Motorfab's Blog: Une Histoire de Crime Organisé

[motorfab]

New article on the blog dedicated to Auguste Ricord.

From 1965 to 1973, Ricord and his associates (all mobsters on the run like him) sent a little over 5 tons of pure heroin to the USA from South America.

The article focuses on Ricord's youth in Marseille, his rise as a mobster in the streets of Paris (mainly in the Pigalle district), his time in the Gestapo during the Second World War, his escape to South America and finally his involvement in drug trafficking until his fall.

The article also focuses on his main associates throughout the different eras, as well as their connections with various mafiosi (among others Tommaso Buscetta, Frank Dioguardi or Filippo Casamento)

Translator available on the site

https://unehistoiredecrimeorganise.blog ... rican.html

[B.]

Great job. You have to wonder if any of the criminals in Marseilles interacted with the Marseilles Family of the Sicilian mafia early on in their lives.

[johnny_scootch]

Great job. You have to wonder if any of the criminals in Marseilles interacted with the Marseilles Family of the Sicilian mafia early on in their lives.

Marseilles had it's own family? Interesting, is there a thread where this was spoken about? I would like to know more.

[motorfab]

Thank you B.

Great job. You have to wonder if any of the criminals in Marseilles interacted with the Marseilles Family of the Sicilian mafia early on in their lives.

Marseilles had it's own family? Interesting, is there a thread where this was spoken about? I would like to know more.

I don't think there is a specific thread here dedicated to the Marseille cosca, but the informations are thin so let's do that here. It should also partly answer B's question, so ...

In 1937, Melchiorre Allegra a mafioso of the Pagliarelli cosca gets arrested and gives information that will later be published in the newspaper L'Ora in 1962 (more details and the articles published in the newspaper available here https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melchiorre_Allegra)

Among other information he says that several places outside Sicily have "cosche", including Tunis and Marseille.

If we have some information on Tunis thanks to individuals like Antonino Calderone (B compiled the available information here viewtopic.php?t=7451), on the other hand we have zero information coming from pentiti on Marseille.

However, I think I have some answers about where the members of this cosca came from, but if I specify right away that this is very substantial and that it is above all my own conclusions and that it is not gospel.

Note: Marseille is thanks to its port a very cosmopolitan city and has people of multiple origins, including of course Italians, and not only Sicilians (Italo-French thugs like Antoine La Rocca & François Spirito were from the Lazio region for example)

So, if I base myself on the Piazza family, I think that the mafiosi of Marseille, or at least some of them, were from Misilmeri:

-Pietro Piazza was born in 1902 in Misilmeri. After having volunteered in the "Legione di Garibaldi", he emigrated to Marseille in 1939

-For obvious reasons, it is impossible to know what he did during the 1940s, but at one point he owned the restaurant "La Galiote", Quai de Rive-Neuve located in the Vieux Port district.

-In September 1963 he was arrested in New York with Charles Vincileoni. The duo were supposed to receive a drug shipment from Marseille, but the carrier, Paul Stefani, was arrested in a Paris train station. At the time, the cops had connected the case with a drug ring that used diplomats as mules (if I remember correctly, Joe Armone of the Gambino Family was involved). FYI Vincileoni is no small fish and is one of the lords of the French underworld. Piazza & Vinci are sentenced to 5 years.

-In 1985 his son and his nephew, both named Mariano, are involved in a big case related to the Pizza Connection in Marseille. (I talk about it here https://unehistoiredecrimeorganise.blog ... ction.html and here viewtopic.php?t=12530)

-The 2 Marianos are also involved in drug trafficking with members of the 'ndrangheta (viewtopic.php?t=8782)

-It gets even more interesting when Rodolfo Di Pisa's name appears. Di Pisa is a relative (cousin I think) of the famous boss and member of the Cupola, Calcedonio Di Pisa killed in 1962 during the First Mafia War. Although a capomandamento of Noce, Di Pisa was originally from Misilmeri (needless to say he was heavily involved in narcotics and of course French mobsters were involved with him, like 99% of such cases at the time).

So, as I said, it's very substantial, but the Misilmeri connection makes my "mafia member" radar beep. Especially since the Piazza & Di Pisa family members were connected to Paul Mondoloni who according to Judge Falcone was the "representative" of Cosa Nostra in France.

No idea what happened to the Marseille cosca after 1937 and Allegra's testimony, but it was probably dissolved during WWII. Later in the 1990s Buscetta, Calderone and Leonardo Messina explain that the cosca of Sommatino (Caltanissetta province) has a decina in Grenoble (https://unehistoiredecrimeorganise.blog ... italo.html)

-----

Some other Cosa Nostra/French mob connections:

-The Mancuso brothers, Salvatore, Serafino & Giuseppe from Alcamo were very connected with the French mob. Giuseppe notably lived in France from 1935 to 1940.

Salvatore was sentenced to 5 and 40 years in prison, respectively for drug trafficking and kidnapping/torture. With his winnings he kidnapped 2 French sailors whom he suspected of having stolen a drug shipment. The reality is quite different: they threw the box containing the drugs into the sea thinking that it was just fertilizer ...

Anyway, an individual named Antoine Zirano was involved in the kidnapping and with Giuseppe in France. Giuseppe was settled in Paris, I think in the Pigalle district where the main traffickers of the time were concentrated (Pierre Marini, the Stefani brothers, etc .... again see my articles for more information)

Another Sicilian named Giuseppe Failla was involved with Zirano and the Mancusos. He was previously active in the US as a bootlegger and moved to France probably after the end of prohibition.

He was arrested in 1939 after US narcotics agents seized coded telegrams and the drugs that went with them.

No idea what his sentence was but Zirano and another Corsican named Armand Alessandrini were killed shortly after.

-And then there's a guy like Gennaro Caputo, an Italo-Corsican who moved to the US in the mid-1920s after killing his girlfriend.

Here, we leave France but he is famous (but not that much) for having been the drug supplier of the 1935 affair which involved Alfonso Attardi, Nick Gentile and the guys from New Orleans ...

He worked with Lucien Ignaro from New York, I suppose that the 2 also had contacts with the mafiosi of the 5 Families ...

It's not much information, but it's still something.

[johnny_scootch]

Thank you B.

Great job. You have to wonder if any of the criminals in Marseilles interacted with the Marseilles Family of the Sicilian mafia early on in their lives.

Marseilles had it's own family? Interesting, is there a thread where this was spoken about? I would like to know more.

I don't think there is a specific thread here dedicated to the Marseille cosca, but the informations are thin so let's do that here. It should also partly answer B's question, so ...

In 1937, Melchiorre Allegra a mafioso of the Pagliarelli cosca gets arrested and gives information that will later be published in the newspaper L'Ora in 1962 (more details and the articles published in the newspaper available here https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melchiorre_Allegra)

Among other information he says that several places outside Sicily have "cosche", including Tunis and Marseille.

If we have some information on Tunis thanks to individuals like Antonino Calderone (B compiled the available information here viewtopic.php?t=7451), on the other hand we have zero information coming from pentiti on Marseille.

However, I think I have some answers about where the members of this cosca came from, but if I specify right away that this is very substantial and that it is above all my own conclusions and that it is not gospel.

Note: Marseille is thanks to its port a very cosmopolitan city and has people of multiple origins, including of course Italians, and not only Sicilians (Italo-French thugs like Antoine La Rocca & François Spirito were from the Lazio region for example)

So, if I base myself on the Piazza family, I think that the mafiosi of Marseille, or at least some of them, were from Misilmeri:

-Pietro Piazza was born in 1902 in Misilmeri. After having volunteered in the "Legione di Garibaldi", he emigrated to Marseille in 1939

-For obvious reasons, it is impossible to know what he did during the 1940s, but at one point he owned the restaurant "La Galiote", Quai de Rive-Neuve located in the Vieux Port district.

-In September 1963 he was arrested in New York with Charles Vincileoni. The duo were supposed to receive a drug shipment from Marseille, but the carrier, Paul Stefani, was arrested in a Paris train station. At the time, the cops had connected the case with a drug ring that used diplomats as mules (if I remember correctly, Joe Armone of the Gambino Family was involved). FYI Vincileoni is no small fish and is one of the lords of the French underworld. Piazza & Vinci are sentenced to 5 years.

-In 1985 his son and his nephew, both named Mariano, are involved in a big case related to the Pizza Connection in Marseille. (I talk about it here https://unehistoiredecrimeorganise.blog ... ction.html and here viewtopic.php?t=12530)

-The 2 Marianos are also involved in drug trafficking with members of the 'ndrangheta (viewtopic.php?t=8782)

-It gets even more interesting when Rodolfo Di Pisa's name appears. Di Pisa is a relative (cousin I think) of the famous boss and member of the Cupola, Calcedonio Di Pisa killed in 1962 during the First Mafia War. Although a capomandamento of Noce, Di Pisa was originally from Misilmeri (needless to say he was heavily involved in narcotics and of course French mobsters were involved with him, like 99% of such cases at the time).

So, as I said, it's very substantial, but the Misilmeri connection makes my "mafia member" radar beep. Especially since the Piazza & Di Pisa family members were connected to Paul Mondoloni who according to Judge Falcone was the "representative" of Cosa Nostra in France.

No idea what happened to the Marseille cosca after 1937 and Allegra's testimony, but it was probably dissolved during WWII. Later in the 1990s Buscetta, Calderone and Leonardo Messina explain that the cosca of Sommatino (Caltanissetta province) has a decina in Grenoble (https://unehistoiredecrimeorganise.blog ... italo.html)

-----

Some other Cosa Nostra/French mob connections:

-The Mancuso brothers, Salvatore, Serafino & Giuseppe from Alcamo were very connected with the French mob. Giuseppe notably lived in France from 1935 to 1940.

Salvatore was sentenced to 5 and 40 years in prison, respectively for drug trafficking and kidnapping/torture. With his winnings he kidnapped 2 French sailors whom he suspected of having stolen a drug shipment. The reality is quite different: they threw the box containing the drugs into the sea thinking that it was just fertilizer ...

Anyway, an individual named Antoine Zirano was involved in the kidnapping and with Giuseppe in France. Giuseppe was settled in Paris, I think in the Pigalle district where the main traffickers of the time were concentrated (Pierre Marini, the Stefani brothers, etc .... again see my articles for more information)

Another Sicilian named Giuseppe Failla was involved with Zirano and the Mancusos. He was previously active in the US as a bootlegger and moved to France probably after the end of prohibition.

He was arrested in 1939 after US narcotics agents seized coded telegrams and the drugs that went with them.

No idea what his sentence was but Zirano and another Corsican named Armand Alessandrini were killed shortly after.

-And then there's a guy like Gennaro Caputo, an Italo-Corsican who moved to the US in the mid-1920s after killing his girlfriend.

Here, we leave France but he is famous (but not that much) for having been the drug supplier of the 1935 affair which involved Alfonso Attardi, Nick Gentile and the guys from New Orleans ...

He worked with Lucien Ignaro from New York, I suppose that the 2 also had contacts with the mafiosi of the 5 Families ...

It's not much information, but it's still something.

Many thanks for the fantastic response.

[B.]

Be interesting if Joe Armone was connected to those guys as his family was originally from Misilmeri like them. Great breakdown.

[PolackTony]

Excellent summary and breakdown on the Marseille Family, Fab. I'll echo what's already been said by saying again that it is very interesting stuff here. I've seen it claimed before that in the early decades of the 20th century, as much as 40% of Marseille's population was Italian. Even if only a minority of that population was Sicilian, it was still a substantial colony, I believe, and surely at least equivalent to many American cities that developed Families.

[B.]

Allegra also implied there were other borgate on the European continent aside from Marseille. Liverpool is one of the best candidates, the Pagliarelli Family and Motisis having strong connections and other indications of something there. Since the French government was seen as somewhat agreeable to the creation of a borgata (Marseille, Tunis), I wouldn't be shocked if Paris had something.

With Fabien finding Misilmeri as a possible nucleus for the Marseille group, it raises the question of if these Families followed a similar pattern that we see in the origins of American Families (including Venezuela), where they were formed around a distinct compaesani / regional group. It seems likely given that's how migration worked and it's what we tend to see when the historic mafia network expanded to new places. What we know of Tunis shows overwhelming connections to Trapani province, suggesting to me that Family was originally an outgrowth of one or more of the Trapani Families that came to include mafiosi from elsewhere (though according to Calderone not all Tunis-based members were members of the Tunis Family, much like we see with remote members in other cities/countries).

The Grenoble decina from Sommatino mentioned by Fab follows this pattern as well obviously, as a mafia branch formed through a singular compaesani group. While that isn't a Family, the Venezuela Families formed this way, beginning as decine of Siculiana and Santa Ninfa before being authorized as their own Families. Based on the evidence we have, the creation of a Family didn't require a large "Italian" or even "Sicilian" population but a tight-knit community of Western Sicilians from hometowns where the mafia system was deeply ingrained.

Though I've seen nothing about a decina, Santa Maria di Gesu may have had a similar relationship to Germany given their boss Andrea Messina spent his youth in Germany and continued to live there most of the time while boss of SMdG in the 1930s-40s. Messina served as the point of contact for Sicilian mafiosi visiting Germany and I've wondered if there were other Santa Maria members or mafiosi in general in his orbit in Germany.

[motorfab]

You're welcome and thanks for the feedback guys!

-No idea about Armone, I didn't even know he was from Misilmeri. I think it was mostly Corsicans (as usual lol) behind the diplomats affair (Joseph Orsini, Gilbert Coscia and others).

For the funny anecdote, thanks to the FBN document that I shared here the other day, I discovered that one of the guys involved, René Bruchon, was born next to where I live lol.

For those interested here is an article from 1964 that talks about the affair and mentions Armone


-It's true that France seems to be a paradise for mafiosi, especially the South & South-East, but it must be said that we have a similar culture and that we are side by side. This is still the case if we look at the number of Italian mafiosi arrested or hidden in France, it's endless. There are a large number of people of Italian origin in these places (including myself), which makes things easier.

On the other hand, I doubt the existence of a cosca in Paris. But the example of the Mancuso brothers and Giuseppe Failla shows a presence there (I'm currently working on an article dedicated to the Mancuso brothers ...)

- Concerning membership and recruitment, whether in Marseille or Grenoble, I think it is very unlikely, unlike in a city like Montreal for example, that local people (therefore French of Italian origin) could have been "made". We French don't like authority, hierarchy is not our thing and we like disorder (we guillotined our king, that says a lot!).

So I think the cosca/decina in France were more like Tunis, with mafiosi coming from Sicily settled there. This is also probably the case with the 'ndrine of the south of France who depend of the Locale in Liguria

-------

To come back to my article on Auguste Ricord, short reflection, but since Sarti's crew was active in Brazil and connected to Buscetta, I always wondered if they were not also in contact with Giuseppe Caruana (in Brazil for a while already) and the Cuntrera brothers who had just landed in Venezuela

I have never read anything about it but given the influence of Ricord's crews in South America it is more than likely ...

[B.]

Didn't know you had Italian ancestry. Time to trace your lineage haha.

Yeah, no doubt members of the short-lived Europe-based mafia groups would have been Sicilian-born. Tunis may have existed as far back as the late 1800s and was disbanded in the 1940s so possible some members were born there but of course to Sicilian parents.

I've got no basis for thinking Paris had a branch but I'd imagine there was some kind of Sicilian immigrant colony there -- Joe Bonanno visited his cousin there for example, who was an artist, but in terms of an actual colony I've never seen anything. Interesting you mentioned the Mancusos having ties there though as they were Alcamese so between them and a Bonanno cousin it makes me wonder if there was some kind of immigrant element from Trapani.

Greatly looking forward to the article on the Mancusos and I'm very excited your article for the Valachi issue is going to be happening and you'll be exposed to a wider audience.

[motorfab]

Didn't know you had Italian ancestry. Time to trace your lineage haha.

Yeah, no doubt members of the short-lived Europe-based mafia groups would have been Sicilian-born. Tunis may have existed as far back as the late 1800s and was disbanded in the 1940s so possible some members were born there but of course to Sicilian parents.

I've got no basis for thinking Paris had a branch but I'd imagine there was some kind of Sicilian immigrant colony there -- Joe Bonanno visited his cousin there for example, who was an artist, but in terms of an actual colony I've never seen anything. Interesting you mentioned the Mancusos having ties there though as they were Alcamese so between them and a Bonanno cousin it makes me wonder if there was some kind of immigrant element from Trapani.

Greatly looking forward to the article on the Mancusos and I'm very excited your article for the Valachi issue is going to be happening and you'll be exposed to a wider audience.

lol nothing very gangsta I'm afraid, my ancestors were from the north of Italy, from the regions of Venezia and Lombardy

I also hope to gain a wider audience thanks to the Informer article.

I am aware that I am talking about subjects that are a gray area for many, but we have here a fairly extensive criminal history that is just waiting to be rediscovered. And as is often the case it is connected to the mafias in Italy and the USA/Canada ...

You can see with articles like the one on Ricord that most things are connected to each other. I'm not saying this because I'm French (let's be honest it's largely ignored here too), but I find it pretty crazy that all these cases involving mafiosi around the world are forgotten, or worse, shunned by people

So if at least I manage to interest a few people, I am happy too

I am also very grateful to Sol for letting me do my promo here and to Thomas Hunt for offering me to write an article, it is as surprising as it is gratifying

[AustraliaSteve]

Fuck yeah Fabien. Your articles are awesome and I’m pumped for your work on these upcoming projects. Hearing successes and Ws from the guys here is always awesome for me; the Mob Archeologists are essentially established as a brand, I still come across B’s substack in the wild (usually Reddit) and i absolutely love the fact that TBHF is considered the gold standard forum that features researchers, writers and academics from around the globe.

Fuck, sorry for the wall of text. Love your work brother. Bounce of me if you need to anytime re: Cusack related stuff. Looking forward to that piece too!

[motorfab]

That's a lot of "fuck" for just one post haha ​​ Don't forget to include yourself among the good searchers on the forum, your site is great

And yes I had started writing about Melbourne, but I was inspired these days to write about the Mancuso brothers, I will come back to the article later, especially since it has been a while since I wrote about a vendetta.

I also have an article planned on the membership of the New Orleans mafia but I'm leaving it on hold for the moment to come back to it later.

So many things I want to talk about...

[AustraliaSteve]

That's a lot of "fuck" for just one post haha ​​

(*cough*) Sorry mate, my inner Aussie appears when I get too worked up

I also have an article planned on the membership of the New Orleans mafia but I'm leaving it on hold for the moment to come back to it later.

Is this looking from a historical(1890s-1900s) or “modern” (1940s to “today”)? Both would be mad reads, especially the latter with how it slowly went extinct etc.

[motorfab]

Is this looking from a historical(1890s-1900s) or “modern” (1940s to “today”)? Both would be mad reads, especially the latter with how it slowly went extinct etc.

Modern, let's say late 1950s to early 1970s. Possibly the 1980s, I'm not sure yet where this will take me

I remember a conversation here with B, Angelo & Antiliar where we disagreed on what Greg Scarpa said about the number of members in the mid 1960s. Colombo supposedly told him that the New Orleans borgata only had 5 members.