The Genovese crime family, also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American Mafia. The Genovese family has generally maintained a varying degree of influence over many of the smaller mob families outside New York, including ties with the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Patriarca, and Buffalo crime families. The modern family was founded by Charles "Lucky" Luciano and was known as the Luciano crime family from 1931 to 1957, when Vito Genovese became boss. Genovese was head of the family during the McClellan hearings in 1963, which gave the Five Families their current names. Originally in control of the waterfront on the West Side of Manhattan as well as the docks and the Fulton Fish Market on the East River waterfront, the family was run between 1981 and 2005 by "The Oddfather", Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who feigned insanity by shuffling unshaven through New York's Greenwich Village wearing a tattered bath robe and muttering to himself incoherently to avoid prosecution. The Genovese family is the oldest and the largest of the "Five Families". Finding new ways to make money in the 21st century, the family took advantage of lax due diligence by banks during the housing bubble with a wave of mortgage frauds. Prosecutors say loan shark victims obtained home equity loans to pay off debts to their mob bankers. The family found ways to use new technology to improve on illegal gambling, with customers placing bets through offshore sites via the Internet. Although the leadership of the Genovese family seemed to have been in limbo after the death of Gigante in 2005, sources believe that Liborio "Barney" Bellomo is the current boss of the organization. The FBI described the Genovese family as the largest and most powerful of the Five Families in December 2001. The family is unique in today's Mafia, and has benefited greatly from members following omertà, a code of conduct emphasizing secrecy and non-cooperation with law enforcement and the justice system. While many mobsters from across the country have testified against their crime families since the 1980s, the Genovese family has had only eleven members and associates turn state's evidence in its history. Detective Joseph J. Coffey of the New York Organized Crime Task Force described the Genovese family as "the Ivy League of the underworld" in April 1998.

History

Origins

The Genovese crime family originated from the Morello gang of East Harlem, the first Mafia family in New York City. In 1892, Giuseppe Morello arrived in New York from the village of Corleone, Sicily, Italy. Morello's half-brothers Nicholas, Vincenzo, Ciro, and the rest of his family joined him in New York the following year. The Morello brothers formed the 107th Street Mob and began dominating the Italian neighborhood of East Harlem, parts of Manhattan, and the Bronx. One of Giuseppe Morello's strongest allies was Ignazio "the Wolf" Lupo, a mobster who controlled Manhattan's Little Italy. In 1903, Lupo married Morello's half-sister, uniting both organizations. The Morello-Lupo alliance continued to prosper in 1903, when the group began a major counterfeiting ring with powerful Sicilian mafioso Vito Cascioferro, printing $5 bills in Sicily and smuggling them into the US. New York police detective Joseph Petrosino, later assassinated while in Sicily seeking evidence to permit the deportation of Morello and other mafiosi, began investigating the Morello family's counterfeiting operation, the barrel murders, and the black hand extortion letters. On November 15, 1909, Morello, Lupo, and others were arrested on counterfeiting charges. In February 1910, Morello and Lupo were sentenced to twenty-five and thirty years in prison, respectively. In 1910 the Lomonte Brothers, cousins of Morello, ran East Harlem until 1915. Fortunato Lomonte was shot and killed in 1914 on East 108th st. Tomasso Lomonte and cousin Rose Lomonte were both shot and killed in 1915 on East 116th st.

Mafia-Camorra War

As the Morello family increased in power and influence, bloody territorial conflicts arose with other Italian gangs in New York. The Morellos had an alliance with Giosue Gallucci, a prominent East Harlem businessman and Camorrista with local political connections. On May 17, 1915, Gallucci was murdered in a power struggle between the Morellos and the Neapolitan Camorra organization, which consisted of two Brooklyn gangs run by Pellegrino Morano and Alessandro Vollero. The fight over Gallucci's rackets became known as the Mafia-Camorra War. After months of fighting, Morano offered a truce. A meeting was arranged at a Navy Street cafe owned by Vollero. On September 7, 1916, Nicholas Morello and his bodyguard Charles Ubriaco were ambushed and killed upon arrival by five members of the Camorra gang. In 1917, Morano was charged with Morello's murder after Camorrista Ralph Daniello implicated him in the murder. By 1918, law enforcement had sent many Camorra members to prison, decimating the Camorra in New York and ending the war. Many of the remaining Camorra members joined the Morello family. The Morellos now faced stronger rivals than the Camorra. With the passage of Prohibition in 1920 and the ban of alcohol sales, the family regrouped and built a lucrative bootlegging operation in Manhattan. In 1920, both Morello and Lupo were released from prison and Brooklyn Mafia boss Salvatore D'Aquila ordered their murders. This is when Giuseppe "Joe" Masseria and Rocco Valenti, a former Brooklyn Camorra, began to fight for control of the Morello family. On December 29, 1920, Masseria's men murdered Valenti's ally, Salvatore Mauro. Then, on May 8, 1922, the Valenti gang murdered Vincenzo Terranova. Masseria's gang retaliated killing Morello member Silva Tagliagamba. On August 11, 1922, Masseria's men murdered Valenti, ending the conflict, as Masseria took over the Morello family.

The Castellammarese era

During the mid-1920s, Masseria continued to expand his bootlegging, extortion, loansharking, and illegal gambling rackets throughout New York. To operate and protect these rackets, he recruited many ambitious young mobsters, including future heavyweights Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Frank Costello, Joseph "Joey A" Adonis, Vito Genovese, and Albert Anastasia. Luciano soon became a top aide in Masseria's organization. By the late 1920s, Masseria's main rival was boss Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to run the Castellammarese clan. Their rivalry eventually escalated into the bloody Castellammarese War. As the war turned against Masseria, Luciano, seeing an opportunity to switch allegiance, decided to eliminate him in 1931. In a secret deal with Maranzano, Luciano agreed to engineer Masseria's death in return for taking over his rackets and becoming Maranzano's second-in-command. Adonis had joined the Masseria faction, and when Masseria heard about Luciano's betrayal, he approached Adonis about killing Luciano. However, Adonis instead warned Luciano about the murder plot. On April 15, 1931, Masseria was killed at Nuova Villa Tammaro, a Coney Island restaurant, while playing cards with Luciano, who allegedly excused himself to the bathroom, when four gunmen (Anastasia, Genovese, Adonis, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel) shot Masseria to death then escaping in a car driven by Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova. It was reported that Terranova was too nervous to drive, so Siegel took the driver's seat and drove the car out of the crime scene. With Maranzano's blessing, Luciano became his lieutenant and took over Masseria's gang, ending the Castellammarese War. Between August 1 and 3, 1931, Maranzano called a meeting where crime bosses met at Nuova Villa Tammaro in Coney Island for a bacchanalian banquet to celebrate the death of Masseria right on the spot where he was murdered and another one on Washington Avenue at a hall in the Bronx. Maranzano called another meeting of crime bosses in Wappingers Falls, New York, where he declared himself capo di tutti capi ("boss of all bosses"). Under Maranzano rule the Italian-American gangs in New York City were reorganized into Five Families headed by Luciano, Joe Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, Vincent Mangano, and himself. Maranzano also whittled down the rival families' rackets in favor of his own. Luciano appeared to accept these changes, but was merely biding his time before removing Maranzano. Although Maranzano was slightly more forward-thinking than Masseria, Luciano had come to believe that Maranzano was even more greedy, power-hungry and hidebound than Masseria had been. By September 1931, Maranzano realized Luciano was a threat, and hired Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, an Irish gangster, to kill him. However, Tommy Lucchese alerted Luciano that he was marked for death. On September 10, Maranzano ordered Luciano, Genovese, and Costello to come to his office at the 230 Park Avenue in Manhattan. Convinced that Maranzano planned to murder them, Luciano decided to take pre-emptive action. He sent to Maranzano's office four Jewish gangsters, secured with the aid of Siegel and Meyer Lansky, whose faces were unknown to Maranzano's people. Disguised as government agents, two of the gangsters disarmed Maranzano's bodyguards. The other two, aided by Lucchese, stabbed Maranzano multiple times before shooting him.

Luciano and the Commission

After Maranzano's murder, Luciano called a meeting in Chicago with various bosses, where he proposed a Commission to serve as the governing body for organized crime. Designed to settle all disputes and decide which families controlled which territories, the Commission has been called Luciano's greatest innovation. Luciano's goals with the Commission were to quietly maintain his own power over all the families, and to prevent future gang wars; the bosses approved the idea of the Commission. The Commission's first test came in 1935, when they ordered Dutch Schultz to drop his plans to murder Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Luciano argued that an assassination of Dewey would precipitate a massive law enforcement crackdown. An enraged Schultz vowed to kill Dewey anyway and walked out of the meeting. Anastasia, now the leader of Murder, Inc., approached Luciano with information that Schultz had asked him to stake out Dewey's apartment building on Fifth Avenue. Upon hearing the news, the Commission held a discreet meeting to discuss the matter. After six hours of deliberations, the Commission ordered Lepke Buchalter to eliminate Schultz. On October 23, 1935, before he could kill Dewey, Schultz was shot in a tavern in Newark, New Jersey, and succumbed to his injuries the following day. On May 13, 1936, Luciano's pandering trial began. Dewey prosecuted the case that Eunice Carter had built against Luciano, accusing him of being part of a massive prostitution ring known as "the Combination". During the trial, Dewey exposed Luciano for lying on the witness stand through direct quizzing and records of telephone calls; Luciano also had no explanation for why his federal income tax records claimed he made only $22,000 a year, while he was obviously a wealthy man. Dewey's case against Luciano on the prostitution charges actually leveled in the indictment, on the other hand, rested on much shakier ground: first on the testimony of Joe Bendix, who was discredited by his own testimony as well as that of others, and then later on the testimony of three prostitutes, whom Dewey rewarded by either paying for a trip to Europe after the trial or arranging for lucrative film and magazine deals. All three witnesses subsequently recanted their testimony. On June 7, 1936, Luciano was convicted on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution. On June 18, he was sentenced to thirty to fifty years in state prison, along with David Betillo and others. Luciano continued to run his crime family from prison, relaying his orders through Genovese, his acting boss. However, in 1937, Genovese fled to Naples to avoid an impending indictment for murder in New York. Luciano appointed Costello, his consigliere, as the new acting boss and overseer of Luciano's interests. During World War II, federal agents came to Luciano for help in preventing enemy sabotage on the New York waterfront and other activities. Luciano agreed to help, in return for a pardon from the State of New York, made contingent on Luciano's deportation to Italy. In reality Luciano provided insignificant assistance to the Allied cause. After the end of the war, the arrangement with Luciano became public knowledge. To prevent further embarrassment, the government followed through on its plans to deport Luciano on condition that he never return to the U.S. In 1946, Luciano was taken from prison and deported to Italy, where he died in 1962.

The Prime Minister

From May 1950 to May 1951, the U.S. Senate conducted a large-scale investigation of organized crime, commonly known as the Kefauver Hearings, chaired by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Costello was convicted of contempt of the Senate and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Kefauver concluded that New York politician Carmine DeSapio was assisting the activities of Costello, and that Costello had become influential in decisions made by the Tammany Hall political machine. DeSapio admitted to having met Costello several times, but insisted that "politics was never discussed". In 1952, the federal government began proceedings to strip Costello of his U.S. citizenship and he was indicted for evasion of $73,417 in income taxes between 1946 and 1949. He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $20,000. In 1954, Costello appealed the conviction and was released on $50,000 bail; from 1952 to 1961, he was in and out of half a dozen federal and local prisons and jails, his confinement interrupted by periods when he was out on bail pending determination of appeals.

The return of Genovese

Costello ruled for twenty peaceful years, but his quiet reign ended when Genovese was extradited from Italy to New York. During his absence, Costello demoted Genovese from underboss to caporegime, leaving Genovese determined to take control of the family. Soon after his arrival in the U.S., Genovese was acquitted of the 1936 murder charge that had driven him into exile. Free of legal entanglements, he started plotting against Costello with the assistance of Mangano family underboss Carlo Gambino. On May 2, 1957, Luciano mobster Vincent "the Chin" Gigante shot Costello in the side of the head as Costello returned to his apartment. Gigante's aim proved errant, however, and Costello survived the attack with no more than a flesh wound. Costello claimed he could not identify his attacker; Gigante was later acquitted when prosecuted for the shooting. Months later, Anastasia, the boss of the Mangano family and a powerful ally of Costello's, was murdered by Gambino's gunmen at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. With Anastasia's death, Carlo Gambino seized control of the Mangano family. Fearing for his life and isolated after the shootings, Costello quietly retired and surrendered control of the Luciano family to Genovese. Having taken control of what was renamed the Genovese crime family in 1957, Genovese decided to organize a Mafia conference to legitimize his new position. Held at mobster Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara's estate in Apalachin, New York, the Apalachin meeting attracted over 100 mobsters from around the nation. However, local law enforcement stumbled upon the meeting and quickly surrounded the estate. As the meeting broke up, the police stopped a car driven by Russell Bufalino, whose passengers included Genovese and three other men, at a roadblock as they left the estate. Mafia leaders were chagrined by the public exposure and bad publicity from the Apalachin meeting, and generally blamed Genovese for the fiasco. All those apprehended were fined, up to $10,000 each, and given prison sentences ranging from three to five years, but all the convictions were overturned on appeal in 1960. Wary of Genovese gaining more power in the Commission, Gambino used the Apalachin meeting as an excuse to move against his former ally. Gambino, Luciano, Costello, and Lucchese allegedly lured Genovese into a drug-dealing scheme that ultimately resulted in his conspiracy indictment and conviction. In 1959, Genovese was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on narcotics charges. Genovese, who was the most powerful boss in New York, had been effectively eliminated as a rival by Gambino.

The Valachi Hearings

Genovese soldier Joe Valachi was convicted of narcotics violations in 1959, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Valachi's motivations for becoming a government informant had been the subject of some debate; Valachi claimed to be testifying as a public service and to expose a powerful criminal organization that he had blamed for ruining his life, but it is possible he was hoping for government protection as part of a plea bargain in which he was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty for a 1962 murder. While serving his sentence for heroin trafficking, Valachi came to fear that Genovese, also serving a sentence on the same charge, had ordered his murder. On June 22, 1962, using a pipe left near some construction work, Valachi bludgeoned an inmate to death whom he had mistaken for Joseph DiPalermo, a Mafia member he believed had been contracted to kill him. After time with FBI handlers, Valachi came forward with a story of Genovese giving him a kiss on the cheek, which he took as a "kiss of death". A $100,000 bounty for Valachi's death had been placed by Genovese. Soon after, Valachi decided to cooperate with the US Justice Department. In October 1963, he testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the US Senate Committee on Government Operations, known as the Valachi hearings, stating that the Italian-American Mafia actually existed, the first time a member had acknowledged its existence in public. Valachi's testimony was the first major violation of omertà, breaking his blood oath. He is credited with popularization of the term cosa nostra. Although Valachi's disclosures never led directly to the prosecution of any Mafia leaders, he provided many details of history of the Mafia, operations, and rituals; aided in the solution of several unsolved murders; and named many members and the major crime families. The trial exposed American organized crime to the world through Valachi's televised testimony.

Front bosses and the ruling panels

After Genovese was sent to prison in 1959, the family leadership secretly established a "Ruling Panel" to run the family in his absence. This first panel included acting boss Thomas "Tommy Ryan" Eboli, underboss Gerardo "Jerry" Catena, and Catena's protégé Philip "Benny Squint" Lombardo. After Genovese died in 1969, Lombardo was named his successor. However, the family appointed a series of "front bosses" to masquerade as the official family boss. The aim of these deceptions was to protect Lombardo by confusing law enforcement as to who was the true leader of the family. In the late 1960s, Gambino lent $4 million to Eboli for a drug scheme in an attempt to gain control of the Genovese family. When Eboli failed to pay back his debt, Gambino, with Commission approval, had him murdered in 1972. After Eboli's death, Genovese capo and Gambino ally Frank "Funzi" Tieri was appointed as the new front boss. In reality, the Genovese family created a new ruling panel to run the organization. This second panel consisted of Catena, Lombardo, and Michele "Big Mike" Miranda. In 1981, Tieri became the first Mafia boss to be convicted under the new RICO Act and died in prison later that year. After Tieri's imprisonment, the family reshuffled its leadership. The capo of the Manhattan faction, Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, became the new front boss. Lombardo, the de facto boss of the family, soon retired and Gigante, the triggerman on the failed Costello hit, took actual control of the family. In 1985, US Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani set his sights on taking down the Mafia Commission through wiretaps, cooperating witnesses, and surveillance cameras. In 1985, Salerno was convicted in the Mafia Commission Trial and sentenced to 100 years in federal prison. In 1986, shortly after Salerno's conviction, his longtime right-hand man, Vincent "The Fish" Cafaro, turned informant and told the FBI that Salerno had been the front boss for Gigante. Cafaro also revealed that the Genovese family had been keeping up this ruse since 1969. After the 1980 murder of Philadelphia boss Angelo "Gentle Don" Bruno, Gigante and Lombardo began manipulating the rival factions in the war-torn Philadelphia family. They finally gave their support to Philadelphia mobster Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, who in return gave the Genovese mobsters permission to operate in Atlantic City in 1982.

The Oddfather

Gigante built a vast network of bookmaking and loansharking rings, and from extortion of garbage, shipping, trucking, and construction companies seeking labor peace or contracts from carpenters', Teamsters, and laborers' unions, including those at the Javits Center, as well as protection payoffs from merchants at the Fulton Fish Market. Gigante also had influence in the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, running illegal gambling operations, extorting payoffs from vendors, and pocketing thousands of dollars donated to a neighborhood church—until a crackdown in 1995 by New York City officials. During Gigante's tenure as boss of the Genovese family, after the imprisonment of John Gotti in 1992, Gigante came to be known as the figurehead capo di tutti capi, the "Boss of All Bosses", despite the position being abolished since 1931 with the murder of Salvatore Maranzano. Gigante was reclusive, and almost impossible to capture on wiretaps, speaking softly, eschewing the phone, and even at times whistling into the receiver. He almost never left his home unoccupied because he knew FBI agents would sneak in and plant a bug. Genovese members were not allowed to mention Gigante's name in conversations or phone calls; when they had to mention him, members would point to their chins or make the letter "C" with their fingers. On May 30, 1990, Gigante was indicted along with other members of four of the Five Families for conspiring to rig bids and extort payoffs from contractors on multimillion-dollar contracts with the New York City Housing Authority to install windows. Gigante attended his arraignment in pajamas and bathrobe, and due to his defense stating that he was mentally and physically impaired, legal battles ensued for seven years over his competence to stand trial. In June 1993, Gigante was indicted again, charged with sanctioning the murders of six mobsters and conspiring to kill three others, including Gotti. At sanity hearings in March 1996, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, former underboss of the Gambino family, who became a cooperating witness in 1991, and Alphonse "Little Al" D'Arco, former acting boss of the Lucchese family, testified that Gigante was lucid at top-level Mafia meetings and that he had told other gangsters that his eccentric behavior was a pretense. Gigante's lawyers presented testimony and reports from psychiatrists stating that, from 1969 to 1995, Gigante had been confined twenty-eight times in hospitals for treatment of hallucinations and that he suffered from "dementia rooted in organic brain damage". In August 1996, Judge Eugene Nickerson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that Gigante was mentally competent to stand trial; he pleaded not guilty and had been free for years on $1 million bail. Gigante had a cardiac operation in December 1996. On June 25, 1997, Gigante's trial started, which he attended in a wheelchair. On July 25, after almost three days of deliberations, the jury convicted Gigante of conspiring in plots to kill other mobsters and of running rackets as head of the Genovese family but acquitted him of seven counts of murder. Prosecutors stated that the verdict finally established that Gigante was not mentally ill as his lawyers and relatives had long maintained. On December 18, 1997, Gigante was sentenced to twelve years in prison and fined $1.25 million by Judge Jack B. Weinstein, a lenient sentence due to Gigante's "age and frailty", who declared that Gigante had been "finally brought to bay in his declining years after decades of vicious criminal tyranny". While in prison, Gigante maintained his role as boss of the Genovese family while other mobsters were entrusted to run its day-to-day activities. Longtime capo Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello became acting boss of the family. Gigante relayed orders to the family through his son, Andrew, who visited him in prison. On January 23, 2002, Gigante was indicted with several other mobsters, including Andrew, on obstruction of justice charges due to his causing a seven-year delay in his previous trial by feigning insanity. Several days later, Andrew was released on $2.5 million bail. On April 7, 2003, the day the trial began, Prosecutor Roslynn R. Mauskopf had planned to play tapes showing Gigante "fully coherent, careful, and intelligent", running criminal operations from prison, but when Gigante pled guilty to obstruction of justice, Judge I. Leo Glasser sentenced him to an additional three years in prison. Mauskopf stated, "The jig is up ... Vincent Gigante was a cunning faker, and those of us in law enforcement always knew that this was an act ... The act ran for decades, but today it's over." On July 25, 2003, Andrew Gigante was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $2.5 million for racketeering and extortion. On July 27, 2005, Matthew Ianniello was indicted in on charges of rackteering related to extortion and loansharking. On June 10, 2006, Ianniello was indicted once again for racketeering charges related to Genovese control of waste management businesses in Southwestern Connecticut. Gigante died on December 19, 2005, at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. His funeral and burial were held four days later, on December 23, at Saint Anthony of Padua Church in Greenwich Village, largely in anonymity.

After Gigante's death

After Gigante's death, the leadership of the Genovese family went to capo Daniel "Danny the Lion" Leo, who was apparently running the day-to-day activities of the family by 2006. That same year, Cirillo was reportedly promoted to consigliere behind bars and Mangano was released from prison. By 2008, the family administration was believed to be whole again. In March of that year, Leo was sentenced to five years in prison for loansharking and extortion. Former acting consigliere Lawrence "Little Larry" Dentico was leading the New Jersey faction of the family until convicted of racketeering in 2006; he was released from prison in 2009. In December 2008, Liborio Bellomo was paroled after serving twelve years; what role he plays in the Genovese hierarchy is open to speculation, but he likely has had a major say in the running of the family since his tight parole restrictions expired. A March 2009 article in the New York Post claimed Leo was still acting boss despite his incarceration. It also estimated that the Genovese family consists of about 270 "made" members. The family maintains power and influence in New York, New Jersey, Atlantic City and Florida. It is recognized as the most powerful Mafia family in the U.S., a distinction brought about by their continued devotion to secrecy. According to the FBI, many Genovese family associates do not know the names of family leaders or even other associates, making it difficult for investigators to gather intelligence about the family's current status. In 2016, Eugene "Rooster" Onofrio, who is believed to be a capo largely active in Little Italy and Connecticut, was accused of operating a large multimillion-dollar enterprise that ran bookmaking offices, scammed medical businesses, and smuggled cigarettes and guns. He was also alleged to have run a loanshark operation from Florida to Massachusetts. Other members of his reputed crew pleaded guilty to extortion and other crimes. Gerald Daniele, an associate, was sentenced to two years in prison in March 2018. On April 10, 2018, Ralph Santaniello, suspected of being a Genovese acting capo, was sentenced to five years in prison for extorting $20,000 from Craig Morel, the owner of one of the biggest towing and scrap-metal companies in Massachusetts, including threatening his life and assaulting him. Morel managed to negotiate the extortion price from $100,000 to $20,000. Associate Giovanni "Johnny" Calabrese was sentenced to 3 years in prison. In October 2017, thirteen Genovese and Gambino associates and soldiers were sentenced after being indicted following an NYPD operation in December 2016. Dubbed "Shark Bait", the investigation focused on a large-scale illegal gambling and loansharking ring. Prosecutors claimed 76-year-old Genovese soldier Salvatore DeMeo was in charge of the operation and had generated several million dollars from the enterprise. Soldier Alex Conigliaro was sentenced to four months in jail and four months house arrest in late October 2017, with a fine of $5,000, after admitting that he supervised and financed a $14,000-per-week illegal bookmaking and sports betting operation between 2011 and 2014. Genovese associates Gennaro Geritano and Mario Leonardi were allegedly partners in selling untaxed cigarettes in New York, alleged to have sold over 30,000 packs.

Current position and leadership

According to the FBI, the Genovese family had not had an official boss since Gigante's death and the leadership was in a state of limbo for some time. Law enforcement considers Leo to be the acting boss, Mangano the underboss, and Cirillo the consigliere. The family is known for placing top capos in leadership positions to help the administration run day-to-day activities. At present, capos Bellomo, Muscarella, Cirillo, and Dentico hold the greatest influence within the family and play major roles in its administration. The Manhattan and Bronx factions, the traditional powers in the family, still exercise that control today. By 2016 however the FBI considers Liborio Bellomo to most likely be the official boss of the Genovese family. On January 10, 2018, five members and associates, including Gigante's son Vincent Esposito, were arrested and charged with racketeering, conspiracy, and several counts of related offenses by the NYPD and FBI. The charges include extortion, labor racketeering conspiracy, fraud and bribery. Genovese associate and Brooklyn-based United Food and Commercial Workers officer Frank Cognetta was also charged. Union official and associate Vincent D'Acunto Jr. was also involved and allegedly acted on behalf of Esposito to pass along threat messages and to also collect extortion money from the union, in particular from Vincent Fyfe, the president of a wine liquor and distillery union in Brooklyn. Fyfe was forced to pay $10,000 per year to keep his $300,000-a-year union job, which he obtained through the influence of the Genovese family. The labor union infiltration was alleged to have taken place for at least sixteen years. Esposito allegedly extorted several other union officials and an insurance agent. At his home during a warranted search, authorities recovered an unregistered handgun, $3.8 million in cash, brass knuckledusters, and a handwritten list of American Mafia members. Esposito was granted bail for almost $10 million in April 2018, and pled not guilty. In April 2019, Esposito pled guilty to conspiring to commit racketeering offenses with members and associates of the Genovese family. He was sentenced in July 2019 to two years in prison. On August 13, 2020, an indictment charged soldier Christopher Chierchio along with Colombo family associate Frangesco "Frankie" Russo (the grandson of Colombo family boss Andrew Russo ), attorney Jason "Jay" Kurland and securities broker Frank Smookler with conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering. The indictment accused the "lottery attorney" Kurland along with Russo, Chierchio and Smookler with swindling $80 million from jackpot winners in an illegal scheme of siphoning money from the jackpot winners' investments. On April 26, 2022, an indictment was served charging capos Nicholas Calisi and Ralph Balsamo, soldiers Michael Messina and John Campanella, and associates Michael Poli and Thomas Poli, with racketeering conspiracy involving illegal gambling and extortion. Balsamo was previously arrested on April 12, and Calisi was detained in Boca Raton, Florida, and presented before a U.S. magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida. According to the indictment, the defendants operated a criminal racketeering enterprise since at least 2011. On February 9, 2023, it was announced that all six defendants in the case had pleaded guilty to the racketeering charges. On May 3, 2022, exactly a week after the Calisi and Balsamo indictments, another indictment was served that charged capo Anthony "Rom" Romanello, soldier Joseph Celso, and small-time actor and family associate Luan Bexheti with extortion and obstruction of justice. Romanello, who authorities state controls the family's Queens crew, oversaw the extortion and intimidation of a Brooklyn restaurant owner, which was carried out by Celso and Bexheti. All three pleaded not guilty and were released on bond. On August 16, 2022, acting capo Carmelo "Carmine" Polito along with family soldier Joseph Macario, Genovese family associates Salvatore Rubino and Joseph Rutigliano, Bonnano family capo Anthony Pipitone, Bonanno soldier Vito Pipitone, Bonanno associate Agostino Gabriele and Nassau County Police Detective Hector Rosario were indicted and charged with racketeering, money laundering, illegal gambling, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The Genovese family and the Bonanno family jointly operated several illegal gambling operations while using front businesses in Queens and Long Island to launder illegal profits. The indictment revealed that beginning in May 2012, the Genovese and Bonanno families jointly operated a lucrative illegal gambling operation in Lynbrook, New York called the Gran Caffe. The Genovese family members Carmelo Polito, Joseph Macario and associates Salvatore Rutigliano and Joseph Rubino were charged with operating illegal gambling parlors at establishments called Sal's Shoe Repair, the Centro Calcio Italiano Club and running an illegal online gambling scheme. On November 30, 2022, Genovese family soldiers Elio Albanese and Carmine Russo were charged for their involvement in a scheme that involved obtaining oxycodone pills from a Midtown Manhattan doctor and having their associates sell the oxycodone on Staten Island. On January 18, 2023, Genovese family soldier Christopher "Jerry" Chierchio was indicted along with Gambino family capo Frank "Calypso" Camuso, Gambino soldier Louis Astuto, Gambino associate Robert "Rusty" Baselice and 19 other defendants including 26 companies for a kickback scheme allegedly operated by Baselice, the vice president of the Grimaldi Group, a firm which allegedly received $4.2 million from contractors. In 2019, Chierchio along with Baselice stole over $300,000 from developer, the indictment states that Baselice allegedly used his position from April 2013 to July 2021, to steal from his firm's developer clients by providing inside information about competitors' bids to subcontractors, among other offenses. On June 6, 2023, five men with connections to the Genovese and Lucchese crime families were indicted for carrying out two brazen midday Manhattan jewelry heists. The robberies, committed on January 3, 2023, and May 20, 2023, respectively, netted the quintet around $2M. Arrested was Frank DiPietro, a Genovese associate, as well as Vincent Cerchio, Michael Sellick, Samuel Sore, and Vincent Spagnuolo.

Historical leadership

Boss (official and acting)

Street boss (front boss)

The position of "front boss" was created by boss Philip Lombardo in efforts to divert law enforcement attention from himself. The family maintained this "front boss" deception for the next 20 years. Even after government witness Vincent Cafaro exposed this scam in 1988, the Genovese family still found this way of dividing authority useful. In 1992, the family revived the front boss post under the title of "street boss". This person served as day-to-day head of the family's operations under Gigante's remote direction.

Underboss (official and acting)

Consigliere (official and acting)

Messaggero

Messaggero – The messaggero (messenger) functions as liaison between crime families. The messenger can reduce the need for sit-downs, or meetings, of the mob hierarchy, and thus limit the public exposure of the bosses.

Administrative capos

If the official boss dies, goes to prison, or is incapacitated, the family may assemble a ruling committee of capos to help the acting boss, street boss, underboss, and consigliere run the family, and to divert attention from law enforcement.

Current family members

Administration

Caporegimes

The Bronx faction Manhattan faction Brooklyn Queens faction Westchester faction New Jersey faction

Soldiers

New York New Jersey

Associates

Former family members

Government informants and witnesses

Factions and territories

The Genovese family operates primarily in the New York City area; their main rackets are illegal gambling and labor racketeering.

Family crews

List of murders committed by the Genovese crime family

In popular culture

The Genovese crime family has a long history of portrayal in Hollywood as the subject of film and television.

Television

Film