In the pantheon of iconic American mobsters, Tommy “Three Finger Brown” Lucchese lacks the household name recognition of contemporaries like Al Capone or Lucky Luciano. Yet during the golden age of organized crime, Lucchese matched wits and brutality with the most legendary mafia figures, building a vast criminal empire that made him fabulously wealthy even as most Americans struggled.
From Street Kid to “Capo Tutti Capi”
Growing up poor in Manhattan’s rough East Harlem neighborhood in the early 20th century, young Tomaso Lucchese turned to the streets for opportunity. By his early 20s, he was already a feared figure in the 107th Street Gang that battled rival Italian crews all over upper Manhattan’s mean streets.
In one such street brawl in 1917, Lucchese was slashed across the hand, severing three fingers. It earned the 16-year old gangster the nickname “Three Finger Brown”, but also hardened him to the violence that would define his underworld ascent.
Through his older brother and mob connections, Lucchese gravitated into bootlegging and other organized rackets, coming to the attention of rising Mafioso like Gaetano “Tommy Brown” Lucchese and Vito Genovese. Displaying keen business instincts and cold-blooded viciousness, Lucchese caught the eye of New York’s top godfather, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria.
By the late 1920s, Lucchese was running his own crews as a captain under boss Masseria, overseeing lucrative rackets like bootlegging, loan sharking, policy, and labor extortion. As a key lieutenant for Masseria, Lucchese took part in some of the most pivotal events shaping the future of the American mafia.
The Castellammarese War Cements Lucchese’s Status
The bloody Castellammarese War of 1930-31 pitted the conservative “Mustache Petes” of the Masseria faction against the rising Young Turks led by Salvatore Maranzano and Lucky Luciano, who chafed under the old codes of the Italian mafia.
As bodies piled up on the streets of New York from drive-by shootings and assassinations, even senior mafiosos had to choose sides. Though nominally loyal to his boss Masseria, Lucchese sympathized with the aims of Maranzano and Luciano and played a double game during this pivotal mob conflict.
When Luciano set up the assassination of Masseria in 1931, Lucchese either helped plan the hit or assured it would succeed by withholding crucial support, depending on whose account you believe. Regardless, after Masseria’s death, Lucchese was rewarded with control of the old Masseria family, establishing his position as one of the top mafia bosses in America.
Just months later however, the slippery Lucchese again switched sides, reportedly working with Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel to eliminate his former ally Maranzano. Disguising themselves as government agents, Lucchese’s hit squad shot and stabbed the unsuspecting Maranzano in his Park Avenue office.
This killing helped establish the national mafia commission to regulate dealings between crime families across the country—with Tommy Lucchese ruling the powerful Lucchese family for the next 30 years.
Tommy Lucchese Rules Through Ruthless Rackets
While other celebrity mobsters like Al Capone grabbed headlines, Tommy Lucchese quietly built one of the largest, most profitable crime empires in America. By the mid 1930s, Lucchese influence and money flowed through rackets like:
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Garment industry extortion – Lucchese controlled the trucking, warehouses and unions that New York’s garment businesses depended on. Companies paid millions in labor “insurance” and workers kicked back portions of their pay to avoid strikes or accidents.
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Loan-sharking – Charging crushing interest rates up to 250%, Lucchese loaned money to everyone from desperate factory owners to degenerate gamblers, seizing assets of those who couldn’t pay. Estimates suggest he banked over $140 million from loanshark profits in his lifetime.
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Policy rackets – The Lucchese family ran illegal lottery and gambling operations, earning around $500,000 weekly at its peak in the 1950s ($5 million today). When Dutch Schultz sought to challenge their policy empire, Lucchese reportedly ordered his murder before rival bosses could get to him.
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Kosher chicken fraud – In the 1930s-40s, Lucchese formed a cartel controlling kosher chicken supply and pricing in New York City along with Jewish mobsters like Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. Lucchese and his partners cleared over $5 million annual skimming profits off inflated wholesale costs passed to ordinary consumers.
Even during World War II with many mafiosos serving in the military, Lucchese kept expanding hisProfitable criminal domains.
In contrast to the lavish lifestyles of contemporaries like Frank Costello or Bugsy Siegel, Lucchese lived modestly in a middle-class suburban home. Ever discrete, Lucchese saw flaunting wealth and celebrity as exposing vulnerabilities that ambitious rivals could exploit. For Three Finger Brown, the quieter he ran the mob’s dark machinery, the smoother it worked.
Havana Mob Summit Sets the Course
The late 1940s brought growing legal assaults against organized crime from crusading prosecutors, tax authorities and politicians like Estes Kefauver. To strategize a response, Luciano and Lansky organized the famous Havana Conference in December 1946 at Cuba’s Hotel Nacional, inviting top mobsters like Lucchese and Frank Costello.
Over lavish days of dining and entertainment, this all-star crime roster reportedly agreed to channel funds into legal enterprises like casinos, nightclubs and hotels through frontmen, while decentralizing mob operations to be less vulnerable to arrests or wiretaps. Lucchese in particular saw labor racketeering as the wave of the future, which would dominate his family’s activities for decades hence.
Lucchese Crime Cartel Rules the Garment District
In the 1950s, Lucchese’s infiltration of garment trucking and labor unions transformed into an iron grip over New York’s iconic Fashion District. From manufacturing to wholesaling, Lucchese workers, muscle and made men controlled every aspect of racks, trucks, warehouses and supplies that designer clothes passed through.
At its peak, an estimated 90% of garment workers were forced to kick back around $11 million annually to Lucchese and corrupt union officials. From coat that retails today for $3,000, up to $750 could be siphoned off the top.
When underpaid workers objected, Lucchese captains didn’t hesitate to order beatings, arson or murders. Longshoreman union activist Anthony Hintz was shot in the back of the head in 1948 for speaking out. Garment union organizer Willie Bioff had his car blown up by the Lucchese family after leading strikes. Such violence kept workers docile and profits flowing.
However, Lucchese also backed union bosses like John Dioguardi to stage strikes when necessary to pressure factory owners for more labor payoffs. Between his covert ownership in garment companies and extortion from both sides, Tommy Lucchese grew enormously wealthy off the Fashion District, clearing an estimated $40 million at his career peak.
Yet for all his discretion and success, Lucchese wasn’t immune to the legal scrutiny increasingly plaguing organized crime after WWII. In 1951, Lucchese was called to testify before Senator Estes Kefauver’s committee on organized crime, where he refused to answer questions, citing Fifth Amendment rights. Though he avoided contempt charges, the televised hearings exposed the sinister reach of the mafia for millions of Americans to see.
Quietly Running a Mob Dynasty
By the early 1960s, Tommy Lucchese was one of the last surviving dons of his generation. Old allies like Luciano had been exiled to Italy, Lansky was under relentless legal assaults, Costello severely wounded in a botched hit. Meyer Lansky later remarked that if any rival deserved credit as an equal business brain, it was Lucchese who matched his skill at converting criminal muscle into sustained profit.
Even in his 60s, Lucchese actively expanded his family’s criminal portfolio from labor racketeering, loan-sharking and extortion to illegal gambling junkets in Europe’s famous resorts.
When Lucchese finally succumbed to a fatal brain tumor in 1967, he had built one of the most powerful, wealthy mafia empires in America, controlling rackets across New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. Hundreds mobsters counted themselves Lucchese loyalists at the time of his death.
Leadership of the family passed peacefully to underboss Carmine “Mr. Gribbs” Tramunti. But the low-key Tramunti lacked Lucchese’s vision, and the family’s fortunes eroded over internecine disputes and member drug abuse in the 1970s.
However, this chaotic period also bred ambitious figures like future head Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso and the criminal mastermind of the infamous 1978 Lufthansa Airlines robbery at JFK airport, the largest theft in American history with over $6 million stolen. Though never officially “made,” it’s believed the Lucchese family sanctioned the heist and provided its architects.
This daring robbery earned the Luccheses respect from other families and showcased the appetite for bold, complex capers that Tommy Lucchese himself would’ve admired.
Lasting Legacy
Unlike the goodfellas and street soldiers who usually pass quickly into obscurity, for half a century Tommy Lucchese stood astride the top ranks of the American mafia as one of its foremost leaders and earners.
Renowned mob author and prosecutor Rudy Giuliani analyzed Lucchese as one of the canniest crime bosses of his day, both financially savvy and decisive in ruthlessly punishing rivals and enemies when necessary to defend his far-reaching criminal domains across the Eastern seaboard.
Yet today Lucchese lacks the household notoriety of his flashy peers in the mob pantheon. No blockbuster movies retell his scheming path to power like Capone, Lansky or Gotti enjoyed. But perhaps this sidelining from history is how Tommy Three Finger Brown might have wanted it.
Ever the discrete strategist, Lucchese saw gaudy wealth and front page publicity as dangerous vanities that could attract cops or rivals. He deliberately faded into the background, dressing in cheap clothes and driving aged cars, even as he ruled rackets grossing hundreds of millions.
So while the loud legends of organized crime have grabbed the glory, it’s the shadowy savants of the mafia like Tommy Lucchese who often have the last laugh from the darkness—and the last bill in their wallet too.