In his early days, he operated a hot dog vendor truck in Coney Island, Brooklyn, running numbers on the side. A close friend and handball partner of Lucchese leader Vittorio "Vic" Amuso, DeFede was inducted into the family in 1986 after Amuso became boss. DeFede's rise and fall in the New York mob can all be attributed to Amuso. He drove a Cadillac and owned three horses that he kept in stables at the Aqueduct Racetrack. He was married twice, and is currently wed to his second wife Nancy who entered the Witness Protection Program with him. The two survive of off an annual income of $30,000 a year, a modest anuity from the U.S. Marshals and his wife Nancy's pension from working at a bank for over twenty years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/nyregion/02mafia.html