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8 statements · 0% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations
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2 identifiers linking Benjamin Levinsky across the web's reference databases
8 statements · 0% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations
2 identifiers linking Benjamin Levinsky across the web's reference databases
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Benjamin Levinsky was an American gang leader, labor racketeer and organized crime figure. Spending almost twenty years in and out of reformatories and prisons, Levinsky had a lengthy criminal record prior to the start of Prohibition. He was first arrested in 1902 for incorrigibility and sent to a reformatory asylum. He was caught pickpocketing five years later and was imprisoned on a variety of charges over the next decade including petty theft, grand larceny, felonious assault and vagrancy. He became involved in labor racketeering in Manhattan's Lower East Side and, prior to the third "Labor Slugger War", Levinsky reportedly became "a thorn in the side of clothing contractors". Due to his unionizing activities, he apparently became the target of assassination by certain business interests. Other sources claim he headed a gang of gunmen and thieves which began muscling in on the territory of other "labor sluggers", particularly that of newsboy and labor racketeer William Lipshitz.