On this day‬ in 1946 Mikey Coppola was born in New Jersey. Mikey Cigars as he is otherwise known is a Genovese Crime Family mobster who made national headlines when he went on the lam for 11 years to avoid a possible murder conviction.

On this day in 1946, Michael Coppola — better known on the streets as Mikey Cigars — was born in New Jersey, destined to carve out a notorious chapter in the long and turbulent history of the Genovese Crime Family, one of New York's most powerful and enduring organised crime outfits.

The Genovese Family, which traces its roots back to the foundational era of Charles "Lucky" Luciano and the establishment of the Five Families in the early 1930s, has long prided itself on operating with a degree of secrecy and discipline that sets it apart from its rivals. It was within this culture of omertà that Mikey Cigars rose through the ranks, earning his stripes as a made member and eventually a capo within the organisation. His nickname, a nod to his fondness for cigars, gave him a certain old-world mob character that belied the serious criminal enterprise he was deeply embedded in.

Coppola first attracted significant national attention in connection with the 1977 murder of John Feliciano, a case that would define much of his later life. Rather than face the music in court and risk a murder conviction, Mikey Cigars chose a path that few could sustain — he vanished. For eleven extraordinary years, Coppola lived as a fugitive, managing to evade law enforcement while allegedly continuing to conduct mob business from the shadows. It was a remarkable feat of evasion that drew comparisons to some of the most audacious disappearing acts in organised crime history and kept his name very much alive in law enforcement circles.

When federal authorities finally caught up with him, the legal proceedings that followed shed further light on just how deeply entrenched Coppola was within the Genovese hierarchy. His case became a window into the inner workings of a criminal organisation that had survived decades of federal scrutiny, high-profile prosecutions, and the relentless pressure of the RICO statute that had already dismantled so many of his contemporaries.

Mikey Cigars ultimately serves as a vivid reminder that the Genovese Family has never been short of resilient, resourceful operators willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect both themselves and the organisation. His eleven-year run from justice remains one of the more compelling fugitive stories in modern American mob history, cementing his place in the broader narrative of New York's underworld.