Word: nostra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...helped destroy the Scarfo family, the first Mafia family to be wiped off the map. Not since Joe Valachi has anyone done this much damage to the Cosa Nostra. But here you are with a completely new identity under the Federal Witness Protection Program, somewhere a long way from Philadelphia. What's life like...
...ghostwriter Laurence Shames' imagery is so hard-boiled it could be served at picnics. (When Gloria, the maid, dropped a steak into hot oil, "it sizzled like a soul in hell.") But the story is fast paced, and the vivid vignettes include the immortal words of a Cosa Nostra capo who was once asked if his beef shipments contained horsemeat. "Well," he answered, "some of it moos and some...
These are difficult times for the 25 families, or "brugads," that make up America's Cosa Nostra (rough translation: our thing). During the 1980s, some 1,200 Mafia operatives were convicted, including the leaderships of New York City's five brugads and 11 smaller Italian gangs in cities ranging from Denver to Kansas City to New Orleans. The bloodletting has decimated two major New York City families (Colombo and Bonanno) and enabled Gambino family boss John Gotti, a flamboyant newcomer, to rise up overnight as America's leading media mobstar...
...crime is an estimated $100 billion-a-year untaxed business operated by groups ranging from motorcycle gangs to Asian drug triads. But the Italian Mafia is still the only group that has infiltrated hundreds of legitimate U.S. industries and labor unions. Despite the wave of new prosecutions, the Cosa Nostra -- and particularly the Genovese branch -- is showing few signs of abandoning these businesses, which today are far more lucrative than such traditional vices as gambling and loan-sharking. "In terms of the Genovese family, I'm afraid we haven't even made a dent," concedes investigator Coffey...
...average $15 million-a-year painting contractor saved $3.8 million in costs by paying gangsters. How? The payoff entitled the contractor to use low-wage painters without getting any flak from the mobbed-up union. But in the end, consumers often pay the price. Economists estimate that Cosa Nostra's penetration of industries in New York City alone costs citizens hundreds of millions of dollars annually from inflated prices for everything from fresh fish to new condominiums. The biggest beneficiary: the Genovese clan...