Sinatra smuggled cash for Mob, Lewis claimed

Victoria Ward, New York

An unauthorised biography of the singer quotes entertainer Jerry Lewis, who alleges that the legendary crooner “volunteered to be a messenger” for the Mob.

Lewis told authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan that Sinatra narrowly escaped arrest when he went through customs in New York with a briefcase stuffed with “three and a half million in fifties.”

Customs officers allegedly opened the case but aborted the search because of a deluge of fans. “He almost got caught,” Lewis is quoted as saying. “We would never have heard of him again.”

The anecdote in the book, Sinatra: The Life, is one of a series linking the singer to organised crime.

He always denied being connected to the Mob before he died in 1998. But he has since been linked to notorious Mob figures Lucky Luciano and Sam Giancana.

The book also reports that Columbia Pictures was pressured by the mob into giving Sinatra the part of Private Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity.