Morello Family

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ORIGINS In 1892, Giuseppe Morello emigrated from Sicily to New York. His family formed the city’s first Italian criminal gang. Sicilian immigrant Salvatore “Toto” D’Aquila and his D’Aquila gang acknowledged Morello as capo di tutti capi, or boss of the bosses. Morello joined with Ignazio “the Wolf” Lupo to form a counterfeiting ring that spanned from Sicily to America. Morello and Lupo eventually went to prison, leaving a power vacuum that allowed D’Aquila to break away and form his own gang. Still, the powerful criminal alliance Morello and Lupo formed would push the Morello family into conflict with other Italian gangs, specifically the Camorra, an Italian crime syndicate with origins in Naples. D’Aquila sided with the Morello family in the Mafia-Camorra War. This conflict ultimately resulted in the decimation of the Camorra in New York. In 1918, remaining Camorra members joined the Morello family or D’Aquila. The D'Aquila family was now the city’s largest and most influential mafia. With the passage of Prohibition in 1919, the Morello family built a lucrative bootlegging enter...

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