Few last names conjure up the same level of notoriety as Gambino.
One of New York’s Five Families, the Gambinos get their name from Carlo Gambino – the ‘boss of bosses’ who inspired iconic mob movie The Godfather and led the Mafia dynasty until he died in 1976.
Now, nearly 50 years after his death, Carlo’s cousin Giovanni Gambino has told the Daily Mail what it’s really like living with the famous surname and how growing up with the mob was a far cry from what you see in Hollywood movies.
‘The feds put a big label and a big stigma on that name,’ he said.
‘Unfortunately people still carry that stigma and have a hard time finding work, because people see the name Gambino and they’re intimidated by it.’
The family name has been in the spotlight ever since Mafia soldier Joseph Valuchi revealed the existence of New York’s Five Families during a 1963 congressional hearing.
From that day on, the world was aware of the Mafia’s inner workings.
It was made up of five organized crime families: Bonanno, Colombo, Genovese, Lucchese and Gambino.
After Carlo’s death, the Gambino family was catapulted further into the public eye thanks to the brazen hit on his successor, Paul Castellano, outside Manhattan steakhouse Sparks in 1985, and John Gotti’s rise to the top – Gotti is said to have set up the hit.
Reveling in the limelight, Gotti courted the press and mingled with stars. With him as boss, the once-secret world was revealed for all to see.
Dubbed Dapper Don (for his taste in designer suits) and Teflon Don (criminal charges just wouldn’t stick), Gotti famously graced the cover of Time Magazine in 1986 in a painting by none other than Andy Warhol.
Though eventually, in 1992, he was convicted of a string of crimes and was sent to prison, where he died of cancer 10 years later. He was 61.
With Gotti’s reign over – and a major government crackdown on organized crime using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act – the Gambino family’s power appeared to wane.
Today, Giovanni sees the name as a mixed blessing.
‘On the streets, it’s great… you get a bit of respect,’ he said. ‘You know, people are like, “Oh, Gambino.”’
But elsewhere, he believes Gambinos don’t always get a fair trial. ‘God forbid if something happens… a judge will turn our name into a bigger problem.’
In addition to being Carlo’s distant cousin, Giovanni is the son of Francesco ‘Ciccio’ Gambino, a former mob boss convicted of trafficking heroin from Sicily to the US.
Born in Palermo, Sicily – the birthplace of the Sicilian Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra – Giovanni moved with his parents and three siblings to New York when he was 11 years old.
‘I went from being a shepherd boy in the mountains of Sicily to the streets of Brooklyn, New York,’ he said.
It’s a move that Giovanni now describes as ‘a disaster.’
‘It was the ’80s, it was a hard time [in New York],’ he said.
Giovanni said his father ‘wanted the best’ for his children, pushing them toward high school and college.
But, as far as Giovanni is concerned, New York wasn’t the right place for that.
‘I saw a few of my friends die in front of me, getting killed,’ he said.
‘I was like, “Dad you think this is better for me?” Like people being killed left and right.’
‘The only thing I saw getting killed in Sicily was animals,’ he added.
Giovanni’s family had been in New York just three years when his father was arrested as part of a string of coordinated raids on Sicilian Mafia members by US and Italian authorities.
In a single day, 75 alleged Mafia members were rounded up and indicted across the US. The sweeping operation was led by then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani, alongside his deputy chief of the Criminal Division James Comey. Their Italian counterparts rounded up another 22 on their soil.
It was 2 a.m. on Dec. 1, 1988, and around 100 revelers had gathered at the infamous Gambino hangout, Cafe Giardino in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to watch an Italian singer perform.
At the end of the show, an FBI agent took to the stage, grabbing the mic and telling the crowd, ‘This is your last dance,’ James Fox, director of the FBI’s New York office, told reporters at the time.
Many initially mistook the interruption as part of the show, before ‘Ciccio’ and eight other alleged members of the family were taken into custody.
The café had been wiretapped for several months, and the FBI had heard it all as Gambino members, including Gotti, held meetings in the back room.
‘Ciccio’ was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. He died of natural causes behind bars in 2012.
Giovanni believes his father was targeted by the FBI in part because of his famous name and his ‘association’ with Mafia members.
‘He was such a great man, my father. Not one person who knew my father could talk bad about my father,’ Giovanni said.
‘My father was a goodhearted, generous, great guy and he got labeled with Mafia labels… They had zero evidence on my father. All they had on my father was him saying hello to a few friends.
‘Unfortunately, the feds go in and they put the stigma on [the name] and that’s it, and then you’re labeled for the rest of your life.’
After his father’s conviction, Giovanni was raised in Brooklyn by his mother – with the help of the mob.
Growing up, his experience of the Gambino family is a far cry from what he says the federal government alleges or what people see in Hollywood movies.
‘The Gambinos that I grew up with are nothing but respectable people,’ he said.
‘They care about people and they give work to people.’
‘And he had beautiful businesses, legal businesses…’ Giovanni claimed.
While Giovanni claims his distant cousin Carlo never spent a day in jail and was never convicted, Carlo had actually served two years in federal prison in the 1930s for running an illegal liquor store. He never served jail time for running what was said to be New York’s biggest organized crime family from the ’50s through to his death in 1976.
The Gambino family dates back to when the Five Families are said to have been created in 1931, at the end of the Castellammarese War, a violent power struggle within the NYC Mafia.
In a post-Gotti world, however, mob activity fell largely quiet.
Yet, some alleged activity has hit headlines in the city over the past few years.
In March 2019, then Gambino boss Frank Cali was shot and killed outside his Staten Island home. He was 53.
Cali was worlds away from Gotti and his pursuit of fame, even being dubbed a ‘ghost’ due to his low profile.
‘Frank Cali was the sweetest guy in the world,’ Giovanni said of the man he grew up around.
‘If America would have a Frank Cali on every corner, it would have been the safest country in the world. Frank always gave work to everybody,’ he said.
‘Franky was such a sweetheart. He always helped people out.’
Cali’s brazen broad daylight shooting was the first hit on a mob boss since Castellano’s notorious 1985 murder.
News of the Cali’s killing initially stoked fears of a mob hit and a return to the violence that had plagued New York decades earlier.
But it was actually the work of QAnon conspiracy theorist Anthony Comello, who lured the Mafia kingpin out of his home by crashing into his parked car.
After a string of bizarre claims and courtroom appearances – including flashing a Q sign – Comello was ruled mentally unfit to stand trial. After treatment in a psychiatric unit, he was ruled fit for trial and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Court records show he was sentenced this January, but his sentence and location were kept secret.
Four years after Cali’s murder, New York prosecutors unveiled a sprawling RICO indictment against 16 Gambino family members and associates.
The men were accused of trying to take over the New York garbage hauling and demolition industries, extorting victims, torching homes and attacking people with hammers if they got in their way.
In 2024, another RICO case was unfurled, accusing 17 Gambino soldiers and associates of running an illegal gambling and loan shark network on Staten Island.
To this day, it’s the Gambino name that remains synonymous with organized crime, Giovanni said – even though most people accused of being part of the crime family don’t actually bear the last name.
‘There’s not one person with the last name Gambino [who has been charged recently] but they still call it the Gambino crime family. It’s a harassment of the last name,’ Giovanni claimed.
‘So now you have 7,000 Gambinos, hardworking Gambinos and they’ve labeled our last name a crime family,’ he continued.
Giovanni thinks it’s the same story for those bearing the names of the other four Families.
‘There’s about 10,000 of the Genovese family in America. There’s 20,000 Lucchese. But they’re trying to narrow down to Five Families… to brainwash people,’ he said.
Giovanni loathes the connotation it has for his blood relatives.
‘People have died in prison because of those last names… instead of doing five years time they’ve done life in jail… It adds 20, 30 years more to their sentence,’ he claimed.
‘It’s not really justice for all… That last name, just the last name, justifies someone’s character or personality.’
‘Or [it’s because] they’re Italian because the government is a little racist against Italians,’ he added.
If a Gambino is able to leave prison, he said, this stigma continues.
Giovanni claimed that ‘child molesters’ get more of a second chance than people with apparent Mafia connections.
‘Imagine walking out of prison with a plan – get a job, rebuild your life, stay clean. But the moment you apply for work, background checks flag your past,’ he explained. ‘If “Mafia” or “organized crime” is tied to your name, it’s game over.’
Giovanni believes ‘the system makes it feel like there’s no other path’ for some people.
‘If you can’t get a job, can’t pay rent, can’t feed your family, what’s left?
‘The Feds know this. By leaning on employers or parolees, they create desperation. One guy told me he felt hunted – agents checked on him so often, he lost three jobs in a year. Eventually, he went back to old contacts just to survive.
‘It’s not an excuse for crime, but when every door’s locked, some guys pry open the only one they know.’
Giovanni believes President Donald Trump should step in and pardon some alleged mobsters including his own father.
‘I’ve asked him to pardon my father – to look into the appeal papers and the court papers,’ he said, adding there are ‘many’ more people he thinks should be pardoned.
In terms of his own behavior, Giovanni has always ‘pretty much tried to stay away from trouble.’
He became an author and scriptwriter, now with 15 books to his name – many of them about the Mafia. He is also about to launch a new podcast called The Gambino Podcast.
Through his lifelong experience as a Gambino, he believes the word Mafia has been ‘weaponized’ by politicians.
He insists the Mafia and crime families do not exist in the way that people think – but have just become labels used to mislead the public and justify the government’s actions.
‘The Mafia stigma is a shadow that follows you everywhere. It’s not just a label, it’s a life sentence of suspicion… society assumes you’re a danger, no matter what you’ve done to change,’ he said.
‘Employers won’t touch you, communities shun you, and even small mistakes get magnified. It’s like wearing a scarlet letter.’