Jukebox Empire

The Mob and the Dark Side of the American Dream

Jukebox Empire cover

Description

An aspiring tycoon partners with a racketeer to build a jukebox that makes millions, then takes the fall for the largest money laundering scheme in history.
Caught between the Mob and the feds in a plot to save the casinos in Havana from Castro's revolution, Wolfe Rabin pulls the biggest money-laundering scheme in history, but his hubris leads to the conspiracy unraveling in a sensational trial. At a time when there was a jukebox in every restaurant, diner, bar, barracks, arcade, and canteen, Rabin's trajectory from inventor to promoter to outlaw is set against the Mob's growing infiltration of the jukebox industry. In a world of music, machines, and money, popular culture and organized crime collide in an epic drama of invention and greed. David Rabinovitch's investigation into his own family history pieces together an epic puzzle that begins in Chicago with the invention of a jukebox and spans the casinos of Havana and the financial giants of Europe, leading to what the FBI called “the biggest bank robbery in the world.”

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Cast of Characters
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One – Origins
Chapter Two – Pay to Play
Chapter Three – Coin Men
Chapter Four – Crimebusters
Chapter Five – Biggest Bank Robbery in the World
Chapter Six – Dollye
Chapter Seven – Air Chase
Chapter Eight – Front Page
Chapter Nine – Biggest Burglary Solved
Chapter Ten – Wheels of Justice
Chapter Eleven – Scheme and Artifice
Chapter Twelve – Shoot the Moon
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About the Author

Product details

Published 15 Oct 2023
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 248
ISBN 9798216257202
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Illustrations 18 b/w photos
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

David Rabinovitch

David Rabinovitch is an EMMY, Peabody, and Gemini…

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Environment: Staging