Giuseppe Morello - Morello Crime Family

Morello Crime Family

In the 1890s, Giuseppe founded the 107th Street Mob which would later evolve into the Morello crime family. In 1903, Ignazio "the Wolf" Lupo, the Sicilian Mafia boss in Little Italy, Manhattan married Morello's half sister Salvatrice.

Morello built his empire based on his merciless ordering of death sentences against everyone who dared to face him. Lupo, his main enforcer, was responsible for more than sixty murders in a 10 year period. The Morello family would frequently employ the notorious barrel murder system, dumping dismembered corpses into large wood barrels. The barrels would then be thrown into the sea, left on a random street corner, abandoned in a back alley or shipped to nonexistent addresses in another city.

Family business included extortion, loan sharking, Italian lottery, robbery and counterfeiting. Illegally earned money was then legitimized by legal businesses such as stores or restaurants owned by the family, making them the first crime family in town to organize this kind of money laundering. They also introduced revolutionary ways of extorting small amounts of money every week from business owners in exchange for "protection", as opposed to the theft of large amounts which might bankrupt them. This technique was adopted from Black Hand gangsters and it led to increased profits for the gang.

By 1905, Morello had created the largest, most influential Sicilian crime family in New York City, and was recognized as capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses) by Mafia leaders in other U.S. cities, according to Nicola Gentile.