Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen (January 1901 – October 16, 1927) was a New York gangster involved in bootlegging and labor racketeering during Prohibition.
Born to a middle-class Orthodox Jewish family from Austria as Jacob Orgenstein, Orgen became a well-known labor slugger for Benjamin "Dopey Benny" Fein by the early 1910s.
[2] Quickly becoming a formidable rival again to Kaplan, Orgen gradually built up a powerful organization which included members such as gunmen Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, and Jack "Legs" Diamond.
After several months of fighting, including a particularly violent gunfight on Essex Street resulting in the deaths of two bystanders, Kaplan was murdered by gunman Louis Kushner, a man attached to Orgen's organization, on August 28, 1923.
At 8:30 PM on October 15, 1927, Orgen and Legs Diamond, his business partner and Orgen's substitute bodyguard, were walking down Delancey Street and turning onto Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side, Manhattan, when a car slowly drove up behind them, a gunman jumped out, walked up behind them, and opened fire.
The shooting was witnessed by many men, women, and children, who ran for cover in tenement hallways when the gunman opened fire.