About: Willie Bioff

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About: Willie Bioff Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

Bioff was born and briefly raised in a kosher Jewish household in Chicago, but his father kicked him out on the street when he was eight years old. Bioff soon became involved in criminal ventures, beginning with petty theft, then minor protection rackets and working his way up to pimping in Chicago's Levee vice district, of which he was later convicted in 1922. Bioff later worked for Harry and "Greasy Thumb" Jake Guzik where, through Guzik, Bioff met Al Capone and later "The Enforcer" Frank Nitti.

Attributes	Values
rdfs:label	Willie Bioff
rdfs:comment	Bioff was born and briefly raised in a kosher Jewish household in Chicago, but his father kicked him out on the street when he was eight years old. Bioff soon became involved in criminal ventures, beginning with petty theft, then minor protection rackets and working his way up to pimping in Chicago's Levee vice district, of which he was later convicted in 1922. Bioff later worked for Harry and "Greasy Thumb" Jake Guzik where, through Guzik, Bioff met Al Capone and later "The Enforcer" Frank Nitti.
dcterms:subject	dbkwik:resource/MN3IrHaiZGEKooDkhPGpAg== Jewish Mobsters Chicago Outfit Associates Rats Murdered Mobsters dbkwik:resource/7Dc2XlWgD7sx39mRq4iTaA==
abstract	Bioff was born and briefly raised in a kosher Jewish household in Chicago, but his father kicked him out on the street when he was eight years old. Bioff soon became involved in criminal ventures, beginning with petty theft, then minor protection rackets and working his way up to pimping in Chicago's Levee vice district, of which he was later convicted in 1922. Bioff later worked for Harry and "Greasy Thumb" Jake Guzik where, through Guzik, Bioff met Al Capone and later "The Enforcer" Frank Nitti. In the 1930s, Nitti sent Bioff to California as an enforcer for Mafia-controlled union leader George Browne, who later became President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Bioff, aided by "Handsome Johnny" Johnny Roselli, and eventually became the collector for the Syndicate-controlled unions in Hollywood, extorting millions of dollars from major motion-picture studios, and keeping several hundred thousand for himself. As one source notes, however, "Amusingly, Bioff, a glorified Chicago thug, went Hollywood in a big way with his sudden wealth. But his fancy suits and solid gold business cards made him too high profile ... - hence the indictment." Bioff later threatened a strike against New York movie theaters by demanding two projectionists in each theater. When owners complained they would go broke under the terms he demanded, Bioff agreed to an arrangement for two projectionists in exchange for reduced pay, much of which went to Bioff. By the late 1930s, a newspaper campaign began bringing attention to the Bioff-Browne extortion operation creating a huge scandal in Hollywood. He was exposed by conservative newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler, who was trying to prove that criminal corruption was rampant in labor unions.

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