America’s Most Powerful Mafia Boss: Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno | Mafia Documentary 

 

 

 

Amongst the inner workings of the Genovese crime family, one gangster in particular has become something of an unsung legend. While his name may not be the very first to come to mind when considering the mafia, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno was incredibly successful across the course of his lengthy criminal career.

He was not particularly known for his violent crimes, but instead became infamous for the incredible amounts of money he was able to rake in for the mob through various racketeering efforts. Illegal gambling, numbers rackets, construction  rackets, and more were Salerno’s forte. And throughout his life, he managed to make tens of millions of dollars for himself and the mob.

While the gangster has been depicted in a select few mob movies, he rarely takes the center stage >>  >> and his misdeeds have floated into the background of the lives and stories of his associates. In reality, Salerno’s life was a turbulent roller coaster of huge successes, massive risks, and eventual failures.

 And in this episode, we’ll be telling his tale in full. Who was Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno? How exactly did he manage to bring in such huge sums of money for the mafia? And what made him such an intriguing figure? Join us as we tackle these questions and more as we delve into the life of one of the most unexplored major figures in American criminal history.

Anthony Salerno was born on the 15th of August 1911 in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of East Harlem in New York City. His parents, Alfio Salerno and Maria Corochio, were immigrants from Messina, Sicily and had settled in a particularly diverse part of the United States to raise their children. Over the course of Salerno’s early childhood, the Great Migration saw African-American communities grow, while the area remained one of the most popular for Italian immigrants to the states.

This gathering of different cultures led to the prosperity of establishments such as nightclubs and jazz bars. And a strong sense of community was fostered within groups of immigrants who now called New York City their home. This cultural explosion was accompanied by an economic boom that would not be offset until the commencing of the Great Depression of the late 1920s.

Businesses new and old expanded across New York’s packed streets, but a clear divide still separated the working and upper classes. Those with little to their name were forced to find a living where they could, and unfortunately, many immigrants found themselves in cramped low-income housing as the early 20th century played out.

Anthony Salerno was one of several children, and by all accounts, his parents were not particularly well off. As a result, his family were one of many who found themselves trying to scrape by on the fringes of society, which may have ultimately coaxed him into organized crime. With his parents busy with so many mouths to feed, they may not have had enough time to devote to Anthony in particular, which further pushed him down the sinister rabbit hole of mafia life.

Moreover, the young Anthony Salerno did not take well to his education, and while his parents enrolled him in an East Harlem school, he did not complete his studies, ultimately dropping out as a teenager. With no qualifications and few places to turn, Salerno looked to Harlem’s criminal underworld as a means of furthering his life, and soon found himself tangling with street gangs and petty criminals.

Criminals were not uncommon amongst the streets of Manhattan during Salerno’s youth, and as a young man, he would cross paths with members of the 116th Street Crew. The 116th Street Crew, an offshoot of what would become the mighty Genovese crime family, was Salerno’s first notable journey into the ranks of organized crime.

At the time, the gang was known as the Luciano crime family, and under capo regime Michael “Trigger Mike” Coppola, Salerno climbed through the ranks as a successful fledgling mobster. Specifically, his responsibilities lay in the loan sharking, numbers, and protection rackets across East Harlem. Using his newfound associates, Salerno extorted and muscled his way to financial success.

The vast majority of the Little Italy neighborhood within East Harlem was controlled by the 116th Street Gang, and Salerno was rarely,  if ever, short of opportunities to make a quick buck. This success was carried firmly into the 1920s, but the gang ultimately began to experience a slight decline towards the end of the 1930s.

Despite these hardships, they remained financially successful and were bringing in immense money for the mob long after the 1930s came to a close. Still, with his gang in decline, Michael Coppola managed to achieve a spike of success in the mid-1930s, using the decline and fall of others to get where he, and ultimately his crew, wanted to be.

In 1935, he managed to take control over all illegal gambling rackets within Harlem, in which Salerno would be an instrumental part. Then, in 1936, Coppola seized power from Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who had been sentenced to 30 to 50 years imprisonment for racketeering, and from Vito Genovese, who had recently fled the country following his role in a murder.

Essentially, organized crime in Harlem was now Coppola’s for the taking, and with him, Salerno would be able to achieve untold wealth. Michael Coppola essentially acted as Anthony Salerno’s mentor as he took his first steps higher into the ranks of Harlem’s organized crime scene. The young man caught Coppola’s attention, likely as a result of his already high potential as an earner for the mob, and the two continued to work together very closely.

By the end of the 1930s or the start of the 1940s, it is believed that Salerno was formally  accepted into the Genovese crime family as a made man, which allowed him to continue to prove himself as he shot up through the ranks. Under Coppola, Salerno became much more adept at executing his various misdeeds across the neighborhood and continued to rise as a key player in extortion throughout Harlem.

Salerno found particular success in the numbers racket, a form of illegal lottery in which case may have brought in as much as $1 million per year for the mob. For the next 12 years, Salerno only continued to grow richer and richer off of his successes. In 1948, however, he would have to fend for himself. Thankfully for Salerno, he was more than capable by this point.

In 1948, Coppola disappeared as the face of organized crime in Harlem. He, like Vito Genovese before him, was about to be indicted on murder charges. This was something he could not afford to get caught up in. Instead of facing the law head-on, Coppola fled to Florida, where he would remain for the foreseeable future.

In his absence, it was Salerno that stepped up to lead the now smaller, yet still nonetheless efficient, 116th Street Gang. As a leader of the crew, Salerno turned his attention once more towards the extortion and loan sharking rackets that had made him such a key player in his earlier mob years. By the turn of the 1950s, it was reported  that he was bringing in millions upon millions of dollars through these schemes alone, and presided over almost all of the organized crime operations in Harlem himself.

Salerno’s successes eventually saw him become one of, if not the most financially successful mobster of his time. The money he was bringing in from his rackets across Harlem, according to FBI reports, may have totaled as much as $50 million per year by the end of the 1950s. That’s the equivalent to around $500 million in today’s money.

Even with all of this money, Salerno still continued to expand his vast criminal empire and would soon reach the absolute height of his power. As leader of the 116th Street Gang, Salerno took every opportunity he could. He rooted his headquarters at the Palma Boys Social Club in East Harlem and continued to reach out into the criminal underworld of New York City to expand his influence.

In 1959, he used his vast wealth to secretly back a heavyweight professional  boxing title fight between the American Floyd Patterson and the Swedish Ingemar Johansson. Reportedly, Patterson, who lost the match, had taken sedatives  prior to entering the ring and had allowed Johansson to beat him in accordance with Salerno’s wishes, or so attendees had rumored at the time.

In reality, Patterson had taken medication that was supposed to help him recover quickly from any injuries sustained in the match, but as said medicine was misunderstood, it had an adverse effect. According to boxing legend Mike Tyson, Salerno was close to his trainer, Cus D’Amato. Salerno would reportedly frequent D’Amato’s boxing gyms and found as much enjoyment in the sport as he did for financial gain.

He also dabbled into entertainment, establishing Metro Urban Music Company as a legitimate business, which provided maintenance services to jukeboxes across the wider New York City area. Salerno spent his vast wealth on a series of lavish homes. He traveled between three properties, including an expensive house in Miami Beach, Florida, a 100-acre horse farm in Rhinebeck, New York, and an apartment in the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan.

Salerno’s several addresses also made it difficult for the FBI to confidently pin him down and establish a base of operations in which to target him. Despite his various residencies, he tended to stay in Harlem most of the time, where he could make himself known amongst its occupants. He saw great importance in making connections within his hometown, and this served him well across much of his criminal career.

Within his base of connections in Harlem, Salerno was well respected, and is often reported to have supported those who were struggling financially in what could be a particularly tough area of New York to live in. As his influence spread, Salerno managed to expand his empire into pastures. He explored illegal gambling rackets, which helped him in bringing in over 1 million additional dollars per year for the mob.

One of Salerno’s closest associates was Anthony Salerno, who reportedly dabbled in the smuggling of drugs into New York City. Some sources suggest that Salerno himself may have profited from the sale of drugs in Harlem, but this is unconfirmed, and it is more likely that he obtained his vast wealth from more traditional mafia means.

The boom in notoriety that Salerno experienced as he rose through the ranks saw him earn his iconic nickname, Fat Tony, designated by his mob associates on account of his large stature. Salerno didn’t like it at first, but eventually found himself adopting the moniker as he progressed throughout his criminal career.

According to one story, as Salerno dined with mob associates at a restaurant in Brooklyn, law enforcement descended on their location. The gangsters reportedly attempted to climb out of the window to evade capture. Everyone except for Fat Tony, that is, who could not fit. It is unknown whether or not he was arrested in this scenario, or if it is even just a case of simple hearsay, however.

Despite his best efforts, the law would eventually catch up with Anthony Salerno. In 1978, the FBI filed an indictment against the mobster that would see him stand before a court in the April of that year. They managed to pin him down on illegal gambling and tax evasion charges, and after a short trial, in which he was represented by famed attorney Roy Cohn, he would be found guilty.

Salerno managed to avoid what could have been a particularly harsh sentence, however, and got off relatively lightly with just 6 months in a federal prison. This lenient sentence was thanks to Cohn’s representation throughout the course of his career. He also assisted the likes of John Gotti and Carmine Galante in evading hefty prison sentences for a while, at least.

Salerno’s sentence would be served in full across the course of early 1981. Not long after his eventual release, however, the mobster suffered a minor stroke, possibly due to the pressures of incarceration. Taking a brief break from the world of organized crime, Salerno opted to take some rest at his farm in Rhinebeck.

By the time he had been released from prison, Salerno had continued to rise through the ranks of the Genovese crime family, and some sources even claimed that he was acting as the family’s underboss when he had his stroke. This, however, may not be entirely true. Vito Genovese, boss of the organization, had died in the February of 1969, and the upper politics of the family were messy for the several years that followed.

It has been said that the Genovese may have been operating at their highest level as a kind of committee, with several high-ranking mobsters calling the shots on the gang’s various operations. Other sources claim that individual mobsters were in charge of different areas of the gang’s dealings, and Salerno may have been one such individual.

Alongside Salerno in the highest rungs of the Genovese crime family’s ladder >>  >> were the likes of Vincent Gigante, Frank Tieri, and Phil Lombardo, notorious and accomplished gangsters that had spent a great deal of time attempting to reach the top. Later in 1981, however, Tieri and Lombardo stepped down from their leadership roles in the family for health issues and legal pressures, respectively.

This left Gigante and Salerno to manage the workings of the Genovese crime family together. But again, the reality of this situation may not have been that simple. Some claim that Salerno and Gigante worked together as an amicable coalition, making decisions that would influence the mob jointly. Others claim that Gigante took full control, with Salerno acting as a front boss, essentially a figurehead that made few impactful decisions.

The latter stance is supported by a phone conversation recorded with Salerno and one of his men shortly after seizing power. In the conversation, Salerno had expressed a desire to recruit new gangsters as made men into the Genovese crime family, but also stated that this would require approval from the boss, Vincent Gigante.

In later years, some of Salerno’s men would also corroborate this side of the story, claiming that Fat Tony was little more than an acting front boss  who answered to Gigante. So, why was Salerno chosen to act as a front boss rather than the genuine article? Well, installing a front boss was likely an effective mob tactic to throw law enforcement off the scent of the actual boss, Gigante.

Gigante could not be held accountable for his role as a boss if a relatively powerless figurehead was taking the fire. And while Salerno’s status became an open secret in Harlem’s underworld, law enforcement reportedly had no idea. Using a front boss was a common tactic utilized by the mob, specifically favored by Phil Lombardo, who had been the most powerful gangster in the Genovese crime family up until the point of his retirement.

Lombardo had used multiple front bosses to mask his true role within the mob, and it worked wonders for him. He retired after the law began to close in and successfully dodged prison, living out the remainder of his days in Hollywood, Florida and Englewood, New Jersey. As Salerno climbed through the ranks, however, he took a step back from his involvement in illegal gambling and loan sharking, and instead opted to oversee his men as they carried out his misdeeds.

He turned his attention to the construction industry in a collaboration with Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino crime family. Gangsters from multiple families came together to extort money from building contractors across New York City, charging them a fee for the right to build. It is believed that personally, Salerno managed to rake in tens of millions of dollars from his construction rackets alone, whilst continuing to grow exceedingly wealthy from his underlings’ roles in their various loan sharking

rackets. The 1980s would be a blessing and a curse for Anthony Salerno, however. While he managed to bring in an enormous sum of money for himself and his associates, the law was beginning to close in, and nothing could  prepare him for what would unfold in the forthcoming Mafia Commission trial. On the 25th of February, 1985, Anthony Salerno was just one of 11 major organized crime figures who would be indicted in the infamous Mafia Commission trial.

These bosses, underbosses, and consigliere would be investigated under varying charges of racketeering, contract murder, and extortion, and standing trial were some of the most important figures in mafia history. Alongside Salerno stood Paul Castellano, Anthony Corallo, Aniello DellaCroce, Christopher Furnari, and Philip Rastelli, among several others.

Evidence to indict these mobsters had been gathered throughout the years prior. Phone conversations were wiretapped, mob hangouts were bugged, and informants provided evidence to bring some of the biggest names in organized crime to justice. The trial was spearheaded by the then United States Attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who aimed to stamp out organized crime in New York by targeting those most powerful in their respective organizations.

In particular, he wanted to wipe out the legendary five families. Salerno, in particular, was a key, potentially even lead defendant in the Mafia Commission trial. By the time he was indicted, he was a man of great status and wealth. Fortune magazine in 1986, for example, had even named him as America’s top gangster in terms of wealth, power, and influence.

Whether or not he actually held said power is debatable, but he was certainly a wealthy and influential man, now at the age of 75. As law enforcement firmly believed that Salerno was the man behind all of the Genovese crime family’s wrongdoings, he faced the brunt of their accusations, a move which many have now pointed out was likely greatly exaggerated.

 As the trial progressed, proceedings were clearly not destined to fall in Salerno’s favor. His long-time right-hand man, Vincent the Fish Cafaro, had become an FBI informant upon receiving a charge for racketeering, and had begun to testify against his former mob ally. Cafaro implicated the wider Genovese crime family in his racketeering schemes and also noted that the organization had controlled vast amounts of territory across New York.

He indicated that the gang’s construction racket had become extremely profitable for the Genovese and also discussed the fact that Salerno was acting as a front boss for the much more powerful Gigante. Reportedly, Salerno had also been pressing Caffaro to pay a debt he owed him of up to $65,000 in addition to a cut of the money he was bringing in from illegal slot machine businesses.

Caffaro hadn’t paid up and Salerno had supposedly threatened to beat him within an inch of his life with a cane if he continued to evade his debts. This gave him all the more reason to provide the FBI with information that would ultimately lead to Salerno’s conviction in the Mafia Commission trial. In March of 1986, however, Salerno would be indicted for a second time on a separate federal racketeering charge.

This charge pointed the blame at the acting boss for having hidden controlling interests in construction companies across New York City. Notably, the S&A Concrete Company and the Transit Mix Concrete Corporation. These organizations were, at the time, involved in the construction of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Trump Tower, and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

 And each case would carry an extremely heavy sentence for Salerno if he was found guilty. On top of this, he was also accused of illegally aiding Roy L. Williams in his election campaign to become the president of the Teamsters Union, a large labor union in the United States and Canada. With his charges surmounting, the law deemed Salerno too dangerous to be granted bail and so he was locked up until both trials came to a head.

Still, despite the fact that he would almost certainly spend the rest of his life  in prison if convicted, he entered a not guilty plea for all charges. By all accounts, Salerno was accepting of his possible impending fate and treated his trials as though they were nothing major to worry about. In one hearing, Salerno reportedly sat and ate a chocolate bar as he waited for the session to commence.

When an onlooker offered him a cereal bar, suggesting that it would be healthier than chocolate, Salerno was believed to have replied, “It doesn’t matter in the slightest now. I will be ending my days in jail anyway.” Salerno was also reportedly very quiet throughout the course of his court proceedings. He refused to comment on his situation and provided no explanation for his accused misdeeds to the court.

When, after one court session, Salerno was approached by a journalist for comment on his situation, the gangster is said to have flown into a rage, launching a vulgar verbal assault at the reporter. Despite its uselessness, this was the only comment anybody was able to get from him throughout the course of the proceedings.

Salerno’s lack of comment could not change the fact that, from all angles, the law was beginning to close in on him. Valuable evidence was presented to the court in the form of wiretapped phone conversations between Fat Tony and Matthew “Matty the Horse” Ianniello, in which Salerno had been reviewing the induction of new members to the Mafia as made men.

Audio recordings from bugs that had been planted at the Palma Boys Social Club had captured Salerno discussing business with his men, implicating him in the crimes of loan sharking, illegal gambling, and racketeering. His role in the construction rackets was undeniable and soon the jury had reached a verdict.

On the 19th of November, 1986, Anthony Salerno would be convicted on the charges he had faced during the Mafia Commission trial and was sentenced to an enormous 100 years in prison without the possibility of earning parole. On top of this, he was fined $240,000, a mere drop in the ocean for a man as wealthy as Salerno, but still adding insult to injury.

Salerno’s sentence would be handed down on the 13th of January, 1987 and he was soon taken to the United States Medical Center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, given his age. By the time he had started his sentence, he had suffered several minor strokes >>  >> and was in ailing health. Six other defendants met the same sentence and it immediately became clear that Salerno’s days as an influential Mafia boss, even  if he was just an acting front, were over.

He would spend the rest of his life behind bars. Then, in October of 1988, Anthony Salerno would be convicted on his charges brought about in the second indictment for having hidden controlling interests in construction companies. After the guilty verdict was handed down for all charges, Salerno would be sentenced to an additional 70 years in prison and was instructed to pay $365,000 in fines.

On top of this, the judge ordered that half of all of Salerno’s racketeering proceeds to be forfeit. This struck a much greater blow to Salerno’s wallet as he was forced to part with up to $30 million. Ironically, given the length of his immense prison sentence, Salerno would only serve a few years in prison.

After he was locked up, his health continued to deteriorate. On top of his repeated minor strokes, he would suffer from the effects of diabetes and is also suspected to have contracted prostate cancer. He continued to fall gravely ill as he quietly served his sentence and on the 27th of July, 1992, Salerno would be pronounced dead.

The final nail in the coffin, it was announced, were complications that arose from a subsequent stroke. The gangster’s body was interred in Saint Raymond Cemetery in the Throgs Neck neighborhood of the Bronx in his lifelong home of New York City. Salerno’s legacy has mostly been immortalized on the silver screen.

Most famously in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 crime epic The Irishman. If you haven’t seen the film yet, skip ahead as this section will contain spoilers for Salerno’s depiction. In the film, which stars Domenick Lombardozzi as the late mafioso, Salerno is depicted playing an instrumental role in organizing the killing of Jimmy Hoffa, a labor union leader who led the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971.

The details around the real-life circumstances of Hoffa’s murder are debated with some claiming that Salerno did indeed organize the hit by himself and others claiming that it was the work of the entire Mafia Commission in approving his death. Despite intense investigations, Hoffa’s body was never found and in the eyes of the law, he simply went missing as opposed to being murdered by the mob.

Nobody was ever convicted for their role in Hoffa’s disappearance or subsequent murder and so the events are not typically closely associated with Anthony Salerno’s life story. Salerno has also appeared in cinema portrayed by the late Paul Sorvino in the 2011 film Kill the Irishman, directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, which primarily depicts the life of mobster Danny Greene.

In the film, Salerno is depicted clearly as the boss of the Genovese crime family, calling the shots on day-to-day operations. Of course, we now know that this likely was not the case. Most recently, 2024’s The Apprentice, starring Joe Pingue as  Salerno, depicts the mobster’s role in the construction of Trump Tower.

You might also have made the connection between Salerno’s nickname and the recurring Simpsons character Fat Tony. While unconfirmed, it is possible that Salerno served as the inspiration for the cartoon mobster, which is made all the more viable considering the real-life Fat Tony passed away in Springfield, Missouri.

The character’s appearance was modeled on Paul Sorvino, who of course played Salerno in Kill the Irishman, and Fat Tony made his first appearance on The Simpsons shortly before Salerno’s death. Throughout his  life, Anthony Salerno managed to ascend from the streets of Harlem to the top of the Genovese crime family.

While he may have been little more than an acting front boss in his final years, Salerno was nonetheless an accomplished and successful criminal and still died with millions upon millions of dollars to his name. While his story has essentially been overshadowed by the more violent or powerful mobsters of his day, Salerno’s story is one for the ages, a classic case of rise, reign, and fall amidst the backdrop of the Mafia’s legendary home city.