The Dealmakers Behind the Chicago Mob

For most Americans, real racket power in the last century hovered somewhere over the Hudson River, and no wonder. They saw New York-area gangsters featured in the best books and movies about the Mafia. Flamboyant bosses like John Gotti grabbed headlines with good sound bites and flashy trials, or the occasional high-profile hit in a crowded restaurant. But while East Coast mob families splattered each other's brains in the marinara, the Second City's less-colorful Mafia, known as the Outfit, built a criminal empire that was truly second to none. Its tentacles stretched to the West Coast and wrapped securely around Las Vegas. Not that its members didn't whack their own wayward bosses along the way, but their executions were mostly private affairs, often dispatched with a few well-placed .22s to the back of the head.

Author Gus Russo has done yeoman's work in pulling the Outfit bosses from the shadows to show how their muscle and methods came to dominate organized crime. In his 2001 book, suitably titles "The Outfit," he chronicles the Chicago mob's rise to national power after Al Capone.

Now, he weighs in with "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers." If you know about the short shrift the Outfit has received in the popular imagination, you can almost forgive the breathless title, but Russo pointedly uses the term "Supermob" to describe a band of Jewish lawyers, politicians and businessmen who acted as cat's-paws for some of the Outfit's most ambitious scams. Although he credits a Senate investigator with first using the term "Supermob," Russo takes it to a new level, suggesting a gang of white-collar kingpins as ruthless and tightly knit as a Mafia family. He is also serious about the "Super," claiming that the members of his "Kosher Nostra" would ultimately profit more from their "amoral, and frequently criminal careers" than did their Outfit allies.

Like all other Chicago gangster stories, Russo's starts with Capone, a criminal mastermind far more sophisticated than the brutal Scarface we know from the movies. Unlike gang leaders before him, he was not content with cornering the market on gambling and bootlegging. The "financial wiz" who showed him the way was Alex Louis Greenberg. He put Capone's money into real estate and service industries with free flowing cash, such as banks, entertainment venues and hotels. In the beginning, to protect the various investments, the mob used its excess money to buy politicians and its excess muscle to strong-arm unions. Eventually these inroads into the public sector and labor organizations would become lucrative sources of income themselves.

As the schemes got more complicated, the mobsters needed the help of lawyers, politicians and frontmen with relatively clean criminal records. It was a Faustian bargain, but it helped launch some of the most prominent names in Chicago's Jewish community. For example, according to Russo, Outfit funds and connections formed the foundation on which lawyer Abe Pritzker's family built the Hyatt hotel chain.

At the nexus of mob influence and political corruption was lawyer Jacob Arvey, the most important Jewish cog of the city's multiethnic Democratic machine. His clout with the Truman administration put a protege in charge of property seized from German companies and interned Japanese-Americans. Russo documents how these West Coast assets were sold for a fraction of their value to silent mob partners and the young lawyers, Arvey accomplices, who served as their frontmen. Some of these young lawyers then set up shop in California and duplicated Chicago's Democratic machine there, fueling their candidates' campaigns with money donated by the mob and its related unions. But the Outfit's insidious control of unions most drove its westward expansion. Back in the earliest days of moving pictures, Chicago mobsters used the threat of projectionist walkouts to shake down local theaters. These extortion schemes worked their way back to the studio lots. According to Russo, the movie moguls did not mind seeing leftist organizers pushed to the side by mob goons, who could at least be paid off to keep the cameras rolling.

Producers also got squeezed by the stars in front of the cameras, especially those managed by Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman of MCA, Hollywood's first powerhouse talent agency. Back in Chicago when Stein started the firm as Music Corporation of America, he was booking area bands and using a "union racketeer" to throw stink bombs in nightclubs that wouldn't take his acts. He was supposedly a silent partner with Outfit bosses in the hot spots where his bands played, and according to Russo, he would continue to blur the line between ownership and union influence throughout his career.

Later, when Wasserman client Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, he helped push through a waiver permitting MCA to be the only agency that could also produce programs for the burgeoning TV industry. This competitive edge helped Stein and Wasserman gain control of Universal Pictures and create Hollywood's first multimedia behemoth. In return for the SAG waiver, Russo asserts, Wasserman secretly cut Reagan into production deals (counter to SAG rules) and helped transform him into the ubiquitous TV presence that launched his political career.

The Outfit had its hooks in Las Vegas from the start (a Chicago mobster bribed Nevada legislators to pass the Wide Open Gambling Bill), but if the bosses hadn't had their fingers in the Teamsters pension fund, the city wouldn't be what we know today. From 1959 to 1961, they took $91 million from the union to build or improve one casino after another. Over the next decade, as Las Vegas' popularity soared, the Outfit was perfectly positioned to dominate the scene, with its control of corrupt politicians from both parties, its manipulation of the service unions and even its access, through Hollywood back channels, to the hottest entertainers, like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Eventually millions in cash skimmed from the casino counting rooms would make its way to Chicago's mob bosses.

Members of Russo's Supermob were pivotal resources in each of the Outfit's connections to Las Vegas, but none more so than Sidney Korshak. An obscure labor lawyer from Lawndale, Korshak would ultimately be dubbed the most powerful man in Hollywood. By the mid-'60s, the same would be true in Las Vegas. His brother Marshall had gone on to a very public career in Chicago as a lawyer, Democratic politician and city officeholder. Though Sidney would have his own notoriety, the source of his power would lurk in the shadows. Working on a flat retainer of $50,000 per job, Korshak was anointed the official labor negotiator for almost all of the Outfit-connected businesses. With just a phone call he could spark or quell strikes--a fearsome power in the seasonal hotel industry or during the massively expensive process of film production. But the contacts with his clients went far beyond labor matters. Moguls like Wasserman called him virtually every day. He helped negotiate deals for casinos and even business conglomerates on the backs of envelopes, often keeping a small piece of the action for himself. No favors were too big or too small for his clients, whether a Chicago hotel room for Warren Beatty during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, or a pardon from President Richard Nixon for ex-Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. Ironically, he may have even contributed to the success of the film "The Godfather" by prying Al Pacino away from another studio.

Many a Korshak miracle was worked from the corner booth at Bistro, a posh Beverly Hills eatery, where a private phone was brought to his table. Russo fails to note that this setup closely emulated the notorious corner table at Counsellors Row, a restaurant across from Chicago's City Hall where the Outfit's kingmaker, Pat Marcy, ruled supreme. Like Marcy, Korshak would walk guests outside the restaurant to talk about especially confidential subjects. Some of the best yarns in "Supermob" come from a book written by Bistro's owner, Kurt Niklas, who kept tabs on the strange bouillabaisse that simmered around Korshak: It could include producer Bob Evans, actor Kirk Douglas, Gov. Jerry Brown, coarse Teamsters and, on rare occasion, cursing mobsters. One later testified that an Outfit boss warned him to stay away from Korshak because " `he's our man, been our man his whole life. [But he] can't be seen in public with guys like us.' "

In other words, the mob had to keep him subservient and separate. This was one of many conflicts in Korshak's fascinating life. He went to great ends to quash any media coverage of his activities, but he gladly relented to fawning mentions by Joyce Haber, the Los Angeles gossip columnist who, Russo says, coined the term "A-list" to describe the celebrities in the Korshak inner circle. He was a doting husband to his glamorous, shopaholic wife and a serial philanderer, not embarrassed to be seen on the town with paramours like Jill St. John. He dressed and collected art with impeccable taste but still exuded a threatening though soft-spoken manner. At one moment he could lament the unbreakable ties to his Outfit overseers and in the next threaten a recalcitrant business executive with " `cement shoes.' " In the words of one producer, " `Sidney was a very loud man in a very quiet way.' " Unfortunately, Russo does not give us much insight into how Korshak or his friends could bridge such contradictions. While "Supermob" is long on anecdote, it's much too short on analysis. No doubt there was something different about either Chicago or its Jewish community to produce the players Russo writes about. He only scratches the surface in trying to understand the world they came from. The closest he gets is a quote about Greenberg: " `[L]ike almost everyone who became rich through racketeering, respectability was what he sought most.' " The words came from long-time Sun-Times reporter Irv Kupcinet, a close friend of Korshak's and another macho Jewish guy who loved rubbing shoulders with the mob.

In fact, most of the Supermob families Russo writes about did find legitimacy, if not for themselves then for their heirs; hence the shock some of us may feel at discovering the roots of their fortunes. The same is true for some Outfit clans as well. Perhaps there is something about the institutional memory in Chicago that has helped ease the transformation. Kupcinet was a gossip columnist but a nice one, the sort who never delved too deeply into the dark sources of power. When he spotted you on a prestigious perch, like Booth One at the Pump Room, a mention in his column brought some glow of fame without the painful questions about how you got there.

Thanks to Hillel Levin

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Brooklyn Rules

Outside Providence director Michael Corrente helms this tale of three lifelong friends struggling with relationships, responsibility, and loyalty on the mean streets of 1980s era Brooklyn, NY.

When the violent influence of the mafia becomes factor in their friendship, lives will be threatened as the fond memories of the past begin to give way to potentially grim future.

Brooklyn Rules is the story of three boyhood friends who come of age in Brooklyn during John Gotti's rise. When becomes enamoured with the mafia lifestyle, it frays the friendships and puts the pals in grave danger. Alec Baldwin plays a mobster, Freddie Prinze Jr, Scott Caan, and Jerry Ferrara are the three friends. Brooklyn Rules is from the writers of The Sopranos

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Ex-Mobster John Alite Alleges Cyber Bullying Attack by Gotti Family #GottisRules

He’s no Facebook friend of ours.

Instead of using brickbats or Berettas, relatives of notorious Mafia boss John Gotti are delivering a beatdown to a former Gambino enforcer the 21st-century way — on the Internet.

“U go to war with one of us u go to war Witt [sic] all of us simple as that,” declared John “Junior” Gotti’s son John Gotti Jr. on Twitter March 25.

The tweet is just one example of an escalating and bizarre online barrage — which includes phony Twitter accounts, altered Wikipedia pages and doctored YouTube videos — targeting John Alite, who says the Gottis have relentlessly bullied him online ever since he was featured in a book titled “Gotti's Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia,” which came out Jan. 27.

“They are blatantly attacking me on every front,” says reformed tough guy Alite, 52, who spent 14 years in prison on charges and convictions that included six murders and at least 37 shootings.

In the book and in subsequent interviews, Alite paints John “Junior” Gotti — who inherited the role of Gambino boss when his father, “Teflon Don” John Gotti, was sent to the slammer in 1992 — as an insecure leader reluctant to get his hands dirty and quick to blame others if things got messy.

Junior says he quit the mob in 1999, but Alite contends it’s the former Gambino boss who ordered the cyber-hit.

Dummy accounts such as “@JohnAliteLies” and “@JohnAlettoRatted” have sprung up on Twitter to mock him.

“SOME PPL FIGHT ISIS SOME PPL FIGHT RATS,” @JohnAliteLies tweeted March 28.

“Guy’s walking around like a celebrity and really believes it. Proudest rat Facebook’s ever seen,” the account sniped on April 9.

On YouTube, videos purporting to be from John Alite alter the title of “Gotti’s Rules” to read, “A Story About John Alite and his Lies.” Another video also shows a picture of Alite with red tape over his mouth, with a caption, “FBI Gave Him $55,000 to Fix his Teeth to Look Presentable to the Jury.”

Alite, a free man since 2012, is now a motivational speaker who tackles topics such as bullying and domestic violence.

He says he has received prank phone calls and insulting texts and says his Wikipedia page was altered after the book came out.

“As of 2015, John Alite came out as gay,” reads the alleged Wiki-tweak, which has been removed.

Alite fingered Gotti for the latest sniping.

“He’s been called a ‘baby bully’ since he was a kid,” said Alite. “This is his new tactic of being a cyberbully.” But Junior Gotti said it’s Alite who is the bully.

“At one time, I admit, I was the wolf. My father was the lion. We’re now the lambs. We’re being preyed on,” he told The Post.

Gotti said he has no doubt his family has lashed out at Alite.

“He accused my ex-brother Carmine of raping two girls. He accused my father of being a swinger. He said I was hanging out with a transvestite,” Gotti said. “So I’m sure my son reacted to it. I am sure my sister, who is fiercely protective of this family, she reacted to it.”

“They shared everything with me, and I’m beside myself with anger. This guy is a demented, sick character. He’s been going on a campaign, looking for a platform. I know his book has been tanking,” he said. But Gotti said he never orchestrated any attacks.

“I’m not computer literate,” he said.

Gotti said the family cut off Alite in 1991 as a Gambino flag bearer and wants nothing to do with him.

“Believe me, if you were an earner or a capable guy, organized crime doesn’t give you up too easy,” he said.

Thanks to Gary Buiso.

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Is the Mafia Still Alive Today?

In mid-1950s, the Italian-American criminal organization known as Cosa Nostra was enjoying the peak of its political influence and economic success. At the time, many questioned the organization’s presence. J. Edgar Hoover completely denied its existence for years. And unfortunately for the criminals describing themselves as “businessmen,” their reign atop the criminal underworld was swiftly coming to a close. Why did the power of Cosa Nostra begin to decline? Is this decline indicative of the death of the mob? And what does today’s mob look like?

The factors that led to this near cessation of overwhelming power are numerous, but two stand out as the most influential. The first is the death of omertà, the code of silence, and the resulting convictions. The second factor involved other criminal organizations pushing Cosa Nostra to the periphery as a result of competition. In spite of these factors, though, the mafia is still very much alive.

A Death in the Family

The downsizing of the mafia began in 1959 with the arrest of Joe Valachi. Valachi was associated with the Genovese family of New York, which was prominent in Cosa Nostra. Offered a deal in which he could either testify about the mafia or face the death penalty, Valachi decided to talk. In an interview with the HPR, Jeffrey Robinson, author of The Merger: How Organized Crime is Taking Over the World, claimed that this was a pivotal point in the history of the Italian mob: “He broke omertà. That’s really a very important moment because until then nobody talked … the FBI realized that they could get inside Italian organized crime.” According to Robinson, FBI agents began approaching mob figures and offer protection from prosecution in exchange for information on other mobsters. It was an overwhelmingly successful approach.

This strategy leveled serious blows to the structure of Cosa Nostra, culminating in the Mafia Commission Trials of 1987 that indicted each head of New York’s Five Families. In 1992, even John Gotti, known as “Teflon Don” because charges never seemed to stick to him, was convicted on charges related to his organized crime activities. Omertà was dead for Cosa Nostra. According to Robinson, so many people flipped that the Sicilian mafia was able to enter the scene and take control of three of the Five Families of New York. They have maintained control to this day.

Ending an Illegal Monopoly

Cosa Nostra’s peaceful cooperation with other criminal organizations also contributed to the group’s decline. Traditionally, moving onto another group’s territory ensured a war. But according to Robinson, as Russian fraudsters relocated to Miami (Colombian territory)—followed by Italians interested in the heroin market—nobody was being killed. Law enforcement soon came to believe that this was because of collaboration between the organizations. When crack cocaine became readily available, many new criminal organizations got involved, and their quickly expanding influence muscled Cosa Nostra into the periphery. This loss of total power, coupled with the end of omertà, forced the Cosa Nostra into a largely successful effort to downsize.

Several criminal organizations, such as the Russian mob and the Mexican cartels, have filled Cosa Nostra’s power void in the United States. New York University professor Mark Galeotti told the HPR that Russian operations in the United States consist mainly of fraud, including schemes that target the U.S. government. He explains, “There are millions upon millions [of dollars] being looted from Medicare and Medicaid [by Russian organized crime].” Similarly, law enforcement has largely failed in stopping the Mexican drug cartels. In an interview with the HPR, Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, argued that despite efforts by law enforcement to stop the cartels, “you still have a drug industry, you still have thousands and thousands of people working for organized crime, you still have millions of consumers of drugs, and you still have high levels of violence.” Grillo also acknowledged the success of other organizations in exporting their gangs to the United States, particularly Colombian gangs and Jamaican “posses.” These organizations may have supplanted the former power and influence of Cosa Nostra. However, despite their reduced influence, the Italians continue to operate.

Into the Modern Era

In the wake of September 11, the FBI’s focus on organized crime has decreased sharply in favor of counterterrorism operations. In a government document titled “10 Years After: The FBI After 9/11,” the FBI acknowledged that it shifted resources from criminal matters to counterterrorism. The document notes that the number of counterterrorist intelligence analysts has doubled. According to current New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton in a 2007 Policing article, “As law enforcement reacted to the aftermath of 9/11, and the United States’ federal dollars and priorities shifted, organized crime groups were able to exploit the reduction in law enforcement attention and moved aggressively to establish new ‘trade routes’ and alliances.” In a 2011 interview with CUNY TV, former New York Times reporter Selwyn Raab claimed that there were once 500 members of law enforcement working on organized crime in New York City. Now, he said, there are around 50, enabling the survival of Cosa Nostra.

According to Robinson, Italian-American organized crime has found a niche role in construction, extortion and protection rackets. In the construction industry, he explains, Cosa Nostra profits by winning bids to do contract work and then fraudulently collecting revenue for unnecessary or absent employees. According to a close friend of Robinson’s who is now in the witness protection program, five percent of all construction funds in the city of New York go to the mafia. Joseph Pistone, a former FBI agent who infiltrated Cosa Nostra in New York, told Quebec’s Charbonneau Commission, which was investigating construction bid corruption, that the mob controls the construction industry via unions. He said that the mafia bosses control unions and subsequently threaten to strike if the company doesn’t relinquish a “fee.” Robinson adds that the mafia still operates protection rackets, in which a business owner will be threatened and then asked to pay a fee for “protection” from this threat.

Despite its reduced influence, Italian-American organized crime is unquestionably alive. The death of omertà, combined with a crowded criminal market, resulted in a downsizing of Cosa Nostra’s criminal operations. It has transformed from a monopoly on the criminal underworld to another small player in a global network. Despite its diminished influence, it has successfully downsized its operations, paving the way for a sustainable, albeit smaller, operation. Cosa Nostra is not dead, and won’t be anytime soon.

Thanks to Jack Boyd.

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Gotti's Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia

From New York Times bestselling author and “one of the most respected crime reporters in the country”, comes the inside story of the John Gotti and Gambino families, told through the unique vantage point of notorious mob hit-man John Alite, a close associate of Junior Gotti, who later testified against him.

Anastasia’s new book, Gotti's Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia, is a very rare glimpse into the Gotti family, from an insider’s perspective through the figure of John Alite, who was Gotti Jr.’s friend and protector. Until now, no one has given up the kind of personal details about the Gottis — including the legendary “Gotti Rules” of leadership — that Anastasia has uncovered here, through his exclusive access to and interviews with mob-enforcer-turned-government-witness Alite

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Real World Of Mafia Boss, Michael Franzese And His True Life Redemption Shown Through Scenes Of The Crucifixion, Deemed Too Violent By MPAA In Upcoming Film "God The Father"

The upcoming release God the Father, slated for release on October 31, the day Michael Franzese, once dubbed the Prince of the Mafia, became a "made man," vividly depicts both Franzese's life as a Mob kingpin and as a man transformed by faith.  The film does not shy away from illustrating the real world and life that Franzese swore allegiance to.  But it is a scene of Christ's Crucifixion shown as part of his prison epiphany and the Mob stock footage scenes combined, that tipped the scales at the MPAA who gave the film an R rating.

The irony is not lost on Franzese: "I spent over 20 years on the street, every day in violation of both God's laws and the laws of man. And the powers that be have a problem not only with Mob reality being seen, but also with Biblical history? You see worse images and stories on the 6 o'clock news! The entertainment business can't afford to be out of touch with real world problems our youth are experiencing, from gangs to drugs and violence. Anyone over 13 needs the opportunity to see this film."

Franzese made over a billion dollars for his crime "family," earning more than anyone since Al Capone.  It was enough to place him at #18 (3 behind John Gotti) on Fortune Magazine's "Fifty Most Wealthy and Powerful Mafia Bosses."  He was a Hollywood producer, a restaurateur, a night club owner:  He was living the life of a man's man as he saw it.  A revelation that his own father went along with planning a hit on him, the love for his own family, and a realization that his life was heading like every other Mob guy before him straight to St. Johns Cemetery in Queens, New York, that made Franzese decide to leave "The Life."  In an act thought impossible, he publicly walked away from the Colombo family and organized crime.

"Its real world stuff (the Mob scene footage) that is around us all the time," says Franzese.  "It's not the gratuitous violence most movies include for the audience reaction, but real life, real crime and real people.  All ages need to see this, but especially our young people who are confronted every day with opportunities to go down the wrong path… This film was created from my reality, for all to see a life outside of the Mob, a way out… but you have to see the reality of it to understand the impact of the redemption that can occur, as what happened in my own life."

Franzese adds: "In making God The Father, we went to great lengths to show the dark aspect of my real life story in a subtle and intelligent way.  The story of Jesus's suffering and Crucifixion is very well known and in the past, audiences have been willing to endure the intensity of those scenes.   What is important to me is to share the parallel themes that I discovered in the story of the Crucifixion and my own experiences in 'The Life': themes such as perseverance, forgiveness, redemption and faith.   I hope that this film will allow everyone to see beyond the short-term and see that there are choices to lead a positive fulfilling life for themselves and those around them."

God The Father takes audiences on the untold personal journey into the life and spiritual transformation of Michael Franzese, a young and charismatic Capo in the Colombo crime family during the 1980's-90's, who's notorious father Sonny Franzese was also a renowned Underboss. It's a true story about mafia, money, love, loyalty and God.

GOD THE FATHER opens on Friday, October 31 across the country in select theatres.  It is rated "R" for violent images by the MPAA and has a running time of 101 minutes.

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Reputed Mafia Boss of Canada, Vito Rizzuto, Dies at 67

Vito Rizzuto, the reputed Mafia boss of Canada, whose dapper outfits and ability to avoid prison led the authorities to call him the John Gotti of Montreal, died on Dec. 23 in Montreal. He was 67.
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Mr. Rizzuto died of natural causes, Maude Hébert-Chaput, a spokeswoman for Sacré-Coeur Hospital, told The Associated Press. There were widespread reports that he had been receiving treatment for lung cancer.

Working with the Bonanno crime family in New York, Mr. Rizzuto ran an international drug smuggling operation that imported heroin and cocaine and distributed it in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, the authorities said. His father ran the operation before him.

“Compared to what New York-based authorities were used to looking at, the breadth of geography and intertwining connections of the Rizzuto organization surprised even seasoned investigators,” Lee Lamothe and Adrian Humphreys wrote in the book “The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto.”

In a 2004 column on his website, then called This Week in Gang Land, Jerry Capeci, an expert on the Mafia, compared Mr. Rizzuto to Mr. Gotti, the longtime head of the Gambino crime family in New York, who died in 2002.

“Like Gotti in his heyday, Rizzuto is known as a flashy dresser who was tough to convict,” Mr. Capeci wrote. “He beat two major drug smuggling cases between 1987 and 1990 and his only jail time was a two-year bit for arson in 1972. As a result, he has often been compared to the Dapper Don by the Montreal press, and police.”

But Mr. Rizzuto’s luck ran out in 2004, when he was arrested in Montreal on racketeering charges related to a gangland shooting in Brooklyn that inspired a bloody scene in the 1997 film “Donnie Brasco,” starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.

In the shooting, on May 5, 1981, Mr. Rizzuto and three other men burst from the closet of a Brooklyn social club and shot three Bonanno captains who had been challenging the family’s leadership, the authorities said. The shooters wore ski masks to make the killing look like a robbery, but the authorities said it had been ordered by Joseph Massino, then a senior Bonanno captain.

Mr. Rizzuto was extradited to the United States in 2006. He pleaded guilty in 2007 and was sent to prison in Florence, Colo.

While he was in prison, organized crime in Montreal fell into chaos and many of his relatives were murdered. His father was killed by a sniper while standing in his kitchen, and his eldest son, Nicolo, was shot and killed. His brother-in-law disappeared, the keys still in the ignition of his Infiniti.

Before his death, Mr. Rizzuto had been working to reclaim control of the mob and exact revenge, experts said. Since his return to Canada in 2012, there have been nine mob-connected murders there, Mr. Capeci said on his website.

“Vito Rizzuto gets out, and this immediately happens,” Pierre de Champlain, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police intelligence analyst and author of a book about the Mafia, told The Globe and Mail after one such killing in 2012. “If it’s a coincidence, it would be a very strange one.”

Victor Rizzuto was born in the village of Cattolica Eraclea in Sicily on Feb. 21, 1946. His family moved to Canada in the mid-1950s, and Mr. Rizzuto married Giovanna Cammalleri in 1966. Survivors include his wife; a sister, Maria Renda; and two children, Leonardo and Bettina, both lawyers.

Despite the spate of killings after he left prison, Mr. Rizzuto once had a reputation as a peacemaker in mob circles.

Mr. Lamothe credited him with “bringing calm to an underworld that at times was out of control” in the 1970s by, for example, arranging an end to a dispute between the Hells Angels and a rival motorcycle gang.

“Mr. Rizzuto’s management style was pretty unique, at least compared to American crime figures, who went to violence as an instant default,” Mr. Lamothe wrote in an email. “He was born into the Mafia and, from his father, inherited the ‘Sicilian view’: Better to share than to shoot.”

Thanks to Daniel E. Slotnik.

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Mafia Prince: Inside America’s Most Violent Mafia Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra

Mafia Prince is the first-person account of one of the most violent eras in Mafia history —“Little” Nicky Scarfo’s reign as boss of the Philly family in the 1980s—written by Scarfo’s underboss and nephew, “Crazy” Phil Leonetti.

The youngest-ever underboss at the age of 31, Leonetti was at the crux of the violent downfall of the traditional American Mafia in the 1980s when he infiltrated Atlantic City after gambling was legalized, and later turned state’s evidence against his own. His testimony directly led to the convictions of dozens of high-ranking made men including John Gotti, Vincent Gigante, and his own uncle, Nicky Scarfo—sparking the beginning of the end of La Cosa Nostra.

Just as The Godfather and Boardwalk Empire defined the early 20th century Mafia, and Wiseguy and Casino depicted the next great era through the ’70s, Mafia Prince concludes this epic genre revealing the Mafia’s violent final heyday of the 1980s— straight from the horse’s mouth.

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Mob Wives Slammed by Victoria Gotti

They may both be daughters of Mafia members, but Victoria Gotti doesn't think she has much in common with Karen Gravano.

At least that's what she implied in a radio interview with Frank Morano on AM 970 The Apple.

Morano asked Ms. Gotti for her thoughts on "Mob Wives" in general and Karen Gravano's attempts to make herself a celebrity. "God bless them, is what I say," Ms. Gotti said. "If you ask me, do I see any major talent there in each of them, or any of them? No."

Ms. Gotti's father was John Gotti, the Gambino crime boss who Ms. Gravano's father, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, testified against. Gotti died in federal prison.

Ms. Gotti has written several novels and is a former columnist. She was recently voted off Donald Trump's television show "Celebrity Apprentice."

"I'm working since I'm 15," Ms. Gotti told Moran. "What I've done, I would have done if I were Victoria Smith. No one would have stopped me." But long before Ms. Gravano cashed in on being a mob daughter on "Mob Wives," Ms. Gotti and her three sons starred in "Growing Up Gotti" on A&E.

She also wrote her own book about growing up in a Mafia family -- but only when she thought it would help her brother, John "Junior" Gotti, who was facing criminal charges. "I was offered to do a book, God, 10, 15 years ago, and God knows the dollar amounts thrown at me," she said. "I don't do that until it's to help save my brother's life. So we have different mindsets, you know, her and I."

Ms. Gotti called "Mob Wives" a "train wreck," and said it wasn't "real."

"I've never met this girl. I don't know her. I don't like what I see, per se, and hear, but at the same time, I think the whole 'Mob Wives' thing is a complete joke," she said.

Morano, the radio host and a Staten Islander, said on the air he is often asked why he attacks Ms. Gravano but praises Ms. Gotti. "I guess to me the major difference is Karen is herself a convicted criminal, and she really doesn't have any major talents," Morano said.

Ms. Gravano pleaded guilty to being part of her father's ecstasy ring when the family lived in Arizona, after Salvatore Gravano's relatively short stint in federal prison and abbreviated stay in the witness protection program. While her father wound up back in prison, Ms. Gravano was sentenced to probation.

A representative of Ms. Gravano's did not respond to a request for comment from the author and reality show star.

Thanks to Jillian Jorgenson

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Victoria Gotti Joins Celebrity Apprentice

Victoria Gotti is a writer, reality television participant and daughter of former Gambino crime family Mafia boss, John Gotti. She will be competing on the upcoming season of Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.

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John Gotti Movie Back on Track and to Start Shooting Soon

John Travolta should start working on perfecting a thick New York Mafioso accent.

It sounds like cameras will finally roll on the much talked-about John Gotti movie...

"I think we've got the money sorted out now," Gotti: Three Generations' writer and director Barry Levinson told me at BAFTA LA's Britannia Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. "It's coming together."

Travolta is set to star as Gotti, the late Mafia crime boss who was nicknamed "the Teflon Don," alongside Ben Foster as his son and real-life wife Kelly Preston as his daughter, Victoria.

"It's not just him, but John Gotti Jr.," Levinson said. "The dynamic that is interesting to me is Gotti Jr. growing up in the shadow of his father and thinking he was supposed to step up as the next Don and then suddenly realizing that this is not a world he wants to be a part of and how do you deal with that ."

Levinson told me they may even shoot in my hometown of Howard Beach, N.Y. Yes, I grew up in the same neighborhood as the Gottis.

Thanks to Marc Malkin

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John Gotti Movie Starring John Travolta is Placed on Hold

John Travolta’s upcoming movie about the notorious Gotti family has been put on hold due to financial issues, according to a report.

The Hollywood actor is due to star as late Mafia boss John Gotti, who died in prison in 2002, in upcoming movie Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father, alongside his real-life wife Kelly Preston and Al Pacino.

Filming is slated to begin in January ahead of a 2012 release date, but a new report suggests production has been put on hold. Showbiz411.com reports work on the project has come to a halt and won’t resume until more financing is secured.

A source tells the website, “If (producer) Marc Fiore doesn’t come up with money this week, and doesn’t show that more is coming, and that he’s really secured financing, it could all fall apart.”

The film’s producers are also facing a legal battle with Goodfellas star Joe Pesci, who is suing bosses at Fiore Films over allegations he was offered a $3 million deal to play Angelo Ruggiero, an associate of Gotti, but was later told he would be given a smaller part.

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Longtime Gambino Associate, Joseph Watts, Sentenced in Manhattan Federal Court to 13 Years in Prison on Murder and Assault Charges

PRETT BHARA the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that JOSEPH WATTS, 69, a longtime associate of the Gambino Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra (the “Gambino Family”), was sentenced to 13 years in prison on murder and assault charges. WATTS pled guilty on January 20, 2011, to a two-count superseding information that charged him with participating in murder and assault conspiracies in order to maintain and increase his influence in the Gambino Family. The sentence was imposed in Manhattan federal court by U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon.

U.S. Attorney PREET BHARARA stated: “Today’s sentence should serve as a sober reminder that if you kill or harm an actual or potential government witness, no matter how powerful you may think you are, we will find you and send you to prison for a very long time. The sentence Judge McMahon imposed today ensures that Watts will spend the next decade of his life paying for his crimes.”

According to documents previously filed in Manhattan federal court and statements WATTS made at his guilty plea proceeding:

WATTS was a close associate of one-time Gambino Family Boss JOHN J. GOTTI and others. Although WATTS was never formally inducted into the Gambino Family as a “made” member because of his non-Italian lineage, he was afforded the status of a Gambino Family capo.

In 1989, FREDERICK WEISS was a defendant in a case that was pending in the Southern District of New York. JOHN J. GOTTI, then-boss of the Gambino Family, suspected that WEISS was cooperating with the government because he terminated a lawyer who regularly represented Gambino Family members and associates. GOTTI ordered WEISS to be murdered—an order that GOTTI communicated to WATTS and others. WATTS then put together a murder team to carry out the hit.

In September 1989, WATTS and others went to a house on Staten Island where they expected WEISS would be. WATTS assigned different Gambino members and associates to different tasks, including digging the grave where WEISS would be buried. WATTS himself stood in the garage, holding a gun and waiting to shoot WEISS upon his arrival. Because WEISS did not show up to the house as WATTS had expected, he was not killed that day. However, a different team of shooters to whom GOTTI had also assigned the task of killing WEISS successfully located him the next day. He was shot to death in front of his apartment building.

While WATTS was serving a prison sentence in connection with his 2001 conviction for money laundering, he met Victim-1, whom he came to admire because of Victim-1’s purported stockpicking abilities. When Victim-1 was released from prison, WATTS sent an emissary to deliver approximately $350,000 to $400,000—all cash—to Victim-1 to invest on WATTS’ behalf. The investment failed. In 2002, WATTS demanded his money back from Victim-1, who returned some, but not all, of WATTS’s money.

To force Victim-1 to give him back all the money, WATTS began threatening Victim-1. On one occasion, WATTS and another individual confronted Victim-1 in Manhattan and physically assaulted him. On a subsequent occasion, WATTS threatened Victim-1 and physically shoved Victim-1 against a wall.

In addition to his prison term, Judge MCMAHON sentenced WATTS, of Staten Island, New York, to three years of supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $250,000.

During the sentencing proceeding, Judge MCMAHON stated that the murder of Frederick Weiss was “heinous,” “hideous,” and the work of a “cold-blooded killer.” Judge McMahon further stated that the maximum sentence, which she ultimately imposed on WATTS, was “the consequence of the choice he made.”

Mr. BHARARA praised the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The case is being handled by the Office’s Organized Crime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys ARLO DEVLIN-BROWN and CHI T. STEVE KWOK are in charge of the prosecution.

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Linday Lohan Joining the Gotti Crime Family?

A New York press conference for John Travolta's latest project, "Gotti: Three Generations," had a surprise guest: Lindsay Lohan .

The 24-year-old starlet has been rumored to be up for the role of Victoria Gotti, daughter of the infamous "Dapper Don" John Gotti.

Producer Marc Fiore confirmed Tuesday that he's in talks with Lohan but said nothing had been finalized. He says Lohan is "a terrific actress."

Lohan has starred in such films as "Mean Girls" and "Freaky Friday." She has been plagued by legal problems in recent years and is now battling a felony grand theft charge in California over a $2,500 necklace.

Travolta will star as the leader of the legendary Gambino crime family. The biopic is set to begin filming in October and is slated for release in late 2012.

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It's Official: John Travolta to Play John Gotti in "Three Generations"

John Travolta is set to play John Gotti Sr., the mobster known as the Dapper Don, in the indie pic Gotti: Three Generations.

Nick Cassavetes will direct the screenplay by Leo Rossi, which focuses on the relationship between John Gotti Sr., the head of the Gambino crime family who died in prison in 2002, and his son John Gotti Jr., who took over the family business for his father, served time in prison, but then successfully escaped conviction in four subsequent racketeering trials.

Marc Fiore is producing for his Fiore Films. Marty Ingels, the former comic turned talent broker, has come on board the project as executive producer.

Gotti Jr., who's given his blessing to the project, plans to join the producers, Travolta and Cassavetes at a press conference on April 12 at the Sheraton New York Hotel.

Travolta, repped by WME, last appeared in the action thriller From Paris with Love.

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CRIME BEAT RADIO PROGRAM TO AIR SPECIAL TWO-PART PROGRAM: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH LEWIS KASMAN, CRIME BOSS JOHN GOTTI’S “ADOPTED SON,” AND KASMAN’S COUNSEL, JOEL M. WEISSMAN, NOTED FLORIDA LAWYER

This coming March 17th and 24th, the radio show, CRIME BEAT: ISSUES, CONTROVERSIES AND PERSONALITIES FROM THE DARKSIDE, will feature a special two-part program focusing on Lewis Kasman, John Gotti’s so-called 'Adopted Son', and his lawyer, Joel M. Weissman, one of the country’s top divorce lawyers. Kasman, at one time a millionaire garment executive, became one of the closest confidants of the late John Gotti, the notorious Gambino crime boss known as the ‘Dapper Don'. When John Gotti died in prison, Kasman brought the body home in private Lear jet, planned the funeral and gave the eulogy at Gotti’s funeral.

Lewis Kasman’s story is fascinating because he gained unprecedented power within the Gotti Mob. The Dapper Don entrusted Kasman with the authority to pay gambling debts, lawyer fees and assorted bills relating to Gambino crime family matters. After Gotti was sentenced with a life sentence in a federal penitentiary, Lewis Kasman hid millions of illicit dollars in a toy chest in his attic and later became a government witness in 1996. Feeling the heat from the Feds, Kasman agreed to wear a wire and recorded 130 tapes with top mobsters inside the Gambino ranks, as well as Gotti’s own family. The court sentenced Kasman to probation as the reward for his invaluable secret work. Kasman is credited with saving the lives of noted crime reporter Jerry Capeci and a federal worker at Springfield, Missouri.

In reflecting on the years he spent with John Gotti, Lewis Kasman told Crime Beat, “If I was to characterize my relationship with Gotti, I suppose I would say it was blind allegiance. I have many regrets.”

Weissman represented Kasman in a high profile divorce that the tabloids covered. In addition to discussing his representation of Kasman, Weisman will talk about his successful career as one of the best criminal and divorce lawyers in the United States.

Joel Weissman will appear on the Crime Beat radio program March 17th from 9-10 p.m. EST, while Lewis Kasman’s appearance is scheduled for March 24th from 9-10 p.m. EST. Listeners can access the program by going to www.artistfirst.com, clicking on the “Live Weekly Show Schedule” and then clicking on the “Crime Beat” link. See also artistfirst.com/crimebeat.

CRIME BEAT is hosted by award-winning crime writer Ron Chepesiuk (ronchepesiuk.com) and broadcast journalist and freelance writer Willie Hryb. Ronald Herd 11, the popular Internet radio host and regular listener of Crime Beat, said Crime Beat “sounds like an organized crime greatest hits collection...I am loving it!

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John Travolta to Play John Gotti?

It's awesome casting ... John Travolta playing John Gotti in a new movie.

Travolta was at Amici restaurant (Italian, of course) in Brentwood last night, where he was coy about taking the role. But Marty Ingels -- the Executive Producer of the movie who dined with John -- was more direct, saying Travolta will play the lead role in the movie, titled "Gotti."

Sources tell us Travolta has not signed on the dotted line yet.

We're also told James Franco has been approached to play John Gotti, Jr. Awesome.

Our sources say Nick Cassavetes -- of "Alpha Dog" and "Notebook" fame -- is currently rewriting the script and will be the director.

Marc Fiore -- who purchased the rights to Gotti's story back in September -- was also at the last night's meeting and is Executive Producer on the film.

Thanks to TMZ

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Onofrio Modica, Gambino Mobster, Pleads Guilty

A Gambino mobster copped a plea that could get him 10 years in jail because otherwise prosecutors wouldn't cut deals with his buddies, his lawyer said Thursday.

"He's a standup guy," lawyer Gerald McMahon said of client Onofrio (Noel) Modica.

Modica, 48, pleaded to accessory to murder, gambling and attempted jury tampering in the 1992 trial of the late John Gotti.

His lawyer said he wanted to go to trial, but the government forced his hand by refusing to offer deals to a half-dozen other Gambino soldiers.

"The government made us an offer he couldn't refuse," McMahon said.

Modica was one of 14 mobsters busted in a gambling ring in April and charged with extortion, jury tampering and murder.

Plea deals with everyone - except Gambino boss Daniel Marino, who pleaded guilty last month - hinged on Modica taking a deal, McMahon said.

He admitted he agreed to hunt down the addresses of anonymous jurors for Gotti's 1992 trial. Gotti ended up calling off the juryfixing plan.

Thanks to Scott Shifrel

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Salvatore Vitale Murders 11, Serves Only 7 Years in Prison

A Mafia boss who turned informant on one of New York's notorious five families - and pleaded guilty to 11 murders - has been sensationally sentenced to 'time served' today.

Salvatore Vitale, 63, immediately cooperated with the FBI and prosecutors after his arrest and imprisonment in January 2003.

He identified more than 500 gangsters and helped convict more than 50 - including his brother-in-law and former Bonanno chief Joseph Massino.

Today's sentence will mean that Vitale will have served around 18 months for each of his 11 murders.

It is expected that he will immediately enter the witness protection programme
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'Quite simply, Vitale has likely been the most important cooperator in the history of law enforcement efforts to prosecute the Mafia,' said Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, of United States District Court in Brooklyn, when he meted out the sentence today.

Judge Garaufis noted that the criminal justice system was 'dependent on the cooperation of criminals in the prosecution of other criminals'. He added: 'This cooperation does not come without a cost.' The judge noted that he was under no illusion that Vitale had become a government witness for any reason other than self-preservation, noting that he did so only when he realised that the crime family had come to see him as a liability.

The judge said: 'It is unfortunate that law enforcement must, of necessity, obtain the cooperation of felons to address the pernicious crimes committed by organised crime,' the judge said. 'But without the benefit of cooperating witnesses like the defendant, the government’s ability to prosecute the secretive and rule-bound world of organised crime would be greatly impaired.'

In October 2004, information he gave to federal officers led to the discovery of three bodies in Ozone Park, Queens.

Vitale’s lawyers, Kenneth Murphy and Brian Waller, had pushed for the sentence to be 'time served'.
Vitale had been facing life in prison.

In a bid to put Vitale away for good, prosecutor Greg Andres read aloud letters sent to the judge from the wife and daughter of one of the victims. Robert Perrino was a Bonanno associate who was the superintendent of deliveries at The New York Post and who was slain in 1992. Vitale ordered the killing based on the fear that Perrino might cooperate with the authorities. Perrino’s body was not found until Vitale himself began cooperating with police. Perrino'd widow Rosalie wrote: 'As a result of Salvatore Vitale’s criminal inhuman behaviour, my grandson never knew his grandfather, and he and our granddaughter have grown up without this special man. 'Salvatore Vitale caused my own life to unravel and the colour in my life to drain away.'

Vitale alternately stared at the table before him and watched the judge as Mr Andres read the letter.
At the end of the hearing, the judge asked the people in the gallery to remain seated so deputy United States marshals could escort Vitale out of the courtroom. He left through the courtroom’s rear door, beside the judge’s bench, and did not look back.

It is not the first time Mafia informants have been given lesser sentences for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of their bosses. Salvatore Gravano, an underboss for the Gambino family known as 'Sammy the Bull', admitted to 19 murders in 1991 in exchange for a lesser sentence and served just five years.
As part of his testimony, notorious gangster John Gotti was jailed for life.

Vitale, wearing a blue suit and silver pattered tie, twice dabbed tears from his eyes during the court proceeding - and exhaled sharply just before the judge read out the sentence.

The former paratrooper - known as Good Looking Sal' during his three decades committing countless crimes on behalf of the Bonanno family - read from a statement where he apologised to the families of his victims.
He said: 'I would say to them that I pray daily for my victims’ souls and I’m truly sorry. I stand in front of you, your honour, ashamed of the life I used to live. 'I disgraced my father’s name, my name, my sons’ name.'

Vitale operated at the highest levels of organised crime while a member of La Cosa Nostra, and knew many of the Bonanno secrets - including quite literally where bodies were buried.

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Mobsters in South Florida Use New Ways to Face New Rivals

Ever since the ruthless Chicago mobster Al Capone bought a mansion on Miami's Palm Island in 1928, South Florida has been a destination for organized crime figures who want to relax and do a little business.

The rackets have evolved over the years — loan-sharking, extortion and gambling have largely given way to stock scams, money laundering and white-collar fraud — and the Italians and Jews of yore have been joined by rival contingents from Russia, Israel and South America. But the culture of greed and violence has remained a constant.

Mobsters generally prefer to keep a low profile here, but La Costa Nostra — "this thing of ours" — is once more in the headlines, this time connected with Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein.

Upon his return from Morocco last November, Rothstein reportedly went to work for the FBI, even as agents were dismantling his $1.2 billion investment fraud.

Roberto Settineri, the alleged Sicilian mobster whom Rothstein is credited with bringing down this month, appears to have the same short fuse and propensity for violence, according to a Miami Beach police report, that has marked mob behavior for a century.

As Settineri lunched at Soprano Cafe on Lincoln Road in January, he got into a heated argument with a security guard, stood up, and pulled back his leather jacket to reveal a black semi-automatic pistol.

"I will put this gun in your f------ mouth now. I know where you live. I'll go to your f------ house and kill you and your family," Settineri told the guard, according to his arrest report.

The pending aggravated assault charge against Settineri, 41, is the least of his concerns. Federal prosecutors allege he was a key intermediary between a crime family in Sicily and the Gambino crime family in New York City.

Settineri and two of his reported associates — security firm operators Daniel Dromerhauser, of Miami, and Enrique Ros, of Pembroke Pines — were indicted March 10 on federal charges of money laundering and obstruction of justice for reportedly shredding two boxes of documents at Rothstein's request and laundering $79,000 for him.

The Mafia's traditions in South Florida date to the 1930s gambling heydays in Broward, when Meyer Lansky and his associates came south to claim a piece of the action in dozens of "carpet joints" — classy casinos that operated around Hallandale under the beneficial eye of a crooked sheriff.

"It goes back to the 1920s and Al Capone. Capone had a house on Palm Island … and that was his alibi for the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre," said Richard Mangan, a 24-year Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

"Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Hallandale was Las Vegas Southeast," said Mangan, who now teaches a class called "Organized Crime and the Business of Drugs" at Florida Atlantic University's School of Criminology. "Clubs like La Boheme were operating. A made [formally inducted] mob member named Anthony "Tony" Plates would set up shop in the Diplomat Hotel during the winters, plying politicians with booze and hookers."

The gambling generated so much cash that the gangsters suppressed their violent natures.

"The Mafia had an understanding that there would be no killings in Broward County because it was such a lucrative business," said Robert Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University Law School and a gambling-law expert.

By the early 1950s, government scrutiny forced the mobsters out of their illegal casinos but not the county. They still had their hands in local dog and horse tracks and jai lai frontons, as well as in shakedown schemes. They expanded their gambling ventures to Cuba under the tutelage of Lansky, who lived for years in a canal home in Sunny Isles, a popular mob neighborhood.

"Many of the mob people — Chicago, New Orleans, New York — would come down here because they owned casinos in Havana, and [Cuban leader Fulgencio] Batista was more than happy to take bribes," Mangan said.

Hundreds of them made Broward their second or retirement home.

New York's five organized crime consortiums — the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Colombo and Lucchese families — have always considered Florida to be "open," with no one family claiming exclusive rights to operate in the Sunshine State. "This is open territory for anyone with the mob for whatever they want to do," said Nick Navarro, a 30-year law enforcement official who was Broward's sheriff from 1984 to 1993. "It's a beautiful part of the country and this is where they like to come down."

With the dramatic expansion of air conditioning in the 1950s and cheap jet flights, Florida had a commercial building boom over the next decades, drawing more mobsters.

"The Mafia has long been involved in the rigging of construction contracts," Jarvis said.

By 1968, a state crime commission concluded, "South Florida, especially Dade and Broward counties, has become a haven for many known Mafia figures and associates, though their activities know no local boundaries within the state."

In more recent years, "The Teflon Don," Gambino boss John Gotti, maintained a residence in Fort Lauderdale. So did Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, the brutal head of a Mafia family operating in Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

Underbosses, consiglieres and soldiers from all the families are well represented, from Palm Beach Gardens to the Keys.

They still get involved in gambling, loan sharking, strip clubs, prostitution, drug dealing and extortion, but have gravitated toward more sophisticated crimes — such as stock and Medicare fraud — that don't carry the same risks.

They have faced increased competition from Israeli organized crime and Russian mobsters.

"The biggest change has been the Russian mafia," Mangan said. "The Russians started moving in after the fall of communism. They primarily set up in South Beach. They started opening banks in Antigua and Aruba."

Federal prosecutors roll out indictments against the Italian Mafia every year, charging everything from murder to money laundering, but younger Mafiosi come up the ranks to fill the voids left by the prison sentences and old-age deaths of top family members.

"It's a funny thing — it's always said that the Mafia has been destroyed and all the old chieftains are dead or in jail; but every time you turn around, there is a story about the Mafia," Jarvis said.

"To the extent that the Mafia exists anywhere, it would have its hand in South Florida because it still has all the attributes that made it so attractive in the 1930s — warm weather, a lot of wealth, a lot of opportunity. Why wouldn't the Mafia be here? Everyone else wants to be in South Florida."

Thanks to Jon Burnstein and Peter Franceschina

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