- Hey, the man’s confident in his dad bod. Good for him.
If you’re a notorious criminal on the lam, you should be careful about what you do. Above all, you should avoid posting your vacation photos on social media.
Somebody should’ve told that to Ralph DiMatteo’s son, though.
“Big Ralphie” DiMatteo, a consigliere and man number three in the Colombo mafia family, went on the run from the law in 2021 after being indicted on various charges. His son, however, soon after posted a photo on X (back then called Twitter) of a shirtless DiMatteo lounging by the side of a Florida pool.
Knowing the jig was up, the 68-year-old mobster surrendered to the cops the day after. He has now been sentenced to three years in prison for his crimes.
At the court, reporters asked DiMatteo if he regretted his son sharing his photo. It would make sense that the arrested mafia boss would be seething with rage, right?
Nope. He doesn’t regret it all — after all, he thinks he looked great in the picture.
The Third-Biggest Cheese
Big Ralphie DiMatteo is a member of the Colombo crime family, which operates in New York City. Founded in 1928, Colombo is the youngest of NYC’s “Five Families” that control mafia operations in the city.
Within the Colombo family’s ranks, DiMatteo is a big shot. He holds the rank of consigliere, acting as something of an advisor and right-hand man to the big boss.
Not only that, DiMatteo is generally considered to be the third biggest cheese in the organization. In other words, only two men are above him — the boss “Mush” Russo himself and one other officer.
So, yeah, he’s a powerful man.
Powerful as he may be, though, he’s not above the law. A September 14, 2021, indictment charged DiMatteo and 13 other important figures in the Colombo family with infiltrating a Queens-based labor union and defrauding its healthcare benefit program.
The other charged criminals were present when the indictment was served, but not DiMatteo. He had mysteriously vanished the day before the indictment.
How convenient.
On the Run
So, DiMatteo had managed to slip through law enforcement agencies’ fingers. They didn’t know where he had gone, and it probably would’ve taken them quite a while to figure it out.
Fortunately for them, they quickly got help from an unexpected source.
DiMatteo had, in fact, fled to Florida. He clearly felt safe at his hidey hole and was living it up with his family members.
We’re saying that because his son snapped a photo of DiMatteo. In the picture, a shirtless mob chief leans coolly on the side of a swimming pool, his shoulder tattoo and a gold chain with a large cross proudly on display.
Maybe it’s fine for even a mafia family to immortalize good family moments. But then DiMatteo’s son decided to share the photo on Twitter.
The cops sure took notice. Although the pool in the picture seems fairly nondescript to us, it allowed the police to track down DiMatteo’s hiding place in Florida.
Now that we think about, maybe it was Twitter’s location data and not the picture itself that helped the cops.
In any case, as soon as DiMatteo found out about the photo going online, he knew it was only a matter of time before the police came a-knocking on his door. So, he decided to save them the trouble and surrendered voluntarily on September 17 — after only three days on the run.
Third Sentencing
Let’s fast-forward to July 14, 2023. On the day, DiMatteo pleaded guilty to the racketeering (involving extortion) and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges laid against him.
The other members of the 14-strong mobster group pleaded guilty as well. Their charges included everything from racketeering and extortion to loansharking, money laundering, drug trafficking, and fraud.
Finally, in mid-December, DiMatteo got his sentence. He’s going to jail for three years.
Granted, this isn’t his first stint in prison. He first went to jail for eight years in 1985 for drug trafficking and again for 18 months in 2001 for money laundering.
Still, he’s probably not too happy to go back to prison. Expecting him to be furious with his son, reporters asked him in court whether he regretted sharing his shirtless picture on the internet.
In response, DiMatteo gave a quote we feel may go down in mafia lore: “Why? It was a great picture.”