Gangsters and racketeers would also host rent parties as fronts. He adopted the guise of Black Condor to fight crooked politicians, rum-running bootleggers, and racketeers. HM Customs & Excise often enter items for auction seized from smugglers, fraudsters and racketeers. He also associated with hitmen and labor racketeers Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro. Finally, some racketeers stole industrial grain alcohol and redistilled it to sell in speakeasies. Internecine warfare between labor sluggers eliminated many of the earliest racketeers. It is about racketeers infiltrating the labor movement. Joe protests, and Edna implores Joe to start a workers' union without the racketeers. The other element is that racketeers are willing to involve themselves in illegal markets. Two elements distinguish racketeers from legal security firms. It may mean an association of racketeers in organized crime. In essence, the enterprise is either the 'prize,' 'instrument,' 'victim,' or 'perpetrator' of the racketeers. Some militsiya in Ukraine worked as racketeers and debt collectors. These businesses immediately became targets for racketeers. Buchalter was one of the premier labor racketeers in New York City during that era.