Advertise on podcast: THE DOSSIER

The Sopranos considered by many the greatest show in television history, made the New Jersey mafia water cooler talk across the country from 1999-2007. While based on fictional characters, there was an actual mafia family neck deep in criminal activities across the Hudson River from their La Cosa Nostra contemporaries in New York. In New Jersey, starting in the 1960’s, the DeCavalcante family ran the show and are considered the inspiration for many of The Sopranos characters and storylines that fans are familiar with today. This season on FAMILY BUSINESS, we will look at the rise and fall of the DeCavalcante family. Sometimes truth is even more colorful than fiction... Family Business is an 8 episode investigative audio documentary focused on the most notorious mafia crime families and their impact and relationship with Hollywood. Each season we will take on another family, another city, and another set of nefarious, deadly and sometimes even comical, characters and their stories. We begin Season One with the DeCavalcante crime family based in Northern New Jersey. The DeCavalcante crime family is an Italian American crime family that operates in Northern New Jersey, particularly in Elizabeth, Newark and the surrounding areas in North Jersey and it operates on the opposite side of the Hudson, from the Five Families of New York, but it maintains strong relations with many of them, as well as with the Philadelphia Crime Family and the Patriarca Crime Family of New England, Its illicit activities include bookmaking, cement, and construction violations, bootlegging, corruption, drug trafficking, extortion, fencing, fraud, hijacking, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, money laundering, murder, pier thefts, pornography, prostitution, racketeering, and waste management violations. Interviews with informants, gangsters, defense lawyers, cops, family members, and journalists weave a true-crime tale. In Episode One, we will trace the rise & fall of the family, beginning with Sam 'The Plumber.’ DeCavalcante. Sam was a sitting member of The Commission, allowing his family a seat at the table with the 5 families that ran La Cosa Nostra in New York. We will discuss Sam 'The Plumber’s' career in crime & his arrests, leading to his semi-retirement to Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Organized crime has always been catnip to savvy crime reporters, and as the years have progressed with the proliferation of rats, the storytelling has gotten more nuanced and more in depth. Former NY Daily News Reporter Greg Smith spent years reporting on orga-nized crime, and in 2003 he published a wide-ranging book on the DeCavalcante clan, and their hijinks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1997, after the death of acting boss Jake Amari, Vinnie “Ocean” Palermo is named part of a three man panel that will now run the DeCavalcante family. Vinnie Ocean is considered the most likely candidate to be the real Tony Soprano, for a number of reasons. We trace his rise & fall in the mafia in this two-part episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Playing a New Jersey gangster was nuanced, one part menacing, but equally comedic. Federico Castellucio played the role of Furio Giunta , a Tony Soprano street-soldier who even tried to have a romantic fling with Tony’s wife Carmela Soprano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As John Riggi is sent to prison, John “Johnny Boy” D’Amato, is made the acting head of the DeCavalcante family. Despite being unpopular in his own crime family, D’Amato would use his close friendship with John Gotti to become head of the DeCavalcante crew. Eventually, he is rubbed out by his own mafia family. His crime...being gay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While The Sopranos mainly focused on a fictional New Jersey mob, their fellow mafiosos in New York couldn’t be ignored. The fictional New York family was represented by Johnny Sacrimoni, better known as Johnny Sack. Vincent Curatola, a New Jersey native, portrayed the New York underboss with a steely cool that made him a hit with the legions of Sopranos fans. We spoke with Curatola in a wide-ranging interview, beginning with his fondness for New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We interview the former FBI undercover task force officer and author of Giovanni’s Ring: My Life Inside the Real Sopranos, who spent 26 years undercover penetrating New Jersey’s DeCavalcante crime family, the criminal organization known to law enforcement as “The Real Sopranos” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In America in 2024, we have all watched major American cities burn the result of a powder keg that exploded around incidents of police killings. We should all know the names by now: George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breanna Taylor, Stephon Clark, Philando Castille, and more. As the list goes on, the debate surrounding race, policing, mass incarceration, and the war on drugs, it seems, has reached the tipping point. Fault lines have been drawn as our divided country simmers in a cauldron of internet conspiracy theories and news stories that may or may not be true. Commonly held facts and assumptions that should guide any democracy are hanging by a thread. To understand the vast societal shifts in contemporary America and the proposition of understanding where we are now, we have to analyze it through the eyes of an art form that, for close to 40 years, arguably has been the voice of many generations and an analytical mirror that has reflected the ills of the United States of America. That art form is Hip Hop. In an irony-filled twist of fate, the music that has caused thousands of controversies, internal war, and conflict has come to define America in 2024. This proposition is not easy, and the narrative will go down many roads. USA vs. Hip Hop will tell this 40-year story through the eyes of the gangsters, the cops, and the artists who wrote the lyrics and created visuals that not only have shifted the world, but are a living and breathing experiment where Crime and Punishment can be unpacked and traced. The starting point for our story is in two places: First New York City in 1980, as Reaganomics left the poor to rot, a new form of music was born in the South Bronx. Over in Harlem, Nicky Barnes, one of the 70’s biggest drug kingpins, decides to cooperate with the government against his fellow members of The Council. On the Left Coast, 1981 was engulfed with a crime wave in Oakland, California. While not an obvious place to start any story as it relates to hip-hop music, it is arguably one of the most important geographical cities where the symbiotic relationship between the fall of the Black Panthers and the rise of a young man named Todd Shaw. This is the 40-year odyssey of The United States of America vs. Hip-Hop. *Episode Note-We were honored to have Executive Producer Ice-T narrate Episode One! **If you’re a fan of The Dossier, please visit our Patreon page for free and paid content featuring exclusive documents, unedited interviews, and monthly online meetups with other Dossier fans and the Dossier team. Go to Patreon.com/Dossier to subscribe!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the dynamic early years of hip hop, you could still see the influences of the disco era in the fashion the samples, and the party music played via car stereos in different neighborhoods in New York City. The hip-hop releases for 1982 and 1983, included Wildstyle the first feature film to reveal the nuances of hip-hop culture written by Fab Five Freddy and directed by Charlie Ahern. The film explores the work of artists such as Lady Pink, Daze, Grandmaster Flash, and the Rock Steady Crew. Hip Hop goes international with a tour featuring Afrika Bambaataa, Fab Five Freddy, Double Dutch Girls, and fashion icon Dapper Dan opened his first boutique in Harlem, while Edward Koch is the mayor of New York City. There's a case to be made that inside neighborhoods in New York City, hustlers still slinging heroin operate almost with impunity, as local police forces are overworked and underfunded. In 1982, & '83, there's a young man who is starting to corner the market for illicit narcotics, and that man is Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols. **If you’re a fan of The Dossier, please visit our Patreon page for free and paid content featuring exclusive documents, unedited interviews, and monthly online meetups with other Dossier fans and the Dossier team. Go to Patreon.com/Dossier to subscribe!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If any story defines what New York was like at that time, it's the story of New York City subway vigilante Bernard Goetz's shooting of unarmed black teens. On December 22, 1984, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, Darrell Cabey, and James Ramseur were shot and wounded by Bernard Goetz after they accosted him on a New York City subway train in Manhattan. In America, you would think that we would learn from our mistakes as it relates to race, class, and the divisions that have been created. One could see this case taking place in 2024, with protests in the cable news wars elevating it into the mainstream. In the first two episodes, we set the stage in the early 1980s with iconic hip-hop drug kingpins who came to define an era. Those names are "Freeway" Rick Ross in Los Angeles, Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols in Queens, Guy Fisher in Harlem, And finally, a mention of a crew called the Supreme Team. These early kingpins were the table setters for what would become a new breed of hustling and the young men from Queens who launched a business idea that would revolutionize the drug trade forever. In the Bible of hip-hop gangsters, Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff and Gerald "Prince" Miller of the Supreme Team were the top dogs. **If you’re a fan of The Dossier, please visit our Patreon page for free and paid content featuring exclusive documents, unedited interviews, and monthly online meetups with other Dossier fans and the Dossier team. Go to Patreon.com/Dossier to subscribe!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As hip hop and the war on drugs hit the mid 1980s, it can be argued that both commercial endeavors hit their strides in inner cities across the United States. As crack cocaine exploded, members of the United States government enacted one of the first steps in the revolution of our criminal justice system in soaring incarceration rates. The comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 was the first revision of the US Criminal Code since the early 1900s. It was sponsored by a racist Strom Thurmond, a Republican from South Carolina in the Senate, and by Hamilton Fish, a Republican from New York. **If you’re a fan of The Dossier, please visit our Patreon page for free and paid content featuring exclusive documents, unedited interviews, and monthly online meetups with other Dossier fans and the Dossier team. Go to Patreon.com/Dossier to subscribe!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The years of 1987 and ’88 ushered in the golden age of hip-hop, when a few groundbreaking artists, acting as cultural critics, show the power of this art form. Led by the protest rap of KRS-One, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, among others, hip-hop was now shining a light on the plight of the inner-city struggle, the crack epidemic, mass incarceration & other societal plights. The presidential race of 1988 is filled with subtle racial dog whistles, aimed at scaring white America into voting for George H Bush. On the West Coast, we witness the rise of LA street gangs such as the Bloods & Crips, while NWA releases the seminal album Straight Outta Compton. **If you’re a fan of The Dossier, please visit our Patreon page for free and paid content featuring exclusive documents, unedited interviews, and monthly online meetups with other Dossier fans and the Dossier team. Go to Patreon.com/Dossier to subscribe!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices