Cosa Nostra News

This was published on Aug. 18 by the New Yorker magazine under its  Daily Shouts  rubric with the headline: FBI Report on Mafia Decline Caused by Group Text and E-mail Chains : INTERNAL/CLASSIFIED A fter extensive investigation, our specialized team, the F.B.I. New-Media Task Force, has determined that organized-crime syndicates are being increasingly hampered by an inability to communicate effectively through text messages and e-mails. Agents have found that the Mafia and other large criminal groups are having difficulty planning crimes as a result of overly long strings of messages that are derailed by unrelated jokes and gifs. Our investigators are pleased to report that this pattern has led to a decrease in crime and an increase in criminal organizations’ cellular overage charges. The bulk of this investigation involved the interception and analysis of Mafia members’ text messages. It was observed that poor texting habits led to many issues. For instanc...

AMC's ongoing miniseries... This was written by a guest columnist for Cosa Nostra News.... The AMC miniseries " Making of the Mob: New York " will be be shown over the next two months, highlighting the history of the American Mob and making it a topic of discussion around many water coolers. Movies like Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco, mixed with The Sopranos, and other guilty pleasures such as Vh1’s Mob Wives and previously high-rated exploits like Growing Up Gotti have always generated huge interest referencing the affects that the Mafia has had on pop culture. Making of the Mob: New York is an eight-part docudrama chronicling the rise of successors like Carlo Gambino , John Gotti, “Lucky” Luciano, Frank Costello and many more who have inspired countless hit films and TV stories- oftentimes glamorizing the reality behind the myths and every generation’s fascination with the major head bosses of the most infamous crime families.

The New York Post today reports that the Port Authority no longer runs background checks on businesses applying to operate at area airports, a policing campaign begun 25 years ago. Critics tell the Post this could lead to a "Mafia resurgence." One insider told the newspaper that the PA "quietly ditched its long-standing corruption-fighting tool that required background checks on new businesses and their principals before they could operate at JFK, La Guardia, or Newark airports."

Vito Genovese in the mid 1940s. The Mafia has always recruited from the streets. Both Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino in the 1950s enlisted soldiers in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn from a Brooklyn street gang called the Jackson Gents. Interestingly these street gangs are still around today, while groups like the Purple Gang and the Bath Avenue Crew, Italian mob-affiliated gangs that more closely resemble the Mafia and were considered farm teams, seem to have died out. Overall, however, the street gangs today are working as partners with the Mafia, which is more strict about recruitment, having the mindset that blood trumps everything else. The Colombo family, in particular, was ahead of the curve in that they have long relied on blood-family relations for members more than anything else. But it wasn't always that way. Used to be the Mafia recruited from street gangs -- teenagers running around in leather jackets, their hair greased back into a duck's a...

William  Cutolo dances  with daughter BJ.  ( CNNews ; Cutolos) Cosa Nostra News Exclusive Thanks to the American public's ongoing obsession with La Cosa Nostra – duly noted by the constant airing of shows like Mob Wives, I Married a Mobster, Mobsters, Bill Kurtis, Biography and even National Geographic (as well as the increasingly competitive blog landscape) – those formerly connected to “the life” but now out can still find ways to earn off the mob, lending their insight and perspective to the aforementioned television shows, as well as consulting with filmmakers (lot of money there). The types of people who make money off mob involvement, and their reasons for doing so, are as varied as the people doing it. As the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir famously said: "Everybody has their reasons" -- and those in the audience can react however they like, spanning the full range of emotion, from incredulity to apathy.