Five Families of New York City

Updated news on the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Lucchese and Colombo Organized Crime Families of New York City.

Friday, November 9, 2012

The Downfall of the New England Mob

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don


When Jeffrey Sallet walked into a Federal Hill restaurant and approached Luigi "Baby Shacks" Manocchio, the aging mobster – who knew just about everyone in Providence – had never seen the man in his life.
It was 2007, and at the time Sallet had just arrived in Rhode Island to be the supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI's organized crime task force for the northeast. Manocchio too, had an impressive résumé: he was the boss of the New England crime family.
"I explained to him that I was the new supervisor of the FBI and I was in town and that we would be keeping an eye on him," Sallet said.
Manocchio responded with a simple question: "Why?"
Sallet replied with a simple answer: "Because you're the boss and you're on the street."
Manocchio has been described by many as a gentleman, someone who is polite even with investigators looking to lock him up. Sallet is no exception. The two men chatted for a stunning 45 minutes, in a conversation Sallet described as "cordial" but lacking any substance about the underworld.
"I really just wanted to lay eyes on him, have him lay eyes on me," Sallet said, adding that his message for Manocchio was "committing crimes is not acceptable and that we would be coming for him."
And come for him they did.
A year later two different FBI agents – Joseph Degnan and Jeffrey Cady – would walk into the same Federal Hill restaurant, but this time it wasn't for a casual chat.
According to court documents, Manocchio had just received a so-called "protection payment" from the Cadillac Lounge strip club by the club's bookkeeper, a longtime mob associate named Thomas Iafrate. Degnan and Cady seized the money from Manocchio, having learned it was coming from the Cadillac Lounge thanks to a cadre of cameras and microphones planted by investigators in the business office of the strip joint.
In the end, the protection payment scheme was Manocchio's undoing. Soon after that payment was intercepted, investigators say Manocchio stepped down as the head of the New England crime family and passed on the reins to players in Boston.
Initially law enforcement sources say Peter Limone of Boston – who had been identified as a consigliere for the family – took over as acting mob boss. But that was short-lived and investigators soon set their sights on the new reputed acting boss, Anthony DiNunzio of East Boston. They eventually intercepted Rhode Island capo regime Edward "Eddie" Lato delivering a cut of those same protection payments to DiNunzio following Manocchio's January 2011 arrest.
In all nine New England mobsters or mob associates have felt the sting from a national crackdown into organized crime. Most of the defendants – including Manocchio and Lato – have pleaded guilty and are serving time in different federal prisons spread out across the country.
Two defendants, including DiNunzio, have pledged to plead guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Sallet is eager to point out that the successful investigation and prosecution of the mob was a “team sport.” He was the head of a task force that toiled for years to make it happen. The membership of the FBI-led unit varied over time, but included Degnan (who is now retired) and Cady, as well as Rhode Island State Police Detectives Matthew Moynihan and Kevin Hawkins (also retired). Veteran Providence Police Detective Jack Whalen also worked the investigation on the task force.
The case is being prosecuted by the office of Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha. The team of lawyers involved includes Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ferland and Sam Nazzaro, trial attorney for the Department of Justice, who took over for Scott Lawson.
Impact on La Cosa Nostra
Sallet said the FBI still identifies La Cosa Nostra as the number one "threat assessment" for organized crime in New England despite the damage done to their underworld operations.
"The threat in Rhode Island is substantially minimized to the point of being almost nonexistent," Sallet said. "We set out to put them out of business. We followed through on that."
G-Men don't like to say a crime family is ever dead because they've seen embers turn back into flames before. But the state of the underworld right now could best be described as disorganized crime.
Rhode Island State Police Col. Steven O'Donnell – a veteran mob investigator who assigned troopers to the task force – said the New England mob is on its "last breath."
"When these people get out [of prison] they will continue to do what they do. That is their life mission: power and money," O'Donnell said. "You've got to be vigilant to it but I don't think it's anywhere near what it was 40 years ago."
O’Donnell took over as colonel midway through the investigation after his predecessor Brendan Doherty decided to run for Congress.
A shocking turning point in the case – and a key reason for the crime family's disintegration – was when an unidentified high-ranking member of the mob agreed to cooperate with investigators. Court documents show the informant went so far as to wear a recording device while discussing the mob’s operations with his fellow underworld colleagues. It was a coup by investigators, one that both O'Donnell and Sallet described as "significant" to the case.
"Someone who lives that world, they're trusted, they take that oath of omertà and they have to say, 'We're going to be silent; we're not going to repeat it,'" O'Donnell said. "For them, or anybody that is part of the Mafia that takes that oath, to cooperate with us – it decimates a family."
"As soon as you break the code of silence you are breaking the organization," Sallet said. "We have in fact shattered omertà during the course of this investigation."
Law enforcement has declined to identify the mystery mobster, but a defense attorney referred to him by the initials "RD" in court documents. Prosecutors said the informant was poised to testify if any of the defendants decided to stand trial. None did.
As Target 12 previously reported, Mafia capo regime Robert DeLuca has not been seen on the streets of Providence since the indictments came down. Law enforcement sources say DeLuca was also charged in the case, accused of taking part in a scheme to shake down a used car salesman for protection money. DeLuca's whereabouts are being kept secret.
'Got to die somewhere'
With high-ranking wise guys behind bars and the sweeping investigation essentially at an end, Sallet has moved on from Providence. Roughly a week after Manocchio received a five-and-a-half-year sentence for racketeering conspiracy, Sallet packed up his Providence office and shipped off to Boston. His business card reveals a promotion: assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston division.
Sallet said he hasn’t spoken to Manocchio since 2007.
O'Donnell knew of Sallet's early encounter with the mob boss; such stories spread like wildfire inside law enforcement circles and on the street. The colonel himself has had numerous run-ins with the aging mobster: first in the early 1980s when he was a prison guard at the Adult Correctional Institute and Manocchio was serving time for murder conspiracy, and later on the streets as both O'Donnell’s and Manocchio's stars were on the rise in their opposing organizations.
O’Donnell’s most recent chat with Manocchio – who is now 85 – happened last year when the former boss was being transported from the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls to face a federal judge for the first time in this case.
At the time O'Donnell was the U.S. Marshal for Rhode Island – he would soon return to the state police as colonel – and he decided to tag along in the van that chilly February morning.
O'Donnell said he gave Manocchio the opportunity to come clean and cooperate with investigators. Manocchio declined.
"I said to him, 'You're going to die in prison you know," O'Donnell said.
Manocchio looked at O'Donnell and replied: "You've got to die somewhere."

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/target_12/inside_mafia/inside-the-mafia-peeling-back-the-curtain-jeffrey-sallett-interview

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Cocky mob associate testifies about baseball bat beating

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don

Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29
When government witness "Bent Finger" Lou Monacello was working the streets, he was slick, cocky and direct.
He was the same before a jury today in federal court, where he's testifying against Mob Boss Joe Ligambi and six others.
His main focus Friday was mob captain George Borgesi, his uncle, Joe Ligambi and mob violence.
"He's the toughest guy in the case," joked defense attorney Joseph Santauguida.
In front of the jury, Monacello testified how he, mob captain Anthony Staino and two others set out to beat a man who had gotten the best of Borgesi in a street fight. Monacello and the others tailed the guy in two cars for weeks on Borgesi's orders, then beat him with a baseball bat as he walked his dog.
"I swung with all my might," Monacello bragged. "I split his head wide open."
FOX 29's Dave Schratwieser asked Staino for a comment on Monacello's early testimony.
"He can't speak, Dave. Sorry," Staino's lawyer Gregory Pagano said.
The guy they called "Big Louie" then explained how he used to pick up Christmas contributions from bookies for Ligambi, over $15,000 each Christmas while he was also paying thousands in tribute money to Borgesi.
"His uncle is greedy," Monacello told the jury. "He's the boss. He never liked me."
Monacello also testified how he hit his business partner with a gun at his South Philly bar, Gavone's, after someone told Monacello's wife he was cheating on her.
"I got them in a room and I told them, 'Nobody's leaving 'til you tell me who,'" Monacello said. "I cracked him right in the head."
The defense team wouldn't comment because of a judge's gag order. Neither would Ligambi's brother.
"Phil, anything you wanna say about Lou?" Schratwieser asked Ligambi as he left court.
Ligambi shook his head and didn't respond.
Monacello told the jury, "I'm not a murderer. I never killed anybody."
He admitted that he routinely threatened people on behalf of Borgesi, Ligambi and himself.
"Don't pay me," he said. "You're a dead man."
Monacello will be back on the stand for what is expected to be a rough round of cross examination on Tuesday.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/20056798/bent-finger-lou-testifies-at-big-mob-trial

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Witness testifies he never killed anyone for the mob

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don

Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello never killed anyone, he said.
He stole cars, supervised gambling operations, collected debts and "tax" payments that reputed Philadelphia mob boss Joseph Ligambi allegedly demanded from other criminals. Occasionally, Monacello told jurors Friday, he smashed windows, slashed tires, even cracked heads. Once, on orders from above, Monacello staked out a South Philadelphia rival's house for three months before finally catching the man as he left to walk his dog one night, he said. Bat in hand, Monacello went to work.
"I swung with all my might," Monacello said, "and split (his) head open."
Monacello, 46, was the latest in a parade of informants and turncoats to testify in the racketeering trial of Ligambi, his nephew George Borgesi and five other defendants.
A former high-ranking associate, he was the most significant witness to date, an insider enlisted to bolster prosecutors' claims that the defendants used violence - or the threat of it - to run rackets for more than a decade.

Defense lawyers have derided the case as "racketeering lite," a 10-year investigation built on criminals seeking deals and thousands of secretly recorded conversations about tough talk but little proof of violence. Monacello's message was that intimidation was often enough.
"You would remind them who you were working with, and where the money is going to and usually that would do the trick," he said. "There was always that underlying thing - that you're with the mob, and if they don't pay, they're going to get hurt."
His appearance marked his first as a government witness, a role he assumed after being arrested with the others in May 2011. His former codefendants, notably Borgesi, glared his way as Monacello, dressed in a dark suit, light shirt and lavender striped tie, entered the courtroom, walked to the stand and poured a glass of water.
Defendant Damon Canalichio turned and smiled at a friend in the gallery as the witness raised his right hand - its index finger bent - and swore to tell the truth.
At first, Monacello appeared to avoid looking toward the defendants. Then he settled in. For more than five hours, he glided comfortably along, at times talking to jurors as if he was trading war stories over a beer.
He laughed as he described catching the friend who told Monacello's wife he was having an affair. Yes, he was cheating on her, Monacello told jurors, but not with the women his friend thought.
And he smiled when he recounted another time he wanted to send a message to an associate who had been speaking a little too freely about mob business. Feigning anger, Monacello said he fired a gunshot into the air, then laughed as the man scurried from the room.
"That was a joke," he assured the jury. "Even if it may not sound funny - if you were there, it was."
Most of the questions from the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney John S. Han, focused on Monacello's longtime association with Borgesi, a reputed capo in the crime family.
They met when both were teens in South Philadelphia in the early 1980s. Monacello was the son and grandson of Philadelphia police officers, and later held jobs as a city clerk, a bartender and trade school operator.
Borgesi was a bookmaker at 17, and emulated his uncle, Ligambi, then a soldier for mob boss Nicky Scarfo, he said. "He had no qualms about telling you he was a gangster," Monacello said.
In the late 1990s, Monacello said, he was riding in a car with Borgesi when the pair began talking about a killing that had been in the news. According to Monacello, Borgesi turned up the car radio volume and then, flashing the numbers with his hands, whispered that he was a "professional" with 11 murders to his credit.
The prosecutor asked Monacello's reaction.
"You find out you're sitting next to a serial killer? It definitely got my attention," he replied.
(Monacello didn't elaborate on the alleged killings and wasn't asked to. Borgesi isn't charged with and has never been convicted of murder.)
For much of the last decade, Monacello said, he helped Borgesi run gambling and loan-sharking rackets in Delaware County, including an illegal casino allegedly run in Folsom by another associate, Nick "The Hat" Cimino.
With Borgesi in prison on unrelated charges, Monacello ferried his monthly payments to Borgesi's wife, he said, sometimes stuffing envelopes of cash into the glove compartment of her car.
He also collected "Christmas taxes" each December for Ligambi, gathering the cash bookmakers paid to keep their business running without mob interference.
Sometimes, violence was necessary, like the time in 2001 that Monacello said he and others severely beat a gambler in Manayunk who was behind on his debts.
"We put in him the hospital," Monacello said. "He paid the next week."
He also recounted a day in the 1990s when he and others were enlisted to beat a contractor who was renovating a property for Ligambi but had been "giving him trouble."
"I kicked the guy in the face twice," he said. "The third time I went to kick him and I kicked Georgie by mistake."
Another victim, he said, was Angelo Lutz, an underling Borgesi suspected of stealing. (Lutz has a new career as a celebrity chef, the Kitchen Consigliere.)
Monacello recounted a late December 1998 night when Borgesi brought Lutz to Monacello's South Philadelphia home. The three men went to the basement, where Borgesi started punching Lutz.
Monacello said he noticed his artificial Christmas tree in the room. "So I took the rod out and I split his head," Monacello said.
Borgesi then allegedly drew a knife. "He says, I'm killing him," Monacello recalled.
Monacello argued against it, he said. His mother was upstairs, and besides, Lutz was nearly 400 pounds, too heavy for the two men could to haul away by themselves. Borgesi told him not to worry. "I got a guy for that," he allegedly said, before giving in and letting Lutz live.
Monacello said he ultimately tired of the family squabbles and backstabbing. According to Monacello, he had ongoing disputes with another capo, Martin Angelina, and Borgesi's brother, Anthony, was jealous because he was overseeing Borgesi's rackets. And he was sure Ligambi didn't like him.
"Meanwhile, I got the uncle who wants me out of the way," Monacello said, turning to the jurors. "Great family, aren't they? This is what it's all about."
Monacello entered a guilty plea in July 2011, with the terms initially sealed by the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno.
He is expected to be grilled about that and his testimony by defense lawyers, especially Borgesi's, when cross-examination begins next week.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20121109_Mob_turncoat_Bent_Finger_Lou_to_testify_today.html?c=r

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Canary testifies against Philly mob boss Ligambi

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don

The future looked bright for the Philadelphia mob, Louis Monacello was told.

It was the 1990s and Monacello was working with George Borgesi, a La Cosa Nostra captain who ran gambling and loan-sharking operations. The pair had known each other for more than a decade, growing up together in South Philadelphia.
"This family is going to be one of the youngest crime families in the country," Monacello recalled his friend telling him.

Borgesi reveled in life as a mobster, Monacello said, ordering beatings and once boasting to him that he committed 11 murders.

"He's a gangster, he was born a gangster, he'll die a gangster," Monacello told a federal jury Friday.

Monacello, 46, was the latest in a parade of informants and mob turncoats to testify against reputed mob boss Joseph Ligambi, Borgesi and five other defendants.

Prosecutors contend the men used violence and threats to run criminal rackets across the region for more than a decade.
Defense attorneys have derided the case as "racketeering lite," a 10-year investigation that produced thousands of recordings of tough talk but little if any actual criminal violence.

Once a high-ranking associate, Monacello, also known as "Bent Finger Lou," is the most significant insider to take the stand thus far. He became a government cooperator after being swept up in the 2011 arrests of Ligambi and the others.

Monacello began cooperating weeks after the indictment because he thought Ligambi wanted him dead, authorities have said. "He never liked me, and I know that," he testified, without elaborating.

Led into court by FBI agents and dressed in a dark suit with a light shirt and purple-and-lavender striped tie, Monacello walked to the witness stand, sat and poured himself a glass of water.

The defendants, especially Borgesi, seemed to aim their eyes at him but Monacello avoided the glares. Another defendant, Damon Canalichio, smiled to an observer in the courtroom gallery as Monacello raised his right hand - its index finger bent - and swore to tell the truth.

Then Monacello settled in, walking jurors through what could be days of testimony about his entanglement with the crime family. He was the son and grandson of Philadelphia police officers, worked as a city clerk, bartender and trade school operator before devoting himself to the mob.

For 20 years, Monacello said, he helped Borgesi run gambling and loan-sharking rackets in Delaware County, even as Borgesi served a decade in jail.

During that span, Monacello said, he ferried the monthly payments to Borgesi's wife, sometimes just stuffing envelopes of cash into the glove compartment of her car.

He said he also collected "Christmas taxes" each year for Ligambi, gathering up the tribute payments that bookmakers must pay the mob to keep running their businesses without interference.

For most customers, Monacello said, the threat of retaliation was enough to guarantee payment.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time it was just threats - or put a brick through the car window or the house, or slit their tires, or go to their workplace," he said.

But sometimes violence was necessary, Monacello said. He described one day in the late 1990s when he and others were enlisted to beat a contractor. Monacello said the man was supposed to renovate a property for Ligambi but had been "giving him trouble."

"We beat the s--- out of the guy," he said. "I kicked the guy in the face twice. The third time I went to kick him and I kicked Georgie by mistake."

Another victim, he said, was Angelo Lutz, an underling who Borgesi suspected had been stealing from him. Monacello recounted a late December 1998 night when Borgesi brought Lutz to Monacello's South Philadelphia home.

The three men went into the basement, where Borgesi started punching Lutz.

Monacello said his artificial Christmas tree was in a box in the room. "So I took the rod out and I split his head," Monacello said.

Borgesi then drew a knife, the witness said. "He says, I'm killing him," Monacello said.

Monacello argued against it, he told jurors. His mother was upstairs, and besides, Lutz was near 400 pounds and the two men could never haul him out.

"I got a guy for that," Borgesi said, according to Monacello.

Ultimately, they did not kill Lutz.

For three hours, Monacello glided along as a witness, at times talking to jurors like he was just trading war stories with friends over a beer.

He laughed as he described catching a friend who had told Monacello's wife that her husband was having an affair. Yes, he was cheating, Monacello told jurors, but not with the women the friend had claimed.

And he smiled when he recounted another time he wanted to send a message to an associate who had been speaking a little too freely about mob connections. Feigning anger, Monacello said he fired a gunshot into the air, then laughed as the man scurried from the room.

"That was a joke," he said, turning to the jury. "Even if it may not sound funny, if you were there it was."

Monacello said he's not sure who gave him his nickname. He once was known as Big Louie, he said. But after getting arrested in 2008, the new nickname suddenly appeared in the news media.

No mystery, he said. "Because I have a bent finger," showing it to jurors.

Monacello entered a guilty plea in July 2011, but details of that plea has been sealed by the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno.

He is expected to be grilled by defense lawyers, especially Borgesi's, when cross-examination begins late Friday or next week.

"Lou Monacello had one thing in mind, and that was Lou Monacello," Borgesi's lawyer, Paul Hetznecker, said during opening statements.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20121109_Mob_turncoat_Bent_Finger_Lou_to_testify_today.html?c=r

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Judge gives Whitey Bulger new trial date

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don

US District Court Judge Richard Stearns today changed the date for the trial of James “Whitey’’ Bulger, scheduling it roughly four months later than federal prosecutors said was justifiable for a longtime fugitive, and about five months early than defense attorneys argued was needed to protect the accused killer’s constitutional rights.

Stearns, in a 13-page order issued this afternoon, set June 6 for juror selection to get underway in US District Court in Boston. Opening statements by defense attorney J.W. Carney, Jr. and prosecutors from US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s office are set to be heard four days later.

“The goal is to determine a task-oriented schedule that is, on the one hand, fair to the defendant in giving his counsel adequate time to prepare for trial and, on the other hand, fair to the government, the public and the families of the alleged victims, by not unnecessarily delaying a case that they desire to be resolved as openly and expeditiously as possible,’’ Stearns wrote.

Bulger had been set to go on trial March 4, but Carney had complained that federal prosecutors had handed over so much evidence, and had done so in such a disorganized fashion, that he would need at least until next November to be ready for trial.

Ortiz’s office, meanwhile, said Bulger’s trial had been delayed long enough, since he spent 16 years on the run after learning from corrupt FBI agents that he was about to be indicted for a variety of crimes, including having an alleged role in 19 murders.

Bulger, now 83, was once one of America’s Most Wanted until his capture in June, 2011, in Santa Monica, California, in the same rent-controlled apartment where he had been staying during most of his 16 years on the lam. He faces a federal racketeering indictment accusing him of 19 murders.

Bulger has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is currently being held at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. Last Sunday, he was taken Boston Medical Center after complaining of chest pains, and was returned to the facility by Tuesday, officials have said.

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/11/09/james-whitey-bulger-given-new-trial-date-judge-june/qSMqgnvaV7gQWxF51Vfg4N/story.html

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Turncoat mob associate expected to testify at Philly trial today

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don


Frank "Frankie the Fixer" DiGiacomo (left) secretly recorded conversations with Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello.
A mob associate who turned government cooperator because he may have feared that Joseph Ligambi wanted him dead is expected to testify against the reputed mob boss and other ex-associates for the first time today.
Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello, 46, is likely to spend at least a day on the witness stand describing for prosecutors what he knows and did for the Philadelpha mob. Then he'll likely spend just as long fending off cross-examination by lawyers for the 73-year-old Ligambi and six codefendants.
Monacello was on the other side of the courtroom after FBI agents arrested him and the others in May 2010. That roundup capped a decade-long investigation into extortion, loan-sharking and gambling by the local mob and set the stage for the racketeering trial that began in late October and could stretch to the end of the year.
Prosecutors once described Monacello as a "high-ranking associate" and leader of a crew run by one of the defendants, George "Georgie" Borgesi, a 49-year-old nephew of Ligambi's believed to run gambling and loan-shark operations in Delaware County. When Borgesi was jailed in another case, they said, Monacello ran his rackets and visited him in prison to deliver updates.
Monacello also allegedly served as a collector for the mob, directed by Ligambi directed to collect yearly "street tax" or "tribute payments" from South Jersey bookies between 2000 to 2007.
Besides describing those duties, Monacello, who began cooperating in 2010, could be asked to recount for jurors a conversation in which Borgesi allegedly bragged about his involvement in 11 murders.
Jurors are also likely to hear about disputes within the crime family that may have led to Monacello's decision to cooperate. In 2008, Monacello was convicted of solicitation of assault for trying to hire someone to kill Martin Angelina, a reputed captain, because he believed Angelina was collecting on debts owed to him.
Prosecutors have acknowledged Monacello's role as a cooperating witness, but it's not clear yet how he will benefit. He entered a guilty plea in July 2011, which for a time was sealed from public access by the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno.
Lawyers for all the defendants have tried to challenge the case as flimsy - more talk that actual violence, and much of it recorded by degenerate gamblers and informants trying to wrangle out of legitimate loans or their own criminal cases. Monacello inevitably faces those same accusations when cross-examination begins late Friday or next week.
"Lou Monacello had one thing in mind, and that was Lou Monacello," Borgesi's lawyer, Paul Hetznecker, said during opening statements.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20121109_Mob_turncoat_Bent_Finger_Lou_to_testify_today.html

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Colombo consigliere lists reasons why he shouldn't go to prison

  November 09, 2012    Dapper_Don

Colombo Consigliere Richard Fusco, leaving Broolkyn Federal Court on Novermber 8th, 2012, following his sentencing to four months in a prison hospital for an extortion conviction.
An elderly Colombo gangster — who whined he shouldn’t do any hard time because he has less than a year to live — may have gotten the last laugh.
Taking a page from “Junior” Soprano’s playbook, reputed consigliere Richard Fusco, 76, pushed a walker into Brooklyn Federal Court and cited a litany of maladies as reasons why he shouldn’t go to prison for shaking down a rival crime family.
Prostate cancer. Three heart attacks. Kidney failure. Claustrophobia. Depression. Early onset of Alzheimer’s, to name a few.
Fusco insisted he was practically stone deaf in the courtroom, repeatedly blurting out that he couldn’t hear a word Judge Kiyo Matsumoto was saying. After the judge’s clerk outfitted him with wireless headphones, Fusco continued to claim he still couldn’t make out the words.
But after Fusco was sentenced to serve a measly four months in a federal prison hospital — he faced up to two years — he appeared to be a new man.
Miraculously, the wily wiseguy appeared to be hearing just fine in the courthouse lobby as he chatted and joked for a half hour.
Approached by a Daily News reporter, Fusco displayed a pretty sharp memory. “You called me a geezer,” he snapped, referring to a September 2011 article in The News.
Asked how his hearing appeared to be much improved, Fusco shot back: “I read lips. I’m reading your lips.”
Why couldn’t he read the judge’s lips?
“She was sitting up there behind a desk,” he said. “I’ve got nothing more to say.”
Earlier, defense lawyer Martin Adelman argued passionately, even begged the judge, to show mercy for the ailing mobster.
“I feel my client’s life hangs in the balance,” he said. “I’m concerned about the box that will come out of the Bureau of Prisons facility with Mr. Fusco in it soon after he arrives,” referring to a coffin.
Adelman dismissed questions about whether the hearing loss was an act. “He does read lips,” Adelman told The News. “And we didn’t make the argument that he’s handicapped due to a hearing impairment.”
But Adelman actually did assert in court papers that his client is partially deaf due to a “missile firing accident” when he served in the Air National Guard, and suffers from chronic ringing in his ears.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes did not dispute that Fusco had significant health problems. But noted that he was undergoing dialysis three times a week while serving as the crime family’s consigliere, attending captains’ meetings, and sponsoring gangsters for inductions.
In 2010, he presided over the extortion of the Gambino crime family after an affiliate of that family stabbed a Colombo associate. Fusco pressed for a six-figure settlement that would come from the Gambinos’ cut of the 18th Ave. street feast in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, according to court papers.
“To come in here today and suggest these medical conditions are so serious that he shouldn’t be punished for his crimes is hollow,” Geddes told the judge.
Matusmoto said the defendant was entitled a break because he’s so sickly, but concluded that he had to serve some jail time, albeit in a prison hospital, because he had returned to the mob life after completing his previous sentence for racketeering.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/colombo-gangster-whines-litany-maladies-article-1.1199306#ixzz2BjhWt6Ey

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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Judge orders mobster to disinvite Gambino family members from wedding

  November 08, 2012    Dapper_Don


He made them an offer he has to refuse to honor.

Low-level mobster and city Sanitation worker Joseph Virzi invited a crew of eight made-members of the Gambino crime family to his upcoming wedding — only to learn that he is prohibited from associating with them.

Virzi’s lawyer reached out to Brooklyn Federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto for help with a quandary that isn’t addressed in any etiquette books.

“This has placed my client in a very difficult and awkward situation [which includes the fact that he still has to pay for these people] whereby he will have to contact these people and tell them not to attend his wedding,” lawyer Steven Brounstein stated in a letter.

The mobbed-up guests are reputed capos John Gambino, Joseph Marino, John Rizzo, Louis Devito and Pasquale Marsala and soldiers Joseph Costa, Joseph Gambino and Pietro "Pete" Inzerillo, according to court papers and law enforcement sources.

They have been Virzi’s “family friends” for many years, the lawyer wrote.

Virzi, a reputed associate of the Colombo crime family, pleaded guilty last year to participating in an illegal sports betting ring controlled by the Colombos and Gambinos. He was sentenced to 18 months and ordered not to hang out with mobsters.

Virzi’s parents sent out the invitations one week before their son was sentenced this past summer, Brounstein furtherexplained.

The judge asked the government to take a position, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes tried to offer Virzi an early wedding present.

As long as he disclosed the details of the wedding ceremony and reception in advance to the feds, the Gambino gangsters and their wives could attend, Geddes informed the judge Wednesday in a letter.

After hearing both sides, Matsumoto “ respectfully denied” the request, so there will be 16 fewer guests at the wedding.

The details of the Nov. 23 nuptials in Belleville, N.J., will not be made public, Brounstein said.

Virzi may face yet another obstacle to surmount — –storm-ravaged Belleville has a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in effect as a result of Hurricane Sandy, which remains in effect until Gov. Chris Christie declares otherwise.

Virzi’s friends in high places aren’t all mobsters. Msgr. David Cassato, ann NYPD chaplain, wrote a letter to the judge on Virzi’s behalf before he was sentenced.

Matsumoto previously showed sympathy for the groom-to-be: She granted permission for Virzi to travel with friends to Las Vegas in September for his bachelor party. None of the friends were linked to organized crime.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/mobster-groom-ordered-disinvite-wedding-wiseguys-article-1.1198454#ixzz2BeYPsDHn

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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Secret mob hideaway found in Denver

  November 07, 2012    Dapper_Don

On the outside, the house make look like any other historic home in the north Denver neighborhood, but inside, the secrets of a gangster's paradise are finally revealed.

When Matt Feeney bought it 1891 Victorian on Osage Street, it needed some TLC. So, he started to knock out the walls, and the walls started to talk.

"So, as we're knocking out the walls, hitting right here, we're smelling matches, as if they're constantly being lit," said Matt Feeney.

Feeney said he discovered a row of matches buried in plaster in the wall.

"I ended up following what I'm calling a fuse from the matches," said Feeney. "It went behind the cabinets, and it led to these canvas packets, taped up against the wall."

Feeney is convinced his new residence had been rigged to burn.

"I think it was booby-trapped," said Feeney. "I think that might have been a way for them to quickly make a distraction at a minimum."

Feeney had learned the first homeowners were Denver's most famous connection to the mob, The Smaldone Family.

"They were great for selling papers," said Dick Kreck, author of Smaldone, The True Story Of An American Crime Family.

He said the family basically ran the city's underground gambling from the 1930s to 1970s.

"They were sort of b-level gangsters, but I always tell people today we still love them because they were our gangsters," said Kreck.

They started with bootlegged liquor, and they needed a hideaway. Before long, Feeney said, he found that, too, in his cellar.

"It's like they almost tried to stucco over it, so we started chiseling away and we found the little seam," said Feeney.

He found a hidden door, which led to a small chamber -- empty now, but once full of secrets.

"My dad was a very interesting man. He was a smart man," said Eugene Smaldone, whose grandparents lived in the Osage house.

He remembers playing there as a child and eating his grandmother's ravioli.

He said the story is that once during prohibition, police raided the home and found the liquor, but that his father and uncle took the rap so his grandparents would not have to go to prison.

"The Sopranos? Nothing like them. Nothing at all," said Smaldone. "They were good businessmen. It's just that their business was illegal at the time. They were ahead of their time."

While Smaldone doesn't believe anyone booby trapped the house to burn, Kreck said during that time, there were a series of unsolved murders, almost all to the advantage of the Smaldone family.

"I don't think you stayed in business 40 years being nice guys. Not in that business," said Kreck.

Since Kreck's book was published, Feeney said he has seen people stopping by his block to look at his house.

He joked that he might start charging a dollar to let people see the historic inside.

"It's a lot of fun trying to put myself in their shoes, as the owner of the home now, living here just like they did," he said.

video: http://news.yahoo.com/video/man-discove ... 00887.html

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Former Hartford gangster convicted of child sex charges

  November 07, 2012    Dapper_Don


A Hartford gangster who appointed himself the "Apostle" of a church he founded in Florida was convicted by a jury there Monday of transporting girls between states in order to have sex with them.
Luis "Tito" Morales once was the target of a Mafia murder contract while living in Hartford. He moved to Florida and became a self-described preacher after serving 10-years for selling drugs in Connecticut in the 1990s.
Morales called his Orlando-based ministry En Fuego (On Fire) for Jesus and its website depicted him jetting to Latin America where he purported to drive demons from possessed women.
Federal prosecutors in Orlando, where he was convicted of a half dozen child sex trafficking charges, called Morales a predator who told girls he wanted to "break" them so they could become "prophets" in his ministry.
Convicted with Morales, 57, was so-called En Fuego "Prophet" Rebeca Rivera, 27, of East Hartford, accused of arranging with Morales to transport a girl from Hartford to Orlando.
A jury in federal court in Orlando convicted Morales and Rivera after deliberating for fewer than three hours. Both face up to life in prison when sentenced.
Morales is accused of abusing six girls, several of whom he encountered through his ministry. He and Rivera were convicted of charges associated with the abuse of four of the girls, who testified during closed sessions of court.
Among other things, the jury heard testimony that Morales traveled by van with some of his victims and their uncle to Connecticut in 2009, ostensibly to visit church members in the Hartford area. He also is accused of molesting children at his home in Ormond Beach, FL, in hotel rooms and in the coach section of an airplane.
Rivera's attorney told jurors she is a devoted mother and wife.
Morales claims that his exorcisms and other ministerial work regularly called him to the Caribbean, Central America and South America. Rivera described herself on an Internet blog as a Mexican living in the U.S. and traveling the world to preach the good news of Jesus Christ
A television news station in Honduras once posted a video recording on the Internet that purports to show Morales chasing the devil from a writhing, flopping, apparently tormented woman somewhere near Tegucigalpa.
Morales achieved a different sort of celebrity in the wrong circles in Hartford 1980s and '90s, where he first came to the attention of law enforcement authorities. At the time, the bustling Puerto Rican neighborhood around Park Street was expanding south, and Italian racketeers were trying to hang on to shrinking territory that they held around Franklin Avenue.
Morales went to work for the Mafia robbing drug dealers and later fathered a child after becoming romantically involved with the daughter of a soldier in the Patriarca crime family, the FBI has said. When the romance soured during an FBI organized crime investigation in Hartford, its deterioration was memorialized on FBI wiretaps.
The father of Morale's girlfriend eventually was convicted of conspiring to murder him, although the reason for the contract was never conclusively settled.
There were some indications that Morales was trying to muscle in on mob gambling operations in south Hartford. Others suggested that he had behaved rudely to the mob soldier's wife.
The FBI tipped Morales to the contract. Not long after, the state police arrested him for selling drugs.
Toward the end of his drug sentence, Morales said in an interview with the Courant that he had found his "savior" while in prison.

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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Skinny Joey Merlino is living the life in South Florida

  November 06, 2012    Dapper_Don


Mob Boss Joey Merlino's fellow wiseguys are on trial here in federal court in Philadelphia on racketeering charges, but while they fight for their freedom, Merlino is living it up in South Florida.
We traveled to the sunshine state a few weeks back to see what Philadelphia's most talked about mob boss is up to.
It's not hard to find the good life in South Florida, the sun, the sand, the beautiful women and of course the night life. Fresh off more than a decade in federal prison for racketeering, you might say South Philadelphia Mob Boss Joey Merlino has stepped in it.
"He's all wound up in the lifestyle, but 11-years in the can, in a 4-by-8 jail cell, will make you daydream a lot," says former organized crime investigator Mike Russell, who's now retired in South Florida.
"He lives in the biggest, nicest one on the block yeah," says Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown.
Living 'Fat'
The guy they called "Skinny Joey" is living "fat" these days.
Twenty months after leaving his prison cell, this is Joey' new home. A $400,000, three story townhouse in Boca Raton. It's just a few minutes from the beach, the casinos and the nightlife Joey missed during his time behind bars. Merlino drives a brand new Cadillac Escalade, owner unknown. Insiders say he visits all the hottest night spots in Boca and nearby Delray Beach.
"He's all over Boca, establishing the fact that he's a celebrity gangster," Russell says.
"Trying to network, I guess, is the best way to describe it," Brown added.
Russell, a retired New Jersey undercover organized crime investigator, has spent months watching Merlino make the rounds in South Florida. He thinks the local wiseguys aren't too happy with Merlino's presence here.
"He's trying to connect with whoever he can connect with and get something going here. He's striking out left and right," Russell says.
Brown, an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, wrote a front page story on Merlino a few weeks back. She says at least one high ranking local mobster told her Merlino's not wanted here.
"He's just gonna have to tread pretty lightly and make sure he doesn't step on anybody's toes," she said.
Mob sources say Joey left prison with a silver spoon in his mouth, using his mob connections inside the joint to get hooked up on the outside with some big money locals. Sources say Joey's new friends don't mind doling out stacks of cash to hob knob with the story-telling former "Dapper Don" of Passyunk Avenue.
"We kind of grew up hearing these stories, knowing about all the hits, but the people who have been down here, they don't come from Philadelphia. This is all new territory for them," Brown says.
Underworld sources in South Florida say Joey likes the local cigar bars with the luxury cars parked right outside. Some say he's been hitting the casino floor at the new Seminole Hard Rock casino and partying at nightclubs like Passion on the casino grounds. One local businessman owns the home where Joey lives and another helped put him to work when he was released from prison.
"He's pretty well set up," Brown says.
"Somebody lined up these two guys, these free rides for the guy," Russell added.
Sources tell FOX 29, Merlino celebrated his 50th birthday last March with a big "invitation only" party at the exclusive Boca Beach Club Resort that towers over downtown Boca. One source tells us the birthday bash was held in a two level suite on the 26th floor. Security's so tight here, even mob investigators had trouble doing surveillance.
Staying Quiet
But getting the bulked up wiseguy to comment on all this is difficult these days.
In fact Joey wouldn't even open the front door when we went to see him recently. His Escalade sped off when we tried to pursue him. Days later he surfaced in Los Angeles on TMZ wisecracking his way through an on camera paparazzi-like airport interview.
"From what I understand from the neighbors there was a lot of loud Sinatra music played in the middle of the night," says Brown, a former Daily News reporter here in Philly. She says while working on her front page splash on Merlino, the so called "Mobster next door", it was clear Joey makes the neighbors nervous.
"Needless to say, they were a little rattled," she says.
Since the Miami Herald story, neighbors told us Joey has gone off the radar. He got the headline and went into hiding. But Joey still has the attention of law enforcement.
"Some of the people he is associating with are pretty...I'm sure the police are watching them," Brown explained.
FOX 29s Dave Schratwieser asked Russell if he thought Merlino could run the mob in Philadelphia from South Florida.
"No, I don't think he could run the mob in South Philly from South Philly to be honest with you," he said.
Brown warns that Merlino should be careful.
"There's no sense of loyalty here and I think he's going to have trouble with that. He better learn that right away. You really shouldn't trust anybody down here," she said.
Merlino never broke his silence in Florida and he turned down our requests for an interview.
The FBI in Miami also refused our request for an interview on Merlino.
Just last week, he made his return to Philadelphia for his father's funeral. But it didn't stop him from being around his old mob crew.

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Monday, November 5, 2012

Mob Wives films Hurricane Sandy's Staten Island aftermath

  November 05, 2012    Dapper_Don

Mob Wives, the snarling, mafia-women reality show shot in Staten Island, is going to make the hurricane and tragic aftermath a part of the upcoming season, according the show’s creator.

A week after shutting down production on the show, cameras started filming Big Ang, Ramona Rizzo and Drita Davanzo over the weekend as they ventured out after the storm that killed 22 people on the island.

“This is all part of the reality of these women, and we can’t ignore it,” says Jennifer Graziano, who created and produces the show.

Graziano — whose excitable sister Rene is the show’s most compelling character — says she will have to work carefully to make the storm part of the show’s story line.

“We’re not a documentary or a news crew,” she says. “We don’t want to intrude on the people who have been hurt bad.

“But we do want to see what’s happened here through the eyes of the women.”

“I have to admit, Ramona has shocked me,” says Graziano. “She’s supposed to be the bitch, but she has been at every donation site on the island.

“This is going to sound funny but Ramona has had a Barbie collection since she was kid. It was her favorite thing.

“She went down to Midland Beach [one of the hardest hits areas on the island] and gave the entire collection to a kid who’d lost all her toys.”

http://m.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/mob_wives_starts_filming_staten_JogNddcazpiTd4C75ER5pL

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Whitey Bulger hospitalized for chest pains

  November 05, 2012    Dapper_Don

One of Boston’s most notorious crime bosses was being treated at Boston Medical Center. James “Whitey” Bulger was rushed there after suffering from chest pains.
Bulger is awaiting trial at a prison on the South Shore. This is the second time he has been taken to the hospital.
The 83 year old arrived to the hospital around 2 a.m. Sunday. A source said Bulger was complaining of chest pains, but his condition is not expected to be life threatening.
People at the Boston Medical Center were surprised to hear Bulger was staying there.
“Maybe he's trying to get a rest, get out of the jail cell for a while,” said a local resident.
Bulger was indicted in 1994 in connection with 19 murders. He was on the lam with his longtime girlfriend Catherine Grieg for 16 years before they were captured in California in 2011. Grieg was sentenced in June to eight years in prison.
Bulger’s trial is expected to begin in March.
Defense attorney JW Carney is trying to get the trial date pushed back to November of next year. Carney said Bulger will take the stand.
Relatives of the alleged victims fear Bulger may not live long enough to go on trial.

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Rizzuto family associate gunned down north of Montreal

  November 05, 2012    Dapper_Don


Joe Di Maulo. (QMI Agency File Photo)
Joe Di Maulo, an associate of the Rizzuto crime family, was assassinated at his opulent home north of Montreal in the latest attack on the crumbling crime empire.
Di Maulo, 72, got two bullets to the head on Sunday evening in Blainville, sources told QMI Agency.
Di Maulo, who was from Calbria in southern Italy, was a Rizzuto adviser and was also the brother-in-law of Raynald Desjardins, one of the few non-Italians to crack the crime family's inner circle.
The murder comes just a few weeks after Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto's return to Canada after serving a prison sentence in the U.S. for his part in a 1981 mob triple-murder.
Di Maulo had apparently switched over to the Rizzuto clan after previous associations with the Cotroni and Violi organizations that the Rizzutos eliminated in the 1980s.
The victim was accused in another triple murder in 1971, but the verdict was overtured on appeal.
Di Maulo was seen at the December 2009 funeral of Nick Rizzuto Jr., Vito's son who was gunned down in west-end Montreal.
Vito Rizzuto has also lost his father, Nick Rizzuto Sr., to an assassination in November 2010.

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Saturday, November 3, 2012

Life Inside The American Mafia For The Mob Wives

  November 03, 2012    Dapper_Don


Her father is a New York mafia bigshot who is now serving time (like just about every other man she knows). So what does Jennifer Graziano do? She makes a reality television show about the wives and girlfriends left at home. Brave woman…
Forty years ago a New York mafia boss called Joe Colombo began attracting a lot of media attention.
He’d come up with the clever idea of spinning police interest in his affairs into an attack on the Italian-American community. He picketed FBI headquarters, gave speeches and appeared on television protesting against this terrible injustice.
But the bosses of the other mafia families were unhappy with his high profile and in June 1971 he was shot.
How times change.
I’ve come to Staten Island, a suburb of New York long popular with Italian Americans, to interview Jennifer Graziano. She is the daughter of a high-ranking mafioso – and the creator of a reality TV show, Mob Wives, starring her own friends and family.
The Mob Wives cast is made up of the partners and daughters (or both) of mafiosi. It offers an irresistible glimpse into a secret world.
And no, I don’t mean the world of protection rackets and crooked politicians – thanks to the likes of Henry Hill (on whose testimony the film Goodfellas was based) and Joe Bonanno (whose autobiography helped Rudy Giuliani bring down the heads of New York’s five families in 1985) we already know plenty about that.
'I wanted to show what this lifestyle is like for the women,’ says Graziano: how it feels to be a powerless bystander in a volatile world, to surrender the right to know your husband’s business and to pick up the pieces and explain it to the children when he’s thrown behind bars.
Graziano filmed her sister and three of her oldest friends – including the daughter of the Gambino family underboss, Sammy ''The Bull'’ Gravano – for the first series. (A second series and a spin-off, Mob Wives Chicago, have followed in America.) Graziano herself stays behind the camera.
The opening sequence shows the four women marching under stormy skies clad in furs and flashing jewellery.
They are glossy-lipped and foul-mouthed with fiery temperaments and complex, contradictory feelings about what they call 'the lifestyle’. What emerges is a cross between The Sopranos and The Jeremy Kyle Show.
The Sopranos, incidentally, is 'very, very true to life,’ says Graziano. 'A lot of the storylines were based on real occurrences. There was one my father [Anthony Graziano] swore was about us. But I’m not going to talk about that.’
Mob Wives owes more than a little to The Real Housewives reality television franchise. It is, in fact, why Graziano created her show. She’d started writing a drama about her life when she saw how popular Housewives was.
'I thought, “I can do that. I have everyone right under my nose.”’
Her sister, Renee, is made for reality television. She’s a self-described drama queen overflowing with one-liners: 'Either play on team Renee, or team go away’; 'I need a break. I have to go fur shopping.’
Other cast members include a gravelly voiced blonde feared for her street-fighting and two quieter, but no less steely women.
A typical episode of Mob Wives involves a perceived slight that snowballs, thanks to much gossiping and several shots of Patrón tequila, into a full-on hair-pulling catfight. Sometimes it ends in hugs all round; other times they have to be dragged apart.
Graziano’s house is being renovated so we meet at her cousin’s place. It is exactly as you’d imagine a gangster’s mansion:
a grey limestone building with carved mahogany doors wide enough to drive a car through and ornamental trees trimmed into spirals dotting the kryptonite-bright lawn. Inside, a gold and white shih-tzu called King Oscar pitter-patters on the tiled floors.
Unlike the surgically enhanced women in the show, Graziano, 39, doesn’t like to be 'all glammed up all the time’.
She is wearing a simple black outfit with just a couple of bling touches: big diamanté hoop earrings and leopard-print stilettos. 'Eighty-five per cent of Staten Island women have had plastic surgery,’ she says with a laugh. She hasn’t – 'yet’.
All of the cast’s fathers and husbands are currently in prison so, reasons Graziano, the show 'isn’t exposing anything that wasn’t already public knowledge. And the girls know what to say and what not to say; we’ve been trained.’
Still, I’m not surprised when she tells me her father was 'very angry’ when he found out about it. 'He didn’t speak to me for a while.’
Another person her father has had cause to be angry with is Gravano, a family friend who turned government informant in 1991, bringing down John Gotti in exchange for a reduced sentence.
'The code of silence went a long time ago,’ says Thomas Reppetto, a former chief of detectives in Chicago, now a Harvard fellow and the author of American Mafia.
'Before, the sentences were light and often the mob could bribe a jury. And if you talked, you were dead – there was no witness protection. Now [since the 1980s], they’re facing 40 years or life. A lot of people talk to save themselves.’
Gravano’s betrayal made his family pariahs overnight. They moved to Arizona, and the return of his daughter, Karen, to Staten Island is the opening drama of Mob Wives.
Gravano himself, a convicted hit-man with 19 known murders to his name, apparently told his daughter 'he didn’t like some of the language Karen used’ in the programme.
Their language, in fact, is as idiosyncratic as their moral code. 'Away’, for example, means in prison.
Carla Facciolo explains her shoulder-shrugging acceptance of her husband’s incarceration thus: 'My father went away, my uncles went away so when Joe went away I was like, “Oh, there goes another one.”’
'Growing up,’ says Graziano, 'I didn’t have any friends outside the lifestyle. Things like your father going away, that’s kind of embarrassing. Within the lifestyle it’s like, “Such-and-such got arrested.” “Oh yeah? What’s the charge for?”’
Is it common for the men to go to prison? 'Yes. This is my father’s third or fourth time in jail during my lifetime. My brothers-in-law, both of them, a couple of times. Karen’s father. Everyone.’
In the second series, one of the cast members turns out to be an FBI informant – the cause of Anthony Graziano’s latest sentence. Graziano takes a deep breath when I bring this up.
'It was the most unexpected person on earth to do that.’
Some of the show’s most difficult and poignant scenes involve the children. When they’re very small, says Graziano, 'we tell them Papa’s in the army’.
But Facciolo decides that, at eight, her son is old enough to know where his father is. Joe Junior’s response? 'I want to go to jail.’
His mother’s stunned, tormented face as she navigates between telling the boy his father’s done bad things and preserving the child’s respect for him is quite agonising.
Fortunately for Graziano’s mother, Jennifer was 18 and her sister Renee 22 the first time Anthony was imprisoned. By then they were well aware of the illicit nature of their father’s business.
The first time Graziano heard the word mafia she was 10.
'It was the first day of school and everyone had to state what their parents did for a living. I was like, “My mother’s a housewife and my father’s a… a…” I didn’t know what to say.
'And the next day this kid said to me, “My dad says your dad’s in the mafia.” And I went home and I asked my dad, “What’s the mafia?” And he said, “What do you mean, 'What’s the mafia?’ Yeah, Mothers and Fathers Italian Association. What about it?”’
Her father was 'a successful mobster. We used to go to school in a limo. We used to get free things all the time, we would always be taken to the front of the line, free dinners in restaurants.’
She remembers a trip to a fairground when she was seven years old. She had 'seven thousand goes at this game but I didnt win so I was walking away.
'Then one of my father’s friends said [to the stallholder], “Give her her prize.” And I said, “I didn’t win.” And he was like, “Yes you did.”
'I was so confused. The guy gave me the biggest prize. I won a load of games that I didn’t win that day. There was a guy behind us carrying all my animals.’
Did people fear her father? 'Yeah, definitely. They feared me as well and my sister – nobody would do anything wrong to us.’
When they grew older, 'Our guy friends who knew my father would tell other guys who were trying to hit on us, “You can’t talk to her.”' Wasn't that annoying? 'It was very annoying!’
Does she feel guilty about the people who might have suffered at her father’s hands? She draws back and sucks in her breath. There’s a long pause.
'Luckily for me, I’ve never heard of any particular person having suffered because of my father.’ She drinks some iced water. 'That’s a tough question. It’s something I really don’t think about.’
The Italian-American community in New York has tended to stick together.
'Most of the Italian guys want Italian women. The girls who aren’t Italian are usually…’ Graziano cups her hand over her mouth and stage-whispers, 'the girlfriends.’
Ah, yes. The mafiosi’s notoriously relaxed concept of fidelity.
'What was the toast? “To our wives and sweethearts!”’ says Reppetto, an Italian American whose own father 'was not on this side of the law’.
Is cheating still so pervasive? Graziano nods.
'They usually have a mistress and a girlfriend,’ adds her cousin. Mob wives are 'more tolerant’ of affairs, says Graziano. Do the men tolerate the women’s affairs, too? 'Oh, no! Are you crazy?’
Graziano is divorced with a 13-year-old son and hasn’t had a mafioso boyfriend since her teens. She understands the appeal: 'They dress well. They carry themselves a certain way. They’re very confident. It was never my thing.
'I mean, I like a tough guy, of course, and I like a sharp-looking guy, but I prefer it if they’re not a mobster.’
Her reasons are not moral; she’d just 'rather not suffer the consequences’: the seized assets, prison visits. 'I’d rather be with a regular businessman.’
There are cultural issues, too, that might put a woman off. When I ask if mafia men do much housework she laughs.
Her cousin cuts in: 'None! What! So! Ever!’ What about childcare? 'Childcare? Childcare? Oh my god! They spend $10,000 to go for a weekend somewhere. Then they don’t see them.’ Graziano smiles. 'They do it their own way.’
Do the women ever get involved in business? 'Business? With the guys?’ Graziano finds this absurd. 'No.’ Did that bother her? 'Yes, it did. You can’t go out unless you ask your husband for money. I said, “Oh, no, I’m not living that way.”’
One of the women, Drita D’Avanzo, has been married for 10 years, eight of which her husband has spent in prison. Her decision to stick with him – they call it 'waiting’ – is a source of continual heartache.
'You’re kind of programmed to wait,’ says Graziano. But in recent years some women have turned their backs on this tradition.
And others. 'Families are becoming more liberal and girls are going to college, and that means they’re meeting guys from outside the lifestyle. It’s not usually approved of.’ She gives a wry smile. 'And I’m sure their new boyfriends tread lightly.’
She intends to steer her son away from the lifestyle, too. 'I want him to be a doctor or a football player or something.’ Is he good at football?
'Yeah. Number-one draft pick every year.’ The boy probably has real talent. On the other hand, as Graziano says, 'My father is still who he is.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9631385/Married-to-the-Mob-Life-inside-the-American-Mafia.html

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Thursday, November 1, 2012

Mob associate spared death penalty after pleading guilty to murder of exotic dancer

  November 01, 2012    Dapper_Don

Ariel Hernandez, an affiliate of South Florida’s Gambino organized crime family, will serve 30 years in prison for the 1999 murder of an exotic dancer whose body was dumped in the Everglades.

Thursday’s guilty plea to second-degree murder means Hernandez, 47, will be spared the death penalty.

Hernandez was part of a South Florida-based Gambino crew that was arrested in a sweeping federal crackdown in 2000.

He is already serving a life prison term — in 2002, a federal jury convicted him of racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, passing counterfeit checks and bank fraud.

A Miami-Dade grand jury in 2004 indicted him for the strangulation murder of Jeanette Smith, 22, of Pembroke Pines, who performed under the stage name “Jade” at Thee Doll House in Sunny Isles Beach.

Prosecutor Michael Von Zamft told a judge Thursday that the state only agreed to waive the death penalty because Hernandez is serving life in federal prison for essentially the same crime. And Smith’s family agreed to the deal to avoid “torture by going through another trial,” Von Zamft said.

Hernandez also pleaded guilty to sexual battery.

According to investigators, the mob members mistakenly believed Smith was a FBI informant.

Hernandez killed Smith in a motel room, then stuffed her in a cardboard box that was discovered near Alligator Alley in West Broward County. He claimed Smith died during rough sex.

The federal investigation also targeted Frederick J. Massaro, of Hollywood, and the “made” man he reported to in the Gambino family, Anthony “Tony Pep” Trentacosta, of suburban Atlanta.

Investigators said Massaro’s crew operated out of the Beachside Mario’s restaurant in Sunny Isles Beach.

Massaro, and others, would offer struggling businessmen, gamblers and others short-term loans at illegal high interest rates. When borrowers fell behind, Massaro would send musclemen like Hernandez and others to collect the debts.

A task force of federal, state and local organized crime agents also discovered an elaborate counterfeit check-cashing scheme.

Massaro and Trentacosta died in federal prison.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/01/3077620/mob-affiliate-pleads-guilty-in.html#storylink=cpy

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Feds deny Whitey Bulger's immunity claims

  November 01, 2012    Dapper_Don

Federal prosecutors are scoffing at James “Whitey” Bulger’s demand for a trial delay while also shooting down the mobster’s “absurd” claim he had immunity while on his alleged murder spree in the 1970s.
In a stinging response, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian T. Kelly accused Bulger’s legal team of playing to the judge in claiming they had too much work to plow through.
He also slams the defense team’s argument Bulger had immunity during his reign of terror on the streets of South Boston.
“Put simply, someone who thought he had immunity would not pay a corrupt FBI agent thousands of dollars in cash, as Stephen Flemmi has admitted that he and Bulger paid to John Connolly,” the feds state in court papers filed tonight.
Prosecutors also argue someone with immunity would not go on the lam for 16 years.
“Someone who thought he had immunity from prosecution would not go on the lam for sixteen years nor would he assume so many alternate identities,” the feds add. “Obviously, James Bulger never once thought he had legal immunity for is crimes and that is why he was a fugitive for so long.”
Bulger’s lead attorney, J.W. Carney, has said he needs more time to sift through 366,000 pages of documents, 100 recorded phone calls, dozens of videos, relating to the FBI’s investigation and its decades-long relationship with Bulger. Carney also said he needs to have 1,038 wiretap conversations transcribed.
He is looking to postpone Bulger’s trial from March to November.
Bulger’s legal team has also confirmed the late U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Jeremiah O’Sullivan is the federal law enforcer they and the mobster claim granted him a license to kill in the 1970s.
The feds say in papers filed tonight that no such deal was ever offered by O’Sullivan.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20221031feds_call_whitey_bulgers_immunity_claim_absurd_attack_call_for_delay_in_march_trial/srvc=home&position=recent

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