New York's Four Crime Families?

A small-time dice game caused a mob boss's defense attorney to take a huge gamble.

He lost.

As a result, on June 10, 1969, 12 volumes (more than 2,000 pages) of conversations between various mobsters and New Jersey crime boss Simone Rizzo DeCavalcante were released to the public. A book was issued as well. Sam the Plumber: The Real-Life Saga of a Mafia Chieftain condensed the voluminous disparate recorded discussions and provided context.

Sam the Plumber preferred to be called "The Count."

DeCavalcante, who oversaw New Jersey-based gambling, loansharking and labor racketeering from an office in Kenilworth, preferred his mob nickname, "The Count," to the one saddled on him by the press: "The Plumber." However, at least one New York Times article written during his heyday probably put a smile on the respected mob boss's face. It described him as "the smartest and smoothest and least vicious of the aging Mafia leaders in the East."

"Sam the Plumber" had never spent a single night in jail, but that changed in March 1968, when he was indicted following his efforts to mediate a dispute among mobsters over a small illegal dice gambling operation. DeCavalcante's mediation helped scale down a necessary tribute payment to $12,000 (from $20,000). Sam pocketed $3,800 for his effort.

"You know, they were going to give the guys in Canada away to Buffalo."

DeCavalcante's lawyer (former assistant U.S. attorney Sidney Franzblau) filed a slew of pretrial motions to request any electronic surveillance evidence that law enforcement had acquired during the course of its probe of DeCavalcante. The lawyer counted on his efforts to quash the indictment and get the case against the mob boss dropped as had happened in many major cases of that era. The reason: the bugs planted in the Plumber's office were illegal (and part of a larger FBI intelligence-gathering effort focused on the mob following the televised Valachi hearings) and couldn't be used in court.

However, in this instance, the government decided to make an exception. It released all its electronic surveillance recordings -- and the dozen volumes of transcripts were made available.

"I've never heard of the government releasing such information before," a dazed Franzblau remarked for posterity.

The conversations disclosed many major mob revelations. Sam the Plumber, despite the small size of his South Jersey-based crime family, cast a large shadow in the underworld. He was a mediator in many instances for other Mafia bosses, including those based in New York.

Johnny Pops...woulda, coulda.....

DeCavalcante, in fact, had been consulted during the so-called "Banana War," which concluded with the New York Mafia's Commission expelling boss Joseph Bonanno from his position as overlord of the crime family that still carries his name.

However, according to Sam the Plumber's recorded conversations, the Commission almost went a step further.

The bosses then sitting at the table had discussed distributing Bonanno's territory (meaning we likely would be referring to New York's "Four Families").

"You know, they were going to give the guys in Canada away to Buffalo," DeCavalcante was recorded saying. In other words, the Bonanno family's Montreal faction was nearly given to Stefano Magaddino, then the powerful boss of the crime family based in Buffalo, New York.

The Commission, some forty years prior to Joe Bonanno's power play against bosses Carlo Gambino and Thomas Lucchese, had allowed Bonanno to take control of Calabrian and Sicilian organized crime operations in Quebec, including Montreal, while Bonanno's cousin, Magaddino was given free reign to reap the profit's from the Mafia in Southern Ontario, including Toronto and the important port city of Hamilton.

If Montreal, the key to the Bonanno family's highly lucrative drug business for decades, had been given to Magaddino as the Commission had considered, it would have had "far deeper ramifications for organized crime in North America than anyone, except for the mischievous Stefano Magaddino, probably realized," as noted in  The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto.

Had the Commission chose that course of action, Magaddino would've consolidated power over both territories, something the Rizzuto clan achieved in the 1990s, decades earlier. Had that happened "so early in the game," Magaddino's clout would've likely increased exponentially and his man in Canada at the time, Johnny "Pops" Papalia, could have become "one of the richest and most important gangsters on the continent."