CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO served as boss of New York’s Genovese crime family from 1931 to 1938. Luciano is known as the father of modern U.S. organized crime for his establishment of the Commission, the official ruling body over all the New York crime families. The ambitious Luciano envisioned a united mafia coast-to-coast and expanded control of the Commission to crime families in Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit.

Shown here from his 1931 arrest for first-degree felony assault at age 33, Luciano was the country’s most powerful organized crime figure when he was eventually convicted of prostitution racketeering in 1936 and sentenced to 30 to 50 years. In 1946, his sentence was commuted on the condition of his deportation to Italy, where he lived out the remainder of his days, dying in 1962 at the age of 64.