J. Michael Niotta is an Iraqi Freedom veteran with over seventeen years of military service. The author of The Los Angeles Sugar Ring pens a column on early LA for the popular National Crime Syndicate website and has lectured at the Las Vegas Mob & Law Enforcement Museum. He is engaged in various projects, including a biography on his great grandfather, Jack Dragna, and a co-authored early history of organized crime in Southern California with esteemed mafia researcher, Richard N. Warner. The former touring musician is also a mixed-media artist and President of the El Rey Breweriana & Homebrewers Club.
Three miles outside California’s jurisdiction amid the second half of the roaring twenties, a handful of bootleggers, gamblers, Mafiosi, and political fixers sank their earnings into a boisterous new venture....
Plenty of tales of heroism have been shared about the Second World War, but few illustrate the anxiety and injustices endured on U.S. soil. Dick is a fatherless boy and...