For years, the DeCavalcantes, the most powerful Mob family in Jersey, labored in the shadows of the more famous families in New York—the likes of the Gambinos and the Columbos. Dismissed by the big-city capos, the DeCavalcantes finally came into their own when they found their lives mirrored in the television hit, The Sopranos. Overnight it legitimized the made men of the Garden State. Now they were a familia to be reckoned with. Unfortunately with high profile came high risk. As member turned against member, as trusted friend turned terrified informant, the FBI put the brakes on the DeCavalcante’s explosive ride into infamy, hastening a fall from honor that would become as infamous as their notorious ascension into the annals of organized crime.Based on more than 1,000 hours of secretly recorded conversations, Made Men delivers, for the first time, the unprecedented and completely uncensored behind-the-scenes truth of a historically clandestine world—of violent life and sudden death inside and outside the mob, told by the very men who made it.
Forced out of the work-hard, play-hard world of Wall Street following the Crash of ’87, financial analyst Cary Cimino was determined to maintain his lifestyle of luxury and ease. Under the guidance of dubious businessman Jeffrey Pokross, Cimino embarked on an illegitimate underground career as a “financial adviser” to naïve investors.
Cimino’s small-time operation soon spiraled into a large-scale crime ring when he and Pokross were reunited and met with Mafia wiseguy Robert Lino. Together, and with the support of organized crime families, the three men devised a high-risk, high-return scheme to extort millions of dollars from a bevy of unsuspecting stockbrokers and investors—all in the name of the Mob.
This is the uncut, untold story of one of the most elaborate conspiracies to rock Wall Street’s rigid foundation—a story centered around the Mafia, murder, and a load of money.
Describes how two highly decorated former detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, were convicted of murdering eight people on the orders of a vicious mob boss.
