I don't know if this has been posted before, but found an interesting article on Giuseppe Morello from 1922, after he was released from prison and hiding in Sicily.

I didn't realize that at least part of the counterfeit operation was really a form of extortion where they made Italian shop owners give them change for obviously fake bills. I always thought they tried to pass them as real money.

Also a clever scheme was to send shop owners black hand letters and walk into the store only minutes later and have the owner ask for his help, of course for a price.

Read the article here.

Thanks for this good old fashioned article. A very great find. I too never read of that detail of exactly how they did their counterfeiting. That's almost like money laundering through an unwilling partner. If they thought they could continue to get away with that, they were truly primitive brutes.

Yes, or as Flynn asked, why bother counterfeiting at all? Why not just extort money. I guess it was just that they invested in counterfeiting and even though the results were bad, they weren't going to let that investment go to waste. In First Family I remember reading that they did have a whole crew of sicilians spreading the fake money around the city, so maybe the neighborhood shop owners were just the lucky ones to get the absolutely worst bills. It probably can't even be called money laundering, since the victims surely wouldn't risk their freedom by using these counterfeits for anything.

Hi Bellette. To read this little gem, I went out and got me a cup of coffee so I could sit down and enjoy it while I took it all in.

Apparently the little Morrellos did try to pass the money off on an official source. They tried to pass one of their horrible renditions of a US note at the Iron National Bank in Morristown, N.J.. Apparently, that move is what tripped them up.

I guess the gist of the article is that when they tried to pass their crayola crayon colored monopoly money off on the officials at that bank, that's when the Secret Service got involved. Counterfeiting is under the domain of the Secret Service.

The National Iron Bank of Morristown NJ was printing different types of US currency back in a time when "National Bank Notes" were being used. These are different from what we call a "US Dollar" today. I guess Guiseppe and Co. thought that a bank that dealt with different types of US currencies could be fooled. But from what I understand, not even the ink and printing quality of the Morello counterfeit money was any good.

The article is a good read. It's funny at times, and also surprising at others. It goes a little further beyond whatever we might have picked up from most mafia books mentioning the Morellos.

Hey Alfa!

Yes I agree with you based on what is written in this article. I was just wondering, because from the book The First Family by Mike Dash I got a different impression. I don't know if you've read it? Anyway, it's a great, well researched book with a ton of info.

I have yet to read a Mike Dash book. But I've heard of First Family. If you say it's a good book, maybe I can give that a read. I just downloaded "The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of The Drug War" by veteran DEA Agent Mike Levine. Nowawdays you can take your library with you in your smartphone anywhere you go. iPhone is getting me back into reading more.

You should absolutely read The First Family. It's really well researched and the sources are listed. You can find a download for that one too. I recommend buying it of course, cause it's worth it. I tend to only steal the books when it would benefit the gangster. Then stealing is fun, no?

BTW maybe you mean downloaded legally, but same applies.

Great find thanks for sharing it

Hey, welcome to the board.

First FAmily is a great read, all about the Morellos, TErranovas, DAquila, MIneo, a must if you are into the Genovese family...

LOL why go through all of that trouble when you can just buy and download from Amazon into your Kindle-for-PC and Kindle-for-iPhone? "The Big White Lie" cost me a grand total of a whopping 2 dollars and 99 cents. All legit.