Last year a ransomware gang took control of the networks of two major casino corporations in Las Vegas. Caesars Entertainment reportedly paid the $15 million ransom, while MGM Resorts did not, resulting in losses of $100 million while it worked to regain control.

The September 2023 cyberattack was not an isolated incident. According to a 2023 report, there were 3,205 data compromises in the United States, affecting more than 350 million people. In today’s digital world, anyone with a connected device can become a victim of cybercrime.

While extortion via ransomware is the most prevalent form of cybercrime, other types of crime have moved online, too. Bank heists, drug empires and human trafficking are all elements found in the internet underworld. The scale of these crimes ranges from single-person operations to state-sponsored cybergangs.

Here we explore criminals who fit the organized crime bill, motivated at least in part by financial gain. Not included are people, such as infamous hacker Kevin Mitnick, who commit cybercrimes just to see if they can. Neither are the so-called “hacktivists,” such as Anonymous, who create digital disruptions to further a cause. Instead, criminals on this list have racketeered in ways straight out of the Mob’s playbook.

5. Joseph Popp and the first ransomware

With every new technology comes new ways to commit crime. Malware, short for malicious software, has been around since Intel made the first microprocessor widely available to consumers in 1971. While most were nuisances with hidden messages or mild annoyances, the late 1980s saw an increase in destructive malware. In 1989, a new kind of malware emerged: ransomware.

Ransomware typically comes in the form of a Trojan horse, a type of malware disguised as legitimate software. Like viruses, Trojans cannot automatically infect a computer. A human must interact with them to function, such as clicking a link, downloading a file or inserting a USB drive or its precursor, a floppy disk.

In December 1989, thousands of Europeans received a floppy disk in the mail, labeled “AIDS Information Introductory Diskette Version 2.0.” The recipients were either tech magazine subscribers or attendees of the 4^th International Conference on AIDS in Stockholm, Sweden. Those who installed the software found a simple questionnaire that assessed the user’s risk of contracting HIV. Underwhelmed, users closed the program and forgot about it – until 90 startups later.

Upon the 90th time booting up the PC, a new message appeared: “It is time to pay for your software lease from PC Cyborg Corporation. Complete the INVOICE and attach payment for the lease option of your choice.” The message concluded with instructions to send $189 to a P.O. box in Panama. It’s not uncommon for software to ask for money to keep using it, but this one prevented users from accessing the rest of their files.

Eddy Willems, a systems analyst for an insurance company at the time, was one of the victims who received a disk — now framed in his living room. He quickly figured out how the program worked and reversed the encryption, but others weren’t so savvy. In a panic, some victims wiped their hard drives, which got rid of the malware — and their data, too. Around the same time that Willems was sharing his solution, the January 1990 issue of Virus Bulletin, an international newsletter, offered free disks with programs to remove the AIDS Trojan and recover encrypted files.

Law enforcement traced the Panamanian P.O. box to a Harvard-educated anthropologist and World Health Organization consultant named Joseph Popp. Popp had returned to the United States after an apparent nervous breakdown at a Nairobi AIDS seminar upon learning that his AIDS Trojan was making international news. On February 1, 1990, the FBI arrested Popp at his parents’ home in Willowick, Ohio, and he was extradited to the U.K. to face blackmail charges.

British courts ruled Popp “was mentally unfit to stand trial” and sent him back to the United States. Scotland Yard officials reported he had been “wearing hair curlers in his beard and a box around his waist” that he believed “could detect radiation.” Popp’s increasing paranoia also led him to believe that Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was trying to kill him. An Italian court sentenced him in absentia to two and a half years in prison, but the U.S. declined to extradite him.

Popp acted alone, but his ransomware scheme inspired a trend in organized crime that is still thriving today.

4. Silk Road and “Dread Pirate Roberts”

In 2010, struggling entrepreneur Ross Ulbricht began working on a side business, a website where “people could buy anything anonymously, with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them,” according to his digital journal entries. Drugs were part of his business model from the beginning. Ulbricht grew psychedelic mushrooms to sell on his new marketplace, which he called Silk Road.

On June 1, 2011, an article on the gossip blog Gawker thrust Silk Road into the spotlight. This was a pivotal moment for the dark web marketplace, both in terms of growth and notoriety. After the article was released, New York Senator Chuck Schumer called for law enforcement to shut down Silk Road.

Silk Road was only accessible through Tor, an anonymous web browser that prioritizes privacy above all else. Originally conceived by the U.S. Navy, “the onion routing” browser adds enough layers of encryption to mask a user’s web traffic and is a prerequisite for accessing the dark web. Silk Road added another layer of anonymity by having Bitcoin as the only method of payment.

Ulbricht enjoyed anonymity as the owner of Silk Road, known to the public only by his handle, “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Perhaps by using that name, an inherited title from the film and novel The Princess Bride, Ulbricht believed he had plausible deniability. During an extended interview with Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg in July 2013, Ulbricht, under his pseudonym, claimed he was not the first administrator of Silk Road nor the first to use that name. Ulbricht boasted he was confident his security measures prevented law enforcement from closing in on him. He was wrong.

Undercover federal agents had already breached Ulbricht’s operation, posing as drug dealers and impersonating a Silk Road moderator whose account had been seized. He had also revealed his identity when using his personal email address to recruit staff on a Bitcoin forum.

On October 1, 2013, Ulbricht was sitting at a table in a San Francisco library when he received an urgent message from the seized moderator account. After logging into Silk Road, a nearby couple began fighting. As he turned to look, a woman snatched his laptop while a man grabbed him. What Ulbricht didn’t know was that everyone around him, including the bickering couple, were federal agents. They had to catch him by surprise, with his laptop open, to get past his computer’s encryption. Federal law enforcement soon took over Silk Road, replacing it with the now familiar notice, “THIS HIDDEN SITE HAS BEEN SEIZED.”

Ulbricht was convicted on seven counts related to operating Silk Road. His “Dread Pirate Roberts” defense did not convince the jury. In May 2015, he received two life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole. A group of his supporters, who run the website freeross.org, argued that his sentence was excessive for nonviolent charges (a murder-for-hire charge was dropped after his sentencing). In May 2024, then-former President Donald Trump pledged to commute Ulbricht’s sentence if re-elected.

3. The Lazarus Group

On November 14, 2014, employees at Sony Pictures logged into their company’s network to find doctored images of the severed heads of two Sony executives and gunshot sounds coming from their speakers. The shocking images were accompanied by a strange message and a threat: “If you don’t obey us, we’ll release data shown below to the world. Determine what will you do till November the 24th.” The executives depicted received a similar warning a few days earlier.

At the same time, malware began erasing data across Sony’s network and making systems inoperable. Sony had to take its network offline, which would take weeks to repair, but there was worse to come. The hackers publicly released the personal information, private emails and internal copies of movies and scripts to the internet, devastating Sony’s reputation, morale and profits. Who could have been motivated enough to carry out such a destructive cyberattack against an entertainment company?

The casus belli for the hackers was The Interview, a 2014 comedy film by Sony Pictures. The political satire stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as a reporter and his producer tasked by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. After the trailer was released in June 2014, the North Korean government decried the movie as an “act of war.” Sony responded by toning down the film’s violence but otherwise cautiously allowed the movie to proceed. Rogen, also a director of the movie, was unmoved by the threats, writing on Twitter: “People don’t usually wanna kill me for one of my movies until after they’ve paid 12 bucks for it.” After the cyberattack, however, Sony canceled the film’s release before allowing a very limited theatrical release — major theater chains opted not to show the film for fear of violence — alongside a digital release on streaming platforms.

On December 19, 2014, the FBI formally blamed North Korea for the cyberattack. Analysis of the malware revealed similarities to other attacks by North Korean threat actors, including the 2013 cyberattacks on South Korean media companies and banks. Although they called themselves the “Guardians of Peace” in the Sony Pictures attack, the cybersecurity community labeled them the “Lazarus Group” for their ability to vanish and reappear with a new identity in each attack.

The Lazarus Group has an extensive rap sheet beyond the Sony Pictures cyberattack. In February 2016, the state-sponsored hackers attempted to steal nearly $1 billion from the Bangladesh Bank via its New York Federal Reserve account. While authorities stopped or intercepted most of the transfers, the Lazarus Group got away with $81 million, making it one of the largest bank heists in the world. They are also suspected of engineering the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, which infected more than 300,000 computers worldwide.

This year, a United Nations report on North Korean cyberattacks between 2017 and 2023 put the amount of money stolen at $3 billion, with a quarter of that in 2023 alone. The plunder funds North Korea’s technology and military programs, including nuclear weapons.

2. Pig-butchering rings

In August 2024, Heartland Tri-State Bank CEO Shan Hanes was sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison for embezzling $47 million from the bank, which failed as a result. The stolen money, which included funds from a local church and his daughter’s college savings, went to a cryptocurrency wallet that belonged to someone he had been communicating with since 2023 on What’s App, a popular instant messaging service. This person, whose identity is still unknown, convinced Hanes to send bigger and bigger investments for a cryptocurrency scheme that would never pay out.

The scam is called “pig butchering.” It begins with a contact through a dating app, social media or even a wrong-number text message. The scammer builds trust with flattering comments, attractive “selfies” and meetup proposals. The conversation inevitably turns to how much success they’ve found investing in cryptocurrency. If the target doesn’t have a cryptocurrency wallet, their “new friend” helps them set it up on a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange.

The scammer continues the ruse for weeks, even months, “fattening up” their victim until it’s time for the “slaughter.” They instruct the target to send money to a crypto wallet or download a fake crypto app, starting off with small amounts but gradually ramping up to life savings-draining investments. The fake apps show the victims having successful returns on their investments, and even allow the victims to withdraw money. But once the scammers have received as much money as they can get from the victim, they cut and run.

When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down international tourism, Chinese organized crime groups turned to pig butchering as a new source of income to make up for the lack of gambling tourists. However, there’s something even more sinister happening behind the scenes.

The person on the other side of the messaging app is often a victim as well. CNN reported last December about an Indian man who moved to Thailand for a promising IT job, but when he got there, his new employers smuggled him into Myanmar and confiscated his passport. They trained him to be a scammer, forced to coerce targets by posing as a blond woman. If he didn’t cooperate, he would be jailed, beaten, tortured or worse.

KK Park, a facility in Myawaddy, Myanmar, is one of the compounds engaged in modern slavery. While the trafficked workers are forced to scam, their families are ransomed for their loved ones’ freedom. Unproductive workers are sold to other compounds and their ransoms increased. In a 2024 report, the United Nations estimated that at least 300,000 people are held against their will at labor camps in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Political leaders in these countries are passive, at best, in combating these compounds. In Cambodia, law enforcement may help people who escape but otherwise allow the labor camps to continue operating.

1. ALPHV/BlackCat

For this last entry, we return to last year’s cyberattack in Las Vegas. In August 2023, MGM’s IT help desk received a call from an employee who needed a new password. MGM staff only had to provide their name, employee ID number and date of birth for a password reset. However, the caller was not the actual employee — they used information publicly available on LinkedIn to impersonate them. By the time the real employee reported the password reset notification to MGM security, the hackers had already gained access.

MGM tried to mitigate the damage by shutting down its systems, which conspicuously disrupted slot machines and prevented reservations. However, the ransomware was already in place, stealing their data and locking them out. Around the same time, Caesars Entertainment was going through a similar ordeal.

The attacks that crippled two of Las Vegas’ largest resort corporations only took a 10-minute phone call. Manipulating people into performing an action or divulging information, called social engineering, is one of the most effective skills in the hacker’s toolkit. Aspiring cybercriminals no longer need to have coding skills for a successful infiltration.

Two groups are attributed to this cyberattack: ALPHV/BlackCat and Scattered Spider. The world of extortion-related cybercrime has a business model: ransomware as a service (RaaS). Ransomware operators, such as ALPHV/BlackCat, create the extortion software and offer it through subscription models or affiliate programs. According to cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, the operators also create payment portals for victims to pay ransoms, offer tech support and help with ransom negotiations. Scattered Spider, an affiliate, carried out the attack using ALPHV/BlackCat’s software, which features an icon of a black cat.

In December 2023, the Justice Department announced it had disrupted ALPHV/BlackCat’s operation, taking over its website with the familiar notice, “THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SEIZED.” The takedown screen was replaced hours later with “THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN UNSEIZED” after the criminals apparently recovered their website. The FBI, however, had retrieved decryption keys that helped more than 500 organizations regain their data, saving them a collective $68 million in ransom payouts.

Last March, the seizure announcement again appeared on ALPHV/BlackCat’s website. But law enforcement claimed to have had nothing to do with the alleged takedown. Furthermore, evidence that the seizure announcement was a fake was found in the website’s source code. Cybersecurity experts reported this was an exit scam, a way to cash out without having to pay what they owed to their affiliates.

The fight against cybercrime is often a game of whack-a-mole. A new ransomware platform, Cicada3301, emerged in June 2024 that some cybersecurity experts have noted is very similar to ALPHV/BlackCat. Although it could be that ALPHV/BlackCat sold its code to a new group, it also wouldn’t be the first time the hackers have reappeared under a different name. The FBI has linked the group as a successor to DarkSide, a ransomware operator responsible for the 2021 Colonial Pipeline attack that cause gasoline shortages in the South.

While the hackers behind ALPHV/BlackCat disappeared into the shadows, members of Scattered Spider were not so lucky. Several arrests were made this year of individuals allegedly connected to the group, including an unnamed 17-year-old teen in the United Kingdom. One of the suspected members, Noah Michael Urban, a 19-year-old whose online identity is “King Bob,” was arrested in Florida and linked with stealing more than $800,000 in cryptocurrency scams.

With unseasonably warm weather for a mid-October evening, Officer Henry A. Blanke dropped the convertible top of his Ford patrol car and set out from Staten Island’s Tottenville Station. He likely expected a quiet cruise down Hylan Boulevard. Blanke’s shift, however, would be anything but uneventful as the twilight hours commenced.

During the hazy purgatory between darkness and daylight, the young cop happened upon an unusual scene. A staggering silhouette appeared on a sparsely populated stretch of road near Huguenot Beach. As Blanke drove closer, he could see a disheveled figure stumbling in the beach terrain.

The officer pulled up to the individual, a battered and confused man covering much of his face with a bloodstained handkerchief.  Blanke quickly scanned the immediate area for any signs of an auto accident, but there was nothing but sand and brush.

“What happened?” Blanke asked.

“I was taken for a ride,” the wounded man muttered.

Blanke discovered the mysterious man about 6 a.m. on October 17, 1929. The victim, in a bewildered state, had not identified himself yet. He asked if he was in New Jersey and presented the cop with a deal: “Get me a cab and I’ll give ya fifty bucks.” Dismissing the overture, Blanke counteroffered, “What you need is an ambulance.”

A rescue vehicle arrived and rushed the bleeding man to Richmond Memorial Hospital, where medical staff worked to stitch up and bandage the lacerations on his back, cheek, chin, neck and wrists. Detective Gustave Schley of Tottenville Station questioned the patient, who revealed himself to be “Charles Lucania.”

The detective asked him who would have committed such an assault. Lucania was largely evasive. However, he did divulge that after receiving a call from a woman to meet with him, he stood at the corner of 50th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan when a sedan full of assailants kidnapped him at gunpoint. The abductors put adhesive tape over his mouth and bound him. Then they threw him to the car’s floor and repeatedly beat and stabbed him. He claimed to have kicked out one of the car windows, which got him pummeled into unconsciousness. Beyond describing a few additional details, Lucania offered nothing of substance, except that he had no idea why it happened but would “take care of it himself.”

Schley ruled out robbery, because Lucania’s valuables were all intact: a gold watch, necklace and $300 tucked inside a hidden pocket sewn inside silk underwear. The patient withdrew $50 from the secret pocket. “Here’s fifty bucks,” he offered the attending doctor, “for getting your shirt all splattered with my blood.”

Detective Schley took the bandaged stranger back to the station and called Detective Thomas Tunney of Manhattan. Tunney, familiar with the 33-year-old Lucania’s reputation and history, told Schley about the suspect’s five previous arrests, a nickname (“Lucky”) and known associates, including notable gangland figures Jack “Legs” Diamond and Thomas “Fatty” Walsh (shot dead in Miami that March). Police had recently questioned Lucania about a double homicide in the Hotsy-Totsy Club speakeasy on Broadway, for which Diamond was charged, but he claimed to know nothing about it.

Considering the new information, Schley booked “Lucky” on the pretense of “protecting” him from further underworld harm. Police summarily placed him into a lineup, took his mugshot and booked him on a felony charge of automobile theft. Bail was set at $25,000.

Lucky walked out of jail, but not without the remnants of his ordeal. Though he had returned, barely, from an intended one-way trip, he was left with a drooping right eye and scarring down his cheek, neck and across the chin. The healed wounds gave him a more “sinister” appearance.

But another alteration would be of his own making. At his October 29 court appearance, Lucky, upon being addressed as “Mr. Lucania” by the presiding judge, stated he no longer went by the name because he’d grown tired of people mispronouncing it. He now wanted to be known as Charles “Luciano.”

The press latched onto the story, and versions of the “gangland ride” spread across newspapers throughout the country with cleverly penned headlines. The incident forever seared the “Lucky” moniker into underworld history, but not without an abundance of mistaken folklore and foggy conjecture to follow. Although most articles were accurate in reporting that Lucky was an established nickname (visibly written in a tattoo he acquired at age 13), all it took was one or two incorrect or misleading lines of text to kickstart the idea that he’d earned the label “Lucky” on October 17, 1929.

Over the following decades, misreporting and incorrect historical accounts created a monstrosity of the original events, which were recorded in books, magazine articles, movies and  documentaries long after 1929.

The young cop who found Luciano in 1929 gave an interview to reporter Josephine Cortes in 1962. He recalled returning to the scene after taking Luciano to the hospital that day. He told the reporter he found the impressions of both male and female shoeprints in the sand, along with wire and adhesive tape. He said the police had a list of underworld suspects, many of whom ended up dead, including one “encased in cement.” He also mentioned a rumor that circulated: Luciano was friendly with a cop’s daughter at the time and allegedly had been scheduled to meet her on that fateful night.

Ironically, it was Lucky who maintained the most uniformity, albeit loosely, in telling the tale. From the 1950s through his death in 1962, he began entertaining the questions of curious journalists. During an interview with sports columnist Oscar Fraley in 1960, Luciano dismissed some of the “gangland” elements of his 1929 ride. He admitted the attack was carried out because the aggressors were interested in the whereabouts of Legs Diamond, but they weren’t fellow mobsters.

“Now I know this is no gang job,” Luciano said. “They don’t put a pistol to your head and make bargains.”

According to Luciano, the kidnappers were cops — racket squad cops to be exact. He admitted to Fraley that shortly after he recovered from the assault, he put out the word that he’d “pay them back.” However, once another carload of men tried to pay him a follow-up visit, Lucky quickly issued a retraction through the grapevine: “I ain’t squealin’ on nobody, and the incident is closed.”

By the 1950s, Luciano had developed a burning desire to tell his life story, particularly in film, and entertained several propositions. Fraley claimed to be writing a script, while other would-be producers, such as Phil Tucker, threw in the towel. The team who won the deal was the duo of Barnett Glassman and Martin Gosch, though no film ever came out of it.

The infamous “ride” wasn’t the first of Lucky’s forays into police blotters, but it certainly propelled his name into the consciousness of both law enforcement and the public at large. Time magazine named him one of the “100 Persons of the Century” in 1998. As a mobster, he played cards with Al Capone, chess with Bumpy Johnson and helped restructure the underworld landscape with the likes of Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. As a socialite, he kept company with stunning showgirls and celebrity crooners. As a poster boy for international narcotics traffic (be it real or imagined by his accusers, the jury is still out), he remained a thorn in the side of government entities, domestic and abroad, until the day he died.

On January 26, 1962, Luciano stood waiting at the Capodichino airport in Naples, Italy, for Gosch, who was reportedly interested in doing a book, not a film, on Lucky. But Luciano dropped dead of a heart attack before Gosch arrived.

Luciano’s name has since been correlated or compared to virtually every major icon of the outlaw underworld of the 20^th century and into the 21st, from Pablo Escobar to John Gotti to El Chapo. His slightly disfigured face has become an iconic image of organized crime.

When reporter Llewellyn Miller visited Naples in 1952, however, the exiled mobster granted her an interview, during which she quietly observed: “The famous drooping eyelid must have been fixed by a plastic surgeon because both eyes open now to the same extent.”

Christian Cipollini is an organized crime historian and the award-winning author and creator of the comic book series LUCKY, based on the true story of Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

On July 21, 1892, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed that Friday, October 21st, would be a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America. But the quadricentennial celebration had a pragmatic origin: It was an attempt in an election year for Harrison to quell anti-Italian sentiments and present an olive branch to both Italy and the Italian American community. The xenophobic hysteria against Italian immigrants had risen to a climax a year earlier.

In the late 19th century, New Orleans was a popular destination for Italian immigrants. Since the 1830s, the Crescent City had been a port of call for ships carrying Italian citrus fruits, dubbed “lemon boats.” Immigrants arrived in these trade vessels, too. From the 1880s to the 1910s, 60,000 Sicilians migrated to New Orleans, so many that the French Quarter became known as “Little Palermo.”

Like America’s other urban centers, street gangs of thieves and ruffians were a common element in the New Orleans underworld. The influx of Italian immigrants added another ethnicity into the mix. But fears of a secret society of Sicilian mafiosos began to creep into the minds of New Orleans residents. Some Italian criminals, after fleeing Italy to escape prosecution, arrived in the city and further stoked those fears. One of them was Giuseppe Esposito.

Esposito, a Sicilian kidnapper and extortionist, emigrated after bribing his way out of an Italian jail. Arriving first in New York, he made his way to Little Palermo in New Orleans where he flaunted his outlaw status. Wasting no time, Esposito restarted his kidnapping racket, targeting wealthy Italians in Louisiana. Consequently, his non-furtive presence allowed the Italian government to discover his location in no time. New Orleans Police Detective David Hennessy and his cousin Michael aided two New York detectives in apprehending Esposito, and he was extradited to Italy where he received a life sentence in prison.

This career break for Hennessy was shortlived, however. When he didn’t get a promotion after the Esposito arrest, Hennessy and his cousin Michael shot and killed the chief of detectives, Thomas Devereaux. Claiming self-defense, the Hennessys were acquitted but were fired from the force. Hennessy worked as a private detective until 1888, when the new mayor, Joseph Shakspeare, hired him back, with a promotion to chief of police.

Hennessy became entangled with crime in the Italian community again in May 1890 when a group of dockworkers were shot at and wounded. The victims were members of a stevedore company, the Matrangas. They accused their business rivals, the Provenzanos, of perpetrating the assault. Charles Matranga, leader of the group, started the feud after he edged out the Provenzanos on a ship-unloading contract a few years before. The Matrangas pursued criminal charges against the Provenzanos for the shooting, and six were convicted. Although the word “Mafia” was absent from any court proceedings or law enforcement press releases, the local newspapers used the term frequently.

Hennessy disagreed with the verdict, primarily because of his relationship with the Provenzanos. He had been friendly with the group and allegedly involved in their brothel side business. In the Provenzano trial, Hennessy provided witnesses from the police force to back up the defendants’ alibis. After the guilty verdicts, he pledged to aid in their appeal. It was even rumored that Hennessy would testify himself, but that would never happen.

On October 15, 1890, four days before the retrial, Hennessy was walking home when a group of assassins ambushed him. Wielding sawed-off shotguns, they shot him multiple times before running off. Hennessy died 10 hours later. He only offered one clue as to who did it: “The Dagoes shot me.”

Immediately, New Orleans Police began rounding up any Italians who were slightly suspicious, including any who possessed a firearm. Mayor Shakspeare ordered them to “arrest every Italian you come across, if necessary.” He also organized the Committee of Fifty, a citizens’ group to investigate and eliminate “Mafia” groups in the Crescent City. The main suspicion fell on anyone remotely associated with the Matrangas, who certainly had a motive for taking out a top Provenzano ally.

While accusations of “Mafia” were thrown around, it is not clear that any of the Italian American players were members of a secret society imported from Sicily. The Matrangas and Provenzanos were stevedores who dabbled in vice rackets. They went to the court system to settle their disputes against one another, not typical for those who adhere to the Mafia’s strict code of silence, omertà. The factions used “Mafia” as a way to disparage each other. Shakspeares’ Mafia crusade was born from nativist fervor rather than actual evidence. Nevertheless, the prevailing anti-Italian sentiments in the community expected that the courts would avenge the slain chief of police.

Most of those arrested were released, save for 19 who remained in jail to await trial. Of the nine who went to trial in February 1891, six were acquitted, including Charles Matranga, while a hung jury resulted in a mistrial for the others. Outraged, the Committee of Fifty organized a public meeting the following morning to decide what to do next.

William Parkerson, a local attorney, political leader and ally of the mayor, addressed the crowd of thousands of angry citizens:

“When courts fail, the people must act. What protection or assurance of protection is there left us when the very head of our police department, our chief of police, is assassinated in our very midst by the Mafia society and his assassins are again turned loose on the community? Will every man here follow me and see the murder of Hennessy avenged?”

The mob responded by marching to the Orleans Parish Prison. The swarm of belligerents easily breached the walls of the jail. The mob proceeding to lynch 11 of the prisoners, shooting them to death. One of the victims was reportedly shot 42 times. The mob took two of the prisoners who didn’t immediately perish from their wounds and hung them outside the jail. Eight prisoners escaped the carnage, including Matranga, who hid under a mattress.

Newspapers in New Orleans praised the lynchings, but publications in other states condemned them, while conceding it was a necessary evil. Most bought into the idea that the Italian community harbored “bandits and assassins” who had to be stopped even if it came to mob justice. In a letter to his sister dated a week after the lynchings, future U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt wrote: “Various dago diplomats were present, all much wrought up by the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans. Personally I think it a rather good thing, and said so.”

The Italian consul in New Orleans, Pasquale Corte, petitioned Mayor Shakspeare and the Louisiana governor to bring in the National Guard, to no avail. Corte later revealed that he had given the prosecution in the Hennessy case a lead on a group of Americans implicated in the chief of police’s murder, which they disregarded. Immediately after the mob’s assault, he sent a telegram to Baron Francesco Saverio Fava, Italy’s first ambassador to the United States:

“Mob led by members of committee of fifty took possession of jail; killed eleven prisoners; three Italians, others naturalized. I hold mayor responsible. Fear further murders. I am also in great danger. Reports follow.”

Sava and the Italian prime minister reached out to Secretary of State James Blaine, whose defiant stance created an impasse. Italy was outraged by the lynchings, particularly because three of the victims were Italian nationals. Both countries recalled their respective ambassadors. Further stoking the flames, members of Italy’s parliament introduced a resolution calling for a retributive naval assault on the Eastern Seaboard. President Harrison had an international crisis on his hands.

Harrison was already facing a difficult battle in the upcoming 1892 election. Although he had a comfortable electoral lead in the 1888 election, incumbent Grover Cleveland narrowly won the popular vote. Undeterred by his defeat, the former president was determined to get back into the Oval Office. In the leadup to 1892, Cleveland was gaining momentum for a comeback. If he wanted to clinch the win, Harrison needed the immigrant vote as his saving grace. But the 1891 lynchings in New Orleans delivered a severe blow to his support in the Italian community.

Harrison had Attorney General William Miller launch an investigation into the Hennessy case, which concluded there was no evidence connecting the victims to an alleged Mafia. Furthermore, Miller’s report scrutinized a list of 94 Mafia murders over the last 25 years produced by Mayor Shakspeare and the Committee of Fifty in reaction to the Hennessy murder. Miller found no evidence to link them to a secret Sicilian society, casting doubt on the very existence of the supposed “Mafia.” In the eyes of the Harrison administration, the Mafia was little more than a bogeyman fabricated to justify nativist persecution of Italians.

That’s not to say that there weren’t Italian criminals or gangs in New Orleans. Consul Corte admitted there was a criminal element in the New Orleans Italian community. But the xenophobic fear of a secret Mafia society in the Crescent City was unproven. Charles Matranga, alleged by some to be the founder of the New Orleans crime family, lived his remaining years quietly with no documented criminal activity. Italian organized crime grew in New Orleans in the early 1900s with Black Hand extortion gangs but had no meaningful connection to the Matrangas.

The president resolved the international conflict with a $25,000 indemnity payment to the Italian government. With the issue behind them, Italy proceeded with its plan to gift a statue of Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo, to them) to the United States to commemorate the quadricentennial of Columbus’ landing in America. After the statue was installed on a traffic circle at the southwest corner of Central Park, the area became known as Columbus Circle. Nearly 80 years later, New York Mob boss Joe Colombo was shot and left with permanent brain damage about 100 feet from the statue.

Harrison still had to deal with outrage in the Italian American community. On July 21, 1892, his proclamation of “Discovery Day,” a one-time celebration of Columbus, served as an apology and a formalization of an event already celebrated in Catholic and Italian communities. The 15th century explorer was a revered figure in those circles, with celebrations already happening every year across the country. The Knights of Columbus organization, founded in 1882, further promoted these festivities as a rallying point to unite American Catholics, who faced opposition from the Protestant majority.

Harrison’s last-ditch effort proved unsuccessful. Cleveland defeated Harrison in a landslide victory. While it was the end for Harrison, Columbus Day was just beginning.

The Knights of Columbus lobbied for the day to become a yearly tradition, and in 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt declared October 12 as Columbus Day. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation making it an official federal holiday beginning in 1971, now occurring on the second Monday of October.

While today’s holiday has become a point of contention regarding its namesake, its origins had little to do with 1492. It emerged as a recognition of the Italian American and Catholic communities, established by a president who urgently needed support in an upcoming election. And it remains an opportunity to memorialize the 11 Italians slain in 1891, victims of an angry mob that saw Italian immigration as nothing more than a pipeline of criminals invading New Orleans.