Lucky Luciano - Operating in Italy

Operating in Italy

After Luciano's secret trip to Cuba, he spent the rest of his life in Italy under tight police surveillance.

When Luciano arrived in Genoa from Cuba on April 11, 1947, he was arrested and sent to a jail in Palermo. On May 11, a regional commission in Palermo warned Luciano to stay out of trouble and released him from jail.

In early July 1949, police in Rome arrested Luciano on suspicion of involvement in the shipping of narcotics to New York. On July 15, after a week in jail, police released Luciano without filing any charges. He was also permanently banned from visiting Rome.

On June 9, 1951, Luciano was questioned by police in Naples on suspicion of illegally bringing $57,000 in cash and a new American car into Italy. After 20 hours of questioning, police released Luciano without any charges.

In 1952, the Italian government revoked Luciano's Italian passport after complaints from U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials.

On November 19, 1954, an Italian judicial commission in Naples applied strict limits on Luciano for two years. He was required to report to the police every Sunday, to stay home every night, and to not leave Naples without police permission. The commission cited Luciano's alleged involvement in the narcotics trade as the reason for these restrictions.

Despite the law enforcement surveillance, Luciano was able to greatly expand narcotics trafficking to the United States by Cosa Nostra, making it one of organized crime's most lucrative ventures. Between October 10 and October 14, 1957, Luciano oversaw a parley of more than thirty Sicilian and American Mafia leaders to draw up plans for the smuggling and distribution of heroin into the United States. According to Selwyn Raab, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, it was at the Luciano meeting, held in the Grand Hotel et des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily, that a plan was put into place through which Sicilians were responsible for distributing heroin in the U.S., while the American mobsters collected a share of the income as "franchise fees". Luciano's plan included a scheme to expand the tiny heroin and cocaine market in the U.S. by reducing the price and focusing on working class white and black urban neighborhoods.