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Nick Licata (mobster)
Nick "Old Man" Licata (born Nicolò Licata; ; February 20, 1897 - October 19, 1974) was an Italian American mobster who was the Boss of the Los Angeles crime family from 1967 until his death in 1974. Early life Licata was born on February 20, 1897 in the small Italian town of Camporeale, in Sicily (although his surname may suggest family origins in Licata). He was the son of Calogero and Vita, and had six brothers and two sisters. According to his records at Ellis Island, he boarded the Sant' Anna in Palermo at age 16 with $25. On December 5, 1913, Licata arrived in the United States and joined his brother Leonardo in Brooklyn. He later legally anglicised his first name to "Nick". During the 1920s Licata became involved in bootlegging in Detroit during the prohibition era. He eventually became a made man in the Detroit crime family. He left for Los Angeles after offending its boss, Joseph Zerilli. He endeared himself to L.A. Boss Jack Dragna who was able to convince Zerilli to cal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mug Shot
A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph or booking photograph) is a photographic portrait of a person from the shoulders up, typically taken after a person is arrested. The original purpose of the mug shot was to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for identification by victims, the public and investigators. However, in the United States, entrepreneurs have recently begun to monetize these public records via the mug shot publishing industry. Photographing of criminals began in the 1840s only a few years after the invention of photography, but it was not until 1888 that French police officer Alphonse Bertillon standardized the process. Etymology "Mug" is an English slang term for "face", dating from the 18th century. Mug shot can more loosely mean any small picture of a face used for any reason. Description A typical mug shot is two-part, with one side-view photo, and one front-view. The background is usua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rum-running
Rum-running or bootlegging is the illegal business of smuggling alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling usually takes place to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. The term ''rum-running'' is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; ''bootlegging'' is applied to smuggling over land. It is believed that the term ''bootlegging'' originated during the American Civil War, when soldiers would sneak liquor into army camps by concealing pint bottles within their boots or beneath their trouser legs. Also, according to the PBS documentary ''Prohibition'', the term ''bootlegging'' was popularized when thousands of city dwellers sold liquor from flasks they kept in their boot legs all across major cities and rural areas. The term ''rum-running'' was current by 1916, and was used during the Prohibition era in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Brancato
Anthony Brancato (July 18, 1914 – August 6, 1951) was an American criminal who served as a freelance gunman to various Mafia and syndicate organizations. Early career Born in Kansas City in 1914, Brancato became involved in armed robbery and drug dealing. He later moved to Southern California in 1946. Arriving in Los Angeles during the early stages of the mob feud between Los Angeles crime family boss Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen, Brancato was immediately able to find freelance mob work. He soon compiled a criminal record including illegal gambling, narcotics, and bootlegging. Broncato was briefly considered by police a suspect in a few Hollywood gangland slayings, including that of New York and Los Angeles mobster Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen gunman Hooky Rothman. Brancato was also a suspect in the July 1949 assassination attempt on Cohen himself. Fresno, California police questioned Brancato about the drug-related death of Abe Davidson. He was a relative of Cleveland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Fratianno
Aladena James Fratianno (born Aladena Fratianno; November 14, 1913 – June 29, 1993), also known as "Jimmy the Weasel", was an Italian-born American mobster who was acting boss of the Los Angeles crime family. After his arrest in 1977, Fratianno become an informant and entered the Witness Protection Program in 1980. He admitted to having killed five people. Later in life, he became a writer. Early life Fratianno was born in Naples, Italy, in 1913, later immigrating with his family to the United States, settling near Cleveland, Ohio. He was first arrested at the age of 19, on suspicion of rape, but was not charged. Two years later, he was acquitted of robbery charges, but in 1937, was convicted of robbery and spent more than seven years in an Ohio state prison. Fratianno earned his nickname "Weasel" as a boy when from running from the police in the Little Italy section of Cleveland. A chase witness shouted "Look at that weasel run!" and the police quickly attached the nickname to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank has a population of 107,337. The city was named after David Burbank, who established a sheep ranch there in 1867. Billed as the "Media Capital of the World" and only a few miles northeast of Hollywood, numerous media and entertainment companies are headquartered or have significant production facilities in Burbank, including Warner Bros. Entertainment, The Walt Disney Company, Nickelodeon Animation Studio, The Burbank Studios, Cartoon Network Studios with the West Coast branch of Cartoon Network, and Insomniac Games. The broadcast network The CW is also headquartered in Burbank. The Hollywood Burbank Airport was the location of Lockheed's Skunk Works, which produced some of the most secret and technologically advanced airplanes, including the U-2 spy planes that uncovered Soviet Union missile components ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a metonymy, shorthand reference for the Cinema of the United States, U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures, are located near or in Hollywood. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was Merger (politics), consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910. Soon thereafter a prominent film industry emerged, having developed first on the East Coast. Eventually it became the most recognizable in the world. History Initial development H.J. Whitley, a real estate developer, arranged to buy the E.C. Hurd ranch. They agreed on a price and shook hands on the deal. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis (publisher), Harrison Gray Otis, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Brea Avenue
La Brea Avenue is a prominent north-south thoroughfare in the City of Los Angeles and in Los Angeles County, California. La Brea is known for having diverse ethnic communities, and many shops and restaurants along its route. History ''La Brea'' is the Spanish phrase meaning "the tar." The La Brea Tar Pits, which the 1828 Mexican land grant Rancho La Brea was named for, are to the west of its intersection with Wilshire Boulevard in the Mid-Wilshire area. In its early history, its northern section followed Arroyo La Brea, a former creek fed by springs in the Santa Monica Mountains that flowed south into Ballona Creek. Originally the southern section of La Brea Avenue within Inglewood was named Commercial Street. Route One end of La Brea Avenue is north of the Century Boulevard intersection in Inglewood, as a continuation of Hawthorne Boulevard in the 17-city South Bay area of Los Angeles County. It continues north through the View Park-Windsor Hills, Ladera Heights, and B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loan Shark
A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and generally operates outside the law. Description Because loan sharks operate mostly illegally, they cannot reasonably expect to be able to use the legal system to collect such debts, they often resort to enforcing repayment by terms of blackmail and threats of violence. Historically, many moneylenders skirted between legal and criminal activity. In the recent western world, loan sharks have been a prominent feature of the criminal underworld. Loan sharking is not to be confused with predatory lending with extremely high interest rates such as payday or title loans, which is sometimes considered to be "loan sharking" (or, at least, unfavorably compared to loan sharking by critics) regardless of whether it is legal. A key difference between "traditional" loan sharking and predatory lending is that lenders alleged to be engaged in the latter practice are ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inglewood, California
Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 107,762. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. The city is in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, near Los Angeles International Airport. History The earliest residents of what is now Inglewood were Native Americans who used the Aguaje de Centinela natural springs in today's Edward Vincent Jr. Park (known for most of its history as Centinela Park). Local historian Gladys Waddingham wrote that these springs took the name Centinela from the hills that rose gradually around them, and which allowed ranchers to watch over their herds," (thus the name ''centinelas ''or sentinels). Spanish era The original settlers of Los Angeles in 1781, one of whom was Spanish soldier Jose Manuel Orchado Machado, "a 23-year-old muleteer from Los Alamos in Sinaloa". These settlers, she wrote, were ordered by the offic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Dragna
Tom Dragna (born Gaetano Dragna; ; November 25, 1888 – September 30, 1977) was a Sicilian-American bootlegger and mobster who became a member of the Los Angeles crime family. He was the brother of Jack Dragna and the father of Louis Tom Dragna. He remained an obscure figure until he was featured in '' The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno'' in 1981. Early life Dragna was born in Corleone in Sicily in 1888. He was the middle child of Francesco Paolo Dragna and Anna Dragna. He had an older sister, Giuseppa, and a younger brother, Ignazio. At the age of nine, they moved to New York City on November 18, 1898. Los Angeles He and his brother Ignazio, who now renamed themselves Tom and Jack, respectively, then moved to Los Angeles. Unlike his brother, Tom became a naturalized citizen. While in California Tom married Julia Torisco, and fathered three children: Frank Paul, Louis Tom and Anna Dragna. He owned a ranch in West Puente Valley, California. During the 1920s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consigliere
Consigliere ( , ; plural ) is a position within the leadership structure of the Sicilian, Calabrian, and Italian-American Mafia. The word was popularized in English by the novel ''The Godfather'' (1969) and its film adaptation. In the novel, a consigliere is an advisor or counselor to the boss, with the additional responsibility of representing the boss in important meetings both within the boss's crime family and with other crime families. The consigliere is a close, trusted friend and confidant, the mob's version of an elder statesman. They are an advisor to the boss in a Mafia crime family, and sometimes is their "right-hand man". By the very nature of the job, a consigliere is one of the few in the family who can argue with the boss, and is often tasked with challenging the boss when needed, to ensure subsequent plans are foolproof. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Dragna
Jack Ignatius Dragna (born Ignazio Dragna, ; April 18, 1891 – February 23, 1956) was an American Mafia member and Black Hander who was active in both Italy and the United States in the 20th century. He was active in bootlegging in California during the Prohibition Era in the United States. In 1931, he succeeded Joseph Ardizzone as the boss of the Los Angeles crime family after Ardizzone's mysterious disappearance and death. Both James Ragen and Earl Warren dubbed Dragna the "Capone of Los Angeles". Dragna remained the boss of the Los Angeles crime family from 1931 until his death in 1956. Biography Early life Dragna was born to Francesco Paolo Dragna and Anna Dragna in Corleone, Sicily, on April 18, 1891. On November 18, 1898, Dragna came to the United States on the S.S. ''Alsatia'' with his parents, older sister Giuseppa, and older brother Gaetano. They stayed in East Harlem, in Manhattan, with his mother's cousin Antonio Rizzotto's family, also from Corleone. It is un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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