What to know about the Trafficante crime family, aka the Tampa Mafia
The history, key figures, and most infamous crimes of the Trafficante crime family, aka the Tampa Mafia.
While it may not be as familiar in Mafia lore as Luciano, Luccesse, Gotti, or Gambino, families who have been in Tampa, Florida, for multiple generations know the name Trafficante.
Rising from the ashes of a decade-long gang war between two unrelated families, the Trafficantes took control of the Tampa Mafia in the early 1940s and held it for more than half a century.
Below, we tell the tale of how the Trafficante crime family, led by a father who coached his son to become his even more infamous successor, ran organized crime in Tampa throughout the better part of the 20th century, working with the Bonnanno, Genovese, and Gambino families in New York while stretching their reach even farther with alliances that included New Orleans, Dallas, and Chicago.
The 1930s-40s: Santo Trafficante Sr., Last Man Standing
Two organized crime bosses rose to power in Tampa in the 1920s. The early part of the decade saw the rise of Charlie Wall, leader of a multiethnic syndicate that operated out of the city’s Ybor City neighborhood. Later in the decade, Ignacio Antinori, a Sicilian-born immigrant, became a well-known drug kingpin and Italian crime boss.
Around this time, Santinori became aware of another rising figure in the crime world; Santo Trafficante Sr. had made notable money running bolita games, a type of lottery popular in Cuba and Florida’s working-class neighborhoods. Rather than move on Trafficante, a fellow Sicilian-born immigrant, Santorini partnered with him, and together, the two expanded the bolita games statewide.
Predictably, Santorini and Wall became embroiled in a bloody war that lasted throughout the 1930s, a time that would later be dubbed “The Era of Blood.” Soldiers and leaders on both sides would fall victim, including Wall’s closest associate, Evaristo “Tito” Rubio, who was killed on his porch in 1938. In 1940, Santinori himself was killed by a shotgun blast to the head at the Palm Garden Inn. His two sons would be convicted and sentenced to prison on drug charges in 1943. With Wall’s power significantly weakened by the decade-long war, Santo Trafficante Sr. stepped up to become Tampa’s most powerful crime boss.
The Reign of Santo Trafficante Sr.
Having taken over most of the organized crime activities in the Tampa area, Santo Trafficante Sr. was “a Sicilian of the old school,” according to The Mob Museum. He wasn’t as flashy as big-city Mafia predecessors like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, preferring to keep a relatively low profile while raking in millions through drug channels and trafficking.
Trafficante was known for expanding his reach beyond America’s borders, trafficking heroin through Buenos Aires and operating mob-owned casinos in Cuba. Despite his efforts to fly under the radar, Trafficante was catching plenty of heat from law enforcement by the late-1940s. He attempted to deflect the attention by naming Salvatore “Red” Italiano his acting boss, all the while coaching his son, Santo Trafficante Jr., to become his successor.
The formation of the Kefauver Committee, tasked with investigating organized crime across the country, in 1950 sent both Trafficante Sr. and his son on the lam to Cuba to avoid being called to testify while continuing their casino operations.
After the Kefauver Committee hearings ended in 1951, the Trafficantes returned with a vengeance. Trafficante Sr. acted first, ordering the killing of Jimmy Lumia, who had run organized crime in Tampa during his absence. Then, 1953 saw the attempted murder of Trafficante Jr. In response, the family cleaned up one other lingering enemy, Charlie Wall, setting up his murder in 1955.
This set the stage for Trafficante Jr. to take full control of Tampa’s criminal underworld upon the death of his father of natural causes in 1954.
Santo Trafficante Jr. takes over
Building on lessons learned from his father, Santo Trafficante Jr. would go on to become one of the most powerful Mafia bosses in American history. He worked closely with the Bonnano and Lucchesse crime families in New York City as well as Sam Giancana in Chicago.
Police apprehended Trafficante alongside more than 60 of his associates and counterparts from around the country in November 1957 at the Apalachin meeting in Apalachin, New York. All of those arrested that day were fined and given prison sentences ranging from three to five years, but all convictions were overturned on appeal in 1960.
Trafficante Jr. would avoid incarceration throughout his life despite several indictments and even one conviction, which was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court.
Trafficante Jr. continued to expand his presence in Cuba following his father’s death, but that all came to an end in 1959 when the Cuban Revolution toppled the Batista government and rebel leader Fidel Castro shuttered the casinos. This was a huge financial blow to Trafficante, who was second only to Meyer Lansky in the depth of his Havana investments.
This would mark the start of Trafficante Jr.’s partnership with the CIA, not to cooperate against fellow mobsters but to help the agency assassinate Castro. He admitted to a Congressional committee in 1975 that he had, in the early 1960s, recruited other mobsters to assassinate Castro.
According to The Mob Museum, gangster Johnny Rosselli, who worked for Trafficante, later claimed to be involved with a Mafia conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy, and some accounts have Trafficante involved in the alleged (and unproven) conspiracy.
Rosselli testified in 1975 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the efforts to kill Castro, which he was also involved in. He was again called to testify in April 1976 on the alleged conspiracy to kill Kennedy, but he was killed before he could do so, his body found in a barrel floating in Biscayne Bay.
Like his father, Trafficante survived all the physical and investigatory threats he faced, dying of natural causes in Texas in 1987.
The Trafficante family after the Trafficantes
Vincent LoScalzo became boss of the Trafficante family following Junior’s death in 1987, operating alongside New York City crime families who were allowed to operate freely throughout the state by that time.
While maintaining control of criminal interests in illegal gambling, prostitution, narcotics, union racketeering, hijacking, and the fencing of stolen goods, the influence of the Trafficante crime family declined as members aged out or died, and no new recruits were brought in.
LoScalzo faced his own legal troubles in the years since, but came out of that largely unscathed. Though technically still the “boss” of whatever remains of the Trafficante crime family, he is said to be retired, as he is now in his late 80s with no one to take his place and no organization to claim control over.
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