Meet the real “Sopranos.” “Mob Money” (8 p.m., CNBC), an installment in the network’s “American Greed” series, profiles the New Jersey mobster organization known as the DeCavalcante family.

Like Tony Soprano’s fictional wiseguys, the DeCavalcantes were overshadowed by the five New York families across the Hudson River, and subject to much condescension.

The New Yorkers referred to their Garden State brethren as “farmers,” and major personnel decisions (like the making of “made men”) in the DeCavalcante organization were subject to New York approval.

Fortune smiled on the farmers in the late 1990s when the New York families were devastated by FBI arrests and infiltration. Suddenly, DeCavalcante members operated in the big time, even pulling off a brazen heist at the World Trade Center.

Their hubris would be their undoing. The World Trade Center jobs’ hapless organizer was captured quickly and submitted to wearing a wire.

The FBI was suddenly deluged with hundreds of hours of details of criminal scheming and internal rivalries. And the flood of information became a torrent when the informant made a “gift” of stolen cell phones that the mobsters grabbed up without suspecting they had been tapped.

And in an odd twist, by 1999, some of the workings of the DeCavalcante family began to be echoed on a popular new show on HBO. Real members of the crime family saw themselves in the fictional “Sopranos” characters, and they reveled in the attention.

But some of the plot twists seemed a tad too close to home. An organization riven by dissent plunges into chaos after the stomach-cancer death of its new boss. Just like Richie Aprile (David Proval)!

A rising star in the family is whacked after members suspect he is gay. Didn’t that happen to Vito Spatafore (Joseph Gannascoli)? And many of the mobsters begin to suspect a snitch in their midst.

Unlike the murdered stool pigeon Salvatore Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore), the FBI informant was sent into protective custody. But not before bringing down the entire operation.

Long before “The Sopranos” went off the air, most of its DeCavalcante crime-family inspiration was awaiting trial, in the witness protection program or behind bars.

• Speaking of behind bars, “World’s Toughest Prisons” (8 p.m., National Geographic) visits the Peruvian facility that may house confessed killer and tabloid media obsession Joran van der Sloot.

• A prime-time edition of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (9 p.m., ABC) welcomes the stars of the third “Twilight” movie. Could it be any more boring than the second?

Tonight’s other highlights

• One too many birthday surprises for Jay on “Modern Family” (8 p.m., ABC).

• A fall event fails to harvest many guests or much media attention on “The Fabulous Beekman Boys” (8 p.m., Planet Green).

• Lingerie modeling can be murder on “CSI: NY” (9 p.m., CBS).

• Joy takes up with a younger man on “Hot in Cleveland” (9 p.m., TV Land).

• “Cameron Diaz” (9 p.m., E!) looks back at the life and career of the star of “Knight and Day.”