Anthony Fiato

Puggy Zeichick - Anthony Fiato Los Angeles Mafia

2010-12-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

Puggy Zeichick bankrolled a seven figure juice loan operation that was backed by Mafia mobster Anthony Fiato's mob muscle. Zeichick and Fiato incorporated all the top west coast Jewish bookies and loan sharks into their crime syndicate.. Law enforcement and Mafiosi alike referred to Anthony Fiato and Puggy Zeichick as the Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky of Los Angeles...

JLSMITH: mobster Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent Sr., leaves Las Vegas black mark:

2010-04-12T21:21:00.000-07:00

Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent Sr., what are we going to do with you?

Didn't we show you enough respect for one street guy's lifetime back in September 1993 when we added your name to Nevada's infamous List of Excluded Persons?

We bestowed upon you the highest honor Nevada awards mobsters and racketeers and cheats by placing you in the casino Black Book. (Population: 35.) The honor comes with a lifetime membership, and you're banned from setting foot in any of Nevada's sacred gambling halls.

You didn't lose sleep over it, I realize. But your Black Book membership was a signal Nevada gaming authorities believed you were a clear and present danger to the credibility of the casino industry. read more
John L Smith Review Journal

mafia: Nick Rizzuto gunned down in Montreal:

2010-01-04T21:03:00.000-08:00

MONTREAL -- A man who was shot and killed in Montreal's Notre-Dame-De-Grace borough Monday afternoon is Nick Rizzuto Jr., a police source who spoke on condition of anonymity has confirmed to The Montreal Gazette. Nick was the son of Vito Rizzuto, the reputed head of the Montreal Mafia read full story

Brando, Sinatra, and John Gotti

2009-10-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

According to Victoria Gotti's new book, "This Family of Mine:"
* John Gotti and Brando hung out. Matthew Broderick once approached Gotti at a restaurant to ask if the godfather would have a drink with him and Marlon Brando. Gotti declined, but sent a bottle of bubbly to the actors. When Broderick made a second plea, Gotti brought Brando to his Ravenite Social Club. "That night, the reel-life godfather came face-to-face with the real-life godfather," Victoria writes. * He was pals with Leona Helmsley. Victoria writes that Helmsley denied the feds permission to "infiltrate" the wedding of John "Junior" Gotti at the Helmsley Palace by posing as staff, and instead hung a 20-foot Italian flag on the hotel's facade for the affair. When Gotti died, it was Helmsley's jet that brought his body back to New York. * He despised Frank Sinatra. "My father hated Sinatra, and wouldn't dare attend a concert of his," Victoria writes. "In fact, Dad never attended a concert in his life . . . He said they were 'too loud' and 'a breeding ground for trouble.' "

Gotti Junior may have killed his kid brother, but Frank Silva Jr. says, 'Not interested'

2009-09-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

Frank Silva Jr. can live without knowing who killed his kid brother, even if federal prosecutors can't.The New Jersey man, standing in his front door Friday, said he's ignored testimony this week that mob legacy John A. (Junior) Gotti stabbed and then taunted a dying Daniel Silva back in 1983
. "Not interested after 26 years," the 52-year-old Silva said flatly at his rural home. "You move on."
His brother's name dominated the first days of the racketeering trial, with an eyewitness implicating Gotti in the killing inside an Ozone Park bar
Mike Bonner recalled the fatal March night at the Silver Fox, where a dispute between second-generation gangster Junior and a local barfly exploded into a barroom brawl. As glasses and punches flew, the prosecution witness said, the then-19-year-old Gotti slid away from the juke box, pulled a knife and stabbed Silva.
Bonner recounted seeing the badly injured 24-year-old victim propped up on a bar stool, splattered with blood.
"He looked like he was in bad shape," Bonner said. "Blood all over his shirt."
Prosecutors said a sneering Gotti returning to taunt the mortally wounded Danny with a cruel Porky Pig impression: "Th-th-that's all folks!"
Bonner said Gotti's father paid $10,000 to a crooked detective to make the case disappear.
The details were lost on Frank Silva, whose son Daniel is apparently named for his late uncle.
His father, Frank Sr., died three years after his brother, Silva said, and his mom is in declining health.
Asked how he coped with Daniel's death, Silva offered a blunt two-word reply: "Never did." Silva declined to discuss the case or his brother. It's a position he's taken for decades, even before the latest link to Gotti.
"I don't speak of family matters," he said before asking a reporter and photographer to leave the property

Ex-Mobster Gets Full Military Honors At Funeral

2009-09-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

Convicted mobster Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo was treated like a hero when he was laid to rest on Thursday. Before serving 24 years in federal prison, Angiulo served in the Navy. Angiulo was buried with full military honors for his service during World War II. The Navy funeral honors he earned serving during wartime are similar to those seen at Sen. Edward Kennedy's funeral last week, with six sailors to act as pallbearers and seven more for the firing party. The rules say as long as he wasn't convicted of capital offenses, he gets the military treatment. But some veterans told the Boston Herald they don't think Angiulo deserves the full honor. Angiulo was busted in 1983 after the feds bugged his North End headquarters for months. He was convicted of racketeering, loan-sharking and gambling charges. He served 24 years in federal prison before his release in 2007. He died last Saturday at the age of 90 from kidney failure

Alex "Bobo" Rocco , Winter Hill hood and Hollywood actor

2009-08-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Hollywood actor Alex Rocco was born Alexander F Petricone in Boston.Mass Petricone was known by the nickname “Bobo” in his early years as a hard fisted hood in the infamous Winter Hill Gang
…
According to Vincent Teresa in “My Life in the Mafia,” it was Rocco whose girlfriend Charlestown mobster Georgie McLaughlin tried to pick up on Labor Day weekend 1961, setting off the bloody Irish Gang War.
.

Rocco was arrested along with Winter Hill boss, Buddy McLean, as a suspect in the October 1961 murder of a gangster but was never charged.

.Petricone then bolted out of bullet riddled Boston and moved to Sunny California in 1962, and began using the name Alex Rocco. . He took acting classes and lost weight.

Rocco made his movie bones and scored the solid-gold role of Mobster,Moe Green, in the Godfather. The Winter Hill Mobs most famous felons watched the movie and rooted for Moe Green to whack out Michael Corleone

The First Mafia Family

2009-08-27T20:45:00.000-07:00

He came to New York City in 1892 from Corleone, the town in western Sicily whose name Mario Puzo borrowed to create literature's most famous Mafioso.

A half-century before The Godfather, he was the face of organized crime in America

.
That's the takeaway from The First Family, Mike Dash's highly researched and smoothly written book on the origins of the Mafia in the United States

.
Focusing primarily on New York City and using an infamous mob hit - the 1903 Barrel Murder - as the jumping-off point, the book, on one level, is a police procedural set against the backdrop of the Italian immigrant experience.

Dash's straightforward account - he accurately describes it as a "narrative history" - provides context for the birth of an American underworld institution, but he in no way glamorizes the gangsters who dominate his story. Morello, shrewd, ruthless and calculating, emerges as the prototype of the ethnic crime boss, the sine qua non of New World Mafiosi.

Known as "Clutch" or "The Clutch Hand" because he had been born with a deformed right arm, Morello was, in the words of one inve stigator, "conscientiously and zealously bad," an individual who "enjoyed" being a criminal Read More

Boston capo Jerry Angiulo reported near death

2009-08-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

Former longtime Boston Mafia godfather Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo was near death yesterday from kidney failure, sources told the Herald.
The 90-year-old ex-mobster from Nahant has been on weekly dialysis treatments, sources said, and was hospitalized in Lynn where he was surrounded by family.

A call to Union Hospital in Lynn last night to check on Angiulo’s condition was referred to the intensive-care unit.

There, a medical official said the hospital was not allowed to discuss patients’ cases.
Angiulo was convicted of racketeering, loansharking and illegal gambling in 1986 and sentenced to 45 years in federal prison after his headquarters at 98 Prince St. in the North End was infamously bugged by the FBI with help from the agency’s star informants, James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi - the criminal kingpin’s underworld rivals in South Boston.
Angiulo, underboss of New England La Cosa Nostra from the late 1960s until he was busted, was not expected to be released from federal prison until next May, but was paroled in 2007 for good behavior.

Ex-girlfriend tells of confronting Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi

2009-07-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

A former girlfriend of gangster Stephen “The Rifleman’’ Flemmi testified tearfully yesterday that she accused him in 1986 of murdering her daughter but did not know for sure that Deborah Hussey was dead and that the mobster had participated in the slaying until 14 years later.
Testifying in a wrongful-death lawsuit that blames the FBI for the slaying because Flemmi was a protected informant, Marion A. Hussey said she confronted him outside a hospital where their son had been taken after a car accident. Hussey, 69, of Weymouth, had three children with Flemmi, whom she never married. Her daughter, Deborah Hussey, was from a marriage that had ended in divorce.
Marion Hussey said she had not heard from Deborah in two years and feared that Flemmi had something to do with the 26-year-old’s disappearance. The young woman had told her mother in 1984 that Flemmi had molested her for years. Deborah Hussey also caused tension in the couple’s Milton home because she abused drugs, engaged in prostitution, and robbed bookmakers, her mother said.
“I said to him, ‘You killed my daughter,’ ’’ Marion Hussey recalled, referring to the confrontation outside the hospital. “He was taken aback. He was in shock. He grabbed a pole. His knees bent.’’
Hussey’s lawyer, Ann M. Donovan, of Newton, asked her whether Flemmi denied killing her daughter. “I don’t remember what his exact words were,’’ Hussey replied.
Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, testified previously during the trial at US District Court in Boston that Deborah Hussey was among two women he lured to homes in South Boston on separate occasions in the 1980s. Both times, the 75-year-old gangster said, he silently watched as his partner James “Whitey’’ Bulger quietly emerged from a back room and strangled them.
Deborah Hussey’s body was unearthed in 2000 from a Dorchester grave, 15 years after her murder.
Her family is among three suing the federal government in the civil wrongful-death trial. The others are relatives of Flemmi’s onetime girlfriend Debra Davis, who was allegedly strangled by Bulger in 1981 at age 26, and relatives of Louis Litif, a South Boston bar owner and bookmaker who was shot to death in 1980.
The families are seeking unspecified damages for the victims’ pain and suffering and the families’ loss of financial and emotional support. US District Court Judge William G. Young is presiding over the nonjury trial.
The plaintiffs contend that the FBI created a dangerous condition by failing to control Bulger and Flemmi, both of whom were FBI informants. The informants reported to John J. Connolly Jr., a corrupt agent who was sentenced to 40 years in prison in January for leaking information to Bulger and Flemmi that led to the killing of a Boston businessman in Florida in 1982. Bulger, 79, is wanted for 19 killings and has been a fugitive since 1995.
The Justice Department counters it had no idea that Bulger and Flemmi planned to kill the three victims. One of the Justice Department lawyers said during his opening statement that Marion Hussey lived on “blood money’’ from Flemmi for years and cannot blame the FBI for her daughter’s murder

Italian American Mobsters

2009-07-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

A
Joseph Abate, "Joey"
Frank Abbandando Jr., "Fingers"
Frank Abbatemarco, "Frankie Shots"
Philip Abramo, "The King of Wall Street"
Settimo Accardi, "Big Sam"
Tony Accardo, [Antonino Accardo], "Big Tuna"
Anthony Accetturo, "Tumac"
Carmine Agnello
Thomas Agro, [Ambrosiano], "T.A", "Tipp"
Anthony Aiello, "Ace"
Joe Aiello, [Giuseppe Aiello]
Joseph Aiuppa, "Ha Ha", "Joey Doves" (1907-1997)
Felix Alderisio, "Milwaukee Phil"
Harry Aleman, "The Hook"
Joseph Allegro, "Joey"
Vincent Alo, "Jimmy Blue Eyes"
Benedetto Aloi, "Benny"
Vincenzo Aloi, "Vinny"
William Aloisio, "Smokes"
Willie Altieri, "Two-Knife"
Giacomo Amari, "Jake"
Jackie Zancone, "The Boss"
Frank Amato
Joseph Amato
Samuzzo Amatuna, "Samuel", "Samoots"
Victor Amuso, "Little Vic"
Albert Anastasia, [Umberto Anastasio], "Mad Hatter", "Lord High Executioner"
Anthony Anastasio, "Tough Tony"
Antonio Anatuppi, "The Toothpick"
Joseph Andriacchi, "Joe the Builder"
Donald Angelini, "The Wizard of Odds"
Albert Anselmi
Anthony Antico, "Tico"
Ignacio Antinori
Salvatore Aparo, "Sammy Meatballs"
Vito Arena
John Ardito, "Buster"
Joseph Ardizzone, [Giuseppe Ernesto Ardizzone]
Joseph Armone, "Joe Piney"
Stephen Armone, "14th Street Steve"
Vincent Artuso, "Little Vinnie"
Jerome Asaro, "Jerry"
Vincent Asaro, "Vinnie"
Louis Attanasio, "Louie Ha Ha"
Alphonse Attardi, "The Peacemaker" (1892-1970)
Carmine Avellino
Salvatore Avellino, "Sal", "The Golfer"
Johnny Avendano, "Johnny Mad Matt"

B
Frank Balistrieri, "Frankie Bal," "Mr. Big" d. 1993
Anthony Baratta, "Bowat"
Joseph Barbara, "Joe the Barber"
John Barbato, "Johnny Sausage"
Edward Barberra, [Barberro]
Vincent Basciano, "Vinny Gorgeous", "Vinny from the Bronx"
Sam Battaglia, "Teets"
James Belcastro, "Mad Bomber"
Liborio Bellomo, "Barney"
Nicholas Bianco, "Nicky"
Anthony J. Biase
Lawrence Bilello, "Larry"
Richard Bilello, "Richie"
Thomas Bilotti, "The Wig", "The Doberman," "Zombie Bilotti", "The Pitbull", "Tommy", (1940-1985)
Charles Binaggio (1909-1950)
Joseph Biondo, "Joe Bandy", "Joe the Blonde", "Little Rabbit"
Attilio Bitondo, "Tillio"
Ferdinand Boccia, "The Shadow"
Richard Boiardi, "Richie the Boot"
Frank Bompensiero, "Frankie Bomp"
Joseph Bonanno, "Joe Bananas" (1905-2002)
Salvatore Bonanno, "Bill" (1932- 2008)
Cesare Bonventre, "The Tall Guy" (d. 1984)
Giovanni Bonventre, "John"
Vito Bonventre
Henry Borelli, "Dirty Harry"
Rosario Borgio
Bartholomew Boriello, "Bobby" (d. 1991)
Anthony Brancato
Dominic Brooklier, [Domenico Brucceleri], "Jimmy Regace"
Adolfo Bruno
Angelo Bruno, "The Gentle Don" (1910-1980)
Fiore Buccieri, "Fifi"
Frank Buccieri, "The Horse", "Frank Russo", "Big Frank"
Russell Bufalino, "McGee", "The Old Man"

C
Joel Cacace, "Waverly"
Thomas Cacciopoli, "Tommy Sneakers", "Cacci"
Vincent Caci, "Jimmy"
Marshall Joseph Caifano, [Marcello Giuseppe Caifano]
Vincent Cafaro, "Fish"
Richard Cain
Frank Calabrese, Sr., "Frankie Breeze"
Frank Cali, [Francesco Paolo Augusto Calì], "Franky Boy"
Joseph Cammarano, "Joe Saunders"
William Cammisano, "Willie the Rat"
Louis Campagna, "Little New York"
Paul Cantarella
Richard Cantarella, "Shellackhead"
Anthony Capo, "Tony"
Al Capone, [Alphonse Capone], "Scarface", "Big Al" (1899-1947)
Frank Capone, [Salvatore Capone]
Louis Capone (1896-1944)
Ralph Capone, "Bottles"
Antonio Caponigro, "Tony Bananas"
John Capra, "Johnny Hooks"
Frankie Carbo, [Paul Carbo] "Frank Tucker", "Mr. Fury", "Mr. Gray" (d. 1976)
Anthony J. Cardarella, "Tiger"
Sam Cardinelli, [Salvatore Cardinella]
Anthony Carfano, "Little Augie Pisano" (d. 1959)
Louis Cafora II, "Fat Louis", "The Whale",
Joseph Caridi, "Joe C"
Sam Carlisi, "Black Sam", "Wings" (d. 1997)
John Carneglia, "Johnny Carnegs"
Sylvestro Carolla, "Sam" (1896-1972)
Charles Carrollo, "Charlie the Wop"
Frank Carrone, "Buzz", "Buzzy"
Robert Carozza, "Bobby Russo"
Frank T. Caruso, "Skids"
Primo Cassarino
Anthony Casso, "Gaspipe"
Paul Castellano, "PC" (1915-1985)
Eugene Castelle, "Bubsie", "Boopsie"
Richard Castucci
Salvatore Catalanotte, "Sam Sings in the Night"
Dominick Cataldo, "Little Dom"
Anthony Catania, "The Baker"
Gerardo Catena, "Jerry"
Domenico Cefalu, "Italian Dom" (b. 1947)
Dino Cellini
John Cerrella, "Johnny Sideburns"
Jackie Cerone, "Jackie the Lackey" (1914-)
Dominick Cersani, "Remo"
John Cersani, "Boobie"
Peter Chiodo, "Fat Pete"
Anthony Ciccone, "Sonny"
Dominick Cirillo, "The Quiet Dom"
Anthony Civella, "Tony Ripe"
Carl Civella, "Corky"
Nicholas Civella, [Giuseppe Nicoli Civella]
Michael Clemente, "Mike Costello", "Big Mike"
Frank Colacurcio, Sr.
Eco James Coli
Joseph Colombo (1914-1978)
James Colosimo, "Big Jim" (1877-1920)
Louis Consalvo, "Louie Eggs"
George Conte, "Georgie Goggles"
Pasquale Conte, "Patty", "Patsy"
Frank Coppa
Michael Coppola, "Trigger Mike" (d. 1965)
Anthony Corallo, "Tony Ducks"
Joseph Corrao, "Joe Butch"
Vincent Corrao, "Vinny Butch"
Anthony Cornero, "Admiral", "Tony the Hat"
Joseph Corozzo, "JoJo"
Nicholas Corozzo, "Little Nicky"
Vincent Corrao, "Vinny Butch", "Vinny the Shrimp"
Vincent Corrao, "Vinny the Blond"
Samuel Corsaro, "Little Sammy"
James Cosmano, "Sunny Jim"
Frank Costello, "The Prime Minister" (1891-1973)
Steven Crea, "Stevie Wonder", "Herbie"
Perry Criscitelli
Domenico Cutaia, "Danny"
William Cutolo, "Billy Fingers", "Wild Bill" (d. 1999)

D
William Daddano, Sr., "Willie Potatoes" (1912-1975)
Louis Daidone, "Louie Bagels"
John D'Amato, "Johnny Boy"
Alphonse D'Ambrosio "Funzi"
Salvatore D'Ambrosio "Sally"
John D'Amico, "Jackie Nose"'
Joseph D'Amico, "Joe Mook"
Anthony D'Andrea, [Antonio D'Andrea]
Leo D'Angelo, "The Mad Hatter"
Ralph Daniello, "The Barber"
Salvatore D'Aquila, "Toto"
Alphonse D'Arco, "Little Al"
Angelo DeCarlo, "Gyp"
Sam DeCavalcante, [Samuel Rizzo Decavalcante], "Sam the Plumber" (1913-1997)
Frank DeCicco, (d. 1986)
George DeCicco, "Butterass"
Joseph Defede, "Little Joe", "Joe D"
Peter DeFeo, "Philie Aquilino"
William D'Elia, "Big Billy" (1946-)
Patrick DeFilippo, "Patty from the Bronx"
Andrew Thomas DelGiorno, "Tommy Del"
Aniello Dellacroce, "Neil", "The Lamb" (1914-1985)
Frank DeLuca, [Francesco DeLuca]
Genovese Family Tags: american mafia, Bonanno Family, Bonanoo crime family, Colombo Family, Crack Cocaine, Death Warrant, Dominick "Quiet Dom" Cirillo, Dominick Cicale, Dominick Cirillo, Fbi Claims, Gambino Family, genovese crime family, Genovese Family, genovese family boss, Genovese family ruling panel, History Of Drug Abuse, John "Sonny" Franzese, john "sonny" franzeser, Joseph Massino, joseph massino testimony, la cosa nostra, mafia, mafia 2011, mafia news, mafia today, Mob Hit, Mobster, Mothers Day, Namesake, new york mafia, Nicholas Cirillo, organized crime, Quiet Dom Cirillo, Second Generation, Son Nicholas, Sonny Franzese, the mafia, the mafia today, Vincent Basciano Jr, vincent basciano trial, Vincent Chin Gigante, Vincent Vinny Gorgeous Basciano, Vinny Gorgeous Basciano, Wiseguy

Joseph DeLuca, [Giuseppe DeLuca]
Vincent DeMartino, "Chicky"
Frank DeMayo, "Chee-Chee"
Roy DeMeo, [Roy Albert Demeo] (1940-1983)
Lawrence Dentico, "Larry Fab", "Little Larry"
John DeRoss, "Jackie", "Jackie Zambooka"
Gino DeSilva, "Ginny Books"
Anthony DeSimone, "Tony D"
Frank DeSimone
Franky DeSimone
James DeSimone
Joseph DeSimone, "Joe Desi", "Joe Black"
Rosario DeSimone, "The Chief"
Thomas DeSimone, "Two-Gun Tommy"
Sam DeStefano, "Mad Sam"
William Devino, "Billy Batts"
Vito Di Giorgio
John DiGilio, "Johnny Dee"
Michael DiLeonardo, "Mickey Scars"
Paul DiMarco, "Paulie Stripes"
Leonard DiMaria, "Lenny"
Joseph DiNapoli, "Joey Dean"
Louis DiNapoli
Vincent DiNapoli
John Dioguardi, "Johnny Dio"
Joseph DiStefano, "Joe Shakes"
Joseph DiVarco, "Little Caesar"
Jack Dragna, [Antonio Rizzoti]
Tom Dragna, born Gateano Rizzoit
Louis Tom Dragna, "The Reluctant Prince"
Vincent Drucci, [Vittorio D'Ambrosio], "Schemer" (1898-1927)

E
Thomas Eboli, "Tommy Ryan" (d. 1972)
Albert Embarrato, "Al Walker" (d. 2001)
James Episcopia, [Giacomo Episcopia], "Jimmy Legs"
Joseph Esposito, "Diamond Joe"
Natale Evola, "Joe Diamond"

F
Anthony Fiato, "The Animal"
Louis Facciolo, "Louie"
James Failla, "Jimmy Brown
Costabile Farace jr., "Gus"
Carmine Fatico, "Charley Wagons"
Anthony Federici, "Tough Tony"
Steve Ferrigno, [Stefano Ferrigno]
Louis Ferrante
Theresa Ferrara
Vincent M. Ferrara, "The Animal"
Joseph Ferriola, "Oscar", "Joe Nagall"
Ray Ferritto
Bill Fischetti, [Guglielmo Fischetti], "William"
Rocco Fischetti, "Ralph Fisher", "Rocky"
Tino Fiumara, "T", "The Greek"
Stephen Flemmi, "The Rifleman"
Vincent Flemmi, "Jimmy The Bear", "Vinnie the Butcher"
Steven Franse
John Franzese, "Sonny"
Michael Franzese
Christopher Furnari, "Christy Tick"
Jimmy Fratianno, "The Weasel"
Louis Fratto, [Luigi Tomaso Giuseppi Fratto], "Lew Farrell"

G
Anthony Gaggi, "Nino"
Tommy Gagliano, [Gaetano Gagliano]
Carmine Galante, "Cigar", "Lilo" (1910-1979)
James Galante
Joseph Galizia, "Joe Glitz"
Albert Gallo, "Kid Blast", "Al Blast"
James Gallo , "Jimmy"
Joe Gallo, "Crazy Joe", "Joey the Blond" (1929-1972)
Joseph N. Gallo (1912-1995)
Kenny Gallo, "Kenji"
Carlo Gambino (1902-1976)
Emanuel Gambino, "Manny"
Thomas Gambino, "Tommy"
Rosario Gangi, "Ross"
Eddie Garafola, "Eddie the Chink"
Charles Gargotta, "Mad Dog"
Michael James Genovese
Thomas Genovese, "Tommy"
Vito Genovese, "Don Vitone" (1897-1969)
Nicola Gentile, "Nick", "Zu Cola"
Preston Geritano
Phillip Giaccone, "Philly Lucky", "The Priest"
Corrado Giacona
Sam Giancana, "Momo", "Mo", "Mooney", "Sam the Cigar", "Sam Flood" (1908-1975)
Michael Gianco, [Michele Gianfranco], "Spider"
Gaetano Gianolla
Mario Gigante
Vincent Gigante, "Chin", "The Oddfather" (1928-2006)
Charles Gioe, "Cherry Nose" (d. 1954)
Thomas Gioeli, "Tommy Shots"
Frank Gioia, Jr., "Spaghetti Man"
Frank Gioia, Sr.
Anthony Giordano, [Antonio Rico Giuseppe Giordano], "Tony G"
Anthony Gizzo, "Fat Tony"
Gene Gotti (1946-)
John Gotti, "Dapper Don", "The Teflon Don" (1940-2002)
John A. Gotti, "Junior Gotti" (1960-)
Peter Gotti (1939-)
Richard G. Gotti (1968-)
Richard V. Gotti (1942-)
Steven Grammauta, "Stevie Coogan"
Sammy Gravano, [Salvatore Gravano], "Sammy the Bull" (1945-)
Anthony Graziano, "T.G."
Edward Grillo, "Danny"
Francesco Guarraci, "Frank"
Matthew Guglielmetti, "Matty"
Joseph Guglielmo, "Dracula"

H
Henry Hill (1943-)

I
Matthew Ianniello, "Matty the Horse"
Joseph Iannuzzi, "Joe Dogs"
James Ida
Frank Illiano, "Punchy"
Nicola Impastato, "Nick Tousa"
Alphonse Indelicato, "Sonny Red"
Anthony Indelicato, "Bruno", "Whack-Whack"
Pietro Inzarillo, [Inzerillo]

J
Ronald Jerothe, "John", "Foxy"
Wilfred Johnson, "Willie Boy"
Joseph Juliano, "Sonny"

K
Paul Kelly, [Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli] (1871/1876-1927/1936)

L
Gennaro Langella, "Jerry Lang"
Joseph Lanza, "Socks"
Angelo J. LaPietra, "The Hook"
James LaPietra, "Jimmy the Lapper"
Louis LaRasso, "Fat Lou"
John Sebastian LaRocca
James V. LaSala
Frank Lastorino, "Big Frank"
Peter LaTempa
John Lazia, "Brother John"
Daniel Leo, "Danny the Lion"
Phil Leonetti, "Crazy Phil"
Paolo LiCastri
Nicola Licata, "Old Man', "Nick"
Dominic Licavoli,
James T. Licavoli, [Vicentio Licavoli], "Jack White", "Blackie"
Thomas Licavoli, "Yonnie"
Peter Licavoli, "Horseface"
Joseph Ligambi, "Uncle Joe"
Frank Lino, "Curly"
Frank LoCascio, "Frankie Loc"
Peter LoCascio, "Mr. Bread"
Salvatore LoCascio
Gaetano Lococo, "Thomas", "Tano"
Dominick LoFaro, "Big Dom"
Pasqualino Lolordo, "Patsy"
Antonio Lombardo, "The Scourge" (1892-1928)
Joseph Lombardo, "Joey the Clown" (1929-)
Philip Lombardo, "Benny Squint", "Cockeyed Ben"
Ralph Lombardo, "Ralphie"
Carmine Lombardozzi, "The Doctor"
Angelo Lonardo
Alan Longo, "Baldie"
Joseph LoPiccolo, "Baldie"
Anthony Loria Sr., ""Tony Aboudamita"" (1921-1989)
Tommy Lucchese, [Gaetano Lucchese], "Three Finger Brown", "Tommy Brown" (1899-1967)
Charles Luciano, [Salvatore Lucania], "Lucky" (1896-1962)
Joseph Luparelli, "Joe Pesh"

M
Mariano Macaluso, "Mac"
Matthew Madonna
Peter Magaddino
Stefano Magaddino, "The Undertaker"
Joseph Magliocco, [Giuseppe Magliocco], "Joe Malayak"
Harry Maione, "Happy"
Charles Majuri, [Carlo Majuri], "Charlie Big Ears"
Alphonse Malangone, "Allie Shades"
Frank Maltese, "Baldy"
Lawrence Mangano, "Dago"
Venero Mangano, "Frank", "Benny Eggs"
Vincent Mangano, [Vincenzo Giovanni Mangano], "The Executioner"
Louis Manna, "Bobby"
Anthony Mannarino, "Marshmallow"
Luigi Manocchio, "Baby Shanks"
Francesco Manzo, "Frankie the Wop", "Frank Manze"
Nicholas Marangello, "Nicky Glasses", "Nicky Cigars", "Little Nicky"
Salvatore Maranzano
Carlos Marcello, [Calogero Minacore]
James Marcello, “Little Jimmy”, "The Man"
Daniel Joseph Marino, "Danny"
Richard Martino
John Vincent Martorano, "Vincent Joseph Rancourt", "Richard O'Coin", "Nick", "The Cook", "The Executioner"
Joseph Masella, "Joey O"
Joe Masseria, [Giuseppe Masseria], "Joe the Boss"
Joseph Massino, "Big Joey"
Richard Mazzeo
John Mazzolla, "Johnny"
Angelo McConnach, "Sonny Bamboo"
Jack McGurn, [Vincenzo Antonio Gibaldi], "Machine Gun"
James McLain, [Antonio Trangorello], "Revolvers"
Anthony Megale, "The Genius"
Angelo Meli
Vincent Meli, "Little Vince"
Frank Menna
Angelo Mercurio, "Sonny"
Joseph Merlino, "Skinny Joe"
Mike Merlo, [Michele Merlo]
Sam Mesi, [Samuele Mesi]
Aniello Migliore, "Neil"
Peter Milano, "Shakes"
Gaspar Milazzo
Alfred Mineo, [Alfredo Manfredi]]
John Mirabella, [Giovanni Mirabella]
Joseph Miranda, "Joe"
Michele Miranda, "Big Mike"
Anthony Mirra
Leo Moceri, [Leonard Calogero Moceri], "Leo Lips"
Salvatore Montagna, "Sal the Iron Worker"
John C. Montana, [Giovanni Montana]
Lenny Montana, [Lenny Passofaro]
Montague Montemurro, "Monte"
Dominick Montiglio
John Morales, "Johnny Burns"
Peter Morales, [Peter Anselmi], "Peter Burns"
Pellegrino Morano
Alexander Morelli, "Black Alex", "Skinny Alex"
Antonio Morello
Nicholas Morello, [Nicolo Morello]
Peter Morello, [Pietro Morello], "The Clutching Hand", "The Old Fox", "Piddu Morello"
Willie Moretti
Julie Morrell, "Jules Morello"
Ralph Mosca, "Ralphie Bones"
Ernest Muscarella, "Ernie"

N
James Napoli, "Jimmy Nap"
Aniello Napolitano, "Neil"
Dominick Napolitano, "Sonny Black" (1936-1981)
Peter Napolitano, "Pete the Nap"
John Nardi, [Giovanni Narcchione]
Bernard NiCastro, "Bernie"
Charles Nicoletti, "Chuckie", "The Typewriter" (1916-1977)
Frank Nitti, "The Enforcer" (1883-1943)
John Nobile

O
Victor Orena, "Little Vic"

P
Daniel Pagano
Joseph Luco Pagano
Girolamo Palermo, "Jimmy Dumps"
Vincent Palermo, "Vinny Ocean"
Charles Panarella, "Charlie Moose"
Vincent Papa
Frank Papagni, "Bones"
Rosario Parrino, "Sasa"
John Pate
Raymond L.S. Patriarca
Raymond Patriarca, Jr.
Guido Penosi, "The Bull"
Anthony Peraino, "Big Tony"
Robert Perrino, "Bobby"
Ciro Perrone
Alphonse Persico, "Allie Boy"
Carmine Persico, "The Snake", "Junior" (1933-)
Theodore Persico, "Teddy"
Dominick Petrilli, "The Gap"
Tommaso Petto, "The Ox"
Anthony Pezzullo, "Razor"
Frank Piccolo
Nicholas Piccolo, "Nicky Buck"
Joseph Pinzolo, [Bonaventura Pinzolo], "Fat Joe"
Louis Pioggi, [Poggi], "Louie the Lump"
Thomas Pitera, "Tommy Karate"
Dominick Pizzonia, "Skinny Dom"
Alfred Polizzi, "The Owl"
Frank Polizzi, [Francesco Polizzi]
Angelo Ponte
Rocco Pranno
Thomas Principe, ".22 Caliber Killer"
Ross Prio, [Rosario Prio]
Angelo Prisco, "The Horn"
Joe Profaci, [Giuseppe Profaci](1897-1962)
Anthony Provenzano, "Tony Pro"
Giuseppe Provenzano, "The Sock-Puppet"
Nunzio Provenzano, "Nunzi Pro"
Joseph Puma, "Joey" R
Anthony Rabito, "Mr. Fish", "Fat Anthony"
Rocco Racco
Gregory Rago, "Georgie"
Joseph Rao, "Joseph Cangro", "Tough Joey"
Phillip Rastelli, "Rusty" (1918-1991)
Marco Reginelli, "Small Man"
Tom Reina, [Gaetano Reina] (1889-1930)
George Remini, "Fat Georgie", "Big George"
Paul Ricca, "The Waiter" (1897-1972)
Santo Ricchiettore, "Sonny boy" (1905-1976)
Lawrence Ricci
Louis Ricco, "Louie Bracciole"
Harry Riccobene, "Harry the Hump"
Giovanni Riggi, "John the Eagle"
Frank Rio, "Frank Cline"
Nelson Rivera "Alexis Lombardo"
Michael Rizzitello, "Mike Rizzi"
Alex Rocco
Carmine Romano
John Roselli,
Anthony Rotondo, "Tony"
Benjamin Ruggiero, "Lefty" (1923-1995)
Angelo Ruggiero, "Quack Quack"
Ernest Rupolo, "The Hawk"
Anthony Russo, "Chucky"

Michael Sabella, "Mimi"
Salvatore Sabella
Ignazio Saietta, "Ignazio Lupo", "Lupo the Wolf"
Vincent Salanardi, "Vinny Baldy"
Frank Salemme, [Francis Salemone], "Cadillac Frank", "Julian Daniel Selig"
Anthony Salerno, "Fat Tony"
Rudolph Santobello, "Rudy"
Nicholas Santora, "Nicky Mouth"
Saverio Santora, "Sammy"
Salvatore Santoro Sr., "Tom Mix"
James Santos, "Jimmy"
Michael Sarno, "Fat Boy"
Salvatore Scala, "Fat Sally"
Frank Scalice, [Francesco Scalice], "Don Cheech" (1893-1957)
John Scalise
John T. Scalish
Frank Scarabino, "Franky the Beast"
Nicodemo Scarfo, "Little Nicky" (1929-)
Nicodemo Scarfo, Jr., "Nicky"
Gregory Scarpa Sr., "The Grim Reaper"
Gerald Scarpelli, [Gerald Hector Scarpelli] (1938-1989)
Giuseppe Schifilliti, "Pino"
Paul Sciacca
John Sciandra, [Giovanni Sciandra], "Johnny"
Gerlando Sciascia, "George from Canada"
Nicholas Scibetta, "Little Nicky"
Augustus Sclafani, "Big Gus"
Joseph Sclafani, "Tin Ear"
Robert Scola, "Bobby"
Ralph Scopo, "Little Ralphie"
Anthony Scotto
Anthony Senter
Angelo Sepe, "John", "Angie"
Carmine Sessa
Alphonso Sgroia, "The Butcher"
Joseph Sica, "JS"
Peter Simone, "Las Vegas Pete"
Michele Sindona, "The Shark"
Frank Sindone
Thomas Sinito, "The Chinaman"
Jack Sirocco
Vincent Solano
Frank Sorace
Anthony Spero
Anthony Spilotro, [Anthony John Spilotro], "Tony the Ant" (1938-1986)
Michael Spilotro, "Micky" (1944-1986)
Victor Spilotro (1935-1997)
Pasquale Spirito, "Pat the Cat"
James Squillante,"Jimmy Jerome", "Vincent Squillante"
Arnold Squitieri, "Zeke", "Bozey", "Sylvester", "Squiggy"
Anthony Stabile
John Stanfa, [Giovanni Stanfa], "The Dour Don"
Johnny Stompanato
Anthony Strollo "Tony Bender"

T
Martin Taccetta, "Marty"
Michael Taccetta, "Mad Dog"
Silva Tagliagamba
Enrico Tameleo, "Henry", "The Referee"
Joseph Tangorra, "Joey Flowers"
Vincent Teresa, "Fat Vinny"
Ciro Terranova, "The Artichoke King"
Vincenzo Terranova
Patrick Testa, "Patty"
Philip Testa, "Chicken Man"
Salvatore Testa, "Salvie", "The Crowned Prince of the Philadelphia Mob"
Frank Tieri, [Alphonse Tieri], "The Old Man", "Funzi"
Albert Tocco, [Caesar Tocco]
Jack Tocco, [Giacomo Tocco]
William Tocco, [Guglielmo Vito Tocco], "Black Bill"
Frank Todaro, [Francesco Todaro]
Joseph Todaro, Jr., "Big Joe"
Joseph Todaro, Sr.
Salvatore Todaro, [Agosto Archangelo], "Black Sam"
Antonio Tomasulo, [Tommasulo], "Bootsie"
James Torello, "Turk"
Johnny Torrio, [Giovanni Torrio], "The Fox", "Papa Johnny"
Santo Trafficante, Jr.
Santo Trafficante, Sr. (1886-1954)
Carmine Tramunti, "Mr. Gribbs"
Dominick Trinchera, "Big Trin"
John Tronolone, "Peanuts"
Matthew Trupiano Jr., "Mike"
Ronald Trucchio, "One Armed Ronnie"
Matthew Trupiano
Dominic Truscello, "Crazy Dom"
Tony Tursi (d. 1989)
Charles Tuzzo, "Chuckie"

U
Joseph Ullo
Charles Ubriaco, [Camillo Ubriaco]
Anthony Urso

V
Joe Valachi, "Joe Cargo" (1903-1971)
Rocco Valenti, [Umberto Valenti] (d. 1922)
Louis Vallario, "Big Lou"
Ernest Varacalli, "Junior"
Paul Vario (1914-1988)
Gaetano Vastola, "Corky"
Anthony Veranis, "Mickey White", "Tony"
Stefano Vitabile, "Steve the Truck Driver"
Anthony Vitale
John Vitale
Salvatore Vitale, "Good Looking Sal", "The Chief"
Rocco Vitulli
Alessandro Vollero
Joseph Vollero, "Joey V", "Joe Andrews"

Y
Frankie Yale, [Francesco Ioele], "Uale" (1885/1893-1928) Z
Michael Zaffarano, "Mickey
John Zancocchio, "Porky"
Ilario Zannino, "Larry Biona"
George Zappola, "Georgie Neck"
Anthony Joseph Zerilli
Joseph Zerilli, [Giuseppe Zerilli]
Frank Zito

An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps!

Richard J. Castucci, Boston Mafia

2009-07-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

Notorious gangsters and longtime FBI informants James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi orchestrated the 1976 slaying of Revere nightclub owner Richard J. Castucci. But his life was not enough; they wanted his money, too.
Taking the stand yesterday in her wrongful death suit against the government, Castucci’s widow described being caught in a terrifying web as her husband’s killers – members of the Winter Hill Gang – and the New England Mafia both vied for control of her husband’s interest in The Squire, a popular and highly profitable strip club.
“I was scared,” said 72-year-old Sandra Castucci, recounting how Flemmi, a stranger to her, showed up unexpectedly at her Revere Beach home after her husband’s killing, asking about her financial interest in the club and suggesting he should handle it for her.
She was frightened by the visit and immediately alerted the businessman who co-owned The Squire with her husband. Then the Mafia got involved.
The widow, who was relying on weekly payments from The Squire to support her and her two teenage children, testified that a friend of her husband’s drove her to a store in Providence, where she was led into a back room and a face-to-face meeting with then New England Mafia boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca
“He said that my husband owed him money and that the money I was getting I guess I wasn’t going to get anymore,” said Castucci, adding that Patriarca told her that she no longer owned any interest in The Squire.
“I was frightened,” said Castucci, wiping away tears as she recounted the meeting, which occurred about a year after husband’s slaying. It meant that the weekly payments from the club, which had already diminished from about $8,000 a week to only $1,000, stopped altogether.
During cross examination, Lawrence Eiser, a US Justice Department lawyer who is defending the government, asked: “You never phoned the police. Why not?”
“Because I was more frightened of the people who asked me to go there,” said Castucci, referring to Patriarca and his associates.
What Castucci did not know then was that the FBI had been told in 1977 that Bulger and Flemmi were suspected in her husband’s death and were trying to extort money from her, according to FBI memos filed in prior court proceedings. Yet the FBI took no action against the gangsters, who were both informants at the time.
Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for killing 10 people, and hit man-turned-government witness John Martorano both provided chilling accounts of Castucci’s killing when they testified last fall in the Miami trial of disgraced former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. in a case involving another slaying.
Flemmi testified that Connolly warned him and Bulger in 1976 that Castucci was an informant and had told the FBI where two fugitive members of the Winter Hill Gang were hiding in New York. Flemmi said they decided to kill Castucci, who also was a bookmaker.
Martorano testified that he shot 48-year-old Castucci in the head as he sat in a Somerville apartment counting money that he collected for a New York bookmaker, then Bulger and Flemmi disposed of his body, which was found in the trunk of his car in a Revere parking lot on Dec. 30, 1976.
Thomas J. Daly, the retired FBI agent who was Castucci’s handler, testified during Connolly’s trial that informants told the FBI that the Winter Hill Gang was suspected in Castucci’s death and that Flemmi later tried to extort money from Sandra Castucci. He acknowledged that the FBI did not investigate Castucci’s death or the alleged extortion.
Connolly was convicted last year of plotting with Bulger and Flemmi to kill a Boston businessman in Florida in 1982 and sentenced to 40 years in prison, to be served after he finishes a 10-year prison term for a 2002 conviction on federal racketeering charges.
Bulger, a fugitive since 1995, is wanted in 19 murders.
US District Judge Reginald C. Lindsay, who died in March, ruled last year that the government was liable for Castucci’s death because of the FBI’s negligent handling of Bulger and Flemmi.
US District Judge William G. Young, who took over the case, is presiding over the nonjury trial and will determine how much the government should pay to Castucci’s widow and his four children

Colombo crime family, Joseph Colombo Boss

2009-07-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

June 28, 1971. The body of mob boss Joseph Colombo is put in a police vehicle minutes after being shot by a non-gangster during a rally of the Italian American Coalition at Columbus Circle. Colombo lingers in a coma for years. Rival Joey Gallo was suspected of arranging the hit but was never charged. The Crime Family is on its last legs .http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/galleries/ny_mobs_greatest_hits/ny_mobs_greatest_hits.html#ph12#ixzz0L1okB4Ij&C

Joseph Massino, Bonanno Crime Family Rat

2009-07-04T17:08:00.000-07:00

JOSEPH MASSINO--Massino became the first sitting boss in Mafia history to turn informant. The longtime head of the Bonnano family, Massino was notoriously security conscious, instructing his subordinates to refer to him merely by tugging on their earlobe.
Things started to go bad for Joe when his brother-in-law and underboss, Salvatore “Good Looking Sal” Vitale, testified against him. Shortly after his 2004 conviction on racketeering charges that would have put him in prison for life, Massino decided to become an informant. He taped his underlings in prison threatening to kill a prosecutor.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/galleries/rats_mob_informants/rats_mob_informants.html#ph6#ixzz0KL4MogON&D

Ex-Mafia fixer, mob rat, Mike Franzese offer of help the sport could not refuse

2009-06-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

Michael Franzese claims little insight into the secretive detective work of the tennis authorities as they continue to clean up the sport but the ex-New York mafia boss, a former match-fixer in US sport, has worked on the Association of Tennis Professional's education programme to warn players of the dangers of gambling, and has no doubt that fixing goes on

I was asked back in 2006 to address the players," he said, talking to The Independent at the recent Play the Game conference in Coventry. "I've had a lot of consultation with the ATP. They're concerned about the problem and they are as proactive as they can be. People would be naive to think that gambling, fixing and attempted fixing isn't happening in tennis. Players told me stories of being approached. It's happened. It still does.

"After I spoke [to the players] I got emails and telephone calls, they confided in me. I spoke via an interpreter to some Russians. I don't know how much attention they were paying but [another player] said to me they were the ones that needed to because they're the most guilty. That's exactly what I was told." --http://cftaf1234.wordpress.com/mini-mice-cheese-factory/

Franzese, 58, is the son of the notorious John "Sonny" Franzese, a key figure for years in the Colombo family, one of New York's five Mob clans. Sonny was a ruthless hitman, and has spent 32 years in prison since 1970. Now 92 and out on bail, he is the oldest parolee in the US.
Michael followed in father's footsteps in his twenties and made hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily from bootlegging, racketeering and tax scams, with a healthy sideline in match-fixing, mainly on NBA basketball games and NFL football.
"We'd prey on athletes' weaknesses," he said. "We'd find a player who gambled, extend him credit until he's far out of his depth – hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then we'd offer an easy way to repay. It was all about shaving points."
In US sports betting, the most popular gamble is "the spread". Franzese and his bookies would target players in teams that were strong favourites, and simply "request" the winning margin was lower than expected. In such details huge profits lay.
His extraordinary life story took a twist after an eight-year prison term and after falling in love with a girl (now his wife of many years) who wanted him to go straight. He left the Mafia, and lived to tell the tale by never grassing. He had a contract on his head, however, and still does.
"I was in that life for 17 years so I took a lot of precautions when I left it behind me, although I never co-operated [with the police], and never entered a witness protection programme. When I was in jail, they kept me in lockdown. I was in the hole for three years, they wouldn't let me out on the yard for my own safety. It was tough for years after I came out, effectively on the run for our safety."
How is he still alive? "I outlasted just about everybody in my life [who'd want me dead]. They're either dead or in prison for the rest of their lives. And I didn't testify against anyone."
The NBA and NFL have used Franzese's services to warn athletes about corruption for many years. He makes a living from public speaking and writing, and his latest book I'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse: Insider Business Tips from a Former Mob Boss is out now.

Anthony Rotondo

2009-06-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

ANTHONY ROTONDO--Anthony Rotondo’s father, Vincent, was a captain in the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family, but he wanted his son to be a lawyer. Rotondo initially started down that path, picking up a degree in business administration from St. Francis College in Brooklyn. But the lure of the mob soon beckoned, and his father ultimately proposed his son for membership.
Then in 1988, his father was gunned down as he sat in his car outside his Bath Beach, Brooklyn home. The younger Rotondo assumed his father’s position, but turned informant in 1999 after nearly the entire hierarchy of the family was arrested,. He claimed he did so in part because of building resentment over his father’s murder.

Two Former Executive Board Members of Bus Drivers' Union Arrested for Extortion and Unlawful Labor Payments

2009-06-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

SALVATORE BATTAGLIA

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, JOSEPH M. DEMAREST, JR., the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), DANIEL R. PETROLE, Deputy Inspector General of the United States Department of Labor ("DOL"), ANDREW AUERBACH, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the DOL, Office of Labor-Management Standards, and RAYMOND W. KELLY, Police Commissioner of the City of New York, announced that two former executive board members and assistant trustees of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union ("Local 1181"), NICK MADDALONE and PAUL MADDALONE, were arrested today on charges of extortion and violations of the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibits payments from regulated industries to union officials. NICK and PAUL MADDALONE were arrested this morning attheir homes by Special Agents of the FBI and DOL, Office of the Inspector General, and New York City Police Department ("NYPD") detectives. According to the Indictment unsealed today in Manhattan federal court, where the defendants are expected to appear later today:
Local 1181 is a union which represents approximately 15,000 bus drivers and bus escorts employed by companies that contract with the New York City Department of Education to provide students with school bus transportation to public schools throughout New York City. From at least the 1980s through 2006, the Genovese Organized Crime Family -- a criminal organization that is part of La Cosa Nostra, commonly referred to as the "mafia" -- influenced and asserted control over Local 1181, including by appointing certain individuals to serve as officers for Local 1181. The defendants, who are brothers, served as members, delegates, executive board members, and assistant trustees of Local 1181 -- NICK MADDALONE from approximately 1984 through 2008, and PAUL MADDALONE from approximately 1993 through 2008.From at least the 1980s through 2006, various Local 1181 officers were involved in a wide-ranging scheme to solicit, collect, and receive illegal cash payments of tens of thousands of dollars from bus company owners and operators whose employees were members of Local 1181, and from companies whose employees were not Local 1181 members. The MADDALONES participated in this scheme along with other Local 1181 officers, including SALVATORE BATTAGLIA, who was both President of Local 1181 and a member of the Genovese Organized Crime Family, and JULIUS BERNSTEIN, who was both Secretary-Treasurer of Local 1181 and an associate of the Genovese Organized Crime Family. The MADDALONES and other participants in the scheme used both their union status and, as applicable, their organized crime status, as a means of inducing payment, obtaining tens of thousands of dollars from bus company owners through intimidation, threats, and fear of personal and economic harm.
NICK MADDALONE and PAUL MADDALONE are the fourth and fifth high-ranking Local 1181 officials to be arrested in connection with this investigation. BATTAGLIA pleaded guilty in January 2008 to racketeering, extortion, and Taft-Hartley violations and was sentenced in June 2008 to 57 months in prison. BERNSTEIN pleaded guilty in August 2006 to racketeering, extortion, robbery, gambling, and obstruction of justice, and died before a final judgment was issued in the matter. Former Local 1181 Director of Pension and Welfare ANNE CHIAROVANO pleaded guilty to the obstruction of the FBI's investigation into the connection between Local 1181 and the Genovese Organized Crime Family and was sentenced in January 2007 to five months in prison to be followed by five months of home confinement.
If convicted of the charges alleged in the Indictment, NICK MADDALONE, 54, of Staten Island, New York, and PAUL MADDALONE, 60, of Neponsit, New York, each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the two extortion counts, and five years in prison on each of the two unlawful payment counts. The case has been assigned to United States District Judge JED S. RAKOFF.
Mr. DASSIN praised the work of the FBI; the United States Department of Labor, Office of the Inspector General; the United States Department of Labor, Office of Labor Management Standards; and the NYPD. He said that the investigation is continuing.Assistant United States Attorneys ELIE HONIG and KENNETH POLITE are in charge of the prosecution

Black Book member Masterana dies in the Dominican

2009-05-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

Frank Masterana, a gambler and bookmaker known from the Strip to Santo Domingo, died Sunday at age 80 in the Dominican Republican, according to a longtime family friend.
A member of Nevada’s list of excluded persons, better known as the Black Book, Masterana was born in Canton, Ohio Jan. 26, 1929, and moved to Las Vegas to work for “Doc” Stacher in the early 1950s.
An illegal bookmaker much of his adult life, Masterana’s name was placed in the Black Book on Oct. 19, 1988. He became known as an associate – a reluctant one, to hear Masterana tell it – of Anthony Spilotro in the early 1980s.
Following a couple trips to prison, Masterana moved his base of operations to the Dominican Republican, and according to reliable sources at the time of his death he ran more than a dozen sports betting outlets in Santo Domingo.
I met Frank many years ago when he was between government staycations. He was an intriguing character whose life was defined by illegal gambling and his son Frank's quadruplegic condition. In those days, in part to avoid detection, Masterana looked a little like Willie Nelson with a long ponytail and salt-and-pepper facial hair. He was an old-school survivor, an outlaw with a soft spot for his kids. John L. Smith Las Vegas Review Journal

Martin Scorcese to direct Frank Sinatra biopic

2009-05-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

Martin Scorsese, the Oscar-winning director, is to make a film about Frank Sinatra's life. After two years of wrangling with the singer's family on how to tell his colourful story. Sinatra has been portrayed several times on screen, including by Ray Liotta in the 1998 film The Rat Pack, but there has never been a feature film devoted to his life.
No actor has yet been announced for the lead role but initial speculation has focused on Leonardo Di Caprio, who has starred in four previous Scorsese films. Cathy Schulman, the co-producer of the new film, provisionally titled "Sinatra", said it would be "an unconventional biopic". It remains to be seen how Scorsese, like Sinatra an Italian-American, tackles the most contentious area of the singer's life – his reported links with the Mafia.While Scorsese has made several Mob-related films such as Goodfellas, the involvement of Sinatra's family – his daughter, Tina, is executive producer in the new project – has prompted speculation that it will steer clear of this area.
"In any family, you're dealing with a precious life, and in this case, you're dealing with an extraordinary life," said Miss Schulman.
"We knew Scorsese would lead the troops to a true, fair, exciting and entertaining portrait of the man."
A screenplay, based on 30,000 pages of research, has been written by Phil Alden Robinson, who won an Oscar nomination for Field of Dreams, the sentimental Kevin Costner film about an Iowa farmer who builds a baseball pitch in a field.
"It's not a cradle-to-the-grave traditional portrait of the consecutive events in a man's life," said Miss Schulman, president of Mandalay Pictures, which is making the film with Universal Pictures. "Instead, it's more of a collage and, in many ways, it will feel like an album itself. It's a collection of various moments and impressions in his life and together we hope they'll tell the full story and present full themes."
It took two years to secure the rights to Sinatra's life and music.
Warner Music Group and the Sinatra estate are partners on the project.
Sinatra's daughter, Tina, said it was "personally pleasing" to know Scorsese would oversee the celluloid version of her father's life story.
The FBI kept a file on Sinatra for decades, detailing his heavy drinking, bouts of depression, liaisons with prostitutes and his friendship with various Mafia bosses.
The singer and actor, who died in 1998, performed on more than 1,400 musical recordings, was awarded 31 gold records and earned 10 Grammys.
He made his first recording in 1939 and continued recording almost until his death, being responsible for such classics as "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
He also appeared in 58 films and won a supporting-actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity in 1953.

Rocco Balliro Mobster

2009-05-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

It was one of the best-known Boston shootouts of the 1960’s. Cops cornered prison escapee Rocco Balliro, his twin brother Sal, and an associate at the Roxbury home of Rocco’s ex-con girlfriend Toby Wagner. They tried to shoot their way out, and when it was over, Rocco’s girlfriend and her 7-year-old son were dead. That was in February 1963, and six months later, here he is in custody at Division 1. Handcuffed to Rocco’s left had is Sgt. Tom Gavin of DA Garrett Byrne’s office. On the right is Det. Eddie Walsh, soon to be the cop mentor of future FBI agent Zip Connolly.

Donato "Danny" Angiulo, part of notorious mob family, dies

2009-05-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

Former New England Mafia capo regime Donato "Danny" Angiulo, who was part of a powerful mob family that ruled Boston's underworld from the 1960s through the mid-1980s, died Sunday night at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center after a long illness. He was 86.
His brother, Gennaro "Jerry'' Angiulo, was the underboss of the Patriarca crime family until an FBI bug planted in his North End headquarters in 1981 captured conversations about murder, extortion, illegal gambling, and loansharking that led to Boston's first sensational Mafia trial and the end of the Angiulos' reign.
In 1986, a federal jury convicted Donato Angiulo and his brothers, Gennaro and Francesco, who was the mob's accountant, of racketeering charges, and a third brother, Michele, of illegal gambling.
An Angiulo associate was caught on FBI tapes boasting that South Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger and his sidekick, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi were friends of the Mafia and would kill for them. More than a decade later it was revealed that Bulger and Flemmi were longtime FBI informants who had provided information about the interior of Angiulo's headquarters that assisted agents in planting the bug.
Donato Angiulo's nickname was "Smiley," but prosecutors alleged during his trial that he had a fierce reputation on the street and served as a capo regime, running a crew of Mafia soldiers. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for racketeering, gambling and loansharking. He was freed from federal prison in 1997, after serving 11 years, and returned to his Medford home.
"He was a great family man and a very decent guy,'' said Boston attorney Anthony Cardinale, who represented Donato Angiulo's brother, Gennaro, during the eight-month federal racketeering trial.
Cardinale recounted that he had been stricken by a virus and hospitalized just before final arguments were about to get underway in the trial.
"I remember waking up in the hospital and there was Danny, just sitting there...he had come to the hospital and sat there to see how I was,'' Cardinale said. "That was typical of the kind of guy he was."
Before Donato Angiulo became ill and was hospitalized, he often was spotted in the North End, having lunch. He was the son of Sicilian immigrants, who ran a North End grocery store, and was raised on Prince Street with five brothers and a sister.
The Dello Russo Funeral Home in Medford confirmed today that it is handling arrangements for Donato Angiulo and said visiting hours will be Thursday from 4 to 8 pm. at the funeral home. A Mass is scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m. at St. Leonard Church in Boston's North End.

Compulsive gambler and loser may have lost his bet as FBI informant

2009-04-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

Mafia Cops

Las Vegas has always been an attractive place for the hail-fellow, the hustler, and the man on the make.
With its shadowy history, seductive setting and proximity to a limitless river of cash, it brims with dreamers, scufflers and schemers. It's a spot where a guy who knows a guy can make a good living.

It was perhaps the ideal spot for the FBI to turn a man like Stephen Corso loose with a recording device. By all accounts, Corso was the street-wise guy Las Vegas tourists fantasize about and most locals rarely experience, the one who exists in dimly lighted bars and nondescript strip mall offices

Corso was an accountant by training, a salesman by calling, and a high-rolling degenerate gambler by compulsion when he got caught swiping clients' money to feed his blackjack Jones and penthouse lifestyle. He spent $5 million that didn't belong to him and was on his way to a prison stretch when he began cooperating with the FBI in 2002.

From what I've pieced together from public documents and street sources, the smooth-talking accountant found his true calling as an undercover informant. Reliable sources say Corso worked his way into the local mob scene and pulled the pants off some very experienced wiseguys.

According to a federal document from the Eastern District of Virginia, where Corso's efforts helped nail securities attorney David Stocker on a "pump and dump" stock manipulation scheme with connections reaching into the Securities and Exchange Commission, the accountant was a one-man La Cosa Nostra census worker.

"He provided information related to the activities of individuals with ties to several LCN organized crime families to include: the Chicago Outfit, Lucchese LCN, Bonanno LCN, Genovese LCN, Colombo LCN, Philadelphia LCN, Decavalcante LCN, and Gambino LCN," the document states. "Corso was also instrumental in providing FBI agents with information on individuals with ties to Russian organized crime, Youngstown, Ohio gangsters, and the Irish Mob which exists in the Boston, Mass. area."

Sounds like the guy did everything but dig up Jimmy Hoffa. Corso back-slapped his way into the Las Vegas underworld, then used his accounting and tax preparation skills to give the wiseguys a financial endoscopic treatment

He played an integral role in sealing the deal in the lengthy "Mafia Cops" case, in which Las Vegas residents and former NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were found guilty of acting as contract killers for the Lucchese crime family. Corso's work in Las Vegas proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Mafia Cops continued their criminal conspiracy years after leaving New York.

Corso's testimony was critical to the ... conclusion that the conspiracy continued into the limitations period," one government document states.

It's as simple as this: No Corso, no Mafia Cops conviction.

And it will be intriguing to see whether the government gets a victory in a related drug case involving Eppolito's son, Anthony Eppolito, and Guido Bravatti now that Corso has been sentenced to a year and a day for his own transgressions.

It's also been reported Corso worked in connection with the Crazy Horse Too investigation. I imagine former Crazy Horse official Bobby D'Apice, who now resides at government expense, won't be sending his former tax consultant, Corso, a letter of reference

.
At his February sentencing in Connecticut, U.S. District Judge Janet Hall seemed almost apologetic. Although she called Corso's crime "an extraordinary violation of trust," she admitted, "I can't find the words to describe the value, at least in my judgment, of this cooperation."

thanks John L. Smith Las Vegas Review Journal

Nick Bianco Mobster

2009-04-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Meet Nicholas Louis Bianco aka “Nicky” aka “ Nicky B” Nicky Bianco was a Gallo Gang shooter before he became a member of the Patriarca Crime Family

Nicky was like Joey Gallo, he was a warrior..His ethos was.”I was born a man, I will die a man”. Unlike the flamboyant Crazy Joey, Nicky was low-key, and level headed.. .In a finger snap, he would kill for Raymond “RayPat” Patriarca Sr.. Raymond loved his composure, and courage, and he moved Nicky up the leader ladder to a spot in the Patriarca high command.. Nicky was Raymond’s acting boss while he was in the slammer
..

I knew Nicky and I will go into greater detail in my new book . But here is a tasty tidbit
.
Nicky had a ton of heat on him from a beef he had in Providence.. He went west to Hollywood to hide out until things cooled off back home. Nicky stayed with a friend of mine. While he was with my pal, he knifed a guy . I had occasion to meet with Nicky years later. I mentioned this incident to Nicky,
and it knocked him for a loop…. Anthony Fiato

Reputed N.Y. Mafia boss arrives in Quebec

2009-04-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

The man named as the boss of one of New York City's notorious Mafia families has arrived in Canada - under the watchful eye of the RCMP - in a forced relocation to the country of his birth.
Salvatore Montagna, 37, nicknamed "Sal the Ironworker" because of his successful metal working business, was sent back to his native Montreal on Tuesday morning after being ejected from the United States, where he has lived since he was 15.
Arriving aboard a direct flight, accompanied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials but none of his family, he was quickly processed at the airport by Canada Border Services Agency officers who quizzed him about his luggage - which had been packed by his wife - and about telephone numbers he was carrying.
As a Canadian citizen who is not wanted for any crime, he was allowed to enter Canada a free man.
He checked in under his real name at the four-star Sheraton Hotel in Laval, a 25-minute drive from downtown Montreal, for the night and at 10:35 yesterday morning checked out, well aware that he was under police surveillance.
A call by the National Post to his room went unanswered.
Mr. Montagna, who owns a multi-million dollar steel firm in Brooklyn, made headlines in 2006 when he was named as the acting boss of the Bonanno Family at the age of 35. Because of his youth he was dubbed the "bambino boss" by New York tabloids.
The Bonanno organization is one of the Five Families of the New York Mafia and for decades it maintained close ties to the Mafia in Montreal.
Mr. Montagna has denied the allegations.
"He wants to live a normal life there," said George Stavropoulos, his New York lawyer.
"He has had a few years of people following his every move. Now he wants to settle down again, learn French and move on; try to run his company from Canada."
Mr. Montagna was aware police had their sights on him here.
"It's something he is used to. He was hoping not to have to deal with that sort of thing in Canada as well," said Mr. Stavropoulos.
Canadian authorities have little to say about Mr. Montagna.
Neither the RCMP nor the Canada Border Services Agency would confirm Mr. Montagna was in Canada.
"He's not wanted so there is no arrest warrant or anything," said Corporal Caroline Letang, spokeswoman for the Montreal RCMP.
"We cannot confirm or deny any investigations."
A spokesman for Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety, said the minister is aware of the file but could say nothing about it for privacy reasons. The Montreal police declined to comment.
The Bonanno Family has been hard hit by U.S. prosecutions since 2002, with more than 70 members and associates convicted for murders, gambling and racketeering.
That includes the conviction of Vito Rizzuto, godfather of the Montreal Mafia, for his role in killing three rivals in New York during a struggle for control of the Bonanno Family.
Facing lengthy prison terms, many Bonanno members agreed to co-operate with authorities.
The informants include the former boss of the family, Joseph "Big Joey" Massino. He was replaced by Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano who was, in turn, imprisoned. That left the family in need of an "acting boss" who was free on the streets.
Authorities say that man was Mr. Montagna.
"He's a very below-the-radar type of person who came out of left field," said John Marzulli, a reporter with New York's Daily News, who first reported Mr. Montagna's alleged ascent.
"They were looking for some kind of stabilizing influence to put the pieces back together," he said.
The theory is the organization was looking for someone who had little past contact with the informants.
Mr. Montagna was born in Montreal but left with his family for Sicily at a young age. Over the years the family shuttled back and forth between Canada and Italy until, at the age of 15, they moved to New York. He never became a U.S. citizen.
In 2001, a prosecutor was unsatisfied with Mr. Montagna's testimony in a gambling case and charged him with criminal contempt. His guilty plea in 2003 gave the U.S. government the ability to revoke his residency status.
Despite intense scrutiny by authorities, he was never charged with any other offence.
Mr. Stavropoulos said the government ejected Mr. Montagna unfairly, describing it as "sour grapes."

James Genovese -- The life & times of the last great Pittsburgh mobster

2009-04-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

On an 82-acre farm in wooded West Deer, the final act in the decades-long drama of the Pittsburgh mafia has played out.
Quietly, of course. That was always the way with the secretive Michael James Genovese.
Consigliere and protege to Sebastian John LaRocca, Mr. Genovese succeeded his mentor in 1984 to become the low-profile head of La Cosa Nostra in Western Pennsylvania, according to the FBI.
He died in 2006 at age 87. But his widow, Jennie Lee Genovese, and his adopted son, Michael A. Genovese (a Post-Gazette truck driver), have been fighting each other over what's left of the estate they both call home.
Jennie and her late husband executed the Genovese Living Trust 21 days before he died, under which she and Michael were co-trustees. But last year she removed him as a beneficiary and kicked him off the property. He challenged her right to deny him his inheritance but lost in Orphan's Court. A county judge ordered that Michael had to move out by March 1.
The property, meanwhile, has fallen into disrepair -- a metaphor of sorts for the decline of the Pittsburgh mob. It used to be a working farm, but when Mr. Genovese died, workmen stopped coming around to maintain it.
It's hard to reconcile this forlorn scene with Michael J. Genovese, who embraced cocaine dealing and oversaw the most lucrative period in mob history here until the feds brought it down with a racketeering case in 1990.
Now old FBI intelligence files, recently released to the Post-Gazette under the Freedom of Information Act, offer new glimpses of his life. Although heavily redacted, they paint a fuller picture than ever before. read more

Sliwa Sued For Mob Slander

2009-04-08T20:44:00.001-07:00

Magazine publisher Frank DiMateo has filed a lawsuit against Degenerate Dirtbag Curtis Sliwa over a YouTube video the Guardian Angels leader made, charging DiMateo’s publishing company was part of an organized crime money laundering outfit. .In his January 20 YouTube video (which has been taken down by Sliwa), Sliwa is seen crouched down next to a news kiosk in a New York City Subway (btw, it is against the law to photograph the New York City subway station and it is unknown if Sliwa had permission to shoot there) holding DiMateo’s MobCandy magazine. In his trademark rat-a-tat-tat, moolah-schmoolah delivery, Sliwa contends the magazine is “put out by the Gambino-Gotti crime family.” He then states MobCandy does not have sponsors and asked, “how are they able to exist when they have no advertising?”. Answering his own question, Sliwa concluded, “Maybe they’re laundering money through vendors, drug dealers, criminals — people with lots of fat cash, who got to be able to launder it properly before they can use it — [a] great opportunity for these mags.”

Mafialife.com’s Chris Chiarmonte posted a video response to Sliwa’s charges, proving that the lifestyle magazine actually has many sponsors and Mob Candy is a legitimate,

Las Vegas strip clubs waging high-stakes cash-for-customers war

2009-04-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

When the cab pulled up outside Rick's Cabaret Gentlemen's Club, the driver might not have fully appreciated he was about to set a Las Vegas record in the ongoing topless/taxi war.

He delivered four customers over the weekend and was tipped $100 by the club for each one. That's right: a $400 "tip" for dropping off riders

While casino resorts are slashing prices and bringing out bargain rates for rooms, food and fun, Treasures and Rick's are leading an unprecedented increase in the cash-for-customers game. One industry source says Treasures upped the ante as high as $105 per customer. (A Treasures manager said $105 was "high," but "we are very competitive. That's all I can really tell you.")

At the moment, the top rate is a C-note per paying customer. Customers pay an average of $30 apiece to enter the club, and some clubs have taken to charging up to $25 for two Coronas in an effort to recoup the tip out. Now that they've raised the stakes, other clubs must follow suit or suffer a drop in business. Like a high-stakes poker player, Rick's CEO and President Eric Langan says he has no intention to be outbid in the topless-taxi war and is willing to write off the expense as the cost of marketing his publicly-traded chain of topless cabarets.
Read More from John L Smith Las Vegas Review Journal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xDANj5nwjE&feature=related

Breakfast in OJ trial with Mafioso Anthony fiato

2009-03-31T02:26:00.000-07:00

. Anthony Fiato
Breakfast In The Neighborhood: Hearty Food and Toasty Talk (Archive fee)
...hangout for law enforcement officers. Ironically, Anthony (Tony the Animal) Fiato, the reputed mafioso and North End native who testified in the O.J. Simpson trial, also used to favor this place where you can get some killer coffee,the district attorney's office. incredibly...read more.

Boston Globe Archive (Nominal fee required)

MOB BIG IS GOING POST-AL

2009-03-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

Crime boss Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano is sick of waiting a month and a half to read the New York Post.

But the convicted Bonanno big will be stuck reading old news for the foreseeable future after a federal judge ruled yesterday he must stay in strict solitary confinement, where his papers come drastically late and visits with his girlfriend and their son are prohibited.

It's the second time the mobster already convicted of one murder and awaiting trial for ordering another has lost a bid to be moved from the notorious Special Housing Unit of Manhattan's Metropolitan Correction Center.

He's been there since July 31, 2006, under the harsh Special Administrative Measures ordered by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

In his petition to be moved, Basciano noted that the restrictions prohibit him from seeing his grade-school-aged son and the boy's mother, Basciano's longtime girlfriend, Debra Kalb.

Neither minors nor non-family members are allowed in solitary.

Basciano also complained that there was a 40- to 45-day delay in receiving his Post.

"We do not understand why there must be any delay with his receipt of a daily newspaper," his lawyer, Jane Simkin Smith, wrote in a February letter to the court.

The feds argue that Basciano, who allegedly slipped a "hit list" to another inmate in 2006 that included the names of federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis, a prosecutor and cooperating witnesses, remains dangerous

A rare memory of steak-eating Spilotro

2009-03-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

John L Smith review journal

Former mobster Anthony Fiato, who grew up with the Boston mob and became a powerhouse member of the Los Angeles La Cosa Nostra before cooperating with the FBI, read with interest my recent post on the nature of greed whether you’re a gangster like Tony Spilotro or a “financier” of the ilk of Bernard Madoff.

It reminded him of one of the times he came to Las Vegas for a meeting with Spilotro, who had considerable street clout from Chicago
to Las Vegas and out to Los Angeles. His Chicago bosses had tough Tony pegged as that city’s representative on the West Coast.

Fiato, the subject of my book “The Animal in Hollywood,” came to Las Vegas with the infamous Mike Rizzitello to meet with Spilotro regarding the completion of a drug deal at a local steakhouse.

“Tony did love good steak, and cash was his favorite dessert,” Fiato writes on his Hollywood goodfella blog (WordPress.com.) “I chopped up a drug score with Tony over a New York steak dinner in the Flame, a steakhouse in Las Vegas.”

Gambino family hit man Charles Carneglia found guilty of 4 murders

2009-03-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

A feared Gambino family hit man known for dissolving corpses in acid faced life without parole after his Tuesday conviction for racketeering and four murders
. Charles Carneglia, 62, betrayed no emotion as the Brooklyn federal jury returned its verdict at the start of the day. He never looked at the courtroom crowd - including the wife and twin daughters of one murder victim - as he was led away
"I'm happy the animal who murdered my father will be in jail the rest of his life," said Milta Delgado-Wheeler, whose father was killed by Carneglia during a 1990 Kennedy Airport heist."He has no remorse for the victims or families he has hurt."
Jurors apparently reached their verdict late Monday - and then slept on it before coming back. In addition to the murders, Carneglia was convicted of extortion and robbery charges after the jury deliberated for five days.Carneglia - one of John Gotti's most-trusted hitmen - was found guilty of killing armored car guard Jose Delgado Rivera at Kennedy Airport.
The slain guard's widow, retired NYPD detective Ana Delgado, gasped loudly before bursting into tears as the verdict was returned. The defendant faces a June sentencing.
Carneglia was not found guilty in the March 1976 slaying of court officer Albert Gelb. Prosecutors said Carneglia killed Gelb to prevent his testimony in a gun case.
"While we didn't get exactly what we wanted, it's important this guy will sit in a jail cell the rest of his life and wake up every morning and not be able to see the sun," said court officers union head Dennis Quirk.Seven mob turncoats portrayed Carneglia as a murderous Gambino family enforcer and a member of the late mob boss Gotti's inner circle.
Prosecutors said Carneglia became a made man in 1990 after murdering fellow Gambino member Louis DiBono in a garage beneath the World Trade Center. Carneglia was convicted of that murder.The other two victims were a pair of mob associates, both stabbed through the heart: Sal Puma in 1983 and Michael Cotillo in 1977.
Co-conspirator Kevin McMahon, a 5-foot-2 hood known to other mobsters as "The Midget," provided the most damning evidence against Carneglia - including witness accounts of the Rivera and DiBono slayings.McMahon was a homeless teen when he was taken in by Carneglia's brother, John. On the witness stand, he recounting growing up in the mob, spinning tales of jury tampering, body disposal, torture and murder.Carneglia dissolved the bodies of some victims with acid, prosecutors say.
Carneglia's lawyer offered a combination defense, citing his client's heavy boozing and heavy beard as evidence the mobster had turned his back on the Mafia.
Carneglia, employing a strategy used by John A. (Junior) Gotti, claimed he left the Gambino family in 2001 - well beyond the five-year statute of limitations for
racketeering.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/17/2009-03-17_gambino_family_hit_man_charles_carneglia.html

Mafia loan sharks making a killing

2009-03-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

ROME - When the bills started piling up and the banks wouldn't lend, the white-haired art dealer in the elegant tweed jacket said he drove to the outskirts of Rome and knocked on the rusty steel door of a shipping container

A beefy man named Mauro answered. He wore blue overalls with two big pockets, one stuffed with checks and the other with cash.

The wad of bills he handed over, the art dealer recalled, reeked of the man's cologne and came at 120 percent annual interest.
As banks stop lending amid the global financial crisis, the likes of Mauro are increasingly becoming the face of Italian finance.

The Mafia and its loansharks, nearly everyone agrees, smell blood in the troubled waters.
"It's a fantastic time for the Mafia. They have the cash," said Antonio Roccuzzo, the author of several books on organized crime. "The Mafia has enormous liquidity. It may be the only Italian 'company' without any cash problem."
At a time when businesses most need loans as they struggle with falling sales, rising debt, and impending bankruptcy, banks have tightened their lending to them.
Italian banks, which for years had been widely criticized for lending sparingly to small and medium-size businesses, now have "absolutely closed the purse strings," said Gian Maria Fara, the president of Eurispes, a private research institute.
That is great news for loan sharks. Confesercenti, the national shopkeepers association, estimates that 180,000 businesses recently have turned to them in desperation.

Although some shady lenders are freelancers turning profits on others' hard luck, very often the neighborhood tough offering fat rolls of cash is connected to the Mafia, the group said.
"Office workers, middle-class people, owners of fruit stands, flower stalls are all becoming their victims. . . . We have never seen this happen," said Lino Busa, a top Confesercenti official. "It is as common as it is hidden."
Many analysts say organized crime is already the biggest business in Italy. Now, Fara said, the untaxed underground economy is growing even larger.
"Certainly I am worried," he said. "The banking system doesn't work, and the private one that is operating is often managed by organized crime."
The consequences for Italy and its 58 million people are huge, Fara said. "Stronger organized crime means a weaker state."
Nino Miceli, an adviser to Confesercenti, said the Mafia's goal is to take over the struggling businesses.
When the loans, typically at interest rates in triple digits, are not repaid, the threats of violence begin, and restaurants, grocery stores, and bars become the property of criminal gangs.
"As we sit here in this cafe," he said over an espresso near the Colosseum, "do we really know who owns it?"
With a burgeoning portfolio of properties and businesses, the Mafia becomes more entrenched in the economy and has more outlets to "clean their money," Miceli said.
Confesercenti estimates in a new report that organized crime syndicates - including Camorra in Naples, Cosa Nostra in Sicily, and 'Ndrangheta in Calabria - collect about 250 million euros, or $315 million, from retailers every day.
Some of that money is the classic "pizzo," or protection money demanded of business owners. Miceli said his auto dealership was burned down when he refused to pay. But the mob's booming business, he and others agreed, is loan-sharking.
In Vigevano, a northern city of 60,000 near Milan, a group called Free Vigevano has helped nearly 100 people who had become entangled with the mob.
One of them, a 40-year-old salesman, said he got his desperately needed $15,000 - but at 30 percent monthly interest.
The salesman said he blames banks for pushing people like him into the arms of the Mafia.
"If they would be a bit more open with their credit, many people wouldn't fall into this trap," he said. "They only give money to those who already have it." Mafia

Prosecution rests rebuttal case in Simpson trial

2009-03-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

Prosecution rests rebuttal case in Simpson trial
September 19, 1995
Web posted at 12:38 a.m. EDT

From Correspondent Jim Hill

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The prosecution in the O.J. Simpson double murder trial ended its rebuttal case on Monday. But prosecutor Marcia Clark reserved the right to call more witnesses if the defense raises new issues with its remaining witnesses.

O.J. Simpson's lead trial attorney read a list of witnesses he intends to call, including a most unlikely figure -- a confessed mob-world hitman named Tony Fiato, who goes by the nickname Tony the Animal.
( 75K AIFF

Defense sources say Fiato and possibly several other people heard Detective Philip Vannatter say police considered Simpson a suspect almost from the start -- before they entered Simpson's home without a warrant.

Vannatter had testified police were only concerned with the safety of people in the house, and did not think Simpson was a suspect at that time.

"I think that the testimony will cause the trier of fact to question some of the central and primary themes the prosecution has offered," said Simpson attorney Carl Douglas.

Prosecution sources say Vannatter does not recall making the comments in question.

The first defense witness of the week was a blood expert who did an experiment reportedly showing blood-stained gloves don't shrink much.

Herbert MacDonell testified that he could detect "no shrinkage or change or shift" in a pair of gloves identical to the ones allegedly worn by the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.(85K AIFF or 190K WAV sound)

Prosecutors have argued the crime scene gloves didn't appear to fit Simpson because they'd shrunk.

Meanwhile, a hearing will determine if FBI agent Frederic Whitehurst can testify for the defense. Whitehurst believes the FBI crime lab is often biased toward prosecutors.

"We interviewed him over the weekend," said Deputy District Attorney Brian Kelberg. "The question is whether his testimony is relevant."

Prosecutors say the weekend interviews revealed Whitehurst has no information about the Simpson case, and they expect the judge to bar his testimony.

Defense attorneys say they want to wrap up their case this week. And clearly, they're trying to do so with a bang.

Field notes on Monday's proceedings
- Members of the jury looked attentive Monday morning during FBI agent William Bodziak's testimony. Some took notes.

- O.J. Simpson talked frequently with members of the defense team during the morning session. Later, attorney Johnnie Cochran pointedly touched the defendant's hand during testimony about the fit of the gloves.

- Ron Goldman's sister, Kim, and Simpson's sister, Carmelita, were both in the courtroom on Monday.

- Actor Richard Dreyfuss, who is preparing for a role as an attorney in his next film, was a guest of Ito's in the courtroom.

- The jury showed no reaction when Clark announced that the prosecution was conditionally resting its rebuttal case. Many of the jurors were still settling into their seats, getting out pens and pads of paper. 75K AIFF

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS SEARCH CNN HOME PAGE MAIN O.J. SIMPSON TRIAL PAGE

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © 1995 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Government witness has some choice words for former mob colleagues

2009-02-27T14:04:00.000-08:00

Memo from Frank Cullotta to his critics: Get stuffed.

Recent columns on mob-tough-guy-turned-government-witness Frank Cullotta generated no shortage of opinions from his former friends and enemies. A couple of the printable statements were published in last Friday's column. They have motivated Cullotta to respond

I know what you're thinking: Can't these people just shoot it out on the street and get it over with?

No, that would be uncivilized

read more from John L Smith Review Journal

JAMES CAAN GETS REAL GODFATHERS HELP

2009-02-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

In a scene that could have been lifted from the Godfather ,actor James Caan enlisted the help of Los Angeles Mafia member Mobster, Anthony “The Animal” Fiato , and his crew, to rescue his brother Ronnie from ronsom seeking kidnappers. Ronnie Caan had been lured to a hotel room and held at gun point. The kidnappers called Jimmy Caan and demanded fifty thousand dollars . Jimmy made a meet to pay them only the bad guys got surprised by Goodfella’s with guns and ball bats and they beat Ronnie Caan’s captors to a bloody pulp

Pictures link 'Goodfella' Frank Sivero to Gambino goon Charles Carneglia

2009-02-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

Frank Sivero, who played wiseguy Frankie Carbone in "GoodFellas," seems like old pals with Gambino hit man Charles Carneglia in photo turned over by turncoat Kevin McMahon to the feds.

A "Goodfellas" actor made a couple of real-life cameos at the Brooklyn junkyard where prosecutors say Gambino hit man Charles Carneglia dissolved corpses in acid.
Frank Sivero, whose Frankie Carbone character was found hanging from a meat hook in a refrigerated truck in the flick, posed with Gambino crime family gangsters in several undated photos entered into evidence Wednesday at Carneglia's trial.
The government obtained the photos from mob rat Kevin McMahon, who testified the Sicilian-born actor visited the Fountain Auto Mall junkyard "a couple of times."
Sivero "had some kind of problem with somebody in jail, I am not exactly positive," McMahon said.
Sivero's agent, Mitchell Shankman, declined to comment.
The classic Mafia film has come up before in the trial. Carneglia was returning from the 1975 wedding of Luchese hit man Tommy DeSimone, played by actor Joe Pesci, when he was arrested by an off-duty court officer he is charged with killing.

By John Marzulli Daily News

ADRENALINE RUSH- FBI Bob Hamer- LasVegas Review Journal

2009-02-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

R-J columnist John L. Smith talks to author and retired undercover agent Bob Hamer about life in the FBI

EDITOR'S NOTE: This partial interview by Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith with retired FBI undercover agent and author Bob Hamer first aired in its entirety Jan. 21 on KNPR-FM, 88.9 "KNPR's State of Nevada." A recording of the interview is available online at knpr.org.
JOHN L. SMITH: Thanks to television cop shows and movies such as "Donnie Brasco," the public has an image of the undercover investigator that borders on caricature. Hard-drinking, wisecracking, two-fisted and ready to shoot first and then start the interrogation

Bob Hamer shatters the stereotypes.

Hamer was a U.S. Marine and an attorney when he joined the FBI back before it was known as an agency that specialized in undercover operations. He soon found his niche and began working against some of the darkest forces in the American underbelly: the Mafia, violent street gangs, international money laundering rings and the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
Hamer has hammered them all, winning new convictions and carving out a career that is the subject of his new book, "The Last Undercover: The True Story of An FBI Agent's Dangerous Dance With Evil."
BOB HAMER: I was an attorney. I reluctantly say that. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I went on active duty in the Marines after graduating law school, and I think I really saw myself after law school as being this high-powered trial attorney that was fighting crime and corruption at every turn.
I got into the Marine Corps, had 150 trials, everything ranging from unauthorized absence to murder, and really did not find any excitement at all in being an attorney. It didn't grab me. Probably for one I wasn't really as good as I thought I was. But every case came down to whether the confession was admissible, whether the case was legal. There were never any whodunits. (Hamer found a new home in the FBI as an undercover agent.)
SMITH: How did you get there and what did you find so fascinating about it?
HAMER: It is actually kind of a limited field even within the FBI. There are currently about 12,700 special agents in the FBI, and maybe only a couple hundred that are what they call certified FBI undercover agents, those that have been selected, have attended the school and have undergone all the psychological screening and then are dubbed undercover agents. So, you're right, it's a pretty limited field. I got into it well before they had all of the screening process. I'm not sure now if I went into it now I could even pass it. But back when I first started. I actually joined the Bureau in 1979, went through the four-month academy, and then reported to the San Diego office in 1980.
Within about six months I was already undercover. Now it requires several years of actual experience as a street agent before you can even apply to the undercover program. So I was there at a time you essentially raised your hand and said 'Yeah, I'll try this.' ... I think it just seemed like the excitement that I was looking for that I didn't find in the courtroom. And trust me after that very first undercover meeting that I had, that adrenaline rush was, I'm assuming, since I'm not a drug addict, that it's the equivalent of the heroin rush that people talk about. I mean I was chasing that adrenaline dragon the rest of my career. I loved it. I loved that rush. I loved that idea of going face to face with the bad guys, of convincing him that you are who you say you are and that you're playing this role. I really relished it. Very early in my career I got hooked on that and continued it throughout my career.
SMITH: Let's talk about one of those early stops. This is where our paths cross at some level.
I wrote a book called "The Animal in Hollywood" about a very tough guy in the L.A. mob, Anthony Fiato, and his experience both as a criminal and as a cooperating witness. You worked in the middle of his world. ... Can you talk a little bit about working La Cosa Nostra in those days in Los Angeles. L.A. is a very big place, but the mobsters weren't too hard to find, I assume, they were just hard to catch.
HAMER: The difference between L.A. and a lot of cities is we didn't have a Little Italy. L.A. had Little Tokyo, they sort of have a Little Saigon. There are a lot of different ethnic communities there, but the Italian family wasn't maybe as strong as maybe they were in other major cities. And as you well know they were sometimes dubbed as the Mickey Mouse Mafia. But they had some pretty significant key players that were involved. They reported to the Commission. They were legitimate La Cosa Nostra, Mafia guys as most of us refer to them. And Anthony Fiato was a major player in that whole organized crime scene.
I worked it both from a case agent perspective, when we were actually targeting Fiato, sat in on hours and hours of wiretaps when we were actually listening to his conversations. And then eventually, when we put together a pretty significant case, he decided to cooperate with the FBI and it was he and his brother Larry who actually introduced me into the L.A. Mafia family.
read full story here http://www.lvrj.com/living/38776657.html . . Listen play

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith/.

Charles Carneglia: From 'shady' mob goon to Mister Rogers

2009-01-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

Fearsome reputed hit man Charles Carneglia has undergone a wiseguy makeover on the eve of his federal trial.
A prison barber did wonders for Carneglia, transforming him from a scary Charles Manson look-alike to a craggy Gorton's Fisherman. Carneglia's ponytail is gone. The stringy, white hair and flowing beard have been neatly trimmed.
The fearsome enforcer for the Gambino crime family, who is charged with five murders, wore a cardigan sweater for jury selection Monday and a powder-blue pullover Tuesday.
Despite the radical change, Carneglia's previous look was apparently burned indelibly in the mind of at least one prospective juror who got a glimpse of the old Charles last week in Brooklyn Federal Courton the first day of jury selection.
"His appearance gave me the impression he was guilty," the anonymous juror told Judge Weinstein. "He looked a little bit on the shady side with the ponytail and the beard."
The juror was excused, and Carneglia glared at him as he left the room.
Defense lawyer Curtis Farberinsisted there is no plan to make Carneglia look less sinister.
"He looks the same to me," Farber said, adding that Carneglia had trouble getting in to see the barber and having his dentures fixed over the 11 months he has been in the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Federal prosecutors have lined up at least 10 cooperating witnesses to testify at the blockbuster Mafia trial beginning Thursday.
They include the late John Gotti's self-described "adopted son" Lewis Kasman and Gambino associate John Alite who will be the star witness against John A. (Junior) Gotti at his trial late

this year

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/01/27/2009-01-27_charles_carneglia_from_shady_mob_goon_to-2.html

A rat through and through

2009-01-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

The ratings for last night's edition of "60 Minutes" will no doubt be boffo. They had a football playoff game lead-in. They had a segment with Roger Clemens, professional baseball player, denying he took steroids. And they had Johnny Martorano, professional murderer, waxing philosophic about the art of blowing people's brains out.
more stories like this
You'll have to forgive Emily Connors for not tuning in. Johnny Martorano helped murder her husband 33 years ago, as Ed Connors stood in a phone booth in Dorchester.
"You know what?" Emily Connors said of Martorano's schtick. "It's getting old."
She got that right. It would almost be bearable to watch this stuff if we knew it would be over and done with. But it's pretty obvious Martorano's appearance was the launch of another attempt to capitalize on the very marketable concept of the sensitive sociopath. After Martorano wraps up his government-witness obligations, which allowed him to trade the 20 human lives he took for 12 years in prison, there will be another kill-and-tell book. Another movie treatment. Some clueless Hollywood type will be snookered by all this tough-but-thoughtful hit-man jive, and we'll have to endure an endless string of breathless whispers about scripts, stars, and on-location shoots in Southie and Winter Hill.

Liesguys Lit is a lucrative genre. It's revisionist history for murderers, allowing them to imbue their venality with a sense of nobility that is otherwise missing from the brutal act of shooting someone in cold blood.

And the best part for the purveyors of this junk is that almost everyone who can dispute its authenticity is either dead or not talking.

It's just as well Emily Connors didn't watch last night, because Martorano's performance was far more offensive to his victims than anything he said in court some years back when he got the sweetheart deal that allowed him to walk out of prison last year.

Johnny told Steve Kroft he didn't enjoy killing, but that he did it for his family and friends.
What a guy.

You could never pay me to kill anybody," said Johnny, who, by job description, was paid to kill people.
"I didn't enjoy risking my life," Johnny said, "but if the cause was right I would."
He never got around to identifying these causes. Perhaps it was to free Tibet, or maybe help the nuns pay off the mortgage at an orphanage. Oh, and even though Johnny is a government witness he is not a rat because he's testifying against those who ratted before he ratted.
Got that?

Like all these criminals who trade their infamy for a few bucks, Johnny Martorano comes across as a guy who is sorry only that he got caught.

Paul Rico, the disgraced, and now dead, former FBI agent who helped Johnny kill people also helped frame a guy named Joe Salvati. Asked how he felt about Salvati doing 30 years for a murder he didn't commit, Rico replied, "What do you want, tears?"

Well, yeah, actually, we do. It would be refreshing to see one of these guys look into a camera and say, "I can't make up for my past. But I don't want to talk about it, either, because all it will do is hurt the families I already hurt."
Don't hold your breath waiting for that one.

Area mob figure alleges ties to LBM Financial

2009-01-19T17:40:00.000-08:00

WORCESTER —
photoString+=''+unescape('')+'Enlarge photo'
The small, elderly man’s soft, raspy voice and frail appearance completely belie a past as notorious as that of practically anyone ever associated with the New England mob.
photoString+=''+unescape('')+'Enlarge photo'
Now 88, Carlo Mastrototaro — who by many accounts, but not his own, ruled Mafia activity in Worcester for much of the latter half of the last century — would seem a highly unlikely confederate to the growing number of borrowers and investors who claim they were ripped off by LBM Financial LLC, a Marlboro “hard-money” lending company.
photoString+=''+unescape('Brian%20W.%20Thompson')+'Enlarge photo'
Clearly motivated by anger, Mr. Mastrototaro recently agreed to talk to a reporter, something he says he’s never done before. Among points raised in that interview, as well as through reviews of lawsuits targeting LBM and related depositions and other filings, are the following:
');
//-->

photoString+=''+unescape('Marcello%20M.%20Mallegni')+'Enlarge photo'
• Mr. Mastrototaro claims that he arranged a meeting in 2000 between Marcello M. Mallegni, LBM president and owner of record, and David G. “Duddie” Massad, the well-known city philanthropist, chairman of Commerce Bank & Trust and former car dealer, a meeting that he says led to a partnership between the two men.
photoString+=''+unescape('Nicholas%20J.%20Fiorillo')+'Enlarge photo'
In exchange for putting the small loan company together with one of the region’s wealthiest men, Mr. Mastrototaro says he was to receive a fee of 1 percent of each loan made by LBM. He says LBM reneged on the alleged agreement. A lawyer for LBM said no such arrangement ever existed.
photoString+=''+unescape('David%20G.%20%93Duddie%94%20Massad')+'Enlarge photo'
• Mr. Mastrototaro said he has known Mr. Massad nearly all his life and until recent years considered him a friend. Four former law enforcement officials who had Mr. Mastrototaro under surveillance at different times over decades said the two men were known to be friends. The bank chairman adamantly denies that they ever were friends, saying through a lawyer that he only sold Mr. Mastrototaro cars over the years. • Despite his reputation and criminal record, Mr. Mastrototaro was paid a $30,000 “broker’s fee” by a local real estate developer for his role in arranging a $3 million loan from Commerce Bank, according to that developer. A lawyer for Mr. Massad flatly denied any assertion of wrongdoing by his client, including those allegations contained in a number of pending racketeering lawsuits, and maintained that Mr. Massad has no role whatsoever in the operation of LBM or any dealings it had with Mr. Mastrototaro. “Throughout all of these specious and outrageous allegations, they uniformly fail to allege or contend interaction with Mr. Massad directly. They’re all suggesting that someone told them that Mr. Massad did something,” according to the lawyer, David H. Rich, who said Mr. Massad would not comment himself. LBM’s lawyer, Jeffrey D. Ganz, contradicted almost every aspect of Mr. Mastrototaro’s version of events. He said it was a Commerce Bank loan officer, not Mr. Mastrotoraro, who first introduced the bank chairman and Mr. Mallegni. He said Mr. Mastrotoraro was never promised a cut of LBM loans and that Mr. Mastrotoraro and his wife were paid all the interest they were due in connection with one loan they funded. “These allegations just don’t hold up,” Mr. Ganz said. For his part, Commerce Bank President Brian W. Thompson said he has never even heard of Mr. Mastrototaro and that the bank would not allow a broker’s fee to be paid out of a loan without written authorization from the borrower. “We’re very confident that whatever the bank has done is consistent with normal banking procedures,” he said. LBM is the focal point of at least a dozen state and federal court lawsuits alleging that the borrowers were victims of schemes orchestrated to ensure their failure and enable the firm to wrest control of their property. The common theme in the lawsuits is that the firm used “loan-to-own” tactics designed to financially sabotage construction projects in order to take them over through foreclosure or, failing that, to use the delays created to run up the payoff amount on the loan by piling on fees, penalties and default interest rates. The firm offers short-term, high-interest loans — known in the industry as “hard money” loans — to developers in the early stages of construction projects. LBM’s lawyer has attributed the flurry of lawsuits to failed and desperate developers trying to avoid repaying millions of dollars they borrowed from the firm. State records show LBM was incorporated in 1996 by Mr. Mallegni of Southboro. Mr. Massad has said he has no formal role in the operation of LBM but, through other companies he has an interest in, has put up some of the money lent by the firm. Interviewed at the Leatherneck Lounge at the Marine Corps League on Lake Avenue, Mr. Mastrototaro, a WWII combat veteran, told the Telegram & Gazette that in 2000 he set up a meeting between Mr. Massad and Mr. Mallegni, who, he said, was anxious to enlist Mr. Massad’s financial backing. In his version of the formation of the association between Mr. Massad and Mr. Mallegni, Mr. Mastrototaro said that the two agreed that he would receive one point — 1 percent — of each loan made by LBM. The agreement, he acknowledged, was not put on paper. “I’ve always taken people at their word, and my word is good in return,” Mr. Mastrototaro said. Mr. Ganz, the LBM lawyer, called the alleged agreement “just false.” “That’s not the way LBM does business. It never agreed to pay anybody a 1 point broker’s fee,” he said. However it happened, Mr. Massad’s involvement with LBM appears to have boosted the firm’s prospects.A review of LBM loans on file with several registries of deeds offices confirms that LBM’s volume of business increased dramatically after Mr. Massad began investing in the firm’s loans. Between 1996 and 2000, LBM made about $40 million in loans to developers in Worcester, Barnstable, Middlesex and Suffolk counties. Records in other jurisdictions were not examined. Since 2000 and Mr. Massad’s involvement, however, LBM has made more than $200 million in loans for construction projects in those same four counties, according to registry of deeds records in the four jurisdictions. If Mr. Mastrototaro’s assertion that he was to receive 1 percent of each loan extended by LBM is correct — an assertion strenuously denied by the firm — he would be owed more than $2 million. His anger boiled over, he said, following a transaction between his wife and LBM. He alleges that the firm failed to pay her at least $14,000 in interest from a $500,000 investment she made with the company. He said his wife made $500,000 through the sale of family property in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2007. The couple invested the money with Mr. Mallegni and LBM that year, for which he said she was to be paid 8 percent interest. The investment was to last no more than a year, he said. LBM, both sides of the dispute acknowledge, loaned the money to Louis Cheschi, owner of the Café Sorrento restaurant in Milford, and a friend of Mr. Mastrototaro’s. Mr. Cheschi last week declined to comment on the transaction.

In a deposition taken last October in connection with a 2007 lawsuit filed against LBM, Mr. Mallegni, Mr. Massad and others by Worcester real estate developer Nicholas J. Fiorillo, Mr. Mallegni was questioned about the loan to Mr. Cheschi. Although Mr. Mastrototaro and Mr. Cheschi are friends, Mr. Mallegni states that Mr. Mastrototaro insisted that the $500,000 be funneled through LBM instead of lending it directly to the restaurateur. Mr. Mallegni said that he never really understood “why I need to get in the middle” of the transaction, but that “to accommodate Louie (Cheschi) and to accommodate Carlo (Mastrototaro) we did that.” When the loan was repaid in mid-2008, Mr. Mallegni says in his deposition, he immediately paid Mr. Mastrototaro what was owed him. Mr. Mastrototaro, however, claims the $500,000 wasn’t returned until well after a month had passed and then only after considerable badgering by him. He said his wife was not paid any interest on her investment. Mr. Ganz said his client made regular interest payments to the Mastrototaros during the course of the loan and then repaid the principal once Mr. Cheschi paid back the loan. “The loan was paid in full with interest,” he said.While it was Mr. Mallegni who he dealt with at LBM, Mr. Mastrototaro said he personally blames Mr. Massad for the situation. “That guy doesn’t do anything without Duddie’s approval,” he said of Mr. Mallegni. “He prays to one god,” he said of Mr. Massad. “That god’s name is M-O-N-E-Y.” Similar accusations about Mr. Mallegni’s reliance on Mr. Massad have been leveled by several of the Massachusetts real estate developers who have sued LBM, Mr. Mallegni and Mr. Massad. Those accusations appear at least somewhat supported by Mr. Mallegni’s response to a question asked of him during his deposition taken last October in the Fiorillo lawsuit Asked if he had discussed details of a particular loan with Mr. Massad, Mr. Mallegni answered: “Yes, he’s my 50 percent partner. I have to let him know what’s happening.” That particular loan was one in which Mr. Massad had put up a portion of the money, according to Mr. Ganz. “What is true is where Duddie is a participant, they make decisions together,” he said. Mr. Rich, one of Mr. Massad’s lawyers, said his client had no role in the transaction involving Mr. Mastrototaro. “If Mr. Mallegni had any arrangements with this person, Mr. Massad was not a party to any contracts, any agreements, any understandings whatsoever. He was not there. He knows nothing of it,” Mr. Rich said. Mr. Mastrototaro apparently did receive a percentage of at least one LBM-related loan. Robert Depietri of Worcester alleges in a federal racketeering lawsuit he filed in 2007 against LBM, Mr. Mallegni and others, and in a deposition and other related court documents, that he paid Mr. Mastrototaro and an associate $30,000 out of the proceeds of a $3 million loan from Commerce Bank in 2000. Mr. Depietri, who declined to be interviewed, alleges in his lawsuit and related documents that he and his partners, who own and manage the Chase Building at 44 Front St., attempted to consolidate a first mortgage held by a Boston bank and a second mortgage held by LBM into a single loan. At Mr. Mallegni’s suggestion, Mr. Depietri said he contacted Mr. Massad at Commerce Bank about the refinancing. In September 2000, he states, Commerce issued a loan commitment for $3 million, which included a $30,000 loan origination fee that he and his partners had agreed to pay. At the loan closing, however, Mr. Depietri states that his lawyers noticed a second $30,000 fee on the settlement statement. After questioning the additional charge, Mr. Depietri said he was escorted to another room by Mr. Mallegni, who allegedly told him that the loan would not be closed unless he agreed to the $30,000 fee. Mr. Depietri alleges that Mr. Mallegni told him that the additional fee was at the insistence of Mr. Massad and was to go to two men, who were described as “advisers” to Mr. Massad, who were seated in the lobby. Mr. Depietri said he was desperate for the refinancing and had no alternative but to go along. He said later he learned that one of the men was Mr. Mastrototaro, whom he had never heard of at that point. In a deposition taken in another lawsuit, Mr. Mallegni acknowledged that Mr. Mastrototaro received the broker’s fee, but said that Mr. Dipietri requested the payment because he had retained Mr. Mastrototaro as a broker. Mr. Depietri’s lawsuit also states that in the summer of 2006, Mr. Mastrototaro came to his home unexpectedly to talk about help he had been giving Mr. Fiorillo with his lawsuit against LBM. He said Mr. Mastrototaro “recommended I didn’t get involved with the situation.” Mr. Depietri, who said he was aware of Mr. Mastrototaro’s criminal background by that point, said he was shocked by the visit, but did not feel threatened. “I didn’t know who sent him there,” Mr. Depietri stated, “but obviously somebody did.” In his interview with the T&G, Mr. Mastrototaro would say only that his presence at the closing and later at Mr. Depietri’s house was not intended to threaten or intimidate anyone. “I don’t do that sort of thing,” he said. Mr. Mastrototaro’s police record, which dates to 1945, includes Massachusetts and federal court convictions and prison sentences for interstate travel in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, gambling and receiving stolen property, as well as several other lesser charges. In 1971, he was convicted in a U.S. District Court in Baltimore of aiding and abetting in the transportation of three U.S. Treasury bills stolen in New York City and transferred to Baltimore. Mr. Mastrototaro’s conviction and 9-year prison sentence were upheld in 1972 by a federal appeals court. He was accused of paying $25,000 for the three treasury bills, each with a face value of $100,000, to the man who stole them, Boston and Providence mob figure Vincent “Big Vinnie” Teresa. In exchange for a reduced sentence, Mr. Teresa, who in 1973 would write a tell-all book called “My Life in the Mafia,” agreed to testify against Mr. Mastrototaro in the aiding and abetting case and also against Meyer Lansky, a notorious figure in mob annals who was regarded as a financial genius. According to Thomas J. Foley, former superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, Mr. Mastrototaro reported in the 1980s and ’90s to the Genovese crime family in New York with the tacit approval of Raymond L.S. Patriarca of Providence, regarded as the boss of organized crime bosses in New England until his death in 1984. Mr. Foley and other former and current law enforcement officials said in recent interviews that surveillance operations indicated Mr. Mastrototaro and Mr. Massad were friends for decades. Mr. Massad was never linked to any of Mr. Mastrototaro’s criminal activities, Mr. Foley said. Mr. Massad’s lawyer said his client and Mr. Mastrototaro were never friends. “It would be fair to say that he knows him and has interacted with him in a very limited capacity,” Mr. Rich said. “He’s certainly not a business partner or colleague or friend in any meaningful way.” In his 1973 book about the Mafia in New England, Mr. Teresa described Mr. Mastrototaro as “the boss of Worcester” and was considered “the fourth most powerful boss in the current New England hierarchy of crime.” The book frequently refers to Mr. Mastrototaro, linking him to Mafia-backed casinos that operated in Haiti and Cuba, as well as to Mr. Lansky. Mr. Teresa makes a few references to Mr. Mastrototaro’s reputation for having “short arms,” that is, for being extremely cheap. “He’s a multi-millionaire,” Mr. Teresa wrote, “but if you were to open the trunk of his car at any time, you’d find rolls of twenty-five-cent slugs that he used in telephone booths to save money on phone calls. He has beautiful clothes, but he never went to a store to buy them — he buys from boosters (small time thieves).” Despite his testimony that helped convict Mr. Mastrototaro in the Baltimore case, Mr. Teresa, who died in 1990 while in the federal witness protection program, seemed to have some admiration for the Worcester mob figure. “As cheap as he was, he was as honest as they come in the mob when you dealt with him,” Mr. Teresa wrote of Mr. Mastrototaro. “If you had a cent and half coming from him, it didn’t make a bit of difference if you didn’t show up to collect for six months. When you got there, the money was there waiting for you. He never tried to beat anybody in the mob.” Mr. Foley recalled that as part of one investigation, state police had Mr. Mastrototaro under surveillance in the mid-1990s as he headed to Western Massachusetts for a clandestine meeting in a bugged cabin with other “capos.” He said the officers tailing Mr. Mastrototaro saw him enter a Shrewsbury supermarket and stuff steaks and other items in his clothing, before taking off for the meeting in the Berkshires. Once inside the cabin, according to Mr. Foley, state police investigators listened to wiretapped conversations that included the Worcester crime leader and other mobsters bragging about their shoplifting exploits. More recently he was convicted of shoplifting in Auburn in 2003 and Shrewsbury in 2005, and paid fines of $200 and $250, respectively. By his own account, Mr. Mastrototaro is a “retired businessman” and during the interview determinedly steered clear of answering questions about businesses he was involved in before retiring. “Different things,” he said of his former occupations, adding when asked about news stories identifying him as an organized crime figure that “not everything said about me is true.”

Curtis Sliwa Guardian Angel's Cab Ride from Hell

2009-01-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

Radio host Curtis Sliwa captivated a federal jury with an action-packed account of how he was kidnapped and shot in a stolen cab by two alleged Gambino goons - and then narrowly escaped death by hurling himself out the window. Testifying at the trial of John "Junior" Gotti, who stands accused of hatching the plot to stop Sliwa from bad-mouthing his father John "Dapper Don" Gotti, the radio host described how a cab ride to work turned into a nightmare in which he was shot at "like a duck in a duck pond."Sliwa, 51, said he sensed trouble when the taxi made a sudden wrong turn the morning of June 19, 1992. "Hey, Mack! Turn this hack around! You're going in the wrong direction!" Sliwa recalled barking at the driver.Seconds later, Sliwa - founder of the Guardian Angels civilian patrol group - said he heard rustling in the front seat. "All of a sudden there was this guy who had popped up. His backside was on the dashboard. He was pointing a gun at me," said Sliwa. "The gunman said, 'Take this you son of a bitch,' " Sliwa told Assistant U.S. Attorney Joon Kim. "The gun sounded like a cannon . . . I saw the fire of the gun."Sliwa said he heard three shots and felt excruciating pain in his abdomen and legs as he tried to escape the rear of the taxi, which had been stripped of its door and window handles. "I'm stuck in a corner. I'm thinking in a matter of seconds I'm going to be dead," Sliwa said. "He's shooting you like a duck in a duck pond."The radio host said he grabbed his two-way radio and shouted, "Angel One! Code Red!" He said he then felt a gust of wind from the front passenger area as the speeding taxi rounded a turn. "I used the back seat like one would a trampoline. I bounced off there," Sliwa said, describing a death-defying stunt that propelled him past the gunman and through an open window. Sliwa said he underwent extensive surgery for damage caused by two bullets and was forced to wear a colostomy bag for a year.This is the second time Sliwa has taken the witness stand against Gotti in Manhattan federal court. Last year a jury failed to reach a verdict on the kidnapping charge against Gotti and acquitted the alleged shooter. The admitted driver of the cab, mob turncoat Joseph D'Angelo, is set to testify.Under cross-examination, Sliwa said he could not identify either the gunman or the driver, but said, "I had always been suspicious of the Gottis and the Gambinos."Defense lawyer Charles Carnesi asked Sliwa if he'd said on his radio show that before he testified he planned to "rub onions in your eyes so you would be crying." Sliwa acknowledged making the statement, but said it was a joke. "I wouldn't do that," he said.Sliwa also acknowledged six instances in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he staged acts of heroism to get positive media attention for his fledgling Guardian Angels group."I appreciated the opportunity of being able to tell the jury my story a second time," Sliwa said, speaking outside of court. "I should have been dead long ago."

Gangster John Gotti dipped neighbour in acid bath

2009-01-09T19:41:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK, Jan 9 — Blinded by the sun, John Favara ran over and killed the 12-year-old son of his neighbour in New York when the boy rode his mini-motorbike into the street on March 18, 1980.
To his great misfortune, the neighbour was John Gotti, who was soon to become the Godfather of the American Mafia. Four months later Favara vanished.

new england mob boss Bruno shooter laying low

2008-12-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

SPRINGFIELD - Where in the world is Frankie A. Roche?
The admitted gunman in the 2003 gangland-style shooting of crime boss Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno, has kept a decidedly low profile since pleading guilty to murder in April.
Roche, 35, has not made a single public court appearance since then, despite the fact that he stands charged in U.S. District and Hampden Superior courts for the same crime.
Most recently, his two codefendants in state court, Fotios A. "Freddy" Geas, 42, and Brandon D. Croteau, 30, appeared Dec. 18 in shackles for a pretrial conference on murder conspiracy charges. Roche was not present.
Assistant District Attorney Carmen W. Picknally said Roche is still charged in both state and federal courts, but declined further comment.
On a prison search Web site, Roche is said to be in custody at the Souza-Baranowski maximum security state prison in Shirley. However, others say he has been behind bars at the Hampshire
County jail and more recently at the Franklin County jail. But, Franklin County Sheriff Fredrick B. McDonald this week said Roche was no longer at that site.

He did his thing ... but now he's gone," McDonald said in response to an inquiry.
Similarly, in Roche's federal case, there has not been a single filing since May, when a transcript of the defendant's guilty plea a month earlier was posted. He has not been scheduled for sentencing, nor has a trial date been set in the state case, which is still pending against him.
Roche waited for Bruno outside an Italian-American social club in the city's South End on Nov. 23, 2003, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd E. Newhouse.
After about a half-hour wait in a dark parking lot, Roche heard Bruno's voice and called out "Hey, Al!," according to the prosecutor. Bruno, the regional head of the New York-based Genovese crime family, responded: "Hey, buddy."
Roche shot Bruno six times and took off on foot, Newhouse said. He later told investigators it was a contract hit. The gunman said he was paid $10,000 by rival gangsters wrestling for power.
Investigators say Geas, previously identified as "the muscle" for Bruno's eventual successor, Anthony J. Arillotta, paid Roche; and Croteau, something of a hapless fringe character, helped Roche get out of town.
Geas was indicted in federal court after Roche pleaded guilty; he is held without bail. Croteau is serving a 15-year prison sentence on unrelated drug trafficking charges.
After Bruno was killed, investigators quickly got a line on Roche, but tracked him for months before he was apprehended by FBI agents while hiding out in Florida the following August.
The arrest was no less eventful than what preceded it: Roche was accidentally shot by agents during the raid.
He sued the FBI in connection with the shooting last year. The civil suit in U.S. District Court in central Florida seems to be the only thing visibly progressing through the court system.
Mark A. Sylvester, a Miami lawyer representing Roche in the civil suit, said he is embroiled in negotiations with the federal government and may not settle out of court. A trial date has been set for Aug. 31 in central Florida.

"I believe that the evidence in this case will show that a series of errors were committed by FBI personnel during the arrest," Sylvester said in an e-mail on Friday. "Those errors culminated with the accidental and wrongful discharge of an M4 carbine rifle into the back of Frankie Roche as he lay face down on the ground surrounded by multiple armed agents."
Roche could use a substantial award in that case, as he also faces a $1 million fine under his plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

In exchange for testimony against others in the Bruno case and other investigations, prosecutors declined to pursue capital punishment and may argue for a substantial reduction in an otherwise mandatory life sentence he faces as a result of his guilty plea in federal court here.
Geas may face the death penalty if he's convicted in the federal court case. Croteau has not been charged there.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/bruno_shooter_laying_low.html

Soprano actor whacks himself out

2008-12-27T20:50:00.000-08:00

Actor Who Played Gay Man on ’Sopranos’ Commits Suicideby Steve WeinsteinEDGE Editor-In-ChiefThursday Dec 25, 2008
The Brooklyn actor who played Johnny Cakes, a gay fireman who was also the lover of a mob capo on "The Sopranos," apprently killed himself. John Costelloe appears to be the victim of a suicide in his home in the blue-collar Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The incident reportedly happened sometime around Dec. 16, according to unofficial police reports.Costelloe had himself served in real life in the New York Fire Department before becoming an actor. A friend told the Post, "I saw him three weeks ago when he stopped by, and he seemed to be in good spirits."Costelloe appeared in four episodes of "The Sopranos" in 2006. He played a short-order cook named Jim "Johnny Cakes" Witowski, who was in loved with Vito Spatafore--played Joseph Gannascoli, real-life friend of Costelloe’s. On the show, Vito is killed by homophobic mobsters. "It still hasn’t really sunk in," Gannascoli told the Post. "I never detected anything troubling about him. I enjoyed all the time I ever spent with him.""Sopranos" actor Steve Buscemi attended the funeral at a local Catholic Church. Buscemi was also a longtime friend of Costelloe’s.Costelloe had been apperaing in an off-off-Broadway play called "Gang of Seven." The show’s playwright told the paper he suspected the actor was bothered by something, but he never explained what it was.EDGE Editor-in-Chief Steve Weinstein has been a regular correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Advocate, the Village Voice and Out. He has been covering the AIDS crisis since the early ’80s, when he began his career. He is the author of "The Q Guide to Fire Island" (Alyson, 2007).

Pellicano gets 15 years in wiretapping case

2008-12-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

The private investigator's sentence was longer than the five-year, 10-month term recommended by the Probation Department. Four co-defendants are scheduled to be sentenced in January.
By Victoria Kim
December 16, 2008
Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano was sentenced to 15 years in prison this afternoon for running an illegal wiretapping operation that gathered information for a list of well-to-do clients, including celebrities, attorneys and business executives.

U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer's sentence was longer than the five-year, 10-month punishment recommended by the Probation Department.

Pellicano, whose clients and victims ranked among Hollywood's biggest stars and most powerful executives, was convicted in two criminal trials earlier this year of 78 counts, including wiretapping, computer fraud and wire fraud.

In court papers filed in October, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pellicano, 64, to more than 15 years in prison, saying the sleuth was charged with, and convicted of, only a fraction of the crimes he actually committed.

By tapping phones and bribing public officials, Pellicano violated fundamental privacy rights of hundreds of people and chipped away at the integrity of public institutions, prosecutors wrote. They added that Pellicano continues to show nothing but pride for the criminal enterprise he ran.

Though Pellicano represented himself at the federal trials -- lending to moments of farce and confusion -- he relied on a court-appointed attorney for his sentencing. Attorney Michael Artan had sought a more lenient sentence from Fischer, arguing that Pellicano's "hardscrabble" youth, work as a forensic audio expert for the government and financial struggle to provide for his autistic son in the years before his arrest were mitigating factors she should consider.

Similar pleas for leniency for Pellicano and his co-defendants, however, have been dismissed by Fischer.

Last week, the judge ordered Pellicano and two co-defendants to forfeit more than $2 million, an amount requested by prosecutors. And last month, Fischer sentenced Pellicano's co-conspirator, attorney Terry Christensen, to three years in prison, rejecting a recommendation from the Probation Department that he be placed under house arrest. Fischer rebuked Christensen, who was accused of conspiring with Pellicano to wiretap his opponents in trial, for "marring" the legal profession.

Four other defendants are scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Pellicano's troubles began in 2002, when a reporter who wrote negative articles about former Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz went to authorities after she found a dead fish, a rose and a note saying "Stop" inside the smashed windshield of her car.

The investigation led authorities to Pellicano's office, and it quickly snowballed into a wide-reaching probe that appeared would implicate some of Hollywood's biggest names. Among Pellicano's clients were Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson and Chris Rock.

Pellicano's co-defendants included Sgt. Mark Arneson of the Los Angeles Police Department, computer technician Kevin Kachikian, and phone company employee Ray Turner, who were all convicted in sweeping jury verdicts. They helped Pellicano earn millions by getting information on ex-spouses, business associates and opponents in lawsuits, prosecutors said.

sexy actress Linda Fiorentino wants to make a movie of Pellicano's life in Hollywood.

'Tough guy'

2008-12-11T11:41:00.000-08:00

The feds indicted a reputed Genovese capo Monday for the 1977 murder of a gangster who, after his killer's gun jammed, snarled: "What're you gonna do now, tough guy?"

Prosecutors say Michael (Mikey Cigars) Coppola promptly drew a second pistol and gunned down John (Johnny Coca Cola) Lardiere outside a New Jersey motel.

Coppola, 62, went on the lam in 1996, after authorities asked him to submit a DNA sample to test against hairs found in a hat at the crime scene.

The FBI captured Coppola last year on the upper West Side, where he was living with his wife.

A DNA test of the forensic evidence was inconclusive; New Jersey authorities handed off the murder to case to the feds.

Coppola has pleaded guilty to the fugitive charges and is serving a 42-month sentence.

A Mob Sequel to film "The Departed "

2008-12-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

By Suzanne Smalley and Evan Thomas NEWSWEEK

For many years, John Connolly was the FBI's most effective Mafia investigator in Boston. He has a master's degree in public administration from Harvard. He says his "hero" is Bobby Kennedy and points to his family's devotion to public service (his brother is a retired DEA agent, and his sister became a teacher). But when he met last week with a NEWSWEEK REPORTER at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami, he was wearing shackles around his ankles. Once dashing and athletic, the 68-year-old Connolly was stooped and pot-bellied in his bright-red prison jumpsuit. His skin was paper-thin and white from lack of sunlight. For the past three and a half years, he has lived in a tiny, 10- by 12-foot cinder-block cell; his food is slipped to him through a slot in the heavy metal door. He is kept in solitary confinement for his own protection: a few years ago, Connolly says, another former FBI agent was badly beaten by inmates in the same jail.

Speaking with the reporter in a holding room, Connolly was grandfatherly, intelligent, emotional. "Believe me, I am innocent!" he declared, pumping his fist in the air. "I'm a Catholic. I say the rosary every day and pray for my innocence. I pray to Saint Jude, the saint of hopeless causes, and to Saint Rita, the saint of the impossible." His cause is not entirely hopeless: last week the judge postponed his sentencing for murder in the second degree to next month to consider the defense's argument that the statute of limitations had elapsed. But there is still a chance that Connolly will never emerge from prison to see his wife and three kids.

If Connolly's story sounds like the stuff of movies, that's because it is. In Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film "The Departed," Matt Damon plays the role of a cop who works as a mole for the mob; the Damon character is widely believed to be based on Connolly. Jack Nicholson plays a role loosely based on the life of James (Whitey) Bulger an Irish mob kingpin from South Boston who secretly cooperated with the FBI against his rivals in the Italian Mafia. The subtext—in fiction as well as in real life—is the sometimes fine line between power for good and for evil.

In 2002 Connolly was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison on racketeering and obstruction-of-justice charges stemming from allegations that in 1995 he had tipped off Bulger and one of his henchmen, Stephen Flemmi (nicknamed "the Rifleman" for his expert marksmanship in the Korean War), right before they were indicted for racketeering. Bulger vanished. (He was last reliably spotted at London's Piccadilly Circus in 2002.) Flemmi dallied and was caught. In return for avoiding a death sentence for separate murder charges, Flemmi ultimately began cooperating with the government.

According to the Feds, Connolly not only helped Bulger escape but was also a spider in a tangled web of gangland slayings. In 2005 he was charged with three murder counts in connection with the death of John B. Callahan, a Boston jai alai executive who liked to drink and hang around with mobsters. In 1982 Callahan's rotting, bullet ridden body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport. A dime was found on the body—a message, some speculated, to those who would think of "dropping a dime," street parlance for cooperating with the Feds. The government charged that Connolly had let Bulger and his crew know that the FBI wanted to question Callahan about the slaying of another jai alai executive, Roger Wheeler, who had been snuffed by a member of Bulger's Winter Hill Gang. At Connolly's trial this fall, the prosecutor argued that Connolly should have known that Callahan would be killed because something similar had happened at least twice before. The Feds assert that in 1976, after Connolly allegedly leaked to Bulger that the nightclub owner and bookie Richard Castucci was an informant for the FBI, Castucci was shot to death. In another case, Edward (Brian) Halloran and an uninvolved friend were slain, execution style, while standing outside a bar on Boston's waterfront in 1982—allegedly because Connolly had told Bulger that Halloran was cooperating with the Feds

The star witnesses testifying against Connolly in his murder trial were Flemmi and John Martorano, a mob assassin known as the Basin Street Butcher who has admitted to killing 20 people. He is out of prison after serving a 12-year sentence, shortened because he agreed to testify for the government. In his jailhouse interview with NEWSWEEK, Connolly claimed that Martorano and other mobsters turned government witnesses were lying: "They're trying to save their own skin. They're like trained seals … Martorano never met me, never spoke to me … Everything he says is hearsay." (Flemmi claimed he was at a meeting—attended by Connolly—at which Bulger announced that Martorano would "take care of" Callahan, the jai alai exec.) The government presented evidence alleging that Connolly had received bribes totaling $235,000 from Bulger's gang—enough, prosecutors say, to buy a boat that cost almost as much as Connolly's annual FBI salary. (Assistant State Attorney Michael Von Zampf told NEWSWEEK THAT Connolly was so close to Bulger that he vacationed with him in Mexico.) Connolly's lawyer, Manuel Casabielle, says the idea that his client took bribes is "absolutely, categorically untrue." He adds that the defense was able to document in court that all of Connolly's assets were purchased with legitimate earnings

In his conversation with NEWSWEEK, Connolly protested that government investigators have to get close to their high-level informants, who are typically bad people, because that is the only way to penetrate secret criminal organizations or terrorist cells. While the government portrays him as a single rogue agent, Connolly describes himself as a "scapegoat." Even Von Zampf admits the FBI's Boston office was permeated by corruption; he says he believes other agents knew Connolly was taking money from Bulger but didn't act. A former FBI agent testifying for the defense admitted that Connolly delivered Christmas gifts from mobsters to him—a black leather briefcase, an expensive figurine, a bottle of cognac. Connolly's FBI supervisor has admitted receiving $7,000, some of which was delivered in a case of wine from the mob via Connolly. (The supervisor, John Morris, was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying.) It is commonplace and necessary for federal agents to use criminal informants to crack criminal conspiracies. But "you don't have informants at the top of the food chain," says Rick Fraelick, a retired Massachusetts State Police major, who attended part of the trial because he said Connolly compromised his own probes of Bulger's gang. "The whole point of an informant is to get to the top of the food chain." Maybe so, but as "The Departed" portrayed, life in ethnic melting pots like South Boston can be complicated

Connolly grew up in the same grim housing project in "Southie" as Bulger did. As they rise out of poverty, proud and ambitious men can make different choices. Whitey Bulger's brother Billy became president of the Massachusetts state Senate and the University of Massachusetts. Connolly recruited Whitey on a beach in Quincy in 1975. At the time, Bulger was afraid he had been targeted by the Mafia and wanted some cover. In addition to a lot of useful tips about the Italian mob, Connolly seems to have gotten a charge from hanging around a colorful and smart (if wicked) character like Bulger. But the game turned ugly. Connolly said that the Feds made a deal with Bulger to turn a blind eye to his gambling and loan-sharking—but betrayed him by bringing racketeering charges in 1995. By then, Connolly says, he feared Bulger would come after his family. Connolly says he never crossed the line in helping Bulger. But in Boston's byzantine world of cops and mobsters, where morals are murky and tribal loyalties are strong, lines separating good from evil can be blurry indeed from Newsweek.com

canker sore Colombo Capo

2008-12-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

Meet Dominic Montemarano, a/k/a "Donny Shacks . Donnie is a canker sore of a capo in the Colombo crime family and he also moonlights as an actor. Maybe when Donnie dressed up in drag when he went on mob hits he considered it acting experience.

Speaking of hits, Shacks is quite a hit with the ladies..He hits the hell out of most of them. His. last girlfriend called the coppers on the creep after he beat the bejesus out of her. .Shack's wound up locked down in the slammer over it.

Seems Donnie went ballistic when the chick brought up his part in , dare I say, a movie, called "Night at the Golden Eagle" Most of the Goodfellas in Gangland were shaking their heads when they saw Shacks had gone Hollywood on them and made the. flick... I mean, come on, a made man acting in movies.

.They were all saying "This Thing of Ours" is really over"... .Maybe if the movie hadn't stunk as bad as a cesspool, and resembled a runaway train wreck, they might have cut Donnie some slack

From the very start the movie flat lined like a heart monitor on a dead man. Shack's acting in the dramatic and tragic scenes came off like slapstick... .One of Donnie's old friends was overheard saying, Oy, Vay, Donnie did to acting what he did to the guys he clipped........ Anthony "The Animal" Fiato

woman in the mob

2008-12-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

In Italy, the first-ever study on women in Italian organized crime reveals that women are rising up the ranks to leadership positions. This is both because the mafia is changing, and women are changing the mafia.

From la dolce vita, the sweet life, to the malavita, the underworld, the growing presence of women is being felt everywhere in Italy.

Until recently, this was almost unthinkable. The first woman arrested for "criminal association" was just five years ago, in 1999. Police have known that women play a supporting role within the mafia: As mothers, wives, and daughters, they've carried out minor tasks.

Filling in for locked up hubbies

Occasionally, women have even stepped in to run things temporarily when their men have been jailed or murdered.

But a new study shows that women within the mafia are rising through the ranks and becoming bosses in their own right. And it says that the Italian judicial system should start paying closer attention.

Ernesto Savona of the Catholic University of Milan, one of the report’s authors, says criminal organizations are becoming more appealing to women. "Criminal organizations are changing. They’re producing less violence. Less people are killed in Palermo and Columbia and in others in proportion to how many were killed before. They’re transforming the hierarchical organization into a more flexible one. That means you’ll get more women having managerial roles. We call them 'sweet criminal organizations'," he told Deutsche Welle.

From hard crime to financial crime

As underworld activities have shifted to financial crimes, violence has dropped. Organizations have also become less centralized.

"That you find women having managerial roles in small criminal organization shows that it's very flexible and not hierarchical," Savona explains. "Especially juvenile gangs. Sometimes you find a woman who has the leadership in the organization."

The evolution of women in the criminal world is exactly the same as that of women in the business world.

Pierluigi Vigna, who heads up Italy’s national anti-mafia office, says that with politically motivated crimes, women are just as willing to kill as men. Mafia women, however, aren’t as willing when it comes to business. The researchers say that’s because women find murder for profit harder to justify. And their roles reflect this difference in values.

"They’re mainly found in areas that require a certain finesse," Vigna explains, "like money laundering rather than murder."

While there are no statistics on the exact number of women in the Italian mafia, the researchers say that more women in key positions are being arrested. In April, a 28-year-old Sicilian woman was found guilty of 50 percent ownership of a thriving underworld business.

This may not be this kind of emancipation feminists had in mind, but it does show that women in Italy need to be taken seriously in all facets of life.

Godmother

2008-11-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

Blonde beauty Georgia Duranti is a gritty and gutsy gal.Talk about life in the fast lane, Georgia did everything from driving getaway cars for mob stick up men to delivering mob messages on the down-low to Mafia boss Carlo Gambino.
Georgia's book, "The Company she keeps" is just terrific. We were both on the A&E (Love Chronicles) "Love & The Mob" in Spring 2000.... Georgia sends me an Invite every year to her "Godmother" gala held in her swanky Tinseltown diggs.
..
by. Anthony "The Animal" Fiato

Godfathers Moe green was a real Mobster.

2008-11-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

Hollywood actor Alex Rocco was born Alexander F Petricone in Boston.Mass Petricone was known by the nickname "Bobo" in his early years as a hard fisted hood in the infamous Winter Hill Gang
...
According to Vincent Teresa in “My Life in the Mafia,” it was Rocco whose girlfriend Charlestown mobster Georgie McLaughlin tried to pick up on Labor Day weekend 1961, setting off the bloody Irish Gang War.
.

Rocco was arrested along with Winter Hill boss, Buddy McLean, as a suspect in the October 1961 murder of a gangster but was never charged.

.Petricone then bolted out of bullet riddled Boston and moved to California in 1962, and began using the name Alex Rocco. . He took acting classes and lost weight..

Rocco made his movie bones and scored the solid-gold role of Mobster,Moe Green in the Godfather. The Winter Hill Mobs most famous felons watched the movie and rooted for Moe Green to whack out Michael Corleone.

Big Mob Boss

2008-11-22T15:15:00.000-08:00

One of the world’s most feared mafia bosses accused of arms dealing, drug running, uranium trafficking and multiple murders has been captured by around 50 police commandos in Moscow

The pock-marked Semyon Mogilevich, known as the “Brainy Don” because of his economics degree, has reportedly ruled a powerful Eastern European organised crime ring since the 1990s.

He is thought to be worth around $100 million. He is wanted by the FBI, Interpol and the UK police for numerous international crimes including fraud, racketeering and money laundering

Police seized Mr Mogilevich, 61, and a large group of his bodyguards outside a Moscow supermarket on Wednesday night, Russian police confirmed today

State television showed footage of the alleged mobster as police held him and bodyguards against their luxury cars. They also broadcast film of the rarely photographed figure in custody, wearing jeans, a cap and leather jacket.

“Sergei Schneider has been arrested. He is better known as Semyon Mogilevich. He has several names, several nationalities and has been wanted for more than 15 years,” said Anzhela Kastuyeva, a Moscow police spokeswoman.

The arrest was made in connection with an investigation into an alleged $2 million tax evasion scheme run in connection with Arbat Prestige, a successful chain of Russian cosmetic stores. Vladimir Nekrasov, the owner of Arbat-Prestizh, was arrested in the same raid.

Monya Elson, a known associate of Mr Mogilevich, claimed in an interview given ten years ago that the Ukrainian was “the most powerful mobster in the world”.

An investigation by US newspaper the Village Voice, which apparently brought a death threat for its author, cited classified FBI and Mossad documents claiming that he was responsible for trafficking nuclear materials, drugs, prostitutes, precious gems, and stolen art. He was also said to have run a series of contract hit squads operating in the US and Europe.

Mr Elson claimed Mr Mogilevich, who was born in the Ukraine, controlled everything going in and out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, which he called a ‘’smugglers’ paradise

The Mogilevich family were reported to live in two opulent villas near Prague where they reportedly operated torture chambers run by young enforcers trained by veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war.

In December 1994, British police officers, tipped off by their counterparts in eastern Europe, first began investigating allegations that the Mogilevich organisation might be laundering profits from arms dealing, prostitution, extortion and drug trafficking through a firm of London solicitors.

Detective Sergeant John Wanless, who investigated the Red Mafia’s role in the UK at the time told the Sunday Times: “Semion Mogilevich is one of the world’s top criminals, who has a personal wealth of $100m. As a result of the effect of his financial impact on the City of London, he clearly falls in the category of a core criminal.”

In 1999 London investigators attempted to question him once again, this time over a $10 billion money-laundering scheme that unwittingly embroiled the Bank of New York and a network of other leading financial institutions in the UK, America and six other countries

Mr Mogilevich is also included on the FBI wanted list for racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. The Bureau warns that he should be considered armed, dangerous and an escape risk.

During a 2005 speech in Hungary Robert Mueller, then FBI director said: “Right here in Budapest, Ukrainian-born Semion Mogilevich established the headquarters of his powerful organized crime enterprise.”

The group engaged in drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution and money laundering, and organized stock fraud in the United States and Canada in which investors lost over 150 million dollars.”

UK authorities and the FBI are unlikely to ever get the opportunity to question the man even after his arrest as Russia has no extradition treaty with either country.

Boston Mobster

2008-11-20T17:18:00.000-08:00

Frank Capizzi, was an associate of the Notarangelis--"Indian Joe" and "Indian Al" who started a renegade gang that tried to muscle in on some of Angiulo's racquets.. .Joe and Al were both whacked out by hitman Johnny Martarano of the Winter Hill Gang. . When FBI agent Zip Connolly was convicted in federal court, Frank Capizzi wrote Judge Joe Tauro a five page letter about what it was like to be machine-gunned by Whitey Bulger in 1973 as Capizzi and two other hoods rode in a car in the North End. The driver, Al Plummer, was decapitated by the bullets

. Frankie Capizzi and his family begged well respected "made man" Paulie Intiso to get him off the hook with the Hill and Angiulo. . Capizzi knew Paulie since he was a kid. .He cried like a baby but he got to live as long as he stayed out of Boston. . . I started out in the Patriarca mob in Paulie Intiso's crew.

Paulie is mentioned in my book. "The Animal in Hollywood"

Anthony Fiato .
.

Whitey Bulger was a rear admiral

2008-11-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

Whitey Bulger of the Winter Hill Mob had a gay one night stand with handsome actor Sal Mineo. Mineo was known for his Academy Award nominated performace opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Bulger killed plenty of people with tommy guns and pistols, but he slew Sal with cupids arrow right in the ass

MOB INSIDER; Fiato focuses on FBI agent murder comviction

2008-11-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

Las Vegas Review Journal
MOB INSIDER: Fiato focuses on FBI agent murder conviction
Posted by John L. Smith review Journal Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008

Anthony Fiato, the subject of my 1998 book “The Animal in Hollywood,” (at left) was the double-tough underboss of the Los Angeles mob in the early 1980s before he became ensnared in an FBI undercover investigation. Fiato was a made guy with criminal credentials in Boston and Los Angeles — and connections in Las Vegas and New York. When he decided to cooperate with the FBI, mobsters from Hollywood to the North End of Boston took a beating.

I spoke with Fiato recently about the conviction in Florida of former Boston FBI Agent John Connolly(at right), who was in connection with the mishandling of Irish mobster James “Whitey” Bulger.

Far from simplistically condemning “Zip” Connolly, Fiato said he understood how a dedicated FBI agent could get lost along the way while trying to put the mob out of business. The fact is, he says, the good guys have to be able to relate to the bad guys in order to gain their trust. Favors are common. Friendships form on both sides of the fence.

Here is an excerpt from that conversation.

“When you’re working undercover as an FBI agent, some of the mob guys rub off on you, and some of you rubs off on them,” Fiato says. “When Mike Wacks (a veteran FBI undercover agent who was a key player in the Bribery and Labor investigation known as BRILAB that nailed New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello) worked that BRILAB case, he told me they almost had to deprogram him for a year after he surfaced. Wacks told me it took him a year to get back to being himself. He was committing crimes along with them, getting to know them as people, getting to know their families.

These FBI guys will tell you anything to get you to do your job, but they also do things undercover that they wouldn’t normally do. People are people. The bad rubs off on the good and visa versa. That’s what I think happened in Connolly’s case.

“He was told to work those guys, make cases, get them to flip, nail the mobsters — and follow every rule or face the consequences. Well, life on the street is never that simple. Never. And I think it’s unfair to throw the book at a guy who was trying to do his job.”

More from Fiato soon.

Hood hit it big

2008-11-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

Joe Di Carlo was a longtime associate of Mobster, Mickey Cohen, and organized crime figures, Joe and Fred.Sica. De Carlo was sitting with Mickey Cohen and cowardly, gunman, Sam Lo Cigno, the night La Cigno shot to death, unarmed hoodlum, Jack Whalen , aka Jack O'Hara... Joe Di Carlo started out a minor hood and he wound up making a big success of himself as a entertainment manger. He got rich managing Hollywood Superstar Cher.. . In my book, "The Animal in Hollywood" . I mention how I grabbed Di Carlo to do me a solid, "or, else", in a private Beverly Hills club named Pips with my associate John Di Mattia... Anthony Fiato .

DIRTY BUSINESS

2008-11-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

He was dubbed the “trash czar” by the media—James Galante, businessman and majority owner of 25 trash companies that controlled about 80 percent of the trash, or carting, industry in Connecticut and parts of eastern New York.
But earlier this summer, Galante’s reign ended when he pled guilty in federal court after a long-term multi-agency investigation of wrongdoing in the waste-hauling industry. Thirty-two others—including Galante’s employees, his accountant, a silent partner with ties to New York organized crime, and a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family—were also charged in the case and have all pled guilty.
Galante was operating what’s known as an illegal “property rights system”—when carting companies affiliated with organized crime groups assert they have a monopoly over certain “stops,” or customer accounts (mostly commercial and municipal customers in this case). These companies collude with one another to divvy up the stops, fix prices, and rig contract bids. They also pay a so-called “mob tax” to keep their piece of the action.
The result is a loss of competition and higher prices for customers. And woe to the carting companies that try to compete legally in this type of marketplace. They find their trucks and other equipment vandalized, their employees threatened or assaulted by mob muscle, and their economic livelihood at stake.

Our case began in February 2003, after Galante sent a threatening note to another trash company over a disputed contract. The company contacted our New Haven office, and we decided to introduce an undercover agent into the mix. Our agent started working as the victim company’s “strategic marketing planner,” with oversight over new trash hauling contracts that put him in direct contact with Galante and his people. Later, our undercover agent was actually hired by Galante as a salesman.

During the operation, which also included extensive use of court-authorized wiretaps, we discovered more than 40 refuse companies working within the property rights system. We identified links between Galante’s enterprise and organized crime. We collected mounds of evidence against Galante and other members of his criminal enterprise. And because we intercepted phone calls containing threats against individuals and companies, we were able to warn intended victims.

Public corruption also reared its ugly head. For a property rights system to work, a criminal enterprise needs the help of corrupt local government and/or law enforcement officials. And so it was in this case—also charged were a former mayor, a federal drug agent, and a Connecticut state trooper who unlawfully accessed our National Crime Information Center database to check a license plate for Galante.
Special thanks to our partners who worked with us on this case—the Ansonia, Milford, and New Haven police departments; the Connecticut State Police; the Connecticut Department of Corrections; the Internal Revenue Service; the Department of Labor; the Drug Enforcement Administration; and the Marshals Service.
Part of Galante’s plea agreement involves the full forfeiture of his companies, which were valued at up to $100 million. The federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies who worked with us will be receiving millions of dollars in forfeiture proceeds. And one other note: because of the case, a new state agency in Connecticut now oversees the refuse hauling industry and requires background checks on trash companies

Mobsterr who died in pink

2008-10-29T00:25:00.000-07:00

By Paul Lieberman 10:00 AM PDT, October 27, 2008
The Gangster Squad got to Jack Dragna by bugging his mistress' bed.Dealing with him was the flip side of dealing with Mickey Cohen. Sure, Mickey ranted about the Los Angeles Police Department in public, but if squad members drew stakeout duty outside his Brentwood home on a hot day, his wife, Lavonne, would send out beers or invite them in for slices of chocolate cake.
With Dragna, icy distance was the rule when the squad members camped outside his banana warehouse or the Victory Market, where he held meetings in a concrete-walled back room. The squad's bugging expert, Con Keeler, did once get in between the rounds of a night watchman, but he didn't have time to fully conceal his bug. Dragna's men found it, carried it outside and smashed it on a curb.Dragna was cautious to a fault -- that's how he'd remained unscathed for decades, despite being branded the "Capone of Los Angeles"by Gov. Earl Warren's crime commission. A native of Palermo, Italy, he had arrived in California in 1914 and generally lay so low that one bookie was said to have asked, even in the 1940s, "Who the hell is Jack Dragna?"He was imprisoned once for extortion but won his freedom on appeal. By mid-century, his record was eight arrests, no convictions.
He knew how to go on the offensive, too, like after the 1950 dynamiting of Cohen's house, when the Gangster Squad hauled in Dragna's entire inner circle, and well as his son Frank, who had gone to USC and lost an eye in the war. The son then filed suit against the head of the squad and the "John Doe" officers who rousted him, seeking $350,000 for false arrest and humiliation, the latter for inviting photographers into the lockup.The younger Dragna's suit was pending in 1951 when the squad bugged the bed of his father's mistress. She was a secretary for the dry cleaners union, in which the mob had its hooks. If a dry cleaning shop didn't sign up, Dragna's men would send over suits with dye sewn inside so all the clothes in its vats turned purple or red.The secretary had a wooden headboard with a sunburst pattern. While she was out, Keeler picked the lock to her apartment and hid a mike in the center of the sun. Amid the pillow talk, the bug picked up occasional mentions of mob business, including plans for a new casino in Las Vegas. But that wasn't what the police used against the 60-year-old Dragna. Their ammunition came from other bedroom goings-on. If they couldn't get him for ordering hits on Cohen and his men, why not for "lewd/vag," lewd conduct and vagrancy?Dragna's lawyers could argue that the police didn't have a warrant to eavesdrop, but to no avail -- back then authorities could use illegally obtained evidence. The misdemeanor case earned Dragna a mere 30-day sentence, but how and where he was bugged stood to cost him respect in the mob. More significantly, the morals conviction could get him sent back to Italy.Indeed, Dragna was still fighting a deportation order when he died in 1956. They found his body in a Sunset Boulevard motel, in pink pajamas, with $986 in cash and two sets of false teeth nearby, his Cadillac parked outside. In his luggage was a small statue of Jesus and a newspaper clipping about his son's lawsuit, which had been dismissed.Paul Lieberman is a Times staff writer.

Louie Gelfuso aka " The Couch"

2008-10-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Louie "the Couch" Gelfuso was a Capo in the Milano Crime Family. He was nicknamed " The Couch" by FBI agent's who were listening to the planted bug in his broken-down-dump of an aparment

Gelfuso was always laying down on his couch while he was watching soap opera's like an old scrub woman. He would talk to the soap show characters, and he would even cry at some of the sentimental scenes.

Gelfuso really had the Fed's almost pissing in their pants with laughrer, when he said to a soap character who was claiming she was a virgin to her boyfriend,, " you fucki'n douche bag , your cherry is so far up your ass, you can use it for a tailgate."

FEDS THROW EX FED UNDER THE MOB BUS

2008-10-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Joe Pistone aka Donnie Brasco, was an FBI agent who worked undercover for six years as an associate of the Bonanno Crime Family. He also helped FBI agent.Zip Connoly with -Mob-informants, Whitey Bulger, and Stevie Flemmi.. Pistone had met and talked to Flemmi and Bulger at a social dinner with Connolly at another FBI agents home in a Boston suburb .
After Connolly was convicted of federal racketeering charges in 2002, Pistone wrote a glowing letter to the sentencing judge urging leniency for .John Connolly,saying, ” he should never have been singled out to take the hit for the admitted flawed policies of a government that benefited from his skills, courage and dedication . I thought that was a cool thing to do.
Pistone must have caught some flack from the feds because now Pistone came up with some lame excuse for not testifying for the defense at Zip’s Conspiracy to Murder trial.. Pistone claims he can’t, and won’t testify without wearing a disguise, which the judge won”t allow. This guy has had his puss shown on TV almost as much as Barack Obama. In my opinion, Pistone is keeping his big trap shut to stay golden with Uncle.Sam. I met Pistone doing a show in the late eighties We compared war stories about what it was like wearing a wire According to Pistone. his wire had malfunctioned many times, which made me wonder if he ever really put it on in dangerous situations, or did he just claim to his superiors that it didn’t work when the going got hairy and scary. I busted his balls about it for a few laughs.
I had flipped to informant and wore a wire on many of the Boston mob . . Something Flemmi and Bulger never really had to do, or they were to scared to do. Connolly’s goose is going to be cooked because of the raw deal he is getting from the deaf, dumb. and blind agents who have thown him under the bus. Pistone should believe his own glowing letter, and have the balls to testify for Zip Connolly . Man up Joe !!! .
Anthony “The Animal” Fiato

BARTENDER HAMMERS MOBSTER

2008-10-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

Frank "Puggy" Sica (on the right) was the hoodlum brother of big time Los Angeles racketeer, Joe "JS" Sica . Frank was a pint sized punk,with a big chip on his shoulder... He was nothing like his older brother, JS, who was well connected and respected by Mafia figures all over the country. Puggy Sica and Sal Di Giovanni were burglars in the Sica gang.. They both got their clock cleaned by a bartender who first shot at them, and then beat the fuck out them both for punching and kicking a woman to the floor in a Hollywood gin mill.. The woman was Sal the Creep's girlfriend... Sal got beat so bad he looked like a racoon because he got two black eyes.. .Frank Sica had been arrested plenty of times, but my old lawyer Eddie "the Fixer" Gritz kept him out of the pokey.. .When I was an enforcer for JS, I hated seeing this little drunken fuck.... Anthony Fiato

..Another true Hollywood story

Mob Killer lived the good life in the joint

2008-10-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

Ronnie "The Pig" Casesso.

When I first met Ronnie "The Pig" Casesso he was in Walpole prison courtesy of the snitch Joe Barboza. .Casesso was a made guy in the Patriarca Crime Family who had gotten the death penalty for being one of the shooters in the murder of a minor hood named Teddy Deegan.. "The Pig" caught a big break when his sentence was reduced to life in prison because the death penalty was repealed.

Casesso.had the run of Walpole in those days...Here's how strong Casesso was. My friend Ronnie Rome was related to Casesso through marriage. He was also in the vending business with mob boss, Jerry Angiulo.. Rome gets a call from Casesso. who tells him to bring a pin ball machine to Walpole for the warden as a gift. .I decided to take a ride with Ronnie Rome....When we get there I expect to be frisked by the guards, but its not that way. Then I see Casesso really has the run of the place...He's in for murder, and not only is he not behind bars, he's not even inside the prison.. He's lying on the grass working on his tan outside of the front gate. "The Pig" is acting more like the warden's brother-in-law, than a prisoner.
. . ..

We greet and I see how informed "The Pig" is.. He is really happy to see Ronnie Rome Rome tells him I was with Nicky Giso.( Nicky was a Patriarca made guy),.but Casesso had already heard. He had . .better news sources than the Boston Globe . He offered us a drink....For a guy in prison , he was a gracious host.

We asked him how some of the guys from our neighborhood were doing. Casesso said," you just missed "The Bear", (Jimmy Flemmi, the brother of Stevie Flemmi)' he was just here getting a tan,.''we are going to eat good tonight,'Chinese food, 'in a swell joint down the street." I couldn't believe it. ."The Pig"
was living better than most guys on the outside. He laid woman in a motel down the road, and he even stayed overnight. He dropped in on the warden anytime he wanted anything. He was more free than the guards.

Everybody was afraid of Ronnie "The Pig." They all knew he was Raymond Patriarca's buttonman and he had killed plenty of times.. When we were leaving he told us to watch out for "those people", meaning The Patriarca Crime Family, " they will use you".. I laughed, and told Casseso to get my cell ready. ..Ronnie "The Pig" Casesso died in prison, but he lived like he was as free as a bird.......
..
.Anthony ."The Animal" Fiato.....

BUSTED SUITCASE

2008-09-22T15:16:00.001-07:00

Some guys get their start in the mob busting knee caps, others whacked-out some mug in a carport,— but Tony ”Toothless Tony” Sposado busted his mob cherry lugging coca cola cases –and stocking up vending machines for a Los Angeles Mob associate of Louie Dragna’s named Mike Marquese.. ..Mike’s vending business was also a legitimate front for his bust-out scams and drug deals., The place was a haven for hoods and swindlers .. –who urged Sposado to start pushing drugs and pulling a few minor mob scams. He did, and he was going great guns,and making big money, until he palled up with a punch drunk stew bum named Ronnie Rome Although he didn’t look it, Rome was a street savvy swindler and he convinced Sposado to invest all his money in a vending business and then he robbed him blind . A broke Sposado went back to dealing drugs and got busted , He did a ton of time in the slammer and came out a useless and toothless busted suitcase.

Another True Hollywood Story

Mafia Pimp

2008-09-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

Vincent Jimmy Caci. Vincent "Jimmy" Caci didn't become a "Made Guy" untill he was 60 years old. He was passed over for years because mob bosses knew he had the heart of a mustard seed. When Caci's pal Pete Milano became boss of the LA mob, Caci finally got his stripes. Caci once ran a whore house in Las Vegas . He caught the clap from one of his Ho's, and nearly beat her to death. Jimmy Caci became a joke when he tried to shake down a San Fernando Valley bookie named Kelly. The Bookie laughed at Caci and said to him. "what the fuck are you gonna do to me, put a horses head in my bed". Then Vincent Jimmy Caci left with his tail between his legs . Word got back to his Boss Pete Milano who then stripped him of a Capo rank, and sent him back to Palm Springs as a soldier

MOVIE ACTOR MITCHUM TOUGH GUY

2008-08-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

Robert Mitchum was a legitimate tough guy.. His macho mannerisms were a templet for Hoodlums everywhere ..They copied his swaggering walk, hell, others even smoked their cigarettes like him. .Mtchum’s machismo didn’t only extend to the silver screen, he became double-tough as a result of many bouts of barroom brawling. Mitchum regularly caught the Friday night fight card at the Olympic auditorium with his friend, mobster, Anthony “the Animal “Fiato . Mitchum and Anthony Fiato were both boxing buffs.. They would go toe-to-toe for hours calling each others favorite fighter a bum , or tomato can.. Fiato says Mitchum’s love for boxing can best be described by this Quote from the movie”The Champion”.. ” Hell , I’m a sucker, I just cant help watching a couple of good boys in action”
Tags: goodfellas', Hollywood mob, Mafia

Pizza Face Puggy

2008-08-21T17:44:00.000-07:00

Sleazy Sal and Pal

2008-08-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

Sal "Sleazy Sal" Esposito was a porn-peddling Harlem-to-Hollywood transplant -- with two-bit ties to theTinsel Town Mob. Sal switched gears to drug dealing --- when he palled-up with a low-leval hood named 'Rhode Island Rocky " The pair provided junkies with pure China-white smack. Mafia mobster's bled them broke --- constantly raking them over-the- coals for cash ..

Sal is mentioned in Mafia mobster Anthony Fiato's book ----"The Animal in Hollywood"

Another True Hollywood story