Dominick Cataldo was born on March 19th 1923 in Lower East Side, Manhattan in a small apartment on Essex Street, his father Samuel Cataldo was a Sicilian immigrant from San Cataldo and member of the Profaci crime family. Dominick and his brother Joseph Cataldo both joined the Colombo family. In 1972, Cataldo started an illegal bookmaking operation and casino out of an after-nights club located on 87th Street just across Atlantic Avenue, which was one block over and one block down from Salvatore Polisi's apartment on 95th Avenue and 88th Street.