According to Leonetti, Stanfa was given the job by John Gotti as a favor to the sicilian faction of the family.....namely John Gambino. Stanfa was very close to the Gambino brothers especially Joe and Rosario. Stanfa also had relatives in sicily who were pretty powerful mafioso's at the time. It was these relatives that asked Carlo Gambino to help out Stanfa when he first came to the usa. Carlo then asked Bruno to make Stanfa into the philly family.

During the war Stanfa asked for help but everyone had big problems of their own and couldn't help him out. Rosario was locked up and Joe and John Gambino were fighting their own cases. He asked Tommy Gambino (Rosario's son) to ask NY or Sicily to send him some backup but they turned him down. Tommy Gambino suggested to Stanfa that he personally should go to sicily and recruit some hardcore muscle but Stanfa said he was afraid they'd be nothing to come back to.

Even with the morons Stanfa had the Merlino faction didn't out fight him, it was the feds who took Stanfa and his crew down.....not Merlino.

Frank Martines was the guy who found Veasey at a construction site and brought him around.