Chicago bosses meet at the First Ward Social Club
The Chicago Syndicate was an organized crime syndicate founded in the early 1900s by "Big Louie" Costillo in Chicago, meant to be a collaboration between all of the gangs of the city. It was based at the First Ward Social Club on the Chicago South Side, which was a front of Costillo, where meetings were held by the bosses. The syndicate dissolved in 1932 when the Costillo Gang went defunct, and the bosses instead pledged allegiance to Al Capone.
History[]
The syndicate was the idea of Louis Costillo, an old-fashioned mob boss from Sicily. Costillo wanted to make the gangs in Chicago into one, organized, family, the first to concieve the idea of organized crime the way that we know it. The Chicago Syndicate was a good idea at first, which united the Kosher Nostra, Irish Mafia, and Italian Mafia into one gang, but the bosses fought each other during Prohibition over the bootlegging business. When Costillo was murdered in the purge of the old dons, Johnny Lovo took over and had a meeting with all of the Chicago bosses, where he announced his plans to get organized and make sure that they didn't cut each other's throats, planning out 3,000 saloons on the South Side with half of a million customers. His meeting was ignored by Publio Berdini, Hyman Ziegler, and Shannon Meehan, mob bosses who did not believe in his plans. The Syndicate got rid of the holdouts and united the southern beer ring, causing the south of Chicago to be unified.
Later in 1932, ambitious Southside Capo Antonio Camonte waged war against the O'Hara Gang of the North Side and attempted to take over his beer rackets, but failed to do so, as O'Hara continued fighting back, killing many of the Syndicate's men. Camonte succeeded in assassinating Charley O'Hara and Joe Gaffney, but Johnny Lovo wanted to get rid of him to stop the chaos, and when he failed, Camonte had Lovo killed by Guino Rinaldo, his right-hand man. The Syndicate was not under his rule for long, as he was killed in a shootout with the Chicago police.
Al Capone took over the syndicate by 1933, and his Al Capone Mob ruled the city as the primary family until the rise of the Viti crime family, and the city also rose with gangs, who ruined other crime families as well. The syndicate collapsed as Lucky Luciano created the National Crime Syndicate, and later, The Commission took over.