Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
a look at the early beginnings of the Jersey mafia, and the rise of the unified North Jersey family whos story would lead to the birth of one of Television’s greatest masterpieces…
the sopranos television series is a truly legendary work that changed its viewers perception of TV shows and of course changed people’s perception of the american mafia.
before that the standard for gangster movies the godfather with its theme of family and revenge.
then it was followed by good fellas which showed a more mundane side of the mafia lifestyle than was believed.
and finally in 1999 the sopranos was released at which point we saw that the drama in the gangster genre could be deeper and more versatile than in the godfather.
and that the realism and homeliness of good fellas was not at all the standard.
the sopranos set a new bar that very few people have approached so far.
that’s why this series has so many fans around the world even so many years after its end.
however not all of them are aware that the soprano family from the show had a real life mafia counterpart
called the Decavalcante family that looked a hell of a lot like it.
the show’s creator david chase has of course denied that he wrote the sopranos in the image of the Decavalcante’s
but the many coincidences that have been brought up by members of that mafia family themselves point to his obvious gile and if you’re interested to hear who might have served as prototypes of the characters in your favorite series
what these prototypes were doing and how much similarity between reality and the series was true
then meet the real sopranos on the other side of the law.
THE ORIGIN
New jersey ,where the fictional and real life sopranos were from is well’d deserving of a whole show to be made about it and its issues with local criminals.
because it waws here that several mafia families were intertwined, starting from new york and ending down in florida.
and that’s not counting the non- italian gangs.
which there were more than a few of from the prohibition Era.
but today, we’re not interested in them but in the one local mafia family now known as – Decavalcante
actually to be more precise, there were two local families in new jersey for a while,one from Elizabeth township and the other from newark.
both were reformed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries .
only one has stood the test of time- Elizabeth would eventually go to Decavalcante, while Newark would fade into oblivion and its members would disperse to other mafia families.
this was due to the fact that in Newmark in the 1930s there were a number of conflicts that the family did not survive
first ,then family boss gaspare D’amico had a run in with another mafioso .Vincenzo Troia the latter had moved to newark in those years and plan to settle there troia did so apparently without D’amico’s approval
so gaspare decided to get rid of his newfound insolent neighbor
in august 1935 a murder attempt was made on troia which he did not survive.
joe profaci
two years later D’amico himself also caught a bullet the most likely scenario of the assassination attempt on him was a conflict with the new york family boss , joe profaci.
D’amico nevertheless survived but then decided to resign his boss and leave Newaek.
afterwards the commission decided to dissolve the local family and its members dispersed to other clans.
in case you didn’t knwo the commission is the mafia’s body for deciding important issues in the US.
consisting of the most powerful bosses in the country.
at the same time literally a few dozen miles away in a much smaller town the Nework -Elizabeth quietly contained another mafia family.
it’s not known who its first boss was because in those years the organization played no particularly significant role.
we can only say that the vast majority of it s first members were natives of the sicily.
the first known leader of the family named Philip Amari was also from there and he became the boss in the 1920s.
he ruled until 1958 then he resigned from his post and went to italy to live out his life.
he was replaced by nick delmore who was qutite old himselfand had to leave the boss’s chair for health reasons in 1963.
and was replaced by his nephew sam Decavalcante the same one the family is named in hornor of to this day.
Decavalcante’s reign is considered the family’s golden age.
it was under him that it reached it its maximum influence and economic prosperity.
there was even evidence that members of the new york mafia wanted to go to Decavalcante to improve their position.
the real life sopranos were involved in all sorts of livelihoods back then .
they had control of the new jersey construction industry by running the local union.
they were involved in gambling betting, loan sharking ,protection and robbery.
and during the sexual revolution of the 1960s they even managed to enter the pornography trade
closer to the 1980s various types of health insurance fraud into the stock market would be added to that list.
during sam’s Era the family was able to spread its interest from connecticut to pennsylvania and even partially entered new york.
likewise Decavalcante’s reign is marked by the first evidence that the borgata, his family unit had influence ove the local political system .
thus sam had ties to new jersey governor richard huges
and to Elizabeth mayor thomas Dunn.
but Decavalcante also made his mark on the negative side.
he talked a great deal about the business in his office which was bugged between 1961 and 1965.
there were conversations about both the internal affairs of the family and the state of the mafia in the country overall.
Decavalcante was one of the intermediaries…
..between joe bonanno and the commission after bonanno failed to attempt to seize power in the american mafia.
which is also reflected in these recordings made by the authorities.
however none of the recordings could directly serve the prosecutors because they were made without proper authorization.
so Decavalcante avoided a trial,but he went to jail anyway.
it happened in 1971.
when he got charged with organizing gambling with a total income of 20 million dollar a year.
sam served two of his allotted 5 years.
he had heart problems and the authorities gave him parole recalling that he was well behaved in prison
apparently this was also the reason why Decavalcante stepped down his boss of the family.
moving to florida and leaving john Riggy nicknamed the Eagle in charge of the Borgada.
Riggy was a hereditary mafioso ,his father Emanuel was close to nick delmore one of the family’s top labor racketeers.
john’s rise began in the late 1950s when he came to the attention of Decavalcante.
in the 1960s sam promoted riggy to captain and put him in charge of Union racketeering.
and when he got out of prison in 1973
he gave him de facto boss’s chair which john had held since the beginning of Decavalcante’s prison term.
riggy’s reign was the period in which the generation that became in part the inspiration for the soprano’s characters was on its way to its final formation.
THE SOPRANOS
in 1990 john Riggy was jailed for 12 years on labor racketeering charges,
hhe was not going to give up power and decided to run the family through trusted individuals.
on of whom would eventually become vincent palermo nickname vinnie ocean.
it’s palermo who’s considered the main candidate suspected to be the prototype for tony soprano.
so from now on we’ll lead or narrative about the real sopranos through the lens of vinnie ocean’s fate….
palermo was born in 1944 in brooklyn he lost his father early and by the end of the 1950s was to forced to go to work to help his mother feed the family.
so vinnie started at the fish market which is were he got his nickname ocean.
this line of income by the way would remain with parlemo for most of his life.
only instead of a salesman he eventually became the owner of a fish store.
in the early 1960s vinnie married sam decavalcante ‘s niece
has this not happened palermo might well have become a member of one of the new york families too.
since his brother pasqual was a member of the columbo family and his uncle was related to the Gambion family.
but fate had it that in the late 19670’s, vinnie ocean was accepted into the Borgada of the Decavalcante.
what he exactly he did in the peridod of his marriage to his initiation is unknown.
in those day pelarmo was virtually a ghost to the authorities and remain so until the 90s, evidence of his first series crimes would come to the FBI only then years after they wer committed.
we talking about several murders he committed on the orders of family boss john Riggy.
the first victim was fred weiss.
this guy was running a construction scam with people from the Gambion family.
they bought up the land of an abandoned railroad station on staten island and turned it into an illegal dump.
soon enough lawe enforcement became interested in the case and they took weiss among others into custody.
other offenses were discovered in addition to the dump, so fred could be facing dedaces behind bars.
Gambino boss john Gotti felt that weiss could not be trusted.
that he could easily become a government witness and decided he had to be talen out.
and since weiss also had dealings with the decavalcante family the hit was decided to be a joint effort.
weiss had to homes one was monitored by team Gambino and the other by team decavalcante led by vinnie ocean.
weiss ended up setting foot in new jersey and palermo and his boys gunned down him down.
a year after the hit ,john Riggy was arrested, he would remain the boss and run the family through John “Johnny Boy” D’Amato for the first time.
the only problem here was that in addition to the loyalist there were some potential rebels on the loose…
namely Louis “Fat Lou” LaRasso who had been an underboss during the sam Decavalcante Era and didn’t seerm to mind regaining the position he lost when Riggy took over.
so in 1991,riggy struck first.
the eam for the hit was once again led by vinnie ocean , however after LaRosso’s mruder the main supporter of the idea john D’Amato was also eliminated almost immediately.
the official reason for this was suspicion of his homosexual tendencies.
in 1991 , D’Amato got himself a new girlfriend to whom he revealed he was bisexual.
she blabbed it to an acquaintance who also turned out to be the gangster’s girlfriend.
and this rumor eventually reached the guys from Decavalcante
and it getting to the point that if D’Amato stayed in power the Decavalacantes would sooner or later turn into a branch of the Gambino family.
which many were not happy with…..
so the motive for murder being his homosexual tendencies was just right.
Palermo was not involved in this hit but help to dispose of the body.
those who are especially attentive already noticed that this real case in many ways overlaps with the story of Vito Spatafore from these sopranos.
and the life ending of someone who started running a family on the streets after the D’Amato’s murder is quite similar to the storyof Jackie Aprile
this guy’s name was jake Amari in 1992 he became whatäs called a street boss.
in 1995 he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and in 97 he died from it .
after Amari was diagnosed with cancer he stepped aside and a diarchy consisting of vinnie and”Jimmy” Palermo were just namesakes
but this sistuation another family member
named Charles Majuri
he first tried to convince boss john riggi to put him in charge and when he didn’t get what he wanted he decides to kill both the palermos.
however he misjudged his hitman majuri assigned it to soldier jimmy Gallow who instead of pulling off the hit told everything to Vinny ocean .
after Gallow was already sitting outside majuri’s house with a gun in the end the assassnation attempts never happened on either side of the conflict and the tension somehow died down on its own.
it’s not known why this happened but neither majuri nor palermo tried to kill each other again.
and vinny ocean became the de facto main man of the decavalcante family,his life back then was similar to one chased showed in tony soprano.
wife. kids, luxurious home and excellent income.
expet there were no psychological problems palermo had a cut of the family’s betting and loan sharking engaged in labor racketeering.
and organized gambling on a yatch in neutral waters.
participated in stock exchange fraud by pumping junk stock through unscrupulous brokers and dumping it at maximum price and he tried to legitimate businesses as much as possible.
this included the previous mentioned fish store as the Wiggles strip club.
he also made a deal with seamans to distribute their cell phones to russia and planed to expand in the nightclub sphere
in cooperation with Robert “Bob” Guccione the creator and owner of one of the most popular erotic magazines in the world
Penthouse.
incidentally Wiggles is another parlemo match to tony soprano who also owned a strip club bada bing.
in reality however wigglers was a much more famous establishment than bada bing and was located not in new jersey but in new york.
it didn’t have to do with any innovations or Elite service but because of the constant hype and scandals surronding the club.
at first residents living near the club complained about it and even held picket protest several times.
and then the mayor of new york rudy Giuliani decided to close it citing the law that such an institution should be at a certain distance from schools and chuches.
because of this Wiggles opened and closed,constantly making headlines in television news and its representativ spent dozens of hours in court.
the main stumbling blkock in the law that the parties ‘s argued over was the 60% 40% rule.
to summarize a club was an erotic club only if more than 40% of its space was used for the sale of erotica or erotic services.
and the rest was others kinds of establishments.
vinny ocean had clearly delineated the required area and fenced it off from the rest of the club whitch allowed it co continually reopen.
even though undercover agents were repeatedly caught violating this rule.
yes you heard me right there were special agents who would come to the strip joint and see if a girl would dance for them outside of the regulated area.
and the money to pay the strippers of course came out of the state treasury.
it was a dream job, in fact . in the 90s were golden Era for vinnie ocean.
the power in the family was in his hands at least until john Riggy’s release in the early 21st century.
and the FBI did not even gas at his role in the american mafia soon enough though the Decavalcante family would have its own Salvatore ‘Big Pussy’ Bonpensiero
who would go much futher than his show prototype.
WHAT’S THE UPSHOTS?
Ralph “Ralphie” Guarino had never been a member of the Decavalcante family but regardless he was to become the man who would gather the evidence that allwoed the authorities to arrest several dozen people connected to Decavalacante.
but don’t think that before his work for the government Guarino was not already famous.
The 1998 Bank of America heist took place in 1 World Trade Center, in New York City/Ralph Guarino planned the robbery
he had one of the most ingenious and daring robberies in the history of new york under his belt.
allthough it was not performed by the most intelligent robbers which makes it impressive not only for its planning but also for the stupidity of its enactors.
the gist of the case was as follows Guarino knew a guy who worked at that world trade center, the one that took the big slam in september 11.
this acquaintance told him that on the same day at the same time money was being brought into the bank of america branch in that center.
several security guards with bags would take a freight elevator up to the 11th floor and hand the money to the branch.
upon hearing this story,Guarino immediately put together a seemingly perfect plan in his head.
first he talked to an acquaintance who was the building’s maintenance supervisor into getting some passes so the robbers could get in.
then these guys were to meet two security guards with money near the freight elevator.
disarm them transfer the money into gym bags and walk out the front door blending in with the crowd.
on the one hand ,this idea felt like suicide, the building in question had probably the largest concentration of police in new york.
there were new york city cops. new york and new jersey port authority cops and federal police officers plus inside the center wer officers for the US secret services,customs protection and the bureau of alcohol Tobacco and firearms.
on the other hand because of this few would have thought that there would be daredevils willing to break in and rob bank of america collectors.
Guarino was counting on this element of surprise, only the perpetrators he picked were terrible…
they were smalltime gangsters and drug addicts, richie Gillete, melvin folk and mike reed who agreed to join in for$20,000
it all happened in january 1998
these geniuses entered the building passed through the barries to the service area without any problems and went up to the right floor.
there they put on ski masks , took out pistols and s tarted waiting for the collectors .
as soon as the elevator doors opened they disarmed them.
filled their gym bags with money and then successfully left the building.
seems like a success … you might think.
it wasn’t though,because for one , they took foreign currency dollars were at the bottom of the bags and on top were franks, yen, and other non ben franklin paper.
but that was only half the trouble,these geniuses of criminal ideation walked to the elevator with open faces, which they didn’t even bother to cover with as much as their hoods.
and they also walked with the money from the elevator with their heads proudly raised.
allowing their faces to be shown on more than 50 video cameras.
of course they were caught almost immediately and forced to hand over the mastermind of the robbery.
Guarino was facing about 20 years in prison but the FBI offered him another option.
they knew that ralph had connection with people from the Decavalcante mafia family and that some of them were supposed to help him get rid of foreign currency.
the agents wanted Ralph to get close to them and become a secret informant.
so began Guarino work for the government.
when Guarino was recruited the FBI had no idea who vincent palermo was , all he had on his record was stealing shrimp years ago.
it wasn’t until Ralph labeled Ocean as Decavalcante main man on the streets that the bureau made him a key target for the operation.
Guarino’s transaction was eventually turned down,citing palermo’s reluctance to get involved with the case that have been talked about so much on TV and was stil under notice.
one of the main reasons whty the mafioso let the guy near him in addition to his reliability and reputation was of course his ability to turn a profit.
with Ralph perfectly demonstrated with his robbery.
Guarino began spending a lot of time with a guy named joe masella hwo was an associate of vinny ocean
he worked as his driver for a while and then worked on collecting the payoffs palermo received from his various illegal businesses.
Ralph rode along with masella practically around the clock, taing everything he said and joe talked a lot.
sometimes he drove palermo who considered Guarino reliable man and was not shy about talking business.
the only problem he had with masella was his gambling addiction.
not only did he owe almost every new york family but he also began stealing from palermo to cover some of his depbts and gamble again.
for example ,he told ocean that the loan shark was rasing his rate by 1 % vinny in turn made no fuss about it and joe took the difference for himself.
of course palermo found out about this and decided that the benefit of masella was not worth the truble he was causing.
so masella was killed and Ralph came under the wing of Joseph Sclafani who talked just as much as masella.
moreover sclafani liked Guarino that he promised to recommend him for admission into the family.
however as was the case with donnie brasco Guarino was pulled out before he could become a member of the mafia.
by the summer of 1999 almost after a year after Ralph first went out on the street with a wire, the Decavalcante’s learned that there was a rat in their ranks .
total paranoia set in, every one was trying to find the snitch leading to several murders.
and the FBI finallly decided that Guarino had to be pulled out or they’d get him sooner or later.
Ralph was taken off the streets at the end of 1999 and already on december 2nd of the same year there was a simultaneous mass arrest of 40 people associated with Decavalcante.
more than a few mobsters from this group opted to switch sides including vincent palermo.
ocean faced spending the rest of his life in prison as the other guy had told about all his affairs,mentioning all the murders he committed .
as a result of palermo’s other defected mobsters testimonies a couple dozen more people were arrested the total number of which exceeded 60 and sixth of them became government witnesses
and so the authorities managed to imprison allmost all the high -ranking members of the Decavalcante family
including an extended sentence for john Riggy who was already in prison.
vincent palermo on the other hand served 2 years and upon his release went into the witness protection program.
his new identity was revealed in the late 90s .
his name is now vincent Cabella.
and he resides in houston where he owns several strip clubs.
he was linked to drug trafficking and money launderingbut they couldn’t prove anything.
so vinny ocean is still at large.
the Decavalcante family on the other hand has fallen apart since the event.
this is illustrated by the fact that the family’street boss.
Frank Guarraci was personally involved in extorting money from a pizzreria in 2009.
the real boss John Riggi who was still in jail at the time was obviously very sad remembering the power and influence that the mafia had just a few decades before.
IN REAL LIFE…
we can’t claim full-fledged copying of tony soprano from vinny ocean .
chase’s characters correspond to the addition of his own creative ideas.
but you can’t prove it to the fans of the series .
they immediately began to look for parallels with reality which to give credit often turned out to be quite convincing.
main one of course is tony soprano and vincent palermo.
big house ,big family strip club boss of the family while the authorities were stuck on another .
and good relations with new york families.
also cited as a prototype for tony is john Riggi.
but there are far fewer coincidences here.
the main one being that they’re more similar in appearance.
chase also mentioned that the Geneves faction in new jersey was used to create the sopranos.
so in theory there could be a piece of Ruggiero Boiardo in tony soprano.
for example covering up his illegal dealings under the legal occupation of waste dumping and recycling.
john D’amato who matches his gay tendencies
with vito Vito Spatafore.
and jake amari who died of cancer just like Jackie Aprile
salvatore Bonpensiero nickname Big Pussy had matches with several real life gangsters at once.
first was ralph Guarino who just like bonpensiero cooperated with the authorities in war a wire.
the second is anthony russo from whom bonpensiero’s nickname was apparently taken ,Russo was the only known mobster within the confines of new york and new jersy who had pussy as his nickname.
Paulie Gualtieri for his part was inspired by members of the Decavalcante family themselves who were caught on the wire discussing the first season of of the sopranos.
they believed that paulie was based on Decavante captain Gaetano Vastola who also was a big muscular guy similar in demeanor to Gualtieri
Hesh Rabkin most resmebles morris levy a famous music producer who was involved with the mafia.
the rest of the characters in the show either don’t have real life prototypes or they ‘re heavily drawn from the real world.
such as the comparison johnny sack and john Gotti.
or the parallel between junior soprano and peter gotti.
the parallels between the series and reality don’t end there however.
Satriale’s Pork Store also existed only it was colled sacco’s and was owned by a members of the Decavalcante family .
Joseph Giacobbe
who used it as a headquarters for his crew.
chase was not shy about using real life scams in the plot that were really done by the mafia.
for example john gotti Jr was tried in 1998 for the phone card scam that big pussy tells furio about.
at the same trial a whole new gangster scheme was uncovered which almost immediately found its reflection in the series.
this was the time where tony soprano paid money to a black activist for organizing riots at a construction site under the guise of dissatisfaction with working with condition where blacks.
in reality the riots and strikes were only necessary so that the mobsters could extort money from the developers in order to quietly continue their work.
another similar case of using a a real crime in the series was the airline ticket scam engaged by tony soprano.
this was tied to steven kaplan’s case who got tried for it in 1999.
and remember in the show ,tony ran card games jewish hotel.
the real life partner of Decavalcante family did the same thing however true crime and TV show not only had parallels …
the overlapped prior to the release of the sopranos
the main movie for mobsters about themselves was the godfather
the gangsters were eager to get acquainted with actors from the movie.
in particular its a well known fact that james khan had friendly relations with quite a few gangsters.
so when sopranos came out on screens, the same fate befell its actors ,they were often seen in places of business with the mafia and some would see it as inevitable , while others would say it was in their favor.
for example actors Tony Sirico Vincent Pastore were friends with
columbo family capo james clemenza.
though in Tony Sirico case it’s not surprising as a young man
he was associated with the columbo crime family, had 28 arrests and even served time in prison .
however he was not the only one who walked a crooked path among the actors of the series.
for example Tony Darrow born Anthony Borgese who played larry but knew john gotti and paul vario in his youth
and in 2011 was convicted for hiring people connected with the Gambino family to extract a dept from a guy who hadn’t paid it.
frank valanga the actor who played carmin lubertazzi
allthough he wasn’t in prison, he worked for a long time in the famous mafia club copacabana.
he was also the insperation for one of the main characters in the movie Greenbook.
as it was frank who accompanied the black musician Don shirley in his tour through some racist states.
also notable were Vincent Pastore who played big pussy and was charged with beating up his girlfriend.
John Ventimiglia who played Artie Bucco and was arrested for DUI.
and even robert Robert Ile who played the role of Anthony Jr. Soprano (A.J. Soprano) and got three years probation for attempted robbery.
