Does the Mafia still Exist Today?
His motives were far from pure. Drinking glasses were sometimes not even washed between uses. And while Fat Tony reportedly paid the cops up to $1,200 a month to stay away, the Stonewall’s owners still made big profits by extorting customers in exchange for turning a blind eye to their illegal behavior. Drinks were overpriced and watered down, and conditions were not hygienic or well-maintained. Because customers were forced to live in the shadows, the Mob could keep standards low. Another Genovese guy, Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianniello, had a hand in running more than 80 bars, restaurants and discos in the 1970s, many of them catering to the gay community.
The Mafia’s foodie reputation has an even richer history. Today, Mob-run pizzerias, restaurants and cafes are everywhere. Coldiretti, a major Italian consumer organization representing agricultural entrepreneurs, estimates at least 5,000 restaurants throughout Italy alone are run by the Mafia. In the 1980s, for instance, the Sicilian Mafia relied on the so-called “pizza connection” to ship heroin and cocaine to mob-run pizzerias in towns throughout the U.S., using cans of San Marzano tomatoes. Their take? More than 22 billion euros ($25 billion) in 2018 alone. It also warns the Mob is extending its reach into Italy’s entire food chain – the “agromafia” – including farmland, livestock and markets, in addition to restaurants.
They also invest in and own companies that provide materials like steel or cement to other construction crews (the cement shoes trope clearly exists for a reason). The Mob has taken a piece of several of New York’s real-estate booms. It seems the Mafia remains a part of construction companies and unions. Mafia-linked subcontractors continue to build projects in Manhattan, including the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center. These companies pile on the costs, making the price of building expensive.
If this is going on in Italy, it’s likely occurring in other countries, too. At one point, the Mafia had a monopoly on gay bars in New York City, and probably operated similar establishments in other cities around the country. It was the Genovese family who ran Manhattan’s Stonewall Inn, the site of the infamous 1969 Stonewall riots, which took place after patrons fought back against police raiding the bar. As early as the 1930s, when homosexuality was illegal in the U.S., Mafia-connected establishments were around to provide gay and lesbian customers a place to meet, mingle and spend money. Investing in the former straight bar, Tony “Fat Tony” Lauria purchased and transformed The Stonewall in 1966, seeing more potential in the neighborhood’s growing gay community.
During the same era, Mafioso types owned and controlled most of the adults-only movie theaters, X-rated distributors and labs processing 35mm films. More recently, high-profile connections between organized crime and internet pornography have been uncovered. The scheme brought in so much money that the profits were invested in a phone company, bank, and more than 64 shell companies and foreign bank accounts. In 2005, Gambino family members were brought up on fraud charges for offering free tours of adult websites, then billing extravagant charges to their customers’ credit cards. While the 2005 arrests were the last high-profile internet porn bust, it’s assumed that several Mafia groups are involved in sex trafficking that results in the creation of pornography.
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