Police Commissioner Ray Kelly met up with Susan Burke, the granddaughter of Lt. Joseph Petrosino, a legendary crimefighter, at exhibit showcasing mementos of Petrosino’s life.
hero against the mafia Joseph Petrosino
A century after his heroic death, the life of NYPD Lt. Joseph Petrosino remains one of the greatest immigrant tales New York City has ever known.
As a young boy, nearly straight off the boat, Petrosino shined shoes outside NYPD headquarters. He became a fearless police investigator who hounded early New York mafiosos, and was murdered in 1909 at the age of 49 while tailing gangsters in Italy.
Supervisory Special Agent Jeffrey Sallet.
(WPRI) – Target 12 Investigator Tim White sits down with the head of the FBI’s organized crime unit for New England
Palermo, 5 Nov. (AKI) – Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni, its justice minister Angelino Alfano and two judges have received a letter threatening reprisals over the restrictive measures imposed on jailed senior mafia members. “You will pay and there will be blood,” the letter reads.
Raids conducted just before daybreak
FOSTORIA, Ohio – A major drug bust executed by the Seneca County Drug Task Force and six regional SWAT teams broke up a crack cocaine ring in Fostoria early Tuesday morning. Six people were arrested during simultaneous raids at dawn
Operation Derailed” took months to plan but only minutes to execute.
Mafia boss Francesco Arcardi
It was greed that helped police crack wide open a case in which employees at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport were helping the Mafia smuggle large shipments of cocaine into Canada, a court was told yesterday.
Leo Frank with Sisters
Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) — Turn back time, more than 90 years, to a cold case that won’t gather dust.
It’s a classic whodunit, starting with the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl and ending in a lynching. It was grist for a prosecutor’s political aspirations, a case that was appealed all the way to the country’s highest court and a story hotly debated in the national press.
CBS) Three of Goto’s Yakuza cronies also got liver transplants at UCLA. For them, money was no object. UCLA says each of their transplants cost about $400,000 dollars; the Yakuza all paid cash.
The hospital also acknowledged Goto and another Yakuza each made $100,000 donations to the transplant center
The Sicilian mafia’s hitmen are skilled and practised, their murders are rarely botched, even when carried out from the back of a motorcycle travelling at speed.
But one of the many mysteries that surrounds the Cosa Nostra is where its killers acquire their lethal dexterity. It is known they have practised in the Sicilian countryside. But the flat crack of a pistol, which sounds quite unlike the reportof a shotgun, can swiftly attract unwelcome attention.
Part of the answerto the puzzle has emerged in Palermo’s notorious Zona Espansione Nord (Zen) – a complex of housing estates on the edge of the city which was the fiefdom of the city’s top mobster, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, known as the Baron, until his arrest last year.
There, 10 metres below ground in a warren of passages, police have found a firing range littered with 9 x 21 calibre ammunition – the Italian mobster’s favourite.
Sara Fascina, the police commander whose officers discovered the complex, said it also seemed to have been used for hiding fugitives and providing them with an escape route in the event of a raid. “The housing blocks that make up the Zen are strongholds that are impossible to enter unobserved,” she said.
The officers came across the shooting range by chance. While searching the flat of a suspected drug dealer, one officer noticed a large bunch of keys and asked what they were all for.
They found what appeared to be a shed in the courtyard, with an entrance opened by remote control. From there, they descended to an armoured door beyond which was a refuge for fugitives, complete with TV, air conditioning and €7,000 (£6,000) in cash.
When another security door was forced open the police found themselves navigating some 100 metres of passageways circling the foundations of the block. At the end of the last passageway was the firing range – 10 metres long and sound-proofed.
Mafia’s secret firing range found beneath housing estate – John Hooper in Rome – guardian.co.uk – The Guardian, Thursday November 27 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/27/mafia-italy-training-news-world
Gaetano Lo Presti, 52, was among almost 100 alleged Mafia bosses detained in a massive security operation on Tuesday
Police said Lo Presti, alleged boss of a Sicilian Mafia clan in a district of Palermo, hanged himself in his cell.
Tuesday’s raids in Sicily and the central region of Tuscany targeted Mafia suspects believed to be trying to rebuild the Sicilian Mafia
Some 1,200 police were involved in the raids
The Sicilian Mafia – also known as the Cosa Nostra – was dealt a huge blow with the arrest in April 2006 of its boss, Bernardo Provenzano.
He was believed to have handed the reins to Salvatore Lo Piccolo, who was then arrested in November 2007.
Police said local crime bosses had been planning to set up a Mafia council with the aim of appointing a new godfather to re-establish the group’s influence.
National prosecutor Pietro Grasso said that the raids had prevented the Cosa Nostra “from rearing its head again”.
Paul Castellano’s body is partially covered after Gambino boss was gunned down when he left midtown’s Sparks Steak House in 1985. Salvatore Scala (below) was an alleged gunman but never convicted.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/12/30/2008-12-30_gambino_wastes_away_in_prison.html
A Gambino gangster suspected of being one of the four gunmen who assassinated crime boss Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steak House in 1985, has died in prison.
Reputed capo Salvatore (Fat Sal) Scala passed away Monday at Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina while serving a six-year sentence for shaking down the owners of a Manhatton strip club , said his lawyer, Lindy Urso
Scala, 65, who had liver cancer, sought an early release so he could die at home, but the prison rejected the request, Urso said.
“The Bureau of Prisons killed him,” Urso said. “They release you by wheeling you out.”
The Federal Judge, who sentenced the gangster last year, wrote a letter to the director of the US bureau of Prisons in July as Scala’s condition deteriorated.
“At the time of the sentencing I made clear my view that his offense, though serious, did not in my view warrant his dying in prison,” Kaplan wrote to Director Harry Lappin
“I respectfully urge you to look into this man’s situation with a view to the possibility of compassionate release of this apparently dying man.”
A prison spokeswoman did not return a call for comment.
Scala was never charged with killing Castellano, an assassination
orchestrated by John Gotti to take over the Gambino family.
The corpse of John Gotti’s neighbor – murdered after he accidentally killed the gangster’s 12-year-old son in a traffic accident – was dissolved in a barrel of acid, an informant says.
John Favara’s grisly fate is disclosed in court papers filed Tuesday in the upcoming racketeering trial of reputed Gambino soldier Charles Carneglia.
He has long been suspected of getting rid of Favara’s body after the father of two was shot in March 1980 on orders of the late Gambino crime boss. Favara’s body has never been found.
Carneglia told a Gambino family associate, who is a government witness, that he disposed of the body by putting it in a barrel of acid, Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Burlingame said.
The associate is not identified in the court papers, but sources told the Daily News it is Kevin Mc Mahon , a mob wanna-be close to Carneglia.
Young Frankie Gotti was riding McMahon’s minibike when the mob scion was fatally struck on 86th St. by Favara, who was briefly blinded by the setting sun as he drove home from work.
Prosecutors say Carneglia “protected” McMahon from retaliation by the Dapper Don for lending his son the minibike and – in a bizarre twist – McMahon is the one ratting him out.
No one could save Favara.
He found the word Murderer scrawled on his auto and was attacked with a bat by Gotti’s wife, Victoria, but failed to heed repeated warnings to move out of the area, sources said.
Several weeks after the tragic accident, Favara was abducted outside the warehouse where he worked in New , L.I.. Cops identified his killers as Gambino members John Carneglia, Charles’ brother, Gene Gotti, Wilfred (Willie Boy) Johnson, Anthony Rampino and Richard (Redbird) Gomes.
Favara was forced into a van, sources said, and shot in the legs. He was taken to another location in Brooklyn where he was killed and stuffed into a 55-gallon drum, sources said.
“In a later discussion concerning his expertise at disposing of bodies for the Gambino family, which included a discussion of a book (Charles Carneglia) was reading on dismemberment, (Carneglia) informed another Gambino family associate that acid was the best method to use to avoid detection
Carneglia, 62, who is charged with five murders, including the fatal shooting of a hero court officer scheduled to testify against him, asked McMahon to help him move barrels of acid stored in his basement.
Former Bonanno crime boss Joseph Massino told the feds he thought Favara’s remains were buried in a mob graveyard on the Brooklyn-Queens border. The feds believe the barrel was tossed into the ocean, sources said
MIAMI (AP) — Former FBI agent John Connolly was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison for the 1982 mob-related killing of a Miami gambling executive.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake imposed the sentence after rejecting defense claims that a four-year statute of limitations had expired on Connolly’s second-degree murder conviction in the killing of 45-year-old John Callahan. Blake said a motion on that issue was filed past a 10-day deadline but was probably legally correct — meaning an appeal is certain.
Trial testimony showed Connolly provided information to Boston mobsters leading to Callahan’s slaying. Connolly, 68, showed no emotion when the sentence was announced.
Connolly is already serving a 10-year federal prison sentence for his corrupt dealings with Boston’s Winter Hill Gang. Blake said the state murder sentence will run consecutively to the federal term, which is set to end in 2011.
Callahan was fatally shot July 31, 1982, by mob hit man John Martorano, who has admitted the killing. Callahan’s body was stuffed into the trunk of his Cadillac and discovered a few days later at a Miami International Airport parking lot.
Martorano and other Winter Hill figures testified that Connolly regularly tipped them off to potential “rats” or snitches within their own ranks, sometimes leading to their untimely demise. In Callahan’s case, Connolly supposedly said the former World Jai-Alai president would probably implicate the mobsters in the 1981 murder of an Oklahoma businessman who owned the gambling business.
In return for his tips, prosecutors said Connolly was given inside information by Winter Hill chieftains James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi that led to high-profile FBI takedowns of bosses in Boston’s rival Italian-American Mafia. That made Connolly a highly decorated FBI star.
Blake said Thursday that Connolly had “tarnished the badge” through his corrupt dealings with mobsters.
“You left law enforcement. You forfeited that badge that so many people wear proudly,” Blake said. “For an FBI agent to go to the dark side is a sad, sad day.”
Connolly’s defense focused on the difficult job of investigating organized crime, on how FBI agents are forced to deal with unsavory characters to win larger victories. Connolly did not testify at his trial but insisted at a subsequent hearing that he had nothing to do with the Callahan killing.
“I never have, and I never would, knowingly say anything that would cause harm to come to any human being,” Connolly said Dec. 4.
While Flemmi and other Boston gangsters have admitted their roles in many murders and other crimes, Bulger remains a fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Testimony indicated that he disappeared following a 1995 tip from then-retired Connolly that a grand jury was about to indict him on racketeering charges.
The Winter Hill saga was the loose basis for the 2006 Martin Scorsese film “The Departed,” with Matt Damon in the crooked cop role and Jack Nicholson playing a Bulger-like Irish-American gangster
The trial will carry another captivating subplot — what is certain to be a bruising locking of horns between several veteran lawyers of mob trials. The assistant US attorney Mitchell Mars was behind the 1992 conviction of the mobster Ernest Infelise, who was sentenced to 63 years for conspiracy to murder, while fellow prosecutor John Scully is credited with jailing a corrupt former Chicago police chief, William Hanhardt, who was involved in a series of jewel thefts in 2001.
Rick Halprin, counsel for Lombardo, is a former marine who was wounded in Vietnam, and says he plans to argue that his client cut all ties with the mafia in the early 1990s, even taking out a newspaper advertisement to publicise the fact. “Those things just aren’t true,” he said of a claim by a retired FBI agent, Jack O’Rourke, that Lombardo was “vicious and a killer, [the Outfit's] prime enforcer”.
Yet only five of the ageing defendants remain to stand trial, including Marcello and Calabrese, 65 and 71 respectively; the Outfit’s alleged leading loan shark, Paul Schiro (69), and an ex-Chicago police officer, Anthony Doyle (62). Those to have fallen by the wayside in the two years since the indictment include Frank Saladino, who was found dead in a New Hampshire motel room along with thousands of dollars in cash, and Frank Schweihs, a 77-year-old alleged Outfit enforcer, who has been excused from the proceedings because he is undergoing treatment for cancer.
Some mafia experts believe that a higher success rate in the Lombardo case might have been achieved if tackling gangland crime had been made a higher priority. “It’s taken a long time for law enforcement officials and federal authorities to do to the mob in Chicago what authorities in New York have been doing for 20 years,” said Jerry Capeci, editor of the ganglandnews.com website.
“Back in the 1980s, authorities there were obtaining racketeering indictments against entire families.”
Lombardo’s health, meanwhile, is likely to become a recurring theme at his trial. While in
At its heart is Lombardo, the reputed former head of the powerful Chicago “Outfit” whose alleged victims include the underworld rival Tony Spilotro, buried alive in an Indiana cornfield in 1986, and whose murder was later recreated in the film Casino.
Lombardo, who was on the run for almost a year before his capture by FBI agents last January, joked to a judge at his pre-trial hearing that he had been, “what do they call it, unavailable”, when asked if he had seen a doctor recently.
A colourful supporting cast includes an array of mob squealers, bent cops, loan sharks, bookies, hit men and pornographers whose testimony, prosecutors hope, will lift the lid on more than two decades of mafia violence in one of the US’s most crime-ridden cities.
“It’ll be many years before there’s anything to rival this,” Lee Flosi, a former member of the FBI’s organised crime task force told the Chicago Tribune.
Lombardo, who joined the Chicago Outfit in the 1950s and served eight years for conspiracy in the late 1980s, revels in his reputation as a prankster. He enjoys yawning to spoil police mugshot photographs and was said to have fled a police raid on a gambling den clutching $12Â 000 and a book of jokes.
One friend said he was “more liked than the priest” in the West Side neighbourhood where he used to coach baseball to children.
Prosecutors, however, are keen to play up the seriousness of the allegations against him. Jurors, who have been promised anonymity for their protection, will hear that Lombardo, and his fellow leaders of the so-called Outfit, James Marcello and Frank Calabrese Sr, were allegedly responsible for up to 18 unsolved slayings in Chicago, along with running the usual mob activities of illegal gambling, protection rackets and prostitution rings.
Frank Calabrese Sr
Hannibal Lecter
He may not have been a cannibal like movie madman Hannibal Lecter, but a lawyer for prolific mob killer Frank Calabrese Sr. says the Chicago Outfit boss is confined in jail just like the fictional psychopath in “Silence of the Lambs.”
Calabrese attorney Joe “The Shark” Lopez filed a pre-sentencing motion in federal court alleging that “the Defendant (Calabrese, Sr.) is shackled like Hannibal Lecter in the movie ‘Silence of the Lambs’. As a result, the Defendant cannot shake his attorney’s hand which is a civilized way to greet another person. The Defendant also cannot read a document on his own since his hands are shackled.”
Hollywood’s Hannibal Lector, a serial killer who would then devour his victims, was entombed in a subterranean prison from homicidally insane. Famously portrayed in 1991 by actor Anthony Hopkins, Lector was restrained in a straight-jacket and a muzzle, intended to prevent him from sinking his teeth into anyone else.
Lopez tells the I-Team that the only restraint not yet used on Calabrese is the protective face-mask. “I am sure it is coming,” stated Lopez “and I think he will never leave (solitary confinement.) This is unheard of for a U.S. citizen. It’s reserved for terrorists.”
Calabrese, known in Outfit circles as “the Breeze,” is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 28. The motion, which will be heard in court next Thursday, is aimed at gaining permission for Calabrese to meet with a private investigator hired by Mr. Lopez.
As the I-Team reported in December, Calabrese has been held in solitary confinement after authorities say they determined he was a violent security threat.
“The Defendant does not know which information the Attorney General was provided; but, it is his position that it is false” Calabrese contends in the court motion. “Accordingly, he is ready to submit to a lie detector test along with the persons who may have made false statements to representatives of the United States.”
Lopez maintains that it is impossible for Calabrese to prepare for his defense while being held like Hannibal Lecter. “The Defendant’s calls are restricted; and, as of today’s date, he has not seen his children. He has seen his wife with whom he was allowed a visit through a glass window and shackled” states the motion.
Among the children Calabrese has not seen, is his Frank Jr. who testified against him during the Operation Family Secrets mob murder trial in 2007. Calabrese believes that government prosecutors do not want him investigating what may have motivated his son to become a witness.”Namely, the real reason he began to cooperate and the fact he recruited individual “A” to put the spin of the lousy father before the public eye rather than the real reason of avarice and greed,” according to the filing.
http://www.thechicagosyndicate.com/2009/01/is-mob-killer-confined-like-hannibal.html
A spokesman for United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald on Friday declined to comment on the Hannibal Lecter motion.
A-list Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan says the appeal of the Whitey Bulger saga is obvious.
http://boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2009/01/15/bulger_film_has_big_time_backing/
This is a story of a corrupt system and about how an angry guy became the second most wanted man after Bin Laden,” the celebrated director said in an email last night.
Sheridan, the director of such Oscar nominated films as “In the Name of the Father” and “My Left Foot,” is headed to the Hub soon to make a movie based on “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob,” the best-selling book by former Globe reporter Dick Lehr and editor Gerard O’Neill.
Sheridan has finished the script with writing partner Nye Heron and, with any luck, will begin shooting in South Boston this spring.
“We’re on cloud nine,” said Lehr, now a journalism professor at BU. “To hear that Jim Sheridan’s going to direct – we couldn’t be in better hands.”
Sheridan could not be reached yesterday, but did email a statement late last night: “This is a story of a corrupt system and about how an angry guy became the second most wanted man after Bin Laden.”
The first – and still best – book about Whitey Bulger, “Black Mass” has been optioned several times since it was published in 2000, but the project only gained momentum after Sheridan got involved. The celebrated director was familiar with the story, and excited by the prospect of shooting it in Boston.
“Jim’s films are always genuine, with characters who are multifaceted and believable,” said Brian Oliver of Arthaus Pictures, one of the producers. “His movies are steeped in Irish culture, history, and politics, and ‘Black Mass’ and Boston fit nicely into that mold.”
It’s no secret that Sheridan is BFF with actor Daniel Day-Lewis, and it’s possible, if not likely, that the two-time Academy Award winner will be considered for the role of Whitey. And who might play former FBI agent and convicted murderer John Connolly? It’s too soon to say, but it’s worth mentioning that Matt Damon, who knows a thing or two about the Bulger back story, has been approached about the plum role. (We know he’s at least interested because Damon and Ben Affleck were among the first to option “Black Mass.”) Billy Bulger also figures prominently in the book, and we’re told Mark Wahlberg will be in the mix to play the former Senate President.
Interest in the Bulger saga remains high. Not only was it the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film, “The Departed,” but a biopic of Bulger’s notorious triggerman John Martorano is in development, and Spike TV just shot a pilot loosely based on the story. Bulger, of course, has been on the lam for 14 years, bolting on Jan. 5, 1995. Once in bed with the Winter Hill crime boss, the feds are now offering $2 million for his capture.Continued…
Coproducer Michael Cerenzie told us yesterday that the relationship between the wiseguy and the government is what appeals to Sheridan.
“He looks at this as an anti-’Godfather’ theme. It’s not about betrayal, but an Irish code,” said Cerenzie. “To this day, none the three – Whitey, Billy, or Connolly – have betrayed each other. That’s really attractive to him.”
Cerenzie added that Sheridan feels strongly about shooting the film in South Boston. “Jim thinks South Boston is a definitive character in the fabric of the film,” he said.
“Jim Sheridan knows these characters and he knows the milieu,” said “Black Mass” co-author O’Neill, reached yesterday on vacation in Aruba. ” ‘In the Name of the Father’ explored some of the characters – down and out Irish characters – and a Belfast setting isn’t so far removed from a South Boston project upbringing.”
We’re told Sheridan will be in Boston soon to do an extensive scout, with shooting expected to begin in April and continue for three months.
The gents from the Denver band the Fray played the Colonnade Hotel for a small group of Mix 98.5 fans yesterday, before taking the stage at the Wilbur. Singer and pianist Isaac Slade (above center) said the band, which has a new album coming out Feb. 3, really likes our fair city. “We have good friends who live here. I asked my wife if she wanted to come [on the tour] and she asked ‘Are you going to Boston?’ “
Think there aren’t any jobs in Boston? Think again. “Good Morning America” correspondent Tory Johnson broadcast live from a job fair she organized at the Sheraton hotel downtown yesterday, with the express purpose of proving economic doomsayers wrong. “To those who want to believe the headlines, jobs do exist,” said the reporter and career coach. “You just have to work really hard to find them.” Johnson, who was joined by GMA economic reporter Bianna Golodryga, recruited 73 employers to set up shop in the hotel. “To fill that ballroom, I got hundreds and hundreds of no’s,” she admitted. But the employers who showed, from the fields of government, healthcare, retail, technology, insurance, and even financial services, had real jobs to fill, she said. “I grilled them myself.” The several thousand job seekers who attended the fair also received resume critiques and career coaching.
and Pat Desmarais, and sports reporter Tom Cuddy – upset listeners have petitioned WBZ, attempted to jam phone lines with complaints, and threatened to boycott advertisers and picket the station. Fans of LeVeille have launched similar efforts, through websites such as www.bringbacksteve.com. Jordan refused to address the backlash, but admitted, “We’ve laid off a lot more than that in the past year.” Between his two stations, WBZ and WODS-FM, there have been 20 people let go, he said. “Our biggest advertisers have been autos, banks, airlines. . . . It’s been a very difficult year.” As to whether more cuts are coming, Jordan said, “Gosh, I hope not. I can’t imagine there would be more.”
Margo Howard is on the move again. Howard’s advice column “Dear Margo” is moving from Yahoo!, where it receives 1 million unique hits each week, to wowOwow.com. Howard, who lives in Cambridge, is the daughter of “Eppie” Lederer, a.k.a. Ann Landers.
The Sox signing of John Smoltz has a stamp of approval from Ben Affleck. The actor was asked about the deal by a Yankee-loving paparazzo from TMZ.com. “I like it,” Affleck said. Told the Yanks had signed pitchers CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and big bat Mark Teixeira, Ben just grinned. “Yeah, maybe you’ll be closer this year.”
Aerosmith has canceled its Feb. 1 concert in Venezuela because Joe Perry (right) is battling a serious infection in his knee. According to a source close to Perry, the guitarist had surgery on the knee at a Boston hospital last Friday, and has not yet been released. Doctors believe the infection stems from knee-replacement surgery Perry underwent 10 months ago. It’s expected that Steven Tyler’s Toxic Twin could need an IV and antibiotics for up to eight weeks. Media outlets in Caracas, where Aerosmith was supposed to play the Solid Fest, are erroneously reporting that Perry broke his knee in an accident Monday.
The ratings for last night’s edition of “60 Minutes” will no doubt be boffo. They had a football playoff game lead-in. They had a segment with Roger Clemens, professional baseball player, denying he took steroids. And they had Johnny Martorano, professional murderer, waxing philosophic about the art of blowing people’s brains out.
You’ll have to forgive Emily Connors for not tuning in. Johnny Martorano helped murder her husband 33 years ago, as Ed Connors stood in a phone booth in Dorchester.
“You know what?” Emily Connors said of Martorano’s schtick. “It’s getting old.”
She got that right. It would almost be bearable to watch this stuff if we knew it would be
over and done with. But it’s pretty obvious Martorano’s appearance was the launch of another attempt to capitalize on the very marketable concept of the sensitive sociopath.
After Martorano wraps up his government-witness obligations, which allowed him to trade the 20 human lives he took for 12 years in prison, there will be another kill-and-tell book
. Another movie treatment. Some clueless Hollywood type will be snookered by all this
tough-but-thoughtful hit-man jive, and we’ll have to endure an endless string of breathless whispers about scripts, stars, and on-location shoots in Southie and Winter Hill.
Liesguys Lit is a lucrative genre. It’s revisionist history for murderers, allowing them to imbue their venality with a sense of nobility that is otherwise missing from the brutal
act of shooting someone in cold blood. And the best part for the purveyors of this junk is that almost everyone who can dispute its authenticity is either dead or not talking.
It’s just as well Emily Connors didn’t watch last night, because Martorano’s performance was far more offensive to his victims than anything he said in court some years back when he got the sweetheart deal that allowed him to walk out of prison last year.
Johnny told Steve Kroft he didn’t enjoy killing, but that he did it for his family and friends.
What a guy.
“You could never pay me to kill anybody,” said Johnny, who, by job description, was paid to kill people.
“I didn’t enjoy risking my life,” Johnny said, “but if the cause was right I would.”
He never got around to identifying these causes. Perhaps it was to free Tibet, or
maybe help the nuns pay off the mortgage at an orphanage. Oh, and even though Johnny
is a government witness he is not a rat because he’s testifying against those who ratted before he ratted.
Got that?
Like all these criminals who trade their infamy for a few bucks, Johnny Martorano comes across as a guy who is sorry only that he got caught.
Paul Rico, the disgraced, and now dead, former FBI agent who helped Johnny kill people also helped frame a guy named Joe Salvati. Asked how he felt about Salvati doing 30 years for a murder he didn’t commit, Rico replied, “What do you want, tears?”
Well, yeah, actually, we do. It would be refreshing to see one of these guys look into a camera and say, “I can’t make up for my past. But I don’t want to talk about it, either, because all it will do is hurt the families I already hurt.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that one.
There were a lot of names thrown around on “60 Minutes” last night. Whitey Bulger. Stevie Flemmi. They mentioned Martorano’s first victim, Robert Palladino, and his last two, Roger Wheeler and John Callahan.
Frank Calabrese Sr. was convicted in landmark Operation Family Secrets
But U.S. District Judge James Zagel found that federal prosecutors had proven those six murders, too, citing a preponderance of the evidence. So the judge took all 13 murders into consideration in sentencing Calabrese.
That brought relief to the families of some of the victims.
Calabrese’s klling spree stretched from 1970 to 1986. His preferred method was strangling. But he didn’t limit himself. He also shotgunned and blew up people.
Calabrese was convicted in large part on the testimony of his own family members — and his own words.
His son, Frank Calabrese Jr., got the Family Secrets investigation started when he wrote to the FBI from prison in July 1998 and said he wanted to cooperate with authorities against father.
“I feel I have to help you keep this sick man locked up forever,” Calabrese Jr. wrote.
Calabrese Sr. was known throughout his life in crime for his paranoia and his care in never talking about past mob business. But that care evaporated when he started talking with his son at length in a prison yard, offering advice and trying to groom him for the Outfit life.
All the while, Calabrese Jr. wore a hidden recording device capturing all his father’s words that would lead to his conviction. Calabrese Jr. — who was not charged in the Family Secrets case — ended up catching his father on tape bragging about mob hits, even laughing about them.
Even worse for Calabrese Sr. was testimony from his brother, Nick Calabrese, a mob hitman-turned-government witness who admitted going out on many mob hits with him and described them to the jury, confirming what Calabrese Sr. said on the secret recordings.
During closing arguments at his trial, Calabrese Sr. threatened to kill a federal prosecutor, Markus Funk, and continued to try to communicate in code to his visitors while in jail awaiting sentencing, authorities say.
For that reason, Calabrese Sr. has been held since late last year under tight security restrictions usually reserved for terrorists. And he’ll likely will face such restrictions for the rest of his life.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mob/1401562,frank-calabrese-family-secrets-sentence-012809.article
Donkey Head
small-time mafia gang have been branded “idiots” after sending a donkey’s head to a shopkeeper in an ill-conceived stunt apparently lifted from The Godfather.
The gang’s target, a local bread shop owner who had refused to pay protection money, was so puzzled by the confused threat that he presumed it was a practical joke.
In Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film, mafia boss Don Corleone uses the “gift” of a severed horse’s head to intimate film producer Jack Woltz into giving his godson a part.
Woltz woke up one morning to find the bloody head lying next to him in his bed, and immediately consented to the request made by the Don, played by Marlon Brando.
But while that threat made sense – the head was of Woltz’s prized thoroughbred stallion – there was no such context for the donkey.
“The man didn’t know the donkey, he didn’t own the donkey, he doesn’t care about donkeys. It didn’t make sense. It was the work of idiots,” a police spokesman in Villafranca Padovana, northern Italy, said.
This is not the first time that mafia gangs have taken inspiration from The Godfather film and Mario Puzo’s original book, which chronicle the lives of a post-war Italian-American crime family.
Earlier this year the deputy mayor of Ostuni in southern Italy discovered that a severed horse’s head had been left on the staircase of his office. It was dismissed as the work of a “madman”.
In 2006 a woman in New York who had been the victim of a campaign of harassment found a severed horse’s head in her swimming pool
Gotti Sr
Mickey Scars
Sammy The Bull
Gotti JR role in a 1990 rubout at the World Trade Center was a gangland secret for years because of a “son for a son” deal between his father and a Mafia turncoat, a government witness revealed Monday.
Before federal prosecutors charged Junior last year with the murder of Gambino soldier Louis DiBono, the mob scion’s name had never surfaced in connection with the hit ordered by John Gotti Sr.
That’s because infamous turncoat Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano – who implicated the Dapper Don, underboss Frank Locascio and others in the murder conspiracy – never fingered Junior, and apparently with good reason, according to former capo Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo.
“Guys were going away for a long time and others were being left out. It was a mystery,” DiLeonardo said Monday at the racketeering trial of reputed soldier Charles Carneglia in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Gambino capo Edward Garafola – Gravano’s brother-in-law – provided the answer about a year after the murder, DiLeonardo said.
Although Gravano sent scores of Gambinos to prison, he spared Junior in a “son for a son” deal with Gotti Sr. in the hope that his own son, Gerard, would not be punished for his father’s decision to break the Mafia oath of silence.
“It was the first time I learned that John Jr.was involved in the [DiBono] hit,” DiLeonardo said.
Gotti Sr. was convicted in 1992 of ordering the murder of DiBono because he had ignored an order to meet with the crime boss when called.
Junior – who faces his own upcoming murder trial – assembled the hit team, prosecutors contend in court papers.
Carneglia is charged with sneaking up behind DiBono in the World Trade Center garage and pumping seven bullets into his head and body.
The reason Gravano did not implicate Carneglia at the time he fingered Gotti Sr. was not disclosed.
Although DiLeonardo has testified in 10 previous trials, he had not previously revealed the alleged son for a son deal.
“It is implausible that after testifying against John [Jr.] three times, DiLeonardo suddenly remembered information about a murder charge,” said Junior’s attorney, Seth Ginsberg
At the time he took the stand against the Teflon Don, Gravano was the highestranking member of a Mafia family ever to cooperate with the feds.
Prosecutors ripped up Gravano’s deal after he was caught trafficking Ecstasy pills with his wife, son and daughter in the witness protection program in Arizona
He is serving a 19-year sentence in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado. Gerard Gravano has nearly completed a nine-year term
Pete Zucarro
It was a day of naming names in Brooklyn Federal Court Tuesday. You know: Quack Quack. Johnny One Arm Vinnie Mad Dog. Little Fat Joe.. Could Big Pussy be far behind?
Turncoat Gambino soldier Pete Zucarro took the stand to testify againstCharles Carneglia who’s accused of five murders.
In a tough, gravelly voice he told why the Mafia kills people:
- “He cursed at a capo in Italian.”
- “He didn’t pass on money (a superior) could use for snacks in the jail commissary.”
- Vinnie Gotti thought he was sleeping with his wife.”
- “He didn’t come when he was called.”
Zucarro is nicknamed “Bud” for his marijuana business, and prosecutor Evan Norris asked how much he earned for the tons of pot he brought here.
“A lot of people ax me that,” he pronounced. “To put a number on the money I made, it’s hard. Millions. Lots.”
Zucarro, 53, described how a Winnebago would pull into Carneglia’s junkyard and they would take the pot and “put it into bales and numbah dem.”
The law intercepted too many imports and they turned to homegrown – hydroponics, to be exactCheech and chong “You don’t use soil,” Zucarro said. “You put the plants in rocks, feed them liquid nutrients under artificial light, create the best climate.” He had a warehouse in Brooklyn”It was like the Epcop center..”
He would save some to smoke, no doubt because he was always around scary Carneglia, who, Zucarro claimed, killed teenager Sal Puma with a small stiletto.
“You don’t need a big knife,” Carneglia told him. “You can use a small one and just wiggle it.”
Zucarro said he started “doing robberies” and assaults at the age of 13, when he met Carneglia.
Asked how many assaults, Zucarro threw his body back and said, “You gotta be kiddin’ me!” He told of the time John Gotto asked them to “slaughter but not kill Carmine Agnello who beat up Gotti’s daughter Victoria, his future wife.
He would do anything Gotti said because “I thought John Gotti was the best thing that walked on this planet.”
But when he died, “I didn’t feel anything. By then, I thought he ruined it. The way he was so flamboyant. … It was supposed to be a secret society and now everything was overexposed. How do you say, “Do as I say, not as I do.’”
John Gotti sicced his most sadistic hit man on his future son-in-law for smacking around gal pal Victoria Gotti, the Dapper Don’s daughter.
Accused killer Charles Carneglia, 62, was part of a gang of mob underlings that Gotti dispatched to attack Carmine Agnello as punishment for hitting his then-gal pal in 1979, former Gambino associate Peter Zucarro said.
“We were instructed to go slaughter Carmine. Find him and slaughter him. Don’t kill him,” Zucarro, 53, said on the stand in Brooklyn federal court at Carneglia’s trial.
Zucarro and Carneglia were two members of a crew that tracked down Agnello and slammed into his tow truck to cut him off.
As the mob princess’ boyfriend sprang from the truck, Carneglia’s brother, John, “shot him in the buttocks,” according to Zucarro, who said his trigger finger was itching – but was ordered not to shoot. “We all ran up . . . and beat him down with ax handles,” said Zucarro, adding that Carneglia used a special weapon he always carried in his waistband, a blackjack-style club.
The gang left Agnello lying in the street.
Three of Carneglia’s other victims were not so lucky, Zucarro testified.
In the case of the first murder victim, Court Officer Albert Gelb, Zucarro was present when Carneglia attracted the unwanted attention by sauntering into an Ozone Park diner, fresh from a wedding, with two guns hanging from his waistband in February 1975.
Carneglia approached Zucarro and two pals in the diner and “leaned over the table as he talked to us. His suit jacket split apart and there were two pistols in his back,” the witness said.
“I said, ‘Hide the guns. The guns are showing.’ “
As soon as Carneglia left for the bathroom, Zucarro heard shouts and found the wiseguy locked in a struggle with another man, whom they would later learn was Gelb.
“A pistol was pointed up in the air. I don’t know whose hand it was in,” said Zucarro, who knocked Gelb to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked him in order to help Carneglia get away. Instead, Carneglia flew into a rage, refused to leave the diner and shouted that he wanted the court officer arrested.
Carneglia was the one who had handcuffs slapped on him that night, but Gelb, 24, wouldn’t live to tell about the encounter in court, because the hit man allegedly killed him just four days before he was set to testify the following March.
Afterward, Carneglia allegedly told Zucarro, “He wouldn’t back off. He had to go and nobody f- – -s with us.”
Gelb’s sister Emily wept as she listened to details of her brother’s brave stand against the mobster. It was the first time she saw Gelb’s accused killer in person.
“My brother loved his job,” Emily Gelb said outside court. “He never thought of himself. He saw someone who needed help and he helped.”
Zucarro said Carneglia also admitted to fatally stabbing a Gambino associate Salvatore Puma, whose girlfriend, Kim Albanese, would later ascend to mob royalty by marrying Gotti’s son, John “Junior” Gotti.
“He said that he stabbed him and he wiggled the knife,” Zucarro said of the July 1983 murder.
Carneglia also admitted to shooting Louis DiBono, a Gambino soldier who refused to attend a meeting when Gotti called in 1990, Zucarro said.
Zucarro also said Carneglia disposed of bodies in Brooklyn, and would hang the victims’ jewelry from the rafters
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02042009/news/regionalnews/thug_beat_vickys_guy_153452.htm
Robert” Bobby” DeLuca
Tony “The Saint” St. Laurent
A leading member of the New England Mafia was charged in federal court in Rhode Island yesterday with soliciting a hit on another “made man” in what may be a continuing feud that started a decade ago during court hearings that exposed the identities of FBI informants
Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent Sr., an aging, ailing member of the Patriarca crime family who is already serving a federal prison sentence for extortion, is expected to appear in federal court Monday to face a charge that he solicited the killing of Robert “Bobby” DeLuca. DeLuca is a reputed capo, or captain, in the La Cosa Nostra crime family.
The elder St. Laurent, who has a long history of organized crime-related convictions, allegedly asked associates whom he recruited in an extortion scheme three years ago to kill DeLuca, offering one of them a piece of the profits he would earn once he took over DeLuca’s rackets, or some of his enterprises.
He tried to ease the associates’ concerns that they would be killing a “made,” or inducted and protected, member of the Mafia, telling them that he had the approval of Luigi “Louie” Manocchio, the reputed boss of the New England crime family, according to court records.
“Shoot him in the [expletive] head,” St. Laurent allegedly told one of the individuals he solicited. “Say, ‘This is from The Saint.’ “
At one point in April 2006, according to court records, St. Laurent drove one of his associates by DeLuca’s workplace, to show him where he could be found. At the time, DeLuca was fulfilling an inmate work-release program at the Sidebar & Grill in downtown Providence. Eventually, DeLuca was secretly removed from the job.
At the time, law enforcement officials did not explain why DeL was suddenly removed, but court records indicate that federal agents realized the dangers of St. Laurent’s alleged attempts.
In court hearings, St. Laurent’s lawyers described the 67-year-old, of Johnston, R.I., as being in poor health, suffering from congestive heart failure and other ailments. St. Laurent allegedly told one of his associates that he would carry out the hit himself, if it had not been for his health.
Even in prison, St. Laurent sought the killing of DeLuca, telling one government witness that he “hates” him and has “reasons with him,” according to court records.
Lawyers who have worked for St. Laurent in the past did not return calls for comment.
The feud between DeLuca and St. Laurent is said to be more personal than reflective of any power struggle within the New England crime family.
DeLuca, who gained notoriety in 1989 as one of the four soldiers who were secretly recorded by the FBI during a Mafia induction ceremony, and others have accused St. Laurent of cooperating with the FBI and the Rhode Island State Police.
St. Laurent was also one of the men accused of being an FBI informant in the court hearings in 1997 that exposed the FBI’s cozy relationship with James “Whitey” Bulger and Stephen Flemmi.
Flemmi, a notorious Boston gangster, signed an affidavit in 1999 saying that disgraced former FBI agent John J. Connolly once sought his help in protecting St. Laurent. According to Flemmi, Connolly had identified St. Laurent as an informant and sought his protection from a Las Vegas bookie who wanted St. Laurent dead for trying to extort him and threatening the bookie’s 15-year-old daughter.
St. Laurent has denied he was an informant and refused to testify in the 1997 court hearings, saying at the time, “Guys like me don’t talk.”
Michael Cotillo
Carneglia
The feds secretly recorded Gambino hit man Charles Carneglia acknowledging he fatally stabbed a mob associate outside a Queens diner, it was learned Monday.
Carneglia fessed up to the murder in a 1999 jailhouse visit with Gambino capo Gene Gotti, a transcript shows.
Documents filed in Brooklyn Federal Court say a listening bug was planted in the visiting room at the federal prison in Pennsylvania where Gotti was serving a 50-year sentence for heroin trafficking.
The victim, Michael Cotillo, was the nephew of a Gambino gangster whose crew was often at odds in the 1970s with John Gotti’s faction, of which Carneglia was a member.
“Well, you stabbed somebody, Charles. You stabbed one of their guys,” Gene Gotti said on the transcript.
Carneglia replied: “I know that. I know.”
“And that’s why they wanted to get you,” Gene Gotti reminded him.
Gene Gotti was referring to revenge sought by Cotillo’s friends and relatives after the Nov. 6, 1977, killing during a melee outside the Blue Fountain Diner on Cross Bay Blvd. in Howard Beach.
There were multiple sitdowns within the crime family to settle the beef, turncoat witness Anthony Ruggiano testified Monday at Carneglia’s racketeering trial.
“They [Cotillo's faction] were looking to kill Charlie,” Ruggiano said. “I said whatever you do, do it right because Charlie’s no joke.”
Despite the passage of 22 years, Carneglia still expressed concern on the tape that permission to whack him for Cotillo’s murder had been granted. Gotti pointed out the threat was “squashed.”
Carneglia is charged with killing five people, including Cotillo. Prosecutors plan to play the tape for the jury today.
Joe Watts
ACTING BOSS AND LONGTIME ASSOCIATE OF GAMBINO CRIME FAMILY CHARGED WITH MURDER TO PREVENT GOVERNMENT COOPERATION
Jackie “The Nose” Acting Boss ( Right)
LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and JOSEPH M. DEMAREST, JR., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today the unsealing of an indictment charging JOHN D’AMICO, a/k/a “Jackie the Nose,” the Acting Boss of the Gambino Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra (the “Gambino Crime Family”), and powerful, longtime Gambino Crime Family associate JOSEPH WATTS with the 1989 murder of FREDERICK WEISS, who the defendants believed was serving as a federal government witness. The Indictment unsealed today also charges D’AMICO with racketeering conspiracy involving murder, extortion, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and gambling. WATTS was arrested earlier this morning in Manhattan and is expected to be presented later today in Manhattan federal court. D’AMICO is in federal custody in connection with a separate matter and is expected to be transferred to Manhattan to face these charges at a later date. According to the Indictment unsealed earlier today and other documents filed in Manhattan federal Court:
D’AMICO is a Capo in the Gambino Crime Family — one of the families of “La Cosa Nostra” that operate in the New York City and New Jersey areas — and is presently serving as its Acting Boss.
One of the purposes of the Gambino Crime Family is to identify and kill individuals suspected of providing information about the Family to law enforcement. On September 11, 1989, FREDERICK WEISS was murdered at the direction of JOHN GOTTI, the boss of the Gambino Family, because he was believed to be cooperating with law enforcement. D’AMICO and WATTS were among those involved in carrying out GOTTI’s order to murder WEISS. From at least 1986, D’AMICO was also involved in conspiring with other members and associates of the Gambino Crime Family to commit a wide range of criminal offenses, including murder, operating illegal gambling businesses, extortion and obstruction of justice. D’AMICO’s illegal conduct continued until at least May 2008 when, in an attempt to obtain release on bail in connection with separate federal charges against him, he misrepresented the nature of a salaried position with a major beverage distributor, which he obtained through Gambino Crime Family influence.
D’AMICO is charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy involving murder, extortion, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and gambling; and one count of murder of a witness in a federal criminal case. WATTS is charged with one count of murder of a witness in a federal criminal case. If convicted, D’AMICO, 72, and WATTS, 67, face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The Indictment also seeks the forfeiture of $4 million from D’AMICO. The forfeitures represent the alleged proceeds obtained from the charged offenses.
Mr. DASSIN praised the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorneys MIRIAM ROCAH and ARLO DEVLIN-BROWN are in charge of the prosecution.
The charges contained in the Indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed
Ugo
Gabriele was arrested in Naples,where the local Mafia are known as the Camorra
Crime lord: Ugo Gabriele, known as Kitty, is believed to the world’s first transsexual Mafia boss
A transsexual Mafia boss has been arrested by police in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.
Ugo Gabriele, 27, who insisted on being called Kitty, was held by armed officers in a raid which also saw 27 other mobsters arrested.
Gabriele ran a sophisticated drugs and prostitution racket and his clan had dozens of members.
His mugshot showed him as thickset and butch-looking but he also had very defined plucked feminine eyebrows and was wearing lip stick when held in Naples.
The southern Italian port city is a popular destination for British holidaymakers en route to Sorrento but is also home to the local Mafia, known as the ‘Camorra’.
A police spokesman said: ‘We have been on Kitty’s trail for several months and it is the first time that we have ever arrested a transsexual Mob boss.
‘We think it is also probably the first case of its kind in the world.
‘He was born Ugo Gabriele but told everyone to call him Kitty – he is very burly but at the same time you can tell he is trying to be a woman.
‘He was a key figure in the Camorra and ran a drugs and prostiutio racket out by the airport.
‘We had tried to arrest him earlier this week but he escaped but thanks to good police work we found him and arrested 27 other Camorra members.’
Traditionally the Mafia has been a haven of machismo although there have been gay mobsters in the past most famously John ‘Johnny Boy’ D’Amato who was gunned down in New York in 1992 for being homosexual.
At his murder trial Mafia hit man Anthony Capo, a former soldier for the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family testified that he killed D’Amato after finding out about his secret life.
He said: ‘Nobody’s gonna respect us if we have a gay homosexual boss sitting down discussing La Cosa Nostra business.’
Luigi Romolo Carrino, a top Mafia author, based in Italy said: ‘There is a lot more homosexual activity in the Mob than you think but it is very discreet.’
By Nick Pisa
Not enemy, enema. Hey, the hapless Rhode Island Mafioso once told a judge he had to take “40, 50 enemas a day.”
He has, as a newspaper story once understated, “dysfunctional bowels.”
Which may explain why all of his appearances in court are by “video conferencing.” And the Saint is in prison at Devens, doing a five-year bit for extortion. He’s charged in Providence with trying to hire a hit man to kill Bobby DeLuca, a mobster whom the Saint detests more than somewhat.
Now, Devens to Providence can’t be much more than a two-hour car ride. The Saint isn’t exactly an escape threat – look at that photo of him, and he’s 10 years older now. So why is the Saint appearing before the judge in Providence via satellite?
“Nobody wants to drive him down there,” said Someone Who Knows. “With all them enemas . . . you understand? Nobody wants to have to deal with it.”
Well, can you blame them?
The Saint is already banned from every casino in Nevada because of his “notorious and unsavory reputation.” Now they could add a third adjective: odiferous.
The Saint is 67 going on 367, and the feds gave him a break by sending him to the medical facility in Devens, not that far from his hometown of Johnston, R.I. But the Saint can’t shake this obsession of his – he has to get at Bobby DeLuca. In 2006, the feds said they had evidence that the Saint had offered two mutts $20,000 to kill an unnamed mobster. The unnamed mobster? DeLuca.
DeLuca’s crime? When he was in prison he tried to prove the Saint was a rat for the FBI. Under oath in federal court in 1997, the Saint was asked the question directly, was he an informant? He took the Fifth. Draw your own conclusions.
So the Saint ends up at Devens where, according to sources, he was asking practically everybody in the joint except the warden if they knew anybody on the outside he could hire to clip DeLuca. The inevitable happened. A guy from Boston, whose brother once got shot in the sitting area, decided to shave a few years off his 10-year rap. Soon a “hit man” showed up in the visitors’ room at Devens.
The wired-up cop/hit man reportedly expressed his concern about hitting a made man like DeLuca. No problem, sources said the Saint responded. When he got out, he’d even introduce the shooter to the boss, Baby Shanks. The Saint gave the hit man his instructions.
“Shoot him in the bleeping head,” he said. “Say, ‘This is from the Saint.’ ” Just like a B movie.
The Saint will be back in court via satellite next Tuesday. Meanwhile, he’s still in the can, so to speak, doing time. And enemas. thanks howie carr
Gene Hackman
Anthony Casso
Who committed the deed? “There were four narcotics detectives,” Mr. Casso wrote the former detective, Pat Intrieri, in October, amplifying information he offered in his 2008 biography. “One worked inside the property clerk’s office.” One, he added, was later shot to death; Mr. Casso said he remembers where the gun was thrown. But Mr. Casso, 66, whose mob nickname was Gaspipe, says he is having trouble with exact locations. So, naturally, he would like to get out, if only for a day, to be helpful. Or at least win some leniency along the lines of a plea deal he says the government reneged on: six and a half years in prison. “Of course he’d like to get out — he’s serving 55 million years,” said Michael F. Vecchione, chief of the rackets division in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Like other prosecutors, Mr. Vecchione has little stomach for Mr. Casso. But without any promises, he has arranged to visit Mr. Casso on Tuesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., where he has been undergoing cancer treatment, although it would take corroboration far beyond the mobster’s word to make any case. “I bet you when the state guys come, they don’t know half the things,” Mr. Casso said on Friday to Mr. Intrieri, who relayed his remarks to The New York Times.
There is little chance that Mr. Casso, now 15 years behind the stoutest walls America can contrive, will ever see his release — not after pleading guilty in 15 murders and being tied to some 22 others. He has also been accused of plotting to kill a federal judge and prosecutors, and violating the terms of his agreement to turn informant as one of the highest-level mobsters ever to flip — becoming the only major Mafia defector to be thrown out of the federal witness protection program. Mr. Casso has also waffled on whether he corrupted an F.B.I. agent and hired two New York City police detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, as mob assassins. The former detectives are to be sentenced on March 6 on racketeering charges. If, moreover, he still wonders why the authorities are leery of his offers, Mr. Casso may have provided the answer to his biographer, Philip Carlo. In his 2008 book, “Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss,” Mr. Carlo, a longtime friend of the Casso family, outlined several of the mobster’s escape schemes, including the planned ambush of a van carrying him back from court after his capture in New Jersey in 1993.
“He’s where he should be,” said Gregory O’Connell, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who initially interviewed Mr. Casso with his late partner, Charles Rose, and called him “the most treacherous sociopath we ever dealt with.” But a man can dream, and for Mr. Casso, that means being back once again in the Brooklyn sunshine, pinpointing old Mafia execution grounds and the watery grave of a murder weapon. Not rising at 5 a.m. every day to meticulously clean his cell in a federal “supermax” prison in Florence, Colo., that also houses the likes of the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski; the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; and such fellow mobsters as Gregory Scarpa Jr. and Salvatore Gravano, known as Sammy the Bull. “I think he got a raw deal,” said Joshua L. Dratel, the latest of Mr. Casso’s many lawyers. Mr. Dratel said Mr. Casso was “poor at playing the system” and threatened major cases by exposing Mr. Gravano and other government witnesses and federal agents as liars. Mr. Casso has long claimed that the records of his F.B.I. debriefings, never made public, would show that the government covered up his warnings of moles in its ranks and that to get out of their plea deal with him, prosecutors used other Mafia turncoats as witnesses instead.
Perhaps Mr. Casso’s staunchest pen pal is Mr. Intrieri, 79, a onetime decorated New York detective lieutenant who was convicted of tax evasion in 1976 in the aftermath of the French Connection drug thefts. Mr. Intrieri, who has drafted a memoir asserting his innocence, saw new information on the case in Mr. Carlo’s book and said he found Mr. Casso’s accounts of unsolved crimes credible. “He wants to get out a little bit, I guess; he’s going stir-crazy,” Mr. Intrieri said, after getting more than a dozen phone calls from Mr. Casso in recent weeks. “But his goal is a sentence reduction.” The drugs at the core of the mystery — popularized as “The French Connection” in a 1969 book by Robin Moore and an Academy Award-winning film that followed two years later — were secreted in compartments in a 1960 Buick loaded aboard the liner United States sailing from Le Havre, France, to New York. The car and its 112 pounds of heroin were later claimed by a Lucchese family underling, Patsy Fuca, who, as it happened, was being tailed by a pair of dogged New York narcotics detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.
The drug bust in January 1962 was widely hailed as a record. But the heroics proved short-lived. In six thefts between March 1969 and January 1972, someone signing the register as Detective Joseph Nunziata, a member of the narcotics bureau’s widely corrupt special investigations unit, and using fictitious badge numbers, removed the French Connection drugs along with another 300 pounds of heroin and cocaine from the police property vault at 400 Broome Street (now a New York University dorm). Handwriting analysis and a discovered fingerprint never established that Detective Nunziata actually signed the police register. But eight months before the thefts were discovered, Detective Nunziata, charged with corruption in an unrelated case, was found shot to death in his car. It was ruled a suicide. Mr. Moore, the author, wrote that as far back as 1967, he and Detectives Nunziata, Egan and Grosso joked about stealing the French Connection heroin.
Many suspects emerged, including Vincent Papa, a major drug dealer; Frank King, a retired narcotics detective and private eye working for Mr. Papa; and Mr. Intrieri, who upon his retirement had joined Mr. King as a bodyguard for one of Mr. Papa’s sons — “the biggest mistake of my life,” Mr. Intrieri now says. (Mr. Papa’s lawyer was overheard on a wiretap asking Mr. King, “Do we have anything to worry about the handwriting analysis?”) After providing what he thought was confidential information on four corrupt narcotics detectives, Mr. Papa was stabbed to death in prison. Also under scrutiny was Vincent Albano, another former narcotics detective, who had served under Mr. Intrieri and had survived a mysterious hail of bullets in 1969, only to be slain in 1985. Thomas P. Puccio, then a Brooklyn federal prosecutor, focused on Mr. King and Mr. Intrieri, but failed to tie them to the drug thefts. Mr. Puccio charged them instead with tax evasion for unexplained income, winning convictions and five-year sentences for both, along with three years for tax evasion by Mr. Albano. But the case remained a puzzle, Mr. Puccio conceded in an interview. “We never really conclusively solved it,” he said.
Still indignant over his conviction more than 30 years later, Mr. Intrieri — who held 15 police citations for bravery and valor — saw in Mr. Carlo’s book that Mr. Casso had named Mr. Albano and a mob associate as two of the French Connection thieves. The book related how Mr. Albano had been shot to death in Brooklyn in 1985, and how Mr. Casso had supplied the gun and helped dump the body on Staten Island. Mr. Carlo, in an interview, said Mr. Casso had told him Mr. Albano had conceived the drug heist and asked Mr. Casso how to carry it out. Mr. Intrieri, in his own manuscript, “The French Connection: The Aftermath,” told of running into Mr. Albano several times over the years — including in 1980 while Mr. Albano was casing a Queens bank — and said that Mr. Albano had laughed at hearing that Mr. Intrieri was a suspect in the drug thefts. By opening an exchange of letters with Mr. Casso — a correspondence that grew to include this reporter — Mr. Intrieri elicited other details, and other crimes. Mr. Casso offered details of the 1986 car bombing aimed at John Gotti that killed his Gambino family underboss, Frank DeCicco; the killing of a Russian mob associate, Michael Markowitz, in 1989; and the apparently unreported killing of a Jewish drug importer near Mr. Albano’s office around 1980, among other crimes.
Officials at the Federal Medical Center in North Carolina did not respond to repeated requests to interview Mr. Casso by phone. “I’ll be here awhile receiving treatments for prostate cancer,” Mr. Casso wrote Mr. Intrieri in December. “Just my luck.” As for the gun that killed Mr. Albano, Mr. Casso supplied a hand-drawn map with imperfect punctuation showing, he said, where it had been thrown: “Its in Sheepshead Bay.” He also sketched a site where, he said, another mob victim was buried, calling it: “Drawing for the Colombians remains.” Mr. Intrieri said that his follow-up inquiries gave credence to Mr. Casso’s information and that it was worth giving the old mob boss a chance to hand prosecutors new evidence. “I sincerely believe that until he goes to the site, he won’t remember,” Mr. Intrieri said.
Victoria Gotti
John Alite jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
thanks jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
crybaby carneglia
He worries; he whines; he pines for Mama.
Despite his reputation as a ruthless, acid-slinging mob assassin, Charles Carneglia came across as more of a self-pitying scaredy-cat in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.
Arrested for five murders last year by an FBI SWAT team, Carneglia asked with morbid hope if he was eligible for the death penalty, one cop, Detective Steven Kaplan, told jurors.
“Longevity runs in my family,” the cop remembered the newly caged wise guy whining.
“My mother’s over 90 years old. I don’t want to spend the next 30 years in jail.
“I’d rather get the needle,”
As an accused Gambino hit man, Carneglia allegedly bragged of knowing just how to twist a knife in flesh for maximum damage, and allegedly dissolved many bodies in vats of acid.
But once arrested, Carneglia apparently couldn’t get past his own personal suffering.
“We got an uphill battle . . . with no traction, up an icy slope,” he griped in one phone conversation, from prison to a pal that was played for jurors.
“They offered me two days in an electric chair,” he exaggerated to another buddy.
“That’s on a plea. If I go to trial, they want to give me five.”
He also bemoans not being able to afford a high-priced lawyer. “A $3 million dollar lawyer? I ain’t got three million. I ain’t got three million cents.”
Among his most pressing concerns? He can’t talk to his mama enough in prison – something he says he plans to do every night once he gets his prison schedule straightened out, he tells a low-level Gambino associate.
“She’s gotta stick around for me,” he moans, dramatically. “She’s gotta wait.”
Among his other torments? The legion of former buddies who have betrayed him, Carneglia complains – all of them “rats” and “canaries.”
Meanwhile yesterday, a Long Island cop was suspended without pay as the feds investigate his alleged participation in a decades-old mob hit ordered by John “Junior” Gotti.
Suffolk Officer Nicholas Tobia came under scrutiny after a mob turncoat testifying last week against Carneglia accused the cop of helping lure drug dealer George Grosso to his death in 1988 – approximately seven years before he became a cop.
Tobia is the brother of retired NYPD hero Carl Tobia, who in 1988 fatally shot a madman who killed an usher in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with a wrought-iron prayer-card stand.
Nicholas Tobia has denied any involvement with Grosso’s murder
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03032009/news/regionalnews/wise_guy_becomes_sobster_157805.htm
Reputed Mafia associate Castardi and Wife
Gambino Capo Nicholas “Little Nicky” Corozzo,
Texas Hold ‘em and Gin gambling club
DENVER – Former Denver Broncos players Reggie Rivers and Rod Bernstine were in an illegal gambling club in Denver that left some players deep in debt and led to the suicide of two members, 9 Wants to Know and the Denver Post have learned.
Rivers and Bernstine were just two of about 100 high rollers in the Gin Rummy Club that was fronting as a social club on South Broadway. Players regularly won or lost $10,000 a hand in Texas Hold ‘em games they say sometimes lasted four days.
Former running back Bernstine was placing bets in the club when it was busted by police in April 2008.
“There’s a $5 limit in Central City. I don’t like the stakes up there,” Bernstine told 9Wants to Know. “I would have to say I knew it was illegal.”
Rivers, who was a running back for the Broncos and is the weekend sports anchor for KCNC-TV, said he is cooperating with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation as a witness.
Some of the other people involved include Dr. John Sacha, a pain medicine doctor in Wheat Ridge, according to court records. He calls himself “Dr. Poker” in instructional videos.
Francois Safieddine, who runs several Denver nightclubs, also placed bets. Safieddine has won more than $1 million in poker tournaments and won the World Series Poker bracelet in 2007, according to poker Web sites. Sacha and Safieddine had no comment.
“Because the Gin Rummy Club survived so long, I think we all believed that [the operators] had some social gaming license that allowed us to play poker there and that he also had the authorities paid off, because [the operators] always claimed that,” said one of the gamblers who agreed to talk to 9NEWS on the condition of anonymity.
None of the gamblers was charged in the operation.
However, seven of the alleged operators were indicted last week. Jeff Castardi, Dawn Wolf, Laura Fouty, James Elterman, David Lettin, Todd Casey and Daniel Rieke were charged with multiple felonies including organized crime. None of them had any comment.
“The leaders of the organization, or the enterprise, was always the goal of the investigation,” Agent Ralph Gagliardi of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said. “Early on it was decided in the Gin Rummy Club investigation that we would look at the upper level that was truly operating and structuring this enterprise.”
The CBI says the club was an organized crime operation, because it involved bookmaking, sports betting, loan sharking, theft, forgery, fraud and racketeering. It operated 6 days a week and opened at 7 p.m. most days, according to gamblers.
“It appears that the entity was trying to appear legitimate,” Gagliardi said.
Gagliardi says Wolf allegedly established the Gin Rummy Club as a nonprofit corporation and filed for a social room license with the city of Denver.
The gamblers played on credit instead of with cash. If they couldn’t pay up at the end of the night, the club would charge 5 percent interest a week. Some gamblers ended up owing the club tens of thousands of dollars.
“I lost, everybody lost,” said the anonymous gambler. “The game was bigger than it should have been because the players that were playing could not afford to gamble with what they were gambling with and were only doing that because they were allowed to play on credit.”
Eric Cox of Denver owed more than $60,000, according to the indictment. Alleged leaders Castardi and Rieke threatened and pressured Cox to pay the money, visiting him in person, calling his home and even sending text messages. On the day Cox committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, his widow found several text messages on his phone that were threats about paying money, according to the indictment.
Jeremy Fowler, who allegedly ran the illegal poker games for Castardi, shot himself in the head after Castardi suspected him of stealing money from the club.
“These were aggressive, persuasive attempts to gain money back that had been lent out to various players,” Gagliardi said. “That money was loaned out at a high rate of interest, well over and above the 45 percent a year that’s allowed by state statute.”
As many as 20 percent of serious, problem gamblers have attempted suicide, according to Dr. Michael Faragher, director of the Problem Gambling Treatment and Research Center in Denver.
“The potential for harm becomes greater when the person has the ability to borrow money, because they get deeply in debt to the point where they realize that unless they do win the jackpot, unless they have the huge win, they’re going to be forever in debt,” Faragher said. “The gaming addict realizes there’s no way out of this financially unless they kill themselves and their family is able to collect on the insurance.”
Castardi liked to brag that he had ties to the mafia and would show pictures of an East Coast mob family, according to investigators. He even named one of his companies “Pie-O-My,” which is the name of Tony Soprano’s race horse in the HBO series “The Sopranos.”
While authorities have not found that the club was formally linked to organized crime, in 1988, Castardi was arrested in Nassau County, New York for promoting gambling, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s office. A spokesman says Castardi has ties to Nicholas “Little Nicky” Corozzo, a reputed mobster who once ran a Queens gambling ring that took in nearly $10 million in bets over two years.
“It is like the Sopranos or like the Godfather, exactly like that, that they want their money and they’re going to make you pay,” said the anonymous gambler. “He [Castardi] was a very intimidating person. He had let everyone know he was attached to a very well-known organized crime family back East. And I think everybody was scared not to pay.”
The money was laundered through two restaurants owned or operated by Castardi and his wife Dawn Wolf, according to the indictment. Winners were paid out at local coffee shops with cash in envelopes.
Castardi remains in jail on a $500,000 cash bond. Wolf, Fouty, Elterman, Lettin, Rieke and Casey will make a court appearance in April.
The CBI’s 15-month investigation was dubbed “Operation Aces and Eights,” which is known as the “dead man’s hand” in gambling circles. Wild Bill Hickok was allegedly holding aces and eights when he was murdered in 1876 while playing cards.
Serious gamblers can get help and change their behavior, according to Faragher. He says they can call a 24-hour confidential hotline at the Problem Gambling Treatment and Research Center at 1-800-522-4700.
thanks deborah.sherman@9news.com.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=111216&catid=339
TURNCOATS, TURF WARS & JAILED DONS TURN TODAY’S MAFIA INTO BADA-BOZOS
mob going out whimpering like ‘Sopranos
Carneglia barber Frank Selvaggio
Charles Carneglia isn’t in the Mafia anymore. His hairdresser said so.
The accused Gambino hit man, known for his crazy eyes and a penchant for dousing enemies in acid, is using the so-called “withdrawal” defense at his ongoing murder trial in Brooklyn federal court.
He claims that he left “the life” in 2001, which means he’s allegedly outside the clutches of the five-year statute of limitations for racketeering.
“Everyone thinks I’m a gangster, and I’m not anymore,” he whined while he got his hair coiffed, according to testimony. Jurors will decide this week whether they buy it.
In the old days, mobsters didn’t even admit there was a Mafia, much less that they’d walked away from it. And they certainly wouldn’t tell their barber.
New York’s mob is going out like “The Sopranos – not with a bang but a whimper. Their influence has declined through death – by natural causes and at each others’ hands – and prosecutions that put guys away for life.
They still make money in the traditional ways: union racketeering, prostitution, drugs, gambling, loan-sharking, concrete and construction, but their grip on these industries has changed from a stranglehold to, say, a tight hug.
But the thing that probably has the old dons spinning in their graves is the circus the mob has become.
While old-school gangsters serve out life sentences in prison, or hide out in witness protection, a new generation of what one law-enforcement officer calls “suburban mobsters” – derived from their cushy upbringing – desecrate the blood oaths their forefathers created and lived by.
“I’m sure some of the old dons are looking down – or up – from wherever they are and shaking their heads in disgust,” said chief of the FBI’s Organized Crime section Matthew Heron.
The “withdrawal defense” is just one example of the mob’s lost honor. Four of the five bosses of New York’s crime families are in prison, and the guys still on the street don’t want the title.
The fistfuls of money they’ll rake in won’t count for much when they get slapped with an inevitable life sentence.
The Luchese and Gambino families are ruled by three-person committees right now – a relatively new phenomenon meant to spread out the risk of prosecution, sources said.
The Gambinos lost their acting boss, underboss, consigliere and one of their most powerful capos in a federal sweep a year ago. Three old-timers – Danny Marino, Johnny Gambino and Bobby Vernace – have stepped in to fill the power vacuum, sources said.
The Colombos are in disarray since their street boss, Tommy “Tommy Shots” Gioeli was picked up on murder charges last year. And the Bonannos have a new street boss who’s only 37 years old.
Only the super-secretive Genovese family remains relatively unscathed thanks STEFANIE COHEN
crooked copper Anthony Doyle
Anthony Doyle, 64, was among five alleged mob bosses and associates convicted of racketeering at the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial.
U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel, who presided over Chicago’s biggest mob trial in decades, said during Doyle’s sentencing that he had a decent career as a Chicago police officer, but “picked the wrong people to try to help.”
Prosecutors describe Doyle as a “sleeper agent” for the mob who, defying police rules, visited convicted loan shark and hit man Frank Calabrese Sr. in prison and fed him inside police information about a major murder investigation.
It was part of an effort by Calabrese to thwart the investigation, they say.
Even before that, Doyle doubled as a collector of “street tax” payments Calabrese charged to businesses and extortion “juice loan” debts, according to federal investigators.
Unlike three of his four co-defendants including Calabrese, however, Doyle has not been held responsible for any of the 18 mob murders outlined in the indictment.
But prosecutors do have secretly made tapes of the husky, broad-shouldered Doyle sitting in a prison visiting room discussing mob business with Calabrese.
Defense attorneys had said the already jailed Doyle has suffered enough and should be sentenced to no more than time served — in other words, released immediately. Prosecutors dismissed that request as “without merit.”
Doyle is the last of the trial defendants to be sentenced. Still to be sentenced, though, is Nicholas Calabrese, Frank’s brother, an admitted mob hit man who became the government’s star witness in hopes of avoiding a death penalty.
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/03/ex-cop-who-worked-for-mob-to-be-sentenced.html#comments
Giovanni Strangio
The shooting left six men dead
Suspected Italian mobster Giovanni Strangio, 30, was taken into custody late Thursday in Amsterdam. Strangio was arrested in the town of Diemen, where he has been living with his wife and child in a modest block of apartments.
Strangio is accused of having taken part in a 2007 shooting in which six men were gunned down outside a pizzeria in the western German city of Duisburg.
Italy’s Ansa news agency reported that Strangio’s brother-in-law Giuseppe Nirta, also wanted for his mafia connections and activity, was also arrested in the joint operation between Dutch, German and Italian police. Measures such as telephone wire tapping and surveillance were used to locate the men.
Authorities believe the killings in Duisburg were the bloodiest episode in a long-running fight between two rival clans of the mafia, Nirta-Strangio and Pelle-Vottari, from Calabria in southern Italy, known as the ‘Ndrangheta.
The ‘Ndrangheta is considered one of the most powerful Italian mafia groups.
Victims shot in their cars
The shootings in Duisburg grabbed headlines in Germany, underscoring the group’s wide network in Europe.
Witnesses said they saw two attackers fire about 70 bullets at the six victims, aged 16 to 39, as they were sitting in their cars after leaving the Da Bruno restaurant in the industrial city.
After the shooting, Strangio and Nirta allegedly fled to Ghent, Belgium where they abandoned a rental car and fell off the radar. According to Renato Cortese, the Italian policeman who coordinated Thursday’s arrests, “the two led perfectly normal lives, mingling with people in Amsterdam, but often wearing disguises, including hats and spectacles.”
Strangio, his wife Caterina and their son were “getting ready for bed,” when police raided their apartment, Cortese told the Italian news agency Ansa.
Police also seized fake passports, other documents and an estimated 1million euros ($1.28 million) in cash and a firearm with ammunition.
Police said they had begun closing in on the whereabouts of the two men after three of Strangio’s sisters visited Amsterdam in mid-November 2008.
One of the Duisburg victims was a chief suspect in the December 2006 murder in San Luca, Calabria, of Maria Strangio, the wife of the suspected leader of the Strangio-Nirta clan and cousin of Giovanni Strangio.
The Duisburg hit was believed to have been revenge for the Christmas-time killing of Maria Strangio and the wounding of her son.
Giovanni Strangio ran two pizzerias in Kaarst, Germany, 30 kilometers south of Duisburg, and was believed to be active in the Nirta-Strangio clan. He was one of the most wanted people in both Germany and Italy.
FBI mob burial site
Carmine Gargano Jr.
Wild Bill Cutolo
Authorities suspect mobsters buried former Pace University student Carmine Gargano Jr. in the wooded area. He was believed to have been killed in a revenge plot targeting his cousin, a member of a rival crime family.
Authorities also suspect Colombo associate Richard Greaves may be buried at the site. He was killed in 1995 because bosses feared he might become an informant.
In October, agents dug up the remains of Colombo underboss William Cutolo. Cutolo’s body was one of three that informers told officials were buried in the industrial park. Mob leaders Alphonse Persico and John DeRoss were recently sentenced to life in prison for their role in the 1999 Cutolo killing.
http://www.lohud.com/article/20090309/NEWS01/903090362/1019/rss0102
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hitman Carneglia
Mob lifer’s looking at life in prison: Mafia hit man Carneglia convicted in 4 murders
victim, mobster, Louis DiBono .
Paulie Walnuts has a quiet word with Psychiatric patient, and Mob boss, Tony Soprano, in a scene from The Sopranos
In scenes familiar from the television series The Sopranos, the so-called “men of honour” are no longer content to keep their problems within their families, researchers have found.
Godfathers and their relatives are breaking the Mafia’s code of silence to discuss their problems on the psychiatrist’s couch
Hollywood blockbuster Analyze This, Mobster also talks over his anxities on a psychiatrist’s couch
Girolamo Lo Verso, a psychologist who led the research, said: “Psychiatric problems are steadily rising among the families, a sign that the monolithic culture of Mafia society is crumbling.”
Dr Lo Verso’s research, The Psychology of Organised Crime in the Mezzogiorno, studied the cases of 81 patients linked to Italy’s three main Mafia organisations – Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the Camorra in Campania and Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta.
Dr Lo Verso said: “These people are victims of terrible identity crises because they aren’t used to seeing their world view challenged.
“They’re like fundamentalists, but as soon as something happens that brings the security wall down, they have crises.
“That’s why they go and see a psychiatrist and many say that they feel a lot better for speaking to someone about their problems.”
Dr Lo Verso said that food disorders, anxiety and depression, sexual problems and a sense of inadequacy and shame at failing to live up to macho stereotypes were the most common problems encountered.
“In one real-life case, a homosexual son of a top … boss rebels against his father’s code and dares to come out of the closet, causing personal pain and wider clan uproar.”
In the hit television series about New Jersey mobsters, Tony Soprano confided his depression and panic attacks over his “business” to a psychiatrist, while in the Hollywood blockbuster Analyze This, Robert De Niro’s Godfather also talks over his anxities on a psychiatrist’s couch
Johnny Depp- Dillinger
Johnny Depp has done playful, mischievous, childlike, soulful, creepy and pretty much any other mode you can imagine.
The one thing he hasn’t done is menacing — true, bloodthirsty, win-at-all-costs menacing. His potentially nastier turns have been limited to those where has a heart (“Chocolat”) or where he’s surrounded by camp (“Sweeney Todd”).
Even when he’s done gangster it’s been in the service of something good, as it was in the (criminally) underrated “Donnie Brasco.” And when he’s a pirate he’s a pretty lovable one.
The only time he was ever what you might call a truly villainous character was “Blow.” And we know how that turned out.
So can he pull off the nihilism of a figure like John Dillinger, as he’ll do in the much-anticipated “Public Enemies
If the first pieces of key art are to be believed — a bunch of them can be viewed here — he’ll play the role with a bit of a smirk.
In other words, he’ll play it as Johnny Depp.
thanks Steven Zeitchik
HUSH, HUSH: Talk-show host Charlie Rose was almost killed in a case of mistaken ID, says a new Mafia book.
Bring me the head of Charlie Rose
No, not the PBS talk-show host. The other one the legendary Mafia-busting prosecutor.
Unfortunately, bumbling mob cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa and the Mafia assassin they dispatched to Long Island didn’t know the difference and nearly bumped off public television’s dapper yapper.
So says “Friends of the Family,” a new book about the mob cops by retired detective Tommy Dades and Brooklyn prosecutor Michael Vecchione, who cracked the case.
The authors write that the disgraced NYPD detectives gave bad information to their benefactor, Luchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, who dispatched a triggerman to the talk-show host’s house, not knowing it wasn’t the home of a Brooklyn federal prosecutor he wanted dead.
The killer never saw Rose and left, according to the book.
“It’s a surprise it’s all new to me,” the TV host told The Post.
He confirmed that he’s owned a home for years in Bellport, which is near the beach on eastern Long Island, about 20 miles west of Quogue.
Casso told FBI agents the house was in “the Hamptons,” according to the book.
Casso was furious with Mafia-busting prosecutor Charles Rose, believing that Rose embarrassed him by leaking a story about Casso having killed his former architect for having an affair with the mobster’s wife.
The bloodthirsty Casso did the unthinkable and put out a contract on the former assistant US attorney, who died of a brain tumor in 1998.
“Naturally, the only people Casso trusted to get Rose’s address were the cops,” the book says.
“Casso was captured before he could make his move against Rose, but supposedly he did get an address for the prosecutor in the Hamptons. One of his people waited at the house for the prosecutor to show up, but for whatever reason Rose never got there.
“That was truly fortunate it turned out to be the wrong Charlie Rose . . This was the home of the TV show host, not the prosecutor.”
“It’s a ‘wow’ revelation in the book,” said Vecchione, who heads the investigation unit of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. “I mean, Charlie Rose!”
The 1992 incident wasn’t the first goof by the corrupt former detectives, whom Casso paid $4,000 a month to help kill rival hoods and supply tips on turncoats and probes.
Caracappa and Eppolito, who were sentenced to life on March 6, were asked to find the address of Nicholas Guido, a conspirator who tried to knock off Casso in a botched hit.
The cops got the wrong information; this time, Casso’s henchmen killed an innocent Brooklyn man also named Nicholas Guido.
The book says Casso told FBI agents that Eppolito, Caracappa and an unnamed uniform cop ripped off millions in heroin in a notorious heist of the French Connection evidence from the NYPD property office.
The book “Friends of the Family” comes out May 12.
thanks BRAD HAMILTON
John Ambrose is charged with leaking info on Nick Calabrese, a hit man he was protecting.
Nick Calabrese
Mob boss, James Marcello.
FAMILY SECRETS | Marcello will take stand vs. U.S. marshal charged with leaking to Outfit
The details about the key witness, mob killer Nicholas Calabrese, were allegedly coming from the man assigned to protect Calabrese from the mobsters who wanted him dead — deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose.
Now, in a stunning reversal, Michael Marcello, once his imprisoned half-brother’s eyes and ears on the street, will testify against Ambrose next month, a prosecution filing shows
Ambrose is charged with leaking important information about Nick Calabrese to the Outfit. Marcello could provide key testimony about how the information allegedly made its way from Ambrose to Ambrose’s friend with Outfit connections to reputed mobster John “Pudgy” Matassa to Michael Marcello to James Marcello. Matassa has not been charged in the case. thanks STEVE WARBIR
Michael Marcello pleaded guilty in the Family Secrets case in June 2007, admitting he ran an illegal video-poker business.
He didn’t agree to cooperate then and got 8½ years in prison.
It’s unclear what prompted the turnaround. Prosecutors would not comment, and an attorney for Marcello did not return a message. Such cooperation often results in less prison time.
Prosecutors secretly recorded Michael Marcello’s conversations when he visited James Marcello in prison.
The Marcellos were intent on finding out what Nick Calabrese had revealed about James Marcello’s involvement in the 1986 killings of mobsters Anthony and Michael Spilotro.
James Marcello drove the Spilotros to a Bensenville area home, where the two men believed they were going to get promotions in the mob, according to testimony in the Family Secrets case. Instead, several mobsters, including Nick Calabrese, pounced on them and beat them to death.
An undated handout photo shows Italian actress Miriana Fajia playing the fictional character Rita Mancuso as a girl, kneeling over actor Marcello Mazzarella in a scene from the feature film La Siciliana Ribelle (“The Rebellious Sicilian”).
REUTERS/Eurofilm S.r.L./Handout
An undated handout photo shows Italian director Marco Amenta discussing a scene for his feature film La Siciliana Ribelle (“The Rebellious Sicilian
ROME (Reuters) – An Italian film inspired by the tragic death of a celebrated anti-mafia informer has sparked controversy with her relatives and an association named in her memory.
La Siciliana Ribelle (“The Rebellious Sicilian”) tells the story of Rita Atria, a 17-year-old girl from a mafia family who braved the fury of the organization in 1991
by collaborating with authorities after the mafia killed her father and brother.
A year later, Atria was dead: throwing herself from the seventh storey of her Roman safe house in despair just a week after the mafia killed her protector, anti-mafia attorney Paolo Borsellino, with a car bomb in Sicily.
In her diary she wrote: “You have died for what you believed in, but without you, I too am dead.”
read more http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE52P43Y20090326
ANSA) – Rome, March 27 – Cosa Nostra`s former `boss of
bosses` Toto` `the Beast` Riina is still too dangerous to be
allowed out of a high-security jail regime, Italy`s highest
court ruled Friday.
The Cassation Court said there a “real risk“ of the
ailing Riina, who has been in jail for more than 16 years,
linking up with his old cohorts if the so-called 41-bis
regime were relaxed.
The Cassation judges noted that Riina, 78, “has never
repented of his past actions and never shown any inclination
to help authorities“.
The court, Italy`s highest court of appeals, turned down
Riina`s request for the tough regime to be eased in view of
his age and recent poor health.
Riina has sought repeatedly in recent years to be let out
of 41-bis.
He was last turned down in May last year when the
Cassation Court made the same finding.
The judges said police investigations had confirmed
that many of his underlings remained active in organized
crime in Sicily.
Until his arrest in 1993, Riina was the Mafia`s leading
don. He was convicted of a range of crimes including ordering
the car-bombings that killed anti-Mob magistrates Giovanni
Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
Riina, who is serving out 12 life sentences, has had
three heart bypasses and is said to be suffering from back
and thyroid problems, as well as suspected prostate cancer.
Inmates subject to 41-bis prison treatment can be kept in
single-person cells in maximum-security jails, almost
entirely cut off from the outside world.
They have restricted visiting rights and are not
permitted to buy anything or to receive parcels. They can
spend up to four hours a day in the open air and are allowed
to mix with five other inmates at a time.
Some 650 prison inmates are currently subject to 41-bis
but cases sometimes occur where prisoners have been found to
have continued running their affairs from the inside.
The 41-bis regime was introduced in 1992 as a temporary
measure designed to help cope with a Mafia emergency.
In 2002, the measure became a permanent fixture in the
penal code.
The London-based human-rights group Amnesty International
has expressed concern that the 41-bis regime could in
some circumstances amount to “cruel, inhumane or degrading
treatment“ for prisoners.
In 2007 a Los Angeles immigration court denied an
extradition request from Italy for a reputed gangster on the
grounds that the 41-bis system was inhumane.
Rosario Gambino, a member of the well-known New York
crime family, had already served 22 years in jail in the
United States for heroin trafficking.
According to the judge, the 41-bis treatment was a form
of coercion “not related to any lawfully imposed sanction or
punishment, and thus constitutes torture“, which is banned
by the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – You shoulda been at La Stanza last night. The place was mobbed.
Sure, they make great ravioli, but most of the restaurant’s patrons came to see Ralph “Ralphie Head” Abbruzzi, the reputed mob associate who talked his way out of house arrest for the night to sing Louis Prima tunes.
He didn’t disappoint, opening with “Buona Sera,” then a hip-shaking version of “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” backed by a horn section. He didn’t have a saxophone, but the air sax worked just fine.
“I’m doing what I love to do,” Abbruzzi said. “I should have done this sooner.”
Might’ve been a better career choice.
In 2001, when Abbruzzi was convicted of participating in an interstate theft ring, prosecutors described him as a “confirmed criminal likely to remain so” and said it’s “unlikely that he will ever be a productive member of society.”
But Ralphie Head looked pretty damned productive in his pork- pie hat last night at 20th Street and Oregon Avenue. He had the audience eating out of his hand in between bites of pork medallions.
“The crowd goes crazy when he starts singing. They go nuts,” said Debbie Leuzzi, his daughter’s godmother, who has known Abbruzzi since they were teenagers.
Abbruzzi, 59, started singing in the early 1980s alongside “Cookie Jar and the Crumbs” in Atlantic City, Leuzzi said.
“Ralphie’s just a really sweet guy,” she said. “I know he has not too good of a record, but he’s good-hearted.”
Earlier this month, Abbruzzi pleaded guilty in Media to criminal use of a telephone, a third-degree felony. He was busted last summer in the “Operation Delco Nostra” organized-crime probe for selling winning lottery tickets to Nicholas “Nicky the Hat” Cimino to conceal Cimino’s illegal income.. Read more
A Sicilian couple are planning a wedding designed to keep money out of the pockets of the mafia.
Fabio Messina, 30, and Valeria Di Leo, 29, are part of a campaign against the payment of “pizzo” protection money, Italy’s Ansa news agency reports.
The two say everything from the bride’s dress to the catering and honeymoon will be bought from “Addiopizzo” or “goodbye protection money” businesses.
Palermo officials say 80% of the city’s businesses pay off organised crime.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7976554.stm
The mafia is estimated to extort 200m euros (£185m; $265m) a day from Italian businesses through pizzo, loan sharking and other crimes, a 2006 report by the national retailers’ association Confesercenti shows.
The report says organised crime groups rake in 80m euros every day from shopkeepers alone.
But anti-mafia police say increasing numbers of Sicilian businesses are joining a grassroots anti-racketeering association called Addiopizzo.
The group publishes a list of businesses that refuse to pay protection money to the mob.
The scheme has been an immediate hit with the public, who welcome the opportunity to keep their cash out of mafia coffers, Ansa reports.
The campaign has prompted Mr Messina and his fiancee to open Palermo’s first Addiopizzo shop – selling clothes, food and home decorations exclusively from Addiopizzo suppliers – in March last year.
”I thought it was right to give those traders who refuse to pay protection money an extra opportunity,” Mr Messina said
Campania region on Thursday resulted in the arrest of five suspects, among them a clan boss, with links to the Neapolitan mafia or Camorra. The suspects are accused of involvement in an extortion racketNapoli, 2 April (AKI) – An anti-mafia operation in the souther Italian
Italian paramilitary Carabinieri police from the town of Castello di Cisterna near Naples carried out the operation after the prosecutor issued arrest warrants. The five men are alleged to be members of the local Egizio crime family.
Victims of the extortion racket were usually businessmen in the construction sector.
Investigators from the government’s anti-mafia organisation (DIA) on Thursday also inspected construction contracts relating to the Piazza Garibaldi extension of Naples’ subway, due to be completed in 2011.
The conservative Italian government has vowed to wage war against the mafia. In 2008, Italian police carried out 200 anti-mafia operations and arrested 2,583 people including 177 fugitives, seizing millions of euros of mafia assets.
Italy’s four main criminal organisations are the mafia or Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples and nearby Campania, the ‘Ndrangheta in the southern region of Calabria and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3170908182
Mob Rat Heny Hill
MORE than $500million is now spent every year protecting former Mafia members against assassination
The whopping sum is what the American government spends on mobsters in the Witness Protection Program every single year.
Experts say the outlay is a sign of the crisis infecting Italian-organised crime since its heyday depicted in the Godfather films
In the classic Mafia movies – and the exhilarating new Godfather II computer game – crime families are governed by the strict code of Omerta, which bans co-operation with law enforcement agencies
But in real life, mobsters have abandoned the Sicilian code of honour when faced with an FBI crackdown and long prison sentences.
Bo Dietl, former New York Police Department detective and security adviser, said: “Organised crime is probably one quarter of what it was 20 years ago.
It has seriously been diminished by at least 75% because they’ve been hit pretty heavy by the Government.
“If a guy gets locked up now he’s looking at life – that’s when you see the guy flip like a fish trapped in a frying pan, or in other words, become an informant.
“Thousands of gangsters are now in witness protection. They get a new identity, they get a place to live and as part of the deal they actually give them monthly cheques for the rest of their lives.”
The move into drug trafficking also meant wise guys faced longer sentences if convicted, thereby increasing the temptation to “rat”.
Henry Hill, the Lucchese crime family associate and cocaine dealer, remains the most famous FBI informant after being portrayed by Ray Liotta in the film Goodfellas.
Sammy “The Bull” Gravano was the highest ranking crime family member to flip.
In 1991, his testimony put away Gambino family boss John Gotti, known as the Dapper Don. thanks Rick Lyons
Junior Gotti
A Manhattan federal judge isn’t buying John A. (Junior) Gotti’s poverty plea.
Judge Kevin Castel Friday turned down Gotti lawyer Seth Ginsberg’s request to tap into taxpayer funds for cash-strapped defendants so he can defend the mob scion against murder conspiracy charges.
Castel said that if Gotti, 45, can show he’s financially strapped, he will appoint a lawyer from a court-approved panel of lawyers paid for by taxpayers.
But he’s not going to free up federal money to pay for Ginsberg and two paralegals to work on the case.
“Trial will not take place until Sept. 14, 2009, and there is ample time for new counsel to become fully familiar with the case,” Castel wrote.
Gotti has the dough to pay attorney Charles Carnesi, who represented him during two of his most recent court appearances, which ended in mistrials. Ginsberg has been on Gotti’s defense team for all three mistrials Gotti scored in recent years
thanks Thomas Zambito
Anthony Nicodemo is to be sentenced this week.
It was a wiseguy lesson in street-corner economics, a how-to-succeed-in-business speech that you won’t hear at the Wharton School.
Reputed mob soldier Anthony Nicodemo was explaining about the “sharks” and the “lions” and the “lambs” to bookmaker Andrew Micali, who was running an illegal multimillion-dollar sports-betting operation out of the poker room of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.
Nicodemo, 36, “exercised leadership authority” over the $60 million betting enterprise, according to New Jersey authorities who used the secretly recorded 13-minute conversation to support that allegation in a gambling indictment. He faces sentencing this week for his role in the operation.
“I’m always in your corner, so you don’t have to worry about no sharks at all,” said Nicodemo, apparently referring to unnamed individuals who were trying to get a piece of Micali’s action.
read more George Anastasia
Calabrese sr ( far left -James Marcello -Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo,
Four reputed mobsters convicted at Chicago’s biggest organized crime trial in years were ordered Monday to pay more than $24 million, including millions of dollars in restitution to the families of murder victims.
Four reputed mobsters convicted at Chicago’s biggest organized crime trial in years were ordered Monday to pay more than $24 million, including millions of dollars in restitution to the families of murder victims.
Federal Judge James B. Zagel, who presided over the Operation Family Secrets trial, ordered a forfeiture totaling $20.2 million plus $4.4 million in restitution.
The heaviest payments were imposed on reputed mobsters Frank Calabrese Sr., Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo, James Marcello and Paul Schiro. A fifth defendant convicted at the 2007 trial, former police officer Anthony Doyle, was ordered to pay lesser amounts.
The defendants were convicted of a racketeering conspiracy that included 18 murders of people who threatened to become witnesses or otherwise antagonized the mob.
Unlike his co-defendants, Doyle was not accused of murder. He was held responsible for just 1 percent, or $44,225, of the restitution.
Six other defendants pleaded guilty in the case that targeted members of the top echelon of the Chicago Outfit, as the city’s organized crime family is called. Most were not fined.
Zagel said the $20.2 million “represents the total amount of proceeds acquired and maintained by the Chicago Outfit since the 1960s in violation” of the laws charged in the Family Secrets indictment.
Calabrese attorney Joseph Lopez told The Associated Press he believes the amount of restitution was too high.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” Lopez said.
One of the factors Zagel took into consideration in calculating the amount was the earnings that were lost because of the victims’ deaths. He said that money should be part of the restitution and be paid to the victims’ estates.
He brushed aside a suggestion by attorneys for Calabrese and Marcello that a victim-by-victim analysis of the lifestyles of the victims should be conducted, including such personal habits as smoking, drinking, drug abuse, diet, eating habits and family medical history.
The idea was that such habits might have shortened the lifespans of the victims and therefore reduced their earnings.
Zagel also rejected a defense contention that he should consider that some of the victims were criminals and therefore could be expected to go to prison, where their earning potential would be reduced.
thanks MIKE ROBINSON
L’Aquila jail.
Rome, April 8 – Mafia bosses were among prisoners in L’Aquila’s top-security jail transferred to other facilities in the early hours of Wednesday as aftershocks from Monday’s earthquake continued to rock the Abruzzo capital.
The department of prisons decided to move the inmates at 02:00 00:00 GMT as a precautionary measure despite a survey revealing no structural damage to the jail.
”It was an operation without precedents carried out not so much because of structural risks to the prison but to avoid dangerous tensions among the prisoners,” said Justice Minister Angelino Alfano.
Around 70 prison vehicles were required to transfer the detainees and it took 12 hours to evacuate the prison completely.
Around 70 prison vehicles were required to transfer the detainees and it took 12 hours to evacuate the prison completely.
Around 140 detainees have been serving time in L’Aquila under the so-called 41-bis regime, used for Italy’s most dangerous criminals to prevent them from continuing to run their affairs from their cells.
Under the high security regime inmates are kept in single-person cells and are almost entirely cut off from the outside world.
Among mafiosi serving time in L’Aquila is Salvatore Madonia, a notorious Cosa Nostra mobster serving life for the 1991 murder of Palermo businessman Libero Grassi.
Nadia Desdemona Lioce, a member of a resurgent Red Brigades terrorist group serving life for the 1999 murder of a labour ministry aide gunned down in Rome, is also a 41-bis prisoner at the jail.
Prisoners serving regular sentences were transferred to other facilities in the Abruzzo region, while male 41-bis prisoners were moved to Spoleto prison in Umbria andthe two women under the tough regime were taken to Rome’s Rebibbia jail.
thanks Giorgio
Chicago mob witnesses to testify behind screen
CHICAGO (AP) – Some federal officials being called as witnesses at the Chicago trial of a deputy U.S. marshal charged with leaking secrets of a major mob investigation will be allowed to testify behind screens so spectators won’t see their faces.
The witnesses are expected to testify at the trial of John T. Ambrose, who’s charged with whispering the secrets concerning the government’s landmark Operation Family Secrets investigation to organized crime.
The witnesses are officials of the government’s ultra-secret witness security program (WITSEC). They’ll also use bogus names to keep their identities secret.
The trial is due to get under way Monday
http://www.wrex.com/Global/story.asp?S=10146551
Sliwa
http://www.therightperspective.org/sliwa-sued-for-mob-slander/
Anthony Nicodemo
Nicodemo, 36, was one of 24 defendants charged in the case after a 20-month investigation by the New Jersey State Police dubbed Operation High Roller. He pleaded guilty to a gambling conspiracy charge earlier this year and faced a maximum three-year sentence.
A state police affidavit filed during the investigation alleged that Nicodemo, of South Philadelphia, was a prime suspect in the 2003 gangland murder of John “Johnny Gongs” Casasanto. The Casasanto murder is one of three unsolved mob hits that are part of an ongoing federal racketeering investigation.
Vittorio Amuso, reputed boss of the Lucchese family,
Rudy Giuliani and Commission Chart
New York Mafia
NEW YORK (CAP) – In a move that could help reduce operating costs from shake downs yet maintain maximum profitability from outstanding vigs, the New York crime family syndicate is easing credit requirements on shylock loans made to businesses and individuals throughout the five burroughs and parts of New Jersey
The Commission is refining the approach we take to provide valuable protection services to our constituency throughout the greater New York area,” Vittorio Amuso, reputed boss of the Lucchese family, said in a prepared statement. “Fewer broken knee caps reduces medical expenses, which thereby increases our income in the long term.”
The program, which will begin with a test run involving two dozen businesses in Brooklyn with outstanding loans, will “strongly encourage” those business owners to make more timely payments with a lower interest rate of 200% in exchange for one of a number of favors at a later point in time. Analysts see the move as a win-win situation.
The auto and banking industries should take some pointers from organized crime: you can correct your own freefall without the government’s help,” said Goldman-Sachs analyst Mark Bonney. “Fewer businesses defaulting on shylock loans means fewer heavies each family has to employ to carry out contracts.”
It’s also an ideology that should have a positive rippling effect as well. Bonney noted that fewer hits means less of a need for the large trunks of Cadillacs and Lincolns, which could result in a move by the Mafia to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles like Subarus and Hyundais, saving both on gas and clean-up costs.
“It’s an economic stimulus approach that everyone can get behind,” Bonney added.
Endeavors by the Five Families to boost growth in the money laundering sector are a precondition for the Mafia’s overall recovery, which means a number of additional steps will likely need to be taken to prevent further delays in the economic rebound. Acting boss Daniel Leo said the Genovese family is leading efforts to go green.
“Asking the Borgata to be socially and environmentally responsible is a critical piece of how we’re going to survive financially,” said Leo. “We are taking every reasonable step to reduce our blood footprint in the city.”
If economic recovery efforts by organized crime are successful, it could very well have ramifications in legit businesses as well, with kickbacks and bribes to public and other officials increasing in size and frequency with a more positive Mafia cash flow. However, economists warn that it could be months before any substantial effect is felt by those on the pad.
John Ambrose arrives at Dirsken Federal Building on Monday.
Once known as a tireless bloodhound who tracked down fugitive gang leaders, Deputy U.S. Marshal John T. Ambrose now faces years behind bars if he is convicted of betraying his oath and leaking secrets to the mob.
Ambrose, 50, is due to go on trial today for tipping off organized crime figures seven years ago that a so-called made member of the Chicago mob had switched sides and was now providing detailed information to federal prosecutors. Ambrose denies he ever broke the law.
“The feds are guaranteed to see this as the worst sort of treachery,” says mob expert John Binder, author of The Chicago Outfit. “I don’t think I’m overblowing it. They’re going to see him the way the military sees a Benedict Arnold.”
U.S. District Judge John F. Grady has ordered extraordinary security, including screens in the courtroom, to conceal the faces of key witnesses from spectators.
Inspectors in the government’s supersecret Witness Security Program operated by the U.S. Marshals Service will testify behind the screens and also use pseudonyms. Ambrose defense attorney Francis C. Lipuma objected to the screens and testimony under false names
.This is going to sensationalize the trial,” Lipuma told a recent hearing
Ambrose is accused of leaking information to the mob about an admitted former hit man, Nicholas Calabrese, who was the government’s star witness at the landmark 2007 Family Secrets trial that targeted top members of the Chicago mob. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/iteam&id=6758965
Ambrose was assigned to guard Calabrese on two occasions. Ambrose is charged with stealing information out of the Witness Security Program and passing it to a go-between, believing it would go to reputed mob boss John “No Nose” DiFronzo. http://www.suntimes.com/news/mob/1523769,CST-NWS-ambrose13.article
Michael Vecchione of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was critical of fed role in Mafia cop case.
Italian Jail
Bari, April 15 – A fresh controversy about the Italian justice system arose Wednesday after more than 20 Mafia members and drug traffickers got out of jail because a judge failed to write down why they were supposed to be there in the required legal term.
Judge Rosa Anna De Palo found the 21 members of a powerful Bari crime syndicate guilty on January 16, 2008 but hasn’t found time to write down why yet.
In Italy’s three-tier justice system, the arguments behind a verdict must be formally issued before the next phase starts – in this case, 15 months.
Eight defendants were released from prison and 13 from house arrest.
De Palo’s perceived lack of zeal could mean another 30 defendants being released in October.
Bari police have been alerted about the mobsters’ release, judicial sources said.
As a political outcry began to rise, Justice Minister Angelino Alfano was poised to send inspectors to Bari and there were calls for the judiciary’s self-governing body to be reformed.
There have been several outcries over perceived judicial slackness in recent years.
Last month a Calabrian Mafia boss walked free after magistrates who had sentenced him to jail in a fast-track trial didn’t get round to formally registering his sentence.
Last June a judge was sacked from the judiciary because he failed to write up a sentence over an eight-year period, leaving Mafia bosses roaming the streets of Sicily.
The sacking came just ten days after another case of what Italians call ’slow justice’, when the son of Mafia superboss Toto’ ‘The Beast’ Riina walked free halfway through an eight-year racketeering sentence because judges had failed to lodge an appeal at the Court of Cassation within the statutory term.
http://www.euronews24.org/italy/italian-news-storm-brews-as-mafiosi-let-out/
Colombian National Police escort drug lord Daniel Rendon Herrera, alias “Don Mario”
Rendon, 43, is alleged to have offered 1,000 USD for each police officer his gunmen killed. He was found alone, eating rice out his hands, hiding under a palm tree in the jungles of northern Antioquia province, Defence Minster Juan Manuel Santos said.
When he was surrounded, the once-feared cocaine baron was living “virtually like a dog, curled up and clinging to that palm tree, where he had been for two days,” Santos told reporters.
Rendon Herrera is accused of shipping about 100 tons of drugs from Colombia’s Caribbean coast to the United States. Santos said he is also responsible for at least 3.000 murders.
Santos said informants were a key part of the nine-month operation in which police patiently penetrated the rings of security, consisting of scores of armed thugs, that once protected the fugitive.
His ruthless style recalled that of Colombia’s best-known drug baron Pablo Escobar, who waged war against the state until he was gunned down by security forces on a rooftop in the city of Medellin in 1993.
The government hailed Rendon Herrera’s capture as a victory for law and order, but experts said Colombia’s thriving cocaine trade is unlikely to be disrupted for long
“Don Mario was the most important drug trafficker out there, but someone will take his place very quickly and it will be business as usual,” said security analyst Pablo Casas. “His organisation is as well structured as any company, where the CEO can be replaced at any time,” Casas said.
Rendon Herrera has also been charged by US authorities, a spokesman for the US Drug Enforcement Administration said in Washington.
Rendon Herrera belonged to one of the paramilitary groups that began demobilizing after a 2003 peace deal with the government, but he refused to confess his crimes as required under the accord and he went into hiding. He is the brother of a jailed paramilitary warlord known as “El Aleman,” or “The German,” a nickname he earned for his reputation of enforcing strict discipline among his troops.
Rendon Herrera is accused of running cocaine trafficking in the area controlled by his brother in the 1990s, when right-wing paramilitaries battled leftist guerrillas for control of rural Colombia.
http://en.mercopress.com/2009/04/16/colombia
Anti-mafia police seize 1.5 mln euros of assets
Palermo, 15 April (AKI) – Anti-mafia police have seized 1.5 million euros of assets from a businessman in Sicily’s regional capital, Palermo, Francesco Colletti, who is on trial for mafia association. The assets include apartments, property, bank accounts and the 25 percent stake Colletti held in a Palermo furniture factory.
Anti-mafia prosecutors have appointed an administrator for the furniture factory, according to local daily Giornale di Sicilia.
Anti-mafia police seized an apartment belonging to Colletti in the Palermo suburb of Villabate and one in the town of Tusa in northeastern Sicily. They also seized two plots of land owned by his wife and his sister-in-law, a graphic design company and a car, and froze a bank account belonging to Colletti.
Since his release from prison on a technicality, Colletti had attempted to take control of the local mafia in Villabate, according to prosecutors.
Italy’s conservative government has vowed to defeat Italy’s mob.
Police have arrested scores of mafia suspects this year, including several alleged mafia bosses and have seized millions of euros of their assets.
In 2008, Italian police carried out 200 anti-mafia operations and arrested 2,583 people including 177 fugitives.
Italy’s main criminal organisations are the Neapolitan Camorra, the Sicilian mafia, the Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita in the southern Puglia region.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3217435939
Whitey Bulger
Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue hit Car
both murdered by Bulger machine gun
Brian Halloran
Whitey killed Brian Halloran and a construction worker named Michael Donahue who had unfortunately offered Halloran a ride home.
This carpenter prepared himself to be betrayed again by the government he loves.
Tommy feared that Justice Department lawyers from Washington might succeed in getting U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young to throw out the heroic ruling made by his late colleague, U.S. District Court Judge Reginald C. Lindsay
Lindsay had determined the feds were liable in the slaughter of Tommy’s father, Michael, at the hands of the FBI rat Whitey Bulger.
Judge Young told a scrum of lawyers at the Moakley Courthouse he would not revisit Lindsay’s findings in the case and called for hearings on the size of the award to begin on May 1.
I was surprised,” Tommy said, “very, very surprised. Judge Lindsay meant so much to my mother and my family. When he got sick and passed away (several weeks ago), the government lawyers wanted to start everything from scratch. We didn’t know what to expect. But it looks like Judge Young is going to pick up where Judge Lindsay left off.
You know,” Tommy sighed, “we’ve been disappointed so many times over the years. You think the finish line is in sight, that maybe the government is going to do the right thing . . . and instead, they push the line around the corner.”
Yesterday, as Donahue’s hopes were lifted, the feds finally shelled out the $3.4 million Lindsay awarded to the family of John McIntyre three years ago.
While under the care and protection of the FBI, Whitey Bulger killed the fisherman and part-time smuggler.
L’Aqila and nearby towns.
Sleuths to make sure Mob’s hands off reconstruction
(ANSA) – Rome, April 20 – A team of four anti-Mafia investigators has been set up to stop the Mob getting its hands on reconstruction money for the Abruzzo earthquake.
”There is no alarm yet, but legitimate concern,” said Italy’s anti-Mafia chief, Piero Grasso, in unveiling the team exactly two week afters the April 6 quake that devastated regional capital
”We want to make sure that we don’t see looting of state coffers,” he said.
”We want the reconstruction money to go to those entitled to it”. The four Mafia fighters will provide databases and investigative skills to stop the Mafia setting up front companies as a way of grabbing funds, as they did after Italy’s most recent comparable quake in 1980, for which trials are still moving through the courts.
”We want to cut out the need for trials. Prevention is the key,” Grasso said. He said the only way to make sure Mafia infiltration is not happening is by using wiretaps and Mafia informants.
The experts on Mafia penetration of business were identified as Vincenzo Macri’, Alberto Cisterna, Gianfranco Donadio and Olga Capasso.
In another move, Civil Service Minister Renato Brunetta said transparency in earthquake-related tenders would be ensured by making sure they were open to scrutiny online. Premier Silvio Berlusconi has vowed the Mafia will be kept out of the reconstruction, which will cost billions of euros.
”We will rebuild in six months, keeping out speculators and Mafia,” he said Thursday.
The premier said the government’s priority was to close down all tent camps, currently housing around 33,000 people, before it starts getting cold in the autumn.
He said the government intended to build new towns close to existing ones with the aid of each of Italy’s 100 provinces.
”The new houses will be technologically advanced and super-safe because they will be built on a plate separating them from the ground. Any kind of earthquake can take place but nothing will happen,” he said.
”I have long experience as a builder, I’ve built a number of cities, and we will also make houses that are aesthetically pleasing,” he added.
The premier said survivors who lost homes in the quake could also opt to rebuild their houses elsewhere, explaining that the government would help with 33% of costs as well as providing a loan of up to 50% of the value of the property.
Abruzzo Governor Gianni Chiodi has hit out at concerns over possible Mafia infiltration, saying the region ”is not mafioso”.
Earlier last week L’Aquila public prosecutor Alfredo Rossini and Grasso warned that organised crime groups would be attracted to the region by the ”rivers of money” arriving to fund rebuilding of the quake-stricken towns. ANSA
Reggio Calabria, 20 April (AKI) -
An arrest warrant was also issued for a seventh woman.
The women, who ranged in age from their twenties to their sixties,included Concetta Romeo (58), Donatella Garzo (38), Domenica Caia (32), Giuseppina Miceli Sopo (28), Concetta Lagana (44) and Maria Teresa Schilipilliti (64).
The suspects were arrested in the ‘Artemis’ operation carried out in the northern Italian cities of Asti, Brescia, Varese and Vercelli. ‘Artemis’ began in December 2006 after the slaying in Calabria of a local mafia boss Domenico Gaglioti.
‘Artemis’ led to previous arrests in December 2007 when 13 people were detained on suspicion of ‘Ndrangheta association aimed at rigging local elections in the Calabrian town of Seminara in the province of Reggio Calabria in May that year.
The Seminara local council was subsequently dissolved and administered by a government-appointed commissioner after investigators alleged it had been infiltrated by the mafia.
The province of Reggio Calabria has been riven by bloody feuds between rival ‘Ndrangheta clans since the the 1970s.
In a separate development, Italian anti-mafia police on Monday arrested 35 mafia suspects allegedly involved in the purchase of cocaine, marijuana and hashish.
The drugs were sold by the Neapolitan mafia or Camorra to drugs pushers in the Naples area and in Sicily. The arrests were made in the southern cities or Naples, Catania and Syracuse.
Michael James Genovese.
Stacy Innerst/Post-Gazette
Michael James Genovese
On an 82-acre farm in wooded West Deer, the final act in the decades-long drama of the Pittsburgh mafia has played out.
Quietly, of course. That was always the way with the secretive Michael James Genovese.Consigliere and protege to Sebastian John LaRocca, Mr. Genovese succeeded his mentor in 1984 to become the low-profile head of La Cosa Nostra in Western Pennsylvania, according to the FBI.
He died in 2006 at age 87. But his widow, Jennie Lee Genovese, and his adopted son, Michael A. Genovese (a Post-Gazette truck driver), have been fighting each other over what’s left of the estate they both call home.
Jennie and her late husband executed the Genovese Living Trust 21 days before he died, under which she and Michael were co-trustees. But last year she removed him as a beneficiary and kicked him off the property. He challenged her right to deny him his inheritance but lost in Orphan’s Court. A county judge ordered that Michael had to move out by March 1.
The property, meanwhile, has fallen into disrepair — a metaphor of sorts for the decline of the Pittsburgh mob. It used to be a working farm, but when Mr. Genovese died, workmen stopped coming around to maintain it.
It’s hard to reconcile this forlorn scene with Michael J. Genovese, who embraced cocaine dealing and oversaw the most lucrative period in mob history here until the feds brought it down with a racketeering case in 1990.
Now old FBI intelligence files, recently released to the Post-Gazette under the Freedom of Information Act, offer new glimpses of his life. Although heavily redacted, they paint a fuller picture than ever before. read more
The Camorra the Italian organized crime groupwith ties to dallas has been overshadowed in American pop culture by th Godfather and other iconic images of the Sicilian mafia
But the ages-old clandestine syndicate from the port city of Naples is getting some attention lately.
The indie film Gomorrah a Cannes winner, is based on Roberto Saviano’s recent book about the secretive and violent Camorra underworld. Not surprisingly, Saviano has recieved death threats since his book was published and is said to travel under police guard.
For those wanting more information on the Dallas drug case involving the Camorra, here are some documents:
“We’ve got some of the major cartel members established here dealing their wares in Europe,” said James Capra, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Dallas office.
Experts say warring cartels battered by unprecedented U.S. and Mexican government crackdowns are increasingly looking to Europe as an expansion market. Across the Atlantic, demand for cocaine is high and prices are up. A kilo sold for $20,000 in Dallas is worth up to three times as much overseas, experts say.
Mexican cartel operatives in North Texas “are dealing with Italy, Spain, you name it,” he said. “They can operate their logistical center from here and coordinate between Mexico, Central America and Europe.”
Italian capos are venturing to North Texas to get in on the action, says one mob expert.
“Places like Houston and Dallas are where these criminal organizations are most likely to invest their money,” said Antonio Nicaso, an internationally recognized author and lecturer on Italian organized crime. “This is the right time, with the recession going on.”
Dallas has long been a recognized distribution hub for drugs smuggled up the Interstate 35 corridor from Laredo. From here, narcotics head out across the country to Atlanta, Chicago, New England and elsewhere.
The revelation that the cartels are forming alliances with Italian syndicates came last year when the DEA revealed that the Mexican Gulf cartel, which supplies Dallas with cocaine, was working with New York associates of the powerful Italian ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
Last August, the DEA arrested a Dallas County jailer accused of tipping off drug dealers to what appeared to be a small-time local narcotics conspiracy. The jailer, Brenda Medina Salinas, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. As others pleaded guilty and court documents piled up, it became clear that the drug pipeline in that case reached all the way to Europe and the clandestine world of the Camorra.
The Naples-based Camorra traces its roots to the 16th century. Ruthlessly violent when they need to be, Camorra members often smuggle behind quiet business fronts. They’re known to work across ethnic and political lines.
Relatively little is known about the local Camorra associate, other than that he had ties to Dallas, Houston and Mexico.
The Camorra associate was not charged in the case because agents had not developed enough information to nab him when they were forced to act because of Salinas’ leaking information to co-conspirators.
Agents learned the Camorra associate’s name last May. That’s when DEA agents monitoring a meeting between him and his local contacts asked Dallas police to pull over the Camorra associate’s car and check his identity.
He had just met with Higinio “Gino” Hernandez, a 30-year-old flooring installer from Carrollton, and Altin Kore, a 32-year-old Dallas man also charged in conspiracy. Kore is charged in the case but is a fugitive. Hernandez has pleaded guilty.
The DEA began investigating the Hernandez network after being tipped by Italian authorities in the fall of 2007. Their wiretaps on Camorra associates in Italy revealed a Dallas cocaine supplier.
Higinio Hernandez was close to his brother Henry “Tito” Hernandez, 34, of Dallas, who has also pleaded guilty. A third brother, Luis, 35, has been charged but is a fugitive.
Henry and Higinio worked for years as flooring installer subcontractors for Carpet One in Southlake.
“They were leading a double life,” said prosecutor Ernest Gonzalez in Plano. “They were doing flooring by day, and at night they were conducting these drug transactions.”
It was obvious to those around them that laying floors was not their only source of income.
When they were arrested last fall, federal agents seized Higinio’s Cadillac Escalade and Lexus IS30, as well as Henry’s Escalade.
Henry and Luis kept snapshots of themselves partying in limos with friends, booze and women. They also had dealings in Cuba, authorities say.
“They didn’t hide their money,” Gonzalez said.
Authorities say Higinio’s supplier in Mexico was half brother Rodolfo Lopez, 35, another fugitive charged in the case.
While living in the U.S., Lopez forged the relationship with the Camorra associate and dealt with cocaine producers in Colombia and elsewhere, authorities say. Lopez eventually relocated to Mexico, where authorities say he directed shipments to his brothers in Dallas.
From Dallas, the cocaine was taken to Houston, where the Camorra associate operated a scented candle export business. It took about a month for the cocaine, smuggled amongst the candles, to make the voyage across the Atlantic to Italy.
Major ports attract Italian organized crime syndicates, which operate in at least 19 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department’s latest Drug Threat Assessment.
The Hernandez case is considered somewhat of an anomaly among law enforcement. Federal agents for years have said that the mafia has no significant grip here.
Still, after a lull, mob influence nationwide seems to be increasing, experts say. Much of their work is partnering with the Mexican distributors and Colombian producers and supplying Europe with cocaine.
It’s a good time to expand to Europe, as crackdowns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have made smuggling cocaine into Texas increasingly difficult. In the past year, authorities have arrested more than 500 Gulf Cartel and 750 rival Sinaloa Cartel members here and in Mexico.
Extraditions of Mexican narcos to the U.S. for prosecution are on the rise under President Felipe Calderón, who has deployed military troops to quell violence in border towns.
Still, a downside to dabbling in international markets is the increased scrutiny by a larger net of law enforcement agencies – which is what stopped the Hernandez ring.
Last spring, DEA agents in Dallas learned that a meeting was to take place between Higinio and the Camorra associate. On May 15, agents set up surveillance at a Chili’s restaurant on Knox Street in Dallas.
It was not a pleasant meeting for Higinio. DEA agents were watching as the Italian poked a finger in his chest. The cocaine they were selling wasn’t pure enough, he told Hernandez. Customers were complaining.
After the meeting, Higinio reached out to his brother, Henry, to see if his own supplier, Moises Duarte, could get purer powder.
But agents were forced to swoop in before any more cocaine made it to Italy.
The reason: Brenda Salinas. The 23-year-old befriended Henry Hernandez and Duarte on the club scene in Dallas, and eventually dated both men.
As a jailer with Dallas County, she had access to law enforcement databases. In July, when agents learned that she was feeding both men information, DEA agents felt they had to act. They arrested Duarte and set up stings on his cohorts.
So far, nine defendants – including Salinas – have pleaded guilty. Among them is an Albanian financial consultant from Dallas. He has ties to an ex-stockbroker being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an alleged pump-and-dump stock scam.
According to the DEA, the investigation is ongoing
deputy U.S. marshal Ambrose
CHICAGO (AP) — Federal prosecutors have rested their case in the Chicago trial of a deputy U.S. marshal accused of leaking information about a federal witness to the mob.
Before prosecutors rested Tuesday, FBI Special Agent Edward McNamara testified that John Ambrose called a restaurant hours after his second stint protecting witness Nicholas Calabrese.
Ambrose’s friend William Guide owned The Pizza King. Prosecutors say Ambrose fed details of Calabrese’s cooperation in the Operation Family Secrets investigation to Guide, knowing they’d end up with the mob.
The defense called two of Ambrose’s colleagues in the Marshals Service. They say they used The Pizza King as a “staging area” for the fugitive warrant unit. Both say Ambrose is honest
thanks tbo,com news
22 Hells Angels arrested in Spain
Weapons and Neo-nazi material were amongst the items seized
Spanish police have arrested 22 members of Hell’s Angels biker gang in an operation which took place in five provinces. The majority of the arrests – 13 – were in Barcelona , with the remaining suspects taken into custody in Valencia, Málaga, Madrid and Las Palmas. The charges against them range from illicit association, to drugs and weapons trafficking, and extortion.
The operation remains open, with more than 30 property searches having taken place so far. Biker clubs believed to be used by the gang members in Barcelona city and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat were also being searched, EFE reports. It’s understood that the Barcelona judge in charge of the investigation has issued a secrecy order
gangster Salvatore ” Sammy ” Gingello
04/22/09 9:05 AM
On this day, April 23, in 1978, colorful gangster Salvatore Gingello was killed in a car bomb after five unsuccessful attempts.
Hailed as the new boss of a Rochester, N.Y., mob, Gingello was targeted by a rival gang trying to stake its claim on the city. He managed to sidestep assassination attempts for two months, including surviving an explosion outside of Gingello’s favorite restaurant.
Other failed ideas included planting a bomb in a children’s toy and lowering another into his nonexistent chimney. Aware of the plots but undaunted, Gingello continued to frequent his local hangouts with two bodyguards.
But on April 23, a bomb detonated under his borrowed, black Buick, ejecting his bodyguards out the side doors. In the driver’s seat, Gingello was blackened and broken from the explosion.
He died soon after because of shock and loss of blood from losing both his legs.
Drunks, hookers and pimps surrounded the wreckage and paid tribute to their hometown boss by collecting car debris and even pieces of his flesh. thanks The Examiner
ANSA) – Milan, April 23 – Police on Thursday arrested
39 people in an operation uncovering infiltration in the
northern region of Lombardy by Calabria`s `Ndrangheta Mafia.
The organised crime ring, linked to the Farao-Marincola
clan in Crotone, allegedly exercised control using threats
and violence over a number of business activities in northern
Italy, especially in the building and real estate sectors.
Arrest warrants were issued for people in Lombardy,
Piedmont, Emilia Romagna, Lazio, Campania, Basilicata and
Calabria on a variety of charges including attempted murder,
extortion, arson and money recycling.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni congratulated the
police on the “important operation“.
Last month police confiscated a NATO-style rocket
launcher and issued 22 arrest warrants in a similar operation
revealing wide-scale intimidation in Lombardy`s public works
sector by an `Ndrangheta clan.
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney appeared in federal court today and calmly defended his decision to seek the resignation in 2003 of the state civil service commissioner because of a decades-old real estate deal with a Boston mafioso.
The credibility of the former commissioner, William P. Monahan had been severely undermined, Romney said, by news that he had bought property on Tremont Street in 1980 from New England mafia underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo.
“Had I known about it, I wouldn’t have appointed him in the first place,” Romney said.
While the governor said he initially hoped that Monahan would be able to keep his position, Romney said his staff helped convince him that his continued service on the commission “would not be appropriate.” Romney likened the civil service commissioner to a judge and testified that news of the real estate deal with a mafia figure undermined Monahan’s credibility.
Monahan has sued Romney and four members of his administration, alleging that he was wrongly terminated and defamed without due process. Monahan, a longtime Romney supporter, contends that he never had the opportunity to defend himself and never agreed to resign.
Romney testified today that he spoke to Monahan after he had agreed to leave his post.
“I called Mr. Monahan to express my sympathy for the circumstances and my appreciation for him having resigned,” Romney said, adding, “He’s a person I like and respect. I knew this would be difficult for him. I felt [the state civil service commission] was a good opportunity for him and now it came to naught.”
.
Romney testified that he offered to help Monahan find a job in the private sector and noted that during the telephone conversation he never indicated that he was unwilling to resign. The governor has known Monahan since the 1970s, when Monahan served as a selectman in Belmont, where Romney lived with his family.
Under cross-examination, attorney Richard Hayes grilled Romney about why he didn’t personally call Monahan to ask him to resign and why he left it for his staff to do. Hayes accused Romney of putting Monahan in a difficult position.
“No,” Romney responded. “A difficult position brought on by himself.”
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/04/romney_testifie.html
ANSA) – Gela, April 24 – Mafia bosses in this southern Sicilian city planned to kill its mayor because of his anti-Mafia drives, police said Friday.
The top clan in Gela, irked by Rosario Crocetta’s clampdown on rackets and his anti-Mob press campaigns, were reportedly poised to carry out their assassination attempt when police moved in.
”We had to act with some urgency,” a police spokesman said after two people were arrested.
Crocetta, 58, a former Communist now in Italy’s largest centre-left party, the Democratic Party, has been fighting Mob infiltration since he was first elected in 2003 to govern the port city of some 80,000 people midway between Agrigento and Siracusa.
Now under round-the-clock police protection, he has called on Italy’s institutions ”not to leave Gela on its own”.
Crocetta received statements of support from across the political spectrum after the news from Gela.
The city 85 km south of Caltanissetta has been rated as one of Sicily’s most Mob-active spots but Crocetta has stressed that ”the overwhelming majority of our citizens are hard-working and decent people”.
Italy’s Anti-Mafia chief, Piero Grasso, said the plot to murder Crocetta – who is Italy’s first openly gay mayor – highlighted ”the risks run by those who put up a serious fight against the Mafia”. The Emmanuello clan also wanted to murder several businessmen who had stood up to them in the port, which has an important oil refinery, police said.
The probe that led to the arrests also uncovered evidence of the clan preying on Sicilian companies that won public works contracts in northern Italy and especially Milan.
They were taking protection money from, among others, the firm performing maintenance on one of Milan’s main water lines, police said.
Grasso said that Mafia recycling of profits in northern Italy was widespread and companies often dodged anti-Mafia controls by moving north after installing new frontmen in place of Mob-tainted executives thanks ANSA) –
US Marshal Ambrose
Jurors deciding the case of a deputy U.S. marshal accused of passing along confidential witness security details that ended up with the Mob began deliberating today with additional instructions from the federal judge about what constitutes “stolen information.”
Over objections by John Ambrose’s defense attorneys, U.S. District Judge John Grady gave a four-page written reply to seven questions submitted late Thursday by one of the male jurors
The questions, six typed and one handwritten, pertain to the definition of “stolen” regarding information in the case.
Ambrose, 42, of Tinley Park, is accused of leaking secrets about protected witness Nicholas Calabrese whom he guarded in 2002 and 2003. Calabrese had flipped and was spilling details about dozens of unsolved Outfit homicides, which put him at great risk for retaliation.
Ambrose’s chatter to a family friend about a big “O.C. guy” he had watched ended up in the hands of brothers convicted in the Family Secrets case against organized crime. His attorneys have argued he broke marshal policy, not the law.
Defense attorney Susan Shatz said she feared providing the answer would set an improper precedent for jurors. Since the note emerged within 40 minutes of the start of deliberations, “I feel the jury doesn’t want to do its job or homework,” she told Grady.
“I’m the stopper,” the judge replied
The defense protested again when the judge’s secretary revealed the note was typed up Wednesday night, before closing arguments.
If the jury still has questions, he continued, “I’m going to answer them.”
In her final argument Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur told jurors Ambrose gave sensitive details about Calabrese to William Guide, a former Chicago police officer and friend of his father who had organized crime connections. She said Guide passed the information on to mob boss James Marcello and his brother Michael.
“Instead of protecting Calabrese, Mr. Ambrose relayed that information to Mr. Guide. Mr. Ambrose relayed that information not once but two times, not by mistake but by design,” MacArthur said.
Defense attorney Francis Lipuma said Ambrose did not aim to betray his office, never named Calabrese in his conversations with Guide and that Calabrese was never harmed.
Lipuma criticized U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Chicago FBI chief Robert Grant, who confronted Ambrose with their accusations in a September 2006 meeting at the federal building in Chicago. He accused the two of ganging up on Ambrose to try to intimidate him into admitting to the leaks and told jurors the men’s versions of what happened that day didn’t jive.
“Fitzgerald told you he didn’t even know all the facts, he showed up unprepared, he didn’t know all the ins and outs,” Lipuma said. “Grant’s testimony was evasive, meandering and at times just plain silly. You’re left with two powerful men who gave inconsistent, contrary versions of what they heard on Sept. 6, 2006.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Markus Funk said Ambrose admitted more than once to discussing Calabrese with Guide.
“The problem Mr. Ambrose has is he confessed, not once, not twice, but three times,” Funk told jurors.
He blasted Lipuma’s assertion that Ambrose revealed no names and no crucial details while boasting to Guide, didn’t intend for the information to get to the mob and had no criminal intent.
“The crime isn’t to give it to (mobsters). If he gave it to his mother, that would be a crime,” Funk said.
Jurors are to start deliberations this morning.
thanks Lauren FitzPatrick
Italian police during a press conference holding fake Prada bags and shoes, sized in Naples, Italy. While businesses around the world are hunkering down for survival, the Italian mob is living a golden moment. The crime syndicates are flush with billions of euros from extortion rackets, drug trafficking and booming sales in fake designer clothing manufactured in China expressly for the Italian mob _ an increasingly lucrative trade as hard-hit consumers search for bargains, prosecutors and police said in recent interviews. (AP Photo / Salvatore Laporta) By Frances D’Emilio
Associated Press Writer / April 25, 2009
NAPLES, Italy—While businesses around the world are hunkering down for survival, the Italian mob is living a golden moment.
Italy’s various organized crime syndicates — often lumped together colloquially as Mafia Inc. — are gobbling up gas stations, muscling in on supermarket franchises, making loans to cash-starved businesses, taking over trattorias and acquiring buildings in swank neighborhoods in Rome and Milan, investigators say.
These mobsters have lots of what is in short supply for many businesses these days — liquidity — as well as centuries-honed expertise in preying on the vulnerable, whose ranks are swelling in the current financial crisis.
It all means the mob is free to sink cash into two areas that lie at the heart of the global meltdown: real estate and credit markets.
The crime syndicates are flush with billions of euros from extortion rackets, drug trafficking and booming sales in fake designer clothing made in China expressly for the Italian mob — an increasingly lucrative trade as hard-hit consumers search for bargains, prosecutors and police said in recent interviews
For the mob bosses, the global economic meltdown “is only an advantage,” said anti-mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti, in his office in Naples, the chaotic port city that is home to the Camorra, one of the Italy’s major crime syndicates.
Italy has scored some spectacular successes in its decades-long fight against the Mafia, capturing top bosses, persuading turncoats to testify, and encouraging ordinary citizens to resist shakedowns.
But the mob keeps growing — and its drive in recent years to grab chunks of legitimate business is paying off big time in the financial crisis.
In Rome, in the high-rent neighborhoods around the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona and Trevi Fountain, mobsters are snapping up real estate, anti-Mafia prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo said in a courthouse interview.
In probes of what Capaldo described as “indications” that mobsters have taken over hotels, restaurants and cafes in Rome, police seized assets of some of these businesses, although the establishments remain open.
These places are well run because they want to make money,” Capaldo said. He declined to identify the establishments because the probe is still being conducted, saying only that “you’ll find some of them in tourist guide books.”
Capaldo’s office also confiscated auto dealerships in Rome from suspected Camorristi or their allies.
“The Camorra makes the money here in the south, but it invests it in legal activities up north,” customs and tax police Gen. Giovanni Mainolfi said in his Naples office.
If the mobsters built posh places in the largely undeveloped south “they would stand out, but do it in Milan … and they blend right in,” Mainolfi said.
In an operation code-named “Easy Money,” police this year seized a hotel in the exclusive Tuscan sea resort of Punta Ala, as well as a supermarket, two Ferraris, a gas station in the wealthy northern Reggio Emilia region and other properties, altogether totaling euro30 million (about $40 million). All were believed to be owned by the Camorra, flush with drug profits.Continued…
The revenues raked in by Italy’s crime syndicates would be more than respectable for many a stock market-listed company these days — although, of course, the mobsters hardly issue annual reports.
The Rome-based Eurispes think tank has estimated that in 2008, “Mafia Inc.” earned euro130 billion (then $167 billion), or about 8 percent of Italy’s GDP, from its criminal activities, nearly half of that from drug trafficking.
Eurispes, which analyzes social, economic and criminal trends, said loansharking brought in an estimated euro12.6 billion ($17 billion) of that income. It calculated that some 180,000 merchants and other businessmen got their loans, directly or indirectly, through organized crime in Italy.
With much of the world financial crunch making its impact in Italy in the first months of this year, it’s too early to tell how much more profit organized crime might make.
Government probes have found that as they launder illicit revenues, mob bosses are increasingly moving their money out of the underdeveloped south where the syndicates are rooted and into affluent central and northern Italy.
In March, Italy’s intelligence services warned in a report that rising unemployment and the credit crunch could help crime syndicates tighten their tentacles around vast swaths of the nation’s business sector, including supermarkets, real estate and tourism.
A main engine of the mob’s recent strength — the age-old practice of loan-sharking — is thriving as banks hoard cash, allowing the Mafia to elbow in on legitimate businesses.
The mobsters are poised to “acquire control of businesses in difficulty, especially through their consolidated practice of loan-sharking,” as well as to “snap up assets put on the market by enterprises experiencing liquidity crises,” the intelligence report said.
The dire predictions seem borne out by businessmen’s complaints.
SOS Impresa, an Italian business lobby dedicated to fighting organized crime, estimated in a report late last year that in the Camorra has “multiplied by 10, 100, perhaps 1,000 times, its penetration of the economic and social fabric, stepping up its business presence in our country, in Europe and the world.”
In Rome, Camorra men or those in their employ have been spotted hanging out at pawnbrokers’ auctions to learn which businesses might be in financial straits, said Carabinieri Lt. Col. Roberto Casagrande. Those businesses would then be approached — and offered a loan they could scarcely refuse.
The Camorra offers shaky businesses attractive interest rates, calculating that the businesses will end up part of its economic empire if the owner falls behind on payments, Roberti said. The mobsters sometimes leave the original owner as a figurehead to thwart suspicion, police said.
The ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate — based in Calabria, the “toe” of Italy’s boot — is also brazenly taking over struggling businesses and snapping up prime northern Italian property at a bargain during the real estate slowdown, investigators say.
Genoa Mayor Marta Vincinzi told a rally against organized crime in Naples late this spring that Mafia bosses, particularly from the ‘ndrangheta, were “gobbling up entire neighborhoods” and pressuring merchants to pay “protection money” in the gritty, northwestern port city.
Investigators believe that flourishing ties with Colombian cocaine cartels have helped the ‘ndrangheta to surpass Sicily’s Cosa Nostra in international drug dealing.
Cosa Nostra has taken blows in recent years. Longtime fugitive bosses have been captured and a rebellion by island businessmen against paying “protection money” is starting to take root. But the anti-extortion revolt is not widespread enough to significantly reduce the Sicilian Mafia’s coffers, the intelligence services’ report noted.
Particularly tempting to the mob is Italy’s recent explosion of supermarkets, a boon to consumers long frustrated by the often limited hours and selection offered by mom-and-pop stores.
In Sicily last year, authorities seized euro$700 million (then worth $900 million) in assets, including supermarket outlets, from a businessman who was known as the island’s “king of supermarkets” and was suspected of letting Cosa Nostra use his businesses to launder money.
Prosecutors in Palermo said the owner’s name turned up on handwritten notes scribbled by Bernardo Provenzano, the longtime fugitive “boss of all bosses” who was captured in 2006.
The intelligence services report predicts that mobsters would step up production of counterfeit name-brand goods given consumers’ apparently increased appetite for fake designer items. The Eurispes think tank estimated this growing business earned the mob euro6.3 billion ($8.5 billion) last year.
Naples anti-organized crime prosecutor Roberti said the Camorra has pumped up what once was a kind of cottage industry, with crime clan bosses knitting closer ties with mobsters in China, where fake designer clothing, shoes and accessories are now churned out in factories for the mob.
Trafficking in fake designer goods — which investigators suspect the Camorra is also peddling in the United States, France, Britain and Germany — is now becoming more profitable for the Neapolitan syndicate that dealing in cocaine and hashish, said Mainolfi, the customs and tax police general.
He has calculated that for every euro it costs to manufacture the counterfeit designer goods, the Camorra earns 10 euros, while for every euro spent to run drug trafficking, it earns six or seven euros.
The fakes, sold in street stalls and clothing shops in the Naples and Rome areas, arrive by the tons in Naples’ sprawling, chaotic port, where custom officials manage to check only some 5 percent of the shipping containers being unloaded, Mainolfi said.
Good times or bad times, it is business as usual for Italy’s Mafia.
Indeed, while the recession bites deeply into the legal economy, this is a time for mafiosi to strengthen their positions and increase their wealth. Credit crunches, pay cuts, falling sales and job losses do not touch Cosa Nostra, Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta or the Camorra in Campania. And liquidity is no problem for the criminal clans.
Their worry is to launder illicit cash, to find ways of investing revenues from drugs, extortion, fraud, loan sharking and the other crimes from which they make money. This liquidity helps them to grow and weave themselves more tightly into the fabric of legitimate business, through buying up firms stretched by the crisis or burdened by debt. Hard for many, the economic downturn brings more opportunities for organised crime.
While the government’s measures may soften the recession’s impact, stimulating an economy that is particularly weak in the south brings a boost for the mafia. Infiltrating parts of the public sector that handle big flows of funds is a priority for the bosses and – aware that control of finance means control of jobs, and these bring votes – some politicians play along with the mafia’s game. A prosecutor in Palermo warns of systematic collusion between the mafia and politics involving all parties in the criminality of power, “a system of corrupt and rapacious power”.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, has assured Italians that the mafia will not profit from the reconstruction that will follow the recent earthquake in the Abruzzo region east of Rome, but such an assurance rings hollow. Berlusconi availed himself of the right to silence in November 2002 when anti-mafia prosecutors sought to question him in a mafia case; some people ask why. That there are senators with mafia links lends weight to the prosecutor’s desolate view that “Italy’s dark sickness is the criminality of its governing class”.
Construction has long been a mafia affair, and clans take a cut of the spending on public works. Earthmoving, ballast-supply, plant hire and ready-mix concrete are sectors in which the Mafa thrives. Work under way for more than a decade to improve 500km of autostrada from Salerno, south of Naples, to Reggio Calabria in the toe of the Italian boot, has been dogged by mafia infiltration. Even so, playing down warnings that the project will boost the mafia economy, the government is pushing ahead with plans for a bridge to join the mainland and Sicily across the Messina Strait.
Despite the promises and the effort that the authorities will make to keep the mafia away, the Abruzzo earthquake offers prospects of a bonanza for organised crime. Reconstruction after 1980’s disaster in Campania and Basilicata cost about 60tn lire, equivalent to about €30bn, and prosecutors estimate that half of what came from the public purse went into the mafia’s pockets. Politicians took bribes from firms and won electoral support from the Camorra. Main contractors were paid for putting their names on projects for which they signed contracts, doing no work but sub-contracting to local firms that belonged or were linked to the clans. Hard times for the homeless and jobless, nice work for the mafia then, and probably now.
thanks David Lane,
Roberto Saviano
ANSAmed) – Madrid, April 28 – Roberto Saviano, the
Italian writer placed under a death sentence by the Camorra
clan he exposed in his worldwide bestseller Gomorrah, said on
Tuesday he may move to Jerusalem.
Speaking in Madrid where he gave a lecture to a Spanish
interior ministry seminar on organised crime, Saviano said
he was thinking of spending “a long time in Israel, in
Jerusalem“.
During a visit to Israel in February Saviano met Israeli
President Shimon Peres who told him that his country would
“open its doors“ if he wanted to move there.
Saviano, 30, also revealed he was currently at work on
two books.
The writer admitted recently that he didn`t regret
writing Gomorrah but said it had taken away his freedom
because he was now forced to live with a police escort.
He has repeatedly reiterated his plan to leave Italy in
order to escape the pressure of living under the constant
threat of assassination by the Camorra.
“It`s not easy to carry on writing living in a barracks
with a five-man escort and so going away would give me the
chance to do my work,“ he said.
Gomorrah was made into a film directed by Matteo
Garrone which won the second prize at the 2008 Cannes Film
Festival. thanks ANSAmed) in milan below.
Sixteen mafia suspects arrested in north
Milan, 28 April (AKI) – Police on Tuesday arrested 16 mafia suspects in and around the northern city of Milan and the Sicilian city of Palermo in southern Italy. The suspects are accused of trafficking cocaine and extortion
The drug trafficking charges relate to the period between 2004 and 2006 and the alleged extortion targeted building firms, according to investigators.
The conservative Italian government has vowed to wage war against the mafia, and several mafia bosses have been arrested this year.
Last week Italian police said they uncovered a plot to murder a Sicilian mayor and prominent anti-mafia campaigner Rosario Crocetta. Two suspects, Maurizio La Rosa and Maurizio Trubia, were arrested by police last Friday.
The two suspects were charged with mafia association and extortion against Sicilian-owned businesses in Italy as well as membership of an armed association.
The mafia was plotting to kill several businessmen who had given information to police about a mafia extortion racket, according to investigators.
In 2008, Italian police carried out 200 anti-mafia operations and arrested 2,583 people including 177 fugitives. Millions of euros worth of mafia assets were also seized.
thanks Security
Police stand next to one of the bodies after the bloody Mafia killing in Duisburg
The arduous process of solving the 2007 Mafia bloodbath in Germany has revealed serious deficiencies in European police cooperation. With the German police failing to secure the cooperation of their Dutch and Italian counterparts, it looks like the presumed killers will not be tried in Germany.
When it comes to fighting crime in the European Union, the relevant politicians have learned to overcome borders and national jealousies. “We must put new forms of police cooperation to the test,” German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble recently said, calling for a security network that “is designed to be as transnational as the threats it seeks to contain.”
It’s a shame that the reality of bureaucratic execution are making such a mockery of good intentions and proclamations, something made depressingly evident by the investigation into a sensational Mafia murder in the western German city of Duisburg.
The presumed killers, who are accused of massacring six Italians with at least 70 bullets in front of a restaurant in August 2007, have been captured. But important pieces of evidence are still have been captured. But important pieces of evidence are still missing today, something that can be blamed primarily on problems in the multinational investigation of the Duisburg bloodbath, which was the climax of a feud between rival clans. In the dismal assessment of one investigator, the case represents a “low point in combating organized crime in Europe.”
At first, authorities seemed to have achieved an important success when, on March 12 of this year, a Dutch police task force arrested the presumed mastermind, Giovanni Strangio, at his apartment in Amsterdam’s Diemen neighborhood. Soon afterwards, the police arrested Strangio’s brother-in-law and suspected accomplice, Francesco Romeo. This week, a Dutch court will decide whether to extradite Strangio to Germany or Italy.
But, as it turns out, this is about all that has been achieved. Frank Berlanda, an attorney in the southwestern German city of Lörrach who is defending Strangio, was puzzled by the thin excerpt of the investigation files he was given by the Duisburg public prosecutor’s office. Instead of names, the numbers 8, 13 and 31 are assigned to the key DNA evidence in the case. Berlanda, an experienced attorney, has no idea who the numbers are meant to represent. Absurdly enough, neither do German authorities. To this day, Italian authorities have failed to provide the reference DNA samples that were requested more than a year ago, nor have they responded to German requests for legal assistance.
Ironically, the investigation into the Duisburg Mafia murders was supposed to usher in a new era in European crime fighting. After the Duisburg bloodbath, representatives of both countries were practically tripping over each other in their efforts to declare war on organized crime. “We want to help the German police obtain new information,” said Pietro Grasso, the chief prosecutor of the Italian anti-Mafia bureau, and Jörg Ziercke, who heads up Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), promised new “strategic approaches to fighting the Mafia.” A German-Italian task force was established and staffed with high-level investigators from both countries. Its goal was to coordinate the fight against the Mafia on both sides of the Alps and help law enforcement achieve a breakthrough.
Requests Ignored
But it soon became clear that bureaucracy has a life of its own. For instance, the Germans are still waiting for DNA data on Giuseppe Nirta, the presumed second shooter, which they requested from their Italian counterparts back in September 2007. Without the DNA evidence, German authorities have been unable to issue a warrant for Nirta’s arrest.
It took Italian police two months to deliver information about DNA traces from a car that had been linked to the suspect. The Italians insisted that they had found nothing, but the Germans questioned that claim, because they later found perfectly usable gunshot residues and DNA on other pieces of evidence that the Italians had said were unusable. Besides, the simple process of matching data, which became standard procedure with other European countries long ago, is an impossibility with the Italians, because the country has not yet ratified the relevant EU treaty.
German investigators had a glimmer of hope when suspected killer Nirta, who had already been sentenced to 15 years in prison in Italy for drug trafficking, was arrested in Amsterdam last November, just as Strangio’s sisters were bringing him a meal of Calabrian sausage and noodles. But Dutch judges ignored a German request to obtain a saliva sample and extradited the man to Italy.
They didn’t change their position after Strangio was arrested. A few hours before the operation began, the Germans asked Dutch authorities to allow them to be involved in the search for traces in the apartment “and other places where the suspected criminals had spent time” once the arrest had been made.
But when the time came, German and Italian investigators were only permitted to observe from a distance. The Dutch authorities instructed police to confiscate only a few items, such as a mobile phone, a laptop computer and one of the presumed murder weapons, a Beretta 93R with a large magazine. Then they turned over the apartment to Strangio’s wife.
On April 2, the disenchanted Duisburg public prosecutor’s office sent a new request for legal assistance, asking for a saliva sample, to their Dutch counterparts. It is still waiting for a response. Then, in a fax sent to Dutch officials last week, the German prosecutors withdrew their request for the extradition of Strangio.
thanks
Interior minister hails latest blow to organized crime
ANSA) – Naples, April 29 – Police on Wednesday arrested a top-ranking boss of the Neapolitan crime syndicate Camorra and alleged regent of the powerful Casalesi clan.
Michele Bidognetti was nabbed in the Caserta suburb of Casal di Principe, the home base of the Casalesi clan, and police also seized assets valued at over five million euros.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni congratulated police on the operation and hailed the arrest as the latest blow against organised crime.
”Bidognetti’s arrest was an important event which demonstrates how combating crime remains a top priority of this government,” Maroni said. The arrest was of ” extraordinary importance” for shadow interior minister Marco Minniti, who said it ”underscores the need for the State to continue to move against organised crime with courage and determination”.
Investigators believe that Bidognetti was acting head of the Biognetti-Setola family on behalf of his jailed brother, Francesco Bidognetti, also known as ‘Cicciott’ ‘e Mezzanotte’ (Midnight Fatty), who is currently serving a life sentence.
The seized assets included farms, open land, villas, apartments and commercial activities all acquired by fronts for the clan.
Bidognetti was apprehended while apparently passing on orders from his brother to other clan members.
He is believed to have taken over the family reins following the arrests last year of his brother’s three sons, Aniello, Raffaele and Gianluca.
The arrests were made possible in part thank to information provided by their mother, who turned state’s witness after her arrest for acting as her jailed husband’s go-between. The Casalesi clan was exposed in the best-selling book Gomorra, by Roberto Saviano, which was later made into an award-winning movie of the same name. thanks ANSA)