FBI Hikes Gambino Site Take at $750 Million
By Rhett Pardon
Monday, April 12, 2004

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas – Federal authorities now believe that the Gambino crime family’s online adult business generated $750 million in revenue, XBiz has learned.
XBiz reported last month on new federal indictments alleging that Lexitrans and other shell companies in Overland Park, Kansas, were used to help run adult Internet sites and 900 numbers that advertised free trials but charged customers anyway.

Thousands of adult surfers who thought they were taking a free peek at the sexually explicit material actually were charged $59.99 a month, FBI spokesman James Margolin told XBiz.

“Based on our belief, this is the largest consumer fraud in U.S. history," Margolin said. “The FBI is working with the Federal Trade Commission on the case, and we’re confident the figure will exceed $750 million – the numbers are growing, not shrinking.”

The scheme originally was thought to have bilked customers out of $230 million when the FBI made the indictments Feb. 10.

Lexitrans Inc. was allegedly founded by members of the Gambino family, including Richard Martino, who partnered with Norman Chanes, producer of several low-budget Hollywood movies and an alleged associate of the Gambino organization, to create an informal joint venture with Crescent Publishing Group Inc.

..........................................

remember "Analize this"? when Robert DeNiro's charecter asks:
"So, what am I going to do now? Run a web site"?

he should have....
;-))))

how the hell half a billion dollars were missing in the first place????

$500,000,000 is not exactly a needle in a hay stack....

lololol....

I don't believe it for a second for many reasons but the main one being that the feds are experts at trumping up the dollar amounts.

They come out here at the end of summer every year and cut down wild marijuana (used to be hemp plantations all over the place around here) and then assign it a value equal to the street value of top grade stuff. Then they get to publicize that they cut down 2 million bucks worth of pot when all they did was cut down worthless weeds.

Also sounds as if some folk are talking. Not the smartest move in the world considering the players involved.

http://kansascity.bizjournals.com/kansasci.../23/story7.html

The pornographic Web sites it ran were beehives of activity -- "ridiculous amounts of traffic, ridiculous amounts of refunds," one former employee said

............

"They were getting 25, 50 memberships a day for playgirl.com," said the former Lexitrans employee, who asked not to be identified. "Then it was 100 memberships a day."

...........

Inventive Lexitrans programmers hatched the idea of inundating users with pop-up ads for related pornographic sites. It worked, with a fraction of people going to those sites and signing up for free tours.

"We practically invented that," the employee said.

............

The former employee said he thinks Lexitrans paid $50,000 a month for Internet access alone.

...........

would like to know the billing company....

They had several "partnerships"
:okthumb:

Exactly. :okthumb:

Hehe - it reminds me of when they do a news story on a drug bust and find "X hundreds of thousand of dollars" of drugs. Yet the people are living 6 to a rented singlewide trailer, driving beaters, missing half their teeth and look like they can't afford the water bill so they can take a shower. Or maybe they're really good at being incognito.... B)

I need to be more corrupt - urg. :matey:

There are scams that are being pulled right now that total take will surpase this amount.

I would imagine some of the same "partners" are invovled.

They are just using new technology.