Hey Wiretappers, listen to my short bonus episode. I’m looking for mob fans to read the first half of a memoir about my life, which is partly about being a cop and mostly about the Civella Spero War. Email me at ganglandwire@gmail.com and I’ll send you a pdf to read. It’s about 22,000 words. Once it’s done, I’ll send you a copy

This week, we journey back to the early 1900s—a time when the first wave of Sicilian immigrants brought more than just dreams of opportunity to America. They also brought with them an age-old criminal code that would lay the foundation for the American Mafia as we know it.

Our story begins with the Mustache Petes—those old-world mafiosi who preyed on their own immigrant communities through intimidation, extortion, and a cunning knack for organized crime. One of their earliest rackets? Counterfeiting.

💵 A Nationwide Web of Fake Money

In 1901, the Secret Service—then the only federal law enforcement agency with a national reach—uncovered a brand-new counterfeit $5 bill in circulation. This was no small operation. The National Iron Bank of Morristown, New Jersey, had unknowingly unleashed a run worth $250,000—millions in today’s money.

Agents quickly linked the phony bills to a sophisticated, coast-to-coast counterfeit ring run by Sicilian gang leaders like Ignacio “Lupo the Wolf” Lupo and Giuseppe Morello. These men were more than petty crooks—they were the original godfathers of organized crime in New York City.

🔪 Violence and Betrayal in the Shadows

As the Secret Service tracked counterfeiters from Yonkers to Pittsburgh to San Francisco, they met ruthless opposition. Notorious mobsters like Vito Catone didn’t hesitate to attack federal agents. One desperate fugitive even tried to escape by lunging at agents with a knife, fleeing through a rail yard, and getting knocked down by bricks thrown from a moving train. Law enforcement, often under-armed and outnumbered, were up against killers willing to silence anyone in their way.

🩸 The Barrel Murder

This bloody saga culminated in one of the earliest and most chilling mob murders on record: the infamous Barrel Murder of 1903. When a New York City woman stumbled upon a barrel with a nearly decapitated body inside, investigators connected the corpse to the Morello gang’s counterfeiting operation. The victim, Benedetto Madonia, had apparently been lured to New York to help secure legal fees for his jailed brother-in-law, Giuseppe DiPrimo—only to be betrayed and butchered by the very men he’d come to help.

🕵️ Secret Service Stings and Underworld Justice

The Secret Service made arrests and even staged elaborate stings, using marked bills and informants to infiltrate the gang. But corruption, fear, and an underdeveloped justice system left many ringleaders untouched. One killer, Tomasso “Petto the Ox,” was freed despite damning evidence, only to be gunned down years later in a revenge hit that many believe was ordered by DiPrimo himself after his release from prison.

🔗 A Blueprint for the Mafia to Come

These early black handers and Mustache Petes were rough drafts of the organized syndicates that would soon flourish under Prohibition. Counterfeiting required a clear chain of command, trusted lieutenants, and loyal foot soldiers—known back then as “queer pushers” who spread the fake bills far and wide. In many ways, it was a proving ground for the hierarchy that would one day run America’s underworld.

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[0:00 ] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there. Good to be back here in the studio. This is a special bonus episode about the barrel murders and what’s his name? Tommaso the Ox Peto and a lot of those guys, Joe Petrocino. It’s kind of a shorty. And also, I’m putting this out because I’m asking for your help. I have a book that I’ve been working on about half, a little over halfway through. It’s going to be a memoir about my career and mainly about my interactions with the mob during the Savella Spiro War and what we did during that time. So I’m doing it. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a little bit different sort of a style.

[0:39 ] It’s a real short and punchy and to the point style. I’m not I’m really trying to take all the words I can out of it. I need some feedback. I want to see, you know, I got 20,000 words and I don’t know how many hours into this thing. And hell, I don’t know if it’s any good or not. And, you know, it may not be, it may be stupid for all I know, you know, I think it’ll, I think you’ll find it somewhat entertaining. And, and so I, I, what I’m looking for is some real critical feedback, you know, something that you like, something that you didn’t like. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. Promise me that. I mean, you see something you don’t like, or you think I’m redundant, or you see some errors where I repeat myself in it or something. Let me know. It’s about, I said, it’s about halfway through. I got up to the point where, uh, Carl Sparrow has been shot. He’s coming out of the hospital, and he has to go to dialysis and has to get his car fitted with hand controls. And so from there on, the war between the Savellas and Spiro is really on. Give me a feedback.

[1:37 ] What you have to do, I think, is email me at ganglandwire at gmail.com.

[1:42 ] Let me know, and I’ll send you a PDF, and then you can get back with me. Thanks a lot, guys. Guys, now listen to my story about the Mustache Pete’s and the early counterfeiting game. Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, back here in the studio all alone today, I’ve got a quick little story of early, early New York Mafia.

[2:03 ] Really the mustache peach. When these guys got here, they’re looking for money. They’re looking for opportunity. They’re denied a lot of opportunity, but they brought the mafia with them. They brought this criminal mentality with them. They started sending out black hand notes and preying on fellow immigrants from Sicily and Italy and kind of branched out from that. It preied on a lot of people. Now, one thing that got into early on was counterfeiting. And the law enforcement agency that had the responsibility to investigate counterfeiting back then was the Secret Service, and it still is today. The Secret Service was really the only nationwide law enforcement agency on a federal level back in those days. 1901, there’s a brand new counterfeit $5 bill detected. Different banks across the country printed the banknotes back then. This was the National Iron Bank of Morristown, New Jersey. I read it was part of a production run of $250,000. Now, $250,000 in 1901 was a lot of money. Of course, they had to sell it for, you know, maybe 25 cents on the dollar, probably even less. So Secret Service agents quickly arrested Giuseppe Di Primo and a couple other guys for passing some of these counterfeit notes in Yonkers, New York in 1902.

[3:30 ] Weeks later, they arrested Vito Laduca and a couple other associates down in Pittsburgh, and they attract them from New York to San Francisco and other cities across the United States. So they’re like onto this counterfeit ring, and they were a nationwide counterfeit ring. One of these guys, Vito Catone, was a bad character. He tried to escape arrest by lunging at the agents with a knife and then ran away in the nearby rail yard, chased him down by commandeering a train, and then knocked him down by hurling bricks at him. Now, can you imagine that? They got a guy with a knife. You’re chasing him through the rail yard. You jump on a moving train, jump off, throw bricks at him, and knock him down. Actually, he might not even have had guns. Law enforcement, again, didn’t carry guns like they do today.

[4:20 ] You know, he was such a bad character when he got to a hospital, he tried to kill a nurse and escape with some kind of a kitchen knife he’d picked up. They found out that the Morristown counterfeits were being distributed at the direction of Mafia leader Ignacio Lupo and Giuseppe Morello. Now, these were the two big-time mob bosses in the Northeast and in New York City, particularly back in. Lupo was Lupo the Wolf. Giuseppe Morello, he was like a godfather.