Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., the San Francisco 49ers, and the Mafia
The NFL permits a DOJ-identified mobster to buy the 49ers
Tonight—Sunday, January 28, 2024—the San Francisco 49ers will play the Detroit Lions for the NFL’s NFC Championship.
Going back in history, above is a chart from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), focusing on Edward J. DeBartolo Sr's ties to major Mafia figures, as well as to organized-crime associates and activities. . . . I detailed many of these claims in this excerpt from my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football. (Chapter 33, “On the Principal Subjects List,” pp. 287-291.) My book was re-released in 2014.
Yesterday, I published my excerpts from Interference about “The Detroit Lions, the Mafia, and the 1963 NFL gambling scandal.”
Eddie DeBartolo and the San Francisco 49ers
Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., a major builder of shopping malls around the United States, was alleged by a variety of law enforcement agencies to have business ties with top organized crime figures, including Meyer Lansky, Carlos Marcello, and Santos Trafficante.
In 1970, DeBartolo’s name appeared on the U.S. Justice Department’s Organized Crime Principal Subjects List, a catalog of people who are suspected of having links to organized crime. Later, DeBartolo challenged the listing of his name on the register through his attorney, Charles F. C. Ruff. At the time of this action, DeBartolo was attempting to obtain a license to operate a racetrack in Oklahoma and didn’t want the list to prejudice the Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission, which issues the licenses.
In response to this challenge, David Margolis, the chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, responded to Ruff. Margolis wrote, “The so-called Principal Subjects List was created in the late 1960s and distributed to a number of government agencies in 1971. Individuals whose names appeared in investigative reports were placed on the list, although they were not necessarily the subjects of criminal investigations. Over the years the list became outdated, and persons remained on it even though they were no longer of interest to the Department of Justice, were not the subjects of any investigation or were deceased.” Margolis added that the list had not been in use since August 1975—after an order had been issued by Margolis’s predecessor that “the list should be destroyed.”
DeBartolo was born in the Smoky Hollow section of Youngstown, Ohio, in 1909.[1] He received his degree in civil engineering from Notre Dame and made his fortune in the construction business, primarily as a builder of shopping centers. Between 1952 and 1954, DeBartolo and members of his company were subjected to six bombings of their offices and shopping centers. No one was killed, and the bombing spree was never solved. In 1960, he purchased Thistledown racetrack near Cleveland, and the following year he bought the nearby Randall Park racetrack. The concessions for these tracks were handled by the Emprise Corporation, a Buffalo-based sports-services conglomerate, which was indicted and convicted in 1972 for racketeering and fronting for several organized-crime figures. In 1973, DeBartolo bought another racetrack, Balmoral, just south of Chicago.
Also during the 1960s, DeBartolo had engaged in a joint development in Florida with Lou Chesler and his General Development Corporation. According to their contract, Chesler and General Development were responsible for building houses in Port Malabar, Port Charlotte, Port St. Lucie, and other locations on both Florida coasts, while DeBartolo handled all commercial construction, such as shopping centers.
By 1965, DeBartolo had begun building shopping malls, beginning with the Summit Mall in Fairlawn, Ohio, near Akron. A 1978 classified report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement described him as “a very wealthy, powerful, influential person with organized-crime connections in Ohio. Subject deals in land purchases, construction, and development of large shopping centers throughout the United States.”
DeBartolo is also an admitted gambler and has had a $100,000 line of credit at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Also the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League and the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, DeBartolo had made several unsuccessful attempts to purchase major-league baseball teams during the late 1970s. Among those teams he tried to purchase were the Chicago White Sox (twice), Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, and Seattle Mariners; he also tried to bring a major-league baseball team to New Orleans.
In the end, DeBartolo either withdrew his bid when it became clear that he would be facing stiff opposition, or he was flat-out rejected because of his ties to racetracks and gamblers.[2] “My father has too much class for baseball,” Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., told The New York Times.
In March 1977, the elder DeBartolo purchased 90 percent of the stock of the San Francisco 49ers for $17.6 million and made it a subsidiary of his corporation. The team was then given to his thirty-year-old son. “Eddie Jr. bought it from me,” DeBartolo told The Pittsburgh Press. “Everyone thinks I gave it to him, but Eddie financed it and paid for it.” However, the senior DeBartolo personally secured his son’s purchase.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse was retained as the DeBartolos’ tax attorney for the 49ers’ sale. At that time, NFL Security reportedly could find nothing in the DeBartolos’ background to prevent them from buying the team.
However, when I asked NFL Security chief Jack Danahy about that report, as well as the nature of the senior DeBartolo’s criminal associates, Danahy replied, “I’m not going to discuss that one.” It was the only time during my interviews with Danahy that he refused to answer a question.
Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis stated in a sworn deposition that he, too, was directly involved in the sale of the 49ers to DeBartolo. “The selling group, I guess, was the San Francisco 49ers consisting of the two Morabito women [the widows of the brothers, Anthony and Victor Morabito, who owned and operated the team][3], Lou Spadia, and Frank Mieuli[4] would stay on with his—I think he had ten percent. The DeBartolo family would be buying ninety percent of the 49ers with options from Mieuli if he wants to sell or if he wants to buy another five percent. I think they gave him a right based on his preemptive right not to let them buy.”
“And you also represented the buying group and that was the DeBartolos?” asked the attorney questioning Davis.
“I represented the buying group to the DeBartolos. I didn’t represent the 49ers group. I kind of brought them all together and kind of advised both of them what I thought was fair and et cetera, like that, yes.”[5]
In return for his role as intermediary, Davis reportedly received a “finder’s fee” of $100,000, paid by the DeBartolos. However, Davis has been coy about the figure, indicating it was probably much higher.[6]
Soon after the DeBartolos bought the 49ers, an FBI wiretap picked up Los Angeles mobster Jimmy Fratianno discussing a meeting with New Mexico criminal lawyer William Marchiondo to be held in San Francisco. The transcript of the conversation stated:
“Fratianno: Hey don’t forget now, when the Miami Dolphins play, you’re going to come over here. See, I got it arranged so you’re going to sit with this guy, the owner of the 49ers.
“Marchiondo: Well, I want to talk with this guy, but that’s a bad time for me to leave . . .” Fratianno explained the conversation to my associate, William Scott Malone, “I arranged through this friend of mine [Youngstown Mafia figure Ronald Carabbia] for an attorney in New Mexico to sit with DeBartolo in the press box. They wanted to talk some kind of business. I don’t know what it was. So I arranged a meeting.”
Fratianno added that DeBartolo Sr. was “very friendly” with notorious mobster Carabbia.[7] He also said that the two men “used to go on junkets to the Tropicana [in Las Vegas]. And [DeBartolo] was a pretty heavy gambler. He would lose a lot of money. He had a pretty good line of credit in Vegas.”
Ronald J. Parr, a racetrack owner and a reliable government informant, who once wore a wire during an investigation of DeBartolo, told Malone that he had come to know the shopping mall king well. “DeBartolo is a heavy, heavy gambler,” Parr alleges. “I mean, he bets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on the outcome of a football game. When you have a guy like that owning a football team, it makes you very nervous.”
The DeBartolo racetrack ownership issue also posed a striking difference of the required standards demanded by officials of the NFL and major-league baseball. Jack Danahy told me that racetrack ownership by NFL team owners “didn’t bother me. That was a legitimate enterprise. There’s no prohibition against owning a racetrack.”
Consequently, while DeBartolo was being turned away by professional baseball for his racetrack ties, he was embraced by the NFL.
ENDNOTES
1. DeBartolo was baptized Anthony Paonessa. His father, Anthony Paonessa, an Italian immigrant, died just before his birth. His mother remarried when he was one. His stepfather was Michael DeBartolo, who adopted him. DeBartolo also took the first name of his uncle, Edward. However, DeBartolo didn’t get around to changing his name legally until he was thirty-four.
2. Interestingly, at the same time baseball players Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were having troubles with baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn because of their casino connections in Atlantic City, former Cleveland Browns superstar Jimmy Brown was busy working on his two-hour, semiweekly radio show, “The Stardust Line,” live from the Stardust hotel/casino in Las Vegas.
An FBI report, dated April 17, 1965, alleged that Brown, one of the greatest runners in the history of football, had been associating with a top Cleveland underworld figure and gambling with him. According to the report, James “Jack White” Licavoli, a major sports gambler who later became the boss of the Cleveland Mafia, had boasted of his golf matches with the Browns star.
3. The founder of the 49ers, Anthony J. Morabito, had a heart attack while seated in his owner’s box at Kezar Stadium—just before halftime in the 49ers game against the Chicago Bears in October 1957. His brother, Victor Morabito, took control of the team until 1964 when he, too, died of a heart attack. The team was then inherited by the widows of the two brothers, Josephine and Jane Morabito. They authorized Lou Spadia to run the team for them. Jane Morabito retained 5 percent of the stock of the 49ers after the DeBartolo purchase.
4. Mieuli was also the owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. Like Morabito, he kept 5 percent of the stock in the 49ers.
Mieuli had attempted to purchase the 49ers in December 1976, along with Spadia, former San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto, and Libero P. Balderelli. However, on December 9, Denny Walsh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with The Sacramento Bee, broke a story, saying that Balderelli, the owner of a tax consulting firm and the foreman of the Nevada County Grand Jury, had been accused by the IRS of failing “to report income, file a return and pay taxes for various periods in the last 12 years.” He had also established lines of credit at a dozen casinos in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. Balderelli was to have owned 11 percent of the 49ers.
The day after Walsh’s story appeared, the syndicate’s negotiations for the purchase of the team were terminated.
5. Deposition of Allen Davis, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission v. National Football League, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Civil Action No. 78-3523-H P.
6. Davis had other motives for greasing the sale of the 49ers for the DeBartolos, namely, his ex-partner in the Raiders, Wayne Valley, had indicated an interest in buying the team. Davis did not relish the thought of a hostile owner operating across San Francisco Bay.
Hired as the DeBartolos general manager was Joe Thomas, who had been a top executive with the Miami Dolphins from 1965 to 1972 and then also helped engineer the 1972 swap of the Baltimore Colts for the Los Angeles Rams. In the wake of that deal, he became the general manager of the Colts under Robert Irsay.
Of course, the former owner of the Colts, who became the new owner of the Rams, was Carroll Rosenbloom.
7. Ron Carabbia was later convicted of murdering Cleveland’s Irish mob leader Danny Greene in 1977 on behalf of the top brass of the Cleveland Mafia. Carabbia had planted and detonated a bomb in Greene’s car. The murder was handled so sloppily that Carabbia’s accomplice, Ray Ferritto, who was not a made-Mafia figure and thus not subject to omerta, turned state’s evidence when apprehended. In the end, the entire hierarchy of the Cleveland Mafia was indicted in the conspiracy and convicted for their collective roles in the Greene murder.
Chapter 42, “Cranking Up the Drug Program,” pp. 352-354
To further complicate the NFL’s problems, a new, rival league was founded on May 11, 1982. Unlike the defunct World Football League,]7] the new United States Football League (USFL) immediately received a two-year, $18 million contract with ABC-TV.[1] Also, in the first college draft in 1983, the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, which were later bought by Manhattan real estate tycoon Donald Trump, signed 1982 Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker of Georgia.
The owner of the Pittsburgh Maulers in the new league was Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr., who was frequently under suspicion of haying mob ties.[2]
For example, the U.S. Customs Service had received information from one of its special agents, William F. Burda, in January 1981 that the DeBartolo organization “through its control of particular state banks in the state of Florida is operating money-laundering schemes, realizing huge profits from narcotics, guns, skimming operations, and other organized-crime-related activities. This organization is reported to have ties to [Carlos] Marcello, [Santos] Trafficante, and [Meyer] Lansky and because of its enormous wealth and power has high-ranking political influence and affiliations.”
In an earlier report, authored by Burda, the special agent wrote that he had developed source information indicating that “Meyer Lansky, the financial wizard of OC [organized crime], is now considered by most to be almost senile and getting out of the business. His successor and new financial wizard is recognized as Edward J. DeBartolo.” . . .
DeBartolo denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with any. When asked by Peter Phipps of the Akron Beacon Journal about the appearance of ties to the underworld, DeBartolo replied, “No one ever comes up with a thing, and still we have to hear about all these crazy innuendoes about us and the rackets. We’re so clean it’s amazing. I’ve never even gotten a union pension fund loan.”[3]
DeBartolo had also acquired Louisiana Downs, a racetrack in Shreveport that became the target of an investigation by the Texas state legislature in 1983. Information submitted to the House committee that conducted the probe alleged that “reliable sources indicate that Mob money is being ‘laundered’ at Louisiana Downs with the knowledge and complicity of Edward J. DeBartolo Sr.”
The information also alleged that DeBartolo and Carlos Marcello worked behind the scenes to defeat a pari-mutuel betting bill in Texas—which would have competed with the Louisiana track. The investigation of DeBartolo, who denied any wrongdoing, was later dropped. The Texas state legislature defeated the pari-mutuel bill, 75-73, just as DeBartolo had hoped.
The problems of DeBartolo Sr.’s owning a team in the USFL—in direct competition with the popular Rooney family and their Pittsburgh Steelers and DeBartolo Jr.’s owning the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL—were glaringly obvious, especially since both teams were subsidiaries of DeBartolo’s parent company. Consequently, DeBartolo Jr. was confronted with the problem in March 1983 at the NFL owners’ meeting. However, both DeBartolos brushed the whole issue off. They owned their teams. They were their properties. And no one could do anything about it.
“The League can’t hurt me,” DeBartolo Jr. said. “It’s not big enough. They don’t like it? That’s the way it is. Nobody’s going to take this team away from me, including the League. Because, I tell you, the League can’t afford the lawsuit, I can. Enough of this bullshit about conflict of interest. That’s ridiculous. They can’t afford a lawsuit because I’ll bury them.”[4]
85-year-old Edward DeBartolo Sr., died on December 19, 1994.
ENDNOTES
[1] In 1982, the NFL signed over its television rights with the three major networks for over $2 billion during the five-year-contract period. Each NFL owner received over an incredible $14 million a year.
[2] In addition to Trump and DeBartolo, other USFL owners in 1984 included Edward B. Diethrich of the Arizona Wranglers, Marvin L. Warner of the Birmingham Stallions, James F. Hoffman of the Chicago Blitz, Ron Blanding of the Denver Gold, Jerry Argovitz of the Houston Gamblers, Fred B. Bullard of the Jacksonville Bulls, J. William Oldenburg of the Los Angeles Express (which was later operated by General Manager Don Klosterman, who had grown disenchanted with the Los Angeles Rams), Billy Dunavent of the Memphis Showboats, A. Alfred Taubman of the Michigan Panthers, Joseph C. Canizaro of the New Orleans Breakers, Ted Taube of the Oakland Invaders, William R. Tatham of the Oklahoma Outlaws, Myles H. Tanenbaum of the Philadelphia Stars, Clinton Manges of the San Antonio Gunslingers, John Bassett of the Tampa Bay Bandits, and Berl Bernhard of the Washington Federals.
Four of the original owners sold their teams in 1983.
USFL head coaches included Craig Morton of the Gold, John Hadl of the Express, and John Ralston of the Invaders.
[3] See Peter Phipps’s story on DeBartolo in the Akron Beacon Journal Magazine, 27 November 1983.
[4] David Harris, The League: The Rise and Decline of the NFL (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986), p. 588.
NOTE: During the 1997 NFL season, Edward DeBartolo Jr., was the target of a corruption scandal involving Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards. In 1998, DeBartolo Jr. pled guilty to a failure to report a felony charge.
He was suspended from active control of the 49ers for one year. His sister, Denise, and her husband, John York, took over the operations of the team.
With his suspension lifted in 1999, DeBartolo returned to the team. However, a flurry of lawsuits within the DeBartolo family resulted in DeBartolo Jr. surrendering his controlling interest in the 49ers to his sister and her husband as part of a 2000 settlement. Denise York was chairwoman of the board while John York was named as CEO.
At present, Denise and John York are co-chairs of the 49ers. Their son, Jed York, is the CEO. And Al Guido is the team’s president.
This is a perspective that most people will never see or hear about. From one of the most capable, thorough and qualified investigative reporters on our planet, Dan Moldea. Kudos and thank you Dan.
Fascinating!