Jacques Imbert (30 December 1929 – 11 November 2019)[1] was a French gang leader who first came to prominence in 1960s Marseille's underworld, where he was considered "The Last Godfather".

[clarification needed] Imbert was sentenced to five years in prison in 1947 for an assault on his mother-in-law's lover in a Montpellier bar, but served less than two due to good conduct.

[citation needed] At the start of the 1950s Imbert joined the Bande des Trois Canards, the "Three Ducks Gang", so-named after the cabaret club which was their den.

The gang specialised in burglaries, hold-ups and racketeering, and was said to have built a cellar in their club in which people who resisted paying protection money would be tortured.

In 1961 he was convicted of pimping in a case involving Raymond Infantes, the kingpin of Oran's brothels, and condemned to six months in prison.

[5] On 1 February 1977 Imbert survived a murder attempt by Tony Zampa's crew.Legend has it that one of the men said: "a swine like him isn't worth 'le coup de grâce' let him die like a dog"[citation needed].

His right arm remained paralysed as a result of the attack; though the French newspaper Le Monde wrote, "Small matter, he learned to shoot with the left".

In the 1980s he was also the public relations man for the discothèque "Bus Palladium" in Paris, which was owned by his friend Richard Erman, a Russian-born businessman.

He was a close friend of Francis "The Belgian" Vanverberghe, another mob boss whose early drug trafficking was described in the movie The French Connection.

Police were investigating a criminal operation run by the Russian Mafia who were planning to build a clandestine cigarette factory in a warehouse in a suburb of Marseille.

The only remaining evidence linking Imbert to the Mafia project was the telephone call with Erman, which his lawyer said in court is open to interpretation: "The case against him is so hollow, so inexistent, so empty, that I am reduced to answering a charge based on the intonation of a voice".