Background
He was born in June 1910 in Jersey City, New Jersey to Ellen Hussion (1884–?) and Michael Moriarty (1883-c1919) of County Galway, Ireland who had married on April 15, 1906 in Somerville, Massachusetts.
He was born in June 1910 in Jersey City, New Jersey to Ellen Hussion (1884–?) and Michael Moriarty (1883-c1919) of County Galway, Ireland who had married on April 15, 1906 in Somerville, Massachusetts.
He got started in the numbers racket when he was 13 years old, around 1923. He always wore the same set of inexpensive clothes. In the numbers game a player picks any three-digit number and bets anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars.
The bet is placed at a neighborhood candy store, newsstand, or tavern.
Each day, the winning number is determined, and there may be none, one, or multiple winners. The number was usually the last three digits of attendance figures at a specified race track or the dollar figures of United States. Treasury receipts, published in the next day"s newspapers, or another tamper-proof number.
A player"s chance of winning with any given bet is one in 1,000 for a three digit number, 10 x 10 x 10. On September 15, 1958 a Jersey Central commuter train carrying 200 passengers derailed and an Associated Press photo made the front pages of the newspapers with the numbers 9-3-2 appearing on the side of the train.
That number received a large number of bets and was the winning number the following day.
Moriarty was able to pay in full and that brought him to the attention of Mike Coppola, which may have led to Moriarty"s arrest in Jersey City. Joseph was arrested for possession of betting slips and was placed in New Jersey State Prison. While he was in prison on July 2, 1962, two day laborers, who were fixing a garage came across his 1947 Plymouth at 47 Oxford Avenue in Jersey City.
On July 3, 1962, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents seized the assets.
He originally denied ownership but then filed a tax form listing them as income. He was released from prison in 1965.
He was rearrested and sent to prison and ordered to pay $1.5 million in federal income taxes in 1972. By the end of his career in crime, he had been arrested 47 times.
Around 1975, while serving another prison term on betting charges, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
In 1976, in his mid-60s, his sentence was commuted by New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne. Moriarty died three years later, on February 26, 1979 in Christ Hospital, Jersey City.