Joseph "The Olive Oil King" Profaci

Profaci ran the family that now carries Colombo's name for thirty-four years, which is longer than any other boss in this archive managed, and he spent the last two of them fighting men he had underpaid.

He was born near Palermo in 1897 and arrived in New York in 1921. He imported olive oil and tomato paste on a genuine commercial scale — the business was real, profitable and the source of the nickname — and he took one of the five seats in the 1931 reorganisation.

The tax

What is remembered about Profaci is the levy.

He required a monthly payment from every member, regardless of what that member had earned, and he maintained it through good years and bad. A boss takes a share of what comes up; Profaci took a fixed sum, which meant that in a poor month a soldier paid his boss out of his own pocket.

The Gallo revolt

In 1961 the Gallo brothers of Brooklyn, who had done the family's harder work for years and been paid the same flat rate as everyone else, kidnapped four of Profaci's senior men and held them for terms.

The war that followed ran past his death. Profaci died of cancer on 6 June 1962 still holding the family, which is a technical victory of the sort that only counts on paper. The organisation he left was fractured, and it stayed that way long enough to be fractured again.