A former mobster for the Gambino family in New York City said he began working for the Mafia when he was 12 years old.

In the second instalment of a three-part series, Mafia On The Inside, former mobster John Alite told The Pat Kenny Show that many people he had grown up around in Queens, New York had been a gangster.

"All my dad's friends were very famous gangsters," he said. "My baseball coach became the neighbourhood boss."

"I was very familiar growing up with all the bosses of major crime families."

Alite was "picked up" by bosses when he was working in a delicatessen as a young boy.

"Next door was my girlfriend's father – a made guy – and around the corner was his brother and they would come in the store," he said.

"I was a baby at the time, 12 to 14 years old, and they started asking me to run errands."

The former mobster said he was a "meek" child who was not naturally dangerous.

"I grew up with a lot of dangerous people in my neighbourhood and my friends were very dangerous – I was meek," he said.

"I played sports. I was a big baseball player, handball and stickball and all the sports that you play in the inner city streets but I wasn't really dangerous.

"I became very dangerous later on."

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Alite went on to become an enforcer for the Gambino family, where he used violent means to deal with those who did not go along with the Mafia's rules.

"I started with a guy ... he was a local bookmaker," he said. "He asked me to go collect money."

"Initially it was just collecting money without hurting anybody but when guys ended up not paying or they were going to pay, he eventually asked me to go baseball bat somebody – which I did.

"Eventually [it involved] shooting, stabbing, batting, piping, whatever and also getting those things done to me."

Executions

In one particular instance during his time in the Mafia, Alite said he executed two men who came on his property after they failed to tell him who sent them within half a second.

"You're living a dangerous life, so there is no middle ground," he said.

"You got to be very violent to survive and they came to kill me.

" I gave them what they were trying to give me."

Downfall

In the early 2000s, federal racketeering indictments were handed to Alite, who went on the run to Rio de Janeiro – a time which took an "emotional toll" on himself and his family.

"From country to country – from Africa to Cuba to Venezuela to the army base I lived on in Colombia," he said.

Alite was arrested in Brazil, and in January 2008, he plead guilty to racketeering charges that included two murders, four murder conspiracies, at least eight shootings, and two attempted shootings as well as armed home invasions and armed robberies.

"They offered me a deal and I took the deal and I decided to talk back against the Mafia that was talking against me and betraying me," he said.

Life now

When Alite was released from prison in 2013, he said he did not fear for his life when returning back to his community.

"I moved right back to New York," he said."I'm not like the typical Italian bosses that go running and hiding somewhere else after they cooperate."

Alite now works with young people to discourage them from joining violent crime groups.

"The only way to get to these kids is for them to respect what you used to do," he said. "So, they'll listen to what you're doing now and hopefully they follow what I'm doing now."