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

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
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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.
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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

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

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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

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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

Gangster John Gotti dipped neighbour in acid bath

It's been one of the last unsolved mysteries from the gangland career of John Gotti.Whatever happened to the neighbor who accidentally ran over and killed the mobster's 12-year-old son Frankie - and then vanished?The answer may be found in Brooklyn court papers filed this week by federal prosecutors.They say John Favara was shot to death on orders of the outraged Gambino crime family boss - and his body was dissolved in a vat of acid.Prosecutors say a cooperating witness has fingered a 62-year-old former mobster as the perpetrator in the 1980 affair.The court papers are related to an upcoming racketeering trial.The story of Favara's untimely demise is revealed in court papers filed in the upcoming racketeering trial of reputed Gambino soldier Charles Carneglia, according to The New York Daily News. Authorities have long believed Carneglia to be responsible for disposing of Favara's body after he was shot in March 1980 on Gotti's orders, the Daily News reported. Favara's body has never been found.Carneglia told a fellow gangster, now a government witness, that he got rid of the body by putting it in a barrel of acid, Assistant Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Roger Burlingame told the newspaperNEW YORK http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-4708066.html

new england mob boss Bruno shooter laying low

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

'Tough guy'

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.

canker sore Colombo Capo

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

Godfathers Moe green was a real Mobster.

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

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.

Pizza Face Puggy

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...