The chronic skim: getting over on Whitey Sorkin

pivotal · Sorkin era, "for years" (B.S.)

• When: "for years," across the crew's Sorkin work (~B.S.), discovered by Gately only after Fackelmann's death
• What: Fackelmann had for years been defrauding Sorkin's operation in small ways — typically taking long-shot action from marginal bettors not well known to Sorkin, not phoning it in, and, when the long-shot lost, pocketing the skeet-plus-vig for himself. Gately calls it a "suicidal-type risk," since any long-shot that actually won would leave Fackelmann personally owing the winnings out of a crew that always "existed on the absolutest margins of liquidity." Against exactly that risk, Fackelmann kept — "through iron will" — an unspent emergency reserve (the $22K of event 16). The pattern is the template the fatal blunder (event 11-12) fits.