Many of the names
and companies are actually fictitious; they are smokescreens to hide the real
players. Compared to ordinary business law, this is a lot trickier
Sam is well paid, but knows he is earning every penny.
Plus, with all of this information in the confines of his head, he is now every
bit as deeply involved as the rest of the family. In fact, by necessity he is
now a “made man.”
Sam was far younger than the others around him and
his original idea of working in the gray areas of the law are long since gone.
He is a racketeer as defined by the government. It is like the old saw, “in for
a penny, in for a pound.” All of this secrecy and time commitment has made a
huge dent in Sam’s ability to have a permanent relationship with a woman. He
has had many dates and short term romances with some fine and attractive women
in New York, but the complexity of trying to fit someone permanently into his
life always leads to an ultimate breakup.
As for his family back in Jersey, Sam gets to see
them on holidays and special occasions. But even here, there is always a
certain distance Sam feels as he can let no one, no matter how closely related,
know his real career. It would be just too dangerous for them and him. So, Sam
is conflicted. He has all of the material things he could ever want, but he is
not progressing towards a possible family life, nor can he ever hope to change
careers at this point. Sam knows it is the ultimate trade-off that every
underworld figure has to make; he is no different.
Across town in his office sits Carlo Dellveccio, the
mob boss for his family for the past fifteen years. We have all heard of the
good old days, well Carlo feels this was certainly true for the five crime
families that controlled New York. While there was the occasional bloodletting
when new leaders or renegade soldiers of the various families attempted to
expand their reach into another family’s area, these transgressions were always
dealt with and harmony again prevailed in New York. But now a new threat, that
wasn’t going to go away in a couple of weeks or even months, was rearing its
ugly head.
The law was always a menace to the mob, but when you
dealt with local authorities, you were up against one detective or at most a
precinct Captain who was out to prove a point. However, when critical witnesses
failed to show up for trials, there was little the local authorities could do.
Sometimes it was necessary to pay off a couple of over vigilant cops or a
meddling detective, but these were all manageable problems. The local
authorities eventually lost interest as more pressing criminal matters were
always at hand. Come the 1980s and new problems arrived.
This all went back to the early 1960s when Robert
Kennedy became Attorney General in 1961 and began to investigate mob influence
in legitimate businesses and unions. After his brother President John F.
Kennedy was killed in 1963, Robert was out of the Attorney General’s office and
the pressure was off. Whether Robert and John Kennedy’s assassinations had
anything to do with the mob has never been proven, but it certainly did bode
well for the families to have those two off of their backs forever. The other
federal authority who could have been a threat to the crime families was J.
Edgar Hoover’s FBI. But, Hoover had a long history of not wanting to get
involved prosecuting organized crime in America. The reasons for this are not
clear, but the results were good for the families across the nation.
Fast forward to the eighties and we have new
problems. There is a law passed by Congress called RICO, an anti-racketeering
statute that targeted the mob families. For the first time federal charges
could now be brought for collusion to act together to commit crimes that were
now punishable by federal instead of local statutes. Several Federal
prosecutors in the States like Rudolph Giuliani in New York began to bring
charges and get grand juries to indict, and later,
and companies are actually fictitious; they are smokescreens to hide the real
players. Compared to ordinary business law, this is a lot trickier
Sam is well paid, but knows he is earning every penny.
Plus, with all of this information in the confines of his head, he is now every
bit as deeply involved as the rest of the family. In fact, by necessity he is
now a “made man.”
Sam was far younger than the others around him and
his original idea of working in the gray areas of the law are long since gone.
He is a racketeer as defined by the government. It is like the old saw, “in for
a penny, in for a pound.” All of this secrecy and time commitment has made a
huge dent in Sam’s ability to have a permanent relationship with a woman. He
has had many dates and short term romances with some fine and attractive women
in New York, but the complexity of trying to fit someone permanently into his
life always leads to an ultimate breakup.
As for his family back in Jersey, Sam gets to see
them on holidays and special occasions. But even here, there is always a
certain distance Sam feels as he can let no one, no matter how closely related,
know his real career. It would be just too dangerous for them and him. So, Sam
is conflicted. He has all of the material things he could ever want, but he is
not progressing towards a possible family life, nor can he ever hope to change
careers at this point. Sam knows it is the ultimate trade-off that every
underworld figure has to make; he is no different.
Across town in his office sits Carlo Dellveccio, the
mob boss for his family for the past fifteen years. We have all heard of the
good old days, well Carlo feels this was certainly true for the five crime
families that controlled New York. While there was the occasional bloodletting
when new leaders or renegade soldiers of the various families attempted to
expand their reach into another family’s area, these transgressions were always
dealt with and harmony again prevailed in New York. But now a new threat, that
wasn’t going to go away in a couple of weeks or even months, was rearing its
ugly head.
The law was always a menace to the mob, but when you
dealt with local authorities, you were up against one detective or at most a
precinct Captain who was out to prove a point. However, when critical witnesses
failed to show up for trials, there was little the local authorities could do.
Sometimes it was necessary to pay off a couple of over vigilant cops or a
meddling detective, but these were all manageable problems. The local
authorities eventually lost interest as more pressing criminal matters were
always at hand. Come the 1980s and new problems arrived.
This all went back to the early 1960s when Robert
Kennedy became Attorney General in 1961 and began to investigate mob influence
in legitimate businesses and unions. After his brother President John F.
Kennedy was killed in 1963, Robert was out of the Attorney General’s office and
the pressure was off. Whether Robert and John Kennedy’s assassinations had
anything to do with the mob has never been proven, but it certainly did bode
well for the families to have those two off of their backs forever. The other
federal authority who could have been a threat to the crime families was J.
Edgar Hoover’s FBI. But, Hoover had a long history of not wanting to get
involved prosecuting organized crime in America. The reasons for this are not
clear, but the results were good for the families across the nation.
Fast forward to the eighties and we have new
problems. There is a law passed by Congress called RICO, an anti-racketeering
statute that targeted the mob families. For the first time federal charges
could now be brought for collusion to act together to commit crimes that were
now punishable by federal instead of local statutes. Several Federal
prosecutors in the States like Rudolph Giuliani in New York began to bring
charges and get grand juries to indict, and later,