ANTHONY SALERNO was the boss of New York’s Genovese crime family from 1981 to 1986. Born and raised in Harlem, Fat Tony became involved with Lucky Luciano’s crime family as a youth in the 1930s, rising through the ranks of the family by graduating from petty crimes to controlling major loansharking and numbers rackets.

The ambitious young Tony had a keen knack for enterprise, eventually expanding his modest operation into the largest numbers racket in New York by the 1960s. This operation, which earned over $50 million dollars a year, combined with his multimillion dollar bookie and loansharking operations to make Fat Tony one of the top earners in organized crime. This notoriety eventually attracted the attention of the FBI, landing Salerno in prison for gambling and tax evasion in 1978.

By then, Fat Tony had ascended to underboss of the Genovese family, placing him second in command of New York’s largest and most powerful crime family. He continued his position and influence while behind bars, and upon release in 1981, he took over as acting boss. At his peak in the mid 1980s, a Fortune magazine feature ranking America’s top gangsters in terms of power, wealth, and influence named Salerno as number one.

In the 1980s, the U.S. government began cracking down on the power structure of the mafia through use of the RICO act, created to enable them to charge previously untouchable bosses with the crime of running a criminal organization. Fat Tony was their number one target, and is shown here in his mug shot for his high-profile 1985 arrest. The new RICO statutes came with the power to impose extremely severe penalties for corruption, and Fat Tony was sentenced to 100 years behind bars for the crime of racketeering. He died in prison from a stroke in 1992 at the age of 80.