How The New York Mafia Actually Works | How Crime Works | Insider

My name is John Pennisi. I am a former member of the Lucchese

crime

family. That's "How Crime Works." The biggest misconception about Cosa Nostra and the people who participate in that life is that people really believe that there is honor, loyalty and respect. These three principles on which Cosa Nostra is based no longer exist. Honor, loyalty and respect have been replaced by selfishness and greed. The rules for a member are the rules of the family and the rules of Cosa Nostra. And those particular rules are: You must not put your hand on another created member. You shouldn't go with another member's wife, not even a girl, for that matter.

You should be of pure Italian blood, your mother and father must be Italian, your lineage must be completely Italian. But with every rule, there is an exception, and there have been people who slipped through the cracks, so to speak. One of the rules is that you shouldn't get involved in lawsuits, you shouldn't sue people. And I know there was a rule that you weren't supposed to get involved in stocks and bonds. I'm not 100% sure if that's still in effect today. Specifically in New York, women, children or family members were not to be killed in the

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They were not allowed to use explosive devices, such as bombs, because on the other hand, in Italy and Sicily, they were known to use explosives to eliminate members during a war, or simply to eliminate a member. They didn't want that kind of attention in New York. So there is an exception to every rule. Frankie DeCicco, who was the underboss of the Gambino family, had an explosive device placed under his car and as a result, it exploded. The "no drug trafficking" rule applies to all Five Families, but all Five Families have drug trafficking activities in them. Every family will have certain members who will be involved in the drug business and who will turn a blind eye because it makes a lot of money.

Cosa Nostra members today have no problem breaking the rules on a daily basis, whereas in Carlo Gambino's era you couldn't break the rules. Breaking the rules meant getting killed. So all these rules that were put in place for reasons are now being broken. So when you have an organization that no longer follows its own rules, it weakens it. Before the Five Families were created, the head of each family was called father. From there they would get the name godfather. And at some point, they divided it into five parents and there were Five Families. So the Five Families of New York are the Genovese family, who, on the street, were known as the Westsides.

That's how we refer to them. There's the Gambino family. There is the Lucchese family. There is the Colombo family and the Bonanno family. And they are like the core of Cosa Nostra for the United States. As for the Five Families being all in New York, they controlled the entire state of New York. It wasn't just New York City. And then there is the creation of the Commission, which was basically the idea of ​​Meyer Lansky, who saw it as a board of directors. The Commission was made up of the head of each of the families, those Five Families, and they would basically make decisions about anything that happened between them.

The territories were divided, obviously, according to which family represented which part of New York City. It's kind of like... they cut off their own territory. But if they overlapped, that's where a Commission would come in and make a decision. So when they created the structure of the Five Families, they set it up more like an army. At the bottom of that hierarchical order are the associates, who are considered civilians. Anyone who is not a member of that life is considered a civilian. Above them are family members, who are called friends. We call them friends in that life.

Above them are the captains. As we say, caporegimes. They are the leaders of the crews. The family is represented by all the crews that are in that family. And above them is the administration of the family. The top of the administration is the chief, the deputy chief and the consigliere. And that is the structure of the entire family. The word Cosa Nostra means "our thing." And that basically means that the structure of the Mafia, or, as people would call it, Mafia, belongs to them, to the members of that life. The

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chooses you. That life, the Cosa Nostra, chooses you.

You don't choose that life. So before someone becomes an incorporated member of a family, he becomes an associate. And usually the way they become an associate is that they are associated with someone who is already a built-in member. For an associate to be proposed, I believe that several factors come into play. One is how well they get along with whoever they're with, the soldier they're with, you know, that they do what they're told to do. They keep their mouths shut. Once you are proposed to, a ceremony takes place. The person who will conduct this ceremony will be a member or members of the administration.

Next to them will be, obviously, the captain who will propose to you that day. During this ceremony there is a gun and a knife on the table, and mainly for symbolic reasons. They prick your trigger finger, whether you're right- or left-handed. Your blood falls on a saint, an image of a saint. It simply symbolizes that the oath that you are taking, the oath that you are about to take, you are taking it by holding that saint in your hand. And finally they set fire to that saint, and you move it from hand to hand, and you repeat it after whoever is leading the ceremony.

After which he explains to you the rules of that life. My position within the Lucchese family was that of a soldier, but there were times when I performed for my captain in the capacity of acting captain, specifically for a sit-in. The administration would elect the family captains. The requirement to be a captain would obviously be good leadership, so you would have to see something in that person to feel that he could lead the crew. That captain is responsible for each crew member, but he is also responsible for all associates who are associated with that crew. The position of consigliere is that of counselor.

Therefore, he is specifically handling not only the internal, what we would call problems or struggles within the family, but also the external. The difference between a boss and an underboss is not a big difference with the exception of the title. Obviously, the boss is the head of the family, but the deputy boss has as much weight in that family as the boss. In general, the position of a boss is to supervise the family. He's really in charge of everything that happens under him, from the administration, all his captains, all the soldiers in the family, all the way down to the associates.

The way life is structured, the boss is supposed to abide by the same rules as the captains, his administration, the soldiers, and everyone else in that life. The head of a family or a family as a whole could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year. There are many reasons to hold a boss position. One, obviously, would be to arrest a boss, imprison him. One would be a boss who passes away for health reasons and, you know, there's a void in the position. But there are also reasons like in the Paul Castellano situation, a boss who felt he was being greedy and the family turned against the boss.

There are different scenarios in which a boss can be removed, replaced, or ultimately killed. I think that years ago, when the Five Families were created, there was much more corruption in having law enforcement officers on the payroll than there is today. I think that's happening less, but that doesn't mean it won't continue. As for political influence, it would obviously involve putting money in people's pockets to obtain political favors. In current times, I don't think they have the political power they once had. I don't think they are capable of corrupting politicians like they were years ago. Initially, the mafia took control of the unions by force.

They would put people. Those people would corrupt the union, they would take over the unions and that's how they were able to control most of the unions, specifically in New York City. But today they have their hand in this, you know, in small areas, but they don't control the unions like they did in the past. La Cosa Nostra arrived in New York at the beginning of the 20th century. This was an organization and structure that came from the other side, that is, Italy, Sicily. When immigrants from those countries came to this country, Italians were almost like second class citizens and were discriminated against when they arrived.

At first, it was to fight oppression. But naturally, that turned into committing racketeering and criminal acts for profit. So when the average citizen started paying attention to Cosa Nostra here, I think the first reactions were fear and intimidation. Because they feared and felt intimidated by this group of Italians, they were also afraid to go to the authorities. They were afraid to speak against him. In turn, the Cosa Nostra gained its power thanks to this. So I joined Cosa Nostra because I came from a neighborhood, both Ozone Park and Howard Beach, that was full of kids in that life.

And I think I admired them at the time and wanted to be like them. If you are surrounded by people who are in that life, incorporated members, at some point you become an associate. And my cousin and I were associated with the Gambino family through John Gotti Jr. And at the time I'm talking about, I was about 14 or 15 at the time. Then, sometime around 2012, I became an associate and of record for the Lucchese

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family. In 2013, he was already an incorporated member of the family. I remained an embedded member of the family until 2018. I ultimately ended up leaving because the family I was a member of falsely accused me of being an informant when that wasn't true.

Now they were cheating on me, which meant they sent people to find my employer. Usually when that's done, it's to either A, hurt you or B, kill you. I made the decision that I would never return to my former friends who turned against me. Obviously, my life has taken a dramatic change. I can't see my family as much as I would like anymore. I can't live as close to them as I would like. I have to watch every place I go, you know, and be very careful about what I do. And my plans have to be drawn up based on where I'm going and what I'm doing.

Then my life took a big change. In my opinion, in 20 years Cosa Nostra will hardly exist in New York. I don't think they will be able to survive. La Cosa Nostra now, compared to years ago, has definitely declined. And the reason is that with these sentences that are being handed down, the government and specifically the FBI have unlimited funds. They are able to go after them. They can eliminate the bosses with RICO. As for earning money by committing crimes or performing various criminal acts, today it is more limited than before. So now, once you limit making money and making money, you are taking power away because money brings power, and organized crime today is definitely less powerful than in years past.

In recent years there has been an increase in arrests and a large number of arrests in Cosa Nostra. Specific families are targeted, and the reason is that it is difficult for Cosa Nostra members to operate without law enforcement, specifically the FBI, knowing what they are doing. There are more people who are informants, cooperators. They have people who work within the families with the FBI, giving information to the FBI. This is how they are dismantling families. Family by family, they are dismantled. Members of law enforcement in the United States now work closely with members of law enforcement from people outside the United States, such as Italy and Sicily.

They create cases together. I made the decision to create a blog and started writing from my experiences. So the first podcast that I created is also the name of the blog, which is called "Sitdown News", and that is also the name of the podcast. And I recently created a second podcast called "Unlimited Substance." In the next episode, we will talk about how Cosa Nostra will make money in 2022. Stay tuned. which is the laboratory where they will process the leaves.