The Five Most Famous US Underground Bookies

In a pre-2018 era, before the fall of PASPA, gamblers could only bet on sports in Nevada, which got a PASPA exception because it had already legalized sports wagering in 1931. Nonetheless, just because this pastime was illegal across the US did not mean that people did not enjoy it pretty much everywhere. They did, laying bets with criminals who sizably profited from running underground bookmaking operations. Below, we tell you about five individuals who made quite the name for themselves in this sphere.

Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder

Born Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos in 1918 in Steubenville, Ohio, Snyder is one of the most publicized and earliest victims of cancel culture. Nicknamed “The Greek” due to his Greek roots—his family originated from the island of Chios in the Aegean Sea—Snyder fell into hot water in 1988 while working for CBS due to making what were regarded as racist comments. During a lunchtime interview amidst a TV program celebrating Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday, Snyder, in conversation with reporter Ed Hotaling, noted that Black people are superior athletes on account of breeding practices that were in place during the slavery period of US history. Even though he later expressed regret for his statements, and it was obvious that they were made while he was somewhat tipsy, they pretty much ended his career as a mainstream media personality.

It goes without saying that this scandal is what Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder is best remembered for. However, before becoming a contributor to The NFL Today, which aired on CBS, a show where Snyder predicted NFL scores for twelve years, he operated as a bookmaker. Snyder had a natural skill for setting odds, and his predictions on NFL Today would get used by bookies around the US as the basis for theirs. In the 1950s, he worked as an oddsmaker and gambler at Vegas Turf and Sportsroom, among other Sin City venues. Due to his TV fame and being a figure who introduced most of the American public to the world of oddsmaking, he takes the number one spot in our article.

Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal

Fans of crime movies probably know who Frank Rosenthal is, as his life story served as the foundation for the movie Casino, directed by Martin Scorsese, where Robert De Niro played a version of Lefty called Sam “Ace” Rothstein.

The real Frank Lawrence Rosenthal was a Chicago native, born in 1929, who grew up in the Windy City’s West Side, where he developed a knack for gambling in his teenage years. He became familiar with this sphere so early on in his life because his father owned racehorses, and he became familiar with betting odds very young. In his 20s, he began working for organized crime, operating within the largest illegal bookmaking operation in the US at that time, run by the Chicago Outfit, an American Mafia group.

In the 1960s, Rosenthal moved to Florida, got arrested multiple times for bookmaking, and was suspected of participation in various match-fixing cases. In his 40s, he relocated to Las Vegas, where he secretly operated three casinos and ran an illegal sportsbook from one. Frank died in 2008 from a heart attack at the age of seventy-nine, and postmortem, it was revealed he was an FBI informant, even before the Mafia tried to take him out in the early 1980s.

Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno

No, this Fat Tony is not the inspiration for The Simpsons’ one. This one was a member of the Genovese New York crime family and a larger-than-life figure in the Big Apple’s underworld. He was born in 1911 in East Harlem and, in the 1940s, climbed the ranks of the Genovese family, eventually overseeing many of their illegal activities, including sports betting.

He even secretly backed the 1959 Floyd Patterson title defense at Yankee Stadium against Swede Ingemar Johansson, which Patterson lost via TKO in the third. Because of the unexpected result in the fight, in which Patterson was a heavy favorite, the fact that Floyd convincingly won his two other encounters with Ingemar, and the influences of organized crime in the event’s organization, many have suspected that the first Patterson-Johansson encounter was a fix.

At its peak, Salerno’s operation was one of, if not the largest, in the country, and his teams accepted wagers on everything from horse racing to professional sports. He personally managed a team of bookies who took bets from high-profile clients, like celebrities and politicians. In the 1980s, Salerno’s health was failing him, and law enforcement cracked down on organized crime in the US, leading to the Mafia Commission Trial that generated his one-century sentence issued in 1987 for racketeering. He died five years later.

Jackie “The Lackey” Cerone

Here we have another Chicago Outfit gangster. Born in 1914 as one of eleven children of immigrant parents, Jackie Cerone is remembered as one of the most significant figures of Chicago’s illegal gambling scene. Standing at only five foot six inches tall, Cerone was a chauffeur to Tony Accardo, known as Big Tuna (more on him below), at the start of his criminal career before becoming a protégé of Salvatore “Momo” Giancana.

Cerone was known for his sharp mind but more so for his disarming smile, renowned as “the happy gambler,” an image he carefully cultivated for the public. Yet, Chicago law enforcement officers knew him to be a feared gunman. He served prison time for organizing an interstate gambling business, and according to his son, he was a bookmaker for virtually all his adult life.

In 1986, he was convicted for skimming money from a Vegas casino and died six days after getting his prison release a decade later.

Frank Costello

Born Francesco Castiglia in Calabria, Italy, Costello was a member of the Luciano crime family, a legendary organized crime group that Frank headed from 1937 to 1957. He was the family’s acting boss during this period, appointed by Lucky Luciano and succeeded by Vito Genovese, who ordered a failed assassination attempt on Costello in 1957.

Frank rose to prominence in the late 1920s and early 1930s, particularly as the main controller of the Luciano family’s bookmaking operations and its slot machines, which this crime group had situated throughout New York at gas stations, bars, drugstores, bus stops, and similar establishments. It is speculated that he brought in several million dollars through these operations, which would be an even more staggering sum if we converted his profits to today’s money.

Costello gets noted as an illegal bookie who ran a betting operation for which he did not implement much violence. He famously tried to avoid feuds and focused on managing his businesses in a way where profits were the most important thing. He had deep ties with the entertainment industry and owned a stake in New York’s Copacabana nightclub, which was the central hub for his bookmaking dealings. Costello died in 1973 at an NYC hospital after suffering a heart attack in his Manhattan home.  

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