Twenty Crime Bosses - page 2

Riley has been selected as an example of police officers who broke the law while still in the force, and then left the job to become major criminals. His most notorious predecessor was John Wesley Egan, who started smuggling heroin into America in 1966 while still working for the NSW… Keep Reading

There were two Michael Moylans, father and son. We are interested in the son as a representative of how some organised criminals of the 1960s, with a background mainly in illegal gambling, moved into the even more lucrative but much less certain world of illegal drugs in the 1970s. This… Keep Reading

Freeman was best known as the state’s most successful SP (illegal) bookmaker, but his interests and influence were far more extensive. He was close friends with crime bosses Lennie McPherson and Stanley Smith, and with them played a leading role in organised crime in Sydney for some 20 years before… Keep Reading

Perce Galea was major owner of illegal casinos from the 1950s to the 1970s. By the late 1960s were fourteen well-appointed casinos around the inner city where all sorts of people rubbed shoulders to play roulette and other games. The owners made huge profits, some of which was paid to police… Keep Reading

Although less well known than some criminals, Anderson – known as “Paddles” because of his big feet – was the closest Sydney had to a criminal boss of bosses. Born in 1915, he maintained a low public profile but informed observers say he was the first among equals from the… Keep Reading

It might seem odd to include policemen among Sydney’s top 20 organised crime figures, but to do otherwise would leave a large gap. For years it was argued corrupt police were only a “few bad apples” and it would be wrong to characterise the police culture as corrupt. But the… Keep Reading

The most popular activity to be made illegal in Sydney was gambling. The Gaming and Betting Act of 1906, and the Police Offences Act two years later, ensured that people who persisted in one of Australia’s most common forms of recreation, betting on horses away from the track, were now… Keep Reading

There was little organised crime in Sydney in the nineteenth century, because there was little to organise. But in the first decades of the twentieth century, in response to pressure from churches and other groups concerned with morality, parliament passed a series of laws outlawing or restricting activities that had… Keep Reading