I have now gathered up enough intel to release a third Button Guys installment for this series. I never intended for it to become a ‘series’ per se, but the sheer amount of interesting mob figures who made the Florida surf and sunshine their environs demanded it. And despite this additional third installment, I still have only scratched the surface of all the underworld activities that took place down there – mob activities that continue to this very day.
I decided to create a third installment of an original story I wrote a while back about the early migration of organized racketeers and Cosa Nostra figures to South Florida. Organized crime in South Florida began in earnest right after WWII. There had been a relatively small continent of New York racket guys who had visited the area in earlier years, with some of them settling down into the Miami area.
Note: Note: For additional stories about the mob in South Florida, please see Mafia Moon Over Miami: Part 1, Mafia Moon Over Miami: Part 2, and Mafia Moon Over Miami: Part 4 (all part of this series). In addition, throughout the Button Guys website, you can find more detailed biographies about many of the mobsters listed below.
But it wasn’t until after the Second World War that the underworld started to really expand their visits and vacations and started to buy homes down there. Almost immediately they started to operate their criminal activities and plant their flag into the sand as well. They came in droves.
In my two previous installments, I named hundreds of Cosa Nostra figures and underworld racketeers of various importance. I also highlighted over 100 of them that I wrote interesting thumbnail sketches about. But the names kept on coming and it seemed the more I dug into the area’s history, the more mob guys I found.
There were so many interesting and important mobsters who made Miami Beach and the other towns sprinkled throughout Dade and Broward Counties their stomping grounds that it compelled me to write a second follow-up story about them.
But it didn’t end there. I have now gathered up enough intel to release a third Button Guys installment for this series. I never intended for it to become a ‘series’ per se, but the sheer amount of interesting mob figures who made the Florida surf and sunshine their environs demanded it. And despite this additional third installment, I still have only scratched the surface of all the underworld activities that took place down there – mob activities that continue to this very day.
So buckle folks, for a wild ride into a section of the country that arguably became the most pervasive, heavily saturated and diversified underworld Mecca in the entire United States.
