Giuseppe Palermo

Giuseppe Paler­mo arrived in New York from Sici­ly in 1902, after flee­ing a 31 year sen­tence for mur­der. He was a known asso­ciate of the Morel­lo gang.

Paler­mo was involved in the 1910 coun­ter­feit­ing case in High­land. He trav­elled to the farm with Lupo and Morel­lo to check the qual­i­ty of the print­ing being done there.

In March 1909, Paler­mo pur­chased a share in Cina’s High­land farm from Vin­cen­zo Giglio. He pur­chased his share under his alias Sal­va­tore Saraci­na, he also ran a gro­cery store at 11 Duane Street, Poughkeepsie.

On Jan­u­ary 8^th, 1910, Secret Ser­vice agents gath­ered at 8804 Bay 16^th Street, Bath Beach, Brook­lyn. They arrest­ed Lupo and Paler­mo in con­nec­tion with the High­land coun­ter­feit­ing. Paler­mo offered a bribe of $100 for his free­dom, Lupo also joined in the plea, claim­ing they should release Paler­mo “let this poor old devil go, he has noth­ing to do with this”.

In the result­ing trial, Paler­mo was sen­tenced to 18 years hard labour and a $1000 fine. He was paroled from Atlanta Pen­i­ten­tiary on 21^st Feb­ru­ary, 1916. His sen­tence was fully com­mut­ed in August 1920, it was noted that Paler­mo had suf­fered a par­a­lyt­ic stroke dur­ing his time in Atlanta.