Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo – Chicago Mafia

One hidden microphone in the Villa Capri restaurant in Kansas City led to wiretaps and hidden microphones in Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Chicago and 19 separate wires in Kansas City. In Chicago, agents developed probable cause to place a tap on a telephone in the office of Allen Dorfman. They soon learned that Chicago Mob Caporegime Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo frequented this office. Chicago Agents code named this Operation Pendorf or penetrate Dorfman.

Allen Dorfman was the step-son of a Chicago gangster named Red Dorfman. After WW II, he became friends with Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and rose in the ranks of both the Teamster’s Union and the Chicago Organized Crime family. Dorfman formed the Union Insurance Agency and soon had an exclusive contract to sell insurance to the Teamsters.

Dorfman became influential in the Teamster’s Central States Pension Fund. He was part of a cabal of Mob bosses from Cleveland, Milwaukee and Kansas City who determined who got pension funds loans. For this, he and his Chicago mob bosses demanded kickbacks. In this video clip, you will hear Lombardo on the phone in Dorfman’s office. He is threatening St. Louis lawyer and Dunes Casino owner Morris Shenker that he will not reach his 73rd birthday if he does not pay a kickback on a pension fund loan.

6 thoughts on “Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo – Chicago Mafia”

  1. Impressive project. A couple of years ago there was a mob documentary about the KC guys at the theater in North Kansas City. Lasted about two hours. I was familiar with a number of the people described or named in the movie, both through police connections a Northeast High School which I attended.

  2. Thanks Bill, That documentary about the KC Mob was Black Hand Strawman. That film showed the entire history of the Mafia in KC. Gangland Wire focuses on the River Quay, the war with between the Civella faction and the Spero brothers. The film shows how the intense investigation on these events revealed the fact that they were skimming money from Vegas casinos. If you saw the film Casino with Robert DeNiro, this is the real story behind those events

  3. I just got done reading William Roehmer’s book on Spilotro and I think, like all his books, that it is horribly uninteresting. It’s like he wrote the book for the sole benefit of himself and his fellow FBI angents. Details upon details about things that only him and his fellow agents would care about and then endless bragging about his own importance and the importance of other agents. Really, really boring and of no real value whatsoever.

    1. I agree about Roemer’s book. I honestly think he pushed it out to capitalize on the Casino film. He even included pictures of himself in it as a boxer! In high school or college, I think. His War of the Godfathers book is complete fiction, too, but he positioned it as based on truth. He was a courageous lawman and I don’t know why he sullied his reputation to cash in on a few horrible books, though I don’t know much about his Accardo book.

  4. If you want to read a retired F.B.I. agent’s book that goes out of its way to not play loose with facts, read Bill Ouseley’s Mobsters in Our Midst. Bill was approached by a publisher to do this book, but when he was told he needed to make himself some kind of hero, he declined and ended up self-publishing his first book, Open City. He got the Kansas City Star Publications to support Mobsters.

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