American Desperado (33 page)

I was crazy for that boat. It was my first nice boat in Miami. I ended up buying a new Cigarette 35 that I named
Mistress
. She was a great boat, and I owned several more afterward, but I never loved a boat as much as my first Miami Cigarette. I was heartbroken when Bobby sank her. Absolutely heartbroken.

*
Abner “Butch” Stokes is better known as the racing boat engine mechanic who founded Stokes Porsche of Hollywood, Florida, in 1973 and is still in business today.

*
Aside from Jon’s assertion, there is no evidence that Gerstein placed illegal bets through Robert Erra, but Miami-Dade police intelligence reports from the 1970s noted personal ties Gerstein had with organized crime figures like Meyer Lansky. Gerstein is best known for his role in exposing money laundering in the 1972 Nixon reelection campaign, which helped to break open the Watergate scandal. Ironically, Gerstein was ensnared in a financial scandal after he and defense attorney F. Lee Bailey became directors of CenTrust bank, which in 1990 was linked to a massive money-laundering scheme involving BCCI bank, General Noriega of Panama, the Medellín Cartel, and Middle Eastern arms dealers. Gerstein avoided criminal prosecution but was reprimanded for “ethical violations,” and his partner, F. Lee Bailey, was disbarred. Gerstein’s final public role was to serve as Pee Wee Herman actor Paul Ruben’s defense attorney after his arrest in a Florida adult movie theater for masturbating. Today, Dade County’s Miami county court complex bears his name in stately letters: The Richard E. Gerstein Justice Center.

*
In 1981 the Dream Bar shut its doors and was turned into a punk rock club.

*
Merritt is a manufacturer of premier sportfishing boats.

†
Boost numbers refer to pounds per square inch of air pressure above normal atmospheric levels.

†
Quayside Towers are premier condo high-rises in North Miami, built in the early 1980s, where units today go for several million dollars.

‡
Sabal Palm Drive was among the most exclusive addresses in Miami in the 1970s. Bay Point Estates was among the first gated communities on Biscayne Bay.

§
Richard Gerstein was Florida state prosecutor for Dade County and served six terms from 1956 to 1980.

34

J
.
R
.:
Our coke business was picking up around the time the old generation of wiseguys was dropping like flies. My uncle Joe Riccobono died in 1975. Carlo Gambino died a year later. Bobby Erra lost his father the same month Gambino went. I had no fond memories of these people. I did not mourn the end of the good old days. I was already making more money with coke than I ever had working for the family.

For Bobby Erra, the death of his father gave him the go-ahead to get into coke. He saw the money me and Gary were making, and he jumped in with Gary to move Albert’s coke out to Gary’s friend in Aspen.

By the end of 1976 I was moving fifty kilos of coke worth half a million dollars or more a month and 10 to 30 percent of that was my profit. So much cash was a problem. Not every car dealer would accept grocery bags of cash for a car. It’s challenging to buy a house for cash. When you have millions of illegal dollars coming
in, it creates a new risk. If you spend it or put it in the bank, it can be just as bad for you legally as getting caught with a trunkload of coke. A pile of coke money is just as dangerous as a pile of coke.

One thing the Mafia did very good was launder money. Gambino had Andy and me take over nightclubs in New York to launder his money. Before everybody started using credit cards, you could take a bar or restaurant, put all your illegal cash through it, and pretend it came from customers. That’s how you cleaned up your money and put it in the bank and paid taxes on it. You ran it through a cash business.

When it comes to criminality, money laundering is almost its own specialty. To me, it wasn’t fun like robbing people, so I never paid much attention to it. In New York, if I needed to buy something expensive, I’d find a crooked businessman to take my cash and buy what I wanted in his name. He’d keep the title, so it looked to the bank like it was his, but I would use it.

In Miami I bought a couple of houses like that. And the way I partied and went through cars, I could burn a couple hundred thousand dollars a month. But it got to the point where no matter how crazy I went, I had boxes of money left over. I was choking on cash. I’d stuff it in cans or bags and bury it on pieces of land near where I lived. The dirt was my bank.

Bobby Erra still owned pieces of clubs, restaurants, and hotels that his father had controlled, and he ran money from his gambling business through these. He had a problem, though, when he tried to wash coke money through his Mafia businesses. The Mafia would want to know how he made that money. Was it drugs? They were just as bad as the IRS.

So Bobby started working with Albert San Pedro to launder his money. Bobby and Albert went in on a strip club together, the Pink Pussycat,
^*
in Hialeah. Titty bars, because of all the cash that runs through them, were a great way to launder money. They still are.

Another scam Bobby and Albert got into was the Puerto Rican lottery. Albert found a guy in the government office of the Puerto Rico lottery who he paid off to tell him when someone came in with a winning ticket. If the winner hadn’t announced his winning ticket yet, Albert’s guy would buy the ticket from him with Albert’s dirty cash. The guy who sold the winning ticket would get a bag full of cash. Spending that money without paying taxes or getting caught would be his problem. Albert and Bobby would get a legitimate winning ticket. They would give it to a relative, or trusted associate, and that person would cash it in. They’d pay taxes, but the money they kept was now clean. Millions of dollars got washed through the Puerto Rican lottery that way. That’s how Albert and Bobby paid people off. They’d give them a winning Puerto Rican lottery ticket.
^*

I’m only explaining this so you understand how much work it is to launder money. It’s harder laundering illegal money than making it, in my view. Not having smart guys like my uncles to help me with laundering money was the one thing I missed about the Mafia.

T
HERE WERE
other things I missed, too. In New York my uncles could take care of almost any legal problem up to attempted murder. Above that, they could help, but it was iffy. In Miami I was getting killed by traffic tickets. I’d throw the tickets out the window like I normally did in New York, but soon Florida cops started impounding my cars, threatening me with jail. I couldn’t believe it.

I went to my friend Mouse, the pothead judge, and told him my problem. He said, “Don’t worry. I’ll work it so you appear in my court, and I’ll fix everything.”

And he did. Mouse almost cracked up when I stood up in front of him in his courtroom. But after he got me out of the first jam, I got many more tickets. Mouse came to me and said, “Jon, I love you, but there’s only so far I can push it.”

I didn’t get mad. Mouse was a stand-up guy. But without him, I was facing real aggravation. I told Gary Teriaca about my problems. He said, “Don’t worry, Jon. I know a lawyer who can fix anything. His name is Danny Mones.”

Danny Mones was of the Jewish persuasion. He was about my age, and he’d grown up in Miami. Danny was not in the Mafia, but he was connected to a group of guys who were raised by Meyer Lansky.
^*
Not like he fathered them, but he helped them go to law school and learn about illegal businesses. Danny’s father, Al Mones,
^†
was an old-time crook who’d worked for Lansky.

Meyer Lansky was very much alive in Miami in the late 1970s. He was a walking dinosaur like my uncles, and like them, he was out doing illegal things until his last breath. The place you’d see him was the Forge Restaurant, one of the finest eating spots in Miami.
^‡
Gary Teriaca and his little brother, Craig, practically lived there. It was the main spot for wiseguys and Jewish crooks because it was
owned by Al Malnik, who was a half-assed Jewish wiseguy and social climber.
^*

The Forge had a terrific bar, where we all used to hang out.
^†
One night I’m in there, and Gary Teriaca says, “There’s somebody you got to meet.”

He takes me into the private dining room behind the bar, and I see an old Jewish guy, Meyer Lansky. He’s got a nice head of hair, and he’s wearing a suit with a bow tie. He looks like an appliance store salesman. Gary introduces me as Jon Roberts.

Lansky tilts his head back and says in his thick, old Jewish-guy accent, “What was your father’s name?”

“Nat Riccobono.”

He looks at me like he’s seen a ghost. He grabs my shoulder and says, “I knew your father forty years ago. He was with Lucky Luciano all the time.”

I wouldn’t know if that was true or not, since my father barely talked. Lansky asked about my father. I told him he went back to Italy, and I hadn’t heard from him since. Lansky said, “If you ever need anything, ask me.”

Hearing those words, Gary Teriaca believed I had a favored relationship with Lansky. There was nothing between Lansky and me, but because Gary and other people now believed there was, it caused some problems for me later on.

• • •

I
TALIANS HAD
a holy reverence for Lansky. They talked about him like he was the pope. Obviously, he was more important than the pope because he helped them hide their money. When I met Danny Mones, he had none of that holy reverence for Lansky. “I heard you know the old cocksucker,” he said.

Danny Mones knew him better than anyone because of his father. Danny’s business partner, Ronnie Bloom, was the son of Yiddy Bloom, another famous old-time gangster.
^*
Danny knew every trick there was.

Danny did more than fix tickets for me. He did everything. He was like my mafia. He was the guy who helped me launder millions of dollars. He became my partner in real estate, buying horses, and running dummy companies. He was so good at crooked things, he ended up becoming Albert San Pedro’s lawyer. We were his two main clients.

Danny was a funny guy. He was very short, maybe five-five. He was fat and had a small face with squinty eyes like a rodent. He truly had the face of a rat. Sometimes he’d talk tough, but when the shit hit the fan, he’d run with his arms flailing. He was a pure coward, but with a big mouth.

Danny didn’t know how to argue in court. He had another lawyer who did that. The one thing Danny knew was how to buy off judges. He was like the Albert Einstein of bribery, a genius. After I turned Albert San Pedro on to Danny, those two practically competed to see who could bribe more politicians in the county.

Albert held his San Lazaro dinners where he paid off judges. Danny held “honorary” dinners, where he’d honor the achievements
of a judge or some other crooked official. Danny would come to me and say, “I’m holding a party to honor Judge So-and-so for ending youth crime”—or some other noble bullshit—“and I need a hundred thousand dollars.”

The dinners cost only a fraction of that. The rest was for the payoffs. Danny held the dinners either at the Coral Gables Biltmore or at a club at the University of Miami, also in Coral Gables. Coral Gables was good because many judges and public officials lived there. They could drink their brains out and not have far to drive home.

We could use the University of Miami because Danny’s little brother went there. It seemed to me that that guy went there for ten years. He must have been a real scholar. Danny sponsored him at the university and made himself a big shot at the school by donating money. Using the university made his dinners look clean. Sometimes Danny would give a big check, with my money, to a charity at the dinner. But what the politicians came for were the party favors. Danny knew the special things each crooked judge liked—Cohiba cigars, Jim Beam, shirts from London. He would give the judge his little gift, and there’d be cash in an envelope with it. Danny was unbelievable. He got state judges, circuit judges, county commissioners. The only thing Danny couldn’t get was a federal judge. Because they’re appointed and they don’t have to pay for campaigns, they’re tougher to bribe. But all the rest, even if they were too clean for cash, they all took campaign contributions. I helped a lot of judges get elected in the 1970s and 1980s.

Once Danny and I owned the judges, the trick was working the prosecutors. From a legal perspective, even if you own the judge, you’re much better off if you don’t go to trial. Plus, that adds court costs to your bribery expenses.

What Danny would do is go to the prosecutor before a trial. He could not tell the prosecutor he’d bribed the judge. He’d say, “What’s the sense in you knocking your brains prosecuting this case, when you know we’re going before Judge So-and-so. We all know what a liberal judge he is.”

“Liberal judge” was a code Danny used that meant this judge
was in his pocket. Most of the time Danny could talk the prosecutor into throwing out a case before it ever went to trial.

As good as Danny was at bribery, he was a moron of a lawyer. For arguing cases in the court, he had a partner, Frank Marks.

F
RANK MARKS
:
Danny and I practiced in the same office for seventeen years. Danny didn’t have many friends. He was a very bad lawyer, and he would insult the other lawyers. He’d get a case and tell the other lawyer, “I’m going to take your ass and wipe the sidewalk up with you. You don’t know shit.”