John Binder is a friend to our hobby. He has done extensive research on the Chicago mob and their clubs. He has also written a book about the mob that ruled Chicago. John has graciously given me permission to post part of his book. In this writing he identifies 4 Taylor T Mold chips some delivered to an address, (no Club name) and one that was not even in the Taylor records. Keep in mind Taylor was owned by the Chicago mob.

The 4 chips were found in the walls at a Chicago store being remodeled. Before John’s work we could only list them as maybes and 1 was a UFC with no record card. This is a long one but well worth the time to read it and absorb the information in it. John also graciously gives credit to CCGTCC members Dave Brown, Doc Finstuen, David Spragg, and yours truly in his writings.

Make no mistake about this research. John Binder’s research put the names to the initials on the chips.

I have had this info since 2007. Finally I got around to posting “The Rest Of The Story.”

The search for the history of our chips goes on and sometimes it has to be a joint effort to find it.

Special “Thank You” to all involved.

Email from John:
Gene:

Please excerpt to your heart's content -- I'm glad to contribute to the hobby.

My book can be bought from the usual internet booksellers or if someone wants a signed copy, they can write me at the address shown on this page:

http://www.johnbindercollection.com/site/thechicagooutfit.html
(My note: If you are a Chicago Illegal chip collector, bookmark this site.)

Thanks,

John

My note: If you are only interested in the names for the initials and not the entire research, skip to the paragraphs with the scans of each chip.

A Batch of Illegal Chips from Cicero

John J. Binder

While I have been interested in Chicago organized crime for years, writing on the subject and also collecting photographs and books, until late 2004 I had no real interest in chips or other gambling paraphernalia. In December 2004 a group of clay poker chips with a Cicero, Illinois pedigree were offered for sale on ebay. This was my entree into collecting illegal chips (at least those from the Chicago area) and researching the “rich” history of illegal gambling in the area. I purchased the 227 chips in question from John Jeanneret of Western Springs, Illinois. John grew up in Cicero, at 1215 S. 49th Court, and his father, Albert Hengge, worked part-time as a carpenter. On one occasion his father’s crew remodeled a store on 14th Street (1400 south in the Chicago numbering system, which is also used in Cicero), between Cicero Avenue (4800 west) and Laramie (5200 west). This is known as the Grant Works section of Cicero. In the walls Albert Hengge uncovered poker chips and other gambling paraphernalia. Mr. Hengge got some of the chips while (sadly for me) the rest of the items went to other workmen in the crew.

A little background information about the town of Cicero is appropriate at this point. The polite way to describe Cicero is that it was a hotbed of illegal gambling and vice from (at minimum) 1924 onward, after the Torrio-Capone gang moved in and took over, with the assistance of the town’s Republican politicians (see my book The Chicago Outfit for further details). A more accurate description would be that a careful ranking of dens of iniquity in the world’s history would begin with Cicero, followed by Sodom and Gomorrah.

With organized crime in Chicago partly closed down during the 1923 to 1927 term of reform mayor William Dever, John Torrio and Al Capone shifted their headquarters to 22nd Street (later renamed Cermak Rd.), just west of Cicero Avenue, in Cicero and opened a number of gambling places. Just west of Chicago, it was a convenient location; accessible to patrons from the city but under the jurisdiction of the corrupt Cicero and Cook County Sheriff’s Police. Newspaper articles and the records of the Chicago Crime Commission indicate that the gambling, for size and other reasons, tended to be located regardless of the decade on the main arteries in Cicero, such as 22nd Street, 12th Street (Roosevelt Rd.), Cicero Avenue and Laramie Avenue. After Prohibition there were numerous gambling joints in Cicero ranging from handbooks for racetrack betting, many of which also contained slots, blackjack tables and ran poker games, to high end casinos such as the Rock Garden (which is of particular interest here and is discussed further below). These places ran well into the 1960s and, as was true in the case of the Rock Garden, sometimes served as the locations of the Outfit’s famous Floating Crap Game (originally referred to as The Big Crap Game).

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune (denoted hereafter as CT) entitled “Cicero and Burnham Repositories of Folklore from the Gangster Era” (CT, Oct. 23, 1987, sec. 7, p. 7), the strip on 14th Street where the chips were found was dotted with speakeasies during Prohibition. Many of the garages between 14th and 15th Street, from 50th to 51st Avenue, contained illegal distilleries during that era. Capone himself was known to frequent a club/hangout at 1346 S. 51st Ct., which is on the corner of 14th Street. Also, during the 1960s and 1970s there were many social clubs along 14th, according to an old-time Cicero resident, which had active card games. This gives the chips of interest some connection to the gambling places elsewhere in town because there was heavy illegal activity in the area they were found going back to Prohibition.

There are four kinds of chips in this batch and they are all Taylor mold, made by Taylor and Company with the distinctive circle of letter T’s molded around the center. Taylor, a premier supplier of illegal gambling equipment in the United States, was located originally at 4848 W. 25th Street in Cicero and was owned by Chicago mobsters Claude “Screwy” Maddox (real name John Edward Moore), Robert Ansani (aka Robert Ansoni and Bobby Taylor) and Joey Aiuppa. During the 1950s Maddox ran Cicero for the Outfit. He was succeeded in that position by Aiuppa, who later rose to be Boss of the entire Outfit. The first type of chip is cream colored, with blue inserts and is hot stamped “J&J” (in blue) on one side and “$1.00" on the other. The other type of cream colored chip has green inserts. It is stamped (in blue) “S&M” on one side and “$1.00" on the other. The red colored chips are hot stamped “JVT” on both sides. The hot stamp is gold and there is a small dot over the V. Finally, the yellow chips are hot stamped “JV” on each side in blue. While the “J&J” chips were already in collectors’ hands, the other chips were newly discovered.

John Jeanneret rightly suspected that these chips were from illegal gambling places in Cicero, which was fairly clear from their location and the fact they were hidden with other gambling items. But no definite proof of their origins was found with them. The first piece of information -- and the key to entire puzzle -- was provided by my friend Kenn “Doc” Finstuen, columnist for the now defunct Gaming Times magazine, who identified the “J&J” chip as a well known illegal.

My note: Doc Finstuen’s name once again pops up in research for Illegal chip ID’s. I have mentioned my friends name in many of the “Illegal Of The Day’ posts. I still miss him. Come on home Doc!

According to a record from Taylor and Company, 4000 of them were ordered in 1954 and over 8000 additional chips were ordered again in 1960. The record card, which was purposefully vague because many of Taylor’s customers were illegal clubs, shows that the chips were ordered by the 4807 Club in Cicero Illinois. Not only does this conclusively identify the one type of chip as from an illegal club, but it adds to the credibility of the others because they were probably all used by the same gambling operators at the same or related places.

My note: The “Rock Garden” on these records was written on them after John Binder’s research.

Based on Doc’s lead, I researched the history of these chips using information from Chicago newspapers, other public sources and research materials on organized crime in my files. It was only when the Taylor records became available on-line recently (after my research had been completed), through the outstanding efforts of David Spragg and Gene Trimble, that I obtained the further information from the manufacturer’s records which is discussed below.

I have not been able to find any newspaper articles or other references, beyond the Taylor and Company record, to a place with the exact name “4807 Club.” But there was for years a major, even by the standards of the Chicago Outfit in Cicero, handbook/gambling operation at 4807 W. Cermak in Cicero, which seems to have operated during its heyday in the building with street addresses 4807-4809 W. Cermak. After an extensive search of the Chicago Tribune on-line archives, it is the only gambling place I have found with the street number 4807 in Cicero.

If that place did not have an explicit name, it likely was simply referred to as the 4807 Club. Just as the gambling place a door or two west of it at 4811 W. Cermak was generally referred to as the 4811 Club (see “Dice Games Richest Source of ‘Velvet,’ Records Show”, CT, October 27, 1941 and the FBI file on Joey Aiuppa) and many other Outfit places around Chicago were referred to similarly. Or a seemingly legal bar in the front of the building, through which one entered the bookie joint in the back, may have been called the 4807 Club.

Admittedly, my search of the newspapers also indicates that there was a J & J Club at 2336 S. Cicero Avenue in Cicero, which was known as the Star Lounge in the 1960s. While it has the same initials as the one type of chip and there was gambling at that location, it seems to have been quite minor in comparison to the action at 4807 Cermak. Furthermore, the initials of the operators of 4807 (discussed below) also explain the monograms on some of the other chips, indicating that 4807 Cermak was the location that used the J & J chip.

During Prohibition, 4809 W. 22nd St. was a pool room run by George “K. O.” Brown and is clearly visible on early photos of the 22nd Street strip. Pool rooms in Chicago were historically fronts for gambling operations so it is likely that it was the location of a handbook well before the 1920s. At least one famous gangland killing, of Theodore Anton, was believed to have occurred there and Fred Goetz (rightfully suspected of being a gunman at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre) was killed as he left the bar next door at 4811 W. Cermak in 1934. On the other side of the building, 4805 W. 22nd Street housed the Little Italy restaurant, which was frequented by Al Capone.

This place was not a run of the mill gambling establishment either. As noted in the attached chronology related to 4807 Cermak, associated locations and individuals, the club was raided numerous times and the newspapers report not only a thriving handbook but also on occasion card games going on, which was not unusual for an operation of that type. After the Rock Garden casino, operated by Capone’s cousin Rocco Fischetti, closed at 2131 S. Cicero due to a fire, it simultaneously operated at two Cicero locations in the early 1940s: 4730 Cermak and the place of interest, 4708 Cermak. The Rock Garden was as “high end” a gambling place as could be found in the Chicago area, giving 4807 quite a pedigree as an illegal gambling club. As the chronology notes, the two locations were linked in various ways and through various individuals over the years. In fact, 4807 may have been tied to the Rock Garden’s location at 2131 S. Cicero as well.

Much later, in the 1950s and 1960s, 4807 Cermak was known as the Aloha Grill because a restaurant operated in the store front on the street side that served as an entrance to the gambling operation. Sometimes there were 100, 200 or even 300 patrons gambling there. For example, an article on March 8, 1950 (p. 12) notes that investigators from the State’s Attorney’s Office found 175 patrons and 27 (!) employees at that location. From 1952 to 1963 the Chicago Crime Commission sent 65 letters to various authorities complaining about gambling at 4807 Cermak, putting it near the top of that organization’s “watch list” during this period. In 1959, an FBI informant described the Aloha Grill as probably the biggest handbook on the 22nd Street strip in Cicero. It was frequented by Joey Aiuppa, the Outfit’s overseer of Cicero rackets in the 1960s.

It was common for the owners/operators of illegal gambling places to put their initials on the chips used there. The fact that two individuals with the first initial “J” (see the chronology), John Varlas (or Varlos) and Joseph Vaccaro (aka Joseph Vacco or James Vaccaro), were often arrested as the “keepers” (operators) of 4807 or the sister location at 4730 W. Cermak explains the “J&J” stamp on the chip already linked to the 4807 Club by the Taylor & Co. records. It represents the first initials of these two individuals. It is possible that Vaccaro ran the handbook operation, taking the bets on the horses, while Varlas managed the card and other games. This information also links the chip stamped “JV” with the 4807 Cermak address. “JV” is simply the first and last initials of Varlas (most likely, given his later stature in the Outfit) or/and Vaccaro.

Additional newspaper information also ties the chip stamped “JVT” to John Varlas. A computerized search of obituaries and other newspaper articles indicates that Varlas is a very uncommon name in the Chicago area. However, a burial notice (CT, 11-30-48) for Anthony T. Varlas of 2110 S. 49th Ave. in Cicero mentions a brother, John T. Varlas. Because the name is uncommon -- which is due to the fact that this was not the original Greek surname, the family having changed it from Varellas (as the parents’ obituaries indicate) – and he is from Cicero itself, this is almost certainly the John Varlas of interest. More conclusively, two other Tribune articles (Sept. 24, 1952 and Aug. 18, 1953) list John T. Varlas as one individual who applied for a federal gambling tax stamp in Cicero during the years 1952 and 1953 and an FBI list of prominent Chicago hoods in 1963 also contains a John Theodore Varlas.

Further information finalizes that the Varlas in question was legally known as John T. Varlas. A July 18, 1963 report by the Intelligence Division of the Chicago Police Department, listing some 150 (mostly higher echelon) individuals involved with the Chicago Outfit along with their addresses and motor vehicle registration information, has an entry for John T. Varlas (and his wife, Nina), who lived at 3040 Harlem Avenue in Riverside, Illinois. This reinforces the information from the obituary discussed in the preceding paragraph, because later obituaries for the same family (i. e., John Varlas’s brothers), list John’s wife as Nina. The red “JVT” chip is, therefore, most definitely stamped with John Varlas’s monogram, the T representing his middle initial.

The Taylor records which are now publicly available confirm these conclusions beyond any possible doubt. Slightly more than twelve thousand of the “J&J” chips were ordered from 1959 to 1960. The record shows the order was placed by Johnny Varlos, for the 4807 Club, also called the Rock Garden on the card. The same information is on the record card for the “JV” stamped chips, of which over 12,500 were ordered in a variety of colors between 1952 and 1957. A single order for 2020 of the “JVT” chips was placed for the Rock Garden/4807 Club (with no mention of Varlos’s name on the record) in July 1957.

These quantities certainly indicate that 4807 Cermak was the queen of the Cicero gambling places. In fact, based on existing records for Hunt & Company and Taylor & Company, the total chip orders by 4807 Club are among the largest on record. They rival the orders of “OC” stamped chips by the mysterious J. Barnett. I was recently able to tie the latter, totaling (as in the orders by the 4807 Club) roughly twenty-six thousand chips and shipped to the Jerome Hotel in Hammond, Indiana, to an employee of the Owl Club in Calumet City, Illinois named Joe Barnett. According to the newspapers, the action at the Owl Club matched that at some Las Vegas casinos in the early 1960s, providing another measure (based on the similar size chip orders) of what the 4807 Club must have been like in its heyday.

While Vaccaro faded from history, his name absent from the newspapers after 1962, Varlas/Varlos gained some prominence in the Outfit. Later newspaper articles note that he attended Tony Accardo’s Independence Day bash in 1956 and that he was closely associated with Cicero Mob boss Joey Aiuppa during the 1960s. He was tied to Joe Ferriola and James “Turk” Torello, prominent members of the Outfit’s Taylor Street crew, by informant Lou Bombacino (as noted in the chronology). In fact, Bombacino first met Ferriola, Torello and Varlas at the MGM Lounge in Cicero, owned by Nick Kokenes, a well known Mob figure. (Kokenes was likely a cousin or uncle of Varlas, because the mother of the John T. Varlas mentioned in the1948 burial notice was born Kokenes).

Varlas also expanded his horizons, certainly still as a major gambling operative for the Outfit, geographically. The Miami Herald (February 22, 1959) notes that John T. Varlas, “the operator of Illinois’ most notorious gambling dive”, was an investor in the swank Cadillac Hotel. Miami when it was an “open city”, where any Cosa Nostra family could, and the Outfit did heavily, set up shop.

John Varlas seems to have faded away, or at minimum out of the newspapers, over time. At least I have found no references to him after 1966 in regard to gambling or other criminal activities. Social Security death records show, however, that John T. Varlas (born on November 11, 1915) died on May 25, 2000 in Westchester, Illinois (just a few miles directly west of Cicero on Cermak Rd.). A search of the internet indicates that he or his family were apparently parishioners of Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Westchester.

Similar perusal of the Social Security death records finds several Vaccaros named Joseph (the usual first name appearing for him in newspaper articles) or James who died in Illinois or had a social security card issued there, including one who lived in Cicero at the time of his death. But, the birth date for this Vaccaro is not consistent with Vaccaro’s age as given in newspaper articles listed in the chronology. However, a Joe Vaccaro residing in Tampa, Florida appears on an FBI list of organized crime figures dated January 1969 and has the appropriate birth date, indicating that the Vaccaro of interest was in Florida at the time (possibly to further the Outfit’s gambling interests or in retirement). There is no matching Vaccaro in the Social Security records, but this is not surprising as many hoods did not apply for Social Security. Consistent with this, there is no Social Security number shown for Joe Vaccaro on the FBI list.

What about the chips stamped “S&M”? Until recently they have remained a bit of a mystery. The Taylor and Company record indicates that 4027 of these were ordered on May 20, 1958. The card has no information on who placed the order, which usually indicates that it was a (local) walk-in order and that it was picked up rather than mailed. The most likely explanation is that “S” and “M” are the initials of the individuals who ran the sister operation of 4807, at 4730 Cermak, at one time or another. For example, when 4730 Cermak was raided in 1955 (CT, 11-15-55) police dispersed 250 patrons and arrested three men as operators of a gambling house, including John Sarno, age 39. A better fit for the letters “S” and “M” is found in an earlier article. When 4730 Cermak, during its days as the Rock Garden, was raided in 1944 (CT, 3-21-44), Constantinous Mologorisis was named as the operator and John Strathakoz’s name appeared next among the list of employees in the article.

My Note: David Spragg made the above card for the Taylor records as no card existed for it. I wonder if there are other T molds out there with no record card.

Finally, what of the town of Cicero itself? Well, times change. The public in the Chicago area no longer tolerates what it once did, such as open, illegal gambling. Coupled with legal (albeit limited) gambling in Illinois, the Outfit run gambling places hosting casino type games – which were once as abundant as gas stations or convenience stores – are a thing of the past, in Cicero and elsewhere. A drive through Cicero reveals that the strip joints of yesteryear are also gone.

But those affected by nostalgia need not be too remorseful. A recent Cicero town president, Betty Loren Maltese (wife of mobster Frank Maltese), was convicted along with other public officials of working with the Outfit to loot the town of some $12 million dollars. However, the jury is still out on whether the Cicero of today has seen any real political reform.

The author is grateful to Dave Brown, Kenn “Doc” Finstuen and Gene Trimble for their comments and assistance. He can be reached at wsidejack1@aol.com.