The Genovese and Luciano fued did not start till Vito returned to the United States, and Luciano was deported. When Vito returned, he no longer had the position of underboss, but was only a powerful capo in the family. The rumor is that when Genovese went to visit Lucky in Cuba, he went to ask Luciano to tell Costello to give him back the underboss position, where Charlie told Vito that Frank was the boss and that was that. Vito did not like that too much and put his hands on Lucky, who in turn slapped Genovese in front of a few witness who were in the family and other families. That was an insult to Vito who waited his time for the moment he would become boss of the family. He is also most likely the one that informed the U.S. about Luciano being in Cuba.

Vito suspected Lucky was the one that set him up and rumor is he sent a couple of people over to Italy to find out, but thought both Costello and Lansky were too weak at the time to arrange such a thing. A rumor is that Genovese wanted to set Luciano up, and reached out to some members of the Lucchese crime family to do this. Tommy Lucchese is in the center of most of these rumors as he had known both Genovese and Luciano way back, not Carlo Gambino as many believe, but Gambino might have been involved as a puppet to these setups. Keep in mind Vito and Lucky were too cautions to be setup like how they both were, and only trusted solid and proven members in their ranks. Side note, both Costello and Lucchese are rumored to have had a capo in each of their families that had FBN agents on their payroll. That too is something to think about.