More commonly, the word "Don" may proceed his first or last name. Godfather also known as The Boss of all Bosses or The King It is a phrase used mainly by the media, public and the law enforcement community to indicate a supremely powerful crime boss in the Sicilian or American Mafia who holds great influence over the whole empire.
It has seldom been given to specific bosses because it could create tension between different factions otherwise known as families within the Mafia. Typically the title is awarded de facto to the boss of the most powerful Mafia family. Male Characters Female Characters Deceased. Webnovel Draft Original Prequel. Author Wiki Staff MrCents Draft Original Recent blog posts.
Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Mafia Ranks. An associate is simply someone who works with the mob, including anyone from a burglar or drug dealer to a lawyer, investment banker, police officer or politician. Associates can still become made-men if they meet the criteria set out, if successful they will be promoted to a street solider, usually.
New Orleans Dr. The Crescent Corner Bookshelf Mr. Family Structure Each family also had a structure, and again it was Lucky Luciano who put this regimented, army style structure in place.
The Boss The Boss At the top of the pile is the boss. The Underboss Underboss Just below the boss is the underboss. The Consigliere Consigliere In-between the boss and underboss is a role of an advisor to the boss. Caporegime Caporegime A Caporegime is sometimes referred to as the Captain or the Capo of a crime family. Soldiers Soldiers At the bottom of the tree are soldiers or saldato, who will report to their Captain.
Associates Associates The final part of a family comes in the shape of an associate. Most of the other U. Thus, you have the Philadelphia family, the Buffalo family, the Cleveland family and so on. The details of a Mafia induction ceremony were a carefully kept secret for decades. But in the early s, Joe Valachi's testimony before a Senate subcommittee shined a spotlight on the mob. The Mafia induction described here is the ceremony conducted by the Sicilian Mafia as well as most American Mafia families.
Circumstances can alter some details of the ceremony, such as an induction in prison or a quick induction during a gang war. First, the potential gangster is told simply to "dress up" or "get dressed.
Other Mafioso who are present will join hands and recite oaths and promises of loyalty. The inductee may then hold a burning piece of paper.
In some families, the new soldier is paired with a more experienced mobster who will act as his " godfather ," guiding him into Mafia life. The inductee must promise that he will be a member of the family for life, and then a drop of blood is drawn from his trigger finger. It takes more than just an oath and a drop of blood to get into the Mafia, however. Only men of Italian heritage are allowed in. In some families, both parents must be Italian, while some require only an Italian father.
The prospective mobster must also show a penchant for making money or at the least a willingness to commit acts of violence when ordered to do so. Usually, the criminal must pass a test before he will be considered for induction, and this test is commonly rumored to be participation in an act of murder. One last obstacle that some mobsters face when they try to become made men: the Commission.
In the s and '30s, the Mafia families in the United States were almost constantly at war with one another. They would often recruit new soldiers by the dozens so rival families wouldn't recognize them as enemies.
These new recruits could easily approach members of other families and assassinate them. To put a stop to this, the Commission began requiring all the families to make a list of their prospective members and circulate the list among the other families. In addition to helping to ID family members, these lists also allowed the bosses to weed out prospects that other families had problems with.
If the prospects became made men, individual disagreements could grow into violent wars between families. Families use a variety of activities to accomplish the Mafia's main goal of making money.
One of the most common is one of the simplest: extortion. Extortion is forcing people to pay money by threatening them in some way. Mafia "protection rackets" are extortion schemes. The twist is that the Mafia members themselves are the criminals who threaten the business.
The Mafia has made money through a wide variety of illegal activities over the years. Mobsters have dealt in alcohol during Prohibition, illegal drugs, prostitution and illegal gambling, to name a few. Sometimes, burglaries and muggings generate income, but the capos know that their activities need a grander scale to ensure maximum profit. That's why they hijack trucks and unload entire shipments of stolen goods.
Another method used by Mafioso is to pay off truck drivers or dock workers to "misplace" crates and shipments that later end up in Mafia hands. The stolen goods could be anything from stereo equipment to clothing a favorite of John Gotti early in his career.
One of the most notorious Mafia schemes was the infiltration of labor unions. For several decades, it is believed that every major construction project in New York City was controlled by the Mafia.
Mobsters paid off or threatened union leaders to get a piece of the action whenever a union group got a construction job, and they sometimes made their way into the ranks of union leadership.
Once the Mafia had its grip on a union, it could control an entire industry. Mafioso could get workers to slow or halt construction if contractors or developers didn't make the right payoffs, and they had access to huge union pension funds.
At one point, the Mafia could have brought nearly all construction and shipping in the United States to a halt. In the last few decades, the federal government has cracked down on Mafia-union connections to a great extent. The current structure of the Mafia took centuries to develop. To learn about the history of the Mafia and to see how law enforcement has dealt with organized crime over the years, read on. It began on the island of Sicily.
Although there are major organized crime groups from other parts of Italy, the Sicilian Mafia is generally considered to be the godfather of all other Mafia organizations. Several unique factors contributed to the development of organized crime in Sicily. The island is located at an easily accessible and strategically important place in the Mediterranean Sea. As a result, Sicily was invaded, conquered and occupied by hostile forces many times. This led to an overall distrust of central authority.
The family, rather than the state , became the focus of Sicilian life, and disputes were settled through a system in which punishment often went beyond the limits of the law. In the 19th century, the European feudal system finally collapsed in Sicily. With no real government or functioning authority of any kind, the island quickly descended into lawlessness.
Certain landowners and other powerful men began to build reputations and eventually came to be seen as local leaders. They were known as capos. The capos used their power to extract tributes from farmers under their authority much like the feudal lords before them. Their authority was enforced through the threat of violence. Their criminal activities were never reported, even by the victims, because of the fear of reprisal.
This was the beginning of the Sicilian Mafia. Several elements of Mafia life that have lasted for centuries first developed during the transition from a feudal to a modern form of government in Sicily. The phrase cosa nostra — "our way," or " this thing of ours " — was used to describe the lifestyle of a Mafioso in Sicily.
The shroud of secrecy that surrounded Mafia activities in Sicily became known as omerta , the code of silence. Mafia bosses relied on this code — in which no one spoke about Mafia activities to anyone outside the family — to protect themselves and the family from the law. The practice of recruiting young boys into the Mafia, culminating with a final test, also stems from Sicily. In the early s, organized crime had so thoroughly infiltrated Sicilian life that it was virtually impossible to avoid contact with the Mafia.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini cracked down on the Mafia using harsh, often brutal methods. But when U. Before long, the Mafia had a firm grasp on Italy's Christian Democrat party. In the postwar years, the various competing Sicilian families realized that their constant fighting was costing them money. They called a ceasefire and formed a group called the cupola that would oversee the operations of all the families and approve all major enterprises and assassinations.
A similar system would be put in place by the American families in the s. While these committees succeeded in stifling gang wars for a time, they also left the bosses vulnerable to prosecution because with the cupola in place, bosses personally approved murders. The fight against the Sicilian Mafia in Italy came to a head in the s. Two very prominent government prosecutors who had done a lot of damage to the Mafia were assassinated in bombings.
Usually you don't find The Family, they find you. Typically, you're young, unsupervised, and in need of an authority figure. A mob boss is a great example of an authority figure—even if that authority is completely illegal, terribly unethical, and probably not very friendly either. Let's say for a second you've been scouted by the Mafia League. What do you do next? Make a display of your loyalty and willingness to do whatever it takes to put The Family first.
They need to know you're in it for the long haul, that you can handle yourself in the field, and that they won't have to worry about you knocking them off when they're not looking. Speaking of which, it's probably not a good idea to tell them you were researching how to become a mob boss. They might take that the wrong way. Once you're in, all you have to do is not die or get caught while everyone else more powerful than you dies or gets caught.
Patience may be fairly useful here—not to mention a bullet-proof vest. That may come in handy on multiple occasions.
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