Benedetto “Benny” Aloi was born on October 6, 1935 and had one sibling, a brother named Vincenzo “Vinnie” Aloi. His father, Sebastian “Buster” Aloi was a soldier in the Profaci crime family and is responsible for bringing his sons into the La Cosa Nostra.
Aloi spent much of his childhood like any other child hanging around his brother and friends and working his way through school. On occasion Aloi would visit his father at the local Profaci hangout where he would run errands and learn about the life of a goodfella.
By his twenties, Aloi was fully integrated in the Colombo crime family formally the Profaci family. By that time his father was a caporegime and handed Aloi and his brother several enterprises to control. One of the most profitable was a garment trucking business that provided substantial income to the Colombo family.
By his thirties, Aloi was one of several hundred mafioso in the sights of the FBI. On November 19, 1974 Aloi and over 150 other members of La Cosa Nostra were indicted on perjury charges. Aloi was one of a few that were never tried.
By the 1980’s Aloi who had risen to capo was being tracked again by the FBI when it was alleged that he was a involved with a capital finance group that would lend money at extremely high interest rates. The case never made it to court.
Aloi biggest threat came in the infamous “Windows Case” in the early 1990’s. The windows case involved four of the five New York crime families that used their control over the construction unions and local contractors to fix the price of their bids to the New York Housing Authority. During that time the authority was entrenched in a thermal window pane project that would provide new windows to thousands of homes in the projects of New York.
In May 1991, Aloi, now consigliere of the Colombo family was convicted on one count of extortion and one count of conspiracy. As a high profile defendant and convicted criminal, Aloi received five times the amount of time expected and was sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison. He was released after serving his sixteen year sentenced and subsequent half way house time on May 18, 1991. It had been 18 long years since he had been free and the time behind bars had taken its toll. Aloi was 74 years old when he was released; far too old to get back in the family and learn the ways of the twenty-first century mafia. He officially retired as caporegime and lived out his days in seclusion. He died on April 7, 2011.
Notice the date of his death, April 7 — same day as Joe Gallo. Karma, Kismet, or just coincidence?