Now i'm not judging the path that people choose to walk in life, i'm just saying that's the way it goes in that lifestyle...You talk your considered a rat.

You also don't know hnow what information and inteligence he gave the Feds. Franzese could have provied them with names and ranks of crews, family structure, rackets, bookmakers, loansharks, businesses and contruction companies on record, corrupt cops, Labor unions, judges, politicians. and other valuable intelligence information that he as a skipper and adopted son of Sonny had access to . That info is very damaging. That is what I think was Franzese worth.

Ironic, because I believe John Gotti had a goomah with the last name Grillo.

Yeah Bugsy...Her name was Shannon Grillo daughter of Neil Dellacroce....Here's the link to the story:

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/family-victoria-speaks-love-child-article-1.555838

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/john-gottis-love-child

Ok I see your point. Now answer me this, if Wayne Grande and Michael Franzese are on in the same then why did Wayn'e family disown him for being a rat and he is out hiding in wherever and Michael's family which includes his dad who is arguably one of the most hardcore LCN figures left and he will still see him?

Now back to your other point of Michael being a rat snitch against a jewish bookie and a black janitor. Am I correct that Michael Franzese made a shit ton of cash as a mobster? And last I checed Janitors do not make very much. Using that reason and the reasoning that also includes the fact his own LCN father will still sit and face him to this day, then wouldn't it be safe to assume that in a way to avoid worse punishment Michael Franzese used some of his many ill gotten gains and convinced a low level ookie and a janitor to possily do 1 or 2 years in exchange for a amount of $ that neither would of earned on the outside in return for helping him? And who knows maye he brokered the whole deal with the help and approval of his LCN family in a way to protect himself and others and maybe keep more of his earnings instead of losing more to seizure. He might of even given the right people a nice compensation package for his leaving and "ratting"

Who is to say they were not well compensated for their troule and not only that Michael Franzese too was able to walk away a lot easier in exchnge for "helping" the government with info.

You discredit his intellegience I think. Just because the governemnt says someone informed does it really mean he did anything?

What is better? Sending your best earning soldier to prison for a long time or 2 nobodies if you are in charge of a family?

All I am saying is is Michael Franzese is a America of Italian descent who became a gangster and did much better in the end than 99% of gangsters. And if you can find me any LCN figure who never bent or broke a ciminal rule such as ratting or one who did not ever fuck someone over in an attempt to help themselves than by all means I will say that that Italian American gangster is the best lol

Yea so damaging that with all that info it took the drug addict son to help put the dad away more than a decade later? Yea that info Michael gave them really sealed the deal.

Now take someone like Leonetti. He ratted and became an informant. He still lives in hiding and even takes protective measures to physically alter his appearance. He lives in hiding because he is considered a RAT and could be killed.

Michael Franzese on the other hand appears on television under his name and goes all over the world talking to people. He does not hide who he knows or what he does. And guess what? He is not in witness protection or claiming to have a hit out on him for being a rat.


Yet he is this huge rat that helped feed tons of information and yada yada yada

Primo, we are all entitled to our opinion. So lets leave it at, that we will agree to disagree.

Personally, I feel that the most successful gangsters are the ones who avoid the can and get rich after investing their illegal money into legitimate businesses. There is a guy by the name of Antonio Ripepi, died in 2000 at the age of 98. He was one of the most feared and respected Capo's in Pittsburgh and was still getting envelopes through his son in law, John Bazzano Jr. up until the day he died. On top of that, he owned the largest vending machine company in Western Pennsylvania that did over $6 million per year and owned a cement block company that did over $12 million per year. His other son in law was Costenze "Stan" Valenti, former boss of the Rochester family. Ripepi helped the Valenti brothers break off from Pittsburgh to start their own family in Rochester, NY and brokered the deal with Buffalo to allow Rochester to be independent of Buffalo. He was also tied to the Corbi brothers in Baltimore, both guys being made into the Gambino's. Most people have never heard of him, but he amassed a fortune between his legitimate businesses and his illegal gambling and loansharking rackets.

I'm certainly not saying that Ripepi is the "most successful" as I am just providing an example of a gangster who did it the right way, accumulating a net worth of well over $40 million dollars, both his sons are medical doctors, two of his daughters married high ranking mob members and he never went to prison after 78 years in the rackets.

None of them are "great". The most well known ones are Al Capone, and John Gotti.

yes

I agree with your assessment of Ripepi. But I sometimes wonder if a part of his success can be attributed to his association with his son-in-law Bazzano's mother's family. They certainly are wealthy and quite politically powerful here in PA.

Paul Vario was a mafioso, a capo, and later the consigliere of the Lucchese crime family. He also has the distinction of being Henry Hill’s teacher/father figure on the mobster way of life. A fictional character played by actor Paul Sorvino based on Vario was featured in the film Goodfellas.

http://youtu.be/JcFpQ6Ryaq0?list=PLQhDH_WZbs1N0jqZ9y9naMtgUfZ3VoVbo

Remember when Paul Sorvino was struggling with the Vario role in Goodfellas and doubting his ability to play the character until he looked at his reflection in the mirror and scared himself?

These method actors....

Paul Sorvino ain't even a good looking guy. But next to the real Paul Vario he looked like a runway model in Milan. Same goes for Ray Liotta and Henry Hill. And I've only seen a photo of the real Karen, but she was no Lorraine Bracco.

But if you make a film with all ugly people, I guess no one would go see it.

Mike Franzese was adopted by sonny but he always and still believes that he is his blood son. Kinda like the scarpa schiro arrangment. He does look like him. Franzese never ratted on cosa nostra and obviously isnt scared of retribution. IMHO Gerardo Catena is by far the most successful american gangster of all time. the guy was worth a hundred million, set generations of his family up for life. Spent only a few years in jail for failing to testify in front of the nj commision on organized crime. He retired in 1975 and lived to be 98, playing golf in boca raton for the last 25 years of his life. Also, Caponigro was a monster earner and if he wasnt a power hungry psycopath could have retired, supposedly was worth well over 20 million and threw it all away to be a godfather of a half ass outfit like philly. Catena is the model for what a gangster should have been. Take your illegal earnings parlay them into legal ventures, insulate yourself and live out your glory years in the lap of luxury

I have to disagree.

If by greatest Italian American mobster you mean both the most significant and the strongest, I gotta go with Salvatore Lucania. In second place is Meyer Lansky, but he wasn't Italian, so that skips us down to the number three most important and powerful mobster, which would make him the 2nd most powerful and significant Italian American mafioso and that is none other than Frank Costello himself.

Lucania was the change agent without which there would have been no Commission. After that he demonstrates that he is head and shoulders in influence above any other living mafiosi by springing himself from prison(!). Then from his base of operations in Italy he helps forge the link between the Sicilian Mafia, the Union Corse, and the American Cosa Nostra, not to mention the OSS. He actually transcended the mafia. He was more than mafia.

Meyer. Without Meyer, there would be no Luciano. It was his and Lucky's brain power added together that made him and Lucky twice as smart as everyone else, cause two heads are often smarter than one. Meyer was also Lucky's muscle, the power behind the throne. Without Meyer, you don't have the successful elimination of Masseria and Maranzano to be replaced by the Commission. You don't have the reformation and modernization of the mafia. So Meyer was of the utmost significance as a boss and he was as untouchable as Luciano himself which meant he was powerful. Forget about it.

Frank Costello was the connecting link between the upper world and the Underworld. Frank gave the mob all the power it needed that a gun could not give, which was the majority of it's power. And whoever heard of a non violent Godfather of a mafia family? You have to be mighty powerful to not even need a gun or demonstrate violent tendencies. In Luciano's parlance, "you gotta be pretty tough".

Real power is not needing to use it. And that's what Frank was.

good choice alfa, frank Costello for sure, now there is someone in Chicago that was comparable to new yorks lansky. namely murray
Humphries, he was the power behind many rackets in Chicago.

he was the one who showed all the families how to use the 5th amendment, but, frank Costello was shrewd, and a top earner, he gets my vote.

Gambino has to be close to #1. It's one thing to run a family for 19 years. But it's another to run the best family in the history of American OC for that time period. And never seeing the inside of a jail cell. He had to make so much money.

He had somewhere around 30 crews total across the country. I wonder what happened with all the money that was kicked up to him.

You could throw Jack Tocco's name into the ring.

Only reason why these families are extinct is not because of the FEDS but because they didn't make guys, they could have made everyone that walked through the door of their Social if they wanted to. The East Coast is seriously a breeding ground for this type of shit. The NY families are influential sure, but no where near as influential or powerful as they used to be just like this family. The Colombo's are a dying family and at this rate, they're all going to fall one after another. However they'll return under a different name, it's bound to happen. But the NY families have the ability to make all of these guys, otherwise they'd be dead right now. The FBI really has nothing to shut down a family, it's all numbers. The Boss gets locked up, they move the next guy in. It's a system that the FBI can't stop... a system that'll burn itself out in due time.

But that is because of the Feds. They probably didn't want to make any new guys because they were afraid of being infiltrated. They were aware of the heat, so they closed the books and rode it out while laying low, enjoying a long successful run safe from the prying eyes of the law. But no new recruits to carry on the That Thing of Theirs.

Salvatore Maranzano (July 31, 1886 – September 10, 1931) was an organized crime figure from the town of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily. He is accused of instigating the Castellammarese War to seize control of the American Mafia operations, and briefly became the Mafia's "Boss of Bosses". He was assassinated by a younger faction led by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who established a power-sharing arrangement rather than a "boss of bosses" in the hopes of preventing future wars.

http://youtu.be/WACvACqlGtk?list=PLQhDH_WZbs1N0jqZ9y9naMtgUfZ3VoVbo

There can only be one answer, hands down: Salvatore Lucania a.k.a. Charles 'Lucky' Luciano..