Although both were charged in 1939 for tax evasion, Kastel and Costello were both acquitted.īy the 1940s, with control over the majority of gambling in Louisiana, both legal and illegal, Kastel and Costello began to expand their operations opening high class gambling casinos in New Orleans earning millions. Between 19, the Costello-Kastel partnership earned an income of over $2.4 million from slot machines alone, according to federal authorities. From New York to New Orleans įollowing Rothstein's death in 1928, Kastel went to work for former Rothstein associate and New York mobster Frank Costello and later moved to New Orleans to establish gambling operations, primarily slot machines, during the mid-1930s. He also preyed upon local chorus girls, specifically being charged with stealing $22,000 from chorus girl Betty Brown in 1922 however this charge was dismissed. Finding employment with Arnold Rothstein, Kastel oversaw Rothstein's numerous bucket shops, an early telemarketing scam selling fraudulent securities. Returning to New York in 1919, Kastel was quickly arrested for extortion, although the charges were dismissed. In 1917, upon the United States entry into World War I, Kastel fled to Canada in order to avoid the draft and operated a nightclub in Montreal, Quebec, for the remainder of the war. Despite growing up in a violent neighborhood frequented by street gangs and others of the city's underworld, Kastel instead became involved in gambling and confidence games during the early 1900s and held interests in many of the city's gambling dens shortly before Prohibition. He married Elsie Conner in 1940 but they later divorced and he married Margaret Dennis. He was brother to Allen, Florence, Ida and Rose Kastel. Phillip Frank Kastel was born to a Jewish family on New York's Lower East Side to Solomon Kastel and Rachel Rosenthal on April 2, 1893. Phillip 'Dandy Phil' Kastel (Apâ August 16, 1962) was an American mobster, gambler, and longtime associate of the Genovese crime family.
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