14 Things We Just Learned About The Mafia In 2025

From Redditor u/TheAtheistArab87:

TIL that during the heyday of The Sopranos FBI wiretaps of the real mafia revealed that the show was so realistic the real mobsters thought there was a connected guy feeding storylines for the show.

Context: Executive producer Terrence Winter revealed in a Vanity Fair interview that FBI agents would hear members of the mob discussing the show on their wiretaps. The mafioso believed the depictions were too accurate for the show not to have a wise guy working for them on the inside.

From Redditor u/johnnylgarfield:

TIL the 1972 hit movie The Godfather does not contain the words ‘mafia’ or 'La Cosa Nostra’ because of a deal struck between the producer and the real mafia.

Context: Joe Colombo Sr. and his son Anthony lobbied the producers of The Godfather through the Italian-American Civil Rights League to not include the word "Mafia" in the final shooting script. Producers seemed to have the understanding that should they not comply, there may be labor strikes, missing equipment, and missing cast members.

From Redditor u/truehalf:

TIL at his peak, mafia boss Al Capone was making an annual income of $1.3 billion in today’s dollars.

Context: In the late 1920s through the early '30s, Chicago's Al Capone was making about $105 million a year, the modern equivalent of $1.3 billion. But it was hardly all profit. Nearly one third of it went to payroll. Other gangsters, judges, politicians, reporters, and police were all required to keep his enterprise running.

From Reddito u/Majorwetod:

TIL How the American mafia helped the Allied forces during WWII. Mob boss Lucky Luciano was eventually granted his freedom from prison for his help. Part of the deal was he had to agree to deportation back to Italy.

Context: In 1942 a US troop carrier ship caught fire and capsized in Manhattan harbour in a suspected act of sabotage. It was well known that the mafia controlled the docks at the time so the Navy reached out to imprisoned mafioso Salvatore "Lucky" Lucanio. Lucky ordered that any suspicious activity along the docks and waterfronts be reported to the authorities and guaranteed that there would be no strikes from the dock workers. In exchange, his sentence was commuted and he was deported to Italy.

From Redditor u/madazzahatter:

TIL the FBI recruited a mafia enforcer to help solve the slaying of three civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1960s. Gregory Scarpa kidnapped a klansman, put a gun in his mouth and forced him to reveal the spot where the three had been buried.

Context: Gregory Scarpa was a capo and hitman for the Colombo crime family and claimed he was recruited by the FBI in the 1960s to use illegal interrogation methods on a member of the Ku Klux Klan to find the find missing bodies of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner.

From Redditor u/pyanan:

TIL - New York's underground gay bars of the 1960's, including the Stonewall Inn, were actually created and supported by the Mafia. It was illegal to be gay. The mob paid off local precincts to keep them from doing raids.

Context: Under the guise of state liquor laws barring the serving of alcohol on  "disorderly” premises, the New York Police Department regularly raided bars that catered to gay patrons. The Genovese crime family purchased the Stonewall Inn in 1966 and transformed it into a gay bar and nightclub. Family member “Fat Tony”  paid New York’s 6th Precinct approximately $1,200 a week to look the other way.