Tony Ripepi could best be categorized as an old-line “Mustache Pete” type mafioso, one who adhered closely to the old-world tenets of the brotherhood back in Calabria. He was believed to have been a member of the old “Black Hand” extortion rings operating in the early decades of the 1900s before the formation of Cosa Nostra in America.
He held a position as one of the most senior and important “capo di decina” in the Pittsburgh Family for decades. In that context, Ripepi was a notorious mafioso, well-known to all in the underworld, locally, nationally, and internationally.
