 Welcome in at the original gangsters podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein. We're gonna do a little more of a deep dive into what's going on with the skinny Joey Barney Balomo controversy related to the Philadelphia Mafia Don Joey Merlino's podcast and New York, some of the bosses in the New York families getting up in arms about this over the last couple months seems to have been a slow burn, a slow boil that's now kind of like a five alarm fire all of a sudden. And I want to like shed some context and take us back to kind of the root of the relationship between skinny Joey and Barney Balomo, the boss of Santa V's crime family, the boss of bosses. Yeah, I said it. Obviously, I'm not being literal. I see a lot of people online. Oh, doesn't you know, Scott, no, there's no more boss of bosses and there's no more commission. Yeah, I know. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just referring to the fact that Barney Balomo is the most powerful mafia Don in America right now and definitely in New York City. His weight holds more weight than any of the other bosses in New York City as well as any other bosses in the other regional mafia families. So I've reported that Barney feels kind of personally slighted by Joey because he co-signed Joey's assent to being a Don about 25 years ago, but let's kind of get even more granular. And this all this question about whether or not Joey Merlino was going to be recognized, whether the Merlino era was ever going to truly be greenlit, co-signed by New York City. All goes back to April 10, 1999, and the murder of Gino Marconi, who was the son of a pretty, you know, relatively influential Philly mob soldier from back in the day, Guarino Marconi, they called him Mark, him and his brother, Fonzie Marconi, Alfons Marconi were very close friends, associates, criminal co-conspirators with the one and only little Nicky Scarfo, maniacal, bloodthirsty Philadelphia mafia Don in the 1980s. And you can trace most of Joey Merlino's headaches as boss of the Philadelphia mafia to his rivalry with a man that had been his baptismal godfather and had been very close to him for the first part of his life and very close to his dad, Nicky Scarfo. And Scarfo's tried and before Scarfo died, he tried numerous times to trip up Joey and his rise up the criminal food chain in the East Coast. So it's the spring of 1999. Ralph Natali has been pretty much pushed out of the boss's seat in Philadelphia. Marlino takes it for himself. He'd already been basically a street boss, under boss, front boss for the previous couple of years, but now it's kind of officially his, we all know that him and Ralph rose to power in an unconventional manner that kind of made themselves or Joey was made, but he made Ralph, Ralph made himself boss. Kind of strange, but Ralph had sanctioning from New York City. So when Joey's, you know, on the ascent, taking over as official boss at that point, Junior Marconi is an independent racketeer in South Philly. He's doing a lot of different things, bookmaking, loan sharking, drugs. He's running like a, you know, makeshift auto yard, making a lot of money. And the Marlinos want a piece of it, or he had given the Marlinos a piece of it. I think when Ralph was there and then when Joey took over his father, a Nicky Scarfo disciple at that point, Nicky Scarfo had been locked up for 12 years. But his father tells Gino, you don't have to recognize Joey. We don't recognize him. New York doesn't recognize him. And basically go, you know, Joey go fuckers, tell Joey to go fuck himself and tell Joey's guys to go fuck themselves. This leads to, if you believe the FBI, the Marlino crew putting a contract on Gino Marconi's head. He's killed on April 10th, walking out of his house in South Philly. His girlfriend, Patty Miley, was shot and wounded in the attack. And this sets off a string of meetings and sit-downs both in prison and on the street between the Philly guys, New York City. Barney is in prison at this point. And it's like a sixth to eight month ordeal about whether or not New York is going to recognize and sanction Joey Marlino's assent to boss. Now we all know that Joey would get locked up a couple months later in the summer of 99, be convicted at the 2001 trial in Philly and go do 12 years in jail. And his guys that were left on the street, mainly Uncle Joe Legambi had to take over and Legambi just one of the most underrated mafia dons of all time, did such a miraculous job putting that thing back together. But there were some real questions there, you know, throughout the rest of 1999 and into 2000 about what was going to happen. We know that there was a plot being hatched by the New Jersey faction of the Philadelphia mob, Pete the Crumb, with the Luccheses and the Gambinos. Again, Luccheses, that's a Nicky Scarfall play because of his relationship to that organization. And there was a plan to kill Joe Legambi, Georgie Boy Borghese, Handsome Stevie, Mazone, that got blown up. The plot got blown up because Pete the Crumb got locked up, Georgie and Stevie got locked up, Pete the Crumb flips. But Barney Belomo, who at the time was known as the, if he wasn't the boss, he was the boss in waiting. He was the Chins. Prodigy, the chin had gone to jail in 97, was in failing health. And Barney was, he was the guy, even though he was locked up, even though he'd be locked up for another decade. He was the guy. And I'm told that through these sit downs, Barney eventually sent out word to New York City that they were recognizing Joey Merlino. But it all goes back to him having to go to bat for Joey because Nicky Scarfall and his boys, the Marconi brothers, were telling their son, their nephew that they didn't need to recognize Joey. And that's when it came to Barney having to step in, validate that Merlino administration, which has led to him being offended that Merlino and this podcast is causing so many issues. We have more news, fresh news, fresh insight to report this week that we'll be coming out with related to that controversy and the fact that according to our sources, Barney and the Gambino's have put out like what I'm being told is a leverage in Bargo, stopping, temporarily stopping business with Philly to try to leverage Joey out of the podcasting game. And I'm told possibly out of the fold all together and just depose him as punishment for breaking these rules that they feel are so sacred. Joey would tell you he's no longer the boss, there's nothing to depose him from, and he's just trying to go legit. So again, I'm just reporting what we're hearing on both sides of this, and we will always give you the most pressing, breaking and exclusive news here at the OG pod. Scott Bernstein, OG pod out.