The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How The Mafia Made MILLIONS By Fixing Horse Races | The Connect

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

Larry Rolla started out as a young kid in Queens surrounded by the tough life of 1950s NYC youth gangs and wise guys. He went from stickups to finding a passion and calling in horse training and racing. After a corrupt racetrack owner sent him into the grips of poverty his legitimate, reformed life quickly turned into fixing races for the mob and a gripping gambling addiction. Larry joins the show to tell us all about his odyssey.  Go Support Larry! Book: amazon.com/Against-All-Odds-Larry-Rolla/dp/1729108598 Website: https://larryrolla.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RollasCorner  YouTube: @LarryRolla This Episode Is Brought To You By The Following Sponsors: Manscaped: https://www.manscaped.com/ Promo Code: CONNECT FUM: https://tryfum.com/  Promo Code: CONNECT MOOD: https://hellomood.co/  Promo Code: CONNECT20, CONNECTFREE Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. You guys, I got dates. I am coming on the road to see you and your mother. November 1st, I'm going to be in Bridgeport, Connecticut. November 2nd, I'm going to be in New Brunswick, New Jersey. November 5th, I'm in New York City for the New York Comedy Festival with Ian Bick. We're doing a live episode of The Connect and a stand-up show at the New York Comedy Club.

On November 15th, I'm in Dallas, Texas. November 16th, Austin at the Vulcan Gas Company. Do not miss that one. December 14th. I'm in San Diego and then rounded out the year, December 21st. I'm at Zanee's Comedy Club in Chicago. I got a lot of Chicago fans. You must come out to that one.

It's going to be great. I love meeting you guys on the road. I'm so thrilled that you come out and see my comedy. Go to Johnny Mitchell. Dot biz to get your tickets. Let's get back into the episode and I will see you out there, America. All of a sudden, three guys come down to shed road, three big guys, six and a half feet tall, 300 pounds. I'm with the Winter Hill gang, Wighty Bulger, and we control all these racetracks around here.

You interested in making any money. I says, what do you have in mind? Today's guest is a man named Larry Rolla. Larry was a horse fixer for the Italian mafia for decades. He started off back in the 1950s as a horse trainer and a jockey, and he was soon approached by the Lucchese family, and he became a horse fixer for different mafia groups throughout the years. This guy made a fortune in fixing horse races. He lost it all. He won it back. The Odyssey is incredible.

He is here to tell us exactly how mafia horse fixing works. He also has a book out right now called Against All Odds, The Larry Rolla Story, and check him out on YouTube. Without further ado, everybody, enjoy Larry Rolla right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Get in a bucket, they draw a couple of bags of cement in there, and they start pumping some water in there. Now, you tell me why I shouldn't let the cement harden and throw you to fuck over.

That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think, I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. And then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me.

And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. You're a guy from Queens. Yeah. Okay. Where in Queens? Jackson Heights.

Jackson Heights. It is now a heavily Colombian Hispanic neighborhood. But back in the game, back in the day, it was an Italian neighborhood? It was Italian. Yeah, it was right next to Corona. Wow. Corona was all Italian. And Jackson Heights was all Italian.

And then right after I got my mother out of there in the 80s, I think at one point, it was the cocaine capital. the world. Right. Well, because that's where it all came to from Columbia was their people. Jackson Heights. They told me something about on 84th Street or 37th Avenue. That's where all the heavyweights went up. But I don't know. I wasn't there. But I know the neighborhood. Every once in a while, I drive past the house that we had there. And it's, it looks like Fort Knox. They have high gates. Everything is gated. Yeah. The windows, everything. Deep Queens is, it's rough out there. Yeah.

You know, what was it like? Was it a mob neighborhood or was it just an immigrant neighborhood? What was Jackson Heights like back when you were a kid? Wherever it is Italians, it's a mob neighborhood. That's true. It's true. There's always a couple of guys getting money off the books. The Bronx, Brooklyn.

Yeah, yeah. Jackson Heights, Corona. It's, yeah, but early on, early on when I was, 15, 16. I mostly say with the guys from Corona, Astoria was Italians, but a lot of Greeks were coming in. Corona was all Italians.

And 14, 15, you start with the gangs and everything else. Were you into gangs? When you're 14, 15, and everybody, every guy is in gangs. You just grow up. It's almost like a way of life, you know. But Italian gangs in the 15, and queens are not, they don't have big oozys and they're not selling crack. Like a gang was like a bunch of guineas with leather jackets and combs.

The biggest thing. And switchblades, you know what I'm right? The biggest thing, what we used to do, this is when we were 14, 15, were garrison belts, them big motorcycle belts. Right. And you wrap them around your wrist and you swing the buckle. The buckle was big. You swing.

and that's what we used to fight with. Until one day, because between Jackson Heights and Corona was East Elmhurst, all black. Right. So it was all black neighborhood. And when I went to PS 148 was in Jackson Heights, it was all white, then they made some kind of zoning thing where after the sixth grade you had to go to junior high school, which was 127 and East Elmhurst all black. I was one of three white guys in the whole place. Wow. And we used to have gang fights all the time, fight all the time.

And every Saturday we used to have, I used to get the Italian kids and we used to go fight with all the black kids. And that went on for a couple of weeks and just with garrison belts and fists and everything. And you got lucky if you, as they were swinging the belt, you got lucky if you grabbed it. If not, you got hit in the head. But one day, one day there was my good friend who turned out to be a pretty famous movie store, which I can't mention his name. Oh, right. He's still living? Oh, yeah.

He came to me. We used to stand right next to one another. He was a stocky guy with bad left hook. But he says, all right, when I tell you, stand back, just stand back. Don't run, because I used to run in charge and swing the belt. He built a zip gun. And back then it was broke a car antenna and one bullet. Anyway, he says, okay, stand back, and he pulled it out and he shot, and the black kid went down.

Didn't get killed. We found this all. He didn't get killed. But it was then, it was about two, three weeks later. Every night we used to go out and just fight, just look for fights. Yeah. And I'll never forget. The diner on 94th Street in Storia Boulevard in Jackson Heights,

we used to wind up there. And I'm sitting in the diner. And my nose was broke three or four times during this period of time. And blood all over the place, head cracked open, covered with blood. and I'm sitting in, everybody's saying, yeah, you see, I hit that guy, and then I'm sitting there saying, I don't enjoy this.

I don't, I love music. Yeah. I love racing my cars. Right. And I love girls. And, you know, like, fuck this. Street fighting doesn't appeal to me anymore. Not only didn't I enjoy it,

but I was lucky up to that point because I could never hit first. And the way you win a fight. is hit first. Sure. It's one of the only ways. I had to get mad. I had to get mad to to to to to to to to to to to fire you up to go fight and once the guy went down I couldn't pounce on him and right I didn't I didn't enjoy so anyway um I all I wanted to do is was was race my cars and but that created another problem um because you need money of course you I had a room full of trophies and blankets

because I'd race my stock car at Freeport on Friday nights and my Drexer and Roaster at West Hampton. But every time you blow a clutch or blow an engine, you've got to have money and I had no money. And that's when I started crossing the line. Great. And what did that look like in the early days? you just go in the gas station

you hold it up you only get 20, 30 bucks but you know you do three or four a night and you wind up with a couple of hundred Wow, so you went on like stickups like that Oh yeah, that's what I'm astonished by your whole story

and your demeanor and you look like an old rich mobster and boca you're holding up gas stations Yeah, it was 15 Wow, wow Okay and so that was your first foray into criminality How long did that last?

It lasted until I blew an engine into Drexter, and I needed about $500 to buy another engine. And I would have to rob 20 gas stations. And I was running out of places to rob. Run out of gas stations out there in Queens. Because during that time, you'd have to go further and further out, you know. So one day, one day. day, right on

the story Boulevard, 112th Street, there was a brand new gas station opening and a grand opening. And I passed by, had all brand new tires and all new transmission jacks because in them years in the late

50s, most of the cars were standard shift and they start switching to automatic transmissions. And them things weighed two, three hundred pounds, so they needed these new transmission jacks to get down. He bought all brand new ones, all red, beautiful Jackson. Everything was new. So I said, I'm going to rob it. So the night before I robbed a box truck. Would you work alone?

Always alone, except this one time. Oh, okay. That's why I'm telling you this story. Always did everything by myself. Didn't want to, and that's the other problem with the mob and all that stuff. I'm not a follow-de-leader kind of guy. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I got to do my own thing. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. That's it. Nobody's going to tell me what to do, where to go and follow somebody. And that's the problem.

I had even when we were 13. If somebody robbed the car, everybody got in that car. And they, okay, let's go. I didn't even want that because I didn't want to go where they wanted to go. But I had to go because they robbed the car. So then I started robbing my own cars. But anyway, you get back to where I was. that's another thing I do.

I forget if I go off track. That's all right. I forget. So I robbed a box truck and then I realized that these transmission jacks I couldn't pick up by myself and they were four of them. So I had to get a friend of mine.

The first time ever I had somebody do something with me in my whole life. And he helped me. We lifted the jacks up. He had a guy that out in Long Island and wanted to buy all this stuff, and we sold it. We made $3,000.

We whacked it up. And that was the end of that. Until three months later, when there was a knock on my door, it was Detective Sands from 114th precinct. 114th priest, it was in Astoria, Queens. And they took me down at a station house, and they said, here's sign this. And I said, what is it? It's a confession.

He says, before you start all your bullshit, we have everything that you took, we have the guy, we have you identified, we have everything. All we want to know from you is who's the other guy and sign the confession. So I says, I'm not signing nothing. So Detective Sands, he was a big fat guy, he was a detective.

He got up from his desk. I never forget it. He had a piece of wax paper with cheese or bologna on it, and he's eating it. And he just gets up, he walks around. And he says, I said to sign her, and I says, I'm not signing nothing. And he slaps me. When he slapped me, I hit him in the belly, and then that was that.

Two other detectives to come, and they handcuffed me behind the chair. Sands goes, gets one of them gigantic books. He starts pounding me on the head. And all of a sudden, my nose starts bleeding, my eyes, my ears, everything. And I was half unconscious. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local Total Wine and More to grab a great bottle to share. With such a wide selection and the lowest prices, it's easy to find something amazing for everyone to enjoy.

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I used to bite my nails so they couldn't do that. Thank God. So they used to use the, so you get the book. So they get the book. Guys, I got to take a minute to tell you about the new lawnmower 5.0 for Manscaped. For years, whenever it was time to trim my jewels, my Franken beans, I would dread it because I knew those crappy Target-Bot electronic razors would leave huge. huge nix and cuts in my balls. I would scream in agony. I mean, you guys know how hard. It's the worst pain. It feels like you're getting castrated. Well, thank God for Banscaped and the lawnmower 5.0. This waterproof electronic razor greatly reduces Nixon cuts. That right into there is enough to toss out your old electronic razors and go order the lawnmower 5.0. Right now, you can get 20% off

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Do you go down for it? What happened, they uncuffed me and they said, signed it. And I says, I'm not signing it. And he come around again and start beating me. I fell, I got, I fell to the floor. and they start punching me and stepping on my ankles. I crawled into the corner in a fetal position, and they had a long rod that they used to push the windows up with,

and they start jabbing me in the ribs and everything jumping on my ankles. And I was out. I was gone. And I woke up in the tombs downstairs. The tombs downtown, the famous tombs. No, no, no. Behind, I don't know, about every precinct, but just about every precinct, They have three cells down in the basement.

They call them the tombs. They're jail cells. And it's in the basement. There's usually six, seven inches of water with rats as big as cats. And they left me down there from, I think, Thursday night until Monday morning when they took me to hold them cell in Queens Boulevard, the courthouse. And that was the first time they gave me anything to eat. No, nothing to drink, nothing to eat. They just left me down there, covered with blood,

busted up, couldn't breathe. I had three or four broken ribs. I found this out later when, I'll get to that. And my mother bails me out. And up to that point, my mother, my mother, she was a good lady, but I was the only thing she failed at in the whole life, just trying to discipline,

me and trying to make me go right. Ever since I was a kid, I was just a defiant kid. Yeah. I wasn't mean. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. And she, I drove her crazy. Did you end up going down? Did you do time for that robbery?

No, I'm going to tell you what happened. Okay. So she bails me out and I says, now I'm covered all dry blood, everything, just my ears and my eyes and my nose. And I'm in bad shape. I says, my, you've got to get me to the hospital. I can't breathe. My ankle was this big.

And I says, I can't breathe. And she says, I'm taking you where I should have taken you two years ago. And she takes me into the city. And she takes me to her boss. Now, her boss at the time was Tommy Lucchasey, Tommy Three Finger Brown, Lucchasey. He was one of the founding members of the cousin. Austria in Manhattan. Of the Lucchese family, one of the five families.

Yeah, he was the boss. He was the founding, but was the, he was one of the five founding members of the La Casinoleucoza in the United States. It was, it was, it was, it was, uh, well, you, you, you know them. Of course, the Luccazi's, the Gambinos, the Bonanos, the Genevese and the Genoves and what's the final one is, uh, Columbus. Columbia. Okay.

So now, what did your mom do for? She, she ran all. his dress factories. He had all dress factories. In the garment district, right? He ran all his dress factories. Wow. She ran all his dress factories. So anyway, she takes me up there and she says, she says, Mr. O'Casey, this is my son. She must have been talking about him for a while. He says, Bessie leave the room. Let me talk to him. She leaves and he says, sit down. And he says, your mother is a good woman and she's my friend. And you're breaking her heart with all your nickel and dime bullshit.

Now, I'm going to tell you something. I want you to go home and I want you to think about what I just said. And if you want to straighten your life out, I'll help you in any way that I can. And you'll never have a problem, including the one you have right now. It'll all go away. Now, I knew who he was because I learned who he was in detail when he came to my sister's wedding. They made a big deal.

My mother had to put a special table in a corner for six guys, and he stayed for about an hour, and then he left all. And did you know now what the mafia was? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know from the time you're young, with the kids. Yeah. You know, when you're kids, you learn from the time you're 12, 13, 14, 4. Somebody's uncles connected, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This person's with this family. Right, okay. The one that Chas Palmitary did, the Bronx Tale, that's basically it. Right. Even from the time you're sitting on the stove, your little kid, on every corner was a mob guy in a club. Yeah. And so, you know, you're born into it.

Right, of course. You know, it becomes a way of life with everybody. Yeah. But most of the kids take that route. I didn't want to take that route. I didn't enjoy getting hit. I didn't enjoy following the leader. You know, I didn't like that.

So anyway, so I leave. And on the way home, I'm thinking, I never ever thought about that, about my mother. I just thought, oh, shit, I'm going to get up because she never got a phone call. That was a good one about me. I was arrested or beat up or in a hospital or in trouble and never got a good phone call,

but I never thought about it. I always thought about what I was going to do. How I'm going to get out of this? I get a beat. I mean, I have a long-sleeve shirt on. I try to wear them all the time because I still got marks and scars here because the belts didn't work.

And finally she found a stick. And it was a square stick. And it never broke. Everything else she hit me would broke except this stick. And I used to put my arm up like that. And I have marks all over here. In fact, I'll show you. And so I start thinking about that.

And I really, really went straight after that. I says, you know what? I felt so ashamed that I was hurting my mother that way because I'm not a bad kid. I wasn't a vicious kid. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. And I didn't want to hurt anybody. You know, I just.

So, I went home and I went to get a job. But the problem was I wanted to get a job in a gas station so I could put my cars there, my Jackson and Roaster. So there was a gas station on Northern Boulevard, which right over, that guy that you had here before, he would know where it was. He was from flushing, right over the Flushing Bridge

into East Elmhurst is where Northern Boulevard starts. And this is one you didn't rob. No, well, so now I went in there and it was in East Elmhurst, the black area because right after East Elmhurst is Corona right on the other side is Jackson Heights but that one strip there is all black and I went there for a job

because it's open 24 hours a day because there's a lot of traffic on Northern Boulevard going into the city so I see the boss there in the afternoon and I says, I know you're looking for night help. I says, I'd like the job under one condition that you let me put my, park my cars here and work on them during working hours.

And he says, that's not a problem. He says, the problem is you're a kid, and we get robbed here often. So I says, that's not a problem for me as long as you let me keep my cars here. And the reason it wasn't a problem for me. So I was the one that was robbing a gas station. So I had no problem with that. So I got that job. And for two or three months, I was one and I had no intentions ever of going back

into that bullshit life of fighting and, you know, I just wanted to race my cars. And the problem I had was that every penny I was making and salary I was putting into the cars, I was always fixing them up. The problem is money. The problem is, as with most situations. The problem is the lack of money. It's always money. So, Larry, I got to move you through.

How did you end up going back? I'll get to that real quick. Okay. One day I'm in a gas station at night and a horse van pulls in. Horse van pulls in. Guy says, fill it out with gas and can I have a bucket of water? I give him a bucket of water. I said, what are you doing with them horses?

And he says, I'm taking them to Yonkers Raceway. And we start talking, and I found out that you can race horses for purse money. What is purse money? That if you win a race, instead of getting a trophy or a blanket, you get purse money. Money. The purse is just called, the money you win is called the purse. Right, right. You get a purse.

So I asked them how much the purse is. He said it could be $5,000, $3,000. to whatever. And he invited me out to the farm. I went to the farm. We'll cover 20 years and 10 minutes. So I went to the farm. He taught me everything and there is about racing.

Now, this is harness racing, not thoroughbreds. It's a harness racing, one with the cart and the bike. Oh, wow. Okay. And that was Yonkers and Roosevelt. They were two biggest harness tracks in the country. And he taught me everything about it. I wound up getting my license a year, year and a half later.

and I went to Roosevelt Raceway, and I start racing. And my first year there, they didn't, first of all, they didn't want to give me stalls. And I called up my mother. And I had to call my mother because when I got my license to train and drive horses, my mother was so happy that she finally got a phone call. That was a good phone call. And she told Tommy Lacasey of my progress in a year and a half, two years. I was behaving and everything else.

And my mother, I told my mother I got my license. She says, come home. I have something for you. So I drove home that day from the farm. And she gave me an envelope. Tommy LaCasey gave her an envelope to give to me, had $20,000 in it. Wow. So with the $20,000, I wind up buying my first four horses.

And I applied for stalls at Roosevelt Raceway. I was denied stalls. The reason was I was a brand new kid. I was a young kid. Roosevelt was the premier racetrack. All the top guys in the country were there, and who the hell am I? And they denied me. So I was all new to me.

I called my mother. I said, my, I bought the horses with the money Tommy gave me, but they won't let me race them here. And I don't know what to do. She says, well, let me ask Tommy. So she asked Tommy, and she calls me back the next day. she says, just ship the horses to Roosevelt. There'll be four stalls waiting. So I says, how do he do that?

And the windup was he did it because Roosevelt Raceway was owned by Morton Levy. Morton Levy was the attorney for Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano and all that. So that was also founding members of the commission. Yeah. Wow. So that. I mean, the power that the bosses of New York wielded back then was truly presidential. Right.

They were as powerful as the mayor of New York. Senator, I mean, you know, Don Corleone and the Godfather, it's not too far off when you talk about the way those guys waved a finger and mountains were moved. Yep. Wow. And it was... I'm sorry, when you say drive a horse, are you talking about actually being the jockey? Yeah, the driver.

The jockeys are the ones on the back. The drivers are the ones in the race bike sitting behind a horse. That's the driver. That's what I did. Gotcha. I also trained thoroughbreds, but the thoroughbreds, use jockeys that way 100%. Gotcha. Gotcha. So anyway,

sure enough, he got me the stalls. I was treated like a king. But I was very good at what I did. I was a student. I fell in love with the horses and I really did and all I wanted to do was race. It didn't make no difference cause of horses. I just loved the competition. I loved to race. I love to go fast. And I loved fixing them if they had problems.

I fixed them. If they had whatever the problem was, I went to universities. I stayed with the vets all day, never played golf, never went to the beach. It was an all-day thing. And I become very good at maintaining lameness, treating lameness, both in body and mind. So I became very, very successful. A lot of my first eight races, I think I won seven out of my first eight at the biggest racetrack against the best drivers.

And they gave me a full page write-up. in the newspaper. What kind of money are you making off that? Well, it was just, as you start off, you make money. It was maybe $5,000, $10,000 each race that you win, you know, purse money. In 1960, that's a lot of money. Yeah. For, you know, 19.

How old are you at this time? It was, well, it was really in 50, well, it was CS 60, 61. Trying to make you feel good. I was, I was born in 1940, so I was 20. Okay. Now all of a sudden, there's this, look. little kid me, who the baddest man on the planet turned me into a good kid. Yeah.

And very, very successful. Now I'm getting calls from all wealthy people because I'm like, who's this phenomenon? Who's this new kid? So I was getting all kinds of calls and people were throwing money at me to buy them horses and I could train their horses and drive their horses. Wow. And I was good at it. So then from there, I went to Yarkers Raceway, which was in Yarkers.

And Yonkers Raceway was owned by a guy called Marty Tannenbaum. And he was a wheeler dealer, politically connected pretty good in the Democratic Party. I found all this out later. And I raced a horse one day, and I found this all out later. that I finished third with the horse climbing over horses. I decided to sit in rather than pull out at the half and go ahead and him with the leader. I decided I got locked in bed and I couldn't get out.

And what happened was Marty Tannenbaum was partners with a big gambler there called Morty Finder and they bet 10,000 to win on my horse. And when I got beat legitimately, Morty Finder, who was the one who put in the bet says to Tanabar, I'm not kid, we should have won this bet. He stiffed him and everything else.

Tanenbaum picked up the phone and he told the judge to tell him he got 24 hours to get off the ground. What does that mean? Leave the racetrack. I couldn't race there no more. Get my horses out of the racetrack. You have 24 hours. Because, yeah, just because he blew a bet and thinking I stiffed the horse,

which I really didn't do. Wow. Now, at that point, Tommy Lucchese took a bad kid and turned them good. And this creep, Tannenbaum, who was a white-collar criminal, and for no reason became judge and jury and threw me out of a racetrack. Now, once you're out of a racetrack in Yonkers, you barred all over. So I called up my mother, and I says, Ma, and I told her what happened. I says, tell Mr. Likaze that I didn't do anything.

them to think that I did anything bad, I didn't. And she says, well, they just wouldn't throw you out. Yes, they did. First of all, the Racing Commission gave the Congress of the United States gave the Racing Commission the right to write their own rules and govern their own body. And that's exactly what they do. The outside courts never get involved. And if you're the owner of a racetrack, just like the owner of your house. You have the right to throw anybody out that you want. And he became judge and jury, and because of reciprocity, you know where the racetrack will take you. But the smaller ones out of town, they'll take you because they need horses.

Right. So now I asked my mother, can Tommy Lucchese fix this? Because he fixed everything else. And she says, I can't ask him. he's in a hospital, he's dying from a malignant brain tumor. So now I'm basically on my own. She says, I can't ask him. He died soon after that.

He died about six months later of brain tumor. And so I was on my own, traveling to all these small racetracks. It was horrible. No money, no. Right. You're on the road. You're just a guy on the road. Yeah.

And whatever money I had ran out in six months. months. And six months later, I was catching pigeons with all the black grooms and cooking, eating pigeons and grand meshes. And it was a horrible, horrible existence. Oh, so you were living like a carny. You were almost like a traveling hobo. Yeah. Wow. With horses to support. Right. And they had to eat before me. Of course. And that's not cheap. No. You guys, I got to take a minute to thank our longtime sponsor and friend of the show, Mood CBD. Mood is the number one Delta 8 and Delta 9 products company in the country. And they deliver everywhere. Even if you live in a state where you don't have full legalization yet, mood CBD can deliver

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I get a sole application. Now I'm penniless. It was the worst time in my life. And I couldn't abandon the horses. I couldn't. It was anyway. The stall obligation comes out in Boston for Lincoln Downs racetrack.

It was the first time ever that they were going to have harness racing at Lincoln Downs in Boston. and I applied for stalls there and I got them and they had a lot better purses that's why I want to go there so I get there and the program comes out for the for the first day of racing and I have two morning line favorites favorites to win the race two separate races and I'm sitting in the shed row and all of a sudden three guys come down the shed row three big guys six and a half feet tall 300 pounds.

And they said, you Larry Roller? And I says, yeah. And he said, I'm Tony Schuller. I'm with the Winter Hill gang, Wighty Bulger. And we control all these racetracks around here. And I says, well, that's good for you. And he says, you interested in making any money? And at that point, like, as big and ugly as he was,

I wanted to kiss him right. on the lips. I mean, when he mentioned money. But the other thing is, he come on like a real jerk, a tough guy, you know, and I grew up with that shit, you know, the same way he grew up, the same way I grew up. Only, I outgrew it. He's still, you know, he's, anyway. So I says, what do you have in mine? Because whatever he had in mine, I was going to do. I just wanted the money. But I couldn't let him know that. So he says, well, you have two morning line favorites. just we'll give you 200 of horse, finish worse than third. Finish what?

Worse than third. Gotcha. Don't be first, second, or third. And we'll give you 200 for each horse. And what they do is then they take the other remaining horses and they box them or they at least they got the favorite out of it anyway, which is probably 90% of the windpool. So this is a good opportunity to ask you about fixing races then, just for people that don't understand. I barely understand.

how does that benefit these mob guys that are asking you to intentionally finish less than third in the race? How do they make money out of it? I'll tell you that in 30 seconds. So I says, all right. He says, just tell me the stall number and how my vet come and treat your horse, give me a tranquilizer, whatever they do. And I says, listen, I says, I want 500 of horse. I want 500 of horse cash right now until your vet to stay home.

And he says, you know who the fuck you're talking to? I says, it don't matter. He says, you want to do business? We do business. But you're not going to make all the money and give me 200 on horse. And there ain't nobody going, no vet going there my horse. So he counts out the $1,000. He gives it to me.

And he says, I hope you know what the fuck you're doing because I'll be back in the morning. And I says, oh, that's good. Just bring coffee, no sugar, and a bagel with butter. And next morning, he came back with coffee, no sugar, and a bagel with butter. And he won a lot of money. So he says to me, he says, can you get other guys around here to do what you do to, you know. Right. So within two days, because everybody at these small tracks are broke.

So within two days, I got seven or eight guys. And here's what they do to answer your question. There's eight horses in a race. And we pay off four guys, not to be first, second, or third, just to be back. Right. And then they take the other four horses and box them in trifects. races. What does that mean box them? So they take they take the first, second, and third choice. They pay them to be out of the money. Now once the first second choice are out, all the money is

still in the pool because all the money in the exact pool, trifecta pool and the wind pool with them horses. So if them horses are out of there, that money stays there. They box the other horses. What's the box mean? Say it's the one, two, three, four. They take them horses and and box them, no matter what combination comes in, just like you're betting a number. You're betting one and two. You bet two and one. You bet two and one.

That's a box. If it's three horses, you bet one, two, three, then two, three, then two, one, three, then just box them. So that's what they do. And what would a purse at this Boston horse racing track? What would an average purse be on a race like that? Probably a thousand dollars. and that's something else that you should know.

If the person is $1,000 or $1,000, let's say it's $1,000, the winner gets 50% of that, so that's $500. The driver gets 5% of the $500. So that means you get $25 if you win. So if I'm going to give you $200 or $300, you're going to take the money and just make an excuse why the horse didn't win. And then you could always win the following week or whatever.

So everybody took that deal. everybody. And that's what happened. And that started me on the way to doing fixing races. Gotcha. Now, it escalated. And the reason it escalated was because after about, after about maybe a month, from being broke, I had about $20,000, $30,000. That was my end that he was given me. So one night he's leaving, one day he's leaving, and he says, oh, by the way, he says, says, I have an edge on some hoops tonight. Do you want any action? Talk about basketball.

Yeah, I didn't even know what hoops work, but it was basketball. So they play in Elmhurst. He says, I never played basketball. I was too busy doing other things. Hold up gas stations. Yeah, so he says to me, I says, what do you want? So I says, whatever you do for you do for me. So the next morning he comes and he gives me $3,000.

And he says, I got another two games tonight. You want you? You know, I should do the same. So before you know it, I'm making more money betting on these sporting events than I am fixing races. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start.

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Now was this guy just A great at picking him This mob guy? No, I was fixing I found this all later They were fixing college games And they were fixing everything Wow

Are you serious? Yeah, whatever is in Boston was being fixed They were fixing them Yeah And what year This is 1960. No, this was the 71. Okay.

1970, 71. Whitey Bulger was in full, well, it was a Winter Hill gang and then Whitey Bulger kind of took over. Wow. Wow. So they're fixing professional games, college games, everything. Everything. I don't know about pros, but I know the colleges. And I was winning a lot of money.

The problem with winning a lot of money is that I was getting hooked. I was getting hooked. And now I was more interested in betting on sports. And I'm skimming right through the years now. I'm going right through the years. By the time I get to Monticello, so from there, me close, I go to Monticello. Monticello now I get involved. Monticello Raceway, in Monticello, New York, upstate New York.

And I was so happy to get in there because it was a New York track. But it was a small upstate track, and they let me in. And they let me in mostly because the owner of the tracks, Charles Slutsky Sr. died, left it to his kid, Charles Slotsky Jr., and the kid didn't know my,

you know, he just was, and he gave me stalls. Now, when they gave me stalls, I won't get too deep into it because everything I said has a backstory that goes on forever. So they gave me stalls and I immediately became friendly

with Charles Slotsky, the owner of the track, who also owned a Nevely Hotel in Ups, state. And the reason I got friendly with him because the waitress in the dining room, I always had the table A7, she liked me. And she was a really good-looking girl. And she liked me. The problem was Susky liked her. So when I used to go to the Concord at night or go out after the races, she would follow and he would follow her. So before you knew, we were a trio. And you guys were both

trying to hook her hook up with her well i i wasn't really i you know i was more interested in hearing the music and everything but you know at the end of the night you're a guy and you do what you do and uh but sloffsky was married at the time and he uh you know he just had to be a little careful he was left millions of dollars plus the racetrack bus hotel he had to be a little a little more careful than me i don't i don't believe that they ever had an affair but he just loved being around it plus she was a beautiful girl nice girl so anyway I convinced them to ask for

every year every year at around Christmas time they closed the racetracks for two or three weeks for for Christmas and New Year's and everything else I convinced Charles to ask the racing commission all of them commissioned to stay at his hotel the Nevely Hotel

I says you got all these guys staying here they're all your friends they run ask them for the dates because your handle will go from 200,000 a night to 5, 6 million a night, plus at the same time OTB is going to open, the same year, the same time, November. I says your handle will go astronomical.

And a handle is what? The handle is the total mutual handle, how much they bet on the total sum of all bets. Total sum of all bets. And OTB must have been a boom to the racing business, right? Yeah, because now it's off-track betting. You don't have to be there to put money down on the water. Seller was an upstate track. Now you could be 150 miles away in Brooklyn, New York and still bet.

So it was the first year they opened, the first month they opened. A year went by by then. And I already had my whole crew lined up. I had seven or eight drivers up there on the payroll, ready to fix races and everything else. And that's what I did. Wow. So now I'm skimming right through this stuff. I'm not giving you particulars how I did it while I did.

I'm just, I had a whole crew. So at that, but at this racetrack specifically, now you've got this million dollar handle on these races. Many, many millions. Okay. And then, so tell us, you got a crew of seven guys. What are you giving them and then what are you taking per race? What does that add up to per month? And how many races are you doing?

What I would do is give me to $1,000 to be worse than third. Then I would take the money. What I tried to do was say I get, I bet, I get four guys out. There are always eight horses in a race. I get four guys out. So them four guys, say I gave him a thousand dollars each. So that's $4,000. Then I would bet maybe another four or five thousand boxing the other horses and every

combination, as many tickets. By the way, are you driving still? Oh, yeah. So you're making money and you're putting your own bets down. Yeah. Wow. So you're double popping. Yeah.

Okay. And I had to do that because I was making a lot of money fixing races, but losing more than I was making betting on sports. Oh. So you're already in a hole. That's a dilemma. Wow. Right. So I hear a full-blown attic now on sports gambling.

I was addicted bad. Oh, no. It got to the point where I lost maybe a little bit more than a million dollars. I would start betting with two guys. And one was Barney Cutler, an old Jewish Maya Lansky bookmaker. He was in his late 70s, 80s, lived up Monticello, retired up there. He was taking action with all the guys. and I was able to bet with him

and I bet with a madman called Cabert in New Jersey. And I started out, you know, $500 bet, you know, but I paid every Tuesday. And then the football season came. And by that time I had excellent credit and I was betting $10,000 a game, betting 10, 11 games on a weekend with each guy. Holy shit.

So you got 100,000 on a weekend. Oh, yeah. More than that, more than that a lot of times. So I was making that kind of money because it went to meet and losing that kind of money on sports. Now, the Jewish guy wasn't a bad guy. He was a nice old guy. And I used to send this girl, there was a girl,

Gina up there, beautiful girl. She was a good friend of mine and we became good friends and she was my girl Friday. She would do the running around for me and she was also one of my runners that would run to OTB. I had three

other runners to go bet on all the OTB offices on races that I fixed. How many races were you fixing on a week? As many would that be? It'd be maybe 10, maybe 15. Maybe two or three a day, seven days, you know, 10, 15 races and made a lot of money. What would you clear 15 races?

Well, it was all different. One week I may make 80,000. I can tell you this. When OTB paid you, they gave you $10,000 in like Swiss cheese in the shrink wrap paper. Stink wrap is 10,000. It was only like not even a half inch thick. I had a whole drawer my dresser filled just with them. The middle drawer was filled all the loose

and 50, all the loose stuff, and the top drawer was all the bullshit singles and fives and tens. All that was gone. All that was gone by January. It was all gone. So I was broke, but I had excellent credit, but I had an addiction.

I had a bet. I had a bet. And I'm saying, oh, my God, the weekend's coming. I paid, you paid every Tuesday. I says, oh, my God, the weekend's coming. I don't have any money. And Cabratt, I wasn't worried about Bonnie Cutler, the Jewish guy, because Gina had him, he liked Gina.

She used to cook him, breakfast and everything. I was worried about the other guy, Cabert. Now, I don't know if you know who Cabert is, but he was, he's a bad, bad guy. He was later on to become Gotti's favorite button guy for whatever he wanted. He'd become part of the John Gotti crew. But up to that point, he killed 17 guys. He was just a bad, he was just a whack job. That's what he was.

And this is a guy that you owe money to every week. Well, I paid him every week. Right. I paid him almost a million bucks. But now I'm broke. And I have no money. I just have an addiction. And by Thursday, I started shaking that the weekends come and I got no money.

So I make up a story. I get a, I drive down to see him. I says, listen, Bert, I'm going to Florida to buy some property. He knew I was racing horses. He knew I was fixing races. And that's why between that, knowing I was in big action and me paying every week,

I mean, if I owed him 80,000 or 120,000, I paid every week, cash. So I said, I'm going to Florida to buy some property, so I won't be, I'll be gone for two or three weeks. So he says, no problem. Just call me up. I'll give you the line, which I knew what he was going to.

say. So, and I told Bonnie the same thing. So sure enough, I go to, it was a lie. I just, I just had to, in the case I lost, I had, I couldn't be there. Right. So I went to Florida. I bet first week, I lose, I don't know, 70,000, whatever. And the second one, how are you losing so much money? You're just not good at it? Or is this the nature of gambling? Well, we're talking about right now where I lost the bulk of it was football. Nobody wins betting football. Out of 15, 16 games historically and statistically, the player wins three times.

You can't win. Nobody ever wins bet. If you were bookmaking, you only took action on football, you become very, very wealthy. Nobody wins Benton football. So now it's in January sometime. I remember this, yeah, it was January, I go to Florida, and I call up, I lose, I lose, I lose. By the third week, I lost close to 700,000.

And I each it up about 370, 80, whatever it was. So now, and every week I say, okay, I'm coming back to the closings next week. But that went off for three weeks. I couldn't stall anymore. So then I had a decision to make, you know, what do you? You owe a guy that killed 17 guys for whole. a lot less. So do I run away or do I kill myself

or do I go back? And I went back. And sure enough, this guy is there at the airport picking me up and he says you want me to take you someplace, get where he's waiting for you. I says, I got no money. He says, you know what you got?

You got a problem. Sure. This fucking guy. 700,000 of them. I said, take me down to say, I owed him half. of what I, oh, okay.

I ended up like 3, 73, 8. So, I just take me down to him. He says, I got to call him. I call him up, and he comes back. He says, he wants me to bring you down there in the morning. Next morning, he picks me up. He takes me down there, Atlantic Islands, down in Jersey.

It's a big yacht club with a big catering hall. And we walk in. and he's sitting in the back just like a typical mob movie sitting in the back in the corner the two guys with him drinking the demitats with the big cigars typical mob thing

he don't say a fucking word he just gets it's like gets up he walks out the back he walks down and we're following him he goes out on the whatever you call that thing where the boats are parked and we get on a boat

they make me go downstairs and they drive the boats out about a half hour later the motor shuts off a guy says go upstairs go upstairs there's a bucket about this big

and get in a bucket they draw a couple of bags of cement in there and they start pumping some water in there and then convert comes and he says Sammy let you go too far and that's on him that's his man who I was betting with he says you went too far

and that's on you now you tell me why I shouldn't let this cement harden and throw you to fuck overboard and I says well those I could pay and he says you could pay and he looks at Sammy and he says well you know we got almost a million dollars

of his money Sammy kind of stuck up for me a little bit he says you could pay I'm going to make this street 70, whatever it was, a Shalak loan, two points. Every week you come here, you're here with $7,200 every fucking week, Vig. And you miss one week, you'll be right back here with no turning back. So I says, all right. So they take me out, they hose me off, he brings me back home.

I tell Gene to make the same deal with Bonnie, and I made the same deal. Now, from that point on, I had to come up with just about $16,000 a week in Vig, just to stay alive. Right, right. Did you, when they're making you, you know, take your shoes off and stand in cement buckets? No. Were you expecting to live or were you expecting to die? I was expecting to live.

You knew that they were just doing this as a threat? I didn't know. But if I owed you, if I come to you and I borrow $10,000 and I didn't pay you and you were a wise guy, you probably kill me. But if I make a bet with you, no money, I make a bet with you, and I lose the bet, you didn't give me no money. Right. It's a big difference. Right.

I asked a guy this two days ago. I had a guy who used to be a bookie on, and I kind of brought that up to him. I'm like, when you go take action with a bookmaker and you don't pay when you lose, well, he's not out anything. It's not like loan sharking. You're right, where I actually give you money and you don't pay back. I'm now out that money. That makes sense to kill you. Yeah, most of them bookmakers, they send these big goons out and they rough you up a little bit

and they try to get the money. But the small ones, they do that. But if you don't pay. Right. And later on, they'd run right to the cops. So you're better off just letting them just not taking no more action because they didn't. But what kills the bookmakers is that when you win two, three weeks in a row, you come and collect and then you lose one week you don't pay them of the guys they get hurt right

they get bad beatings right because because the bookmaker paid when when you won yeah but now you lost and you don't want to pay and that's how that's that's that's when it gets personal yeah well well the addicted gambler can't help that they you know they don't think of any they don't think of the after effects if they lose right they just know they have the bet right and they chase and they chase and And it's the chase that gets you killed and hurt. Right. So now here you are. You owe 17 grand a week in Vig and in the 1970s.

Yeah. That's a pretty staggering amount of money by most people's standards. But what are you now, what do you go into in order to stay alive and make that payment? Well, the problem I was, the problem I was facing was the winter meat at Monicello was ending. so the big money was gone and I couldn't make that kind of money one thing I left out that when the winter meet first opened

Tony Shula the guy from Whitey Bulger's guy came up to Monticello and I said what are you doing here and he says it's the only game in town that's what I'm doing here so he made it ain't you happy to see me and everything and I wasn't going to chase him

because he got me off to snide we made a lot of money But now the winter meet ended, and I have Tony Schuller there, and he says to me, I says, look, you're going to have to go back because there's no more handle here. I couldn't have him. I didn't think I could ever make the money I had to make fixing races at Monticello once the handle went back down and nothing, because then I can make maybe $1,500 a night fixing races with the small purses. So I says, you've got to get out of here. So he says, what about Yonkers in Roosevelt? It's right down the road.

And I says, now the whole Likaze crew got that. The Likaze crew, they were fixing all the races. I'm sorry, isn't that the one you were banned from years before? Yeah, I wasn't there. I couldn't race there. Right, right, right. But now the Lukazis have control of it. Yeah, but Tommy was gone years ago.

Right, I see. His crew, some of his captains and soldiers were fixing all the races. Gotcha. So I told Shula, I said, we can't go there, okay? So Shula, you know, like, fuck them. I said, no, there's no fucking them. I says, this is not Boston. This is New York.

And you won't last a minute. You go over that fucking bridge. So, so, but what I had a plan in mind. And the plan I had in mind was that during the, during the meet, Charles Sotsky, the owner said the Racing Commission called him up. and there was a Hall of Fame jockey called Manuel Yucasa. He broke both knees in a riding accident at Santa Anita Racetrack. He's through a therapy and everything else, but he can't ride no more.

But he loves horses. He wants to know if I would teach him how to harness horses and drive and everything else, which I did. And he lived with me for about seven, eight months, and we become very good friends. And while he was living with me, the winter meat was coming to an end, and I knew I was going to be in trouble. And I says, how do I get to the guy, the jockeys at Aqueduct in Belmont, which was the biggest thoroughbred racetracks in the world

with a handle of $10 million at every day, which is unbelievable. Yeah. So I knew that there was an old jockey there. I knew from some of the wise guys that there was an old jockey called Con Eriko. That was, he wasn't retired. He kept his life. license but he was he was past his prime and and maybe he'd ride one or two a day or a week and he used to hang out at a bar in sunnyside queens so i asked manny one day yucasa i says you know connorico he says of course

i know him we're from the same i know so i says i want to meet him i says let's go have dinner he's always hanging down there so we go to have dinner so during dinner Mani gets up, he goes to the bathroom, and I says, Colin, I says, listen, I says, I got to talk to you about something, but I can't talk in front of Mani, because you know how Mani was nuts. He was crazy. Straight Arrow guy. So I says, you're going to be here tomorrow night?

He says, yeah. So I go back the next night. I'll breeze right through this. And I says, if you go to the jockey's room every day at Belmont, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know all them guys? Yeah, I know them since they're kids. I raised them all. I says, you know who you could trust,

who you can't trust? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I says, now, Kahn, you got to tell me. You can't say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be careful what you're saying. Don't tell me something you can't do. And if you could do what you say, we're going to make a lot of money.

He says, what is it? I says, every morning you get the program. And whoever's on the favor of the second choice, you offer them $5,000 to be worse than third. and... Because when you fix the favorite, that's who everybody's betting on to win. So when they lose...

All the money's still in the pool. So I says, try to pick the races where they have less horses. Because the thoroughbred, sometimes they have eight, ten, ten, twelve horses in the red. I says, try to get the short fields, trying to get horses, races that have maybe seven, eight horses in them. Right.

Get the first second choice out. If you can get the third and four choice out, to be perfect. For every horse you get out, you get $1,000. So in other words, you get the first and second choice out. That's $5,000, $5,000, $5,000, $5,000, $3,000 and $4,500, $2,500. So now between the first four choices out of it, all that money in the pool, which is like $2,000, $300,000, it stays there. The rest of the remaining horses, we just box every combination. Right, right. Now, Now, that will cost me five, ten, ten, and fifteen thousand. You get another thousand for each guy, so you get another four thousand.

So now we're up to nineteen, twenty thousand. That's what you're going to get. So you get four guys, you get four thousand for every race. If you do two or three a day, you'll get twenty thousand a day. That's more money than he made in two years. And you're making... And now what I do is I take twenty, thirty thousand, and I have my... runners go to all OTB and enter the track.

So it's all spread around. And how much money does each runner put down on an OTB? Is there like a limit? No, there's no limit. But you have to be careful because you have to, as far as the runners go, as far as the runners go, you got to get a guy that knows what he's doing. You got to get a gambler. You got to get a street guy who's a gambler.

Because the lines at OTB are long. You can't get shut out. Don't ever get shut out. No. So you got to get a guy that knows how to bet, what the bet, when the bet, and when he wins, say he wins 20, 30,000, security or the managers comes up to you, and they do. Right. How'd you get their numbers?

How'd you, you know, we don't have that much cash, we got to give you a check. Right. I says, accept all the checks, but don't answer no questions. Because they come and say, how'd you pick them numbers? How'd you lead the first, second, third, fourth choice out? You got to tell them to go fuck yourself. And that's what they did. I said, I've been losing my whole fucking life.

I finally get lucky. You want to ask me, get the fuck out of here. And that's what they answered them. Can they find these on your channel? Like, are you going to be doing episodes about these? Oh, yeah. They find it. I have a website.

What is that website? I don't know. Okay. Well, you know what? Google Larry Rolla, but go buy his book against all odds and then check his YouTube out, subscribe, like, watch these episodes. what he's given us is just a snippet. So if they go and start from the beginning,

you're going to hear everything he talked about, but in much greater detail. Yeah, I have 17 episodes up there, and I don't think I got to La Cajas show yet. Maybe I did. See, that's the problem I have, too. I don't remember what I said in the podcast before. We do three podcasts every couple of weeks.

Nobody remembers. We talk so much. We just, you know, becomes a blur. I don't remember. That doesn't matter. You recall and then let them consume, you know? Yeah. I get a lot of questions because in the beginning, I said,

please call in your questions because it helps me remember and it fills a lot of gaps. Now I get five, six hundred calls every week. Wow. Is that right? Keep going, man. That's great. Well, this originally started because Frankie Vincent, the act of Frankie Vincent, he was going to be my co-host and he was the one that got me to California

and everything. And we were going to do the, we were going to do the podcast as an intro into the TV series of the book. And then COVID came and everything. And then it just, and then, and then now, just maybe six months ago, we started, we started it again. And we were just going to do it. until we did the movie with the Val Langeau brothers. Then when Frank killed himself, that ended. So we started the podcast again as an intro to Barry O'Brien's TV series. And then the writer's strike happened. So we continued doing it.

I just thought we were going to do it because the first episodes, first couple episodes were like almost an hour. And now that I have to do it. I just, after 20 minutes, I just go, That's enough. I'm done. It's a lot. Well, you're going to find that podcasting and show business is much like horse racing and gambling. You're going to have your highs. You're going to have your lows.

You've just got to have more highs than lows. And there you go, man. You hit three out of ten in baseball. You're a Hall of Famer. So I'm looking out for the series. I think it's going to happen. It's been an incredible story. Thank you for coming into the city for it, man.

My pleasure. And really, once again, I'm going to say, say it again, against all odds with Larry Rolla, the legend, and check out his YouTube channel by the same name as well. Larry, thank you so much, my man. I had a great time. My pleasure. All right. Take care of you guys. Bye-bye. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to MintMobile today.

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