What's the Going Rate for Mafia Membership These Days?

Skinny Joey Merlino.
Tired of being a mob associate and kicking up most of your earnings?

Tired of constantly lying to your superiors about how much you earn so you don't have to kick up as much as you should?

Face it -- you wanna be a made guy... You already maybe did a piece of work for the family (or not, it's not the requirement everyone always thought it was), and you are feeling you deserve to be a soldier.

Well, friends, now that dream can be yours! You can become a full member of the Philadelphia mob for only a one-time payment of $10,000! (Cash, of course.)

Chances are, you won't read an ad like that anytime soon. But believe it or not, for a time it was the case, according to two government witnesses.



Someone could join the Philly mob by making a cash payment to George Borgesi, who belongs to the administration of the family his uncle lorded over and brought back from extinction for Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, who also was selling mob memberships. (Merlino, however, was getting $100,000 per button -- and this was back in the 1990s.)

This is according to testimonies from two mob turnoats, including New York informant Anthony Aponick, who testified at the racketeering conspiracy retrial of Borgesi and his uncle, mob boss "Uncle Joe" Ligambi last December.

Aponick said he was asked to pay the 10Gs to Borgesi while they were cellmates in a federal prison in West Virginia back in 2003.

"He said I would become a member of his crew. He wanted $10,000."

Aponick was actually getting a bargain. As George Anastasia wrote on Big Trial, that price was a mere 10 percent of what Boston mobster Bobby Luisi said he had to pay Merlino back in the late 1990s to become a made member.

"Whether that was a reflection of an economic downturn in the underworld or whether Aponick was getting a special discount could not be determined. Like Aponick, Luisi became a close associate of Borgesi's. And like Aponick, he eventually became an FBI informant."

What pinged our curiosity was the dollar figure of $10,000.

Ronald Turchi, a convicted arsonist and one-time Mafia consigliere busted to capo in the mid-1990s, had been in and out of prison and was considered a troubled man.

Ligambi, on right, Borgesi

He was also found in the trunk of his wife's car in South Philadelphia around noon on Passyunk Avenue, naked, shot twice in the back of the head. His hands and feet were tied with white rope.

"It was reminiscent of many mob hits of the 1980s," wrote Philly.com.

Turchi was considered an ally of one-time mob boss Ralph Natale, who, it was later learned, only was acting boss because Merlino and his crew, who went to war to end the abrupt, violent reign of the previous boss, John Stanfa, wanted a buffer for law enforcement.

Natale flipped shortly before the Turchi slaying. On the stand in February 2001, Natale said that Turchi was killed for trying to "buy" the job of Philadelphia mob boss by paying $10,000 to a high-ranking Gambino family member.

Ten-thousand dollars, the same amount.... We wonder if this was common practice. Is it still common practice? Exactly how many high-ranking mobsters were selling buttons, and how many mobsters are only mobsters because they paid the fee? And was $10,000 really the going rate?

George Anastasia didn't note in his article what happened to another Anastasia -- namely, Albert (who was called "Don Umberto" by his men, and "Lord High Executioner" by the press). He also was involved in a button-selling racket.

Anastasia was famously whacked in 1957 on the orders of Vito Genovese, who wanted Anastasia gone as part of a plan to take out Frank Costello and assume control of what would become the Genovese family.

Genovese used Anastasia's brutal behavior to help win support. It wasn't a difficult job, as Anastasia was known for being an unstable killer, who had once had a citizen killed because he didn't approve of citizens informing on criminals.

Genovese also highlighted the fact that Anastasia had been selling memberships to what would soon become the Gambino crime family for $50,000, not only a violation of Commission rules, but something that made a lot of members furious. And if that wasn't enough, according to Valachi, Anastasia had been losing large amounts of money at the racetrack, which fueled Anastasia's surliness and unpredictability.

Anastasia may have been selling buttons -- or he may not have been. We do know, however, that on June 17, 1957, Frank Scalice, Anastasia's underboss and the one directly responsible for selling Gambino memberships, was also assassinated. Anastasia deftly approved the hit, and the subsequent murder of Scalice's brother Joseph after offering to forgive threats to avenge Frank.

Was Anastasia punishing his own underling or covering his tracks. I'd say I could not believe Scalice would even try such an audacious stunt without Anastasia's approval. A boss whacking his own underboss is pretty severe stuff.

What is really interesting about all this is the perceived value of mob membership.

Fifty-thousand dollars in 1957 would be worth $422,000 today.

But $10,000 today would be worth $1.2 million in 1957.

Still, it is safe to say that mob membership just isn't what it was worth back in the 1990s...
Posted by Ed Scarpo at 5:17 PM


Death Before Dishonor