Mafia family in the United States

The American Mafia is considered to be an American-Italian criminal society as well as the Sicilian Mafia’s offshoot. This group in the States is also popularly called Italian American gang or American Cosa Nostra. It was during the later part of the 19th century that its United States chapter began in the East Coast, especially with emigration of Sicilians and people from South Italy.

Reasons for the growth of Mafioso in the U.S.

Most of the Sicilians including other Italians living in horrible and below poverty conditions in their state were tired and treated by their government with contempt. With dreams of having a wonderful American life, they started to emigrate to the U.S. during the 1800s. However, it was in the early part of the 20th century that sudden increase was noticed among the Italians to emigrate to the United States. While majority of the Italians chose the path of an honest life to earn their living, few had plans to have Sicilian ways of gangs to be brought to this new place.

Introducing organized crime

Right from its inception, until today, the American Mafia is said to dominate the U.S. organized crime, maintaining a greater control over the regions of Providence, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, including the organized criminal activities in the city of New York and other cities along the North East and all over the country like New Orleans and Las Vegas. Mafia history of America had been etched in the popular American culture and portrayed in video games, books, TV shows, movies, etc. Mafia game Developers have tried to cash in on the growing craze among gamers to come up with variety of Mafioso related games for people of all ages.

In the metropolitan area of New York, New England, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, the American-Italian Cosa Nostra is considered to be more active. The US currently ‘boasts’ of having about 26 mafia families and splinter groups located all over the United States.

The beginning

It was in the city of New York that the mafia members became first active. They started their operations from those poor Italian neighborhood ghettos and slowly progressed to city regions and later in international activities. It was with ‘The Black Hand’ or ‘La Mano Nera’ that American Mafioso started with, extorting Italians as well as other immigrants around the city of New York. Their activities until the 1920’s were largely limited, after which they expanded.