The History of Italian-american Mafia in 20 Century

The Italian-American Mafia started in the early 20 centuries. It grew due to probation and illegal activities. Its manly in New York and Chicago after the probation ended they got into the illegal gambling, drug trafficking, while also getting in with labor unions and construction companies.

The Mafia made violent crimes notorious members such as John Gotti and Al Capone have fascinated the public and become a part of pop culture. During the latter part of the 20th century the government used laws to convict high-ranking mobsters and weaken the Mafia. However, it stills is in business today. During the 1920s when the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned the sale making and transportation of alcohol American gangs entered the bootleg liquor business and transformed themselves into criminal enterprises, skilled at smuggling, money laundering and bribing police and other public officials. During this time, the Mafia in Italy, which had flourished since at least the mid-19th century, was under attack from the Leader of Benito Mussolini. Some Sicilian Mafiosi escaped to the United States, where they got involved in bootlegging and became part of the American Mob. The Mafia in the U.S. and Sicily were separate entities, although the Americans adopted some old-school traditions, all-important code of conduct and secrecy that forbid any cooperation with any federal or state law.

American Mafia crime family was organized around a headed by a boss, who ruled with authority and received a cut of every money-making operation taken on by any member of his family. Second-in-command was the underboss and below him were the captains, who each controlled a crew of 10 or more soldiers. At the bottom of the chain were associates, people who worked for or did business with the family but weren’t actual members.

Becoming an official member of a Mafia family traditionally involved an initiation ceremony in which a person performed such rituals as pricking his finger to draw blood and holding a burning picture of a patron saint while taking an oath of loyalty. Italian heritage was a prerequisite for every and men often, though not always, had to kill before they could be members. Becoming a member of the Mafia was meant to be a lifetime commitment and each Mafiosi swore to obey the all-important code of loyalty and silence. Mafiosi were also expected to follow other rules, including never assaulting one another and never cheating with another member’s girlfriend or wife. Charles “Lucky” Luciano and his allies which included crime boss Meyer Lansky were at the top of the New York crime scene. They were the victors of a New York City gangster war between old line Italian and Sicilian Mafia bosses who had moved to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The older bosses focused on settling old grudges not on making money. The winning Luciano-Lansky faction concentrated entirely on making money and killed anyone who got in their way. Luciano was also responsible for energizing the nine-member commission. This change in direction and the activation of the commission is referred to as the American of the Mafia. New York City was divided among five crime families with approximately nineteen more family units around the country. The five New York City families became famous each was named after their Godfather. The legendary families were the Bonino, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese.

When the highly profitable bootlegging period ended in 1933 with the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, organized crime focused on other criminal activities including gambling, loan sharking, prostitution, and drug distribution, a natural extension of bootlegging. Labor was another popular criminal activity. Gangsters worked their way into positions of power in a labor union and then stole from the union’s retirement and health funds.

Keeping a relatively low profile, the national organized crime syndicate received little interference from the FBI. Fearing a poor showing against the underworld Hoover chose not to battle organized crime. Hoover insisted the mob did not exist in the United States. Organized crime grew and prospered across the country.

The Commission did not result in the prevention of all gang wars. However, the scale and frequency of the gang wars did reduce considerably. When one Mafia family declared war on another, the aggressor Family usually found itself at war with the Commission and the rest of the Mafia. This provided a powerful incentive to the Families to negotiate their disputes without bloodshed or wars. The American Mob is still reportedly in business but no one knows for sure. They work in the shadows and are very secret about their business. They are not noticeable they are all over the place but are not identify in their roles the work for their bosses to and make money doing it. They are still believed to be in construction and other working jobs in New York. They have legitimist license to work in their trade so they are less obvious to the federal government, cops, and federal agents. Of course, the Mafia isn’t what it once was: a power structure capable of influencing national politicians and making historic heists at major transportation centers. But the FBI maintains that La Cosa Nostra the sprawling group originally steered by Sicilian immigrants that we hear about most often is the foremost organized criminal threat to American society. The feds estimate that various Italian Mafia groups have more than 3,000 members scattered throughout the country, with their largest presence in New York, southern New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

A recent New Jersey case demonstrated the mob’s endurance, as acting state attorney general John J. Hoffman said his investigation into the Lucchese crime family revealed that traditional organized crime remains presence in the US and continues to gain huge profits through criminal business.