THE BLACK HAND FORUM

Western Sicilian mafiosi were well-acquainted with other mafiosi throughout the island even as far back as the 1800s. Yes, travel was more difficult in the Sicilian interior but that did not stop them from visiting other towns and networking. These weren't cripples but extremely enterprising men wh...

1. The network was incredibly tight-knit from the very beginning, as it was based on existing relationships within Sicily that further expanded in the US. Mafiosi communicated extensively via letter and regularly took trains all over the country to attend meetings even before other modes of communi...

Great thread guys, and great questions and replies. This gets to the core of what Italian American Organized Crime was during the beginnings. Here are some principles I try to keep in mind: 1. The world was MUCH MUCH MUCH less connected than it is now. We tend to forget that. These guys couldn't se...

B, I appreciate your lengthy replies, and your articles are well-written, and I enjoyed reading them. I still have some questions though, if you don't mind. You realize Boschetto was a STATE Senator, not a U.S. Senator? In Wyoming? Right after statehood. Before PROPORTIONAL representation? (Before ...

Just when one starts to think that SOME members are generally honorable patriots, you read something like this. These stories are infuriating. Hard to claim that any of these guys -- many who would tell you they LOVE their home town and region -- have any such feelings when it comes down to their pe...

Cosa Nostra's rules are and were overwhelmingly consistent between different Families and even countries. Investigations from 19th century Sicily show an incredible amount of consistency with American Cosa Nostra when it came to structure and rules. The boss/capo/rappresentante could interpret rule...

No problem, man. However, I do disagree with the last two points. 1) It was heavily formal even early on. Most of the rules we know of today outside of some of the circumstantial ones (i.e. no stocks/bonds, drugs) were in place and if anything they were even more rigid when it came to rules and pro...

There are an endless amount of guys like this. Colorado in particular had seemingly hundreds of mafia affiliates from the Agrigento / Trapani / Palermo interior and outside of the big names it's very difficult to know who was and wasn't a member. If you've researched this stuff deeply enough for a ...

Not intended to offend but you do yourself and the forum a disservice by not mentioning their names, the discussion ends up being more speculative and generalised as a result I know, and I appreciate the help. Individual One is Michael Galasso, born 1891. PART of the reason I didn't mention that na...

Black Handers: I'm researching two individuals and would love your thoughts. Both individuals came from Lucca Sicula, Sicily, the hotspot for Colorado Italian Organized Crime. Individual one owned a "tavern/restaurant" during Prohibition that became a bar the day Prohibition was repealed....

My understanding is the profit is made also by using tiny amounts of it in other drugs. These guys put 2mg in a pill and claim its Oxy. They lace cocaine with it and people come back for more. Truly awful when the stakes are so high.

I just wrote a review of a Netflix Docuseries called Fear City. It used Trump's name a lot in discussing the 1980s Commission trial. Basically everyone building a skyscraper in NY had to pay a mob-connected concrete company an inflated rate. So Trump was not really a mob friend, but more of a mob vi...

Oh that reminds me, thank you Ivan, that it is also my understanding that a lot of the real work in the Commission case was done by New York State organized crime task forces, and yet they credit it all to the FBI. I'm sure that pissed a lot of people off!

I came across the Netflix Documentary entitled "Fear City" the other day. It's been out for a while, but Netflix is promoting it again. It's about the arrests and convictions of the heads of NY's Five Families during the Commission Trial in the mid-1980s. I give it a 5 out of 10. The prod...

But here’s the thing: we live in a country with no shame, driven by a lust for fame. If any of those bosses had created generational wealth, don’t you think we’d know? Like the grandkid would be a social media influencer?