Black Hand (blackmail)
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Black Hand was a type of extortion racket. It was a method of blackmail, not a criminal organization as such, though gangsters of Camorra and Mafia practiced it.
The first rackets began in Sicily in the 1750s. When criminals moved to the USA alongside other Italian immigrants, they continued the practice. They concentrated on Italian immigrants in cities like New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco. Although more successful immigrants were usally targeted, possibly as many as 90% of Italian immigrants in New York were threatened.
Typical Black Hand tactics involved sending a letter to a victim threatening bodily harm, kidnapping, arson, or murder. The letter demanded a specified amount of money to be delivered to a specific place. It was "decorated" with threatening symbols like a smoking gun or hangman's noose and signed with a hand imprinted in black ink; hence the name La Mano Nera (The Black Hand) which was readily adopted by the American press as "The Black Hand Society".
Gangsters would carry out the threat if the victim did not pay. Ignazio Saietta, a Sicilian gangster in New York's Little Italy, strangled his victims and burned the bodies in the East Harlam neighborhood known as the "Murder Stable". One of the threatened victims was the tenor Enrico Caruso who received a Black Hand letter, on which a black hand and dagger were drawn, demanding $2,000. Although Caruso decided to pay, he again received a demand for $15,000. Realizing the extortionists would continue to demand money, he reported the incident to the police who, arranging for Caruso to drop off the money at a prearranged spot, arrested two Italian-American businessmen who retrieved the money. On occasion, Black Handers threatened other gangsters and usually faced retaliation.
If law enforcement closed in, gangsters answered with their usual style: assassination. Victims include New Orleans police chief Daniel Hennessy and NYPD lieutenant Joseph Petrosino. They intimidated potential witnesses even in the courtroom.
The Black Hand practice practically disappeared when gangsters found the more profitable enterprise of bootlegging during US Prohibition.