Donnie Brasco, Reservoir Dogs, Scarface, The Departed, The Godfather, Goodfellas (which lost the best picture Oscar to Dances With Wolves!) and so on?the list of Hollywood movies enthralled by the mob is long. Bollywood doesn?t do too badly either, what with the likes of Nayakan, Sarkar, Satya et al. But with many of these films, the enthralment is balanced by a comforting sense that it all sort of happened in the past, or in a city elsewhere, a waterfront that?s not ours. But Americans would have felt such comfort dampened after a historical roundup in which 127 suspected mafiosos from seven families were arrested across New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. FBI director Robert Mueller announced that as against the common belief that organised crime was a thing of the past, it continued to force legitimate businesses to pay up, with costs ultimately borne by American consumers nationwide.
You thought the Genovese, the family of much-storied Lucky Luciano, were history? Nope. They are still forcing dock workers in New Jersey to hand over a portion of their Christmas bonuses. The DeCavalcante family, which traces its roots back to the Prohibition and which is said to have inspired HBO?s The Sopranos, also remains quite active apparently. And if you think the action is all old-school, wake up. Mob schemes of today are well up to defrauding consumers with poor credit histories out of one-time payments that they believe will secure loans. How have these families survived over decades of scrutiny? The best answer seems to be that it is a question of supply and demand. They have roots deep in urban poverty, drug addiction and the like. Till these problems go away, the mafiosos may well survive if not thrive.
