Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola – “Sharkey of East Harlem”

Sharkey was said to be a Queens-based mortician with interests in several funeral homes over the years in the upper Manhattan area where it was reported that Cupola had allegedly held a percentage in the Piragnoli Funeral Home.

Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola - aka “Al Cupola”, “Albert Cupola”, “Alfred Coppola”. “Alfredo Cupola” was born in 1902 and raised in East Harlem. By the early 1950s, he had moved up to the Bronx, residing at 3974 Boston Road. By 1960, he had purchased a private home with his wife out in Jamaica, Queens where they would raise their family. Sharkey lived there for the rest is his life.

Cupola was also known to frequent Miami, Florida, where he associated with crew associates. A top Miami hangout was the Amvets Club, a well-known mob gathering place secretly controlled by his capo and along the Collins Avenue strip where his regime was well represented. Other hangouts included the Johnina Hotel and Lounge (Dean Martin’s Restaurant) and the Fontainbleu Hotel-Lounge.

Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola

FBI # 19944783, NYCPD # B-54987, KG # 5343

By 1951, he was also listed by Harlem’s 25th Precinct as a (KG) or “known gambler.” His activities included policy racket, shylocking, police bribery - “the pad”.

Cupola was officially named in 1963 by mob informer Joseph Valachi during his testimony before the McClellan Senate Investigating Committee as a documented “soldier” in the old Vito Genovese Family serving under “Trigger Mike” Coppola.

But he was well known to the 25th Precinct in Harlem as a local hood and gambler many years earlier. Sharkey was the longtime aide and confidante of future capo Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and one of 22 listed soldiers in Coppola’s East Harlem regime.

Sharkey was said to be a Queens-based mortician with interests in several funeral homes over the years in the upper Manhattan area where it was reported that Cupola had allegedly held a percentage in the Piragnoli Funeral Home.

He was also reported to frequent The Bridge Club, a private mob social club on Boston Post Road in the Bronx. Another mob den he regularly frequented was the local Democratic Club located on 116th Street between First and Second Avenues in East Harlem.

Criminal Record

Cupola had an extensive criminal record dating from 1919 but was largely unknown outside of Harlem. He figured into several probes for numbers-lottery operations and the NYPD had him recorded as a “KG” or known gambler in their precinct files.

He had at least 18 arrests:

1919 - disorderly conduct

1921 - suspicion (Boston, MA)

1922 - grand larceny (sent to Elmira Reformatory - 10 years)

1924 - disorderly conduct (4 months in the workhouse)

1925 - burglary

1926 - assault and robbery

1933 - disorderly conduct

1935 - vagrancy

1936 - vagrancy

1940 - vagrancy

1941 - forgery - forged instrument

1942 - policy ($50 fine)

1944 - vagrancy

1956 - exact charge was not listed

1959 - vagrancy

1962 - vagrancy

1966 - extortion, conspiracy and usury (see below)

An Unassuming Building with a Secret

On October 20, 1956, several teams of Treasury and IRS agents, aided by New York Policemen raided an unassuming building in East Harlem that housed what prosecutors later called New York City’s largest numbers “bank.” This policy-lottery racket was said to be grossing over $4,000,000 a year with a net profit of $500,000 (a very hefty sum for that 1950s era).

Located along a dingy block at First Avenue and E.115th Street, the nondescript tenement housed an upstairs apartment that served as headquarters for one of the major gambling networks run by the Vito Genovese Family.

The Internal Revenue Intelligence Division named and targeted as the ringleaders: Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola, and Joseph (Joe Fats) DeSantis.

The investigation became a very sensitive and difficult one in that the entire immediate neighborhood served as the Mafia’s home base. The mob had posted lookouts on nearly every corner constantly watching up and down the blocks for signs of police or detectives snooping around.

There were also armed neighborhood toughs stationed nearby to protect the various numbers banks, narcotics drops, and mob social clubs that dotted every block in East Harlem from potential heists and strangers. So, any police surveillance or raiding task force would quickly be spotted and word relayed back to the targets, enabling the racketeers time to destroy or hide potential evidence.

It was discovered that a hallway in a building at 420 East 115th Street was being used as a “drop” for the various runners and “controllers” to deposit the daily numbers “slips” in brown paper bags.

Then, periodically through the day, an employee of the policy ring named Angelo Zanfardino would come by to collect the day's “handle” placing the gambling bundles in a large paper shopping bag for delivery to the policy bank at a rundown apartment house located down the block at 442 East 115th Street.

Side Note: Zanfardino was related to Gennaro (Jerry Z) Zanfardino, another East Harlem hood who would gain some infamy in the early 1970s as a key operative in a multimillion-dollar heroin network-based along Pleasant Avenue that was headed by Lucchese acting boss Carmine (Mr. Gribbs) Tramunti.

This huge nationwide network would come to be called “The Pleasant Avenue Connection. ”

The Drop

Between 1:45 and 2:45 each day Zanfardino would make three to four trips from the drop to #442, and after the last trip, he would leave with a package from #442 that he’d deliver to 431 East 115th Street. It was believed that Fat Tony maintained his private office at this address.

There also seemed to be a passel of operatives directing and overseeing racket traffic, as it were, in the street during these hours. These men were identified as DeSantis, Cupola, and Frank Lesandro. After months of surveillance, on the day of the raid, six cars with five agents in each car, converged on the neighborhood.

Strategically parked at key locales, each time a runner or controller was approaching the block housing the “bank,” they were quietly swept off the street and hustled away from the area by police and restrained so as not to cause a disturbance or to sound an alarm.

Prior surveillance had also revealed that apartment # 3-A housed the bank. In all, seven runners or controllers had been snatched off the street that afternoon. Once Zanfardino appeared, he too was nabbed. With that, teams of law enforcement hit apartment #3-A.

What they found was breathtaking.

A Breathtaking Discovery

Seated around a kitchen table tabulating the days betting receipts were six men later identified as Alfred Maiorello, Louis Coppola, Joseph Coppo, Cirino (Speed) Salerno (Fat Tony’s brother,) Patsy Romano, and Charley Streppone. On the table were mountainous piles of numbers slips, adding machine ribbons, and recapitulation sheets.

Elsewhere in the apartment, the raiders found shopping bags filled with gambling receipts for the period from October 16 through October 19 stashed away. A quick check showed that the play for October 17, just an average day, was $14,394.61. Commissions paid out to runners and controllers was $4,932.41, and the “hits” or winnings paid out were $7,561.50, leaving a one day’s net, net profit of $1,900.50.

Additionally, cash found on the six suspects and in their pockets amounted to $6,740.00...and yet not a one of them would ever dare claim the cash was theirs.

After several years of delays, All defendants eventually pled out to reduced charges. Although pivotally involved in the operation, Cupola was never actually charged in the indictment because he was not in the apartment at the time of the raid, nor was he caught with any gambling records on his person.

Extortion in New Jersey

In 1966, Cupola was one of seven mafiosi arrested on federal extortion charges by the FBI.

By March of 1967, he was cleared of all charges by a federal jury in Newark, New Jersey after a trial. They were accused of disrupting interstate commerce by extorting money from a former operator on the Hoboken piers, Herbert Mann, from 1964 to 1966.

New Jersey federal prosecutors claimed that the defendants loaned money at usurious interest rates on several occasions to Mann and drained over $100,000 from him and his business firm and threatened his life, before he complained to the FBI, thus starting the investigation.

Criminal Associates

Among a gaggle of Harlem racketeers well known to Sharkey, the men listed below were among Cupola’s closest, steady associates. They included:

• Michael (Trigger Mike) Coppola - His longtime capo di decina. A vicious and feared notorious mafioso who later relocated to Miami, Florida.

• Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno - Sharkey’s closest associate and director superior. Tony later rose to “Captain” the former Coppola crew and served as underboss to Chin Gigante.

• Louie (The Gimp) Avitabile -Prolific numbers operator active in West Harlem. An old-time Genovese “KG”.

• Frank (Farby) Serpico - Originally from Corona, Queens, Farby was a regime soldier and numbers racketeer active in Upper Manhattan who later figured into a huge police bribery and corruption scandal investigated by the Knapp Commission that also saw Cupola drawn into it.

• Cirino (Speed) Salerno - Fat Tony’s brother and policy controller/aide. “Speed” later headed a Teamsters Union Local that organized private parking garages in Manhattan for his brother.

• Alexander (Al Ross) Rosato - One of Cupola’s closest regime associates. A top soldier, shylock, and policy racketeer. A vicious and feared hood. Said to be one of the wealthiest loan sharks in New York.

• Anthony (Tony Moon) Ciccone - Policy racketeer, shylock, suspected narcotics trafficker, and Lucchese soldier. Another product of East Harlem.

• Vincent (Fish) Cafaro - A young neighborhood guy Salerno took under his wing grooming him to become a soldier and top numbers controller in West Harlem. Cafaro later turned informant in the 1980s.

• Dominick (Quiet Dom) Cirillo - Longtime soldier who later rose to become acting boss of the entire Genovese Family. Convicted in 1950 of heroin sales as a young man in Harlem.

• Samuel (Big Sam) Cavalieri -Top Lucchese soldier and key gambling operative. He ran a mob social club along First Avenue. Later oversaw several Laborers Union locals for the Lucchese’s.

All of the above was a Harlem habituate and notorious mafioso in his own right.

Dominick (Quiet Dom) Cirillo

By the late 1960s, Sharkey had slowed down a bit. After a lifetime serving the Luciano/Genovese borgata and the Coppola/Salerno regime, he was already pushing 70 years old. “Soldato” Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola died in 1974 at the age of 72.

Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola – “Sharkey of East Harlem”

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Alfred (Sharkey) Cupola – “Sharkey of East Harlem”

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