He played a large role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld by introducing money laundering and offshore banking in 1932, used in the 1950s for cash from the heroin trade.

[9] In 1911, Lansky emigrated to the United States through the port of Odessa[10] with his mother and brother Jacob, and joined his father (who had immigrated in 1909) living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York.

They became lifelong friends, as well as partners in the bootlegging trade, and together managed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, with its reputation as one of the most violent Prohibition gangs.

In the 1930s, Lansky and his gang stepped outside their usual criminal activities to break up rallies held by the pro-Nazi German-American Bund.

He recalled a particular rally in Yorkville, a German neighborhood in Manhattan, that he and 14 associates disrupted: The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler.

[21]During World War II, Lansky was instrumental in helping the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)'s Operation Underworld, in which the government recruited criminals to watch out for German infiltrators and submarine-borne saboteurs.

Lansky connected the ONI with Luciano, who reportedly instructed Joseph Lanza to prevent sabotage on the New York waterfront.

Lansky eventually bought an offshore bank in Switzerland, which he used to launder money through a network of shell and holding companies.

It is widely believed that Lansky was compelled to give the final okay on eliminating Siegel due to his long relationship with him and his stature in the organization.

Twenty minutes later, Lansky's associates, including Gus Greenbaum and Moe Sedway, walked into the Flamingo and took control of it.

[citation needed] Although his role was considerably more restrained than in previous years, Lansky is believed to have both advised and aided Chicago boss Tony Accardo in initially establishing his hold.

[citation needed] After World War II, as a reward for his wartime service, Luciano's sentence was commuted to time served.

During a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in the late 1940s, it was mutually agreed that, in exchange for kickbacks, Batista would offer Lansky and the Mafia control of the country's casinos and racetracks.

Present were such figures as Joe Adonis, Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, Frank Costello, Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, Vito Genovese, Moe Dalitz, Thomas Luchese, from New York; Santo Trafficante Jr. from Tampa; Carlos Marcello from the New Orleans crime family; and Stefano Magaddino, Bonanno's cousin from Buffalo.

In 1952, Lansky offered then-President of Cuba Carlos Prío Socarrás a bribe of US$250,000 to step down so Batista could return to power.

Once Batista retook control of the government in a military coup in March 1952, he quickly put gambling back on track.

As long as they made the required investment, they were given public matching funds for construction, a ten-year tax exemption and duty-free importation of equipment and furnishings.

[citation needed] Lansky is credited with having "controlled" compromising pictures of a sexual nature featuring former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover with his longtime aide Clyde Tolson.

In his book, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, Anthony Summers cites multiple primary sources regarding Lansky's use of blackmail to gain influence with politicians, policemen and judges.

One stage of the acquisition of blackmail materials was orgies held by late attorney and Hoover protégé Roy Cohn and liquor magnate Lewis Rosenstiel, who had lasting ties with the Mafia from his bootleg operations during Prohibition.

[30][failed verification – see discussion] In 1970, Lansky fled to Herzliya Pituah, Israel, to escape federal tax evasion charges in the United States.

[5] Lansky's biographer Robert Lacey describes his financially strained circumstances in the last two decades of his life and his inability to pay for health care for his handicapped son, who eventually died in poverty.

For Lacey, there was no evidence "to sustain the notion of Lansky as king of all evil, the brains, the secret mover, the inspirer and controller of American organized crime".

His second wife's granddaughter told the author T. J. English that at the time of his death in 1983, Lansky left only $57,000 in cash, equivalent to $147,000 in 2023 terms.

[34][page needed] To him, the FBI, and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the reality was that Lansky had kept large sums of money in other people's names for decades and that keeping very little in his own was nothing new to him.

Since the warming of relations between the U.S. and Cuba in 2015, Lansky's grandson, Gary Rapoport, has been asking the Cuban government to compensate him for the confiscation of the Riviera hotel his grandfather built in Havana.