 Pretty heavy stuff that I'm hearing out of the West side, as well as out of the Gambino's camp, within the Sicilian camp of the Gambino's, and how it relates to Joey Merlino in Philadelphia and the controversy around his online platform started on YouTube. Now it's on Patreon. It's a podcast called The Skinny, Joey, according to the federal government. He's still the boss of the Philadelphia mob, even though he lives down in Florida. And about six, seven months ago, he became a kind of a social media influencer, a personality more than a crime lord. And this has ruffled a lot of feathers. And we've heard a lot about how this has upset people both in Philadelphia and New York City, but I want to kind of get granular here. And I know that around Christmas, there were a number of very top level sit-downs with some really, really major shot callers in the five families, including Barney. And when Barney is calling for sit-downs, calling to talk to other families or meet with other families, you know it's serious. Barney feels personally offended by what's going on with Joey right now, I'm told. Barney feels like he made Joey. And in a lot of ways, if you believe this narrative that came out from court findings and informants, it's true. Joey had difficulty getting recognized as a boss in New York because of the way him and Ralph Natale took power in the 90s. When Ralph Natale went away to prison and was kind of pushed out of the way in the Philadelphia hierarchy, Joey ascended, he'd already kind of been the boss, but now he became the official boss in the late 90s, and he had some guys in prison, meaning little Nikki Scarpo, the former Philadelphia boss, some other guys in New York that didn't want to recognize Joey and Barney. I think in around 99 or 2000, made an edict and told everybody, we're recognizing Joey. Joey's being recognized in New York in the five families as the boss of Philadelphia. Barney feels responsible for that and feels like this is a slap in the face to him. And I just heard him, Lorenzo, Menino in the Gambino's are both incredibly upset over this. And I'm being told that as of about around Christmas, there was an order sent out from the Gambino's and the Genovese to at least temporarily cease sit-downs, meetings, business relationships with the guys in Philly. I don't know how that's been applied. I don't know if that's happening, but that's what I was told. An order from multiple sources, from multiple camps, both the Gambino and the Genovese, people feeding me stuff, that this was something that was brought down from on high, that the people in New York want to force Joey off the internet. And some of them are talking about wanting to pull his stripes all together and force him out as boss or whatever leadership role he has in Philadelphia right now because of the online controversy. So the last thing I'll say about that is I was told that the biggest worry from these guys is that this is going to kind of open up a floodgate in the way that maybe the analogy would be the way that the Sammy the Bulls Cooperation Deal or Crazy Philly and Eddie's Cooperation Deal opened up a floodgate for cooperators. And there was kind of this before and after phenomenon. After those cooperation deals, people were running to the government to try to get those kind of deals after before that. There were less than a handful of guys that had ever cooperated at that level. And I think the belief from Barney and Lorenzo is that this could be a tipping point. And if Joey's allowed to go on, whether he's boss or not, if he's allowed to go on social media and become an influencer and become a telling war stories and whatnot, that this could embolden other people, not the type, not the mob two types that are have been around for a while. You know, a lot of cooperators that are jumping online. Barney and Lorenzo are talking about like not cooperators, guys like Joey that just want to get their face into the spotlight and give their opinions and show their lifestyle. I personally, I hope that Joey, you know, gets right on this and is able to do everything that he's striving to do, which is get legit and be able to show a legitimate tax return to the government and show that he's got legitimate money coming in, I wish the best for him. But this is what's going on in New York right now. And I just needed to tell you. So for OG pod, I'm Scott Bernstein out.