Trafficante crime family
| Founded by | Ignacio Antinori and named after Santo Trafficante, Sr. |
|---|---|
| Founding location | Tampa, Florida, United States |
| Years active | 1925–2015 |
| Territory | Hillsborough, Tampa Bay Area and the state of Florida. |
| Ethnicity | Italian, Italian-American as made men, and other ethnicities as "associates" |
| Membership | Defunct |
| Criminal activities | Racketeering, loansharking, extortion, contract, kidnapping, sex slavery, bribery, corruption, drug trafficking, murder, gambling, conspiracy, money laundering, bookmaking, contract, labor racketeering |
| Allies | Five Families, and Chicago |
| Rivals | various gangs. |
The Trafficante crime family also known as the Tampa Mafia, is the only original Mafia crime family in the state of Florida.
Tampa crime started with Charlie Wall who in the 1920s controlled a number of gambling rackets and corrupt government officials. Wall controlled Tampa from the neighborhood known as Ybor City, he employed Italians, Cubans and men of other ethnicities into his organization. Charlie Wall's only competition was Tampa's earliest Italian Mafia boss Ignacio Antinori.
The first Italian gang in the Tampa Bay area was created by Ignacio Antinori in 1925. Antinori a Sicilian-born immigrant became a well-known drug kingpin and the Italian crime boss of Tampa in the late 1920s. A smaller Italian gang in the area was controlled by Santo Trafficante, Sr., who had lived in Tampa since the age of 18. Trafficante had already set up Bolita games throughout the city and was a very powerful man. Antinori took notice of Santo Trafficante and invited him into his organization and together they expanded the Bolita games across the state. By the 1930s Ignacio Antinori and Charlie Wall were in a bloody war for ten years, which would later be known as "Era of Blood". Wall's closest associate, Evaristo "Tito" Rubio was shot on his porch on March 8, 1938. The war ended in the 1940s with Ignacio Antinori being shot and killed with a sawn-off shotgun. Both Wall's and Antinori's organizations were weakened leaving Santo Trafficante as one of the last and most powerful bosses in Tampa.
Santo Trafficante Sr. had now taken over a majority of the city and started to teach his son Santo Trafficante Jr. how to run the city. In Trafficante Sr.'s adult life he only portrayed himself as a successful Tampa cigar factory owner. Santo was being watched closely by police and made Salvatore "Red" Italiano the acting boss. With the untimely Kefauver hearings and Charlie Wall testifying in 1950, both Trafficantes fled to Cuba. He always wanted to make it big in Cuban casinos and dispatched his son, Santo, Jr., to Havana in 1946 to help operate a mob owned casino. The Tampa mob made a lot of money in Cuba, but never achieved its ambition of making the island part of its own territory. After the hearings ended the Trafficantes returned to Tampa to find out that Italiano had just fled to Mexico leaving Jimmy Lumia the biggest mobster in the city. Santo had Lumia killed after finding out he was bad mouthing him while he was in Cuba and he took over again. In 1953 Santo Jr. survived a shooting. The family suspected it was Charlie Wall and they had him killed in 1955. Trafficante remained the boss of Tampa until he died of natural causes in 1954.
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Wikipedia