My name is John Pennisi. I'm a former made member
of Lucchese crime family. [screen buzzes] This is "How Crime Works." [screen buzzing and Whirring] The biggest misconception
about Cosa Nostra and the people that are
involved in that life are people really believe
that there is honor, loyalty, and respect. These three principles, which
Cosa Nostra is based on, it no longer exists. Honor, loyalty, and
respect have been replaced by selfishness and greed. [screen buzzing and whirring] The rules for a member is
the rules of the family and the rules of Cosa Nostra. And those particular rules are: You're not to put your hand
on another made member. You're not to go with
another made member's wife, or even girl, for that matter. You would need to be
fully blooded Italian, your mother and your
father need to be Italian, your bloodline needs to be all Italian. But with every rule, there's an exception, and there has been people who slipped through the
cracks, so to speak. One of the rules is you shouldn't
get involved in lawsuits, you should not sue people. And I know that there was a rule where you're not to get
involved in stocks and bonds. I'm not 100% sure if that's
still in effect today. Specifically in New York, you were not to kill women and children or family members in the Mob. They were not allowed to
use explosive devices, such as bombs, because on the other side, in Italy and Sicily, they were known to use explosives to take out members during a war, or just to take a member out. They didn't want that kind
of attention in New York. So there's an exception to every rule. Frankie DeCicco, who was the underboss for the Gambino family,
had an explosive device put under his car, and he was blown up as a result of that. The "no drug dealing" rule applies to all the Five Families,
but all the Five Families have drug-dealing
activities going on in it. Every family is going
to have certain members that are involved in the drug business and kind of turn a blind eye to it because it brings in so much money. Cosa Nostra members today have no problem breaking the rules on a daily basis, whereas in Carlo Gambino's era, you couldn't break the rules. Breaking the rules meant
getting yourself killed. So all these rules that were put in place for reasons are now being broken. So when you have an organization that no longer follows its own rules, it weakens the organization. [screen buzzing and whirring] Before they created the Five Families, the head of each family
was called a father. So that's where they would
get the name godfather. And at some point, they broke
it down to five fathers, and there was Five Families. So the Five Families in New York are the Genovese family,
which, in the street, they were known as the Westside. That's how we refer to them. There's the Gambino family.
There's Lucchese family. There's the Colombo family
and the Bonanno family. And they're like the nucleus of Cosa Nostra for the United States. So as far as the Five Families
all being in New York, they controlled the
entire state of New York. It wasn't only New York City. And then you have the
creation of the Commission, which was the idea,
basically, of Meyer Lansky, who looked at it as a board of directors. The Commission consisted of the head of each of the families,
those Five Families, and they would basically make decisions on anything that went on between them. Territories were divided, obviously, by what family represented
which part of New York City. It's kind of — they
cut their own turf out. But if it overlapped,
that's where a Commission would come in and make a ruling. [screen buzzing and whirring] So when they created the
structure of the Five Families, they set it up more like a military. From the bottom of that pecking order, you have the associates, who
are considered civilians. Anybody that's not a
made member of that life is considered a civilian. Above them are the made
members of the family, which are called friends. We call them friends in that life. Above them are captains. As we say, caporegimes. They're the head of the crews. The family is represented by all the crews that are in that family. And then above them are the
administration of the family. The top of the administration is the boss, the underboss, and the consigliere. And that's the structure
of the whole family. The word Cosa Nostra means "Our Thing." And that basically
means that the structure of the Mob, or, as people
would call it, Mafia, belongs to them, the members of that life. [screen buzzing and whirring] The Mob picks you. That life, Cosa Nostra, picks you. You don't pick that life. So before someone becomes
an inducted member of a family, they become an associate. And usually how they become an associate is they're associated to someone who's already an inducted member. In order for an associate to be proposed, I think several factors take place. One is how good they get along with whoever it is that they're with, the soldier that they're with, you know, that they do what they're told to do. They keep their mouth closed. Once you're proposed,
a ceremony takes place. Who's conducting that
ceremony is going to be a member or members of the administration. Along with them is going to be, obviously, the captain that's going
to propose you that day. A pistol and a knife are on
the table during this ceremony, and it's mostly there
for symbolic reasons. Your trigger finger, whether you are a righty
or a lefty, is pricked. Your blood is dropped on a
saint, a picture of a saint. It just symbolizes that
the oath that you're taking the oath that you're about to take, you're taking it holding
that saint in your hand. And they ultimately
light that saint on fire, and you're moving that
saint from hand to hand, and you're repeating after whoever's conducting the ceremony. After which he is explaining
the rules of that life to you. [screen buzzing and whirring] My position within the Lucchese
family was as a soldier, but there was times that
I acted for my captain in the capacity of an acting captain, specifically for a sit-down. The administration would pick
the captains of the family. The requirement to be a captain, obviously, would be good leadership, so they would have to see
something in that person to feel that he could lead the crew. That captain is
responsible for each member of the crew, but he's also responsible for all the associates that
are associated to that crew. A consigliere position
is that of a counselor. So, he is specifically handling not only internal what we would call beefs or struggles inside of the
family, but external as well. The difference between
a boss and an underboss, there's not a whole big difference with the exception of the title. Obviously, the boss is
the head of the family, but the underboss holds
just as much weight in that family as the boss. Overall, a boss's position
is to oversee the family. He's really in charge of everything that goes on underneath him, which goes through the administration, all his captains, all the
soldiers in the family, all the way down to the associates. The way the life is structured, the boss is supposed to
abide by the same rules that the captains, his administration, the soldiers, and everyone
else in that life abide by. A boss of a family or family together could bring in hundreds of
millions of dollars per year. There's many reasons to
fill a boss position. One, obviously, would be a
boss is arrested, incarcerated. One would be a boss passes away through health reasons, and, you know, there is a void in the position. But then, there's also reasons like in the Paul Castellano situation, a boss that they felt was being greedy and the family turned on the boss. There's different scenarios where a boss can be taken out, replaced
or ultimately killed for that matter. [screen buzzing and whirring] I think years ago, when
it was first created, the Five Families, there
was a lot more corruption with having law enforcement on the payroll than as it is today. I think there's less of that going on, but that doesn't mean
that it doesn't go on. As far as political influence, obviously it would go
through putting money in people's pockets for political favors. In present times, I don't
think that they have the political power that they once had. I don't think they're able to corrupt the politicians as they were years ago. Initially, the Mob took
control of the unions by force. They would put people in. Those people would corrupt the union, take over the unions, and that's how they were able to control most of the unions,
specifically in New York City. But today, they have their
hand in it, you know, in little areas, but they don't control the
unions like they did in the past. [screen buzzing and whirring] Cosa Nostra came to be in New York sometime in the early 1900s. This was an organization and structure that came from the other side, which means Italy, Sicily. When the immigrants from those countries came here to this country, the Italians were almost
like second-class citizens, and they were discriminated
against when they came. So in the beginning, it
was to fight oppression. But naturally, that turned into
committing organized crime and criminal acts to gain a profit from. So when the average citizen
started to take notice of Cosa Nostra here, I believe that the first reactions were fear and intimidation. Because they feared and
they were intimidated over this group of Italians, they were also fearful
to go to law enforcement. They were fearful to
talk out against them. In turn, Cosa Nostra gained
its power because of this. [screen buzzing and whirring] So I joined Cosa Nostra because I came from a neighborhood, both Ozone Park and Howard Beach, which was replete with guys in that life. And I believe that I looked up to them at that time and wanted
to be just like them. If you are around people
that are in that life, inducted members, at some
point you become an associate. And we were associated, my cousin and I, to the Gambino family
through John Gotti Jr. And the time I'm talking about, I was around 14, 15
years old at that time. So sometime around 2012,
I became an associate and on record with the
Lucchese crime family. By 2013, I was an inducted
member in the family. I stayed an inducted member
in the family until 2018. I ultimately winded up leaving the life because the family that I was a member of falsely accused me of being an informant when it wasn't true. They now were laying on me, which meant that they sent
people to lay and get my pattern. Usually when that is done,
it's either to A, hurt you or B, kill you. I made my decision that
I would never go back to my former friends who turned on me. So obviously, my life has
took a dramatic change. I'm no longer able to see my
family as much as I like to. I'm not able to live as close
to them as I would like to. I have to watch every
place I go, you know, and be very careful at what I do. And my plans have to be mapped out of where I'm going and what I'm doing. So my life took a big change. [screen buzzing and whirring] In my opinion, in 20 years from now, Cosa Nostra is hardly
going to exist in New York. I don't believe that they're
going to be able to survive. Cosa Nostra now, compared to years ago, has definitely declined. And the reason is these sentences that are being handed out, the government and specifically the FBI have unlimited funds. They're able to go after them. They're able to take out
bosses with the RICO. As far as earning money
by committing crimes or doing various criminal
acts, it's limited today than it was. So now, once you limit moneymaking and money earning,
you're taking away power because money brings power, and the organized crime today
is definitely less powerful than it was in years past. In the past few years,
there's been an increase in arrests, and a large number
of arrests, in Cosa Nostra. Specific families are targeted, and the reason being is that it's hard for
members of Cosa Nostra to operate without law enforcement, specifically the FBI,
knowing what they're doing. There are more people that
are informants, cooperators. They have people that are
working inside families with the FBI, giving the FBI information. That's how they're dismantling families. Family by family, they dismantle them. Members of law enforcement
from the United States now work very closely with members of law enforcement from people outside of the United States,
like Italy and Sicily. They jointly create cases together. [screen buzzing and whirring] I made the decision to create a blog, and I started just writing
from my experiences. So the first podcast I created is also the name of the blog, which is called "Sitdown News," and that's all also the
name of the podcast. And I just recently
created a second podcast called "Unlimited Substance." In the next episode,
we'll talk how Cosa Nostra makes money in 2022. Stay tuned. which is the laboratory where
they will process the leaves.
Looking forward to part 2. Also doesn't anyone find it weird how revered Meyer Lansky is to later generations of mobsters (Penissi here and Franzese mentions him a lot). They give him credit for a lot of the "organizing organized crime" shtick when it was already organized before him.