Mafia Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about the Mafia.

Mafia Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is the Mafia?
A: The American Mafia commonly referred to as the Mafia or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian-American criminal society.

The organization is often referred to by members as what?
A: The Cosa Nostra and by the government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN).

The organization's name is derived from the original Mafia or Cosa nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, and it originally emerged as an offshoot of what?
A: The Sicilian Mafia.

Where did the Mafia in the United States emerge?
A: In impoverished Italian immigrant neighborhoods or ghettos in New York's East Harlem (or Italian Harlem), Lower East Side, and Brooklyn.

It also emerged in other areas of the East Coast of the United States and several other major metropolitan areas such as where?
A: Such as New Orleans and Chicago.

Where is the Mafia currently most active?
A: In the northeastern United States, especially in New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Buffalo and New England, in areas such as Boston, Providence and Hartford.

It is also heavily active in what other large cities?
A: Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Florida, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, with smaller families, associates, and crews in other parts of the country.

What are the five main New York City Mafia families?
A: The Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Bonanno, and Colombo families.

Each crime family has its own what?
A: Territory (except for the Five Families) and operates independently, while nationwide coordination is overseen by the Commission, which consists of the bosses of each of the strongest families.

The term Mafia was originally used in Italy by the media and law enforcement to describe what?
A: Criminal groups in Sicily.

Like the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia did not use the term "Mafia" to do what?
A: Describe itself.

When Italian immigrants started forming organized crime groups in the United States, the American press borrowed the term Mafia from Italy and it became what?
A: The predominant name used by law enforcement and the public.

Widespread recognition of the word has led to its use in the names of other criminal organizations, such as what?
A: The Jewish Mafia, Mexican Mafia, or Russian Mafia.

Mafia groups in the United States first became influential in what area?
A: The New York City area, gradually progressing from small neighborhood operations in poor Italian ghettos to citywide and eventually national organizations.

The Black Hand was a name given to an extortion method used where?
A: In Italian neighborhoods at the turn of the 20th century.

The Black Hand was a criminal society, but there were many what?
A: Small Black Hand gangs.

Who was the first known Mafia member to immigrate to the United States?
A: Giuseppe Morello.

He and six other Sicilians fled to New York after doing what?
A: Murdering eleven wealthy landowners, and the chancellor and a vice chancellor of a Sicilian province.

What happened to him?
A: He was arrested in New Orleans in 1881 and extradited to Italy.

New Orleans was also the site of the first Mafia incident in the United States that received what?
A: Both national and international attention.

On October 15, 1890, New Orleans Police Superintendent David Hennessy was what?
A: Murdered execution-style.

It is still unclear whether Italian immigrants actually killed him, or whether it was a frame-up by whom?
A: Nativists against the reviled underclass immigrants.

Hundreds of Sicilians were arrested on mostly baseless charges, and nineteen were eventually what?
A: Indicted for the murder.

An acquittal followed, with rumors of what?
A: Bribed and intimidated witnesses.

On March 14, 1891, the outraged citizens of New Orleans organized a what?
A: A lynch mob after the acquittal, and proceeded to kill eleven of the nineteen defendants.

In Chicago, the 19th Ward was an Italian neighborhood that became known as the "Bloody Nineteenth" due to the frequent violence in the ward, mostly as a result of what?
A: Mafia activity, feuds, and vendettas.

On January 17, 1920, what began in the United States with the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution?
A: Prohibition, making it illegal to manufacture, transport, or sell alcohol.

Despite these bans, there was still a what?
A: A very high demand for it from the public.

This created an atmosphere that tolerated crime as a means to do what?
A: To provide liquor to the public, even among the police and city politicians.

Criminal gangs and politicians saw the opportunity to make fortunes and began what?
A: Shipping larger quantities of alcohol to U.S. cities.

Al Capone's culturally-publicized violent rise to power in Chicago made him what?
A: An ever-lasting criminal figure of the prohibition era.

In the early 1920s, fascist Benito Mussolini took control of Italy and what happened?
A: Waves of Italian immigrants fled to the United States.

Sicilian Mafia members also fled to the United States, as Mussolini cracked down on what?
A: Mafia activities in Italy.

Most Italian immigrants resided where?
A: In tenement buildings.

As a way to escape the poor lifestyle, some Italian immigrants chose to do what?
A: Join the American Mafia.

The Mafia took advantage of prohibition and began doing what?
A: Selling illegal alcohol.

The profits from bootlegging far exceeded the traditional crimes of what?
A: Protection, extortion, gambling, and prostitution.

Prohibition allowed Mafia families to do what?
A: To make fortunes.

In the 1920s, Italian Mafia families began waging wars for absolute control over what?
A: Lucrative bootlegging rackets.

As the violence erupted, Italians fought whom?
A: Irish and Jewish ethnic gangs for control of bootlegging in their respective territories.

In Chicago, who did Al Capone and his family massacre?
A: The North Side Gang, another Irish American outfit.

In New York City, by the end of the 1920s, two factions of organized crime had emerged to fight for control of the criminal underworld, one led by Joe Masseria and the other by whom?
A: Salvatore Maranzano.

In an unprecedented move, Maranzano set himself up as what?
A: Boss of all bosses and required all families to pay tribute to him.

This new role was received negatively, and Maranzano was what?
A: Murdered within six months on the orders of Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

Luciano was a former Masseria underling who had done what?
A: Switched sides to Maranzano and orchestrated the killing of Masseria.

After prohibition ended in 1933, organized crime groups needed what?
A: Other ways to maintain the high profits that they had acquired throughout the 1920s.

The smarter of the organized crime groups expanded into other ventures, such what?
A: Such as unions, construction, sanitation, and drug trafficking.

By mid-century, there were how many official Commission-sanctioned Mafia crime families, each based in a different city (except for the Five Families which were all based in New York)?
A: 26.

In the mid-20th century, the Mafia was reputed to have infiltrated what?
A: Many labor unions in the United States, most notably the Teamsters and International Longshoremen's Association.

This allowed crime families to make inroads into what?
A: Very profitable legitimate businesses such as construction, demolition, waste management, trucking, and in the waterfront and garment industry.

In New York City, most construction projects could not be performed without whose approval?
A: The Five Families.

In the port and loading dock industries, the Mafia bribed union members to tip them off to what?
A: Valuable items being brought in.

Mobsters would then steal these products and do what?
A: Fence the stolen merchandise.

Las Vegas was seen as an "open city" where what could happen?
A: Where any family can work.

Once Nevada legalized gambling, mobsters were quick to do what?
A: Take advantage and the casino industry became very popular in Las Vegas.

Since the 1940s, Mafia families from where, had interests in Las Vegas casinos?
A: New York, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Chicago.

When money came into the counting room, hired men skimmed cash before it was recorded, then delivered it to whom?
A: Their respective bosses.

This money went unrecorded, but the amount is estimated to be how much?
A: In the hundreds of millions of dollars.