# Abner Zwillman

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/people/abner-zwillman/

Newark figure whose 1939 contempt sentence for refusing to name his Prohibition-era business associates was reversed in 1940, who was named in the Supreme Court's 1952 Rutkin opinion as a recipient of a 1943 Browne Vintners payment, and whom the FBI watched under its "Top Hoodlum" program until 1959.

No family or role is given. The FBI called him "a notorious racketeer and one of the most important top hoodlum figures" in its Newark division, and the Treasury agent Baldwin called him a "kingpin" of the "Reinfeld syndicate"; those are an agency's and a witness's characterizations, not findings, and "top hoodlum" was the name of an FBI program. The opinions of 1940 and 1952 print only the surname; the Vault file and the Kefauver testimony supply the first name.

The FBI file is read mostly from a poor OCR, and Part 06 is largely unreadable. The aliases above are the names the FBI's 1950 and 1955 memoranda list. No opened record documents his death. The 1935 shooting of Dutch Schultz in Newark appears in his file only as context and is described on the [New York 1930s](/new-york-1930s/) pages, not here.

## Sources

- FBI Records: The Vault, Abner Zwillman, Part 01: https://vault.fbi.gov/Abner%20Zwillman/Abner%20Zwillman%20Part%2001%20/view
- United States v. Zwillman, 108 F.2d 802 (2d Cir. 1940), CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1478134/united-states-v-zwillman/