not long after 9 00 pm on march 13th
2019 a q a non-obsessed 24 year old
called anthony camelo walked up to
francesco cali's house in well-heeled
staten island suburbia it happened
quickly camelo approached and the two
men had a brief exchange
then camelo opened fire and cali was
killed instantly needless to say with
the
potential organized crime
angle to this story it gets the utmost
importance to the nypd and the entire
detective bureau frank cali wasn't just
your average 53 year old
total is a staten island neighborhood
known for its deep italian mafia ties
and few figures were as well known in
high ranking as cali the feds say frank
cali an alleged mafia captain is the
family's bridge to crime families in
sicily the reputed acting boss of the
gambino crime family one of the largest
and most notorious of new york's
historic five families 25 defendants all
members and associates of the gambino
family are charged with racketeering
conspiracy which include predicate acts
of murder attempted murder murder
conspiracy felony murder robbery
extortion conspiracy to distribute
cocaine and marijuana securities fraud
mail fraud loan sharking theft of union
benefits illegal gambling and bribery
kali's murder marked the first time a
head of a new york family had been
murdered since the mid-80s when john
gotti orchestrated the infamous hit of
paul castelleno another gambino boss but
things had changed drastically between
then and 2019. the usual mob narrative
is one of decline
but kali's sudden and apparently random
murder was a reminder that the old
school organized crime families haven't
vanished they've just been forced to
venture further into the murky
underground
[Music]
this is the business of crime in this
episode we're looking at the feature of
the crime family why they hold such a
sway over the imagination and exactly
what their role is in an ever more
chaotic global criminal underworld i do
believe the math organization exists
everywhere extortion drug trafficking
fraud and murder
to some they seem so much more
respectable when apparently controlled
and regulated as a family business
but the reality is often more sopranos
than the sepia tinted godfather law you
take away the labels and the stripes and
the mafia and the cozenostra and
the blood oath and all the hollywood
hype and the sopranos business
where is the proof
for much of the 20th century the crime
family made perfect business sense from
the 1930s formation of new york's five
families to the 80s heyday of pablo
escobar's medellin cartel
some of the most lucrative and
ruthlessly violent criminal
organizations on earth operated in a
strict top-down hierarchy with a boss at
the top and various layers of underlings
spread out below they realized very
quickly
that they needed to insulate the upper
brass from the crimes themselves the
more people you have
the easier it is to keep the bosses
insulated and officials now admit
underestimating its reach and strength
it's a system with clear structure and
even clearer boundaries at least in
theory
money flows up the chain of command and
grief slides down
the top tier make the decisions and the
workers implement them if arrests are
made they shouldn't ever impact upper
management for too long
for all the apparent benefits the old
school crime family's rigid hierarchies
present its fair share of problems
for one thing it's easier to investigate
breaking the back of new york's five
families in the 80s might have taken
enormous resources and political will
spearheaded by an ambitious then obscure
district attorney named rudy giuliani
two of them i know will be able to post
bail immediately
uh castellano yeah and fat tony
the rico act uh came into play in the
very early 1970s and that was the
government's counter-assault on
organized crime which meant essentially
that they could not only go after the
person who committed the crime
they could go up the ladder and
prosecute the individuals who ordered
the crime once the organizational
structure revealed itself the
organization could open up resulting in
the much mythologized 1986 mafia
commission trial in which three of the
five new york bosses were imprisoned for
life but the mob didn't really go
anywhere instead they shifted further
into the undergrowth
running fraud and financial crimes while
keeping ostentatious displays of
attention-grabbing violence to a minimum
they are the prime targets of law
enforcement steel so they constantly
have their money seized their property
their assets the decline and stubborn
resistance of the mob can also be traced
in the uk a nation with a rich history
of gangland families jostling for
supremacy across its major cities
the adams family are a major case in
point
founded and led by three brothers terry
tommy and patrick the north london-based
firm came to prominence in the mid-80s
they made millions and gained a fearsome
reputation through a mixture of
international drug smuggling extortion
and a propensity for brutally efficient
violence with suspected involvement in
dozens of gangland murders over the
decades
by the early 90s they were commonly seen
as one of europe's most formidable
criminal enterprises with a fortune
estimated in the hundreds of millions in
a credit line to south american drugs
cartels their position appeared
unassailable
until a joint investigation by mi5 in
inland revenue disrupted the family's
operations post-millennium an al capone
approach it can really take down some
quite big and notorious
organized criminal groups
by looking at their financial assets
though all three brothers have spent
significant time in prison since they're
still thought to retain significant
underworld influence as of today
organized crime has proven rather
successful in the fine art of acquiring
more money so no matter what the
government does
to combat that they're still gonna be
wise guys
that's the problem with heralding the
demise of the traditional crime family
even when the leadership is carted off
to prison operations can still carry on
much like before traditional mafia
families in certain parts of the world
by struggling
even though they
they have one thing that other organized
crime groups don't have which is their
historical reputation in the past the
funeral bell's told because of the
actions of the cossa nostra the sicilian
mafia but despite its fame it's no
longer the most feared even more
ruthless is the andranketta and it now
has more members perhaps though the very
concept is something of a myth in the
modern world
there's even something comforting about
imagining a series of mr biggs imposing
order on the violent chaos of the
criminal underworld
reality however is usually somewhere
else
take cape town for example here
[Music]
they're sitting there although apartheid
rule ended over a quarter century ago
class and racial divisions remain stark
in the south african metropolis
poverty and violence are commonplace
conditions that helped lead to over a
hundred thousand people involved in the
city's estimated 130 gallons
jostling for space and profits in a
saturated market often makes for bloody
warfare
the level of violence
is a characteristics of
unevolved criminal groups in such a
volatile world the reputation of this or
that crime family doesn't hold much sway
for some it's safer to simply go alone
at least for the unnaturally fearless
and violent individual these maverick
individualists remain rare
broadly speaking there's still relative
safety in numbers
for as long as that remains true the old
school crime family won't ever totally
recede into history
though frank cali's murder jolted new
york's middle class into remembering the
mob's existence
it wasn't like they'd ever gone anywhere
in the first place frank cali gets
assassinated
and everyone including most historians
and journalists were very quick to think
oh no
this is something we haven't seen in
years a brazen daylight mob hit
and then we come to find out
as happens in the world of organized
crime truth is stranger than fiction
it probably wasn't a mob hit
it was a mob stirrer getting hit
by someone the gambino boss's killer
wasn't an ice-cold assassin but a
conspiracy obsessed 24 year old without
mob ties who lived with his parents and
was convinced frank cali was part of the
deep state
it was just a crazy guy
a chewing on guys
you