As New Jersey seeks to end watchdog mobsters rake in over $400K a year in cushy jobs on the waterfront

As New Jersey seeks to end watchdog mobsters rake in over $400K a year in cushy jobs on the waterfront

  March 13, 2022    Dapper_Don

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Hundreds of longshoremen rake in more than $400,000 yearly in the shadow of a decades-old organized crime racket that thrives in New York Harbor’s sprawling seaports, reports by a little-known law enforcement agency show.

Many of those big earners are affiliated with New York-New Jersey Mafia families, according to federal investigators and the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.

The Waterfront Commission, which since 1953 has cracked down on mob activity and unfair hiring practices at the ports, now faces an existential threat from New Jersey’s political establishment, which is bent on shutting it down.

Garden State Gov. Phil Murphy aims to turn over waterfront policing to the New Jersey State Police starting March 28 — and the move could prompt a lawsuit from New York officials who want more oversight of mob activity in the seaports.

Among the highest-paid New York-area longshoremen is Ralph Gigante Jr., who in 2019 made $423,488 working for Port Newark Maintenance & Repair, according to records obtained by the Daily News via a freedom of information request.

Gigante — the nephew of late Genovese family boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, famed for an insanity act that involved mumbling incoherently as he wandered Greenwich Village in a bathrobe and slippers — is among more than 200 longshoremen in New York and New Jersey’s seaports to benefit from “special deals” that let them put in for up to 27 hours of work a day, seven days a week.

The “special deals” allowing Gigante and others in a select group of longshoremen to file for more hours of pay than there are hours in a week are negotiated in collective bargaining agreements between the New York Shipping Association and the International Longshoremen’s Association — a union known by the initials ILA that represents dockworkers from Maine to Texas.

New York Shipping Association President John Nardi said the special deals are “filled with long-term workers with seniority” and said the association under his leadership “has never encountered anyone involved in organized crime in our operations.”

“Any claim by the Waterfront Commission that there are people working in the port who are associated with organized crime is an admission that the Waterfront Commission has failed to achieve their core mission,” Nardi said.

Yet law enforcement sources said many of the 200-plus longshoremen who earn big money at the port through “special deals” have direct connections to crime families or high-ranking ILA officials.

They include Joseph Queli Jr., the son of convicted Genovese soldier Joseph Queli Sr., who made $471,818 in 2020 working for Maher Terminals, records show. The older Queli was sentenced in 2012 to five years in prison for extortion of dockworkers, from whom he demanded payments called “Christmas tributes.”

The convicted soldier’s brother, Lawrence Queli, works as a foreman with Gigante at Port Newark Repair & Maintenance. He made $403,519 in 2019, records show.

The top two earners at the seaport are Paul Buglioli and Michael Giordano, records show.

In 2020, Buglioli earned $610,889 and Giordano earned $588,315 as timekeepers at Port Newark Container Terminal. For more than a decade, they’ve enjoyed high salaries for work they barely show up for, according to annual reports by the Waterfront Commission.

Buglioli’s late father, Robert, was a former vice president for Ports America at Port Newark who in 2011 was charged by the Waterfront Commission with having ties to Genovese family members like Joseph “Pepe” LaScala and Andrew Gigante, the son of Vincent “The Chin.”

Sometimes dockworkers are prosecuted for failing to show up for work while collecting huge paychecks, as happened to Paul Moe Sr., a former general foreman at APM Terminals in Elizabeth, N.J., who in 2018 was sentenced to two years in prison for salary fraud.

The ILA contract requires workers to show up at least 40 hours a week to be paid for more than 24 hours per day. Investigators found Moe regularly skipped his shifts, but was paid $500,000 a year anyway.

When Moe was locked up, his son, Paul Moe Jr., took over the reins. In 2020, Moe Jr. raked in $498,273 as a mechanic at APM Terminals, where his father worked.

The ILA, which negotiated the big salaries, and its international president, Harold Daggett, have long been accused of having ties to organized crime families.

In the 2000s, Daggett was twice acquitted of alleged organized crime activities. A civil racketeering lawsuit in Brooklyn Federal Court that’s been ongoing since 2005 alleges Daggett is party to the families’ criminal conspiracies.

Daggett, in a 2005 trial, was acquitted for fraud, extortion and other mob-related charges, along with another former ILA executive, Arthur Coffey. During the trial, one of their co-defendants, Genovese captain Lawrence Ricci, was found dead in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey diner.

Through a spokesman, Daggett and ILA officials declined to comment.

Mob schemes at the seaports prosecuted by the feds over the last 15 years include extortion and racketeering.

Despite the decadeslong history of port corruption, New Jersey lawmakers are set on dismantling the Waterfront Commission, which was established as the famed 1954 movie “On the Waterfront” told a story of murder and corruption on the mob-controlled New Jersey docks.

Law enforcement officials say the bistate commission’s crimefighting work isn’t done.

A former prosecutor told The News that shuttering the commission would “allow the mob to continue to rule the waterfront through an unholy alliance between the ILA and the New York Shipping Association.”

“Successful federal prosecutions have revealed the continued influence of the Genovese and Gambino organized crime families over the International Longshoremen’s Association and waterfront businesses,” said a letter filed to the U.S. Supreme Court last June by top FBI Special Agents George Crouch Jr. and Jacqueline Maguire.

Crouch and Maguire wrote in support of a lawsuit by the Waterfront Commission to stop New Jersey politicians’ effort to dismantle it.

Elected officials in Trenton have pushed to close the commission for years. The New Jersey Legislature in 2017 passed a law requiring the state to pull out of the commission, which has one representative from both states.

Former Gov. Chris Christie signed the bill on his last day in office in 2018, prompting a lawsuit from the Waterfront Commission arguing the move was not legal without approval from lawmakers in New York.

The suit was shot down by the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to take up the case, finding that only the State of New York could sue New Jersey over the disagreement.

New York Gov. Hochul says New Jersey can’t by itself dismantle the bistate agency — a position that could lead to a court battle between the two states over the commission’s future.

How far Hochul will go to save the agency isn’t clear. In February, Hochul’s chief counsel, Elizabeth Fine, wrote a letter stating New Jersey’s withdrawal plan “is without effect,” and called the Waterfront Commission “a key investigative partner in both state and federal prosecutions in both New York and New Jersey.”

Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays would not say whether the governor plans to sue New Jersey in federal court to save the commission.

“We have made our position clear and we are evaluating our options,” she said.

Gov. Murphy in December appointed Joseph Sanzari, a construction executive, as the state’s member of the Waterfront Commission, replacing Michael Murphy, a former prosecutor in Morris County, N.J.

Sanzari in 2019 spoke at an ILA convention in Florida, and said ILA President Daggett gave him an honorary membership card to the union’s Local 1804-1.

As a bistate agency, Waterfront Commission investigators can work the New York and New Jersey sides of New York Harbor. The New Jersey State Police would have no jurisdiction on the New York City side of the port — which includes container ports in Staten Island and Brooklyn.

The Waterfront Commission also helps federal and state mob busts outside of the seaports — such as the New Jersey attorney general office’s “Operation Fistful,” which in 2019 resulted in prison sentences for Genovese soldier Vito Alberti, 60, and five associates in a loansharking, gambling and money laundering scheme.

Amid the war over its survival, Waterfront Commission officials have declined to provide documents and data about their operations to the New Jersey State Police.

The letter in February from Hochul’s chief counsel made clear that she believes “there remains the threat of organized crime and corruption at the port.”

Michael Zhadanovsky, a spokesman for Murphy, declined to say whether the New Jersey governor believes the Mafia still corrupts the seaports, but said the New Jersey State Police “is well-equipped to patrol and safeguard our state’s ports.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-new-jersey-seeks-to-shutter-crime-fighting-port-agency-20220314-fcfn2l6qmjfh3e3ljj26g34cy4-story.html

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The mafia still wields influence over the New Jersey ports

The mafia still wields influence over the New Jersey ports

  July 05, 2018    Dapper_Don

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The Huck Finn on Morris Avenue in Union is an unremarkable, typical Jersey diner, where the usual three-egg omelets and burgers share the menu with Greek salads, tuna sandwiches and, of course, meatloaf.
But it has a more notorious claim to fame. In November 2005, authorities made a gruesome discovery in the trunk of a silver Acura that had sat undisturbed for weeks in the back of the diner’s big parking lot.
Alerted by a foul odor and the swarming of flies around the car, police found the decomposing body of Lawrence Ricci—an alleged Genovese crime family capo with hooks into the waterfront, who had disappeared weeks earlier in the midst of his own racketeering trial.
Face down with a grey sweatshirt over his head, somebody had put a bullet in his brain.

Lawrence Ricci

Connections with organized crime

The death of Ricci marked the last known mob hit tied to the waterfront, say investigators, and the murder has never been solved.
But more than a decade later, law enforcement officials say organized crime still stalks the docks.
Since January 2017, records show at least 10 dockworkers have had their registrations revoked, or had their applications denied by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor because of friendships or associations with those deemed to have organized crime connections.
Another four applications for registration were withdrawn or surrendered without an administrative hearing, and one individual seeking a restoration of his registration was denied.
Among those cases included a $350,000-a-year longshoreman barred over his alleged friendship with an admitted loan shark who authorities say was connected to a Colombo crime family bribery scheme involving debris removal from the World Trade Center site.
Just last month, another longshoreman who supervised the delivery and maintenance of refrigerated containers was banned from the port by the Waterfront Commission, citing his alleged ties to Pasquale “Patty” Falcetti, Sr., a reputed member of the Genovese crime family.
Falcetti was convicted of defrauding the employee pension and welfare fund for longshoremen, noted the commission, which also concluded that the banned supervisor had a friendship with Andrew Gigante, the son of the late crime boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante.

Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's 1954 film On the Waterfront.

The influence remains

The movie classic On the Waterfront told a story of crime and corruption on the docks of New York and New Jersey. It followed a series of Pulitzer Prize winning stories by reporter Malcolm Johnson in The New York Sun that exposed the racketeering and violence endemic on the piers, and led to major reforms aimed at ridding the port of mob influence.
More than 60 years later, Jan Gilhooly, a former special agent in charge of the Secret Service in New Jersey who served on the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, said the mob’s influence remains, despite a litany of criminal cases in recent years.
“The port is a perfect setting for organized crime and it always has been,” said Gilhooly. “There’s so much money involved.”
He added the influence remains even after prosecutors make arrests.
“That’s the way organized crime works. One part goes away, and another tentacle takes its place,” he said.

A man identified by law enforcement officials as Stephen Depiro leaves the federal courthouse in Newark in 2011, after at least 15 people were arrested in New Jersey in connection with a waterfront corruption scheme involving the collection of "Christmas tribute" money exacted from dockworkers.

Kickbacks and racketeering

According to court filings, Ricci had reported to the late New Jersey mobster Tino Fiumara, a feared Genovese member with a ruthless reputation, who had long controlled the rackets on the waterfront. After Ricci turned up dead, he was replaced by Stephen Depiro, said the FBI in a 2010 affidavit.
The affidavit said Depiro “took over handling for Fiumara and the Genovese crime family extortion payments at Christmas from port union members, loansharking at the ports, illegal gambling at the ports, kickbacks for giving union-related jobs to individuals, and kickbacks from vendors for favorable treatment by port unions.”
Depiro ultimately pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges for his role in a decades-long scheme to extort Christmastime tribute payments from ILA members. He was charged with taking a cut out of the annual year-end bonuses longshoremen receive based on the number of containers moved through the Port of New York and New Jersey, and sentenced in 2015 to three years in prison.
But his arrest and conviction did not represent a knockout blow to the mob on the waterfront, said former U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, whose office prosecuted Depiro and two others tied to the shakedown scheme.
“You always hope that every case makes an incremental improvement, but guys like that don’t get wiped out in a day,” said Fishman, who said he believes organized crime still wields “considerable influence” at the port.

Nighttime on the waterfront.

Whack-a-Mole...

A similar assessment came from Robert Stewart, former head of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force in New Jersey, who traces the entrenchment of organized crime at the port to the 1940s, first with the Irish gangs and then with the Mafia.
The operations at the port are less violent, and far more lucrative, and it has only gotten more sophisticated, he said.
“You’re not seeing anything. There’s no bodies. But that suggests a higher level of ability to work,” observed Stewart.

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"You're not seeing anything. There's no bodies..."

— Robert Stewart, former head of the Organized Crime Strike Force in N.J.

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Tossing down a series of dossiers one-by-one onto a table as he read the names of close relatives of known organized crime figures with high-paying port jobs, Walter Arsenault, the executive director of the Waterfront Commission, asserted that “the mob is very much a presence at the port.”
At a hearing before a New York legislative committee in June, Arsenault volunteered a 15-page list of ‘made’ men from the seven Mafia families in New York and New Jersey, who he said all had relatives at the port. “You can't throw a stone at the port without hitting the son, the daughter, the son-in-law, the nephew, the cousin, the godson of a ‘made’ guy,” he told the committee.
Whenever someone is removed for having mob ties, he complained the spot is immediately filled by another family member. “It’s like Whack-a-Mole,” he said, the arcade game that players seldom beat.

https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/at_jerseys_ports_the_shadow_of_the_mob_never_goes.html#incart_2box_nj-homepage-featured

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ILA union linked to Genovese crime family hit by lawsuit

ILA union linked to Genovese crime family hit by lawsuit

  February 22, 2013    Dapper_Don

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A former shipping terminal operator in Newark and Brooklyn is suing the International Longshoremen’s Association for $160 million, charging that leaders of the 65,000-member dockworkers’ union are organized crime associates who forced the company out of business after it refused to go along with their racketeering schemes.
The suit names ILA President Harold Daggett, union subordinates, and several other members of the local shipping community as defendants in the case, asserting that they formed a “Waterfront Group,” that was linked to organized crime, and engaged in extortion, bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and other forms of racketeering.
“Defendant Daggett is and at all relevant times has been, associated with organized crime,” the suit states.
One of the allegations in the suit by American Stevedoring Inc., is that ILA leaders told the company’s chairman, Sabato Catucci, in August 2011 that if he refused to pull up stakes and leave the port he would be carried out “in a box.”
Charges that the ILA is a corrupt, mob-influenced organization are not.
Dozens of ILA officials have been convicted or pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, many of those cases cited as examples in the suit by American Stevedoring. The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created in the 1950s to keep the mob off the docks, following revelations dramatized in the Marlon Brando film, “On the Waterfont.” The commission is still active, and among several law enforcement agencies, along with the U.S. Attorneys offices in New Jersey and New York, that continue to bring criminal and civil cases against ILA officials and others in recent years.
Harold Daggett himself was indicted on racketeering charges along with two fellow longshoremen and a reputed Genovese Crime Family capo in 2005. Daggett and two others were acquitted, after he broke down on the witness stand and insisted he himself had been the target of mob threats. But a fellow ILA official, Albert Cernadas, pleaded guilty in the case. The reputed mobster, Lawrence Ricci, was acquitted in absentia, before his body was found in the trunk of a car.
The suit by American Stevedoring says Daggett, 66, of Sparta, began pressuring Catucci at least as far back as 2005, while Daggett was still president of ILA Local 1804-1 in North Bergen, six year before he was elected the ILA’s international president.
“In or about March 2005, Defendant Daggett began to openly express his desire for American to cease operations in Waterfront Commerce,” the suit states. “He wanted to see Sabato thrown out of the port sector, as he regarded Sabato to be a ‘troublemaker’ who ‘did not know how to give the ILA what it wanted.’”
A spokesman for the union, Jim McNamara, declined to comment on that or any other assertion in the suit, which was filed Feb. 7 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan under federal anti-racketeering law.
American Stevedoring did eventually leave the port and the terminal operating business, signing “concession agreement” on Sept. 26, 2011, which turned over control of its Port Newark and Red Hook, Brooklyn terminals to a company known as Red Hook Container Terminal LLC. But the suit said the agreement was only signed under pressure from the ILA, which had staged a walk-out against the company three days earlier, and vowed to continue the strike until American bowed to its demands.
The suit, which was first reported by the Journal of Commerce, charges that Red Hook Container Terminal was acceptable to the ILA as a successor because it was open to the kind of no-show jobs and other corrupt practices the union demanded. The president of Brooklyn-based RHCT, Michael Stamatis, declined to comment on the allegation.
“I have not seen the complaint,” Stamatis said when reached by phone.
American Stevedoring is no longer in the terminal operating business, though it still exists and has plans to launch another venture soon, said Matt Yates, a company official. Yates said it took the company and its lawyers 17 months to file the suit after signing away its terminal operations because of the complexity of the case. He said company officials did not fear retaliation for finally taking the union to court.
“Obviously, we’re mindful that we’ve taken a significant action,” Yates said. “But we cannot and will not be deterred from the appropriate course of action because of concerns like that.”

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/02/terminal_operator_sues_longsho.html

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Reputed North Jersey mobster Stephen "Beach" Depiro a family man of contradictions

Reputed North Jersey mobster Stephen "Beach" Depiro a family man of contradictions

  February 14, 2011    Dapper_Don

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Stephen "Beach" Depiro has been described by federal authorities as a major player in the New Jersey underworld, a veteran mobster who has risen through the ranks and now oversees the highly lucrative rackets along the North Jersey waterfront.
The balding, 5-foot-7 Union County resident is, according to one underworld source, a "flashy" wiseguy out of the John Gotti, celebrity gangster mode, favoring fancy cars, nice clothes, and a manicured look.
But court documents filed by his lawyer as Depiro, 55, tries to win release on bail after his arrest last month offer a different picture of the man the FBI has listed as one of the highest-ranking Genovese crime family soldiers in the state.
The contradictions are stark and fascinating:
Depiro, according to his lawyer, goes to Mass every day. But authorities allege that he has used violence and intimidation to enforce the mob's control of gambling, loan-sharking, and labor racketeering along the waterfront.
In a letter to the court supporting Depiro's request for bail, three priests and a deacon at his church - St. Theresa's in Kenilworth - cited "his sincerity" and his "participation in pastoral programs" and added that "some of our parishioners . . . told us they are inspired by his prayerful attitude and kindness." Yet the FBI says he was closely aligned with the late Tino Fiumara, one of the most feared mobsters in New Jersey, and is a top associate of Michael Coppola, a mob capo and suspected hit man who was once part of a murder team known as "The Fist."
His criminal record indicates he's never been convicted of a violent crime. But federal prosecutors say he took over the mob's interests along the docks after Lawrence Ricci, a Genovese crime family soldier, was killed in 2005. Ricci was shot in the head, his body left in the trunk of a car parked behind a North Jersey diner.
Depiro is the lead defendant in a pending racketeering case in federal court in Newark that details the mob's alleged control of the New Jersey waterfront.
He has been held without bail since his arrest on Jan. 20, but his New York attorney, Sarita Kedia, has filed a motion seeking his release pending trial.
Prosecutors have opposed the motion.
Court filings in that dispute have provided the wildly divergent descriptions of the reputed wiseguy.
From law enforcement's perspective, Depiro is a gangster who has sworn an oath "to serve the ends of the Genovese . . . family above all else."
And he has done that, they allege, through the extortion of International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) dockworkers who are forced to kick back to the mob in order to work; through a lucrative illegal sports-betting operation; and through a loan-sharking and extortion racket tied to the gambling enterprise.
He has also consistently associated with mob figures, they say, even while free on bail or under supervised release and despite court-ordered prohibitions.
Depiro was one of several crime family members, prosecutors say, who helped Coppola live in hiding for more than a decade as he avoided arrest in a murder case.
And since at least 2005, they allege, Depiro "has managed and controlled the crime family's waterfront rackets," which some estimate generate more than $1 million annually for organized crime.
Defense documents, on the other hand, paint Depiro as a family man in the most honorable sense of that term, and as someone who cares deeply for his loved ones.
He is, according to those filings, a man who sought court permission while under house arrest last year to visit his mother's grave on Mother's Day; to take his elderly aunt to the cemetery on another occasion and then join her for lunch; to visit his father's grave on Father's Day; and to fete family members celebrating birthdays and graduations at such restaurants as La Campagna in Millburn, La Griglia in Kenilworth, and the posh Stella Marina in Asbury Park.
His fiancée and self-described "life partner," Michele Caruso - they have been together 15 years, she wrote in a letter to the court - said Depiro had been "a second father to my son, from toddler to high school graduate."
She called him a "dedicated and personable man," a "role model in our family" who is "capable of handling any situation with thoughtfulness and maturity."
That, of course, is not the picture emerging from snippets of wiretapped conversations that are now part of the racketeering case in which Depiro and 14 associates have been charged.
In those conversations, Depiro is picked up discussing the extortion of the ILA locals with both Fiumara, who died in September, and Coppola, who was jailed last year after his conviction in another racketeering case.
The kickbacks from dockworkers alone, prosecutors say, generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for the mob each year.
Prosecutors also cite other conversations in which a top associate threatened a deadbeat gambler with a baseball bat if he didn't come up with the money owed to Depiro's gambling operation.
"He needs his hands to work," reputed mob enforcer Richard "Dickie" Dehmer said of his target. "He ain't working no more for a while."
FBI surveillance reports also detailed Depiro's meeting on several occasions with Fiumara at a Long Island restaurant and associating with mobster Daniel Dellisanti, whose criminal record includes convictions for drug dealing and murder, prosecutors said.
Whether Depiro goes to Mass every day, and even if he is a caring son and father figure, authorities argued that he was "the most recent successor" to Fiumara and Coppola and head of a "violent crew that has controlled the crime family's port-related rackets for decades."
He has, they pointed out, no legitimate source of income. Yet he clearly lives well, dining at fine restaurants and driving a Jaguar and a Mercury Mountaineer.
He has, according to his own lawyer, been approached several times by FBI agents who wanted him to cooperate. It was, apparently, an offer he could refuse.
"Each time, the FBI agents found Mr. Depiro in the same church, where he . . . attends services each morning," the lawyer wrote.
Prosecutors say Depiro's mob associations and the charges outlined in a 53-count indictment returned last month support the argument that he is a danger to the community and should be denied bail.
But not everyone in the community agrees.
The priests and deacon at the Church of St. Theresa, in a letter written Jan. 27, conceded that the charges Depiro faces are "serious."
But, they wrote, "through the years of consistently seeing him in church and from our countless conversations with him, we all agree to the fact of his sincerity and his desire to live his life consistent with what our Christian faith teaches."

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20110214_Reputed_North_Jersey_mobster_Stephen__Beach__Depiro_a_family_man_of_contradictions.html?viewAll=y

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Feds Mob Takedown Includes Union Crooks

Feds Mob Takedown Includes Union Crooks

  January 27, 2011    Dapper_Don

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There are few things quite like a mass arrest to serve as a reminder of the Mafia’s continuing presence in American life. The mob roundup last Thursday morning, the largest in U.S. history, at once underscores the large dent that the Justice Department has been making in organized crime and how deeply entrenched so many organized crime operations have been. Some 800 FBI agents, U.S. marshals, state police and New York City cops fanned out and arrested nearly 120 wise guys and associates named in an 82-page, 16-count indictment for acts of murder, racketeering, money-laundering, loan-sharking, extortion and other offenses going back three decades. The takedown includes crime soldiers from each of New York’s “Five Families,” plus the DeCavalcante (Northern New Jersey) and Patriarca (New England) families. A number of the arrestees were heavily involved in labor corruption.
The operation was as swift as it was efficient. Most of the arrests had been made by 8 A.M., with most suspects being held at Fort Hamilton Army Base in Brooklyn, N.Y. until their arraignment in Brooklyn federal court. By the end of the day, 119 of the 127 persons named in the indictments were arrested. Another five already were in prison for separate offenses, while three more were at large. Nearly three dozen arrestees were full-fledged members of New York’s Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families; indeed, the entire leadership of the Colombos and two top Gambinos were taken into custody. But good news shouldn’t instill false public confidence, caution federal agents. “Arresting and convicting the hierarchies of the five families several times over has not eradicated the problem,” remarked Janice K. Fedarcyk, head of the New York FBI office. It is “a myth,” she emphasized, to call the mob a thing of the past.
The bust, the result of years of investigation, is even bigger than the one three years ago, known as Operation Old Bridge, that arrested more than 60 Gambino crime family members and associates, virtually all of whom eventually pleaded guilty (the operation also netted a couple dozen arrests in Italy, in cooperation with that country’s authorities). Federal prosecutors and agents worked in tandem to conduct electronic surveillance and develop key witnesses, especially Bonanno soldier Salvatore Vitale, who until his 2003 arrest and eventual guilty plea had a hand in 11 murders; his testimony helped put away more than 50 mobsters and associates. The latest batch of arrestees included individuals possessed of little compunction about using violence to protect their flow of funds or exaggerated sense of honor. Attorney General Eric Holder, who traveled to Brooklyn to announce the arrests, said: “Many of them (mobsters) are lethal. Time and again they have shown a willingness to kill.” Similarly, Bruce Mouw, the former FBI agent who led the probe of now-deceased Gambino boss John Gotti back in the Eighties, also noted, “(Y)ou still have five families [in New York], you have captains, you have crews; they still control a lot of labor unions, they still control a lot of the construction industry, different companies; still commit crimes; and according to the indictments, they still kill people.”
Control over labor unions remains on the radar screen. Dozens of unions in the New York City and New England can be said to have some connection with one or more of the latest arrestees. A complete flow chart and accompanying discussion would be worthy of a monograph. What follows, then, is a summary of the most flagrantly mobbed-up unions, each likely familiar to regular readers of Union Corruption Update.
Cement and Concrete Workers Local 6A. An affiliate of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), Local 6A for many years has operated as a Colombo crime family branch office. And the branch managers are the Scopos. Patriarch Ralph Scopo was a Colombo made man who ran the union for years until his 1986 conviction based on evidence gathered by the President’s Commission on Organized Crime. His sons, Joseph and Ralph Jr., inherited the family business. Joseph served as president of Local 6A until his 1993 murder, part of a bloody Colombo civil war between members loyal to acting boss Victor “Little Vic” Orena and those loyal to imprisoned boss Carmine “Junior” Persico (the Persico faction – what was left of it – prevailed). Reputed Colombo street boss Anthony Russo was charged last Thursday in that killing.
Ralph Scopo Jr. has proven himself something less than a model of virtue. He pleaded guilty in 2005 to extortion, managing to avoid prison by convincing the judge he had only two years to live. He must have had an excellent medical plan because he’s still alive. Federal prosecutors allege Scopo handed out jobs to cronies and took a cut from Local 6 benefit funds. In addition, back in the late Eighties he created the so-called “coffee boy” scheme in which the crime family would receive cash kickbacks from lunch orders taken at union work sites. Scopo the Younger wasn’t above using muscle to make his point. In 2007, for example, when he learned that a Ground Zero reconstruction site foreman had complained about the union being under mob control, he had a chat with the foreman, bringing along Colombo capo Dino Calabro and his own son Ralph III for good measure. After the “discussion,” Ralph Jr. admitted to Calabro that he brought along his son just in case the foreman “needed to be physically assaulted.” Ralph Scopo III, not among those arrested last week, is now president of Local 6A, although the union since last December has operated under LIUNA trusteeship.
Teamsters Local 282. Though under federal receivership for more than 15 years, the arrests last week of Gambino crime family soldier William Scotto and an associate, trucking industry executive Anthony Licata, brought home just how deep the Lake Success, L.I.-based union had been in hock to the Gambinos. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 282 represents roughly 4,000 truckers and related workers in New York City and Long Island who deliver concrete and building materials to construction sites. It also has a long pedigree of Mafia involvement. John O’Rourke, union president during 1931-65, was a close associate of Lucchese crime bosses Johnny Dioguardi and Anthony “Ducks’ Corallo. Later on, the Gambino family asserted control during the successive Local 282 reigns of John Cody (1976-84) and Robert Sasso (1984-92), both of whom ended up in federal prison on racketeering charges. Frank DeCicco, a Gambino made man, delivered payoffs from union bosses to crime bosses until he died in a 1986 car bombing; Genovese and Lucchese enforcers, enraged that Gotti had seized power the previous year by whacking Gambino boss Paul Castellano, had done the deed.
With Gotti at the helm, Local 282 became more of a Gambino profit center than ever. Aided by underboss Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, Local 282 funneled about $1.2 million a year to mob coffers. Here is how a federal circuit court summarized the process in 2000, in its rejection of the appeal of former President Sasso and four other defendants:
At the pertinent times, the individual defendants were officers of Local 282. Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, by means of threats of physical, economic and financial harm, including work stoppages, the individual defendants unlawfully obtained cash payments from representatives of companies whose employees were members or were eligible to be members of Local 282. Such companies were assured of lax enforcement of their agreements with Local 282 or were allowed to operate in the absence of a collective bargaining agreement without experiencing labor unrest.
Gravano, whose eventual flipping for the prosecution was crucial in securing Gotti’s conviction in 1992, long had been a ruthless enforcer for Gotti, committing or ordering 19 murders, any number related to Local 282 business. The corruption didn’t end with Gotti’s conviction or Gravano’s subsequent move to Arizona. Federal prosecutors filed a civil RICO suit, winning in 1995 an agreement with the local and the parent Teamsters under an agreement for court-supervised monitoring. More than 50 local officials and shop stewards thus far have been forced from their posts due to links to organized crime. Evidence of corruption continues in fits and starts. One of the defendants in the 2008 Justice Department Gambino takedown was Staten Island, N.Y. trucking executive Joseph Spinnato, who allegedly skimmed scheduled Local 282 health and pension fund contributions by underreporting hours worked. The arrests of Scotto and Licata last week served notice of additional unfinished business.
Longshoremen Local 1235. For decades, the Genovese crime family ran the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1235, which represents port employees working the docks in Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey. The arrest of former local President Vincent Aulisi on conspiracy and extortion charges last Thursday was an appropriate coda. According to prosecutors, Aulisi, now 78, and several Genovese associates forced port workers to hand over thousands of dollars in “tribute payments” each year around Christmas bonus time. The ILA Local 1235 extortion racket had gone on for at least three decades until federal prosecutors dismantled it.
This was not the only problem area. In September 2005, then-President Albert Cernadas pleaded guilty to benefit fraud; two months earlier he settled a civil racketeering suit against him in Brooklyn federal court whose defendants had included ILA International President John Bowers. Another alleged co-conspirator in the criminal case, Genovese capo Lawrence Ricci, a witness during the fall 2005 criminal trial, suddenly went missing for weeks – until he turned up dead in the trunk of a parked car at a New Jersey diner. Another Genovese mobster, Michael “Mikey Cigars” Coppola, had spent more than a decade on the run rather than face a trial for the 1977 murder of fellow mobster John “Johnny Cokes” Lardiere. Captured in August 2008, he pleaded guilty to fugitive charges and is serving a 42-month sentence. A federal grand jury in Brooklyn, meanwhile, indicted him for racketeering related to ILA Local 1235 business deals and the Lardiere murder. He went on trial in July 2009. While found not guilty of murder, he was convicted of extortion and flight charges, and in December of that year was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
This is not a comprehensive guide to mob-union links. In the world of organized crime, the dots have a way of connecting in unexpected places. That’s why this latest round of arrests probably won’t be the last. If the recent past is any guide, many arrestees will plead guilty. In exchange for a lighter sentence, some will provide information of use in prosecuting additional suspects. Nobody is suggesting this should become a witch hunt or that the accused should be denied due process. But if evidence is sufficient to convict, defendants should pay a price regardless of how many years ago their offenses took place. Mafia financial rackets, enforced with murderous violence, has corrupted a whole range of American institutions. Labor unions are among them.

http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2011/01/26/feds-mob-takedown-includes-union-crooks

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Genovese Family New Jersey Head And Next In Line To Become Boss Dies

Genovese Family New Jersey Head And Next In Line To Become Boss Dies

  September 21, 2010    Dapper_Don

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His mob associates called him "Shark Eyes."

In a business filled with mean men, Tino Fiumara, a mobster with Hudson County roots, had a reputation for being a particularly scary one.

"He was a real murderer," said once source about Fiumara yesterday. "His eyes were black...He was very intimidating."

The boss for the Genovese crime family in New Jersey, and considered next in line to take control of the crime family, Fiumara died Thursday in New York from natural causes, authorities said yesterday. He was 71.

Also known as "The Greek" and "T," Fiumara controlled labor rackets on the New Jersey waterfront, as well as illegal gambling, loan-sharking, extortion and narcotics.
A powerful figure in New Jersey organized crime for three decades, Fiumara operated out of a Hoboken social club in his younger days, a source said.

Fiumara, who lived in Long Island before he died, was convicted of racketeering and extortion in Manhattan federal court in 1979 and convicted of extortion in Newark federal court in 1978.

He was linked by law enforcement to numerous murders, including the piano-wire strangulation of an associate and the shooting of a childhood friend during a dispute.

Fiumara was released on parole in 1999, but federal agents locked him up again for associating with known felons and he was finally released from prison in 2005.

Image via WikipediaUntil his conviction, authorities viewed Fiumara as next in line to head the Genovese family, the dominant mob organization in New Jersey and New York. In 1983, State Police Lt. Col. Justin Dintino called Fiumara "a callous killer who has resorted to violence with little provocation."
In 2005, Genovese mobster Lawrence Ricci's decomposing body was found in the trunk of a car in New Jersey and it was said Fiumara approved the hit because Ricci refused to plead guilty in an ongoing racketeering trial.

"Nobody was more feared than Tino," the source said of Fiumara. "They all were feared, don't get me wrong, but you didn't want to get called in by Tino."

Fiumara's attorney, Salvatore Alfano of Bloomfield, said yesterday that Fiumara died from "a very fast-moving cancer."

"I've represented the man for over 10 years and he was always a gentleman with me," Alfano said. "I am deeply saddened by his loss."

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2010/09/a_top_new_jersey_mobster_with.html

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North Jersey Genovese Enforcer on Trial

North Jersey Genovese Enforcer on Trial

  July 06, 2009    Dapper_Don

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Genovese Captain Tino Fiumara via Wikipedia

A reputed North Jersey mob figure who spent more than a decade on the run from a murder investigation was once part of a notorious Genovese crime family hit team known as “The Fist,” according to government documents filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
Michael Coppola, who goes on trial this week in a racketeering-murder case, was part of a Mafia assassination squad that “performed murders ordered by the Genovese family administration” in the late 1970s and 1980s, prosecutors said in a motion filed last month.
One of those murders, the 1977 killing of mobster John “Johnny Coca Cola” Lardiere, is part of the pending racketeering case against Coppola, who fled New Jersey in 1996 as state authorities sought a DNA sample they hoped would link him to the long-unsolved gangland slaying.
Described in a second government motion as a seasoned Mafia enforcer, Coppola served as “the right-hand man to Tino Fiumara, a powerful and violent . . . crime family captain [and] part of the Genovese family administration,” even while living in hiding, prosecutors allege.
Fiumara was labeled an unindicted coconspirator in the pending case.
Coppola, 63, is facing racketeering and conspiracy charges that include the Lardiere murder and the systematic extortion of an International Longshoremen’s Association union that works the New Jersey waterfront.
The labor-racketeering charge stems from an ongoing federal investigation in which authorities allege that the Genovese and Gambino crime families have used violence, intimidation, and extortion to corrupt the ILA and control the docks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and North Jersey.
A civil suit filed by the U.S. Justice Department alleges the mob generates millions of dollars through a labor-racketeering scheme that one law enforcement expert said echoes the 1954 movie classic On the Waterfront.
While not part of the current case, federal authorities also allege Coppola and Fiumara, the Genovese crime family’s reputed New Jersey boss, orchestrated the 2005 slaying of Lawrence Ricci, an ILA official then on trial for racketeering.
Jury selection in the Coppola case begins tomorrow in Brooklyn federal court. For security reasons, prosecutors have asked that the members of the panel be chosen anonymously.
The trial is expected to include hundreds of secretly recorded, wiretapped conversations that allegedly tie Coppola to the corruption of ILA Local 1235, based in Newark.
In one phone conversation Coppola is heard bragging about how the mob controlled a former union president.
“We were right next to him all the time during this whole thing,” Coppola is quoted as saying.
The indictment alleges that since 1974, the Genovese crime family has had its hooks into Local 1235. During that time, investigators say, the mob arranged no-show jobs for associates, extorted shipping companies by threatening labor slowdowns and work stoppages, and received hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in tribute payments from the union itself.
Two underworld informants, George Barone, a mob soldier and former ILA official, and Thomas Ricciardi, an admitted Lucchese crime-family hit man, have provided information about Coppola, according to court documents, and are expected to testify in the pending trial.
Identified only as “CW” (cooperating witness) in several pretrial motions, Ricciardi has told authorities that Coppola boasted about the Lardiere killing, which took place in the parking lot of a Somerset County motel on Easter Sunday 1977.
Lardiere was serving a sentence for contempt at the time, but had been granted a two-day prison furlough. Authorities said the Genovese crime family ordered him murdered because, while in prison, he had gotten into a fight with and shown disrespect to a high-ranking mobster who was also in jail.
Coppola became a “made” or formally initiated member of the Genovese organization after carrying out the hit, authorities say.
The shooting, which Ricciardi has said Coppola confirmed to him when they first met in 1983, has taken on folklore status in the New Jersey underworld.
Coppola allegedly approached Lardiere in the parking lot of the Red Bull Inn, pulled out a gun, and tried to open fire. But the gun jammed.
Lardiere laughed and said, “What are you going to do now, tough guy?”
With that, the story goes, Coppola reached for another gun he had in an ankle holster and shot Lardiere five times.
Prosecutors also had hoped to use testimony from Ricciardi to link Coppola to the 1988 slaying of Ray “The Barber” Barberio, who was killed in the Downeck section of Newark. Barberio was slain, authorities say, for failing to pay a loan-sharking debt he owed to the Genovese organization.
Ricciardi told authorities that while having drinks with Coppola a few nights before the murder, Coppola told him he was “on the road,” an underworld phrase that meant he was actively assigned to a murder. He said Coppola also showed him the gun he was carrying.
After Barberio was killed, Ricciardi said, two other mobsters told him Coppola was the hit man.
Prosecutors argued that the slaying and Coppola’s willingness to discuss his “work” with Ricciardi should be admitted because it demonstrates a pattern of criminality and demonstrated Coppola’s relationship with Ricciardi.
A federal judge, however, responding to a motion filed by Coppola’s lawyer, has barred any testimony about the Barberio hit, ruling that it might unduly prejudice the jury.
It was also Ricciardi who told authorities that Coppola, along with Fiumara and several others, comprised the Genovese hit team known as “The Fist.” He said the group was based in the Downeck section of Newark, a once predominantly Italian American neighborhood where, in the 1980s, several crime families maintained clubhouses.
Coppola spent more than 10 years on the run before he was arrested on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in March 2007. Authorities say he and his wife, using aliases and aided by the Genovese organization, lived in an apartment there and in another in San Francisco during the decade that New Jersey authorities searched for him.
The DNA test, which was administered after he was apprehended, proved inconclusive.
A murder charge against Coppola stemming from the Lardiere killing is still pending in Somerset County.
Coppola and Fiumara remain targets of an ongoing federal investigation into the Ricci murder, which, authorities allege, was carried out by Coppola on Fiumara’s orders.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20090706_Trial_for_accused_Mafia_hit_man.html

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