Joe Profaci was an Italian-American mafia boss best known as the original founder of the notorious Colombo crime family. He was born and raised in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, and it is believed that he worked with Sicilian mafia bosses from a young age, even spending a year in a Sicilian prison. He arrived in the United States in 1921, initially landing in New York City. He eventually moved to Chicago, where he started a grocery business, but it proved unprofitable. In the mid-1920s, he returned to New York City and entered the olive oil business. Around this time, he connected with prominent Italian gangsters, including Vincent Mangano. By the late 1920s, he had formed his own gang, and by the early 1930s, he was running an organized crime syndicate based in Brooklyn, handling businesses in prostitution, loan-sharking, and narcotics. Following the Castellammarese War, he was appointed head of one of the Five Families in New York, which later became known as the Profaci crime family. He led the family for the next 30 years until his death from liver cancer in 1962.
