Vincent Palermo

Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo (born June 4, 1944) is an Italian American former mobster who was de facto boss of the New Jersey DeCavalcante crime family before becoming a government witness in 1999.

Fictional mob boss Tony Soprano, the protagonist of the HBO series The Sopranos, is said to be based upon Palermo.

He also owned a strip-club called Wiggles, which was the inspiration behind the show's Bada Bing! strip-club.

Vincent Palermo was raised in a traditional Italian American family in Brooklyn, New York.

He was an in-law by marriage to Nicholas Delmore, the former head of the New Jersey crime family, whose nephew was Simone DeCavalcante, also a New Jersey mob boss whose daughter he married.

He has five sisters, including Claire and Nancy, and two brothers.

His father was an Italian immigrant who moved to New York when he was a teenager.

Palermo came from a close-knit family and was said to have lived a harmonious lifestyle.

He was an altar boy during adolescence.

When Palermo was sixteen, his father died, which forced him to leave school and work two jobs to help support his family, as his mother was a bedridden asthmatic.

In his earlier years, Palermo worked at a wholesale fish business in the Fulton Fish Market, where he earned the nickname "Vinny Ocean".

Palermo was very protective of children; he allegedly once stopped a man from beating his son, and rescued a toddler relative who had accidentally fallen into a pool.

Palermo was also reputedly a dedicated family man.

He attended Sacred Heart Church in Island Park, New York, drove his daughters to Brownie meetings, and reportedly watched Annie with one of his daughters regularly.

Palermo also took in a troubled teenager named Richard, becoming his godfather.

Palermo would allow his godson to stay at his home every weekend for a year, enabling the boy to study the Catholic sacraments in preparation for eventual baptism, Communion and Confirmation.

Palermo was divorced once and remarried.

In the early 1960s, Palermo met and married the niece of crime boss Sam DeCavalcante of the DeCavalcante crime family.

DeCavalcante took a liking to his nephew-in-law and began inviting him to visit his social club in Kenilworth, New Jersey.

He worked at the fish markets in the early morning hours and hung out with mobsters on Sunday afternoons.

Palermo cultivated relationships with other crime families—a lucrative loansharking operation with one Gambino family caporegime and bookmaking with another.

He was also a close associate of the Genovese family.

Palermo was known to say very little, speaking to only a very few close associates, and stayed away from mob-run social clubs.

Until his racketeering indictment, he had only been arrested for the misdemeanor of stealing shrimp at the Fulton Fish Market.

In the 1980s, he became indebted to a hospital, local doctors, and the federal government.

The tax liens against his property were in his second wife's name, an Italian-American woman named Angela, totaling $68,000.

At the time, he was paying a large mortgage on a waterfront mansion with a 100-foot pier located in Island Park, New York.

He had two Social Security numbers and paid alimony to his first wife.

He also supports his second family, two daughters, Danielle and Tara, and a son Vincent Palermo Jr., with Michael (from his first marriage) and Renee.

His son Michael is a graduate of Fordham University and a licensed New York stockbroker; he was an investment banker with Goldman Sachs up until his father's indictment, when Vincent Palermo Jr went into hiding.

On September 11, 1989, Palermo, Anthony Capo, and James "Jimmy" Gallo murdered Staten Island resident Fred Weiss, on orders from DeCavalcante boss Giovanni "John the Eagle" Riggi through capo Anthony Rotondo.

Weiss was a former newspaper reporter for the Staten Island Advance and a real-estate developer who had become associated with mobsters from both the DeCavalcante and Gambino families.

Weiss and two mob-partners had purchased a vacant property in Staten Island and started illegally dumping large amounts of dangerous medical waste there.

Local authorities uncovered the scheme and started investigating Weiss, and the two mob-families became nervous.

Gambino boss John Gotti worried that Weiss might become a government witness in exchange for leniency and requested that the DeCavalcante family murder Weiss to protect them.

Palermo, Capo, and Gallo drove to the New York condominium of Weiss's girlfriend.

As Weiss left the building and climbed into his car, Palermo and Gallo shot him in the face.

Palermo was appointed capo after the Weiss murder and given his own crew of soldiers.

Riggi was sent to prison in 1989, and appointed John "Johnny Boy" D'Amato as his acting boss.

In January 1992, Anthony Capo participated in the murder of acting boss D'Amato.