THE STRONGEST MOB BOSS (or not?) - STORY OF CARLO GAMBINO

in the American Mafia there's probably no man with as ambiguous an assessment of his fate as Carlo Gambino some say that he was the most powerful boss in the history of kostra managing to dictate his will on other mafia families others believe he was just a publicized pawn who had someone behind him throughout his life some portray him as a champion of Mafia tradition and a staunch supporter of keeping mafiosi out of the drug trade others argue that it all was nothing more than hypocrisy with nothing to back it so who is he a mafia legend or an overblown caricature today I'll tell you the story of Gambino trying to give answers and examples for each of the opinions so that at the end you will answer for yourself the question I have posed meet Carlo Gambino on the other side of the law not much is known about Don Carlo's childhood he was born in 1902 in palmo to Tomaso Gambino and feliche Castellano he had three brothers and two sisters all of the sources I used stated that on both his fathers and mother's side The Gambino family was connected to the Sicilian Mafia some have even suggested that Carlo was initiated into the mafia before 1921 while still in Sicily but there are no strong arguments in favor of this however even before joining he was already quite familiar with how the mafosi lived and operated not only because poo was one of the centers where such people of Honor were gathered but he also had relatives in this organization as I've said before so it's not surprising that little Carlos's childhood Idol was not some scientist or ruler but prominent local Mafia figure Dan Vito kioo who was rumored to have killed detective Joseph pastoso doing his overseas colleagues a huge favor pastoso was a pain in the ass for the American Mafia of the early 20th century he ran the New York City Police Department dealing with crime in Italian neighborhoods where the mafia did most of its business then and in 1909 pestr Cino decided to travel to Italy to collect data on local criminals since the US and Italy had not yet had an exchange of this kind so he wanted America to use this Intel to start deporting Italian immigrants with open trials in Italy and pencil in those who had already served their time this would have hit the American mafiosi hard and they with the help of their Sicilian colleagues made sure that pestr Cino did not leave Sicily alive according to one version it was Don VTO cashio fero who shot him unsurprisingly with such early conflicts and Idols our current hero also chose the path of the mafioso and although the beginning of this path for Gambino was undoubtedly laid in palmo it was in the United States that he'd become a real active player in the Underworld Carlo would go there in 1921 at the age of 19 in December of that year he arrived at the shores of the United States on a cargo ship and illegally set foot on national territory researchers specul at that this method of immigration was chosen because Gambino had some trouble with the law in Italy he was met in the states by relatives on his mother's side who had already been living in New York for some time his uncle jeppe Castellano by that time was already a member of the mafia family now known as the gambinos and cousin Paul Castellano is familiar to many fans of American Mafia history through his conflict with John Gotti also some researchers claim that before his move Carlo had another iconic acquaintance in New York named Tommy lucazi who would himself later be a mob boss they claimed that Tommy and Carlo were childhood friends in palmo until lues left with his parents for the states in 1911 however on the contrary another mob boss of those years named Joe banano said that Gambino and Lukes met and became close only in New York who to believe you can decide for yourself because there's no no super strong support on either side right after the move Gambino worked at a legal job some say that he worked in his uncle japp's butcher shop others say he helped his brother Paul Castellano and his auto shop at the same time his plunge into crime through bootlegging began at first he had no businesses of his own he worked for an unknown Mafia member helping him with Logistics and sales or to put it simply he drove and delivered illegal alcohol alol this fact is plagued with a little confusion because of the different sources that refer to Gambino as part of a different Bata or family unit some say that he worked with the daila family others that he worked with the masara family but neither of them are right since he like Castellano was associated with the Mano family and the confusion arises from the fact that relatively recently it became known that moo was the boss of a separate family before this Gambino had only been considered a captain some attributed him to Mia as he was on his side during the castella M War others say Dila as Manel was also from a family founded by poo natives in fact until about 1911 to 1912 he was indeed in the same borata with Dila but afterward he split off with some number of people and became an independent boss you you can see more about this in my video on the birth of the American Mafia another Factor Why Gambino was attributed to the masara family was not only mano's cooperation with this Bata but also the alleged involvement of unproven childhood friend Tommy luuk with the Masia family with whom he allegedly brought Carlo in fact lues was already connected to the arena family by then which formed sometime between 1920 and 1921 before massaria even became the boss of the family the confusion here is again due to the fact that Raina and Masia came from a single borata that split into two in the early 1920s in general this is probably all that's known about gambino from that period he was associated with the Mano family and seems to have become a member somewhere between 1922 and 1930 he was a bootlegger and he married his cousin Katherine Castellano from from there Carlo Gambino's name only comes up in the early 1930s as part of the castella M War at that time massaria who was on the same side as Gino's boss manfredy Manel also fought against Salvatore maranzano and it seems Carlo had some leverage in the family by then Joe banano calls him in his book a soldier of the Manel family and another mafioso of that time Joe vashi added that Gambino was a big man in the Masia camp both of them are called Carlo in the context of an incident where his brother Paul Gambino was murdered instead of him the brother survived and Carlo along with his cronies soon defected to Manzano's side at the end of the castella mar war in which both Masia and Manzano were killed a Carlo found himself in the family led by Vincent Mangano and was apparently promoted to Captain all these years Gambino managed to stay in the shadows for nine whole years the authorities knew nothing about him at all and Carlos's first arrest didn't happen until 1930 and listen to this for looking like a suspicious person in the end of course he was released as a matter of fact it happened again the next time he got arrested 3 years later for taking part in a scam Carlo pulled an old trick called the handkerchief switch scam its Essence was to approach a wealthy stranger on the street introduce yourself as a foreigner and flash a big wad of money while asking them to help you rent a hotel or provide some other service you were willing to pay for as soon as the money was shown your accomplice came up to you and started talking about how it's wrong to show so much money on the street but that you should open an account in an American Bank and withdraw a little bit at a time you'd start saying that you've never used a bank and don't trust them then you're accomplish would persuade the victim to show you that it's very easy to deposit and withdraw money together you'd go to the bank where the victim would drew some money when you saw this you'd act excited and out of kindness you'd want to show how people keep money in your country where people supposedly Don't Trust Banks you'd take the man's money wrap it in a handkerchief and give it to him however as soon as you've wrapped it your accomplice distracts the victim briefly at which point you switch the handkerchief with the money for a handkerchief with cut up paper and then heardly leave on some flimsy pretext Carlo pulled such a stunt in the city of Brockton in Massachusetts relieving a gallal citizen of $1,200 and then he was arrested however he managed to get out on bail and immediately left the Bay State without being punished for the scam why Carlo engaged in Petty fraud is not entirely clear as by the late 1920s he and his brother Paul Gambino were identified by police As Leaders of an independent gang of bootleggers and at the end of prohibition Carlo had enough money to buy a large distilling operations in four states Maryland New Jersey New York and Pennsylvania most boot leers after the repeal of the volstad ACT started getting rid of their illegal Stills believing that the Golden Age of bootlegging was over Gambino on the other hand thought that even with the repeal there would still be a high demand for illegal alcohol and as it turned out he was right in addition to Stills Carlo also acquired several companies that were engaged in the production of goods that used denatured alcohol also known as methanol this way he could purchase as much methanol as he wanted for example for the alleged production of paint without obtaining a liquor license in fact the methanol was illegally delivered to distilleries where unneeded impurities were supposed to be removed to make it suitable for alcohol production I.E turn it back into drinkable alcohol after that it was possible to make booze and sell it to bars as well as to legal alcohol distilling companies all this naturally took place outside the legal framework who needed it you may ask if the prohibition was lifted and it was possible to work legally first it wasn't easy to get a liquor license so illegal drinking establishments stayed around for some time second the alcohol industry in the States was still being reborn and the imported Supply couldn't cover the demand that was previously covered by Bootleggers so for the time right after prohibition was lifted illegal alcohol was needed by both consumers and legal producers they had to replace the supply in a short period of time Bootleggers covered them and they needed raw materials even if they weren't exactly legally obtained so it turned out that Gambino who had at that time was almost a monopolist in the production and sale of illegal drinking alcohol in the US made a lot of money for a couple of years while his scheme was carried out by 1937 his front companies had purchased about 114,000 gallons of methanol arousing the suspicions of the authorities they started digging and Came Upon Gambino arresting him in June of the same year 1937 as a result Carlo and a few dozen others got indicted on multiple charges namely conspiracy to distill the natured alcohol into drinking alcohol conspiracy to defraud the government of income taxes possession of liquor on which no federal tax was paid and illegal transportation of alcohol in 1939 the trial for this case finally concluded and Gambino received 22 months in prison and a $2500 fine however he only served a couple of days the lawyers filed an appeal leading Carlo to be released and its result was ultimately the abolition of the verdict as the lawyers were able to prove that the wiretapping of the suspect's phones was performed illegally and this was one of the main sources of evidence almost immediately after that was another case of tax evasion but even there Gambino got off easy serving in prison for only 30 days also in this period began some attempts at deportation but we'll return to this a bit later now I suggest we move forward some years to the 1940s the first half of that decade was an extremely strange period in the United States on the one hand the defense industry was in full operation and huge funds were poured into it some of which were used to pay high wages to factory workers moreover a very large number of laborers was needed which caused a lot of money to flow into the population almost almost instantly but on the other hand there was practically nowhere to spend this money because of the shortage of goods and what happens when the legal Supply cannot meet the demand that's right those who can meet it get into illegal activity naturally the mafiosi and Carlo Gambino in particular became active players in the black market speaking of scarcity I don't mean that they were living in the US the same as in cutof lingraph they had almost everything just that some Goods could only be purchased in limited quantities on coupons issued by the state for example that's how people got gasoline and meat Carlo was most concerned with the former his involvement by the way became known only in the 1960s from the words of Joe vachi when he named Gambino one of the main players in the underground gasoline voucher Market in New York vachi also detailed how the scheme worked the gasoline coupon system did not perform its restrictive function for long almost immediately consumers began to run out of fuel the criminal World which decided to play on this shortage started by stealing the coupons themselves at night Bandits would break into the offices of the price Administration where the coupons were kept and take them all away most of the time it was independent gangs that didn't have distribution networks so they sold everything wholesale to the kosa no ra dealers Gambino was one of those guys he bought coupons from a lot of robbers and then distributed them through retailers pretty soon the state shut down the burglary of the coupons it mandated that they be deposited overnight in well protected Bank vaults leaving the robbers out in the cold but they were almost immediately replaced by officials from the office of price Administration who themselves began stealing and selling the coupons to fences as a result it all got so out of control that an average of 2 and2 million gallons of gasoline were sold on the black market every day unfortunately we don't know how much Gambino had but according to vachi Carlo belonged to the ranks of a businessman with weekly turnovers amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars and while Gambino was quietly and peacefully building up his Capital as something was happening in parallel that would very soon set off a chain of events that would turn gambino from an inconspicuous Capo into one of the most talked about bosses of kostra there are two theories on how exactly Gambino came to power one puts him in a proactive position developing then into the fact that Carlo was a strong player from the very first days of his Reign the other puts Gambino in a dependent position and develops into the view that for years Carlo was only a pawn in the hands of other bosses both of them are tied to the same event but interpreted differently and now you and I will gradually get into it and try to figure out which version is more plausible well let's begin our journey with a description of the context which helped shape the event it all started in the early 1950s in the family where Gambino was a conflict was brewing between boss Vincent mango and his Deputy Albert Anastasia which ended in an event where in the spring of 195 1 Vincent and his brother Phillip were killed after that Anastasia became the boss this event brought the first split in the main dispute resolving body of the American Mafia which included the strongest bosses of the country called the commission before Anastasia's Ascension there had been a strong unified block that acted in unison it included banano Mangano profi and magadino two other bosses by the the names of Costello and gallano kept out of it but after Mangano's elimination Costello who is friendly with Anastasia gained an ally and formed another Block in the same year of 1951 gallano died a natural death and his place was taken by Tommy Lukes Lukes was not satisfied with his solitary role and made an alliance with vido genes a member of the Costello family who wanted to oust him tensions as you imagine were not low there and in 1955 the conflict completely fell open genoves made a failed hit attempt on Castello Frank survived but stepped down as the boss of the family handing it over to genoves along with LC and magadino who had defected sides because of the quarrel with banano genoves became the dominant force on the commission Anastasia planned to kill geneves and lucaz both as revenge for Castello and out of fear for his own skin as he could easily have been the next victim but he was dissuaded by prachi and bonano who said they didn't want a war and if Albert started one they would oppose him but if he abandoned the idea they would stay on his side in a potential conflict Anastasia agreed and made peace with his enemies but in 1957 he was killed anyway and Carlo Gambino replaced him as boss actually this assassin is the big event I mentioned earlier the first version of why Anastasia was killed is that Gambino took advantage of the conflict and Enlisted the support of lcas and Janes and aou it's believed that Carlo along with Anastasia's Captain Jo Bando devised the assassination plan handing it over to another family member named Steve anmon who had already assembled a team of Shooters with Steven ganata and Arnold Wittenberg also involved in the murder attempt was a man named Andrew albery who hit a gun in a hotel room in the same building as the barber shop where Anastasia was killed so the gunman entered the building grabbed the guns looked into the barber shop did some shooting and disappeared after successfully executing the plan Carlo took over his boss and became another equal Ally of LZ and jenev as supporters because according to this version Gambino himself made a mutually beneficial Alliance and rid his friends of one of their enemies but the other version is not like that it came up relatively recently when the testimony of a secret informant named Alfredo Sant anonio a soldier under the leadership of Capo Charles dang became available according to S Antonio the three compos for Anastasia Charles dang Joseph ricono and Joe Bondo learned that Albert Was preparing a hit attempt on them after making sure it wasn't a rumor they decided not to wait for their deaths and struck first Biondo put Steve Armon in charge he found the previously mentioned gunmen they killed Anastasia later the three conspirators appeared before the commission to explain their actions themselves in the end their arguments were deemed valid and they were acquitted this opportunity was immediately seized by genoves and L to make the latter's Matchmaker the new boss of the family Gambino's son was married to lukes's daughter and so it was Carlo who was chosen in addition this version suggests that Gambino was not an underboss at the time of Anastasia's murder as is believed but still a captain and if it had not been for the support of the other bosses it's unlikely that he himself would have become head of the family this assumption comes from a recorded conversation between the Lukes family's underboss Salvador centuro the man was a longtime member of the mafia having joined the family while still under gallano and promoted to Captain underl he then went to prison in 1959 and upon getting out was appointed by underboss Tony Galo as an underboss on this recording centur claimed that Gambino would never have become boss if it had not been for lukes's help hinting that it was Tommy who pushed his candidacy through when Anastasia was killed which is quite consistent with our second version also cantoro's other statements where he says that Albert was not even going to choose Gambino lead us to the version that after the assassination in the mid1 1950s of Anastasia's Deputy Frank scal it was actually Nino kante not Gambino who took his place finally in another statement centuro indirectly hints that the choosing of Carlo was imposed by the commission bypassing the rule that the new boss must be chosen by vote within the family in this case Gambino might never have become boss because in terms of influence he was no stronger back then than the other captains and all the data from this version lead us to the fact that Carlo having become the boss was not really a full-fledged leader but was a prodige of geneves and LC to whom he owed his elevation but if you think that the mafia Game of Thrones ended after gambi became the boss I hasten to inform you that it did not and Carlo was in the very epicenter of it first he along with a couple dozen other bosses fell into the clutches of the police at a mob convention in Appalachian it's believed that one of the items on the agenda of that meeting was to formalize Carlo as a boss secondly Gambino needed to establish Authority in the family since not everyone was happy with his appointment there was a group of conspirators who wanted to depose him but Carlo found out about their plans and struck first there are at least two known murders connected to the story they were Armand Dava believed to be the head of the rebels and John Rabil loto apparently the elimination of these two guys was enough to normalize the situation and from that moment on such attacks in the direction of Carlo were no longer observed thirdly the problems were not only within the family benano who had been the unspoken head of a coalition of bosses in the commission that had spoken alone and dictated its own terms by the early 1950s had almost completely lost his influence first his ally Vincent Mago was murdered then vdo genes Ed Costello's boss forming a coalition with LC then beno's brother Stefano magadino quarreled with him and sided with L furthermore Gambino also loyal to LC became boss and finally the new commissioner Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia was also for lucaz bonano had only Joe magalo as an ally a successor of Joe Pachi who had died of cancer in the early 1960s the Gallow Brothers rebellion was raging in mago's family at the time which the commission left him to deal with alone Bano took advantage of this and persuaded mag lioko to join the plot to kill Lukes magadino and G Ino so as to make a move and once again become the main force in the commission but Carlo got lucky here too a man named Joe Columbo who maglio had implicated in the scheme came to lucaz and Gambino revealing his boss's plans mag lioko was eventually suspended and allowed to die in peace he was Ill at the time and passed away soon after though banano denied his participation in the conspiracy he was also removed as Boss by the commission he still tried for some time to regain Power by means of intra family Warfare but he finally abandoned this Venture and left New York after that the luuka gambino faction finally asserted its dominance on the commission they had the genoves and magadino families as allies and the Bruno and Columbo families had to listen to them one way or another there was a numerical superiority in votes power had been established the only thing left to do now was to hold it properly and just as importantly to monetize it nothing is known about Gambino's regular earnings as a boss it's not clear whether he was involved in anything along the lines of Usery extortion or gambling back then however you and I can currently be aware of at least two of his main sources of income the first is SGS Associates a labor relations company to put it plainly this firm was in the business of settling issues between workers unions and employers they were called upon when you wanted to use non-unionized labor without problems when you wanted to deal with a strike or when you wanted to make sure in advance that no strikes occurred so SGS Associates a company that Carlo had a one-third stake in was a kind of criminal guarantor of steady work regardless of anyone's grievances the firm's net earnings were estimated at $500,000 a year and among its clients was Wellington Associates the real estate group that owned the Chrysler Building and was described at the time as the largest real estate player in the country the most famous strikes The Firm handled were the Flowery Branch Hospital workers strike and the Chrysler Building workers strike in the 1960s the second major source of income came to Carlo after the death of his main Mafia Ally Tommy LC in 1967 as we mentioned earlier Gambino's son Thomas was married to LC's daughter and his father-in-law put him into his business racketeering in the New York garment industry when LIC died however Carlo decided to push his son up through the ranks here racketeering was based on controlling Trucking without which as you can imagine the clothes simply would not get delivered anywhere from the factories and the materials for their production would not arrive in the early 20th century many independent logistics companies handled transportation for factories but by the mid-century gangsters had organized most of them into unions and began to control the industry through them you can see more details on how this worked in my video on L Balter the man who ran transportation for luk Gaz was James plumer who started getting pressed by Carlo and when he was killed in the early 1970s Carlo reigned Supreme in the Garmin District another of Gambino's livelihoods that also needs to be discussed is drug dealing Carlos probably the most publicized boss of kostra credited with the family's ban on this activity but was this really the case to get to the bottom of this question I suggest we not just read the arguments for and against it but dive a little deeper and take a broader look at the issue touching on the myth of the mafia not dealing illegal substances in general since Carlo is the most prominent example here an explanation of the whole issue will be appropriate and will make his own position on the matter clearer let's begin with what this myth is in case you didn't know it breaks down into several subp points the first is that the mafia tradition itself forbade the drug trade this is largely pedal by Joe Bano in his book however let's remember when the very tradition of the mafia was taking shape this was the the 19th century and perhaps the final formation in the early 20th century but even if we capture the early 20th century drugs were legal then and were openly sold in stores and pharmacies so what prohibition of the drug trade are we talking about if at the formation of the mafia they were just appearing and were not even considered a problem outlawed yet then we go on to complain that everything is the fault of these new school mafiosi who would sell their mother for money and therefore sell drugs it's not like the old school Gambino times where they certainly did not get involved in such things however there are statistics in which we can see a clear Trend in the increasing share of mafiosi in the drug Market in the 1910s they were about 10% and by the end of the 1930s more than 40% in the future they would almost completely displace their main Rivals the Jewish gangsters in heroin smuggling every every family in that period had a person from Gambino's generation who was involved in drugs just to name a few Charles luchano Carmine galante the Armon Brothers Joe Bando John ormento and Nicola genti and mind you all of these people went on to have a great career in the mafia even though they were involved in the drug trade as you can see there was no single prohibition bosses could create such rules separately in their families but how it was implemented is another matter and most often heads of families just turned a blind eye to the drug trade as long as the money went into their pockets Carlo Gambino was probably of a similar opinion there may have been a Prohibition but it was very poorly enforced the previously listed armone brothers and Jo Biondo were actually from The Gambino family and the latter was his under boss for a long time one of the closest ones to Carlo is his brother Paul Gambino was also involved in heroin smuggling since the post-war years cooperating with the Sicilian Mafia and there's even a theory that Paul's operation actually belonged to Carlo well and we shouldn't forget about another relative of Carlos and the so-called gambinos of Cherry Hill who in the 1970s started building their giant drug Empire it was easier to say who in Carlos's Entourage didn't deal drugs if there was Prohibition it was only as a joke as we've started talking about this myth in general we can't help but talk about its third component here it was already admitted that the mafia had something to do with drugs but they are credited with keeping the substances away from their neighborhoods they didn't [ __ ] where they ate some of this was true but it didn't do any good anyone from the Italian quarter who wanted to find a dose only had to drive a couple of miles and voila there was dope for for the buying very quickly and easily supplied to dealers by their mafioso neighbors to summarize I would like to say that the mafia not only lacked any prohibition on drug handling it was in fact the main supplier of heroin in the country most of the dealers who wanted to sell heroin on the streets worked with kostra we talked earlier about the fact that after the attempted coup in the commission by Joe banano a new order was established there with a dominant group led by K and Gambino there were a total of nine bosses on the commission at the time five from New York and one from Chicago Buffalo Philadelphia and Detroit each lucaz and Gambino had Buffalo geneves had Philadelphia along with Columbo as an ally and after LC's death in 1967 Gambino single-handedly took over as the leader of the secret faction and was quite successful in that role for the rest of his life the only issue during this time was Columbo who decided to play as a public figure he created the Italian-American civil rights league and started to promote it in every way possible he organized rallies went on TV gave interviews to newspapers and attacked anyone who decided to use the words Mafia or kostra in their movies or TV series even The Godfather CAU heat which was filmed during that time at first Gambino did not suppress the idea and even personally donated several tens of thousands of dollars but Columbo knew No Boundaries attracting the attention of not only the public but also the FBI and in December 1970 the bureau ultimately got Columbo's documents with the names of all League members with the size of their donations among them Gambino Carlo and a couple of other Mobsters including geneves boss a Thomas E were then questioned by a grand jury which was probably the turning point where Columbo's scheme lost mob support he and Gambino soon had a conversation in which Columbo refused to honor Carlo's request to give up or leave the league and then came the hit attempt on Columbo in the summer of 1971 which left him in a prolonged coma the main Persons of Interest in the hit were Gambino and Joe Gallo who Columbo had a conflict with within the family who exactly organized the attempt is not known but most are inclined to believe that it was Gambino although Carlo may have been able to deal with his enemies in the mafia setting quite easily with his main opponent the United States government he would fight his whole life I've already mentioned that he was tried for his involvement in the illegal alcohol trade as well as for tax Evas but the main problem that could not be solved was his deportation case because as you might recall Carlo arrived in the states as an illegal immigrant in 1935 he tried to change that status he went to Canada and attempted to come back legally with a Visa but he got denied seemingly not too shaken up Carlos somehow made it back to the US again in November 1936 he got arrested for the first time for his illegal status in the country but in 1937 the charge was withdrawn for some reason then the war broke out and Gambino was forgotten for a while they remembered him only after the meeting in Appalachian in 1957 but when the authorities went to arrest him it turned out that shortly before they came Carlo had gone to the hospital for heart related surgery whether this was just a coincidence or Gambino was playing some kind of tricky game is impossible to determine but such coincidental tricks would be incountered many times in the future when trouble with the law arose it wasn't until August 1958 that the immigration officer was able to issue a warrant the trial was scheduled for September but each time Carlos suddenly became ill before the hearing apparently he did have heart problems as he had undergone several operations but they were clearly exaggerated for the authorities it worked regardless since something similar to the first case hearing happened in 1963 again nothing much was resolved there and there were constant postponements due to his health finally in 1966 the immigration office managed to issue a deportation order based on his illegal entry in the 1920s Gambino's lawyers decided to challenge the decision and the case went back to the course of constantly postponed sessions lasting until 1970 when the court finally recognized the order as valid however this was far from a victory for the authorities now they had to prove that Carlo could even withstand deportation they had no time for this and Gambino managed to emerge Victorious even here until 19 76 the realization of the sentence was constantly postponed and in October of that year Carlo Gambino died peacefully of natural causes

Channel: On the other side of the law

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Length: 38min 10sec (2290 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2024