Paul Vario, The Violent Mobster Who Controlled East New York

Wikimedia CommonsPaul Vario’s true story was connected to many real-life criminal figures portrayed in Goodfellas.

At the head of the operation responsible for many of the crimes committed by Thomas DeSimone, Henry Hill, and James Burke was Paul Vario, renamed “Paul Cicero” and played by Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas.

Vario was born in New York City in 1914 and began getting himself into legal trouble from an early age. By the time he was an adult, Vario was an experienced criminal, and at 6’3″, an imposing figure. His involvement in racketeering and loan-sharking led him into the Lucchese crime family. He later became a made man and eventually a crew leader (“capo”).

He oversaw his operation meticulously, abiding by his own important rule: “Never put your name on anything!” Vario never wanted anything to come back to him. In fact, he never even owned his own telephone, and he often refused to take meetings with multiple people at once.

With this crew and other associates, Vario gained control of most organized crime in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, located near what is now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport, a major source of income for Vario’s crew.

Of course, like any good gangster, he owned a number of legitimate businesses too — which he registered to his brothers.

Warner Bros. EntertainmentPaul Sorvino as Paulie Cicero, the Goodfellas character inspired by Paul Vario.

Meanwhile, Vario would regularly rob the airport, extort its employees, and use his union connections to block federal investigators. And when Jimmy Burke came to Vario with the plans for the Lufthansa heist at the airport, it was ultimately Vario who had to approve it.

Not merely a boss who approved criminal activities without getting his own hands dirty, Vario himself was known to be a violent man — and his crew was known to be one of the most brutal in the city. When a waiter accidentally spilled wine on his wife at a restaurant, for example, Vario sent men with baseball bats to beat the restaurant’s staff later that night.

In the end, Vario was arrested based on Hill’s testimony that Vario had defrauded the government by creating a fictitious job that would ensure Hill’s release from prison.

Paul Vario eventually died in prison of a heart attack in 1988.

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