Natale was a Teamster union tough guy and troubleshooter in the 1960s and 1970s and introduced and vouched for Merlino to a number of New York mob luminaries he had met in prison. subsequently left Philadelphia and took refuge in New York’s Lucchese crime family under the protection of his father’s close pal and prison confidant Lucchese boss Little Vic Amuso.Īt first, Skinny Joey slid into the underboss role once held by his dad, allowing the eager and brash Ralph Natale - fresh from a decade and a half in a federal correctional facility for drug, extortion and arson offenses - to be the new Philly don. 1 suspect in a failed hit attempt on Little Nicky’s progeny, a brazen Halloween night shooting in the middle of a crowded restaurant.
One of his first orders of business was to take aim at Scarfo’s son, “Nicky, Jr” as a way of sending a message to his pops in the pen that there was a new regime in town and it wasn’t recognizing past arrangements.Īuthorities consider Merlino the No. In the years that followed, Merlino returned to South Philly, teamed with an old-school labor racketeer he met while serving a prison sentence for an armored truck heist, rallied a crew of tight-knit childhood friends behind them and conquered the area’s rackets by force. Part of Merlino’s takeover of the city, involved taking vengeance on past foes, including imprisoned former Philly mafia don, Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, who had demoted his father from the crime family underboss position and chased him from the city for a brief period of time before getting locked up in the spring of 1987. He’s spent the past week enjoying sun and fun at the Shore in Margate.īack in the 1990s, swashbuckling Skinny Joey fought and won a shooting war to take control of the Philly mob.
#Boston mafia news series#
Today, the feds claim he runs his crime family from afar through a series of buffers, intermediaries and street bosses. Merlino relocated from Philadelphia to Boca Raton in the spring of 2011 following a 12-year federal prison stay for racketeering. He once threatened to ship Amuso’s men back to New York in “body bags” if they dare encroach on his turf in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, per the way Pennisi tells it. The nation’s most compelling underworld figure, Skinny Joey Merlino, 59, just got off supervised release from a gambling case and is back on the prowl in South Florida……and South Philly. According to Pennisi’s podcast “The MBA & The Button Man,” Merlino was backed by Genovese crime family don Liborio (Barney) Bellomo in his rise to Godfather status in the late 1990s and Bellomo blocked a plot launched by Lucchese boss Vittorio (Little Vic) Amuso from behind bars to stop Merlino’s ascent. Aug– The details behind the New York mafia’s sanctioning of Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino reign in Philadelphia, which today is going on two decades of mob decadence and bold gangland maneuvering, came to light last week via former Lucchese crime family soldier John Pennisi.
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