Crooks in charity bingo.

• Author: Lausten, David
• Position: Includes related article on charitable gambling

States and localities should be certain that bingo and other types of charitable gambling are fund-raising opportunities for deserving charities, not a money machine for racketeers and the Mob.

The favorite evening haunt of Aunt Tillie and Grandma Jones, the bingo game, could be a money machine for the Mob. A ludicrous notion?

A recent investigation by the Pennsylvania Crime Commission found that organized criminals had established large bingo halls across the state. Operating under the bingo licenses of local charities, racketeers were generating millions of dollars a year in cash. Indeed, even crime "families" of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were part of the act, exacting "street tax" from bingo racketeers and skimming proceeds through supplier contracts.

Racketeers have always been on the alert for new "business" opportunities. The ideal racket is a low-profile activity that will generate significant cash with little likelihood of arrest. When local police and prosecutors are preoccupied with violent crime, drugs, burglaries and auto theft, the enforcement of state bingo statutes has a very low priority.

Fully aware of this, and armed with lots of cash to corrupt charities and local officials, racketeers have prospered in the bingo business for generations. Since the 1930s when Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo, a Mafia lieutenant in the Vito Genovese La Cosa Nostra family in New York, began in a bingo parlor in Broward County, Fla., the Mob and countless local racketeers have been deeply involved in charity-operated bingo games. As recently as the 1970s and '80s, the infamous Meyer Lansky and members of the Luccese La Cosa Nostra family of New York and the Bufalino family of Pennsylvania established bingo games at Indian reservations across the country.

The Pennsylvania bingo law provides that games may be held to raise funds for legitimate charities. The games must be operated by the charity itself and with bona fide members of the charitable group.

The crime commission's report identified bingo operations across the state that had operated under the licenses of charities, but were actually run by racketeers. Racketeers typically returned as little as 3 percent of the revenues to the charities. In most instances, the charities' participation was in name only--no legitimate members of charitable groups were involved in the operation of the games.

In May 1991, the Lebanon County district attorney served search warrants at two Pennsylvania bingo halls in Lebanon and Harrisburg. Documents and bingo equipment were seized, as well as considerable amounts of cash...