Voting Station

Joe Profaci

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Outlaw

The Resume

    (October 2, 1897-June 6, 1962)
    Born in Villabate, Sicily, Italy
    Birth name was Giuseppe Profaci
    Organized crime boss in Brooklyn
    Named head of one of the Five Families controlling organized crime in New York City (1931)

Why he might be annoying:

    He spent a year in prison in Sicily for theft (1920-21).
    He controlled prostitution, numbers running, protection rackets, bootlegging, and narcotics trafficking in Brooklyn.
    He smuggled heroin into the US by concealing it in hollowed-out wax oranges.
    He demanded that family members pay a $25 tithe to him each month. The money, amounting to some $50,000 per month, was supposedly being used to support the families of jailed mobsters, but most of it went into Profaci’s pocket.
    His refusal to distribute the family’s wealth more equitably resulted in an intra-family war led by Joey Gallo and his brothers, in which nine people were murdered and three disappeared.
    At the time of his death, the IRS was suing him for $1.5 million in unpaid taxes.

Why he might not be annoying:

    Despite multiple arrests, he avoided prison in the US.
    He ran a successful business importing olive oil.
    He gave generously to Catholic charities, resulting in a group of prominent New York Catholics, including several priests, to petition the Vatican to confer a knighthood on him. (The Vatican declined after the New York District Attorney’s office informed them of Profaci’s seamier side.)
    After a thief stole jeweled relics from the Regina Pacis shrine in Brooklyn, he arranged for the return of the stolen goods – and the death of the thief (who was allegedly strangled with a rosary).
    He was one of the real-life Mafiosi that Don Vito Corleone in ‘The Godfather’ was based on.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 10 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 103 Votes: 59.22% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 125 Votes: 64.80% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 9 Votes: 33.33% Annoying