8. The Mobster Who Was America’s Biggest Drug Dealer
Charles “Lucky” Luciano (1897 – 1962) was a visionary crime mafia boss who founded today’s Genovese crime family – one of New York City’s five mafia families. Luciano is considered the founding father of the Italian-American mafia, and the key architect who created modern American organized crime as we know it. He is also credited with establishing The Commission – a committee that ran the Italian-American mafia and arbitrated its internal disputes to avert mob wars and other bloody struggles that could prove disruptive to business.
Less commonly known about Lucky Luciano is that he was America’s biggest drug dealer. A criminal since childhood, Luciano emigrated to America at age nine. By the time he was ten years old, young Luciano was involved in shoplifting, mugging, and extortion. At age nineteen, Luciano was sentenced to six months for selling heroin. In 1920, he joined Joe Masseria’s crime family, and became his chief lieutenant, running his bootlegging, prostitution, and narcotics operations. In due course, Lucky Luciano became the country’s biggest narcotics trafficker and distributor.
