They were born leaders,pretty violent,charismatic, street smart,flashy,ect...but also none of them were real earners with their own personal scams.
On the other hand you had guys like Lucchese,Profaci,Gambino who were also violent but. Also low key,made a ton of. $ from their own personal rackets

no. lucky was the 30tys gotti the 80tys and merlino 95 till today. they all dress nice. look at pictures of funzi tieri in the 70tys guys had the best suits in the world huge glasses. pizza boy would say this too . there was tons of gangsters we bearly know about they dreesed vain like tmz was following them

hay pizza if your lurking out there in internet land.

Almost all gangsters dress well and drive nice cars ect..I mean as far Luciano and them were never known for their own personal rackets
Lucchses and those guys all had their own personal rackets that made them rich and powerfull.

Luciano wasn't a money maker ?? Lol

Luciano not only made tens of millions for himself, but structured the american mob and made them all rich beyond their wildest dreams once it was organized !!

Gotti and Merlino shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as Luciano !!

Why do you consider Luciano a 'money maker'how did he earn?I don't consider Gotti or Merlino earners but they were both very rich.None of those guys became boss because they were big earners they became boss because they were born leaders,smart,violent,charismatic

Luciano and Gotti in same sentence ? Seriously man...

For example, after World War II, LCN, under the leadership of Luciano, took control of the U.S.heroin market.

So Lucky was just a drug dealer

Heroin and Gambling/Casinos.

Sure they all made tons of $ from all kinds of crimes but how many of those crimes were their idea? I don't think any of those guys really had their own shit going on.
Profaci,Gambino,Lucchsese were entrepreneurs with their own rackets

To me Lucky made $ off other gangsters that paid tribute not from his criminal ingenuity

The Fucking guy negotiated with the US Navy to get his prison sentence reduced. He has the booze, prostitution, the heroin, left the country and still had a say of what was going on. He took what was a flourishing business and turned it into a multinational enterprise. GranTed Rothstein had the lockdown on heroin before he was killed. It's like comparing a bottle of Dom to two quarts of old English.

That just means that he was very smart.You could kinda say the same about Merlino He brought the Philly family back from the brink and still had power while locked up.It doesn't mean they were successful earners.

Gotti and Merlino both cannot be even compared to Luciano. I don't even wanna comment on this,since you are trolling or something. In that world ,lucky did more than gotti and merlino combined , gotti actually ruined Gambino Family so...

Also had a lot of interests in the Garment Centre, even offered Joe Bonanno a piece of the action..

Gotti also had influence in the garment center but it wasn't 'his' racket

In "The Mob and the City" by C. Alexander Hortis the author found a psychological profile a prison psychiatrist gave Luciano. After reading it I couldn't help but be reminded of my impression of what Joey Merlino is like.

Gotti and Merlino do seem quite similar. Both seem to have a loyal following. Gotti by his own admission wasn't a big money maker. I don't think Merlino was either.

I don't think Luciano belongs in the same category though. He did have his own rackets and was a money maker. He was a major bootlegger along with drugs and gambling. I know Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein and others were involved in those ventures with him, but they were business partners. It's not like they were just giving him tribute. Joe Bonanno comments in his book that Luciano was very business-minded. I get the impression that he was more of an "honest" gangster, while Merlino sounds shady and was ripping people off. Gotti and Merlino both seem charismatic, but not necessarily good bosses, while Luciano was.

It was Tommy Gambino that had influence in the garment center. Gotti was the boss. And he had influence wherever his family infiltrated. Reverend troll.

I understand what your saying.Ive never really heard Lucky described as an earner.
I think Lucchsese went to Staten Island early on and got into construction boom then into garbage because it would last even after the construction boom was over. That's the kinda thing I mean.That was his vision and his racket. I've never heard of lucky doing anything like that.

This is a weird thread. Like someone else pointed out, A LOT of these guys were into being fly. And not just the suit era. When it was the Studio 54 era, they wore the collar shirts and gold chains and shit. It's just street fashion, lol.

Luciano was a consummate criminal organizer. He also had vision and strategy. More than dressing nice, I think women were a bigger problem for him. He never married, and seemed like an inveterate skirt chaser. He got kicked outta Cuba cause of some high society, socialite, 1940s version housewive ass thot. But hey, not even Genovese could control his woman either........

Lepke was Luciano's entry into the Garment Center. He helped him to streamline it and make it more of an organized racket, more than just isolated shakedowns.


This is no knock on Merlino, but I don't know if he ever actually MADE, or RAN an actual racket or operation. Present day excluded, with all the indictments and shit, but you know what I mean. When he was younger I think he mainly robbed the bookies, which is VERY counterproductive.


Luciano dealt with Scottish distillers, Chinese heroin merchants, Americanized Sicilian, Calabrian, and Napoletan gangsters. Irish guys, Jewish guys, French Corsicans, OSS agents, politicians, labor people, cops, the Naples black market.....

What fucked Luciano was Dewey, who somehow managed to flawlessly prosecute the perfect RICO case, when there wasn't even any RICO. Most of these prosecutors STILL fuck these cases up today, ( look at the East Coast enterprise thing,...) I don't think it's understood how impressive a prosecution that was....

It was Tommy Luchesse that made the Garment Center what it was. After Lepke got the chair, it was kinda his until he " GAVE" it to Tommy Gambino as a wedding present?!!! (The Luchesse guys must have lost their minds, lol...) I've read that he started " knockdown" loans there.

Trash I thought was Squillante's brainchild?? The Gambino guy, Anastasia guy? No?


I want someone here to correct me, I'll make an assertion; ( This is most likely 100% wrong, I'm all ears to others with better info..)

Pre 1970s, the Bonnano family was the biggest in construction. I base this on the closeness of Bonnano bigwigs to Genneroso Pope, he was close to Garafolo, I think.
Genneroso Pope had the largest Italian owned construction company in the US I think at the time..... I'm just throwing some shit out there to talk about....

I think it was the Colombos who initially controlled the construction unions, the larger families just muscled in....

In the Luciano biography I recall somewhere in the first few chapters that he didn't want his guys dressing flashy like Capone and bringing on all the media attention. This thread is funny. I meant that Gotti had nothing to do with the garment center until he was boss, same thing with construction. Hijacking trucks from jfk is comparable to picking fruit in comparison to the white collar crimes. Same thing with Merlino. He didn't create any notable rackets. This insurance scam is because he is the boss. Scarfo had Philly on lockdown. Look at the unions, extortion, and companies he had. He was crazy but had his shit together. At least that's how I feel.

If lucky wanted his guys to not be flashy maybe he shouldn't have lived in one of the most expensive hotels in NY

According Capeci and Robbins in "Mob Boss":
"Most of the garment rackets had been run by Jewish gangsters, led by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, whose thugs worked both sides of the industry's many labor battles. But Luchese worked out an accomodation, cutting Lepke into the family's small but growing narcotics trade in exchange for room at the table on Seventh Avenue.

After Lepke was convicted of his Murder Inc slayings and died in the electric chair in 1944, Luchese's men had things mostly to themselves. The crime family's principal role in the garment district was officially confirmed by a Mafia Commission ruling in the 1950s. The other families were allowed to have pieces of the trade, but the Luchese crew ruled. Carlo Gambino's sons Tommy and Joey ran several large garment trucking companies. But their position and influenece there stemmed partly from a wedding gift Thomas Luchese had made when Tommy Gambino married his daughter."



That's what I have read. The Gambinos owned the Teamsters local for garbage collectors. The Lucheses ran the business in Long Island, but they had to give the Gambinos a piece of the action.



Never heard about that guy I'll have to check it out. I haven't really heard that much about construction rackets prior to the 70s. However, in "Mob Boss" Al D'Arco says that the Lucheses used to control Local 282 which had huge power over the construction industry because because its members drove the trucks delivering materials to building sites. Tommy Luchese gave the local to the Gambinos for a wedding present too!!

Guys like Lepke and Meyer would bring Lucky in as a partner because of his influence.
I thought Luckys family disowned him pretty early in his life if true that tells me a lot about his character.