Yeast baron Antonio Cecala

Morello counterfeiter turned yeast baron, Antonio Cecala, lived an original gangster life with many chapters.

Antonio Cecala was born in 1873 in Baucina, in Palermo province, Sicily.^[1] He and his father, Salvatore, both barbers, emigrated to the United States together when Antonio was sixteen. His mother and siblings followed a few years later. In 1893, Antonio lived at 77 Carmine Street, an address in the West Village near SoHo, in New York City, when he married his neighbor Grazia Librino.^[2] The couple had five children, the youngest born in Queens in 1902. In 1900, Cecala became a naturalized citizen.

Officially, Antonio still worked as a barber, but he was already associated with Ignazio Lupo. To describe Lupo as a captain in the Morello-Terranova gang is to understate his importance: he was a brother-in-law and co-equal to Morello, and a wealthy business owner with groceries throughout the city.

Giuseppe Morello was the Mafia boss of bosses, and a successful building contractor based in East Harlem. Due to a market downturn and poor financial management, however, Morello’s building cooperative ran into money trouble in 1907. Unable to pay the bills, Morello began a serious counterfeiting venture. He brought in only people he could trust, having nearly lost his freedom a few years earlier in an East Harlem-based counterfeiting ring. That time, fellow corleonese Calogero Maggiore took the heat and went away for six years.

For this counterfeiting operation, the printing at first took place on a farm in Highland, New York, owned by Salvatore Cina. “Don Antonio” Cecala was involved at every phase. Cecala traveled around the country with Cina, his alleged godson, attempting to move the first counterfeit bills the team produced.^[3] Cecala was part of the ploy that drew in the kidnapped printer, Antonio Comito, by posing as a Philadelphia print shop proprietor offering work. Cecala drove the wagon that abducted Comito and his girlfriend to the Highland farm. Later, at a second farm outside Highland, he supplied the printer with plates and paper.^[4]

Members of Morello’s inner circle, including Antonio Cecala and the Vasi brothers, Leoluca and Pasquale, distributed the bills through their various businesses in the city, with Cecala being the main mover of the counterfeit currency. Cecala ran one of Lupo’s groceries in Little Italy.^[5] Another Italian grocery at 235 E. 97th Street (between 2nd and 3rd) appeared to be jointly owned by Cecala, Morello, and Domenico Milone.^[6]

Cecala was sentenced to twenty years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.^[7] He appears with his “godson” Cina in the 1910 census, working in the prison stone shop with the Vasi brothers.^[8] Historians report he was paroled in 1915, but there are sources showing him still a prisoner as late as January 1920.

In the fall of 1916, Cecala was named among the prisoner-performers of a “swinging waltz” written by a fellow inmate and performed at the federal prison in Atlanta to an overflow crowd. Due to popular demand, the musicians put on a second show the following Sunday.^[9] Two years later, Cecala registered for the draft while still incarcerated in Atlanta.^[10] And in the summer of 1919, he was named among the pallbearers for his destitute colleague, Giuseppe Boscarino.^[11] In the 1920 census of the prison, taken in January, Cecala was named in sequence with four of his fellow counterfeiters, including Morello and Lupo.^[12] His scheduled release date was the seventeenth of July of that year.^[13] All evidence points to him serving the full term.

In 1910, the year Antonio Cecala went away, his family was living on Bleecker Street in Manhattan. His wife Grace, and eldest child, Lizzie, age fifteen, both worked in a tailoring factory. Benjamin, the youngest, was seven. On his draft registration in Georgia, Antonio wrote two addresses in New York City: a permanent home address for himself in the East Village, and one in the Bronx for his wife.^[14]

The first census taken of the reunited family was also the last. In the state census of 1925, Anthony and Grace lived with their two youngest sons, who both worked as salesmen. Once again, Anthony Cecala told the census enumerator that he was a barber.^[15]

1925 was a big year for Anthony Cecala. He took a trip to Sicily with Vincent Mangano, the Mafia boss.^[16] He also became a part-owner in two major criminal enterprises, the United Lathing Company and the Empire Yeast Company. United Lathing created a monopoly on construction services; Cecala’s partners in this scheme were an all-star gangster cast: Tommy Gagliano, Antonio Monforte, Ignazio Milone, and Giuseppe Morello.^[17]

Based on his death record, Cecala added “undertaker” to his long list of professions, which included arsonist as well as counterfeiter, grocer, poultry purveyor, part-owner of a lathing company, and yeast salesman.^[18] The year before his death, Cecala purchased land in Poughkeepsie, on the east side of the Hudson, about three miles from Highland.^[19]

Yeast was of vital importance to organized crime during Prohibition, since it was an essential ingredient for the commercial production of alcohol. Cecala may have become involved in Empire Yeast through Ignazio Lupo, and worked his way up through the business as a salesman.^[20] In 1928, Cecala was the president of the company.^[21] His partners included Tommy Gagliano (of Corleone) and Domenico Dioguardi, who was also from Baucina. Cecala was protected by Joseph Masseria, due to his long-time relationship with Morello.^[22] 

Cecala was insulated, to some degree, by Empire Yeast, which was controlled by not just one gangster, but was a partnership among several powerful mafiosi.^[23] The company had branches in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, each led by an important member of the secret brotherhood. Empire Yeast was a “mafia ‘super company’” as Eric Stonefelt puts it, and organized crime figures were willing to put considerable differences aside for the opportunity to cooperate in an enterprise that was at once a cash cow, able to launder money quickly, and the cinch point controlling a critical resource.^[24]

Cecala was assassinated on the 26th of May, 1928 by someone who spared no expense in taking the yeast monopoly in New York. Two professional hitmen laid in wait in a vacant apartment, rented for this purpose, across the street from Cecala’s office on Chrystie Street, and shot him in the street on his way to work.^[25] The slain man was carrying a licensed revolver and cash when his body was examined by police; robbery was clearly not the motive.^[26] The gunmen were never identified.

Giuseppe Traina, closely associated with Salvatore D’Aquila’s crime family, succeeded Cecala as president of the Empire Yeast Company in New York.^[27] D’Aquila was killed in October. Traina lived to be 96.

Feature image note: Cecala not pictured.

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