The Vario Regime Leadership Chart

This crew is best known publicly for their infamous exploits as the robbery gang that pulled off the daring $5.8 million-dollar Lufthansa heist at JFK International Airport in Queens, New York in 1978. But they were so much more than that.

The historical introduction and hierarchy chart that follows documents the life and times of legendary Lucchese Family caporegime Paul Vario. It also identifies his crew of deadly soldiers and associates, including his notorious Irish sidekick, “Jimmy the Gent” Burke.

Born and raised in East New York, and later operating from nearby Canarsie, Brooklyn , by their late teens, Paul Vario and his brothers were quickly becoming a notorious bunch.

By the late 1950s, the Varios, led by Paul and Salvatore (Babe), were becoming one of the largest organized crime factions in Kings County. By the time the 1960s rolled around, they were branching out even further into Queens County and onto Long Island.

Born in 1913, the most notorious of the brothers was Paul Vario Sr.

Keep reading to learn more about the Paul Vario regime in this short history and view the Vario Regime Leadership Chart .

The Vario Regime - Beginnings

During the 1950s, Paulie and his brother Babe were formally inducted into the Brooklyn branch of what was then known as the Gaetano Gagliano Family of East Harlem. By 1953, or so Family underboss Gaetano (Tommy Brown) Lucchese had succeeded Gagliano to become the new leader.

With a disheveled look and crude disposition, the often-foul mouthed Vario had an intimidating personality and was a very aggressive hoodlum. A few years after getting his “button,” he was elevated from “soldier” status to a “capo di decina” position within the newly named Lucchese Family.

Although their traditional home base was the East Harlem and Bronx sections of the city, nonetheless, over the years, the Lucchese Family also developed a large Brooklyn-based membership under the auspices of two “regimes” they formed.

Brooklyn

One regime was headed by capo Christopher (Christy Ticker) Furnari . A second regime was led by the newly appointed Paul Vario who had inherited a large and active crew.

In time, Paulie would add even more men to this crew as “associates,” many of whom he later sponsored for formal membership into the ranks of the Family.

A Plethora of Rackets

Under his guidance, Vario’s crew engaged in virtually every type of criminal activity including gambling rackets , loansharking, extortion and shakedowns, truck hijacking , major armed robberies, warehouse burglaries, arson for hire, fencing stolen cargo, cigarette smuggling , narcotics, labor-union racketeering, embezzlement, kickbacks, business infiltration, auto-theft rings and chop-shops, credit card fraud , police bribery, strong-arm tactics, and contract murder, to name but a few of their activities.

In 1965, Vario’s brothers Babe and Lenny and several of their key associates were charged out on Long Island with bribing several undercover Suffolk County Police Officers in a bid to buy police “protection” to help avoid arrests for operating a lucrative floating dice game in the Town of Huntington.

Vario and members of his crew were constantly in the news. In another instance in 1966, he and over forty associates were indicted for operating a massive $30,000,000 a year bookmaking and policy ring that stretched from Manhattan through Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. At the time of their indictment Nassau’s District Attorney William Cahn announced it was the largest gambling ring ever broken up on Long Island. He labeled Paul Vario as the titular head of this sprawling betting operation.

By 1970 he had already been convicted and jailed numerous times for rape, gambling, loansharking (twice), assault, bribery (twice), extortion (twice), criminal contempt of court (6 times) among his many other arrests and convictions.

The Infamous Lufthansa Heist

But of all his nefarious activities through the years, the one crime that Vario will forever be synonymous with is the infamous $5.8-million dollar theft of $5,000,000 in cold cash and another $850,000 in gold and diamonds from the Lufthansa Airlines Cargo Terminal located inside John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, Queens, on the night of December 11, 1978.

Armed with inside information, infamous Vario associate James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke supervised a team of gunmen as they stormed the cargo terminal, handcuffed several Lufthansa workers, broke into a storage room, grabbed the loot, and then made a clean getaway.

The daily tabloids went wild reporting on this historic record-breaking heist.

After the robbery, more than a dozen men and women who had been directly or indirectly connected with the heist were slaughtered over the next several years.

It was Vario and Burke’s way of limiting their exposure to criminal prosecution for the heist.

It was also a cold-blooded but very efficient way to avoid paying out millions of dollars in profits to their confederates by killing off as many robbery participants and close associates as possible.

The Leadership Chart below represents the known membership of Paul Vario’s crew as well as dozens of the crew’s more significant criminal associates over the years.

The Vario Regime Leadership Chart

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The Vario Regime Leadership Chart

Unlock This Door to the Underworld

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You May Also Enjoy

The Anthony Strollo Regime of NY/NJ

The Day Charlie (the Bug) Workman Saved a Horse

Racketeer Profile – San Francisco’s “Jimmy the Hat” Lanza

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