A mob war of words erupted Friday over court documents identifying
infamous Colombo family boss Carmine “The Snake” Persico as a federal
“top echelon informant.”
Lawyers for Persico blasted the charge leveled in a court filing Wednesday seeking compassionate prison release for one-time acting Colombo boss Victor “Little Vic” Orena.
“This story is BULL----!” tweeted defense attorney Matthew Mari.
“Calling Carmine Persico a rat is like calling George Washington a
British spy! Junior was a great client, man, and friend. The government
railroaded him and he fought back like a MAN!”
David Schoen, representing Orena, delivered the bombshell Brooklyn
Federal Court filing — including a 1971 law enforcement document
identifying Persico as a member of the FBI’s “Top Echelon Informant
Program.” The 50-year-old paperwork was revealed through a Freedom of
Information lawsuit filed against the Justice Department.
Schoen said he hesitated to go public with the charge until doing some digging to verify the shocking story.
Carmine Persico, late boss of the Colombo crime family.
“Independently of this document, two lawyers who represented Mr.
Persico in the past have said that they had solid reason to believe that
this information is accurate, as did another cooperating witness who
gave examples that he believed proved the point,” Schoen wrote in a
Friday email to defense lawyer Anthony DiPietro. “I would never have
filed such a document without having taken these steps.”
In another email, Schoen said he heard from a former Colombo associate
declaring “the assertion is 100% right.” The mobster was a cooperating
witness who testified against two of Schoen’s clients.
DiPietro, who fought unsuccessfully
to win Persico parole before the mobster’s March 2019 death, dismissed
the charge as ridiculous after The News published the exclusive scoop.
“Having served as Carmine’s lawyer and being his friend, I am very
upset by this allegation,” said DiPietro. “What I know for fact is that
this allegation is completely false and the 50-year-old document cited
by Orena’s lawyer provides no support for this bogus claim. We fought
the government until his last dying day and there wasn’t even a thought
of cooperation.”
The revelation came as Schoen argued for the ailing, 87-year-old
Orena’s early release from federal custody. Orena is battling senility,
and Schoen argued that Persico’s cooperation was another factor in favor
of turning the elderly mafioso loose.
The Colombo family famously went to war with itself between 1991-93,
with factions loyal to Persico and Orena battling as 10 people were
killed — including an innocent teen slain at a Bay Ridge bagel store
during the bloody battle.
Schoen alleged Orena’s racketeering conviction and life sentence were
the result of FBI misconduct. Orena has long argued that Colombo
turncoat Greg “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa and his FBI handler Lindley
DeVecchio instigated the mob war.
David J. Garrow, the author of a book on the FBI’s campaign to
discredit Martin Luther King Jr., messaged the lawyers that the document
indicated Persico and a handful of other gangsters were the targets of
informants, rather than cooperators.
But Schoen remained adamant that he’d considered all these
possibilities and ran them by the Justice Department’s Office of
Inspector General during an in-person meeting.
Colombo crime family boss Carmine “the Snake” Persico's name in documents naming four turncoat mobsters.
“I met with the DOJ inspector General and two FBI agents. ... All
agreed that the document reflected exactly what it has been represented
to reflect,” he said. “I avoided filing this document for quite some
time because of the seriousness of it and the implications.”
Colombo crime family boss Carmine “The Snake” Persico was a “Top
Echelon Informant” for the feds, shocking new court papers reveal,
adding a posthumous twist to the tale of an infamous gangster known for
his ruthlessness and street smarts.
The revelation, which likely has implications for numerous Brooklyn mob
cases, is contained in a government document from November 1971 listing
members of a “Top Echelon Informant Program.” Persico’s name appears
among those of four turncoat members of the Colombo family.
“I think it changes the entire dynamic of how this so-called Colombo
war has been sold,” said attorney David Schoen, who submitted the
document Wednesday in a Brooklyn Federal Court filing.
“I never wanted to disclose this document. I think it potentially puts people in danger.”
Ten people died in the city’s last major gang war, including an
innocent teen killed at a Bay Ridge bagel store, as the Colombo factions
battled between 1991-93.
The list emerged through a Freedom of Information lawsuit that pried
confidential documents from the Justice Department. Schoen represents
onetime acting Colombo boss Victor “Little Vic” Orena, who is 87 years
old, senile and seeking compassionate release from prison. Schoen cited
the stunning revelation as another reason to release the octogenarian
gangster serving a life sentence, alleging his racketeering conviction
was the result of FBI misconduct.
“There is no truth to this allegation and the supporting record is
substantively worthless. Having served as Carmine’s lawyer, I can attest
that he was not an informant nor did he provide information to the
Government. Until this day, Carmine remains a giant among men, and I was
honored to represent him in the many contentious legal battles he
fought against the Government,” attorney Anthony DiPietro said.
In the popular narrative, Orena challenged Persico’s position atop the
Colombo family around the early 1990s and sparked one of the bloodiest
wars in mob history.
Colombo crime family boss Carmine “the Snake” Persico was a “Top
Echelon Informant” for the feds, shocking new court papers reveal,
adding a posthumous twist to the legendary gangster known for his
ruthlessness and smarts.
But Orena has long argued that Colombo turncoat Gregory Scarpa Jr. and
his FBI handler, Lindley DeVecchio, set him up, fomenting the war with
Persico.
“The ‘official boss’ of the Colombo family, on whose side Scarpa and
DeVecchio were working, Carmine Persico, was himself, since decades
earlier, in the government’s employ as a member of its ‘Top Echelon
Informant Program,’” wrote Schoen.
“This explains a great many events, both directly related to Mr. Orena’s case and otherwise.”
Victor Orena in handcuffs leaves 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan in 2006.
DeVecchio’s messy relationship with mob snitches has been cited by gangsters in court since the 1990s.
Schoen said that Persico’s cooperation made the Colombo “war” more of a one-sided “attack.”
“It seems like perhaps it was being orchestrated from the top,” Schoen said.
DeVecchio was even indicted by the Brooklyn District Attorney for
helping Scarpa kill four people in the 1980s and 1990s, but the case
fell apart and was dismissed.
The feds have acknowledged that Scarpa “lied” and “misrepresented” his
involvement in murders during the Colombo civil war while also feeding
them information.
Schoen said the Persico paperwork was such a game changer that he made
an appointment with Justice Department Inspector General Michael
Horowitz and other federal agents to confirm the documents were legit.
“They did not indicate they had any reason to believe it was anything
other than what it purported to be or that any information reflected on
it is inaccurate,” Schoen wrote.
Carmine Persico, boss of the Colombo Crime Family, poses for a portrait
Sept. 15, 1986 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York
City.
Schoen acknowledged that the “top echelon informant” document left many
questions unanswered. Persico does not seem to have benefited from his
cooperation ― he died in prison in 2019 at age 85 while serving a 139-year sentence.
Schoen noted that Persico’s son, however, had secured a plea deal
recommending a sentence of around three years in 2017 despite a judge
concluding that he participated in a murder.
The elder Persico took over the Colombo family after the 1971 shooting
of boss Joe Colombo. He maintained control over the family despite
frequent stints in prison, making millions through labor racketeering,
gambling, loan sharking and drug trafficking around New York.
He was famously charged along with the heads of the other four crime
families in the “Commission” prosecution led by then-Manhattan U.S.
Attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Persico’s response was to propose putting out a contract on Giuliani’s life, though the other families disagreed.
Persico received a 39-year term in the first case. In the second, where
he acted as his own attorney, Persico was hit with a 100-year term —
ensuring his death behind bars.
Manhattan Federal Judge John Keenan described Persico as “one of the
most intelligent people I have ever seen in my life” for his performance
as a lawyer.
Persico’s attorney DiPietro said the Commission case was based on “false information” provided by Scarpa.
“This is ridiculous on its face. If this were the truth, Carmine
Persico would have won compassionate release and not have died in prison
like a dog,” DiPietro said.
Ailing Brooklyn mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. caught a break Wednesday
when a judge ended his 32-year prison stretch on racketeering murder
charges by ordering his compassionate release.
Scarpa, 69, a former Colombo crime family mobster turned prison snitch —
he helped the government probes of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — is currently at a federal Bureau
of Prisons halfway house in Kansas City, Kan., records show.
“I do not minimize the evil acts Mr. Scarpa committed over the course
of his criminal career,” wrote Brooklyn Federal Judge Edward Korman in
ordering Scarpa’s release.
“The reality, however, is that Mr. Scarpa is a seriously ill man who is
unable to care for himself and has little prospect of recidivating.”
Among Scarpa’s many illnesses behind bars has been a late-stage cancer,
for which he’s received radiation and chemotherapy and surgeries,
including the removal of a tumor that left a hole in his throat.
Doctors removed Scarpa’s salivary glands during the surgeries — and now
he “regularly chokes” on his food, to the point where he has had to
learn to be able to do the Heimlich maneuver on himself, the judge
wrote.
In healthier times, Scarpa Jr. — whose father was also a famous murderous Colombo family mobster— was a high ranking member of the crime family, often requesting permission from leaders to kill perceived enemies.
He was convicted in 1998 of a large-scale racketeering case that the
feds say involved four murders he committed. He was already incarcerated
in another case before that.
In 1981, Scarpa Jr. shot Robert DiLeonardi in the head in a secluded
spot on Staten Island because DiLeonardi was bragging to people about
bank heists their crew had pulled off, prosecutors said.
That same year, Scarpa Jr. had his dad and Joseph DeDomenico murder
limousine driver Alfred Longobardi, with whom Scarpa Jr. had a feude,
said the feds.
Six years later, Scarpa Jr. murdered DeDomenico because he believed
DeDomenico was “committing lucrative crimes without sharing the proceeds
with other crew members,” according to federal prosecutors.
In 1983, Scarpa Jr. hatched a plan to murder Sal Cardaci, who Colombo
family members believed was a rat. After members of their crew killed
Cardaci, Scarpa Jr. ordered him buried in the basement of a Bensonhurst
store, according to the feds.
In 1985, Scarpa Jr. was tasked with offing Anthony Frezza after Frezza
murdered a member of the Gambino crime family. Scarpa Jr. shot Frezza in
the head at the Scarpa home, the feds said.
Behind bars, Scarpa Jr. turned into quite a rat.
He worked as an informant behind bars for the FBI to get information
from Al Qaeda terrorist and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi
Youssef.
While housed in 2005 at Colorado’s “Supermax” federal prison, Scarpa
learned from fellow inmate and Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols
(pictured) the location of some explosives hidden in Nichols’ home.
While housed in 2005 at Colorado’s “Supermax” federal prison, Scarpa
learned from fellow inmate and Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols the
location of some explosives hidden in Nichols’ home.
Scarpa Jr. told a private investigator that the explosives were buried
in the basement of Nichols' home in Kansas, and the private eye passed
it on to two congressmen who alerted the FBI. The explosives were
recovered.
The judge in Scarpa Jr.'s case took ten years off his sentence for the tip, but an appeals court later reversed that decision.
Korman cited Scarpa Jr.'s aid in those cases — as well as his model
prisoner behavior — in granting the compassionate release. Korman also
noted that Scarpa Jr. has exhibited signs of early onset Alzheimer’s or
dementia.
Court papers say Scarpa plans to live with a sister in Florida.
By Seth Ferranti
“Dude, Frankie Sparaco is in the hole,” Mean Gene, a fellow prisoner at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania, told me on the move.
Why on earth would this popular mobster
get thrown into single-cell segregation? I wondered. “That white boy
from New York, Roger, punched him in the face and called him a rat,”
Mean Gene explained. But I wasn’t buying it. I’d done time with Sparaco
at several joints, and he was known as a solid convict. He also was
nearing the end of his two decades in federal prison, getting ready to
return home. A vicious dude and then some, but Sparaco was different
from most mobsters I knew in jail.
“[He] was a very dangerous man back in his days on the street with the Colombos,” says Scott Burnstein, author of Mafia Prince: Inside America’s Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra.
Sparaco was acting boss Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico’s best friend and
did a lot of his bidding. This included killing a guy who had been
sleeping with Allie Boy’s wife, Burnstein says. “Guys were very afraid
of him. When people saw him coming, they knew he was for real, who he
spoke for and how much terror he could bring.”
Not
only did he officially join Team USA against his former cohorts, but it
also came out that he had been cooperating since the Colombo war.
Known
as “Frankie Blue Eyes,” Sparaco was a top capo for imprisoned Colombo
Don Carmine “the Snake” Persico. During the Colombo war that left a
trail of dead mobsters on Brooklyn’s streets in the early 1990s, Sparaco
was a shooter for the Persico faction, a group loyal to Carmine who was
fighting off Victor “Little Vic” Orena’s leadership challenge. Sparaco
was so close to the Persicos that Orena made plans to eliminate him
first, according to Mafioso blogger Kenny Gallo. But he couldn’t get close to the elusive, savvy gangster who started killing those on Orena’s side.
Carmine Persico, also known as the Snake.
The Persico faction, says Larry McShane, author of Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mafia Boss Vincent Gigante,
was led by Greg “the Grim Reaper” Scarpa — “one of the FBI’s most
valuable rats.” They had been fighting for control of the family, and
“the Orena team, to this day, insists that the FBI backed the Persico
faction in an effort to keep Scarpa in place and install him as boss,”
says McShane. This basically gave “the feds a seat on the commission,”
he adds, referring to the ruling commission in New York composed of five
Mafia families.
Arrested
in 1993, Sparaco pleaded guilty to five murders and was sentenced to 24
years in federal prison. But being in the big house didn’t stop him
from making moves. Through an associate, Sparaco hooked up with John
LeBoutillier, a Harvard grad, former Republican congressman and an heir
to the Vanderbilt and Whitney fortunes. Sparaco proceeded to scam
LeBoutillier for more than $800,000 from prison using an elaborate
scheme that played on LeBoutillier’s belief that American prisoners of
war from the Vietnam War were still being held captive in Russia and
Southeast Asia.
McShane refers to the scam as “kind of genius.”
Sparaco, he says, claimed he had contacts with jailed Russian gangsters
who confided that there were as many as 75 American POWs from the
Vietnam War era still imprisoned in Belarus. “It was all bogus, but
LeBoutillier bit hard,” McShane adds. The former congressman visited
Sparaco in prison, sending him money to supposedly pay the foreign
gangsters for their info while advocating on Sparaco’s behalf to prison
officials. “If I was scammed, I feel betrayed,” LeBoutillier would tell
the Daily News.
But
Sparaco saved his grandest feat for last. Threatened with new murder
charges right before he was set to be released, Blue Eyes turned on his
boss, Allie Boy, and spilled the beans. Not only did he officially join
Team USA against his former cohorts, but it also came out that he had
been cooperating since the Colombo war. He was a New York Whitey Bulger —
in deep with the feds and getting paid since the 1980s, according to
the New York Post.
Although
it was Scarpa who earned a hefty share of media attention for carrying
out murders while working simultaneously as a paid FBI informant, his
playing both sides wasn’t unique. “He wasn’t the first, nor the last,
gangster to do so,” says Christian Cipollini, author of Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend.
And revelations soon surfaced, making it clear that Sparaco, while
cooperating with police in 2009, committed murder, and “two of the
victims weren’t even Mafia or underworld figures at all,” Cipollini
adds.
To spare himself more time, Sparaco gave info that led to
Allie Boy’s conviction for the 1999 murder of “Wild Bill” Cutolo. But
the feds acknowledged that they had been duped by Sparaco in the past,
noting that Sparaco and Scarpa had lied and misrepresented their
criminal culpability in the Colombo war, pointing fingers at others
while pocketing government checks as they whacked rivals.
“Of course, the bureau denies agents had any knowledge of this,” Cipollini says. “But the feds knew all about it.”
*Squirreled away in the witness protection program, Sparaco wasn’t available for comment.
Animal rescuer James Guiliani’s bite is worse than his bark — at least it used to be.
The one-time Gambino family enforcer swore off the mob life long ago to
instead save the lives of Brooklyn’s animal population in his secret
shelter deep in the heart of Bensonhurst.
“Back in the day I would’ve killed someone,” Guiliani tells a visitor
inside the perpetually hectic world of Keno’s Animal Sanctuary. “Now I
enjoy life. I enjoy being alive.”
And yet Guiliani, aka “Dogfella,” hasn’t gone entirely straight. By
taking in wildlife at his operation, he’s violating city regulations.
The current population is 52 critters, and not just cats and dogs.
Lizards, tortoises, birds, squirrels, possums and raccoons fill out the
roster. (The last three are on the city list of animals that are illegal
to keep as pets.)
He’s also rescued a smattering of pigs. Some escaped from local butchers with their necks half cut.
James Guiliani interacts with dogs at Keno's Animal Sanctuary in Bensonhurst on Friday.
Guiliani, 50, sees his job as a calling that he cannot ignore, like the oath taken by a Mafia made man.
“When I got into this, I didn’t want to do it at all,” he admits. “Who
the f--k wants to do this? Would I rather be at the beach in Puerto
Rico? Of course. But I gotta do this.”
Guiliani is proud of the scars on his face and his hands, each one
evidence of his rescue efforts since 2013. He boasts that his last day
off came 1,160 days ago, making him the Cal Ripken Jr. of animal rescue.
He sleeps three hours a night. He walks his dogs in the middle of the
night. He works 18 hours a day. He always leaves his car trunk open.
James Guiliani holds a pair of raccoons.
He might be crazy.
“I have an addictive personality,” Guiliani says.
Dogs arrive in NY after they were saved from slaughter in Korea
“But now I have an addictive personality toward my passion. You gotta
find something in your life. You gotta love it. If I don’t do this,
nobody will.”
Bensonhurst served as a breeding ground for generations of gangsters,
from boss Carlo Gambino to infamous informant Salvatore "Sammy Bull"Gravano to remorseless mob killer Greg "The Grim Reaper" Scarpa.
Guiliani now walks the same streets looking to help, not harm — a far
cry from the days when he was busted for conspiracy to commit hijacking,
kidnapping and armed robbery.
Turtles
are among animals under the care of James Guiliani, a former mob
enforcer. He now runs an animal shelter in Brooklyn. “Back in the day I
would’ve killed someone,” Guiliani said.
There’s an unavoidable parallel between Guiliani and his animal
clientele. Like his pit bulls, he is stocky, strong and dangerous.
Guiliani recalls the days when he would rob, steal, fight, snort cocaine, drink and go out on 96-hour benders.
“Maybe I see my animals like me, grew up and never had a chance,”
reflects Guiliani, who says he downed his last drink 14 years ago.
“Maybe that’s why I do it.”
His current drinks of choice: espressos (15 cups a day) and water (20 bottles a day). The caffeine helps keep him going.
“I rescue, no joke, 60 to 100 raccoons a year,” he declares. “About 30 to 60 possums.”
The rescued wildlife find refuge in the sanctuary basement, one floor down from the dogs wandering free upstairs.
The possums and squirrels are kept in cages. The raccoons are kept in
cages with the locks taped over, because they can use their tiny hands
to unhinge the locks.
One of Guiliani’s raccoons, Gino, is now a fully grown adult and ready
to taste freedom in the wilds of upstate New York or New Jersey.
Guiliani co-owns Diamond Collar, a grooming salon and pet store in
Brooklyn that was featured in a reality show of the same name on Oprah
Winfrey’s TV network OWN beginning in 2013.
One of Guiliani's furry pals interacts with the former mob enforcer on Friday.
Unimpressed city officials said they planned to investigate the animal sanctuary.
“The Health Department regulates shelters to ensure animal safety,”
said a spokesman for the department. “We will look into this.”
Dr. Salvatore Pernice, 54, serves as the veterinarian for Keno’s
animals. He is Guiliani’s polar opposite: calm, short, slow and
deliberate with his choice of words.
James Guiliani talks passionately about his shelter Keno's Animal Sanctuary in Bensonhurst on Friday.
“James is an extremist, but sincere,” explains Pernice. “He’s honest,
dedicated, loud, opinionated. His is a story of redemption — what he did
then and what he does now.”
A plain white mug with black lettering sits in the sanctuary bathroom,
offering a question: “Who Rescued Who?” Nobody knows the answer better
than Guiliani.
“I want to make a difference,” he explains. “I want to leave a legacy.”
A federal appeals court has reinstated the full 40-year sentence of a convicted mobster who passed along a tip leading to the recovery of explosives stashed away in the one-time home of convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols.
In 2016, Colombo solider Gregory Scarpa Jr. saw his sentence shaved down to a 30-year term by Brooklyn Federal Judge Edward Korman, who said Scarpa deserved credit for the valuable information.
On Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Korman and kept the 65-year-old wiseguy's full sentence intact. The appeals court said it agreed with Brooklyn federal prosecutors who said they had justifiable reasons why they didn't want to seek a sentence reduction for Scarpa — including his failing a lie detector test in connection to the Nichols information. Fire personnel gather at the base of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City Thursday, April 20, 1995. Scarpa passed along a tip about explosives in the former home of one of the conspirators in the bombing.
Scarpa was convicted in 1999 for racketeering and other offenses. Scarpa said he got the information about the explosives from Nichols, serving a life sentence, when they were housed near each other in 2005 in the Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.
Scarpa's lawyer, Georgia Hinde, declined to comment Thursday on the ruling.
The Democratic congressman seeking to unseat Senator Marco Rubio has
accepted maximum campaign contributions from a pair of Florida
businessmen identified by the FBI as members of the Colombo organized
crime family, records show.
According to Federal Election
Commission filings, Representative Patrick Murphy’s political committee
has received $5400 apiece from John Staluppi and John Rosatti during the
2016 election cycle.
FEC rules cap individual donations at $5400--$2700 for a primary campaign and another $2700 for the general election effort.
The
Friends of Patrick Murphy committee received Staluppi’s two
contributions on March 31. Rosatti initially gave Murphy $1000 last
September, and then maxed out with a pair of March 8 contributions
totaling $4400. During the 2014 election cycle, Staluppi and his wife
gave the 33-year-old pol a combined $5000.
In Tuesday’s
Democratic primary, Murphy received 59 percent of the vote, setting up a
general election race against Rubio, the incumbent Republican. The
two-term congressman represents a southeastern Florida district that
includes St. Lucie and Martin counties.
As previously reported in
these pages, Rosatti, 72, and Staluppi, 69, are each extremely wealthy
due to their ownership of numerous car dealerships in Florida and New
York. Both men are Brooklyn natives, convicted felons, superyacht
owners, and, according to FBI records, prized Mafia “earners.”
Rosatti
and Staluppi, both registered Republicans, are residents of Palm Beach
Gardens, which is in the southern tip of Murphy’s congressional
district. In 2004, Rosatti and Staluppi each donated $2000 to the
Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, according to FEC filings.
Rosatti’s
and Staluppi’s involvement with the Colombo gang is detailed in FBI
debriefing reports with an assortment of mob turncoats, including former
ranking members of the crime group.
During the deadly early-90s
fight for control of the Colombo family, Rosatti and Staluppi initially
sided (and financed) insurgent forces seeking to oust imprisoned boss
Carmine “The Snake” Persico. But the pair subsequently switched
allegiances mid-war after paying a visit to jailed Colombo captain
Dominick “Donny Shacks” Montemarano, a staunch Persico supporter. The
duo’s charge of heart is detailed in an FBI report of a debriefing of
Salvatore Miciotta, a crime family captain.
The Rosatti-Staluppi
flip was later the subject of a bugged conversation between Persico
allies. “We got those two guys with us, Staluppi and Rosatti. They’re
with us now, right?” one hoodlum asked. “Yeah,” a second wiseguy
replied.
Carmine Sessa, a former Colombo captain, identified
Rosatti and Staluppi as members of a crew headed by Theodore Persico,
Carmine’s son, according to an FBI report. During an NYPD surveillance
outside a Brooklyn catering hall, detectives spotted Rosatti and
Staluppi attending the wedding reception of another Persico son (along
with numerous other Colombo family figures).
In 1988, Gregory
Scarpa, a Colombo captain who doubled as a top echelon FBI informant,
told his handlers that Staluppi was a member of the crime family and a
“man to be taken seriously.” Referring to Staluppi’s interest in several
large auto dealerships, Scarpa said that he “was brought into the
family because of his legitimate enterprises.”
In the midst of
the Colombo war, Scarpa told the FBI that Staluppi (seen at right) and
Rosatti “have made it known that they are looking to come over to the
Persico side.” The move, Scarpa said, was prompted by the arrest of
Victor Orena, who was leading the bloody campaign to depose Persico as
boss of the Colombo gang.
At the time of Scarpa’s 1988 reports,
Staluppi was working with Donald Trump on the production of a series of
Cadillac stretch limousines. The Trump Golden Series and Trump Executive
Series vehicles were the first time the developer had licensed his name
for a product.
There were tears, kisses — and “family” galore — at Monday’s emotional send-off for Angela “Big Ang” Raiola, star of the reality-TV show “Mob Wives.”
Raiola — the brash-talking, big-bosomed, big-lipped doyenne of the
VH1 show — was laid to rest after a morning Mass inside the Basilica of
Regina Pacis Church on 65th Street in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.
Among the mourners were her castmates, including: Karen Gravano, the
daughter of mob turncoat Sammy “Bull” Gravano; Drita D’Avanzo, wife of
mobster Lee D’Avanzo, and Carla Facciolo, the daughter of Gambino crime
family associate Louis Facciolo.
Carla Facciolo’s uncle, Bruno, worked under Lucchese capo Paul Vario,
who was played in the movie “Goodfellas” by Paul Sorvino. His
character’s name was changed to Paul Cicero.
Raiola, who died Thursday at age 55 from complications of cancer,
went out in a style befitting her larger-than-life character. She was
remembered in a flower-crammed church, with white pigeons released after
the ceremony.
After a Mass led by Monsignor David L. Cassato, mourners congregated
in the street as a large crowd — including many of them fans of the show
— also gathered to gape.
Big Ang’s ties to the mob came through her uncle, Salvatore Lombardi,
who was known as Sally Dogs, a low-key capo of the Genovese crime
family.
Her big personality made her the most popular character on the show, which is now in its sixth and final season.
Those also on hand to say goodbye to her included: her estranged
husband, Neil Murphy, a city sanitation worker; brothers, Louis and
Stephen; her sister Janine Detore, and her kids, Anthony and Raquel.
The venue for her funeral was appropriate.
Precious jewels were twice stolen from the church — only to be returned after the purported intercession of Mafia kingpins.
In May 1952, the jewels, which were used to adorn a painting of the
Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, were stolen several months after they’d been
flown to Rome to be blessed by Pope Pius XII.
Eight days after they were discovered missing, they were mysteriously
mailed back to the rectory, supposedly after the personal intercession
of Joseph Profaci, the head of a local mob family who had personal ties
to the church.
In January 1973, the same jewels, valued at more than $100,000, were
again stolen and then returned after the FBI made contact with
organized-crime figures, a federal official said at the time.
The mobster who helped return them was later identified as Gregory Scarpa Jr., a powerful Colombo family capo.
New York private eye turned Hollywood actor Bo Dietl is booking more roles after his appearance in Martin Scorsese’s HBO series “Vinyl.”
Spies said Dietl could pop up next in a biopic of Gregory Scarpa, the Colombo crime family enforcer, starring Sylvester Stallone and written by “Goodfellas” scribe Nicholas Pileggi.
In a stunning burst of candor, a Brooklyn federal judge said he has long believed that a former FBI agent who beat a murder rap was a rogue G-man, the Daily News has learned.
Judge Edward Korman’s damning words were buried in a transcript of a 2012 court case for mob informant Gregory Scarpa Jr.
Scarpa was seeking a reduction of his racketeering sentence as a reward for helping the feds find explosives hidden in the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
Korman suggested that the government opposed the motion because the FBI might still have a grudge against Scarpa for his willingness to testify against former agent Lindley DeVeccchio. DeVecchio was accused of helping Scarpa’s father, also named Greg, who was a capo and also a mob rat, kill rivals during the Colombo family civil war.
“It was my view and remains my view that Lin DeVecchio provided information to Scarpa that got people killed,” Korman said, according to the transcript.
“I found it pretty outrageous and the bottom line was, of course, nothing happened to Lin DeVecchio. He was permitted to retire and in his retirement was actually doing background checks for the (FBI),” the judge said.
The Brooklyn district attorney’s case against DeVecchio fell apart mid-trial when a key prosecution witness was caught in a lie.
Korman had presided over the mob trial of Colombo gangster Vittorio "Vic" Orena in the 1990s when allegations of improper conduct by DeVecchio were first raised.
The judge declined to comment Wednesday.
DeVecchio provided information "that got people killed," according to Korman. The former FBI agent was accused of helping the father of Greg Scarpa Jr., who was seeking a reducing of his racketeering sentence.
“Obviously, I disagree with the judge’s opinion,” DeVecchio’s lawyer Doug Grover told The News.
Korman reduced Scarpa Jr.’s sentence by 10 years this week, blasting the FBI and federal prosecutors for refusing to acknowledge the mob scion had actually done a good deed.
“I commend Judge Korman for not being intimidated by the blue wall of silence and speaking his mind,” said Sandra Harmon, author of the book “Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI, and a Story of Betrayal.”
DeVecchio was charged with helping Scarpa Sr., who was his prize informant, carry out four mob hits from 1984 to 1992, at the height of the Colombo war.
During their hour-and-a-half outdoor sessions at the super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colo., Gregory Scarpa Jr. struck up a friendship with an important prisoner: Terry L. Nichols, the co-conspirator of the Oklahoma City bombing.
At the time, in 2005, Mr. Scarpa was eager to reduce his sentence of 482 months (40 years). The Colombo captain, a gangster whose father was a violent enforcer for the crime family, had been convicted in Federal District Court in Brooklyn of a racketeering case that included charges of conspiracy to commit murder, tax evasion and illegal gambling. Mr. Scarpa’s prison yard conversations with Mr. Nichols led to a cache of hidden explosives, an embarrassment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and a chain of litigation that resulted in a decision on Monday by a federal judge in Brooklyn. The judge, Edward R. Korman of United States District Court, shaved 10 years off Mr. Scarpa’s sentence in a decision that castigated both the F.B.I. and the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn for its “implausible, contradictory, and factually unsupported reasons” for opposing a lighter sentence for Mr. Scarpa.
Mr. Scarpa did not have a great track record as an informer. Years earlier, he had provided information on a jailmate Ramzi Yousef, the chief organizer of the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, but the government said nothing came of the disclosures. At Mr. Scarpa’s sentencing in 1999 in the racketeering case, a prosecutor said the tip about Mr. Yousef was “a scam” that resulted in “wild goose chases.” A judge sentenced Mr. Scarpa to 40 years, on top of the 20 he was serving for another racketeering case.
In 2005, Mr. Scarpa said, he told prison officials he knew that Mr. Nichols had stashed explosives in his old house. Nothing happened. Mr. Scarpa told agents from the F.B.I. Nothing happened.
It was only after private investigators contacted by Mr. Scarpa sent multiple letters to congressional representatives and to the National Security Council alerting them to the information that the F.B.I. acted on the tip, according to court documents. Agents had already searched Mr. Nichols’s house multiple times. This time, they found the explosives in a crawl space, right where Mr. Scarpa’s tip indicated they would be. News coverage called it a “new embarrassment to an F.B.I. already burned by missteps in this case,” and a congressional inquiry ensued.
Mr. Scarpa got the information through a “sting,” as he put it, according to notes from, and interviews of, Mr. Scarpa summarized by one of the private investigators. Mr. Scarpa said he would pay Mr. Nichols for revealing the location of the explosives, and pass that on to a private investigator, who would examine the material for fingerprints and DNA. Mr. Nichols thought the evidence would link a man who testified against him, Roger Moore, to the bombing.
“I have kept my word — TLN” reads one letter Mr. Scarpa said Mr. Nichols wrote to him. The letter, dated March 2005, describes a crawl space in the basement of Mr. Nichols’s house, with two piles of rocks. “Under the south pile is my ammo can. Under the north are the 2 cardboard boxes wrapped in plastic. Simply remove the rocks,” it says.
There were several other letters that Mr. Scarpa said were from Mr. Nichols, discussing, among other things, the pronunciation of Mr. Nichols’s first and second wives’ names; how to use acupressure to handle pain; the mislabeling of “non-dairy creamer” in the prison; his view that “God is a vengeful God”; and a complaint of “a big gap of communications between you and I.”
In March 2005, Mr. Scarpa met with one F.B.I. agent, then two. An agent said that he “can easily see that all these notes are from one person (me),” according to the investigator’s summary of Mr. Scarpa’s comments. “He said it’s some kind of scam.”
Mr. Scarpa turned to private investigators. Throughout March 2005, those investigators contacted congressional representatives and staff members with the information. By the end of March, one congressman pressured the F.B.I. to investigate Mr. Scarpa’s tip, according to Judge Korman’s decision.
On April 2, F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Nichols’s house. The Associated Press reported that they had searched the home several times before and had missed the explosives.
Mr. Scarpa’s campaign for a lower sentence began then, and continued until Monday.
Usually, prosecutors recommend reducing the sentence of a defendant who has helped the government. However, Judge Korman wrote that is subject to judicial review, which he did with some vigor in his opinion.
Prosecutors had opposed a reduction of Mr. Scarpa’s sentence, arguing that he had obstructed justice in the past by lying on the stand at his trial, “through his alleged ‘sham’ cooperation in the Yousef case,” and by embellishing the information about Mr. Nichols, Judge Korman wrote. These claims, he wrote, were “vague and not supported by the facts.”
The judge asked an F.B.I. agent who interviewed Mr. Scarpa in March 2005 to provide an affidavit about what happened. Some of what the agent, who was not named, wrote is “flatly incorrect,” the judge found. For instance, the agent said Mr. Scarpa’s tip had not provided the basis for an F.B.I. warrant, yet the search had been a consent search and there had been no warrant.
Judge Korman also criticized an assistant United States attorney working on the case, Patricia E. Notopoulos. This is, he wrote, “an apparent case of the AUSA relying on faulty and inaccurate information provided by the F.B.I. to deny Scarpa sentencing relief based on his substantial assistance.”
“It is difficult to ignore the fact that the information Scarpa provided embarrassed the F.B.I.,” he wrote.
Nellin McIntosh, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office, declined to comment.
Judge Korman’s reduction of Mr. Scarpa’s sentence would push his release date to 2025, when he would be 74.
It was a hollow victory for Mr. Scarpa, who has cancer and other ailments. “It is more likely than not,” Judge Korman wrote, that the conditions “will take his life within five years.”
Gregory Scarpa Jr. has been fighting a legal battle for nearly two decades to overturn his racketeering conviction.
Over the objections of prosecutors, a Brooklyn judge is poised to reduce the 40-year sentence of a convicted mobster as a reward for his tip that led to the recovery of explosives hidden in the home of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, the Daily News has learned.
Colombo soldier Gregory Scarpa Jr., the son of a murderous capo nicknamed the “Grim Reaper,” has been fighting a legal battle for nearly two decades to overturn his racketeering conviction.
Those efforts failed, even after the mob scion served as an informant behind bars for the FBI to get information from Al Qaeda terrorist and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Youssef.
But Federal Judge Edward Korman has suggested that Scarpa, 64 — scheduled to be released from custody in 2035 — may be entitled to credit for his undercover work involving Nichols.
Korman, last month, tipped his hand when he took the extraordinary step of asking the prosecutor assigned to the case to recommend how much Scarpa’s sentence could be reduced without waiving the government’s longstanding objection. Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Notopoulos declined to come up with a number.
Terry Nichols was found guilty of all 161 counts of first degree murder in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Rescue workers stand in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building following an explosion Wednesday, April 19, 1995, in downtown Oklahoma City.
“I frankly believe that Greg Scarpa has done nothing but attempt to, pardon the phrase, bastardize the system,” Notopoulos told the judge, according to a transcript.
Scarpa and Nichols were inmates at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., in 2005 when the ex-mobster told the FBI that there was a secret cache of explosives still available to Nichols’ associates.
Front page of Thursday, April 20, 1995 Daily News, with headline about the Oklahoma City bombing reading "They Blew Up The Babies."
Nichols is serving life in prison without parole for planning the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building with Timothy McVeigh that killed 168 people.
Agents were skeptical of Scarpa’s intel on Nichols because Scarpa did not tell them where the explosives were located. Instead, he showed them a note written by Nichols in code and claimed he would try to decipher the code if the government agreed to reduce his sentence.
Meanwhile, Scarpa failed a lie detector test administered by the FBI — so there was no deal.
But with the 10th anniversary of the bombing looming, Scarpa told a private investigator that the explosives were buried in the basement of Nichols’ home in Kansas, and the private eye passed it on to two congressmen who alerted the FBI.
Korman acknowledged that he had been unaware that Scarpa provided the FBI with only partial information. The judge said at a court hearing that he was under the impression that the FBI held a grudge against Scarpa for embarrassing the bureau, which had failed to find the explosives after Nicholas was arrested.
Terry Nichols conspired with Timothy McVeigh (above) in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
But Korman noted that informants only get a benefit when they provide truthful information — and Scarpa’s tip was on the money.
It remains to be seen whether Scarpa will get a few years shaved off the sentence or maybe walk out the door of a Kansas City, Mo., halfway house with time served — to the chagrin of the feds.
On the morning of Nov. 18, 1991, Linda Scarpa learned, brutally, what it meant to be the daughter of a Mafia assassin.
Gregory Scarpa, known as “Grim Reaper,” was the most feared gangland enforcer in New York and executioner for one side of an internal war in the Colombo crime family.
But the enemy knew where his family lived in Bensonhurst and was waiting for Scarpa that morning as he pulled away from the house. Linda followed her father’s car out of the driveway and noticed a van speeding down the block.
“The Mafia Hit Man’s Daughter” by Linda Scarpa with Linda Rosencrance
“When I backed out, I cut the van off,” she writes in her new memoir, “The Mafia Hit Man’s Daughter.” “It almost slammed into me…I yelled a few choice words and started driving again.”
At the end of the street, a truck had blocked the intersection. She pulled up behind her father, and the van stopped behind them. Not realizing the danger, she looked down to check on her 8-month-old son. “All of a sudden I heard popping noises that sounded just like fireworks.”
“I looked up and there were these guys dressed from head to toe in black. Their faces were covered in black ski masks, and they were carrying these long black guns with silencers. They surrounded our cars and started shooting at my father’s car. As soon as the first shots rang out, I saw my father go down.”
She wanted to place her child on the floor but was too afraid to move. “I was only 22 years old. The fear was paralyzing. It was like I was outside my body watching everything that was going on around me. I noticed this one guy with a walkie-talkie standing on the sidewalk, watching these guys shooting at my father’s car as if he was directing a movie.”
A friend of her father’s, Joseph “Joe Fish” Marra, jumped out of his car and returned fire. “One of the guys started shooting back at Joe, and I saw the wind from the bullet whiz right through his hair. He just missed getting his head blown up. I read his lips. He said, ‘Holy s–t.’ He jumped back in the car.
“The guy he was shooting at panicked. His automatic gun was spraying bullets everywhere. He even shot into my car. By now my father’s entire car looked like Swiss cheese.” Modal Trigger
Linda Scarpa
Scarpa’s car took off, wedging through the space between the stop sign and the truck.
“I was left there on the road — the baby and I — with the van, the truck and all these guys dressed in black. My heart was in my mouth. I knew I was going to die right then.
“Then the guy whose gun was spraying bullets — I’ll never forget him because he had the bluest eyes — came running over to my car. . . . He looked in the car, then turned and ran away.”
Linda raced back to the house and, assuming the worst, told her mother, “Big Linda” Schiro, that Greg Scarpa was dead.
Then Scarpa himself walked through the door.
“He was pale as a ghost. He saw me and the baby and he just started to cry. He grabbed my son and hugged him. Then he looked at me. ‘You saved my life. You realize that, right?’ ”
“Don’t worry,” he added. “Everything’s OK. I’m going to take care of this.” He turned to Linda’s mother and said, “They’re all f–king dead. They’re going to f–king die, starting tonight.” The Colombo War
Linda’s mother (Linda Schiro) was Scarpo’s mistress—she grew up thinking someone else was her father.
Family life was complicated for the pampered Mafia princess.
She grew up thinking a mild-mannered man named Charlie Schiro was her dad, and that “Greggy” was just a friend of the family. It was only as a teenager that she learned the truth: Her mother was Greg Scarpa’s mistress, and Linda and her brother Joey were his children.
Even before she knew Scarpa was her father, though, she loved him. Their home was filled with parties, and “we had the nicest cars and the nicest clothes,” she writes. “I got my first fur coat when I was 6.”
She and brother Joey would sometimes join their father at his crew’s Wimpy Boys Social Club on Thirteenth Avenue in Bensonhurst, where Scarpa worked from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. They were treated to chocolate egg creams at the luncheonette next door and candy from the store across the street — always free.
But when Linda was old enough to find out the truth, she lived in fear of his gangland dealings.
“He was known as the Grim Reaper,” she points out, “because if you did wrong and were in the life, or you hurt his family or anyone he cared about, it was his job to bring you death.”
Scarpa said he stopped counting the number of his victims at 50.
Throughout the Colombo War Scarpa (pictured) was allegedly assisted by FBI supervisor Lin DeVecchio.
Many of the killings occurred during the Colombo civil war of 1991-1993, which erupted just as Scarpa was thinking about retiring and moving to Florida. By then he had AIDS — contracted during a blood transfusion over a life-threatening bleeding ulcer.
The mob family’s consigliere, Carmine Sessa, begged him to join the battle in support of imprisoned godfather Carmine Persico, who was at odds with rebellious acting boss Victor “Little Vic” Orena. Scarpa owed Sessa a debt of gratitude for having cared for him when most others stayed away because of his illness.
Through the war, Scarpa was assisted, Linda alleges, by Lin DeVecchio, an FBI supervisor and Scarpa’s handler during several years when the hit man secretly aided the bureau in exchange for cash and tips.
Scarpa, who loved James Bond movies, hinted at the relationship even when his kids were young. “That’s your father,” he once said. “Call me Greg. Greg Bond.” Linda just laughed. “It wasn’t until I was older that I learned what he was talking about.”
DeVecchio was tried in 2006 for helping Scarpa carry out four gangland murders, but the case collapsed because Linda Schiro had denied DeVecchio’s involvement in Scarpa’s murders a decade earlier in a Village Voice interview.
But Linda Schiro told the truth to investigators, “about how Lin helped my father,” the daughter says. Little Linda even says DeVecchio helped spark the Colombo war by tipping Scarpa about the hit men who’d come after him.
“My father gave him the license-plate number of one of the trucks involved in the shooting,” she writes. “Lin checked around. He told my father that the truck belonged to William ‘Wild Bill’ Cutolo. So my father knew that Wild Bill and Vic Orena had called the hit — and now he knew who his targets were.” Close to home
Linda, at age 6, with her father.
As a teenager, Linda Scarpa, now 46, fell in with a group of kids who used to hang around and smoke pot, a crowd that included her first boyfriend, Greg Vacca.
When she came home high one night, her parents raged at her. The next day, Scarpa went looking for her boyfriend.
The boy’s head and face were so badly beaten, “I couldn’t bear to look at him. His head was misshapen. There were bumps the size of grapefruits.”
She told her dad, “I hate you. How could you do that to him?” He said: “That’s what happens when you do stupid things.”
Greg Vacca gave his own account of that beating in Linda Scarpa’s book. He describes how Scarpa and his gangster friends tracked him down the day after the pot-smoking incident, chasing him in cars as he fled on foot.
“There must have been 10 or 12 guys,” Vacca recalled. “And they just friggin’ pulverized me. I ended up with a broken nose, a concussion, two fractured ribs, and the rest of my body was bruised everywhere. My head was so swollen, I looked like the Elephant Man.”
But Vacca credits Scarpa for steering him away from drugs and the streets.
“I don’t get high anymore or do drugs. I’ve been sober since 1991, completely sober — no drinking, nothing, zero. I don’t gamble at all. I don’t get involved with the mob.
“So, Greg, thank you, number one, for not killing me. Number two, I learned a lot from that.”
Another terrifying encounter happened about three years later. Linda was 16 and attacked by her car-service driver, Jose Guzman, who was supposed to take her to Bishop Ford HS in Park Slope but instead drove her to a secluded area of Prospect Park.
“He grabbed my hand . . . and licked the crease between my index finger and my middle finger as if they were my legs. ‘That’s what I’m going to do to you, baby.’ And then he ripped my shirt open. All that was going through my head was that I was going to get killed — raped and then killed.”
She got out of it by pretending to be interested and insisting that Guzman meet her later. When she told her mother, “She flipped out. Went totally crazy. Crying. Screaming at the top of her lungs.”
Scarpa tracked down Guzman and shot him as he ran from the front steps of his home, telling Linda, “I had actually saved other girls from being raped.”
Scarpa cut out a newspaper account of the murder and kept it in her wallet. “Every once in a while I’d take it out and look at it. He had kids, and I felt so bad and guilty about him getting killed. But what was I supposed to do, not say anything?” Her lost brother
Linda with her brother Joey, Scarpa, and mother, Linda Schiro.
For Linda, the worst part about his dad’s mob world was what it did to her brother.
Joey, a “mama’s boy,” got pulled into his father’s Mafia world at 17, when Scarpa forced him to murder his best friend, Patrick Porco. DeVecchio found out Porco had been picked up on a murder charge and was going to flip.
“Greg told Joey he’d have to kill Patrick himself. Joey had no choice,” said Linda Schiro. Ultimately the teen couldn’t pull the trigger — but watched as Joey’s cousin shot Porco in the head.
Two years later, another friend of Joey’s, Joe Randazzo, was gunned down in front of him during a beef with drug dealers in which his father blasted Lucchese member Michael “Mickey Flattop” Derosa and his crew fired back. “A bullet went through Daddy’s nose and took out his eye,” Joey told his sister. “When I turned around to tell Joe to duck, he got shot in the head.”
Greg Scarpa ended up in the hospital under arrest, joking to Linda Schiro, “That’s all right, sweetheart. You can call me ‘One-eyed Greg’ from now on.”
Linda and Joey
Scarpa was eventually convicted and died in prison in 1994 at age 66.
Joey spiraled into depression.
“Life’s not the same without Dad,” he told his sister. But though he tried to get away from the life, Joey was killed after a member of the Gambinos lured him into a trap.
His death devastated Linda. “That was in 1995,” she writes. “Today it’s not better, not even a little bit.”
“I’ve often thought about the people my father murdered and the families he destroyed, and it’s very painful and disturbing. I knew what that felt like because my brother was murdered, too.”
