Of the many territories all across the United States where Camorra clans established themselves and plied their nefarious stock-in-trade, there was no place the Camorra better established themselves that right here in New York City.
And as the first early waves of Italian immigrants established “Little Italy” type neighborhoods within the city several important Camorra clans also developed within those areas to control their respective territory.
Within the five boroughs, one of the most prominent Camorra strongholds was in Lower Manhattan’s Mulberry Street section. Another enclave could be found in East Harlem, and still another was established in Queens County’s Ozone Park neighborhood.
But of all their various strongholds, nowhere was the Camorra’s power base more evident than within Kings County, New York.
During the early 1900s, two distinctly separate but united and powerful Camorra networks developed within the borough. One was located in Downtown Brooklyn around the old Brooklyn Navy Yards. The other was based in South Brooklyn, headquartered in Coney Island, near the boardwalk.
The Camorra’s Coney Island Clan was headed by a powerful Calabrian-born camorrista by the name of Francesco Ioele, who was to become infamous throughout gangland by his underworld nickname, Frankie Yale.
