Mostly lurk on here. But I've been wondering.
There's five families, a dozen of crews under these five, hundreds of made guys wannabes and associates. How do these guys even know who is who, who is made and how do they present themselves to people in the life? I can't imagine a guy going around speaking about his family and calling it by its name. Maybe a stupid question, but it doesn't make sense to me at all.

A bit off topic but I remember a testimony at a mob trial of a few years ago when one of the defendants said that he didn’t know he was a “Colombo” until prosecutors identified him as such during trial. And he’d been a mob associates for years. Most of the guys in this life don’t really focus on the larger scheme of things, they are truly focused on their inner circle, that’s how the LCN should operate: insulate the administration and let crews run smoothly without letting the low-tier guys know too much about what goes on upstairs, both big money and mob politics-wise

Some more court-savvy poster may remember the trial in question and the guy’s name. I read about it either on the NY Post or Daily News.

Yeah, this is what I mean. It'd strike me as odd if every single involved guy would know who he's with, well maybe which org they're with, which crew etc. But no way you'd know every crew and every made member of all the families.

Have there been any instance of a guy accidentaly getting into a scuffle with a made guy, cap or another guy from another family that caused shit on the big picture or only on a small scale? Of course made guys aren't as untouchable as they have been in the past, but some of the rules still hold up, no?

A mob associate once pulled a gun out on an Colombo acting boss (Russo?) at a restaurant during an argument. He didn't know the guy was a acting boss.

In Raab's 5 families the author write that cause the dcline of the mob,many low level associates or even made men doesnt know who's the boss or in which family are.

I think the Genovese have done that for a long time to insulate the real boss. For example, some low level guys may not have known that Gigante was the real boss for a long time and may have thought Fat Tony was boss.

It makes sense to do this, because the low level guys are more likely to run their mouth to other people and have word get back to law enforcement. Whereas the Genovese admin are pretty well disciplined to keep quiet.

Lucchese solder Pennisi seemed to know everything about the Luccheses and all the latest gossip when he flipped. He knew how many crews they had, how many active members, who was in the administration, he knew the content of the messages being passed back and forth between Amuso and the administration. For a low-level soldier he sure knew a shit load of information he didn't have to know about.

I guess they talk a lot in the Lucchese family; you could say...too much chatter box.