By Dane Schiller
Talk of organized crime conjures up images of Chicago’s Al Capone, or the Gambino Crime Family’s John Gotti, but most crime bosses, especially those who have had footprint in Houston or other parts of Texas, aren’t legendary, but largely unknown to the general public.
A step through court records, news files, and the streets, shows how the emergence of drug trafficking and related crimes have long-entrenched a whole new style of criminal underworld in the Lone Star State.
Most, but not all, of the modern players have been accused of tapping into the underground pipelines that move drugs, cash and guns.
Some of them are hardened figures who have years of run ins with the law. Others had never even been arrested before authorities leveled heavyweight accusations against them.
“Capone epitomized organized crime to the public,” said Larry Karson, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Houston Downtown. “But there were numerous other individuals that were involved during Prohibition and were involved in the years afterward leading up to current drug cartels.”
In the most modern of examples, Ross Ulbricht, who lived in Austin and formerly attended the University of Texas at Dallas, is waiting to learn his fate Wednesday. as federal jurors in New York are to consider whether he was the mastermind of a semi-secret online drug market known as Silk Road.
As The Wall Street Journal notes:
Mr. Ulbricht’s trial in a New York federal court, which started three weeks ago, has painted conflicting portraits of the 30-year-old California man, who faces potential life in prison for alleged crimes related to his alleged operation of Silk Road. Prosecutors say he was a power-hungry kingpin who used threats of violence and murder to protect his drug empire on the Internet. Mr. Ulbricht’s lawyers say he was the site’s peaceful and innocent creator, who was framed by the real villains.
The prosecutor has referred to Ulbricht as kingpin, the very same term used by the Department of Justice officials to describe the leaders of drug cartels. A copy of the indictment filed against Ulbricht is posted at the bottom of this article.
UPDATE: The Associated Press reported Wednesday afternoon that Ulbricht “was swiftly convicted … of creating and operating an underground website that prosecutors said enabled drug dealers around the world to reach customers they would never find on the street”
Another person awaiting charges for allegedly creating a running a spinoff of Silk Road is Blake Benthall, also a Texan and formerly of Meyerland, who is charged in drug trafficking, conspiracy and money laundering by federal authorities in San Francisco. Texas Monthly recently profiled both men.
Closer to home, Houston Chronicle reporters James Pinkerton an Mike Tolson recently filed an in-depth piece on the still unsolved 2013 death of a Phil Liase, who had sought to open an upscale strip club here before he was shot by two people as he sat in his Bentley.
Twice that year, as workers were turning a building on Richmond Avenue into a pleasure palace that Liase had hoped would rival any in Houston, fires were set in acts of arson, but did not spread enough to destroy the project.
Was the killing connected to organized crime? Nobody’s is saying, but Liase’s demise does provoke pause.
The University of Houston Downtown’s Karson, who is also a retired U.S. Customs Service agent, explained that organized crime is not a couple of kids taking a couple of cars for a joyride, but a couple of dozen people ripping off cars to ship them overseas. It is a group effort.
Crime groups clearly evolved through the ages, going from Prohibition to gambling and prostitution, to ultimately cartel level activity.
There have been several cases recently uncovered in this region that involved human trafficking for the illegal sex industry. Authorities have also often pointed to how cartels based in Mexico have enlisted U.S. gangs to do work for them on U.S. soil.
“Organized crime is an easy way to view a group of people coming together solely for the objective of criminal activity,” Karson said.
“In many cases with an organized crime group, you are finding the same leadership competencies that you find with business,” he continued. “The difference is that organized criminals are more likely to utilize violence in the fulfillment of their objectives.”