Pittsburgh Mafia Gambling Boss Bobby Ianelli Dies Age 95
Posted on: July 21, 2025, 03:49h.
Last updated on: July 21, 2025, 03:53h.
- Final figure of Pittsburgh Mafia dies at 95 years old
- Iannelli ran multimillion-dollar gambling operation for decades
- Avoided prison in 2019 sports betting ring conviction
Robert E. “Bobby I” Iannelli, a fixture in Western Pennsylvania’s gambling underworld for more than half a century, died peacefully on July 15 at age 95, The Gangster Report reports.
According to his obituary at Devlin Funeral Home, Iannelli — a resident of both Jupiter, Florida, and McCandless Township — died peacefully surrounded by family.
Perhaps the final figure of the LaRocca-Genovese crime family’s heyday, Iannelli rewrote the rulebook on sports betting in Steeltown.
He began his career as a small‑time bookie, and his first brush with the law came in the 1950s when he was fined for running football pools. Over the years, he grew an underground empire that reportedly handled multimillion-dollar operations across Allegheny and Westmoreland counties.
In 1990, a Pennsylvania Crime Commission report listed Iannelli as an associate of the legendary Pittsburgh LaRocca‑Genovese family, aka the Pittsburgh Mafia.
Though the LaRocca-Genovese family once operated as a ruthless criminal syndicate, no allegations of violence were ever brought against Iannelli.
Legal Troubles
Named for former bosses John LaRocca and Michael Genovese, the syndicate once played a commanding role in the city’s rackets, but prosecutions and shifting power in the 1990s left it weakened, Among the few figures to survive its decline was Iannelli, who continued running “Chub’s Place,” a diner in North Park that doubled as his base of operations.
His career was punctuated by federal legal battles. Iannelli served jail time in the 1970s and again in the early 1990s following convictions tied to illegal gambling activities. The most recent arrest came in February 2019, when authorities indicted the aging mobster, his son Rodney, and 11 others in connection with a sprawling sports‑betting and numbers lottery scheme.
In September 2020, he pleaded guilty alongside his son and agreed to pay approximately $300K in fines. Sentenced to 10 years, the judge suspended the term in favor of probation, allowing both men to avoid further prison time.
Iannelli was “a numbers guy and bookie around Pittsburgh for decades,” as Penn State criminal justice professor Donald Liddick told Casino.org in 2020. A Tribune‑Review profile described him as the crown jewel of the LaRocca‑Genovese gambling machine.
Old-School Gangster
Devlin’s obituary lists him as beloved husband, father to four children, and great‑grandfather, surrounded in his final moments by loved ones. Mob writer Scott Burnstein this week called him “old-school” and one of the gambling trade’s all-time greats in a note marking his death
Mob-watchers like Burnstein see his death the symbolic end of Pittsburgh’s old guard in organized crime. The once‑mighty LaRocca‑Genovese family, which in its 1950s to 1980s heyday stretched from the Hill District to suburban diners, has, according to Liddick, “dissolved into informal groups” with no centralized leadership.
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