In this eye-opening episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins pulls back the curtain on a lesser-known chapter of American crime history — how the Kansas City mob capitalized on the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s to fuel its criminal empire.

Gary takes listeners deep into the shadowy world of Nick Civella, the shrewd Kansas City mob boss whose knack for high-stakes financial deals made him a pivotal figure long after his rise to power in 1957. Discover how Civella leveraged massive loans — including the notorious $62 million from the Teamsters Pension Fund — to help finance Las Vegas casinos like the Stardust, creating opportunities for mobsters like Lefty Rosenthal to skim untold millions from the gaming floors.

The episode traces how shifting interest rates and lax lending regulations cracked open the door for organized crime to exploit savings and loan institutions. Gary details how local mobsters compromised bank employees, funneled unsecured loans, and left behind a trail of financial ruin that reverberated far beyond Kansas City. You’ll hear gripping accounts of banks like Shawnee State Bank and Indian Springs State Bank, where insiders turned a blind eye — or worse — to the mob’s schemes.

Listeners also meet Anthony Russo, a criminal attorney with deep ties to mob-run banking ventures, and Farhad Azima, a businessman whose name appears in allegations linking financial crime to covert government operations. These tangled connections paint a vivid picture of how the lines between legitimate business, organized crime, and shadowy politics can blur.

Through vivid stories and insider knowledge, Gary breaks down how these Kansas City schemes mirrored the nationwide savings and loan crisis that ultimately cost taxpayers billions. From questionable loans backed by worthless assets to the fallout that reshaped the Teamsters Union and federal oversight, this episode reveals how deep the mob’s influence ran — and how fragile the American financial system can be when corruption goes unchecked.

Tune in for a fascinating blend of true crime, history, and financial intrigue that exposes how power, money, and organized crime colluded behind the scenes to leave a lasting mark on American society.

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Chapters
0:04 Introduction to Kansas City Mob
3:03 The Savings and Loan Scandal
5:45 The Shawnee State Bank Scheme
7:19 The Indian Spring State Bank
9:45 Anthony Russo: The Mob Lawyer
12:08 Russo’s Legal Troubles
15:23 Global International Airways Connection
18:19 The Arms Smuggling Allegations
21:09 Azima and Russo’s Partnership
25:10 Russo’s Goodwill Trip
26:44 The Rental Money Scheme
28:42 The Dunes Hotel Loan
32:16 The Savella Family Indictment
34:10 Conclusion: Mafia and Scandals
35:15 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Transcript
Transcript
[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. This is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, with another story, and it’s going to be about Kansas City, but it’s going to be how Kansas City was really, part of the, remember the big savings and loan debacle back in the 80s? Anyhow, we had a piece of that action here in Kansas City. Let’s start off a little bit about the Kansas City mob family, which many of you guys may not know. Most of you probably do. Most of you guys, most of my guys that listen to this regularly, they know all about Kansas City. They know all about all the mob families. They like these kind of obscure stories that haven’t been told and retold and retold. So my job is to continually try to find more of those stories. So this is one of them. uh you know we don’t get you know uh Michael DeLeonardo we don’t get John Gotti involved but but we’ve got a guy here in Kansas City that is a little known guy but he made a lot of money for the mob he was an interesting guy Nick Zabella has been the Kansas City mob boss you know since the 19th I would say since 1957 or so he was at Appalachian they just didn’t get caught at the meeting himself. He was down the road. He was at a train station, a couple of train stops away.

[1:30] Nick Savella, he didn’t have any formal education, but he had a nose for good, big, sophisticated, money-making deals. He knew an opportunity when he saw it. I was on this local podcast with a guy named John Termini, and he had Nick Savella’s great-grandnephew. I guess that’s how you say it. It was Tony Ripe’s grandson. Tony Ripe is Nick Savella’s nephew.

[2:00] And his kid, Anthony Savella, and he told me, and he called him Zio, which is Italian for uncle, said Zio plays chess while others play checkers, and that’s true. I agree with that. Remember, Nick Savella is a guy that helped orchestrate that deal with the Teamsters Pension Fund to loan $62 million to a man named Alan Glick to purchase a Stardust and three other casinos, And Alan Glick, he was like a 32-year-old untested shopping center developer is all he’d ever done. Now, in exchange for that money that he was able to borrow from the Teamsters Pension Fund, he allowed them, that cartel of Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cleveland, he allowed them to put Lefty Rosenthal in the hotel and then Lefty Rosenthal, then put other people in the hotel and in the count room and, and in other areas of the hotel where they could then skim millions off the top of the casino receipts before the money even got counted.

[3:04] Now, do you recall the savings and loan scandals in the 1980s? I kind of do. And, you know, by this time, by the 80s, the trials, the skim trials were starting and it was all exposed what they’d been doing. The Teamsters Pension Fund was under heavy, heavy federal scrutiny at the time. They’ll eventually put the Teamsters Union into trusteeship and the fund and trusteeship. And the government will help appoint new overseers and regulators. And they’ll really monitor that closely. And so all those loan kickback schemes they had done for years are dried up. They’re gone. Alan Dormans, who was their main guy in Chicago, the guy that really was integral to getting all these pension fund loans, he’s been killed. Mob bosses are all going to jail. One of their other guys, Jackie Presser out of Cleveland, they find out he’s been an informant and he’s testifying. And Roy Lee Williams, who was a teamster out of Kansas City, they got him on a case trying to bribe the senator from Howard Cannon, the senator from Nevada, with Joey Lombardo. He’s going to jail, and he testifies about how, you know, they had been, the teamsters had been controlled by the mob and by him and Cleveland and Milwaukee and Chicago.

[4:31] Now, if you remember in the 1970s, the feds raised interest big time on loans to combat inflation, when inflation was just out of control. We were getting, if you were getting paid during the early 70s or middle 70s when inflation went out of control, you remember you got 10, 12, 15% increases in your paycheck. It was crazy. And I also remember paying, I think it was 12% maybe on my first home loan during those years. So that will slow inflation down. As inflation slowed down, then they wanted to generate new business in the lending industry. So the Fed started losing their control on it. They had put a lot more controls on it with that much higher interest rate than other controls. They started loosening control on the lending institutions.

[5:26] Now the mob is never going to sit on its hands when control is loosened, where there’s a lot of money involved, whether it’s casinos or banks or what...

The Mob and the Savings & Loan Scandal