His mother, later discovered to be his biological aunt, worked at a Kresge's department store during Paulie's childhood and early adulthood, but has since retired.

Paulie's grandfather, who emigrated to the United States in 1910, is from Ariano, a municipality in the province of Avellino, in Italy's Campania region.

Paulie spent four years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where he was eventually drummed out through Section 8 (discharged for psychiatric reasons).

He eventually was inducted into the DiMeo crime family, becoming a close associate of Johnny Soprano and helping to mentor his son Tony.

One of the older active gangsters in the family, Paulie adheres to traditional mob customs and ultimately shows loyalty and deference to his boss Tony.

In the first season finale, "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano," Tony tells his crew that he had been in therapy for almost a year when Paulie reveals that he too had seen a therapist, from whom he "learned some coping skills."

Although he is shown to be dating a couple of different women during the series, Paulie has no children and mostly remains single, devoting almost his entire life to being a gangster.

Other tasks he performs are recovering a stolen car (with Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero), torturing a hotel co-owner so the crew can own 25% of the business, and extorting Meadow's soccer coach by giving him an unwanted free TV.

To help set up the crew's stolen car distribution operation, Paulie travels with Tony and Chris to Italy.

Paulie becomes more demanding of his regular payments and subjects Christopher to a humiliating random strip search for wires.

Valery, who is later revealed to be a former Russian military commando, is still alive and knocks both Paulie and Christopher to the ground with a shovel.

During his four months in jail, he communicates with John "Johnny Sack" Sacramoni, the underboss of New York's Lupertazzi crime family, with Johnny tricking Paulie into feeding him valuable intelligence about Tony's activities by giving him the impression that Carmine Lupertazzi Sr. is interested in offering him a spot within the family.

A party is thrown at the Bada Bing when Paulie is released, but his wavering loyalty only serves to accelerate his marginalization.

Paulie, however, by the end of the season, realizes he had been duped by Johnny and that Carmine has never even heard of him, much less offered him a place in his family.

Following this realization, Paulie once again devotes himself fully to Tony and the Soprano family, reclaiming his status as a top earner.

She is delighted when he first places her at Green Grove (in stark contrast to Livia Soprano's reaction), and Paulie also intercedes in her social problems with the other residents, going so far as to attack their relatives to ensure civility towards his mother.

In the fifth season, Christopher and Paulie's bad blood resurfaces when Chris reiterates the story of the Pine Barrens incident to Vito Spatafore, Patsy Parisi, and Benny Fazio.

The story starts out friendly, but after Chris embarrasses him in front of the guys, Paulie calls Christopher "Tony's little favorite."

Tapped out, Christopher leaves a small tip and argues with Paulie in the parking lot until the waiter comes out to confront them.

While this seems to Christopher like a fair compromise, it essentially means that Paulie is profiting from the whole situation by only returning half of the cash he stole from the dead waiter.

In "The Fleshy Part of the Thigh," Paulie learns that his dying aunt Dotty, a Sisters of Christian Charity nun, was actually his mother.

This news sends Paulie into an emotional tailspin, in the grips of which he severed his ties with Nucci and does not attend Dotty's funeral.

Paulie suggests that his luck at having been diagnosed early was a reward for good deeds in his life, and Tony agrees with him.

However, Paulie makes off-color remarks about Christopher's daughter, which cause an inebriated Chris to storm out and later kill his AA friend J.T.

In "Kennedy and Heidi", Paulie is left surprisingly grief-stricken when Christopher is killed, reflecting that their arguments over money and respect were trivial and that he should have been nicer to him in life.

At first, Paulie is hesitant because all the bad luck that had befallen that crew's previous capos, but changes his mind after clever persuasion from Tony.

When given control of the Soprano crew, Paulie oversees all of Tony's old business dealings, including the Paving Union, extorting drug dealers, the pump and dump scams, charging HMOs for fake MRI expenditures, fencing stolen cars, a phone card scam, gambling, loan sharking and the crew's front businesses: Barone Sanitation and Massarone Construction.

These include control of the Joint Fitters Union, credit card hijacking, betting shops, cigarette smuggling, and protection rackets.

However, prior to the beginning of season six Christopher Moltisanti is promoted to captain splitting off from Paulie's crew with the younger soldiers and associates.

Paulie appeared in a commercial for Aftonbladet, advertising that the tabloid was being sold with a free Sopranos DVD each week in 2009.