Gladwell argues that mafias of old slowly evolved into legitimate businesses because they were largely left to their own devices.

He cites the work of Francis Ianni, an anthropologist who studied a pseudonymous New York City crime family named Lupollo, headed by a man named Giuseppe:

...[F]rom Giuseppe's earliest days in Little Italy, the Lupollo clan was engaged in a quiet and determined push toward respectability. By 1970, Ianni calculated, there were forty-two fourth-generation members of the Lupollo-Salemi-Alcamo-Tucci family ? of which only four were involved in the family's crime businesses. The rest were firmly planted in the American upper middle class.