| Founded | Late 1920s–1930s (as a term in media and law enforcement) |
|---|---|
| Founding location | United States |
| Years active | Prohibition era–mid-20th century (as a descriptive concept) |
| Territory | United States |
| Ethnicity | Italian-American, Jewish-American, and other criminal groups |
| Criminal activities | Bootlegging,gambling,labor racketeering,extortion,bribery,fraud |
TheNational Crime Syndicate is a term used by journalists, law-enforcement officials, and some historians to describe informal cooperation amongorganized crime figures in theUnited States during theProhibition era and the mid-20th century. Rather than a single, centralized organization, the term generally refers to loose, pragmatic alliances amongItalian-American,Jewish, and other criminal groups engaged inbootlegging,gambling, and related illicit activities.[1][2]
While mid-20th-century media accounts and congressional investigations—most notably those conducted by theKefauver Committee—often portrayed the Syndicate as a national confederation with leadership and enforcement mechanisms, later scholarship has questioned whether such an organization ever existed in a formal sense. Many historians argue that the concept reflects contemporaneous efforts to explain inter-ethnic criminal cooperation rather than evidence of a durable, structured criminal body.[3]
The concept of a National Crime Syndicate emerged during the late 1920s and 1930s, as organized crime groups across the United States expanded beyond local and ethnic boundaries, particularly during Prohibition. Journalists and law-enforcement officials used the term to describe increased coordination among criminal figures involved in bootlegging, gambling,labor racketeering, and other illicit enterprises.[4]
Popular accounts often trace the origins of the Syndicate to a reported meeting of underworld figures inAtlantic City in 1929. While several writers have described this gathering as a founding conference, historians note that contemporary evidence is limited and that, if such a meeting occurred, it likely functioned as a coordination or networking event among bootleggers rather than the establishment of a formal organization.[5][6]
During the 1930s and 1940s, newspapers and prosecutors used the termMurder, Inc. to describe a series of killings carried out by loosely connected criminal figures, many of them based in Brooklyn’sBrownsville neighborhood. Contemporary media accounts portrayed these murders as the work of a centralized, nationwide enforcement arm serving organized crime leadership. Subsequent historical research, however, has challenged this interpretation, concluding that “Murder, Inc.” was a journalistic and prosecutorial label rather than a formal organization. Scholars argue that the violence attributed to Murder, Inc. reflected episodic, situational killings tied to local rackets and personal alliances—particularly those involving figures such asLouis Buchalter andAlbert Anastasia—rather than the activities of a standing corps of salaried contract killers.[7][8]
In his biography ofMeyer Lansky, journalistRobert Lacey argued that no National Crime Syndicate existed as a cohesive entity, describing the term as a journalistic and prosecutorial construct that overstated the degree of coordination among criminal groups. According to this interpretation, cooperation among mob figures was episodic and transactional, lacking the permanence, hierarchy, or governance implied by the Syndicate label.[9]
