Flashback Friday: Chiefs’ Super Bowl IV win over Vikings helped FBI take down Kansas City mobster’s illegal gambling operation
Chiefs Kingdom’s unyielding support of their team once helped the FBI take down a local crime boss.
This week, the FBI announced arrests of over 30 individuals, including Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, as a result of an investigation into illicit gambling and sports betting schemes involving the mafia. Not only are they accused of rigging NBA games, but several are also accused of participating in rigged poker games.
The wild story might bring back some memories for older Kansas City Chiefs fans who witnessed the FBI take down a local mob boss during the team’s first Super Bowl championship in 1969-70. The story was well covered in the 2009 documentary “Black Hand Strawman,” during which director Terence Michael O’Malley examined the extensive history of the Kansas City Mafia.
Chiefs fans’ support of their team in Super Bowl IV helped the FBI take down Mafioso Nick Civella
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court declared a federal ban on sports gambling unconstitutional, and we’ve since seen the rise of legal sports betting. When the Chiefs made it to Super Bowl IV against the Minnesota Vikings, if you wanted to place a bet on the game, you had to find a local bookie. In most cases, these bookies were bankrolled and backed by the Mafia, who would make money by taking a vig from losing bets.
In this story, the bookie in question was Frank Tousa, who handled the sports books for mob boss Nick Civella. The Civella organization had its hand in Kansas City’s illicit gambling, loan sharking, racketeering, extortion, and virtually every other criminal activity commonly associated with the mafia. Where they made most of their bread, however, was illegal sports betting. Tousa ran the books, and Chiefs Kingdom caused this man to have an epic slip-up.
Fans of the Chiefs supported their team, led by the passionate Hank Stram and the masterful quarterback Len Dawson, so much that the local betting books were heavily slanted toward Kansas City in Super Bowl IV. The talk of the town was nothing but Chiefs. The Vikings were considered heavy favorites coming into the game, but it didn’t matter for the fans in Chiefs Kingdom. They were confident their team would win Super Bowl IV, leaving Tousa in a major bind. He fixed the books in Minnesota’s favor and was desperate to find fans to bet on the Vikings, but to no avail. They found themselves in a hole, and if the Chiefs won the game, they wouldn’t be able to pay out the bets.
But when Tousa picked up the phone and reported to Civella that they couldn’t cover more than $47,000 (roughly 300,000 by today’s standards) in bets, someone else was on the line, listening. The FBI had received permission to wiretap the phones. The feds ultimately used Tousa and Civella’s admission to charge and arrest both, effectively dismantling the Civella crime syndicate.
So, you see, Super Bowl IV wasn’t just a redemptive victory for Stram and Dawson after their loss in Super Bowl I to the Green Bay Packers. It was also a significant win for federal investigators, who chose the perfect time to wiretap the phones of the suspected bookie and mob boss.
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