By John Newton
Forty years of travel round the world in some very odd places meant I met and made friends with some very odd people. One of the more absorbing is Eddie Markus, the Mafia man. Despite being Canadian, he really was – or had been – a member of the Mafia. Honest.
Here in quiet little England, it is difficult to believe but the contact came from our Orange Juice suppliers in Israel, a factory named Jafora. It seems that Ed was married to an Israeli woman. She lived in Israel, but he didn’t, although Jewish, for reasons that will become apparent.
Ed came to London and started a business called Mr Pizza Man. He needed a source of inexpensive pizza sauce and his wife approached Jafora. The Jafora deputy managing director, Yigal Carmil, met Ed at a trade show in Europe and was bowled over by his charm and wit. Yigal is as naïve as a puppy and Ed, a practised con man, knew exactly how to tickle Yigal’s tummy. The result was that Yigal contacted me and asked us to import and sell a planned twenty to fifty loads of pizza sauce a year to Eddie and his new business. At around thirty thousand dollars a load this seemed an attractive deal.
In America it is generally known that the US pizza sauce business, based around Chicago, is very much controlled by the Mafia of that area and their grip on the product runs throughout The States and Canada. Shortly after my discussion with Yigal I saw a copy of an article from Private Eye describing Ed and his new business in detail, the main thrust being that Ed was recently released from a five-year jail term in New York for selling American investors non-existent orange groves in Brazil. Ed’s victims found no redress in the arrest since he had tied up the money gained in long-term bonds, impossible to break. The article made no mention of the Mafia.
I sent Yigal a copy of the article but – tummy still tingling with pleasure – he refused to believe that Eddie was anything but completely reformed. ‘When you meet him you will see, John. He is a lovely man with a lovely wife living here in Tel Aviv. Ed told me all about his past, and promises he is reformed and trying to go straight with this new business. His wife has given us all guarantees and I believe in them both.’
Ho-ho. Is this true? Well now, a few days later The Sunday Times wrote a much more penetrating article about Eddie. No doubt sparked off by the Private Eye piece it went over the same ground but stated categorically that Ed had direct Mafia links both to Chicago and elsewhere and gave a specific example. You may remember Meyer Lansky, the Jewish American who acted as banker to the main Mafia families in the US and was the prime mover in the attempt to buy the government of Cuba from Fulgencio Batista, the then Cuban dictator. You may also remember that Lansky, after a lifetime of crime, finally fled to Israel under the Right Of Return to avoid US charges of racketeering that would have placed him in prison for the rest of his life.
The Sunday Times said that Ed, looking for finance for some scam or other, flew to Israel trying to meet with Lansky (pictured above) and ask his assistance. But the Israeli police already knew of the trip and despite Ed’s wife’s Tel Aviv domicile and although Ed could claim full Right Of Return, being Jewish, the immigration and police refused entry and hustled him back onto the plane to the USA.
I sent the article to Yigal who STILL swore that Eddie was reformed and a good guy. At Yigal’s suggestion I went to London and met Ed in his factory – a well set up modern operation with excellent equipment. I must say that Eddie certainly knew how to sell pizza and seemed to be doing well. But meeting Eddie with eyes opened by the two articles one could look behind the extreme charm, the immediate friendly welcome and big smile; the arm round the shoulders; the expert schmoozing. I think I may have been wary without the articles, but with them…
Then his office: it showed no business paper or invoices. No sign of any accounts or accountant. No feeling that this was anything but a sort of clubroom, filled with framed photos of Eddie on the golf course, shaking hands with celebrities, or in a tuxedo with a group of rich men and their wives, some of whom looked sort of familiar. And in the corner a set of golf clubs, balls and a cup for putting practise. It seemed to me to be a sort of stage set office. No perspiration, only entertainment.
We chatted and I asked him about the articles. ‘Old hat and all over. I’m reformed,’ said Ed with outstretched arms and a rueful expression ‘I don’t do that stuff anymore.’
I came away unconvinced and told Yigal, ‘We will act only as commission agent. The deal is direct between Eddie and Jafora with us merely helping with importing and paperwork.’
I took this line partly because I checked through a couple of banks on Eddie’s financial operation. It turned out that hardly any of the money generated by this cash-only business stayed in Mr Pizza Man, most being shipped daily to an anonymous account in a small bank in the Irish Republic and from there it disappeared to heaven-knows-where.
We ran the business for about a year on this basis before Eddie just disappeared leaving about fifteen loads – half a million dollars – unpaid. Because, although the original deal was for Ed to pay on delivery, as time went by and he slipped back with excuses and sweet words to Yigal – with me saying, ‘Yigal, you’ve had your tummy tickled again,’ Jafora allowed him this creeping credit until he skipped and left them dry.
So off he went. No forwarding address. No goodbye. Not even a casual wave as he followed his money via Ireland to some prepared bolthole from where he could start his next scam.
There are two sequels. The first occurred a year later when Pam and I were on holiday in America and stayed the night at Bakersfield. We wandered into a book- shop and I chanced upon a biography of Meyer Lansky, the Mafia banker. Wondering if the stories about Ed were true I looked through the index for ‘Markus’ and there he was. I checked the page and it confirmed the story of Ed trying to enter Israel to meet Lansky and being chucked out. I was so excited I shouted across the shop to Pam, ‘Eddie is in this book,’ and felt vindicated in believing the original Private Eye article.
The second happened in my Leighton Buzzard office. I read a short piece in The Sunday Times that mentioned Ed Markus, ‘subject of previous Sunday Times investigations’, had been jailed for six years in Amsterdam for a diamond fraud. No money from that fraud had been recovered either so his pension still seemed to be intact.
I could not resist writing to Eddie, care of the Dutch Prison Service in Amsterdam. I expressed pleasure at hearing of him again and repeated what I’d once said to his face: ‘You are so clever it is a pity you’re not straight. With your brain and charm you’d make a first class politician. You could easily run a country.’ He’d laughed and said, ‘Difficult, because really I’m a criminal at heart. I’m just naturally bent.’ I also said in my letter, ‘Since you seem to have the diamond money tucked safely away, why can’t you be decent and send some of it to Yigal for the pizza sauce you never paid for?’
I thought that would be that, but do you know, about three weeks later Eddie telephoned our office from prison in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I was out but he spoke to Pam and said, ‘tell John Newton I am not the Ed Markus he thinks. I do not know John Newton and have never met him. Tell him not to make contact with me again and tell him he will never hear from me again.’
This was all said quite politely and without menace, but Pam recognised his voice and said along the lines of, ‘Okay Eddie. I’ll tell him.’ And that was the end of that. I never felt threatened and never heard from him again.
Author Bio:
This story is true and happened to me and appears in my Book of Short Stories available on Amazon
Contact Author:
Email: nbi.john@gmail.com
