How do the wealthiest mobsters up against dealers?

There were some very rich drug dealers like Pablo Escobar, frank Matthews, freeway Ricky Ross, alpo Martinez, Nicky Barnes, bumpy Johnson etc. There's a lot more than I named. But have any mobsters ever matched up against them in terms of power and money? I have a hard time believing it. I was watching a frank Matthews documentary on YouTube and one of the guys said that the mafia was overrated. He said there were many times where they couldn't come up with money. Idk how much stock I would put into what he said but does anyone want to dispute what he said? I know a lot of people have said that carmine lombardozzi made a lot of money. As well as the bosses(obviously).

ever hear of the pizza connection? The gambino brothers moved a lot of junk back in the day. mathew maddona used to supply nicky barnes, bumpy johnson was also supplied by the italians. And if the Mafia really was over rated why would they have a huge high risk meeting of black drug dealers from all around the country to discuss how to overtake the mafias monopoly on the herion market?

Were there ever any huge earners who were bigger than the drug dealers who weren't involved in drugs?

Great points btw

Jerry Catena was worth over a billion when he died. And he was retired for over 20 years

Carmine Galante

You have to separate Escobar from the rest of those guys you listed. He was one of the top bosses of a drug cartel that was international in scope. Totally different scale than most of those other guys who operated only within a certain region of the U.S., if not just a certain city.

Guys like Matthews, Ross, Barnes, etc. were millionaires but never saw anything close to a billion dollars. The top guys in the Colombian and Mexican cartels have been worth perhaps $1-2 billion at most. Escobar, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, Chapo Guzman, etc.

I personally don't think any American LCN guy ever got close to a billion either. $100 million, yeah. Maybe a few hundred million. But the mafiosi that got close to or north of a billion would probably be found in the syndicates over in Italy.

I should add that, if the original post is talking about the Frank Matthews movie below, keep in mind it's by Al Profit. He also did Detroit Mob Confidential and he seems to exaggerate at times.

excluding international and cartel guys. domestic distributors i would include within the mafia was perhaps vincent papa and joe dinapoli, Papa was a wholesaler and partenered with dinapoli, who then sold kilos for $22,000 each to associates who then distributed it to mid level dealers. Then you had louis inglese was another big guy that also was supplied by papa. Papa must have cleared over $100 million with distribution chain and also the direct connect to the french connection dope. However you also have to acknowledge that he didnt control the street level sales aswell like barnes or any of those other guys did.

He that's the documentary I was talking about. I really liked his documentary on NYC. I thought he was extremely accurate there. But does the mob still make a lot of money from the stock market?

pump and dump schemes. Joe massino was doing that but I dont know and havent heard of anything going on about it in the news.

Skinny,was Catena involved with or related to the big car dealer in NJ?

Read the book by pablos brother.he said they would write off 10%of all there money every year that was dameged by rats or dampness

That's hard to say since there aren't to many realistic network of wealthy mobsters. In terms of comparison of kingpins, it vary too much. Take example Frank Matthews you mention, it's estimated his DTO made $300 millions in total before he fled. Ricky " Freeway" Ross whose total was $600 million. The Flenory Brothers ( B.M.F) was roughly around $500 million. Generally speaking a kingpin can make the same amount of a LCN boss, more or less.

There were several multi-million dollar mob-run stock scams in the 1990's and into the 2000's.

you forgot to mention craig petties.

Carmine Galante must have been in the same ball park as big meech and Freeway cause they were basically the same thing,they had a direct source of supply and distributed in numerous states aswell as controlling the supply in the cities they were based in , in this case being atlanta, LA, new york.

Catena is an interesting character, what do u know about him?

I didn't include Craig because his network didn't reach that high money wise.