Loyalty: My Washington Times On Crime Column On Lisa Scottoline's Historical Thriller About The First Sicilian Cosa Nostra Crime Family

The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Lisa Scottoline (seen in the below photo) and Loyalty, her historical thriller about the first Sicilian Cosa Nostra crime family. 

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:

BOOK REVIEW: 'Loyalty' - Washington Times

 

I was drawn to “Loyalty,” Lisa Scottoline’s historical novel about Sicily, because I’ve enjoyed her novels in the past, and because I’m half Sicilian on my late mother’s side and I visited that beautiful island many years ago. I remember Sicily’s wonderful scenery, food and people, and as a student of crime, I was and remain fascinated with Sicily’s darker side.

 

Speaking to her last year, I discovered that we are originally from the same Italian American neighborhood in South Philadelphia, and we lived around the corner from each other when we were young.

 

I contacted her and asked how she would describe “Loyalty,” and why she chose that title for the historical novel.

 

“I think ‘Loyalty’ is a fast-moving historical thriller about the first Mafia family of Sicily and the young crusading lawyer who sets out to oppose them and find justice for a young, kidnapped boy,” Ms. Scottoline replied.

 

“I entitled the novel ‘Loyalty’ because loyalty is such a wonderful concept, in that it can be a double-edged sword, in that it’s a virtue until it’s taken too far. Writers have a saying that ‘the villain is the hero of his own story,’ and I think that’s true in the novel, because even the characters who do bad have convinced themselves that they are doing good, because they are loyal to a person or principle. I leave it to the reader to decide which is which, because I respect my readers so much.”

 

How did you research “Loyalty”?

 

I visited Sicily and traveled all over, setting unique locations for the novel, like a convent that is also a bakery, an underground church where a secret society met, and the awful sulfur mines in the center of the island. I even filmed videos, so readers could see them on my website as a companion piece to the novel. I also steeped myself in Sicilian culture and literature, reading di Lampedusa, Verga and Vittorini, among many others.

 

Was your character Franco Fiorvanti based on a real Sicilian criminal in history? How would you describe him?

 

Franco was not based on any mafioso in particular, but I read everything I could about the history of the Mafia and was amazed to learn that the term mafioso is a Sicilian term that means bold, brave, and essentially, having swagger. As soon as I learned that, it clued me into Franco’s character, because he starts the novel as a lemon grower in a feudal society that oppresses him, and partly because he is unable to move up in that society and enjoy the freedoms that Americans like us take for granted, especially in modern times.

 

Did the evolution of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra take place like you describe in the novel?

 

The history of the Mafia as depicted in “Loyalty” is exactly true to the facts. I’m a former lawyer and adjunct law professor, and so I am very aware that many people get their ideas about law, justice, and crime and punishment through fiction. I always feel like I have a special responsibility to get the facts right, and frankly they were fascinating here.

 

I was amazed to see that the Mafia was born in the lush lemon groves of Palermo and came into being largely because lemons became such a valuable crop when the British navy kept contracting scurvy. Lemon crops were so valuable that they needed protection, and armed guards like Franco protected them, but that protection soon turned into what is known as a modern-day protection racket.

 

Your character Gaetano Catalano was a member of Beati Paoli, which was a real organization. How would you describe the group?

 

I was astounded to learn about the blessed Society of St. Paul, or the Beati Paoli, which really was a secret organization in Palermo in the 1800s. It was composed of aristocrats who felt compelled to fight injustice for the common man, even though they benefited from the feudal system that tilted the law in their favor.

They were guided by their faith in God and specifically the teachings of St. Paul, and it struck me as so brave of them and forward-thinking. In addition, it informs the backdrop of the novel in that religion and law can give all of us a way to conduct our lives that affords dignity and respect to everyone.

 

Other than having been entertained, what takeaways would you like your readers to glean from “Loyalty”?

 

“I have written 35 contemporary thrillers in as many years, and I have been president of the Mystery Writers of America, so I think I bring my thriller chops to bear in historical fiction, especially “Loyalty.” I really think of the novel as impossible to put down, with fast-paced drama, riveting action, and even romance set against the ruggedly beautiful island of Sicily.”

 

Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.

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Loyalty
Lisa Scottoline

Putnam, $28, 432 pages.

Alleged Sicilian Cosa Nostra Members Among 91 Jailed In Italy Over EU Subsidies Fraud

The British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on Sicilian Cosa Nostra members receiving prison sentences for subsidies fraud.

Judges in Italy have handed down prison sentences to 91 people, including alleged mafia members, after a large-scale EU agricultural subsidies fraud.

According to magistrates in the Sicilian city of Messina, mobsters fraudulently received more than €5m (£4.3m) in subsidies between 2010 and 2017, including funds for thousands of hectares of “ghost” farmland in the east of the island that was either nonexistent, stolen from farmers or owned by the Italian state or regional government.

The sentences ranged from two years to 30. Among the charges that resulted in convictions were extortion, fraud against the EU and mafia association.

Prosecutors said the Batanesi mafia clan – one of the oldest crime families on the island, operating in the Nebrodi regional park, a hilly region popular for grazing – was believed to be at the centre of the fraud, which allegedly involved more than 150 companies.

Annual EU agricultural subsidies of up to €1,000 a hectare provide an incentive to organised crime. A magistrate wrote in the investigation file that it was often the case that one phone call from an organised crime boss was enough to prompt a farmer to give up his land out of fear of retaliation. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Alleged mafia members among 91 jailed in Italy over EU subsidies fraud | Italy | The Guardian   

The Traitor Review – The Real Goodfellas: Cosa Nostra On Trial

Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian offers a review of Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor, a film about the 1986 maxi of Sicilian Cosa Nostra members and Tommaso Buscetta, a Cosa Nostra boss who testified against them.

Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is a big, handsomely shot, true-crime gangster movie, ranging over 30 years from the early 1970s to the late 90s, scripted by Bellocchio with screenwriters Valia Santella, Ludovica Rampoldi and Francesco Piccolo. The film has the authoritative air of official history: sometimes brash, sometimes stolid, sometimes with flashes of inspiration and sometimes with long stretches of courtroom dialogue. It is in these sections where Bellocchio is perhaps self-consciously concerned, as a major Italian film-maker, to be seen delivering a definitive cinematic account of an important period of modern Italian life. Well, it was certainly a sound instinct to show the courtroom scenes at some length, because however bizarre and chaotic it could be, the court of law is the moral centre of these events.

His subject is Italy’s sensational anti-mafia Maxi trial of 1986, in which hundreds of Sicilian mobsters were convicted, on the testimony of a tiny number of high-up pentiti, or informers, of which the most important was Tommaso Buscetta, a bulkily intimidating, charismatic presence portrayed here by Italian character actor Pierfrancesco Favino. 

He was the important Cosa Nostra guy who astonished everyone by committing the ultimate sin: treason. He snitched to the cops. 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/23/the-traitor-review-the-real-goodfellas-cosa-nostra-on-trial

A Look Back At The Pizza Connection Case: The FBI And The Landmark 1980s Heroin Bust

The FBI released the below: 

Thirty-five years ago, in early April 1984, the FBI closed in on a real-life Mafia godfather.

His name was Gaetano Badalamenti (seen in the above photo), and he was the former top boss of the Sicilian Mafia. Though banished from Sicily by rival mobsters in 1978, Badalamenti had continued to secretly lead one of the world’s most prolific drug cartels. Frequently on the move, he ultimately traveled with his wife and oldest son to Madrid. Pietro Alfano, a nephew who was his top operative in the American Midwest, took a flight from Chicago to meet them.

Little did Badalamenti know that Spanish authorities, acting on information from the FBI, were watching closely. On April 8, Badalamenti and Alfano ventured out onto the streets of Madrid and were quickly taken into custody. His son was arrested soon after.

The next day, the FBI conducted a carefully coordinated roundup of nearly 30 Mafia members and associates who worked with Badalamenti in the United States. Under the leadership of FBI New York, agents in six Bureau offices made arrests and carried out search warrants, seizing drug paraphernalia, large amounts of cash and weapons, and a trove of documents.

Among those swept up in the dragnet was Salvatore “Toto” Catalano, the owner of a bakery in Queens and a major figure in the Bonanno Mafia family based in New York. Catalano served as Badalamenti’s primary nexus to the American Mafia and the leader of his U.S. crew, a group of Sicilian immigrants known as the “Zips.”

The trial began on October 24, 1985, with 22 total defendants, all Sicilian-born men. As the government made its case over 16 grueling months—giving rise to the longest criminal jury trial in U.S. history to this day—two men pleaded guilty to lesser charges. One was brutally murdered, likely a victim of friction between Catalano and Badalamenti (Alfano was later shot and nearly killed in retaliation). That left 19 defendants by the time the jury delivered its verdict on March 2, 1987.

Federal prosecutors—including Louis Freeh, who would later become Director of the FBI—argued that the men were part of a vast, long-running drug conspiracy that touched four continents. The scheme involved purchasing morphine base from suppliers in Turkey, processing it into heroin in Sicily, smuggling it into the U.S., and then selling it through pizza shops and other Mafia-run businesses stretching from New York to Illinois and Wisconsin. Cocaine was also being imported from South America as part of the operation.

It was a lucrative business. From January 1975 until April 1984, an estimated $1.6 billion worth of heroin was shipped to this country in the plot. The cash profits were then illegally laundered through a web of banks and brokerages in the U.S. and overseas. 

Gaetano Badalamenti

The case, dubbed “The Pizza Connection” by the news media because of the frequent use of pizza parlors as fronts for drug sales, was enormously complex and laborious. Undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone, who had infiltrated the Bonanno crime family in 1976, delivered crucial intelligence that helped set the case in motion. Over time, the investigation snowballed into a massive multi-agency and multi-national effort, with key contributions coming from the New York Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Customs, and international authorities (including FBI international legal attaché offices) in Italy, Sicily, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Brazil, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and Mexico.

Over more than four years, the FBI and its partners gathered a mountain of records and evidence and utilized an array of investigative capabilities. They conducted surveillance on multiple players on multiple continents, sometimes around the clock. They traced and analyzed thousands of telephone calls, often from remote pay phones. Since the conspirators mostly spoke Sicilian and used coded phrases to conceal their true activities, turning their many covert conversations into plain English was especially challenging, requiring a team of expert translators from the FBI and elsewhere.

In the end, the painstaking efforts paid off. All but one of the final 19 defendants were convicted, with Gaetano Badalamenti and Catalano receiving hefty prison sentences.

The case has had some lasting downstream benefits as well. By fortifying partnerships, it helped pave the way for the expansion of the FBI’s network of legal attaché offices, so vital today in addressing global threats like terrorism and cybercrime. The first major drug bust after the Bureau was given concurrent jurisdiction with the DEA over narcotics violations in 1982, the probe also set an investigative standard for similar cases by employing the same suite of tools and approaches used by the FBI to address organized crime—most notably, the use of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to take down larger illicit groups and not just isolated actors.

Director Freeh would later put the case’s importance in perspective, calling it “the FBI’s first major, transnational criminal enterprise investigation and prosecution” and “a historic turning point for international police cooperation and coordinated enforcement action.”

The Pizza Connection was clearly a watershed, and 35 years later, it continues to pay dividends for policing and public safety. 

Seven 'Rising Star' Mobsters Are Arrested In Italy As Police Swoop On Resurgent Cosa Nostra

The Daily Mail offers a piece on the arrest of suspected “rising stars” in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra by the Italian police.

Seven suspected 'rising-star mobsters' have been arrested in Italy as anti-mafia police are dealing with resurgent Cosa Nostra.

The raids follow a swoop against the mafia in December when a jeweller was captured just before being appointed 'boss of the bosses' of the reconvened Mafia Commission or Cupola.

Two of the people rounded up last month revealed secret information about clan leaders who were allegedly part of the Cupola.      

'Like never before, within a month (of the December arrests) we had two new state witnesses. 

'And not any old members, but two from the upper echelons,' Palermo's chief prosecutor chief Francesco Lo Voi told journalists.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6619627/Seven-rising-star-mafia-mobsters-arrested-Italy-police-swoop-resurgent-Cosa-Nostra.html 

La Padrona: Italy Arrests 'The Mistress', Suspected Mastermind Of Mafia Reshuffle

Lorenzo Tondo at the Guardian offers a piece on the arrest of a woman known in the Sicilian Cosa Nostra as La Padrona.

A female mobster suspected of being the mastermind behind a reshuffle of the Sicilian mafia after a series of high profile arrests has been taken into custody, Italian police have said.

Mariangela Di Trapani, 49, was arrested on charges of having managed the business of the Resuttana family, one of the most important Cosa Nostra clans in Sicily. The other bosses called her La Padrona, or the Mistress.

“They were trying to reorganise,” said Col Antonio Di Stasio of the carabinieri, Italy’s military police, who oversaw the operation that also led to the arrest of 24 other suspects.

Police said Di Trapani was the link between the bosses in prison and those still at large and she had been appointed to liaise with other clans on the relaunch of Cosa Nostra. The Sicilian mafia is in a weakened state as prosecutors have jailed its key bosses and the death last month of the “boss of bosses” Totò Riina.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/05/italy-arrests-the-mistress-suspected-mastermind-of-mafia-reshuffle 

The Real Godfather: The True Story Of The Italian Cosa Nostra Boss Known As "The Tractor"

This week I watched an interesting BBC documentary on Netflix about Bernardo Provenzano, the then-73-year-old boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra who was finally arrested in April 2006 after 43 years as a fugitive. The hunt for Provenzano was one of the world's longest manhunts.

As the BBC noted, Provenzano was a teenage assassin for Cosa Nostra in the 1950s and rose swiftly through the ranks. His reputation for violence was so prolific that he became known as "The Tractor" because, as an informant put it, "he mowed people down."

You can read about Provenzano’s life and death in a piece in the British newspaper the Guardian via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/13/italian-mafia-boss-bernardo-tractor-provenzano-dies 

Former Sicilian Cosa Nostra Boss In United Kingdom Offers His Take On Murder of Roberto Calvi, Known as 'God's Banker'

Tony Thompson at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on the former Sicilian Cosa Nostra boss turned informant who is a suspect in the murder of Robert Calvi (seen in the above photo), known as “God’s Banker.” 

One month before the 30th anniversary of one of London's most enduring murder mysteries, the mafia godfather at the heart of the case has spoken for the first time about why he believes the real killers of Italian financier Roberto Calvi will never be brought to justice.

Calvi, dubbed "God's banker" because of his work with the Vatican, was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars bridge in London on 18 June 1982. Bricks had been stuffed in his pockets and he had more than £10,000 in cash on him. In the months before his death he had been accused of stealing millions being laundered on behalf of the mafia.

His death was originally ruled a suicide but later judged to be murder. In July 1991, Francesco "Frankie the Strangler" Di Carlo, a mafia godfather who had lived in England since the late 1970s, was named as Calvi's killer by a supergrass. Di Carlo has since become a supergrass himself.

Speaking from the small town in central Italy where he now lives, Di Carlo related how he first came to hear that he had been accused of Calvi's murder.

"I was in university – that's what I called the prisons in England. We were all in the association room watching television when the news came on that the killer of Calvi was Francesco Di Carlo. All the prisoners and guards looked over and stared. I just shrugged my shoulders and said that they must be talking about someone else with the same name as me."

Di Carlo seemed a likely suspect. He had arrived in the UK in the 1970s, relocating shortly after being linked to the murders of two Sicilian police officers.

He bought businesses and a palatial home but soon came under the watchful eye of British customs, who believed he had moved in order to oversee the Cosa Nostra's operations in the UK. Between 1980 and 1985 customs officers allegedly linked him to at least a dozen multimillion pound drug hauls, only a handful of which were intercepted.

... Although Di Carlo denies killing Calvi, he admits that he and his mafia colleagues wanted him dead and that his boss had attempted to contact him to carry out the hit.

"I was in Rome and received a phone call from a friend in Sicily telling me that a certain high-ranking mafia member had just been killed. I will never forget the date because of this: it was 16 June 1982 – two days before Calvi was murdered. The friend told me that Pippo Calò [known as the "mafia's cashier"] was trying to get hold of me because he needed me to do something for him. In the hierarchy of Cosa Nostra, he was a general, I was a colonel, so he was a little higher up, my superior.

"While I finally spoke to Pippo, he told me not to worry, that the problem had been taken care of. That's a code we use in the Cosa Nostra. We never talk about killing someone. We say they have been taken care of.

"Calvi was naming names. No one had any trust in him any more. He owed a lot of money. His friends had all distanced themselves. Everyone wanted to get rid of him. He had been arrested and he had started to talk. Then he had tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists. He was released, but knew he could be rearrested at any time. He was weak, he was a broken man. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/may/12/roberto-calvi-blackfriars-bridge-mafia 

Italy Struggles To Deal With An Aged “Godfather”

The Economist offers a piece on former Sicilian Cosa Nostra boss Salvatore “Tito” Riina, known as la belva – the beast.   

What place, if any, has humanity in a fight with barbarism? On June 5th such a question was posed in an unusual fashion in Italy when the country’s highest appeals court hinted that Salvatore “Totò” Riina should be freed to “die with dignity”. As the head of the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, Mr Riina is credited with ordering or committing several hundred murders, including those in 1992 of two of Italy’s modern heroes, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two anti-Mafia prosecutors.

The judges said a lower court’s rejection of an application for house arrest by Mr Riina (pictured) had not offered proof that he still posed a threat. The lower-court judges must now rewrite their verdict. If it is again judged unsatisfactory, the 86-year-old “godfather” could end his days in his home town of Corleone, in Sicily.

Also known as la belva (The Beast), Mr Riina is an exceptionally ferocious mobster. Under his command a 14-year-old boy was strangled before his body was dissolved in acid. After snatching the leadership of the Corleone “family”, Mr Riina took on the established clans in the Sicilian capital of Palermo, sparking a Mafia war that cost several hundred lives. Once he was recognised as the undisputed chief of Cosa Nostra, he led it into a terrorist onslaught on the state, which culminated in the assassination of the two prosecutors.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21723147-salvatore-tot-riina-once-head-cosa-nostra-wants-die-home-italy-struggles 

The Early Release Of Mafia Boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina, Known As The "Beast," To 'Die With Dignity,' Angers Families Of His Victims

Philip Pullella at the British newspaper the Independent offers a piece on the possible humanitarian release of an imprisoned Sicilian Cosa Nostra organized crime boss.

Italian politicians and relatives of victims of organized crime have voiced anger at a court ruling that opens the way for an ailing Mafia boss known as “the Beast” to be freed to “die with dignity”.

Salvatore “Toto” Riina, from the Sicilian hill town of Corleone made famous in The Godfather movies, was jailed in 1993. Known for his exceptional brutality, he was for years the Sicilian Mafia's “Boss of all Bosses”.

Riina declared a “war against the state” and ordered the killings of magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992. Both were blown up by bombs in attacks that left nine others dead.

Responding to a request by Riina’s lawyers, Italy highest court ruled late on Monday he had a right to “die with dignity” under house arrest like any other terminally ill prisoner. He is believed to have cancer, heart problems and Parkinson's disease.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italy-mafia-boss-salvatore-toto-riina-early-release-die-with-dignity-family-victims-murders-a7775861.html

Italian Government: Corleone's City Hall Is Mafia-infested

While serving on a U.S. Navy harbor tugboat at the nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland in 1975, I traveled to Sicily on vacation.

Being part-Italian on my mother's side, and as a student of crime since my early teens, I was curious to see the town of Corleone. Corleone, wrongly or rightly, is a town associated mostly with Cosa Nostra, Sicily's infamous organized crime group.

Prior to my trip to Sicily, I'd read a good number of travel and historical books on the island, as well as on Cosa Nostra, and of course I'd read the Mario Puzo novel, The Godfather. I also watched the first two films based on Puzo's novel a few years prior to my trip.

Corleone is the town that writer Mario Puzo used famously for his Godfather novel and he gave the name of the town to his main character. Film director Francis Ford Coppola also used the name of the town in his film series, but he filmed scenes in different towns in Sicily.

Hiring a car and driver in Palermo, I was driven through the beautiful countryside to Corleone and then given a tour of the picturesque Sicilian town with a dark and violent history. The people were warm, friendly and open, although the town held many criminal secrets, then and now.

It was an interesting day that I can still recall vividly.

The British newspaper The Telegraph offers a piece on how Corleone remains plagued by organized crime.        

The Italian government believes Mafiosi have infiltrated the local administration of Corleone, the Sicilian town which inspired the fictional crime clan's name in "The Godfather"novel and movie.

Premier Matteo Renzi's Cabinet on Wednesday dissolved Corleone's municipal government and put its City Hall under temporary control of the interior ministry.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano had proposed the action. Corleone's mayor also voiced worries about Mafia infiltration.

Using intimidation, Sicily's Cosa Nostra frequently influences decisions and public contract bidding or backs local politicians sympathetic to the Mafia's economic interests.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/10/italian-government-corleones-city-hall-is-mafia-infested/

You can also read an earlier post on the Sicilian Cosa Nostra via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/07/the-real-godfather-true-story-of.html

Cosa Nostra At A Crossroads As Nigerian Gangsters Hit Sicily's Shores

Lorenzo Tondo at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on the changing face of organized crime in Sicily.

Prosecutors in the Sicilian capital of Palermo are warning that a new alliance between the mafia and Nigerian criminal gangs moving in from Libya could herald a new era of organised crime.

“Even the Sicilian mafia has to deal with the wave of migration from Africa,” said Leonardo Agueci, Palermo’s deputy chief prosecutor. “The neighbourhoods under mafia control have changed profoundly in recent years due to the growing presence of foreigners, especially Nigerians coming on boats. Among them, there [are a small number] of people who want to transfer their illegal trafficking, linked to prostitution and drug dealing, to Sicily. And the mafia was quite happy to integrate them into their criminal business.”

In Ballarò, a mafia stronghold market area in the historic centre of the city, a whistle is traditionally used by drug dealers to attract customers, who are offered hashish, marijuana and cocaine. In the past this signal was only used by Italian dealers working for Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia. About two years ago, when Nigerians adopted the whistle, offering drugs at a discount, it was clear that a new criminal organisation had set foot in the city.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jun/11/mafia-palermo-nigerian-gangsters-hit-sicily-shores

Daggers, Pistols And Blood Bonds: How The Mafia Works

Oliva Goldhill at the British newspaper the Telegraph interviews John Dickie, author of Blood Brotherhoods: A History of Italy's Three Mafias and other books on Italian organized crime, about the current state of the secret criminal society La Cosa Nostra.

A strict moral code, archaic initiation ceremonies and… Uxbridge? When a Mafia criminal known as “The Professor” was discovered living in a West London suburb, his humdrum semi-detached house seemed an odd fit for a notorious Cosa Nostra boss.
 

Domenico Rancadore, who was a member of the Sicilian Mafia Cosa Nostra from 1987 to 1995, has been convicted of Mafia association and extortion.
 

Though he fought his first extradition attempt on human rights grounds, the former fugitive is now waiting to hear whether he’ll be sent to Italy for a seven-year sentence.
 

But does the criminal group he belonged to deserve its chilling reputation? Mafiosi receive automatic status and notoriety – in part because of the many films and tv shows that depict mob life. But how does The Godfather measure up to real life as a mafia godfather?    

... The Sicilian Mafia is 150 years old and has historically seen several hundred murders per year. In 1992, all Italian Mafias were responsible for more than 300 murders, though this fell by 80 per cent between 1992 and 2012 - down to 70 reported mafia-related homicides in 2012. And in the last few years, Cosa Nostra's number of members has dropped from 5,000 to 3,500.
 
The Mafia is still linked to drug trade – though not as much as they’d like – but make their living from protection rackets. “Managing protection rackets are the day-to-day business of the Mafia boss, that’s what he gets up in the morning and does,” says Dickie.
 
Under these rackets, the Mafia insist that businesses pay them regular fees as “protection” from crimes, while also demanding that criminals give the mafia a cut of any takings. And while the number of murders are down, that doesn’t mean that extortion is a peaceful affair.
 
“That kind of arrangement is the real blight of southern Italy,” says Dickie. “You don’t have to kill people to do an extortion racket. You can kill their dog and burn their shop.”

On top of their lucrative extortion rackets, Cosa Nostra is defined by its political links. In 2011, the former President of Sicily Salvatore Cuffaro was convicted of aiding the Mafia, and the criminal group is keen to make political friendships. “The Mafia wouldn’t be the Mafia without political links,” says Dickie. “The story of the last 20 years is of them trying to re-connect with politics because their bombing campaign didn’t go down terribly well.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11178975/Daggers-pistols-and-blood-bonds-how-the-Mafia-works.html

For a look at the American side of La Cosa Nostra, you can read my interview with Philip Leonetti, the former underboss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra crime family via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/01/crime-beat-column-mafia-prince-q-with.html 

FBI: A Look At The History And Current State Of Italian Organized Crime

The FBI offers their take on Italian organized crime below:

Since their appearance in the 1800s, the Italian criminal societies known as the Mafia have infiltrated the social and economic fabric of Italy and now impact the world. They are some of the most notorious and widespread of all criminal societies.

There are several groups currently active in the U.S.: the Sicilian Mafia; the Camorra or Neapolitan Mafia; the ’Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia; and the Sacra Corona Unita or United Sacred Crown.

We estimate the four groups have approximately 25,000 members total, with 250,000 affiliates worldwide. There are more than 3,000 members and affiliates in the U.S., scattered mostly throughout the major cities in the Northeast, the Midwest, California, and the South. Their largest presence centers around New York, southern New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

Their criminal activities are international with members and affiliates in Canada, South America, Australia, and parts of Europe. They are also known to collaborate with other international organized crime groups from all over the world, especially in drug trafficking.

The major threats to American society posed by these groups are drug trafficking and money laundering. They have been involved in heroin trafficking for decades. Two major investigations that targeted Italian organized crime drug trafficking in the 1980s are known as the “French Connection” and the “Pizza Connection.”

These groups don’t limit themselves to drug running, though. They’re also involved in illegal gambling, political corruption, extortion, kidnapping, fraud, counterfeiting, infiltration of legitimate businesses, murders, bombings, and weapons trafficking. Industry experts in Italy estimate that their worldwide criminal activity is worth more than $100 billion annually. 

A Long History

These enterprises evolved over the course of 3,000 years during numerous periods of invasion and exploitation by numerous conquering armies in Italy. Over the millennia, Sicilians became more clannish and began to rely on familial ties for safety, protection, justice, and survival.

An underground secret society formed initially as resistance fighters against the invaders and to exact frontier vigilante justice against oppression. A member was known as a “Man Of Honor,” respected and admired because he protected his family and friends and kept silent even unto death.

Sicilians weren’t concerned if the group profited from its actions because it came at the expense of the oppressive authorities. These secret societies eventually grew into the Mafia.

Since the 1900s, thousands of Italian organized crime figures—mostly Sicilian Mafiosi—have come illegally to this country. Many who fled here in the early 1920s helped establish what is known today as La Cosa Nostra or the American Mafia.

Charles “Lucky” Luciano, a Mafioso from Sicily, came to the U.S. during this era and is credited for making the American La Cosa Nostra what it is today. Luciano structured the La Cosa Nostra after the Sicilian Mafia. When Luciano was deported back to Italy in 1946 for operating a prostitution ring, he became a liaison between the Sicilian Mafia and La Cosa Nostra. 

Sicilian Mafia (based in Sicily)

The Sicilian Mafia formed in the mid-1800s to unify the Sicilian peasants against their enemies. In Sicily, the word Mafia tends to mean “manly.” The Sicilian Mafia changed from a group of honorable Sicilian men to an organized criminal group in the 1920s.

In the 1950s, Sicily enjoyed a massive building boom. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the Sicilian Mafia gained control of the building contracts and made millions of dollars. Today, the Sicilian Mafia has evolved into an international organized crime group. Some experts estimate it is the second largest organization in Italy.

The Sicilian Mafia specializes in heroin trafficking, political corruption, and military arms trafficking—and is also known to engage in arson, frauds, counterfeiting, and other racketeering crimes. With an estimated 2,500 Sicilian Mafia affiliates it is the most powerful and most active Italian organized crime group in the U.S.

The Sicilian Mafia is infamous for its aggressive assaults on Italian law enforcement officials. In Sicily the term “Excellent Cadaver” is used to distinguish the assassination of prominent government officials from the common criminals and ordinary citizens killed by the Mafia. High-ranking victims include police commissioners, mayors, judges, police colonels and generals, and Parliament members.

On May 23, 1992, the Sicilian Mafia struck Italian law enforcement with a vengeance. At approximately 6 p.m., Italian Magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife, and three police body guards were killed by a massive bomb. Falcone was the director of Criminal Affairs in Rome. The bomb made a crater 30 feet in diameter in the road. The murders became known as the Capaci Massacre.

Less than two months later, on July 19, the Mafia struck Falcone’s newly named replacement, Judge Paolo Borsellino in Palermo, Sicily. Borsellino and five bodyguards were killed outside the apartment of Borsellino’s mother when a car packed with explosives was detonated by remote control.

Under Judge Falcone’s tenure the FBI and Italian law enforcement established a close working relationship aimed at dismantling Italian organized crime groups operating in both countries. That relationship has intensified since then. 

Camorra or Neapolitan Mafia (based in Naples)

The word “Camorra” means gang. The Camorra first appeared in the mid-1800s in Naples, Italy, as a prison gang. Once released, members formed clans in the cities and continued to grow in power. The Camorra has more than 100 clans and approximately 7,000 members, making it the largest of the Italian organized crime groups.

In the 1970s, the Sicilian Mafia convinced the Camorra to convert their cigarette smuggling routes into drug smuggling routes with the Sicilian Mafia’s assistance. Not all Camorra leaders agreed, leading to the Camorra Wars that cost 400 lives. Opponents of drug trafficking lost the war.

The Camorra made a fortune in reconstruction after an earthquake ravaged the Campania region in 1980. Now it specializes in cigarette smuggling and receives payoffs from other criminal groups for any cigarette traffic through Italy. The Camorra is also involved in money laundering, extortion, alien smuggling, robbery, blackmail, kidnapping, political corruption, and counterfeiting.

It is believed that nearly 200 Camorra affiliates reside in this country, many of whom arrived during the Camorra Wars. 

’Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia (based in Calabria)

The word “’Ndrangheta” comes from the Greek meaning courage or loyalty. The ’Ndrangheta formed in the 1860s when a group of Sicilians was banished from the island by the Italian government. They settled in Calabria and formed small criminal groups.

There are about 160 ’Ndrangheta cells with roughly 6,000 members. They specialize in kidnapping and political corruption, but also engage in drug trafficking, murder, bombings, counterfeiting, gambling, frauds, thefts, labor racketeering, loansharking, and alien smuggling.

Cells are loosely connected family groups based on blood relationships and marriages. In the U.S., there are an estimated 100-200 members and associates, primarily in New York and Florida. 

Sacra Corona Unita or United Sacred Crown (based in the Puglia region)

Law enforcement became aware of the Sacra Corona Unita in the late 1980s. Like other groups, it started as a prison gang. As its members were released, they settled in the Puglia region in Italy and continued to grow and form links with other Mafia groups. The Sacra Corona Unita is headquartered in Brindisi, located in the southeastern region of Puglia.

The Sacra Corona Unita consists of about 50 clans with approximately 2,000 members and specializes in smuggling cigarettes, drugs, arms, and people. It is also involved in money laundering, extortion, and political corruption. The organization collects payoffs from other criminal groups for landing rights on the southeast coast of Italy, a natural gateway for smuggling to and from post-Communist countries like Croatia, Yugoslavia, and Albania.

Very few Sacra Corona Unita members have been identified in the U.S., although some individuals in Illinois, Florida, and New York have links to the organization.

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La Cosa Nostra

 

La Cosa Nostra is the foremost organized criminal threat to American society. Literally translated into English it means “this thing of ours.” It is a nationwide alliance of criminals—linked by blood ties or through conspiracy—dedicated to pursuing crime and protecting its members.

La Cosa Nostra, or the LCN as it is known by the FBI, consists of different “families” or groups that are generally arranged geographically and engaged in significant and organized racketeering activity. It is also known as the Mafia, a term used to describe other organized crime groups.

The LCN is most active in the New York metropolitan area, parts of New Jersey, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, and New England. It has members in other major cities and is involved in international crimes. 

History of La Cosa Nostra

Although La Cosa Nostra has its roots in Italian organized crime, it has been a separate organization for many years. Today, La Cosa Nostra cooperates in various criminal activities with different criminal groups that are headquartered in Italy.

Giuseppe Esposito was the first known Sicilian Mafia member to emigrate to the U.S. He and six other Sicilians fled to New York after murdering the chancellor and a vice chancellor of a Sicilian province and 11 wealthy landowners. He was arrested in New Orleans in 1881 and extradited to Italy.

New Orleans was also the site of the first major Mafia incident in this country. On October 15, 1890, New Orleans Police Superintendent David Hennessey was murdered execution-style. Hundreds of Sicilians were arrested, and 19 were eventually indicted for the murder. An acquittal generated rumors of widespread bribery and intimidated witnesses. Outraged citizens of New Orleans organized a lynch mob and killed 11 of the 19 defendants. Two were hanged, nine were shot, and the remaining eight escaped.

The American Mafia has evolved over the years as various gangs assumed—and lost—dominance over the years: the Black Hand gangs around 1900; the Five Points Gang in the 1910s and ‘20s in New York City; Al Capone’s Syndicate in Chicago in the 1920s. By the end of the ‘20s, two primary factions had emerged, leading to a war for control of organized crime in New York City.

The murder of faction leader Joseph Masseria brought an end to the gang warfare, and the two groups united to form the organization now dubbed La Cosa Nostra. It was not a peaceful beginning: Salvatore Maranzano, the first leader of La Cosa Nostra, was murdered within six months.

Charles “Lucky” Luciano became the new leader. Maranzano had established the La Cosa Nostra code of conduct, set up the “family” divisions and structure, and established procedures for resolving disputes. Luciano set up the “Commission” to rule all La Cosa Nostra activities. The Commission included bosses from six or seven families.

Luciano was deported back to Italy in 1946 based on his conviction for operating a prostitution ring. There, he became a liaison between the Sicilian Mafia and La Cosa Nostra. 

Other Historical Highlights: 

1951: A U.S. Senate committee led by Democrat Estes Kefauver of Tennessee determined that a “sinister criminal organization” known as the Mafia operated in this nation. 

1957: The New York State Police uncovered a meeting of major LCN figures from around the country in the small upstate New York town of Apalachin. Many of the attendees were arrested. The event was the catalyst that changed the way law enforcement battles organized crime.

1963: Joseph Valachi became the first La Cosa Nostra member to provide a detailed looked inside the organization. Recruited by FBI agents, Valachi revealed to a U.S. Senate committee numerous secrets of the organization, including its name, structure, power bases, codes, swearing-in ceremony, and members of the organization.

Today, La Cosa Nostra is involved in a broad spectrum of illegal activities: murder, extortion, drug trafficking, corruption of public officials, gambling, infiltration of legitimate businesses, labor racketeering, loan sharking, prostitution, pornography, tax-fraud schemes, and stock manipulation schemes. 

The Genovese Crime Family

Named after legendary boss Vito Genovese, the Genovese crime family was once considered the most powerful organized crime family in the nation. Members and their numerous associates engaged in drug trafficking, murder, assault, gambling, extortion, loansharking, labor racketeering, money laundering, arson, gasoline bootlegging, and infiltration of legitimate businesses.

Genovese family members are also involved in stock market manipulation and other illegal frauds and schemes as evidenced by the recent FBI investigation code named “Mobstocks.”

The Genovese crime family has its roots in the Italian criminal groups in New York controlled by Joseph Masseria in the 1920s. The family history is rife with murder, violence, and greed. 

Early History—Masseria and Maranzano

Masseria sparked the so-called “Castellammarese War” in 1928 when he tried to gain control of organized crime across the country. The war ended in 1931 when Salvatore Maranzano conspired with Masseria’s top soldier, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, to have Masseria killed. Maranzano emerged as the most powerful Mafia boss in the nation, setting up five separate criminal groups in New York and calling himself “Boss of Bosses.”

Two of the most powerful La Cosa Nostra families—known today as the Genovese and Gambino families—emerged from Maranzano’s restructuring efforts. Maranzano named Luciano the first boss of what would later be known as the Genovese family. Luciano showed his appreciation less than five months later by sending five men dressed as police officers to Maranzano’s office to murder him. 

Luciano, Costello, and Genovese

With Maranzano out of the way, Luciano become the most powerful Mafia boss in America and used his position to run La Cosa Nostra like a major corporation. He set up the LCN Commission, or ruling body, composed of seven bosses, and divided the different rackets among the families.

In 1936, Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison. Ten years later, he was released from prison and deported to Italy, never to return. When he was convicted, Frank Costello became acting boss because Genovese—then just an underboss—had fled to Italy to avoid a murder charge. His return to the states was cleared when a key witness against him was poisoned and the charges were dropped.

Costello led the family for approximately 20 years until May of 1957 when Genovese took control by sending soldier Vincent “the Chin” Gigante to murder him. Costello survived the attack but relinquished control of the family to Genovese. Attempted murder charges against Gigante were dismissed when Costello refused to identify him as the shooter.

In 1959, it was Genovese’s turn to go to prison following a conviction of conspiracy to violate narcotics laws. He received a 15-year sentence but continued to run the family through his underlings from his prison cell in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Valachi Sings—and Lombardo Leads

About this time, Joseph Valachi, a “made man,” was sent to the same prison as Genovese on a narcotics conviction. Labeled an informer, Valachi survived three attempts on his life behind bars.

Still in prison in 1962, he killed a man he thought Genovese had sent to kill him. He was sentenced to life for the murder.

The sentencing was a turning point for Valachi, who decided to cooperate with the U.S. government.

On September 27, 1963, he appeared before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and testified that he was a member of a secret criminal society in the U.S. known as La Cosa Nostra.

In 1969, several years after Valachi began cooperating with the FBI, Vito Genovese died in his prison cell. By then the Genovese family was under the control of Philip “Benny Squint” Lombardo. Unlike the bosses before him, Lombardo preferred to rule behind his underboss. His first, Thomas Eboli, was murdered in 1972. Lombardo promoted Frank “Funzi” Tieri, and later Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno as his front men.

Throughout the 1980s, the Genovese family hierarchy went through several changes. Tieri, recognized on the street as the Genovese family boss in the late 1970s, was convicted for operating a criminal organization through a pattern of racketeering that included murder and extortion.

Salerno then fronted as boss until he had stroke in 1981. In 1985, Salerno and the bosses of the other four New York families were convicted for operating a criminal enterprise—the LCN Commission. Lombardo, his two captains in prison and his health failing, turned full control of the Genovese family over to Gigante—the man who tried to kill Costello 30 years earlier. 

Fish on the Hook

In 1986, a second member turned against the Genovese family when Vincent “Fish” Cafaro, a soldier and right-hand-man to Anthony Salerno, decided to cooperate with the FBI and testify. According to Cafaro’s sworn statement, Gigante ran the family from behind the scenes while pretending to be mentally ill. Cafaro said this behavior helped further insulate Gigante from authorities while he ran the Genovese family’s criminal activities.

Gigante’s odd behavior and mumbling while he walked around New York’s East Village in a bathrobe earned him the nickname “the Odd Father.” After an FBI investigation, Gigante was convicted of racketeering and murder conspiracy in December 1997 and sentenced to 12 years. Another FBI investigation led to his indictment on January 17, 2002, accusing him of continuing to run the Genovese family from prison. He pled guilty to obstruction of justice in 2003.
Gigante died in prison in December 2005 in the same federal hospital where Gambino family leader John Gotti had died in 2002.

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The Italian American Working Group

Over the years, FBI investigations have revealed how organized criminal groups have proliferated and impacted much of the world. Partnerships with foreign law enforcement agencies are essential to combat global organized crime groups.
 

Among the partnerships the FBI is involved with is the Italian American Working Group, which meets every year. The group addresses organized crime, cyber crime, money laundering, international terrorism, illegal immigration, cooperating witnesses, drug smuggling, art theft, extradition matters, and cigarette smuggling. The U.S. and Italy take turns hosting the meetings.

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Labor Racketeering

Labor racketeering is the domination, manipulation, and control of a labor movement in order to affect related businesses and industries. It can lead to the denial of workers’ rights and inflicts an economic loss on the workers, business, industry, insurer, or consumer. 
 

The historical involvement of La Cosa Nostra in labor racketeering has been thoroughly documented:

• More than one-third of the 58 members arrested in 1957 at the Apalachin conference in New York listed their employment as “labor” or “labor-management relations.”
• Three major U.S. Senate investigations have documented La Cosa Nostra’s involvement in labor racketeering. One of these, the McClellan Committee, in the late-1950s, found systemic racketeering in both the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.
• In 1986, the President’s Council on Organized Crime reported that five major unions—including the Teamsters and the Laborers International Union of North America—were dominated by organized crime.
• In the early 1980s, former Gambino Family Boss Paul Castellano was overheard saying, “Our job is to run the unions.”

Labor racketeering has become one of La Cosa Nostra’s fundamental sources of profit, national power, and influence.

 

FBI investigations over the years have clearly demonstrated that labor racketeering costs the American public millions of dollars each year through increased labor costs that are eventually passed on to consumers.

 

Labor unions provide a rich source for organized criminal groups to exploit: their pension, welfare, and health funds. There are approximately 75,000 union locals in the U.S., and many of them maintain their own benefit funds. In the mid-1980s, the Teamsters controlled more than 1,000 funds with total assets of more than $9 billion.

 

Labor racketeers attempt to control health, welfare, and pension plans by offering “sweetheart” contracts, peaceful labor relations, and relaxed work rules to companies, or by rigging union elections.

 

Labor law violations occur primarily in large cities with both a strong industrial base and strong labor unions, like New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia. These cities also have a large presence of organized crime figures.

 

We have several investigative techniques to root out labor law violations: electronic surveillance, undercover operations, confidential sources, and victim interviews. We also have numerous criminal and civil statutes to use at our disposal, primarily through the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Statute.

 

The civil provisions of the RICO statute have proven to be very powerful weapons, especially the consent decrees. They are often more productive because they attack the entire corrupt entity instead of imprisoning individuals, who can easily be replaced with other organized crime members or associates.

 

Consent decrees are most effective when there is long-term, systemic corruption at virtually every level of a labor union by criminal organizations. A civil RICO complaint and subsequent consent decree can restore democracy to a corrupt union by imposing civil remedies designed to eliminate such corruption and deter its re-emergence.

 

The Teamsters are the best example of how efficiently the civil RICO process can be used. For decades, the Teamsters has been substantially controlled by La Cosa Nostra. In recent years, four of eight Teamster presidents were indicted, yet the union continued to be controlled by organized crime elements. The government has been fairly successful at removing the extensive criminal influence from this 1.4 million-member union by using the civil process.

 

We work closely with the Office of Labor Racketeering in the Department of Labor and with the U.S. Attorneys’ offices in investigating violations of labor law.  

 

Note: The above photo is of Nicodemo Scarfo, the former boss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra organized crime family. He is currently in federal prison.

The photo of Scarfo was provided by Philip Leonetti, the former underboss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra organized crime family.

 

You can read my interview with Philip Leonetti via the below link:

 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/01/crime-beat-column-mafia-prince-q-with.html