Cohen crime family
| Founded by | Ben Siegel |
|---|---|
| Founding location | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Years active | 1933–1961 |
| Territory | Various neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. |
| Ethnicity | Jewish Americans and Italian Americans were official members; other ethnicities were known as "associates." |
| Membership | Unknown |
| Criminal activities | Murder, illegal gambling, bookmaking, racketeering, labor racketeering, extortion, prostitution, drug trafficking, political corruption, police corruption, money laundering, loan sharking, smuggling and contract killing |
| Allies | Chicago Outfit, Luciano crime family, Dallas crime family |
| Rivals | Los Angeles crime family |
The Cohen crime family, or the Siegel crime syndicate, was an Italian-American Mafia / Jewish Mafia crime family created by New York Jewish American mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel in the early 1930s. Siegel ran Los Angeles and later Las Vegas' illegal gambling and prostitution rings with his lieutenants Mickey Cohen, David Berman, Harold "Hooky" Rothman, Moe Sedway and boss of the L.A. family Jack Dragna.
Although founded and ran by Jewish mobsters, the family was considered to be a part of the Italian-American Mafia, due in part to Siegel and Cohen's associations with the Italian New York and Chicago families. Furthermore, although many of the Cohen family's high-ranking members and "soldiers" were Jewish gangsters, the majority of the Cohen family's members were ultimately Italian-American. The Cohen family also adopted the Italian Mafia's machismo culture and operated under the Italian Mafia's structure, rules, and customs. However, uniquely, the family generally did not employ the traditional Italian Mafia "made" man system, a system that involves an exclusive Mafia initiation ritual used to induct only men of Italian ethnicity into the Italian-American Mafia. The traditional Italian Mafia initiation ritual was incompatible with the multi-ethnic nature of the family, as the ritual would inherently exclude the many Jewish-American members of the Cohen Family from obtaining high ranking within the family.
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Wikipedia