Nevertheless, the article mentioned that many Sicilians still turn to the Mafia to "recover stolen goods, claim unpaid debts and manage economic competition. In its place, another mob, the 'Ndrangheta syndicate , has emerged. In early , Italian authorities brought charges against people associated with the Calabria-based organization, which has used billions of dollars made from the drug trade to expand its operation into Europe, Australia, North and South America, and Africa.
Sicilians and other Italians began immigrating to the United States in the s, but a major wave of them arrived on American shores early in the 20th century. While the vast majority worked hard at building a new life for their family through legal means, some of them brought the ways of the Sicilian Mafia with them.
Anti-Italian sentiment, much of it growing from resentment of the Mafia, was at its peak in the late s. In New Orleans in , a Sicilian crime family was pressured by the local chief of police, who was then murdered.
After the mobsters were tried and acquitted, a lynch mob went to the jailhouse. The mob shot or hanged 11 men. Mafia families spread through the country in the first half of the 20th century, emanating from New York City, where five families vied for control. The era of Prohibition was a huge money-maker for the Mafia , which sold illegal alcohol in speakeasies around the country. The Mafia's power during this period grew exponentially, and wars between the families broke out.
There was an epidemic of Mafia violence in the early s — bosses and underbosses were assassinated regularly, with few bosses ruling their families for more than a few months before they were killed. The Luchese family went through three or four bosses in alone. In the middle of this bloodbath, helping to orchestrate much of it, was a mobster named Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
Born in Sicily in as Salvatore Lucania, Luciano became the first boss of the Genovese crime family. Luciano threw his support behind an idea that had been floating around for some time — the formation of a multi-family commission that would approve Mafia activities nationwide.
The Commission that brought together mob bosses from all over the country was initially composed of bosses from the five New York families, along with Al Capone from Chicago and Stefano Magaddino of the Buffalo family.
The Commission members acted as representatives for other families, too, bringing their concerns to the attention of the rest of the Commission.
For example, the families in cities on the West Coast were almost all represented by the Chicago boss. Large-scale money-making activities, as well as murders and kidnappings, had to be approved by the Commission.
Commission membership was determined at national Mafia meetings that were held every five years. One of these meetings was the scene of a famous event in Mafia history — a raid of the Apalachin Meeting. On Nov. A suspicious state trooper led a raid on the meeting and brought 58 mobsters into the spotlight — and in many cases, brought them to trial. While the raid struck a serious blow to the Mafia, it had a more profound effect.
The American public could no longer deny that the Mafia existed. Since its formation, the Commission has shrunk. Some families have fallen out of power and no longer send representatives.
Today, it is rumored to still exist, but mainly on the East Coast, and it is nowhere near as powerful as it was in Lucky Luciano's day. Rumors of ties between the Kennedys and the Mafia go back to John F. Kennedy's father, Joe Kennedy, who reportedly earned much of the family fortune as a bootlegger though his biographer has said this is untrue and had connections to mobsters like Meyer Lansky.
When JFK faced Hubert Humphrey in the Democratic primary in , many claimed that the Kennedy clan called on their mob connections to ensure a favorable vote, and similar accusations were made during the presidential election against Richard Nixon, which Kennedy won by a slim margin. Several theories tie JFK's assassination to the Mafia.
One story attributes motive to the Mafia through the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The Mafia reportedly hated that Cuba was in the hands of Fidel Castro, who had thrown them out of their lucrative Cuban casino businesses when he came to power.
The invasion was an utter failure attributed by some to Kennedy's refusal to approve air support. Once appointed, Robert Kennedy immediately began a Mafia crackdown. Robert also died from an assassin's bullet. Another rumor plays on suggestions that JFK kept several mistresses and girlfriends, some of whom were known to associate with mobsters. Some evidence, including federal wiretaps, shows that mobster Sam Giancana may have set JFK up with various women and recorded proof of the President's extra-marital affairs.
Conspiracy theorists have speculated hit men sent by Giancana murdered Marilyn Monroe, one of JFK's supposed girlfriends. Almost from its start, the American Mafia operated luxurious, illegal casinos through the United States, bribing local police officers to look the other way. When Nevada legalized gambling in , mobsters were not the first to see the opportunity. And when mobsters finally did arrive, it wasn't the usual suspects. It cost a lot of money to build casinos, and these men offered shady loans to prospective developers.
Some of the loans happened out in the open, with the mob-controlled Teamsters union using its pension fund to finance casino and hotel construction projects. This stopped in , when federal officials took notice.
Casinos generate huge profits, so it didn't take much creativity on the part of the wiseguys to figure out a way to get their cut. They skimmed cash from casinos they partly owned or simply extorted payoffs from casino managers. Many mob bosses were "business partners" with casino owners, whether the owners wanted them as partners or not. Since the s, the government has been very strict about keeping the mob out of the Vegas casinos. Today, it is believed that the major casinos are not influenced by the Mafia; any hint of an organized crime connection is enough for a casino to lose its gambling license.
One of the government's most important tools in the fight against organized crime is RICO. It was passed in specifically to help fight the Mafia. It allows prosecutors to go after entire organizations. Racketeering a crime that was invented with the law and is based on the word for Mafia schemes, or "rackets" is making money through an unlawful enterprise that shows a pattern of such illegal money making activity.
Almost any felony falls under racketeering; two or more such crimes must take place with a year period for a conviction to occur. The result is extra jail time if multiple crimes are committed in pursuit of the same general scheme — that is, bribing a union representative, murdering an uncooperative business owner and extorting money from construction contractors add up to racketeering , a designation that adds decades to the bribery, murder and extortion sentences.
Furthermore, members of the criminal enterprise can be prosecuted for racketeering even if they weren't specifically involved in individual crimes. This removed one of the most common defense tactics of Mafia dons — sending low-level criminals to commit the actual crimes so they could never be prosecuted.
Today, RICO has been used by civil attorneys to get large lawsuit awards from corporations and other groups and is used less and less against organized crime. For officials to arrest and prosecute high-level criminals as part of a crime family, they need to find out what's going on throughout the organization. They can bust drug dealers or truck hijackers, but the family will just find new ones. They need to reach the top to really crack a family. And the best way to do that is by sending someone to infiltrate the family, undercover.
An FBI agent working undercover as a mob associate is an incredibly dangerous job. In an interview for the now-defunct website Mafia-International. Pistone was so effective that even when the operation put dozens of mobsters behind bars, his Mafia friends still thought he was a mobster-turned-informant, rather than an actual FBI agent.
His story was made into the film " Donnie Brasco. Undercover work continues to be an important part of the FBI's fight against the mob.
A sting orchestrated by an undercover agent in Cleveland netted more than 40 corrupt cops in However, you will never hear of most undercover work — the very nature of the job means that undercover agents use assumed names, refuse to be photographed and hide their very existence from the public eye.
But convictions for racketeering, murder conspiracy and obstruction of justice kept Gigante in U. Mob bosses outside the United States are somewhat more distinguishable. Part of the explanation could be that foreign bosses in general find it easier to hide from, or pay off, the authorities, even in the digital age. Some enjoy the political clout that money can buy in local and national governments, as in Russia, Italy, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Mexico and many countries in Central and South America.
Still others are captured and jailed even before they reach infamy. The grand don of world crime bosses has to be Semion Mogilevich of Russia. Multiple websites mention Mogilevich — 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighing about pounds and a heavy smoker — as first among his mobster peers, if he has any. After his apprenticeship, he started his own syndicate, the Solntsdevo gang. Of Jewish heritage, and once in possession of an Israeli passport, Mogilevich stole millions of dollars from Jews seeking to leave Russia for refuge in Israel in the s.
He used the proceeds to invest in both criminal and legitimate enterprises. Yet he remains a free man in Russia, almost certainly thanks to protection from friends in high places. The division did not seem to help the Kobe gang. Who is the latest Yakuza boss? If that means the most infamous read: most publicized , it would have to be Shigeharu Shirai.
A year-old Yamaguchi-gumi leader, Shirai bolted from Japan to Thailand in and remained on the lam with an expired visa until his arrest this past January.
Someone snapped photos of him playing checkers on a sidewalk with his shirt off, exposing multihued floral tattoos on his chest, upper arms and back.
After the photos went viral, Japanese police notified Thai authorities that Shirai was a wanted suspect in a gangland slaying from Thai police arrested Shirai, who denied the murder allegation. Successor Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo brought a return to secrecy as he conducted business from a phone car, his crew earning notoriety for the Lufthansa Heist at JFK Airport that inspired a scene in the movie Goodfellas. Amuso's murderous ways sealed his own fate when top lieutenant Alphonse D'Arco was spooked into turning informant in the early s, though the boss reportedly continued wielding absolute power from behind bars for many years afterward.
After Luciano was convicted on prostitution charges in , leadership passed to Frank Costello — who expanded the organization's reach into Las Vegas — and then to Vito Genovese, who planted his name on the family masthead before his own conviction on narcotics charges in The final decades of the century saw the Genovese run by the powerful and paranoid Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who tightened control over union and construction rackets but also reportedly forbade his men to speak his name under penalty of death, and wandered the streets in a bathrobe in an ill-fated effort to convince the FBI of his insanity.
One of the oldest families of the American Mafia has also endured some of its most notorious scandals, beginning with the Luciano-ordered assassination of Maranzano that placed year-old Joe Bonanno in charge of the organization. Although he strengthened his authority by allying with the Profaci family, Bonanno departed after his plan to murder Tommy Lucchese and Carlo Gambino was uncovered in , setting off a family power struggle known as the Banana War.
The following decade, acting boss Carmine Galante courted more trouble by killing the rival gangs that were butting into his drug-trafficking operation, leading to his assassination in Meanwhile, FBI agent Joe Pistone had infiltrated the family under the alias Donnie Brasco , his six years undercover leading to convictions.
Despite all this, the Bonannos managed to regain their footing under the leadership of Big Joey Massino, until he became the first New York crime boss to turn informant following his arrest. He grew up in poverty in Queens and his baptism into the world of organised crime came when, as a child working at a local delicatessen, he was asked to run errands for some made members of the Lucchese family who ran a bookmaking business from the back of a nearby store. Eventually, Alite met Gotti Sr.
At first he looked up to him, wanted to be like him. He found it easy to make good money on the street and as his status rose in the family he also became known for the levels of violence he was willing to inflict on anyone that crossed him or his family. In , he went on the run after getting word that he was about to be indicted. When he was in Brazil, Alite says he heard rumours that Gotti Jr was an informant and that several of his old cohort had flipped.
In return, he hoped for a lenient sentence. For his crimes, Alite got a ten-year sentence. Alite says the mob is being restructured. All those rules were put in place for a reason: to keep the structure and keep the fear. The concrete crumbles and it falls. Are they trying to build it from the bottom up again?
John Alite introduces me to Stevie Newell — someone who could give me an example, he says, of just how active the mob still is. When we meet, Newell is a few weeks away from going to prison for illegally possessing weapons because he thought someone connected with the mafia was going to kill him. I order the soup. Newell opts for a cheeseburger. Newell looks tough, like an enforcer. He also has a glint in his eye.
Newell was born a few miles west of here in Bushwick and grew up on the streets of Queens. His father played bocce ball with members of the Bonanno family. In his teens, he started knocking around with a made man in the Genovese family who he met through his girlfriend.
Although he could never get made — Newell has Irish blood — he tells me not to believe the hype. The saying goes: we do the work; they take the credit. Newell was charged with the murder of Bruce Gotterup, a mobster accused of falling behind on payments to sell drugs in Queens. Gotterup was shot five times in the back of the head.
The feds offered Newell a deal, but he denied the crime and refused to wear a wire. Instead, he spent two years in jail awaiting trial, at which he was eventually found not guilty. Gotti declined to talk to me for this story. But Newell is a felon and therefore forbidden from possessing guns. One night in March , he got a knock at the door. Someone had apparently made a complaint that Newell had firearms. He knows the mafia code of retribution is alive and well.
Also, he knows what happened to Whitey Bulger. It was 8. At his trial in , a jury convicted him of extortion and racketeering and found him culpable in eleven murders between and But Bulger was also a rat, an informer who turned in rivals in return for protection from corrupt law enforcement agents, inexcusable in the mafia world.
What nobody could understand was why authorities had decided to transfer Bulger from a Florida prison to one in West Virginia and put him with other inmates in general population.
What was really telling, though, was who had killed Bulger. Geas, who according to reports had a fearsome reputation as a ruthless killer and enforcer, was serving multiple life sentences for murder. Anthony Arillotta knew as soon as Bulger was sent to the same prison as his old friend Freddy Geas that Geas was probably responsible. Geas and his brother Ty used to work as enforcers for Arillotta when he was a capo in the Genovese family.
The journey by car to Springfield from Queens takes a little more than two hours. You take the coast road up through Connecticut before joining I, which shoots north through Hartford up into Massachusetts. Traditionally, in order to become a made member of the mob, you had to have killed someone. At the time, Artie Nigro was the acting boss of the Genovese family and he asked Arillotta to shoot someone in New York. After the year-old Dadabo climbed into his car, Arillotta and Ty Geas ran to the vehicle and emptied nine bullets through the window.
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