Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

[scagghiuni]

You've taken 1+1 and said it = 3, i.e Violi was recently made, he makes a passing, not totally clear comment about "beating out 30 other guys," and you assume the family not only found enough guys to make up for those dying but actually grow back to over 30.

honestly, it is not so unthinkable to believe the buffalo family has about 30 members considering the high italian population over there and the fact it's active in canada, and also that the bonanno's probably forced todaro jr to make new members because of the mafia war in montreal with the rizzuto faction

[Confederate]

Not sure who the Buffalo source was, only that he was a CI with the FBI with extensive knowledge of the Buffalo family. We've had many discussions on this concerning the Bonanno and DeCavalcante family already, but just to quickly sum it up, many Bonanno sources spanning decades reported that they had a verbal-only "ceremony". The DeCavalcantes had verbal-only ceremonies in the 1970s and 80s -- since we don't have info on their pre-1960s ceremonies we can't be sure how far back it went. A member source with the Lucchese family also claimed that he was made in a similarly "unorthodox" ceremony in the late 1950s. What's interesting to me is that all of these families had strong Sicilian roots.

Yes, quite interesting. The Chicago Outfit, being rooted much more in the Camorra Style, seemed to do things a little differently. However, I am surprised that some Families rooted in the Sicilian way also did their Ceremony differently, at least for awhile, years ago. Thanks for sharing.

[B.]

As mentioned above, it's also possible Buffalo's numbers never got quite as low as the FBI believed in recent decades. If they were at ~125 members in the 1960s as Magaddino himself said, 30 remaining members less than 60 years later including new inductees isn't an unreasonable total to believe and either way you cut it they are a thin shadow of what they were.

[faffy444]

i have posted this before and im going to post it again.in 1963 mike amico of the buffalo ny police dept appeared before the valachi hearing to give an account of the magaddino family. he stated that there were 80 made men in the city of buffalo, 25 in niagara falls, and 25 in canada. thats a total of 130 made men. he didnt mention any other areas of magaddino made men. such as the utica are which the valachi commision noted had 30 made men. no mention of rochester, which was the magaddino family that may have had as many as 30 or more made men. F.B.I. reports state there were 6 magaddino made men in erie pa. in syracuse ny there were approx 10 magaddino made men. contrary to popular belief binghamton ny was also magaddino territory.not sure how many made men in binghamton in 1963, but i do know the FBI estimated in approx 1995 there were 11 made men. frankly i believe the canada number to be low at 25. many of the men were probably retired, or semi retired, but it doesnt change the fact they were made. consider the fact that in our grandfathers time it was considered an honor to be made. some were far more active than others, some were just "grunts" my point is the magaddino family was powerful, and very geographically diverse for many years. stefano magaddino was an original.

[Pogo The Clown]

As mentioned above, it's also possible Buffalo's numbers never got quite as low as the FBI believed in recent decades. If they were at ~125 members in the 1960s as Magaddino himself said, 30 remaining members less than 60 years later including new inductees isn't an unreasonable total to believe and either way you cut it they are a thin shadow of what they were.

A large part of the drop would be attributed to Rochester breaking off. I don't know how many they had when they broke off but they were at 40-45 members by 1972 so it was a big loss for the Buffalo total. It is not so unusual for non-NYC families to see such a big drop. Philly for instance went from what, 90-100 members in the 1950s to 50 something by the time Bruno was killed. Not unreasonable to believe that Buffalo had dropped to 45 members by 1989 when you factor in the big Rochester loss.


And we a see a continues decline since then; 45 in 1989, 40 in 1995, 23 in 2006, 20 in 2013. Really how believable is it that a family whose membership has been in a steedy decline from the 1970s-2000s is now suddenly going through a massive recruiting effort that not only maintains their numbers but actually sees it start to grow again? At a time when most of the remaining membership is old and inactive? And it all escaping LE attention (despite them having a wired up informant around)?


To put it in perspective Philly has just barely been able to maintaine their numbers and that is with over 90 new members being inducted since 1980. Buffalo inducting over a dozen new members in recent years surpasses places like Philly, NE and Chicago and is approaching NYC levels of recruiting. And again it would all have to totally escape LE attention.


Pogo

[scagghiuni]

And we a see a continues decline since then; 45 in 1989, 40 in 1995, 23 in 2006, 20 in 2013. Really how believable is it that a family whose membership has been in a steedy decline from the 1970s-2000s is now suddenly going through a massive recruiting effort that not only maintains their numbers but actually sees it start to grow again? At a time when most of the remaining membership is old and inactive? And it all escaping LE attention (despite them having a wired up informant around)?

To put it in perspective Philly has just barely been able to maintaine their numbers and that is with over 90 new members being inducted since 1980. Buffalo inducting over a dozen new members in recent years surpasses places like Philly, NE and Chicago and is approaching NYC levels of recruiting. And again it would all have to totally escape LE attention.


Pogo

violi himself said it has 30 members who was named underboss of that family and he had not any reason to lie about it, especially to anothern lcn member (he would even risk the life)
it is not a so recruit massive effort, we are talking of 30 members in total not 300, part of them in canada and i doubt fbi knows so much about canada that's because it escaped le attention; in fact all the new members were probably made in canada, not the states

[Pogo The Clown]

Turridru is that you?


Pogo

[scagghiuni]

Turridru is that you?


Pogo

yes, but several years ago on real deal

[Pogo The Clown]

Figures. You were arguing just as vigorously back then that place like New Orleans and Pttisburgh were still around and running. No surprise you think the same about Buffalo today with the very same reasoning being used.


Pogo

[scagghiuni]

Figures. You were arguing just as vigorously back then that place like New Orleans and Pttisburgh were still around and running. No surprise you think the same about Buffalo today with the very same reasoning being used.


Pogo

i've never said new orleans or pittsburgh were still around, concerning buffalo there are wiretaps that proof it is still viable, not me
anyway, at that time i said john gambino was still active when fbi said he was retired, i was right

[Pogo The Clown]

Ah no I remember very clearly you arguing that those families and others were still around. That is why I asked if it was you becuase your posts read the same way and reminded me of Turridru.


Pogo

[eboli]

To put it in perspective Philly has just barely been able to maintaine their numbers and that is with over 90 new members being inducted since 1980. Buffalo inducting over a dozen new members in recent years surpasses places like Philly, NE and Chicago and is approaching NYC levels of recruiting. And again it would all have to totally escape LE attention.

That's a good point. It's a very aggressive recruitment, if true. Even the low figure of 30 made members looks insane compared to the other small lcn families still active. That said, other families might be more cautious in inducting new members, while Buffalo in an effort to revitalize the family, might have pulled the trigger on a more rash approach.

My personal opinion is that's very unlikely for the family to bounce back to the level we're speculating about without drawing more attention to themselves. There was a very good reason why the FBI stopped updating Buffalo charts after their purge of lu local 210.

[B.]

As mentioned above, it's also possible Buffalo's numbers never got quite as low as the FBI believed in recent decades. If they were at ~125 members in the 1960s as Magaddino himself said, 30 remaining members less than 60 years later including new inductees isn't an unreasonable total to believe and either way you cut it they are a thin shadow of what they were.

A large part of the drop would be attributed to Rochester breaking off. I don't know how many they had when they broke off but they were at 40-45 members by 1972 so it was a big loss for the Buffalo total. It is not so unusual for non-NYC families to see such a big drop. Philly for instance went from what, 90-100 members in the 1950s to 50 something by the time Bruno was killed. Not unreasonable to believe that Buffalo had dropped to 45 members by 1989 when you factor in the big Rochester loss.


And we a see a continues decline since then; 45 in 1989, 40 in 1995, 23 in 2006, 20 in 2013. Really how believable is it that a family whose membership has been in a steedy decline from the 1970s-2000s is now suddenly going through a massive recruiting effort that not only maintains their numbers but actually sees it start to grow again? At a time when most of the remaining membership is old and inactive? And it all escaping LE attention (despite them having a wired up informant around)?


To put it in perspective Philly has just barely been able to maintaine their numbers and that is with over 90 new members being inducted since 1980. Buffalo inducting over a dozen new members in recent years surpasses places like Philly, NE and Chicago and is approaching NYC levels of recruiting. And again it would all have to totally escape LE attention.


Pogo

The Rochester decina was not so big before it broke off that it would have created that drastic of a drop between the mid-1960s and 1972, though the family did have plenty of attrition during those years. The key point I'm making is the FBI never had a comprehensive list of all 125 potential members of the Buffalo-Ontario family. The FBI's own lists I've seen from that period don't name anywhere close to 125 members, only half at most, and if we were to use their membership lists back then as the standard, we would be led to believe they were drastically smaller at their peak than they may have been. Yet we have the family's boss stating outright that he expanded the family from 22 members to 125 during his time.

Some of the 30 current members could be holdovers from previous eras, some of which went unidentified or unconfirmed, as well as newly recruited members. We don't have enough knowledge to comment for sure and again, the FBI's membership lists are historically not comprehensive which makes it difficult to gauge the basis for their estimates in later years. Were these estimates of confirmed members only, or were they estimating what they believed to be the total number? If so, what was that estimate based on?

Philadelphia at their peak looks to have had 90 or so members, but even with multiple member informants with deep historical knowledge of the organization spanning decades there are names that we have only incidentally found out about and when accounting for elderly, inactive, or otherwise low-key members, the total of Philly members could actually have been higher. This seems to be the case for many smaller families.

[Lupara]

violi himself said there are 30 members and he's underboss, honestly i don't see any more believable proof than mafiosi themselves

And this is exactly the two pov's the two camps here have. Nobody is going to win this debate as of now.

[Lupara]

Figures. You were arguing just as vigorously back then that place like New Orleans and Pttisburgh were still around and running. No surprise you think the same about Buffalo today with the very same reasoning being used.


Pogo

Why is it that you guys always have to get personal in these debates and attempt to bully peope away?