Lucky Luciano

Charles "Lucky" Luciano was an American gangster, businessman, and traitor, who was instrumental to the ruling structure of the American Mafia, the Commission, after the Castellammarese War., and was Chairman of that organization, as well as his own family. However, after he became involved in a scheme to import Italian arms to help the Fascist League of America and The Sons of Liberty, he was arrested, convicted, and executed for various crimes.

Born in Sicily, and immigrating to America at age 9, he would become involved in various small-time gambling and prostitution rackets before moving into the notorious Five Points Gang, eventually forming lifelong partnerships with men like Meyer Lansky and Vito Genovese. He would become involved with the Mafia, and under the mentorship of Arnold Rothstein, he would gain lucrative business through gambling, prostitution, and state-level bootlegging.

In 1929, he and several other gangsters formed the National Crime Syndicate in Atlantic City. In 1931, after getting frustrated with the xenophobic, conservative older Sicilian bosses (nicknamed "Mustache Petes"), he and several other upstarts would eliminate them during the Castellammarese War. Luciano would eliminate the title of "capo di tutti capi" (The boss of all bosses), and establish an egalitarian "Commission", where power was shared amongst the various crime families. Luciano would be the lead power behind it.

During the Civil War, Luciano directed the Commission and the families to back the Whites, fearing the Reds would threaten their various business interests. Sure enough, the Reds promptly legalized many of the vices they had made profits off of, and went after the various profit making ventures and effectively took control of various unions away from them.

The previously secret existence of the Commission was grandly revealed in the pages of the Daily Worker in 1934, and Luciano and the other leading figures of the Commission were placed on Public Enemies list soon thereafter. As raids increased, profits dwindled and gangsters were arrested or turned informant, Luciano attempted to hedge his bets. He got back into contact with Joseph Bannano, one of the old bosses in Cuba. Bannano put him in contact with the former's friend Generoso Pope, a prominent conservative Italian-American publisher and American Havana ambassador to Italy. Pope, in turn, connected Luciano with his old lieutenant Vito Genovese, who had fled to Italy following the Civil War, and had embedded himself with the Fascists.

The four soon came up with a scheme, where Genovese and Pope would send Italian weapons to Canada, and Luciano would smuggle them into the United Republics and give them to various counterrevolutionary groups, in exchange for the Sons helping with illegal schemes.

Because of the severe charges treason might bring down on him, Luciano attempted to move the Commission to a low profile so the arms scheme could be quiet. However, when Dutch Schultz proposed an assassination of Metropolis Attorney General Joseph Brodsky, Luciano failed to prevent the Commission from approving it. After the assassination attempt went horribly wrong (with Shultz being gunned down in public by the Proletarian Guards), the Commission was quickly identified as the culprit, and they were soon put into the crosshairs of StateSec

With his gambling and prostitution dens raided and his associates arrested, Luciano's scheme was revealed soon enough, forcing Luciano to go on the run. After several months, he eventually turned up in Buffalo, New York, where he was preparing to cross into Toronto.

Luciano was arrested on charges of treason, murder, accessory to murder, illegal gambling, illegal prostitution, racketeering, and illegal drug trafficking. A guilty verdict was inevitable, with a mountain of evidence and Luciano's own reputation, and he was sentenced to death as a warning to other gangsters hoping to finance counterrevolution.

Luciano was executed by firing squad in 1937. His last words were a prayer in Italian followed by an English statement: "It was good. While it lasted".

Luciano was honored in 1959 with the "Charles Luciano Center for Italian-American Culture" in Havana (renamed in 2003 as the "Museum of Italian American Culture" to remove Luciano's name)