Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 44

“Calabrian Opportunists, Sicilian Traitors” Still on Rizzuto Hit List

The Godfather of Montreal, Vito Rizzuto, died one year ago
of complications from lung cancer.
REVISED, EXPANDED: While the American Mafia hid in its underworld, Vito Rizzuto drove around the streets of Montreal in an armored car and brazenly sent his assassins across the world to kill those who defied him, including traitors in his own organization and Calabrian mobsters from Toronto..
And Vito's bloody street war to annihilate any and all rivals and defectors will continue in 2015. 
So said a law enforcement source quoted in the Toronto Sun, which further noted that Rizzuto's death last December at age 67 failed to "stem the vendetta."
The Rizzuto crime family still has some “Calabrian Mob opportunists and Sicilian traitors” that it needs to deal with, the source said.




Although Rizzuto was challenged, he retained his power. “The ground was never lost,” the source said. 
On Dec. 1, after months of relative peace within Montreal’s Mafia circles, one of its Calabrian members was fatally shot in a restaurant in Rivière-des-Prairies. Tonino Callocchia, 53, had survived a first attempt on his life in February 2013, but not the second, when two masked assailants shot him to death in a bistro.

Callocchia chose to side against the Rizzuto organization while its now deceased leader, Vito Rizzuto, was imprisoned in the U.S. A week prior to the murder there was an arson attack on a restaurant closely linked to the former Montreal Mafia chieftain who died of cancer last December after reinvigorating an ongoing Mafia war after a rival faction rose up to claim the lives of his father and son, among others.

More than 40 were murdered so far.

2012 Di Maulo murder scene.


"Callocchia spent most of the 1990s behind bars serving a 21-year aggregate sentence for a series of drug-related offences and money laundering. Last month, a judge at the Montreal courthouse fixed a date in September 2015 for a hearing in a case where Callocchia was charged with extortion."

Earlier this year, in April, Carmine Verduci, 56, was hit by two gunmen outside the Regina Cafe, an Ontario social club just north of Toronto. He is a suspected Ndrangheta hit man whom police have described as a "bona fide psycho-killer."

The Ndrangheta was among the opposition factions to Rizzuto's power when the Montreal mob boss returned home after serving time in an American prison. He quickly set about to revenge the murders of his father and son, among others close to him.

Rizzuto had warned Canadian police, after losing an extradition battle, that blood would flow in the streets in his absence.

The Sicilian Mafia organization formerly run by Rizzuto remains in control of the underworld in Canada, according to press reports.

Verduci was killed outside a cafe frequented by Ndrangheta members in the city where they believed they were untouchable. "The message was loud and clear: For those who opposed Rizzuto, there is no safe haven," the law enforcement source told the Sun.
In 2013, Rizzuto assassins struck in Sicily, Mexico, and possibly America, as well as in Canada.

While Rizzuto was in prison, a group of Calabrian Ndrangheta clans in Ontario joined with a group led by former Rizzuto strongman Raynald Desjardins to try to take control of the Rizzuto Cosa Nostra operation.
Former Bonanno acting boss Salvatore Montagna joined the dissident faction. (Vito Rizzuto previously made clear that he'd never accept "The Iron Worker," as Montagna was called.  The insulting monicker "Bambino Boss" also was saddled on the Canadian-born, Sicilian-raised mobster by old timers in Montagna's own Bonanno crime family. As noted in The Cicale Files, Volume One: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire, Montagna even armed himself.)

Facing deportation after he was convicted of criminal contempt of court, Montagna voluntarily left the U.S. in 2009. At the border, he supposedly told the FBI agents traveling with him that he was going to retire.

He didn’t.

Once Montagna arrived in Canada, guns started blazing in an attempt to oust the Rizzuto clan. Among the casualties in the early stage of the war were Vito’s son Nicolo Jr., father Nicolo Sr., brother-in-law Paolo Renda and other close associates. 
It appeared as if the Rizzuto clan was on the brink of extinction. Major news reports claimed that Vito Rizzuto would pack his bags and flee Canada once he returned from prison.
He didn't.

When Rizzuto returned to his well-guarded Montreal estate in 2012, "the tide turned for good."

Rizzuto's bloody vendetta ramped up seriously in 2013, with the organization's young Turks launching a series of isolated executions and leaving the bodies on the street. Among the revenge killings were hit man Salvatore “Sam” Calautti, well-respected Calabrian Joseph Di Maulo, Roger Valiquette Jr., and Moreno Gallo (who was in Mexico when the hitters got him in a restaurant).
The November 2012 Di Maulo hit is considered the first major retaliation by the Rizzuto clan. At the time, however, the press could only speculate about who was behind the hit on the old-school Calabrian gangster. The telltale signs were there all along, however: Di Maulo was shot to death merely one month following Rizzuto's return to Montreal. Also, Di Maulo was not laid out in the Rizzuto-owned funeral parlor popular among Montreal Mafiosi, nor was there a wide assortment of mobsters in attendance at the funeral. Di Maulo's brother-in-law, Desjardins, sent a large flower arrangement to the service from prison.

Di Maulo had been part of Montreal organized crime since the 1970s, as a member of the Calabrian wing of what was then an outpost of New York's Bonanno family. Another Calabrian, Paolo Violi, ran the Bonanno family's action in Montreal. The Sicilian Cosa Nostra members of the Bonanno family, led by Nicolo Rizzuto, Vito's father, split into a separate faction and assassinated Violi in 1978. Di Maulo adroitly switched his loyalty to the burgeoning Rizzuto organization.
Moreno Gallo
Gallo was attempting to enjoy an early retirement/exile in Acapulco, Mexico. A former top-echelon mob figure in Rizzuto's organization, he was dining in an Italian restaurant in November 2013 when he was shot several times in the head with a 9mm handgun.

Juan Ramon Fernandez, known as Joe Bravo, and associate Fernando Pimental were murdered in Sicily. They were shot and their bodies burned "because they turned their back on Rizzuto," police said.

Desjardins is one of the few high-ranking members of the opposition still living; he was arrested for Montagna's murder and is in jail (which is probably why he's still breathing).Verducci was among the highest ranking Ndrangheta members in Ontario when he was killed, according to reports. He carried a lot of clout within Ndrangheta circles as a close associate to Carmelo Bruzzese, who is wanted in Italy for Mafia association and is currently fighting extradition from Canada for his alleged involvement in the ‘Ndrangheta.

Italian authorities say Verducci was the Canadian representative of alleged Mafia boss Antonio Coluccio. He also hosted functions attended by Ndrangheta leaders.

Italian police captured him on a wiretap speaking with crime family chieftain Giuseppe “The Master” Commisso, who ran a global criminal syndicate from an office in the back of a laundromat. Police described Verducci as a messenger between the clans in the two countries.


Did Canada's Mob War Reach Into the U.S.?
In October 2013, Domenico Arcuri Sr., died in an accident on a construction site in south Florida. The medical examiner noted that “the context is worrisome,” the MontrealGazette.com reported.

A Montreal Mafioso and member of the Rizzuto crime family, Arcuri also was part of the small group that tried to generate a consensus in early 2011 over who would replace Vito and run Montreal organized crime.
Most of the group's members are dead.

Suspect Named in 'Mob Wives'-related Slashing Attack

From TMZ/Instagram
UPDATE: According to the New York Post: Rodolfo “Rudy” Lopez is wanted for the box cutter attack which left London Rene, 37, with gashes on his face, stomach and arm after a dispute outside Club Output, sources said.

From TMZ.com: "The boyfriend of "Mob Wives" star Natalie Guercio got knifed in a Brooklyn nightclub last night ... TMZ has learned.

London Rene has a huge wound on the right side of his face after the attack in Club Output [in Williamsburg, Brooklyn]. He's hospitalized, and from what he told cops ... lucky to be alive.





According to NYPD ... Rene says a man walked up to him with a box cutter and sliced his face ... and then cut his left arm and abdomen. The stabber fled the scene, but Rene told cops he knows the guy.



Rene was taken to the hospital by ambulance.


We're told Natalie was standing by Rene's side during the attack.

It's unclear what the suspect's motive was. NYPD is investigating."

The Daily Mail Online added: "London, who has appeared on the VH1 reality show as Natalie's long term boyfriend, was recovering in hospital on Sunday. It is believed Natalie was with him when he was attacked and she posted a series of Tweets after the incident. "

In one she wrote: 'London was just sliced in the face @ClubOUTPUT in Brooklyn. In ER.'

Later she added: 'Please pray for him' and 'Thank you for ur prayers we are heading to Hackensack medical center to have plastic surgeon stitch him.'

He has identified the attacker but said he has no idea what his motive was. Police are investigating.

Earlier this year Natalie was forced to deny she was cheating on London with married music producer Ryan Banks after she was seen cosying up with him in a nightclub photo.

'Mob Wives' Natalie Guercio's Boyfriend Slashed, Stabbed in Nightclub

From TMZ/Instagram
From TMZ.com: "The boyfriend of "Mob Wives" star Natalie Guercio got knifed in a Brooklyn nightclub last night ... TMZ has learned.

London Rene has a huge wound on the right side of his face after the attack in Club Output [in Williamsburg, Brooklyn]. He's hospitalized, and from what he told cops ... lucky to be alive.





According to NYPD ... Rene says a man walked up to him with a box cutter and sliced his face ... and then cut his left arm and abdomen. The stabber fled the scene, but Rene told cops he knows the guy.



Rene was taken to the hospital by ambulance.


We're told Natalie was standing by Rene's side during the attack.

It's unclear what the suspect's motive was. NYPD is investigating."

The Daily Mail Online added: "London, who has appeared on the VH1 reality show as Natalie's long term boyfriend, was recovering in hospital on Sunday. It is believed Natalie was with him when he was attacked and she posted a series of Tweets after the incident. "

In one she wrote: 'London was just sliced in the face @ClubOUTPUT in Brooklyn. In ER.'

Later she added: 'Please pray for him' and 'Thank you for ur prayers we are heading to Hackensack medical center to have plastic surgeon stitch him.'

He has identified the attacker but said he has no idea what his motive was. Police are investigating.

Earlier this year Natalie was forced to deny she was cheating on London with married music producer Ryan Banks after she was seen cosying up with him in a nightclub photo.

The Mob's Control of Prizefighting Molded Sport's Evolution

Incredibly absorbing documentary (posted above) about the mob's decades-long control of prizefighting.

Most notable - the film uses modern technology to highlight the so-called "phantom punch" that sent Sonny Liston to the mat. This knockdown -- further screwed up by the referee, a former boxer himself -- marked the beginning of the end of both Liston's boxing career and the mob's influence over the sport. (Some even believe the mob murdered Liston.)

The two fights between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for the World Heavyweight Championship were among the most watched and controversial fights in the sport's history.

The phantom punch ended the second fight between Muhammad Ali (then still known as Cassius Clay) and Sonny Liston.




Mobsters at the forefront of organized crime's infiltration of the sport were Frank "Blinky" Palermo (1905-1996) and "Frankie Carbo," who together "owned" boxers and fixed fights, including the famous 1947 Jake LaMotta-Billy Fox fight.


Palermo was an associate of the Philadelphia crime family and ran the largest numbers racket in that city.

"Frankie Carbo" (born Paolo Giovanni Carbo; named Paul John Carbo) was a New York Mafia Luchese family soldier who had once been a Murder Inc. hitter.

By 1959, Blinky and Frankie Carbo owned a majority interest in the contract of heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, who went on to win 1962's World Heavyweight Championship. Since 1953, when he became a professional prize fighter, Liston had been claimed by St. Louis mobster John Vitale, who continued to own a stake in the boxer.

During the 1940s, Blinky and Carbo headed a group called "The Combination," which included underworld figures Ettore "Eddie" Coco, James "Jimmy Doyle" Plumeri, Harry "Champ" Segal and Felix Bocchicchio.
The group thrived at fixing high-profile boxing matches. 
Carbo was referred to as the "Czar of Boxing."
In a 2002 interview with The Observer, Budd Schulberg talked about Carbo and Palermo and their involvement in a 1954 welterweight championship fight.

"...Frankie Carbo, the mob's unofficial commissioner for boxing, controlled a lot of the welters and middles.... Not every fight was fixed, of course, but from time to time Carbo and his lieutenants, like Blinky Palermo in Philadelphia, would put the fix in. When the Kid Gavilan-Johnny Saxton fight was won by Saxton on a decision in Philadelphia in 1954, I was covering it for Sports Illustrated and wrote a piece at that time saying boxing was a dirty business and must be cleaned up now. It was an open secret. All the press knew that one - and other fights - were fixed. Gavilan was a mob-controlled fighter, too, and when he fought Billy Graham it was clear Graham had been robbed of the title. The decision would be bought. If it was close, the judges would shade it the way they had been told."

British journalist Kevin Mitchell wrote about the mob and boxing in Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Fights, the Fifties:

Of Carbo, Mitchell wrote:

“He was a charmer, looked after his mum, all that stuff. But he had this split personality; he could be ruthless, aggressive, one of the scariest guys you’d ever meet. They called him 'Mr. Grey', because he just stayed in the shadows. 

"He didn't want a public profile; he wanted to do things in private, without people knowing his face. That’s just how he operated, a nameless face who was arguably the most powerful man in boxing at that time.”

In 1961, Carbo and Palermo, along with Los Angeles mobsters Joe Di Sica and Louis Dragna, were charged with conspiracy and extortion against National Boxing Association Welterweight Champion Don Jordan. After a three-month trial (U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy served as prosecutor), Carbo and Palermo were sentenced to 25 years in prison. 
Granted early parole due to ill health, Carbo was released from prison. He died in Miami Beach, Florida on November 9, 1976. Palermo served seven and one-half years.

The Mob's Control of Prizefighting

Incredibly absorbing documentary (posted above) about the mob's decades-long control of prizefighting.

Most notable - the film uses modern technology to highlight the so-called "phantom punch" that sent Sonny Liston to the mat. This knockdown -- further screwed up by the referee, a former boxer himself -- marked the beginning of the end of both Liston's boxing career and the mob's influence over the sport. (Some even believe the mob murdered Liston.)

The two fights between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for the World Heavyweight Championship were among the most watched and controversial fights in the sport's history.

The phantom punch ended the second fight between Muhammad Ali (then still known as Cassius Clay) and Sonny Liston.




Mobsters at the forefront of organized crime's infiltration of the sport were Frank "Blinky" Palermo (1905-1996) and "Frankie Carbo," who together "owned" boxers and fixed fights, including the famous 1947 Jake LaMotta-Billy Fox fight.


Palermo was an associate of the Philadelphia crime family and ran the largest numbers racket in that city.

"Frankie Carbo" (born Paolo Giovanni Carbo; named Paul John Carbo) was a New York Mafia Luchese family soldier who had once been a Murder Inc. hitter.

By 1959, Blinky and Frankie Carbo owned a majority interest in the contract of heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, who went on to win 1962's World Heavyweight Championship. Since 1953, when he became a professional prize fighter, Liston had been claimed by St. Louis mobster John Vitale, who continued to own a stake in the boxer.

During the 1940s, Blinky and Carbo headed a group called "The Combination," which included underworld figures Ettore "Eddie" Coco, James "Jimmy Doyle" Plumeri, Harry "Champ" Segal and Felix Bocchicchio.
The group thrived at fixing high-profile boxing matches. 
Carbo was referred to as the "Czar of Boxing."
In a 2002 interview with The Observer, Budd Schulberg talked about Carbo and Palermo and their involvement in a 1954 welterweight championship fight.

"...Frankie Carbo, the mob's unofficial commissioner for boxing, controlled a lot of the welters and middles.... Not every fight was fixed, of course, but from time to time Carbo and his lieutenants, like Blinky Palermo in Philadelphia, would put the fix in. When the Kid Gavilan-Johnny Saxton fight was won by Saxton on a decision in Philadelphia in 1954, I was covering it for Sports Illustrated and wrote a piece at that time saying boxing was a dirty business and must be cleaned up now. It was an open secret. All the press knew that one - and other fights - were fixed. Gavilan was a mob-controlled fighter, too, and when he fought Billy Graham it was clear Graham had been robbed of the title. The decision would be bought. If it was close, the judges would shade it the way they had been told."

British journalist Kevin Mitchell wrote about the mob and boxing in Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Fights, the Fifties:

Of Carbo, Mitchell wrote:

“He was a charmer, looked after his mum, all that stuff. But he had this split personality; he could be ruthless, aggressive, one of the scariest guys you’d ever meet. They called him 'Mr. Grey', because he just stayed in the shadows. 

"He didn't want a public profile; he wanted to do things in private, without people knowing his face. That’s just how he operated, a nameless face who was arguably the most powerful man in boxing at that time.”

In 1961, Carbo and Palermo, along with Los Angeles mobsters Joe Di Sica and Louis Dragna, were charged with conspiracy and extortion against National Boxing Association Welterweight Champion Don Jordan. After a three-month trial (U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy served as prosecutor), Carbo and Palermo were sentenced to 25 years in prison. 
Granted early parole due to ill health, Carbo was released from prison. He died in Miami Beach, Florida on November 9, 1976. Palermo served seven and one-half years.

New York's Four Crime Families?

Sam the Plumber preferred to be called "The Count."
A small-time dice game caused a mob boss's defense attorney to take a huge gamble.

He lost.

As a result, on June 10, 1969, 12 volumes (more than 2,000 pages) of conversations between various mobsters and New Jersey crime boss Simone Rizzo DeCavalcante were released to the public. A book was issued as well. Sam the Plumber: The Real-Life Saga of a Mafia Chieftain condensed the voluminous disparate recorded discussions and provided context.

DeCavalcante, who oversaw New Jersey-based gambling, loansharking and labor racketeering from an office in Kenilworth, preferred his mob nickname, "The Count," to the one saddled on him by the press: "The Plumber." However, at least one New York Times article written during his heyday probably put a smile on the respected mob boss's face. It described him as "the smartest and smoothest and least vicious of the aging Mafia leaders in the East."





"Sam the Plumber" had never spent a single night in jail, but that changed in March 1968, when he was indicted following his efforts to mediate a dispute among mobsters over a small illegal dice gambling operation. DeCavalcante's mediation helped scale down a necessary tribute payment to $12,000 (from $20,000). Sam pocketed $3,800 for his effort.

"You know, they were going to give the guys in Canada away to Buffalo."

DeCavalcante's lawyer (former assistant U.S. attorney Sidney Franzblau) filed a slew of pretrial motions to request any electronic surveillance evidence that law enforcement had acquired during the course of its probe of DeCavalcante. The lawyer counted on his efforts to quash the indictment and get the case against the mob boss dropped as had happened it many major cases of that era. The reason: the bugs planted in the Plumber's office were illegal (and part of a larger FBI intelligence-gathering effort focused on the mob following the televised Valachi hearings) and couldn't be used in court.
However, in this instance, the government decided to make an exception. It released all its electronic surveillance recordings -- and the dozen volumes of transcripts were made available.

"I've never heard of the government releasing such information before," a dazed Franzblau remarked for posterity.
Johnny Pops...woulda, coulda.....
The conversations disclosed many major mob revelations. Sam the Plumber, despite the small size of his South Jersey-based crime family, cast a large shadow in the underworld. He was a mediator in many instances for other Mafia bosses, including those based in New York.

DeCavalcante, in fact, had been consulted during the so-called "Banana War," which concluded with the New York Mafia's Commission expelling boss Joseph Bonanno from his position as overlord of the crime family that still carries his name.

However, according to Sam the Plumber's recorded conversations, the Commission almost went a step further.

The bosses then sitting at the table had discussed distributing Bonanno's territory (meaning we likely would be referring to New York's "Four Families").

"You know, they were going to give the guys in Canada away to Buffalo," DeCavalcante was recorded saying. In other words, the Bonanno family's Montreal faction was nearly given to Stefano Magaddino, then the powerful boss of the crime family based in Buffalo, New York.

The Commission, some forty years prior to Joe Bonanno's power play against bosses Carlo Gambino and Thomas Lucchese, had allowed Bonanno to take control of Calabrian and Sicilian organized crime operations in Quebec, including Montreal, while Bonanno's cousin, Magaddino was given free reign to reap the profit's from the Mafia in Southern Ontario, including Toronto and the important port city of Hamilton.
If Montreal, the key to the Bonanno family's highly lucrative drug business for decades, had been given to Magaddino as the Commission had considered, it would have had "far deeper ramifications for organized crime in North America than anyone, except for the mischievous Stefano Magaddino, probably realized," as noted in  The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto.
Had the Commission chose that course of action, Magaddino would've consolidated power over both territories, something the Rizzuto clan achieved in the 1990s, decades earlier. Had that happened "so early in the game," Magaddino's clout would've likely increased exponentially and his man in Canada at the time, Johnny "Pops" Papalia, could have become "one of the richest and most important gangsters on the continent."

Former Mafia Capo Dominick Cicale Answers Your Questions

DOMINICK CICALE, A FORMER CAPO IN THE BONANNO CRIME FAMILY, WILL ANSWER THREE QUESTIONS EVERY FRIDAY.

Dominick CicaleIn 1999, Bronx-based Dominick Cicale finished his second years-long bit and hooked up with Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, then an up-and-coming member of the Bronx faction of the Bonanno crime family.

Initially he'd been closely affiliated with "Big Ernie" in the Genovese family.



POST QUESTIONS BELOW IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.
EACH FRIDAY DOMINICK WILL ANSWER THREE QUESTIONS OF HIS CHOICE -- UNLESS THREE QUESTIONS ARE PUSHED TO THE TOP BY READERS' UPVOTES. 
SO IF YOU ASK A QUESTION, OR WANT A PARTICULAR QUESTION ANSWEREDCLICK THE "UP" ARROW.*
[* The story was posted about three hours ago -- and already we have far more comments than I anticipated, so Dominick will answer the top three questions each Friday (if three do not get "upvoted" to the top, he will pick). As a courtesy, in addition to answering three questions this Friday, he will also answer some that were posted when he was going through the comments a while ago. (I will note the ones he said he'd answer in the comments themselves; the rest still may get answered if they are upvoted enough). This is all up to Dominick: he is answering the questions as a favor to me -- whether he writes a long, detailed answer or not is his decision and probably depends on a number of variables, including a.) what kind of day he's having. b.) whether he's pissed off at me about how many ads he has to watch to get to my website. c.) Whether he has had a few drinks and d.) I am just joking around with variables. But be sure to upvote your question or the questions you'd like him to answer; I will vote for my favorite questions as well. Then again, Dom may answer more than three questions, he may reply, whatever. He will be on here Fridays to answer at least the three questions. Depends on how much time he has. My opinion ask one very specific question at a time, like I did...]

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 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.

He testified in four major RICO trials, including one of John Gotti Junior's.

He can tell you the real stories about what happened on the street. Because he was there and played a part in those stories...

Yes, Dominick is a turncoat. He himself liberally describes himself as a "rat." To writers, insiders like Dominick offer gold. But the American public exhibits an odd dichotomy.



While citizens devour their stories as told in books, films and documentaries (without a rat, we wouldn't have Goodfellas) these same taxpayers cheer against them during trials. This sentiment was eloquently expressed on the Friends of Ours blog.

Friends of Ours from November 2012: "Juries are sophisticated enough to understand that a rat carries baggage, and they aren't looking for boy scouts and choir boys.  When the government tries the devil, the witnesses often come from hell.  Indeed, a flipped witness is credible precisely because he's often a slimeball.  Who else would be involved with the Mafia to know where the proverbial bodies are buried?  The badder the rat, the more he knows.  A witness is more credible on the stand based on the more "street cred" he has, and defense lawyers paradoxically are propping up the rat by empasizing how bad he is. 

Although rats often are motivated by self-interest in their decisions to flip, the move also comes at great personal risk to themselves.  After all, the criminal underworld doesn't look kindly on those who betray it.  Moreover, whatever deal a rat obtains from prosecutors is conditioned upon his truthful testimony, and he risks losing the deal for any perjurious statements or other misconduct.  Finally, it's the rare case which is predicated solely on rat testimony, and often there is other corroborating evidence. 

Mob apologists may bemoan the loss of omerta but ordinary folk want career criminals to betray their once-held values, and rather than condemning rats we should encourage them.. ."

Post any questions for Dominick in the comment section below:
Amazon.com Widgets

Decades of Mob Violence Behind Recent Waterfront Case

Stephen "Beach" DepiroThis past Friday, three North New Jersey-based Genovese crime family mobsters pleaded guilty to waterfront racketeering in a case that's been going on for years -- since January 2011's Mafia Takedown Day.

But the Genovese family's control of the New Jersey waterfront goes back decades and includes many storied mobsters of the past who killed and were killed for control of the lucrative Garden State rackets. The Genovese family even ran its own hit squad, which focused on murdering FBI informants, among others.
The bloodless indictment by comparison likely will end with three men serving three-year prison sentences.


The key count in the indictment is conspiracy to extort members of the International Longshoremen’s Association for Christmastime tribute payments, according to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman and Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch.

Genovese soldier Stephen "Beach" Depiro, 59, along with two family associates -- former president of ILA Local 1235 Albert Cernadas, 79, and former vp of ILA Local 1478 Nunzio LaGrasso, 64 -- pleaded guilty in Newark federal court.before U.S. District Judge Claire C. Cecchi.







Depiro admitted to predicate acts involving conspiracy to commit extortion and bookmaking. Cernadas and LaGrasso admitted to predicate acts involving conspiracy to commit extortion and multiple extortions.
Since at least 2005, Depiro has managed the Genovese family’s control over the New Jersey waterfront – including the nearly three-decades-long extortion of port workers in ILA Local 1, ILA Local 1235 and ILA Local 1478. Members of the Genovese family, including Depiro, are charged with conspiring to collect tribute payments from New Jersey port workers at Christmas Time each year through their corrupt influence over union officials, including the last three presidents of Local 1235 and vice president of ILA Local 1478. Depiro also controlled a sports betting package that was managed by several others, through the use of an overseas sports betting operation.

During their guilty plea proceedings, Depiro, Cernadas and LaGrasso admitted their involvement in the Genovese family, including conspiring to compel tribute payments from ILA union members, who made the payments based on actual and threatened force, violence and fear. Cernadas and LaGrasso admitted to carrying out multiple extortions of dockworkers. The timing of the extortions typically coincided with the receipt by certain ILA members of “Container Royalty Fund” checks, a form of year-end compensation.

The racketeering charge to which Depiro, Cernadas and LaGrasso pleaded guilty carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison, though according to GangLand News sources, plea agreements carry recommended prison terms of about three years.
In a story posted last Thursday Santa's Made A List, Checked It Twice; No Christmas Gifts On The Waterfront, Jerry Capeci noted: "The trio are the last remaining defendants in the only still pending case stemming from the arrests of 127 mob-connected defendants on Mafia Takedown Day nearly four years ago.  The guy who owned the “Godfather’s Garden.” "The case was a throwback to the bad old days of On the Waterfront-style schemes in which mobsters and their designated union stooges preyed on hard-working laborers. The indictment alleges that the Genovese family employed a "systemic use of actual and threatened force, violence and fear" to extort about $3 million in "Christmas tributes" from longshoremen beginning in 1982. Actually, the feds say the scheme began years earlier, but the indictment only goes back to when Cernadas got involved after he took over as president of Local 1235."
Depiro was a long-time soldier under the family's powerful waterfront capo Tino Fiumara, who was supposedly part of a three-man panel running the family at the time of his death in 2010.

Fiumara controlled Newark/Elizabeth Seaport-based unions and engaged in loansharking, extortion, gambling, union and labor racketeering throughout the New Jersey counties of Union, Essex and Bergen.
The Feds attributed a dozen murders to Fiumara, who once belonged to a Genovese family hit squad.

Several of Tino's alleged victims were FBI informers.
Tino Fiumara

Fiumara had designated Depiro as his acting capo to run operations on the New Jersey piers and docks after Genovese soldier Lawrence Ricci was found with two bullets in his head in the trunk of a car parked behind a North Jersey diner in 2005.  The man who likely gave that order was Fiumara himself. 
Tino came up in the mob alongside Michael "Mikey Cigars" Coppola. In fact both were together in the late 1960s when they worked for New Jersey capo Ruggiero "Richie The Boot" Boiardo, who lived in Livingston, New Jersey, in a lurid mansion that supposedly was the model for the home in which HBO's Tony Soprano lived with his family in the award-winning HBO series.

According to a New York Times report, Tino was "an imposing figure who kept fit in his later years and favored cashmere sports jackets and turtleneck sweaters."

Fiumara was known for being as canny as he was ruthless by both law enforcement and his criminal cohorts.

He once traveled in the trunk of a car to defeat surveillance, according to an account provided to investigators by an informer. He also routinely drove the wrong way down one-way streets, traveled up highway off-ramps, regularly switched cars and even rode a bicycle — sometimes traveling through parks into which cars could not follow — to lose his F.B.I. pursuers, according to court papers. 

He never used his home phone to discuss mob business and eschewed cellphones, communicating only with pagers and pay phones, and maintaining a list of some 20 locations at any given time where he knew he could be neither watched nor overheard, according to court papers. 

Indeed, Paul J. McCarthy, a veteran F.B.I. agent who spent at least four years investigating Mr. Fiumara in the 1990s, said in a 1998 affidavit that the man had used “more extensive countersurveillance techniques than I have ever seen in all my years in law enforcement.” The application was for a roving wiretap so agents could listen in on his pay phone calls.

Fiumara was so low key, it is not widely known that his brother was married to an aunt of New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie. (Turns out, Chris Christie was also pretty discreet about some things. For example, he had visited Fiumara in prison in 1991, but did not disclose this when his office announced a plea bargain in that case.)

Fiumara’s reputation for cunning was so powerful, when he died in September 2010, law enforcement officials didn't believe he was dead. One F.B.I. supervisor sent two agents to confirm Fiumara’s demise. They visited the Long Island funeral home that had buried him; the proprietor assured them that Fiumara, who had moved to South Huntington, New York, after his 2005 release from prison, was indeed dead. But that didn't stop the FBI, who then visited the hospital where Fiumara had been undergoing cancer treatment when he died. There, they were finally satisfied: Fiumara, head of the Genovese family’s waterfront rackets, was indeed dead.
Richie PriscoCourt papers filed in the case of another Genovese crime family figure said a government informer had told authorities that in the late 1970s, Fiumara belonged to a Genovese family hit team known as “the Fist.”
Four murders linked to Fiumara and "The Fist" involved men who talked to authorities, or were planning to talk but were murdered first; in all cases the fatal topic of discussion was John DiGilio, Fiumara’s mob superior.
(In May 1988 DiGilio himself was murdered. His body was found inside a mortician's bag in the Hackensack River. DiGilio had disappeared three weeks prior. Genovese capo Angelo Prisco, the Bronx-based wiseguy who took over the slain gangster’s crew in the early 1990s, was found guilty of committing the murder, ordered by Vincent "the Chin" Gigante. DiGilio was killed two weeks after he was acquitted of racketeering on the Bayonne, N.J. waterfront. He had represented himself during trial, making this one hell of an achievement. Nevertheless, according to court papers, Gigante ordered his murder after the former boxer/labor racketeer fell out of favor with Louis "Bobby" Manna, who was also based in New Jersey.)

Fiumara also is believed to be responsible for the grisly death of a big bookmaker in New Jersey, who was found by children playing in a snow-covered dump. As GangLand News reported, on March 29, 1969, "the savagely beaten body of Robert "Bobby" Harris Jr., a well-heeled, 49-year-old black civic leader and politically connected nightclub owner in Paterson" was found.

His skull was crushed. His spine was broken. The ribs on the right side of his body were caved in. Nine ribs on the left side were fractured, as was his right leg. For good measure, Harris was shot once in the chest. He was in a kneeling position, with his ankles tied to the back of his head with wire. He had disappeared three months earlier. 

Even before his body was found, police suspected that Harris...  had been killed in a turf dispute with rival gangsters. When his remains were recovered, however, evidence that Harris had been tortured stumped them.

Federal prosecutors in Newark told a federal judge that Fiumara was responsible for Harris’s murder.

“We received information from confidential informants that Tino had done it and had driven the trussed up body around to make sure everyone knew that the family was very serious about its control of all the bookmaking business in New Jersey,” said one law enforcement source.

New Mafia Group Found in Rome

Italian Law Enforcement Officials Call It Italy's Fifth Major Mafia Group
Mafia Capitale is based in Rome.

In a story posted this week about Matteo Messina Denaro, The Independent notes that Italian law enforcement has uncovered what is believed to be Italy's fifth major Mafia group. It's based in Rome.

The organized crime group is less violent prone than the traditional Mafias and seems to largely rely on corruption. In terms of age, it goes back "at least three administrations."






From The Independent:

Recently, evidence has emerged of a major new Mafia-type organisation in the Rome seaside suburb of Ostia. 

In the city itself, Rome’s chief prosecutor this month ordered 37 arrests in a bid to decapitate what he called the Mafia Capitale, a group of Roman gangsters, businessmen, public officials and politicians that has been skimming hundreds of millions of euros off public services, from contracts for refuse disposal to immigration holding centres. 

Significantly, after years in which factions of the established Mafia groups have fought Roman turf wars, Mafia Capitale appears to have cooperated with ‘Ndrangheta, and the group’s leader, an ex-member of a far-right terror group was in the past linked to the city’s own Magliana gang of hoodlums – made famous by the TV drama Romanzo Criminale. 

... Mafia groups are becoming more international in outlook. ‘Ndrangheta, however, has taken this approach to new levels with its domination of Europe’s cocaine trade. This year, a report written by 20 anti-Mafia experts, including senior prosecutors, said that lax EC regulations against money laundering meant that Mafia groups were benefiting from globalisation while “in contrast, EU states are suffering the consequences.”

In addition to the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Neapolitan Camorra, Calabrian Ndrangheta and Apulian Sacra Corona Unita are considered the four major Mafias in Italy.  La Stidda (Sicilian for "star," a tattoo of which all members wear), a direct rival to Cosa Nostra also based in Sicily, is smaller and mostly unheard of in America.
"Diabolik" -- aka Matteo Messina Denaro Matteo Messina Denaro is considered "the last great Cosa Nostra kingpin." He has been on the run for more than 20 years and was convicted in his absence for the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 10 people in Rome, Florence and Milan.

Denaro (born in April 1962) is nicknamed Diabolik, after an Italian comic book series. Investigators recently seized Denaro's prized olive groves in Sicily "worth 20 million Euros. “Seizing assets remains the main way to fight the Mafia,” said provincial commander Giancarlo Trotta. Wire taps obtained by prosecutors suggest the profits from the olive oil company have been funding Messina Denaro's run from the law.


The Daily Beast posted a story about Mafia Capitale, noting that it is a "new organized-crime syndicate, dubbed Italy’s “fifth Mafia” by the Italian press and “Mafia Capitale” by the police."

Over the last few days, Rome has been rocked by a scandal that redefines Italian corruption and explains why one of the world’s most beautiful cities has fallen into a state of degradation.

A new organized-crime syndicate, dubbed Italy’s “fifth Mafia” by the Italian press and “Mafia Capitale” by the police, has been operating for years, it would seem. But rather than using violence to do their damage, they've been exploiting Rome’s weakest residents and starving the city of basic amenities like street cleaning and garbage collection, which has made the Eternal City increasingly unlivable—and dangerous. 

“The investigation into Rome as the mafia capital exposes a disgusting, horrifying situation that goes well beyond even the darkest hypothesis,” consumer-rights group Federconsumatori said.
Italian authorities have arrested 37 people so far, including Massimo Carminati, a 56-year-old one-eyed former neofascist terrorist who allegedly guided a gang of white-collar thugs that bilked the city of hundreds of millions of euros over the last several years. Hundreds of people affiliated with the group are also under investigation, including Rome’s former mayor Gianni Alemanno—an ally of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi—and the man he hired as his anti-corruption tsar, Italo Politano. The president of Rome’s parliament and the head of the city’s public-housing division were also arrested. Authorities have seized more than $250 million in assets from businesses across Rome. 

According to transcripts from wiretaps collected over the past year, the group has even been siphoning off profits from refugee centers and bolstering petty criminals, including Gypsies who run unchecked in the city’s high-traffic tourist areas. 

“Do you have any idea how much I can make on these immigrants?” Carminati wingman Salvatore Buzzi was caught telling an associate, bragging about making a €40 million profit (about $49 million) on everything from migrant housing to fake contracts for liaison services between the Rom and Sinti shelters and city hall. “It’s a lot more profitable than drug-trafficking.”

According to prosecutors, Buzzi ran several shell companies that were given contracts for necessary services the city has been left to struggle without—including leaf removal, the lack of which has left cobblestone streets a death trap and caused millions of euros in flood damage from even nominal storms when sewers get stuffed with dead foliage. Investigators have also suggested that the city’s police department and secret services may have complicit members.
“Do you have any idea how much I can make on these immigrants? It’s a lot more profitable than drug-trafficking.” 

The Mafia Capitale investigation began last year, shortly after Ignazio Marino was elected to succeed Alemanno as mayor. Marino described to the foreign press how one of the first things he did when he took over the office was to call the tax police to invite them to check the books. As he had suspected, he said, there had been years of corruption and layers of deceitful action that went back at least three administrations. He found payouts in the hundreds and thousands of euros to people who had no right to them, including settlements to suspicious characters for injuries suffered due to the absence of vital services—all of which were missing because of fake contracts to nonexistent firms who weren’t performing them. 

Kindle Countdown Deal: "Last Great Mafia Empire" on Sale

Now available at a holiday promotional price as part of the Kindle Countdown Deal:
Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire.
Life (and death) inside the Mafia... in the words of a former Bonanno capo....
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.
...Dominick Cicale, then..
Additional figures in the book: Salvatore "The Iron Worker" Montagna. and Vito Rizzuto, who set loose a bloody vendetta against all traitors, especially those responsible for the murder of his father and son.

We posit that whatever else Vito did  in Canada, he still paid annual tribute to the Bonanno boss in New York.

Cicale believes any "break" Vito made prior to serving 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