Lucky Luciano: Most Famous Gangster Of All Time

Lucky Luciano is known in History as one of the most notorious gangsters of all time. Charles “Lucky” Luciano was born in Sicily, Italy on November 24, 1897 with the name Salvatore Lucania. He came to New York with his family in 1906. Luciano’s parents weren’t around a lot so this started affecting how he acted. He went to school and barely knew how to speak any English, so for any kid this was tough.

In school Luciano started to act like the much older gangsters he came in contact with out of school. He would tell kids in school to pay them their lunch money and he would protect them, and if they didn’t pay him, he would beat them up. By the age of nine he already became involved in extortion, mugging, and shoplifting. Luciano dropped out

After Luciano was found lying on the beach by police, they sent him to the hospital to be treated for his wounds. At this time Masseria, who Luciano had worked with for years, was in a turf war with crime boss Salvatore Maranzano. Luciano began working with Maranzano and arranged a hit against Masseria to gain power and trust from Maranzano. Luciano then quickly rose to the top and took over Masseria’s position as boss. Luciano became a boss of one of the city's five families, or today known as the Genovese crime family. Maranzano quickly felt that Luciano as a boss was a big threat so he decided to order a hit on Lucky, but instead Luciano moved first and had his men lay an attack on Maranzano in his office in September 1931, killing him and now able to focus and improve family organization and

He turned the Mafia into something more than money hungry thugs, he made the Mafia a business-like organization and paved the building blocks for organized crime in