Born August 28, 1928, Joseph Luco Pagano grew up in the East Harlem section of Upper Manhattan. By at least the time he reached his late teens, Pagano had already become a criminal. He soon became a trusted associate of the local underworld after being brought around by Joseph (Joe Cago) Valachi, a longtime soldier of the old Vito Genovese Family, who later became infamous after turning canary for the FBI.
Little Joey Pagano began his criminal career by running numbers and serving as an all-around lackey for Valachi. As time went on, he graduated to more important activities like peddling narcotics and was eventually given an important assignment by Valachi to use a gun on behalf of the Family.
Joey, and his older brother Pasquale — appropriately named “Big Patty” because of their size difference — quickly became very trusted members of the Vito Genovese Family. So much so, that legend has it Valachi later sponsored the Paganos for formal Mafia membership.
Regarding Joey’s eligibility, his involvement in a specific mob sanctioned murder became his golden ticket into the Genovese borgata.
Makin’ Your “Bones”
In September 1952, young Joey finally “made his bones” by participating in the gangland execution of wayward Lucchese Family soldier, Eugenio (Gene) Giannini.
Together with his brother Patty, and another up-and-coming young East Harlem hood named Fiore (Fury) Siano, the trio shot Giannini to death as he was exiting a tenement building on East 112th Street where a weekly crap game was being operated.
Although the Pagano brothers lived and operated in Harlem, upon being inducted into the Genovese borgata, the brothers, like their mentor Joe Valachi, were assigned to the Downtown Manhattan-based regime headed by the legendary mafioso, Antonio (Tony Bender) Strollo.
By the early 1960s, Joey Pagano was branching out considerably from his earlier activities as a gambler and drug peddler into more sophisticated rackets including labor-union scams, shylocking and business infiltration, the latter two of which soon led him into what would become a major windfall of illicit profits and eventually earn him a highly publicized indictment and jail term for perpetrating a $1.3 million dollar ripoff.
Big-Time “Bust Out”
Using his power as a shylock and underworld figure, after loaning money to the principal owners of Murray Meat Packing, Inc., a wholesale purveyor and distributor of meats to butchers, restaurants, nightclubs, and smaller meat companies, Pagano leveraged his way into becoming a signatory on the company’s bank account and its overseer under the guise of protecting his investment for having extended usurious loans to the company.
According to federal prosecutors, after gaining control of the company check book and access to their office and records, over the course of a mere six weeks or so, Pagano, in league with several key soldiers of Carlo Gambino’s Family, ordered over one million dollars in meat shipments that they sold out the backdoor of the company without paying any of their suppliers — pocketing the proceeds instead.
Often Imitated. Never Duplicated. Button Guys of The New York Mafia...There's Only One!
