# How much money did the Mafia rake in during its prime? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 10, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592 "2006-12-10T20:11:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/1 "2006-12-10T20:11:27Z")
I realize this may be difficult or even impossible to accurately answer, but I’ve been wondering about this for a long time. For any crime organization to prosper, there’d have to be a lot of money involved. Even the lowest ranking members of the organization would have to be offered a comfortable salary as an incentive to join given the huge risks they take (such as imprisonment, or murder by rival gangsters). How would being a mafia boss compare with being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company? ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/2 "2006-12-10T21:04:45Z")
[Sudir Venkatesh](http://www.iserp.columbia.edu/people/venkatesh.html)’s work on Chicago street gangs found that the lowest members were earning less than minimum wage for a much higher degree of risk. What motivated them was not the base pay itself but the prospect of advancing up the ranks and becoming one of the gang leaders. Sudir’s work is probably the closest you’re every going to get to seeing the inside of a criminal organisations books. Theres a decent chapter written about him in Freakanomics. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/3 "2006-12-10T21:41:12Z")
[QUOTE=Shalmanese] [Sudir Venkatesh](http://www.iserp.columbia.edu/people/venkatesh.html)’s work on Chicago street gangs found that the lowest members were earning less than minimum wage for a much higher degree of risk. . [/QUOTE] I find it rather hard to believe that a person flipping burgers at McDonalds makes more than a Mafia soldier. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/4 "2006-12-10T23:00:24Z")
[QUOTE=Blalron] I find it rather hard to believe that a person flipping burgers at McDonalds makes more than a Mafia soldier. 😕 [/QUOTE] Keep in mind, it is impossible to estimate what a Mafia "soldier"makes, because so much of it is stolen or in the form of cash and goods. For example, a Mafia soldier doesn’t BUY a washing machine when his wife wants one-they merely contacta friend, who will “boost” (steal) one for him. No W-2s, no taxes, no records. Even meals- a Mafia guy will accept free meals from a restaurant, as part of supplying smuggled (non-taxed) beer and liquor. So the guy migh be at poverty level (on paper), but living at the $200K/year level. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2006, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/5 "2006-12-10T23:10:49Z")
[QUOTE=Blalron] I find it rather hard to believe that a person flipping burgers at McDonalds makes more than a Mafia soldier. 😕 [/QUOTE] I ask a question once here about how much street level drug dealers make and people convinced me that many of them make very little, probably less than minimum wage as well. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/6 "2006-12-10T23:20:34Z")
[QUOTE=Blalron] I find it rather hard to believe that a person flipping burgers at McDonalds makes more than a Mafia soldier. 😕 [/QUOTE] Interestingly, there was an [article](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/nyregion/10mob.html?pagewanted=all) on just this subject in today’s NY Times. Some excerpts: > [@NY Times](#): > > The striking disparities underscore a simple truth not always understood outside the ranks of the city’s five crime families: Some mobsters reap millions from rackets, and in some cases from legitimate enterprises, but many struggle to maintain a middle-class existence, and some are routinely broke. The impoverished gangster barely eking out a living is so commonplace that mobsters have a word for these poorer men of honor: brokesters. > [@NY Times](#): > > “The hours are long, there is no benefits package, there is a high risk of prosecution, and very little job security,” said Gerald L. Shargel, a lawyer who has represented a number of mobsters, rich and poor, including several members of the Gotti clan. > [@NY Times](#): > > They found ways to scrape by. In the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July, the two men could be seen from the windows in the rear of the criminal court building in Lower Manhattan, selling fireworks by the case to people in cars who pulled up on Mulberry below Canal Street. > > Mr. Russo was released from federal prison in January. A person who knows him says he had been selling plastic bags at the Fulton Fish Market before it moved and was now hoping to open a small business in his Chinatown neighborhood. > > His sentence included a $7,500 fine. He has been paying it off in monthly increments of $50 or $60. ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/7 "2006-12-11T01:05:41Z")
[QUOTE=Blalron] I find it rather hard to believe that a person flipping burgers at McDonalds makes more than a Mafia soldier. 😕 [/QUOTE] Why not? If any business could get people to work for free they probably would. A friend was able to get a kid out of the gang that he was dealing drugs for by arranging a job for him at Sonic. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/8 "2006-12-11T04:23:02Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] I ask a question once here about how much street level drug dealers make and people convinced me that many of them make very little, probably less than minimum wage as well. [/QUOTE] Yep. Following in the SDMB rules of discussing _past_ illegal activity, since it is relevant here and considering the fact that I am far removed from it and was long ago arrested and been fully dealt with by the system for it, I’ll go ahead and reveal the fact that when I was young (17 and still in high school) I had a bit of a “job” selling weed. I would sell about a quarter of a pound a week, which is a substantial amount but very much a street level thing, mostly selling $25 and $50 bags to high school kids. I usually only had enough money to buy an ounce or two at a time, which would cost me $300 and I would sell it in smaller bags for $400, so a net profit of $100 per ounce X 4 per week = $400 profit per week. If I was trying to support myself I could have barely afforded groceries on that kind of salary. Now, I was certainly never involved in the Mafia or anything like it, but I just want to support the theory that entry-level criminals are not usually thinking about the risk-reward ratio of their first position, they are thinking about the potential. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/9 "2006-12-11T04:26:34Z")
Oh, and in my case I wasn’t thinking at all - I just wanted to get some cash without being a slave to the “system” and all that jazz, plus have easy access to drugs. Very stupid, but I learned some wonderful lessons that I get to keep forever. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/10 "2006-12-11T14:50:19Z")
[QUOTE=Shalmanese] [Sudir Venkatesh](http://www.iserp.columbia.edu/people/venkatesh.html)’s work on Chicago street gangs found that the lowest members were earning less than minimum wage for a much higher degree of risk. What motivated them was not the base pay itself but the prospect of advancing up the ranks and becoming one of the gang leaders. Sudir’s work is probably the closest you’re every going to get to seeing the inside of a criminal organisations books. Theres a decent chapter written about him in Freakanomics. [/QUOTE] The Chicago gangs were never Mafia in the first place. The term “Mafia” is associated with groups afilliated with the New York organizations. The Chicago gangs are referred to as “The Outfit”. If you had called Al Capone a “Mafiosi”, he’d have felt _very_ insulted… ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/11 "2006-12-11T16:52:36Z")
Mob Boss “Whitey” [Bulger](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=whitey+bulger+million&btnG=Search) was reportedly worth $50 million when he went missing. At least some of them are makign a lot of money. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-money-did-the-mafia-rake-in-during-its-prime/383592/12 "2006-12-11T17:02:19Z")
[QUOTE=brickbacon] Mob Boss “Whitey” [Bulger](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=whitey+bulger+million&btnG=Search) was reportedly worth $50 million when he went missing. At least some of them are makign a lot of money. [/QUOTE] And, “Whitey” had a "legitimate’ front for his income: -he owned a liquor store in Souuth Boston; and presumably paid taxes on his income from that business -he "purchased’ a winning Mass lottery Ticket from an underling; this was used to cover his cash flow. However, as i said, you never know how much cash the Mob is handling-Whitey (reputedly) shipped garbage bags full of cash to contacts in Ireland, where the money was laundered and sent back to the USA. Today (10 years after he skipped town). Bulger is estimated to be living of cash stashed in bank safe deposit boxes, under assumed names.