Louisiana Voice

In 1934, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia put the kibosh on Mafia boss Lucky Luciano consigliere Frank Costello’s slot machine operations in New York City when he confiscated thousands of the machines and had them dumped into the East River.

Facing a major cash flow problem from La Guardia’s actions, Costello cut a deal with Louisiana Sen. Huey Long giving Long 10 percent of the gambling revenue if Costello cared to move his slots to New Orleans. Thus, with the Kingfish’s blessings, Costello and Philip Kastel of Stamford, Conn. and New York City, came to New Orleans in early 1935 and organized Bayou Novelty Co as a front to spearhead what would eventually be a statewide gambling operation.

In 1937, the manager of Bayou Novelty died and Costello’s brother-in-law Dudley Geigerman took over the operation which by 1939, accounted for annual profits of $800,000, according to Baton Rouge State-Times newspaper files. But in October of that year, a federal indictment charged six men of evading $529,456 in income taxes, according to then-U.S. Attorney Rene Viosca.

That amount would equate to about $10.4 million in today’s dollars.

Named in the indictment were Costello, Dudley Geigerman, Harold Geigerman (the Geigermans’ sister was married to Costello), James Brocato (alias Jimmie Moran), Kastel, and Jacob Altman (alias Jake Altman). All but Costello and Kastel were from New Orleans.

Moran, it should be noted, had once served as a bodyguard for Long.

The indictment, which identified Altman as the organization’s bookkeeper and the Geigermans as the collectors, claimed the tax evasions for the years 1936 and 1937 totaled nearly $2.6 million ($51 million in 2021 dollars).

Kastel and associate Alfred “Freddie” Rickerfor of New Orleans petitioned the court in December 1947 to return the slot machines seized earlier that year after police had already destroyed 390 of the 652 confiscated machines. The two obtained a restraining order preventing the destruction of the remaining 262 slots. A lawsuit against Mayor deLesseps Morrison was dismissed in July 1949 despite Dudley Geigerman’s testimony that the machines could not be used as gambling devices without manipulation or the addition of special features. Under cross examination, however, he admitted that they could be fixed so as to make payoffs.

By 1954, Costello himself was on trial for evading $73,437 in income taxes on income from his 22½ percent ownership of Louisiana Mint Co., a slot machine rental firm in New Orleans. Costello’s accountant testified that the Beverly Country Club in Jefferson Parish was a partnership divided between Kastel (25 percent), Costello and crime syndicate chief Meyer Lansky (20 percent each) and Carlos Marcello (15 percent), Rickerfor (17 ½ percent) and Dudley Geigerman (the remaining 2 ½ percent).

The IRS claimed at the same time that Marcello owed $13,600 additional income tax for the years 1943 through 1947, plus fraud penalties totaling more than $6,000.

Gambling, of course, was illegal all this time in Louisiana and continued that way until the state lottery was approved in 1990. Video poker was authorized the following year and the first casino was given a thumbs-up in 1993. Yet, the IRS was issuing gambling stamps here as late as 1968 in order to legally claim taxes on illegal income.

Because gambling was taboo, the $50 stamps were sold as “operational tax stamps,” and one of the first persons to purchase them as the ’68 football season approached was Dudley Geigerman, Jr., son of the man responsible for most of the illegal slot machines in the state and who was not only a brother-in-law to, but a business partner with gangster Frank Costello a generation earlier.

When Costello died in February 1973, his wife of 59 years moved to New Orleans to live with her brother, Dudley Geigerman, Sr. Geigerman Sr. died in August 1985. Newspaper accounts of his death noted only that he was a golf pro and said nothing of his family and business relationships with organized crime figures.

Fast forward to today and we have one Dudley Geigerman, III, who, at various times, has partnered in business with Marcello associate and convicted organized crime figure Anthony Tusa and Louisiana State Police Commission member Jared Caruso-Riecke.

Business enterprises in which Dudley Geigerman III was involved – and his partner(s) – included:

• Crown Entertainment, Metairie (Anthony Tusa, partner);
• Decatur Entertainment, Slidell (Tusa);
• Southeastern Louisiana Entertainment, Houma (Tusa);
• Video Village, Slidell (Tusa);
• Mr. Binky’s Video Store, Kenner (Tusa);
• Paradise Video, Kenner (Tusa);
• GDH International. Covington (Jared Caruso-Riecke).

The first six businesses were video stores that specialized in pornographic videos and literature as well as various sex toys while GDH was a real estate investment company. Other officers in GDH besides CEO Riecke and Director of Housing Geigerman were Director Daniel E. Buras, Jr., Chief Operating Officer Richard Sharp and Chief Financial Officer Bruce Cucchiara.

Cucchiara was MURDERED in an apartment complex parking lot in New Orleans East on April 24, 2012, while looking for investment property. His killer has never been found.

Caruso-Riecke had four life insurance policies totaling $5 million on Cucchiara with New York Life. Three policies were for $1 million each and named Caruso-Riecke as beneficiary. The fourth, for $2 million, named Southern Louisiana Water and Sewerage, a company they owned together at the time of Cucchiara’s death. Such policies are not unusual with partners or key employees in the business world. Neither is it unusual for insurance companies to delay paying benefits when the beneficiary has not be cleared as being implicated in a murder.

Caruso-Riecke, despite not having been eliminated in the investigation, nevertheless filed suit against New York Life on March 19, 2013, a month before his claim would have prescribed and 11 months after the murder, which was still under investigation. Inexplicably, he filed his lawsuit in state court in Baton Rouge instead of St. Tammany which would have normally been the proper venue for a St. Tammany Parish resident and/or a St. Tammany Parish corporation. The insurance company opted not to contest the policies and paid Caruso-Riecke.

Cucchiara had also had signed a promissory note as security on some real estate property to Caruso-Riecke only 20 days before he was killed.

Caitlin Picou, Cucchiara’s daughter, said Caruso-Riecke gave an initial statement to investigators but since then, the investigating detective “has reached out to him but he declined to speak. They’ve reached out to his lawyer, as well, and he’s declined as well,” she said in February 2019.

Caruso-Riecke, his family members and business enterprises were – and are – politically active, contributing tens of thousands of dollars to both Republican and Democratic candidates, including Gov. John Bel Edwards and his brother, Tangipahoa Sheriff Daniel Edwards. On Jan. 8, 2019, Gov. Edwards named him to the State Police Commission, a seven-member body “that has exclusive jurisdiction and final authority over the administration of the state police service,” according to the commission’s Web page. “The Commission serves as an impartial review board that enacts and adjudicates State Police Commission Rules to regulate state police personnel activities, and hears appeals from commissioned full-time law enforcement officers,” the Web page says.

It has, however, been mired in controversy as has Louisiana State Police, particularly Troop F, headquarter in Monroe, where media attention has been focused on state trooper beatings of Black motorists, including the beating death of Ronald Greene in May 2019.

It’s not entirely clear what Geigerman’s role is as housing director of GDH International or why Caruso-Riecke would enter into a business partnership with an individual tied to persons linked to the Marcello, Costello and Gambino families and organized crime. There is no indication that Caruso-Riecke is in any way involved in illegal activities, but there can be no question that there is at least an indirect if somewhat questionable link from him to Geigerman and by only a degree of separation, to Tusa and Marcello, which in turn raises questions about his membership on the State Police Commission.

Geigerman and Anthony Tusa together purchased Video Village, located at 1797 Hwy. 190 West in Slidell, on March 15, 2002, for $50,000. That same day, the two also negotiated a lease of the building at that address to be used as a video rental store and for the “sale of novelties, periodicals and refreshments and snacks.”

In something of a plot twist, two men were arrested on suspicion of simple arson in the Sept. 11, 2007, stemming from a fire that burned Mr. Binky’s video store at 96 West 27^th Street in Kenner. One of the man, Jesse Acosta, was manager of Paradise Video only a few blocks away at 41 West 24^th Street in Kenner, and the other man, Rashad Clark, was a part-time employee of Paradise Video.

Both stores were jointly owned by Geigerman and Tusa.

Despite the arrests, no one was ever prosecuted.

The Tusa name has a long history of organized crime connections. In 1991, when Louisiana legalized VIDEO POKER, brothers Anthony and Victor Tusa, along with Sebastian Salvatore, were CONVICTED under the Racketeer Influence Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act of mail fraud for conspiring to act as “front men” or “straw men” to obtain video poker licenses on behalf of the Marcello and Gambino organized crime families through Bayou Casinos, Inc, a corporation controlled by Anthony and Victor Tusa and whose agent of record was listed as Alan B. Tusa.

NEXT: Caruso-Riecke business dealings examined