Credit Union, With Mob Ties In Its History, Closed This Week - Courant.com

Credit Union, With Mob Ties In Its History, Closed This Week - Courant.com: "South End Mutual Benefit Association was shuttered this week by banking regulators, so went a once questionable Hartford banking tradition — one known principally among gangsters and FBI agents.

Two decades ago, when the mafia in Connecticut was at its peak and legal casino gambling was just a dream, the mob made the credit union a 'piggy bank' of sorts, using it to underwrite a multimillion-dollar, illegal gambling business.

Mobsters who ran illegal casino games at social clubs in Meriden, New Britain and Hartford had access to stacks of pre-approved credit union loan applications and used them to extend instant money to tapped out players. It meant reliable cash in south Hartford, where gangsters and would-be gangsters whispered importantly in the bakeries and Italian restaurants along Franklin Avenue.

The relationship between the credit union, referred to in the neighborhood as 'the Oxy,' and the mafia was never publicly explored in court, but it is the subject of FBI affidavits and interview reports. It was twice the subject of grand jury subpoenas, first in 1984, and more significantly in 1990 during a federal criminal investigation that led to a landmark Hartford mafia trial in 1991."