Early Family History
Anthony and his brother Joseph are the sons of Prohibition era Mafia boss Giuseppe Piraino. The Peraino brothers' father was a member of the Sicilian Mafia and immigrated to the United States from Sicily around 1911 after escaping from the Palermo prison where he had been sentenced to 25 years. Joe Piraino settled in New York around 1911, but it is unknown if he was already married upon his arrival. What is known is that Anthony was born approximately 4 years after his father's arrival from Sicily, and that his father immediately joined his fellow Sicilian countrymen in New York's Italian underworld and started to climb the ranks of the New York Mafia. By 1930, Piraino had become the boss of the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn area rackets, taking over bootlegging, gambling and extortion activities once controlled by boss Frankie Yale. Piraino was said to be an associate and ally of powerful New York Mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano, and on the night of March 27, 1931, Piraino attended a "bootleggers summit" in Brooklyn, where he was murdered as he left the meeting. he is suspected of being another casualty of the Castellammarese War, but his death could have been the result of separate Mafia conflict that was occurring within the Brooklyn bootlegging community. Author and Mafia historian Patrick Downey has theorized that Piraino may have in fact been the patriarch of the Profaci crime family, the precursor to the Colombo crime family, because Piraino's criminal interests, Brooklyn territory and several members of his group were absorbed into the group led by Brooklyn based Mafia leader and Maranzano ally, Joseph Profaci, a theory that is supported by some, and dismissed by others. Another strong fact that lends to Downey's theory is that both of Piraino's sons, Anthony and Joseph became members of the Profaci-Colombo crime family. At some point the spelling of the Piraino family name was changed to its present spelling.
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