At first glance, the photo below could be any gathering of elderly and middle aged white men. A fathers and sons night at a local Kiwanis Club or perhaps an insurance firm honoring its senior members.

Not quite.

There are a few fathers and sons in the group picture, but what the 47 men gathered here have in common is crime, of the allegedly organized variety.       

They are the Real Sopranos, Class of 1980, or thereabouts. 

In the second row, seventh from the left, wearing a broad smile, dark suit and dark tie, is John Riggi, the bespectacled boss of the New Jersey-based crime

family named for his predecessor, Simone (Sam The Plumber) DeCavalcante, (left) by then retired to Florida. The photo was taken in the Ribera Social Club in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a multi-purpose establishment named after a town in Sicily that had been home to the Riggi family, as well as many DeCavalcante crime family members.

The photo was introduced into evidence by Manhattan federal prosecutors Michael McGovern, Miriam Rocah and David Burns at the recent trial of DeCavalcante soldier Girolamo (Jimmy) Palermo, standing at the far left in the second row. Convicted of racketeering, Palermo (right) faces 20 years when he is sentenced next month.

Each year, the Ribera club raised money for the St. Joseph’s Orphanage in the old country. And while family members appropriated the cash for themselves once in a while, “usually it went to the orphanage,” according to turncoat capo Anthony Rotondo.

The primary function of Riggi and the mob associates in this family portrait, however, was the business of crime, Rotondo testified.

Seated second from the left, for example, is the late Carlo Corsentino, a gangster-undertaker from the violent Prohibition days who

operated a funeral home and designed a “double-decker coffin” to help dispose of mob rubout victims.

“During the ’20s and ’30s, when there were a lot of Mafia murders committed, the family would put the murder victim below the regular customer, thus, disappearing forever,” is how Rotondo (left) explained it from the witness stand.

During the 1990s, Corsentino and the late Jake Colletti, the elderly gent two seats over, became family celebrities of sorts.

“They lived to be a hundred,” said Rotondo. “And everyone in the family thought it was kind of ironic that the two oldest members of the American Mafia had about 50 bodies between them (and) lived to receive congratulatory letters from President Clinton.”

Two of the men, Frank Majuri, (right) seated eighth from the left, and Louis (Fat Lou) LaRasso, the white-haired wiseguy seventh from the right in the second row, (his hair was much darker in the photo at left) represented the family at the 1957 Mafia conclave at Apalachin, NY that was routed by state troopers. In 1991, after Fat Lou had fallen out of favor, Rotondo took part in the execution of LaRasso, whose body has never been found.

Colletti’s son Joseph, a capo, is standing right behind his dad at Riggi’s right

shoulder. Majuri’s son Charles, (right) who like Riggi, pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, is in the second row, nine in from the right. Consigliere Steve Vitabile, (left)  who was convicted of LaRasso’s murder, is second from the right in the second row, standing in front of his father, according to Rotondo.

Joseph Merlo Jr., his late father Joseph Sr. and Junior’s brother Michael, all family soldiers and close allies of Riggi, (right) are sprinkled in the second row, manning the second, eighth and tenth spots, from left to right, respectively.

The Merlo brothers were not among the scores of wiseguys who pleaded guilty or were convicted at five trials that resulted from two racketeering and murder indictments that stemmed from a two year FBI probe of the DeCavalcante family.

If they’ve been paying attention, the brothers are surely looking over their shoulders, and have stopped posing for pictures in the Ribera Social Club.

This Week In Gang Land is being served up on Black Friday, because like most Americans, Gang Land took yesterday off and celebrated Thanksgiving Day with family and friends.

We hope you enjoy today's effort and we thank you for your continued support.