Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 23

Fed's Use Force Against Louie's "Skywalker"

Look: Skywalker

Louis J. DiNunzio, 29, of Medford, and his co-defendants pleaded guilty to selling "Skywalker,” a forceful strain of marijuana. He's out on bail.

Federal prosecutors are seeking the force of a 21-month prison sentence for the reputed made member  of the ailing New England Mafia and his cohorts.

In US District Court in Boston, the Fed's filed a sentencing request on Wednesday; DiNunzio pleaded guilty in September to marijuana distribution conspiracy.





What appears not to have been mentioned is Skywalker is one of the chief marijuana strains used as a painkilling aid for cancer patients, as Leafly writes:

Skywalker is a well-rounded indica-dominant hybrid that helps patients knock out pain and relax into sleep after a long day of battling the Dark Side.

One reviewer added:

As a person with 100% disability from combat-related PTSD, I can tell you that this is the first strain that I have found that has actually decreased my reliance on PTSD meds the doctors give me. Since I started using Skywalker, I no longer need to pop a Xanax when I am feeling stressed-out....

Xanax is one of the most addictive drugs in the benzodiazepine class; that says a lot because all benzos are addictive and include dangerous long-term withdrawal symptoms, worse even than any opiate. Pot is NOT ADDICTIVE.

DiNunzio is the son of Anthony DiNunzio and the nephew of Carmen “The Cheese Man” DiNunzio, who both allegedly led the New England Mafia before serving prison sentences.

Louis DiNunzio and three others conspired from July 2013 to February 2014 to import the high-grade marijuana from California to Massachusetts, where it was to be sold, prosecutors charged. The 23-pound “Skywalker" shipment had a street value pegged at about $20,000, prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Prosecutors said Louis DiNunzio has a prior conviction for running an illegal gambling table at the Sons of Italy social club in Boston. He also worked at his uncle’s North End cheese shop, which the FBI had bugged during its investigation of former street boss Carmen DiNunzio.

Several people recently wrote letters to the sentencing judge in support of him, including his grandfather, Michael Uva, who described DiNunzio as “a good person that made a mistake and wants a better future.”

From The Weed Blog:

Check out the Skywalker marijuana strain on THCFinder.Com, and see what people had to say about Skywalker, and how Skywalker affects various ailments.

What the Mafia's Been Doing Lately....

New York’s mob families are truly living undercover these days, in a manner that almost seems to hearken back to the pre-Apalachin years.

An interesting report was quietly published following Vincent Asaro's startling acquittal that took a look at how the mob is trying to "invisibly" earn today.
“They don’t want the notoriety they once had,” observed Inspector John Desenopolis, Commanding Officer of the NYPD’s Organized Crime Investigation Division, known as OCID, told the PIX report.  “These are secret societies that have learned,” Desenopolis added. “We were able to put people away for long periods of time,” the Inspector said. “They realized, and learned, how to adapt.”


The Mafia "radically" modified its ways of earning. It stopped killing people, for the most part. (There's always an exception to the rule.) As a result, new mob prosecutions have certainly slowed down.

This alone is a marked change from the 1980s and 1990s especially, when it seemed mobsters were ducking and firing and dying on a daily basis, as the Andrew DiDonato and Bath Avenue Crew stories illustrate. For example, from DiDonato's story, typical for that time and place:

Little Nicky supported his crew, wanted the Luchese member dead. To get around attempts by a Luchese capo (Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso) to save the guy in a sit down, the word was put out that whoever the Luchese gunman had killed, he had not been associated with Little Nicky and his crew. 

Corozzo, who had a lot on his plate, kept his eye on how his crew handled this particular piece of work. 

"If this happened to a friend of Lenny [DiMaria] and me, the guy that did it would be dead already,"Little Nicky told Andrew one night when he was annoyed the hit was taking too long.
The "mark" was finally shot down, but as fate would have it, Andrew wasn't with the crew on the night they got him. 

That killing was part of a larger ongoing battle between Little Nicky's crew and the Luchese family crew. But the hit was more significant in that it sent a message to other crews and crime families: Little Nicky had a crew of killers under his auspices.

All that said, however, it does not mean that the mob can't muster up some muscle when needed.

“Traditional organized criminals in New York City are still engaged in violent crimes like extortion,” Inspector Desenopolis said. “They’re involved in gambling, prostitution, drug sales and pill diversion.” meaning the illegal sale of prescription medication, versus straight-up narcotics, like cocaine and heroin, which the mob has sold since the beginning. I've heard it was once a requirement. 
Also assisting the mob is the unending war on "terror," which has reduced the FBI's focus on the Mafia in New York.

“There’s no question the FBI has downgraded the importance of going after the wiseguys in New York,” Jerry Capeci, the don of mob scribes, said.

 “They used to have five squads to go after the five crime families. They now have two.”



Bonanno mobsters in 1981...

Still, the FBI did a damn good job prior to 9/11. “In the last 15 to 20 years, a lot of top mobsters have flipped and cooperated,” Capeci noted. “All of these factors have combined to make the mob much less influential than it ever was before.”
At the same time, the mob rebuilds and finds new profit centers.

“We also see some mortgage fraud cases,” Inspector Desenopolis said. “And Internet gambling.”
The mob will make a buck wherever there's illicit demand is the bottom line. Make pot illegal, they'll just sell more of something else. Maybe fake virgin olive oil, which supposedly has a higher markup than the most addictive narcotic available: Heroin.

Jimmy Lanza: West Coast's Preeminent Mobster

Preorder by clicking book cover.

James "Jimmy the Hat" Lanza certainly earned his place among the pantheon of Cosa Nostra's wiliest bosses as will be revealed in Lanza's Mob by Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo, Esq., a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco (who lived for years in Queens, New York). Available for pre-order now, the book will be released on July 31, 2016.

Lanza truly knew the old-school ways of hiding in plain sight. While there's much evidence that he was one of the attendees of the doomed 1957 Apalachin summit, he successfully avoided arrest unlike so many others. "It would have been child’s play for Lanza to evade the New York state police, as he apparently did," as the author writes below.

The book is based on extensive research by the author (who knows her stuff, folks!) and includes how major events such as the Castellammarese War impacted the Lanza crime family. The book details some lucrative and probably generally unknown scams from which the Lanza's reaped huge profits -- such as from the highly profitable black market item olive oil during World War II. The Lanzas also had a largely undisclosed connection to the Los Angeles crime family.

NOTE: "John" is not Lanza's first name -- and he lived until the ripe old age of 103; reports that say differently are incorrect.




I'd personally like to thank Christina -- I asked her A LOT of questions, and she provided insightful and complete answers to them. I'd be glad to help her promote this book in any way that I can. Those of you with a strong interest in the American Mafia no doubt will want to read the book when it's finally available next summer. But below is something that should tide you ever for a little while anyway....


What's a nice girl like you doing writing about violent criminals! LOL! But honestly I'm curious what led you to write about the Lanza crime family? 

I’m not that nice a girl! :) Seriously, I grew up in Kew Gardens, Queens in the 1970s and back then, the Mafia seemed to be both hidden and everywhere at the same time. Everyone I knew who had a business either paid protection or it was assumed that they did. The funny thing about this was that for years I saw it as something that was completely normal. After all, if a mobster can’t protect you, his argument that you should pay him to do so is fatally weakened, but it’s a lot harder to make this pitch to tax collectors. 
I first read Jimmy “The Hat” Lanza’s name on an exhibit at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas back in 2012. At the time, my first reaction was “Who the hell is that?” and the quest to find out the answer led to the book. 


It appears many people don't know there was a mafia family in places like San Jose and San Francisco.... why do you think that is?

As you’ll see in the book, I think the relative anonymity of the Lanzas in San Francisco and San Mateo and the Marino/Cerrito families in San Jose is a reflection of how good these men were at their jobs. After all, the goal of a mobster isn’t to go out in a blaze of glory through a gunfight or indictment, but to die rich, free and in their own bed, ideally with their sons and daughters in legitimate occupations. James Lanza managed that in spades and lived for more than a century in the bargain, so he may very well be the most successful mobster you’ve never heard of.

Lanza from 1968 photo.

Can you give us an outline of topics covered in your book... for example do you include info about or other West Coast families and events, like Bugsy in Las Vegas, etc.

The book starts out in Castelbuono, Sicily, where the Lanzas originated from (although they had a different last name at the time). From there, we learn about their time in New York and Brooklyn before relocating to the West Coast.

Since history doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I also talk about the other major events that helped shape both the Mafia in general and the Lanzas in particular.

For example, even though it was mostly fought elsewhere, the outcome of the Castellammarese War and its aftermath –especially the Commission-imposed overall limitation on the number of made members a family could have—affected the Lanzas as it did other families and may have caused them to flub some big opportunities, such was when Francesco failed to get involved on either side with the San Francisco waterfront strike of 1934.

Also, it’s hard to understand the point of some of the Lanza Family’s allegedly favorite scams and relationships unless you’re aware of what was going on locally and across the country at the time. For example, until I did the research for this book, I had no idea of what a hot black market item olive oil was during World War II and its immediate aftermath. Similarly, the fact that the Lanzas have a connection with the DeSimone family by marriage is a meaningless detail unless you’re also aware that Lanza’s sister-in-law was Frank DeSimone’s cousin and that Frank would go on to succeed Jack Dragna as the boss of the Los Angeles Family.


Was there ever a point where the Lanza family gained national attention, via the media or a committee like the Kefauver? What were some of the rackets they focused on?

James Lanza first appeared on the FBI’s radar in the late 1950s after the debacle at Apalachin. After J. Edgar Hoover slapped him with a “Top Hoodlum” designation, the San Francisco office of the bureau pressured Washington for authorization to illegally bug Lanza’s office, which they received in 1959. Although the electronic surveillance was supposedly terminated in 1965, the tapes were leaked to Look Magazine four years later, which used some of them in an expose accusing then-San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto of being closely associated with both Lanza and several organized crime figures from San Jose.

Alioto sued for libel and the case dragged on for twelve years—and while he won what amounted to a token judgment at the end, all of it went to his law firm’s creditors. Still, the case is important because the deposition transcripts of James Lanza and his brother Anthony are the only Q & A we have of them that hasn’t been summarized or redacted to ribbons by the FBI.

I devote an entire chapter to the Kefauver Committee’s hearings in San Francisco, but because they uncovered just how corrupted the SFPD was at the time—and consequently, how impotent the District Attorney was. Although Lanza wasn’t called as a witness, the Committee spent a lot of time reviewing the Nick DeJohn case, which did involve Tony Lima, one of Lanza’s predecessors as boss.

In terms of rackets, on the legitimate side Lanza sold insurance, invested in rental properties and attempted to organize the crab fishermen at Fisherman’s Wharf into an association. On the less than legitimate side (though James Lanza wasn’t personally involved with all of these) the Family was long known for agricultural scams, whether it was pushing cottonseed oil as “olive oil” or falsifying bills of sale and altering the scales used to measure grape purchases from farmers. Of course, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the FBI believed—but could never prove—that they were also trafficking heroin and morphine in glass tubes inside olive-oil barrels.

I believe Frattianno and one of his relatives flipped and testified against the Lanza's and CERRITO's, etc, but I don't think his testimony did major damage. I'm curious, did the Lanza's ever produce a rat who gave information about the family's inner workings?

As Ovid Demaris points out in The Last Mafioso, Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno and James Lanza were at each other’s throats during most of Fratianno’s stay in San Francisco. From my own perspective, most of the trouble came from Fratianno being completely ignorant of how organized crime developed in San Francisco during the 1920s and 1930s and the one cardinal rule that emerged from it: do what you want as long as dead bodies don’t pile up in parked cars or on the street.

Every time organized crime in San Francisco violated this rule, they paid for it in police crackdowns that were progressively more damaging to their business operations. In contrast, Lanza saw how the McDonough Brothers went from saloon keepers to inventing the bail bond industry to a criminal empire of their own in just a few decades by corrupting the police force and keeping their operations out of public view.

Fratianno was more of a man of action—and unfortunately, that action often led to publicity, which Lanza avoided like Superman ducks Kryptonite. In the end of course, Lanza had the last laugh—because of his refusal to interact with or supervise Fratianno (who, after all, was technically under the control of either the Outfit or the Los Angeles Family and not one of Lanza’s soldiers), there wasn’t much Fratianno could say to federal prosecutors about Lanza that would have hurt him.


The Aliotos were a prominent political family in San Francisco at the time of the Lanzas - was there any connection?

Joseph Alioto was never formally involved with the San Francisco Family. That said, Joseph’s father and James Lanza’s father were friends and business partners in the Exposition Fish Grotto on Fisherman’s Wharf. In addition, Joseph was related to John Alioto, the boss of the Milwaukee family in the 1950s and 1960s.

While that doesn’t make Joseph a made guy or associate by implication, I do find his assertions that there was no Mafia in San Francisco during his mayoralty more than a bit much. Joseph’s meeting with Fratianno is a matter of record and there are multiple indications from the FBI wiretaps on James Lanza that Joseph represented Lanza before an L.A. Grand Jury investigating organized crime, though both men denied it later (and claimed the representation was by a criminal defense attorney in Joseph’s building who was—conveniently—by this time dead). Given that the Lanza wiretaps include him complaining about Joseph’s bill, I’m inclined to believe the FBI wiretaps on this issue.

Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo, Esq.


Alioto won a lawsuit against a publication (is that where Cerrito got the idea?) But my Spidey sense tells me he took payoffs. Without corruption the mob can't operate.

Alioto’s lawsuit against Look outlasted both his political career and the magazine’s existence. While he did better than Joe Cerrito in that he technically won the case, ultimately he didn’t get a penny for his efforts as all the money went to his law firm’s creditors.

Traditionally, corruption in San Francisco from organized crime has tended to flow from operators (the guys running the speakeasy, bookie joint, brothel, illegal abortion clinic in the era before Roe v. Wade, or whatever) to the police, rather than to the mayor or other politicos. Moreover, in Alioto’s case, by the time he became mayor he was already independently wealthy and didn’t need to solicit or receive bribes from anyone.


When would you say the Lanza family was at its pinnacle in terms of power?

I think their peak was from the late 1930s and the end of the Booze Wars in San Francisco (where the Lanza family were the last men standing) until the aborted Apalachin meeting in 1957. Post-Apalachin, the Family’s outlook became primarily defensive, which—while it ensured Lanza’s personal survival—sharply limited their life cycle as an organization.


Most observers conclude that San Francisco and San Jose were represented on the Commission via the Outfit in Chicago. Lanza did have a relationship with Joe Bonnano as well, but given Bonnano’s issues with the Commission that may have been more of a hindrance than a help. The Lanza family went to Apalachin (I believe the son went with his father's successor and Cerrito)... any color you can give us as to what happened. I believe they evaded arrest?

James Lanza repeatedly claimed—both under oath and otherwise—that he wasn’t present at Apalachin, but the evidence from the time, including but not limited to hotel records, indicates otherwise. Moreover, given that the meeting was open to the leader of any Family who wanted to come and that one of the agenda items is believed to have been how the Mafia would divide up territories for the flood of heroin that would enter the United States via the French Connection, Lanza’s family had interests that would be affected by the meeting and it seems hard to imagine a circumstance where he wouldn’t have been there.

As for how he escaped arrest, it would be speculation—but given his ability to hide in plain sight before Apalachin, it would have been child’s play for Lanza to evade the New York state police, as he apparently did..


What strikes you as most intriguing about the founder of the Lanza family?


Francesco Lanza was born Francesco Proetto—and only changed his name and that of his family by a legal petition in Sicily in June 1926 through the assistance of his brother. Why he did it then or at all is a mystery, though I have some possible explanations in the book. 

Are there any members of the Lanza family left in San Francisco? Is there any mafia still there or anywhere nearby?

Lanza’s direct descendants are all in legitimate occupations and, as far as I can tell, are no longer in the Bay Area. While I’d never be so bold as to proclaim the Mafia completely defunct in San Francisco since James Lanza’s death in 2006, it does seem that the role they filled in the criminal ecosystem has been largely supplanted by other organizations and groups, from ethnic mafias like the Tongs to street gangs.


So what the heck happened with this DeJohn character from Chicago? What do you think happened that led to his death.... and why did some of his personal items show up in a New York pawn shop?

I spend an entire chapter on DeJohn’s death and the aftermath, so I think you’ll like the book! DeJohn was an Outfit gunsel with some prospects (he was one of the people who was rousted by the Chicago P.D. after the murder of Jake “Machine Gun” McGurn, Al Capone’s old enforcer) but his ambition outran his skills, which is fatal in this line of work. After he tried to take over the Grande Cheese Co., (beyond the profits that would come from cornering the local supply of cheese in the Midwest, food companies offer wonderful opportunities to smuggle and distribute contraband) and failed, DeJohn apparently got on the bad side of Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik and fled to the Bay Area. Although he lived quietly under an assumed name for a short time, the lure of getting back into the rackets was too strong, especially since it must have seemed to him that San Francisco was completely unorganized in comparison to Chicago.

DeJohn’s ultimate murder seems to have been a result of his attempt to muscle in on local narcotics rackets. Still, it was a messy hit—and veteran Mafia drug dealer Sebastiano Nani’s uncharacteristically stupid decision to pawn DeJohn’s jewelry while retaining the deposit tickets on his person didn’t help matters. Ultimately, it took a highly irregular decision by then-District Attorney Pat Brown (who would go on to be Attorney General and Governor of California, as well as sire Jerry Brown, our present governor) to save the day for Nani and his co-defendants at their trial.


Do you know of any mob boss of today who has any illegal interests in California/West coast?

Although the Italian Mafia has experienced increased competition from other ethnic mafias and different organizations like street gangs and I’m not personally aware of a Family in the West that’s currently active in the way the Five Families in the East, I think only a fool would declare the Mafia completely eradicated in California and elsewhere.

So long as state and federal legislators continue to ignore the advice of former FBI agent Edwin Atherton (whose 1930s report blew open the lid on corruption in the SFPD) to the City of San Francisco to legalize gambling and sex work across the board, the Mafia and its criminal competitors will continue to have a rich vineyard of opportunities to harvest, limited only by their manpower, wisdom, balls and the countervailing efforts of law enforcement.

Jimmy Lanza Among Mob's Wiliest of Bosses

"The Hat" Lanza in the middle, with soldiers Robert Salerno, left, and Carmine Pagano, right, circa April 1987.


James "Jimmy the Hat" Lanza certainly earned his place among the pantheon of Cosa Nostra's wiliest bosses as will be revealed in Lanza's Mob by Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo, Esq., a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco (who lived for years in Queens, New York). Available for pre-order now, the book will be released on July 31, 2016.

Lanza truly knew the old-school ways of hiding in plain sight. While there's much evidence that he was one of the attendees of the doomed 1957 Apalachin summit, he successfully avoided arrest unlike so many others. "It would have been child’s play for Lanza to evade the New York state police, as he apparently did," as the author writes below.

The book is based on extensive research by the author (who knows her stuff, folks!) and includes how major events such as the Castellammarese War impacted the Lanza crime family. The book details some lucrative and probably generally unknown scams from which the Lanza's reaped huge profits -- such as from the highly profitable black market item olive oil during World War II. The Lanzas also had a largely undisclosed connection to the Los Angeles crime family.




I'd personally like to thank Christina -- I asked her A LOT of questions, and she provided insightful and complete answers to them. I'd be glad to help her promote this book in any way that I can. Those of you with a strong interest in the American Mafia no doubt will want to read the book when it's finally available next summer. But below is something that should tide you ever for a little while anyway....


What's a nice girl like you doing writing about violent criminals! LOL! But honestly I'm curious what led you to write about the Lanza crime family? 

I’m not that nice a girl! :) Seriously, I grew up in Kew Gardens, Queens in the 1970s and back then, the Mafia seemed to be both hidden and everywhere at the same time. Everyone I knew who had a business either paid protection or it was assumed that they did. The funny thing about this was that for years I saw it as something that was completely normal. After all, if a mobster can’t protect you, his argument that you should pay him to do so is fatally weakened, but it’s a lot harder to make this pitch to tax collectors. 
Preorder by clicking book cover.
I first read Jimmy “The Hat” Lanza’s name on an exhibit at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas back in 2012. At the time, my first reaction was “Who the hell is that?” and the quest to find out the answer led to the book. 


It appears many people don't know there was a mafia family in places like San Jose and San Francisco.... why do you think that is?

As you’ll see in the book, I think the relative anonymity of the Lanzas in San Francisco and San Mateo and the Marino/Cerrito families in San Jose is a reflection of how good these men were at their jobs. After all, the goal of a mobster isn’t to go out in a blaze of glory through a gunfight or indictment, but to die rich, free and in their own bed, ideally with their sons and daughters in legitimate occupations. James Lanza managed that in spades and lived for more than a century in the bargain, so he may very well be the most successful mobster you’ve never heard of. 

Can you give us an outline of topics covered in your book... for example do you include info about or other West Coast families and events, like Bugsy in Las Vegas, etc.

The book starts out in Castelbuono, Sicily, where the Lanzas originated from (although they had a different last name at the time). From there, we learn about their time in New York and Brooklyn before relocating to the West Coast.

Since history doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I also talk about the other major events that helped shape both the Mafia in general and the Lanzas in particular.

For example, even though it was mostly fought elsewhere, the outcome of the Castellammarese War and its aftermath –especially the Commission-imposed overall limitation on the number of made members a family could have—affected the Lanzas as it did other families and may have caused them to flub some big opportunities, such was when Francesco failed to get involved on either side with the San Francisco waterfront strike of 1934.

Also, it’s hard to understand the point of some of the Lanza Family’s allegedly favorite scams and relationships unless you’re aware of what was going on locally and across the country at the time. For example, until I did the research for this book, I had no idea of what a hot black market item olive oil was during World War II and its immediate aftermath. Similarly, the fact that the Lanzas have a connection with the DeSimone family by marriage is a meaningless detail unless you’re also aware that Lanza’s sister-in-law was Frank DeSimone’s cousin and that Frank would go on to succeed Jack Dragna as the boss of the Los Angeles Family.

Lanza from 1968 photo.


Was there ever a point where the Lanza family gained national attention, via the media or a committee like the Kefauver? What were some of the rackets they focused on?

James Lanza first appeared on the FBI’s radar in the late 1950s after the debacle at Apalachin. After J. Edgar Hoover slapped him with a “Top Hoodlum” designation, the San Francisco office of the bureau pressured Washington for authorization to illegally bug Lanza’s office, which they received in 1959. Although the electronic surveillance was supposedly terminated in 1965, the tapes were leaked to Look Magazine four years later, which used some of them in an expose accusing then-San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto of being closely associated with both Lanza and several organized crime figures from San Jose.

Alioto sued for libel and the case dragged on for twelve years—and while he won what amounted to a token judgment at the end, all of it went to his law firm’s creditors. Still, the case is important because the deposition transcripts of James Lanza and his brother Anthony are the only Q & A we have of them that hasn’t been summarized or redacted to ribbons by the FBI.

I devote an entire chapter to the Kefauver Committee’s hearings in San Francisco, but because they uncovered just how corrupted the SFPD was at the time—and consequently, how impotent the District Attorney was. Although Lanza wasn’t called as a witness, the Committee spent a lot of time reviewing the Nick DeJohn case, which did involve Tony Lima, one of Lanza’s predecessors as boss.

In terms of rackets, on the legitimate side Lanza sold insurance, invested in rental properties and attempted to organize the crab fishermen at Fisherman’s Wharf into an association. On the less than legitimate side (though James Lanza wasn’t personally involved with all of these) the Family was long known for agricultural scams, whether it was pushing cottonseed oil as “olive oil” or falsifying bills of sale and altering the scales used to measure grape purchases from farmers. Of course, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the FBI believed—but could never prove—that they were also trafficking heroin and morphine in glass tubes inside olive-oil barrels.

I believe Frattianno and one of his relatives flipped and testified against the Lanza's and CERRITO's, etc, but I don't think his testimony did major damage. I'm curious, did the Lanza's ever produce a rat who gave information about the family's inner workings?

As Ovid Demaris points out in The Last Mafioso, Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno and James Lanza were at each other’s throats during most of Fratianno’s stay in San Francisco. From my own perspective, most of the trouble came from Fratianno being completely ignorant of how organized crime developed in San Francisco during the 1920s and 1930s and the one cardinal rule that emerged from it: do what you want as long as dead bodies don’t pile up in parked cars or on the street.

Every time organized crime in San Francisco violated this rule, they paid for it in police crackdowns that were progressively more damaging to their business operations. In contrast, Lanza saw how the McDonough Brothers went from saloon keepers to inventing the bail bond industry to a criminal empire of their own in just a few decades by corrupting the police force and keeping their operations out of public view.

Fratianno was more of a man of action—and unfortunately, that action often led to publicity, which Lanza avoided like Superman ducks Kryptonite. In the end of course, Lanza had the last laugh—because of his refusal to interact with or supervise Fratianno (who, after all, was technically under the control of either the Outfit or the Los Angeles Family and not one of Lanza’s soldiers), there wasn’t much Fratianno could say to federal prosecutors about Lanza that would have hurt him.


The Aliotos were a prominent political family in San Francisco at the time of the Lanzas - was there any connection?

Joseph Alioto was never formally involved with the San Francisco Family. That said, Joseph’s father and James Lanza’s father were friends and business partners in the Exposition Fish Grotto on Fisherman’s Wharf. In addition, Joseph was related to John Alioto, the boss of the Milwaukee family in the 1950s and 1960s.

While that doesn’t make Joseph a made guy or associate by implication, I do find his assertions that there was no Mafia in San Francisco during his mayoralty more than a bit much. Joseph’s meeting with Fratianno is a matter of record and there are multiple indications from the FBI wiretaps on James Lanza that Joseph represented Lanza before an L.A. Grand Jury investigating organized crime, though both men denied it later (and claimed the representation was by a criminal defense attorney in Joseph’s building who was—conveniently—by this time dead). Given that the Lanza wiretaps include him complaining about Joseph’s bill, I’m inclined to believe the FBI wiretaps on this issue.


Alioto won a lawsuit against a publication (is that where Cerrito got the idea?) But my Spidey sense tells me he took payoffs. Without corruption the mob can't operate.

Alioto’s lawsuit against Look outlasted both his political career and the magazine’s existence. While he did better than Joe Cerrito in that he technically won the case, ultimately he didn’t get a penny for his efforts as all the money went to his law firm’s creditors.

Traditionally, corruption in San Francisco from organized crime has tended to flow from operators (the guys running the speakeasy, bookie joint, brothel, illegal abortion clinic in the era before Roe v. Wade, or whatever) to the police, rather than to the mayor or other politicos. Moreover, in Alioto’s case, by the time he became mayor he was already independently wealthy and didn’t need to solicit or receive bribes from anyone.



Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo, Esq.

When would you say the Lanza family was at its pinnacle in terms of power?

I think their peak was from the late 1930s and the end of the Booze Wars in San Francisco (where the Lanza family were the last men standing) until the aborted Apalachin meeting in 1957. Post-Apalachin, the Family’s outlook became primarily defensive, which—while it ensured Lanza’s personal survival—sharply limited their life cycle as an organization.

In their region, did they defer to another larger family in terms of larger issues. For example the mafia commission, the Lanza's had no seat. I assume Chicago represented them?


Most observers conclude that San Francisco and San Jose were represented on the Commission via the Outfit in Chicago. Lanza did have a relationship with Joe Bonnano as well, but given Bonnano’s issues with the Commission that may have been more of a hindrance than a help. The Lanza family went to Apalachin (I believe the son went with his father's successor and Cerrito)... any color you can give us as to what happened. I believe they evaded arrest?

James Lanza repeatedly claimed—both under oath and otherwise—that he wasn’t present at Apalachin, but the evidence from the time, including but not limited to hotel records, indicates otherwise. Moreover, given that the meeting was open to the leader of any Family who wanted to come and that one of the agenda items is believed to have been how the Mafia would divide up territories for the flood of heroin that would enter the United States via the French Connection, Lanza’s family had interests that would be affected by the meeting and it seems hard to imagine a circumstance where he wouldn’t have been there.

As for how he escaped arrest, it would be speculation—but given his ability to hide in plain sight before Apalachin, it would have been child’s play for Lanza to evade the New York state police, as he apparently did..


What strikes you as most intriguing about the founder of the Lanza family?


Francesco Lanza was born Francesco Proetto—and only changed his name and that of his family by a legal petition in Sicily in June 1926 through the assistance of his brother. Why he did it then or at all is a mystery, though I have some possible explanations in the book. 

Are there any members of the Lanza family left in San Francisco? Is there any mafia still there or anywhere nearby?

Lanza’s direct descendants are all in legitimate occupations and, as far as I can tell, are no longer in the Bay Area. While I’d never be so bold as to proclaim the Mafia completely defunct in San Francisco since James Lanza’s death in 2006, it does seem that the role they filled in the criminal ecosystem has been largely supplanted by other organizations and groups, from ethnic mafias like the Tongs to street gangs.


So what the heck happened with this DeJohn character from Chicago? What do you think happened that led to his death.... and why did some of his personal items show up in a New York pawn shop?

I spend an entire chapter on DeJohn’s death and the aftermath, so I think you’ll like the book! DeJohn was an Outfit gunsel with some prospects (he was one of the people who was rousted by the Chicago P.D. after the murder of Jake “Machine Gun” McGurn, Al Capone’s old enforcer) but his ambition outran his skills, which is fatal in this line of work. After he tried to take over the Grande Cheese Co., (beyond the profits that would come from cornering the local supply of cheese in the Midwest, food companies offer wonderful opportunities to smuggle and distribute contraband) and failed, DeJohn apparently got on the bad side of Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik and fled to the Bay Area. Although he lived quietly under an assumed name for a short time, the lure of getting back into the rackets was too strong, especially since it must have seemed to him that San Francisco was completely unorganized in comparison to Chicago.

DeJohn’s ultimate murder seems to have been a result of his attempt to muscle in on local narcotics rackets. Still, it was a messy hit—and veteran Mafia drug dealer Sebastiano Nani’s uncharacteristically stupid decision to pawn DeJohn’s jewelry while retaining the deposit tickets on his person didn’t help matters. Ultimately, it took a highly irregular decision by then-District Attorney Pat Brown (who would go on to be Attorney General and Governor of California, as well as sire Jerry Brown, our present governor) to save the day for Nani and his co-defendants at their trial.


Do you know of any mob boss of today who has any illegal interests in California/West coast?

Although the Italian Mafia has experienced increased competition from other ethnic mafias and different organizations like street gangs and I’m not personally aware of a Family in the West that’s currently active in the way the Five Families in the East, I think only a fool would declare the Mafia completely eradicated in California and elsewhere.

So long as state and federal legislators continue to ignore the advice of former FBI agent Edwin Atherton (whose 1930s report blew open the lid on corruption in the SFPD) to the City of San Francisco to legalize gambling and sex work across the board, the Mafia and its criminal competitors will continue to have a rich vineyard of opportunities to harvest, limited only by their manpower, wisdom, balls and the countervailing efforts of law enforcement.

Nine New Charges Filed Against Mafia Boss

Leonardo Rizzuto
UPDATED: 
Nine new criminal charges were filed against Leonardo Rizzuto today at the Montreal courthouse, right before his bail hearing was to commence.

Rizzuto was identified by law enforcement as one of two bosses of the Montreal Mafia family previously run by his father, Vito, who died in December 2013. Leonardo was arrested on Nov. 19 as part of Projects Magot and Mastiff, a joint investigation into drug trafficking in the city.

Rizzuto was charged with drug trafficking and gangsterism, which was introduced into Canada's Criminal Code in 1997 as a way to apply longer sentences against organized crime members. Specifically it was designed following the bloody street battles between the Hells Angels and The Rock Machine MCs for dominance over Quebec.



Of the new charges filed against him, one count alleges Rizzuto was in possession of cocaine, but not a large enough quantity for drug trafficking. The other eight charges are related to two seized firearms — a Browning semi-automatic pistol and a Walther semi-automatic pistol.

One charge specifically references a prohibited and loaded firearm found in Rizzuto’s home for which he had no permit.

Stefano Sollecito, 48, Rizzuto's co-boss in the crime family, also had his bail hearing today.

Evidence heard during today's hearing was placed under a publication ban -- meaning the media wasn't privy to it.

The hearing is expected to run through Wednesday regarding Rizzuto, 46, and Sollecito, 48.

Both face two charges related to Project Magot, a Sûreté du Québec-led investigation into drug trafficking in Montreal. Charges are for participating in a conspiracy to traffic in drugs between Jan. 1, 2013, and Nov. 16 of last year.

They were arrested in November and identified as co-leaders of the Rizzuto family at the time.Rizzuto’s father, Vito, was the Montreal Mafia's boss for around two decades, up until his death in December of 2013 of cancer.

Leonardo Rizzuto, who as an attorney is a member of the Quebec Bar Association, was convicted twice in the past for impaired driving. He was sentenced to14 days in prison in 1995.

Sollecito, the son of Mafia leader Rocco Sollecito, 67, was arrested in 2001, as part of a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation dubbed Project Oltre. The investigation, based in Ontario, uncovered a group that had distributed tens of thousands of ecstasy pills in Canada.

Sollecito ended up with a four-year prison term in Project Oltre, after being convicted of drug trafficking and the illegal possession of a firearm.

According to a Parole Board of Canada decision made in 2003, while serving his sentence, Sollecito was “perceived as a person who had power over other inmates.”

Both Rizzuto and Sollecito have been detained since Nov. 19.

Eighteen were charged in Project Mastiff, seven of which have since been released. The other nine people have been detained and charged as part of the same indictment as Rizzuto and Sollecito. Their bail hearings are scheduled for next week. Forty-six people were arrested in both Projects Magot and Mastiff since Nov. 19.

Two men, José McCarthy, 39, and Patrick Williams, 41, are still at large.

Bail Hearings Begin for Montreal Mafia Bosses

Leonardo Rizzuto
At the Montreal courthouse, a bail hearing began today and is expected to run through Wednesday regarding Leonardo Rizzuto, 46, and Stefano Sollecito, 48, the alleged leaders of the Montreal Cosa Nostra group.

Both face two charges related to Project Magot, a Sûreté du Québec-led investigation into drug trafficking in Montreal. Charges are for participating in a conspiracy to traffic in drugs between Jan. 1, 2013, and Nov. 16 of last year.

They were arrested in November and identified as co-leaders of the Rizzuto family at the time.

Rizzuto’s father, Vito, was the Montreal Mafia's boss for around two decades, up until his death in December of 2013 of cancer.

Leonardo Rizzuto, who as an attorney is a member of the Quebec Bar Association, was convicted twice in the past for impaired driving. He was sentenced to14 days in prison in 1995.

Sollecito, the son of Mafia leader Rocco Sollecito, 67, was arrested in 2001, as part of a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation dubbed Project Oltre. The investigation, based in Ontario, uncovered a group that had distributed tens of thousands of ecstasy pills in Canada.

Sollecito ended up with a four-year prison term in Project Oltre, after being convicted of drug trafficking and the illegal possession of a firearm.

According to a Parole Board of Canada decision made in 2003, while serving his sentence, Sollecito was “perceived as a person who had power over other inmates.”

Both Rizzuto and Sollecito have been detained since Nov. 19.

Eighteen were charged in Project Mastiff, seven of which have since been released. The other nine people have been detained and charged as part of the same indictment as Rizzuto and Sollecito. Their bail hearings are scheduled for next week. Forty-six people were arrested in both Projects Magot and Mastiff since Nov. 19.

Two men, José McCarthy, 39, and Patrick Williams, 41, are still at large.

Twist in $500M Mob-Linked Boston Art Heist

Museum with empty frame awaits stolen painting's return.

Robert Gentile, "an aging, unremarkable wiseguy from Hartford [Connecticut]" grew from obscurity into infamy after the widowed wife of a dead longtime associate told the FBI that Gentile was linked to a half-billion heist that occurred some 25 years ago.

He'd been an off-the-radar mobster with a criminal history stretching back to the 1950s when he was suddenly publicly identified as the FBI's chief suspect in one of the world's most perplexing crimes, the "officially unsolved" robbery of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in March of 1990. Experts to this day puzzle over why the robbers took certain artworks and not other more-valuable pieces. The Hartford Courier ran a story breaking the news.

A new wrinkle in this story was recently revealed, when a published report detailed how the FBI accumulated additional incriminating information about Gentile -- namely, his own words, recorded by two snitches.



No one's ever been convicted of this crime, though the FBI says it knows the identifies of the robbers, though the agency will not ID the men in public. The Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI’s Boston Field Office continue to investigate the robbery in partnership with the museum, which still offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the artworks' recovery. Here's the FBI's announcement and list of the 13 stolen titles. Also see the FBI's dedicated webpage.

One of the Biggest Mob Heists Ever?
Two men dressed as police officers entered the Gardner Museum and overpowered and tied up security guards and stole 13 paintings valued at around $500 million. In addition to Degas sketches and Rembrandt works, they took a Vermeer painting, one of only 36 in existence.

But then earlier this week, on January 3, a twist in the story came to light via The Hartford Courant, which revealed there's more than the widow's testimony that's incriminating Gentile.

"What put Robert "The Cook" Gentile at the center of the mystery and why authorities have pursued him relentlessly..." stems from evidence obtained by a "longtime Gentile associate who agreed to work with the FBI."

The turncoat "told agents that Gentile has acted for years as if he had access to the missing art, has talked about selling it and, for a time, kept what appeared to have been a lesser-known Gardner piece — a 200-year-old gilded eagle — at a used car lot he owned in South Windsor."

Sebastian "Sammy" Mozzicato delivered the astonishing account of Gentile and the world's best known stolen art to the FBI a year ago, after agents, dangling a $5 million reward as a lure, enlisted him and a cousin as secret cooperators in the recovery effort. Investigators have suspected for years — and Gentile has denied for just as long — that he is withholding information about the art.

Agents recruited the cousins, Gentile associates for decades, as participants in a sting that agents hoped would shake loose enough information to locate the art.

An attempted sting op failed because Gentile grew suspicious.



During one operation, Gentile was recorded discussing the paintings with an undercover FBI agent posing a pot dealer. The agent asked Gentile why he didn't simply return the paintings and pocket the $5 million reward.

"The answer, based on Mr. Gentile's own words, was he felt that the feds were going to come after him anyway, even if he was going to turn in the paintings for the $5 million reward," a prosecutor said.

During the same conversation, Gentile wanted an interest in the dealer's pot business and was "furious" when he was declined

"Do you know who I am?" he queried the agent, noting he could have people killed.

The two cousins still managed to catch him on a recording discussing sales transactions regarding multiple paintings for millions of dollars.

"Mozzicato said he believes Gentile has had access to the art since the late 1990s — which is when investigators suspect he was part of a Boston gang that gained control of the art from whoever stole it."


Gentle is in jail for what some consider a trumped-up criminal charge. 

Mozzicato's account is consistent with what the FBI had heard from him. Other evidence and/or testimony further corroborates what he told the FBI, according to the report.

Proceedings in an unrelated case also revealed that Gentile "specifically suggested" that he has two of the stolen  paintings. Still not one of the stolen paintings was ever recovered.

Gentile, 80, is not enjoying his golden years, needless to say. He has numerous health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, and requires a wheelchair.

He's also been in jail for the past five years awaiting a trial over drugs and weapons charges.

Gentile denies all criminal wrongdoing but did agree with some of the widow's information. For example, Gentile and his wife did like to occasionally drive to Portland, Maine, from their Manchester home to indulge in Gentile's passion for good New England chow (and food in general. (A mobster "foodie," his nickname is "The Cook").

Gentile agreed that he and his wife had met with Robert Guarente and his wife Elene for a shore dinner. Guarente was an experienced bank robber who departed prison in 2002 and relocated to Maine.from Boston.

A Mutually Beneficial Relationship
Gentile and Guarente met in the 1970s at a used-car auction and became close friends. They also became something like a two-man crime wave, according to allegations. Supposedly they were even inducted into the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra family together in the same ceremony, federal prosecutors claimed in court

Other allegations about Gentile and Guarente: They committed robberies and numerous violent crimes together. The mobsters shared digs on Boston's outskirts while serving as "armed bodyguards" for their boss, a Mafia capo.

Gentile's since been described as a Hartford hoodlum who'd lived a "secret life" in Boston as a made member of " the New England branch of a Philadelphia mafia family ." That was noted in a New York Times story.

The FBI considers him the only person alive with direct knowledge of the storied robbery. And he's shown he ain't talking. Period. That's why he's rolling his wheelchair in jail. Some even speculate the drug and weapon charges were trumped up to pressure him.

In a court filing, defense lawyer A. Ryan McGuigan has implied Gentile duped the FBI -- that Gentile was running a "scam for all it was worth in hopes of getting some quick cash" and "proceeded to lead his merry band of informers and double agents on a merry hunt for nonexistent paintings."

McGuigan dismissed Mozzicato's claims.

"Apparently, the government is relying on sources which include murderers, drug dealers and career criminals," McGuigan said.

Mozzicato's account doesn't answer why, if Gentile knows anything, he continues to ignore the substantial millions of dollars reward and opens himself to ongoing investigation. Also he's in jail.

Gentile is a sworn Mafia soldier, however, according to the FBI. Other law enforcement sources, however, say he enjoys the publicity that paints him as an old-school adherent to the mob's sacred Omerta oath, while also denying he's a member.

Mozzicato told agents that he believes Gentile was involved with the stolen art at least 15 years earlier than was known, as far back as the late 1990s.

Among other things, Mozzicato told the FBI:

In the late 1990s, he was instructed to move a package of what he suspects were paintings between cars outside a Waltham, Mass., condominium used by him, Gentile, fellow mobster Robert Guarente and other partners of their Boston gang, which was a faction of the Philadelphia Mafia. A day or two later, Mozzicato said Gentile and Guarente drove the purported art to Maine, where Guarente owned a farmhouse. 

Not long afterward, Mozzicato said he listened to an animated discussion between Gentile and Guarente about whether they should give what they referred to only as "a painting" to one of their Philadelphia mob bosses as "tribute." Mozzicato said Gentile argued that the painting was "worth a fortune" and told his old friend Guarente "You're out of your (expletive) mind" to give it away. 

Also in the late 1990s, Mozzicato said Gentile gave him photographs of five stolen paintings and asked him to act as an intermediary in recruiting a buyer. Mozzicato said the potential buyer was shocked by the paintings and complained, half jokingly, that they could be arrested just for talking about them. Mozzicato said Gentile then cut him out of the deal, but acknowledged later that it fell through. 

Mozzicato said he and his cousin saw, on repeated occasions, what he believes was the gilded eagle, cast two centuries ago in France as a finial for a Napoleonic flagstaff. He said they saw it often on a shelf at Gem Auto, the used car business Gentile formerly owned on Route 5 in South Windsor. Mozzicato said he thinks Gentile later sold the eagle. Mozzicato said he identified the finial from a photo provided by the FBI.

There have been several intriguing stories about the missing art. Mozzicato's account, however, is among "the more remarkable" to come to light since the 1990 robbery.

Guess who in this picture is Robert Guarente...
Guarente's farmhouse was located in north Portland, Maine, in the woods. He died from cancer two years later, in 2004.

Investigators searched Guarente's farmhouse and found nothing. A source who knew of his widow Elene's meeting with the Courier regarding her meeting with the FBI offered this account:

She first denied knowing anything about the stolen art work. But then she confessed: "My Bobby had two of the paintings."


Unmarked law enforcement vehicles surrounded the home of alleged Philly gangster Robert Gentile.
In additional interviews, she revealed  that her husband kept the paintings in Maine and, after his last release from prison, he passed them to an associate.

She said Guarente put the paintings in their car and they drove to Portland, where Guarente had arranged to meet another couple at a downtown hotel. They sat down for a shore dinner -- after which the men departed together and left the restaurant for a while.

Gentile as the man who took possession of the two paintings, Elene said.

Gentile claims he has bee victimized due to the competition for the $5 million reward -- and among those seeking to pocket that money, he said, is Elene Guarente.

"Everything is lies," he said. "They got no proof."

He admits meeting the Guarentes at the Portland hotel. He said he met the couple regularly. Gentile said his friend was sick and broke. As noted, he also said that he and his wife liked to drive and enjoyed occasional getaways at enjoy good food, with Portland's waterfront among his favored destinations.

"Bobby Guarente always needed money," Gentile said. "One day he calls me. He said he needed $300 for groceries. That's what he used to call it, 'Groceries.' He was sick at the time."

"I helped him out," Gentile said. "I've helped a lot of people."

Gentile said he remembers picking up the check because Elene Guarente ordered the most expensive item on the menu — the lobster special.

"I'm a sucker," Gentile said. "I'm the one picking up the check."

Elene Guarente implicated him to get back at him, he said, because after her husband died, Gentile had his own health problems and could no longer provide her with financial aid.

The widow's session with the FBI in early 2010 stimulated the probe into the crime and also shined a bright spotlight on Gentile, who initially tried to prove he was correct about her claims being false.

As the Courant noted:

He submitted to a polygraph examination, during which he denied having advance knowledge of the Gardner heist, ever possessing a Gardner painting or knowing the location of any of the stolen paintings. The result showed a likelihood of less than 0.1 percent that he was truthful, according to a government filing in federal court.

Searching Gentile's home

In 2011, as part of a pending indictment for drugs, FBI agents searched Gentile's home in Manchester and found, hidden in the basement, money, drugs, guns, ammunition, silencers, explosives, handcuffs -- as well as a stuffed kestrel (a small falcon) and a pair of enormous elephant tusks.

Also found a copy of the March 19, 1990, Boston Herald, which included major coverage of the Gardner heist. With the newspaper was found a piece of paper that contained a handwritten list of the pieces the thieves stole, alongside the corresponding values.

Mob Corruption on Staten Island Circa 1969

The Staten Island Advance posted an archive page from a story it published on April 20, 1969.

The story names Paul Castellano as an "underboss" of the Gambino crime family.

"An Advance study shows numerous Staten Island real estate dealings are being investigated to see the potential role taken by various organized crime figures. These include Paul Castellano, underboss of the Gambino Cosa Nostra family, the largest Mafia organization on the East Coast."


The story focuses on "the glittering gold" of Staten Island land due to the "boom" created by the construction of the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge. Usually referred to as simply the Verrazano Bridge, it's a double-decked suspension that connects Staten Island and Brooklyn.
"Shadow figures may have mined million of dollars in broad daylight."
The SI Advance's three-month study revealed the role played by some of the shadowy figures.
High-ranking Mafioso and their associates had made "extensive" investments in Staten Island land since 1959, and had seemingly earned massive profits from these transactions. What interested investigators in these pre-RICO days were the potential unpaid taxes.
An elite IRS group that was part of a Brooklyn-based U.S. Justice Department's Organized Crime Taskforce was investigating the matter. Daniel P. Holman was described as the attorney in charge.
Interestingly, the newspaper used NYPD and Justice Department data (not the FBI) to offer background on the mobsters 
Mob figures of interest were identified as Castellano, "reputed underboss" to "brother-in-law" Carlo Gambino, "boss of a 1,000-plus member Cosa Nostra family in Brooklyn." The article describes the Gambinos as "the largest crime family in the East."
Peter "Pumps" Ferrara was the other key mobster named in the story, identified as a Gambino capo. He seems to be worth further investigation.


Is this Peter Ferarra Peter Pumps?

Salvatore Perritore, identified as a Colombo soldier, was described as a "low-ranking but nevertheless important Mafia figure also involved."
Joseph Rae also is named. His original name, which he'd changed in 1949, was Joseph Rosenberg. In 1969, according to law enforcement sources, he ran a vending machine and jukebox business in Brooklyn and Queens, which put him in daily contact with a number of mobsters, including the Gallo brothers, the story noted.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1943 - Joseph Massino, future boss of New York's Bonanno Family, is born in Queens. 1973 - Two diamond-studded crowns are reported stolen from the Regina Pacis shrine in Brooklyn. The crowns had been stolen and returned 21 years earlier.1995 - New England crime boss Frank Salemme is indicted along with James Bulger, Stephen Flemmi and Robert DeLuca.

NJ Luchese Capo, Sons Get 8-, 10-Year Sentences

From left: Ralph Perna and sons,  Joseph Perna, John PernaRalph Perna, the Luchese crime family's top capo in the Garden State and two of his sons were slammed with nearly a decade in prison each. Meanwhile, one of the North Jersey Luchese crew's leaders was sentenced to about half the amount of time in prison.
Matthew "Matty" Madonna, considered a close associate of the family's street boss, Bronx-based Stevie Crea, was a suspect in the the last Mafia hit ( clarification: last in this case, meaning until the next one ).

Sentenced this past Thursday were Ralph Perna, 69, of East Hanover, who was given eight years in state prison; John G. Perna, 38, of West Caldwell, got10 years in state prison as did his brother, Joseph M. Perna, 46, of Wyckoff.

The sentences follow to the letter the recommendations issued last October by New Jersey's Attorney General.

The mobsters were among six key members of the Luchese family's North Jersey franchise. Except for one defendant (Matthew "Matty" Madonna), all pleaded guilty in June of last year to racketeering charges resulting from Operation Heat, which focused on the crew's illegal gambling enterprise that utilized extortion and violence. The operation netted the crime family billions, according to investigators.
Madonna, 80, of Seldon, N.Y., a member of the crime family's ruling panel, was sentenced on Sept. 30, to five years in state prison.

The Luchese family's former New Jersey underboss, Martin Taccetta, 64, of East Hanover, N.J., was sentenced on Sept. 30 to eight years in state prison. He's alreadyt serving life, plus 10 years.
John Mangrella, 73, of Clifton, N.J., another senior member of the crime family, was sentenced on Oct. 29 to eight years in state prison.

According to authorities, the defendants were initially charged and arrested in Operation Heat in December 2007. The investigation uncovered an international criminal enterprise that transacted an estimated $2.2 billion in wagers, primarily on sporting events, during a 15-month period.
The gambling operation utilized simple password-protected websites and a Costa Rican-based wire room.

The enterprise involved hundreds -- or thousands -- of gamblers, including one high-roller who bet upwards of $2 million in two months. The Pernas and Taccetta pocketed illicit proceeds of the enterprise kicking up "tribute payments" to the family's ruling panel members, including Madonna, and allegedly Joseph DiNapoli, 80, of Scarsdale, N.Y. DiNapoli's charges are still pending.
The investigation also uncovered a prison smuggling scheme that involved a former New Jersey corrections officer and a high-ranking member of the Bloods-affiliated Nine Trey Gangsters. The street gang had entered into an alliance with the Luchese crime family to smuggle drugs and prepaid cellphones into East Jersey State Prison.
The alliance allegedly extended beyond smuggling, possibly to the gambling enterprise, according to reports. It seemed to also include a more general component. For example, Joseph Perna sought assistance from a high-ranking member of the Nine Trey Gangsters to stop a Bloods associate from extorting a man with ties to the Luchese family.
The charges are pending against several other defendants charged in smuggling scheme, authorities stated.

FBI Agent "Got People Killed," Judge Says

Lin DeVecchioCORRECTION NOTED
A Daily News Exclusive today noted that a federal judge, in a moment of extreme candor, voiced his belief that a former FBI agent who was Greg Scarpa Senior's handler had indeed passed on intel that led to murders.

"Judge Edward Korman’s damning words were buried in a transcript of a 2012 court case for mob informant Gregory Scarpa Jr.," the News noted. The murders were part of the early 1990s Colombo crime family war.
"Scarpa was seeking a reduction of his racketeering sentence as a reward for helping the feds find explosives hidden in the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols." This blog noted back in August that Scarpa Junior had been moved to a reentry facility in Kansas City, Kansas.






"Korman suggested that the government opposed the motion because the FBI might still have a grudge against Scarpa for his willingness to testify against former agent Lindley DeVeccchio. DeVecchio was accused of helping Scarpa’s father, also named Greg, who was a capo and also a mob rat, kill rivals during the Colombo family civil war.
"“It was my view and remains my view that Lin DeVecchio provided information to Scarpa that got people killed,” Korman said, according to the transcript.
“I found it pretty outrageous and the bottom line was, of course, nothing happened to Lin DeVecchio. He was permitted to retire and in his retirement was actually doing background checks for the (FBI),” the judge said.
Correction:

The Brooklyn district attorney’s case against DeVecchio fell apart mid-trial when a key prosecution witness was seemingly contradicted based on recordings presented to the court, dramatically, just as Scarpa Junior was poised to testify. 

Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins later published Mob Boss.

Aside from Scarpa Junior's information regarding terrorists, his father did a lot of damage to the mob itself.
Although Scarpa Senior's information was self-serving and not always accurate he did provide intelligence that later led to convictions of top-ranking mobsters, primarily in New York but also in Philadelphia. His information also helped take down the historic boss of the Pennsylvania's crime family, Russell Bufalino. 
Scarpa Senior helped facilitate the Commission Case, as well as the concrete club and windows cases; he identified where the true power was in one crime family, filled in the FBI about many Colombo family social clubs (except Wimpy Boys, no doubt), helped put bugs on ranking guys in three crime families--and even gave up members of his own crew.
Scarpa stimulated both the Commission Case and the Concrete Club Case when, in 1983, he gave the FBI revealing intel regarding two mobsters involved in a multi-family extortion and bid rigging scheme that tucked a 2% surcharge into the mob's coffers for each Manhattan construction project that ran beyond $2 million.
He ratted out Colombo soldier Ralph Scopo, then president of the powerful cement workers union, which was charged with being the racket's muscle in the event the mob tax was not paid.
In September 1983, Scarpa described Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno as “one of the most powerful men in that family.”  In fact, he even gave up the Genovese family's entire "hide the boss" strategy in 1984, only the Feds somehow didn't pay attention or didn't believe him.

Scarpa told them Gigante was really boss, but they still went after Fat Tony.




About three years before Salerno was convicted in the Commission case for being the boss of the Genovese family, Scarpa revealed that the real boss of that family was actually Vincent "The Chin" Gigante.
Scarpa also provided enough fodder for the Feds to install bugs and wiretaps in Brooklyn and Manhattan that led to a series of prosecutions ofleaders of the Colombo, Luchese and Genovese crime families.
In late 1983, Scarpa also revealed that mob associate Peter Savino was “involved in a bid-rigging scheme” involving the installation of storm windows in city housing units. This was an entire six years before the feds indicted Gigante and bosses of three other families in the “Windows Case,” which caused so much mayhem and bloodshed, at least for the Luchese family, which was under the new management of Vittorio "Vic" Amuso and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso. 
Scarpa knew plenty beyond the boroughs of New York.
He gave information about the 1980 murder of Philadelphia boss Angelo Bruno, which would later be confirmed by additional sources. He fueled the eventual conviction of Russell Bufalino, aka "McGee" and "The Old Man" (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1994) and also the boss of the Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family from 1959 to 1989.
Scarpa even gave up the guys in his own crew. He provided details about the social clubs where the Colombo gangsters hung out, including boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico and a man who needs no introduction: John "Sonny" Franzese, going so far as to draw a sketch of the interior of one club. 

Scarpa's daughter Linda has a book available titled The Mafia Hitman's Daughter -- it's gotten 34 reviews, nearly all of them five stars, and was no. 1 on a Kindle best-seller list.