Does the Italian Mafia still exist in Los Angeles? Is the Los Angeles crime family still active today?

[PolackTony]

What is your opinion on Detroit crime family. IMO the Detroit Partnership has proven itself to be a very stable and resilient crime family considering what most other Cosa Nostra families deal with in the way of internal strife and law enforcement scrutiny. The fact you don't hear about Detroit crime family shows their strength. In fact, they probably are the most sophisticated and "white collar" of any family in the country. The Detroit Family has always been lowkey. While the feds have always aggressively gone after the Chicago, Philly and New York families, Detroit has always been around in the shadows. Keeping a low profile. Old school. Hardly any rats either. They ain’t going anywhere. They have the strongest code of silence and have legitimized their children. They adapted. Since the beginning of the Detroit L.C.N they have invested and purchased legitimate business . That is the smart way to go . They are far more insular than many families other than the Genovese and Rizzuto families. They have had the least amount of informants from inside of their family and they carried on pretty successfully after the Gamtax case and among other indictments. DETROIT Partnership doesn’t have many mob style killing or indictments because a lot of the marriages are “in house.” Made guys nephews marrying made guys nieces and so on.

Since you've likely been on this forum before (and I'm not just saying that because Pogo pointed it out), I imagine you know my opinion on Detroit. It's no secret.

I have never been on this forum. I am new on this forum. I am not even from the USA. I am a 38year old Macedonian from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Macedonia. I am just a Mafia enthusiast. I read alot about organized crime alot online. In my country you just have to fight, even if someone just verbally insults you. Here in my country is unthinkable to be slapped by another man, and don't fight him. Even if you loose the fight. You must fight back. I guess we (people from the Balkans) are more violent than average Americans. If you don't fight back, you are not considered a man.When i was younger i fought alot on a daily basis on the streets, i even stabbed a guy in his chest and stomach. He was in critical condition, but thank god he lived..

Depends on which Americans. I'm from Chicago and what you describe is exactly how I was raised. An "honor culture".

[Nick Prango]

What is your opinion on Detroit crime family. IMO the Detroit Partnership has proven itself to be a very stable and resilient crime family considering what most other Cosa Nostra families deal with in the way of internal strife and law enforcement scrutiny. The fact you don't hear about Detroit crime family shows their strength. In fact, they probably are the most sophisticated and "white collar" of any family in the country. The Detroit Family has always been lowkey. While the feds have always aggressively gone after the Chicago, Philly and New York families, Detroit has always been around in the shadows. Keeping a low profile. Old school. Hardly any rats either. They ain’t going anywhere. They have the strongest code of silence and have legitimized their children. They adapted. Since the beginning of the Detroit L.C.N they have invested and purchased legitimate business . That is the smart way to go . They are far more insular than many families other than the Genovese and Rizzuto families. They have had the least amount of informants from inside of their family and they carried on pretty successfully after the Gamtax case and among other indictments. DETROIT Partnership doesn’t have many mob style killing or indictments because a lot of the marriages are “in house.” Made guys nephews marrying made guys nieces and so on.

Since you've likely been on this forum before (and I'm not just saying that because Pogo pointed it out), I imagine you know my opinion on Detroit. It's no secret.

I have never been on this forum. I am new on this forum. I am not even from the USA. I am a 38year old Macedonian from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Macedonia. I am just a Mafia enthusiast. I read alot about organized crime alot online. In my country you just have to fight, even if someone just verbally insults you. Here in my country is unthinkable to be slapped by another man, and don't fight him. Even if you loose the fight. You must fight back. I guess we (people from the Balkans) are more violent than average Americans. If you don't fight back, you are not considered a man.When i was younger i fought alot on a daily basis on the streets, i even stabbed a guy in his chest and stomach. He was in critical condition, but thank god he lived..

Depends on which Americans. I'm from Chicago and what you describe is exactly how I was raised. An "honor culture".

i meant average suburban Americans.

[PolackTony]

I thought this was a big part of keeping the mob in Sicily down.. everytime they meet it's a mafia association charge......

The difference, of course, is that in Italy membership in a mafia organization is itself a crime.

[Philly d]

Suprised that the OUtfit is almost dead. Chicago has a ton of italians an it's the 3 largest city in America.

New England also has a ton of Italians and look at the state of their "outfit". For Chicago, they were hit very hard by a series of important Federal indictments in the 80s and 90s that did serious damage to their viability. Critically, their control over Chicago and Cook County government and courts was broken up. This meant that they could no longer kill and terrorize at will and thus could no longer exact street taxes or put the fear of God into deadbeats or potential rats in the same way. And after Family Secrets, no one wants to die like Joey Lombardo in the freaking Florence Supermax. This, coupled with broader demographic and cultural changes that undermined traditional rackets and the cohesive Italian communities that the Outfit thrived in for decades, has contributed greatly to their decline in my opinion.

What you say applies to every city in the US. new england is a vast region. Chicago has more italians than boston. And from what i read, boston has more activity than chicago. Plus Boston had a civil war and battled the Winter Hill gang.

[Wiseguy]

Suprised that the OUtfit is almost dead. Chicago has a ton of italians an it's the 3 largest city in America.

New England also has a ton of Italians and look at the state of their "outfit". For Chicago, they were hit very hard by a series of important Federal indictments in the 80s and 90s that did serious damage to their viability. Critically, their control over Chicago and Cook County government and courts was broken up. This meant that they could no longer kill and terrorize at will and thus could no longer exact street taxes or put the fear of God into deadbeats or potential rats in the same way. And after Family Secrets, no one wants to die like Joey Lombardo in the freaking Florence Supermax. This, coupled with broader demographic and cultural changes that undermined traditional rackets and the cohesive Italian communities that the Outfit thrived in for decades, has contributed greatly to their decline in my opinion.

What you say applies to every city in the US. new england is a vast region. Chicago has more italians than boston. And from what i read, boston has more activity than chicago. Plus Boston had a civil war and battled the Winter Hill gang.

Up until 2011, I would say New England had the most activity out of the remaining families outside New York. Big drop off since then.

And again, it's probably more accurate to refer to them as Boston at this point. They really don't have a presence in Connecticut anymore. And there are only a handful of guys left in Providence. 75% of the remaining membership is in Boston.

[TommyNoto]

What would the LA rackets BE exactly? If a mob was still there? Outta curiosity.......

Gambling rackets , it’s always about the book and given time a crew like Tommy Gambinos could be managing a pretty big book with very little to worry about. I wonder how big his crew is as I can see NY guys wanting to try something out there. From the gambling comes the loansharking, really sky’s the limit. Not to mention whale gamblers and sharps a few hour drive away.

Did TG have a restaurant in LA area ? I felt like I read that he does and would make sense

You also already have crews mananaging hundred LB + weed shipments into NY from CA

I wouldn’t be shocked if the Westside has gambling rackets in the area either. We know they had a weed crew out there supplying Larca’s crew

If I could play out a fantasy live , being a big mob loanshark to the 80s CA porn industry is probably top 10 lol

[Pogo The Clown]

LCN was never big in bookmaking in LA. Even during the mobs heyday of the 1940s and 50s the big bookmaking operations in the city were run by Mickey Cohen and his crew. LCN never got a foothold in that racket like they did back east.


Pogo

[Nick Prango]

What would the LA rackets BE exactly? If a mob was still there? Outta curiosity.......

Gambling rackets , it’s always about the book and given time a crew like Tommy Gambinos could be managing a pretty big book with very little to worry about. I wonder how big his crew is as I can see NY guys wanting to try something out there. From the gambling comes the loansharking, really sky’s the limit. Not to mention whale gamblers and sharps a few hour drive away.

Did TG have a restaurant in LA area ? I felt like I read that he does and would make sense

You also already have crews mananaging hundred LB + weed shipments into NY from CA

I wouldn’t be shocked if the Westside has gambling rackets in the area either. We know they had a weed crew out there supplying Larca’s crew

If I could play out a fantasy live , being a big mob loanshark to the 80s CA porn industry is probably top 10 lol

I would dare to say that all 5 New York crime families have a small presence in California. They probably have factions in California representing them.

[Nick Prango]

I just found this channel. This Irish guy Jeff Crow is ex-associate of Detroit crime family - CA Based. He was associate from 1993 until 2000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zq6sRfsY7A

[avvocato]

I thought this was a big part of keeping the mob in Sicily down.. everytime they meet it's a mafia association charge......

The difference, of course, is that in Italy membership in a mafia organization is itself a crime.

Correct. In 1982, the Italian parliament passed Article 416-bis c.p., which defined for the first time the crime of “mafia-type association” (associazione di tipo mafioso). With the passage of this law, anyone who was found to be a member of a mafia-type association could be punished with 10-15 years in prison.


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[Pogo The Clown]

To give you a graphic analogy, Maxie is like herpes. He shows up, causes problems, then leaves after being given the medicine. Regardless of how long he lays dormant you know he’s always coming back and there’s zero chance of getting rid of him, and easy to spot.

It is clear that many of these new accounts that have recently popped up is the same person posting to himself. Like you said it is easy to spot at this point.


Pogo

[Grouchy Sinatra]

I’ve been trying to find information on La Cosa nostra activity in California for ages now and there isn’t much information about them post 2003. Today, they are very much under the radar with the police shifting their attention towards Russian and Chinese syndicates in the city. Because of this, almost nothing is known about the organisation. The focus from the feds on crime families outside of the northeast and Midwest has seemed to have died off post 1990’s. I have read online that the LA Mafia has thought to have been taken over as a puppet family of the Gambino Crime Family. Is it possible?

Los Angeles had an Italian neighborhood at one time. Mostly the area around Lincoln Heights, Elysian Valley. This was Jack Dragna's neighborhood. This was the birthplace of the Italian mob in LA. Like the San Francisco family, they probably saw their peak in power during prohibition. Since the families out west were very traditional Sicilian without a lot of non-Italian partnerships in high society, they didn't adapt well to the post-prohibition era of the mob when big industrialized rackets took hold. In fact these industrial rackets never really did take hold in LA since LA was never much of a union town. LA's downtown brass, the LA Times, etc, were very anti-union. The only real active unions were in show business and Chicago had an inside track on those. After Bioff, Roselli, etc got busted that was the end of the outfit's labor racket infiltration in Hollywood.

[Grouchy Sinatra]

I forgot to add, when William Parker took over the LAPD he weeded out all of the cops that were on the take for the LA mob, whether it be the Dragna family, Cohen's crew or the Outfit guys in LA. At this time most of LA's wiseguys moved to Vegas.

Since then, as others have pointed out, mostly gambling rackets and drug dealing.

[JoeCamel]

What would the LA rackets BE exactly? If a mob was still there? Outta curiosity.......

Gambling rackets , it’s always about the book and given time a crew like Tommy Gambinos could be managing a pretty big book with very little to worry about. I wonder how big his crew is as I can see NY guys wanting to try something out there. From the gambling comes the loansharking, really sky’s the limit. Not to mention whale gamblers and sharps a few hour drive away.

Did TG have a restaurant in LA area ? I felt like I read that he does and would make sense

You also already have crews mananaging hundred LB + weed shipments into NY from CA

I wouldn’t be shocked if the Westside has gambling rackets in the area either. We know they had a weed crew out there supplying Larca’s crew

If I could play out a fantasy live , being a big mob loanshark to the 80s CA porn industry is probably top 10 lol

Last I knew he’s still got interest in TElecom industry and has the Gambino Prosecco wine distribution company. I would lean towards legit with him. He’s high profile enough he pops up once inawhile as a C list celeb in page six like publications. If anything he does have status as “Boss of LA” and was specifically made there with his brother probably as some kind of bridge gap to hand over Milanos LA rackets to the inzerillo Gambino faction Of the Gambinos so I’d imagine when Pete Milano died whatever unknown made guys or associates were folded in to them. We also know tony gambino (his brother) was made as LA Milano family but worked for Joe isgro at his record company. Joe Isgro is inducted gambino soldier so it seems as the Cleveland and Chicago/KC ties died off the Gambino ties increased. This is pure spec, but I think if any family has real rackets in LA it’s the Gambinos and even then Tommy G was tied in with Donnie montemarano in the telecom and entertainment (Colombo) who’s still alive but as for active I don’t know: Inzerillos and Gambinos dig in everywhere like ticks and associates don’t need to be made
To be kicking up or referring business both legit and illegitimate to the family from LA or guys putting money on the street out there

So Nick Prango your wish might be reality in terms of it being a Gambino Stronghold but too big and too many different criminal groups to be anything more then an open city. They would be just one of many many crews stemming from many groups, but there might be some number of associates to chase leads if the Feds and Locals were more concerned with Italian OC vs cartel and violent Rico indictable street gangs.

[Grouchy Sinatra]

Best way to find out if there's mob activity in any city is to go there and start an illegal sports book. Believe me if there's any action there you'll find out fast.