Joseph Profaci

Joseph Profaci (born October 2, 1897, Palermo, Italy—died June 6, 1962, Bay Shore, New York, U.S.) was one of the most powerful bosses in U.S. organized crime from the 1940s to the early 1960s.

Twice arrested and once imprisoned for a year in his native Sicily, he emigrated to the United States in 1921 and, thereafter, though arrested several times, managed always to avoid prison. By the 1940s he had become head of one of the Five Families of organized crime, operating in Brooklyn and dealing in narcotics, labour racketeering, gambling, and other crimes.

In 1960 the so-called Profaci-Gallo war erupted when one of his lieutenants, Joseph Gallo, and Gallo’s brothers began challenging his rule and complaining of an insufficient share of the spoils. Several gang members on both sides were murdered in the two years preceding Profaci’s death from liver cancer in 1962. He was succeeded, after more than a year, by Joseph A. Colombo, Sr.