The Outfit

with Alana Hope Levinson and Dan O'Sullivan

Robert Kubecka: Garbage & The Mob

12/4/2025

This week, Dan travels back to the land of his birth--Long Island, New York--for a fragrant stroll past one of the Mafia's biggest moneymakers: garbage. As he and Alana find out, the garbage industry was a critical source of money to New York's Five Families, the cost passed on to everyone else. Until one honest garbage hauler--Robert Kubecka--decided to do something about this stranglehold, in a saga which would dominate Long Island news for years.

Sources

• Garbage, Dentists, and Mobsters – Resource Capital Group’s LCN Connections, Mafia Book Reviews, 2022.
• Alan A. Block, Space, Time, and Organized Crime.
• Alan A. Block & Frank R. Scarpitti, Poison for Profit: The Mafia and Toxic Waste in America.
• New York Newsday, New York Daily News, New York Post, The New York Times.

The Outfit is a production of Higher Ground and Headgum.
Hosted by Dan O’Sullivan and Alana Hope Levinson
Executive Produced by Dan O’Sullivan and Alana Hope Levinson
Produced by Julia Murray
Production Assistance by Franchesca Diaz and CJ Archerd
Sound Design and Engineering by Ryan Kozlowski and Andrew Eapen
Show theme is Bittersweet Defeat by OTE.