Quick Facts
In 1928, bootlegger Joe Profaci founded what would become the Colombo crime family, establishing the youngest of New York's Five Families. What began as a small-time bootlegging operation during Prohibition would evolve into a sprawling criminal enterprise stretching across the Northeast—but also the most fractured and violently unstable of the Five Families.
Profaci's empire expanded rapidly through strategic marriages that linked the family to the Detroit mob's Zerilli and Tocco clans, as well as the Bonanno family. By his death in 1962, the Profaci organization—as it was then known—commanded approximately 150 made members and over 1,000 associates operating across Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, Long Island, New Jersey, Manhattan, Westchester, Connecticut, and Florida. The family's criminal portfolio was comprehensive: gambling, loansharking, hijacking, cargo theft, narcotics trafficking, labor racketeering, extortion, bookmaking, and prostitution.
Yet from the moment Profaci died, the family's history became one of almost relentless internal bloodshed. Giuseppe Magliocco, Profaci's brother-in-law, assumed leadership but quickly became entangled in an ill-fated conspiracy with Bonanno boss Joseph Bonanno to assassinate other Commission bosses. When Joseph Colombo reported the plot to the Commission, Magliocco was forced into exile. Colombo rose to leadership in 1964, rewarded for his loyalty to the Commission's authority.
Colombo's reign brought a dramatic pivot. In 1970, he founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League, attempting to mainstream the family's image. The strategy backfired catastrophically. On June 28, 1971, Colombo was shot and paralyzed at a league rally, setting off the Second Colombo War. Carmine Persico emerged as the new boss, but not before Joe Gallo—released from prison—attempted a takeover that left him murdered in 1972.
