Announcing the 2023 re-release of my first book, The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia – Corn Sugar & Blood. Originally published in 1995, this is the same book with a redesigned cover and is now self-published. Click Amazon Buy Now button below.

Mafia boss turned federal witness Angelo Lonardo, the Sugar War, and the story of the Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia.
This enduring and fascinating chronicle of the Cleveland Mafia was written after the author's many years of research into the murders of his grandfather and three uncles, who were mob bosses. The seven Porrello brothers and four Lonardo brothers, former boyhood friends in Licata, Sicily, had a wholesale lock on corn sugar, a lucrative bootleg ingredient during Prohibition. After a rogue business manager sparked the infamous sugar war, teenage Angelo "Big Ange" Lonardo emerged to commit a boldly executed murder.
The Porrello brothers attempted to secure their leadership by hosting the first known national meeting of the Sicilian-American Mafia. Meanwhile, bloody vendettas continued. Eventually, the Porrellos were succeeded by the powerful Mayfield Road mob. Its bosses, Frank Milano, Al Polizzi, and later, John Scalish, were allied with influential Jewish mobsters like Moe Dalitz. During the 1930s, the Cleveland crime family was third in power after those in New York City and Chicago and would have a role in developing Las Vegas.
Through the years, Big Ange Lonardo rose through the ranks to become the acting boss. After mob foe Danny "the Irishman" Greene was blown up, local, state, and federal law enforcers cooperated in successfully prosecuting the once-mighty Cleveland Mafia. Lonardo received a life sentence. However, he shocked friends, fellow mobsters, and lawmen when he cut a deal for his freedom. At the time, he was the highest-ranking Mafiosi to betray omerta, the Sicilian code of silence. His testimony helped the FBI and federal prosecutors wreak havoc on crime families and their bosses across the U.S. and provided an insider's history of the American Mafia.

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Readers' Favorite Reviews: "...Porrello has carved a noteworthy niche as a true crime author with his previous work and his investigative skills honed in law enforcement serve him well with each subsequent book. He provides the gritty and grim details surrounding the various crimes Henkel and his associates would participate in during the 1960s and 1970s. Henkel is shown to be a ruthless criminal with little to no remorse for the mayhem he caused. Porrello doesn't attempt to humanize his subject but does provide a voice for the victims caught up in a madman's web. A captivating true crime biography that may cause more than a few readers to lose sleep."

Alex Shondor Birns—Public Enemy Number One, friend of powerful Jewish and Italian mobsters, and trusted partner of black gambling racketeers. He went toe-to-toe against relentless challenges —the cops wanted him in prison, immigration officials wanted him deported, and the IRS wanted his nightclub, car, and cash. Black gangsters wanted the old white man out of the numbers racket. One rogue protégé had Birns on the ropes in a high-finance mystery stretching from the US to Israel, and Canada to Cuba. Then along came Ellie, a second-grade schoolteacher thirty-three years his junior. She was an unlikely paramour and ally, but clearly smitten with Shon. For half a century, the charismatic hood beat the odds, cultivating allies high and low, including ambitious reporters whose careers he helped build via blazing front-page coverage. Combine the name Shondor Birns with stories of bribes, bullets, and bombs, and it sold newspapers. It was this notoriety that Shondor embraced through the decades as his turbulent story was memorialized. Until that is, it reached a shocking crescendo.

In development for a motion picture, Superthief is a captivating first-hand look at the life of Phil Christopher, a career criminal, Mafia associate, and one of the most successful bank burglars in the United States. In a raw and candid accounting, Rick Porrello takes his readers inside Phil's brutal street world and prison life and exposes the details behind the planning and execution of the daring and record-setting 1972 United California Bank burglary in Orange County, California. Foreword Magazine award winner.

A fearless Irishman boldly muscles in on the Italian-American Mafia—intrepid, charismatic, shrewd, cunning, and armed with a master plan to take over the rackets under the auspices of the Irish banner of which he was so fiercely proud. His name is Greene, his signature color is green, and with his Irish luck for surviving bungled mob attempts on his life, he is seemingly indestructible. In the end, the war with Danny Greene—and his ultimate murder—severely crippled the Italian stranglehold on organized crime, with historic repercussions that outlived the unsinkable Irishman himself.