The list is a mile long and would probably take me a long time to find the answer.....Figured I might as well just cut to the chase!

My guess is that the Chin was the first one to use the front boss (Salerno).

Street boss? No clue!.....Everyone did time. Even the street boss probably had a street boss.

Right family, wrong guys. Benny Squint had Funzi fronting for him long before Vince and Tony followed suit.

Didn't Ricca use Nitti technically as a "front boss" way back then? Or did Nitti know people were meeting behind his back with Ricca and just couldn't do nothing about it?
What about later on with Ricca and Accardo when Giancana was boss? They say big picture-wise nothing would get done without their approval so you can't just count them as senior "advisors"

Benny squint Lombardo was the first to use front bosses and ruling panels

sorry PB , didn't see your response . Try replying to your PM its therapeutic pal

When asked why Philip Lombardo was called "Benny Squint", Funzi replied "Are you kidding? I've seen 'em squint. He can squint his way down to like twenty, thirty vision. Once we were driving down from the Catskills and he lost his glasses. He squinted his way from Wortsborough down to the Tappan Zee Bridge! He was spotting raccoons, on the road!"

Seinfeld is Costanza's front boss.

I'd say the Genovese and Benny Squint, but the Chicago guys deserve an honorable mention. The fact that Ricca pretty much told Nitti to take the charge for the movie union thing, and got all the other guys to side with him, says something. It implies that Nitti never had the real power anyway and it was Ricca running things all along. There's also that cop and a couple of others who claim that Ricca was still the real boss and that nothing got done without him knowing about it, even when Accardo was boss and even parts of Giancana's reign.

I've wondered why more front bosses don't flip. What a shitty job. Doing all the time and not even reaping the benefits.

Take Mancuso for example. Let's say he is a front boss as speculated. The guy is in jail already and now has all of the heat on him. That blows, I'd be pissed.

I think it would be a mistake to assume that Nitti was a low-ranking guy that Ricca told to take charge under him. Nitti could have been an early capo of the Taylor Street Crew or the underboss so was always under Ricca, but if outsiders were going to believe that Nitti was the top boss they weren't going to correct them. They just let them continue to believe it and probably had a laugh at how law enforcement and the press always get things wrong. I think that's how it works in most cases.

I don't think a boss is going to say to some other member, "I'm going to make you the front boss. You're going to let the outside world think you're the boss, but you won't have any power and if the G puts in prison thinking that you're the boss, you'll have to take it." It makes more sense that LE confuses a powerful capo or an underboss for a boss and it gets uncorrected. That's what happened with Ferriola who was believed by LE to be the Outfit boss after Aiuppa until Lenny Patrick, Jerry Scarpelli and others corrected them. After all, the bosses with the greatest longevity try to stay in the background and don't try to be walking targets like Gotti.

Yes, I agree. This seems to be the case also with Gigante/Salerno in the early 1980s. The feds believed Salerno was the boss but was corrected by Cafaro in 1986/1987, after Salerno´s conviction. Instead of admitting that they were wrong, they simply invented the "front boss" position. Not admitting, helped them saving face.

Something that needs to be taken into consideration is if having a so called "front boss" as a deliberate strategy, why wasn´t this same strategy used again by Gigante after Salerno´s conviction in 1986?

Thanks All!

Maybe because Chin figured he was already outed, plus he had the crazy act going on.

I've said it a hundred times. A lot of these titles are just law enforcement and media terms.

Yeah, of course that's true. These guys don't worry about titles: "I'm the President, Benny's the Vice President and Joey over there is the Secretary of Defence" But at the end of the day, someone's the Boss, Underboss and Consigliere, and some others are major league powers in their own right.

Here is my ? With all this. Wouldn't the easiest way to tell who was in charge be who got money paid to them? Because power is nice but they do it for money? If your a front boss or whatever do you have everyone kick up to you and then it goes to the boss? Or like with the ruling panel did they split the earnings?

Take Migliore as an example with the Lucchese's. Extremely powerful capo for over 40 years now, never wanted the top spot in the 80's but was on the 3 man panel ruling the family not too long back, smart.

second

Never said Nitti was a low-ranking soldier. I just said all signs point to him being the lesser individual when compared to Ricca, during times when everyone thought Nitti was boss of the whole shebang.

To be honest, one of either Ricca or Accardo was the final word on the Outfit for almost fifty years. Giancana, Aiuppa, Cerone, etc. were the bosses and made all of the operating decisions for the Outfit during that time but make no mistake, if one of the above wanted something done during that time period, it was done.

A little off topic, but I was watching this program last night called "Facing Ali". There was this boxer on there, George Chuvalo. He was telling the story about Ernie Terrell and the first fight he was supposed to have with Ali, Chuvalo said Terrell's real manager was Tony Accardo, he used another Outfit guy by the name of Bernie Glickman or something like that, as the front manager for Terrell. Chuvalo says they had the contract all written up, of course Terrell tells a different story saying he backed out after someone told him he'd get no guaranteed money. Chuvalo says the real reason the first fight never happened is because Accardo sent Glickman to Ali's manager, and told his manager that if Ali won the fight they'd find his manager "in cement shoes, stuffed in a trunk", Ali's management at the time was all NOI guys. Chuvalo says the manager sent word by snapping his finger, and they beat Terrell's manager, Glickman within an inch of his life and sent him back to Chicago, and that's why the fight never happened.


Interesting story to say the least.

Milwaukee Phil Alderisio was the one who beat Glickman up so I am not sure if Chuvalo is getting his stories mixed up or if Glickman got his ass beat more than once. Anyway, Glickman claimed that New York, Funzi Tieri specifically, was demanding that the fight be on the East Coast. Glickman went to Accardo, who said that Alderisio (who was from New York and still had connections there) was going out east to straighten things out. What ended up happening was that Phil cut a deal with Funzi to give him Terrell and then beat Glickman's ass for crying to Accardo - Phil probably had this deal set up with the Genovese the entire time.

Glickman then went to the FBI and threatened to blow the lid on the mob's control over boxing but his one caveat was to not implicate Accardo, a personal friend, in the whole thing. However, the government reneged on the deal and when Glickman appeared before the grand jury, he perjured himself on the stand and refused to implicate Accardo. Knowing what an animal like Phil might do to him, the FBI then went to Accardo and requested that no harm was to come to Glickman, and none did.

They say the fight was supposed to be held in Atlantic City, but it was around the time Ali made the Viet Cong comments and refused to follow his draft call-up, so he had all this heat on him and basically they were scared for his safety, so the fight didn't happen in the East Coast. Again, that's according to Chuvalo, he says after Glickman got beat up by NOI, he went to a mental institution and died there.

Well, maybe we should rephrase the question.

Since we know Luciano used Costello as a acting Boss, who used an acting boss before that?

You are talking pre-1937.

Wiki (I know) says Vito was acting before him. But I think that was a very short period of time. Maybe a year or less. Anyone feel free to correct.

So which families used an acting boss before 1936 or so?

I wasn't addressing you specifically, but some people have gone the other way in claiming that Nitti was a nobody, and since we were on that topic it seemed appropriate to deal with it then.



Having acting bosses goes back to the beginning. Anytime the boss went on vacation, went to jail for a brief period, or any other reason that prevented him from being in his territory, there would be someone acting in his place.

Something I didn't understand a few years ago was the difference between Operating Boss and Official Boss ( or possibly another title). While reading different news articles, there were references made that went something like this: " top echelon bosses unhappy with Cerone ( just using his name for illustration purposes)." I kept thinking, "who are these top echelon bosses?" I was thinking Cerone was the boss. I had also been reading and studying the comments and charts on ANP. There were about three or four posters who basically said Accardo was not a factor in most decisions. This surprised me because everything I read said just the opposite. I started calling and emailing some folks in Chicago and here's what I was told. There was an Operating Boss and then there was some type board of directors. This was in the late fifties and early sixties. But I was told by every single person with whom I talked that the two individuals with the most power were Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo. They went on to say basically what you (Snakes) have said here; If these two wanted something done, it would be done. Once Ricca passed, it was Accardo.

So what you are saying here is what I've been told by many, and I do mean many, people. Our fellow poster, StonePark, made this very clear in his posts about the Outfit.

I also inquired about the charts from ANP. I was told very succinctly, that it made no difference how many charts are "out there," the two most powerful men in the Outfit were Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo. I asked lots of questions about Ricca, Accardo and Giancana, and got lots of answers and perspectives.

In fairness to those who said Accardo was not the boss of the Outfit, they were correct; he was not the Operating Boss after 1956; Sam Giancana inherited the position. Accardo became second in command to Paul Ricca. Do you think Ricca and Accardo knew what they were doing by creating this organizational structure ?

Jimmy brown was Carlo acting boss I think when he was indicted on on that bull money truck robbery or one of his heart attacks. Then big Paul was to. So that word acting bosses went back to late 60tys early 70tys.

Jimmy brown was Carlo acting boss I think when he was indicted on on that bull money truck robbery or one of his heart attacks. Then big Paul was to. So that word acting bosses went back to late 60tys early 70tys.

just overlook 1930/40s chicago huh?

chicago was first