THE REAL SOPRANOS - the story of the Decavalcante Mafia family.

The Sopranos television series is a truly legendary work that changed its viewers perception of TV shows and of course changed people's perception of the American Mafia before that the standard for gangster movies was The Godfather with its theme of family and revenge then it was followed by Good Fellas which showed a more mundane side of the mafia lifestyle than was believed and finally in 1999 The Sopranos was released at which point we saw that the drama in the gangster genre could be deeper and more versatile than in The Godfather and that the realism and homeliness of Good Fellas was not at all the standard The Sopranos set a new bar that very few people have approached so far that's why this Series has so many fans around the world even so many years after its end however not all of them are aware that the soprano family from the show had a real life mafia counterpart called the Davante family that looked a hell of a lot like it the show's Creator David Chase has of course denied that he wrote The Sopranos in the image of the decapod kantes but the many coincidences that have been brought up by members of that Mafia Family themselves point to his obvious Gile and if you're interested to hear who might have served as prototypes of the characters in your favorite series what these prototypes were doing and how much similarity between reality and the series was true then meet the real Sopranos on the other side of the [Music] law New Jersey where the fictional and real life Sopranos were from is welld deserving of a whole show to be made about it and its issues with local criminals because it was here that several mafia families were intertwined starting from new New York and ending down in Florida and that's not counting the non-italian gangs which there were more than a few of from the prohibition era but today we're not interested in them but in the one local Mafia family now known as Davante actually to be more precise there were two local families in New Jersey for a while one from Elizabeth Township and the other from Newark both were formed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries only one has stood the test of time Elizabeth would eventually go to The davot KES while Newark would Fade Into Oblivion and its members would disperse to other mafia families this was due to the fact that in Newark in the 1930s there were a number of conflicts that the family did not survive first then family boss gaspare the Miko had a run in with another mafioso named Vincent Troy the latter had moved to Newark in those years and plan to settle there tro did so apparently without the Miko's approval so gaspare decided to get rid of his Newfound insolent neighbor in August 1935 a murder attempt was made on Troy which he did not survive two years later the Miko himself also caught a bullet the most likely scenario of the assassination attempt on him was a conflict with the New York family boss Joe prachi gaspare neverthe last survived but then decided to resign his boss and leave Newark afterwards the commission decided to dissolve the local family and its members dispersed to other clans in case you didn't know the commission is the mafia's body for deciding important issues in the US consisting of the most powerful bosses in the country you can learn more about it in my video about the birth of the American Mafia at the same time literally a few dozen miles away in a much smaller town the nework Elizabeth quietly contained another Mafia Family it's not known who its first boss was because in those years the organization played no particularly significant role we can only say that the vast majority of its first members were natives of the Sicilian Town rera located in the province of agento the first known leader of the family named Phil Amari was also from there and he became the boss in the 19 20s he ruled this Bata until 1958 then he resigned from his post and went to Italy to live out his life he was replaced by Nick deore who was quite old himself and had to leave the boss's chair for health reasons in 1963 and was replaced by his nephew Sam Davante the same one the family is named in honor of to this day Daval kante's Reign is considered the family's Golden Age it was under him that it reached it its maximum influence and economic Prosperity there was even evidence that members of the New York mafia wanted to go to diavante to improve their position the real life Sopranos were involved in all sorts of livelihoods back then they had control of the New Jersey construction industry by running the local union they were involved in gambling betting lone sharking protection and robbery and during the sexual revolution of the 1960s they even managed to enter the pornography trade closer to the 1980s various types of health insurance fraud into the stock market would be added to that list during Sam's era the family was able to spread its interest from Connecticut to Pennsylvania and even partially entered New York likewise Daval kante's Reign is marked by the first evidence that the borata his family unit had influence over the local political system thus Sam had ties to new New Jersey governor Richard Hughes and to Elizabeth mayor Thomas Dunn but davo keante also made his mark on the negative side he talked a great deal about the business in his office which was bugged between 1961 and 1965 there were conversations about both the internal affairs of the family and the state of the mafia in the country overall Davante was one of the intermediaries between Joe banano and the commission after banano failed to attempt to seize power in the American Mafia which is also reflected in these recordings made by the authorities as well as in my video about bonano which you can find on my channel however none of the recordings could directly serve the prosecutors because they were made without proper authorization so Davante avoided a trial but he went to jail anyway it happened in 1971 when he got charged with organizing gambling with a total income of 20 million dollar a year Sam served two of his allotted 5 years he had heart problems and the authorities gave him parole recalling that he was well behaved in prison apparently this was also the reason why Daval kante stepped down his boss of the family moving to Florida and leaving John riggy nicknamed The Eagle in charge of the borada riggy was a hereditary mafioso his father Emanuel was close to Nick delore and was also one of the 's top labor racketeers John's rise began in the late 1950s when he came to the attention of Davante in the 1960s Sam promoted riggy to Captain and put him in charge of Union racketeering and when he got out of prison in 1973 he gave him the deao boss's chair which Jon had held since the beginning of Tavor kante's prison term riggy continued to strengthen the family's Authority established by Davante and it must be said that he succeeded very well until the end of the 20th century when the events that we'll discuss later would take place riggy's Reign was the period in which the generation that became in part the inspiration for The Soprano's characters was on its way to its final formation in 1990 John riggy was jailed for 12 years on labor racketeering charges he was not going to give up power and decided to run the family through trusted individuals one of whom would eventually become Vincent poo nicknamed Vinnie ocean it's polmo who's considered the main candidate suspected to be the prototype for Tony Soprano so from now on we'll lead our narrative about the real Sopranos through the lens of Vinnie Ocean's fate poo was born in 194 4 in Brooklyn he lost his father early and by the end of the 1950s was forced to go to work to help his mother feed the family so Vinnie started at the fton fish market which is where he got his nickname ocean this line of income by the way would remain with poo for most of his life only instead of a Salesman he eventually became the owner of a fish store in the early 1960s Vinnie met and soon married Sam deav K's which became the jumping point for his Repro Shon with the New Jersey family had this not happened PLO might well have become a member of one of the New York families too since his brother Pasqual was a member of the Columbo family and his uncle was related to The Gambino family but fate had it that in the late 1970s Vinnie ocean was accepted into the borada of davot kante what exactly he did in the period from his marriage to to his initiation is unknown in those days pmo was virtually a ghost to the authorities and remained so until the 9s evidence of his first serious crimes would come to the FBI only 10 years after they were committed we're talking about several murders he committed on the orders of family boss John riggy the first victim was Fred Weiss this guy was running a construction scam with people from The Gambino family they bought up the land of an abandoned railroad station on Staten Island and turned it into an illegal dump soon enough law enforcement became interested in the case and they took Weiss among others into custody other offenses were discovered in addition to the dump so Fred could be facing decades Behind Bars Gambino boss John Gotti felt that Weiss could not be trusted that he could easily become a government witness and decided he had to be taken out and since Weiss also had dealings with the cavod kante family the hit was decided to be a joint effort Weiss had two homes one was monitored by team Gambino and the other by team Davante led by VIN ocean Weiss ended up setting foot in New Jersey and poo and his boys gunned him down a year after the hit John riggy was arrested he would remain the boss and run the family through John deato for the first time the only problem here was that in addition to the loyalist there were some potential Rebels on the L namely Lis laraso who had been an underboss during the Sam Davante era and didn't seem to mind regaining the position he lost when riggy took over so in 1991 riggy struck first the team for the hit was once again led by VIN oan however after Lor raso's murder the main supporter of the idea John deato was also eliminated almost immediately the official reason for this was suspicion of his homosexual tendencies in 1991 damato got himself a new girlriend to whom he revealed he was bisexual she blabbed it to an acquaintance who also turned out to be the gangster's girlfriend and this rumor eventually reached the guys from davor keante The Unofficial reason for taking out damato was that he was very close to John Gotti and it was getting to the point that if damato stayed in power the davod kantes would sooner or later turn into a branch of the Gambino family which many were not happy with so the motive for murder being his homosexual tendencies was just right poo was not involved in this hit but helped to dispose of the body I think those who are especially attentive already noticed that this real case in many ways overlaps with the story of VTO spor from these Sopranos and the life ending of someone who who started running a family on the streets after damato's murder is quite similar to the story of Jackie aiel this guy's name was Jake Amari in 1992 he became what's called a street boss in 1995 he was diagnosed with stomach cancer and in '97 he died from it after Amari was diagnosed with cancer he stepped aside and a diarchy consisting of Vinnie and Jimmy poo was put in charge of the family if anything they were just namesakes but this situation did not suit another family member named Charles Mauri he first tried to convince boss John riggy to put him in charge and when he didn't get what he wanted he decided to kill both the palmos however he misjudged his Hitman majuri assigned it to Soldier Jimmy Gallow who instead of pulling off the hit told everything to Vin ocean afterward Galla was already sitting outside Missouri house with a gun in the end the assassination attempts never happened on either side of the conflict and the tension somehow died down on its own it's not known why this happened but neither Mauri nor palmo tried to kill each other again and venosan became the deao main man of the davor kante family his life back then was similar to the one Chase showed in Tony Soprano wife kids luxurious home and excellent income except there were no psychological problems poo had a cut of the family's betting and lone sharking engaged in labor racketeering and organized gambling on a yacht in neutral Waters participated in stock exchange fraud by pumping junk stock through unscrupulous Brokers and dumping it at maximum price and he tried to engage in legitimate businesses as much as possible this included the previously mentioned fish store as well as The Wiggles Strip Club he also made a deal with Seamans to distribute their cell phones to Russia and planed to expand in the nightclub sphere in cooperation with Bob Guion the Creator and owner of one of the most popular erotic magazines in the world Penthouse incidentally Wiggles is another polaro match to Tony Soprano who also owned a strip club only with the name bada bing in reality however WI was a much more famous establishment than bada bang and was located not in New Jersey but in New York it didn't have to do with any Innovations or Elite service but because of the constant hype and Scandals surrounding the club at first residents living near the club complained about it and even held picket protests several times and then the mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani decided to close it citing the law that such an institution should be at a certain certain distance from schools and churches because of this Wiggles opened and closed constantly making headlines in television news and its representativ spent dozens of hours in court the main stumbling block in the law that the parties's argued over was the 6040 rule to summarize a club was an erotic Club only if more than 40% of its space was used for the sale of erotica or erotic services and the rest was other kinds of establishments Vinnie ocean had clearly delineated the required area and fenced it off from the rest of the club which allowed it to continually reopen even though undercover agents were repeatedly caught violating this rule Yes you heard me right there were special agents who would come to the strip joint and see if a girl would dance for them outside of the regulated area and the money to pay the strippers of course came out of the state treasury it it was a dream job in fact the 9s were a golden era for Vin ocean the money flowed the power in the family was in his hands at least until John riggy's release in the early 21st century and the FBI did not even gas at his role in the American Mafia soon enough though the davor kante family would have its own big Bon penero who would go much farther than his show prototype Ralph guino had never been a member of the Davante family but regardless he was to become The Man Who Would gather the evidence that allowed authorities to arrest several dozen people connected to diavante but don't think that before his work for the government gorino was not already famous he had one of the most ingenious and daring robberies in the history history of New York under his belt although it was not performed by the most intelligent robbers which makes it impressive not only for its planning but also for the stupidity of its enactors the gist of the case was as follows gorino knew a guy who worked at that World Trade Center you know the one that took the big Slam in September of we all know what year it's better not to even mention it on YouTube this acquaintance told him that on the same day and at the same time money was being brought into the Bank of America branch in that Center several security guards with bags would take a freight elevator up to the 11th floor and hand the money to the branch upon hearing this story gorino immediately put together a seemingly perfect plan in his head first he talked an acquaintance who was the building's maintenance supervisor into getting some passes so the robbers could get in then these guys were to meet two security guards with money near the freight elevator disarm them transfer the money into gym bags and walk out the front door blending in with the crowd on the one hand this idea felt like suicide the building in question had probably the largest concentration of police in New York there were New York City cops New York and New Jersey Port Authority cops and federal police officers plus inside the center were offices for the US Secret Service Customs protection and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms on the other hand because of this few would have thought that there would be Daredevils willing to break in and Rob Bank of America collectors gorino was counting on this element of surprise only the perpetrators he picked were terrible they were smalltime gangsters and drug addicts Richie Gillette Melvin folk and Mike Reed who agreed to join in for $20,000 it all all happened in January 1998 these Geniuses entered the building passed through the barriers to the service area without any problems and went up to the right floor there they put on ski masks took out pistols and started waiting for the collectors as soon as the elevator doors opened they disarmed them filled their gym bags with money and then successfully left the building seems like a success you might think it wasn't though because because for one they took foreign currency dollars were at the bottom of the bags and on top were Franks Yen lra and other non Ben Franklin paper but that was only half the trouble these Geniuses of criminal ideation walked to the elevator with open faces which they didn't even bother to cover with as much as their hoods and they also walked with the money from the elevator with their heads proudly raised allowing their faces to be shown on more than 50 video cameras of course they were caught almost immediately and forced to hand over the Mastermind of the robbery guino was facing about 20 years in prison but the FBI offered him another option they knew that Ralph had connections with people from the Davante Mafia family and that some of them were supposed to help him get rid of foreign currency the agents wanted Ralph to get close to them and become a Secret informant so began Gina work for the government the first person Ralph spoke to after putting on a mic was Tommy dor a partner in the Davante family the conversation centered mainly on Gino persuading Dora to talk to venosan about marketing the foreign currency he'd recently stolen oh yeah I almost forgot when Gino was recruited the FBI had no idea who Vincent poo was all he had on his record was stealing shrimp years ago it wasn't until Ralph labeled ocean as davo Dante's main man on the streets that the bureau made him a key Target for the operation gorino's transaction was eventually turned down citing Poo's reluctance to get involved with a case that have been talked about so much on TV and was still under notice one of the main reasons why the mafioso let the guy near him in addition to his reliability and reputation was of course his ability to turn a profit which Ralph perfectly demonstrated with his robbery gorino began spending a lot of time with a guy named Joe Mella who was an associate of Vin ocean he worked as his driver for a while and then worked on collecting the payoffs palmo received from his various illegal businesses Ralph rode along with Mella practically Around the Clock taping everything he said and Joe talked a lot sometimes he drove poo who considered guino reliable man and was not shy about talking business the only problem he had with Mella was his gambling addiction not only did he owe almost every New York family but he also began stealing from poo to cover some of his debts and gamble again for example he told ocean that the lone shark was raising his rate by 1% Vinnie in turn made no fuss about it and Joe took the difference for himself of course PLO found out about this and decided that the benefit of Mella was not worth the trouble he was causing so Joe was killed and Ralph came under the wing of Joseph scani who talked just as much as Mella moreover scani liked gorino so much that he promised to recommend him for admission into the family however as was the case with Donnie Brasco who I have a separate video about on my channel Gino was pulled out before he could become a member of the mafia by the summer of 19 1999 almost a year after Ralph first went out on the street with a wire the Daval KES learned that there was a rat in their ranks total paranoia set in everyone was trying to find the snitch leading to several murders and the FBI finally decided that Gino had to be pulled out or they'd get him sooner or later Ralph was taken off the streets at the end of 1999 and already on December 2nd of the same year there was a simultaneous mass arrest of 40 people associated with davot keante more than a few Mobsters from this group opted to switch sides including Vincent poo ocean faced spending the rest of his life in prison as the other guy had told about all his Affairs mentioning all the murders he committed as a result of poos and other defected Mobsters testimonies a couple dozen more people were arrested the total number number of which exceeded 60 and a sixth of them became government Witnesses and so the authorities managed to imprison almost all the high-ranking members of the Davante family including an extended sentence for John riggy who was already in prison Vincent pmo on the other hand served 2 years and upon his release went into the witness protection program his new identity was revealed in the late 90s his name is now Vincent Cabella and he resides in Houston where he owns several strip clubs he was linked to drug trafficking and moneya laundering but they couldn't prove anything so Vin oan is still at large the davu kante family on the other hand has fallen apart since the event this is well illustrated by the fact that the family's Street boss Frank gasi was personally involved in extorting money from a pizzeria in 2009 the real boss John riggy who was still in jail at the time was obviously very sad remembering the power and influence that the mafia had just a few decades before clearly we can't claim a full-fledged copying of Tony Soprano from Vin ocean Chase's characters correspond to the addition of his own creative ideas but you can't prove it to the fans of the series they immediately began to look look for parallels with reality which to give credit often turned out to be quite convincing the main one of course is Tony Soprano and Vincent poo big house big family strip club boss of the family while the authorities were stuck on another and good relations with New York families also cited as a prototype for Tony is John riggy but there are far fewer coincidences here the main one being that they're more similar in appearance Chase also mentioned that the geneves faction in New Jersey was used to create The Sopranos So in theory there could be a piece of Richie Bardo in Tony Soprano for example covering up his illegal dealings under the legal occupation of waste dumping and recycling next let's remember the already mentioned John damato who matches his gay Tendencies with vetto spor and Jay Kamari who died of cancer just like Jackie aiel Salvatore Bon penero nicknamed big had matches with several real life gangsters at once the first was Ralph gorino who just like Bon pensiero cooperated with the authorities in war a wire the second is Anthony Russo from whom Bon peno's nickname was apparently taken Russo was the only known mobster within the confines of New York and New Jersey who had as part of his nickname poly galtieri for his part was inspired by members of the kavante family themselves who were caught on The Wire discussing the first season of The Sopranos they believed that paully was based on Davante Captain Gano vasta who was also a big muscular guy similar in demeanor to gtii Hesh rabkin most resembles Morris Levy a famous music producer who was involved with the Mafia the rest of the characters in the show either don't have real life prototypes or they're heavily drawn from The Real World such as the comparison between Johnny sack and John Gotti or the even stranger parallel between Junior Soprano and Peter Gotti which to me is completely incomprehensible the parallels between the series and reality don't end there however satri Al's pork store also existed only it was called SOS and was owned by a member of the Davante family Joseph giobbe who used it as a headquarters for his crew Chase was not shy about using real life scams in the plot that were really done by the mafia for example John Gotti Jr was tried in 1998 for the phone card scam that big tells furio about at the same trial a whole new gangster scheme was uncovered which almost immediately found Its Reflection in the series this was the time where Tony Soprano paid money to a black activist for organizing riots at a construction site under the guise of dissatisfaction with working conditions for blacks in reality the riots and Strikes were only necessary so that the Mobsters could extort money from the developers in order to quietly continue their work another similar case of using a real crime in the series was the airline ticket scam engaged by Tony Soprano this was tied to Steven kaplan's case who got tried for it in 1999 and remember in the show a Tony ran card game names at a htic Jewish Hotel the real life partner of the davor kante family did the same thing however True Crime and the TV show not only had parallels they overlapped prior to the release of The Sopranos the main movie for Mobsters about themselves was The Godfather the gangsters were eager to get acquainted with actors from the movie in particular it's a well-known fact that James Khan had friendly relations with quite a few gangsters so when Sopranos came out on screens the same fate befell its actors they were often seen in places of business with the mafia and some would see it as inevitable While others would say it was in their favor for example actors Tony Sero and Vincent btor were friends with Columbo family cappo James clemenza though in Cero's case it's not surprising as a young man he was associated with the Columbo crime family had 28 arrests and even served time in prison however he was not the only one who walked a crooked path among the actors of the series for example Tony bores who played Larry but knew John Guardian Paul vario in his Youth and in 2011 was convicted for hiring people connected with the Gambino family to extract a debt from a guy who hadn't paid it Michael sardini who played Frank culina also spent many years in prison five of them for aggravated assault and after after his death in 2001 he was charged with the murder of a Hispanic drug dealer as for Frank valanga the actor who played Carmine lubertazzi although he wasn't in prison he worked for a long time in the famous Mafia Club kopa Cabana to my surprise he was also the inspiration for one of the main characters in the movie greenbook as it was Frank who accompanied the black musician Don Shirley in his tour through some racist States also notable were Vincent pistor who played big and was charged with beating up his girlfriend John venilia who played Ary buo and was arrested for DUI Lilo banado Jr who played Matthew bevaka and was first arrested for drug possession and then went to jail for 10 years for attempted robbery resulting in the death of a police officer and even Robert eer who played the role of Anthony Jr and got three years probation for attempted robbery if I missed anyone let me know in the comments as there were so many mob connected or just lawbreaking guys in The Sopranos that I'm sure I left someone else so I hope you can help The Sopranos is undoubtedly the best series about the American Mafia and one of the best crime dramas so it's not surprising that this work largely Echoes real events and people because as we know life is the best screenwriter

Channel: On the other side of the law

Views: 244,451

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Id: ac2W8Wpzz-Q

Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2024