Few American towns captured the contradictions of Prohibition as vividly as Reading, Pennsylvania. Between the dawn of the Volstead era in January 1920 and Repeal in 1933, Reading—and the farms and mill towns of Berks County around it—turned a constitutional experiment into a [...]
For much of the 20th century, Reading, Pennsylvania earned the moniker “Sin City” for its entrenched rackets in gambling, prostitution, and organized vice. Among the city’s most enduring underworld families were the Damianos — a clan whose influence extended across three generations, from [...]
In the fall of 1962, attention in Reading’s underworld drifted away from Abe Minker and the city’s familiar vice rackets to a quieter figure with powerful connections: Frank Donato. Though Reading was Minker’s turf, Donato had enough pull to run a numbers operation [...]
For decades, Reading, Pennsylvania, carried the notorious moniker "Sin City," an identity forged in smoky backrooms, illegal breweries, and the hushed transactions of vice. According to Ed Taggert's historical account, "When the Rackets Reigned," this infamous era was not the work of a [...]
In the annals of American organized crime, the names that resonate are often tied to the sprawling metropolises of New York or Chicago. Yet, in the mid-20th century, the far smaller city of Reading, Pennsylvania, earned the notorious moniker "Sin City," largely due [...]
The Gentleman Bootlegger Who Defied Every Stereotype In the violent, chaotic world of Prohibition-era organized crime, Max Hassel stood apart as an anomaly—a bootlegger who built his empire through business acumen rather than bullets, charity rather than cruelty, and political sophistication rather than [...]
From Anthony Mirenna to Tony Moran: The Making of a Racketeer Born Anthony Mirenna in 1903 in Tunis, Africa, Tony Moran immigrated to the United States with his family and eventually settled in Reading, Pennsylvania. By the 1930s he was a naturalized citizen. [...]
In the late 1960s, Westinghouse Broadcasting’s Urban America series pulled no punches. One of its most arresting installments, The Corrupt City, investigated how organized crime hollowed out Reading, Pennsylvania—a city of 100,000 people—through payoffs, intimidation, and public indifference. Narrated by Group W chief [...]
In 1967, "The Wincanton Report,” a federally funded study, was published about corruption and organized crime in a small city. Wincanton, a fictional name chosen to protect innocent people, was later disclosed to be Reading, Pa., a city that for 30 years was [...]
Organized crime is a society that seeks to operate outside the control of the American people and their governments. It involves thousands of criminals, working within structures as complex as those of any large corporation, subject to laws more rigidly enforced than of [...]
