Tommy Vercetti (1951-) was an Italian-American mobster who founded a criminal drug empire that ruled over the city of Miami, Florida during the late 1980s. Formerly an associate of crime boss Sonny Forelli, Vercetti decided to move towards becoming an independent mobster in Miami, far away from the Forellis' base in New York. Vercetti took down the drug lord Ricardo Diaz in the process, and his gang would take over the city with the help of some new allies such as Umberto Robina's Cuban gang and Mitch Baker's biker gang. Vercetti became a millionaire due to his rule over the drug trade in Miami, having done several hard jobs to build up his fortune.
Biography[]
Tommy Vercetti was born in Brooklyn, New York City to an Italian-American family in 1951. He became a member of the Forelli family and was nicknamed "the Harwood Butcher" for killing eleven mobsters in 1971, for which he was imprisoned for fifteen years. Vercetti would have been sent to death row if not for his boss' intervention, and his boss arranged for him to secure drug connections for the family in Miami on his release in 1986.
Vercetti's deal was crashed, and he came into contact with Colonel Juan Garcia Cortez, a colonel of the Bolivian Army who was in the United States to steal missile technology from the government of France. Tommy was sent by the colonel to meet with Pierre La Ponce at the Washington Mall in Ocean Beach, Miami, where the deal would go down. However, GIGN and DGSE agents ambushed the meeting, and Vercetti engaged in a shootout with the French. He killed La Ponce when he tried to flee and took the chips, escaping the French and delivering the chips to Cortez. The government of France now decided to assassinate Cortez, starting an international crisis. Cortez enlisted Vercetti's help in defending his ship as it escaped from Miami Harbor while the French tried to sink his vessel, and Vercetti destroyed three French helicopters, including an attack helicopter. Cortez gave Vercetti his personal launch boat as a gift as he headed to the open sea, and they parted as friends. After this, his involvement in politics ended. Vercetti became the strongest drug baron in Miami after taking over the streets from his rivals and seizing the mansion of drug baron Ricardo Diaz, becoming a very wealthy man, whose gang was still in power in 1992.