It was on 1st October 1910 that Carmine Tramunti was born in New York’s Manhattan district. He was popularly called ‘Mr. Gibbs’. It was in Harlem that he spent within a tenement building, his early years. At the age of 20, he robbed his neighborhood rent collection and got arrested. Because of lack of evidence, he was rereleased.
Leading a criminal life
He was again arrested and convicted of felony in July 1931 and sentenced for 6 to 15 years, being sent to Sing Sing Correctional center at New York’s Ossining. He was released for a brief period and for parole violation, got arrested, but eventually in 1938 got released.
After his release, he again took to criminal activities and got engaged in a lucrative New York crap game known as ‘Harlem Game’. He got married and gave birth to two children, during the time he got close to Brooklyn’s Lucchese Mafia family.
His rise to power
He had a very good relation with Carlo Gambino, the future Gambino Mafia family boss and with his power and friendship rose to power within the Lucchese cri me family. With Thomas Lucchese’s death in 1967, Gambino had the Commission to be pushed to accept Tramunti as his successor, given his general intelligence and business leadership. It was agreed upon by the Commission and Tramunti was made the boss of Lucchese Family. It was assumed that the Commission was simply buying time as Anthony Corallo, the true successor was in prison. Tramunti got indicted with stock fraud on 14 counts for taken over a Florida based investment firm on 19th November 1970. At trial, he got convicted. Again the next year, he got indicted, this time due to his lying to the grand jury about not having any kind of contact with Paul Vario, the Lucchese capo. On 6th August, 1972, he got 3 three years sentence.
The same year, when serving in prison for the above reason, along with 42 others, Tramunti got charged on drug charges, with law enforcement officials cracking a heroin route that came through Canada via France. This trial had received national headlines and been dubbed as ‘The French Connection’. For this, on 7th May 1973, he got sentenced to about 15 years in prison, to which he reacted that he was a mobster doing bad things, but of course not at all a drug dealer.
Anthony Corallo in the meanwhile had been released and went back to the top spot in the Lucchese Crime Family. On 15th October 1978, Carmine had died when serving sentence because of natural causes.