Antonio Mirabito

Stamp used by Mirabito while signing letters as "Frederico Baryndo"

The first letter in the series of correspondence that resulted in Antonio Mirabito's arrest was sent around December 1907 to Benjamin Piscopo, a hotel owner in the Italian neighborhood of Boston's North End.[11] It was part of a group of three letters, sent and received over the course of three months, demanding that $1000 (nearly $30,000 in today's money) be forfeited in the form of a certified check.[12] This method of payment was chosen to allow Mirabito to cash the check anywhere, with little ties to the banking process.[1] He also ordered Piscopo not to reveal the demand to anyone, and threatened that he would murder both him and his family if the request was not fulfilled.[12]

After receiving the initial letter, Piscopo consulted the Boston Police department on how to manage the blackmail. Initially, an attempt at capturing Mirabito failed.[10] Then the police department's chief, Chief Watts, along with the acting inspector from the U.S. Bureau of Criminal Investigations (the FBI of the time) took the case.[1][8] He worked alongside the United States Postal Service to create and track a decoy letter that was returned to the writer, who used the alias Frederico Baryndo and at the time was unknown. Police believed Mirabito's fruit store on Bowdoin Street in Dorchester to be the source of the crime after the decoy letter was accepted there.[13] An investigation was made into Mirabito's business and home, during which police found the stamp press and the same style of paper used in the Black Hand letters.[10][13] The police interpreter also stated to police that he lived in the area and noticed Mirabito acting suspiciously for the past few weeks.[1] While they could not find the decoy letter itself, the delivery boy identified the letter recipient, Concetto Rizzo.[7] Both he and Mirabito were taken into custody on February 23, 1908.[14]

Rizzo was a 27 year old Italian immigrant who lived at the fruit store Antonio owned.[7][12] It is likely that Rizzo also worked in the fruit store, and was aware of Mirabito's Black Hand operations. However, after their arrests, Rizzo denied any connection to the crime.[8] He reported Mirabito as the sole actor, and stated that his only involvement was in providing Mirabito his mail.[1][12] He also retained a personal lawyer, who promoted his character and degraded Mirabito's.[8] Mirabito remained as the primary suspect moving into court, with a bail twice as high as Rizzo's.[8]

Both men were arraigned on February 24, 1908, and held in jail until their court date.[8] Their case began in Boston's superior criminal court on March 25, for which the courtroom was completely filled with people interested in witnessing the moment.[14][15] Working against Mirabito were both the Massachusetts assistant district attorney and police chief Watts.[4][14] Rizzo and his attorney were also testifying against Mirabito in court.[16][17] After a little over a week of proceedings, Mirabito was indicted by a jury on April 3 for the charge of attempted extortion as a result of the letters sent to Piscopo.[4][18] The court refused a retrial of the case, stating they had seen enough evidence to know Mirabito had committed the crime.[19] Mirabito was assigned a sentence of 6 to 10 years in prison, and was recommended to receive a harsher sentence due to severity of his Black Hand organization's impact on the region.[17]

As a result of his crime, Antonio Mirabito became well known in the Northeastern Region of the United States.[8] Elite individuals throughout the area had consistently been terrorized by his demands.[1][4] His arrest landed him on the front page of the Boston's leading newspapers, and was reported across all of the Northeast.[11] Mirabito's case was the first Black Hand conviction in Massachusetts, and all of New England.[3][4] With his removal from the Black Hand crime scene, officials were hopeful that his branch of the organization would dissolve and the extortion tactic would end.[1][9] However, it survived Mirabito and eventually became the Mafia.