MEYER LANSKY IS DEAD AT 81; FINANCIAL WIZARD OF ORGANIZED CRIME (Published 1983) (2024)

Meyer Lansky, the reputed financial genius of the underworld, died today of cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital here. He was 81 years old.

Mr. Lansky was admitted to the hospital Dec. 31 suffering from dehydration, according to Joyce Clark, a spokesman for the hospital. Mr. Lansky lived in the Imperial House, a high-rise waterfront condominium in Miami Beach. ---- Kingpin of Crime Syndicate By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

''He would have been chairman of the board of General Motors if he'd gone into legitimate business,'' an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation once said of Meyer Lansky with grudging admiration. And in a moment of triumph, Mr. Lansky once boasted to an underworld associate: ''We're bigger than U.S. Steel.''

Maier Suchowljansky, the Russian-born immigrant better known as Meyer Lansky, always called himself a lucky gambler. But, according to law-enforcement officials, he was for decades a kingpin of organized crime in the United States, a ruthless onetime ''director'' of Murder Inc. and a man who bet only on a sure thing.

While he was said to have had some experience as a hired gunman in the 1920's, he had not, by most accounts, personally done anything violent for 50 years.

The authorities described him as a genius of finance who applied his Midas touch to bootlegging in the Prohibition era, to gambling in Cuba, the Bahamas and the United States and to loan-sharking, stock manipulation and underworld penetration of legitimate businesses throughout the United States.