Charles Lucky Luciano: American Gangster

“A lot of people say, 'I always knew Lucky Luciano as a very smooth, very elegant, very powerful man.' All the accounts of him as an older man were that he was very genteel but he still had the look of smothered violence behind his eyes.” (Vincent Piazza, BrainyQuote) This is a quote from a famous actor called Vincent Piazza, who had been known for the act of Lucky Luciano in a TV series called Boardwalk Empire. Charles “Lucky” Luciano has been the most researched and discussed American gangster of all the time, his name was widely circulated in the gangland of prohibition bootlegging and formation of the Five Families. (Montaldo Charles, crime.about.com)

Lucky Luciano was born in 1897, in Sicily, he and his family moved to America in 1906.

On December 7, 1941, two months after Japan's attack on the Pearl Harbor, 48 American merchant ships had been sunk in the Atlantic Ocean not far from the United States Eastern seaboard by Nazi U-Boats. This onslaught was said to have officially begun on February 2, 1942, after the French ship Normandie, then the largest ship in the world, caught fire at New York City's Passenger Ship Terminal. The ship casualties led to Naval Intelligence suspecting that the Nazis were getting information on the Atlantic Ocean ship movements and logistics from their supporters and spies. The Naval Intelligence then decided to take action and fought back. While Naval Intelligence knew that organized crime had controlled the East Coast docks for years, an idea suddenly came up: why not ask the gangs for help? However, they needed a way to enter that world. Intelligence officers approached gangster Meyer Lansky and asked him to meet with his close friend, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the undisputed boss of organized crime in the United States. The target action of this liaison was for Lucky and Lansky to help recruit informants on the East Coast docks. At that time, Luciano was still serving a long sentence for promoting prostitution that could be up to 50 years at Dannemora Prison in a remote part of New York State. When Luciano agreed to help, the government's Office of Strategic Services granted him unrestricted and unrecorded visits at Dannemora from friends, family, and business associates. "Operation Underworld" became the name of the OSS alliance with organized crime in its war