There was jewish mafia, an irish mafia, italian mafia. John Dillinger's crew was a mafia, the guys back in the '30s...and plenty of "associates" Mafias were originally formed to enforce street justice in a corrupt society and for ethnic groups to stick together. They made money outside of the system, that always means illegally. It doesn't matter how you feel about that, there's no other way to remain independent. If you work a 9-5 job or own a business, you have to do what you're told unless you can fly under the radar. In any case, it's usually a shitty life of mostly working like a slave. The rare ability to pull the trigger or knock over a bank gave a man unmatched independence back in the day. Little chance of being caught, 20-30k each time and that was way more back then. 2 or 3 jobs and you'd have a nice house paid for. They fucked that up too, now the mexicans do it for nothing and they let them run the streets. The reason was to take away that means of independence and also because the Italians and Irish (probably) didn't like rape and pedophilia, they'd kill people over that. That's also why the 2001 attacks happened, they wanted to make it hard to move cash around, have accounts under different identities, etc. Prior to that, it was fairly easily to "start over" or to acquire and own property or travel under a different name. It has always been about control and cutting off avenues of escape.