No group or society is without its criminal element. Ignoring this population within any ethnic or societal group is always a mistake. Just as all real world problems must be faced and addressed, so too must we acknowledge and recognize the habitual criminals among Greeks in the United States. From the 1880s onward counterfeiters, con-men, anti-Semites, street thugs, heartless extortionists, and out-and-out killers can all be found among Greek immigrants and their descendants.

Even among the most nefarious of all such Greek ne’er-do-wells, the life and career of Gus Alex stands alone. It is not simply a dark story but a profound loss and disappointment that a person of such obvious real-world gifts should use them as this man ultimately chose to do.

Of all the criminals of Greek origin who have lived in the United States Gus Alex was the only one destined to become a high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit. Since Alex was a Greek, he could not be ‘made’ as an Italian or Italian-American would-be gang member could.

Nevertheless, Alex rose in the ranks of the Chicago Mob/outfit to one of the highest ‘positions’ within any criminal organization ever established in the United States. A proven criminal many times over, Gus Alex deserves to have his life of unadulterated malfeasance included in the dark pages of American criminal history.

As far as public documents can report, Gus Alex was born in Chicago on April 1, 1916. His family is said to have immigrated from the village of Alepochori in Achaea. During the 1930s, Gus Alex’s family owned a small restaurant at Wentworth and 26^th street in what was then the Armour Square/Chinatown neighborhood. This restaurant was frequented by an array of mobsters from the Capone and Nitti gangs. Various sources allege that this restaurant was, in point of fact, the favorite hangout for both Al Capone (1899-1947) and Frank Nitti (1886-1943). It is claimed that on one occasion the Alex family “posted some real estate as bond so a Capone hood could make bail (http://www.pinterest.com/pin/gus-alex).” Gus Alex and Frank (Strongy) Ferraro, as boys and then young men, both worked at this restaurant and in time each became part of the Chicago Outfit.

The Chicago Outfit (also known as simply ‘The Outfit’ and/or as the Chicago Mafia, the Chicago Mob, the Chicago crime family, the South Side Gang, or The Organization) was initially an Italian-American organized crime syndicate or crime family based in Chicago. Having originated in the city’s South Side in the early 1910s this criminal organization was never exclusively Italian. Non-Italians soon became ‘connected’ in loosely based networks of career criminals.

By 1930, Alex (known on the street at this time various as Shot gun, Slim, and/or Gussie) was the principal suspect in at least five murder cases. Astounding as it may be to hear, two of these alleged victims who later died of their wounds identified Alex as their assailant. As Alex rose through the ranks of the Chicago crime world he worked primarily with Jake ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik (1886-1956) who was the financial and legal advisor, and later political ‘greaser’, for the Chicago Outfit. As the mob’s assigned fixer, Guzik secured protection for the Chicago Mob through the bribery he regularly issued to an incredibly wide variety of city officials.

As Guzik’s protégée, Alex gradually became proficient in securing protection for the Mob through situational and ongoing bribery of city officials. By the mid-1940s, Alex was the main connection between the Outfit and corrupt Chicago city officials. In time Alex would extend this network of pay-offs to include Illinois State officials in the capital of Springfield. As if all this was not enough, Alex also made a series of trips to Switzerland where it was suspected that he was depositing Chicago Outfit monies into local banks. While specifics on this claim are not available in detail, we do know Gus Alex was banned from entering Switzerland for at least one ten-year period. All in al,l these activities led to Alex being known as the Chicago Outfit’s principal ‘Fixer.’

Aside from whatever Guzik was able to teach Gus Alex about bribing city-officials for the Chicago Outfit, it is always noted that Alex was an extremely smooth operator. Well dressed, well-spoken, a person with a winning manner, Gus Alex always presented himself as someone anyone would be glad to meet and know.

Aside from his duties as mediator between the Outfit and elected officials, Alex ran all the day-to-day operations in Chicago’s downtown Loop area. All illegal gambling and prostitution operations under Alex’s oversight brought in an alleged $1 million dollars a month for the Chicago Outfit. As I was growing up in Chicago I frequently heard the tale that Gus Alex was one of those individuals who had a photographic memory such that he quite literally never forgot anything. I do not know, and have not been able to find a source one way or another on this point, but whether or not this was actually the case, Alex was widely said to possess this ability.

To really appreciate the level of Gus Alex’s standing in the Chicago’s criminal world we need only briefly recount Alex’s position when, the then-leader of the Outfit Joseph ‘Joey Doves’ Aiuppa (1907-1997) was imprisoned in 1986. The Chicago Outfit’s day-to-day activities were then shared between Gus Alex and Samuel ‘Wings’ Carlisi with former leader Accardo, who at that moment in time was based in Palm Springs, acting as a supervisor. According to Carl Sifakis in his ‘The Mafia Encyclopedia,’ “in fact, as death, retirement, arrest, and flight from jurisdiction played hob with much of the Chicago’s mob’s leadership in the 1970s, there was pressure on Alex to take up the reins. Alex begged off…insisting he wanted to retire (Facts-On-File, 2005: 7).”

Not to be forgotten in Alex’s long list of crimes was his extortion of prominent businessmen in Chicago and the surrounding metropolitan area. Various owners of major car dealerships and/or prominent restaurateurs were singled out and threatened personally, and sometimes their wives and families were also threatened with violence if the extortion money was not paid.

Then, in 1992, Leonard ‘Lenny’ Patrick, a close criminal-associate of Alex’s for well over 30 years, wore a ‘wire’ and taped Alex incriminating himself for the FBI. As a consequence Alex “was charged in December 1991 with sanctioning violent extortion schemes against legitimate business enterprises. With the assistance of turncoat racketeer Patrick, an underling and supervisor of a North Side Street crew, federal prosecutors won a conviction against Alex on October 1, 1992. Gus Alex was sentenced in February 1993 to fifteen years and eight months in prison and $823,000 in fines and restitution for approving violent extortions ((c.f. Chicago Tribune 20 Feb 1993; mob-who.blogspot.com).”

On July 24, 1998, Gus Alex died in federal prison at Lexington Kentucky of a heart attack. He was eighty-two years old. Curiously, Gus Alex has not received the kind of intense journalistic attention other powerful Chicago criminals have so far received.

So, what are we left with after hearing this tale of bad choices and a worst life-style? A hard lesson. Whatever natural gifts Gus Alex may have had or thought he had – by his own choice he made a waste of all of them.