incarcerated for attempted extortion, Cascio Ferro was recruited into the Fasci Siciliani (Sicilian Leagues), a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration, by Bernardino Verro, the president of the League in Corleone. The Leagues needed muscle in their social struggle of 1893–94. Cascio Ferro became the president of the Fascio of Bisacquino. In January 1894, the Fasci were outlawed and brutally repressed on the orders of Prime Minister Francesco Crispi. Many leaders were put in jail; Cascio Ferro fled to Tunis for a year. After serving his sentence for his role in the peasant unrest, Cascio Ferro returned to a position of social power and pressured authorities in Palermo to put him in charge of granting emigration permits in the district of Corleone. According to Mafia historian Salvatore Lupo, Cascio Ferro was involved in clandestine emigration networks. In the United States Sentenced for the kidnapping of the Baroness of Valpetrosa in 1898, Cascio Ferro was released in 1900. To escape special police surveillance in Sicily, he sailed to the United States and arrived in New York City at the end of September 1901. He lived for about 2 years in New York, acting as an importer of fruits and foods. He also spent six months in New Orleans. On 21 May 1902, Cascio Ferro was arrested in connection with a large counterfeiting operation in Hackensack, New Jersey. He was arrested at the barbershop of Giuseppe Romano on First Avenue, from which the counterfeit money had been distributed. Cascio Ferro managed to escape conviction—his alibi was that he worked at a paper mill—while the other gang members were tried and sentenced. In New York, he became associated with the Morello gang in Harlem, headed by Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo. In September 1904, he returned to Sicily shortly after police sergeant Joseph Petrosino of the New York City Police Department ordered his arrest for involvement with the Barrel Murder; his application for American citizenship was consequently blocked. Petrosino traced him to New Orleans, where Cascio Ferro had gone to escape detection, but he had already slipped away. Some observers consider Cascio Ferro as the one who brought the extortion practice of "continuing protection" in exchange for protection money (pizzo) from Sicily to the United States. "You have to skim the cream off the milk without breaking the bottle," he summarized the system. "Don't throw people into bankruptcy with ridiculous demands for