Unpacking NEPA’s surprisingly strong ties to the Mafia

Learn about how the Mafia grew its influence in the shadow of the Pocono Mountains.

If your familiarity with the Mafia is based on what you’ve learned from watching “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos,” you may be surprised to learn that our very own Northeastern Pennsylvania was once a Mafia stronghold.

Or perhaps your knowledge of the Mafia is also informed by Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film “The Irishman,” and you know all about the mob in NEPA.

“The Irishman” billboard that shows Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino. (kcube – kaan baytur/Shutterstock)

Though the drama surrounding the Mafia is common fodder for fictional movies and TV shows, the American Mafia was once a major influence in business and politics. Italian immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s brought the organized crime syndicate from Sicily to their new country, forming the biggest groups in major cities like New York and Philadelphia. Mobsters made money from illegal gambling, racketeering, and other criminal enterprises and quickly grew their fortunes by smuggling alcohol during Prohibition. 

NEPA’s proximity to New York made it an excellent location for mob activities, but the NEPA Mafia, most famously the Bufalino Family, flourished particularly because of its early influence in the coal industry.

Anthracite coal and the mob

In the late 1800s, thousands of immigrants from Sicily and other areas of Southern Italy made new homes in the Pittston area, which is located about halfway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. These immigrants brought Italian traditions like the Catholic Mother of the Rosary procession, Italian cooking, and music, and of course, some brought the concept of the Mafia, the gangs divided into “families” of men not necessarily related to each other.

Like most immigrants, Italian Americans came to the United States for work. In the Pittston area, they manned the region’s anthracite coal mines, working in exploitative and dangerous conditions for little pay.

But over time, Mafia members infiltrated not only the coal companies but the miners’ union, the United Mine Workers. The mob would extort businesses, promising protection from strikes, while siphoning union funds. In the 1930s, at least one mob boss even became a member of Pennsylvania’s State Coal Commission, further broadening the Mafia’s influence.

A 1912 postcard showcases slate pickers at work in the anthracite coal region. (Janet Lindenmuth/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Bufalino crime family

The Northeastern Pennsylvania-based Mafia is almost synonymous with the Bufalino crime family, even though its namesake, Russell Bufalino, didn’t become the boss of the crime family until 1959. You might also hear this area’s mob referred to as the “Pittston crime family” or the “Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family.” But as a prominent leader in the NEPA underworld, Bufalino’s name was memorable.

After the decline of the anthracite coal industry, the area’s crime family turned to different industries, including the garment industry. As the region’s Mafia boss, Bufalino garnered control over the area’s garment factories, owning at least seven dress factories himself. The family controlled dozens more garment factories, had ties to the police, and even formed a competing union of garment workers in opposition to an established labor union that wasn’t controlled by the Mafia. 

The Mafia’s ill-planned Apalachin Meeting

The Apalachin Meeting was an influential 1957 meeting of Mafia men from around the world, held at a NEPA mob boss’s house in the small town of Apalachin, New York, just over the Pennsylvania border. This was part of the NEPA crime family’s territory, and Russell Bufalino was one of the key organizers of the Mafia summit. 

Picture it: more than 100 men from several powerful Mafia families, all coming together to discuss — to organize — their crime! The police, however, didn’t need to simply picture it. They raided the family reunion meeting and detained more than 60 mobsters. More than a dozen mobsters from the NEPA crime family were indicted, including Russell Bufalino.

The Apalachin Meeting was the beginning of the decline of the Mafia because the meeting confirmed that organized crime existed. Before 1957, the FBI had been unwilling to seriously investigate the Mafia, but the events in Apalachin forced their hand. If only the meeting could have been an email.

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

In 1975, the former head of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa, disappeared without a trace. His body was never found. Most people — including former Mafia members — agree that the Mafia had something to do with it.

In fact, if you’ve seen the movie “The Irishman,” you already know that a common theory is that Hoffa’s murder was arranged by the Bufalino crime family because the mob didn’t want Hoffa to threaten their interests if he went back into leading the Teamsters. The movie follows the life of Frank Sheeran, an Irish-American truck driver and Teamster who became a hitman for the Mafia and a friend to Hoffa. 

Before he died in 2003, Sheeran said he killed Hoffa in 1975 on Bufalino’s orders.

Jimmy Hoffa on trial at Senate Racket Com. (Library of Congress)

The NEPA Mafia today

In the 1980s and 1990s, arrests and imprisonments dampened the prominence of the NEPA-based crime family and the Italian-American Mafia at large. For his part, Russell Bufalino was imprisoned twice in the 70s and 80s for a combined 11 years. He died in 1994 at the age of 90.

To a much smaller degree than it once was, the American Mafia is still active today in big cities, including New York and Philadelphia. But, as far as we know, it’s no longer influential in NEPA. Still, the history remains. And, of course, there’s always “The Irishman.”

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.