Who Was Harry Riccobene? The Philly Elder the Scarfo Crew Tried to Kill
Mobsters DailyHarry Riccobene — 'Harry the Hunchback' — was the Philadelphia crime family's elder statesman of the street: a veteran loanshark who, in his seventies, refused to pay Nicky Scarfo's new street tax, survived the full-scale war Scarfo launched to kill him, and lived to 90, outlasting the reign of the boss who tried to bury him. In a family defined by young men's violence, Riccobene's power was simply that he had been there forever and would not kneel.
The elder who would not pay
Riccobene's standing came from the old Philadelphia — a made man of decades' standing under Angelo Bruno, running loansharking and gambling with his brothers from South Philadelphia while bosses came and went. When Bruno was murdered in 1980 and Scarfo seized the family, the new boss imposed a street tax on every independent operator's action. Riccobene, then in his seventies, refused — a public insult to the paranoid regime whose character is laid out in who was Nicky Scarfo, Philadelphia's most violent boss. Scarfo read the refusal exactly as it was meant: a declaration that the old man's respect was worth more than the new boss's fear.
Scarfo killed men for a look; Riccobene refused him to his face, at seventy-something — which is why, with November here and the holidays coming, rewatch season belongs to the Tony Soprano Ugly Christmas Sweater: Tony in black-and-white stencil, nothing covering the design, built for holiday parties and long nights back in this world.
The Riccobene War
From 1982 to 1984 the family fought itself in the open. Scarfo's gunmen came for Harry repeatedly — he was shot and wounded in attempts that would have retired any other target — while the war consumed people around him: his brother Robert Riccobene was murdered in December 1983, shot in front of their mother, and his nephew Mario 'Sonny' Riccobene crossed to the government's side in despair. The Riccobene faction answered with its own hits, including the killing of Scarfo capo Frank D'Alfonso, for which Harry was ultimately convicted as the war burned out. The era's defections are chronicled from the inside in the Informant Files: Phil Leonetti, Scarfo's nephew who testified. Harry Riccobene spent his final years in prison, dying in 2000 at 90 — having survived Prohibition's aftermath, five Philadelphia regimes, and a war waged personally against him by the most violent boss in the family's history. Scarfo outlived him in a cell too, but the street's verdict was settled long before: the elder bent for no one.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it called the Riccobene War? Because Scarfo's campaign of 1982–84 was aimed at one faction: Harry Riccobene and his brothers, who had refused the boss's street tax.
How did Harry Riccobene die? Of natural causes in 2000, aged 90, while serving a prison sentence arising from the war's killings.
Did Scarfo's men ever wound Riccobene? Yes. He survived and was wounded in Scarfo assassination attempts during the war, even as his brother Robert was murdered in 1983.
Keep reading: why Angelo Bruno was killed · Ron Previte, the 300-pound wire in Philadelphia · Ralph Natale, the first sitting boss to cooperate · Who Was Joseph Aiello? The Man Who Tried to Kill Al Capone
From the shop: Shadows of the Underworld — the real-mafia history behind the names in this story.
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