Jukebox Empire

The Mob and the Dark Side of the American Dream

By: David Rabinovitch

Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann

An aspiring tycoon partners with a racketeer to build a jukebox that makes millions, then takes the fall for the largest money laundering scheme in history.

Caught between the Mob and the feds in a plot to save the casinos in Havana from Castro's revolution, Wolfe Rabin pulls the biggest money-laundering scheme in history, but his hubris leads to the conspiracy unraveling in a sensational trial. At a time when there was a jukebox in every restaurant, diner, bar, barracks, arcade, and canteen, Rabin's trajectory from inventor to promoter to outlaw is set against the Mob's growing infiltration of the jukebox industry. In a world of music, machines, and money, popular culture and organized crime collide in an epic drama of invention and greed. David Rabinovitch's investigation into his own family history pieces together an epic puzzle that begins in Chicago with the invention of a jukebox and spans the casinos of Havana and the financial giants of Europe, leading to what the FBI called "the biggest bank robbery in the world."

©2023 David Rabinovitch (P)2023 Tantor

The story was fascinating and full of details & vignettes. I’d like to see a TV series or movie made of it.

I did not like the speaker. I thought he was very sing-song & at times .seemed to make “light” of serious subjects. I was very disappointed that the author did not read his book.