How The Boss of the Genovese Crime Family Ran a National Jukebox, Pinball, & Gambling Machine Empire From Prison
By Michael Kelman Portney
When Gerardo "Jerry" Catena entered Yardville Prison in 1970 for refusing to testify before a grand jury, law enforcement assumed his criminal empire would crumble. What they didn't understand was that Catena had built something unprecedented: a network so sophisticated, so deeply embedded in the nation's bars, clubs, and restaurants, that it could run itself—with him still calling the shots from behind bars.
For seven years, while imprisoned for civil contempt, Catena maintained control over what Myron Sugarman would later call the most extensive gambling machine operation in American history. Through coded messages, unwitting couriers, and a coordination system that stretched from Newark to Las Vegas to Chicago to Florida, Catena proved something remarkable: in organized crime, power isn't about where you sit. It's about who listens when you speak.
And everyone listened to Gerardo Catena.
THE EMPIRE BEFORE PRISON: RUNYON SALES AND THE VERTICAL INTEGRATION OF VICE
To understand how Catena maintained control from prison, you first need to understand what he controlled.
In 1946, when Joseph "Doc" Stacher relocated to Israel, Catena took over Runyon Sales Company—ostensibly a distributor of jukeboxes, pinball machines, and vending equipment. In reality, Runyon Sales was the cornerstone of the East Coast gambling machine network.
This wasn't just about distributing machines. According to a 1979 Florida investigation documented in the Boca Raton News, Runyon Sales was secretly owned by a partnership that included Catena, Abe Green (Meyer Lansky's financial coordinator), Irving Kaye, and Barnett Sugarman. When investigators examined Bally Manufacturing—the largest gaming equipment manufacturer in America—they discovered Catena's consortium had purchased significant ownership stakes, giving them control of both manufacturing and distribution.
This was vertical integration in the criminal world. Catena's network controlled:
Manufacturing: Through stakes in Bally Manufacturing and connections to other producers, Catena influenced what machines were made and where they went.
Distribution: Runyon Sales and affiliated distributors in Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities ensured machines flowed to approved operators. As Myron Sugarman writes in his memoir "Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster," operators who bought from Runyon often owed money to the company—which meant they answered to Catena. "Willie Hilberg bought machines from Runyon Sales Company, and he always owed Runyon a small fortune," Sugarman explains, noting that owing money to Runyon meant going to Abe Green, "which meant the same thing as going to Gerry Catena."
Operations: Hundreds of regional operators—from Newark to Pennsylvania to Montana—placed machines in bars, clubs, and restaurants. Revenue flowed up the chain.
Finance: The Las Vegas casino skim operation generated enormous cash that Catena controlled the distribution of. Money went to Meyer Lansky in Miami, who prepared packages for Swiss bank deposits, which were then distributed to network members worldwide.
Sugarman describes Catena's role bluntly: "Mr. Catena was in charge of the rake-off, and the reason for the meeting in Tel Aviv that Shabbat with Doc and Meyer was because in reality, while Meyer was concerned for his friend, both Meyer and Doc were also concerned for the continual flow of rake-off coming out of Vegas, and Gerry Catena called the shots because he was really the boss, Supreme Commander in Chief."
Supreme Commander in Chief. Not just of the Genovese family, but of the entire national gambling machine and casino skim operation.
By 1970, when Catena entered prison, this empire was generating millions annually. The question wasn't whether it would survive his imprisonment. The question was how he would maintain control while physically separated from the operation.
The answer was ingenious.
THE CODED MESSAGE SYSTEM: USING INNOCENTS AS CARRIER PIGEONS
Myron Sugarman's memoir provides a rare firsthand account of how Catena's prison communication system worked—and how he himself became an unwitting participant.
In the early 1970s, Sugarman visited Israel to meet with Meyer Lansky and Doc Stacher, both living in exile and deeply concerned about Catena's imprisonment. While there, an Israeli named Norman Blaiberg repaid a debt to Sugarman: $5,700 in cash.
Doc Stacher saw the money and told Sugarman not to travel with cash. Instead, Doc instructed him to give the money to Doc, and when Sugarman returned to the United States, he should tell Abe Green that he'd given the money to Doc, and Abe would repay him.
When Sugarman returned to Newark and visited Abe Green at Runyon Sales, he explained the situation. Green's response was curious: "What $5,700?"
Sugarman was confused but followed instructions when Green told him to send a cablegram to Doc stating that he never received the money from Abe.
"I didn't know at the time that I was now the carrier pigeon for the Mob to send a message," Sugarman writes. "But I figured it out later: Abe Green needed to send a message to Gerry Catena, who was in Yardville Prison near Trenton, to find out if it was okay to give me the $5,700, and the message that obviously came back was to use the kid (meaning me) as the perfect messenger service, to not give me the $5,700 and for me to tell Doc Stacher that Abe didn't give me the money."
The brilliance of this system was its plausible deniability. To law enforcement monitoring Catena's visitors and communications, Sugarman appeared to be having a money dispute with business associates. There was no obvious criminal message being transmitted.
But to those in the network, "Abe didn't give me the money" carried a coded meaning. As Sugarman later realized: "My cablegram to Doc was a message to Doc that the faucet on the rake-off from Las Vegas was turned off for him."
From inside Yardville Prison, Catena was still controlling who got paid from the Las Vegas operations. Doc's money had been cut off—punishment, restructuring after the Swiss banking system collapsed, or simply Catena asserting control. Whatever the reason, even from prison, Catena could turn the money flow on or off with a coded message delivered through an unwitting courier who thought he was just sorting out a payment dispute. Even Meyer Lansky was at Catena’s mercy, though they were by all accounts very good friends.
THE SUPREME COMMANDER'S AUTHORITY: WHY EVERYONE STILL LISTENED
How could Catena maintain this authority from prison? The answer lies in what he knew—and what everyone else knew he knew.
As Supreme Commander of the gambling machine network and Las Vegas operations, Catena had comprehensive knowledge of:
Financial Structure: Who owned stakes in which casinos, how money was skimmed, where it went, which Swiss bank accounts belonged to whom. The International Banque de Crédit in Geneva, owned by Tibor Rosenbaum (described by Sugarman as "a Mossad guy"), was the primary depository for Las Vegas skim money. Catena knew the account numbers, the couriers, the entire system.
The Supply Chain: Every operator who bought machines from Runyon Sales or affiliated distributors. Every manufacturer who supplied equipment. Every political connection that allowed operations to continue. Sugarman describes meeting operators from Pennsylvania—Rex from Williamsport, Klugy from Edwardsville—who all knew each other and all bought from the same network.
Political Connections: Which politicians were paid, how much, and for what protection. The 1988 arrest of a Montana operator with 700 machines resulted in just a $10,000 fine despite 28 charges—the same pattern Sugarman describes from his own 1985 Operation Ocean arrest in New Jersey. These outcomes don't happen without systematic political protection.
The Operators: Hundreds of regional operators across the country, their territories, their revenues, their reliability. As Sugarman boasts to a prison guard: "If a guy operates a video poker machine anywhere in the world, and he don't know me, then he ain't no gambling machine operator." If Sugarman was that connected, Catena—his boss—knew even more.
If Catena had talked during his seven years in prison, he could have destroyed hundreds of people. Meyer Lansky facing tax evasion charges in Israel would have been exposed. Doc Stacher living in exile would have been compromised. Regional operators from Montana to Florida would have been arrested. The entire network would have collapsed.
Everyone knew this. Which meant everyone had an incentive to keep Catena happy, keep the system running as he wanted it, and ensure that when he eventually got out, he would see that his instructions had been followed.
This created a fascinating dynamic: Catena's imprisonment actually strengthened his authority in some ways. He was proving, every single day, that he would never break the code. And the network was proving, by continuing to follow his orders transmitted through coded messages, that his authority remained absolute.
THE LAS VEGAS CONNECTION: CONTROLLING THE FLOW FROM BEHIND BARS
Catena's most significant authority came from his control over Las Vegas casino skim operations. According to Sugarman's account, the system worked like this:
Las Vegas casinos with hidden mob ownership skimmed profits before reporting them for tax purposes. This cash was transported to Meyer Lansky in Miami, who prepared packages with numbered Swiss bank account information. Couriers like Sylvan Ferdman would fly the money to Geneva, where it was deposited and then distributed to network members based on their stakes and status.
Catena controlled who got paid and how much. Even Doc Stacher, living in Israel and one of Meyer Lansky's closest partners, received "his share of the Las Vegas rake-off for years while he was living in Israel," flying to Geneva periodically to access the International Banque de Crédit.
When Catena sent the coded message through Sugarman that resulted in "the faucet on the rake-off from Las Vegas was turned off" for Doc, he was demonstrating this control. The most powerful men in the network—Meyer and Doc, the architects who had built the system with Lucky Luciano in the 1930s and 40s—still needed Catena's approval to receive their money.
Why? Because Catena handled operations. Meyer was the financial genius, the strategic mind. But Catena knew where the money actually was, how it moved, who carried it, which accounts it went to. Meyer designed the architecture. Catena ran the machinery.
And you can't run the machinery without the operator's cooperation—even if the operator is in prison.
Sugarman describes visiting Meyer and Doc in Israel during this period and finding them anxious about Catena's situation. "Mr. Lansky was anxious to learn as many details as he could, because he felt that they had some bearing on his own problems," Sugarman writes. Meyer wasn't just concerned for his friend—he was concerned about the continuity of the financial system that depended on Catena's silence and Catena's continued coordination.
The remarkable thing is that the system kept working. For seven years. Money kept flowing, machines kept operating, coordination continued. All while the Supreme Commander sat in prison, transmitting orders through coded messages and unwitting couriers.
THE NETWORK'S RESPONSE: POSITIONING FOR POST-PRISON COORDINATION
While Catena was in prison, the network began positioning itself for his eventual release. The evidence suggests a strategic shift toward Florida as the coordination hub.
According to property records, in April 1979—two years after Catena's release but four years into his permanent Boca Raton retirement—a Montana gambling machine operator named Zollie Kelman purchased an apartment in Davie, Florida. The location was precisely 28.7 miles from Catena's home at 2100 Coconut Road in Boca Raton—a 37-minute drive.
Kelman wasn't alone. By the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, numerous operators and mob figures had established residences in the greater Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Boca Raton area.
The 1968 Miami Herald had published a "mob map" showing dozens of organized crime figures living in South Florida, including Catena in Boca Raton and Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo (Meyer Lansky's closest friend) in Miami. By the time Catena was released in 1975 and retired permanently to Florida, the infrastructure was already in place.
What emerged was what might be called "Catena's retirement system": operators maintained Florida properties not for vacation, but for coordination access. According to Sugarman's documentary about his life, meetings continued "every six weeks." These weren't formal sit-downs—they were lunches, golf games, social gatherings where business happened to be discussed.
A 1975 Palm Beach Post article quotes a local law enforcement official: "We don't have enough men to follow him around, but we make note in our organized crime file of when he's here and when he leaves." Catena wasn't hiding. He was openly retired. Which made him less suspicious to law enforcement and more accessible to the network.
The genius of this system was its cover: retired mobsters living in Florida looked exactly like what they claimed to be—old men enjoying their final years in the sun. That they happened to coordinate a national gambling machine network during their golf games and dinner parties was nearly impossible to prove.
THE CODE THAT HELD: WHY SEVEN YEARS OF SILENCE MATTERED
Understanding Catena's prison period requires understanding the code he lived by—and why that code mattered so deeply to the network's survival.
Sugarman describes this code repeatedly in his memoir:
On drugs: "We didn't have anything to do with drugs, either using them or dealing them." This wasn't moral objection—it was strategic. Drug crimes brought federal heat and mandatory minimums. Gambling charges were state-level and negotiable.
On boundaries: "My religion was the coin-operated amusement and gambling machine business. I had fences around my world, and I remained within the fences of that machine business." Specialization reduced exposure and allowed sustainable operations.
On silence: This was the foundation of everything. As the chapter about Catena's Operation Ocean arrest notes, Confucius is quoted: "Silence is a true friend who never betrays."
Catena's seven years of silence validated this code absolutely. He could have walked out of prison any day by testifying. The state literally told him: "You hold the key to your own exit."
He chose silence. For seven years. While Meyer and Doc worried in Israel. While the network wondered if he would break. While prosecutors dangled freedom in front of him daily.
He never broke.
This had an extraordinary effect on the network. It proved the code still worked. It showed that even under extreme pressure—seven years is an eternity—a man of honor would stay silent. And it demonstrated that Catena valued the network's survival over his personal freedom.
When Catena was finally released in 1977 after a Supreme Court ruling limited civil contempt imprisonment, he had earned something unprecedented: universal respect and the right to retire.
As Sugarman recounts from a later conversation, Catena told him: "I quit the life. I'm the only person ever allowed to retire."
In traditional organized crime, retirement doesn't exist. You're in until you die, either from old age while active or from violence if you try to leave. But Catena had proven his loyalty so completely that he was granted what no one else had ever received: permission to walk away.
He relinquished control of the Genovese family to Frank Tieri in an orderly transition. He sold his Newark home. He moved permanently to Boca Raton. And for the next 23 years, until his death in 2000 at age 98, he lived as a retired elder statesman—consulted by operators, available for advice, but officially out of the life.
THE AFTERMATH: SUGARMAN'S VINDICATION AND THE NETWORK'S CONTINUATION
Months after Catena's release and Sugarman's coded message episode, Abe Green finally resolved the situation. Sugarman had gone to Nigeria on business—possibly at Green's instruction to get him out of the way during sensitive network restructuring. When he returned, Green invited him to lunch and handed him the $5,700.
But Green added a warning, as Sugarman recounts: "Next time you're in Israel and you see Doc, you don't give him a f---ing dollar!"
The message was clear: Doc's payments were still cut off. Whatever restructuring Catena had ordered from prison remained in effect even after his release. The Supreme Commander's authority persisted.
Years later, Sugarman had multiple interactions with Catena that revealed the depth of the old boss's commitment to the code and his genuine relationships within the network. Describing a two-hour conversation with Catena at a party, Sugarman writes that Catena was "unusually chatty" and spoke about being "touched" by how concerned Meyer and Doc had been about him during his prison years.
This reveals something important about the network's structure: it wasn't purely mercenary. These were relationships built over decades, genuine friendships formed through shared risk and mutual dependence. When Meyer and Doc worried about Catena in prison, it wasn't just about the money—it was about their friend.
And when Catena controlled the money flow from prison, it wasn't just about power—it was about maintaining the system that kept everyone safe and prosperous.
The network Catena built and maintained lasted decades after his retirement. Sugarman's 1985 arrest in Operation Ocean (which targeted over 300 gambling machine operators in New Jersey) and a Montana operator's 1988 arrest (28 charges reduced to a $10,000 fine) show the same patterns Catena established: extensive operations, political protection, and outcomes that suggested systematic coordination rather than random criminal enterprise.
Even in the 1990s, witnesses place Sugarman having lunch in Minneapolis with the Montana operator and Frank Rosenthal—the Las Vegas casino operator depicted in the movie Casino. These weren't chance meetings. They were the continuation of a network that stretched from Meyer Lansky's Prohibition-era operations through Catena's coordination in the 1960s-70s and beyond.
CONCLUSION: THE SUPREME COMMANDER'S LEGACY
Gerardo Catena's seven years in prison weren't an interruption of his control over America's gambling machine network. They were the ultimate demonstration of it.
By maintaining coordination through coded messages, by controlling Las Vegas money distribution from behind bars, by keeping hundreds of operators loyal and aligned, Catena proved something remarkable: true power in organized crime wasn't about muscle or violence. It was about information, loyalty, and systematic organization.
Catena knew everything. Everyone knew Catena knew everything. And everyone knew Catena would never tell what he knew. This combination made him more powerful in prison than most mob bosses were on the street.
The vertical integration he achieved—controlling manufacturing, distribution, operations, and finance—created a sustainable business model that lasted decades. The code he enforced—silence, specialization, loyalty—protected the network when law enforcement came calling. The coordination system he built, eventually centered in Florida, allowed continuity across generations of operators.
And the seven years of silence he maintained proved the code worked, earning him something unprecedented: the right to retire and live peacefully for another 23 years.
When Myron Sugarman boasted to a prison guard that "if a guy operates a video poker machine anywhere in the world, and he don't know me, then he ain't no gambling machine operator," he was describing the network Catena built—a network so extensive and so well-coordinated that reputation and connection stretched nationwide.
Sugarman's memoir, "Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron," documents this world from the perspective of a soldier in Catena's network. The title itself captures the continuity: from Meyer Lansky, who designed the financial architecture of modern organized crime, to Myron Sugarman, who operated under Catena's coordination for decades.
But the true architect of sustainability—the man who took Meyer's vision and built the machinery that implemented it across the country and maintained it even from prison—was Gerardo "Jerry" Catena.
Supreme Commander in Chief.
The only man ever allowed to retire.
The boss who called the shots on America's gambling machines for four decades—even, remarkably, during seven years behind bars.
His legacy isn't in headlines or movies. It's in the architecture of a system that proved organized crime could be organized—coordinated, sustainable, and resilient enough to function even when its Supreme Commander was physically removed from the operation.
Because in the end, Catena built something that didn't depend on his physical presence. It depended on his authority, his knowledge, his loyalty—and the network's certainty that he would never betray them.
He never did.
For seven years in prison, and 23 years in retirement, until his death in 2000.
The Supreme Commander kept the code.
And the empire he built kept running.
