Originally Posted by Toodoped
We cannot compare the Mafia with the black drug lords because first of all the Italians created their organizations centuries ago, while the black criminals began getting big at the start of the 20th century, mainly with the help of their policy racket. Also most of the black drug lords lasted for a decade or two and so you cannot compare their financial income with some Mafioso who was born in 1906 and died in 1992 and on top.of that he left one huge crime legacy behind him which lasts even today. I mean if a Mafioso such as Accardo who started making big income since the late 1920s, then you can imagine how much cash he managed to spent or invest through out his life time. Also you have Mafiosi who completely infiltrated huge legit industries and somehow managed to get "clean"....we are talking about different goals and different types of criminals... two different worlds...and the only thing which used to connect them was obviously gambling...and possibly the dope biz from time to time.

I think that in terms of income, the only Mafioso who can be compared to guys such as Matthews or Lucas is Al Capone....short career followed by a lot of cash...i mean you can calculate 100 mil during the early 1930s in todays cash but dont forget that all of that money didnt went only in Als pockets but instead some went for corruption and the rest went up or down the scale since as I previously said, it was all about maintaining the organization


I’ve heard $100 mill before. I always found it hard to believe but it made me wonder how much his criminal organization as a whole was making then. He was the boss for a very short amount of time though, you’re right about that. It’s easy to forget sometimes. $100,000 in 1930 is worth around $1.5 million today based on what I just calculated with inflation online(trusting that it’s accurate). So if Capone made $10,000,000 then that’s around $150 million adjusted for inflation. So based on the amount of money he made in that short amount of time, maybe he would be a good comparison.