Mar 04 2007
Former mobster writes tell-all about the Israeli mafia in NY
Upon returning to Holon, the 15-year-old began to dabble in crime. He engaged in cat burglary and fenced the goods, denying that he was the thief. His small enterprise expanded until, in 1965, Gonen decided to forge documents that would allow him to join the Israel Navy despite being underage. Docked in Marseilles, the young Gonen realized that the world held more opportunities than tiny Israel had to offer.
While on leave from the Navy, Gonen continued his one-man crime wave, staging break-ins and robbing, among other things, parking meters. After he completed his mandatory military service, he returned to the streets, living high as a B&E man, and later branching out into auto theft.
After an unusually successful theft whose take totaled an estimated $20,000, Gonen says that he decided he “had no future in Israel” and searched for new horizons. “I wanted to rob Germans. I thought it was a good payback,” he recalled.
For the next decade, Gonen’s base of operations was western Europe, although he never lost his ties to Israel – or its burgeoning criminal underworld. At first he continued with break-ins, but – after being expelled from Germany – began to work in forged documents.
“I looked like a diplomat,” Gonen said. “This was old school, not gaining a name,” he said of his lifestyle. “It [was] better to be in the shadows, but to be very involved in the social, cultural life of the country in which I lived.” This was a principle that he maintained after moving to London, where he managed a fictitious company as part of a pyramid scheme.
Gonen continued in London until he realized he was under surveillance, and then in 1981 fled to Spain, where he heard shortly later that Scotland Yard had raided his London office and arrested everybody. Deciding that Europe was now “too hot” for him, he fled to Guatemala, where he found himself in the midst of a series of coups. Only after he was warned for a second time that a death squad was after him did he flee, this time to the US.
After a brief time in the States, he returned for a short stay in Israel. There, he realized that among his old friends in the underworld, drugs were a hot industry.
“Everybody was high on speed that they bought from Kalkilya pharmacies,” he recalled. Gonen called in old contacts, and began to smuggle cocaine into Israel in small quantities. Unwitting flight attendants would bring in the drug, concealed in cigarette filters. “But after three or four trips, I got the name of “Candyman” and began to hear that they’d be on to me,” Gonen said, explaining why he returned to the US later in 1982.
