D'Aquila proclaimed himself the boss of all bosses some time after the jailing of Ignazio Lupo and Giuseppe Morello in 1909. (He wasn't the only one to attempt such a proclamation, but he was the only one to survive the announcement for any significant length of time.)
D'Aquila allegedly meddled extensively in the business of other American crime families. He is believed to have inserted his own loyal followers as spies into other families.
While D'Aquila did not succeed in uniting the city's Mafiosi, he did not have a serious open challenge for about a decade, when Giuseppe Masseria and Umberto Valenti moved to grab the underworld throne with the support of Morello, Ciro Terranova and Nicola Gentile.
Not much is known about D'Aquila. It appears he lost much of his authority to Masseria in the early 1920s and then was eliminated by Masseria forces (or allies) in 1928. His crime group seems to have been taken over by Masseria supporter Al Mineo and his right-hand man Steve Ferrigno. The unit was run by Frank Scalise during the later Castellamarese War and was then turned over to Vincent Mangano in the 1931 reorganization. It survives to this day as the Gambino Family
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