Giovanni Lupo

Broth­er of Ignazio Lupo, John arrived in New York with his fam­i­ly in 1900. He worked as a press­er for six years before leav­ing to work for his broth­er at his whole­sale store on Mott Street.

John worked with Ignazio for just under two years, he then left in Octo­ber 1908 to start his own busi­ness, ‘Lupo & Lo Presti’, a whole­sale gro­cery store in Hoboken.

In May 1909, a huge gun fight broke out in Hobken. One of the trucks belong­ing to to the Lupo & Lapresti busi­ness had killed the four year old son of Enri­co Bar­ra­cano, an Ital­ian Banker. The acci­dent caused a riot in which ‘forty to fifty shots were fired at mem­bers of the Lupo faction’.

After Ignazio Lupo was con­vict­ed of coun­ter­feit­ing in 1910, John was heav­i­ly involved in try­ing to secure his release. He gave many inter­views to the press, and it was esti­mat­ed he spent $65,000 on his efforts to free his brother.

A peti­tion in bank­rupt­cy was filed against John Lupo in 1915.