Stanfa makes Merlino.. Stanfa is a boss, Merlino tries to kill a boss .. Totally breaks the rules of the commission and the 5 families dont do anything?
Stanfa goes to Jail and then Merlino has a ceremony and makes Nalalie ...and Then makes Ralph Natalie the boss. !!! Natalie gets arrested and then cooperates.. And Merlino made him..NYC does nothing ? At the very least i would of thought NYC or the other cities wouldnt recognize Merlino.

They profit from the unrest. The busier the Philly are fighting the less business gets taken care. The $$$ goes someplace else.

To be honest after the debacle of stanfa I don't think the New York families recognised the Philly mob

That stuff all happened post-commission. I don't care how many times people bring up the 2004 meeting or even the Massino meeting, those were more like informal get-togethers. By the mid '90s the New York families had so many of their own problems that no one cared.

And today? Pfffft. They can make whoever the Hell they want down there. No one in New York gives a shit.

NYC hasn't cared about who was boss of the other families since the early nineties. There is way less interstate cooperation between families so it's not as necessary for them to have leaders who are to the NYC families' liking.

I don't even think the Five Families care about who is boss of the other four as even the NY inter-family rackets have been drastically reduced. It's pretty much every family for itself in this day and age.

Back in the day the genovese and gambino's vied for control of the Philly mob , it was a vote on the commission and a virtual cash cow , If one of them indirectly controlled Philly , like u said PB nobody in New York gives a shit , fighting over a couple of video poker machines is not the be all and end all

PB I agree that New York could care less about Philly. But, we all have to say they probably were and continue to be the most dysfuncyional organized crime family of all time. This current Merlino family its just slowly ticking away before it starts crashing and burning! Philadelphia does give us some great headlines!.

For so many year's Angelo Bruno low key style was the template for stability. Nicky Scarfo comes into power, vindictive and blood thirsty & greedy. Old School guys get killed. Good stand up guys who understand the life are slaughtered. Not a Rat among them. The goofs who killed for Scarfo (Grande, Leonetti, Yogi Merlino, Caramandi, Milano, etc. ALL RAT ! Scarfo choose quanity over quality and it destroyed the family. Stanfa was a zip who would have been better off if he had a crew of zip's not the junkie's and rat's that he made. Natale was out of touch with the young guy's and deceided that he owed them nothing and rolled over. Since the early 90's the NYC families all have major LE problem's. Truthfully if it was not for George Anastasia the Philly's would have been almost forgotten !

you said it brother

NY has not given a shit about anything but NY for a decade or two

they got enough of their own problems and they wouldnt make a ton of money from philly anyway they are fighting over the spoils as it is with a small family

Like my wife's been telling me for thirty years, even a busted clock gets it right twice a day .

But I thought N.Y controlled everything even Montreal LOL.

from what I read about the uncle joe meeting the gambinos its more important who they make down there lately because they have had so many rats in the past. the last guy who flipped was the horse head guy who was made by stanfa in 1993 so they did good for awhile, I know horse head flipped in 2000 but my point is hes the last made guy since that group of stanfa tards. uncle joe could have made awhole bunch of guys but he said it can wait for merlino to do it.i really don't think they give a note of guys they intend to make then 1 of the 5 familys probably the gambinos. since its seems the luchese and Genovese get along well in nj.

from what I read about the uncle joe meeting the gambinos its more important who they make down there lately because they have had so many rats in the past. the last guy who flipped was the horse head guy who was made by stanfa in 1993 so they did good for awhile, I know horse head flipped in 2000 but my point is hes the last made guy since that group of stanfa tards. uncle joe could have made awhole bunch of guys but he said it can wait for merlino to do it.i really don't think they give a note of guys they intend to make then 1 of the 5 familys probably the gambinos. since its seems the luchese and Genovese get along well in nj.

While Stanfa was obviously backed by the Gambinos, the Merlino faction supposedly had the tacit support of the Genovese. Sort of a "cold war" scenario, as one poster on another forum put it. Natale also had connections to NY. Fast-forward, it's well known that members of both NY families plotted with Philadelphia guys to have Ligambi, Mazzone, and Borgesi killed in order to expand their video poker operations. Yet, later on, the NY families are supposedly on good terms with Ligambi. I remember reading one article that said they were pushing for Ligambi to replace Mazzone and Borgesi with Staino and Lucibello but it was ultimately his call. The days where Chin simply told Philadelphia how it was going to be (this guy dies, this guy is going to retire, this guy is the new boss) are gone. But if the current makeup in Philadelphia, or more likely South Jersey, has some affect on NY guys making money, I think they care to some extent.

New York got what they "wanted" from Philly back in the 90's

Just shows how low they will go ,and how bad it has gotten.Looking to whack a few guys over video poker machines...

By the time of stanfa-merlino gotti was being sold
Down the river by Sammy, chin was under indictment
And was only a matter of time before he was
Gonna go to trial. Ny could have cared less
About philly. Philly is only interesting because
Of the characters it has produced. Tony bananas
Was supposedly worth 20 mil but he gets hoodwinked
By funzi to be boss at 67 yrs old. Ever since it's
Been a disaster. Probably have a more lucrative career working
For the city of Philly than chasing a few gambling
Dollars

Of course, Ivy. That's a different story. If you fuck with their money, they're going to care. No two ways about it. But the days of the New York families caring one way or another about the structures and pecking orders of the outside families are gone for good.

Why would anyone from NY care unless it was going to affect their rackets? If Merlino tried to push them out of NJ then he would be dead in a NY minute.

Clever pun .

Is a NY minute twice as long?

The city so nice, they named it twice.



I kill me too

What about the idea that as long as the Feds have Philly under a microscope they're aren't interested in NY atm?

Oh, you mean if the Feds could put a guy like Marty Angelina away for domestic abuse, and get those pesky Joker Poker machines out of the bars in Philly, that they wouldn't be interested in bringing down the Five Families anymore?

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Joey is nearly 50 years of age and is still considered as a punk kid upstart.

When does does Nicky get out lol.....haruga haruga

Here is an example of the Ligambi regime recently having interaction with Gambino and Genovese mob a few years ago before he got locked up and eventually acquitted...

Happy Birthday to Joe
Mobsters flock to Margate to celebrate the Philly crime boss's 68th.
by Brendan McGarvey


print email reply rss feed
Published: Aug 15, 2007




Guess who wasn't invited to reputed mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi's birthday bash at the Shore last Saturday night? Nicky Scarfo Jr., that's who. Nope, Nicky Jr. was not asked to help blow out the 68 candles on Ligambi's cake at Memories nightclub in Margate, even though he lives less than a mile away on the same barrier island.

Recent media reports —namely, a front pager by Inquirer mob watcher George Anastasio — focused on rumors that the 42-year-old Scarfo is positioning himself to take over the Philly Cosa Nostra with backing from dear old dad, Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo.

To understand the lack of love some in the Philadelphia Mafia have for the Scarfos, go back to the mid-1980s, when the teenaged Junior was a familiar sight in mob clubhouses in South Jersey and South Philly.

ADVERTISEMENT
Little Nicky ran the Philadelphia Mafia from his apartment on Georgia Avenue in Atlantic City during the 1980s and set a gangland record for killing off, demoting and exiling members of his own crime family. In those days, Ligambi was a bookmaker and associate of underboss Salvatore "Chucky" Merlino, whose son, "Skinny Joey," was pals with Junior.

It seemed to be one big happy crime family until 1986, when Little Nicky demoted Salvatore to soldier and passed over Ligambi for a promotion because of Ligambi's close ties to the demoted underboss. Junior then avoided his friend, making it clear that his father's fall from power affected Merlino's own underworld status.

Three years later, Little Nicky, Salvatore and his brother Lawrence, Phil Leonetti and more than two dozen members and associates of the crime family, including Ligambi, were arrested, tried and convicted on various charges. With dad in jail, Junior Scarfo was still strutting around the streets of Philadelphia, which angered many of the sons and nephews of the men convicted with Scarfo.

They blamed Little Nicky for mismanaging the crime family and wanted to send him a message. So on Halloween night in 1989, a gunman dressed in a Batman mask blasted Junior seven times inside Dante & Luigi's restaurant in South Philadelphia. Although never charged with the shooting, law enforcement and underworld sources swear to this day that the gunman was none other than Skinny Joey.

Scarfo Jr. survived and as soon as he was released from the hospital, moved to North Jersey, where he was twice arrested on gambling and loan-sharking charges and served two prison terms. Scarfo's dad allegedly arranged protection for his son from the Lucchese mob family.

While law enforcement sources claim Junior is now a Lucchese capo, his attorney says Scarfo, who is still on parole for his 2002 conviction, has nothing to do with any organized crime family and that he moved to Ventnor to be closer to relatives.

But now, the man who Scarfo's dad passed over for membership in the mob is the big boss of a crime family that operates in Atlantic City. Making matters more interesting is the fact that Skinny Joey, a Ligambi friend and ally, should be back out on the streets in about four years.

Still, local made men don't think Scarfo Jr. has too much to worry about. They say Ligambi will be boss until he dies or goes to jail and, as a member of a powerful New York crime family, Scarfo Jr. is safe in South Jersey — as long as he doesn't try a power grab.

"If that kid wants to make money with us, that would not be a problem. Money is always a good thing," one Philly mob associate tells City Paper. "He should be OK, as long as he don't eat at Dante & Luigi's again."

While Junior was nowhere to be seen in Margate last weekend, at least 40 "made" members of the Philadelphia Mafia, including the entire North Jersey crew, as well as representatives from the two most powerful borgatas in the country — the Genovese and Gambino crime families — were there.

"They came to pay respect to Uncle Joe," says one mob associate who attended. "They like him in New York."

The New York mobsters who zoomed down the Garden State Parkway for Uncle Joe's celebration were there to let the alleged boss of the Philadelphia underworld know that the Genovese and Gambino mobs are quite happy with his leadership. Responding to published reports indicating that Ligambi might also be thinking about having a retirement party sometime soon — which would hypothetically create a power vacuum for Scarfo Jr. — one associated simply explained that, "Joe Ligambi ain't retiring to Florida."

(editorial@citypaper.net)