Mike Coppola (mobster)
American mobster (1900–1966)
Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola (July 2, 1900 – October 1, 1966) was a New York City mobster who became a caporegime of the 116th Street Crew of the Luciano family, which later came to be known as the Genovese family. Coppola headed many Genovese family criminal operations from the late 1930s until the early 1960s. He should not be confused with Michael "Mikey Cigars" Coppola (born 1946), a later member of the Genovese crime family.
Biography
Coppola's parents were Giuseppe and Angelina.
In 1927, Coppola and Joseph Rao were arrested on suspicion of murdering a bootlegging rival named Salvatore Barbera. Coppola was arrested in 1941 for burglary, then later assault, murder and drug dealing. Coppola entered the ranks of the New York mafiosi with a reputation as a sadistic and violent gunman during Prohibition. Following the end of the Castellammarese War gang war in New York, Coppola became a high-ranking member of Charles "Lucky" Luciano's family. In 1936, following the conviction of Luciano on prostitution charges and later underboss Vito Genovese's fleeing the country on a murder charge, Coppola was left in charge of the Luciano crime family criminal operations including a monopoly on New York's artichoke supply and Harlem's numbers racket, worth over $1,000,000 a year. He controlled Mason Tenders Locals 47 and 13 of the Laborers Union.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mike Coppola (mobster)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.