Santo Sorge

Santo Sorge (Mussomeli, January 11, 1908 – New York, May, 1972) was a Sicilian Mafioso living in the United States. His exact role has never been very clear; he was one of the great 'unknowns' of the Sicilian and American Mafia. He was one of the highest-level Sicilian Mafia leaders in his time. His counsel was sought in important decisions affecting the American Mafia as well. He traveled extensively between Italy and the United States.

Sorge was a relative of Sicilian Mafia boss Giuseppe Genco Russo. His first problems with the judicial authorities go back to 1928 in his hometown Mussomeli for brawling and grievous bodily harm. The charges were dismissed when the peasant accusing him retracted, offering his apologies for causing trouble. In 1932 he was convicted in Paris (France) to six months incarceration and a fine of 1,200 French francs for forgery and using a false passport. A year later he was convicted in Ghent (Belgium) to five months and 20,000 Belgian francs for fraud.

Other sentences for fraud and bad checks followed in Palermo in 1937 and in Turin in 1939. In 1948 he was convicted to three years and four months on unclear charges for ‘political conspiracy’ in Florence (probably related to espionage). Meanwhile, he moved to the United States. He became a naturalized US citizen living in New York City, and maintained a respectable front in America, through directorships in front companies such as Rimrock International Oil Company of New York and the Foreign Economic Research Association.

He was considered to be a lieutenant of Lucky Luciano in the post World War II heroin business, trafficking heroin produced in France by Corsican gangsters to the US. The opium needed to produce the heroin was cultivated in Turkey and Iran. The opium was processed into morphine base, after it was transported across Syria into Lebanon. From Beirut, Lebanon, or Aleppo, Syria, the morphine base was shipped to clandestine laboratories in France for conversion into heroin.

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