To show the sorry state of the American organized underworld nowadays, I pose a question to the forum.

With the possible exception of one or two scattered indictments brought against the NYC mob like the one in Staten Island not too long ago involving a small Colombo crew, or the few guys in the Gambino crew brought down for drug dealing over the Canadian line a few years back, and another for gambling on LI. Where the heck are all the cases?

Is it because the level of mob activity is at such a low dismal level that there truly are no cases to bring?

Or do you think that law enforcement is just slipping up and 'missing' these guys and they're rackets?

Or have the current mob guys suddenly become more slick and savvy, evading prosecution all together?

PS: I might have missed a few cases but you get my point right? Very few guys being probed, arrested, indicted, or jailed for many years already. And NYC is considered the epicenter of all things OC. Imagine in other cities. They're like ghost towns as far as mob activity....is the mob now quickly going the way of the dinosaur? Or going legit?

I'm curious as to your thoughts?

There's not much going on right now. Are there crews out there who are still making serious money? Yes. Is the West Side still powerful? Yes. But the vast majority of guys in that life are not doing anything that's even remotely criminal. LE should focus on the horrible crimes committed by street gangs every single day. The murders are out of control and none of them are committed by members of CN, who today are mostly upstanding citizens who just want to go to church and do right by their fellow man.

I would have to believe that the threesome of RICO, DNA, and informants has caused people in that life to be very very cautious. The lack of a RICO statute in Canada paints a very different story to mob life up there.

Also the gangbang of government CCTV placed on every street corner now, ring camera networks, licence plate readers, dash cam, facial recognition, cellular triangulation. I believe NY is the CCTV capital of America. These could all be countered though if they choose to adapt

I think that along with lesser mob presence, that LE doesn't really give that much of a shit about smaller stuff going on. I think there are bigger fish to fry. Although I could be wrong!

This question pops up regularly.

The answer is obviously a mixed of all the logical reasons most posters eventually write: more attentive and cautious guys, hotheaded cowboys are short-lived (trimmed out, discouraged by the upper echelons and promptly taken out by LE), less overall action compared to the golden age, cultural and demographic attrition, top-tier schemes and crimes that take a lot to infiltrate/investigate/take down, as well as low-tier crimes that aren’t a priority for LE, etc…

Has been like this for quite some time.

What I have been noticing, for awhile now too, is that there is very little in the way of federal indictments and criminal cases related to traditional (as well as non-traditional) organized crime. In the federal arena almost every single case brought by prosecutors has to deal with some sort of paper or computer fraud; bank frauds galore, stock and securities swindles, credit card fraud, identity thefts rolling into international type frauds, etc.

And nearly every single case is for megabucks. Millions; 115 million, 35 mill, 2 mill, 87 mill......the numbers are truly staggering. Any one of these schemes, executed successfully, dwarf the annual revenue produced by entire mafia regimes, if not that of entire mafia families of just a few years ago.

Even in narcotics cases that deal in big bucks. most of the cases don't come close to the level of monies that these financial fraud cases perpetrate. Wow!....thats 'crime' and the way of the future. OC should try and acclimate to that. They'd be much better off than booking a horse or sports bet, or shaking a guy down for $200 weekly

“Acclimate” so they’d be a main target for the feds? No thank you! (They would say).

Believe it or not, those who know how to make good money in that life ARE making good money as we’re typing. Have been and will be.

Like we’ve said already: high-level schemes take years to take down and the low level stuff is not enough for the law to bother with (most of the time).

So all things considered, the way things are (and have been for a while now) aren’t that bad for those still in the life.

From what I can see in NYC, lots of guys are starving. If not outright starving, then they are just getting by. Most of all the guys (inducted or not) are not reaping the big types of money you'd expect them to generate considering all the hype about LCN.

I agree with you that 'earners' are always earners. These types of guys will always generate a buck. But you'd be surprised just how many of those same kinda guys have transitioned to legit, and semi-legit, activities. Oh sure, they may still dabble in street stuff. But the big earners have transitioned to legitimate businesses both for the earning power and stability it provides, as well as for protection from prosecution.

Unless you wanna risk handling coke or junk nowadays, or are involved in a big money paper scheme, the huge money just isn't there anymore in the rackets.

Gotta remember also that for every guy who is involved in a complex labor racketeering scam, there's a hundred or better who aren't. Few guys understand the complexities and have the connections required to jump into labor. It's a very specialized field of endeavor.

What else is left over to do? Not much!

So the 'smart money' guys as they are called in the business, long ago wised up and got out of the street shit. Only the desperadoes who are brokesters and have few other options get involved today. If you see a guy neck-deep in street rackets, its because he has no other choice.

If they even still care to dabble, skippers and solid wealthy soldiers always have a few bananas around them who handle that sort of stuff. But the big money (and longevity) is elsewhere today.

In my humble opinion anyway.

Deleted.
No flaming on this or any other board! If you can't keep it civil, stay off!

Like I said. It’s been like that for quite some time. Nothing new. Nothing due to the 2008 recession or COVID. It’s been gradually happening since the early ‘90s. And it’s due to the variety of reasons we posted above.

As for the guys you know that are “starving” even that isn’t new. Or maybe they’re starving because they’re not good at hustling. Not every loser is a victim of the circumstances. Some are just bad with money, dumb, embarrassingly dumb or a mix of all.

Even in the golden age, for one legitimately well off wiseguy you had several dozens who were getting by due to nickel and dime schemes.

Important to note: most of what the mob did/does is connected to the service industry. Which can be inserted in the semi-legitimate file. Businesses forced to buy from a specific mobbed-up company or else. Get a specific service provided by so-and-so or else. That I know hasn’t changed much. Even in places that aren’t as mob-rich as NYC. Surprisingly so. It’s a more than decent operation that the feds don’t really bother with unless drugs or corpses can be connected to it. So it’s one of those “backbone” rackets we hear about.

there has been a constant string of OC busts in canada going back years.
all of the hits that have taken place between MTL and the southern part of ontario cannot all be written off as vendetta.
most of these murders are about taking over territory to make money.
the american mafia as a whole has never had the inclination to work with other OC groups.
there have been very minor busts showing alliances to street gangs or biker mc groups but not many.
it could be that the mafia has lost out on rackets they feel beneath them.
the mafia no longer needs to be a middleman between cartels and street level drug sales.cartels do almost everything themselves or with alliances to trusted groups.
how many states have legalized gambling?sports gambling?marijuana?no money to be made there.
could also be an overestimation of the made man strength of all these families to begin with.
there have been many charts/lists on this site over the years and no matter where they originate from the numbers of men shown to be in the mafia has always seemed too big.
so maybe not enough man power,not enough rackets,not enough intelligence=no big busts.

was the former/current consigliere of the colombos thomas farese not busted back in the summer for a large medicare scam for like 60 mill thats pretty big.

I agree

thats all true.

What you say is true about brokesters in every era. For every wealthy guy, there's always dozens less so, and plenty of hardcore bust outs too. Lol. But even 'servicing' the 'service' industries is falling by the wayside today. Its called 'coercion' and 'extortion,' and plenty of legit people will scream law in a heartbeat if approached. So the year 2021 is not what many of you would like to think it is.

Does it still go on? Of course it does. But proportionately speaking ALL those types of rackets and activities have been grossly reduced in volume and profit.

The Farese bust was a rarity, and I agree that was a huge scam. But most crews have neither the skills, base intelligence and knowhow to involve themselves in that.

The proof is in the pudding as they say! And I agree with you; NOT ENOUGH; man power, rackets, intelligence, etc.

That's why i dont follow US almost at all , Italy/Canada are interesting , you always have stuff happening , while US mafia is just same topics every few months , that we discussed million times before.

Agreed. And its only gonna get worse as whatever little action and solid guys are left fade out. OC in America is NOT a growth industry. It's been on the decline for decades already, and I must say that they are presently on their knees. It ain't ever gettin stronger thats for sure!

The other thing with Canada are the lenient jail sentences. Guys seem to get out in just a couple of years for crimes that they would get life for in the U.S. There's no deterrent up there.

Like everything else in government, law enforcement/justice is political--focused on what makes prosecutors, judges, police officials look good. As Selwyn Raab noted in "The Five Families": After Giuliani won the Commission case, US Attorneys around the country fell all over themselves prosecuting Mob hierarchy under RICO to earn their own share of glory. After 9/11, terrorists replaced Mob guys on their radar.

High profile Mobsters like Gotti, Wonder Boy, Skinny Joey, Scarfo, etc., attract their attention because putting them away makes the "justice" system look good. But, who does the Mob have now? A lot of of erudite posters on this board have difficulty identifying who's in charge of whom or what rackets in today's OC--why would law enforcement even try? And, all the formerly high profile Mob guys turned rat and are filling the blogs and airways with their "insider tales," keeping the public entertained. Not much left for law enforcement.

This isn't to say that individuals and families in OC aren't making money. They're just not high-profile enough for us to read about.

Not trying to poke the bear here, but couldn’t all of this be true at the same time? Yes, guys aren’t making what they used to. Yes, there’s still hundreds (a thousand ) of gangsters still out there doing crimes. And… maybe it’s just quiet because there haven’t been many new high profile cases ???????????.

The majority have legitimate businesses, and are occasional indicted when they brake a rule that every other person in the same industry brakes on a daily basis. The ones we hear about for the most part are the associates (Some of who are barley associates like Borrello) that commit robberies and drug deals. With the biggest focus of law enforcement on the Mafia and still so little going on it seems they are dead compared to what they were years ago. If we had this forum in 1932, 1957, or 1963 when Valachi testified, we'd have 10,000 people posting here daily, at the least. Plus for the past 50 years Italians who have criminal leanings have mixed themselves into multi-ethnic groups. It's a different world.

That is true. You are correct in what you say.

There are still tons of guys on the street trying to earn a dishonest dollar. Both goodfellas and knockaround guys alike. And there aren't earning what the used to. Not even close to what they made years back. The opportunities just aren't there anymore. And because of it the feds aren't bringing criminal cases like they used to because there's no "illegal" dollars around, scores around, for guys to even break the law though they want too. It's a domino effort to the most extreme degree.

That life is on a respirator! (Fans and mob aficionados of that life may not understand the true dynamic. Even lots of the young guys who still get into the life nowadays don't realize it, thats why they jump in. They think there's still a future in it). But mob life, "The Life," is on a respirator. And it's never coming back. It's going the way of the "Cowboys & American Indians" but fast.

You are 100% right in your assessment

In the 1980s and 1990s the mob was the priority for LE when men like Casso and zamuso,Gotti,Orena etc attire mass media attenzione and LE with bodies in the streets.
Now is different,even a 5 families boss flipped,now there no old school mobsters that would accept long sentences,there few white collar mobsters and houndred of brokesters that sell drug on the corner,small time bookies or shylock that are ready to broke your legs for few houndred dollars.
This happened even in the glorious old days but with the end of the little italies or the mobbed up hoods,there are no safe place.

911 shifted the policing Landscape, all across the planet. The interesting part is that the FBI etc. should consider going after the OC groups that work with the terrorist. If you were to look at the Canadian OC, there’s definitely an overlap of ethnic groups that are working with the OC in Canada, that the USA, Israel and Britain consider terrorist. (Iran, Palestine, Algeria, Eastern Block, Iraq, Syria, Indian, Pakistan, Sudan,Afghanistan, etc) the country is full of them. As well as home grown terrorist like the FLQ, from Quebec.

It’s the 20 year Anniversary today, I heard one guy says “it’s not a celebration, rather a memorial”.

I just found out that the Secret Service in Canada doesn’t even carry a firearm WTF, how/why is that possible, they are always underprepared to protect or stop an attack lol


“ Justin Trudeau's Liberal government announced it would settle a lawsuit filed by Omar Khadr, a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, by paying Khadr $8m. Khadr was transferred to a Canadian prison in 2012 and released by the courts in 2015.”

Afghanistan has lots of poppy to make Heroin. Look at the State and Streets in Canada, the country is crumbling. Preparation for American??

Very true Furio. It's all (or mostly) "penny-anty" type rackets today. With the exception of the occasional large gambling operation (which is usually run by an outside entity in Costa Rica by a semi-independent operators), or the occasional big-money what collar swindle for millions, today's 'wiseguys' are all scrabbling for the same dollar bill.

It's not so wise to operate the streets any longer and the more savvy of the bunch see that. The wise guys who don't see that are really wiseguys in name only. 'dumb-guys' is a better handle for them.

It ain't 1950. Or even 1990 anymore

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You might be right. Over the years we've seen the Sicilian mafia, French, Marseilles, and Coriscan mafia interact with Middle East drug bosses in Pakistan and other warlords of terrorist nations to buy opium base, hashish, etc. So why is it such a stretch to imagine them interacting up in Canada?

The force of the American Mafia was that was an well organizated crimininal gruop and can bribe the judge,cops,politicians etc now after eppolito and caracappa cases its almost impossible to bribe a cop another thing is that expecially in the drug bussiness you'll be ready to pull the trigger and now nobody will risk and the FBI would use the rico even would heard of everything was running by a wiseguy.

Agreed Furio. And another MAJOR reason why a lot of wiseguys stayed away from babania was because you gotta deal with outside jerkoffs. Druggies, independents who have no morals or 'code' etc. Narcotics was always very dangerous territory for guys to dabble in for that and other reasons.

For every guy who fucked with drugs, there were ten who didn't. But today there is NO other rackets so lots of guys jump in to try and make quick bucks. They get pinched, and they flip. It's become a bad syndrome for CN

The Gambinos and the Bonannos are still big time heroin dealers. It's a bad business, but the money is very tempting. Almost all the guys who are living in mansions are the drug dealers. It's sad, but it's true.

I feel bad for those clowns who are tying to get their shy running right lol. You might as well invest in crypto like a schmuck