Ignazio Saietta

Ignazio "Lupo" Saietta, police photo

Ignazio “Lupo the Wolf” Saietta , born Ignazio Lupo (born March 19, 1877 in Palermo , Sicily , † January 13, 1947 in Brooklyn , New York City ), was an Italian-American mafioso. He was the founder of the Black Hand Gang in New York City and a member of the Morello family .

biography

Ascent

Ignazio Lupo was born in Palermo, Sicily and is said to have murdered a man named Salvatore Morello at the age of 12 and therefore fled to the United States in 1889 . In New York City, where his presence is mentioned from 1900, he became acquainted with the Terranova-Morello clan and married Salvatrese Terranova , in the same year his son Rocco was born. Lupo used his mother's maiden name "Saietta" for camouflage purposes.

He is considered to be the founder of the Black Hand Gang , which together with the Morello family, which can be considered the forerunners of the Genovese family , raised a large counterfeit ring in Manhattan . However, he was also involved in countless murders and also worked with mustache Pete Vito Cascio Ferro , who had come to New York City in 1901 but returned to Sicily in 1909 after his acquittal on a murder charge. Ignazio later also became the underboss of the Morello family.

Saietta had thus managed to use his violent influence on Italian-American circles in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx to become president of the Unione Siciliana . As the first point of contact for non-English speaking Italians, the Unione was the ideal recruiting point for Saietta and an ideal cover for criminal activities. When the Italian-American police agent Joseph Petrosino searched the headquarters of the Unione in 1901, sixty bodies were discovered. Saietta was arrested, but apart from the fact that he owned the building, there was nothing to prove to him. The morgue had since been known as the Murder Stable and the Unione's image was ruined. There were theses that the Unione was founded from the beginning by the Black Hand , and thus by the Mafia.

Whether Lupo committed the murders himself or z. B. took the help of his brother-in-law Giuseppe Morello , can no longer be finally cleared up. The Black Hand Gang was mainly concerned with extortion and so Lupo was arrested on March 7, 1906 in connection with the kidnapping of the son of the Italian-American banker Tony Bonzuffi , but was released after paying bail of US $ 1,000.

Fraudulent bankruptcy

His headquarters and business were then at 210 Mott Street . However, in November he filed a fraudulent bankruptcy with his grocery store and initially went into hiding; this alone had accumulated US $ 700,000 in unpaid bills. However, a large part of the missing $ 50,000 merchandise was found on December 4, 1908 on the piers of New York - ready for shipping to Italy. In addition, properties valued at $ 110,000 were discovered in Harlem.

The coup had obviously been in preparation for a long time, because his brother Giovanni "John" Lupo , who had come to New York in 1900 and lived together with his brother in a house in Fort George on 184th Street / Nicholas Avenue , left after 20 months of activity at 210 Mott Street and opened his own grocery store in Hoboken in October 1908 under the name Lupo & Lapresti . Lapresti was later one of the aliases used by Lupo.

Lupo himself had gone underground to Baltimore and Buffalo and went to Ardonia in January 1909 . However, he used the time to take care of the new business with counterfeit money of better quality. In the same year there was a meeting between Lupo, his brothers-in-law from the Terranova-Morello clan and Vito Cascio Ferro . It may have been about problems with the counterfeit ring that they raised together and the murder of Joseph Petrosino , an Italian-American police officer, was discussed here. This was then also murdered during an investigation on March 12, 1909 in Sicily. Allegedly Lupo is said to have promised the murder and even visited Italy; It remains unclear whether he was actually directly involved in the murder.

The end of the counterfeit coin

On November 1, 1909, Lupo rented a house in Bath Beach under the alias name "Joe La Presti" . Eleven days later, on November 12, he appeared at his creditors' office with his lawyer Charles Barbier, claiming that he himself had been blackmailed and had therefore been in hiding for a year. Lupo was arrested on November 15, 1909 and taken into custody on November 17; Initially, the allegation was only of extortion from Salvatore Manzella , but the case was dropped on November 22nd because Manzella did not appear before the authorities. Lupo was released, but immediately arrested again because of an older counterfeit case from 1902. He was able to avert this accusation by paying a fine of US $ 5,000. However, the police had meanwhile tracked down the distribution of the new, better counterfeit money. On January 8, 1910, Secret Service officials found a revolver, letters, passports and bank papers in a house in the names of John Lupo , Joseph La Presti, and Giuseppe La Presti .

On January 26, 1910, the trial for the spread of counterfeit money began and on February 19, 1910 the verdict was passed: Lupo was fined 30 years and a fine of $ 1,000, his brother-in-law Giuseppe Morello 25 years and a fine of $ 1,000 . The other accomplices were also convicted: Giuseppe Calicchio , 17 years old, fined 600 US dollars; Giuseppe Palermo , 18 years old, $ 1,000 fine; Nicola Sylvestro , Cantonio Cecala , Vincenzo Giglio, and Salvatore Cina each with 15 years and a $ 1,000 fine. Lupo and Morello were also sent to an Atlanta labor camp.

The return

On June 30, 1920, he was released on parole by Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and vowed to return to Sicily. Daugherty permitted travel and return on October 30, 1921, and Lupo was likely returning to New York City from Sicily in the early months of 1922. In any case, his three-week stay on Ellis Island , where he tried to counteract his deportation , was documented. Ironically, he claimed to be a wine merchant, even though alcohol prohibition had been in place since 1920 . On June 12, 1922, he received a residence permit from the US government. He now got into the bakery business and opened a fruit wholesale business with his son.

Similar to how his brother-in-law Ciro Terranova had secured his monopoly on artichokes (also with mafia-like methods) , he now proceeded in the bakery trade. In any case, on December 2, 1923, his cooperation with Anthony Forti in this regard was officially registered by the authorities.

Exit and end

Likewise, in 1925 the authorities registered his renewed visit to Sicily , and the police assumed a money transfer there. This could almost be interpreted as his departure from the front line of the Cosa Nostra . In any case, it no longer played a role after the Castellammare War (1930–1931) and in the new hierarchy of families. He was seen as responsible for the murder of Roger Consiglio on October 8, 1930 , but that probably had more to do with the siphoning off of Italian bakeries than with the power struggles between Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano or the murderous presidential discovery of the Unione Siciliana .

On July 16, 1935, he was arrested for his extortionate actions to bring all Italian bakeries under his control. Franklin Roosevelt in particular had now come to the opinion that Lupo had violated his probation requirements from the old counterfeit money story, so sent him back behind bars on July 15, 1936 and he had to begin his custody in Atlanta . During his imprisonment in 1938 he learned of the death of his brother-in-law Ciro Terranova and was released a short time later because of his allegedly poor health; but he spent nine more years in freedom before he died of natural causes.

According to the inscription on the tombstone , he died on January 13, 1947, and not as stated in other sources in 1944, in Brooklyn and is located in the local family grave (Calvary Cemetery) and the like. a. together with his brother-in-law Ciro Terranova.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ www.onewal.com ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)  
2. ↑ New York's Black Hand: Part 1 ( Memento of the original dated December 30, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www.mobsters.8m.com (English)  
3. ↑ www.8ung.at www.8ung.at ( Memento of the original from July 17th, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)  
4. ↑ Ignazio Lupo on www.gangrule.com (English)
5. ↑ http://www.gangrule.com/biographies/giovanni-lupo Giovanni "John" Lupo. (English)
6. ↑ www.onewal.com ( Memento of the original from April 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) 
7. ↑ Ignazio Saietta on www.mugshots.com (English)
8. ↑ Ignazio Saietta in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 8, 2015.

predecessor	Office	successor
unknown	President of the Unione Siciliana in New York City around 1900–1918	Frankie Yale