The Real Sopranos Documentary

[ __ ] things to play lob these are actual FBI recordings of four men talking about a mob TV show they love they're discussing whether The Sopranos is based on them the men belong to a real New Jersey crime family called the DeKalb County family [Music] these recordings were later used in court to convict them of murder racketeering extortion illegal gambling bribery organized crime they would rather break your arm off and beat you to death with your own arm rather than make love to a woman you stabbed the guy in the eye with a fork full violence and intimidation is why they survived [Music] this is a true story of extreme violence brutality and fear these guys aren't just like The Sopranos these are the real Sopranos and this is the internet tale of their rise and fall [Music] in the TV show The Sopranos Tony Soprano is the head of a modern mob family violence brutal and ruthless but there's something that's different about his family until the Sopranos came along the mob had always been a New York thing the show established the idea of the small town mobster living in the epitome of suburbia New Jersey but there was a real New Jersey crime family before The Sopranos the de Cavalcanti family were based on the wrong side of the Hudson River they were the smallest and oldest mob family in America they called themselves the Jersey mob the world now knows them as the real Sopranos wherever the scriptwriters have listened or read the tapes of actual conversations by mafiosi and they know that every other word is laced with profanity no [ __ ] way so in the mob vernacular you profanity serves both as a noun verb [ __ ] all of them an adjective and adverb it's every part of grammar the similarities between the Sopranos and the real New Jersey mob don't stop it the way they speak both families hung out at a pork store and the fictional sent alleys is less than 200 yards from sockos where the real mob could be found most mornings you can walk around the corner you can walk go to the real gangster pork store and then walk down the street and go to the TV pork store Tony Soprano reveals his caring side when on the bus Jackie a prelate dies of stomach cancer in 1992 Rio de Cavalcanti underboss Jake Amari died of stomach cancer but in the real New Jersey crime family there was one man who could claim the most unbelievable parallels with the fictional New Jersey crime family Vinny Palermo known as Vinny Ocean has the strongest claim to be the real Tony Soprano Tony Soprano owns a strip club the badda-bing vini ocean owned Wiggles a strip club in Queens Tony and Vinny are both cappers both their crews are murderous and often incompetent Tony Soprano lives in a mini mansion Vinny Ocean lived in this mini mansion both Tony and Vinny take over their family without officially becoming boss and both of them have trouble spelled with a capital F be the world of the real Tony Soprano Vinny Palermo was just as brutal and sometimes funnier than fiction and the mob isn't a career you retire from for both men there's only three ways it can end you either die you go away or you cooperate there's really no other way out of it the rise and fall of Vinnie Ocean began in 1989 the decouple countries were what they had always been the poor relations of the New York Mafia if you listen to Bruce Springsteen he'll tell you everything you need to know about New Jersey New Jersey is the place you want to get out of and you aspire to come to New York it's the place next to the power it's the place next to money it's the place next to celebrity no one took them seriously if you asked anybody who was in the five families in New York I don't think they want to be a member of the Jersey mob I actually know of some cases where you know guys couldn't get made in New York and as a last resort take Jersey the New York families look at the New Jersey family as a pathetic stepchild the New York families call them farmers and they really hate that they were a branch office of the American Mafia and they didn't like it but this was the family Vinny Paloma was trying to get into he started at the bottom he got his nickname because he at one point was involved in selling fish at the Fulton fish market so they came up with the brilliant nickname of any ocean Vinny wasn't just working the fish market he was hustling and he'd married into the mob the daughter of the underboss of the real soprano family I think he was street smart and willing to do things that other people were not willing to do he was also able to kind of see other people's weaknesses his very corporate guy basically you know he would have been a great CEO it was that willingness that got Vinnie Ocean his big chance it was time for him to make his bones in 1989 John Gotti the biggest boss in the New York Mafia wanted the Jersey mob to do him a favor this is very important for our family it'll give us some credence make us look good with the other five families John Gotti always kind of looked at the Calvin Candie family as a Jersey mall or something and so gaudi reached out to the de Cavalcanti family the farmers and asked them to do a little piece of work that's the phrase they use but to basically shoot this guy who is a real estate developer in Staten Island the developers name was Fred Weiss it was a Sunday morning 1989 four cars drove in convoy over the bridge to Staten Island Vinnie was one of a crew of 12 men staking out Fred wises house comes walking out of his house September morning September 11 1989 he comes walking out his door and two guys walk up and shoot him in the face Vincent Palermo James Gallo jumped back in the car James said go go go so I pulled away not too fast not too slow that was a big deal because that was doing a favor for John Gotti therefore Vinnie Palermo could do no wrong in the de Cavalcanti family from ned on a few days later Vinnie ocean became a made man in the de Cavalcanti family when you remember that the Calvo County Family you had no choice about being second second banana on second place of New York families but that was about to change for Vinnie Ocean and the real Sopranos the 1990s would be a time of murder extortion and fast qualities of town in The Sopranos Tony lives the high life always flush with cash provided in brown envelopes by the men in his crew Marty this is lifted directly from the real life [Music] Vinnie Ocean the real Tony Soprano became a made man in the Jersey mob after the Staten Island hit now he too was part of that money-making machine getting into the family was as hard as getting into the most exclusive Country Club in America it was an honor not easily bestowed organized crime he is organized Vinnie was joining a carefully structured business you have a boss you have an underboss you have a consul year and I would be called the administration of the family two three highs people the family the boss was the only one who could appoint that captains the Kappas were people captains who control the real work includes their units each capo had at least ten people who are known as soldiers people who were formerly and underwent the blood induction into the family then he was now a soldier a made man he had taken an oath never to reveal the family secrets on pain of death he'd moved up a rung from being an associate you start off as an associate and if you're a great earner or if you're somebody that they can depend on to do dirty work that they need you know it's gonna push your chances up to become a member in the modern mob it's all about cash flow associates have to keep money up to soldiers soldiers to Capo's and Capo's to the administration vini was given his own scams to run his to make as much cash as he could from as long as he kicked some of it upstairs these were the classic mob schemes money lending and illegal betting as long as it's gambling and loan sharking a mafia will be alive and well frank santa sola spent 20 years as a cop infiltrating organized crime he knows better than anyone else how mob scams work because he's done them himself this is the Park Hill section in Yonkers South Yonkers they used to be a club here right here I used to turn in work this was a certain guys club now I don't know if it's still in operation but I also used to buy homemade wine in the basement Frank was working as a numbers runner the bottom of the mob hierarchy most of Vinny ocean's crew ran some sort of gambling operation it's changed you know it's not it's not what it used to be the numbers was the unofficial mob lottery people would bet on what three numbers would come up as the total gambled at the Brooklyn racecourse different outfits have different payouts like the outfit I work for they were paying five hundred and fifty to one people loved to gamble now you didn't have to twist their arms everybody Gamble's anyone who knows anything about gambling in America would prefer to wager with the mob they give you the best odds there's no taxes a lot of guys who gamble end up borrowing money and if they can't go to the bank and say I want to gamble $450,000 so what you do is you go to Vinny and they say yeah no problem give you this money okay no problem and then you gamble it and what happens you lose just like Tony Soprano Vinnie Ocean put money out on the street you're clenching Lehigh rates of interest with my [ __ ] money say you borrowed five hundred dollars so you know it's like if I borrowed five I'd have to pay eight back so can you imagine if I borrowed five and I could not pay the principal back and I have to come up with three hundred bucks a week to give you every week Sopranos betrays a world where violence is the simple solution to every problem that's just as true of the real mob for most of the 20th century the mob was an invisible government and presence in the New York metropolitan area including New Jersey and Connecticut and Long Island and they were into everything but the Catholic auntie's controlled one of the important laborers unions in the construction industry they were involved in drug dealing they extorted stores auto crimes medical fraud insurance fraud Bank burglaries murder salts do you name it day if there was money in it they they found a way to turn it into something the alleged members of the Colombo crime family were indicted for loan sharking labor corruption extortion the 90s was a good time for the Jersey mob the FBI hit the New York family's hard taking them down one by one in a series of huge cases but the real Sopranos continued to fly under the radar they live basically two lives they have their little suburban scene going on with wives and kids and then they also have their social club thing going on where everybody's hanging out and paying no attention to their family and scheming and making money and gambling and having a good time with their girlfriends and of all the members of the DeKalb County family Vinnie Ocean was having the best time of old he was living upper middle-class Long Island existence with a wife two kids who go to private school and they would go to Disney World once a year Vinnie had a unique money-making Enterprise a main supply of clean cash we go [Music] yes just like Tony the real Sopranos owned a strip club his old nude cloth we're not serving alcohol and girls dancing around stage Thursday fighters inside it does it was a big proudest and girls danced mute onstage so that's the best thing you can see Wiggles was his wonderful source of what he calls legitimate money it was a perfect place it was a cash business Wiggles was meant to be Vinny's source of legitimate cash but all it brought in was problems with the world the new mayor of New York also an italian-american wanted to clean up the city and he wanted to start right here on Queens Boulevard new Giuliani had decided that it was a really bad idea to have strip clubs in neighborhoods so they come up with a law that would essentially eliminate any strip club that was within 500 feet of schools and churches he had a lot of problems because they were trying to close down the nude bars he was just incensed about it didn't they have better things to do with their time the strip clubs claimed they were just enjoying their constitutional rights to freedom of speech the city came up with a rule called 6040 6040 is a strange rule if more than 60% of your business is a strip club then you're a strip club and you can't exist within 500 feet of a church but if just a little bit more that a little less than 40% is a strip club you're all set you're not really a strip club the 60% of the club is empty right now the 60/40 trick enabled wiggles to stay open but it was still the constant subject of police attention it's funny how that's an assignment that a lot of the officers really seem to covet but they they they send in undercover officers to see if it's really a strip club which is a really tough assignment and they would kind of see what was offered in the VIP room some people thought that girls some people sniffing him here for 50 minutes some people enjoying the dance you know watch the girls dancing in front of them and a little lap dance Wiggles is still open today under new management but there was one thing even more important than Kash respect on TV Tony Soprano is prepared to kill his oldest friend over a matter of respect it was even more true for the real Sopranos a mob family with a collective inferiority complex terrified that New York didn't give them the respect they deserved they cultivate an image of cool guys that that's how they recruit it's not you know I mean can you can you imagine that you'd be able to walk around the neighborhood in Brooklyn and say hey let's let's all become heroin dealers that doesn't really work even though they're heroin dealers the Jersey mobs inferiority complex at a body count and that gave Vinny his chance to step up to the very top those guys were sociopaths but they would rather break your arm off and beat you to death with your own arm rather than make love to a woman I noticed and you know I'm used to concern me because I used to drink with them eat with them you know party with them weddings wakes funerals the Jersey mob were prepared to murder their own acting boss John D'Amato to protect the family Connor D'Amato his girlfriend let something slip to another member of the family Anthony Kapoor she told me John D'Amato and her were going to sex clubs in the city and swapping partners that John was engaged in homosexual activities he's shocked I knew John for a long time he was the boss of an organized crime family couldn't be acting that way Anthony felt he just had to tell other people about this because mostly the mafia has rule says he can't be gay in being the Mafia I've met Anthony capo once he came down from his house in a bathrobe and looked like he was snoring his brains out all night that's very impression I got of him is just a coked-up guy he is sort of the psycho you go to when you need to get money from somebody the guy owes you money have Anthony go talk to the guy with a baseball bat he called a meeting of the Capo's and it was decided that for the sake of the family honor D'Amato nobody's gonna respect us if we have a gay homosexual boss sitting down and discussing Cosa Nostra business with other families I don't think any family would be to police to hit and that boss was actually found in a gay bar I don't think they'll go over too well at all a car was waiting outside de Matos house D'Amato came out and got him capo turned and shot him twice in the face they shot him in the back of a car and drove him to a garage and rolled him up in a rug and set him upstate word gets back in two seconds you know you guy like that gets killed you know you're gonna find out about it real quick and the room isn't gonna fly and who you think that as with most mob hits they got away with it most of them are pretty clean job you probably know exactly who did it but in order to prove a murder case you know you need evidence corroboration with D'Amato dead the family decided not to appoint a new boss instead they appointed three Capo's to run the family one of these men was Vinnie ocean Vinnie had reached the top of the mob he was a rich man but the icing on the cake for the real Sopranos was yet to come it was 1998 and a new TV show hit the screens the story of a New Jersey crime family The Sopranos perfect thank you it was the biggest audience and critical hit of the year above all when the Sopranos hit the screen it put the New Jersey mob on the map The Sopranos made that account the county's famous people knew about them before so the Sopranos in effect were terrific public relations boost for the DeKalb counties and gave them some kind of aura of pride something they never had before actually real Jersey mob would take a break from extorting construction sites to watch The Sopranos do the same thing and they loved it it kind of gave them this almost romantic aura their TV stars that's the way they act about the thing they talk about it as if of course they make a TV show about us a lot of these guys are barely making a living and when they see something like this on TV they feel much better about themselves I think that they were thoroughly entertained by it it's like anything else they they they felt the thrill of being not imitated but portrayed Tony Soprano and the badda-bing might look like they were based on Vinnie ocean and Wiggles but the creators of the TV show insisted they hadn't copied the real Jersey mob in fact they did a PR job on The Sopranos made the real mob seem more successful than they were The Sopranos is good entertainment but it's terrible history it's lousy facts anyone in the mob who lived the lifestyle of Tony Soprano wouldn't last one day [Music] he begins his day by walking out of his mini mansion in his bathrobe he walks down to pick up his newspaper he's totally exposed if anyone wanted a hit amore welcome they could all the mobsters that I've met in my lifetime I've never met anybody that was a good guy all they're interested in is their own self survival making money and if necessary murdering everybody in their path soprano is not your typical mobster and in a bizarre mingling of fact and fiction The Sopranos would play a role in the downfall of the real Jersey mob on TV it's a source of dramatic tension the FBI are watching The Sopranos in the real world FBI surveillance tapes showed the de Carroll counties comparing themselves to soprano characters and this would damn them when they eventually came to trial so what you have is a kind of art imitates life imitates art and and you have gangsters sitting around watching in The Sopranos and learning from them and imitating them one of the arguments was you know the government can't prove that they're a crime family and I said what are you King they've compared themselves to a you know a make-believe crime family vini ocean and the Jersey mob thought they were untouchable but the show they loved would make them famous in all the wrong ways the real Sopranos were about to find themselves top of everybody's on TV the FBI are always on Tony Soprano's case their dream scenario is to flip one of his men big [ __ ] is a central figure in Tony's tightly knit crew but with a drugs charge hanging over him there's nothing else he can do he agrees to wear a wire with the fictional New Jersey mob making their headlines the FBI were forced to do something about the real Sopranos their number-one target was acting boss Vinnie Ocean at the end of the day you need a break you need somebody who's going to do more than just offer you confidential information you need somebody who's willing to make tapes Maria got her break and Vinnie met his nemesis in the unlikely shape of a land called Ralphie Karina he was a short guy medium build salt-and-pepper hair Pekka bleed rest you know a little bit of an olive complexion you know had to talk Ralphie was gambler he is basically not a tough guy he's not gonna go out killing people what he's going to do is he's gonna have his scheme seen he had this guy's like lives to scape he schemes the way I dream Ralphie's big scam was a delivery of cash coming to the World Trade Center on the 13th of January 1998 a security van with the money arrived in the underground car park at 11 a.m. two guards but bags of money on a trolley and took the lift to be 11th floor when pull some guns out grab these bags that were being transported by bank employees and take the elevator down and get out of the building with bags of cash they walked out of the building with three million dollars in bags as nonchalant as you like and as the elevator doors open on the 11th floor but the heist didn't go exactly as planned as Ralphy later put it and the three guys he chose for the job turned out to be morons they forgot that there were cameras all over the place and in one particularly beautiful moment they still hooked right up into the camera which ended up on the front page of just about every newspaper the next morning I don't know within days they had all of them they got off the lift at the wrong floor even worse they've taken foreign currency useless to Ralphie it was very amusing to the general New York population because here they were they hate war all these ski masks and they covered themselves up and then they went out in the hallway took everything off and Shh the robbery was linked back to Ralphie almost immediately the senior FBI agent turned up at his house and offered him one chance to stay out of jail [Music] he was able to talk him through and basically laid the cards on the table and said here your options and you're doing yourself a lot of good and everybody else a lot of good if you you know join Team America and he did you persuaded him so what we did was rather than make a big publicity we just recovered the money and we kept it quiet Ralphie was now a rat his job was to wear a wire and get close to Vinnie ocean if somebody suspects you and they do realize that you're taping them you know you're gonna you're gonna get killed there'd be some occasions where I'm where well fee was shown how to tape his friends Frank's aunt Isola is one of only a handful of cops who have ever infiltrated the mob I tape it to my chest between my and the breast area by the solar plexus because it indented there and you know these guys are pretty smart they're always bumping into you for a reason to find out if you're if you're wired so there was a few few ways of doing it you know as you're doing this for me going through my mind is my mission I knew that I had an hour and a half of recording time so whatever ever information I had to get it within that hour and a half and that's plenty of time hit the record button you see the red light go on so now you know it's recording and then I always would say to myself you know I saw the red light because you know what emotions come into it and you sometimes your mind plays tricks on you did I put it on didn't I put it on now I know it's on now I'm live I'm ready to go nobody's gonna look naturally just like Frank even once he got on the inside Ralphie would never be sure he was safe I remember walking into the social club it was no movement and everybody's somber so I walk up to the bar nice guy Frank goes hey Cheech we know you're a cop now we want you to take this money and get the [ __ ] out of here you know you gotta sort of like think pretty quick so let the grab the money and as I'm grabbing I'm saying well I know you know I know you think I'm a cop I ain't but I'm taking your money and the guy puts his hand on mine he says well Cheech we just have to you know we just got to make sure you just got to make sure this was the bar right here when did they flip you tell me don't lie what Ralphie had plenty to fear the way The Sopranos dealt with their rat was realistic enough no one saw the FBI visit Ralphie at home as far as the family was concerned he was a guy who had just pulled off a massive heist and that made him welcome in the Jersey mob Ralphie Corina became the newest member of Vinny oceans crew Ralphie comes into the family because he's making money it's always about money forget the rest of the stuff forget about honorable guys at Aulis it's about money it's a business Ralphie was put with Vinnie's driver Joey mesilla known as Joey Oh Joey was really poor schmuck he was an errand boy collecting large amounts of money for Vinny Parma most guys in the modern mob were more like Joey than Vinnie scratching a living from disorganized crime they managed to combine extreme violence with comical incompetence a guy like Ralphie looked a Vinny like a godsend how could they not have known that Ralphie would possibly become an informant after his genius scheme exploded onto the front page of every newspaper in New York it's hard to know except I would point out that Ralphie kept bringing the money in and as long as that money's coming in the incentive to just put you know whack Somebody it's just not there Joey on the other hand had debts up to his eyeballs problems with his wife problems with his ex-wife problems with his girlfriend he was one screw-up away from some serious trouble he was trying to run his own gambling business and he had terrible luck always I mean running an illegal gambling business is very very stressful you got to pay off your bets and if you don't have money and if you haven't calculated correctly you're always owned money and it's a huge problem he is always desperate for cash and constantly try to come up with ways to make money Joey have been waiting half a lifetime to become a made man finally Vinny gave him his chance Vinny wanted his rival big ears Charlie Missouri dead Missouri lived with his mother in this house in Linden New Jersey [Music] at the point that you're asked to do it you basically have two options do it or you better turn yourself in somewhere because it's not as if you have any other choice spent hours parked in front of this guy's house trying to figure out how they could get him when he's coming out killing big ears would get Joey back in the families favor instead he achieved nothing the guys he was with didn't really seem to have much of a plan it was pretty much go up to the door if he answers it will shoot him sort of thing the cops gonna come them what they spent hours till they realized that there was a state trooper like park-like next door who happened to live next door figured that probably might not be a good place to do that finally they just like all gave up and drove off and that was the end of that and and Joey miss Ella flew down to Florida and he just just said I'm not doing this this is just you've got to set it up better than this and that was Joey's big chance to be a made guy but you have to ask yourself this question have you ever shot anybody what's it like how do you do it how do you do it right go to school to learn how to do that Joey went back to his version of everyday life this is the business end of organized crime two guys in a car driving around trying to think of ways to make money [Music] Ralphy had to keep Joey thinking he was another guy looking out for a scam the FBI would create scenarios for him blunt jewelry or other valuables for him to pretend to steal you pretend you have stolen property what you do is when when you do make recoveries of stolen property you use it to set it up and you offer to sell it all the time Ralphy was pumping Joey for information what he and his handlers were getting was a picture of criminal incompetence one of the things that happens with a lot of FBI tapes is they're supposed to turn a tape recorder off when people start talking about personal stuff they don't they leave it on all the time most of the talking is really boring because it's mostly how are we gonna make money who's making money well how can we get a piece of that so far no one suspected Ralphy wasn't what he seemed at least of all his boss Vinnie Ocean it was Joey he was getting himself into deeper and deeper trouble the Jersey mob could come over like the Keystone Cops but these clowns packed real guns I can't imagine what it would be like to get up every single morning thinking that some psychotic guy I owe $450,000 to could be parked outside my door he owed lots of money to people and he owed money to people that were in other families and whenever there's an issue about that then the person that they're gonna go to with their beef is your boss then he had had enough he told Joey he should have him killed it's probably not the best idea to kill somebody who owes you money because probably if you don't kill him they'll pay you something so you'll at least have some money coming in in his case it just I think he became kind of an embarrassment it was October the 10th 1998 Joey got a call from a bookmaker who owed him money to say he'd got ten thousand dollars for him he was called to a golf course way out in Brooklyn they lured him out to a parking place [Music] and somebody just pulled up and blew them away and that was the end of Joey oh they were all trying to kill each other because everybody thought everybody else was becoming an informant of course there was an informant the FBI were listening all along but they weren't getting what they needed they didn't have evidence linking Vinnie ocean to the crimes his crew was committing you can't go to victims no victim wants to come in and I did rather pay the loan sharking debt they used a tactic that had worked this was pretty sure if any player meant money and so our cooperator offered him a cell phone set I've got this connection and take it and as many minutes as you want and that was the cell phone we had but after Joey was killed Ralphie was put with 10's claw fani a gangster of the old-school Joe 10-year [ __ ] funny so named because he's deaf in one ear was a former Marine who is a tough guy he's the guy that pulls the trigger tinea might have been more frightening than Joey owes that he was just as incompetent he wanted Ralphie's help with a hit he was another I mean we always got stuck with people who who were not very productive financially he was always looking for four things to do and so one don't you know one of the things that we investigated was that school Fani had agreed to take the hit and he was trying to to get at him and school Fani he was obsessed with trying to kill the guy in a motorcycle but he didn't know how to drive a motorcycle it was just like these endless conversations about getting a motorcycle and how he and our cooperator were going to ride on it and what they were gonna do other members of the crew was starting to suspect that Ralphie might be the rat after all these were guys with a stack of bodies between them they ordered a hit on him we began to worry that they were suspicious of him we were worried about the safety of our cooperating witness we were worried about whether or not Vinnie Palermo would flee the FBI was closing in on Vinnie Ocean Ralphie's grave had already been dug but the real Sopranos case was about to take a turn unprecedented in the history of the mob in The Sopranos Tony is always waiting for that unwelcome knock at the door Calva candy crime family is one of the oldest and most entrenched crime families in Villa Costa Nostra's on the 2nd of December 1999 the police and the FBI arrested 40 members of the de Cavalcanti crime family in the biggest ever swoop on the mob the press called it the real Sopranos case Vinnie Ocean the real Tony Soprano first thought about flight on the day of the arrest Vinnie Palermo was found under circumstances that would indicate he was leaving home the day that was supposed to take down the first case I think six is seven of the top defendants warrant home he had a bag with him and money with him and he was you know he clearly was ready to take off but Vinnie didn't get away like the rest of the family he found himself in jail the FBI had come for the de Cobo counties just like the five families in New York they tried to emulate they effectively brought the whole family down and they arrested almost everybody which is kind of unprecedented then he was facing serious jail time they included murder murder conspiracies loan sharking extortion fraud the interstate transportation of stolen property all manner of charges it was a very strong case and there were very strong charges and when you're facing that the stronger the charges the more difficult it is to [Music] to roll the dice Vinnie Ocean was on the ruling committee of a mob family it was meant to be a man of honor to go down and do his time but Vinnie Ocean wasn't entirely happy with that option for somebody like Vinnie Palermo who who led a nice life and who had a business that he enjoyed and like the legitimacy of being a business guy and do you know it's a very hard thing to then settle into prison for life Vinnie's lawyer did a deal with the prosecutors Vincent Vinnie ocean Palermo agreed to cooperate he flipped and once Vinnie had flipped the floodgates were open you couldn't put the number of informants that came out of that case on a school bus you couldn't fit him there were so many of them that they were they were rushing to get in there everybody's trying to get you know get their deal as fast as possible a few old-timers like Tania's Kafani chose to do that time but something fundamental had changed in the mob don't forget years ago guys went into that life because they really had nothing else if they went to jail sometimes it was almost an improvement today a lot of these kids who become made guys are driving if fathers brand-new car at 15 years old grow up in a million-dollar house of course when you throw them in a Cell they're gonna cooperate they'd never been tested and they've really been pampered most of the life it was the end of the line for the de Cavalcanti family the Jersey mob thought they were the real Sopranos they aspired to be on the same level as the New York families and they blew it listen you look at a guy like John Gotti whatever he was whatever he was and you gotta give the guy a little bit of credit because he was really treated like the lowest form of dirt in prison and he never broke if you admire that kind of quality in somebody because he backed up what he said the end game would play out very differently for Vinnie ocean well Vinny Palermo ends up in WITSEC the witness protection program moves he'll move in next to you he who become your neighbor you have no idea who he is he has a new name his name's not have any Palermo's that I'm sure he doesn't you know go by the name Vinnie Ocean when he moves into some suburb and in Phoenix the best days of the mob were well and truly over Tony Soprano is always thinking about the good old days when he thought that mafiosi were more Spartan they were more loyal they obeyed the oaths of America how to conduct themselves as Men of Honor but the so-called men of Honor broke even their own rule [Music] in real life they noted to be and watch getting at pictures taken they got to watch their phones on tap they got to watch that the club that they hang in it is in bug they got to be afraid now if the guy that talking to her and a wire on them they're absolutely paranoid but you have to be there is no way they're as powerful today as they was say 30 40 20 years ago today they're lucky they can get a reservation at a restaurant now really literally the mob looks finished as a viable career option but as one opportunity ends another one begins Tony Sirico the actor on the left is convincing his Paulie walnuts for a reason before he became an actor Sarika was arrested 28 times and jailed for 7 years let's whack this [ __ ] would be double in life because he was shot the kind of guys who used to join the mob now play mobsters on The Sopranos while the real Jersey mob do their time or hideaway in witness protection there's one Mafia family that's alive and well and living in New Jersey for now the soprano [Music] [Applause] you [Music]

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Views: 4,192,541

Rating: 4.5846891 out of 5

Keywords: Sopranos, Borgia, +mafia, +cosa, nostra+, Organized, crime+, Vinnie, Ocean, Gardofini, The real sopranos, decavalcante family, New Jersey, documentary, Rick Borgia, goodfellas, cosa nostra, organized crime, Real deal, Sicilia, Sicily, La cosa Nostra, Mafia, New York, tv show, top rated show

Id: i_WtIeeSuO0

Length: 47min 49sec (2869 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 04 2012