Giovanni "John" Gambino was born on August 22, 1940, in Palermo, Sicily. He was the first in his immediate family to arrive in the United States, entering the country illegally in 1958.
He was arrested as an illegal alien and deported a short time later. He returned to the U.S. and married his cousin, who was an American citizen and coincidentally also a Gambino. John himself became a U.S. citizen in 1964.
John's father was Tommaso Gambino, who owned a butcher shop in Italy and was a first cousin to Don Carlo Gambino. When Tommaso came to the U.S. in 1964, he settled in Brooklyn with his wife, who was a Spatola.
Tommaso was also a close friend and associate of Tommaso Buscetta, a member of the Puerto Nuevo family of the Sicilian Mafia. Buscetta later made headlines when he turned against his family in the highly publicized Pizza Connection and Maxi trials of the 1980s.
John had two brothers, Giuseppe, known as Joe, and Rosario, known as Sal. He also had a sister, Giovanna "Joanne," who would eventually marry Erasmo Gambino, who became a player in John's drug business.
When John first arrived in the U.S., he resided in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In 1972, his brothers, father, and sister moved to Delran, New Jersey, where the brothers set up a base as the Cherry Hill Gambinos. John stayed behind in Brooklyn.
He later lived at Bay Ridge and also owned a home in Milford, Pennsylvania, near John Gotti's estate. He also had properties in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Florida.
According to law enforcement, John was a man of honor in the Sicilian Mafia, affiliated with the Inzerillo, Gambino, Spatola, and Di Maggio clan, also known as the Passo di Rigano family. He was inducted into the Gambino family in 1976 under Paul Castellano.
In 1986, he was promoted to capo by John Gotti and was put in charge of the family's Sicilian faction, which had previously been headed by Antonino "Nino" Inzerillo. However, according to LCN bios, former Gambino underboss turned informant Sammy Gravano testified that after Inzerillo's murder in 1981, Castellano had transferred John to James "Jimmy Brown" Failla's crew. John was later transferred to Tommy Bilotti's crew and stayed there until Bilotti and Castellano were murdered in 1985.
In 1983, New Jersey police had identified Failla as a capo in the North Jersey crew. They had also identified both John and Nino Inzerillo as capos of the South Jersey crew.
John Gambino was considered a loyalist of Castellano. It was believed that after Castellano was murdered, he was going to seek revenge against Gotti, and that Gotti was going to kill John as a preventative measure. But Gambino had a stroke, which calmed things down since he was out of action. When he was well enough to return to business, John Gotti reportedly promoted him to capo.
He eventually became boss of 18th Avenue in Brooklyn until he was jailed in 1994, after which his nephew Frank "Kelly" took over operations. No matter what crew John was in, he was still the man pulling the strings in the big business of drug trafficking.
Although narcotics trafficking was John's main business, he also owned many legitimate businesses, including construction firms and others in the U.S. and abroad. In 1966, he and Joe opened a meat market in Brooklyn called G & J Meat Market, where their father Tommaso also worked. The market was later renamed San Juan Meat Market. Tommaso also operated the Italian Village restaurant in Queens around the same time.
In 1966, John opened Cafe Valentino on 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst. It was the same building that later housed Cafe Giardino, which he later jointly owned with Joe. The original name of Cafe Giardino was Cafe Milano. Either way, Cafe Giardino became John's main base of operations and would later be the site of his law enforcement headaches in the late 1980s.
At one point, the FBI called Cafe Giardino the Pentagon of the U.S. Sicilian drug trade. It was believed that John and his extended family in Sicily were the single most potent family in Cosa Nostra. In fact, Claire Sterling in her book "Octopus" said that one Sicilian prosecutor estimated the Gambino, Inzerillo, and Spatola holdings in Palermo were worth about one billion dollars.
It seems that money generated in the U.S. was sent back to Sicily to be invested in legitimate businesses such as the construction industry and real estate. In 1971, Gambino bought a cattle breeding station in the state of Barinas, Venezuela. He was listed on the board of directors for many corporations in Venezuela through his association with the Contreras brothers.
In 1972, John formed Father and Sons Pizza Corporation in Pennsylvania and opened three shops in Philadelphia with both his brothers and his father. Joe and Rosario would later open additional pizza joints and restaurants throughout the South New Jersey and Philadelphia areas.
According to an El Espresso article published in 1984, John himself actually owned an estimated 240 pizzerias throughout the United States that brought in nearly 200 million dollars a year in legitimate profits. He had many other businesses in New Jersey, including the A.W. Aspen Construction Company, Commonwealth Contractors and Developers, and Genova Pizzeria, all of which he owned in partnership with his two brothers, his brother-in-law Erasmo, Antonio Inzerillo, Francesco Betolamente, and Salvatore Menino. All of these men were from John's hometown of Palermo.
Towards the middle of 1975, he formed GNG Concrete in Brooklyn with Anthony Genovese. When legal problems started mounting in the 1980s, the company moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey. Since GNG shared their profits with the Genovese family, it made it easier to move into the Genovese-controlled Hudson River waterfront.
But the move didn't help much. U.S. District Attorney Rudy Giuliani had already started investigating the company after it was revealed to be mob controlled during the Commission trial of 1986. When it moved across the river, New Jersey State Police started their own investigations. Genovese was being probed by New Jersey police around 1988, soon after the company had completed a 34-story condo complex at Newport in Jersey City.
In an interesting side note, mob rat Frank "Frankie Fat" Fabiano testified during Peter Gotti's 2004 conspiracy trial that GNG Concrete had made 22 million dollars helping build the Metropolitan Detention Center in the early 1990s. GNG was dissolved in September 1995, according to the New York Department of State, not long after John was sent to jail.
John was also linked by DEA officials to GNG Tile Company, which was also located on 18th Avenue in Brooklyn. It was only a few doors down from the Cafe Valentino and close to his concrete business. GNG Tile Company closed in 1980 after a huge amount of heroin seized in Italy was found packaged and ready to ship to that location.
Law enforcement considered the building a major center for receiving heroin shipments from Italy. This was part of the Sicilian Connection case of that time, not to be confused with the more infamous Pizza Connection case of the late 80s. John was suspected but never implicated in either case.
There was also John's involvement in the Michelle Sindona affair of 1979, the year before things really started to unravel, and his ties to his father's good friend Tommaso Buscetta in pre-informant days, who would surprisingly come into play when the cards fell for John in the 90s.
There's an old idiom that says blood is thicker than water. For Italians, it's a saying that's taken very seriously. But when you're a made man in the Mafia, you have a new blood family that might not include those that you share a bloodline with. However, for John, he had the best of both worlds.
There was no one closer to him than his two brothers, Rosario and Joe, who made their way to Cherry Hill to set up base. In addition, there was a host of other players who were very important to his business at hand.
Lorenzo Menino was perhaps John's closest friend, confidant, and associate outside his brothers. Lorenzo was born in Torretta, Italy, and came to the U.S. as a child. Law enforcement officials described him as John's nephew and bodyguard and believed he started working for John when he was 17 years old and was part of his Brooklyn crew.
There is no doubt that Menino was a protege of John Gambino. Menino was arrested in the raid on Cafe Giardino in December 1988 along with many others, including Joe Gambino. He was charged with narcotics trafficking, gambling, and loan sharking on behalf of John and Joe since at least the mid-1980s.
Police believed he was a highly respected associate of the Gambino family who had been proposed for formal membership shortly before his arrest. In 1993, Menino was fingered by turncoat Sammy Gravano as a participant in the Francesco Oliveri murder. Prosecutors sensationalized the raid on his home when they said they found an assassin's kit containing a ski mask, guns, and hollow-tipped bullets in his bedroom.
In 1994, Menino pled guilty to racketeering, conspiracy to murder, and drug trafficking and received a 15-year sentence after a plea bargain.
Dominico and Emmanuel Adamita were brothers and childhood friends of the Gambinos in Palermo. Emmanuel was also related to John through marriage. He lived close to Rosario and Joe in Delran, New Jersey, within walking distance of their homes.
New Jersey police believed Emmanuel was a soldier in John's crew. He was also believed to have been John's main heroin courier and to have been a chauffeur for Failla. Gambino-Emmanuel operated the Piancone Pizza Parlor in New Jersey, and he and his brother also owned Pen Pizza Palace and Pensacon.
He was arrested several times from 1979 through 1988 in both Italy and the U.S. for various drug smuggling schemes that involved both Joe and Rosario. He was also a non-indicted co-conspirator in the Pizza Connection case.
Dominico Adamita came to the U.S. in 1960 and worked as a cab driver. In addition to owning various pizza parlors with his brother, he also owned Casanova's Restaurante in Atlantic City, which police believed was a front for Joe and Rosario and, in effect, John.
John was closely affiliated with the brothers Pasquale, Palo, and Gaspari Contrera. They were a significant part of his drug trafficking network. He owned land in Venezuela where the Contreras were located, as well as his cattle breeding firm.
Many other high-ranking mafiosi involved in heroin trafficking were part of these companies as well, including Salvatore Greco, the alleged former head of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra; Antonio Napoli, a very close friend of John's; Nick Rizzuto of Montreal's Cotroni-Rizzuto family; as well as Joe Bonanno of the Bonanno family, among many others.
He was also on the board of directors of many of the Contreras' businesses, which included almost everything from construction to meat packing to travel agencies and shirt factories. The Contrera brothers were eventually banished from Venezuela and convicted in Italy on drug trafficking charges.
Frank Cali, John's nephew through marriage, was married to an Inzerillo. LCN bios reported that Kelly took over John's 18th Avenue crew when John went to jail in 1994. Later, Cali was believed to have been the major liaison in the Sicily-to-New York drug trade. He was brutally murdered in front of his home in 2019.
Dominic Cefalu, who was born in Sicily, is believed by authorities to have taken the reins of the Gambino family in 2011. He allegedly reported to John D'Amico during Gotti's reign, was sponsored into the family by Pasquale Conte, and was a mentor to Frank Kelly. Federal law enforcement believed John Gambino was a key advisor to Cefalu.
Tommaso Inzerillo was a close associate and key player in the drug trade. Tommaso was a cousin to Salvatore Inzerillo and a brother-in-law to John Gambino.
Rosario Spatola and his brothers Vincenzo and Antonio were cousins and close associates of John Gambino and his brothers in the drug trade, as well as the Michelle Sindona affair. Spatola's father was the brother of John Gambino's mother.
Salvatore "Totuccio" Inzerillo was the head of the Passo di Rigano family in Palermo and was a close associate and key player in John's drug trafficking network. He had been chosen to lead the Inzerillo clan by his uncle Rosario Di Maggio, who had retired. Inzerillo had been married to a Spatola, and his cousin was Joe Gambino's wife. Inzerillo was shot in the face and killed in May 1981 during the Second Mafia War with Totò Riina, which by the way had a lot to do with drugs.
Salvatore "Toto" or "the Baker" Catalano was a capo in the Bonanno family who was a good friend and associate with whom John would trade product. Catalano owned Catalano's Bakery and Cafe Vitale. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years during the Pizza Connection case.
Paolo Luduca was a close associate of John's and a major player involved in the U.S.-Sicilian heroin trade. He died in 2019.
Frank Rappa was a close associate who reportedly worked in Jimmy Failla's North Jersey crew.
Enzo and Antonino Napoli: Enzo was a high-ranking representative of the Sicilian Mafia who worked with Gambino and was said by authorities to be one of the biggest movers of junk to the United States. He reportedly checked in daily with John in 1976 and 1977 during the FBI's Operation Earn.
He was also seen dining with John at the Ritz or the 21, where authorities would then tail him to John's home in Bensonhurst. They were seen together dozens of times at the Milly Lucci, Enzo's own cafe on 18th Avenue, and another terminal for massive heroin deliveries. Even in December 1988, Enzo was regularly checking in with John and Joe Gambino at the Cafe Giardino.
Antonino Napoli was part of John's innermost circle since at least the 1960s. They went to Caracas around the same time in the early 1970s, and both became business partners with the Contrera family. Napoli moved to Venezuela to escape the French Connection investigation. He also helped Tommaso Buscetta establish himself in New York when he arrived, and they became partners in several pizzerias.
Michelle Sindona was the infamous banker who handled the Gambinos' cash. And there were many, many more involved with John in the drug trafficking business.
The Gambino family faction known as the Cherry Hill Gambinos didn't start out in Cherry Hill. After arriving in the U.S. in the early 60s, John and his immediate family members settled in Brooklyn. But in 1972, John's parents, sister, and both his brothers packed up their bags and moved to Delran, New Jersey.
John had purchased homes for them there for one hundred thousand dollars each. He paid in cash. He also stayed behind in Brooklyn and ran a separate crew from there.
A suburb of Philadelphia, Delran is an idyllic little town full of parks and restaurants, tree-lined streets, and green open spaces. It's the perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Cherry Hill is a short eight-minute drive away, and Brooklyn is only a one-and-a-half-hour drive away. It's also only an hour away from Atlantic City.
At the time, Atlantic City, which had seen better days, was considering legalizing casino gambling in an effort to revitalize the city. It was a big deal that generated excitement but also a lot of dread for its residents. Officials worried that it had the potential of becoming an open city for organized crime, an arrangement between families to divvy up the action.
Whether that was the reason why John sent his family there in an attempt to position themselves if the referendum passed is anyone's guess. He might have just wanted to offer a delicious pizza pie to the residents of South Jersey, Philadelphia, and the surrounding areas.
However, according to a 1978 Courier Post article, an unidentified SCI source, New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, told the newspaper that he believed the Gambinos didn't come to South Jersey because of Atlantic City but because of pizza parlors and business opportunities. The source added that pizza parlors were a good way to launder cash and, as the world discovered during the 1980s Pizza Connection case, a great way to facilitate narcotic smuggling.
As a side note, that same source told the Courier Post that he believed the Sicilian faction of the Gambino family was bringing in illegal aliens from Sicily in an effort to build a Sicilian army in case there was a family war. The Gambinos were involved in legal alien smuggling, but that theory was a bit off base.