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To become member of the Mafia or Cosa Nostra (both the original Sicilian Mafia or the Italian-American offshoot often known as the "American Mafia") – to become a "man of honor" or a "made man" – an aspiring member must take part in an initiation ritual or initiation ceremony. The ceremony involves significant ritual, oaths, blood, and an ...
Structure of a Mafia crime family. In the American and Sicilian Mafia, a made man is a fully initiated member of the Mafia. To become "made", an associate first must be Italian or of Italian descent and sponsored by another made man. An inductee will be required to take the oath of omertà, the Mafia code of silence and code of honor.
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra (Italian: [ˈkɔːza ˈnɔstra, ˈkɔːsa-], Sicilian: [ˈkɔːsa ˈnɔʂː(ɽ)a]; "our thing" [3]), also referred to as simply Mafia, is a criminal society and criminal organization originating on the island of Sicily and dates back to the mid-19th century. It is an association of gangs which sell their ...
The early history of the Lucchese crime family can be traced back to the Morello crime family which was based in East Harlem and the Bronx. Durning the 1910s, the bosses of Morello family lost power and control which allowed Gaetano "Tommy" Reina, along with Salvatore D'Aquila and Joe Masseria, to split off and form their own crime families.
The five Mafia families in New York City are still active, albeit less powerful. The peak of the Mafia in the United States was during the 1940s, and the 1950s, until the year 1970 when the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act) was enacted, which aimed to stop the mafia and organized crime as a whole. [ 23 ]
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Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992, objected to the conflation of the term Mafia with organized crime in general: While there was a time when people were reluctant to pronounce the word "Mafia" ... nowadays people have gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become an overused term ...
The DeCavalcante crime family, also known as the North Jersey crime family or the North Jersey Mafia, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family that operates mainly in northern New Jersey, particularly in Elizabeth, [2] Newark, West New York [4] and the surrounding areas. The family is part of the nationwide criminal network known as the ...