The bloody mob warfare this is the focal point of the brand new Netflix collection “Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia,” which premieres Oct. 22, 2025, is filled with the homicide and mayhem, treachery and deceit which were the hallmarks of the country’s Cosa Nostra circle of relatives conflicts.
What was once other in Philadelphia was once that the FBI had all of it stressed out for sound.
Digital surveillance has been a big instrument within the govt’s extremely a hit warfare in opposition to the Mafia national, however nowhere has its have an effect on been felt extra dramatically than in Philadelphia.
As a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, I coated this mob warfare in actual time from 1994 thru 2000. Now I educate a direction at Rowan College at the historical past of arranged crime, the usage of the warfare as a case learn about, and I used to be a specialist at the Netflix collection.
The warfare pitted one faction of the Philadelphia mob, headed through Sicilian-born John Stanfa, in opposition to a rival faction led through Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino. The problems have been regulate of all unlawful operations within the underworld – playing, loan-sharking, drug-dealing and extortion. Cash was once the base line, however there additionally was once a cultural and generational divide that had Stanfa and, for probably the most section, his crew of older wiseguys going through off in opposition to Merlino and his team of younger South Philadelphia-born mobsters.
However most effective after indictments have been passed down and proof was once offered at trials did the level of the digital surveillance operation change into recognized.
A trailer for ‘Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia’
‘Goodfellas kill goodfellas’
Mobsters, talking in unguarded moments and unaware that the feds have been listening, buried themselves.
So right here was once mob boss Stanfa discussing with an affiliate plans to entice Merlino and two of his two lieutenants to a gathering the place they might be killed:
“See, you no gotta give a chance,” the Sicilian-born Stanfa stated in his halting English. “Bam, bam … Over here is best, behind the ear.”
Or right here was once Salvatore Profaci, a New York mobster introduced in to quietly settle a dispute that had long past public after mob attorney Salvatore Avena filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in opposition to his mobbed-up trade spouse in a trash-hauling trade.
“Goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas,” Profaci stated in a line that couldn’t were written any higher through “The Godfather” writer Mario Puzo or delivered extra successfully through the award-winning actor Robert De Niro. “Goodfellas kill goodfellas.”
Essentially the most staggering piece of the investigation, which was once made recognized most effective after Stanfa and greater than 20 of his mates were indicted and arrested, was once that the FBI had won courtroom authorization to plant listening gadgets within the Camden, New Jersey, legislation workplaces of Salvatore Avena, Stanfa’s protection lawyer.
A pass judgement on licensed the extremely strange authorization after the feds argued that Stanfa was once the usage of the defend of attorney-client privilege to habits mob conferences in Avena’s place of job whilst a mob warfare raged at the streets of South Philadelphia.
Greater than 2,000 conversations have been recorded all the way through the two-year digital surveillance operation, with FBI brokers and an assistant U.S. lawyer manning a listening submit within the basement of the federal courthouse a block clear of Avena’s place of job. Every time Stanfa and his mates were given in combination, the feds have been listening. A lot of the ones conversations have been then offered as proof on the racketeering trials that adopted.
The conversations proved to be a treasure trove no longer just for investigators but in addition for reporters who coated the tale because it opened up and later were given get right of entry to to the tapes that have been made public when the instances went to trial.
Blood within the streets
Two of the books I’ve written in regards to the Philadelphia mob, “The Last Gangster” in 2004 and “The Goodfella Tapes” in 1998, are constructed round the ones tapes and the investigations they spawned.
Any individual who has written true crime is aware of that a part of the issue with nonfiction storytelling is arising with discussion. In writing books in regards to the Philadelphia mob wars which might be the focal point of the brand new Netflix collection, that was once by no means an issue.
Mobsters from Philadelphia, South Jersey, New York and the Scanton-Wilkes Barre space of Pennsylvania ended up at the recordings, which presented no longer most effective information about the warfare but in addition integrated philosophical ramblings and private asides that equipped a glimpse into the arena of arranged crime as just right as or higher than any fictionalized tale line from “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos.”
All through the struggle, as our bodies piled up and blood ran within the streets of the Town of Brotherly Love, Stanfa and a number of other of his mates have been picked up plotting homicide and mayhem, bemoaning the lack of honor and loyalty that had as soon as been the hallmark of Cosa Nostra, and belittling their street-corner competitors, the “little Americans” who hadn’t a clue about what it supposed to be an actual mafioso.
“When you’re a dwarf they could put you on a high mountain, you’re still a dwarf,” Avena advised Stanfa in one in every of a number of conversations mocking Merlino and his mates.
“I was born and raised in this thing (Cosa Nostra) and I’m gonna die in this thing,” stated Stanfa at every other level, bemoaning the state of the Philadelphia mob. “But with the right people. Over here is like kindergarten.”
Former Philadelphia mob boss ‘Skinny’ Joey Merlino, pictured right here in 1997.
AP Photograph/H. Rumph Jr.
‘You can’t cross-examine a tape’
Digital surveillance was once used over and over again in racketeering trials through which the feds no longer most effective dismantled however judicially eviscerated the Philadelphia crime circle of relatives.
Stanfa is recently serving existence in jail. A number of of his best mates have been jailed for greater than two decades. In a 2d prosecution, Merlino and maximum of his best mates have been convicted of racketeering and jailed for sentences starting from seven to fourteen years.
Dozens of conversations have been performed for the juries that sat in judgment all the way through the racketeering trials that adopted. Time and again the mobster’s personal phrases have been grew to become in opposition to them.
Any other spotlight was once an FBI surveillance video of a mob hit picked up on a hidden digicam because it happened. A surveillance digicam positioned around the avenue from a deli run through then-Stanfa underboss Joseph Ciancaglini Jr. picked up the early morning capturing through which 4 shadowy figures burst into the deli and opened hearth. An audio computer virus hidden throughout the deli equipped the sound results – gunshots, shouting and the screams of a waitress. The capturing happened in a while after 6 a.m. and simply moments after Ciancaglini and his waitress had arrived and begun putting in place for trade.
Cooperating witnesses have been additionally a part of the trial, however protection lawyers incessantly undermined their testimony through offering a litany of the crimes – incessantly together with murders – that the witnesses had admitted to as a part of their plea offers.
You’ll assault the credibility of a cooperating witness through that specialize in his personal crimes and his want to say regardless of the govt needs in an effort to win a lenient sentence, a protection lawyer as soon as defined to me. What you’ll’t do, he stated, “is cross-examine a tape.”
Jurors were given to listen to mobsters in their very own phrases discussing the mob warfare. And there was once not anything the protection may do to counterattack the have an effect on of the ones phrases.
One vintage dialogue underscored the mobsters’ fear about digital surveillance and demonstrated their incapability to do a lot about it.
Stanfa consigliere Anthony Piccolo was once speaking with Avena about the issue with cooperators and speak to faucets. Each males agreed it was once necessary to be wary. Avena then advised Piccolo that he’d had an digital anti-bugging skilled come into his place of job over the weekend and had swept the rooms. It had value him $500, Avena stated.
“It’s money well spent,” stated Piccolo because the undetected FBI listening tool beamed the dialog again to the listening submit.
