Jukebox Empire: The Mob and the Dark Side of the American Dream

Jukebox Empire follows the many twists and turns in one man’s pursuit of the American dream, from a self-taught electronics genius to money launderer for the mob. This book exposes how the jukebox industry became the vertically integrated business model for organized crime at a time when there was a jukebox in every restaurant, diner, bar, barracks, arcade, and canteen throughout the country. Anyone can afford a nickel for a song and every week the jukeboxes generate millions of dollars in cash, untaxed income, that needed to be laundered.. Beneath this wholesome veneer lies a seamy underworld of juke joints, operators’ routes, smoke-filled showrooms, and violence. Rabinovitch reveals the details of the mob’s international money-laundering scheme to finance running guns to Cuba. The investigation pieces together an epic puzzle that begins in Chicago with the invention of a jukebox and spans the casinos of Havana and the financial giants of Europe, leading to what the FBI called the biggest bank robbery in the world.