You know, “Jews control the FGC” was not a take I was expecting to see today, but here we are.
Didn’t see that before but it’s possible. But we can’t draw enough conclusions from just this post alone. I am admittedly making a lot of assumptions just based on this guy’s use of the word “banker”.
Pinball kinda was a money laundering scheme for the mob when it started, though.
For one it was often gambling, pre-flipper (like pachinko!) tables were often formatted as bingo analogues (with more advanced ones changing victory conditions as play progressed), you won free games, tracked on its own reel, but the “house” would buy them back.
Even that aside though, pinball route operation relies on good relationships with local establishments you can put tables in and generates uncheckable cash inflows (Are you taking in $150 but only reporting $15? Okay! Are you only taking in $15 but putting $150 from another scheme on the books legitimately? Okay!) which played to mob strength.
The historical capital of pinball, Chicago, was the capital of American organized crime, and major manufacturers like Bally (like the casinos and weirdly, the gyms) and Williams (which abandoned pinball for the higher-margin work of making equipment for video poker) have readily crossed over into the legal “gaming” world.
Bally Total Fitness, established 1983… you know, that would almost make sense if it was established as a framework for national steroid distribution networks.
