did Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes rival the Mafia?

what is your opinion... Did Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes power-wise and wealth rival the Five Families? particually the Genovese

Nicky Barnes was schooled by both Joe gallo and Matty Madonna while he was in prison and he bought a lot if heroin from Madonna and from guys in the bonanno family, I don't know much about Frank Lucas other than the movie American gangster was greatly exaggerated

Didn't Nicky Barnes criminal career at the top only last like 7 years? Hardly enough time to build up a network that could of rivaled any of the Five Families. Same with Frank Lucas. From Bumpy Johnson's death til his arrest, it was only about 6 years.

I dont know but it would have been interesting to see what the council would have become. I dont think that it was sustainable due to the fact that I dont believe they ( Nicky barnes and his guys) were into anything other than drug dealing.I dont think they were into gambling , load sharking and etc etc

In nick Barnes biography he claimed to have killed a made member of the mafia without retaliation

The mobsters name was mikey pugliese, theres a thread where i went into this bit more in depth, this should help. http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=661190
I thought his name was carmine pugliese. But heres the mobsters episode calling him mikey and saying he was a bonnano family soldier.

so Barnes was as powerful as the Five Families, the Genovese in particular? Bonanno as well?

He was one of the most powerful drug traffickers at the time and his status and position could have probably trumped a lot of people in new yorks criminal underworld. Cant say that he was more powerful than two crime families but i will say that the drug trafficking and running a union and gambling are completely different fields of criminal activity, and that killing barnes wasn't going to somehow bring things back to the way they were in fact it probably would have made things worser on the streets and in the prisons when it came to down to the mob trying to live and operate in the city.

did the Council rival the Comission in power?

I can find zero reference to this mikey pugliese guy. Zero reference to him existing, being made, etc. Can anyone provide real information

its actually referenced in that documentary, the undercover agent who infiltrated them, and also testimony in court against other members of the council.

Heres a link:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=18...pg=1371,1874829

i should note that the guys name is carmine pugliese in this article, mikey might be a nickname.

Yea, that's nice but the vast majority of documentaries have little concern for actual facts. Often those not associated with the actual research widely speculate about a guys status with no references or evidence. Can someone give me the case (i can pull the dockets) or the newspaper articles (got the database that can pull ever historical paper since the 1800s)

Well no wonder, the documentary didn't even get his name right.

I still can find no reference to this guy as being anything but a drug dealer.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/11/nyregi...-informant.html
Its actually one of the murders most of the council were charged with after barnes flipped.

What family? Who made him? That literally gives zero information

i posted that before i read your other posts.

yes they rivaled members of the 5 families when it came to dope dealing

they didn't have the same political connections

they were equals or above mafia members as far as the dope game went

i say mafia members because everybody in the mafia doesn't sell dope

in power in wealth?

Please don't tell me you're asking cook to clarify something lol. Cook follows his routine, he posts 3 or 4 randomly spaced out sentences with no basis in reality and that's about as much you get from him. That being said i'd say that was one of cooks most sensible posts.

how would you answer my question?

I'd say that the fact the Italians were involved and profiting from both Lucas and Barnes operations, makes it unlikely that they were threatened or rivaled by them. I'd also say that the five families were involved in very different rackets like Loansharking,Gambling,Extortion and Union related crimes, while neither Lucas or Barnes groups were this diverse or tried to impede on the Italians there. I think both decided to operate together and that the Italians profited much more from their crimes than vice-versa.

In all honesty though i'm not the person to ask, the knowledgabl,e posters on Black crime like BlackFamily or Scorcese, as well as all of the NY crime posters are.

Certainly not someone like cookcounty who professes to be an expert on any Chicago related crime even though he's usually wrong, and who has no problem chiming in on any other crime in the world without ever going further than his vague three sentence routine.

Anyway didnt Nicky and Frank eventually cut ties with italians ( stop getting their drugs from them)?

Think that was just Frank Lucas. Wikipedia says Madonna helped Barnes until 75 but who knows..It's wikipedia

frank lucas was a lying punk...

No. Not even close.

are u comparing nicky barnes and frank lucas to the entire five families?

or

are u comparing them to mafia members that sold drugs?

who do you think supplied them? that american ganster was a good movie but complete fiction

DON'T BELEIVE TO MUCH OF LUCAS . but he was not on the level of FRANK MATTHEWS ... HE WAS LEGENDARY !

It's funny seeing how indignant some are getting at the topic of the thread.

was frank lucas,nicky or frank matthews as powerful as the five families?

No

Nowhere near as powerful as any single NY family.

mad as hell for no reason

then people are comparing frank lucas/nick barnes to all five familes combined

Lucas was sort of a bullshitter, he was actually ratted out by some gambinos who were supplying him at the time. However he also obtained heroin from ike Atkinson. Nicky Barnes did obtain heroin from Madonna but it wasn't like he was paying some mob tax. It was simply an exchange of drugs for money, Barnes controlled the largest heroin market in the city if not on the east coast, he would buy it wholesale and then sell it in the stamped bags at retail level so his wealth was probably greater than a lot of people in new yorks criminal circle.Frank Matthews was probably the same if not wealthier just by how expansive his operation was. Now im not saying they were richer than carlo Gambino who had a lifetime to make his money, but I doubt he had the wealth that Matthews had at age 27.

compare frank matthews to the genovese

for instance salerno was a billionaire, wasn't he

Go look at the original question.



No, he wasn't. Some reports claimed he was worth $100 million but there's no way to verify that.

Here's my input: If your comparing the 5 families collectively to any of those enterprise in terms of rackets and wealth than no. Remember that those drug enterprises are like a spiderweb per say, remove the spider ( principal leader/s) than eventually it falls apart. The only comparison is in the drug trade.
You have to look at that time period exclusively of these enterprises than compare to individual crime family drug racket at that time. Frank Matthews enterprise was more extensive than each NY family network and total to an ESTIMATED $300 million before he fled. Then take each of the NY families individual drug racket estimates from 69-73 and you could compare them.
That's the only venture you could compare but everything else isn't. The only NYC syndicates the 5 families can be compared to is themselves.

Why? Because the vast majority of the claims in the documentary go completely unreferenced? That is generally the standard we use to assess truth.

I still see no reason to believe the person killed was a made man in any way.

@littlenicky


u just proved his point

1st you're mad at the mere notion that barnes/lucas might've controlled ny dope trade

now you're upset that somebody brought up the possibility of a madeguy getting killed

I never said anything vaguely related to the dope trade, moron. They could have been emperors for all I know.

I am still waiting for a citation that this was a made guy. As of now, nobody can even tell me what family he belong to.

Don't bother, Nicky. You're smarter than he is all day long and twice on Sundays. All he has in life is his Gu'mment check, a bad attitude, and the ability to rile up complete strangers on the Internet .

so each family still had more wealth cause of other rackets

This barnes testimony from the presidents commission on organised crime from back in 85. He goes into the relationship with the mafia.
some of the spelling messes up during the copy and pasting it. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/105010NCJRS.pdf


MR. OINTINO: Mr. Barnes, you have made
a statement that the supplier who was determined to be an informant named Carmine Pugliese, you decided to terminate this individual?

THE WITNESS: Yes. sir.
MR. DINTINO: Did the Council seek permission from anyone to terminate this individual, outside of your own council?

THE WITNESS: No, we didn't. We didn't require supervision from anyone.
We weren't subjected to any intimidation by any outside group_

MR. DINTINO: Do you know if he was connected to any of the seven Hafia families in New York City?
THE WITNESS: We didn't know. We werent
interested.

HR. DINTINO: Your main supplier Madonna. was he connected to any of the seven Mafia families in New York City?

THE WITNESS: I think so.

MR. DINTINO: What family?

THE WITNESS: I don't know. I have heard
him mention names, but I just don't remember any of them at this time.

MR. DINTINO: Did your Council have any inter- action with the seven .mafia families in New York City?
THE WITNESS: No sir
MR DINTINO:You worked completely independent
WITNESS:Yes, sir.

MR DINTINO:Now, in the Harlem area, even though you were involved in heroin, the other vice activities, such as prostitution, lottery. bookmaking, loan sharking, were they controlled by Black organized crime. or were they controlled by the Mafia families in the Harlem area?

THE WITNESS: To my knowledge, it was Black
controlled.
MR. DINTINO: In other words, you had complete control of the Harlem area. and that Blacks controlled
the vice activities in the Harlem area?

THE WITNESS: Y e s .
MR. DINTINO: Did you extend outside the Harlem area, particularly in narcotics trafficking?


THE WITNESS: Well. among the Council members with whom i was associated. one of our Council members operated in Brooklyn.. and another one operated in the bronx.

MR. DINTINO: One~ last time: Was there any interaction between you and the, Council and the Mafia families in New York City?

THE WITNESS: When you use the word "inter-raction"?
MR. DINTINO: Did you get permission from them to do anything?
THE WITNESS: No. we didn't need permission.

MR. DINTINO: Did they operate in Harlem in anyway?
THE WITNESS: No. not to my knowledge.
HR. OINTINO: Did they ever?
THE WITNESS: Oh, yes, at one time they did.
MR. DINTINO: Whai: year are you talking about?
THE WITNESS: I think there was a gradual
changing of hands beginning in the '60·s.

MR. OINTINO: Would you characterize that
the seven Mafia families, at this time. would be appre- hensive about operating in Harlem?
THE WITNESS: I don't know whether they would be apprehensive. I think that they would probably conclude that it wouldn't be a sound business decision t.o be:: involvud in Harlem because many of the Blacks in Harlem operate the area for themselves.

MH. DINTINO: Okay, sir, thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions?
I would like to ask you one question: Knowing
the background of the Mafia, how do you account for the fact that they didn't intimidate the Council or your operations and try to move in?

THE WITNESS: I think the best response I could offer would be that thay probably concluded that the fox isn't worth the chase, and they decided to stay out.
THE CHAIRMAN: Why wasn't tho fox worth the
chase?

THE WITNESS: I think that the obstacles would have been created because the Blacks felt that Harlem, in a sense, belonged to them, and I think that they wore willing to fight for the territory.
I think that the organized crime people
wanted to--they wanted to earn from the activities in
a territory, but I don't think that they wanted to go back to the violence of the Prohibition-type era, and I think that is what they would have been confronted with.

THE CHAIRMAN: In short, there would have been warfare?.
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir·.

@scorses, great find!

Good point nicky. Ive taken smarter shits than this moolinyan cookcounty.

You'll have some extra time to sit on the throne. We don't use racial terms here.

some interesting stuff in that report, even back then you had a whole bunch of different nationalities running heroin, pakistanis, lebanese, nigerians. Its also noted by FBI agents and some of the witnesses that sicilians didn't really trust american mobsters that much.