Out of the Five Families, which had the most made men (and how many were they) at their height? I've heard The Gambinos had 500 made men in the 1960s....

if you read scarpa's fbi files he alway says carlo gambino in the early 60tys had 1000 guys. if he was telling the truth i think he was it may be close. he also told the fbi his boss joe colombo wanted to find out the exact number of guys he had in his family so he went to all his capo's and got the number 115 i think it was small. he did that cause he wanted to ask the commission to open the books and make a bunch of new guys. scarpa also said tommy brown had more seniority thou, and vito genovese well in jail was still more powerfull in seniortiy. it sounds like albert anastasia the boss before carlo was selling memberships and probaly making 30 guys every 2 weeks. some guy in the genovese family got caught on a wire saying they made 15 guys in a nite in 1999, thats a good amount of soldiers.

I think maybe the 1000 number would have to include associates, highly doubt a family ever had 1000 made guys, have heard the Gambino's having 400 soldiers up until the 70s, then throw in capos, bosses getting up towards 500 total made guys.

That is correct. I´m glad other posters but me on here, are paying close attention to the the Scarpa files. However, the 1,000 number seems at odd. The number is too big. The FBI listed known Mafia members throughout the 1960s and never was the Gambino list made up by 1,000 names. I figure Scarpa confused the Gambino members with Gambino associates and added them all together.

To answer this thread´s question, the Gambinos was the biggest Cosa Nostra Family with maybe (and this is my opinion) around 450 made guys in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I heard that there were 5000 made men in different Mafia families in the USA when the American LCN was at its height. Is this correct?

Sounds like Scarpa was intentionally fudging the numbers, perhaps to mislead the government? Maybe just as a F-U to authorities...