How the Mafia Works" The Kennedy Rumors Rumors of ties between the Kennedys and the Mafia go back to John F.
Kennedy's father, Joe Kennedy, who reportedly earned much of the family fortune as bootlegger and had connections to mobsters like Meyer Lansky. When JFK faced Hubert Humphrey in the Democratic primary in 1960, many claimed that the Kennedy clan called on their mob connections to ensure a favorable vote, and similar accusations were made during the presidential election against Richard Nixon, which Kennedy won by a slim margin. Several theories tie JFK's assassination to the Mafia. Jack Ruby, the man who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK's accused assassin), was a known mob associate. Another theory points to JFK's brother, Robert, whom JFK appointed to the position of attorney general after he was elected president.
Another rumor plays on suggestions that JFK kept several mistresses and girlfriends, some of whom were known to associate with mobsters. How the Mafia Works" Sicilians and other Italians began immigrating to the United States in the 1800s, but a major wave of them arrived on American shores early in the 20th century.
While the vast majority of them worked hard at building a new life for their family through legal means, some of them brought the ways of the Sicilian Mafia with them. The first major Mafia incident occurred in New Orleans in the 1890s. A Sicilian crime family was pressured by the local chief of police, who was then murdered. When the mobsters were tried, they bribed witnesses and were acquitted. Anti-Italian fervor erupted, and a lynch mob went to the jailhouse. Mafia families spread through the country in the first half of the 20th century, emanating from New York City, where five families vied for control. In the middle of this bloodbath (and helping to orchestrate much of it) was a mobster named Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
How the Mafia Works" The current structure of the Mafia took centuries to develop.
It all 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 blueprint for all other Mafia organizations. Several unique factors contributed to the development of organized crime on 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.
How the Mafia Works" The ultimate point of the Mafia is to make money.
Families use a variety of activities to accomplish this. One of the most common is also one of the simplest -- extortion. Extortion is forcing people to give up their money by threatening them in some way. Mafia "protection rackets" are extortion schemes. They tell a shop owner that she needs to pay them $100 a week so they can "protect" her from criminals who might demolish the shop or hurt her family -- the implication being that the Mafia members themselves are these criminals.
The Mafia makes money by participating in virtually any activity that is illegal. Sometimes, burglaries and muggings generate income, but the capos know that their activities need a grander scale to ensure maximum profit. How the Mafia Works" The details of a Mafia induction ceremony were a carefully kept secret for decades.
But in the early 1960s, 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 of the 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. " He is taken to a private place and seated at a long table, right next to the boss. It takes more than just an oath and a drop of blood to get into the Mafia, however. There is one last obstacle that some mobsters face when they try to become made men -- the Commission. How the Mafia Works" How the Mafia Works" La Cosa Nostra had always been involved in gambling, from numbers games to sports betting.
They operated luxurious, illegal casinos through the United States, bribing local police officers to look the other way. When Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, mobsters were not the first ones to see the opportunity. The famous Strip was already developing, and a few fancy hotel/casinos were already in place by the time the Mafia arrived. When they did arrive, it wasn't the usual suspects. Instead, many of the early Vegas casinos were financed by Jewish mobsters like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. Casinos generate huge profits on their own, so it didn't take much creativity on the part of the wiseguys to figure out a way to get their cut. How the Mafia Works" The Mafia is not an actual organization itself.
There is no head of the Mafia. Instead, the word Mafia is an umbrella term that refers to any of several groups of gangsters who can trace their roots to Italy or Sicily. In broad terms, there are five Mafia groups, defined mainly by the regions they operate in or the regions they originated in. All five groups have their hands in criminal operations that span the globe and have set up operatives in many different nations. How the Mafia Works" Today, the word "mafia" is used to refer to almost any organized crime group, and in some cases is even used to describe groups completely unrelated to crime.
In this article, we will focus on the traditional meaning of "mafia": organized criminal organizations of Italian or Sicilian heritage. In organized crime there is a hierarchy, with higher-ranking members making decisions that trickle down to the other members of the family. The Mafia is not a single group or gang -- it is made up of many families that have, at times, fought each other in bitter, bloody gang wars.
At other times, they have cooperated in the interest of greater profits, sometimes even serving on a "Commission" that made major decisions affecting all the families (more on the Commission later). Most of the time, though, they simply agree to stay out of each other's way. Mafia-dom is neither a political nor a religious affiliation.