Many people on these boards, especially younger people, ask questions or make statements about Mob life that are often myths--not realities. I'd like to start a thread that helps clear up the myths. I'll post occasionally, and ask you to post your own ideas, thoughts, explanations. Here's the first:

BEING "MADE" IN THE MOB IS DANGEROUS TO LIFE AND LIBERTY

Many younger people believe that getting "made" in the Mafia is the ultimate glory. Nothing could be further from the truth: Getting "made" is just about the worst thing that could happen to anyone:

First you have to serve an "apprenticeship," during which you'll have to kiss the asses of every member of the crew you hope to join, and turn over most of your earnings to a boss who thinks you're lower than whale s**t. If you're "lucky," the apprenticeship will last for a decade or less. By that time, you'll have convinced the boss that you're dumb and compliant enough to be "honored" by being made.

So, you'll probably be assigned to kill someone you don't know, for a reason that's not explained to you; and take all the risk on yourself with no reward. If you manage to whack the guy without being killed, injured or arrested, your "reward" will be the famous "induction ceremony"--the fingers pricked so that your blood runs together with the Don's (just hope he doesn't have AIDS or some other STD); the burning saint's card, the oath, the kisses on the cheek, etc. Now you've got it made, right?

Wrong! Your troubles have just begun:
You'll be assigned to a crew chief whose purpose in life is to squeeze you dry. You'll be given a "living"--a sports betting operation, some numbers, drugs or loan shark action. But since the Mob is a pyramid scheme, your crew chief will give you a "nut"--an amount that you must kick back to him each week, whether or not your rackets generate enough profit to cover it. He'll set the amount so high that you'll have no time or opportunity to do anything on your own except work for him. And if you fail to meet the weekly nut, he'll hit you with the same "vig" that he charges his loan shark victims--six percent per week.

Oh, and let's not forget your new "brothers" in the Mafia--the guys who kissed you on the cheek when you got made, and now refer to you as "a friend of ours." Every one of them has contacts in law enforcement that they feed info to in return for being left alone to pursue their own rackets. As soon as your ceremony was completed, they were on the phone to their favorite cops, informing them of the newest member of the Mob. Suddenly you're going to get more attention from law enforcement personnel than a visiting head of state. Your "brothers" will see you as insurance for them when they commit high profile crimes: they'll tip off their police pals that you did the dirty deeds. And, if you manage to survive all of that, the Don'll evntually get nailed on a RICO charge, and he'll rat out you and your other "brothers" in return for a free pass to the Witness Protection Program.

"Honored Society"? You'd be better off washing dishes for a living.

Excellent post Turnbull. Well said.

And if I might add something, when you get made, you may not be lucky enough to be ordered to kill someone that you don't know. Many times, to test one's loyalty, the boss will order you to kill someone that you've grown very close to in the life, even if he's your best friend!

Not a way that I would want to live.

There's no glory in that life whatsoever.


Don Cardi

Exactly. When I first watched Goodfellas I became really intrested in the mafia, I admitedly thought WOW what a great life. After more research I found out that you can not trust anybody or rely on your 'friends'. Great thread TB!

Well, with washing dishes you don't have to worry about coming clean.

Good post, TB!

Ditto!

Great topic and thread.

DonPacino, I must commend you for your understanding and your maturity in realizing that the mob life is not all it's cracked up to be and that these people are not the kind of people that anyone should ever look up too.

It's very easy, especially for a young man your age, to become infatuated with the mob because of the way that hollywood glamorizes them and uses their magic to make you root for them. And there's nothing wrong in getting caught up in the moment or with the character that is being portrayed on the big screen. As long as when those credits roll, one realizes that it's not as glorious as it's made out to be in the movies.

Obviously we are all interested in mob movies and learning about real life mobsters, or we wouldn't be talking here. And being interested in the mob, it's people and how it operates is not a bad thing in itself. As a matter of fact it's very intruiging.

But as long as that interest stays at a level where it's only an interest in learning things and wanting to understand why they do the things that they do and operate the way that they do, and stops at that.

I am gald to see that a young man such as yourself has the mentality that you do and can differenciate the mobster life that's portrayed in the movies from the mobster life of the real world.


Don Cardi

What is a RICO charge?

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations

Changed the Mafia World,More to Follow....Turnbull your on.

Thankyou DC. I am very glad to hear your impression of me. I do get caught up in the portrayal of a character in a movie, but I know as soon as those credits roll the movies over. My mum hates me watching those films nut I have loads of them! But thankyou DC for you're kind words and I hope to be on these bords discussing mob films, and the mob itself for many years to come.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) was passed by Congress to eradicate organized crime in the United States. It means that it is unlawful for anyone to be associated with any organization engaged in the practice of racketeering activities.


In order for the governemnt to charge someone with RICO, it has to show a pattern of racketeering activity and requires at least two acts of racketeering activity committed within ten years of each other. The government must show that the racketeering predicates are related, and that they amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity.

If the government arrests a mobster, who is part of a mob family, for for comitting a crime, under the RICO act they can attempt to charge the bosses in that family with being a part of the conspiracy to the crime committed, even if those bosses physically did not commit the actual crime themselves. If the government can show that the person who committed the crime belongs to a mob family and committed that crime on behalf of the organization/family itself, then they can charge all those in the chain of command under the RICO act.

RICO changed the focus from prosecuting individual criminals to prosecuting individuals who committed crimes which benefited corrupt organizations such as crime families.




Don Cardi

Just to add to what DC said, if I remember correctly, the law was written but for what 5 or 10 years it was never used? It seemed like a law that would have appeared to be doing a lot against organized crime but prosecutors didn't know how to use it, so it was just laying around on the book for years before ever being used.

I believe that the firt use of the RICO act was against a mobster named Frank "Funzi" Tieri back in the early 80's.


And if I'm not mistake, former U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani was one of the first to use the RICO act against a non mobbed up businessman who was a junk bond trader and schemer named Michael Milkin. He was charged with Racketeering and fraud. First Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street mogual, was arrested for insider trading. He turned state's evidence and ratted on several of his cohorts including Michael Milkin. And the RICO act was used in prosecuting all those who Boesky ratted on.


Don Cardi

All true about RICO, guys.
The real impact of RICO is that, before it was passed, law enforcement had to catch a Mob guy in the act of committing a crime, and get more than one witness to it. RICO made it a crime, punishable by double-digit sentences, to be part of a "criminal conspiracy." "Conspiracy" is very important:" no corroborating witness is required for the government to obtain a conviction. And RICO also eased the burden of proof by simply requiring law enforcement to show that the accused was part of a "pattern" of crimes.
"Corrupt organization" is also very important. That means that if the Mob guy was influencing a labor union (a favorite of Mobs), the union could be characterized as a "corrupt organization."
Two other very important aspects of RICO:
1. A guy who was victimized by the Mob could be considered part of a "corrupt organization" because he "cooperated" with the Mob even though he was forced. So, if you were a degenerate gambler who was into a Mob loan shark for a lot of money that you couldn't pay back; and the Mob guy forced you to "bust out" your business to pay him back; then you could be charged under RICO because your busting out of your business constituted a "corrupt organization." Faced with a double digit sentence, you'd have a big incentive to cooperate with law enforcement against the Mob guy.
2. RICO for the first time specified iron-clad rules for obtaining phone taps and other forms of electronic surveillance that would stand up as evidence in any court of law. Previously, a lot of "bugs" were thrown out by judges as being illegal. Not after RICO, though.
And, yes DMC and DC: it's true that RICO languished for 10 years before Rudy Giuliani, as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, finally figured out how to use it. He invited Robert Blakely, the lawyer who wrote RICO, to daily brief his investigators and assistant prosecutors on how the law could work. Giuliani, a great fan of the GF Trilogy, called Blakely, "my consigliere." After his huge success in the famous Commission case, prosecutors all over the country figured out that they could heap glory on themselves by using RICO to prosecute the Mob.
The best source on RICO and how it works is Selwyn Raab's "The Five Families," IMO the best Mob book of the last 10 years.

This is a necessary and valuable thread.

Turnbull, thank you for starting it off.

For what it's worth, I feel it would be a good idea to keep this near the top of the threads in this forum, and it should be required reading whenever Don Malta opens the books to new GangsterBB members.

Signor V.

Good idea Vitelli. It is now on the top of this thread.



Don Cardi

For that alone, he deserves to be President of the United States!




Don Cardi

Thanks for the swell reception, guys! Here’s another entry:

DOES THE COMMISSION CONTROL ORGANIZED CRIME?

No. Contrary to what many people believe, the Commission does not adjudicate inter- or intra-family disputes, divvy up territories, sanction murders, or maintain a common treasury or army to punish renegades or law enforcement foes (like Joe Pistone). But Mafia families do cooperate when it serves their purposes:

The only thing Mob families have in common are greed, and distrust of their fellow Mobsters. But they try to avoid wars, which are wasteful and destructive, and they do agree on broad arrangements that suit them. Most often the arrangements are made between families, not at Commission meetings. And they are made only by mutual agreement. Dons are highly individualistic, and the Commission cannot force any family to do its bidding. Or, as Mario Puzo noted in the GF novel: Dons shared two characteristics--they were good listeners, and no one could bend their will unless they were persuaded by utmost reasonableness. Here's a little history:

Charlie Luciano formed the Commission after the Castellemmarese War of 1930-31. His vision of the Commission was not as a “governing body” for organized crime that would manage Mob affairs or even allocate territories. Rather, he saw the Commission as a kind of corporate Board of Directors that would meet occasionally to allow the rugged individuals to discuss broad matters of interest to all.

Luciano had his own agenda: Though born in Sicily, he was a thoroughly American businessman, and was dedicated to destroying the “Moustache Pete” mentality that led to the war and to Salvatore Maranzano declaring himself capo di tutti capi. He also saw that, with Prohibition’s days numbered, new opportunities would emerge that families could share in if they learned to cooperate. Luciano also recognized that help should be welcomed from any useful sources, including non-Sicilians and even non-Italians. That’s why he nominated Al Capone as chairman of the Commission, and included Jews like Meyer Lansky, Lepke Bucholter, Dutch Shultz and Bugsy Siegel in Commission meetings.

His forceful personality drove the Commission, but neither he nor the Commission as a whole ever micromanaged families’ affairs. They stuck with broad strokes. A representative accomplishment was to get agreement that Dutch Shultz’s plan to whack New York special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey was a threat to all Commission members, and to whack Shultz. After his imprisonment and exile to Italy, Luciano convened an important Commission meeting in Havana in 1946, at which Siegel’s fate was sealed and a general direction set for the future of Nevada gaming. This, too, was a broad stroke: the Commission didn’t divvy up territory, it simply ruled that no single family owned Vegas. What’s more, Jewish gangsters, not Mafiosi, dominated Vegas in the immediate postwar era.

The Commission declined after Luciano was run out of Cuba. Meetings were held every 18-24 months, and were usually dominated by an individual Don’s personal agenda. For example, the famously aborted Apalachin NY meeting of 1957 was called by Vito Genovese to bless drug trafficking, endorse his protégé Carlo Gambino as Albert Anastasia’s successor, and to anoint Don Vitone as de facto capo di tutti capi. But it was doomed to fail even before police busted it up because Joe Bonanno had recently cut a huge drug deal with Luciano in Sicily, and boycotted the meeting; and because Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky were already plotting against Genovese.

The Commission made a grandstand play in the early Sixties when a plot by Bonanno and his ally Joe Magliocco to whack Tommy Luchese and Gambino was uncovered. The Commission forced Magliocco to resign his Donship in favor of Joe Columbo (who betrayed the plot). Magliocco was seriously ill with heart disease and was ready to quit. But when Bonanno refused to appear before them, the Commission ordered him to step down and appointed Gaspar DiGregorio as his successor. A war ensued that not only wrecked the Bonannos, but also weakened the Commission, which failed to impose its will on a member family.

The “Banana War” was in effect the Commission’s last gasp. They met only sporadically after that. Paul Castellano called a meeting after Carlo Gambino appointed him his successor. Castellano recognized that he was not the man Gambino was; and with the Gambinos as the largest and most geographically powerful family in New York, he was looking for agreement to maintain the territorial status quo. He also wanted to placate his powerful underboss, Neil Dellacroce, and those Dons who favored “Mr. Neil” over Big Paul. John Gotti didn’t ask Commission approval to whack Castellano—and got away with it.

Mafia families did cooperate with each other during this period, and still do. Some rackets, like garbage hauling, concrete contracting and the former Fulton Fish Market, were and are big enough that all families share in them. Since their neighborhood operations abut each other, they often meet to delimit territories. But none of this involves the Commission.

Um, err.....what Mafia? Who said anything about the Mafia? There is no mafia. The mafia doesn't exist.

It's a myth.

(Nice thread, TB. Even though I have NO idea what you mean by this 'mafia' thing. )

Excellent thread guys. I would have weighed in earlier but there's a cable line down on my block and I'm without internet service for the time being. I'm actually in a Barnes And Noble with my laptop right now.

I'm glad to see that some of the younger guys here are smart enough to not be impressed by "the life". I have to admit, that as a younger guy, it impressed the hell out of me and believe me, as our friend Turnbull said, you truly are better off washing dishes. But you live and learn, acually you're very lucky if you live and learn.

Anyway, as far as RICO, listen to TB and DC. I have little to add other that the fact that it actually sprang from the McClellan hearings of the the late 1950's. It's roots being the Landrum-Griffin Act, kind of a working man's bill of rights, formed to protect union members from corrupt union officials.
However, union lobbyists quickly knocked it down. A furious John McClellan bit back by drafting the now famous RICO Act of 1970.

As stated earlier, it sat on the shelf, largely unused, until the Reagan administration and a gung-ho prosecutor by the name of Rudy Giuliani put it to use in the mid 1980's.

It was truly the beginning of the end for the mob as we'd come to know it.

I got my own family, pizzaboy.

I think this thread earned you your Button now as well

Here’s another in the series (BTW: please feel free to post your own myths vs. realities):

DOES THE MAFIA TAKE CARE OF “STANDUP GUYS”?
Nope. Not anymore--if they ever did...

The myth that the Mafia will support a made guy and his family if he honors omerta was expressed quaintly in the GF novel. Puzo wrote that a man sent to prison “had only to keep his mouth shut and his wife and children would be cared for…a warm welcome would be his when he left prison…a party…the best food and wine…all his friends and relatives gathered to rejoice in his freedom…perhaps even the Don himself would drop by to pay his respects to such a stalwart…”

This tale may have had some basis before World War II, when Mob economics were simpler. Soldiers did the grunt work that was most likely to expose them to arrest (the higher-ups got the white collar rackets). In the days before investigative journalism and instant electronic news media, it was far easier for the Mob to bribe politicians, judges and law enforcement—and for them to accept the bribes without detection. Often, Mob soldiers were caught in so-called “victimless” crimes, such as gambling, prostitution and illicit alcohol. And people hurt or killed in Mob shakedowns and violence were those that society didn’t care about—degenerate gamblers, drug addicts, crooked labor leaders, ethnic minorities, etc. So it was easy for a soldier who actually got arrested and convicted to receive a light sentence, or have a major charge reduced to a minor one. In those hard economic times, a soldier didn’t live a lot better than a regular working stiff, so his financial needs were small, and the payout to his family was small, too. The soldier needed his job, and it was in his interest to keep his mouth shut, suck up the light sentence, and go back to work after prison. And there was no Witness Protection Program to shelter him.

But the myth pales before the reality that today’s Mafia is an empire based on greed. Its financial structure is a pyramid scheme in which money flows upward to the Don, not downward to soldiers. A Don takes the attitude that the soldier knew the risks when he signed on. If he gets caught, it’s his problem. In today’s every-man-for-himself Mafia, the assumption is that he’ll turn rat anyway. So the imperative for the Don is to protect himself through “buffers,” not to buy silence by supporting the soldier and his family, which the Don would view as a sign of weakness on his part—in effect, setting himself up for potential blackmail.

John Gotti’s career provides real-life examples. Gotti had been in Carmine Fatico’s Gambino Family crew for about 12 years when he was arrested in 1968 for hijacking. He got a three-year sentence—and no help from the Gambinos. His family was forced onto the welfare rolls, and his wife almost divorced him. When he got out, he was made acting crew chief. But when he was arrested in 1974 after killing James McBratney, who had kidnapped and murdered Gambino’s nephew, he got no help directly from his Don. Instead, Gambino passed the hat around to his capos and crew chiefs. They reluctantly coughed up enough money to hire Roy Cohn, one of New York’s highest-powered lawyers, who got the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter. Gotti didn’t get formally “made” until he got out of prison four years later.

And that’s how Gambino, the most powerful Don, in the most powerful family in the US, treated a “standup guy” who later became the Don. Later, Gotti tried to get Sammy Da Bull to take the rap for the Castellano murder—which stimulated Da Bull to rat Gotti out.

There’s not only no honor among thieves, there’s no loyalty, either.

Another great post TB.

They've created more than one rat by propagating the notion that the families of imprisoned wiseguys would be taken care of while the wiseguy is in prison.

The disillusioned footsoldier, upon his release from prison, will often become an informant out of revenge.

TB, is the irish mafia the same?

Sorry, I don't know enough about them to answer, DP. But "no honor among thieves" isn't an exclusive Italian Mafia characteristic.

I would say that anyone or group that murders for fun and profit has the same level of morality as onyone else or any other group that murders for fun and profit.

It's interesting that the HBO series "Rome" has current episodes that illustrate the gangs of Rome in the B.C. era. Somethings about people never change.

During the 80's and 90's, every high profile mobster in Philadelphia were getting nailed by RICO. Nicky Scarfo (In a Super Max Prison will be out in 2033...he'll be 104), Ralph Natale (6 life sentences), Skinny Joy Merlino (current Boss, out in four years), Steven Mazzone (current Underboss out in '08), and George Borgesi (current Consigliere out in 2012).

As for the mob life...Hollywood makes these guys look somewhat regular people with a dark secret. In truth...their scumbags, guys you don't want to be around, big time low-lifes.

That prety much sums it up BDuff, good job.

As far as Philadelphia, I really think the currently imprisoned administration will all be re-indicted before their possible release dates. The government seems to have a hard on, in particular, for Merlino.

They put him away last time, largely on the testimony of former cop-turned wiseguy-turned rat, Ron Previte. The evidence wasn't very strong and they still got their conviction.

Sidebar about Previte - The main reason he turned informant ?

FBI wiretaps had him on tape bad mouthing the Genovese Family and Vincent Gigante, in particular. He knew that when the tapes became public, he wouldn't be long for this world.

"Sidebar about Previte - The main reason he turned informant ?

FBI wiretaps had him on tape bad mouthing the Genovese Family and Vincent Gigante, in particular. He knew that when the tapes became public, he wouldn't be long for this world. "

Very interesting, never knew that. You're right about the current Philadelphia hierarchy, they'll never get out. The FBI knows once those three (Merlino, Borgesi, and Mazzone) get out the Bruno Family will be back and up to old things. Philadelphia has enough on its plate as it is (65 murders so far this year) and doesn't need a Mafia rebirth taking place. The Philadelphia Faction had it's chance in the early 80s to become very powerful family, like a New York family, because of thier location near Atlantic City. But over 37 murders, greed, and paranoia left the family in shambles by '89.