Chris Paciello
American gangster; restaurateur
Chris Paciello (born Christian Ludwigsen, September 7, 1971) is an American former Cosa Nostra associate, member of The Untouchables car-theft ring, and government informant who was convicted of racketeering. During the 1990s, and again in 2012, he became a prominent nightclub owner in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida.
Biography
Background
Paciello was born Christian Ludwigsen in 1971 in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the first of three sons born to Marguerite (née Paciello) and George Ludwigsen, and spent his childhood there. His father was a heroin addict and a small-time criminal who was arrested for burglary, auto theft, and drug charges in the 1980s. By age 15, Paciello found himself stealing car radios and then cars.
When he was 16, his mother left the family and Paciello moved to Staten Island. Three years later, he left home and changed his last name from Ludwigsen to Paciello, his mother's maiden name. His elder brother, George Ludwigsen, was convicted of bank robberies in Hallandale, Florida and Gulfport, Mississippi in the 1990s.
New York crimes
Paciello had connections to the New York Cosa Nostra crime families. On Staten Island, Paciello joined the New Springville Boys (LUSS), a gang with affiliations to the Bonanno crime family.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chris Paciello” 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.