re: Anyone on the OT ever know or come across a member of organized crime?

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I'm sure darth has

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Well considering the Feds consider clubs like The Outlaws, Devils Deciples, Sons of Silence, Banditos, Warlocks, and Hells Angels as criminal organizations, you're right.

Since I've been in Japan I've met a couple of guys in a Tokyo syndicate of the Yakuza. Nice guys, pretty low key about their, uh, organizational affiliations, but they seem like people I wouldn't want to cross. Mostly it's the shadowy reputation of the Yakuza that makes them seem so powerful...

But I see gangsters out on the town almost every weekend, because the area I'm in is full of Yakuza-run clubs. You can tell them by full body tattoos, (sometimes) missing fingers, shaved heads, and the number plates on their Rolls or Bentleys.

And the other day I met the gangster Lamborghini guy in Tokyo, Morohoshi. Super nice guy... I got a picture with him and one of his Lamborghinis. He and his crew are known from this video:
UNDERGROUND HERO

My mother's great-grandfather and great-grandmother (her father's side) emigrated from Sicily in the early 1900s. They had 15 children and lived in Philadelphia.

Some of the children got involved with organized crime. I don't really know to what extent, but to escape it, my grandfather moved to New Orleans.

I honestly don't know much about it, but I remember when I was really little, my great uncle showed up at my grandfather's house with a "flesh wound" after being in a gunfight. I remember he spent some time in the hospital and there was talk of him losing his arm, but looking back on it as an adult, I'm guessing the bullet either grazed him or passed through.

After he healed up, he lived in my grandparent's downstairs room (wasn't really a basement now that I think about i) for a few months before getting an apartment on his own. He was about 18 years younger than my grandfather, so it was weird seeing someone closer to my parents' age being a sibling of my grandfather. His two children who were out of high school moved to New Orleans when he got his apartment.

He died of a heart attack not too long after moving to New Orleans. His son went to jail a few years later for attempted murder during a robbery. His daughter was in and out of jail for a while, but honestly, after my grandfather passed away from cancer, we stopped keeping up with them.

EDIT - I was 6 or 7 - somewhere around that age - when he showed up at my grandparents' house. I was there with my parents, and I can distinctly remember the commotion when they opened to the front door to him sick, clutching his arm, and asking for help. There was also someone else there with him. I guess the driver.

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It would be terrifying as a child to grow up around all of that stuff.

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Why you would have no idea what those people do. You just know they have a lot of money and are highly respected. That's what draws them in to that life when they grow up.

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quote: Anyone who says they do is a liar.. Meh. Older people probably at least know somebody who knows somebody. There was a pretty good range of connected guys back in the day. The 80s put a hurt on them, organizationally-wise - and from a lot of areas. But they were everywhere from the mid-50s to the late-70s.

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This. I have a shite ton of family members on my wife's side that love to talk about the Danny Greene vs the Italian wars in the 70's. Most people that grew up in Cleveland in those days were directly affected by it somehow. A lot of them knew someone that got hit, or watched it happen.

IDK, but some guy with the last name Anselmo I used to work with, talked about his Dad being in with the mob on a bar/club he owned and operated in New Orleans.

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Some of the children got involved with organized crime. I don't really know to what extent, but to escape it, my grandfather moved to New Orleans.

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Now this is funny . I didn't realize how "uncriminal" NO was until now.

Ever heard of:
Matranga crime family
Silver Dollar Sam
Carlos Marcello


I'll stay away from Wiki so I'll leave this here:
N.O. Crime Bosses

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Carlos Marcello

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Ran shite and was a major player nationally. Suspected to have masterminded assassination of JFK.

Not sure about NOLA, Gambino was in NYC

every italian person i've ever met had mafia ties