One of the most legendary and infamous Mafia groups to ever operate in the United States was the notorious criminal gang that controlled the Lower Manhattan waterfront and docks, taking over the famous Fulton Fish Market and piers located along the Lower East Side. From the 1920s forward, this Cosa Nostra network would control all organized crime generated by New York’s multimillion-dollar-a-year seafood industry.
Giuseppe Lanza, who was to become infamous around the waterfront and throughout police circles as Joe Socks, or Socks Lanza, was one of the original Mafia powers in the organized crime network that later became known as the Salvatore (Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano) Lucania Family.
A powerfully built man, from 1917 forward Lanza racked up a long series of arrests and convictions for such offenses as grand larceny (twice), burglary, homicide by gunshot, petty larceny, gun possession, Sherman Anti-Trust Law Violations, coercion, criminal conspiracy, extortion (thrice), and violating state election laws.
By the 1930s, “Socks” Lanza was solidly in command of underworld operations at the Fulton Fish Market, and his name had become synonymous with waterfront racketeering in New York City.
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On the Waterfront
During those early years, Lanza and the hoodlums who operated under his tutelage and direction built up one of the largest, most prolific, and durable criminal networks to ever operate in Manhattan — or anywhere else in the country, for that matter.
And although by the mid-1940s “Socks” Lanza was eventually jailed on a state rap for conspiracy and extortion and serving out a 7.5-to-15 year penitentiary term in Upstate New York, from the mid-1920s through at least the 1980s the criminal fiefdom he helped build continued to maintain an ironclad grip on nearly every money-making racket or business in that section of the city, extracting Cosa Nostra’s “tribute” from fellow hoodlums and legitimate businessmen alike who operated along the waterfront. Lanza’s crew controlled nearly everything.
Their power was derived mainly through Lanza’s pervasive infiltration of and control over several key labor unions he either first created or later infiltrated to better maintain control of waterfront businesses. By controlling the labor force that supplied various businesses and companies with dock workers at the Fulton Fish Market, the Mafia gained a virtual stranglehold over the entire waterfront.
Several union locals, in particular, played a key role in this effort. One was the United Seafood Workers Union, Local #359. The other was the International Longshoremen’s Association, Local #856 (ILA). These two labor organizations allowed Lanza and his goons to maintain firm control over nearly all waterfront workers.
As time went on, Lanza and his boys also formed several business “association” trade groups, which all businesses operating on the docks or doing business along the waterfront were compelled to join under threats of intimidation, beatings, sabotage, arson, or worse.
By controlling both a company’s management and labor force, Lanza and his Mafia superiors, like Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese, were able to virtually control everything and anything that moved on or through the docks.
This ironclad control over labor and management provided Socks Lanza and his men with unprecedented and almost limitless opportunities for criminal plunder, including raking off monthly union dues for their personal use, the ability to falsify or inflate labor-union expense accounts, pay themselves bloated union salaries, and pilfer the union’s treasury using various forms of embezzlement from its seven-figure pension and welfare fund.
Often Imitated. Never Duplicated. Button Guys of The New York Mafia...There's Only One!
