Skinny Joey Merlino and The Philly Mob Wars:
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It's Halloween 1989, and the Philadelphia Mafia is in chaos. Just a year before, legendary mob boss Nicky Scarfo and a bunch of the other top dogs get sent to prison for a very, very long time, leaving a major power vacuum at the top. Now, there's two men trying to fill that vacuum.

One of them happens to be Nicky's son, Nicky Jr. And despite the jostling for power, he's out and about enjoying dinner at Dante and Luigi, an Italian restaurant in South Philly.

But while Nicky Jr. is chowing down on baked clams and spaghetti, a man wearing a Batman mask rushes into the restaurant and pulls out a Mac-10 from a trick-or-treat bag. He lets off a clip, hitting Nicky Jr. eight times from close range. Miraculously, no vital organs are hit, and Nicky Jr. is somehow released from the hospital only a few days later. The message has been sent, though, and it says the Scarfo family is no longer in control of the Philly-slash-South Jersey mob.

The alleged shooter, according to law enforcement and multiple mob snitches, is 27-year-old Joey "Skinny Joey" Merlino, who right now, in 2024, happens to be the hottest mafia podcaster out there. But back then, he was just an ambitious young mob scion, the son of former Scarfo underboss Salvatore "Chucky" Merlino. And much like Junior Soprano, he wasn't respecting old arrangements.

While Nicky Jr. survives, he goes on to become a non-factor in the Philly mob. So much so that he soon moves to Newark and his father arranges for him to be inducted into the New York-based Lucchese family, one of the five New York families. And, you know, if you moved to Newark in the 90s, you know you'd mess something up.

With him out of the picture, Joey Merlino and his gang of young go-getters seem set to take over the city. But the New York Mafia Commission has other ideas. They want things to calm down in Philly, stop the chaos and violence before there's another hit song about the chicken man being blown up. So they appoint Sicilian-born mafioso John Stamfa as the new Don of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Merlino is sent away to jail for a few years soon after for an armored car robbery, and the power vacuum seems to be filled.

But when he's locked up, Merlino meets a longtime Philly mobster with other ideas. And those two will allegedly start plotting the takeover. When he's finally released a couple years later, all hell breaks loose in a bloody Philly mob war that shocks the city. This is The Underworld Podcast. ♪♪

Welcome back to another episode of the radio program where two journalists take you through a weekly story of crime, mostly organized, mostly international, unless the situation calls for it. And that situation would be the hope that we can generate some more attention off SEO since Skinny Joey is all the rage all over YouTube and podcasts and everything right now.

I'm one of your hosts Danny Gold and I'm joined by Britishman Sean Williams who has said a lot of nasty things about Philadelphia before we started recording which you know just insulting the people the Eagles the Flyers the Phillies I mean I personally would never ever badmouth a city with a reputation like Philadelphia but Sean you just you can't control this guy yeah I mean cheesesteak is legitimately one of the worst dishes of all time I mean there's that mascot there are you insane are you insane

No, isn't it just like a big, fat, disgusting sandwich? I don't know. Like, are we supposed to believe that Philadelphia invented the steak sandwich or what? I don't know.

Kind of sucks. And there's that mascot that looks like a dildo. Dude, you're out of your mind. I mean, look, the place ain't Indiana. It's got something going for it, but it's not doing that well either. And if I keep going through every single American city, eventually those Moldovans are going to get off my back too. So let's just keep it going.

As always, bonuses are on patreon.com slash an aura podcast. You can sign up there on iTunes or Spotify, you know, hit the socials, YouTubes, all that. I definitely want to shout out our new sponsor aura that is hooking us up with a great deal. And they're an internet security company. They do everything to protect you from hackers, scammers, spammers, people. We do episodes on identity theft, fraud, all that.

and they help get your data off the internet away from data brokers. Now they're hooking up our listeners with a two-week free trial when you go to aura.com slash underworld. That's A-U-R-A dot com slash underworld. It's only 12 bucks a month afterwards, and they've been really, really good to us, so please support them and sign up. Anyway, yes, another American mob story. We thought we would be done for them after the Tony Accardo episode, but this is just a good one. It's in the zeitgeist right now, topical.

An alleged, and you're going to hear that word a lot this episode since this guy is allegedly retired, but how can you resist Skinny Joey? You know, he's all over my algorithms. It just made sense to do this. And we did a reel on him, like a Instagram reel. I think we put it on the YouTube too, like a short. And people got really, really mad that we were just like kind of making jokes about his situation.

but a lot of people. So people, people love this guy. They love skinny Joey and we're going to find out why. So yeah, the, uh, the mafia member having a podcast thing, it's really nothing new at this point. You know, Sammy Gravano, the most infamous rat of all time. He did one and he did all the, you know, YouTube and, and terrible interview rounds. Michael Franzisi, another big name. Uh, and he was actually really up there, you know, the fuel tax and everything. And,

He probably has the most successful YouTube podcast career, I'd say. John Alitz, right? He's done a bunch. And there's got to be quite a few more, but I feel like those are the Mount Rushmore of just mafia podcast guys. There's a whole lot of guys, too, that seem like pretenders, but it's a tough beat for guys like me and Sean because...

If they're just doing it all themselves, where does that leave us? You know, just doing Manscaped ads pretty much. I mean, Manscaped are brilliant, of course. And as are Aura. What can I actually say here? I don't know. Like every little helps. Let's just say that when you guys get involved in that product. And I think for the most part, you know, we view these guys, mafia guys, as like supposedly secretive, right?

Now, obviously, things have changed a lot in the last few decades, but there were always guys who loved the attention and the limelight, whether Capone, Bugsy Siegel, you know, the New York Post cover star himself, John Gotti is the most, I guess, infamous one who loved the limelight. So mobsters chasing the spotlight, it's nothing new.

They've just kind of adjusted, like all media folks have, onto the hot new thing, which is a YouTube podcast, Pivot to Video and whatnot, which worked out great for journalism. Yeah, how's Vice doing? But I digress. The Philly mob, instead of starting off organically like some other mafia groups across the country...

It starts off a little different. In the 1910s, a New York-based mafia organization, the one that eventually becomes the Gambino family, they send a Sicilian-born mafioso to Philadelphia to start a family and just kind of like set things up. There's other organized crime groups there, particularly Jews and Irish, and, you know, they fight and they make up and they fight again. So we're going to skip over all that, though, right up to 1959, because that's where the foundation for the Joey Merlino story begins.

At this point, many mafia families are controlled nationally by the commission who oversee everything across the country. It's made up of the bosses of the five New York families, as well as some of the other powerful regional bosses like Chicago, the Chicago outfit. Now, some of these regional bosses, like say the boss of the Chicago outfit are fully independent, but other families like Philadelphia are actually subservient to the New York families. In Philly's case, they're under the Gambino family, even though the boss at the time, Angelo Bruno sits on the commission.

Bruno is the boss, not of the Gambino family, of the Philadelphia mob. And Bruno and Carlo Gambino, who was the boss of the Gambino family, they go back to when they were young up-and-comers and they were in the bootlegging business together. They're longtime friends, close associates, all that sort of stuff. And one of the main reasons that Angelo Bruno even becomes a boss in the first place was because he had the backing of the Gambinos. And just a little background, Carlo Gambino is the boss of bosses and the most powerful mobster in the country at this time.

He forms an alliance with Tommy Lucchese, and they basically dominate the commission. Lucchese family is one of the other big families. So basically, he's the best guy in the underworld to be pals with, and it really pays off for Bruno. Bruno is known as the Gentle Don because he likes to keep things quiet and avoid violence if he can.

He's the opposite of flashy, just real respectable. Like George Anastasia, who is a longtime Philly journalist who covered the Philly mob for decades and whose work basically is a major source for this episode. He described his governing style as an iron fist covered by a velvet glove, which is just a great description. You know, he keeps a low profile, doesn't attract any attention and all that. And he's a great guy.

And Bruno excels at this. He doesn't allow his guys to sell drugs, but instead he taxes other gangs in the city that do sell drugs. Many mob bosses have had this rule over the years because drug sentences are often really long and guys are more likely to flip, but usually it was ignored. Yeah, that's pretty ingenious, I guess. More like a...

I don't know, like a reinsurance kind of thing. Also, I feel like with so many of these mob episodes that you've snuck in about 10 Sopranos references already before I've had time to think. So how many have we got? I mean, I don't know. I'm guessing like two or three. We're going to do more Springsteen references, I think, in this one. Okay, cool. I'm really screwed. We've only had a few. In 1976, Carlos Gambino dies and Bruno loses a significant amount of his power because he loses his major backer.

Then in 1980, he's sitting in his car outside his house with his driver, John Stampha, who we've mentioned in the cold open when a man appears from out of the shadows and pops him in the back of the head with a shotgun, which is a tough to survive that. And, uh, and messy. There's actually a picture of him. It's super grizzly. Like the stuff of night bears. He's almost caught in like a, like a primal scream. It's,

really insane. Don't look it up. Just sit this one out. Except, yeah, I did look it up and it is pretty gruesome, but also the Philadelphia Daily News just ran that pic on its front page the very next day. That's pretty brutal because he's like,

It's like a horror movie. It's crazy. It's Philadelphia, man. Back when men were men, Sean, newspapers were newspapers. You could put a guy's grisly corpse with his head half blown off on the cover of the paper. But Stanford is somehow left unharmed. And as we mentioned earlier...

Bruno didn't allow his guys to sell drugs, but it just so happened at the time that his consigliere was dealing heroin on the side. So the convoluted theory by mob people and law enforcement goes like this. The consigliere is up in the New York area. He's complaining to the Genovese family about Bruno and that he won't allow him and the others to sell drugs. Some other people are complaining too, you know, as one does about their boss or podcast partner, you know? Okay. That's nice. That's nice. I'll take partner.

He ends up walking away from that meeting, thinking he has the commission's approval to take out Bruno. And after the hit, the consigliere goes to New York, assuming he would be named the new godfather of Philadelphia. But instead, he gets brutally murdered and they find his body on the side of the road with money stuffed in his mouth and in his ass, which...

That's just weirdo freak stuff. But the message is you're being too greedy or you were being too greedy, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I need to know more. Like, is this, is this money like coin money or is it note money? Cause I guess you could just pop them up there. Like,

I don't know, antacids or something. All right, that's enough. I'm going to stop you. Oh, come on, man. I was going to get to my great pun as well. You didn't even let me get there. No. Yeah, there's no more. People want to know about the Bunjamins. Three other Philly mobsters associated with the hit, they also turn up dead soon. And apparently, the Genovese family wanted to steal the Philly family from the Gambino family because in 1977, a law passed making gambling legal in Atlantic City and they want a big taste of all the rackets that come along with it

And Philadelphia was going to be the ones running Atlantic City. Since Gambino dies, though, in 1976, they think that Bruno is more vulnerable. That's why they want to get him out of the picture. What happens is just a super confusing story, according to George Anastasia, of just double crosses, triple crosses, double crosses.

Ouch. Ouch.

And it might sound hard to believe, especially if you've been there recently, but Atlantic City at one point was held in like high esteem. Everyone thought it was going to be basically Vegas or the East Coast, just glamorous, full of tourists, tons of money coming in. So much so that the East Coast mobs pretty much decided to leave Vegas to the Midwestern mafias and focus their energy on Atlantic City.

He even used to have a bunch of the Tyson fights there back when he was at his peak. It was a hot place to be. What is it like now? Have you been there recently? I'm just thinking Blackpool was my only point of reference. It's a rough town, man. I think a lot of the casinos went bankrupt. I mean, there's still stuff to do there, but it's definitely not what I would consider a hotspot. I feel like the reputation is like...

You know, pretty crime fields, dirty, sleazy, and not in like a Vegas glam sleazy sort of way. Yeah. I mean, you would enjoy it for sure. Of course. But yeah. Yeah. The Philly mob, they're focused on getting money there. And the previously appointed captain in AC happens to be little Nicky Scarfo. Little Nicky because he's 5'5". He'd been exiled.

exiled to AC after he had killed a random civilian in a fight and got convicted of manslaughter. And like I said, Atlantic City wasn't a great place to be, so they shipped him off there to run a couple things. He gets exiled there to this, at that point, it's declining, sleepy vacation town. But now that gambling is coming in there, he's set to become a major player. And when Scarfo was previously serving a stint in prison, he became really close with two of the top figures in the Genovese family. And that's another part of the reason that the Genovese family makes his power play to begin with.

you know, get the Gambino's guys out and let our guys in. Little Nicky is approached by the Genovese family to become the new boss, but his best friend and childhood friend is the underboss Phil Testa. So he doesn't feel like it's the right idea to take the top job. So he steps aside and Phil chicken man. Testa is appointed the new boss who turns around and makes Scarfo his concivierie.

Testa was called that because he was in the poultry business. So, Sean, what do you think happens to the chicken man? Does he have a nice life? Does he get a podcast? I don't know. No. No. Okay. His reign does not last long and he is blown up by a nail bomb under his porch in a plot by his underboss only a year later. They blow him up and they blow up his house too and then down on the boardwalk...

The Racket Boys, they're getting ready for a fight, which is a war, actually. So, little Nicky Scarfo, he's now the new Don of Philly. After becoming boss, he appoints Joey Merlino's father, Salvatore Chucky Merlino, as his underboss, which is interesting considering Chucky had only been inducted into the family a year prior. And around the same time, his son, Skinny Joey, from 1979 to 1982, he's actually trying to make it as a horse jockey, and he wins 41 races. That's like...

Really weird and not a profession that lends itself to scary men, right? I mean, they're basically like four foot tall children and they weigh less than a laptop, right? He's going to need to go on one of those, one of your style bulking binges if he's going to get up in the Philly mob, right? I mean, he's definitely not a dude to be messed with. Like, I think it's funny because if you know him only from like YouTube or whatever else, you think he's just some other guy, like mob guy, you know, running his mouth. But like, he's a pretty serious dude as we're about to find out.

In 1982, Joey gets his first criminal charge when he, along with a friend, is indicted in the beating and stabbing of two men at a restaurant at a fight in Atlantic City. And according to Joey, so Joey did a DJ Vlad interview, which if you guys don't know who he is, he's pretty much like this hip hop interview celebrity.

And he also interviews a ton of gang members and some mafia guys and people, especially rappers. They're always incriminating themselves on his show by trying to portray themselves as, you know, top dog criminals, gangsters. So Joey went with the better tactic of basically just denying everything or firmly saying that he wasn't going to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, I watched a bit of this interview to like research for this and he said,

Is like straight in there with the like life is tough back then. We didn't have no air conditioning those days. These kids all playing video games locked away to getting fat. And they, I mean, I love that kind of stuff. You got to get these woke GTA playing fat. So I was on the racetrack, man, balancing on the trapeze, walking on glass, walking over hot coals, shooting up criminal rivals. What are you talking? I mean, you know, just stuff that makes you a real man. What? All right. All right. Um,

So yeah, about the fight.

Joey says that three men were bothering Scarfo's senior sister and wouldn't leave her alone. So he says he hit one with a chair in a riot, like a fight broke out and that someone got stabbed. But he was not the one who did the stabbing. He does end up getting sentenced to two years in jail for that. But Scarfo's reign as boss then really, you know, begins. And it's just marked by violence, killing, bodies starting to pile up in the street. Murder becomes basically a calling card for him, according to George Anastasia. Whereas Bruno used murder as a last resort.

Scarfo would use it to solve any dispute. The turning point for the Scarfo mob is when Salvatore Testa gets taken out. Testa is the son of Phil Testa, the boss who was killed, and Scarfo's best friend. He's engaged to Chucky Merlino's daughter, who would be Joey Merlino's sister. Sorry, there's a lot of names going around here, but yeah. It's all very, very in the family.

And in 1984, Salvatore, he breaks off the engagement, even though there was a massive wedding that was planned where supposedly Michael Jackson was going to perform. You know, those guys were getting, they were getting money back then. But yes, Scarfo, he's footing the bill for the whole thing. And when Salvatore breaks off the engagement, this really pisses off Chucky Merlino and Scarfo and they, uh, they kill him. They left the bloodstains on the carpet. Um, not bad, not bad.

But the actual reason for his death appears to be something else. There's another theory that he was this 28-year-old captain, Salvatore was. He was this big, handsome dude. He was very well-liked and admired. Plus, he's the son of the former boss. So there's this 1984 Wall Street Journal article that comes out with the headline, Family Matters. A 28-year-old is said to be heir to the top job in Philadelphia mafia. And the article really paints a glowing picture of Salvatore.

Talks about him being the biggest star in the Philly mob, how he's already captain at 28, where usually a captain was twice as old. He survived multiple gunshot wounds, just really hyping him up.

It also mentions how he had sold an Atlantic City nightclub for $1.1 million to former president and potential future president, one Donald J. Trump. So yeah, this article, with the headline that says he's bound for the top, it pisses Scarfo off something fierce. He gets paranoid. He thinks that Salvatore Starr is outshining his and decides that he's got to take him out. So the wedding is kind of like the excuse to do so because he embarrassed Scarfo's underboss by breaking off the engagement. So yeah, the...

Once again, the media man just really, really making things worse over here, causing a mafia war. This is a major turning point in the Scarfo mob because the thinking of many members is that if he could kill Salvatore, who was like a son to him basically, and also the son of his lifelong best friend, Phil Testa, who he promised that he would look after his kid to before that he died, he's willing to kill that guy. He's willing to kill anyone.

Meanwhile, a year later, Chucky Merlino, Joey's dad, he runs over a member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club after an argument and just gets into like a beef with them. He's also been out of control. He's got a really bad drinking problem. And all this sort of negative attention results in him being demoted from the position of underboss and cut off by Scarfo. Then in 1986, Scarfo and several other top Philly mobsters get indicted on a big RICO case.

So, yeah, it's just things are completely up in the air. A couple of other Philly mob guys get indicted on different charges, and they fear that Scarfo is going to kill them. They turn government witness against him. And in 1988, the trial takes two months. Everyone's convicted. And then after being convicted and facing up to 45 years, Scarfo's underboss turns government witness himself and testifies too. So Scarfo basically gets life and a bunch of other captains, soldiers. They all get sent away for a really long time.

The underboss ends up with five years. Chucky Merlino gets 45 years. And the Philly mob is just left in shambles and chaos. I mean, this actually sounds like pretty good news to the people of Philadelphia, right? Maybe they can...

They can rise from the ashes and build that great and wonderful city that they've pretended they've had for like 200 years. I don't think you should be bad-mouthing Philadelphia this much. But yeah, in that chaos, enter Skinny Joe and Merlino and the cold open and that hit on Nicky Jr., which is just one of these things you really see when you really look into...

Into mafias and all that and how it goes, right? Nicky, Scarfo Jr. and Merlino were like best friends from their youth. The Merlino and Scarfo families were super close. But when Chucky Merlino gets demoted from underboss and cut off by Scarfo Sr.,

Scarfo Jr. cuts off Merlino and tells his friends to do the same. So, you know, there's no loyalty at all. Merlino, the younger Merlino, is furious. He decides he's going to make his play against Nicky Jr. He doesn't take him out in that shooting, but he takes him out of the mafia picture, which is 1989, like we said. And it makes a statement that the Merlinos, they're not going anywhere and they're the power in town, not the Scarfos.

Later that year, there's a television news report that catches Merlino after exiting a bar, and it brings up that there's supposedly a half-million-dollar bounty on his head in Philadelphia, to which he replies, quote, give me a half-million dollars and I will shoot myself. Which, I mean, that's a great line right there. That's a great line. Yeah, if anyone else wants to wire, I don't know, two grand into my son's bank account, then I'll shoot myself too. Yeah. Yeah.

Merlino seems poised to take over at this point, but before he can really grab control, he sentenced to four years for interstate theft and conspiracy charges in 1990. That's the conviction for robbing an armored federal truck in 1987, which, you know, sounds really cool and like the movie The Town or Heat.

but it's not that. What happened was that this bag of like $350,000 was stolen from this truck in an inside job. You know, it wasn't a crazy heist. More, they convinced the guard to drop off and misplace a giant bag of cash. Yeah, I mean, I need to flag up the fact that you, I'm not sure you can mention the town and heat in the same sentence. That's like,

I don't know, mixing corned beef and gabagool, if you know what I mean. Dude, the town rules. What? Are you not like the town? Oh, man. Town's excellent. I came away from that thinking it was like a joke film, like a piss take, but... No way, dude. Oh, my God. Dude, Jeremy Renner and the town, the town rules, dude. You haven't spent enough time in Boston. I mean, that was... Oh, man. I got to watch again. Maybe I got to stop watching films on my...

Fucking fine. Yeah. So, John Merlino, he's in prison and the Philly mob is in chaos yet again. And after the new acting boss gets indicted, the Genovese and Gambino families, they step in. They turn to John Stampha to put together the family and return it to stability. So, a little background on Stampha. He's born in Sicily in 1940 and immigrates to New York in 63. When he gets there, he gets introductions to the Gambino crime family from his two brothers and brother-in-law who were members of the mafia. The Gambinos arrange for Stampha to work for Angelo Bruno.

He goes down to Philly. He's Bruno's driver during that hit against him, but he keeps his mouth shut when he's forced to testify to the grand jury. And he kind of disappears after that. He's arrested in 1980 in a Baltimore pizzeria working as a baker.

He's charged in 1981 with perjury for lying to the grand jury about meeting with mobsters after Bruno was killed. He ends up serving eight years, and according to a 1995 New York Times article, quote, that it is unclear whether Mr. Stanford was involved in Mr. Bruno's killing, but that his silence earned him the respect of other mobsters. You know, this is a guy who doesn't seem to have many roots in Philly, but he definitely impressed some of the higher-ups in New York. But...

Because he doesn't have the roots in the city, he's immediately kind of disliked by some of the mobsters in Philadelphia for being an outsider. In prison, Joey Merlino meets longtime Philadelphia mobster Ralph Natale, who was serving a 15-year prison sentence. Merlino's complaining about Stamfa and how he was an outsider and shouldn't be boss, and Natale starts to advise Merlino on what to do. And they begin to plot how to get rid of Stamfa, take over the Philly mob.

It wasn't just the fact that Stanford was an outsider that annoys Marlino. There's also this sort of culture class between the Sicilian born Stanford and Marlino and his peers who grew up in America. You know, it's kind of a throwback to the classes in the first half of the century between the mustache Pete's and the American born mafiosos. And Marlino was like, uh, you know, he's a young, tough kid. He was brash. He was out and about like he wasn't going to put up with some outsider coming into town and running things.

In January 1992- He was a jockey, man. He was a jockey. In January 1992, with Merlino and Natali still behind bars, the Merlino crew, they decide they're going to go to war. They draw first blood. They take out a 73-year-old mafia soldier that was loyal to Stanford. In retaliation, there's an attempted hit on Merlino's best friend, Mikey Chang, but he's unharmed. And the whole period is characterized, this little war, by failed hits, pretty much inept mafiosos, according to the fielding media. Yeah.

That sounds like the Phillies bullpen, am I right? The Eagles are good, man. Oh, damn. I don't know how their offensive line is, but they had a good season. Right around then, Merlino gets released from prison in the midst of this war in April of 1992, and he hits the streets. It's a full-on war on the verge of breaking out between Merlino's young gunners and Stampa's crew to try to stem the violence and bring unity between the two factions, but

Stanford makes multiple moves that surprise a lot of people. He makes Joey Chang, who's the brother of Merlino's best friend, Michael Chang, his underboss. Stanford also makes Michael and Merlino both made men in the family. And he thinks that by promoting them, basically making his best friend's brother underboss, he's going to bridge this gap between the two factions. It's a peacemaker move. He also thinks it's going to make it easier to keep tabs on them and kill them if he has to.

This uneasy truce, it holds for roughly a year before things turn south. Inevitably, the breaking point appears to be when stamp has a meeting with Merlino and Mikey Chang about them placing bets and not paying when they lose to mob affiliated bookies, which, you know, got to got to pay your bets.

Then on March 2nd, 1993 at 5.55 a.m., Joey Chang's the underboss. He arrives at a cafe he owns with a waitress. And if you wonder why I know the exact time, it's because that cafe was under video surveillance by the FBI in addition to being bugged inside.

Four minutes later, you see a station wagon pull up and three people get out. FBI wiretaps pick up the next five seconds, which is just bang, bang, bang, and a woman screaming. Joey Chang takes five bullets, but somehow survives. And even more messed up than that, his brother is one of the shooters.

It's said at the time this is the only mob hit ever recorded on a wiretap. That's pretty nuts. Well done to Joey. That's what, five shots survived. That's like half a 50 cent. Pretty good work. Also a proud day for Mama Chang too. It's always nice to see your two kids playing together. So yeah, a good day all around. Yeah.

Both sides at this point are just full on hunting the other. There's a 1995 Associated Press article about a mob trial, but the headline reads, inept mobsters made best hits as witnesses, which is, ouch.

Pretty, pretty vicious. Quote, the targets of most of the boss hits were Joseph Skinny Joey Merlino and a gang of young upstarts he led in battle against Stanford over gambling and extortion business. The article goes on to talk about the testimony of a mobster who turned informant who discusses that they worked around the clock in 1993 to try to take out Joey's team, the Young Turks is what the media called them. They also report that Stanford's crew tried to blow up Merlino a bunch of times with remote car bombs that just never worked.

FBI wiretaps pick up so much talk that they even warn Merlino and his buddy Michael that their lives are in danger. Stanford's boys actually succeed for once in August 1993 when they do a drive-by. They kill Mikey Chang and hit Merlino with a few shots. I think they actually shot him in the ass. The

though he survives and is seen limping around a few days later at Chang's funeral. You know, I think it is easy to see these guys now on YouTube, like I was saying, whatever it is, and kind of forget that they're like the real deal. Like Marlino is not a guy to be taken lightly. He's a real hitter. Yeah, he's like in that video, he's got this cold, like really dead stare straight into the interviewer's eyes as well. Like he's seen a lot, that guy. I mean, I can't imagine he's a huge amount of fun to interview, but...

I love him on the show. Yeah, definitely some awkward laughs from DJ Vlad when he was like, I'm not going to talk about that. It was great. So later that summer, Merlino and his crew go a little out of control, allegedly. And I'll tell you why I said allegedly in a minute.

It's morning rush hour on one of the main highways heading into Philadelphia. Stanford and his son and a driver are headed downtown to handle some business when a van pulls up next to them and just unloads with automatic weapons on the highway. Just real cowboy type stuff. During rush hour too. Stanford's son is the only one hit. He's hitting the job but survives.

And Joey reminds us in the DJ Vlad interview that he got charged with the shooting, but he was acquitted. So, yeah, allegedly. Of course, though, this is huge news, and the whole city of Philadelphia is just stunned at how insane this mafia war is, that there's a daytime hit on the highway. Stanford's crew retaliates quickly. They kill one of Merlino's friends who wasn't even involved in organized crime, just friends with Merlino and his crew. And then Merlino gets sent back to jail in November of 1993 for violating his parole order.

But soon after the war ends, Merlino actually ends up winning the war because Stampa goes down on a massive RICO charge in 1994. He eventually gets five life sentences. 23 other mobsters get indicted along with Stampa. And since the competing factions are two separate entities at this point, the people indicted, they're mostly in the Stampa faction, leaving Merlino and his crew basically ready to take over, you know, kind of like they forfeited.

One of the most devastating things, the trial is that there's a Philly cop turned mafioso turned FBI informant, which is, um, what is that? Like a trip? Is that triple cross? Yeah, man. Yeah. He, he wears a wire for a year and he helps make the case against everyone. Damn. Yeah. It's a pretty wild, the guy's huge too. It's a pretty wild story. Uh,

So Stanford's crew, they're now locked down. Marlino was released in November 1994 from his short stint. And his prison mentor, Ralph Natale, his mafia takeover co-conspirator, he also gets released around the same time. Marlino makes himself underboss and he makes Ralph boss. But it's generally believed that Marlino is running the show and that Ralph is the front man, you know, season one Soprano style.

With trouble brewing in New York, thanks to Merlino's rival podcaster, Sammy the Bull, turning government witness against the mob and just a whole host of other things and people going down. The New York families don't really get involved in the Philly family chaos, and Merlino becomes the power in the Philly mob at the age of 32. So I think, I mean, he's got to be one of the youngest mob bosses ever at that point, you know?

As you probably gather, though, he is not the under the radar type. He's letting the local news tag along. He's passing out turkeys in the hood on Thanksgiving, Christmas, all that. He's a popular guy. He's like very Gotti like, you know, best guy around what murder that sort of thing. We did a little short video, like I said on him. And dude, people just went nuts. It was like Swifties coming after us. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this is the controversy we can call, right? It gets us huge online. I mean, just like crapping on YouTube mob bosses. I mean, it's kind of victimless crime if it sells us a couple of teachers. I don't know. People can buy teachers. I'm only an hour and a half from Philadelphia, buddy. You're going to have to be the one talking that nonsense. Thank God. Any closer. Any closer, you wouldn't want to be there. But yeah.

During this period, actually, I really like Philadelphia, man. It's a gritty, affordable city. Good people. To be fair, I spent one afternoon in Philadelphia one time and it was to interview Bernard Hopkins at his gym and it was a cool day out. So I do like Philadelphia. I don't know where that area was, but it was really cool. Red brick buildings and stuff. I don't know. Maybe it's a dump. Maybe it's cool. Everyone's got guns. Everyone's got fentanyl. It's the perfect city for this podcast. Yeah.

But yeah, during this period when he's on top, he's a party guy. He's out on the town, hot clubs, night spots, ball games. He does charity drives. He plays in a summer softball league. His friend sums it up to the city paper like this, quote,

Joey was born to follow in his father's footsteps. How could he not? He was the son of an underboss. People on the street respected and feared him. Girls went crazy over him. There was always plenty of money and the best tables and expensive restaurants and no waiting in line at the nightclubs. Big time sports celebrities and movie stars wanted to hang with him. In 1995,

Merlino's crew gets into it with a 10th and Oregon crew, which is like an independent from the mob, but mostly Italian organized crime group. They were, uh, they, I think we're dealing and his crew beats up the leader of the gang when they refuse to pay a street tax and the leader of the gang and the leader of the gang's dad start plotting to take out Merlino. But, uh,

Then he gets arrested and hangs himself in jail, the leader of the gang, to which Joey replies in that DJ Vlad interview, I heard about that. It was in the paper. And then three years later, when the father is on trial for conspiring to kill Joey, a masked gunman takes him out outside his house, just shoots him. And when asked if he knows the father in the DJ Vlad interview, Joey just says, doesn't know him, but he knows the brother and that they're all rats. So Joey also talks about how he got charged for that assassination or that killing. It's not an assassination, but he was acquitted of that as well. So-

you know, draw your own conclusion. But yeah, Merlino and his crew at that point, they run things. They ruffle some feathers, they take over, but it doesn't last too long. Natale is sent to jail in 1998 for violating his parole. And it doesn't take long after that for a split to occur between him and Merlino. Here's a quote from an article from 2001 in the Philadelphia City Paper detailing that time. Merlino then became acting boss. And Natale's friends claimed that within two months, Merlino stopped kicking money back to Natale.

And they stopped sending money to Natalia's girlfriend, which made Natalia very angry. I might be going mad here, but I feel like so much of this is lifted straight into Sopranos plot lines. Is that the case? I don't know any specific stuff, but it feels like it is. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, it wasn't based on anything with the Philadelphia family. It was based on...

I always forget. We've talked about it before. I forget. I think, I mean, this was what, 99? So the season, the show was already going at this time, right? Oh, yeah. That's a good point. That's nuts. It feels like all this stuff was so long ago, but it's like really recent, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, they could have lifted plot points. Who knows?

Another thing with Merlino is that when he was boss, he would place these big bets, collect his winnings, but never ever pay up when he lost, when he was gambling. That actually causes problems for the acting boss that takes over when Joey gets arrested because none of the former mob-affiliated bookies, they don't want to have anything to do with the mob anymore thanks to Merlino. Here's a quote.

Underworld sources claim the mob blames Merlino for pissing off mob-allied bookies because he always bets big, collected his winnings, but never ever paid up when he lost. There was a lot of mob money that Merlino blew, one mob insider told City Paper. Now it's gone and the bookies don't want to deal with it. It's Merlino's fault.

So, yeah, I mean, like I said, he was well-liked and feared and respected, but he also caused some trouble. And in 1999, Joey gets arrested again, and he's hit with drug trafficking charges. Natale's also charged in the same indictment, and things go from bad to worse for Joey when Natale, who already had two serious convictions under his belt, decides to become the first boss of a major crime family to flip and turn government witness.

You know, I feel like I see that sort of thing mentioned a lot, like the first one to do this, the first one to turn. But I feel, I don't know, it seems like there's quite a lot of that by the 2000s, especially with the Midwest mobs getting broken up in the 80s and 90s. So I don't know how accurate it is to say that he was the first boss that flipped.

Joey goes to trial in 2001 for a sweeping indictment involving lots of different crimes, multiple murders, all sorts of stuff. He gets convicted of racketeering related charges like extortion, book mating, receiving stolen property. But he's acquitted on the most serious charges of three murders and two attempted murders and also the drug charges. He does end up getting sentenced to 14 years. The LA Times in 2001 has Joey's response after his lawyer said he can get out after nine years for good behavior.

Ain't bad. Nine's better than the death penalty. Yeah. Which, yeah, is not wrong. Merlino actually ends up going to trial in 2004 again for one of the murders that he beat in 2001, which doesn't make much sense to me. It feels like double jeopardy, but he gets acquitted of that too. I'm sure there's a reason for it. We're not a lawyer podcast. I'm not going to do...

I'm not going to figure it out. But Merlino, he's finally released in 2011 after that sentence, and he begins to split his time between Florida and Philadelphia. In 2013, he does an interview with George Anastasia and says he's done with crime and that there's just too many rats. He doesn't like how he spent 19 years of his adult life in jail and wants to spend more time with his kids. And he later opens up a restaurant in Florida called Merlino's.

And then in 2016, Merlino is busted along with 45 other alleged mob members in an indictment accusing them of gambling, loan sharking and extortion and medical insurance fraud and untaxed cigarettes, which are two very good hustles. I think we've talked about a lot. Definitely get in, get in on the medical insurance fraud. Doesn't have the same, you know, sexiness as other crimes and untaxed cigarettes too, but that's where the money is guys. Uh, most of the guys busted there are members of the Genovese and Lucchese crime families, uh,

But the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office says that all five families and Philly were working together in one giant scheme. In a 2016 Philly Voice article, it says that the authorities believe that Merlino is the alleged head of the Philly crime family, something he has repeatedly denied to this day. So, I mean, just to interject here, you know, he's definitely been atop the Philly mob. I don't doubt for a second that law enforcement, though, gets a hard-on for these guys, even if they've claimed to have left a life, even if they have actually left a life, so...

So just because authorities say it, it doesn't, of course, mean that it's 100% definitely the case. But yeah, I don't know. No, I mean, are these guys actually big anymore? I mean, we've kind of like done shows where...

A lot of these mobs are declining in power and value over the years. I'm guessing guys south of the border have eaten a lot of their dinners these days, but he does seem like he's done a lot of stuff, whether he's been sent down for it or not. He's clearly got a pretty massive CV. They've been hitting the pocketbook a lot, right? The crimes that they used to do, like gambling, right? I can place bets on seven different apps on my phone, so it's kind of like why...

you know, why risk it? And then also, even like loan sharking, you know, how many payday loaners can you, loans can you go get like that with, you know, terrible, terrible interest, but not as bad as mafia interest. I'm sure there's still people that gamble with bookies and there's still people that, that, you know, take,

take out bad loans from these people, but definitely cuts into a lot of the business when all this stuff gets legalized. Yeah, for sure. They're doing it themselves, right? They're going into the white collar stuff with the insurance fraud and that kind of stuff. So they're seeing the writing on the wall. Yeah, I'm sure they've cooked up their own NFT schemes and whatnot, but it's a little tougher. But yeah, back to this huge bust.

After it's revealed that FBI agents might have mishandled a key witness, many of the arrested are offered like sweetheart plea deals on lesser charges and decide, you know, they plead guilty. Merlino actually says no thanks and decides to take it to court. He beats the trial on a hung jury, but instead of retrying the case, the feds and Merlino's lawyers cut a deal and he pleads guilty to one gambling related account. He gets two years. According to Merlino in that DJ Vlad interview, he said the only thing he was guilty of was placing a bet and

And who doesn't bet? And he's right. Like I said, who doesn't bet? Betting rules. Yeah, really gunning for that. So we had back to gambling cash there. But we'll take him. We take all sponsors. But yeah, I mean, where are we at today? Joey's still rumored to be the current boss of Philly. And if this was true, he would be the first mafia boss to have a Patreon. So that's something. But, you know...

Despite Sean's life of crime and numerous arrests for shoplifting at CBS, which is the real reason he lives in New Zealand, we can't compete with that, you know, with actual mafia guys telling their stories. But also, apparently he was paid $100,000 for some upfront episodes, so...

Good for you, Joey. You know, the media world is a tough one, and it's definitely a less respectable career than loan sharking and extortion and running rackets. So, you know, if you're getting that money, though, get paid. On his podcast, he basically, like, he tells mob stories, but not really because he can't actually get too far into anything. He does sports betting picks. He also has a rat of the week or month or whatever. People seem to like it. You know, he just opened up a cheesesteak spot in Philly soon. So look out for that.

For that one, if you're going to be in the area, I think actually it might be outside Philadelphia. But yeah, I don't know. I, you know, maybe do a road trip and we go check that out. But Joe, if you're out there, you're always welcome on the Underworld podcast. We would completely compromise our integrity, softball interview, whatever it takes. I mean, at this point, we would completely compromise our integrity for a $50 coupon to your new cheesesteak restaurant. But, you know, who cares? Come on the podcast and yeah.

Yeah, that's it. Looking forward to really people who love Mafia guys they've never met getting really angry in our YouTube comments, which is a thing that happens. Anyway, until next week. ... ... ...

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