CIRO TERRANOVA served as underboss of New York’s Morello crime family from 1910 to 1938. Terranova earned his eccentric nickname by muscling in on New York’s artichoke trade, buying up all the supply and reselling it for roughly three times its value.

Born in Sicily, young Ciro immigrated to New York as a boy and worked as a waiter at a restaurant owned by his stepbrother Giuseppe “The Clutch Hand” Morello, a notorious gangster who controlled one of New York’s most powerful crime families. It wasn’t long before young Ciro was drawn in by the allure of the family crime business. In 1910, Giuseppe went to prison for counterfeiting, leaving behind a massive power vacuum. Ciro, along with his brother and nephew, stepped up to take control of the family, instantly becoming the top gangsters in Harlem.

Ciro ran various criminal enterprises for the mob, but was most notable for his innovative creation of an artichoke cartel. His monopoly on what was a very popular vegetable leveraged him tremendous power, with his stronghold on the artichoke market earning him over a million dollars a year.

By the early 1930s, rival gangsters of more powerful ruling families began muscling in on Terranova’s operations and squeezing him out, causing him to rely more and more on his artichoke racket for his livelihood. Then, in 1934, newly elected Mayor La Guardia made it a priority to crack down on corruption and racketeering in the local economy, and one of his first targets was the city’s notoriously corrupt artichoke business.

La Guardia’s successful decriminalization of the artichoke trade shattered Terranova’s last remaining power base, and with all his resources invested into artichokes that he could no longer sell, he plunged into poverty and died penniless in 1938, succumbing to a stroke at age 49.