People say scarfo pretty much destoyed the family during his destructive regime which he did to an extent, but i think the credit for the families small and weak state that its in now goes to merlino.
One one hand, under Scarfo the family's interests expanded in HEREU Local 54, political corruption (Matthews), imposition of the street tax, etc. On the other hand, that stuff went out the window by the early 1990's and the family was weakened by so much internal strife, which led to so many rats. At one point it seemed you had the Stanfa and Merlino crews basically fighting over who got to shake down what in South Philadelphia.
