Genovese crime family

The Genovese crime family (Italian: [dʒenoˈveːze, -eːse]), also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American Mafia. The Genovese family is the oldest and the largest of New York's Five Families, and was the first of the New York families to expand into New Jersey. The Genovese family has also generally maintained a varying degree of influence over many of the smaller Mafia families outside New York, including ties with the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Patriarca, and Buffalo crime families.

The modern family was founded by Charles "Lucky" Luciano and was known as the Luciano crime family from 1931 to 1957, when Vito Genovese became boss. Genovese was head of the family during the McClellan hearings in 1963, which gave the Five Families their current names. Originally in control of the waterfront on the West Side of Manhattan as well as the docks and the Fulton Fish Market on the East River waterfront, the family was run between 1981 and 2005 by "The Oddfather", Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who feigned insanity by shuffling unshaven through New York's Greenwich Village wearing a tattered bath robe and muttering to himself incoherently to avoid prosecution. Finding new ways to make money in the 21st century, the family took advantage of lax due diligence by banks during the housing bubble with a wave of mortgage frauds. Prosecutors say loan shark victims obtained home equity loans to pay off debts to their mob bankers. The family found ways to use new technology to improve on illegal gambling, with customers placing bets through offshore sites via the Internet. Although the leadership of the Genovese family seemed to have been in limbo after the death of Gigante in 2005, sources believe that Liborio "Barney" Bellomo is the current boss of the organization.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers the Genovese family the most powerful of the Five Families. The organization is the most formidable, sophisticated, secretive, and wealthiest Mafia family in the United States. The Genovese family has maintained an ability to operate white-collar crime rackets such as construction and labor racketeering as other crime families were weakened and reduced to street-level, blue-collar crime rackets. The family is unique in today's Mafia, and has benefited greatly from members following omertà, a code of conduct emphasizing secrecy and non-cooperation with law enforcement and the justice system. While many mobsters from across the country have testified against their crime families since the 1980s, the Genovese family has had only eleven members and associates turn state's evidence in its history. Detective Joseph J. Coffey of the New York Organized Crime Task Force described the Genovese family as "the Ivy League of the underworld".