Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 26

Mob-Bloods Alliance and the Last Mafia Hit

Matty Madonna's roots go back to 1970s Harlem-based
drug kingpin  Nicky Barnes.
A recent Cosa Nostra Newsletter referred to the Five Families' alleged ban on killing, as well as an alliance between the Luchese crime family and the Bloods that shocked law enforcement, which described it as "alarming." Officials revealed it to be the first ever alliance between wiseguys and gang bangers -- or gangsters and gangstas, if you will.... This story expands on the newsletter.

Luchese powerhouse Matthew "Matty" Madonna allegedly ordered what is considered the last Mafia murder. (Note that in this instance, "last" means "most recent".)

Madonna, 80, of Seldon, N.Y. was a "person of interest" to law enforcement officials investigating the last murder -- to which they were unable to link the the Luchese chief. The actual gunmen were charged, while Madonna copped to 2010's Operation Heat case involving a gambling and a prison-smuggling ring, then to another case. All told, he'll serve five years.

Michael Meldish, a former Purple Gang boss, was offed with one shot to the head in November 2013. His body was found in his car, slumped over in the driver's seat, head back and mouth open.

Meldish was not an innocent victim. He is believed to have committed as many as 10 mob-related hits, and was never prosecuted for a single one of them, to Joseph Coffey's lament. His brother and longtime street partner Joseph Meldish has been serving a 25-to-life sentence for a 1999 slaying. Joseph is believed to have committed as many as 70 contract killings.

Both Michael and Joseph were leaders of the notorious Purple Gang, which back in the 1970s and 1980s dealt heroin in the Bronx and Harlem and whacked people for the Bonanno, Luchese, and Genovese crime families. The gang appropriated its named from the Prohibition-era Detroit gang. The "new" Purple Gang had a distinction, however, for dismembering victims' bodies. The Purple Gang also may have had ties to Latin American terrorists in a firearms for narcotics trade agreement. By the late 1980s, members increasingly were apprehended in drug busts. Some of the remaining members then joined the 116th Street Crew, with a few of them landing buttons in three crime families.

Meldish was a Luchese associate at the time of his death.

His brother Joseph, 60, is serving his sentence at Shawangunk Correctional Facility for murder in the 2nd degree for the 1999 mistaken identity execution of Joe Brown inside Frenchy’s Bar, formerly located in Throggs Neck.

According to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Meldish will be eligible for parole on September 22, 2032.

Mob associate Christopher Londonio and Terrence Caldwell were arrested and indicted for committing the actual murder. Londonio and Caldwell have had a longstanding criminal relationship, the NYPD reported.


The Last Hit
In November of 2013, Meldish, who had 18 prior arrests dating back to 1971, pulled to a stop at a crosswalk and was exiting his vehicle when he was fired on. The shooter had either ambushed Meldish at this location or was his passenger. He was shot in the right side of his head from a short distance (gunpowder residue was lacking).

Investigators eventually focused on Matty Madonna and a Bonanno boss, though Madonna would seem to have had more reasons -- as well as the requisite power -- to order Meldish's death. According to published reports, Madonna was angry at "Meldish and his ways" in the 15 months before he was shot to death.

It is likely that Madonna and Meldish also had a longstanding relationship, going back decades to 1970s Harlem -- when the Purple Gang was murdering and dismembering and Matty Madonna was driving a car loaded with heroin meant for a drug kingpin.


Nicky Barnes, one of Harlem's biggest drug traffickers in the 1970s.

Nicky Barnes' Drug Supplier

In 1975, Barnes was a legend in Harlem, "a cancer that law enforcement officials couldn't eradicate," as the New York Daily News reported. In that same article it detailed Barnes' and Madonna's relationship. His front-page photo in a New York newspaper so angered then-President Jimmy Carter, he ordered law enforcement to target the drug dealer.

Barnes got his drugs from the mob -- specifically from Matty Madonna.

"He and his Mafia heroin suppliers had a system for exchanging cash for the drug imported from Asia. Barnes would meet Matthew Madonna, a smuggler he befriended in an upstate prison [Green Haven Correctional Facility in Upstate New York] in 1959, to get the location of a car parked in a municipal lot in Manhattan and the keys to the car. Heroin would be in the trunk. One night in February 1975, a 20-kilogram load of heroin from Bangkok was in a car that Madonna had parked in a 24-hour lot in Manhattan. After eluding the cops, Barnes picked up the car and drove to one of several apartments he kept, where underlings cut and packaged the heroin for sale on the streets. Two days later, Barnes returned the car, its trunk full of cash, to another lot, met Madonna on another street corner and gave him back the keys. The feds nailed Madonna that year, but Barnes found another supplier and kept going for two more years beating another case in the Bronx."

A 2007 New York magazine article titled Lords of Dopetown, an interview with Barnes and Frank Lucas, both retired by then, mentions Madonna. He's also included in the must-read book Gangsters of Harlem: The Gritty Underworld of New York City's Most Famous Neighborhood by Ron Chepesiuk.of Strategic Media Books.
Madonna was given heavy time following his arrest. On December 21, 1976, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. In December 1981, while still doing time, he was summoned to testify before a grand jury about New York-area narcotics activity. Madonna twice refused to testify, even after he was granted immunity. The judge held Madonna in contempt of court. Madonna received an extra 528 days added to his sentence.
In 1995, Madonna was released from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. Around 1998, Madonna was inducted into the Luchese crime family and was soon thereafter elevated to a capo. Madonna was sent back to prison and was released on September 22, 2003.
While Steven Crea, known to operate several construction companies, was serving three years in prison, Madonna was part of the Luchese family's ruling panel that also consisted of Aniello Migliore (who'd been a close associate of two Luchese bosses, Gaetano "Tommy" Lucchese and Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo) and Joseph DiNapoli (who has two brothers in the Genovese family).
Some reports name Madonna as the head of the panel, but Jerry Capeci reported otherwise. Migliore... “is the biggest influence on the street,” says one law-enforcement official. “He’s more equal than the others,” says another investigator.
After Crea's release from prison, he formally took control of the family, disbanding the panel.
In December, 2007, New Jersey law enforcement arrested Madonna and over 30 other members and associates of the Luchese family, a result of "Operation Heat." (View indictment, PDF).




There were two parts to the case. One was a prison-smuggling racket that New Jersey's Attorney General described as consisting of an “alarming alliance” between the Luchese crime family and the Bloods street gang to supply drugs and cellphones to gang members inside a New Jersey prison.

There was also a $2.2 billion gambling ring that was run mainly via a Costa Rican website.

Overall 34 were nabbed -- the majority from New Jersey and five from New York. Michael A. Cetta, one of the indicted, is a Bonnano crime family associate linked to the Luchese crime family through marriage.

Charges ranged from racketeering and money laundering to conspiracy to distribute heroin and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.
New York’s crime families have long built alliances with other organized crime groups, including Russians, Cubans and Asians. Also, prison-smuggling rings have gone on for decades.



But as the New York Times noted, the Luchese alliance was unique:

"... [L]aw enforcement officials said, the prison scheme provided the first evidence of an organized crime family from New York working with the Bloods street gang, one of the state’s largest. Moreover.... the potential for more cooperation was great, given their shared interests in “violence, illegal drugs and quick profits.”


“What we have here in this case is the realization of what we feared: connecting old-school organized crime, the Mafia, with new-school organized crime, gangs,” a New Jersey law enforcement official said. “We’ve heard anecdotes about overlap, but this is the first time we’ve had a direct link between the two organizations.”

As part of Heat, investigators seized two shotguns, one handgun, one hand grenade, 2,000 OxyContin-grade pills and $200,000 in cash.

State officials also obtained court orders to take possession of 7 homes and 13 luxury cars.

According to law enforcement officials, the prison scheme revolved around prisoner Edwin B. Spears who has served time for a variety of offenses since 2002.

Spears, a reputed “five-star general” in the Nine Trey Gangsters faction of the Bloods, cooperated with two Luchese members — Joseph M. Perna and Michael A. Cetta — to smuggle heroin, cocaine, marijuana and prepaid cellphones into East Jersey State Prison in Woodbridge.

They enlisted the help of Michael T. Bruinton, a senior prison guard, by offering him $500 each time he allowed smuggled goods to pass through. Bruinton started a career in corrections in 1987.




Ralph Perna, was named top capo for the Luchese family's New Jersey faction. Three of his sons, including Joseph, and his daughter-in-law, were also charged in the investigation.

Reports indicate that the Nine Trey gangsters may have been involved with the gambling ring as well, though this hasn't been proven.


Gangsters and GangstasAccording to New Jersey's former head of the gang unit in the United States attorney’s office, the cultural differences between the two groups would appear to be too great to allow for a long-term alliance. Mafia crews shun the spotlight, while gangs like the Bloods and Crips are proud to show their gang affiliations, taunting law enforcement and the public with raw displays of power and wealth.

“No self-respecting mobster would want anything to do with the Bloods or Crips because those gangs are the antithesis of the Mafia,” he said. “The mob is concerned with making money over the long haul, trying to appear respectable. But the Bloods are concerned with projecting their status, so they’re all, ‘I’m going to shoot up the block and wear a red bandanna.’”

Yet Marc Agnifilo, the former head of the gang unit, added that while prosecuting organized crime and street gang cases between 1998 and 2003, "he frequently heard members of the Bloods speak of Mafia members and customs with admiration."

“The Blood guys love mobsters because they’re the old-school gangsters,” he said. “A lot of my Mafia informants in prison would complain that they couldn’t get away from the Bloods’ always following them and fawning over them.”

Lucheses Allied With Bloods-Affiliated Nine TreyGangsters

Matty Madonna's roots go back to 1970s Harlem-based
drug kingpin  Nicky Barnes.
A recent  Cosa Nostra Newsletter referred to the Five Families' alleged ban on killing, as well as a startling alliance described as "alarming"  between the Luchese crime family and the Nine TreyGangsters -- with officials calling it the first alliance between wiseguys and gang bangers -- or Gangsters and Gangstas.... This story expands on the newsletter.

Luchese powerhouse Matthew "Matty" Madonna allegedly ordered what is considered the last Mafia murder (Note that in this instance, "last" means "most recent".)

Madonna, 80, of Seldon, N.Y. was a "person of interest" to law enforcement officials investigating the last murder -- to which they were unable to link the the Luchese chief. The actual gunmen were charged, while Madonna copped to 2010's Operation Heat case involving a gambling and a prison-smuggling ring, then to another case. All told, he'll serve five years.







Michael Meldish, a former Purple Gang boss, was offed with one shot to the head in November 2013. His body was found in his car, slumped over in the driver's seat, head back and mouth open.

Meldish was not an innocent victim. He is believed to have committed as many as 10 mob-related hits, and was never prosecuted for a single one of them, to Joseph Coffey's lament. His brother and longtime street partner Joseph Meldish has been serving a 25-to-life sentence for a 1999 slaying. Joseph is believed to have committed as many as 70 contract killings.

Both Meldish and Joseph were leaders of the notorious Purple Gang, which back in the 1970s and 1980s dealt heroin in the Bronx and Harlem and whacked people for the Bonanno, Luchese, and Genovese crime families.

The gang appropriated its named from the Prohibition-era Detroit gang. The "new" Purple Gang had a distinction, however, for dismembering victims' bodies.

The Purple Gang also may have had ties to Latin American terrorists in a firearms for narcotics trade agreement. By the late 1980s, members increasingly were apprehended in drug busts. Some of the remaining members then joined the 116th Street Crew, with a few of them landing buttons in three crime families.

Meldish was a Luchese associate at the time of his death.

Joseph, 60, is serving his sentence at Shawangunk Correctional Facility for murder in the 2nd degree for the 1999 mistaken identity execution of Joe Brown inside Frenchy’s Bar, formerly located in Throggs Neck.

According to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Meldish will be eligible for parole on September 22, 2032.

Mob associate Christopher Londonio and a man who seems to be a partner in crime, named Terrence Caldwell, were arrested and indicted for committing the actual murder.
Londonio and Caldwell have had a longstanding relationship. the NYPD reported.

Meldish, who had 18 prior arrests dating back to 1971, pulled to a stop at a crosswalk and was exiting his vehicle when he was fired on. The shooter had either ambushed Meldish at this location or was his passenger. He was shot in the right side of his head from a short distance (gunpowder residue was lacking). 

Investigators eventually focused on Matty Madonna and a Bonanno boss. But Madonna would seem to have had more reasons -- as well as the requisite power -- to order Meldish's death.

Meldish had been a Luchese associate. According to published reports, Madonna was angry at "Meldish and his ways" in the 15 months before he was shot to death. 

It is likely that Madonna and Meldish also had a longstanding relationship going back decades, to Harlem in the 1970s -- when the Purple Gang was murdering and dismembering and Matty Madonna was driving a car loaded with heroin meant for a drug kingpin.



Nicky Barnes, one of Harlem's biggest drug traffickers in the 1970s.



Nicky Barnes' Drug SupplierIn 1975, Barnes was a legend in Harlem, "a cancer that law enforcement officials couldn't eradicate," as the New York Daily News reported. In that same article it detailed Barnes' and Madonna's relationship. His front-page photo in a New York newspaper so angered then-President Jimmy Carter, he ordered law enforcement to target the drug dealer.
Barnes got his drugs from the mob -- specifically from Matty Madonna.

"He and his Mafia heroin suppliers had a system for exchanging cash for the drug imported from Asia. Barnes would meet Matthew Madonna, a smuggler he befriended in an upstate prison [Green Haven Correctional Facility in Upstate New York] in 1959, to get the location of a car parked in a municipal lot in Manhattan and the keys to the car. Heroin would be in the trunk. One night in February 1975, a 20-kilogram load of heroin from Bangkok was in a car that Madonna had parked in a 24-hour lot in Manhattan. After eluding the cops, Barnes picked up the car and drove to one of several apartments he kept, where underlings cut and packaged the heroin for sale on the streets. Two days later, Barnes returned the car, its trunk full of cash, to another lot, met Madonna on another street corner and gave him back the keys. The feds nailed Madonna that year, but Barnes found another supplier and kept going for two more years beating another case in the Bronx."

A 2007 New York magazine article titled Lords of Dopetown, an interview with Barnes and Frank Lucas, both retired by then. He's also included in the must-read book Gangsters of Harlem: The Gritty Underworld of New York City's Most Famous Neighborhood by Ron Chepesiuk.of Strategic Media Books.
Madonna was given heavy time following his arrest. On December 21, 1976, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. In December 1981, while still doing time, he was summoned to testify before a grand jury about New York-area narcotics activity. Madonna twice refused to testify, even after he was granted immunity. The judge held Madonna in contempt of court. Madonna received an extra 528 days added to his sentence.
In 1995, Madonna was released from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. Around 1998, Madonna was inducted into the Luchese crime family and was soon thereafter elevated to a capo. Madonna was sent back to prison and was released on September 22, 2003.
While Steven Crea, known to operate several construction companies, was serving three years in prison, Madonna was part of the Luchese family's ruling panel that also consisted of Aniello Migliore (who'd been a close associate of two Luchese bosses, Gaetano "Tommy" Lucchese and Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo) and Joseph DiNapoli (who has two brothers in the Genovese family). 
Some reports name Madonna as the head of the panel, but Jerry Capeci reported otherwise. 

Migliore... “is the biggest influence on the street,” says one law-enforcement official. “He’s more equal than the others,” says another investigator.

After Crea's release from prison, he formally took control of the family, disbanding the panel.
In December, 2007, New Jersey law enforcement arrested Madonna and 32 other members and associates of the Luchese family, a result of "Operation Heat." (View indictment, PDF).

There were two parts to the case. One was a prison-smuggling racket that New Jersey's Attorney General described as consisting of an “alarming alliance” between the Luchese crime family and the Bloods street gang to supply drugs and cellphones to gang members inside a New Jersey prison. 
There was also a $2.2 billion gambling ring that was run mainly via a Costa Rican website. 
Overall 32 were nabbed -- 27 from New Jersey and five from New York. Charges ranged from racketeering and money laundering to conspiracy to distribute heroin and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.

New York’s crime families have long built alliances with other organized crime groups, including Russians, Cubans and Asians. Also, prison-smuggling rings have gone on for decades. 



But as the New York Times noted, the Luchese alliance was unique:

"... [L]aw enforcement officials said, the prison scheme provided the first evidence of an organized crime family from New York working with the Bloods street gang, one of the state’s largest. Moreover....  the potential for more cooperation was great, given their shared interests in “violence, illegal drugs and quick profits.”

“What we have here in this case is the realization of what we feared: connecting old-school organized crime, the Mafia, with new-school organized crime, gangs,” a New Jersey law enforcement official said. “We’ve heard anecdotes about overlap, but this is the first time we’ve had a direct link between the two organizations.”

As part of Heat, investigators seized two shotguns, one handgun, one hand grenade, 2,000 OxyContin-grade pills and $200,000 in cash.
State officials also obtained court orders to take possession of 7 homes and 13 luxury cars.

According to law enforcement officials, the prison scheme revolved around prisoner Edwin B. Spears who has served time for a variety of offenses since 2002.

Spears, a reputed “five-star general” in the Nine Trey Gangsters faction of the Bloods, cooperated with two Luchese members — Joseph M. Perna and Michael A. Cetta — to smuggle heroin, cocaine, marijuana and prepaid cellphones into East Jersey State Prison in Woodbridge.

They enlisted the help of Michael T. Bruinton, a senior prison guard, by offering him $500 each time he allowed smuggled goods to pass through. Bruinton started a career in corrections in 1987.


Ralph Perna, was named top capo for the Luchese family's New Jersey faction. Three of his sons, including Joseph, and his daughter-in-law, were also charged in the investigation.

Reports indicate that the Nine Trey gangsters may have been involved with the gambling ring as well, though this hasn't been proven.



Gangsters and GangstasAccording to New Jersey's former head of the gang unit in the United States attorney’s office, the cultural differences between the two groups would appear to be too great to allow for a long-term alliance. Mafia crews shun the spotlight, while gangs like the Bloods and Crips are proud to show their gang affiliations, taunting law enforcement and the public with raw displays of power and wealth.
“No self-respecting mobster would want anything to do with the Bloods or Crips because those gangs are the antithesis of the Mafia,” he said. “The mob is concerned with making money over the long haul, trying to appear respectable. But the Bloods are concerned with projecting their status, so they’re all, ‘I’m going to shoot up the block and wear a red bandanna.’”
Yet Marc Agnifilo, the former head of the gang unit, added that while prosecuting organized crime and street gang cases between 1998 and 2003, "he frequently heard members of the Bloods speak of Mafia members and customs with admiration."

“The Blood guys love mobsters because they’re the old-school gangsters,” he said. “A lot of my Mafia informants in prison would complain that they couldn’t get away from the Bloods’ always following them and fawning over them.”

Vinny "Ocean" Palermo: Life Afterward....

Vinny "Ocean" in the good old days (or bad old days, depending on one's perspective.)
Vincent Palermo, former boss of New Jersey's homegrown DeCavalcante crime family, is of major interest to readers of Cosa Nostra News as I know from perusing this blog's analytics.
What he's been up to is exactly what I'd like to find out as I'm supposed to be speaking with him soon, thanks to a recent acquaintance

When last we heard of Vinny, he was set up pretty nicely in Texas, running a strip-joint called the Penthouse Club. (See video, below.)





Cosa Nostra News appears to be close to interviewing its first former Cosa Nostra boss of the notorious DeCavalcante crime family.

Previous Reports
In 2011 newspapers were making hay out of a particular court case involving Vinny Palermo, a former resident of Island Park in Nassau County, one town over from where I live, in the five-towns enclave.

He arrived in Houston while in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Allegedly, the model for the fictional Tony Soprano character defaulted on payments on a $1.3 million promissory note. (Vinny Ocean wanted to buy out a partner in a strip club and missed a payment, the partner alleged. In America, anyone can file a lawsuit against anyone for anything.  I know these things, I once worked for a personal injury law firm.)

In the old days, need I tell you how much Vinny Ocean would've paid to buy out a partner? I'd say three bullets behind the ear.

Vinny Palermo, former DeCavalcante bossThe former acting boss of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family, in his new life, ran The Penthouse Club. (Hey, T operated the Bada Bing, right?) Vinny Ocean's club was literally across the street from Baby Dolls, a rival topless sanctuary (as I consider them). The street in question here, Westheimer, is a major thoroughfare in Houston. (That means it's a great location for a business, for you non-business types. You've heard the business expression about the importance of location, location, location, right? Well this location is around lots of traffic.)  Lisa Hansegard owned Baby Dolls and had agreed to sell it for around $850,000. But first she and Vinny formed a partnership under which Vinny took effective control of Baby Dolls. Then, "Through mid-2007, the parties had an increasingly contentious relationship," wrote Courthouse News Service.

"Hansegard was denied access to the business and its records and did not receive any funds from the business."

Under their arrangement, Hansegard was to be paid $1.3 million in weekly payments of $2,500, according to the complaint, which cited the Bill of Sale and Promissory Note.

Hansegard received two payments. "During the negotiation process for the sale, Hansegard learned that [her partner's] former name was Vincent Palermo and that he was a former member of the DeCavalcante organized crime family in New Jersey," the complaint states.

Bottom line, the newspapers exposed Vinny "Ocean" and highlighted where he was living and what his new name was.

Sounds to me like there's the potential here for Hansegard to have gamed Vinny Ocean. How the hell is he supposed to reveal his true identity to her? He was a mob boss who'd publicly testified, named names. I'm sure there are rules in the witness protection paperwork that actually allow Vinny to conceal certain information. Otherwise, whats the point?

Read my stories on the formation of the witness protection program (Stefano Magaddino is a major reason it needed to be created) here and here.



Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo 

New Jerseys first mob boss was Filippo "Phil" Amari, a major drug trafficker. He died in 1957.

Nicholas Delmore took over after Amari's short reign. He would hand the reigns to the man for whom the family remains named after.

"Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante led the family for years. I've written extensively about Sam, as well as John Riggi, the next boss, who died this year.

Vincent Palermo and James Gallo were the shooters, Anthony Capo the wheelman, in the Fred Weiss murder.

Riggi appointed a very unpopular captain, John D'Amato, to acting boss. John Gotti told D'Amato that DeCavalcante enforcer Gaetano "Corky" Vastola was a rat and he should be killed D'Amato immediatly agreed. (Gotti was later convicted for this murder conspiracy; Vastola is still alive and reportedly has never cooperated. On May 3, 1988, Vastola was convicted of extortion and two counts of racketeering conspiracies and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In late 1990, Vastola lost his final appeal and was sent to prison. In May 1998, he was released.)

Then D'Amato's girlfriend told Anthony Capo that the acting boss was a homosexual. See story here.

In November 1991 D'Amato was shot and killed by bodyguard Capo with associate Victor DiChiara as the driver. His body has never been found.

The next street boss was Giacomo "Jake" Amari. An old-timer who was a labor racketeer like boss Riggi. He lead the family until his death in June 1997.

The man who replaced him as street boss was Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo. His interests were a gambling boat, strip clubs and construction industries. Palermo knew how to be legitimate but he knew when he needed to be a gangster.

Joseph Masella, a degenerate gambler, was looking like he was going to cooperate. Until Vinny Ocean ordered his death.




DeCavalcante associate Ralph Guarino started ratting on January 20th 1998. Fritzy Giovanelli, a longtime Genovese mobster known for his access to law enforcement paperwork (he also was with a crew known to have shot an NYPD detective to death in Queens in January 1987), had been whispering news about an informant in New Jersey.

Arrests were made in December 1999, an indictment naming many of the family's members. Anthony Capo was the first to cooperate. Longtime Soldier Joseph "Tin Ear" Sclafani DID NOT BECOME AN INFORMANT as some sites reported. He did his time and got out in 2005.

Anthony Rotondo and "Vinny Ocean" Palermo flipped following Capo.

Vinny if you're reading this, I look forward to speaking with you.....

Former Mob Boss Vinny "Ocean" Interview Coming

Vinny Palermo, former DeCavalcante boss
Vincent Palermo, former boss of New Jersey's homegrown DeCavalcantes, is of major interest to readers of Cosa Nostra News as I know from perusing this blog's analytics.
What he's been up to I plan to find out as I'm supposed to be speaking with him soon, thanks to a recent acquaintance.

Cosa Nostra News appears to be close to interviewing its first former Cosa Nostra boss of the notorious DeCavalcante crime family.

Vinny if you're reading this, I look forward to speaking with you.....

Mob Boss's Appeal Calls Witness "Bulger"

Adolfo "Big Al" was a boss for the Genovese crime family's Springfield outpost.

April 1st, 2011, April Fool's Day, held no jokes for Arthur Nigro, the former Genovese crime family acting boss found guilty of murder and other crimes following a three-week trial in New York, as noted.

Nigro, of the Bronx, N.Y., stood trial with enforcers Fotios "Freddy" Geas, of West Springfield, Mass., and his brother Ty Geas, of Westfield, Mass. Facing the trio was a litany of crimes that put them in prison for life.

The headline charge was the 2003 murder of Genovese boss Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno, the murder of a suspected informant as well as the attempted murder of a union boss, plus and a series of extortion attempts spread across Springfield, Mass., Hartford, Conn., and Manhattan.



"A treasure trove of new information" about the "workings of the Springfield mob" has come to light thanks to Masslive.com's Stephanie Barry, whose been dutifully writing up revelations regarding this Cosa Nostra family. ( Personally, I didn't find any revelations so far to be earth shattering, but this is an ongoing series. )

Freddy" Geas, and "Artie" Nigro, of Bronx, NY, filed fresh motions asking U.S. District Court Judge in Manhattan to vacate their life sentences. One of the appeals, anyway, highlights "new details about government witnesses," including New York's John Bologna and Springfield-based strip club magnate James Santaniello. 
Also, retired FBI Agent Clifford Hedges, was prompted to provide details regarding a report he wrote about Bruno that is described by some "as the final trigger that sent the Bruno murder conspiracy in motion," as Barry reported.

Nigro had control over the Springfield faction from the Bronx, which is said to be a Mafia stronghold to this day. It was Nigro who gave the nod for Bruno to be removed from his position (as well as life on this earth).
This case nearly annihilated the mob's overall presence in Greater Springfield.

First page of an FBI report on statements Bologna made  -- as well as details he withheld.
See more documents.

All these years after the verdicts -- and one of two recent appeals seems to have ruffled feathers.
Freddy Geas filed a motion to vacate his sentence in May -- but it's "rudimentary and boilerplate, clearly written by the hand of a penniless inmate serving a life sentence in a high-security prison in West Virginia with the possible assist of jailhouse lawyers."
It's the other motion, filed by Nigro's lawyer, that has shot some figurative flack at the FBI. "Persuasively written and carefully prepared" by a high-profile Wall Street lawyer named Ruth Liebesman, it was filed in June and is said to offer a rare glimpse into law enforcement's handling of informants: namely two: John Bologna, "a mid-level New York gangster who bounced between crime families while an informant for the FBI" and James Santaniello, a local man known for his "wealthy, stealthy and somewhat reclusive" ways -- all while also serving as an FBI informant. 
Nigro received inadequate defense, his motion proclaims. Federal prosecutors "dumped thousands of pages of witness testimony "on the eve of trial" with hidden gems of exculpatory evidence inside, which were all but unmanageable given the timeline," Barry reported.

New information about Santaniello, including his business holdings and tight relationship with law enforcement officials, raises some questions about Nigro's guilt, the motion says. Also spotlighted:  Bologna's uncanny ability to deceive both mobsters and FBI agents.
Cross-examination of Bologna (Nigro's former lieutenant who worked for the Feds as a snitch since 1996, all while living the lifestyle of a violent criminal committed to Mafia life. In addition, the Feds  "took 14 years ... to disavow him, and, only after his role in the Bruno murder conspiracy came to light through other witnesses."
"Bologna was the FBI's New York office's answer to Whitey Bulger," the wily ex-boss of Boston's Irish mob crew known as the Winter Hill Gang. He lammed it for decades -- but was finally caught and is serving life for 19 murders. Bulger "committed crimes unchecked while acting as an informant for the FBI and feeding federal authorities information on his rivals in the Italian Mafia."
Bulger's former FBI handler/childhood buddy John Connolly is serving a 40-year prison sentence due to his links to Bulger and other Winter Hill members. Convicted in 1999 for tipping Bulger off about to pending investigations and indictments, he was blamed for causing Bulger to take off in 1994. Bulger went on to find his place on the FBI's Most Wanted list until 2011, when he and his girlfriend were arrested on the West Coast, in California.

There have been no accusations that the FBI in New York knew about Bologna's specific criminal dealings in Western Massachusetts. An agent testified at Nigro's trial that Bologna simply hid things and lied to the agency during dozens of briefings. However, previous reports law enforcement indicate Bologna was tipped to an investigation into Mafia figures in Greater Springfield, where he had been regularly visiting in 2002, and abruptly stopped traveling here.

Liebesman argues in her motion that Bologna was the one who ordered the hit on Bruno - not Nigro - and orchestrated a myriad of extortion schemes in Springfield after Bruno was appointed boss of the city.

Santianiello, who ran local strip clubs and nightclubs, was detailed as having extensive business holdings in his family members' names. The agreement he signed with federal authorities in 2010 carried "unspecified benefits."

Santaniello somehow managed to live in the real world as well as the underworld. Despite a range of questionable activity he was never prosecuted. All the while he was compelled to pay to various mob figures thousands of dollars on a week basis.
Masslive noted:

Santaniello was cited as a victim of extortion in two trials: the prosecution of Nigro and the Geases plus a subsequent 2012 trial of Emilio Fusco, a co-conspirator who fled to his native Italy and delayed his own proceeding. Fusco was acquitted of the Bruno and Westerman murders but convicted of racketeering, extortion and other crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

And despite his dealings with mobsters, he offered "little or nothing" in terms of evidence against Nigro.
"As law enforcement was well aware - at least in Massachusetts - Santaniello was Bologna's victim. He had nothing to say about Arthur Nigro," the imprisoned Bronx boss's lawyer wrote.

Bruno and Gary Westerman were killed by a group of upstart gangsters looking to usurp power from Bruno, a longtime figure in Western Massachusetts' organized crime landscape. Fusco won permission from New York crime bosses (Nigro, namely)  to kill Bruno after he showed them a court document that revealed Bruno had discussed Fusco's standing in the Genovese family with an FBI agent in 2002. Fusco also equipped the chosen hitman with the .45-caliber gun used to kill Bruno.

Turncoat witness Anthony J. Arillotta, Bruno's successor before flipping in 2010, led the charge against Bruno and Westerman, who disappeared in 2003. Arillotta's brother-in-law, Westerman was viewed as untrustworthy after he was seen speaking with police.

Arillotta testified in a previous trial that he and Fusco were among the four who brought Westerman to the location where he was killed. Told they were going on a home invasion, he was led to a property where he was shot and bludgeoned then buried in a wooded lot behind the house.

Westerman's remains were only found in 2010; Arillotta led investigators there after his arrest in the Bruno case. His testimony was critical against "Freddy" Geas, Ty Geas  and Nigro. The Geas brothers previously had served as Arillotta's enforcers. They had assisted him in his vast efforts to take over Springfield's underworld.

Yes, New York's Five Crime Families Still Exist

The OGs... Members of the early American Cosa Nostra stand for the camera.

I wrote this story for the Insider Magazine -- which gave it an attractive presentation. Thought I'd toss up an excerpt to try to get some of you to give the story a click and check out the full version.

"The mob is exposed when law enforcement makes arrests. Then newspapers print stories about men with colorful nicknames and their “alleged” acts of murder and racketeering."

"Such stories are in short supply these days. When the newspapers do cover a mob story, it generally details elderly men who committed crimes going back decades. Take the Vincent Asaro trial this year. Billed as the big Lufthansa Heist case, which was spotlighted in the cinematic classic Goodfellas, which many fans consider to be the most accurate take on the mob (though the mob of the 1960s and 1970s). The trial ended in a shocking acquittal for the 80-year-old defendant, a former pal with James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke."

"The mob is not the power it once was. But is it finished? Has it reverted back to the street gangs from which New York’s Five Families originally emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?"

"The facts seem to suggest otherwise, though hold on to that street gang reference…"


The Colombos have suffered from having a boss calling the shots from prison for the past few decades. The crime family even engaged in full-scale civil war in the 1990s over this issue, when then-acting boss Vittorio “Little Vic” Orena sought to assume control from longstanding official boss Carmine “The Snake” Persico. Orena was sent away for life. Persico retains control.

When a new Colombo boss is named, it will mean either the Snake has died or was finally successfully unseated by the youngest and most violent mob family in New York.

The Bonanno’s acting boss, Thomas “Tommy D” DiFiore was in prison for more than a year, and official boss, Michael “The Nose” Mancuso is in prison for around four more years. (Unless Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, serving life, is still the official boss, that is.)

 So it seems that the families able to muster enough men to show power on the street and run scams also are helmed by powerful and accessible bosses -- meaning they are out of prison.

 The Genovese family has historically never revealed its true bosses even to other crime families. This helped buffer the family from law enforcement. It also helped to strengthen the family’s hand at sit downs.

“We met with the West Side several times to take care of a certain situation,” a source once explained. “Every time we met, they had different guys in there! We had to start from zero every f—ing time!" 

Evidently by sewing small-scale confusion and aggravation into such situations, by simply having new “officials” show up at meetings who “knew nothing” about a particular issue or problem, the Genovese hierarchy was able to win more sit downs – or at least to lose fewer.

 However, the mob’s collective eye is ever focused on the 1931 organizational plan.

The three operational families are helping to run the remnants of the other two.

New York’s Gambinos also have a level of control over the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family. The Gambinos are said to have raised Frank Cali to boss in the hierarchy. Cali has strong ties with certain Sicilian Mafia families. A past investigation revealed there’s possibly large-scale drug trafficking resulting from certain overseas meetings Cali has had in Sicily.

 Meanwhile, a Ndrangheta crew (from the Mafia based in Southern Italy, in Calabria) was found operating in New York – specifically it was running a billion-dollar drug trafficking ring with members of two New York crime families, the Bonannos and Gambinos.

This year, an alleged Ndrangheta member was arrested for acting as a drug broker between the Calabrian mob and the Mexican cartels. He operated a pizzeria located in a Queens neighborhood known to be overseen by a powerful Genovese capo....

There’s one final piece of the story, regarding the mob potentially forming alliances with street gangs, which this writer thinks is happening based on two recent law enforcement raids, one in Montreal and one in New York....

READ THE FULL STORY ON THE INSIDER MAGAZINE'S WEBSITE

DeCavalcante Associates Cop to Drug Charge

DeCavalcantes in an undated surveillance photo.
It won’t be a very Merry Christmas for John “Johnny Balls” Capozzi and Mario Galli.

The two DeCavalcante associates admitted they distributed more than 500 grams of cocaine, the FBI’s Newark office reported.

Capozzi, 34, of Union, New Jersey, and Galli, 23, of Toms River, New Jersey, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge William H. Walls to one count of distribution of more than 500 grams of cocaine. The count carries a mandatory prison sentence of between five and 40 years.
Between Dec. 12, 2014, and March 2015, they and other DeCavalcante associates sold more than one-half a kilo of cocaine to an undercover FBI agent for around $78,000, the two also admitted.

The Feds busted a group of DeCavalcantes that included Capozzi and Galli back in March 2015. Sentencing for both defendants is scheduled for March 21, 2016.

A total of 10 members and associates of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family were arrested for running a prostitution ring, drug trafficking and plotting to kill a rival, according to U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman.

The complaint noted that the New Jersey family is run closely with the Gambinos in New York and that both have Sicilian members in leadership positions today.

Frank "Shipe" Nigro, 72, Paul "Knuckles" Colella, 68, and Anthony "Whitey" Stango, 33, all from New Jersey, were arrested this morning and face the bulk of the criminal charges cited in the complaints unsealed today.

Also taken into custody were Charles "Beeps" Stango, 71, of Henderson, Nevada, and and Nicholas Degidio, 37, both from New Jersey.

Genovese Boss Who Took Lie Detector Test Dies

Barney Bellomo, left, and Mickey "Dimino" SUBSTANTIALLY EXPANDED: 
COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE Former Genovese underboss Michele “Mickey Dimino” Generoso died this week, a source informed Cosa Nostra News.
The old-school gangster finally succumbed to natural causes at around age 97; he'd been active on the street until about two years ago, despite reports to the contrary, said our source. Generoso was waked in Brooklyn today privately and will be publicly waked tomorrow. The funeral is scheduled for Saturday.

Generoso reportedly "retired" around two years ago, said the source, a Queens-based former mobster. "Mickey Dimino" had some powerful men under him while he was on the street. One was Anthony "Tough Tony" Federici, a captain in the Genovese crime family who is known today for his fundraising efforts and for owning the Corona, New York-based Parkside Restaurant.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, MY FRIENDS...





The FBI investigated Federici for ties to the Ndrangheta drug dealer who distributed dope -- and threatened to consume his enemies' guts -- from a pizzeria in May of this year. Named Gregorio Gigliotti, he's in jail on charges that he was a  U.S.-based Ndrangheta drug broker. The Feds were unable to link the Calabrian to Federici, who historically has run the Queens neighborhood for the Genoveses.In February 2004, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall honored Federici for his service to the community. Many police officers from the 110th Precinct in Queens attended the ceremony. A year later, Nassau County Judge David A. Gross was charged with federal money laundering charges. The indictment was based on wiretap surveillance conducted at Federici's Parkside restaurant.

Also under Generoso was Alphonse "Allie Shades" Malangone, who by the 1990s was one of the Genovese crime family's most important and powerful capos. He was known to frequently visit Pastels and other New York City haunts of the day, where he'd meet with Genovese family heavyweights, including "Mickey Dimino" Generoso.

Being under Generoso could be a death sentence. In fact five powerful mobsters under Generoso during his heyday disappeared or were found murdered, all based on Generoso's orders.

Whoever else they might kill, the mob certainly kills its own, not hesitating based on personal relationships. Usually it comes down to a guy stealing from the family or informing -- or guys believing or wanting to believe that's the case. The story I now tell you is rife with double-dealing and murder, with the murdering happening within the Genovese family.

Vincent "The Chin" Gigante never hesitated when an order reached him. One time he did hesitate, refusing to whack a guy close to him (most of his inner circle, including bosses in other families, had begged the Chin to act, he balked and it cost him his freedom.


Allie Shades Malangone, a Genovese family powerhouse in the 1990s,
met with the family bosses including  Generoso.The Genovese crime family, which has inducted a large number of men in Brooklyn recently, is considered the most powerful Cosa Nostra clan in the United States. The Genoveses, along with the Gambinos and Lucheses, are currently considered strong on the street, are quite active and are rebuilding. The Bonannos and Colombos are moribund, having been battered into near extinction by law enforcement, turnoats and dry snitches.

"There's no Commission," said the source, who noted that the "five families" still police each other, only now the three largest families make decisions and are largely running the remnants of the other two borgatas. "They have a way to do things."

The goal is to stick with the 1931 organization plan.

"They can replenish when they see fit but they have to stay within the quotas set by Luciano," the source said.

"Mickey Dimino” Generoso and Lawrence Dentico were both identified by the FBI as holding the underboss title in the Genovese crime family in 2004.

"[Generoso's] father had been a capo under [Charles] "Lucky" Luciano," the source said. "He was there when the whole thing started."

In February 1997, Genoroso was one of two high-ranking Genovese crime family members to plead guilty to extorting payoffs from a construction union and a garbage hauling company, the New York Times reported.

The case was noteworthy at the time because the two Genovese mobsters -- then acting-boss Liborio "Barney" Bellomo was the other -- charged in a 60-plus-count indictment copped pleas rather than go to trial. (Apparently, this case was one of the earlier ones in which inducted ranking members of organized crime made plea deals.)

Earlier in the 1990s, Bellomo had grown into one of the wealthiest and most feared mobsters in all of New York. He was closely tied to the Genovese crime family's most lucrative rackets, including the waterfront and Javits Center. In addition, he was said to be indirectly connected to some of the nation's preeminent heroin traffickers.

"The Chin" Gigante thought so highly enough of him that he actually name Bellomo the family's street boss in 1992. This vastly increased Liborio's fortunes as he was placed in control of most of the storied crime family's day-to-day operations.

Genoroso, meanwhile, lived more behind the mob's historical veil of secrecy, maintaining a low profile but earning vast sums of illicit revenue. Generoso owned Vincent's Restaurant. His brother gave a surprisingly lengthy interview to The Villager in 2004 called Vincent’s restaurant celebrates 100 years on Mott St

The story noted that Giuseppe and Carmela Siano started with a pushcart located at the corner of Mott and Hester, where Little Italy blended into Chinatown (which systematically began gobbling up "Littler Italy," as it's now called.) The couple had commenced selling homemade, freshly prepared clams, mussels and scungilli directly from the pushcart, fragrant and delectable, back in 1894.

Vincent Generoso is quoted extensively in the story. He and Michele (often misspelled as Michael) were grandsons of Jimmy Generoso, a Siano cousin. “They all came to this country together, as stowaways on ships. Then some moved to Brooklyn, to Westchester, some moved all over.”

Another article published in 2004 offered different information regarding "Mickey Dimino" -- Generoso was said to be living in a Brooklyn residence. Aged 86 at the time, law enforcement officials believed that due to his advanced age, he had "become far less active in playing a key leadership role in the organization," a report noted.

Then 1997 arrived -- and the Genovese family's fortunes, as well as Generoso's and Bellomo's, were suddenly in jeopardy. As the case began to proceed, "in an unusual move, defense lawyers were seeking to introduce evidence that ... [Generoso and Bellomo] had passed lie detector tests showing their innocence of the murder charges," Selwyn Raab noted in the Times report, adding that David Breitbart, Generoso's chief lawyer, had proclaimed that both men had been examined by Federal law enforcement-employed polygraph experts.

Both Genoroso and Bellomo actually took lie detector tests, the first and only instance our source is aware of in which this happened. 

The two may have faced some heat for their actions by other members of the crime family. According to reports, the then-consiglieri of the Genovese crime family, also snagged in the case, was agitating for Bellomo's death. (There's no word regarding whether he wanted the same for Generoso.)

The two Genovese family mobsters -- Generoso and Bellomo -- faced life without parole, as did consiglieri James "The Little Guy" Ida.
James Ida supposedly wanted Genovese street boss
Bellomo whacked....
Mary Jo White, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of the State, whose office handled the case, said Bellomo was ''one of the leaders of one of the largest and most powerful organized crime groups in the country,'' and noted that his plea calls for a specific term of 10 years without paroleBellomo and Generoso each denied participation in the mob murders alleged in a 65-count indictment.Asked why Generoso had accepted the deal instead of going to trial, a defense attorney replied, ''He felt strongly that he was going to win, but if he lost he would die in jail, and this way with good time off he is facing perhaps 15 months in prison.''

Another factor that likely made a plea agreement sound sweeter than usual was the fact that the defendants knew that Alphonse "Little Al" D'Arco, former Luchese boss, was going to testify at the trial, and he did, detailing how the Genovese family was able to spin off vast sums of dollars from wide-ranging rackets connected for decades to San Gennaro.

Lawyers speaking on background noted that the two mobsters "apparently also won a concession from prosecutors that they would not be subpoenaed as witnesses to testify against the remaining defendants in the trial or against Vincent Gigante, who authorities say is the Genovese boss. Mr. Gigante is scheduled to be tried on unrelated Federal racketeering and murder charges next month in Brooklyn."

Organized crime experts quoted in the story said that Generoso and Bellomo had copped to the agreements because the two could use them to prove to cohorts that they had not been informers. Also, their taking the lie detector tests may have led to a sitdown at which the two could've faced an even more extreme sentence, from fellow mob members. The lie detector tests would've required some explaining.

Four defendants -- Anthony Pisapia, Louis Zacchia, Michael Autori and Leonard Cerami, a former aide to the Staten Island Borough President Guy V. Molinari --.charged in the same case admitted to participating in gambling and payoff conspiracies involving the San Gennaro Feast.

Bellomo and Generoso, then 78 years old, were not charged with San Gennaro-related crimes.

James "The Little Guy" Ida, described as then-consiglieri of the Genovese family, was the main defendant in the rackeetering and murder trial. The government had offered Ida a 15-year plea deal in exchange for his cooperation, which Ida simply refused.

"However, fellow mobster Bellomo accepted a plea agreement, reportedly enraging Ida," as Raab noted.

"The FBI was sufficiently concerned about the threat to notify Bellomo's lawyer and to place Bellomo in solitary confinement in jail during the trial. However, both Bellomo's and Ida's lawyers refuted reports that there was any tension between the two mobsters."

On April 24, 1997, a Federal jury decided that Ida, then-57, needed to forfeit his $1 million 11-acre estate in Bedford where he kept horses, published reports noted. Ida, identified at the time as the third most powerful Genovese family mobster, also was found guilty of running two gambling casinos, as well as conspiracy to transport stolen construction equipment and conspiracy to defraud the United States. In addition, he was convicted of racketeering, murder conspiracy and the murder of Antonio Dilorenzo in 1988. He also was convicted of conspiracy to murder Ralph DeSimone in 1991 and Dominic Tucci in 1995.

Dilorenzo was shot to death, his bullet-riddled body found in his own backyard. DeSimone was shot five times and left in the trunk of his car, which had been parked at La Guardia Airport in Queens. Both DeSimone and DiLorenzo were hit because the Genovese family bosses decided that the two were informants for the feds, published reports noted. (Read details of the trial and charges here.)

Bellomo's lawyers stated that their client passed more than one polygraph tests regarding his involvement in the murders. Still, following alleged jailhouse tips from informants, wary FBI agents shaved Bellomo's head (they also plucked samples from his arms and legs) to test his hair for the drug lithium, which can be used to beat the polygraphs.No trace of the drug was found.

In February 1997, prosecutors dropped the DeSimone and DiLorenzo murder charges and offered Bellomo a plea to extorting payoffs from a construction union and a garbage hauling company. Bellomo accepted the deal and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Ida received a life sentence. (Former capo Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello retook control of the Genovese family's Little Italy crew.)

Larry Dentico is believed
to be retired now. But
who knows for sure?The Feds weren't done with the wily Genovese boss with the shaved head yet, however. On July 13, 2001, the imprisoned Bellomo was indicted on charges related to the Genovese family's waterfront rackets, as well as for controlling the ILA. Bellomo again pleaded guilty to lesser charges -- and his new release date was pushed into 2004.

Then, on February 23, 2006, Bellomo and 30-plus Genovese family members were indicted on additional racketeering charges. Bellomo was specifically charged with ordering the 1998 Ralph Coppola murder. The acting captain of Bellomo's crew (and Bellomo's personal friend), Coppola disappeared on Sept. 16, 1998, a few weeks before he was to face sentencing for fraud. His body was never found. F.B.I. officials said that convicted mobsters had been saying that Coppola was whacked for "an unknown act of disrespect against Mr. Bellomo," the Times reported.

Government witness Peter Peluso, a former lawyer for the Genovese family, claimed that he himself had passed on Bellomo's order to place Coppola on the family's hit list.

As of March 2012, Ida is serving life without parole at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Otisville, a medium security facility in New York. However, currently, the 76-year-old mobster is serving his life sentence at Schuylkill FCI.

Bellomo finally departed prison on Dec. 1, 2008, after serving 12 years. He is considered to be part of the Genovese crime family's leadership today.

From 1997-1998, Generoso spent 15 months in federal prison, copping to the plea agreement. In the end, he avoided that federal racketeering murder trial that sent Ida upriver for life. By 2004, Generoso probably was serving as co-underboss due to his advanced age. Lawrence J. “Larry Fab” Dentico, from Seaside Park, N.J., held the same title. He reportedly had extensive ties to the Genovese family from about the 1950s, when he was a soldier under the family's violent founder, Vito Genovese himself, reports noted.

Dentico eventually found a place as Louis A. “Bobby” Manna's top aide.In 1989, Manna, then-consigliere who oversaw the Genovese family's New Jersey operations, was sent away for 80 years for racketeering and murder conspiracy.

In August 2005, Dentico and other mobsters were indicted on for extortion conspiracy and conspiracy to commit murder, as well as for loansharking, sports bookmaking, numbers running, and football-ticket gambling. Dentico pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 51 months in 2006. He departed prison on May 12, 2009.
Generoso was hustling on the street until around two years ago, despite whatever the FBI and newspapers reported, our source said.


As a side-note, around 2004, the FBI offered the following figures as the size of each of the Five Families and identified the following ranking members:
GENOVESE: 142 soldiers, 22 capos. Boss: Vincent “Chin” GiganteActing Boss: Liborio “Barney” BellomoUnderboss: Michele “Mickey Dimino” Generoso and Lawrence DenticoConsigliere: James “Jimmy” Ida
GAMBINO: 168 soldiers, 17 capos.Boss: Peter GottiActing Boss: Arnold “The Beast” SquitieriUnderboss: Anthony “Tony Connecticut” MegaleConsigliere: Joseph “JoJo” Corozzo.
LUCHESE: 82 soldiers, 9 capos. Boss: Vittorio “Vic” AmusoActing Boss: Louis “Cross Bay” DaidoneUnderboss: Steven CreaConsigliere: Joseph Caridi
BONNANO:
131 soldiers, 15 capos. Boss: Joseph MassinoUnderboss: Salvatore VitaleConsigliere: Anthony Spero
COLOMBO: 60 soldiers, 5 capos. Boss: Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico Acting Boss: Joel “Joe Waverly” CacaceUnderboss: Thomas GieoliConsigliere: Ralph Lombardo

PS: The Sonny Red trifecta was not approved by the now-defunct Commission.


Sweeten up your sex life with some Mob Candy...available now.

So What the Hell Happened with Asaro Case?

This guy is 57 years old and still afraid of an 80 year old man. what a pu**
A seemingly unrecognizable Vinny Asaro walks home triumphantly with
his daughters lawyers.....
I first heard the term "jury nullification" Monday morning in conversation with a federal prosecution source regarding the Vinny Asaro verdict. I'd actually known what it meant, I just didn't know there was a term for it.

Asaro departed Eastern District Federal Court in Brooklyn on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, after being found not guilty of masterminding the infamous $6 million Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport in 1978. His attorneys, Elizabeth Macedonio, left, and Diane Ferrone walked with him.



An anonymous Brooklyn federal court jury of six men and six women had found Asaro, 80, not guilty in the killing of mob associate Paul Katz in the 1960s as well as various extortion and gambling charges.

After hearing the verdict, Asaro broke into a grin and slapped both his hands on the defense table with glee.

He then embraced defense attorneys Macedonio and Ferrone.

Nullification?
Jury nullification, quite simply, occurs when a jury acquits a defendant, even though jury members may believe that the defendant did commit one or more of the alleged crimes. The jury doesn't believe the defendant should be punished. The jury may disagree with the laws the defendant is charged with breaking. Or, the scenario seemingly more applicable here, they believe that the law should not have been applied in that case.
"This is a massive humiliation for federal prosecutors," said the source, who wasn't involved with the Asaro prosecution.

He believes, whatever else, Asaro primarily benefited from jurors' sympathy.

"Vinny Asaro looks like a grandfather. He wasn't Whitey Bulger; he was never on the FBI's most wanted list."

Asaro "the mobster," he said, "was the epitome of the mid-level company man, just sort of plugging along through the decades trying to earn a living. He wasn't living large. He wasn't Joe Massino. I don't want to say he's a harmless old man, but he was no mob chieftain in his later years, like, say, [Paul] Castellano was before he was killed [by John Gotti in a 1985 coup to assume control of the Gambino crime family]."

Noting that it took jurors only about three days to come up with verdicts on some 14 charges, he said his sense was that a "who cares?" attitude also seemed to have pervaded the jury room.

This is where the "weird concept" of jury nullification pokes its head up and says "howdy."

"It requires the perfect combination of the right jury and the right defendant, and the defense attorney really has to walk a line, especially in Federal Court, where the judges are sharp."

Defense attorneys have been know to mention the concept of nullification in opening and or closing statements depending on what that state's laws are regarding the concept. In federal court, the source said, telling jurors they can nullify a case, find the defendant not guilty even if they think he committed crimes, isn't allowed, though defense attorneys may mention it obliquely. Nullification also can be raised behind closed doors during deliberation. All it takes is one strongly opinionated juror to raise the idea of "who cares? This is absurd."

"It's just sort of telling the jury, "yeah we all know he did it, but so what? Why are we even here?," among other things.

"That may have happened in this case," he added, noting that some of the charges Asaro faced occurred when the President was named LBJ.

What also fuels the nullification scenario, he said, was the Fed's star witness, Gaspare Valenti.

"[Asaro's] own cousin admitted to needing money and to getting three grand a month. Now, three grand a month in New York City  is probably closer to six grand a month [in many other states]. That's a significant sum of money to working-class people who bust their ass day in and day out."




I'd agree, adding that $3,000 a month isn't bad for New York's white-collar workers, either. Including journalists.

"If I were the defense counsel, I'd be all over that:

Ladies and gentlemen, can you believe that YOUR tax dollars are funding the life of a man who was a leech on the ass of society since before we put a man on the moon?

"This may have been the single biggest thing that killed the government's case... Gaspare makes a liveable wage" for wearing a wire and testifying in a case he himself prompted.

He called the Fed's efforts in this case "bootstrapping." Mobsters have told me of a similar phenomenon, called a "Christmas tree RICO case."

"Basically, they threw a bunch of un-related charges against Vinnie, and the hope was probably that something would stick, and given his age and his background, he ends up serving, effectively, a life sentence."

The source said that what is of particular interest to him is which charge the jury first voted not guilty on.

"I'm thinking that it's the Lufthansa one. Whatever the case, it's a weird sort of dynamic. Say they find him not guilty of one charge. Then they look at another charge, and say, well, this is bullshit too. Basically, they go down the line" saying this. Eventually, he said, do they simply stop going over the charges?

"They may have gotten through four of five charges and said, let's just go home. This might be why they got back so quickly. I read that the prosecutors were just stunned at the verdict. I can tell you, there is nothing in the world like being defense counsel and hearing your client is found not guilty on anything."

A defense attorney in the Marine Corps, the source said when he won his first case, with jurors voting not guilty down the line, he felt like he'd had an out-of body experience.

"I asked my client, did he just say not guilty to everything? Which, by the way, is exactly what Vinnie did."

Such a win as Asaro's is quite rare.

Some of the charges baffled the source, among them the murder charge.

"This was the one that really stumped me. Burke has been dead since '96. And supposedly Vinny and Burke killed Katz with a dog chain the same year we went to the moon... So how did they try to prove that? By Jerome Asaro saying that he helped his dad move the body, in what, 1984? See, I keep coming back to dates, you notice. These alleged offenses, it's worth repeating and re-repeating, are old.

"If I'm the defense counsel, I'm arguing "Where's the beef?" A tagline from a 1980s Wendy's fast food commercial. "I'd throw in cultural references from the sixties thru the nineties, when the bulk of this stuff supposedly happened."

Asaro used two women as his trial attorneys. He didn't have the stereotypical mob defense attorney roaring in the courthouse.

"It totally flipped the whole, overaggressive Bruce Cutler, Sindone (who defended Nicky Scarfo and won in the 1980s) defense. Here you have two young, relatively attractive female defense attorneys defending an old mobster, and maybe the jurors on some level are thinking, well, if these nice girls are defending him, how can he be guilty?"

The trend in mob cases
The Fed's win 92 percent of cases, either through plea deals or jurors voting guilty. "The government lawyers in Mr. Asaro’s case spent three weeks presenting their case, with evidence and witnesses that they said proved Mr. Asaro had helped organize the 1978 Lufthansa heist, carried out a 1969 murder, and committed other crimes," the New York Times reported.
"It was a fast verdict, particularly for an acquittal, and the jurors did not request much evidence from the complicated case. It was also one of several defeats for organized-crime prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York in recent years, including acquittals for Joel Cacace in 2013; Francis Guerra in 2012; and acquittals on the most serious charges — six murders, including that of a police officer — for Thomas Gioeli and Dino Saracino in 2012."
The Times is piling it on somewhat. The Fed's "lost" those cases, but Waverly and Gioeli still will likely die behind bars. Saracino is serving 50 years. Francis “BF” Guerra, a long-time Colombo associate, was found not guilty of two murders but still was sentenced to 14 years in prison (for selling prescription drugs).

Anonymous Jury
The not-guilty verdict voiced by the anonymous jury is nearly unbelievable. Despite hundreds of hours of wiretap recordings during which the defendant said some pretty damning and incriminating (and comical) things, despite enough evidence to prove (in my mind) that Vincent Asaro was a third-generation card-carrying Mafia member who spent decades living the outlaw life as per a code created by Sicilian bandits more than 100 years ago, he walked out of prison a free man.

Asaro himself couldn't believe it.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Asaro told reporters through a grin while strolling away from the courthouse, breathing fresh air for the first time since he was rousted from his home by the Feds and put on trial for crimes committed decades ago.
He even said a few words for the camera, holding on to his attorneys for dear life...

Anonymous juries are pretty common in mob cases. There's an interesting dynamic involved in cases with anonymous juries that could have backfired in this case. Defense attorneys generally highly object to anonymous juries. John Gotti's final defense attorney, Albert Krieger, spoke out in a near-frenzy about the evils of anonymous juries, pointing out a not-so-obvious major flaw (for the defendant): The simple fact is that the government, by telling jurors that their names will be kept secret during a trial, also relays to them between the lines the fact that: THIS GUY ON TRIAL IS DANGEROUS, YOU, WHO SIT IN JUDGEMENT OF THIS MAN, ARE IN DANGER ...
The first anonymous jury was used in New York City in the 1970s. The case was the trial of Leroy Nicky Barnes, a Harlem drug kingpin.
An early clue that the Lufthansa case was not going the way prosecutors had initially planned may have been the fact that Bonanno street boss Thomas "Tommy D" DiFiore's attorneys were able to do something rarely done in major Mafia trials, as this case first seemed to be. 
As this blog reported (first..... I broke this news myself!) in Unheard of Is Heard: A federal judge granted a motion for severance that meant the Bonanno boss and two other Bonanno members, Jack Bonventre and John "Bazoo" Ragano, would have trials separate from the high-profile Lufthansa-related case that only "tainted" Asaro and, back then, his son.
Jerry Capeci acknowledged that this is pretty unheard of stuff, writing, "Normally, the likelihood of success for severance motions in racketeering cases involving five mobsters in one crime family ranges from very slim to none. In this case, the chance that either severance motion will pass muster is even more remote than the norm."
While Lufthansa was touted in headlines around the world following the Bonanno bust in January 2013, only Asaro was ever linked to Lufthansa. Court papers say he took part in “several planning meetings” with Burke.

Asaro at home days after being freed. A Valenti is visiting him.

Other crimes alleged in the indictment predate the airport heist. A homicide allegedly committed in 1969 by Asaro who later told an informant that he and Burke had killed Paul Katz in 1969 with a dog chain. Asaro had suspected that Katz was an informant, he told the actual informant.

Then in the mid-1980s, Asaro ordered his son and another man to dig up the corpse and rebury it somewhere else after Burke revealed that an NYPD detective was looking into Katz’s disappearance, according to court papers.

Asaro was observed on that day driving past the scene of the excavation. 
Later the same day he was seen chatting with Bonanno soldier Ragano. Asaro apparently was upset, court papers noted, adding that “agents observed him drive into a metal pillar.” (We note again: would have been a great scene for "The Sopranos.")
Asaro's other alleged crimes include ordering the early-1980s firebombing of a mobbed-up bar on Rockaway Boulevard in Ozone Park. Called "Afters," the Feds said the watering hole “was named for after Lufthansa. ”
At trial defense attorneys pretty effectively, it seems, argued that that alone was a stretch for the Fed's, as the timeline suggests Asaro would've required the ability to see into the future for that to be true. Afters could simply stand for After Hours.

It seems the Fed's might want to recalibrate their piling it on strategy. Never write a headline that overbills the story too. That's one rule jurors seem to be tired of prosecutors breaking.

I think the Fed's should refocus this vigor on other cases, such as the trend apparently evident on college campuses of male students getting away with rape .... there's some award-winning athletes who may deserve life in prison more than Vinny Asaro, in this writer's opinion. Ever hear of Erica Kinsman?

Just saying...

Murder Plot, Mob Alliance Prompt Quebec Bust

Vito Rizzuto's son Leonardo and Stefano Sollecito were identified as the two heads of the Montreal Cosa Nostra.
The murder plot of Vito Rizzuto's chief enemy, Raynald Desjardins, set in motion today's series of predawn raids in Quebec, with police sweeping up 48, including members of the Montreal Mafia and the Hells Angels.

Arrested were Rizzuto's son, an attorney reportedly not involved in organized crime (Leonardo Rizzuto, 46, took over after his father's death, police today claimed), and the daughter of Maurice "Mom" Boucher, a legendary former president of the Hells Angels' Montreal chapter.

Boucher himself was arrested  in his jail cell where he's serving multiple life sentences for killing two prison guards.



Both Leonardo Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito, 48, were identified as the heads of the Montreal Mafia since Vito Rizzuto's death in December 2013, according to police.

All those arrested today face a range of charges related to a drug-trafficking alliance between the mob, outlaw bikers and street gangs, as well as the alleged conspiracy to murder Desjardins, who earlier this year plead guilty to conspiring to commit the 2011 murder of Salvatore "The Ironworker" Montagna, a former Bonanno boss from New York.

Desjardins was a key player in an insurrection within the Montreal Mafia that allied elements of the Cosa Nostra and Ndrangheta against the Rizzuto organization. The war erupted while Vito was serving time in an American prison and in 2010 claimed the lives of his father and son Nick Jr., who had entered the family business. Rizzuto, knowing he was dying of cancer, returned home and quickly reignited the war, seemingly devoting what time he had left to killing as many of his enemies as possible.

Boucher, his daughter Alexandra Mongeau and Gregory Wooley, a longtime Boucher confidant also nabbed today, were central members of the Desjardins murder plot. Boucher met his daughter at the federal prison in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines and used a coded language to send messages through her to Wooley.

"There was an aspect of vengeance in the conspiracy, but it was mainly to keep (drug territory) and if there was competition, it was to eliminate it and if there was thought to be competition, it was to eliminate it," said provincial police Lt. Benoit Dube.
Maurice "Mom" Boucher.
Authorities said the alliance of the Italian Mafia, outlaw bikers and street gangs was established as a means to control drug trafficking and money laundering in Montreal.

Dubé said the raids -- dubbed operations Magot and Mastiff -- were meant to dismantle the "union" of Hells Angels, Mafia and street gangs.

"We arrested all the persons who were making the decisions," Dubé said at a news conference today.

Mongeau — daughter of "Mom" Boucher — will appear in court tomorrow to face the murder conspiracy charge. She gave birth about three weeks ago and her lawyer is attempting to get her a conditional release.

Boucher was convicted for first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of two prison guards.

Woolley, a Hells Angels member and boss of the Syndicates street gang, is charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking, plus the murder conspiracy.

The probe was conducted in three stages, according to police. The first involved an alliance formed by the mob, the Hells Angels and the street gangs to control territory and maintain distribution after Rizzuto's 2013 death. Investigators next uncovered the money trail followed by the conspiracy to kill Desjardins.

About 200 RCMP officers, Quebec provincial police and Montreal police participated in the raids today. Law enforcement seized 41 firearms, $1.2 million in cash, 122 cell phones and one Harley-Davidson motorcycle.