Antonio "Tony Balls" Balsamo (born 1898) was a soldato in the Moretti crime family. He was in charge of the family's protection payment rackets.
Biography[]
Antonio Balsamo was born in 1898 to an Italian-American family in New York City, New York. During the mid-1920s, he joined the Moretti crime family and became Don Tomaso Moretti's personal driver and bodyguard. During the Vinci-Moretti war, in 1933, Balsamo was gravely injured when a bomb was placed under Moretti's car, which killed Moretti but Balsamo survived. After the war's end, Balsamo went on to work for Don Carlo Falcone, and was tasked with collecting protection payments owed to Falcone. A tough and respected mafioso, Balsamo and Moretti associate Frankie the Mick were also ordered to protect Falcone's accountant, Harvey Epstein, to ensure none of the family's secret account books would be revealed. Balsamo helped escaped Clemente family enforcer Joe Barbaro return to New York City and set him up working for the Moretti family, assigning him on a stolen car ring with Vinci Family capo Derek Pappalardo and going along with him on several heists, including stealing military weaponry from the New York docks and the theft of a supermarket.
In May 1951, Balsamo, Frankie the Mick and Epstein were all kidnapped by Clemente underlings on the orders of capo Luca Gurino, who held them captive at Clemente's slaughterhouse for an entire day to be tortured, and Frankie died as a result of his injuries. However, Moretti family recruit Vito Scaletta came to their rescue, freeing Balsamo and Epstein, and after getting rid of all of Gurino's men, Balsamo drove a car through an office wall where Gurino was hiding and beat him repeatedly, ultimately torturing him to death with Epstein and putting him through a meat grinder. When Scaletta and Barbaro unwittingly started a conflict between the New York Triads and the Vinci family, Balsamo was targeted and interrogated by Vinci's men, being brutally beaten in the process. Though assisted by mob doctor Andreas Karafantis, he was so badly hurt he may never have been able to walk again.