Frank "The Horse" Buccieri (January 23, 1919 – March 8, 2004), also known as "Frank Russo" or "Big Frank", was an American mobster who headed mob operations on the
West Coast of the United States
The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...
during the 1970s and 1980s. He was the brother of Outfit hitman Fiore "Fifi" Buccieri.
In 1936, the 17-year-old Buccieri was arraigned in a Chicago court on charges of petty larceny. When judge said that he was going to send the charges to a grand jury, Buccieri's brother Fiore asked if the family could punish him instead. The judge agreed and one of Buccieri's relatives gave him five lashes with a doubled five-foot length of rubber hose. This would be Buccieri's only arrest in a lifetime of crime. During the 1960s, Buccieri was a business manager for
illegal gambling
Gaming law is the set of rules and regulations that apply to the gaming or gambling industry. Gaming law is not a branch of law in the traditional sense but rather is a collection of several areas of law that include criminal law, regulatory law, ...
and
loansharking
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 ...
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
Lucchese crime family
The Lucchese crime family (pronounced ) is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, in the United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as ...
to help in the day-to-day operations in California. One investigator explained, "The Commission wanted someone they could trust to handle the lucrative California rackets and this time they wanted to make sure nothing went wrong."
On March 8, 2004, Frank Buccieri died of natural causes.
References
*Sifakis, Carl. ''The Mafia Encyclopedia''. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005.
Further reading
*Peterson, Virgil W. ''Chicago: Shades of Capone''. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, CCCXVII (May 1963).