Marco was born in 1887 in Italy. Marco came to the United States through Ellis Island in 1908. He started off as a pimp and con man in Nevada and Washington. In 1919 he served a brief prison sentence for burglary in Sacramento. Crawford, an old friend from their days in Seattle convinced Marco to move to Los Angeles. In the early 1920s Macro drove to L.A. in a Cadillac transporting alcohol to a Long Beach warehouse. The political connections created by Crawford's political machine let Marco operate without much fear of prosecution for his crimes. In 1925 Marco pistol whipped an LAPD officer and was given a $50 fine and his gun back. According to the IRS, between 1922 and 1924 Marco earned $500,000 from bordello prostitution.