Jerome H. Skolnick, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, in House of Cards, a study of casino gambling: ''It was more a public-relations stunt than a serious control measure. In any event, its existence did nothing to reassure the federal authorities and others that Nevada had succeeded in expelling organized criminal interests from its casinos.''
Black Hand: Italian extortion racket What the newspapers called "the Black Hand Society" never really existed in America—or anywhere else. That's cold comfort to the hundreds who number among their victims, forming a bloody trail that makes it easy to understand why there have been and still are today politicians and investigators who speak of the Black Hand as being synonymous with the Mafia or "Cosa Nostra."
The Black Hand racket was extortion, a pay-or-die shakedown of the Italian community in which murders often followed if a victim refused to pay. Victims or their families usually were only maimed since a corpse cannot pay tribute, but if they remained recalcitrant or it was felt that an object-lesson murder or two would shake loose money from other potential victims, death by gun, knife, bomb, rope or poison could well follow. The average victim paid immediately upon receiving a demand for money usually "signed" at the bottom with a hand that had been dipped in black ink (a procedure that was altered as the science of fingerprinting came into vogue). The terror it struck in most targets was simply overwhelming.
In point of fact there was an actual Society of the Black Hand in Europe, but it had nothing to do with either the Mafia or Camorra, the two largest criminal societies in Italy, who practiced extortion rackets there while members immigrated to America. The Society of the Black Hand was of Spanish origin and formed during the Inquisition as a force of good, seeking to prevent the oppression of the day. According to popular theories, the Mafia and Camorra also started out with noble intent and later turned into criminal bodies. The Society of the Black Hand merely withered away. But the name remained, La Mano Nera, or Black Hand, and it had an inspiring ring to New York newspapermen who had no intention of losing such a sinister phrase. The Black Hand was simply reborn as an organized force and reporters constantly traced various criminals back to some Black Hand Society.
In actuality the Black Hand was never more than a loosely run extortion racket practiced in the Little Italy sections of many American cities. It was not at all unusual for a businessman in financial trouble to send a Black Hand note to another businessman in hopes of solving his own money woes. When the recipient got such a note threatening him or members of his family, he automatically thought the Black Handers were most likely mafioso or Camorra gangsters. Certainly when the great opera tenor Enrico Caruso got a Black Hand threat with the imprint of a black hand and a dagger, he took the threat seriously and paid the $2,000 demanded. When the extortionists then presented a new demand for $15,000, he realized he had to go to the police or he would be the target of constant demands. The police set a trap and the Black Handers were caught when they tried to retrieve the loot from under the steps of a factory. They turned out to be private businessmen who figured Caruso was a natural for taking. The pair was convicted of extortion and sent to prison, one of the very few successful prosecutions of Black Handers. Thereafter Caruso was considered to be in danger from other Black Handers—a successful prosecution was bad for business—and he was kept under police and private detective protection both in this country and Europe for the rest of his life.
Mafia and Camorra gangsters never struck at Caruso but they did at other uncooperative victims just to demonstrate that it was wise to pay. Often they applied a convincer to a victim by first seizing his child and cutting off a finger. A typical Black Hand case involved a well-to-do Brooklyn butcher named Gaetano Costa who, in 1905, got a Black Hand threat: "You have more money than we have. We know of your wealth and that you are alone in this country. We want $1,000, which you are to put in a loaf of bread and hand to a man who comes in to buy meat and pulls out a red handkerchief." Costa was an exception in his neighborhood; most other businessmen in the area had paid on demand. He ignored the demands. One morning Black Hand killers marched into his shop and shot Costa to death behind his meat counter. No one was ever charged in the case, although it was generally known that the gangsters who did the killing worked for Lupo the Wolf, a Black Hand mafioso headquartered in Italian Harlem.
For many years, Lupo, whose real name was Ignazio Saietta, was the foremost Black Hander in New York City. He maintained a notorious "Murder Stable" where more than 60 gangland victims, many recalcitrant Black Hand targets, were buried. Lupo paraded his Black Hand activities openly to the Italian community, thus reinforcing the perception that he was untouchable by the law. It was common for many Italians to cross themselves at the mere mention of his name.
Another Black Hander who considered himself immune from legal interference was Paul Di Cristina. He blithely delivered his Black Hand extortion notes in
