Every Christmas, longshoremen working the docks in New York and New Jersey receive royalty payments from shipping companies that off-load at the region’s piers. Every Christmas for the last 30 years the Genovese crime family, which infiltrated union leadership, would violently extort part of the payments from members, according to an indictment released today by the FBI and the Justice Department. The characters involved in this and other alleged criminal schemes detailed in the indictment come right out of a Hollywood script: Vincent “The Vet” Aulisi; John “Lumpy” Hartman, Albert “The Bull” Cernadas.
The extortion racket is just the start of the news in what turns out to be the biggest coordinated bust of organized crime families in FBI history. Close to 130 members of the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, Luchese and DeCavalcante families and their associates, including 30 “made men”, have been arrested on charges of murder, drug trafficking, arson, loan sharking, gambling, labor racketeering and so on. Said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the arrests are “another step towards our goal of cutting La Cosa Nostra off at its knees.”
Justice is making a big deal of the bust. And while some of ancillary materials they have prepared are a little silly—the bureau put together a factoid-filled chart explaining the hierarchy of power in a mafia family including such helpful definitions as “Boss or don: The undisputed leader of the organization.” But the scope of the bust and the detailed substance of the charges in the documents is impressive, and makes for good reading.