Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (126 page)

The emergence in New York and other urban regions of vicious Russian, Asian, and Latin American gangs may further deflect local and federal law-enforcement attention from the Mafia. These marauders, most of them recently arrived immigrants, rarely engage in sophisticated crimes, resorting mainly to drug trafficking and leg breaking to terrorize neighborhood merchants for “street taxes.” Since the five families eagerly exploited the Russian mafia in huge gasoline-tax scams, and used the Irish Westies as hit men, it is conceivable that they could benefit through alliances with new ethnic hoodlums. Some Asian and Russian criminals are adept at high-tech frauds and money laundering, and Asians have been a major source of narcotics for mafiosi who disregard the Cosa Nostra’s frequently violated prohibition on drug transactions.

A sign of another troublesome international collaboration is the Mob’s flirtation with Albanian organized-crime groups. The FBI’s WK Williams says the Mafia’s ties to Albanian gangsters are expanding, and that the Albanians, once used primarily as musclemen, have moved up to equal status in mutually run narcotics, gambling, and prostitution ventures.

Vital to the Mafia’s future is the durability of New York City’s Business Integrity Commission and similar regulatory units, established in the 1990s to prevent the Mob from regaining footholds in the wholesale food markets and the private rubbish-carting industry. At least one banned Genovese-connected garbage carter was discovered back in business in the New York area. Counting on coercion, the mobster used two “front” companies to cheat customers out of more than $2 million. He was exposed when honest carters raised a cry to authorities that wiseguys were again using muscle to steal customers.

Further confirmation that the Mob continues to infiltrate the carting business came from defectors’ testimony that the Bonanno/Massino family had helped a Mob-connected company grab the waste-paper removal contract at the
New York Post
. Until Joe Massino’s arrest in 2003, the contractor rewarded the family with $2,500 a month, most of it going to Massino.

Former prosecutor Ronald Goldstock, who has analyzed regulatory agencies, is dubious about their long-range tenacity to battle mobsters. These licensing bodies are usually effective at the outset in disqualifying “bad actors,” he says. But historically they have evolved into dumping grounds for civil-service hacks and corruptible, self-sustaining bureaucracies. Goldstock believes that vigilant law enforcement and basic operational changes in industries susceptible to infiltration are more essential for permanent reforms than political supervision. He and other critics wonder whether officials, after instituting minimal cosmetic changes, have the political stamina to alter vulnerable industries and giant wholesale markets when confronted by well-heeled lobbies opposed to government oversight.

Joe Massino’s career is a template for evaluating the Cosa Nostra’s prospects. Joe the Ear was eventually brought down, but his ability to resuscitate the Bonanno borgata into a booming conglomerate for over a decade was a scathing lesson to law enforcement. More than likely, Massino clones in the five families are biding their time, counting on investigative lassitude to aid their comebacks. “They want everyone to believe, ‘We’re done, leave us alone,’” the FBI’s Philip Scala cautions. These gangsters undoubtedly will attempt novel strategies to escape the fates of their predecessors. A strategic shift could be exploiting new territories. Although big cities continue to be glittering attractions, there are signs that the Mafia, following demographic trends, is deploying more vigorously in suburbs. There, the families might encounter police less prepared to resist them than federal and big-city investigators.

“Organized crime goes where the money is, and there’s money and increasing opportunities in the suburbs,” Howard Abadinsky, the historian, observes. Strong suburban fiefs have already been established by the New York, Chicago, and Detroit families, and Abadinksy anticipates a continued expansion. “As long as the Mafia has a critical core of people functioning, they will see greedy opportunities and they can always bring in new people.”

A vivid display of Mafia inroads into the suburbs surfaced in March 2005. After an unimpeded ten-year run, a Gambino crew with headquarters in upscale Westchester County was put out of business through the arrests of seven reputed made men and twenty-five associates. According to the federal indictment, the crew’s illegal profits totaled $30 million, flowing mainly from illegal gambling, highlighted by Super Bowl betting. A goodly portion of the crew’s
total take came from “protection” shake-downs of suburban construction and trucking companies and a restaurant in Greenwich, Connecticut. Imitating the customary practices of big-city colleagues, the mobsters also were accused of embezzling a union’s pension and welfare fund.

The impetus for the investigation was a reincarnation of “Donnie Brasco.” An FBI agent penetrated the crew for almost three years, and his undercover work entangled the reputed new leaders of the Gambinos’ post-Gotti era in racketeering charges. The indictment identified Arnold Squitieri as acting boss, and Anthony Megale as acting underboss. Possibly a sign of the Mafia’s geographical shifts, the two men live in New Jersey and in Connecticut, not in Manhattan or other boroughs previously favored by Gambino grandees.

Another drastic alteration in the Mafia’s future could be mergers among the beleaguered families. Robert Buccino, a New Jersey law-enforcement official and Mafia authority, says the consolidation idea was raised by crews in his state in the 1990s. At that same period, a similar idea struck Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, the Lucchese kingpin, when he considered combining with the strife-torn Colombo family. Precedents exist. Out of chaos, the farsighted Lucky Luciano radically reorganized the disparate factions in 1931 into five stabilized families. The time may come when his twenty-first-century descendants overcome their internal disputes and realign into fewer yet stronger gangs to enhance their survival chances.

Before being nailed again on narcotics charges, the arch defector Sammy “the Bull” Gravano discounted predictions that the Mafia was finished. “Don’t kid yourself. Cosa Nostra could come back,” he wrote. “I hear the Chinese, the Russians are going to move in. Believe me, they can’t put together what took us fifty, sixty, whatever years to do.”

A longtime Mob adversary, former New York police lieutenant Remo Franceschini, holds the same opinion. He doubts that the Mafia, with its expertise in gambling, loan-sharking, and other crimes, will die quickly or quietly. “In the old days, back in Sicily, they would say, ‘We’re going back to the caves.’ They would go back to the caves to protect themselves and regroup. That’s what I expect the Mob will do.”

These two sagacious judgments, from antagonistic sides of the conflict, should be a sobering reminder to law enforcement and to the nation: the Mafia is grievously wounded—but not mortally.

1931–1937: Charles “Lucky” Luciano, founder of the family and the Mafia’s governing body, the Commission; convicted in 1937 of being a prostitution overlord, sentenced to thirty years: deported to Italy, 1946.

1937–1957: Frank “Prime Minister” Costello hastily retires in 1957 after bullet grazes his head in assassination attempt ordered by rival, Vito Genovese.

1957–1969: Vito Genovese replaces Costello but is convicted of narcotics trafficking in 1959; still in charge until he dies in prison in 1969. His name remains as family’s title.

1970–1980s: Philip “Benny Squint” Lombardo; retires as leader because of failing health in early 1980s. Uses Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno to pose as boss to deflect attention and deceive law enforcement.

1982 to present: Vincent “Chin” Gigante also uses Salerno as “front” boss until Fat Tony is convicted of racketeering and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1986. Gigante fakes mental illness for decades until convicted of racketeering in 1997 and 2003. Scheduled for release from prison in 2012, when he will be eighty-four.

1931–1964: Joseph Bonanno, founder and original Commission member; forced to retire in 1964 after failed plot to kill rival godfathers and become Mafia’s Boss of Bosses.

1964–1975: Interregnum and internal battles over control of family.

1975–1979: Carmine “Lilo” Galante schemes to become a godfather, expands narcotics deals, and imports Sicilian mobsters to bolster his faction; killed on orders of the Commission in 1979 to stop him from becoming too powerful.

1980–1991: Philip “Rusty” Rastelli; spends most of his reign in prison on racketeering convictions; dies of cancer in 1991.

1991–2003: Joseph “the Ear” Massino, rebuilds organization into the nation’s top Mob family and changes gang’s name to honor himself. Convicted on RICO charges in 2004, Massino becomes first New York boss to cooperate with government. Family’s future leadership is unclear

1931–1951: Gaetano Gagliano, an original godfather at the birth of the modern Mafia, maintains low profile and no arrests for two decades. Fatally ill, Gagliano retires in 1951.

1951–1967: Gaetano “Tommy Three-Finger Brown” Lucchese, former under-boss, rules without opposition and family is named in his honor. Dies of cancer in 1967.

1970–1986: Antonio “Ducks” Corallo; becomes boss after three years of interim acting leaders while he is in prison. Powerful and effective godfather until he is convicted in Commission case trial in 1986.

1986-present: Vittorio “Little Vic” Amuso is appointed boss with underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso as an equal, if not stronger, commander. Their bloody purge of suspected internal enemies produces numerous defections and convictions. Amuso sentenced to life imprisonment in 1992, and Casso gets life in 1998. Amuso remains nominal boss.

1931–1951: Vincent Mangano, secretive, virtually unknown to federal and local police, heads one of the original five families until he disappears in 1951.

1951–1957: Albert “Lord High Executioner” Anastasia, a key figure in “Murder Incorporated” is widely assumed to have killed Mangano in a coup to take over the family.

1957–1976: Carlo Gambino becomes boss after arranging the barber-shop hit on Anastasia. Gambino dies from a heart attack in 1976, at the height of power as the Mob’s supreme godfather. Family adopts his name.

1976–1985: Paul “Big Paul” Castellano, Gambino’s brother-in-law, ascends to the family throne. Castellano is gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in a preemptive strike orchestrated by a younger rival, John Gotti.

1986–2002: John “Johnny Boy” Gotti becomes the most publicized boss since Al Capone. Following three trial acquittals, he is convicted in 1992 on racketeering and murder charges, including Castellano’s. Sentenced to life without parole, he dies of cancer in prison in 2002.

2002–2003: Peter Gotti, John’s older brother, runs the family until he is found guilty of racketeering in 2003 and receives a minimum sentence of nine years. In 2004 is convicted of conspiring to kill Sammy the Bull Gravano, and faces life sentence.

2005: Acting boss Arnold Squitieri indicted on RICO charges.

1931–1962: Joseph “Olive Oil King” Profaci creates one of the original families. He becomes a multimillionaire but the last years of his life are plagued by younger members’ rebellion, led by “Crazy Joey” Gallo, and he dies of cancer in 1962.

1963–1971: Joseph Colombo is appointed boss, mainly through the support of Carlo Gambino. His tenure is cut short when he is shot and paralyzed in 1971 at a rally protesting supposed bias by law-enforcement agencies against Italian-Americans. Colombo becomes the signature name for the family.

1972–1986: Carmine “the Snake” Persico is in firm control until he is convicted in the Commission case and at another rackets trial in 1986.

1987-present: Although sentenced to life without parole, Persico tries to maintain control from prison until his son Alphonse “Little Allie Boy” is ready to succeed him. Persico’s attempt to create a Mob dynasty provokes an internal war. Alphonse is convicted of racketeering in 2001, creating a power vacuum and a fractured family. He is indicted in 2004 on new charges of murder.