The American Mafia, commonly known as the Mafia, Italian Mafia, Italian Mob, or the Mob in the United States, is an Italian American criminal society that originated and developed from the Sicilian Mafia. The Italian-American Mafia is a secret criminal society without a formal name, similar to the Sicilian Mafia. Its members usually refer to it as Cosa Nostra , a phrase which literally translates to "our thing," but can be more accurately paraphrased as "our work" or "our operation." The press also coined the name "National Crime Syndicate" to refer to the entire network of U.S. organized crime, which included the Jewish Mafia elements and the Italian-American Mafia. It was described as a confederation of mainly Italian and Jewish-American organized crime groups throughout the U.S., as revealed by the findings of a U.S. Senate Special Committee in the 1950s chaired by Estes Kefauver. The creator of the American Mob was long-time criminal Charles "Lucky" Luciano.