Brancato was born in Sicily, Italy. He left his home in the early 1900s for America. He first settled in New York where he worked as a longshoreman and moved to Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1920s where he would rise up in ranks to become Cleveland's Street boss to many men in the organization. During the early 1930's, Brancato was a known bootlegger who had been charged with several murders in a brutal and deadly turf war over the profitable "Corn Sugar Wars" between the two strong and powerful rival Mafia families; the Porrello's and the Lonardo's. Brancato became acting underboss for the John Scalish regime by the mid-1950s. For many years, FBI agents were under direct orders from the Director, J. Edgar Hoover himself; to observe Brancato’s activities and attempt to collect information t