a question that may be appropriate for this thread.
i have been laid up this week couch bound and the mind wanders in many directions when this is the case. i am not mobile been told to stay off my feet so watching alot of t.v.

after reading the latest MTL mafia book about andrea scoppa and then watching last 3 seasons of breaking bad in all honesty how many guys in this day and age does it even take to run a profitable crew/family?
many on this site myself included quibble over numbers of families size wise big small etc...
the internet has taken the man power out of say running a large gambling operation. u can buy a litany of drugs on line.

walter,jesse et al ran a tight small op a t.v. show no less i know.
but it came to me more from the scoppa book. MTL is a big city no NY,chicago or even toronto but a big city with diverse criminal groups.
the mafia there maybe has a core of 20-30 active guys.the hells angels at this point dont even have 100 full patch members covering the province of quebec.
and quebec is big and the hells have the province locked up as far as drug distributio/importation.
both groups however seem smart enough to know that they cannot be a part of every single aspect of the drug game.
a single full patch HA could control a puppet club or a small group of trusted non patched associates.
a mafia member or cell leader is the same. both these groups also partner up with each other or other ethnic groups for certain crimes and possibly never work together again.
many of the more recent east coast busts r the same. the andrew campos indictment from 2019 is a good example. a capo a soldier few associates and making bank.

so back to the outfit.
the most recent sports betting bust paloian,del giudice were not city wide busts. u bet with a guy through a server based in costa rica u win u get paid out with an envelope by some guy in a bar you lose u pay another guy.
back in even the 80's there were still armies of guys collecting taking bets paying off...not happening today.

so if the outfit has less guys and we only know about say 15 that are legit OUTFIT members that could make sense.
also taking into account those members we do not and may never know of.

one last example is the partnership of whitey bulger/steve flemmi in boston. now we know they were informants with the fbi and that helps when u can get yer rivals arrested or kill them with no fear of retribution. but there crew barely numbered 10. 10 core guys but the 2 at the top had reputations that people feared.
they could take money from anyone they didnt need to import drugs,deal them just collect a tax very similar to what some HA continue to do in MTL.

one full patch with a reputation can and in some cases does control profitable territory.

so if the numbers of some families seem small maybe its because the leaders have recognized they dont need to be as big.