Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 30

Drinking with the Mob in "Cocktail Noir"

Nobody has to tell me how much some people dislike this blog.

I am more than aware of it (though the extremes to which this brings certain individuals befuddles me).

Anyway, when I add a link in the right-hand column I usually first ask the new addition whether they mind.

Which reminds me, I didn't really ask Scott Deitche if I could link to his personal website and the Tampa Mafia site that all along I thought he owned but doesn't. A quite  lovely woman named Lisa Figueredo owns it. (Through Tampa Mafia I found an interesting article on The Mob Museum's blog, which I also now link to, not first seeking permission either. The story is about the possibility of gambling returning to Cuba... that'd be so cool, wouldn't it?)
Anyway I am assuming it's okay with Scott, the linking, because he recently informed me of a new book coming out later this year. He thought, correctly, it would be of interest to me. By extension, I think it will be of interest to you. (Which reminds me: Lisa, I didn't ask you for permission either, sorry...)

I might as well come clean and tell you I added Nick Denmon as well (I should've added all these links a year or two ago) because he played a role behind the scenes in this needlessly complicated scenario I recount for you here.... I added Nick because he writes excellent Mafia-based fiction and is an all-around nice guy who probably can pick up women a lot easier than I can. I interviewed him a ways back, for interested parties.

Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets, available for preorder now, officially ships on November 3, 2015.

Authored by  Deitche, the book "cater[s] to lovers of the well-written word and the well-mixed drink...," a category into which I definitely include myself ("I'll have a martini, gin, straight up with extra olives, please." And it seems so would Cip, who I have linked to from the beginning and who I KNOW can pick up especially hot women easier than I can.... )

Cocktail Noir is a lively look at the intertwining of alcohol and the underworld―represented by authors of crime both true and fictional and their glamorously disreputable characters, as well as by real life gangsters who built Prohibition-era empires on bootlegged booze.    

It celebrates the potent potables they imbibed and the watering holes they frequented, including some bars that continue to provide a second home for crime writers.  

Highlighting the favorite drinks of Noir scribes, the book includes recipes for cocktails such as the Gimlet described in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, the Mojito Mulatta T.J. English drank while writing Havana Nocturne and the Dirty Martini favored by mob chronicler Christian Cippolini.   

Cocktail Noir also lets us in on the drinking habits of notorious organized crime figures, revealing Al Capone’s taste for Templeton Rye, Meyer Lansky’s preference for Dewar’s Scotch and Gambino family hit man Charles Carneglia’s habit of guzzling Cutty Sark.   

With black and white illustrations throughout, Cocktail Noir is as stylish and irreverent as the drinks, often larger-than-life figures and culture it explores.   

Authors Quoted Extensively: Dennis Lehane, Patrick Downey, T.J. English, Scott Burnstein, Christian Cippolini, Chriss Lyon, Gavin Schmitt.    

Authors Discussed: Mario Puzo, Gay Talese, Peter Maas, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammet.

Authors Honorably Mentioned: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Stephen King, Truman Capote.

Scott M. Deitche is the author of five books, including several on organized crime, including Cigar City Mafia: A Complete History of the Tampa Underworld, and The Silent Don: The World of Santo Trafficante Jr. 
He has also written dozens of articles for local and national magazines and newspapers, including the regular column Scott Deitche’s Libation Lounge for Cigar City Magazine, a column devoted to spirits and unusual cocktails. Scott has been featured on The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, A&E, C-SPAN, and both national and local news and radio shows. 
Scott also is one of the few writers who has donated items to the Mafia Museum in Las Vegas, and is a regularly featured guest speaker there. A high-tech, visual effects-filled true crime travel television series entitled Mobtown America, based on Scott’s popular walking tours of Mafia sites, has just started being shopped by Big Machine Productions. Scott lives in St. Petersburg, FL. with his family. Scott’s favorite cocktail is the Negroni.

The Inside Dope on Colombo Crime Family's Michael Persico

Michael Persico

I am running this one straight from Kenji Gallo's Breakshot Blog:

This Tuesday another man who has lived the mafia life will face a judge and be sentenced for his crimes: Michael Persico.
This so called “mafia prince” never had to get in the trenches to get his hands dirty. He was born into power and ordered others (who were not born into the ruling class) to do his work for him. He lived the life of privilege, wealth and power that comes with being mafia royalty. A position he never earned. He was able to live the way he did because of the murderous reign of his father Carmine.

Michael Persico got away with murder for 18 years until another Colombo soldier decided to change sides.

Tuesday Michael Persico will only face a maximum of 5 years. He has had a battery of high priced lawyers (that none of the family soldiers would ever be able to afford) delay the sentencing for 3 years.

One of the tapes the FBI used to bring the racketeering charges against Michael was made by Steve Marcus who Michael gave a $100,000 Shylock loan. Steven was partners with Teddy Persico and Eddie Garofalo in the trucking business on Staten Island.

Eddie has already taken a 7 year deal and Teddy took 12 years. The two people who really gained the most but face the least are Michael Persico and Alicia DiMichele. They both got great deals for pleading out.

The enterprise could not have functioned without those two.

Maybe the judge will grant Michael Persico his wish and let him take back his plea deal. Send him to trial where he will face murder and racketeering charges.

Teddy Persico will emerge from prison ready to continue on in the family tradition because that is what he knows. Eddie Garofalo, whose father was a big man in the construction industry in New York until he was murdered in front of his Brooklyn home by Sammy the Bull’s crew, continued on in the footsteps of his father regardless of his father’s fate. The Gambinos wanted to take away Eddie’s business after his father was murdered, but Teddy stepped in the argument. Teddy told them to let the kid earn a living. Once Teddy and I were talking about a guy who bad mouthed Eddie for not doing anything about his father’s murder. The guy was talking about using a gun to get revenge. Teddy said what was he supposed to do? He was a kid. Fight the whole Gambino family? A few years later Eddie was in a bad spot because nothing happened to him after I wore a wire on him. The Colombos wondered why nothing had happened to him as a result. I wonder also.

About Our U.S. Alexa Ranking

Some diligent readers may notice that little badge over in the right-hand column atop this blog's search engine (which I created all by myself and which nobody apparently uses but me).

What is Alexa....

Well, in as few words as possible, it offers insights into a website's popularity. You can visit the site, paste an http address and seen an estimate of its ranking, in both the U.S. and the world.

In as many words as possible -- we'll let the Alexa folks tell you in their own words:

Alexa's traffic estimates are based on data from our global traffic panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions. In addition, we gather much of our traffic data from direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script on their site and certify their metrics. However, site owners can always choose to keep their certified metrics private. 

Our global traffic rank is a measure of how a website is doing relative to all other sites on the web over the past 3 months. The rank is calculated using a proprietary methodology that combines a site's estimated average of daily unique visitors and its estimated number of pageviews over the past 3 months. We provide a similar country-specific ranking, which is a measurement of how a website ranks in a particular country relative to other sites over the past month.

So while our ranking of around 106,000 may not seem that big a deal, think for a moment about how many websites exist in the U.S. and are launched on a daily basis. Many millions, if not a billion.

And know that our ranking is actually much higher, as I have not signed on to any of Alexa's plans. I know the ranking is higher because the site's estimates for our daily unique visitors is woefully lower than the actual numbers as per Google Analytics.

Also, as a fun game—and for fellow bloggers out there always on the lookout for cool stuff, download this free Alex browser extension. Then, any website you visit you can see a chunk of key data about its traffic and other benchmarks.

This is probably the first thing I have ever written for this blog that is not related to the mob.

I only hope you folks can get used to it because I may start writing about tertiary topics from time to time.

As many of you already know, I am by nature a loudmouth and my interests are wide and varied—and somewhat esoteric, ranging from my personal hero, Vladimir Nabokov, the greatest fiction writer who ever lived, to the Eastern front of World War II, where the Wehrmacht invaded Russia and some of the largest tank battles in the history of modern warfare took place.

Nabokov
Of course we Americans don't know our history and I daresay that most of you WWII buffs know all about D-Day, the Normandy landings, etc. but nothing of the Eastern front, where about 75% of Hitler's war machine was fighting first a war of conquest, then one of retreat.

Hitler's greatest general there was Erich von Manstein.

Of all his Field Marshals, Hitler actually both admired and feared Manstein, who was a strategic and logistical genius, which Hitler was not. Manstein also was exceptionally popular among the rank-and-file soldiers, as well as the officer corps.

(Interestingly, Hitler and his gang of paladins are usually referred to as "gangsters," something I may explore more fully in a future post.)

Hitler "retired" Manstein (who was not afraid to speak up when he thought his Fuehrer wrong) in 1942, which probably saved Manstein's life.

Manstein was the architect of Hitler's invasion of France and the so-called "low countries."

Erich von Manstein
Anticipating the Allies expectation that the Wehrmacht's major thrust to the West would occur through the Netherlands (basically the Allied commanders thought the German army would use the same strategy to invade to the West used in World War I -- and in fact, the old WWI strategy was the only one on the drawing board. Then Manstein got to work -- uninvited, he crafted a strategy that brought Rommel and his tanks to the sea so fast, it scared the hell out of the rest of the Western world. Today, we do not appreciate how close Hitler came to world domination.)

Manstein devised an innovative tactic—later dubbed the Sichelschnitt ("sickle cut")—involving a sweep through the Ardennes—a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges, and also later the site of the well-known Battle of the Bulge—followed by a swift drive to the English Channel that cut off the French and Allied armies in Belgium and Flanders.

Manstein's memoirs, Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler's Most Brilliant General, make for great reading for World War II buffs and those interested in the strategic planning of large-scale land battles using conventional arms.

For those of you loyal readers who have read this far a treat: my next story will involve a story about something that happened in Florida involving the Gambino crime family and John Gotti. 
"Mikie Scars" promised me the story—and this week I have to pester him for the details....

Buy Now: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire

Now available for purchase on Amazon!

Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire. Both print and ebook versions are available, priced at $6.99 and $4.99. This is a short-format ebook (equal to around 62 pages, the length of the print edition.)

It reached no. 2 on Amazon Kindle's best-seller list.... (It also obviously touched a nerve based on strongly unjustified critical feedback received from a few sources, in addition to death threats aimed at yours truly. Read the bogus reviews on Amazon. )

Some 100,000 people visit this blog monthly. About 50,000 are regular readers. If you enjoy this blog, please support it by purchasing your copy. (Weve sold a lot of copies but nowhere near 50,000--and I'd never post a donate button. I'm not a beggar....)

ALSO:

*Dominick Cicale will sign a set number of print copies, for those of you who want a personalized edition. (Details coming later today ...)


"Life (and death) inside the Mafia... Dominick Cicale was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. From a young age he was closely associated with the Genovese crime family, considered the most powerful Mafia group in America. Fate intervened. In 1999 Cicale forged a tight alliance with Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, then an up-and-coming member of the Bronx faction of the Bonanno crime family.

"Under Basciano’s tutelage, Dominick rode the fast track: he was inducted into the American Cosa Nostra and swiftly rose from soldier to capo, amassing great wealth and power. Cicale befriended and associated with numerous high-ranking figures within all of New York's Five Families as he plotted and schemed in a treacherous world where each day could be his last.

"This installment views startling details surrounding the brutal gangland murder of Gerlando “George from Canada” Sciascia and its resulting impact on relations between the Bonanno family in New York and its Montreal -based “outpost” established by the Mafia Commission in 1931. The cast of characters includes high-ranking Mafiosi such as Joseph Massino (The Last Don), Salvatore “Sal the Iron Worker” Montagna, Vito Rizzuto, Michael "The Nose" Mancuso, "Vinny Gorgeous" (a nickname never used in his presence) and Cicale himself."


The short-format ebook is priced at $4.99 (it is around 20,000 words), and we packed it with as much value as possible.

Researching extensively to set the background and context for Dominick's information, I tried to focus on little-known facts that were part of some of the major events described in the book.

For example, "Sonny Red" Indelicato was under investigation for the murder of Crazy Joe Gallo when he was killed, in addition, Indelicato, on the night of the three-capo meeting, scattered his crews throughout New York City in case the loyalist faction tried to take them all out in one strike.

In addition, several Bonanno members supposedly stayed with Tommy “Karate” Piterawhile the three capos were slaughtered.

As you'll read in our book, Dominick exonerates someone now sitting in prison for a crime they didn't commit.

In addition, we note problems with testimony that touched on this story. Sal Vitale, who provided the mother lode of testimony regarding facets of the Massino-Bonanno family, didn't know the full account of activities that took place in the Bronx, based on Dominick's inside info.

Vitale and other mobsters never went to the Bronx, where Basciano and other of the borough's crews were essentially left alone to do what they wanted. The Bronx could've been on the moon as far as mobsters in New York's other boroughs were concerned. (Volume two will focus on the Bonanno's Bronx faction.)

This is the  look that "stumped" Jerry Capeci, who misunderstood it and called it a sort-of business manual. (He obviously didn't read it.)

Vitale's testimony regarding the "George from Canada" murder doesn't agree with Dominick's information.

Also Joseph "Big Joey" Massino failed two polygraph tests.

As Newsday noted in the storySurprising testimony in Basciano case:

"Former crime boss Joseph Massino unexpectedly testified that he failed two FBI lie detector tests while trying to become a government witness -- an admission defense attorneys are likely to use to attack his credibility...

"Massino described his test failings while Basciano's attorneys cross-examined him in a special proceeding, in which prosecutors are trying to convince a federal jury in Brooklyn that Basciano -- convicted this month of the murder of a mob associate -- deserves to die."

Anthony DeStefano mentions a murder plot Vinny "Gorgeous" Basciano tried to orchestrate from prison. The target was Michael "Mikey Nose" Mancuso. The plot didn't originate with Vinny, and DeStefano doesn't really know what set it in motion.


Tony Green

Now I realize some (or many) of you probably don't even know who some of these guys are. Sal Vitale, for example, was Massino's brother-in-law and underboss for a time. He fell out of favor and, following an indictment, he eventually flipped. This book was written for the beginner as well as the expert.

One main goal was to dole out juicy details that many of you likely will find intriguing. For example, consider the "Tony Green" excerpt. Anthony "Tony Green" Urso was a capo who briefly served as Joe Massino's acting boss. He advocated the killing of children of informants as punishment -- but also as a cautionary measure to stop others from flipping -- in an infamous comment made to "Big Lou" Tartaglione.
Urso also dressed in skintight spandex and didn't always wear his toupee properly. He also could be talking about, say, a murder or a new family venture that could earn millions -- any topic at all was never large enough to interest Urso if a nice ass happened into his view. His entire focus would concentrate on a female's swaying buttocks.

From the excerpt:

...Urso commanded the Bonanno family and had major resources to back him up.

Urso was also interested in attractive young ladies—to a fault. On street corner meetings, he was known to suddenly lose interest in the topic of discussion whenever a fetching young woman happened into his field of vision. “Tony thought he was God's gift to every woman who passed him by,” Cicale said. “He’d make it so obvious too, looking a woman up and down.”

... Cicale recalled a time when he and Basciano were waiting for Urso to meet them. “Urso steps out of his tricked-out, pimped-out black Hummer H2 wearing bright, shiny, royal-blue skintight spandex. Urso actually looked as if he was about to get on stage at a male strip club.

“Vinny and I were standing in a supermarket parking lot waiting for Urso. We watched him park his car farther down the lot from us. When Urso got out of the Hummer in that outfit, Vinny starts whispering shit to me without moving his lips so Urso doesn’t notice. ‘Oh my fucking God,’ Basciano told me. ‘Is this man crazy or what? Dom, look at his sagging balls. They’re huge. This guy is fucking kidding, right?’”

“Tony was only several feet away and I’m trying to hold in a major burst of laughter. I’m trying to keep my lips together and stop myself from losing it. Then Vinny whispered again, like a ventriloquist: ‘Bo, shut the fuck up. You’re gonna make me bust out laughing right in this guy’s face. You’re gonna get us killed.’ I’m busting a gut inside, thinking if any of the other families see this guy, then we’re all gonna get killed, the whole fucking crime family.”...

Salvatore "The Iron Worker" Montagna also plays a role.Vito Rizzuto, who set loose a bloody vendetta against all traitors, especially those responsible for the murder of his father and son, is a major figure in the book.

We posit that whatever else Vito was doing in Canada, he still reported to the Bonannos and paid annual tribute to the boss in New York. Cicale believes any "break" Vito made prior to his prison sentence for the three-capo slaying was directed personally at Massino and not the Bonanno family. In fact, Vito was very friendly with another figure in our book and was still paying tribute as late as the year 2004; he didn't stop paying in 1999, the year George From Canada was murdered, as has been widely reported.

Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire

Riggi, "Last Legitimate Boss," Dies

John "The Eagle" Riggi
Giovanni "John the Eagle" Riggi (February 1, 1925 – August 3, 2015) died on Monday of natural causes.

A member of the New Jersey-based crime family since the 1940s (before it was given its historic name, the DeCavalcante crime family), Riggi served as the Elizabeth crew's captain and was named acting boss in the 1970s.

Riggi's rise was slow and deliberate. Simone "Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante named Riggi as his successor in 1980. Riggi in fact held the official boss title up until his death a week ago.  He's been described as well-spoken, extremely polite and extremely ruthless.





Toward the end of his life he'd been incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Massachusetts. He was released on November 27, 2012.

The funeral at the Corsentino Home for Funerals in Elizabeth, N.J., held on Friday, Aug. 7, was well-attended, with mourners going around the block. Riggi was entombed at Rosedale Cemetery in Linden, N.J.

"He was the last legitimate boss and there will never be another guy like him," said a source who'd been close to Riggi for many years. "If you met him, he had almost like a presidential bearing."

John Alite told us: "John Riggi had a sense of honor. The difference between him and John Gotti was that he would take the fall for his guys.

"I'm the father of my family," was something Riggi said. He viewed himself as a father, versus as a boss.

Riggi was more than willing to go to prison to take the heat off his guys, the rank-and-file members who served in his crime family. This doesn't mean that Riggi tolerated informants. Quite the opposite, the DeCavalcantes was known for ruthlessly killing their fair share of informants/suspected informants, among other threats to the family.

"Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante (who preferred "The Count" moniker based on claims of Italian royal lineage) had a tight relationship with Riggi. Early during Simone's reign, he picked Riggi from the choir.

At the time, "John had had a beef with someone in the family. John told [DeCavalcante], 'If I'm lying, kill me. If he's lying I'm gonna kill him right now....'

"It didn't come to that, but [DeCavalcante] saw what John was made of."

According to the source, Riggi was hesitant about getting involved with Cosa Nostra but that his father, Manny, "an old-school Sicilian" soldier in the New Jersey crime family, had pressured him into joining.

"He pushed John into the crime family."

Riggi graduated from Linden High School in 1942 as its class president. He then enlisted in the United States Army in 1943, serving as an aircraft and engine mechanic. His obit described him as an "Army Air Corps veteran."

After he returned from World War II, he drifted toward the Mafia.

In 1969, DeCavalcante was convicted of extortion-conspiracy and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released in 1976, when he named Riggi acting boss of the family. DeCavalcante then moved to Florida to begin the process of pulling away from the day-to-day affairs of the Mafia.

In 1980 after serving his final prison stint (five years), DeCavalcante officially retired to a high-rise condo in Florida and passed control to Riggi.

"The Count" largely stayed out of Mafia business, though the FBI alleged he continued to assist Riggi into the early 1990s, dispensing advice through Simone Junior, his son.

According to our source, when Simone passed Riggi the torch he made one request in particular.  "'Promise me you'll keep these guys working.' That's what this was all about," the source told us.

Riggi reaped the enormous rewards of large labor and construction racketeering, as well as the mob's historic standbys of loansharking, illegal gambling and extortion.

He reinstated some of the crime family's old traditions, which DeCavalcante had deemed unnecessary. (Years later, Joseph "Big Joey" Massino followed the precedent set by "Sam the Plumber," doing away with conceits like having a gun and knife on the table during induction ceremonies in case of a law enforcement raid amid the ceremony.)

Historically, while the DeCavalcante crime family engaged in traditional Mafia rackets, its strength (and perhaps ability to maintain its independence from New York's Five Families, as well as the Philadelphia criminal organization) stemmed from its immense influence over unions – specifically, Local 394 of the International Brotherhood of Laborers and Hod Carriers in Elizabeth and Laborers International Union District Council 30 in Millburn.


"Sam the Plumber" told Riggi to keep the guys working.....

Riggi was an expert in labor racketeering and wielded immense power for years over New Jersey's construction trade due to his involvement with labor unions. Riggi served as a business agent for Local 394 from 1965 to 1986, and was then named president of District Council 30 in 1986. He supposedly retired shortly thereafter, though he continued to serve as a consultant to the local.

Today, New Jersey's only homegrown crime family (despite the mob's relentless exploitation of the Garden State) operates closely with New York's Gambino crime family, according to the FBI. Both crime families are run by Sicilians, according to a recorded conversation between a member and an undercover agent.

It was a very different story in Riggi's day.
"The Eagle" had been virtually untouchable. Riggi and his associates were known to be an extremely tight-knit group that held important meetings in or near Elizabeth's Peterstown section at the Ribera Club and the Cafe Italia. The Holiday Inn in East Orange and Sheraton Newark Airport Hotel at Newark International Airport also were key meeting places for the group.

Although Riggi, like his predecessor, was known not to have a lust for violence, he didn't hesitate to issue the ultimate order when he deemed it necessary.
Riggi sanctioned the 1978 murder of John Suarato, the uncle of a made member. A low-level street hustler, Suarato engaged in an ongoing dispute with his sister over an inheritance. Riggi's approval of the hit, while he was still officially capo, raised his profile and popularity level with the rank and file.
Other key murders attributed to Riggi include the 1980s hit on Vincenzo Sorce, a local construction company owner whose body was found under the Goethal's Bridge between Elizabeth and Staten Island. His murder followed an altercation between himself and member at the Ribera Club. It also happened a few weeks following an FBI/local law enforcement Local 394's Elizabeth headquarters. Some 14 other business locations were searched in connection with a federal investigation of the mob's influence in the construction industry in New Jersey.

In January of 1988, Vincent "Jimmy" Rotondo, once underboss of the DeCavalcante family, was found dead inside his Lincoln Continental, which has been parked in front of Rotondo's Brooklyn home. Inside the vehicle with his bullet riddled body was a jar of rotting fish. It's alleged that Riggi approved the hit owing to Rotundo having brought into the family a criminal associate later identified as an informant who testified against Riggi. John Gotti also allegedly approved the hit. (Years later, Anthony Rotondo, Vincent's son, who'd been promoted to capo, turned informant.)

The problem for law enforcement was that, though recordings were made extensively during meetings when Riggi was in the room, the man never said a single incriminating word.

He also took extensive measures to avoid incriminating himself and anyone else. "John would drive for two hours to have a one-minute conversation with someone" via a payphone, the source told us.

Even during meetings held in public, with the FBI and other law enforcement officials watching, Riggi never said or did anything incriminating.

(Riggi once wrote a letter to a Union County, N.J., businessman advising the well-respected gentleman to take up vegetarianism.)

A local contractor once called the New Jersey Organized Crime Task Force to tell them Riggi had summoned him to a lunch meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Linden. The OCTF, which had been watching Riggi for months by then, leaped at what they thought would be a huge opportunity.

They bugged the table where Riggi and the contractor would sit and set up full surveillance.

They were surprised when the restaurant started filling up with more patrons than was usual.

Riggi showed up, and the receptionist sat him and the contractor at the bugged table, where she'd been instructed to by the OCTF.

The task force expected Riggi to demand an envelope. They thought he'd threaten the contractor with labor disruption or even violence.

They were in for a shock.

"I am John Riggi," the mob boss said as he took his seat in the restaurant across the table from the contractor. "I just want to tell you that New Jersey is a very pro-union state."

Then, union leader after union leader rose from other tables in the restaurant and walked over to Riggi's table. One by one, they shook Riggi's hand, told the contractor what a great guy Riggi was, then returned to their respective seats. These men were the bosses of nearly every single union local in North Jersey.

Law enforcement officials had to admit they were impressed. Riggi was able to let the contractor know exactly how powerful he was without saying or doing anything. He simply introduced himself and allowed the contractor to see the extent of his influence via simple handshakes.

The contractor who'd called the OCTF ultimately did business with Riggi.

Still, Riggi was a mob boss, and he never forgot it. No Paul Castellano, he knew what tended to happen to mob bosses and other powerful mobsters, so he began readying himself for prison about five years before he went in, according to our source.

"He sat in a room alone for hours every day. He also started to get into shape. He wanted to live."

Riggi also sought to help his own family in the event that he was imprisoned.

"I once drove him to meet with a butcher he knew from East Orange," the source said. "He'd saved this guy's life once and had never taken anything from him in return."

"When I go away," Riggi told the butcher, "feed my family." (The butcher did, sending his best cuts of meat to the Riggi household on a weekly basis while Riggi was in prison.)

Law enforcement finally nailed Riggi and his two sons on October 16, 1989, when they were indicted along with two top Riggi associates: capo Girolamo Palermo and soldier Salvatore Timpani. 
All faced federal racketeering charges related to their control of the construction industry through Local 394. Riggi was convicted on July 20, 1990, of extortion and labor law violations, and Timpani of extortion. The other defendants were acquitted.

When they came to arrest Riggi early one morning as part of a larger sweep, the mob boss asked politely if he could shower and dress in a suit.

"All the others we took in that morning put on the arrest suit—sweats and sneakers. But when we brought him into the holding cell and he walked in, they all stood up," said Robert Boccino, a veteran New Jersey organized crime expert and former deputy chief of the State Organized Crime Bureau. Boccino considered Riggi a gentleman.

While at the federal penitentiary in Butner, N.C., Riggi was sentenced in September 2003 to an additional 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to ordering the Sept. 11, 1989, murder of a Staten Island man believed to be cooperating with authorities.

"We agreed that he should be murdered," Riggi said matter-of-factly at his plea hearing. "Pursuant to the agreement, Fred Weiss was murdered. That's it."

Riggi was not perfect, and he made mistakes.He had a knack for picking the wrong street bosses while he was away, for example.

But his larger mistake, some say, was becoming too close to Gambino boss John Gotti. Historically under "Sam the Plumber" the Genovese family had been most closely associated with the New Jersey family.

According to intelligence reports, Riggi and Gotti meet regularly to discuss construction projects in New Jersey. Gotti had an interest in a New York City-based steel erecting company, which was involved in a large construction project in Central New Jersey. Gotti and his associates needed Riggi's laborers but also sought Riggi's advice.
Riggi cooperated with Gotti and approved the hits that Gotti requested of him. Still, in the end, Riggi supposedly harbored some anger at Gotti.
When told Gotti was suffering from a particular ailment that later caused the Dapper Don's death, Riggi allegedly said: "That's because he talked too much."
Riggi was his own man, to the end. He helped build Little League baseball fields in Linden and gave generously to charity, Boccino said.

"The people in Elizabeth loved him. Nobody would cooperate—that was the problem. He was respected."
Another source we spoke with had this to say of Riggi: "Pal, I have nothing to add that's has not already been said. I knew him as a child because he knew my family, then years later I ended up spending a couple of years in a cell with him, which was a great Life lesson. ...

"He was a good man in a world of scumbags."

Also we can now reveal Riggi's role in a previous story we posted about Frank Sinatra, who was once proposed to get an honorary button, as a source told us.

"Very few people know he was purposed to be made," the source said of Sinatra.

However, "a few of the bosses on the Commission shot it down. I got that story right from the mouth of a boss who sat on the Commission."

That boss, we can now say, was Riggi, who hated Sinatra and was one of the bosses who thumbed-down the honorary button request.

NYPD Detective Who Infiltrated Mob in 1972 Dies

Detective LeVien was part of a 1972 sting centered on a junkyard in Canarsie, Brooklyn.
 New York’s five families would meet here. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York TimesNew York Detective Who Infiltrated the Mafia, Dies at 68 - The New York Times: Douglas A. LeVien Jr., a former undercover police detective who in 1972 infiltrated the meeting ground used by New York’s five Mafia families, a landmark operation that produced scores of convictions, died on July 30 while vacationing in Saratoga, N.Y. He was 68.
The cause was a heart attack, his son Vincent Douglas LeVien said. Except for several months in the late 1970s when, under apparent threat of death from a high-ranking mobster, he was placed in the federal witness protection program, Detective LeVien lived in Brooklyn all his life.

An expert on organized crime who in a four-decade career worked with city, state and federal authorities, Detective LeVien — a French-Canadian name, pronounced luh-VYEN — was a 20-year veteran of the New York Police Department. Eight of those years were spent under cover.

“He’s disarming,” Edward A. McDonald, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Detective LeVien for years, said on Thursday, reflecting on his former colleague’s success as an undercover operative. “He didn’t come off like a tough guy, but he studied the people he was dealing with and knew what would be appealing to them and what they would be persuaded by.”

Mr. McDonald, who during the 1980s was chief of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn, added: “He had incredible street sense. He grew up as a kid in the streets of Brooklyn and knew his way around.”

Detective LeVien’s most celebrated cases include the 1972 sting, called Operation Gold Bug, which centered on a Brooklyn junkyard trailer in which known Mafiosi planned a spate of crimes. He also played a two-year role as a drug-dealing millionaire in an operation that snared Enzo Napoli, a representative of the Sicilian Mafia who served the Gambino and Lucchese crime families.
Douglas A. LeVien Jr.In later years, his investigative work aided prosecutions in the Abscam federal corruption trials, the fatal Howard Beach racial attack of 1986 and the “Mafia Cops” case of the 2000s, in which two former New York police detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, were convicted of crimes, including murder, committed while in the pay of the Lucchese family.

During Detective LeVien’s time under cover, his life was a web of identities assumed and identities discarded, with an array of passports and driver’s licenses to match. His work encompassed seedy motel rooms and million-dollar yachts; diamonds, stolen artworks and kilos of heroin and cocaine; and long, painstaking efforts to penetrate a famously clannish brotherhood.
“When you’re dealing with organized crime,” he told Police magazine in 1980, “most of them, if they don’t know your mother and your grandmother, they’re not gonna talk to you. You have to try to break that insulation. It’s not impossible, but it is extremely hard. It has to be done with a lot of thought.”

Beneath all that thought ran a relentless undertow: the chronic fear of being “made” — of having someone tumble to his true identity. At least once while under cover, Detective LeVien submitted to a beating so as not to reveal himself.

“As soon as the guy thinks you’re a cop, it’s just like him knowing you’re a cop,” he said in the same interview. “If he’s suspicious, he’s gonna ask you who’s your mother and who’s your grandmother. And that test you’ll never pass. Then you’re dead.”

Only at his father’s wake on Tuesday, Vincent LeVien said, did he learn that Detective LeVien was known to law-enforcement colleagues in his years under cover by the code name Canary — as in the canary in the mine shaft.

Douglas Alexander LeVien Jr. was born in Brooklyn on May 27, 1947, and reared in the Prospect Heights neighborhood. His father was a security guard; his mother had been a cloistered nun in Montreal before leaving her order and marrying.

As a youth, he ran with the Hilltoppers, a local street gang.

“I was always on the wrong side of the fence,” Detective LeVien told The New York Times in 1972. “I never did anything that serious, or mugging or stealing. We drank beer and fought the nearby gangs.”

After graduating from John Jay High School in 1965, he enlisted in the Marines, and that, he said, straightened him out fast. He served as a radio operator in Vietnam, where he saw combat.

On his discharge in 1969, he joined the Police Department. In 1972, at 25, he was made a detective.

That year, Detective LeVien was conscripted for Operation Gold Bug, a yearlong investigation involving Bargain Auto Parts, a junkyard in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. The operation was named for Eugene Gold, the Brooklyn district attorney at the time, and for the listening device that the authorities planted in the junkyard trailer that served as a de facto Mafia boardroom.

The sting, which included six months of audio and video surveillance, was of a scope never before attempted.

“The Gold Bug was a marquee investigation,” Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney from 1990 to 2013, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “It was the first time a bug was actually planted in a mobster’s office.”

He added, “It was a breakthrough for local law enforcement, and it would be followed by dramatic investigations by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney.”

Holding court in the trailer was Paul Vario, a powerful member of the Lucchese family (and the model for Paul Sorvino’s character in the 1990 film “Goodfellas”). Members of all five families were seen entering and leaving the premises, said Mr. Hynes, who at the time worked under Mr. Gold as chief of the Brooklyn rackets bureau.

Mr. Vario hoped to infiltrate the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. In cultivating him, Detective LeVien presented himself as exactly what he was: a detective attached to that office. But, wearing a wire, he also presented himself as a cop on the take, hungry for bribes.

It took time for him to ingratiate himself, but after Detective LeVien had made some 30 visits to the trailer, Mr. Vario offered him $1,000 to supply the name of a confidential informer used by the district attorney.

In October 1972, just before Detective LeVien would have had to deliver that information, 1,200 police officers fanned out across the metropolitan area, serving more than 600 subpoenas on accused mob associates and some 100 fellow police officers believed to be in their pay.

The operation, which made headlines nationwide, including on the front page of The Times, resulted in about 100 convictions, Mr. Vario’s among them, on charges including extortion, bribery, hijacking, loan sharking and insurance fraud, Mr. Hynes said — “the whole menu of organized crime.”

For Detective LeVien, the relentless imperative to think six moves ahead, the labyrinth of shifting identities and the constant looking over his shoulder inevitably took a toll over time.

Read Full Article....

Reformed Mobsters Help Epilepsy Foundation

Jimmy Calandra, far right, John Alite, third from right, and Minister Glenn Hovater of Goodfellas for God, third from left, at epilepsy fundraiser held recently.
Former mob associates Jimmy Calandra and John Alite both stood at the podium and electrified the audience at a fundraiser for the Epilepsy Foundation held on July 24.
The event was organized by Goodfellas for God minister Glen Hovater's son, Perry, in honor of Perry's son Austin, who suffers from epilepsy, as does Alite.

The fundraiser took place in Cleveland at the LaVera Party Center in Willoughby Hills.


The News Herald ran a piece about the event, Former mafia members explain why the life should not be glamorized:

When Alite, who also suffers from epilepsy, and Calandra got up to speak to a crowd of more than 100 people, I expected the worst. They delivered with stories about felony crimes involving murder, drugs and robberies which put them in prison. Alite, who spent 20 years in prison and was involved in over 40 shootings, shared his feelings of shame and regret for the crimes he committed. At one point, he unexpectedly put his cell phone to the microphone and played the song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” The crowd sang and clapped along. 

Once he had the crowd’s attention, Alite got serious and spoke from the heart about meeting with family members of his victims and asking for forgiveness. A heavy, cold silence filled the room. Strangers, who sometimes glamorize the mob, seemed to realize a life in crime is nothing to be proud of. 

Alite and Calandra, who have reformed their lives and are now motivational speakers, confirmed that. 

Calandra, who spent 13 years in prison, unexpectedly shared poems he wrote in prison. One told the story of how he got involved in the mob at a young age. When his father divorced his mother and moved away, the “wise guys” on the streets of New York where he grew up became his mentors. He spoke about what it was like to have his best friend killed by the gang he hung out with. He also described the day he realized a life in crime wasn’t for him. 

He had gone to a home to do a hit on a man with a fellow mob member. When he got to the home, a lady answered the door instead of the man he intended to kill. His fellow mob crony, who had his finger on the trigger of his gun, instantly killed the woman, who was a complete stranger. 

It’s unusual that a murder could become a turning point in someone’s life, but for someone in the mob, unusual, devastating circumstances are everyday occurrences. 

As I sat in LaVera’s Tuscan room, a former mob hangout known as the Mounds Club several decades ago, and listened to Alite and Calandra’s stories, I wondered what it was like to wake up every day with disappointment, pain and regret. I wondered what it was like to live with the constant worry that I could be killed at any moment out of vengeance for someone I had murdered. I also wondered how much strength it would take to put a life of prison and crime behind me and move on knowing I had missed watching my children grow up, my best friend dying and some of the best years of my life. 

“If I can change one kid’s decision to join a gang, to enter ‘the life,’ or to throw away his future, then I know everything I’ve been through hasn’t been in vain,” Alite said. 

Alite openly shares his story with anyone who asks. Earlier this year, a book about his life titled “Gotti’s Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti and the Demise of the American Mafia,” was released. Calandra, who plans to write a book, also isn’t afraid to share his stories. He has talked about his trials and regrets in an episode of “Inside the American Mob” on National Geographic.
Because I am human and make mistakes myself, it’s not up to me to throw stones and judge Alite and Calandra. They have to wake up every day, look at themselves in the mirror and live with what they’ve done. I don’t at all condone what they’ve done. I despise it. I feel bad for their victims and their victim’s families. 

What I do admire about Alite and Calandra is their courage to be open and honest about the dark side of the mafia. They stress to their audiences that the mob life should not be glamorized. They have asked for forgiveness from their God and have vowed to live the rest of their lives helping others. 

How they ended up in Willoughby Hills from their homes in New York and New Jersey is a fluke. They willingly made a 10-hour drive together to help a friend raise money for a good cause. They brought people in with the anticipation of hearing stories about the mafia. While their stories are sad and horrific, their courage to share is admirable. 

My hope is Alite and Calandra continue to speak at charity events. Not only are they benefiting themselves by telling the sad truth about their lives, they are also helping others realize nothing good comes from a life of crime. Crime can suck you in and squeeze years out of your life. Alite and Calandra are proof of that, and they aren’t proud of it. 

Despite the trail of troubles they have let behind, they are determined to spend the rest of their days helping others.

Agnello Indicted on Racketeering Charges

Carmine Agnello.
His legendary former father-in-law, John Gotti, may have been unfair when he said those famous words about him ("Does he get in the backseat of the car and think someone has stolen the steering wheel?") but one thing is perfectly clear.

Carmine Agnello likes to steal (at least according to Cleveland's Cuyahoga County Prosecutor).

A source formerly active in the Gambino crime family told us that Agnello is actually a pretty intelligent businessman, only he's beset with certain flaws, the chief one being he has the mindset of a dime-store thug. By this we refer to his predilection for sparking street fights with uniformed police officers over parking tickets....
"The [NYPD] set up shop across the street from him with a rival business" as part of an investigation. "So what does he do? He threatens them, sets fires and breaks their windows."
Agnello was indicted and sentenced to years in prison for his scrap metal scheme but it appears when he hauled up stakes to head west he wasn't exactly rehabilitated.

Anyway, Cleveland's Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty announced the indictment of Agnello, on racketeering and related charges.

Also indicted: his wife, Danielle Agnello, along with Eagle Auto Parts Inc.; Charity Towing LLC; and Alfred McClairn .

The investigation, 30 months long, is ongoing --and so far has revealed that since 2012, Agnello has "systemically defrauded a regional scrap metal processing facility for more than $4.2 million."

Agnello, 55, artificially weighed down scrap automobiles with dirt and other debris, in addition to bribing employees of the scrap facility.

The indictment seeks forfeiture of the property that Agnello used to commit the offenses, as well as equipment and contraband that police seized when they searched his scrap operations on July 14, 2015.

Ian Friedman, an attorney for Agnello, said in a statement that Agnello was engaged in a legitimate business and the government is "dead wrong here to keep harping on his past." He said prosecutors have "picked a dirty fight."

In 2002, Agnello pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York to Racketeering and Conspiracy to Defraud the IRS.

That case established Agnello's status as "made man" in the Gambino crime family, holding the rank of "soldier."

Agnello was indicted for extorting rivals in the New York scrap metal business, orchestrating the firebombing of an undercover police scrap metal operation, and failing to pay taxes on the millions he stole via his rackets.

As part of his guilty plea in that case, Agnello agreed to forfeit $10 million, pay $1 million in restitution, and agreed to never again go into the scrap industry.

Agnello served around six years in prison, and settled in Northeast Ohio after his release.

Apparently, he immediately got back into the racketeering business once he moved and remarried. His current wife, Danielle Agnello, owns the companies in which her husband committed the indicted offenses.

In 1979, Gotti did more than insult Agnello -- he decreed that Agnello be baseball batted and shot in the ass for the crime of assaulting Gotti's daughter, Victoria Gotti. 
Nevertheless, in 1984, Agnello married Victoria. The couple had three sons and lived in Westbury, New York, in the same mansion that served as the location for the 2004 reality show "Growing up Gotti." (We remember the show primarily for its use of close captioning so viewers could understand what the young Long Islanders were saying.) Agnello and Victoria have since divorced.
On February 5, 1994, Agnello was charged with criminal mischief for damaging a police scooter.  The officer was ticketing cars parked outside of Agnello's scrapyard. Agnello, watching from the office, went out and argued with the officer, then climbed into his Ford Bronco and rammed the police vehicle about 15 feet down the street.
In June 1994, Agnello and several Gambino members fought with police outside the same location.
Again, the brawl was caused by parking tickets. Again Agnello was arrested. 
On June 6, 1997, Agnello was arrested on assault charges for beating a former employee with a telephone (didn't Russell Crowe do that?) Nothing came of this however because the employee failed to press charges.
On January 20, 2000, Agnello was charged with racketeering and arson. This resulted most likely from the fact that the police understood they were dealing with a guy beholden to severe anger issues.
Undercover NYPD officers set up a phony scrap metal business in Willets Point, Queens, near Agnello's scrap metal business. 
Agnello firebombed their property and eventually prompted them to sell their scrap metal to him at a below-market price. Agnello had promised to pay an informant $2,000 to "buy glass bottles (and) fill them up (with gasoline) and throw them all around the truck" of a competitor. 
Defense documents claimed that Agnello was on medication for bipolar disorder, which led him to bad judgement. On August 16, 2001, Agnello accepted a plea bargain in return for a reduced sentence.
Stephen Newell


We also wrote how in 1995, Agnello attempted to plot the murder of John Alite with the help of one of his employees, Stephen Newell, who'd been shot by Alite previously.
The hit never got beyond the planning stages.

Street Soldiers Die Hard: Frank Gangi Interview

Frank Gangi
"I was in New York for two years. People knew I was back in Brooklyn. I even ran into people I knew.

"I saw an old girlfriend on Staten Island I hadn't seen in 30 years.

"People knew I was back in New York.



"I didn't go up to mob guys but I saw a lot of guys who were connected to them."

The speaker is Frank Gangi, former partner of Thomas "Tommy Karate" Pitera. He's talking about a period during the past decade when he returned to his old stomping grounds from the wilds of Witness Protection.

Gangi noted the surprise and befuddlement he feels regarding how a secret society he once killed to belong to has evolved to the extent it has.

He refers to the many former mobsters who openly post on places like Facebook, noting his surprise that even high-profile former gangsters regularly update their social media accounts.

No, the mob aint what it used to be.
Pitera, first arrested.
"The guys in the mob now -- these [turncoats] put their fathers and brothers away for life. If these guys in the mob don't have the heart to do it, I don't know who would."

Gangi also is a turncoat. He is old enough to remember the way the mob used to work, back when he was killing people for Tommy Karate in Brooklyn and burying them on a nature preserve on Staten Island.

(We're not going into Tommy Karate here; we're working on a book to tell that story.)

Gangi says that today it doesn't even make sense to go into the Witness Protection program.

"Everybody knew who Sammy the Bull was and that he was out in Arizona."

He mentions how many mobsters have written books about how they have changed their lives.

He doesn't believe they are very sincere in this regard.

"I don't think you change; I think this is another way to make some money. Everyone is broke today."

"I am not proud of what i did," he notes. "But I don't exaggerate or anything though and I don't bullshit about anything."

While serving his prison sentence in the protected witness's unit, Gangi gained firsthand experience regarding the very worst side of "the life," the side that no one wants to discuss or consider.

"I saw Sammy the Bull give other people information that would help them reduce their sentence. He'd tell people about stuff that happened so that they could then tell the feds that they were there and they knew what happened.

"The more information the less time you got. That is why I got 10 fucking years.

"Every time you testify for them you get years taken off your sentence.

"I was in there for nine years," he recalls, offering a roll call of fellow inmates that includes Sammy the Bull, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, Phil Leonetti and Carmine Sessa, to name a few.

"They put Carmine and Gaspipe together and they got into a fight. They put Gaspipe in the hole and ripped up his agreement. I think a lot of that had to do with Carmine Sessa.

"Carmine felt Gaspipe was responsible for the Colombo war.

Asked how, specifically, he couldn't recall. He did say that "Gaspipe killed a lot of people and set a lot of people up."

Gangi notes that while in prison for the first few years after flipping, living in the unit with other guys who flipped, who had lived the life, it was easy for he and his former cohorts in crime to slip into an imaginary world in which they were still wiseguys while there in prison, living together, sharing a common culture and from the same streets.

"We lived like we were still wiseguys," he says. There is even a boss, underboss, etc.

Well, not exactly. But "there was a chain of command in the witness units."

Sammy, he says, was "boss" in one unit where Gangi spent time.

"I had respect for Sammy because he was a major witness.

"And If I didn't get along with him, he could have had them send me to Minnesota."

Looking back at his decades on the street, Gangi notes that when it comes to getting made, the mob only cared about money.

"That's what the shit was all about - it wasn't about being tough, taking care of your family. If you brought in money you could be made. There was always this picture that you had to be a tough guy to be made.

"If you made a lot of money and knew someone in the mob, you'd be sponsored and be made.

He noted how easily Donny Brasco penetrated the Mafia back in the 1970s.

"When he first came around he said he was a big jewelry thief. He had a lot of money in his pocket, too," which was given to him by the feds as part of his cover.

"When i grew up if you didn't know the mother of that baby... you know? If they weren't so greedy they might have noticed he didn't even have any family - he didn't have parents or sons and daughters.

But back to his original point about being made: "A lot of mobsters were punks, when they were young, other guys stole their lunch money.

"But if your family had money--then you had money and you were in."

He noted how one guy -- someone in Gangi's case -- had proffered and was being held in the witness unit.

"He already ratted people out -- but he didn't testify against them. He got out 10-11 years later and they made him."

Street Soldiers Die Hard

Frank Gangi
"I was in New York for two years. People knew I was back in Brooklyn. I even ran into people I knew.

"I saw an old girlfriend on Staten Island I hadn't seen in 30 years.

"People knew I was back in New York.



"I didn't go up to mob guys but I saw a lot of guys who were connected to them."

The speaker is Frank Gangi, former partner of Thomas "Tommy Karate" Pitera. He's talking about a period during the past decade when he returned to his old stomping grounds from the wilds of Witness Protection.

Gangi noted the surprise and befuddlement he feels regarding how a secret society he once killed to belong to has evolved to the extent it has.

He refers to the many former mobsters who openly post on places like Facebook, noting his surprise that even high-profile former gangsters regularly update their social media accounts.

No, the mob aint what it used to be.

"The guys in the mob now -- these [turncoats] put their fathers and brothers away for life. If these guys in the mob don't have the heart to do it, I don't know who would."

Gangi also is a turncoat. He is old enough to remember the way the mob used to work, back when he was killing people for Tommy Karate in Brooklyn and burying them on a nature preserve on Staten Island.

(We're not going into Tommy Karate here; we're working on a book to tell that story.)

Gangi says that today it doesn't even make sense to go into the Witness Protection program.

"Everybody knew who Sammy the Bull was and that he was out in Arizona."

He mentions how many mobsters have written books about how they have changed their lives.

He doesn't believe they are very sincere in this regard.

"I don't think you change; I think this is another way to make some money. Everyone is broke today."

"I am not proud of what i did," he notes. "But I don't exaggerate or anything though and I don't bullshit about anything."

While serving his prison sentence in the protected witness's unit, Gangi gained firsthand experience regarding the very worst side of "the life," the side that no one wants to discuss or consider.

"I saw Sammy the Bull give other people information that would help them reduce their sentence. He'd tell people about stuff that happened so that they could then tell the feds that they were there and they knew what happened.

"The more information the less time you got. That is why I got 10 fucking years.

"Every time you testify for them you get years taken off your sentence.

"I was in there for nine years," he recalls, offering a roll call of fellow inmates that includes Sammy the Bull, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, Phil Leonetti and Carmine Sessa, to name a few.

"They put Carmine and Gaspipe together and they got into a fight. They put Gaspipe in the hole and ripped up his agreement. I think a lot of that had to do with Carmine Sessa.

"Carmine felt Gaspipe was responsible for the Colombo war.

Asked how, specifically, he couldn't recall. He did say that "Gaspipe killed a lot of people and set a lot of people up."

Gangi notes that while in prison for the first few years after flipping, living in the unit with other guys who flipped, who had lived the life, it was easy for he and his former cohorts in crime to slip into an imaginary world in which they were still wiseguys while there in prison, living together, sharing a common culture and from the same streets.

"We lived like we were still wiseguys," he says. There is even a boss, underboss, etc.

Well, not exactly. But "there was a chain of command in the witness units."

Sammy, he says, was "boss" in one unit where Gangi spent time.

"I had respect for Sammy because he was a major witness.

"And If I didn't get along with him, he could have had them send me to Minnesota."

Looking back at his decades on the street, Gangi notes that when it comes to getting made, the mob only cared about money.

"That's what the shit was all about - it wasn't about being tough, taking care of your family. If you brought in money you could be made. There was always this picture that you had to be a tough guy to be made.

"If you made a lot of money and knew someone in the mob, you'd be sponsored and be made.

He noted how easily Donny Brasco penetrated the Mafia back in the 1970s.

"When he first came around he said he was a big jewelry thief. He had a lot of money in his pocket, too," which was given to him by the feds as part of his cover.

"When i grew up if you didn't know the mother of that baby... you know? If they weren't so greedy they might have noticed he didn't even have any family - he didn't have parents or sons and daughters.

But back to his original point about being made: "A lot of mobsters were punks, when they were young, other guys stole their lunch money.

"But if your family had money--then you had money and you were in."

He noted how one guy -- someone in Gangi's case -- had proffered and was being held in the witness unit.

"He already ratted people out -- but he didn't testify against them. He got out 10-11 years later and they made him."