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Start Writing Get the app. On January 16, , prohibition began in the United States with the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution making it illegal to manufacture, transport, or sell alcohol.

Despite these bans, there was still a very high demand for it from the public. This created an atmosphere that tolerated crime as a means to provide liquor to the public, even among the police and city politicians.

There were over , cases of liquor shipped to the borders of U. The majority of the alcohol was imported from Canada, [23] [24] the Caribbean, and the American Midwest where stills manufactured illegal alcohol.

In the early s, fascist Benito Mussolini took control of Italy and waves of Italian immigrants fled to the United States. Sicilian Mafia members also fled to the United States, as Mussolini cracked down on Mafia activities in Italy. As a way to escape the poor lifestyle, some Italian immigrants chose to join the American Mafia.

The Mafia took advantage of prohibition and began selling illegal alcohol. The profits from bootlegging far exceeded the traditional crimes of protection, extortion, gambling, and prostitution. Prohibition allowed Mafia families to make fortunes. The bootlegging industry organized members of these gangs before they were distinguished as today's known families.

Gangs hijacked each other's alcohol shipments, forcing rivals to pay them for "protection" to leave their operations alone, and armed guards almost invariably accompanied the caravans that delivered the liquor. In the s, Italian Mafia families began waging wars for absolute control over lucrative bootlegging rackets.

As the violence erupted, Italians fought Irish and Jewish ethnic gangs for control of bootlegging in their respective territories. In New York City, Frankie Yale waged war with the Irish American White Hand Gang.

In Chicago, Al Capone and his family massacred the North Side Gang , another Irish American outfit. Maranzano then divided New York City into five families.

This new role was received negatively, and Maranzano was murdered within six months on the orders of Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano was a former Masseria underling who had switched sides to Maranzano and orchestrated the killing of Masseria.

As an alternative to the previous despotic Mafia practice of naming a single Mafia boss as capo di tutti capi , or "boss of all bosses", Luciano created The Commission in , [13] where the bosses of the most powerful families would have equal say and vote on important matters and solve disputes between families.

This group ruled over the National Crime Syndicate and brought in an era of peace and prosperity for the American Mafia. The Mafia thrived by following a strict set of rules that originated in Sicily that called for an organized hierarchical structure and a code of silence that forbade its members from cooperating with the police Omertà.

Failure to follow any of these rules was punishable by death. The rise of power that the Mafia acquired during prohibition would continue long after alcohol was made legal again. Criminal empires which had expanded on bootleg money would find other avenues to continue making large sums of money.

When alcohol ceased to be prohibited in , the Mafia diversified its money-making criminal activities to include both old and new : illegal gambling operations, loan sharking , extortion , protection rackets , drug trafficking, fencing , and labor racketeering through control of labor unions.

In New York City, most construction projects could not be performed without the Five Families ' approval. In the port and loading dock industries, the Mafia bribed union members to tip them off to valuable items being brought in.

Mobsters would then steal these products and fence the stolen merchandise. Meyer Lansky made inroads into the casino industry in Cuba during the s while the Mafia was already involved in exporting Cuban sugar and rum.

One estimate of the number of casinos mobsters owned was no less than investment in the country, putting an end to the Mafia's presence in Cuba. Las Vegas was seen as an "open city" where any family can work.

Once Nevada legalized gambling, mobsters were quick to take advantage and the casino industry became very popular in Las Vegas.

Since the s, Mafia families from New York, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Chicago had interests in Las Vegas casinos. They got loans from the Teamsters ' pension fund, a union they effectively controlled, and used legitimate front men to build casinos.

Operating in the shadows, the Mafia faced little opposition from law enforcement. Local law enforcement agencies did not have the resources or knowledge to effectively combat organized crime committed by a secret society they were unaware existed.

Senate committee called the Kefauver Hearings determined that a "sinister criminal organization" known as the Mafia operated in the nation. In , New York State Police uncovered a meeting and arrested major figures from around the country in Apalachin, New York.

The event dubbed the " Apalachin Meeting " forced the FBI to recognize organized crime as a serious problem in the United States and changed the way law enforcement investigated it. More importantly, he revealed the Mafia's existence to the law, which enabled the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin an aggressive assault on the Mafia's National Crime Syndicate.

The FBI put a lot more effort and resources into organized crime activities nationwide and created the Organized Crime Strike Force in various cities. While all this created more pressure on the Mafia, it did little, however, to curb its criminal activities. Progress was made by the beginning of the s, when the FBI was able to rid Las Vegas casinos of Mafia control and made a determined effort to loosen the Mafia's stronghold on labor unions.

By the late s, the Mafia were involved in many industries, [13] including betting on college sports. Several Mafia members associated with the Lucchese crime family participated in a point shaving scandal involving the Boston College basketball team.

Rick Kuhn, Henry Hill , and others associated with the Lucchese crime family, manipulated the results of the games during the — basketball season. Through bribing and intimidating several members of the team, they ensured their bets on the point spread of each game would go in their favor. One of the most lucrative gains for the Mafia was through gas-tax fraud.

They created schemes to keep the money that they owed in taxes after the sale of millions of dollars' worth of wholesale petroleum. This allowed them to sell more gasoline at even lower prices. Franzese was caught in Labor racketeering helped the Mafia control many industries from a macroeconomic scale.

This tactic helped them grow in power and influence in many cities with big labor unions such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and many others. Many members of the Mafia were enlisted in unions and even became union executives. The Mafia has controlled unions all over the U.

to extort money and resources out of big business, with recent indictments of corruption involving the New Jersey Waterfront Union, the Concrete Workers Union, and the Teamster Union.

Restaurants were yet another powerful means by which the Mafia could gain economic power. A large concentration of Mafia-owned restaurants was in New York City. Not only were they the setting of many killings and important meetings, but they were also an effective means of smuggling drugs and other illegal goods.

From to , Sicilian Mafiosi in the U. Another one of the areas of the economy that the Mafia was most influential was Las Vegas, Nevada , beginning just after World War II with the opening of the first gambling resort, The Flamingo.

This capital did not come from one Mafia family alone, but many throughout the country seeking to gain even more power and wealth. Large profits from casinos, run as legitimate businesses, would help to finance many of the illegal activities of the Mafia from the s into the s.

Tourism in the city greatly increased through the s and strengthened the local economy. The s were also when the Mafia's influence in the Las Vegas economy began to dwindle, however.

In , the Nevada State Legislature passed a law that made it easier for corporations to own casinos. This brought new investors to the local economy to buy casinos from the Mafia.

The U. Congress passed the RICO Act a year later. This law gave more authority to law enforcement to pursue the Mafia for its illegal activities. There was a sharp decline in mob involvement in Las Vegas in the s. Through the RICO law, many in the Mafia were convicted and imprisoned.

When the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act RICO Act became federal law in , it became a highly effective tool in prosecuting mobsters. It provides for extended criminal penalties for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. A high-profile RICO case sentenced John Gotti and Frank Locascio to life in prison in , [49] with the help of informant Sammy Gravano in exchange for immunity from prosecution for his crimes.

This led to dozens of mobsters testifying and providing information during the s, which led to the imprisonment of hundreds of other members.

As a result, the Mafia has seen a major decline in its power and influence in organized crime since the s. On January 9, , Bonanno crime family boss Joseph Massino was arrested and indicted, alongside Salvatore Vitale , Frank Lino and capo Daniel Mongelli, in a comprehensive racketeering indictment.

The charges against Massino himself included ordering the murder of Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano. Andres and Robert Henoch heading the prosecution. His sentencing was initially scheduled for October 12, and he was expected to receive a sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

Immediately after his July 30 conviction, as court was adjourned, Massino requested a meeting with Judge Garaufis, where he made his first offer to cooperate. In the 21st century, the Mafia has continued to be involved in a broad spectrum of illegal activities.

These include murder, extortion, corruption of public officials, gambling, infiltration of legitimate businesses, labor racketeering, loan sharking, tax fraud schemes and stock manipulation schemes. The American Mafia operates on a strict hierarchical structure.

While similar to its Sicilian origins, the American Mafia's modern organizational structure was created by Salvatore Maranzano in He created the Five Families , each of which would have a boss , underboss , capos , soldiers —all only of full-blooded Italian origin—while associates could come from any background.

This signifies that they are untouchable in the criminal underworld and any harm brought to them will be met with retaliation. With the exception of associates, all mobsters within the Mafia are "made" official members of a crime family. The three highest positions make up the administration.

Below the administration, there are factions each headed by a caporegime captain , who leads a crew of soldiers and associates. They report to the administration and can be seen as equivalent to managers in a business.

When a boss makes a decision, he rarely issues orders directly to workers who would carry it out but instead passes instructions down through the chain of command.

This way, the higher levels of the organization are insulated from law enforcement attention if the lower level members who actually commit the crime should be captured or investigated, providing plausible deniability. There are occasionally other positions in the family leadership.

Frequently, ruling panels have been set up when a boss goes to jail to divide the responsibility of the family these usually consist of three or five members.

This also helps divert police attention from any one member. The family messenger and street boss were positions created by former Genovese family leader Vincent Gigante. The Mafia initiation ritual to become a made man in the Mafia emerged from various sources, such as Roman Catholic confraternities and Masonic Lodges in midth century Sicily.

The oath of loyalty to the Mafia Family is called the Omerta. This was confirmed in by the pentito Tommaso Buscetta. A hit, or murder, of a made man must be approved by the leadership of his family, or retaliatory hits would be made, possibly inciting a war.

In a state of war, families would "go to the mattresses," which means to prepare for a war or be prepared in a war-like stance. It was mainly derived from the film The Godfather , as the origin of the phrase is unknown.

In , John D'Amato , acting boss of the DeCavalcante family, was killed when he was suspected of engaging in homosexual activity.

The following is a list of Mafia families that have been active in the U. Note that some families have members and associates working in other regions as well. The organization is not limited to these regions. The Bonanno crime family and the Buffalo crime family also had influence in several factions in Canada including the Rizzuto crime family and Cotroni crime family , [82] [83] [84] and the Luppino crime family and Papalia crime family , [85] [86] respectively.

Naval Intelligence entered into an agreement with Lucky Luciano to gain his assistance in keeping the New York waterfront free from saboteurs after the destruction of the SS Normandie. While it was in the process of being converted into a troopship, the luxury ocean liner, SS Normandie , mysteriously burst into flames with 1, sailors and civilians on board.

All but one escaped, but were injured and by the next day the ship was a smoking hull. In his report, twelve years later, William B. Herlands, Commissioner of Investigation, made the case for the U.

government talking to top criminals, stating "The Intelligence authorities were greatly concerned with the problems of sabotage and espionage…Suspicions were rife with respect to the leaking of information about convoy movements.

The Normandie , which was being converted to war use as the Navy auxiliary Lafayette , had burned at the pier in the North River, New York City. Sabotage was suspected.

In August , Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the Office of Security of the Central Intelligence Agency CIA , proposed the assassination of Cuban head of state Fidel Castro by Mafia assassins.

Between August and April , the CIA, with the help of the Mafia, pursued a series of plots to poison or shoot Castro. In , Linda Schiro testified in an unrelated court case that her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa , a capo in the Colombo family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find the bodies of three civil rights workers who had been murdered in Mississippi in by the Ku Klux Klan.

She said that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed him being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents.

She testified that Scarpa had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in the Klansman's mouth, forcing the Klansman to reveal the location of the bodies.

Similar stories of Mafia involvement in recovering the bodies had been circulating for years, and had been previously published in the New York Daily News , but had never before been introduced in court.

In several Mafia families, killing a state authority is forbidden due to the possibility of extreme police retaliation.

In some rare strict cases, conspiring to commit such a murder is punishable by death. Jewish mobster and Mafia associate Dutch Schultz was reportedly killed by his Italian peers out of fear that he would carry out a plan to kill New York City prosecutor Thomas Dewey and thus bring unprecedented police attention to the Mafia.

However, the Mafia has carried out hits on law enforcement, especially in its earlier history. New York police officer Joe Petrosino was shot by Sicilian mobsters while on duty in Sicily. A statue of him was later erected across the street from a Lucchese hangout.

In , a U. Senate special committee , chaired by Democratic Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver , determined that a "sinister criminal organization" known as the Mafia operated around the United States. The United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce known as the "Kefauver Hearings" , televised nationwide, captured the attention of the American people and forced the FBI to recognize the existence of organized crime.

In , the FBI initiated the "Top Hoodlum Program". The purpose of the program was to have agents collect information on the mobsters in their territories and report it regularly to Washington to maintain a centralized collection of intelligence on racketeers.

The Apalachin meeting was a historic summit of the American Mafia held at the home of mobster Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara , at McFall Road in Apalachin, New York , on November 14, As a result of the Apalachin meeting, the membership books to become a made man in the mob were closed, and were not reopened until Local and state law enforcement became suspicious when numerous expensive cars bearing license plates from around the country arrived in what was described as "the sleepy hamlet of Apalachin".

Twenty of those who attended the meeting were charged with "Conspiring to obstruct justice by lying about the nature of the underworld meeting" and found guilty in January All the convictions were overturned on appeal the following year.

Edgar Hoover , had long refused to acknowledge. Genovese crime family soldier Joe Valachi was convicted of narcotics violations in and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Valachi murdered a man in prison who he feared mob boss, and fellow prisoner, Vito Genovese had ordered to kill him.

Valachi and Genovese were both serving sentences for heroin trafficking. Soon after, Valachi decided to cooperate with the U. Justice Department. McClellan 's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.

Senate Committee on Government Operations , known as the Valachi hearings , stating that the Italian-American Mafia actually existed, the first time a member had acknowledged its existence in public. He was the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to acknowledge its existence publicly, and is credited with popularization of the term cosa nostra.

Although Valachi's disclosures never led directly to the prosecution of any Mafia leaders, he provided many details of history of the Mafia , operations and rituals, aided in the solution of several unsolved murders, and named many members and the major crime families.

The trial exposed American organized crime to the world through Valachi's televised testimony. As part of the Mafia Commission Trial , on February 25, , nine New York Mafia leaders were indicted for narcotics trafficking, loansharking, gambling, labor racketeering and extortion against construction companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Prosecutors aimed to strike at all the crime families at once using their involvement in the Commission. In the early s, the Bonanno family were kicked off the Commission due to the Donnie Brasco infiltration, and although Rastelli was one of the men initially indicted, this removal from the Commission actually allowed Rastelli to be removed from the Commission Trial as he was later indicted on separate labor racketeering charges.

Having previously lost their seat on the Commission, the Bonannos suffered less exposure than the other families in this case. Eight defendants were convicted of racketeering on November 19, , [] with the exception of Indelicato who was convicted of murder, [] and were sentenced on January 13, , as follows: [] [].

In the early s, as the Colombo crime family war raged, the Commission refused to allow any Colombo member to sit on the Commission [] and considered dissolving the family. On January 20, , the United States Justice Department issued 16 indictments against Northeast American Mafia families resulting in charged defendants [] and more than arrests.

It has been described as the largest operation against the Mafia in U. The film Scarface is loosely based on the story of Al Capone. In , Paramount Pictures released the film The Brotherhood starring Kirk Douglas as a Mafia don, which was a financial flop. Nevertheless, Paramount's production chief Robert Evans subsidized the completion of a Mario Puzo novel with similar themes and plot elements and bought the screen rights before completion.

It immediately inspired other Mafia-related films, including a direct sequel, The Godfather Part II , also partly based on Puzo's novel , and yet another big winner at the Academy Awards , as well as films based on real Mafiosi like Honor Thy Father and Lucky Luciano both in and Lepke and Capone both in A part miniseries by NBC called The Gangster Chronicles based on the rise of many major crime bosses of the s and s, aired in Although the show is fictional, the general storyline is based on its creator David Chase's experiences growing up and interacting with New Jersey crime families.

Fat Tony in The Simpsons is described as "a mobster and the underboss of the Springfield Mafia". The Mafia has been the subject of multiple crime-related video games. The Mafia series by 2K Czech and Hangar 13 consists of three games that follow the story of individuals who inadvertently become caught up with one or multiple fictional Mafia families while attempting to rise in their ranks or bring them down as revenge for something they did to them.

The Grand Theft Auto series by Rockstar Games also features the Mafia prominently, mainly in the games set within the fictional Liberty City based on New York ; the games set in the "3D universe" canon feature the Forelli, Leone and Sindacco families, while those in the "HD universe" have the Ancelotti, Gambetti, Lupisella, Messina and Pavano families a reference to the Five Families , as well as the less-influential Pegorino family.

In all games, the different Mafia families serve as either employers or enemies to the player. In , The Godfather was released, based on the film of the same name; it spawned a sequel , itself based on the film's sequel. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Download QR code Wikidata item.

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons. Highly organized Italian American criminal society. For other uses, see Mafia disambiguation. Further information: Sicilian Mafia § Etymology.

Main article: Black Hand extortion. Further information: The Commission American Mafia. Main article: List of Italian Mafia crime families § United States.

See also: List of Italian American mobsters and List of American mobsters by organization. Main article: Apalachin Meeting. Main article: Valachi hearings. See also: List of organized crime video games. Atlantic City Conference The Corporation "Cuban mafia" D-Company "Indian mafia" Havana Conference Jewish-American organized crime Irish-American organized crime African-American organized crime La Eme "Mexican Mafia" Timeline of organized crime Triad "Chinese mafia" Unione Corse "Corsican mafia" Yakuza "Japanese mafia" Bratva "Russian mafia" Sicilian Mafia Camorra Ndrangheta Sacra Corona Unita.

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Cosa Nostra James B. Jacobs, Christopher Panarella, Jay Worthington. NYU Press, SAGE Publications. Retrieved August 10, The Everything Mafia Book: True-Life Accounts of Legendary Figures, Infamous Crime Families, and Chilling Events. Everything series illustrated ed. Everything Books. Archived from the original on January 19, October 7, Archived from the original on August 13, Retrieved June 14, Archived from the original on August 21, Archived from the original on August 12, Retrieved June 23, SSRN December 6, International Center National Institute of Justice.

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