Macheca was born and raised in the Italian-American community of New Orleans and started his own gang there in the 1860s. The Macheca Mob was not a Mafia group when it began. In fact, it thwarted early efforts by the Sicilian Mafia to gain a foothold in the New Orleans area. When Sicilian gang leader Giuseppi Esposito and a few followers entered New Orleans in 1879 (fleeing from Sicilian justice and unhappy with their brief experiences in the Irish- and Jewish-dominated underworld of New York), Macheca welcomed Esposito and allowed him to share leadership of the New Orleans underworld.