[1] Although immigration from Naples and Campania to New York City was rather small compared to that from the rest of southern Italy and Sicily, criminal groups from that area would have a substantial impact on organized crime events in the 1910s.

At the turn of the century, some 500,000 Italians, mainly originating from the impoverished southern regions of Italy, lived in New York City and had to survive in difficult social and economic circumstances.

[5] Italian immigration "made fortunes for speculators and landlords, but it also transformed the neighborhood into a kind of human ant heap in which suffering, crime, ignorance and filth were the dominant elements", according to historian Arrigo Petacco.

It also provided a huge market for products from the homeland and from the West Coast, such as artichokes and olive oil, the distribution of which the criminal elements attempted to control.

Like earlier immigrant generations, a few Sicilians and Neapolitans engaged in criminal activities to succeed, employing the crime traditions from their original Italian home regions.

Under Pelligrino Morano, the Brooklyn Camorra held the upper hand over the Mafia, then largely controlled by Manhattan's Morello crime family in Italian Harlem.

[10] Morano opened the Santa Lucia restaurant close to the Coney Island amusements parks with his right-hand men Tony Parretti,[11] from where his gang made money in gambling and cocaine dealing.

In the end, a deal was negotiated in which a 'tax' of 25 dollars was levied on every car load of artichokes delivered, under threat of stealing the dealer's horses or wrecking their merchandise.

[16][20][21] At the trials, some criminals involved depicted the Navy Street and Coney Island gangs as "Camorra" and used "Mafia" to identify the groups from East Harlem.