Paul Dorfman
American mobster and trade unionist (1901–1971)
Paul "Red" Dorfman (1901 – 1971) was an American mobster associated with the Chicago Outfit and a close associate of Jimmy Hoffa, having introduced him to the world of organized crime in Chicago. He was described by the US Senate's McClellan Committee as "the contact man between dishonest union leaders and members of the Chicago Underworld".
Biography
In his youth Dorfman was a prizefighter managed by Sam Pian, he fought under the name "Red Dorfman". He began to do enforcer work for the mafia, becoming favored by Murray Humphreys. Although he was never convicted of any crime, he was arrested in 1928 in connection to electoral fraud in a local election and in 1942 for the beating of a trade union official with knuckle-dusters.
He became involved with the Chicago Outfit while it was under the control of Al Capone. His associates included Capone men like Tony Accardo and other mobsters like Abner Zwillman. The FBI considered Dorfman as one of the six people closest to Accardo. In 1939, after the previous union president Leon Cooke was murdered, Dorfman rose to become the new president of the Chicago Waste Handlers Union. He had no experience with unions and took over the leadership on the night of his first dues payment.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Dorfman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.