New Orleans crime family
[6][7] These activities included racketeering, extortion, gambling, prostitution, narcotics distribution, money laundering, loan sharking, fencing of stolen goods, and murder.
Operating along the Gulf Coast, with its main criminal activity centered in the New Orleans area, the organization reached its height of influence under bosses Silvestro Carollo and Carlos Marcello.
Born of Arbëreshë descent and members of the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church in Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Carlo and Antonio Matranga immigrated to New Orleans during the 1870s and eventually opened a saloon and brothel.
Using their business as a base of operations, the Matranga brothers began establishing lucrative organized criminal activities including extortion and labor racketeering.
The decision caused strong protests from residents, angered by the controversy surrounding the case, and the following month a lynch mob stormed the jail killing 11 of the 19 defendants—five of whom had not been tried—on March 14, 1891.
He had also joined forces with New York mob associate Meyer Lansky in order to take money from some of the most important casinos in the New Orleans area.
According to former members of the Chicago Outfit, Marcello was also assigned a cut of the money skimmed from Las Vegas casinos, in exchange for providing "muscle" in Florida real estate deals.
By this time, Marcello had been selected as "The Godfather" of the New Orleans Mafia,[17] by the family's capos and the National Crime Syndicate after the deportation of Sylvestro "Silver Dollar Sam" Carollo to Sicily.
On April 4, 1961, the U.S. Justice Department, under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, apprehended Marcello as he made what he assumed was a routine visit to the immigration authorities in New Orleans,[21] then deported him to Guatemala.
However, in October 1964, Marcello was charged with "conspiring to obstruct justice by fixing a juror [Rudolph Heitler] and seeking the murder of a government witness [Carl Noll]".
[28] In the 1960s, due to Marcello's stubborn refusal of inducting new members into the family, the organization dwindled down to a paltry four or five made men, with hundreds of associates throughout the United States.
[29] However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation believed there were a bit over 20 made men at the time, or more than 20 associates so close to Marcello and to each other, that they were considered a formal part of the New Orleans family hierarchy.
[10][30] Although the family was small in size, it exerted significant influence due to Marcello's political connections with state and federal judges, prosecutors, governors, senators, labour leaders, and law enforcement officials.
The New Orleans family was also closely linked with the Dixie Mafia, initially through Marcello's association with LeRoy Hobbs, the Sheriff of Harrison County, Mississippi.
[4] Under Marcello's rule, the family outsourced debt collection and contract killing to members of the Dixie Mafia and the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
In its investigation, the HSCA noted the presence of "credible associations relating both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby to figures having a relationship, albeit tenuous, with Marcello's crime family or organization".
[31] In 1981, Marcello, Aubrey W. Young (a former aide to Governor John J. McKeithen), Charles E. Roemer, II (former commissioner of administration to Governor Edwin Edwards), and two other men were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans with conspiracy, racketeering, and mail and wire fraud in a scheme to bribe state officials to give the five men multimillion-dollar insurance contracts.
[36] Due to his imprisonment and ill health, Carlos Marcello lost the ability to manage the New Orleans family, and the organization became effectively leaderless.
[37] In 1993, the FBI bugged Frank's Deli in the French Quarter, a popular meeting place for New Orleans Mafiosi, as part of an investigation into how the Mafia was infiltrating the new poker industry in Louisiana.
[8] FBI wiretaps recorded conversations between the New Orleans Mafia leaders and helped authorities gain insight into the family's operations on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
[43] In May 1994, following an FBI sting dubbed "Operation Hard Crust", Carollo with 16 members of the Marcello, Gambino and Genovese families were arrested on charges of infiltrating the newly legalized Louisiana video poker industry, racketeering, illegal gambling and conspiracy.
