1908 . A look at an organized Mafia conspiracy to commit bankruptcy fraud by concealment of assets, amounting to $ 500 , 000 .

The Crime

Ignazio Lupo had worked in the gro­cery busi­ness in Palermo with his father since 1887. Legal pro­ceed­ings were held against him in March 1899, after he shot a busi­ness rival in his store. Based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of his own employ­ees, Lupo was con­vict­ed of ‘delib­er­ate and wil­ful mur­der’. But he had already fled the coun­try, arriv­ing ille­gal­ly in New York dur­ing 1898.

Lupo con­tin­ued to work in the gro­cery busi­ness, and opened sev­er­al out­lets in New York City. His first store was on East 72nd Street with a cousin named Saitta, lat­er he moved the busi­ness to Brooklyn. In 1901, he moved back to Manhattan open­ing a store at 9 Prince Street. When his father arrived in 1902, they opened a retail gro­cery store “Rocco Lupo & Sons’ at 310 West 39th Street, where he worked along with his broth­er, Giovanni Lupo.

He opened his flag­ship store at 210–214 Mott Street. The New York Times described it as ‘‘eas­i­ly the most pre­ten­tious mer­can­tile estab­lish­ment in that sec­tion of the city, with a stock of goods over which the neigh­bour­hood mar­velled … Lupo’s hors­es and deliv­ery wag­ons were the best that had ever been used in the neigh­bour­hood”. The turnover of the busi­ness reached between $500,000 and $600,000 a year.

William Flynn, chief of the Secret Service, who had an informed knowl­edge of Lupo’s meth­ods, described how Lupo threat­ened oth­er busi­ness­es:

The small Italian gro­cers of the dis­trict were forced to buy their sup­plies from this store. If they did not their estab­lish­ments were in dan­ger of being wrecked by bombs or burned … By intim­i­dat­ing the local gro­cers into trad­ing at their whole­sale store, Lupo and Morello accom­plished a dou­ble pur­pose. They swelled their so-called legit­i­mate prof­its and were able to get rid of some of [their] coun­ter­feit mon­ey.

Lupo import­ed Italian goods from his broth­er-in-law, Francesco Gambino, via an import com­pa­ny run by Frank Zito. In February 1903, a con­sign­ment of emp­ty olive oil cans labelled ‘Rocco Lupo & Sons’ was sent by Gambino to the ‘Lupo Brothers’. The cans were impound­ed for inspec­tion by the Secret Service, after they learnt of a telegram sent by Vito Cascioferro, that led them to believe the gang were smug­gling coun­ter­feit cur­ren­cy into the city.

Other Mafioso also ran gro­cery stores across New York. Several of them were con­sid­ered to be ‘branch stores’ of Lupo’s net­work:

9 Spring Street — run by Antonio Cecala.

Spring Street — run by Antonio Cecala. 593 Flushing Avenue — run by Antonito Passananti.

Flushing Avenue — run by Antonito Passananti. 235 East 97 th Street — run by Domenico Milone.

East Street — run by Domenico Milone. 307 East 71 st Street — run by Carlo Costantino.

East Street — run by Carlo Costantino. 150 Elizabeth Street — “owned by Lupo”.

Elizabeth Street — “owned by Lupo”. Giovanni Pecoraro, who also ran a gro­cery store, showed debts to the same cred­i­tors as Lupo in 1909 .

In late November 1908, Lupo dis­ap­peared from New York owing up to $100,000 to his cred­i­tors, among whom were list­ed a trust com­pa­ny; a New York bank; and food and wine mer­chants; Many oth­er Italian stores in the city began to fail at the same time, esti­mat­ed at six in Brooklyn and eleven in Manhattan. The New York author­i­ties soon realised they were fac­ing an organ­ised con­spir­a­cy, with com­bined lia­bil­i­ties across Brooklyn and Manhattan esti­mat­ed at $500,000.

Twelve war­rants were issued by Court Receiver, Charles Cohn, for ‘fraud­u­lent dis­po­si­tion of prop­er­ty, and with con­spir­a­cy to defraud mer­chants’. Benjamin Lesser, attor­ney for Lupo’s cred­i­tors sus­pect­ed that a fur­ther ten busi­ness­es were involved.

Receiver Cohn became sus­pi­cious after find­ing one of the stores emp­tied of stock, even though they had been sup­plied with ‘thou­sands of dol­lars of wine dur­ing the past few days’. He was tipped off about the con­spir­a­cy by a book­keep­er from one of the stores, who had been offered $100 to ‘keep his mouth shut’. Cohn, and the book­keep­er both received death threats.

Goods totalling around $50,000 were tracked down to a Jersey City pier ready to be trans­port­ed to Italy, with fur­ther stock dis­cov­ered on a Manhattan pier. Some items, includ­ing meat and lard had already been shipped to Italy. In an attempt to dis­guise the source of the goods, com­pa­ny names and details had been removed from the bar­rels and crates, but agents con­nect­ed to the sup­pli­ers man­aged to iden­ti­fy the stock. A store­room at Twenty Fourth street and First avenue was raid­ed, reveal­ing a fur­ther $6,000 worth of prop­er­ty, and anoth­er ware­house on Washington Street dis­closed even more.

The bank­rupt­cy courts auc­tioned off the reclaimed stock, along with oth­er assets from Lupo’s store. The items were list­ed as:

large stock of Italian wines, liquors. gro­ceries, bar­rels of claret, port and oth­er wines, vine­gar, bar­rels of soda, bags of beans, peas, nuts, salt, bales of stock fish, cas­es of soap, starch, wash­ing pow­der, mac­a­roni, bologna; also fix­tures, con­sist­ing of safe, revolv­ing chairs, desks, seal­er, let­ter press …

The Brains

Egyptian born, Philip S. Saitta, was the son of an Italian Minister to Egypt. He began his career in the gro­cery busi­ness, but was best known for his work as a New York attor­ney, spe­cial­is­ing in rep­re­sent­ing fruit importers.

Saitta was a well edu­cat­ed man with a great knowl­edge of the gro­cery busi­ness; in 1908 he spoke in front of con­gress in ‘Tariff hear­ings before the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives’ where he ‘rep­re­sent­ed the fruit deal­ers and importers of New York’ and the Italian Chamber of Commerce, and spoke about remov­ing the tar­iff on Italian lemons import­ed into America. He also act­ed as rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Italian Merchants Protective Association, and had a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny involved with erect­ing apart­ment hous­es.

Saitta act­ed as attor­ney for the Musica fam­i­ly in 1913, who were accused of ‘hav­ing swin­dled a chain of twen­ty two banks in [America] and Europe out of more than $1,000,000 through alleged manip­u­la­tion of invoic­es’. He had known the fam­i­ly for many years, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed them in sev­er­al civ­il cas­es, but was accused of only offer­ing them his legal ser­vices after they had hand­ed over their pri­vate papers and valu­ables. Reports show that Saitta was served with a writ in 1913 for hold­ing prop­er­ty belong­ing to the fam­i­ly.

In 1914, Saitta was tried and con­vict­ed for grand lar­ce­ny in the Court of General Sessions. He was charged with retain­ing pro­ceeds from import­ed Italian lemons, and as a result was dis­barred on July 6, 1914.

Towards the end of the tri­al, Saitta was con­front­ed with a ten page report pre­pared by Assistant District Attorney William Hayward. He was accused of being con­nect­ed with bank­rupt­cies, bogus finan­cial trans­ac­tions, and of hav­ing con­nec­tions with the Mafia.

The report closed by say­ing:

The Police Department of this city, as well as many well informed busi­ness men, believe that the defen­dant has been the mas­ter mind and legal advis­er to the Mafia, and has been in close asso­ci­a­tion as advis­er and friend of some of the most dan­ger­ous and noto­ri­ous crim­i­nals for years

The accu­sa­tion cer­tain­ly holds some weight:

In 1909 , Mafioso Giuseppe Morello was seen vis­it­ing Saitta’s office at 258 Broadway.

, Mafioso Giuseppe Morello was seen vis­it­ing Saitta’s office at Broadway. In the weeks lead­ing up to Saitta’s 1914 tri­al, lawyer Charles H. Deull from DA Whitman’s office con­tact­ed the New York Secret Service to ascer­tain if they had any infor­ma­tion on ‘Filippo Saitta, who was a close asso­ciate of Lupo’s’.

tri­al, lawyer Charles H. Deull from Whitman’s office con­tact­ed the New York Secret Service to ascer­tain if they had any infor­ma­tion on ‘Filippo Saitta, who was a close asso­ciate of Lupo’s’. Saitta act­ed as attor­ney for Salvatore Manzella, an Italian gro­cer who had con­nec­tions with Ignazio Lupo.

His son, Philip W. Saitta, did busi­ness with Lupo’s whole­sale store on Mott Street, involv­ing gro­cery goods and loans.

An arti­cle about Saitta’s con­vic­tion, sub-head­ed “Defender of Notorious Crooks”, claimed he had rep­re­sent­ed ‘Lupo the Wolf’, and ‘Petto the Ox’ from the famous Barrel Trial in 1903 .

. Saitta act­ed as attor­ney for Ignazio Lupo in a busi­ness mat­ter.

He incor­po­rat­ed a com­pa­ny in 1913 with Frank Zito, a busi­ness­man with con­nec­tions to Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo.

with Frank Zito, a busi­ness­man with con­nec­tions to Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo. He had deal­ings with Biagio Calandra, an Italian gro­cer who was arrest­ed for mur­der and insur­ance fraud, who also had con­nec­tions with Ignazio Lupo.

During the tri­al, ADA Hayward accused Saitta of being involved with a bank­rupt­cy con­spir­a­cy using a net­work of New York gro­cery stores.

The Conspiracy

Hayward asked Saitta if he had induced Charles A. Edwards of the Anglo-South American Bank to loan $300,000 to Italian gro­cers and busi­ness­es, that were non­col­lec­table due to the gro­cers being miss­ing or repu­di­at­ing their sig­na­tures mak­ing the doc­u­ments worth­less.

The busi­ness­es list­ed in the courts accu­sa­tion and press reports were:

❖ Ignazio Lupo. 210 Mott St. and 9 Spring St. NY

Lupo was the first to dis­ap­pear in the scheme, leav­ing debts of around $100,000, and was con­sid­ered to be ‘at the bot­tom of the alleged swin­dle’. Before he dis­ap­peared, Lupo had large busi­ness trans­ac­tions with Philip Saitta’s son , and received ‘cash advances’ from Saitta, that were paid on his bills of lad­ing.

❖ Antonio Passananti. 593 Flushing Av. Brooklyn

Passananti was report­ed to have made large pay­ments to Lupo short­ly before his own whole­sale wine store simul­ta­ne­ous­ly failed with $15,000 of debt. His busi­ness, which had been report­ed as sus­pi­cious by the NYPD Italian Branch, was also sus­pect­ed to be a branch store of Lupo’s own gro­cery net­work. He had pre­vi­ous­ly been arrest­ed for extor­tion, and was lat­er arrest­ed in Sicily in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of Lt. Petrosino.

❖ Lupo & Lo Presti. 419 – 421 Jefferson St. NY

A whole­sale and retail gro­cery busi­ness run by Giovanni Lupo, broth­er of Ignazio Lupo. Giovanni had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with his broth­er in the failed Mott Street store, but left six months pri­or to its fail­ure to set up his busi­ness in Hoboken with Giuseppe Lo Presti.

❖ Manzella Bros. 189 / 196 Elizabeth St. and 1096 3 rd Av. Brooklyn

After Manzella’s gro­cery busi­ness was judged bank­rupt with lia­bil­i­ties reach­ing $32,000, one of his cred­i­tors was shown to be Philip Saitta’s son. He is also shown in records with the Mafia owned con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, The Ignatz Florio Co-Operative Association Amongst Corleonese, where he is named in mort­gage trans­fers and sub­or­di­na­tions. Philip S. Saitta lat­er act­ed as Manzella’s attor­ney.

❖ Sebastiano Cataldo. 165 Elizabeth St. NY

Cataldo, a whole­sale liquor deal­er, dis­ap­peared at the same time as Lupo, his lia­bil­i­ties were ‘stat­ed to aggre­gate many thou­sands of dol­lars’. He was a direc­tor of the J. Rumore Realty Company. John Rumore, an under­tak­er based at 2089 2nd Av, had direct deal­ings with the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative.

❖ Frank Zito. 24 Stone St. NY

Frank Zito’s import com­pa­ny shipped in pro­duce from Francesco Gambino, Lupo’s broth­er-in-law based in Palermo. Zito had cor­re­spon­dence with Lupo after his impris­on­ment in 1910 hav­ing appeared as a char­ac­ter wit­ness on his behalf, and was list­ed as a sig­na­to­ry request­ing Lupo’s full par­don from parole in 1921. Zito was also shown as a sig­na­to­ry dur­ing Phillip S. Saitta’s pre­sen­ta­tion to con­gress in 1908. The’ New York Fruit Exchange Incorporated’, which was described as the ‘largest and most influ­en­tial body of its kind’, list­ed Zito as a trustee of the com­pa­ny.

❖ John Bono & Co. 252 Avenue A. NY

Bono, a whole­sale wine deal­er, was the first arrest made in the scheme. A book­keep­er from his store ‘squealed’, and con­fessed the scheme to the receivers. Bono had fled his store, but was lat­er arrest­ed on Broadway and charged with grand lar­ce­ny. Among Bono’s cred­i­tors were the Lake Erie Wine Company, the same cred­i­tor as Cataldo and Passananti.

❖ A. Viviano & Sons. 238 Elizabeth St. NY

Antonio Viviano offered him­self as sure­ty when Lupo was arrest­ed on coun­ter­feit­ing charges in 1903. He was also giv­en as a busi­ness ref­er­ence by Domenico Milone who front­ed a gro­cery busi­ness dis­trib­ut­ing coun­ter­feit mon­ey for Lupo and Morello. His son, Luigi Viviano, had cor­re­spon­dence with Lupo after his impris­on­ment in 1910, and was list­ed as a sig­na­to­ry in request­ing his full par­don from parole in 1921.

❖ Antonio Collora. 1024 Wallabout Market. Brooklyn

Collora, a Brooklyn based mer­chant, dis­ap­peared after clear­ing the assets from his busi­ness. Suspected of being part of the scheme, he was adjudged bank­rupt. Collora’s wag­ons were seen out­side Domenico Milone’s store in 1909, the dri­ver was seen to be argu­ing with Antonio Cecala, both known asso­ciates of Lupo. Giuseppe Morello was seen vis­it­ing Collora’s busi­ness in October 1909.

❖ Abele Corillo. 990 Atlantic Avenue. Brooklyn

Corillo was anoth­er wine mer­chant who dis­ap­peared with the oth­ers in the scheme. He lat­er had a peti­tion in invol­un­tary bank­rupt­cy filed against his busi­ness.

❖ Rando Bros. 24 Stone St. NY

Saitta’s ‘Arch Realty Construction Company’ list­ed Frank and Giuseppe F. Randow as direc­tors.

The Money

The accu­sa­tion put to Saitta was that he had induced the Anglo-South American Bank to loan $300,000 against bills of lad­ing from the gro­cers involved.

The New York Times stat­ed that in the weeks before Lupo’s dis­ap­pear­ance he had ‘pur­chased about $50,000 worth of mer­chan­dise … most of it he put in ware­hous­es after­ward, either sell­ing the bills of lad­ing or obtain­ing loans on the foods.‘ and that he had secured his mon­ey using bills of lad­ing for the ‘enor­mous amount of stock that [he] gen­er­al­ly car­ried in his estab­lish­ments at Mott and Spring Streets.”

The Evening Telegram con­tend­ed that Lupo had also been using prop­er­ty to raise mon­ey:

The police say [Lupo] fur­nished the secu­ri­ty upon which the gro­ceries were stocked. The scheme was start­ed by secur­ing a house val­ued at more than $75,000 on which Lupo paid $3,000 and gave a mort­gage. By refer­ring this house as secu­ri­ty the back­ers of the gro­cery chain got cred­it in lots of $2,000 until they had $100,000 worth.

Property records show that the The Ignatz Florio Co-Operative con­veyed two six storey ten­e­ments to Lupo in 1907. A few days before his dis­ap­pear­ance, Lupo took three mort­gages on the prop­er­ties, one from Antonio Rizzo, and anoth­er from Joseph Di Giorgio, a wealthy fruit importer who had pre­vi­ous­ly been bombed by the Black Hand. Philip W. Saitta wit­nessed Lupo col­lect­ing $8,500 from Di Giorgio’s office short­ly before he fled the city.

Seven months after Lupo’s dis­ap­pear­ance, he was sum­monsed by the Supreme Court of New York in rela­tion to the build­ings. Others named in the sum­mons were Joseph Di Giorgio, Antonio Rizzo, The Ignatz Florio Co-Operative, and Giuseppe Morello. The build­ings were even­tu­al­ly put up for pub­lic auc­tion in late 1909.

In 1910, Lupo was ques­tioned in court about his busi­ness fail­ure, which he attrib­uted to the ‘1907 Bankers’ Panic’:

In 1908, on account of bank­ing trou­ble cri­sis, busi­ness went bad … He had friends he could go to to get loans once in a while to pay his notes … Before the finan­cial cri­sis he bought some prop­er­ty where he invest­ed all his mon­ey … He had stuff in bond and he had bills for those goods and had bor­rowed mon­ey on them.

The pros­e­cu­tions main wit­ness from Lupo’s tri­al said that he had over­heard con­ver­sa­tion frag­ments dur­ing the time he had spent with the Mafia gang:

There was some talk of the fail­ure of Lupo in his bank on Elizabeth Street, and how [Giuseppe Palermo] and Uncle Vincent had also failed on Elizabeth Street, mak­ing much mon­ey there­by

The bank­rupt gro­cer, Salvatore Manzella, claimed his busi­ness had been ruined by an extor­tion scheme run by Lupo. He tes­ti­fied that for over three years he, and oth­ers, had been a vic­tim of extor­tion from Lupo. Manzella also claimed that Lupo, one week before he dis­ap­peared, had vis­it­ed his store and tak­en over $1000 in cash at gun­point. But detec­tives claimed that the mon­ey was giv­en to Lupo more than a week after his cred­i­tors and receivers had begun to look for him.

Philip S. Saitta, who act­ed as Manzella’s attor­ney, lat­er retract­ed these state­ments. Manzella then failed to appear as a wit­ness for the pros­e­cu­tion against Lupo, and the extor­tion charges were dropped.

The con­spir­a­cy had a dev­as­tat­ing effect on inno­cent busi­ness­es. Jacob Kulla, a whole­sale deal­er who’s sales exceed­ed two mil­lion dol­lars a year, was adjudged bank­rupt in January 1909. His insol­ven­cy was, in part, attrib­uted to ‘the recent fail­ures of Lupo and oth­er Sicilians in the gro­cery and wine trade’.

When Lupo returned to New York, in late 1909, to face his cred­i­tors, he dubi­ous­ly explained that his busi­ness had been ruined by threats from the Black Hand, who had forced him to pay $10,000 before he fled the city. His tale caused some under­stand­able dis­be­lief as Lupo him­self had been ‘cred­it­ed by the police with being trea­sur­er and head of the Black Hand’.

The Others

According to the writ­ings of William J Flynn, oth­er Mafia organ­i­sa­tions failed at around the same time as the gro­cers:

❖ The Roma Construction Company

Run by Antonio Passananti and Carlo Costantino. The pair had been con­nect­ed to the gro­cery con­spir­a­cy, and were sus­pect­ed of being employed by Lupo to ‘run two of his branch stores’. They fled to Sicily in ear­ly 1909, and were lat­er arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of NYPD Lt. Petrosino.

Baldassarre Ceola, the police com­mis­sion­er of Palermo, wrote a report on the Petrosino case in April 1909:

Carlo Costantino and Antonio Passananti returned unex­pect­ed­ly from America, pass­ing off their sud­den jour­ney with the excuse that they sought there­by to escape pay­ments of some pet­ty debts. Actually, both bought large sums of mon­ey to Italy…

❖ The Co-Operative Society of Sicily

The pur­pose of the soci­ety was described as:

The pro­mo­tion and encour­age­ment of mutu­al­i­ty and reci­procity in indus­tries and com­merce, through the estab­lish­ment of Co-oper­a­tive stores and fac­to­ries in the United States of America … trade, deal in, and deal with goods, wares, mer­chan­dise and prop­er­ty

The soci­ety was based in Prince Street, with direc­tors includ­ing Carmelo Naso and Giuseppe Palermo, both of whom were with Lupo at the time of his arrest for coun­ter­feit­ing in 1910. The soci­ety also had prop­er­ty deal­ings with Carlo Costantino from the Roma Construction Company, and the Ignatz Florio Co-Operative. Palermo, who was impris­oned along with Lupo in 1910, was described as:

an Italian Banker in the upper east side of New York … in 1907 he is sup­posed to have abscond­ed with a large sum of mon­ey which had been placed with him by Italians of the neigh­bour­hood to be trans­mit­ted to Italy.

❖ Pasquale Pati & Son. 238 – 240 Elizabeth St. NY

Flynn wrote ‘Lupo was also on more than famil­iar terms with banker Pati’.. The banker he was refer­ring to was Pasquale Pati who ran a pri­vate bank on Elizabeth Street, at one time hold­ing deposits totalling $1,500,00. In March 1908, Pati closed the busi­ness and fled, pro­claim­ing threats from the Black Hand. He was lat­er want­ed by the police for grand lar­ce­ny in con­nec­tion with his dis­ap­pear­ance.

The Convictions

No con­vic­tions were made in con­nec­tion with the con­spir­a­cy that was described by ADA Hayward in 1914.

When Manzella failed to appear in court against Lupo in November 1909, the extor­tion charges were dropped. Lupo was arrest­ed just months lat­er for coun­ter­feit­ing, and was grant­ed an exten­sion of a month in which to file his appli­ca­tion for a dis­charge from bank­rupt­cy. However, he was impris­oned on the coun­ter­feit­ing charge for 30 years at Atlanta Penitentiary.

After Philip S. Saitta’s 1914 tri­al he was sen­tenced to two-four years at Sing Sing. He sold his Brooklyn house, described as ‘one of the finest in the Bay Ridge sec­tion’, which was lat­er destroyed in a ‘sus­pi­cious’ fire. He then passed away in late 1917.

Written by Jon Black, with thanks to David Critchley for his con­tri­bu­tions to the research.