Editing Lupo Gang (section)

==Independent development==
Lupo was born in Palermo on March 21, 1877 and fled Sicily after killing a business rival during an 1898 store dispute. He passed through Liverpool, Montreal and Buffalo before settling in New York in 1898.<ref name="GangRule">[https://www.gangrule.com/biographies/ignazio-lupo “Ignazio Lupo”], ''Gang Rule'', citing Italian court, immigration, business and Secret Service records.</ref> He first operated with a cousin on East 72nd Street, moved a business to Brooklyn, and returned to Manhattan in 1901 with an import store at 9 Prince Street and a saloon at 8 Prince Street.

Those businesses and Lupo family grocery interests supplied a distinguishable Palermitan commercial network. Former Secret Service chief William J. Flynn later described coercion of neighborhood grocers, threats, counterfeiting and investment in apparently legitimate enterprises.<ref>William J. Flynn, [https://archive.org/details/barrelmystery00flyniala ''The Barrel Mystery''] (New York: James A. McCann, 1919), especially pp. 23–47.</ref> Flynn's sweeping “Black Hand Society” terminology is treated as law-enforcement rhetoric rather than proof of a formal organization by that name.