The Mafia "capo" had an employee problem.

“The mutt” — a made member of the Mafia family — had insulted an acting boss and disputed a mobster staffing decision. He “had to meet death,” concluded the reputed caporegime, the Italian term for captain in the underworld.

Or at the very least, the mutt had to be maimed.

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“You just gotta put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life or somebody's gotta get a f----- jar of acid and throw it in his f----- face…” Charles “Beeps” Stango said, according to a March 2015 federal court document alleging crimes by him and other accused members of the DeCavalcante crime family, the New Jersey mob outfit known as an inspiration for "The Sopranos" series on HBO.

Stango, now 75, ultimately opted for death, according to the document. The capo planned to pay two motorcycle gang members $25,000 each to kill the Elizabeth man, but the hit never came. Stango pleaded guilty to using the telephone with the intent to commit murder and was sentenced in 2017 to 10 years in prison in connection to the planned killing. The attorney who represented Stango in the case declined to comment.

Stango's case stands among the latest federal prosecutions of New Jersey Mafia figures, showing that despite the rise of other gangs, the old mob is still active in the Garden State.

"La Cosa Nostra" (Italian for "our thing") doesn't enjoy the same power it had in decades past. The latest "organized crime spotlight" report issued by the state focused instead on the notoriously violent street gang MS-13. The alleged MS-13 "regional director for the East Coast" had a home in the Jersey Shore's Long Branch.

Yet old school mobsters still wreak havoc on the shreds of turf they control, with federal prosecutions in recent years uncovering mob activity at the Port of New York and New Jersey and in some suburbs across the state.

The USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey learned the state remains a hunting ground for mobsters tied to Philadelphia and New York City. Two of the notorious five New York crime families — Lucchese and Genovese — operate in New Jersey, mob experts said. The Network also found documents identifying recent New Jersey ties to the Bonnano and Gambino families.

“The mob still exists,” said Grady O’Malley, senior litigation counsel in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, who has sent Mafia members to trial and prison since the late 1970s. He estimated up to 300 associates are active in the state, down from 800 at their peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

MORE: 'The things you can't beat are the tapes': Jersey Shore Mafia drug ring busted

O’Malley explained that mobsters today are struggling to make money. Legalized sports gambling and a crackdown on opioids cut into their traditional cashflow. Sweeping federal indictments in past decades decimated the mob hierarchy as members flipped to help law enforcement or went to prison.

Today's mobsters aren’t as sophisticated as Asian, Russian or African organized criminals conducting high-end internet fraud in New Jersey, according to O'Malley.

Gambino Boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali was gunned down in Staten Island earlier this month. Anthony Comello was arrested in Brick and charged in the fatal shooting. Comello's attorney told the Network the incident is related to hate online, "including right-wing conspiracy websites and public comments made by politicians,” Robert Gottlieb said. He declined to comment on a rumored romantic motive, except to say “we’re investigating everything that’s been reported."

O’Malley said he didn’t think the killing had the markings of a sanctioned mob hit.

Even so, legacy mob activity in New Jersey is detailed in the records of recent federal prosecutions:

Prostitutes and cocaine: DeCavalcante associates charged along with Stango were accused of discussing at a bar in Toms River in 2015 their plan for a prostitution business. Accused mobsters were charged with dealing cocaine in Union Township in 2014 and 2015. A conversation recorded by the feds showed the DeCavalcantes operating under the Gambinos, another one of the major New York families.

DeCavalcante associates charged along with Stango were accused of discussing at a bar in Toms River in 2015 their plan for a prostitution business. Accused mobsters were charged with dealing cocaine in Union Township in 2014 and 2015. A conversation recorded by the feds showed the DeCavalcantes operating under the Gambinos, another one of the major New York families. Taking over a company: A Galloway member of the Lucchese crime family was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2015 in connection to a scheme whereby he and others, including an associate of the Philadelphia crime family, conspired to take over a Texas financial services company and funnel millions of dollars from the company to themselves.

A Galloway member of the Lucchese crime family was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2015 in connection to a scheme whereby he and others, including an associate of the Philadelphia crime family, conspired to take over a Texas financial services company and funnel millions of dollars from the company to themselves. Holiday shakedowns: Four reputed associates of the Genovese crime family were charged in a scheme that involved extorting a percentage from New Jersey port workers' Christmas-time bonuses. Two accused mobsters were sentenced to more prison in April 2015 for their roles, one for more than two years, the other for more than three years.

On the waterfront

The Port of New York and New Jersey is a longtime hotspot for organized crime, O’Malley noted.

“That has never stopped,” O’Malley said. “And that will continue as long as there are ships that are coming in from all over the world and the people here who know what the ships are bringing in.”

Law enforcement authorities seized 3,200 pounds of cocaine valued at $77 million at Port Newark in late February, though they haven’t yet named who they suspect of importing the drugs.

All five of the New York City crime families, plus the New Jersey DeCavalcantes and the Philadelphia mob have people placed in the port, according to Walter Arsenault, executive director of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. The Genovese family controls the New Jersey side, according to Arsenault.

Formed in 1953 to combat corruption, in recent years the Waterfront Commission has fought against New Jersey withdrawing from the commission, which operates under a joint arrangement between New Jersey and New York.

Arsenault described mob activity at the port today similar to the problems that prompted the formation of the commission: theft of cargo and containers, extortion of port workers and importation and sale of drugs.

“Its death has been greatly exaggerated,” Arsenault said of the mob. “The one thing that they are is adaptable.”

The mob moneymaking portfolio

The Mafia once infiltrated New Jersey’s political system and some elements of law enforcement, according to Lee Seglem, executive director of the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, a 51-year-old arm of state government dedicated to rooting out organized crime and corruption.

La Cosa Nostra’s reign has waned in the last 10 to 15 years, diminished by prosecutions and infighting between criminal factions. They’re now a “low-grade fever,” Seglem said.

Seglem explained they still make money with traditional ventures like labor racketeering — taking control of workers at a construction site and demanding a payout from the builders.

HBO's fictional character Tony Soprano’s stock in trade, the solid waste industry, also remains a moneymaking magnet, according to Seglem.

In one recent example, a Bonanno crime family captain was connected to a scheme in which a “dirt broker” trucked in demolition waste, including dirt tainted with a cancer-causing substance, to fill in backyards eroded by superstorm Sandy along the edge of Raritan Bay in the Cliffwood Beach section of Old Bridge, according to a 2017 report by the State Commission of Investigation.

“Organized crime is not dead, unfortunately,” Seglem said.

Andrew Ford: @AndrewFordNews; 732-643-4281; aford3@gannettnj.com