How the Mafia Works

going to be lousy. With Chuck's Italian impressive. I want to go ahead and um apologize to the Italian American Anti Defamation League. Actually that is a serious c o A. I wanted to say because a lot of Italian Americans get upset about things like the Sopranos being portrayed as game bixters. We're not saying all Italian Americans and gangsters,

but we're gonna talk about the mafia. It's a real thing, and specifically we're gonna when you say the mafia, even though it's used in all these different ways, right, it's it's specific to Italian organized crime groups or Sicilian. Yeah, well, Sicily is a part of Italy. Yeah, sort of, that's Sicilians, and they probably would say not so much. Well, under modern geopolitics, it's a part of Italy, right, I just

wouldn't say that in Sicily. Well, if you want to talk about the mafia, even even broadly, the Sicilian mafia is part of five total right. Yes, Oh we got going already, did you know? Yeah? I was like, wow, that's set up here. We are you? I mean, should we name those or you just want to get to those at the appropriate time? Did I throw you off? No?

I'll name him right now. Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra Mafia from nap the Calabrian mafia from Calabria, right, Uh, the Sacra Corona, Yunita or Unita, they're recent, they are based in the Puglia region region. He's getting out of hand already. And look also Nostra, which is uh, that's a good place to start, yeah, because that's what's been come to be called the American mafia. That is exactly right, Chuck. And that's our first bit of jargon we should cover.

I think it is grammatically incorrect. It is you know, uh, cosin nostra means our way, right, Yeah, possibly our thing. Yeah, the FBI and I think the sixties were wire tapping, um, the American mafia. They mentioned cosin nostra and um the FBI came to use that as the term for the Italian mafia, adding law so it means the r way. I came up with the Italian mafia in the United States. But it's stuck, right when the FBI labels you, that

label sticks and black. Cosa nostra, like you said, describes the American mafia, which is one of the five Italian mafia groups in the world. Today. I got a friend named Blastfeld. We call him Blass, and I call him La Blasa nostra. It's a good nickname, I think. Uh, there's some other terms we're gonna throw about here. Uh, the Almerta. I did look up how to pronounce some of these. Actually, the Almerta is the code of silence, really, that's how you pronounce it. Yeah, tah is the and

fascists on top. A made man is someone who is been, you know, inducted into the mafia family. A capo originally was the head of the family in Sicily, but now there are lieutenants in the mafia. Then the family, of course is the gang within the mafia, like the family is uh, each individual gang, and then of course the wise guys. Let's let's break down the hierarchy. Right, we're talking family is a gang within the mafia, and there can be usually say anywhere from ten to a hundred,

which strikes me as an incredibly arbitrary number. But there are different families within the mafia. And if you're talking about the Sicilian mafia, there's there's a lot of families. There a lot of families in the US, right, um, and beneath the in the hierarchy, beneath the family, each families is headed by a boss, right don a don or boss. Then you've got the underboss, possibly more than one,

but usually just one. Uh. The boss is right hand man. Yes, Sometimes underboss makes his own decisions based on the you know, the family way. Sometimes the underboss will go to the boss say what should I do? Boss? Then travel down to the lieutenants and let the now and you know, Chuck. As I was reading this and reading about the structure of the mafia organization, it occurred to me that like a lot of this mirrors management and organizational styles found incorporations.

That's why they call it organized crime. It is it is very much like Okay, so you have a boss who's real hands on, the underboss is going to probably not be very uh not be empowered, just like right if if you have a hands on manager, the supervisor right below him is not going to have a lot of power authority, right, Okay, Well let's just keep going.

The copos are beneath the underboss. They're like lieutenants, lieutenants, and they will either control a part of the family or maybe a geographical area, or maybe they run a certain racket only like I just deal in uh, prostitution, prostitution, illegal gambling, legal gambling, right, or it could be like um, Tony owns you know, everything west of eleventh Street. Right. So that's how the the capo um, that's how the capo h is a cappo really hats off to you,

capo off to you at the pronunciation. But that's how the the what is it the capo is defined? Right? And I thought about this too, and good fellas, PAULI, as you know, big and important as he seemed, was just a capo, was he? He went in an under Boston. I don't think so. Who was a big daddy in that movie? They never showed because think about it, like Henry hill Um or what is his name, Leiota Hendry, Yeah, and Jimmy and all they were really just soldiers, yeah,

well made. And Hendry couldn't be made because remember he couldn't trace his bloodline back to the old country, right, so he would have been an associate. Yeah, but Joe Pesci was made. No, he wasn't. No, remember what happened to him when he went to go get made. Well he was, he was set to be made because his bloodline was was correct. Yeah, okay, that's so. Beneath the Coppos, right, are soldiers and they're the lowest rank and file, lowest level rank and file members of the mafia, but they

are members. They have been inducted into the family, young guys who are are probably trying to make their way up to at least Cappo. And then you've got associates, which are anybody from an investment banker, an accountant, the accountant in Untouchables, he would have been an associate to, like somebody who work with who's good at safe cracking or hijacking or dealing drug, dirty cop, somebody who works

with the mob, but I remember the family. That's an associate and Josh, then there's one more very important part of the mafia family. Yeah. And there's a couple of ways to pronounce this, the Conciliada, I like the the hard g Consigliati. Yeah, and that is If anyone's ever seen the movie Godfather, which you should, um obviously, Robert Duval is Tom Hagen. If you haven't seen The Godfather, press Paul Is on this podcast, rent or buy it. Well, we'll go buy one and two. Yeah, you need to

see both of those. Uh, and and then come back to this. And actually, while you're at it, go watch Good Fellows as well and Casino and um Apocalypse. Now. So, Robert Duval played Tom Hagen, who is the council YadA and the Godfather, And the key here is that they're not a part of the family's hierarchy. They're not an actual family member, not supposed to be. Yeah, because they're

supposed to offer outside advice their advisors. They're supposed to rule on fairness rather than Vendetta's personal feelings, that kind of thing. They're elected they're not appointed. Yeah, did you know that. Well, that's ideally how it goes. So I really all of the soldiers, the copos, the the under boss, the boss, all these people, I guess probably not the boss, but UM elect this guy to basically say, I'm going to serve as the tiebreaker the referee probably obviously a

very trusted, wise person. But the problem is most of the time they're just appointed by the boss. Well, yeah, that's what it says. In reality, a lot of times they are appointed, they're not always impartial like they're supposed to be. That's the real world mafia, not Tom Hagen in the movies. And Duval was a great consulada. He was excellent. He's just a class act. He is all the way around. Um, there's no head of the mafia. It is not a group, a single organization. It's not

like that. It depends. What do you mean. Are you talking about the American mafia, the Sicilian mafia. Well, we're talking to as a whole, largely about last So if we're talking about Lakosa Nostra, there have been times when there were basically ahead of the mafia before I think the thirties, before the five families of New York were really established and defined. There were people who were really running the show or trying to run the show in the country for the whole thing. Yeah, but for the

most part, you're absolutely right. It's there's nobody running the head. There's a commission. I guess you could say, is the head of the mafia. Right. Yeah, we'll get to the commission in a minute. That's good stuff. When it comes to naming the families, it's not a clear cut thing. Sometimes it was the region. Uh. In the case of New York, the main families were kind of accidentally named in the Senate subcommittee testimony of A. Joe Alacchi in

nine sixty three. So once you say it in a subcommittee meeting and then all of a sudden, it's sort of the family names kind of stuck. And those names, Josh, you want to go for those? Uh? Yeah, there were the Banana, Jenna, Vasi, Gambino, Luches, and Profacci, very good and some of those have been around before that. Um. I believe the Bonano family was around for well since the thirties, right, the um Profacci was around as well. Uh. The gene Vase was relatively new oh, I'm sorry. In

the thirties it was Scalazi, Profacci, Luciano, Gagliano, and Banano. Okay, and then in the sixties when Joe Volacci named him, that was what they were named as they were named after the most powerful bosses for their current bosses. Well yeah, and and sometimes the family name would be transplanted if they were taken over, like it almost happened with the Gambinos and John Gotti took over the Gambino family. They

were very close to being called the Gotti family. But Gotti, as everyone knows, was arrested for racketeering thanks to Sammy the Bulgravano, and he's still behind bars today, so it never became the Gotti family. No, the Profacci family did become the Colombo crime family. So it does happen. There are changes, that's right, But like we said, no hard infest rules. That's that's the five families of New York

and those are the ones. They are most prominent. You don't hear about the Buffalo family or the San Francisco family or the Cleveland family, but these families exist. Uh. Most of the time. They're named after the city that they're running. Yeah, except in New York because so there were just too many of them. Yeah, you couldn't call the New York family because all five of them would be like, oh what about the meat? It does happen elsewhere though, Like there's the Patriarch crime family they run

New England apparently. Yeah. Nice, Well I'll talk about them in a second. Right, where are we What which we hit next? There's so much goodness in here. Well, let's just go with the flow. How do you become a member of the mafia. Let's say you're a um, you're a low level safe cracker. Right, they'd be exciting, right, but h and you've really proven your work. You've made a lot of money. You're like, look, I want to move on up. I like safe cracking, but I also

want to run numbers and horses and kids exactly. Um, I want to become a member of the family. I am Italian. I got to prove that my father at least as Italian. Yeah. Most most of the time, it's got to be both, but sometimes you can slip by it. Just the old man is Italian, which is what kept Henry Hill out of mafia because his father was Irish. That's right, Um, I want to be inducted. What happens

well at an induction ceremony? It was really like most induction ceremonies were pretty quiet and secret for a long time. But as we said, Joe Valachi's testimony in the sixties kind of blew the lid on a lot of this stuff and this was one of them. Uh, what happens is you sit down at at a table, you get you're told to get dressed up or get dressed taken to a private place. At your long table, you sit next to the boss other mafio, so guys are gonna

be there, recite some oaths, promises of loyalty. Then you've got to burn a piece of pay hold it. Here's where the patriarchal family comes in. So in October, the FBI managed to tap an entire induction ceremony and with the card that piece of paper they talk about, it's actually an image of a saint, like a family may have,

like a patron saying or whatever. So it's an image of that and the the inductee holds it and says something like well, in the patriarchal family, they were made to say, as burns this saint, so we'll burn my soul. I enter alive into this organization and leave it dead and you go drop the burning scene. Yeah, and all of them are thinking probably in the next few years. Yeah, we'll give you six months. Uh so, yeah, you burn

the thing holding your hand. Is there any kind of like feet of strength that you're supposed to hold it till it burns your fingers or anything like that that I saw a lot of times. The the new soldier is paired with a more experienced dude, who is your godfather guide you through the whole mafia things. I did not know that. I just thought godfather was like another name for like a coppo or a boss or the Don. Well, I thought I thought in The Godfather it was Don

Corleone was the Godfather, wouldn't he interesting? Uh, the inductee has to say, you know, I'm gonna be a got a pledge for life, take a drop of blood from the trigger finger, which I love that obviously, and uh boom, you're a made man. Yeah. Well, some the rumor has it is that you have to prove afterward by taking part in a murder, is the long standing rumor. But I think it's before before. Yeah, like you have to show that you're loyal enough to to kill when ordered

to or at least help out in a killing. You're loyal, you can keep your mouth shut, you have the stomach for it. Allegedly, Allegedly, we need to say that we don't want to get sued by the mafia. And then the final thing you gotta do before you can become a made man is you have to face the commission. And uh, in the twenties and thirties, we mentioned the

commission a second ago. There was so much activity, mob activity going on that they were recruiting soldiers left and right just to kind of like claim to two bodies and say, well, we've got all these guys, and it became confusing. I gottauld infiltrate and assassinate pretty easily. So they literally formed a commission that's like all right, you

gotta it's like a registry almost. So remember I was saying, like there were heads of the mafia, like in the US, there were people vying for it, and this is what it was creating, this hugely violent point in mafia history. Right. So not only that, Chuck, it was prohibition as well. Well. That was a huge time of the mafia very much was right. So there's a lot a lot of money to be made, an unprecedented amount of money to be made. It was relatively new turf for the Italian mob in

the US. They've only been here for like maybe thirty four years, right, um and the uh. There is a lot of wars going on. And the guy who basically brought ordered all this chaos through murder and structure was k Luciano. Yeah, he was the one that had the idea for the commission. And he also murdered the two guys who were like the rivals for the boss of bosses and then set up the five families. Now did he? The commission is different now, The commission is the same

as as the committee meetings. Right, that's the same thing. Okay, Well they grew out of the committee meetings, so the commission got a register. That's the last thing you have to do is literally be like, all right, my name is Josh the the I Clark. No, it's just Minnesota Fats clients. So the Fats Clark and I'm with the Gambino family and I live in Bayonne, New Jersey, and Kate and Long walks on the beach at night and drown people with my bare hands. Right, So, um, you

can finally your made man. You're in the commission, you're registered, you're the dude, right Well, the commission passes you, they say that's okay. Well, well this guy is okay with me to be in your family, because part of the reason of passing lists of prospective members around is it weeds out guys who another family has a beef with. Who if it becomes part of your family, that's gonna

lead to war. Yeah, you don't want that to happen. Plus, it brings them out of anonymity so that they can't just walk up and shoot somebody in the face, right right, right, because you can't do that unless you're made right right. Well, this good stuff it is. It's just amazing. Middle class white dudes like us are fascinated by the mafia. Where we all want to be in the mafia. Uh So let's talk about how the mafia makes money, because that's what the mafia is. Let's I mean, let's get real.

The mafia is there to make money, and uh they have a history of doing it through illegal means. Otherwise they wouldn't be the mafia. They'd just be corporations. Right. One of the way is one of the classic ways you'll see in movies, which is actually a very real thing, is extortion protection fees happens all the time, or it did happen. Imagine it still does in some cases. Still. Jerry was telling us about kiding Guatemala, who's who's killed

because the family couldn't pay for protection. Oh is that why? Man? That's awful. Wow, I realized that was a reason. So you know, that's the scene from the movie where they go into the and rough up the shop owner and say you gotta pay for protection. Basically to protect you from us. Is sort of what it boils down to. Yeah, although imagine sometimes it might have been some legitimate protections.

But the impression I have of it is like, yeah, they're saying, if you don't pay, then you're not going to be protected from us. But I think if you do pay, you kind of enter into this fold where other people can't mess with you, and if they do, you can go to the capo or whoever is running the show that you're paying tribute to um and say I've got this problem I need you to take care of. Like I think it gives you access if you're like

a regular paying person. And we'll see when we talk about mafia history how closely this mirrors, you know, sicily and the under the feudal system, any feudal system. Really well, remember in The Departed when Leo just went house on those two guys that were extorting the shop owner and he thought he did this guy favor, and then the shop owner was all ticked off. Afterwards, He's like, thanks a lot, man, you know you you brought down this a reign of terror on me. Oh that's right, he

killed you can kill him. But he mutilated their faces in the shop. Um. That was such a good movie. It was. It was great. So alcohol. We talked about prohibition, illegal drugs, prostitution, gambling. Those are extortion, and that's just the illegal stuff they can also they also managed to make money off stuff that would otherwise be illegal if they hadn't hijacked it, or would otherwise be legal. I mean yeah, like importing and exporting stuff like that. It

was stealing things that other people important. Next, well, that's what I mean. But Gotti was like, was he the one that was into women's apparel? That man had taste? I wonder if that's they probably modeled that DeNiro thing at the end on him, the end of Good Fellows where DeNiro has the the Ladies Clothing warehouse. Yeah, but that was on Gotti. But I don't know if it was because I think Jimmy was an actual person because

that was all Henry Hill like real life stuff. Yeah, but they could have borrowed who knows, or maybe whoever he was based on was into women's clothing. Maybe. So, like you said, they want to make lots of money. So while there are like muggings and stupid things like that, they generally would rather hijack a boat and pay off a dock worker or steal a semi truck full of cigarettes instead of knocking off a store or something like that.

They want the big dough or they could, say, I don't know, infiltrate a labor union and threatened to have their workers slow or stop construction if they don't get additional money. Yeah, that happened in New York for decades.

The Mafia infiltrated the Team Stretch union specifically, and they said in this article, at one point the Mafia could have nearly brought all construction and shipping into the US to a halt that they wanted to write that was thanks in large part to a guy named Jimmy Hoffa, who actually it turned out, you know, he was a labor organ eys are in the thirties and that was like when the cops used to crack the heads of

labor organizers on behalf of guys like Henry Ford. Right, Um, so he was like the real deal, but he was also super crooked too. Yeah, he's buried in Oakland Cemetery right here in Atlanta, is all right? Now, he's famous for not knowing where he was buried. Really, Yeah, he disappeared, Okay, Well, the rumor was he's buried under Giant Stadium and I've

heard that one before too. But you know, you know, they finally pinched him and he went to prison for a while, and Nixon pardoned him, supposedly because half of the teamsters and like a bunch of gangsters like gave a lot of money to Nixon's campaign. Interesting, that's allegedly, but Halfa gets out and starts campaigning for prison reform. Five years after that. Four years after that, he goes

to lunch in Michigan. Never seen from again has declared legally dead in nineteen eight three, but he was the head of the Teamsters, but he was finally pinched for fraud. And the whole point of being of controlling a labor union was you controlled labor, but you also add access to their pension which everybody is paying into. Well, they used the pension to underwrite huge contracts in Vegas at one point to control until the seventies. Alright, we're getting

all that. Uh, let's go back to the history. You were talking about how it mirrored Sicily, and I think that's one of the most fascinating parts about this. So go yeah, because extortion is another way of extracting tribute. It's another way of saying extracting tribute. Right in Sicily. Sicily lived under the feudal system long after the rest of Europe. Look to other forms of governance, right, and

the feudal system is basically like, I'm a landowner. I control all this land, but I can't possibly work all of it. I'll let you guys live on this land. I'll let you live and you give me some of your grain, most of your grain, however, much of your green I want. That was an early model for what the mafia did, right, and if you don't do this, I'm going to have this other class of society. Basically my foot soldiers kill you or kill your wife or whatever until you do what I want you to. That's

the feudal system. Yeah. And the reason that Sicily was kind of the birthplace, not kind of, was the birth birthplace of the mafia. It was because Sicily is out there in the med It's very accessible and because of that, it was invaded a lot. It's very strategic, controlled by a lot of different people over the years, and that led to instability such that the people of Sicily didn't look too and sometimes it was just lawlessness, but they regardless even if there were laws, they didn't look to

the state to solve their problems. It became very much a family thing, a local thing. Yeah, you solved it locally. Your family took care of business. They took care of things outside the law. And that kind of is what birth the mafia. So basically you can look at that capo's territory or the capos racket as the land, the feudal land, the capos the feudal lord, right, yeah, and

and it mirrors it almost identically. There's extortion, there's tribute, um, there's there's the threat of violence, there's the use of violence. All of it is based out of this feudal system that collapsed in the nineteenth century in Sicily, but was immediately replaced after this bout of lawlessness by the mafia following pretty much the same thing. And then they came to America. Then they came to it. Well, yeah, this is actually interesting how this happened to and um, Mussolini

had a big crack down on the mafia. It's very harsh on the mafia, put a lot of them in prison, and then the U. S troops occupied Sicily during World War Two. They thought a lot of these jailed people were political prisoners, so not only did they set a lot of them free, they made the mayors and police chiefs and that was they were like, hey, I really appreciate that we're back on the streets now. Thanks for

quashing Mussolini. We're in more control than we ever was yea who was a real thorn in our side for a long time. So uh. In the postwar Sicily, there was a group there was a ceasefire because there was so much warring going on within the families, and they formed the Cupola and the Coppola basically oversaw all of the families commission. Yeah, it's an early version of the

commission that would happen years later. And Um, the American mafia, the tactics that like casinostri uses mirrors the Sicilian mafia in a lot of ways, like recruiting young guys to like do the dirty work and eventually inducting them. Um, the the whole extracting tribute in the form of extortionmarta, the code of silence, right, Um, yeah, the whole lifestyle of the mobster is reflected in the Sicily right. Yeah,

so that's the birthplace. Yeah, and it was going pretty well in Sicily until the eighties and nineteen eighties, so not even that long ago. And uh, they had a big trial called the Maxi Trial, right because, uh, the the government went after the Sicilian mafia, and the Sicilian mafia was like, okay, well, these two big prosecutors are coming after are both gonna dyeing car bombs. And I think they underestimated the response to the public, which turned

against him. So they had this Maxi Trial, which they've built a special courthouse, which is essentially a bunker. Try four hundred Sicilian mobsters, and I think three hundred, three hundred and thirty eight were found guilty. I got a different number. I got three hundred and sixty convictions. It's a two year trial. They had three judges. They had one judge and two alternates that literally sat in on

the whole trial. Just in case something happened to the one judge, like a car bomb, they wouldn't have to start all over declare mistrial. The second one would step up. Somebody killed the second guy, the third guy would step up. Nothing happened to the first guy. He made it all the way through. I can't believe that. I know um a hundred and fourteen acquittals. Out of the hundred fourteen acquittals, eighteen of them were murdered. One of them was murdered

within an hour of leaving the courtroom. On the way home. I supposedly was going to like a surprise or not a surprise party, but like a a celebration. I got acquitted party, and then those are those are good parties. He got off. And then a lot of successful appeals after that, with the Maxi trial and what I got is only sixty. By nine eighty nine, only sixty of the original three sixty remained in prison. Wow. So the Maxi trial kind of turned out to be the Mini

trial in the end. So it's not surprised that it's no surprised that the Maxi trild didn't get rid of the Sicilian mafia. In the Italian government sent seven thousand troops to occupy Sicily for six years, and that apparently worked. According to this article, they the Sicilian mafia is still around, but is less violent than it was before. I didn't know was that recent? You know? I didn't either, kind of like, um, sudd war is sweet, odd, I don't

know that guy. I don't know if I've ever helped dumber. By the way, in the podcast, I should have had that cut out, but I was like, yeah, it was. It was endearing. This is me. It's endearing warts and all. The American mafia Josh. Yeah, the the Italians and Sicilians came to the United States and the eighteen hundreds big time in the twentieth century. Most of these were just regular folks, not mafia, starting a good, honest life here. Nice.

Some of them weren't, uh, in in New Orleans. Specifically, the first um I guess mafia incident Italian mafia incident in the country happened right in the eighteen nineties. There was um a mobster, Well, there was a there was a group a family that was basically getting heat from the local police chief. So they offered them right and at trial, this this uh mafia family was they well they all got off basically from blatantly bribing and intimidating witnesses.

And uh the people of New Orleans did not like this, so they actually um formed a lynch mob and went and killed sixteen and these these mobsters, and that was the first mafia. That was the United States introduction to the Italian mob crazy and they were defeated by Nola. Yeah, look at him go at least temporarily. Who knows what happened after that. Uh So, first half of the twentieth century in New York City is where a lot of

it's happening because a lot of the immigrants poured into there. Obviously, you had the Five Families, you had prohibition making everybody rich. You had bosses and underbosses getting killed like monthly. Yeah, the Luke Chase's right. They went through three three bosses in nineteen thirty in one year, three different bosses. This is the time when Lucky Lichiano was killing everybody. To

basically set up the structure this organization. And he defined the five Families, and that's like literally is like this, this is the name of your family. This is who you are, this is this, this and this. There's five families out component in Chicago, and then the Buffalo family and that's the Commission, the little family. I love that.

And uh, the way they describe it here is they were basically kind of like Senator so al Capone represented like all of the West coast because he was, you know, the closest one obviously, and uh, they had to you know, the Commission had to approve things assassinations, kidnappings, big money

deals that had to all go through the Commission. And they had meetings every five years, every five years committee And probably the most famous meeting of all time was their nineteen fifty seven meeting in Appalachian on the New York Pennsylvania border. And apparently this state trooper was a little suspicious of the scores of Lincoln Town cars. Yeah, wise guys who were showing up, so he himself let

a raid on the Mobster convention. And basically this is a time when the public and the government denied that there was such thing as mafia nine fifties. It seems like second nature now because of all the popular culture stuff, But it was long before any of that, right, But not only that, it seems it seems obvious now because of the Appalachian rate. It was basically tantamount to us rating convention of ghosts and being like, okay, well there

really are ghosts. Right, It's pretty much the same thing. And it brought them mafia undeniably into the light. And there really was mafia. Here's all their leaders. You know, I just try. I like the ghost convention, things like to go to that. Uh should we talk about Vegas for a minute or Kennedy first? Either one? Alright, let's

go with Kennedy. Everyone knows that John F. Kennedy. Everyone has long associated him with the mafia, partially because his dad, Joe, was alleged bootlegger during Prohibition, involved with the mob obviously if you're bootlegging in that part of the country. And uh also had connections to people like Meyer land Ski, who was a friend of Lucky lu Les. Yeah, Ben Kingsley, he saw Bugsy right, great movie. One of the other things that happened was JFK was assassinated and Jack Jack

Ruby killed. Lee. Harvey Oswald, who allegedly assassinated Kennedy was an associate. He was a mob associate, so there's that tie. Other people say that the mafia didn't like Castro kicking them out of the Cuban casino business, so they think the Bay of Pigs may had something to do with the mafia because Kennedy didn't call in an airstrikes. Robert Kennedy went after the mafia. He died by an assassin's bullet. Yeah,

I've stood at that very spot, have you really? The kitchen was the deal with sir Han sier Han, I don't know that weird. Yeah, we need to look all that stuff up. Let's be a good podcast. And then while the girlfriends go head Yeah, same gene Conna. It was pretty cool, dude, as far as the mafia bosses go. He uh supposedly set JFK up with all sorts of girlfriends, including Marilyn Monroe, so he could record and basically get

dirt on the president. So Um, they think that Marilyn Monroe possibly was murdered by hitman that Giancanna had hired, and the Giancanna was going to testify about the Kennedy connection to the mob and he gets murdered, which basically just goes to show you that it's all mafia. Whether they're Italian, legitimate, whatever, it's all mafia. Right. So those are all the alleged links to the John F. Kennedy,

former President of the United States. Then there's the Vegas connection. Um, you know, Vegas was just kind of started by by Bugsy. It was the Jewish mobsters that were the first up to Vegas. And then once it was set up, the gambling was happening legally for the first time. They're already running casinos, illegal casinos all over the country, but all of a sudden, you got this haven in the desert. It's legal where you can go out there and do it for real. So the you know, they got in

on the action. So the uh that one of the ways the Italian mob got in was through their um leveraging of pensions like you said, uh, teamsters labor union pensions, UH to underwrite casinos. A lot of construction going on exactly, or they would just basically show up and be like, I'm your partner now, right, Like Peschi showed up in Casino, which I thought was every bit as good as Good Fellas. I know people don't agree with that, but I thought

Casino was terrific. It was a good movie, but it was not as good as as Good I'm giving it a slight tier two, but I love I love Casino. I thought it was great. Sharon Stone good stuff in that one. I thought she screwed that up, really she did. I mean she was great actress. I think her character got too much um emphasis in that movie. Yeah. I liked James Woods in that slime Ball for the ex boyfriend. God,

he was slimy uh. Since the seventies, though, the Vegas has supposedly been pretty clean, supposedly, and I think it actually is. I think it's one of those ones where it's not like, yeah, it's clean, Wing Queen, like, I think it actually is pretty clean. Well, there's probably too much money at stake, now, Yeah, you don't want to lose your gambling license. If you're the Palms, you know it's no good or Steve Winn or Steve win how

can we fight the mafia. How do we fight the mafia? Well, Chuck, we fight the mafia through a little law that was passed in nineteen seventies specifically to be used against the mafia called the RICO. Yeah. They invented a charge. Yeah, in the United States very smartly invented a charge. Um. It's called the Racketeering, Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act. The RICO Act, which is Title eighteen in the United States Code, section is nineteen six s one just top top my head.

And um. Basically, it's it's set up so that you can go after an entire criminal enterprise and RICO. The RICO Act has just about any felony associated with it, but they have to be carried out by this enterprise two i think two felonies within a fifteen year period after that, right, and if it's the mafet, they're gonna they're gonna break two laws, like you know, within fifteen years,

so that counts as racketeering. If two or more illegal acts happened, then they say that's an organized family crime, right, because a racket is you know, these different types of illegal activities that the mafia used to make money racketeering is this enterprise, right yea, and that an act of

making that. So what they can do is not only can they attack a racketeering charge on which will give you extra time in addition to your crime other crimes like unloading the truck of cigarettes, it uh, it accomplished a very important thing and that the mafia boss could no longer sit behind a veil of safety because they're not the trigger man. Right, all of a sudden, John Gotti can be brought up in racketeering charges. And that's even if they can't pin an order for the murder

on the boss. Because one of the things about the couple of and the commission was that it brought peace to the mafia among the families, but it also exposed the bosses because they were the ones who were approving murders and stuff. Now, right this with with the reco act, I think you don't have to you don't have to. You just have to say, this guy is the boss of this organization. Everything flows up to him. Anything we can pin on any other member can be pinned on

the boss. And like you said, it adds it's not just bribery, it's bribery plus ten years because it was bribery in the context of racketeering. It's a huge law. But the the interesting thing to me is they almost never used it for mafia anymore. It's for corporations. Oh, interesting, corporate racketeering. Good. Yeah, that's what I say. Trump up some charges. You can you can also go that's kind of what it is. They created a loss so they could trump up charges. Right. You can also go undercover,

like one Joe Pistone did. Yeah, the movie, The Great Movie. Donnie Brasco told his story pretty well. Yeah, he was undercover for what six years, like deep undercover, scarily undercover. Yeah, to the point where even when he came out in trial, uh, testifying against people, some of the mob guys were like, how's he gonna turn it against us like that? Yeah, they thought he was a rat. Yeah, they still didn't think he was a cop, even though he's on the

stand saying I'm a cop. Yeah, I'm FBI. Yeah, Donnie Brasco. Look for it in theaters near you in Pacino was the Uh No, it was Johnny Depp And I'm sorry, I thought I thought of Heshi when you said Paccino and Johnny deppia one man's pesci is another man's peccino. No, that's like one man's Casino is another man's good Fellows. One man's Madden is another man's must Burger. Maybe okay, ah, that's the mafia. There's so much there, Like this was

the structure, bare bones, very little flesh on it. Just because there's so much to it. We could pole this could be part one in a series of tin snuffed out before the tenth though. Probably we were respectful. I think so too. Where are we, hey, man? I mean, if we weren't, just send us an email. Don't shoot us now, please, So chuck. That's it. That's it, all right.

If you want to know more about mafia, including a chart of the structure of a typical Sicilian mafia family or Locosa Noster family, just type in mafia in the handy search bar how stuff works dot com, which means it's time now for listener, ma'am. And for God's sakes, see The Godfather one and two and good Fellas and good Fellas and Casino and Donni Brasco and My Blue Heaven. That's a good one. And you can watch god Father three. I'm a proponent of it. Even though most people poop

to it. Just take Sofia Coppola with a grain of salt and realized that she had She's a brilliant director in the making, and not a great actor. She's already a brilliant director. Not when you make up other three she wouldn't she made that movie up a few No know that I'm saying she was in it was a very poor actor. She went on to become a great director actor. So I'm gonna call this. We asked for

sinking ship stories. We've got a couple that were okay, but our best one was an airplane falling out of the sky story. Hi guys, I know you called for seeking boats stories, but I hope you'll consider this falling airplane story and fall of oh seven. My boyfriend and I were coming home to the US after he had played some concerts in Germany. He was he in the scorpions. I don't know, this might be Hasslehoff. The flight to

parted Cologne in the morning. We had been in the air for a couple of hours when suddenly we felt something akin to very violent turbulence. The plane dropped by out, dropped an altitude by a lot enough to make me feel like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out like a roller coaster. The plane momentarily righted. The captain got on the intercom said there was a there was some difficulties. The next few minutes felt like ages. The plane alternately banked from side to side, lost more altitude,

and shook some more. Lights flickered on and off. The captain announced it was a fire in the first class cabin, and it didn't help that he sounded panicked and was nearly screaming. We were sitting in the back row, which, as we know, is not proven, but it's probably one of the best places to be if your plane is going to crash. Flight attendant ran too our row and threw open the overhead compartment looking for something. She hollered, Oh my god, there's only one, she said, only one.

What we never found out? The lights went out for a longer period. That's when we noticed that the oxygen mask had deployed, but only for seats on the other side of the plane. Our entire side did not have oxygen masks deployed. My boyfriend was to my right, an elder Russian woman on my left. I was squeezing both of their hands and trying to stay calm. The Russian woman had both of her eyes closed. She was rocking back and forth and speaking softly under her voice. Suddenly

the ground was coming very fast. We had miraculously hit the runway at Shannon Airport in Ireland, but we hit it hard because of the weight of all the fuel that was intended intended to fly us to Newark. The plane bounced a couple of times on the miscovered runway, lost all of the electrical power, air circulation shut down, and we were towed to the gate. There were a lot of tears, prayers and shaking up people, and the airplane doors were eventually hand cranked open and we deplaned.

That is from Ariadne and carry the boyfriend. Wow, sinking ship. Who cares? Would you ever get on a plane again at something like that happened to you? Uh? These days? Yes you would, because you've kind of overcome that to a large degree. Yeah. Um, But with what I've gotten to the point now where I can I just sit there and look out the window and make myself watch take off and landing. Um, and I'm usually pretty good. Well, we fly alight now I quit smoking and I got

over my fear of flying. Did you you've made so many changes at something? Anybody? Look at you. I can run two miles at a stretch now too. That's impressive. Onward and upward, onward and upward. If you have a story about a mail man you hated or who hated you, or mafia stuff, Okay, all right, we'll go with that one. Then if you have a story about the mafia, we want to hear it. We want you to wrap it up in an email and send it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this

and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House stuff Work's iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready, are you