Nicky Scarfo Jr. - Early Years in The Scarfo Crime Family

Early Years in The Scarfo Crime Family

After graduation, Nicky Scarfo allegedly became involved in organized crime. He became a close friend of Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, the son of Scarfo crime family underboss Chuckie Merlino. However, the relationship with Joey Merlino was to prove inauspicious. Their friendship, which was very close, ruptured in 1988 when Chuckie Merlino was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 45 years in a federal penitentiary. Merlino was then demoted by the elder Scarfo, and Nicky Scarfo, Jr. allegedly ended his friendship with Joey Merlino at this time. Philadelphia crime family boss Ralph Natale later testified in court that Merlino "hated" Scarfo from this time onward.

In the late 1980s, Nicky Scarfo, Sr. came under increasing legal pressure as the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a massive investigation of the Scarfo crime family's operations. Twenty members of Scarfo's organization were imprisoned, and many more came under indictment. Five members of the Philadelphia crime family turned state's evidence against the elder Scarfo, including soldiers Nicholas Caramandi and Eugene Milano, capos Thomas DelGiorno and Lawrence Merlino (Chuckie Merlino's brother), and underboss (and Scarfo relative) Phil Leonetti.

During the trial, Mark Scarfo attempted suicide on November 1, 1988. Mark, then only 17 years old, had been taunted for years by classmates about his father's criminal activities. Increasingly despondent over his father's possible imprisonment, Mark Scarfo hanged himself in the office of his father's concrete supply company in Atlantic City. He was discovered by his mother, and paramedics were able to resuscitate him. He suffered cardiac arrest and his brain was deprived of oxygen. He entered a coma, from which he had yet to emerge as of 2008. On November 4, 1988, just three days after Mark's suicide attempt, Nicky Scarfo, Jr. and a friend assaulted a woman in an elevator at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. The woman said the two men had looked menacingly at her, and she pretended to reach for a gun in her coat. The two men then punched her, pushed her to the floor, and kicked her several times. Scarfo was arrested for assault, convicted, fined, and put on probation for the incident.

Nicodemo Scarfo, Sr. was convicted on November 19, 1988, on more than 32 counts of racketeering, which included eight counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, two counts of illegal distribution of methamphetamine, one count of loansharking, 14 counts of extortion, and one count of illegal gambling.

Nicky Scarfo, Jr. may have attempted to use his father's conviction as a means of rising within the syndicate. In October 1989, Scarfo Jr. bodyguard George Fresolone turned state's evidence and began wearing a wire. Fresolone taped Scarfo Jr. discussing the death of his cousin, Phil Leonetti, an act which would have allowed him to rise within the Philadelphia criminal organization:

My father says, he says, this one is definitely my responsibility. He can't rest.... I told him, I says, "I ain't resting till it's f-ing done" ... How can I rest? How could I sleep at night?... It's always eating at me, eating at me.

The evidence was later used to help indict Scarfo Jr. on racketeering and conspiracy charges in 1990.