During the 1984 US presidential election, publicity about DiBernardo having rented business premises from the husband of Geraldine Ferraro embroiled her in damaging media innuendo about organized crime.

DiBernardo was seen as a phenomenal money maker, secretive, and a lone operator (unlike most Mafia members of his status, he did not retain a crew to back him up).

DiBernardo, who had been the target of a federal investigation into child pornography, was awaiting sentencing when he was murdered by members of Sammy Gravano’s crew on orders from John Gotti.

One of the relatively few thought to have become made in the Mafia without committing a murder, DiBernardo, at that time allegiant to the DeCavalcante crime family, bought the softcore pornography business Star Distributors in the late 1960s, and used it to sell hardcore pornography of all types and media to adult industry businesses around Times Square, long perceived as an insalubrious (if not actually dangerous) district where police did not prevent flouting of obscenity and other laws.

DiBernardo directly commissioned the production of much of the so-called Golden Age of Porn-era hardcore films made in New York; rivals were intimidated out of business or co-opted into his network.

DiBernardo became the prime target of the operation following the death of Michael "Mickey Z" Zaffarano, a Bonanno crime family capo who suffered a fatal heart attack as FBI agents served a warrant for his arrest at his Times Square adult movie theater on February 14, 1980.

[9] A federal judge then overturned the convictions of DiBernardo and Rothstein and ordered the indictments against them dismissed on grounds that FBI agent Patrick Livingston – who posed as a dealer of adult materials in Miami and purchased allegedly obscene films and videotapes from KED Productions – may have lied to a grand jury.

[11] New York police routinely surveilled DiBernardo as an organized crime figure, but he only became widely known after his name emerged in publicity surrounding the 1984 Democratic candidate for United States vice president.

[16] DiBernardo was not mentioned during the 1984 vice-presidential debate, though questions over Ferraro's separate tax filing, which were widely seen as carrying implications about her husband's business, put her on the defensive.