Gee, I saw two freepers posting that the mafia doesn't exist anymore. I will have to go find them and ping them.
Isn't it just the Italian Yakuza?
The Italian Mafia is done. Has been for years. They're still around, but current-generation guys don't have the stomach for extreme savagery. The various South American gangs are another story.
When the USSR collapsed, has nobody ever wondered what happened to the legions of KGB thugs who held up the old regime? People highly trained in assassination techniques, surveillance and counter-surveillance? People professionally trained in how to get into highly-guarded installations? What do you think that members of the "Russian Mafia" were doing during the Soviet era?
40 posted on 02/19/2006 12:05:06 PM EST by SauronOfMordor
The Genovese Family
200 to 225 members
Boss: Vincent “Chin” Gigante, 76
Underboss: Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano, 83 (Incarcerated)
Consigliere: Vacant
The Genovese clan, long considered the Ivy League of organized crime, is the only family whose heir apparent and official boss seem to be one and the same. Vincent “Chin” Gigante took over around 1982. He’s been in federal prison since 1997. The Oddfather, whose crazy-man strolls in Greenwich Village in his pajamas kept him out of prison for decades, is scheduled for release at age 82, in 2010— if he lives that long.
His genes give him a good shot. His brother Mario, believed by some to function as Chin’s acting boss, is active at 81. Their mom, whose calls of “Cinzini” out her Greenwich Village apartment window gave Vincent his nickname, lived to 95.
Until then, he has a committee of three serving as his eyes and ears: Mario, who ended three years of supervised release in June following a 42-month term for labor racketeering, and two longtime allies who hail from his downtown, or West Side, base: Lawrence “Little Larry” Dentico, 81, and Dominick “Quiet Dom” Cirillo, 75.
“Mario is a gangster in his own right,” says one law-enforcement expert. “He’s Chin’s blood-family connection. Larry and Quiet Dom are trustworthy old-timers who do his bidding with little fear of opposition from within or outside the family.”
As Gigante told a prison guard who wondered if younger inmates were bothering him: “Nobody ***** with me.” Or his disciples.
Genoveses 'top of five Mafia families'
The FBI considers the Genoveses to be the biggest and most powerful of New York's five Mafia gangs.
The four other families have seen their leaderships undermined by a relentless campaign against organised crime in the United States over the past 20 years, detectives say.
That has led to a new underworld order. The Genoveses - once seen as the second most powerful family after the Gambinos - have now moved up to the number one slot, the FBI believes.
The Gambinos were crippled by the arrests of their boss John Gotti and other leading figures.
LOL......how wrong they were.
They do, but they lost most of their power from the early 1960s on. La Cosa Nostra was at the peak of their power from the late 1920s until the late 1950s.
LOL, I have a few friends who would beg to disagree.
Then again, I use to love going to dinner at this nice restaurant in queens near me....until the owner was indicted as one of the crime family bosses.
Some great stories there.