Milton (Milty) Wekar

Milton Wekar was one of the most prolific bookmakers in New York City and its immediate suburbs. Wekar eventually gained a reputation as a top bookmaker -- a “bookmaker’s bookmaker,” if you will. His reputation was that of a notorious old-time Jewish racketeer.

Milton (Milty) Wekar was born in New York City in approximately 1913. His brother, Benjamin (Benny) Wekar, was also a well-known Brooklyn hoodlum and gambler.

In his early years, they both resided in Brooklyn. By the late 1950s, Milty lived in an apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side. But regardless, over the years, he’d constantly provide arresting New York City police officers with varied home addresses.

For instance, in 1951, he claimed to have lived in Brooklyn. Then, it was Manhattan. Yet, in early 1967, he listed his residence as 470 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn. During another gambling arrest that same year, he listed his home as Horizon Place in Fort Lee, New Jersey. By 1969, he had relocated to 345 East 56th Street, on Manhattan’s ritzy Upper Eastside.

Milton Wekar

Milty Wekar was a lifelong gambler. As a young hoodlum, he had first gravitated to the horse bookmaking rackets in Brooklyn. He soon expanded into accepting wagers on sporting events as well.

He was to slowly become one of the most prolific bookmakers throughout New York and its immediate suburbs. Wekar eventually gained a reputation as a top bookmaker -- a “bookmaker’s bookmaker,” if you will. His reputation was that of a notorious old-time Jewish racketeer.

Over the years, he was affiliated with many of the top professional gamblers throughout the city. He would also figure into some of the largest gambling busts ever recorded as well.

Although Wekar was as slippery as a fox as a hoodlum and played sleight of hand with the authorities as best he could through the years, his modus operandi was to become well-documented by law enforcement.

His criminal activities included the gambling rackets , bookmaking (horses-sports,) bookie lay-off service, and police bribery.

Known as a big betting "Mahoff," which in Hebrew means a big gambling “boss,” Milty Wekar had a well-deserved reputation as one of the premier bookmakers and professional gambling figures in New York City for almost 50 years.

His list of close associates and partners in the gambling rackets is legendary. Men with names such as:

Barney Kotler -- A Brooklyn original. Former prizefighter, gambler, strong-arm, and labor extortionist. Kotler was well known and respected as a fellow mobster dating back to the days of Murder Inc.

Sammy Jacobson and Danny Jacobson -- The Jacobson brothers were well-known strong arms, bookmakers, and policy operators from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Together with their younger brother Ralph (The Beak) Jacobson , they were close to mob legend Meyer Lansky. Sam was said to have run Lansky’s garment district-based policy and shylock network for years.

Gilbert Lee Beckley -- A nationally-known top bookmaker and layoff man. At one time, Beckley partnered with such mob luminaries as Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and Meyer Lansky. Beckley would later be killed gangland-style after getting caught in several high-profile criminal investigations.

Charles (Ruby) Stein -- He and his longtime partner, Mafia caporegime Nicholas (Jiggs) Forlano , were labeled by authorities as the two largest and most important shylocks operating in NYC. Stein worked in tandem with Wekar in gambling rackets for years.

Solomon (Solly Pork Chop) Margolies --A prolific bookmaker, who was long allied with the Jewish element of the underworld. He was an important member of the largest bookmaking “layoff” network in the U.S. He had a record of many gambling arrests and convictions.

David Budin -- A former school teacher, Budin was a pivotal figure in a sports bribery and nationwide gambling network, who, along with Wekar and others, was busted in a major 1967 gambling case.

Charles Marcus -- Close associate and Wekar's aide who helped oversee their large gambling operation. Convicted numerous times of bookmaking.

Danny Kapilow -- Another well-known former prizefighter, Kapilow was a feared and respected Brooklyn “tough guy.” Danny went into shylocking and labor racketeering after his career as a welterweight/middleweight contender. He was later accused of selling “sweetheart contracts” to favored companies. By the 1960s, he had become vice-president of the powerful Long Island Federation of Labor.

Robert Cohen -- Another Brooklyn-based convicted bookmaker, known gambler (KG), and close associate to the Wekar brothers.

Paul Vario Sr. -- A notorious Lucchese Family caporegime and gambling boss who partnered with Wekar in a $30-million-a-year betting operation active from Brooklyn to Long Island during the 1960s-early 1970s era. Among Vario’s men who Wekar was also affiliated with were Vario’s brother Salvatore (Babe) Vario, who was also a mob soldier; bookmaker Johnny Savino, the father and son team Steve DePasquale Sr. and Jr.; Raymond Montemurro; and Colombo mob figure Pasquale (Checko Brown) Fusco , who was a close aide to capo Sebastian (Buster) Aloi.

The White Turkey Restaurant

Dating to July 1951, the then 38-year-old Milty Wekar was indicted along with notorious Jewish hoodlum Barney Kotler and five other top Jewish gamblers for operating as major bookmakers by a Brooklyn rackets grand jury probing Brooklyn’s gambling rackets.

In setting heavy bail, famed Kings County Judge Samuel Leibovitz declared the seven to be “openly and defiantly thumbing their noses at authorities while operating a large betting operation during the midst of a major law enforcement probe of Brooklyn’s gambling rackets.”

Arrested along with Kotler and Wekar were Jack Eisenberg, Hyman (Little Hymie) Hymowitz, Jacob Stanger, Leo Rosen, and Herman Blumenkrantz.

Nearly a decade later, in January 1961, in what was touted at the time by Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan as a “conference” among the city’s prominent gambling figures, detectives raided the famous White Turkey Restaurant on East 57th Street. Several men were charged with bookmaking or possession of gambling records.

All present were charged with consorting with known criminals. The 14 men arrested that day were described as the “cream of the crop” of gambling racketeers in New York. Police simultaneously nabbed six others during a parallel gambling raid on a nearby Manhattan apartment.

White Turkey Restaurant

Among those arrested at the restaurant were Profaci Family capo Nicholas (Jiggs) Forlano and his partner Charles (Ruby) Stein. The “Ruby and Jiggs” combo was widely known as among the country's biggest loan sharks.

Stein also had the reputation of a mathematical wizard. His expertise was allegedly utilized as the “odds-maker” who set the betting “line” many other bookmakers in the city followed. The gamblers used the White Turkey Restaurant as a meeting place to “settle up” weekly gambling figures amongst themselves and to meet subordinate bookies to pay off or collect accordingly.

Others nabbed were Hyman Stutman of Jackson Heights, Queens, and gambling boss Milton Wekar, who was arrested in the apartment that served as a “wire room” for the ring. At the time of his arrest, Wekar had $8000 cash in his pocket.

Then, in February 1966, the NYC Police wielding sledgehammers battered down a heavy steel door in Manhattan to smash what was termed a Mafia-connected $10-million-a-year bookmaking.

Nabbed in the renovated Eastside tenement apartment were 52-year-old Wekar and two other men. Raiding officers also confiscated several telephones and over $65,000 in betting slips representing one single day's action. Another top bookmaker, Charlie Marcus (53), was also arrested, and Wekar’s son-in-law, Peter D’Onofrio (38).

That same year in June of 1966, four months later, Wekar was nabbed again. This time, he is named as the boss of a $ 30-million-a-year combination bookmaking and policy operation based out in Nassau County.

At the time of this widely publicized raid, authorities say he was partners with Lucchese capo Paul Vario Sr. in this particular betting ring. Lucchese associate and top Vario aide Stephen DePasquale allegedly handled the policy-numbers segment of the gambling operation.

Only eight months later, in February 1967, authorities caught him back at it. Milty is nabbed with seven other bookies on misdemeanor gambling charges as part of a bookmaking network based out of a Long Beach apartment that accepted bets on both college and professional sports.

Two weeks later, his alleged Manhattan-based partner Harold (Blackie) Sampson was arrested as well. Sampson was said to conduct his portion of the operation by utilizing a New Rochelle-based telephone “call service” named Tel-O Answering Service. Prospective bettors would call a phone number for the service and leave their name and a call-back number.

Sampson and his associates would check in throughout the day and retrieve those messages for callbacks to accept their customer's wagers.

In a seemingly never-ending police campaign against him, not even three months later, in May of 1967, Wekar is reindicted along with those seven other men on “felony” bookmaking charges for participating in a vast interstate sports-betting ring by Nassau County authorities.

The year 1967 was especially brutal to the veteran bookmaker. In December of that same year, in a deep probe follow-up investigation, the Nassau Rackets Squad, under the unrelenting direction of District Attorney William Cahn, broke up what they described as a huge nationwide bookmaking “layoff” operation with the arrest of 22 suspects.

Cahn said the gambling ring was estimated to have grossed a whopping $100,000,000 per year in wagers. Besides those arrested in Nassau County and Manhattan, others nabbed included gambling suspects in Miami, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; New Orleans, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Arrested on multiple counts of felony gambling, misdemeanor bookmaking, and gambling conspiracy charges were the notorious Gilbert Lee Beckley, Robert Cohen, David Budin, Jack Kapitofsky, Marvin Weitz, Benjamin Feinlowitz, Jack Singer, Jerry Einhorn, Martin Kane, Martin Skalaroff, Eugene Nolan, Cecil Dobrowolski, James Liebowitz, and Matthew Rakowitz.

A key part of this highly-publicized case dealt with the suspects' ability to create a “spy network,” which included team assistants, trainers, and locker room attendants of many professional sports teams who kept the gambling ring flourishing with confidential inside information on the condition of star athletes. It enabled the gamblers to receive inside information on the “up to the minute” condition of various star football, baseball, and basketball players.

The bookmakers would then adjust the odds on those games accordingly without letting the public know. This allowed the ring to make fantastic profits off the private info. They would also place bets with other unaffiliated bookmaking offices, which had the dual effort of generating huge wins for them while financially destroying their gambling competition.

In June 1969, Milty Wekar got slammed again by District Attorney Cahn’s office. He was hit with two felony counts of bookmaking for accepting $53,000 in wagers over two days from Cosmo (Casey) Rosado, an embattled Lucchese mob associate and president of Local # 21 of the Transportation, Terminal, Interplant, and Commissary Workers Union.

The authorities had also tied Rosado into an affiliation with the Lucchese Family and, specifically, capo Paul Vario. So, they were riding this case especially hard.

During his lifetime, Wekar was arrested for bookmaking at least nine times, conspiracy twice, police bribery, and possession of gambling records twice. After many decades of repeated gambling arrests and convictions, by the 1970s, Milty started to spend more and more time down in South Florida, away from all the street action and law enforcement "heat."

He had been frequenting the Miami area for years, but as he aged, Wekar eased into a semi-retirement down there. He occasionally frequented the New York area, commuting back and forth as a snowbird.

And some said that he still kept a profitable hand in the gambling rackets. He also maintained his lifelong connections to the many mafia members and varied Jewish hoodlum associates he’d met along the way.

Milton (Milty) Wekar died in Boca Raton at 81 years old in 1994.

Until next time…”The Other Guy!”

Milton (Milty) Wekar

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Eugene (Little Gene) Giannone

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