Interesting factoid of the day: Andrew Campos who is a reputed member of the Gambino Family and has a pending racketeering case that is stalled right now because of Covid and has been on strict home confinement conditions since he was released on bail back in December is seeking a lessening of those restrictions to nighttime curfew. I'll have more on that later.

But back in 2004 when he was indicted on another case, the government made up an alias for him, calling him "Andrew Campo" because the "s" in his last name didn't quite fit with the Italian organized crime image (aka his name didn't end in a vowel) and even made up a story about his background being investigated by Gambino members before Campos was able to become a "made" member which was a story picked up by all the media outlets.

His lawyers fought that and while the judge at the time didn't remove it from the indictment, he did make sure it wouldn't be said in front of the jury if it had gone to trial and if the government proved it existed. That case didn't go to trial. However, it's an extremely convoluted case where the govt ended up dismissing all but two of the counts and all which they fought extremely hard to keep on the indictment in pretrial hearings. And there are a lot of interesting parallels in regards to the govt's tactics then and the tactics being used now. More on that later also.

And just FYI, in current indictment, there is no "Andrew Campo" alias so it probably never existed.

Jack derose another shortened last name

Deross

Interesting.

A lot of names got butchered when people got off the boats at Ellis Island. Or people changed them to sound more "American" in the hopes of making it easier to find work.

True. But this particular situation has nothing to do with Ellis island.

It appears that the US Government have a habit of renaming groups and people. The Gambino family becomes the Gambino organized crime family, Steve Crea becomes 'Stevie Wonder', Andrew Campos becomes Andrew Campo.

Deffinitely was happening in the early 1900's. Problem is with that tid bit of information is the wave of Italian immigrants coming over before and after the world wars to America in hopes for a better life was around 100 years ago approximately. Shockingly when an Italian decides to come to America now instead of fleeing for refuge, they just move here. I can only speak for New York though but you could be from a small town in Utah where they ban pizza places for all i know and outlaw excessive body hair.