0:08

School of Humans. I'm

0:16

Christina Lee. This is Racket

0:19

Inside the Goal Club, Episode

0:21

three, Dirty Money. When

0:25

I was researching this podcast, I thought

0:27

it'd be a good idea to learn

0:29

more about the Mafia's influence on pop

0:31

culture, right, So I started

0:33

by watching Good Fellas, and then I moved

0:35

on to The Sopranos. We've

0:38

officially pulled up the HBO Now app

0:41

and we got the

0:43

cursor set on

0:45

season one, episode one, the

0:48

pilot of The Sopranos. All

0:50

right, here we go. Honestly,

0:55

Jersey kind of looks like gettysburg Pa. Oh,

0:59

but then they pull it to this Kardashian type house.

1:01

Okay, got it. This

1:06

is definitely different from Oh my Life.

1:08

I always wanted to be a gangster. So

1:12

my whole coupe about Goodfellows is

1:14

that this is what happens when

1:16

men can't talk through their feelings, Like especially

1:18

the Joe Pesci character. You give like a live

1:21

wire gun and look what happens. Right, But

1:23

in this very scenario, it's the complete opposite.

1:27

I didn't even think about how ironic that was,

1:29

but the fact that we're literally starting with

1:31

Tony Soprano going to therapy

1:33

is hilarious to me how

1:36

much time it's going to pass until I see somebody off.

1:40

Oh oh

1:42

okay, no,

1:45

come back. Let's talk about the ducks. Let's

1:47

talk about the ducks. Come

1:49

back. I

1:52

watched this first episode with my husband and

1:55

we had a lot of thoughts after

1:57

the episode about mafia

1:59

archetypes. So I guess perhaps

2:02

if people understood the mafia archetype

2:06

like clear

2:08

as day, I could see

2:10

why people would be really drawn and intrigued

2:13

by these very personas that we've come to

2:15

know being sort of like taken apart and

2:18

sort of like interrogated

2:21

in a way. Well, The Sopranos was funny

2:23

in that way because it was very explicitly supposed

2:25

to be like, yeah, you know, deconstructing

2:28

the American mobster, right, But

2:32

despite it, they

2:34

still ended up being kind of like those good

2:37

good fellas as you know, like

2:39

yeah, cool guys, gobba gool

2:42

got it all figured out. Yeah, kind of like as

2:44

a nervous tick, right, like you don't know how else you're

2:46

supposed to act. Yeah, Yeah,

2:48

people still end up seeing them as like aspirational

2:50

figures. In

2:55

the second episode of season one, at

2:57

The Sopranos, a mobster informant

2:59

says this, You're always going to have

3:02

organized crime. Always. As

3:04

long as human being has certain appetites

3:07

for gambling, pornography, or whatever,

3:09

someone is always going to surface to serve those

3:12

needs. Always. The

3:15

first episode of The Sopranos aired on January

3:17

twelfth, nineteen ninety nine. The FBI

3:20

raid on the Gold Club was on March nineteenth,

3:23

nineteen ninety nine. By

3:25

the time of the trial in two thousand and one,

3:27

The Sopranos was arguably one of the most

3:29

popular shows on TV, so

3:32

for millions of Americans who followed the trial,

3:35

the Italian Mafia was on the mind. Atlanta's

3:42

Gold Club was an end of twentieth century bacchanal,

3:45

one big champagne room for the rich and famous.

3:48

Sexual activity happened in the privacy

3:50

of the Gold rooms upstairs, and

3:53

the clubs swindled its patrons in a variety

3:55

of ways, dumping champagne

3:57

into the carpet or potted plant, charging

4:00

tips twice, maxing out credit cards.

4:04

But as much fanfare and excess

4:06

as there was, the prosecution was

4:08

mostly interested in pinning down Gold Club's

4:10

owner, Steve Kaplan, as an

4:12

associate of the Italian Mafia.

4:15

The lead prosecutor on this case was Art

4:18

Leech. I'm Art Leech. I

4:21

am a former Assistant United States

4:23

Attorney. I was with the Department of Justice for nineteen

4:25

years. I am the

4:27

lead prosecutor on the

4:30

Gold Club case. Through the

4:33

work of the FBI, we knew

4:36

what was happening, and we saw set

4:38

out to prove what was happening with regard to

4:40

the Gambino crime family, which is one

4:43

of the five crime families out

4:45

of the New York City metro area. Art

4:47

Leech describes himself as a patriot.

4:50

This goes back to when he was in the second grade

4:52

the year John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

4:55

Leech says he remembers being deeply

4:57

affected. In

5:00

nineteen ninety three, Leech became the assistant

5:02

US Attorney in Atlanta. Leech's

5:05

job led him to prosecute a variety

5:07

of organized crime syndicates in the South.

5:10

At one point, he had to have a security

5:12

detail of US marshals

5:15

because a Vietnamese gang he was prosecuting

5:17

was plotting to invade his home. You

5:20

know, I had threats, and you

5:22

know, you take precautions. I take precautions

5:25

to this day, just because there's

5:27

a lot of people that I prosecuted over the twenty

5:30

one years that I was a prosecutor, both in state

5:32

and federal court. I'd had nineteen years with

5:34

the Department of Justice, so you know some

5:37

people out there they're not happy with me. In

5:40

Atlanta, Leech became the head of the

5:42

Organized Crime Strike Force. The

5:44

Organized Crime Strike Force was part of

5:47

a larger federal justice initiative,

5:50

and of all the organized crime in the country,

5:53

their primary target was the Italian

5:55

mafia, also known as

5:57

the Mob. Let me just

5:59

see how much I can talk about on this.

6:02

I think I can say

6:06

the Organized Crime Strike Force is a

6:08

nationwide organization, okay,

6:11

And I think I can go so far to say that

6:14

the plan in my

6:16

time frame was a

6:19

full court press on

6:21

the organized crime families with

6:24

a perspective of eradicating

6:27

them as a

6:30

criminal force in the United States

6:32

at that point and for all time in the future.

6:38

Leech believes without a doubt that Caplan

6:40

was involved in the mob, specifically

6:43

the Gambino crime family, and

6:45

if Caplan got away with it, the mafia

6:48

could take hold down South. I

6:50

think I can venture to say, without

6:53

any opposition from anyone, that this

6:56

situation was unique in Atlanta, unique

6:59

in Georgia and needed to

7:01

be addressed because it's like a fester

7:03

in cancer. I mean, if you're going to allow

7:05

it to grow and

7:08

prosper, you're going to have a problem going

7:10

forward. We'll

7:16

be right back. The

7:29

sordid history of the Gold Club is inextricably

7:32

tied up with the history of the Mob. The

7:36

first major Italian mafia incident

7:38

in the United States was in New Orleans

7:40

in eighteen ninety a police officer

7:43

was murdered execution style. But

7:46

as we know from The Sopranos and all

7:48

the Mob movies, the Mob primarily

7:51

operates out of New York. Tony Soprano

7:53

commutes from his home in New Jersey. The

7:55

Mob is also in South Florida and other big

7:58

cities up north like Philadelphia and

8:00

Boston. The Italian

8:02

mafia and the United States is also

8:05

known as LaCOSA nostra, which

8:07

translates to this thing of ours,

8:10

and the mafia is divided into five main

8:12

families. They're named

8:14

after significant leaders they had at one

8:16

point or another Banano,

8:19

Colombo, Gambino, Chenevis,

8:22

Lukees, and

8:24

in New York. Their primary goal is

8:26

extorting money from businesses, nightclubs,

8:29

strip clubs, you know, cedier

8:31

enterprises. They order business

8:34

owners to give them protection fees

8:36

to protect these businesses from other

8:38

crime organizations. As

8:41

prosecutor on the Gold Club case, Leech

8:44

knew he had to spell out exactly what the mafia

8:46

was capable of, so he

8:49

brought an FBI aged Jack Stubing,

8:51

who was following one of the five families. An

8:54

actor is reading Stubing's testimony as

8:56

an expert witness. The

8:59

purpose of the cosin Nostra family is

9:02

simply to generate income and

9:04

maintain the hour to keep

9:06

generating that income, and these individuals

9:09

are key in carrying out those day

9:11

to day duties. Each

9:13

crime family is organized as a

9:15

pyramid. The boss is at

9:17

the top. The boss of the family's

9:19

word is supposed to be absolute. He's

9:22

assisted by an individual who's

9:24

known as the underboss, who,

9:27

for lack of a better word, might be

9:29

thought of as the vice president. Then

9:32

there is the concilierre what

9:35

it means is counselor The

9:37

level below them is the captain's

9:40

In Italian, they're also known as

9:42

capo. Under them are

9:45

the people who are said to be in their cruise

9:47

or regime, and these people

9:49

are referred to as soldiers. To

9:53

be an official member of the mob, an associate

9:55

must be of Italian origin on their father's

9:57

side and be recommended and vetted

9:59

by another member of the family. Then

10:02

they undergo an initiation ceremony.

10:06

Here's how the ceremony is ascribed in Jack

10:08

Stubing's testimony. It's very

10:11

dramatic. There will

10:13

be a gun and a knife laying

10:15

on a table traditional

10:17

ceremony, they would take that knife

10:20

and prick the individual's trigger

10:22

finger. Then they would squeeze a drop

10:24

a blood onto what's called a holy

10:26

card. It's a small, maybe

10:28

a four inch tall card with a picture

10:31

of a Roman Catholic saint on it. Then

10:33

the card placed in the individual's

10:35

cupped hands, and it's lit

10:37

a fire, and the individual

10:40

is given an oath to recite, but

10:42

in essence, he is swearing

10:44

his undying loyalty to LaCOSA

10:47

Nostra, that he will not discuss

10:49

LaCOSA Nostra's affairs outside

10:52

of the family, and that if he should

10:54

ever betray his oath, may

10:56

he burn like the image or

10:58

like the paper that's burning in his hand.

11:03

They emerge from the ceremony of fully

11:05

initiated maid member. Now,

11:15

according to these rules, Steve Kaplan

11:17

could not have been an official made member

11:20

because he is Jewish, but the

11:22

FBI had an eye on him for a while because

11:25

of his father, George. The government

11:27

alleges that George was an earner generating

11:30

family income for the Gambinos, and

11:33

when Steve Kaplan entered the family business,

11:36

he continued his father's legacy. As a

11:38

mob associate, Steve Kaplan

11:40

was what we know as an associate of

11:43

the crime family. Generally,

11:46

made members of the crime family have to

11:48

be of Italian lineage, and Kaplan

11:51

was not. But associates

11:53

are just as important within the family

11:55

as maid members, and that

11:57

goes from soldiers,

11:59

which are the bottom admitted members,

12:02

all the way up to the boss of the family.

12:05

Kaplan was one of their biggest earners.

12:08

And earners are people who are

12:10

supplying cash

12:13

to the family, and the cash is

12:15

what provides them the ability

12:17

to carry on day to day, month to month,

12:19

year to year. It is what lines

12:21

the pockets of everybody up the chain of command.

12:24

So an associate would be

12:26

basically partnered with the soldier. He

12:29

would be associated with a captain who

12:31

runs a crew within

12:33

the organized crime organization.

12:37

And ultimately the captain

12:39

is also paying up

12:42

to the boss, the underboss,

12:45

and the concieri, if that

12:47

is what the organization is at the time.

12:49

But to prosecute Kaplan Leech couldn't

12:51

just follow the chain of command. A case

12:54

involving the mafia needs to show a pattern

12:56

of illegal behavior. The

13:03

FBI didn't know that LaCOSA Nostra existed

13:05

until nineteen fifty seven, and

13:07

then in nineteen sixty three, Joseph

13:10

Vlacke became the first mob member to

13:12

violate the Klos Nostro's code of

13:14

silence called Omerta.

13:18

Thanks to Vlacke's testimony, the FPPI

13:20

would see just how far the mob would

13:22

go to make money illegally, what's

13:24

known as racketeering. This

13:27

led to the passing of the Racketeering Influenced

13:30

and Corruptions Act or Rico.

13:33

RICO was passed in the nineteen seventies

13:35

as a means of dealing with organized crime.

13:38

It allows the government to go after leaders

13:40

and members of a criminal enterprise even

13:43

if the government can't prove that the individual

13:46

was an acted part of each specific

13:48

criminal act. It's

13:50

complicated, and it has been used to prosecute

13:53

a variety of cases across the country.

13:55

So here's Art Leach explaining. It

13:58

is a statue that the

14:01

Department of Justice passed way

14:03

back when Bobby Kennedy was Jorney General,

14:06

and it was aimed at the mafia

14:09

and has been used for that purpose over

14:12

time. It is also used

14:14

for complex cases

14:17

where you have a variety of crimes

14:20

spread over a wide area. So

14:23

one of the many cases that I did when I was Chief

14:25

of the Organized Crime Strikeforce involved

14:27

the game that worked the entire

14:30

United States and they would do home invasions,

14:32

murders, murder for hire,

14:35

kidnapping, all sorts

14:37

of thefts, extortion. And

14:40

so what RICO allows you

14:42

to do is if there's a murder in the state

14:44

of New Jersey, you can charge that murder

14:46

under New Jersey law in

14:48

a case in Georgia. So

14:51

the whole idea is to bring all

14:53

of the criminal activity together in a

14:55

single indictment, regardless

14:58

of where it occurred in the United States.

15:01

RICO is what Art Leads used in the Gold

15:03

Club case. It was perfect.

15:06

Everything could fall under RICO. Prostitution,

15:09

money laundering, fraud, Dozens

15:12

of defendants could be charged with dozens

15:14

of different crimes occurring in different states,

15:17

all in one giant case starring

15:19

the FBI and the Gold Club. The

15:22

government envisioned seizing millions

15:25

and shutting down the Gold Club for good.

15:35

There's no denying that Kaplan was closed

15:37

with Gambino members. John

15:40

Gotti Jr. Was the boss of the Gambinos

15:42

at the time. Kaplan was

15:44

close enough to call him by his nickname Junior.

15:47

In nineteen ninety six, Kaplan hosted

15:50

Junior for a weekend in Atlanta

15:52

at the Gold Club. But

15:54

what art Leage alleges in the indictment

15:56

is that Kaplan was more than a friend. Let's

16:00

take a look at the indictment. There

16:02

are going to be a lot of names, and it's going to

16:04

sound like the cat of a Scorsese film.

16:08

It's nineteen eighty eight. At a nightclub

16:10

in New York called Bedrock. A

16:13

guy named Shorty Mascuzio is

16:15

in a rage because he was just fired

16:17

from the club. He

16:19

goes downstairs to the bathroom and when a

16:21

Bedrocks owners, David Fisher, follows

16:24

him. When Shorty's on the toilet,

16:26

Fisher shoots him in the head. Shorty

16:29

dies. Now one

16:31

of the other owners of the club is none

16:33

other than Steve Kaplan, and

16:35

apparently Shorty is a soldier with

16:37

the Gambino crime family. There's

16:40

a problem. An employee named

16:42

Douggie Chittam witnessed the murder. Crime

16:45

families like to keep things within the family.

16:48

They don't want the police in their affairs, so

16:51

Kaplan takes Douggie to meet with the Cambinos

16:53

to see what they should do about the murder. John

16:57

Gotti Jr. Instructs Kaplan to hide

16:59

Douggie from law enforcement investigating the

17:01

murder. Kaplan flies

17:04

him down to bulk of her Tone, where he owns

17:06

a home and operates a nightclub. He

17:08

lets Dougie hideout in his home. In

17:14

retaliation. Dino Basciano, a

17:16

Gambino associate, wants to murder Fisher,

17:19

and he wants to do it at Bedrock. Kaplan

17:22

asked him not to, assuring Basciano

17:25

that he will provide him with Fisher's address.

17:28

Kaplan's Gambino involvement continued

17:30

in Florida, which, besides New York,

17:33

is another mob hotspot. In

17:36

nineteen ninety four, a Banano family

17:38

associate operated a hot dog stand

17:40

out of Kaplan's Florida nightclub called

17:42

Kloboca. Kaplan fiers.

17:45

This associate is trying to muscle him out of

17:47

his own business. He asked

17:49

the Gambinos for help. The associate

17:51

is successfully removed and the threat

17:53

against Kaplan is resolved. Kaplan

17:57

participated in numerous loan sharking

17:59

schemes in Florida where he'd lend

18:01

people money at high interest rates and

18:04

get Gambino as see it's to beat people

18:06

up if they didn't get their interest payments

18:08

in on time. He'd fly

18:10

Gambino members on reduced fare tickets

18:13

on Delta, and he'd have meetings

18:15

with Gambino members in New York. And

18:23

then there's the score situation. According

18:26

to the indictment, Kaplan and Gotti

18:28

Jr. Were plotting to extort money from

18:30

a strip club in New York culled Scores.

18:36

You might know Scores from Hustlers, the

18:39

twenty nineteen films starring Jennifer

18:41

Lopez and Constance Wu based

18:43

on a true story. Hustlers is about

18:45

a group of strippers trying to financially survive

18:47

the economic collapse of two thousand and eight. To

18:50

do so, they drugged men, brought

18:52

them back to scores, and maxed out the

18:54

credit cards before the

18:56

controversy. In nineteen ninety five, John

18:59

Gotti Junior was staging a takeover and

19:01

he'd bring Kaplin for several cozy

19:04

sitdowns with scores own nurse. It

19:07

was owned by two individuals. The

19:11

Gambino crime family made

19:13

a decision to try to basically take that over.

19:16

And what had happened is when

19:19

you're a club in New York City, you

19:21

are going to be associated with one

19:24

of the crime families, and from

19:26

the view of the crime family, you are

19:28

protected by that family,

19:30

which means that no other family can come in. If

19:33

you have some sort of problem, they

19:35

will address it, but

19:37

the ever present threat is of physical

19:39

violence for failure to pay

19:41

your tribute to the family that is

19:43

protecting you. Well, the

19:46

two owners of the Scorers nightclub had

19:49

been paying that tribute to the Gambino

19:51

crime family for a period of time and

19:54

it was such a moneymaker that they decided to

19:56

take it over. And the way they were going to take

19:58

it over was through Steve Kaplan. The

20:00

Gambinos were apparently so impressed with

20:02

the Gold Club and how Caplan was motivating

20:05

and boyees with speeches and cash.

20:07

They sought as counsel for Scores. Years

20:11

later, when three Gambino members pleaded

20:13

guilty to the racketeering scheme involving

20:15

scores, Kaplan wasn't among

20:17

them, but the indictment alleged

20:20

that he played a pivotal role in extorting

20:22

scores regardless. All

20:24

right, so you're one step away from the

20:27

actual administration of the family. So

20:29

I mean, in terms of kind of measuring

20:32

how important Steve Kaplan

20:34

was viewed within the Gambino crime family, the

20:36

fact that he has got that sort of access

20:39

tells you that he's incredibly trusted,

20:43

which is why he ends up in the whole Scores

20:45

situation. Because, as

20:47

somebody who has run a successful club,

20:50

if they're going to take it over, they've got to

20:52

have somebody that can run it. And

20:54

they're soldiers, their captains. They can't

20:56

do it. They don't have the acumen,

20:59

they don't have the knowledge, they don't know

21:01

what needs to be done on a day to day basis

21:03

to run a business like that. So,

21:07

you know, I just think that it

21:09

was it was a mutual relationship.

21:11

It was highly beneficial to the Gambinos,

21:14

and he enjoyed it. He just liked it. You

21:16

know. That's that's the way that I would characterize

21:18

it. The

21:26

FBI started surveillan Kaplan in

21:28

nineteen ninety six. A year

21:31

later, the bureau had twelve boxes

21:33

of surveillance tapes. We had

21:37

sources, we had agents,

21:40

you know, we had surveillance, you know,

21:42

we had all the normal things

21:44

that you see in any criminal investigation.

21:47

We had all those things happening

21:49

there. One of the things that

21:51

the FBI is really sensitive about

21:53

a source of methods. So I really

21:56

can't talk very much about what

21:58

it is we were doing or what the objective was.

22:00

And you know, something's work, something's fail,

22:03

but that's the nature of conducting an investigation.

22:07

Art Leech is vague about what exactly the

22:09

FBI was tasked with doing, but

22:12

he makes it clear that the FBI had people

22:14

surveilling the Gold Club from the outside

22:16

in We'll

22:19

be right back among

22:31

the Gold Club employees, like Catherine,

22:34

the cocktail waitress. There was definitely

22:37

a sense that something sketchy was happening

22:39

at the club. I didn't

22:41

know they were mafia at first.

22:43

I hadn't. I didn't know, but it's

22:45

definitely like a feeling

22:47

like I knew in that office was Steve Kaplin

22:50

that I was kind of like with a shark. I

22:52

just because I'm a pretty intuitive person,

22:55

you know. I was like, oh, this is like, no

22:57

fucking Joe. But the entertainer

22:59

Jacqueline Bush, who was close with Kaplan,

23:02

said all of Leech's accusations about

23:04

the MOV tie for bullshit. No,

23:07

And see that's the thing that made

23:11

me kind of laugh

23:13

at first. But then like later

23:15

under in the trial, I realized I had met John

23:18

Gotti Junior and didn't even know it. They had

23:20

a video of me shaking his hand out from the

23:22

Gold Club. They didn't introduce him

23:24

as John Gotti Junior. They just said, this is

23:26

John. He's here visiting from New York.

23:28

He wants to see the Gold Club, and

23:30

he wants the best of the best. And

23:33

so I had

23:35

to round up ten of my girls for him

23:37

and his friends that night because

23:39

he wanted to experience the Gold Club and because

23:41

he was on in our building. All

23:43

of a sudden, now my Jewish boss,

23:47

my Jewish boss is

23:49

in the Italian mob. Now, come on,

23:52

are you kidding me? It's

23:55

hilarious. They're

23:57

from New York. All of those

24:00

people, the rich people, their

24:02

kids all go to school together. So his kids

24:04

went to school with John these kids, So what

24:07

that doesn't make him in business with this

24:09

man? Are you kidding me? And I've

24:12

been to New York with Steve so many

24:14

times and I was never around anybody

24:17

that was a gangster. The

24:25

Gold Club case was going to be Art Leech's

24:27

last as assistant US Attorney. He

24:30

was pulling out all the stops to take Kaplin

24:32

and the Gold Club down, and

24:35

he decided to take advantage of the country's

24:37

witness security program.

24:39

We had several witness

24:42

security witnesses, in

24:44

other words, former mafia

24:47

people who decided

24:50

to cooperate with the Department of Justice and

24:52

are now in a program that we call Whitseek

24:55

Witness Security, and they go

24:57

to different prisons. When

25:00

they're transported, they're transported in

25:02

a very different way. They're just not on

25:04

commercial lights and so forth. In

25:07

order to tell the story, you

25:10

have got to put those people on the

25:12

stand so that they can say from the inside,

25:14

this is what we were doing and why we were doing.

25:18

Leech found several mobsters who said

25:20

they would give testimony about Steve Kaplan

25:22

and the Gold Club in exchange

25:25

they would get their sentences reduced. The

25:28

guys he got were torturers and murderers

25:31

who had done some pretty gruesome stuff. We'll

25:34

get into all that in a later episode,

25:37

but for now, one guy

25:39

liked to do is torturing and a bathtub.

25:42

It makes clean up easier. Leech

25:46

thought presenting these people would help the jury

25:48

understand how vital it was to bring down

25:50

Kaplan and Gold Club, because

25:53

he feared that people might get caught up in

25:55

a romantic view of the mafia,

25:57

in part because of the hit show The

25:59

Sopranos. For

26:01

somebody who was an organized crime prosecutor

26:04

in that timeframe, I

26:06

thought the Sopranos did a

26:08

pretty good job of showing the ugly side

26:10

of what happens within the mafia as

26:12

well. But they did it all

26:15

under circumstances that kind of made

26:17

the role of the boss and the captains

26:19

and the soldiers kind of a romantic sort

26:22

of thing. So this deconstruction

26:24

of the archetype that I mentioned at the top

26:26

of the episode was rubbing off on the public.

26:29

Our idea of a made member wasn't Joe

26:31

Pesci and Goodfellows, it was Tony

26:33

Soprano. At his first therapy appointment,

26:37

Leech explains what mafia members were like in

26:40

his experience you

26:42

by and large their sociopaths.

26:45

By that, I mean that you know they

26:47

have been engaged in criminal conduct

26:50

the better part of their lives and it doesn't

26:52

bother them at all. To

26:57

prove that Steve Kaplan was an earner, the

26:59

FBI and Leech needed to find evidence

27:02

that the Gold Club profits were going from

27:04

the hands of Steve one into

27:06

the hands of a mobster, and

27:08

that alleged mobster is Michael de Leonardo.

27:12

People call him Mikey Scars. According

27:17

to prosecution, Di Leonardo was

27:19

Kaplan's main point of contact with the Gambinos.

27:23

He was a capo or a captain, and

27:25

Kaplan gave him money in the form of protection

27:28

fees. I was viewed Michael

27:30

de Leonardo as kind of being the leader of

27:32

the band and someone

27:36

who was making strategic

27:38

decisions, the way that

27:40

the club operated, the way that it attracted

27:42

people, the prices that had charged.

27:45

I mean, there was a good bit of money that

27:47

was never accounted for in terms of the United States

27:49

government, as you might imagine, and that

27:52

money, in turn was going

27:55

to pay the Gambino crime family.

27:57

There was also a variety of illegal

27:59

activity that was going on, all of which went kind

28:01

of into the pool of earnings, and

28:04

then Steve Kaplan would pay up

28:06

through his captain, which was Michael

28:08

de Leonardo, and then de Leonardo

28:11

would pay up ultimately

28:13

to the hierarchy. In

28:16

art Leech's opinion, the stakes were

28:18

extremely high. Atlanta

28:20

was fertile ground, so if the Gambinos

28:23

took hold at the Gold Club, they could

28:25

take over other clubs and businesses in the

28:27

city. As Leech said, they

28:29

were a festering cancer. It

28:32

was an objective of organized crime

28:34

at the time to spread their influence,

28:37

and of course it's an objective of the organized

28:39

crime program at the Department of Justice

28:42

during my time to stop them.

28:44

But the problem was with their twelve

28:46

boxes of tapes. All the government

28:49

had was one person saying that on

28:51

one occasion Caplan gave de

28:53

Leonardo a brown paper bag of cash.

28:57

Former owner John Kirkendall told the government

29:00

something similar, that CAPN

29:02

paid their lawyer fees in cash and

29:04

brown paper bags. Employees

29:06

also said they got paid in cash. There

29:08

was just a lot of cash floating around Kaplin,

29:12

like the millions in his basement. The

29:15

FBI conducted a search of

29:19

Kaplan's residence, but when they

29:21

got that Kaplin had gone and departed.

29:23

Apparently somewhere another somebody tipped

29:26

him off. The FBI was in route to search

29:28

his house. Well when they went

29:30

down in this basement and they found about two

29:32

million dollars of wet money, what we call

29:34

the molded money, that captain discarded

29:37

just didn't even want it. The government estimate.

29:39

He took a duffle bag out of that basement

29:42

with a little over five billion dollars in cash

29:44

in it and left two million and there was wet

29:46

that he didn't want. On

29:56

the next episode of Racket, you guys need

29:58

to call me more offering. I don't get any fucking

30:00

phone calls. And then as soon as we get on this, I

30:02

feel like eight phone calls that

30:06

this was gonna need into the biggest

30:08

case that I ever handled. And I was

30:10

thrilled. And they're just

30:12

buying more and more booze, and there's more and more

30:14

girls coming up. I guess

30:16

you could say they were being taken advantage of it, but they

30:19

were willingly spending their money. You've

30:21

got a dirty cop that you're

30:23

thrown into the slad. What

30:25

you're trying to do is give it some local flavors

30:27

so people if they would just have a bad

30:29

taste in the mouth. Steve

30:32

comes to me in the office. He says,

30:34

Hey, I don't want these New York lawyers

30:36

anymore. How much more money do you want

30:38

to just run the whole show? And I

30:40

said finally. So

30:44

they brought it south thinking that they

30:46

can make a moralative prosecution.

30:48

You know, at some point in time, people got to realize

30:51

the Civil War is over. I'm

30:54

Christina Lee. This is Racket

30:56

Inside the Goal Pub Oh

31:00

My Life, Racket,

31:07

Racket, Oh

31:10

My Life, My

31:15

lone Husband,

31:24

Oh My Life, Racket

31:31

Inside the Gold Club is a production of

31:33

School of Humans and iHeartRadio Rackets,

31:36

written and narrated by me Christina

31:38

Lee and produced by Gabby Watts.

31:41

Caroline Slaughter is our supervising producer,

31:45

special thanks to Taylor church In Sonambashi.

31:49

Music is by Claire Campbell and

31:51

sound design and mixes by Tune Welders.

31:54

Executive producers are Brandon Barr,

31:56

Elsie Crowley and Brian Lavin,

31:59

along with Scott Grubman and Lauren Zimmerman.

32:05

M h m

32:08

hm hm

32:16

hm. School

32:30

of Humans