Artie Nigro

[Rocco]

Only guess would be that Nigro was hard up for cash and Bologna was feeding him cash. Possibly the feds were giving Bologna cash to kick up to Artie to get close to him like they did with Jack Falcone and DePalma. Allot of these guys cant turn down the cash even when they know they shouldn't be around the guy. Greed is a very powerful thing.

[rayray]

On a side note, this thread reminds me of a time when there was a knock on the door and my grandmother answered the door and yelled to my brother,
".....your colored friend is here!!!"

He just kind of looked at her and smiled cause he knew she didn't mean anything by it.

[Wiseguy]

My guess with the Genovese family is that their leadership is like a venn diagram rather than a pyramid. Certain captains / areas / operations report to a certain guy, and he more or less has full authority over them, but his authority as a whole overlaps with the authority of a couple other guys in similar positions. I still believe at the center of that venn diagram there is one person, though.

It seems like there has been a ruling panel of one kind or another in place ever since Cirillo reportedly created one back in the late 1990's. At the same time, there also seems to have been one guy who would be selected from this panel to be the acting boss and handle the day-to-day responsibilities of that position. The default (for lack of a better word) part of the family that most of these guys have come from have tended to be the same crew - Bellomo, Muscarella, Serpico, DeLuca, Nigro.


May 1990 - Barney Bellomo made acting boss after Vincent Gigante is indicted in the Widows case.

June 1996 - Barney Bellomo indicted. Dominick Cirillo becomes acting boss.

May 1998 - Dominick Cirillo steps down after a heart attack. Frank Serpico follows as acting boss but steps down some time between then and April 2001 when he's indicted as the "former" acting boss. Whenever that was, apparently Ernie Muscarella followed as acting boss.

January 2002 - Ernie Muscarella indicted as acting boss.

Artie Nigro was reported to have been the acting boss in November 2003 so he probably succeeded Muscarella.

If what former FBI agent Garcia said was correct, Pasquale DeLuca was probably acting boss at some point during this time, since it would fall within the December 2002 - March 2005 time frame of Garcia's undercover work; though it's not clear for how long since we don't know exactly when Dominick Cirillo resumed his the role after he recovered.

April 2005 - Dominick Cirillo indicted as acting boss.

July 2005 - Matthew Ianniello indicted as "an" acting boss, as opposed to "the" acting boss. This is wording is probably intentional by the feds, which suggests he was on the ruling panel.

December 2006 - Danny Leo identified as acting boss (from his previous position on the ruling panel) and indicted as such in May 2007.

June 2009 - NY Daily News article identifies Benny Mangano (Oct 2006), Ernie Muscarella (Jan 2008), Barney Bellomo Dec 2008), and Larry Dentico (May 2009) on a "rotating panel" of recently released senior members running the family.

September 2009 - NY Times article identifies Tino Fiumara as being on a "three man panel" running the family.

February 2010 - Artie Nigro indicted as the "former" acting boss.

February 2014 - Genovese family reported to likely be using a rotating panel of leaders.

[Rocco]

Sounds like the feds can't even keep up with who is the street boss or who is on a panel at any given time... How old is Larry Dentico now? 95? Lol

[Wiseguy]

Sounds like the feds can't even keep up with who is the street boss or who is on a panel at any given time... How old is Larry Dentico now? 95? Lol

What makes you say that? It's because of the feds that we know what we do. Just because the February 2014 article didn't specify who was on the ruling panel doesn't mean the feds don't know. It was the feds who earlier said Tino Fiumara was on the panel with 2 other guys prior to his death. The article said the family uses the rotating panel to keep any one guy from being targeted by the feds as the boss. Which is why I don't think the family has installed an official boss since Gigante died.

[Rocco]

Sounds like the feds can't even keep up with who is the street boss or who is on a panel at any given time... How old is Larry Dentico now? 95? Lol

What makes you say that? It's because of the feds that we know what we do. Just because the February 2014 article didn't specify who was on the ruling panel doesn't mean the feds don't know. It was the feds who earlier said Tino Fiumara was on the panel with 2 other guys prior to his death. The article said the family uses the rotating panel to keep any one guy from being targeted by the feds as the boss. Which is why I don't think the family has installed an official boss since Gigante died.

True. But what I meant is they are one step behind. The Genovese family have really been set up to not skip a beat when indictments come down. no public power plays for the top spot. you just don't see any of that with them.

[Wiseguy]

True. But what I meant is they are one step behind. The Genovese family have really been set up to not skip a beat when indictments come down. no public power plays for the top spot. you just don't see any of that with them.

Well obviously the feds are always playing catch up and can only get the intel as fast as it comes in. They've admitted the West Side is very hard to investigate because it's so secretive and well organized.

[B.]

Sounds like the feds can't even keep up with who is the street boss or who is on a panel at any given time... How old is Larry Dentico now? 95? Lol

What makes you say that? It's because of the feds that we know what we do. Just because the February 2014 article didn't specify who was on the ruling panel doesn't mean the feds don't know. It was the feds who earlier said Tino Fiumara was on the panel with 2 other guys prior to his death. The article said the family uses the rotating panel to keep any one guy from being targeted by the feds as the boss. Which is why I don't think the family has installed an official boss since Gigante died.

If the Genovese haven't named a boss in almost ten years, that changes the entire foundation of Cosa Nostra. Even with ruling panels, street bosses, and all of that, it's at its core a patriarchal organization where the boss is the "father" who symbolizes the strength of the organization. Things have of course changed over the years and despite being the most secretive family the Genovese have always tended to be the least traditional, so maybe they have thrown the structure out the window. Whether that's the case or not, I don't think the lack of public information in this case is proof of anything and it's worth noting that the absence of an official boss has in the past been a sign of a troubled family. It's not like the Genovese would care what the other four families think, but I still have a hard time believing that all of those elderly Genovese members are comfortable with such a drastic change in structure.

[Wiseguy]

If the Genovese haven't named a boss in almost ten years, that changes the entire foundation of Cosa Nostra. Even with ruling panels, street bosses, and all of that, it's at its core a patriarchal organization where the boss is the "father" who symbolizes the strength of the organization. Things have of course changed over the years and despite being the most secretive family the Genovese have always tended to be the least traditional, so maybe they have thrown the structure out the window. Whether that's the case or not, I don't think the lack of public information in this case is proof of anything and it's worth noting that the absence of an official boss has in the past been a sign of a troubled family. It's not like the Genovese would care what the other four families think, but I still have a hard time believing that all of those elderly Genovese members are comfortable with such a drastic change in structure.

Even as secretive as they are, if the Genovese had named an official boss at some point after Gigante's death we would probably know about it by now. The feds have been able to identify who has been on the ruling panel and the various individual acting bosses over the past 15-20 years so I don't know how they wouldn't know about the existence of an official boss sooner or later.

And I don't think it's that drastic of a change in structure. Their acting bosses are essentially doing everything an official boss would. It's simply not a permanent position, which an official boss would be. The Genovese seem to have been the most forward-thinking and practical family in many ways. That, coupled with their "almost fetishistic" desire for secrecy, makes it easy to believe they would attempt to avoid one guy becoming an all-out target for law enforcement as "the boss" by using a ruling panel and acting boss position.