King Ralphie has a nice ring to it.

The Santaniellos have the power now in Springfield (MA) mob, per multiple sources.

On the heels of finally getting his button in New York City, 56-year old Ralphie Santaniello has taken over the Genovese crime family’s Western Massachusetts wing by a show-of-force, pushing out his infirmed first-cousin, Albert (The Animal) Calvanese, an unsanctioned skipper of mafia affairs in the area the past seven years, and assuming control of the city’s historic Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club Monday morning, sources claim. Calvanese, 61, survived a serious car wreck last month and is recovering from two broken legs, among other major injuries. His reign as the de-facto boss of the Springfield crew was a “rogue operation with little to no oversite from the Bronx” and increasingly upset local and NYC mob figures by who he was letting in the club to do business, sources say.

Back in the 2000s, Calvanese, Santaniello and Santaniello’s dad, consummate Springfield mafia OG Amedeo, all worked together under young-gun, baby-faced local mob chief Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta, who succeeded the longstanding leaders of the Scibelli brothers–Big Al Bruno era at the forefront of the region’s rackets. In the years following Arillotta flipping in 2009, the three of them took control of the Springfield crew themselves, with Ralphie Santaniello getting proposed for official membership into the Genovese crime family. But just as the crew was getting put back in place and beginning to operate at full capacity again, Ralphie and four others in the crew were busted for extortion and racketeering in the 2016 East Coast LCN case and went to prison, leaving Calvanese and his uncle Amedeo Santaniello to look after affairs. That arrangement dissolved rather quickly though and Calvanese allegedly leveraged discontent between Amedeo and an elderly jailed Genovese don into having him banished and absorbed both Santaniellos racket portfolios for himself, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the situation.

The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Society Social Club has acted as Ground Zero for the Springfield mafia crew for well more than a half-century. Local mob tradition states the boss of the city controls the club, located in the city’s South End. Former Springfield mob skipper Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno, 57, was assassinated in the club’s parking lot in November 2003, gunned down by an Arillotta-dispatched hit man leaving his weekly Sunday card game, leading to Arillotta’s ascension to the throne in his early 30s. Arillotta’s testimony in a 2011 federal racketeering and murder trial that sent then-Genovese acting boss Arthur (Little Artie) Nigro to prison for life for ordering Bruno’s slaying. Springfield mafia figure Antonio Fascente was allegedly killed in the club’s basement in 1979 by Bruno and others, per Arillotta’s initial debriefing.

During the club takeover this week, police were called to the scene in the South End as the locks were being changed. Per sources, the Santaniellos were brought off-the-shelf in recent years, after Little Artie passed away of natural causes behind bars. Eighty-five year old Amedeo Santaniello, who seems to have “nine lives” and the gangland resiliency of a pitbull, fell out of favor with an incarcerated Nigro when a photo of him next to a cooperator responsible for helping put Little Artie away surfaced on social media. per sources and FBI intelligence reports. Both Santaniellos were punished with shelvings prior to Nigro’s death and the consensus forming in New York Genovese circles that the Santaniellos were needed to get the crime family’s Western Mass. operations back in order, per sources on the “Westside.” Amedeo Santaniello was Big Al Bruno’s right-hand man for years before the pair got into a beef and Bruno chased Santaniello to Florida in the late 1990s only for Arillotta to summon him back to Springfield once Bruno was dead to serve as an adviser in the 2000s.

According to sources in both Massachusetts and New York, Calvanese angered mob shot callers throughout the region for a series of perceived slights and infractions, including Calvanese allowing Arillotta to return to the club’s grounds and shoot content for a podcast chronicling the history of organized crime in Springfield, him welcoming a contingent of Latin Kings to use the club for meetings and okaying the filing of a personal protection order against the Santaniellos banning them stepping foot from the club property when Ralphie was released from prison more than three years ago. Ralphie Santaniello got “off paper” last year and according to multiple sources was inducted into the Genovese mob at some point in the past few months in a ceremony held in New York City.

While well known as one of the most dangerous, fearsome and crafty mobsters in Western Massachusetts dating back to his days as a relentless enforcer for Big Al Bruno and then Arillotta, Calvanese never received a button, per sources on both sides of the law. More brutish and reclusive than Springfield mafia powerhouses of the past, Calvanese shunned engaging in the political networking and gladhanding with New York and Boston mob influencers as his predecessors did, these sources claim. Boston LCN leaders allegedly have a particular dislike for Calvanese due to an incident in federal prison where Calvanese reportedly snubbed a Patriarca crime family administrator.