Meyer Lansky And Bugsy Siegel example essay topic

(Corruption and Murder in the 1920's: The story of Bugsy Siegel) Thesis Statement: Born within the streets of Brooklyn to poor immigrants parents, Benjamin Siegelbaum would steal and kill his way into history as one of the most notorious members of organized crime. In which he and gang member and friend Meyer Lansky terrorized people throughout the city of New York. With their racketeering and thefts they made the city of New York a dangerous place to live in the 1920's. One of five children, Benjamin Siegel was born to a Russian family, and raised on low income his father pulled out of being a day laborer. As a child Ben vowed to never become a day laborer like his father.

Ben had different things in mind. Ben would start his life of crime with one of his new made friends named Moe Sedaway. Ben and Moey would attack street vendors by Moey splashing the ignorant vendors with kerosene, and Ben lighting up a match to set the vendors on fire. If the vendors lived they would next time pay whatever money Moey and Ben were asking for.

(Britannica Biography) After a while Ben would make some other friends that would pretty much accompany him through the rest of his life as a criminal. The story goes as Ben was walking down the street after meeting with a prostitute, he saw Charlie Luciano, the prostitute's boss, hitting her, and he tried to stop him. At the time a mobster apprentice, Meyer Lansky, was walking down the street when he came accross the scene and helped Ben fight off Charlie Luciano. After that the three of the fighters became very good friends. Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel then put together a Hofheinz 2 murder for hire ring called the "Bugs and Meyer Mob". The problems that were with Bugsy Siegel during his life were that he never thought before he acted, almost getting him killed most of the time.

After that Bugsy became known for raping women and getting away with it when he raped a girl for knowing too much information of Bug's and Meyer's latest killing. He was brought to the cops, but Meyer helped get the charges dropped by talking to the woman. (Potter) At the end of World War I the Bugs and Meyer mob became one of the top gangs in New York, as they came to the attention of the big gangs, such as Arnold Rothstein and Joe Masseria. In 1919 one member of Masseria's gang killed a Bugs and Meyer gambling owner. Killings would follow that one in which made Bugs and Meyer angry. Bugs, Meyer and others routed a lieutenant from one of Joe's East side gangs and got charged a two dollar fine for disrupting the peace.

Later on they would ambush the Masseria gang in Atlantic city. The Volstead act in 1919 was a profitable one for the Bugs and Meyer gang. (Wilk man 1999) The act basically gave them the right to steal and cheat the government by bootlegging liquor. In the late 1920's Ben had killed the wrong man and was forced to move to the Western United States. He also wanted to be in controll of his own area in which Meyer Lansky specifically set this job up for Bugs Siegel. Along with Bugsy Moey Sedaway and othe Bugs and Meyer gang members headed West to start taking control.

It was Meyer Lansky who kept Ben Siegel alive because of his good social skills in which Ben Siegel did not have causing his downfall in New York, and if he did not have Lansky as a member of his organization he would have been killed a while ago. The only opposing gang in California was operated and Hofheinz 3 ruled by a man named Jack Drag na. (Gribben) He ran an Italian protection agency in which made him a considerable threat to Bugsy Siegel taking over the West coast with the Bugs and Meyer gang. Along with all of this Bugsy made friends with Al Capone when he let Capone live with his Aunt to keep the mob from killing Capone.

When Capone took over Chicago he helped the New York mob by becoming a joint team with each others support of money. Ben Siegel moved West with his wife, he had no sons, only three daughters and immediately rented a 35 room mansion owned by the singer Lawrence Tibet that was valued at about $200,000, a large sum of money now. Siegel had friends in the West mainly George Raft, an actor who usually portrayed a mobster. Raft helped Bugsy get together a racket in which was Bugsy's first in the West. Raft also helped Bugsy become good friends with Hollywood. By helping him became friends with the big time actors of the era.

He loaned money to film companies that needed money help to produce films. Bugsy would usually tell great actors of the day that they would work for his employees of the film industry or they would not make it to their next big picture. In Ben's first year of being a mobster in Hollywood he made 400,000 dollars. Bugsy was now the boss of California's gangs and was asked to kill a Canadian mobster for annoying a New York mobster. Harry Green burg became the first major murder for the Bugs and Meyer mob in California.

Now the mob's duty was to report horse race victors to reporters in New York which made them quite a Hofheinz 4 bit of money. In doing this it gave the mob advantage over others by placing bids during the race. Bugsy also helped get a Chicago telephone wire to become the top in order to throw out a mobsters rival. (Gribben) Bugsy Siegel now had moved to Las Vegas where he would try to begin a casino and hotel his dream that he called " the Flamingo". People say that the reason he thought it up was because he had seen it in a vision.

He really did not have a crowd to go because it was a small town with a military base outside of it in which was the only attraction. It followed World War II when he thought of this, and he had also visited the Nazis back in the day and had offered to kill them because he really did not like them. In Las Vegas Bugsy needed money from the mob in order to execute his master plan of the Flamingo they estimated a 1.2 million dollar cost for the construction of the Flaming in which the mob would pay. Soon the cost would up itself from a small 1.2 million dollar cost to a 6 million dollar cost making the mob very angry at Bugsy, and the worst was that the mob had found out that the Flaming was a big flop on it's opening day.

Even though the whole hotel and casino was not finished it still meant Bugsy would not be able to pay the mob the money back in which the mob and Meyer Lansky agreed to a contract to kill Bugsy Siegel in which would be bad. Another factor was that Bugsy Siegel had taken mob money and then pocketed it into Swiss bank accounts in which infuriated the mob and his friend. Hofheinz 5 Meyer Lansky was not about to sell out on his Bugsy, and gave him another chance to make up for his mistake and pay off his debt. If the Flamingo became a success the mob would forget everything, and not kill him. On opening day again it was a sort of a success. The flamingo reported 250,000 dollars in the first half of 1947.

Meyer Lansky was in Havana trying to open up a casino with the mob while he had increased pressure to kill Bugsy Siegel, and some say he ordered his death. On the evening of June 20, 1947 Ben Siegel arrived at the bungalow he and his mistress shared in Hollywood and while reading the paper in front of the living room window, a barrage of bullets screamed through the window at approximately 10: 00 PM killing Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegelbaum. A while after that a group came into the Flamingo and announced that they were taking the Flamingo over. It is said that because of heightened pressure of the mob that Meyer Lansky was ordered to have Bugsy Siegel killed because of the poor pay of the Flamingo and the Swiss bank accounts that Bugsy had. (Gribben) In conclusion the New York mobster Bugsy Siegel is one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920's and that organized crime played a historical role in the upcoming of Las Vegas and other cities. It changed society so that we look at things differently and be more careful about things out in the world.

I think Ben Siegel did good and bad for the fact that he helped in the up bringing of American cities, and changed our ways of life. The gangsters of New York were dangerous and people not meant to be messed with due to their personality's and differences from society. That is one of the many reasons Bugsy Siegel was executed from the gang, because he was becoming too much of a greedy gangster instead of a Hofheinz 6 person trying to make a living. Word Count: 1549.