Longtime area bookies facing more gambling charges

NORFOLK

On the eve of Super Bowl Sunday, the biggest sports betting day of the year, those who placed wagers with two of the area’s long-time and well-known bookies might want to hedge those bets.

The FBI seized about $1.5 million in cash plus gold and silver coins, cars and homes from the two men. Each is now facing criminal charges.

Howard “Moose” Amdusky, a colorful character who used to operate open craps games at the Oceanfront and who has been a sports book since at least the 1960s, faces a federal gambling charge. An associate, Ronald Freedman, who once had links, though nebulous, to the Vegas mob, faces a state gambling charge.

Both cases are part of a larger investigation into an organized criminal gambling ring, authorities said.

That’s nothing new to Amdusky, 82, and Freedman, 70. Every 10 years or so, local police or the feds come calling with search warrants and seizure orders, court records and news accounts show.

Like many people in retirement, Amdusky got bored.

He had been out of the bookmaking business due to health reasons, but was feeling better and, according to his lawyer, “didn’t have anything to do.”

He picked up two or three customers, some of them “betting pretty good,” said the attorney, Franklin Swartz. But unfortunately for Amdusky, one of his customers turned out to be an undercover Virginia Beach police officer.

“People around here love to bet,” Swartz said. “Unfortunately, he got caught at it.”

Amdusky has agreed to plead guilty on Feb. 23 in U.S. District Court to one count of running an illegal gambling business. Facing up to five years in prison, Amdusky may have taken his last bet.

Amdusky’s gambling roots stretch back to the Roaring Twenties, where one of his uncles, Joseph Amdursky – the family dropped the “r” at some point – got his bookmaking start as a young man.

The FBI has been chasing the Amdurskys, and the Amduskys, ever since.

Through the years, colorful characters with names like Lefty and Whitey came and went. There were many successful prosecutions for minor gambling offenses, but all the big federal conspiracy cases seemed to fall apart.

At a 1965 federal trial in Miami, Joseph Amdursky, testifying under a grant of immunity, described his 40-year life as a bookie. He testified against one of the legends in the business, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal.

Rosenthal, who beat the rap in Miami, moved on to start legalized sports betting in Las Vegas. He is perhaps best known as the character Sam “Ace” Rothstein, played by Robert De Niro, in the movie “Casino.”

And that character’s thug sidekick, played by Joe Pesci, was based on a real mob thug named Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro. Both Rosenthal and Spilotro were tied directly to the Outfit, the Chicago branch of La Cosa Nostra. The local link to the mob would come later.

By the 1960s, bookmaking had become a family affair for the Amdurskys/Amduskys. Joseph Amdursky’s brother Ben and nephews Howard and Martin Amdusky were in on the action, too.

Brothers Howard and Martin were born and raised in Portsmouth, the sons of Israeli native Abe Amdusky, who ran a Churchland general store for 50 years.

In the 1960s, Howard Amdusky moved his operations to Virginia Beach, where he ran nightclubs and restaurants for many years, taking bets and running dice games on the side.

In 1969, Amdusky was one of the several men charged federally with operating what was called the Virginia Beach Gentlemen’s Floating Craps Game. At the trial, witnesses testified that the Virginia Beach police chief at the time was taking a 25 percent cut from the ring, an accusation the chief, James E. Moore, denied. A jury acquitted all the defendants.

Two years later, the FBI was back knocking on Amdusky’s door. He and 10 others were charged with running a bookmaking operation that took in $10 million to $20 million annually. That case also fell apart when an appeals court ruled that the FBI conducted illegal wiretaps on the suspects. The case was dismissed.

Amdusky would have at least four more run-ins with police through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. The operation became so sophisticated that the bookies had speed-dial telephones and bet slips that dissolved in water in case the authorities showed up unannounced.

The most serious penalty Amdusky ever received was a six-month federal prison term in a 1988 gambling conviction in U.S. District Court. Court records show that he took in more than $400,000 in one day of betting around the time of the 1986 World Series. His attorney at the time said Amdusky suffered from “an addiction to the action.”

The Internal Revenue Service also imposed more than $1 million in liens on his ill-gotten gains, according to Virginia Beach Circuit Court records.

In the days before the 1994 Super Bowl, Virginia Beach police again targeted Amdusky, raiding a storefront on North Witchduck Road where he had posted an insurance sign as a front for his bookmaking operation, according to court records.

Police also raided the home of an Amdusky associate, Ronald Freedman, records said. The result of that case could not be learned.

By then, Freedman himself had a history of gambling ties, including associations with Frank Joseph Masterana, a mob-connected bookie who moved to the Caribbean to set up an Internet and phone betting operation. Freedman and Masterana were charged and later convicted of involvement in a Richmond-based illegal sport-betting ring.

According to news reports, Masterana had ties to Spilotro, the mob enforcer played by Pesci in “Casino.”

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith, who has covered the gambling industry for years, said lower-level bookies typically paid mobsters protection money and Masterana, who has since died, was no different.

“You kick in the money and Tony (Spilotro) lets you operate and doesn’t put you in a trunk somewhere,” Smith said.

With the advent of Internet and phone betting, the old-school bookies are rare, but Smith said he wasn’t surprised to hear that people like Amdusky and Freedman were still working the old-fashioned way.

“That kind of corner bar bookmaker still exists but they aren’t nearly as prevalent as they used to be,” he said. “If you’ve developed a relationship with a bookmaker, it’s far more secure than a lot of those intimidating online services that have mysterious ownerships.”

The current cases against Amdusky and Freedman stem from an investigation that began in late 2008 and culminated last fall with arrest warrants and raids on their homes.

On Oct. 29, just before the start of Game 2 of the World Series, Virginia Beach police raided Freedman’s apartment on Donation Drive and seized his bank accounts, a stock trading account, a box of gold and silver coins, and two vehicles, including a Cadillac. The cash alone totaled nearly $500,000.

Last week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a forfeiture proceeding against Freedman’s property, citing Freedman’s admission to authorities that he has been a bookmaker for decades, according to the court filing.

Freedman has a state gambling charge pending in Virginia Beach.

Amdusky was charged last fall as well. But his state criminal case was turned over to the feds, where he could get substantially more prison time if convicted, though sources knowledgeable of the case say that given his age and ill health he could get probation.

In Amdusky’s case, the feds have frozen more than $1 million in cash from Amdusky’s bank accounts and they may seize his car, his Miami bay-front condo and his art collection, according to the court papers.

Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney Harvey Bryant said the two cases were split between the state and federal systems so that the city could share some of the benefits of the seizures. If both cases had gone federal, the city would get very little.

“This is not chump change,” Bryant said. “Hopefully it sends a message and is a deterrent to others who would get involved.”

But Swartz, Amdusky’s lawyer, questions the extensive use of state and federal resources for a crime that he says hurts no one.

“He never hurt anybody in his life,” Swartz said. “Everybody loves him.”

Amdusky declined to comment for this story. Freedman did not respond to a message left at his apartment.

Swartz wondered whether the authorities went after Amdusky because they failed to get him on serious charges over the past 40 years.

“Nobody cared about this stuff then and nobody cares about it now,” Swartz said.

Bryant disagrees.

“It’s still harmful and apparently harmful to society in that there are people who get involved in it who get in over their heads,” he said.

“We prosecute it, because it’s against the law.”

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com