Anthony Casso - Big Money

Big Money

In the fall of 1986, Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo sensed that the Commission Trial would result in a guilty verdict that would ensure the entire Lucchese leadership would die in prison. Wanting to maintain the family's half-century tradition of a seamless transfer of power, Corallo endorsed Casso as his successor. However, Casso turned it down and instead suggested that Amuso become new boss.

Amuso formally took over the family in 1987, and Casso succeeded Furnari as consigliere. Amuso named him underboss in 1989 after Mariano Macaluso retired. However, Casso wielded as much influence as Amuso. According to federal and state investigators, Amuso attended to policy issues and representing the family at Commission meetings, leaving day-to-day control of the family to Casso.

During this time, Casso maintained a glamorous lifestyle, wearing expensive clothes and jewelry (including a diamond ring worth $500,000), running restaurant tabs up to thousands of dollars, owning a mansion in an exclusive Brooklyn neighborhood and going on huge spending sprees. While at the top of the Lucchese family, Amuso and Casso shared huge profits from their family's illegal activities. These profits included: $15,000 to $20,000 a month from extorting Long Island carting companies; $75,000 a month in kickbacks from eight air freight carriers that guaranteed them labor peace and no union benefits for their workers; $20,000 a week in profits from illegal video gaming machines; and $245,000 annually from a major concrete supplier, the Quadrozzi Concrete Company." Amuso and Casso also split more than $200,000 per year from the Garment District rackets, as well as a cut of all the crimes committed by the family's soldiers.