The Mafia

This is the real story of the mafia - a story that has never been fully told on television before.From the late 1950s onwards the mafia exploited the new pportunities for international travel and banking to turn itself into the biggest and most profitable criminal gang in history. Starting from New York - with its huge American-Italian community, the power base of the American mob - the tentacles of the Sicilian mafia spread across the US.Heroin poured in from Sicily, hidden inside Italian foodstuffs and distributed via pizzerias across the nation. Money flowed the other way. The operation was so big that one gang in Philadelphia alone was laundering $5 million per day.It made the mafia in Sicily wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. It came with a heavy price, though. With money, war followed. Rival mafia clans fought for control of the heroin trade. It left thousands dead on both sides of the Atlantic.This is the story of the mafia from the inside - from both sides of the criminal divide.