BEIJING — A Chinese court has concluded the trial of a former police chief accused of protecting gangs, accepting bribes and rape in a southwestern China megacity with a long history of corruption.
Miguel Angel Caro Quintero
DENVER — A Mexican drug kingpin who led a fearsome cartel for more than a decade was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in prison for trafficking drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Russia’s battle against the country’s neo-Nazis is reaching boiling point as it emerged they killed 71 people last year.
One group recently posted a sickening video message on the internet celebrating a stabbing attack which killed a Ghanaian man in December.
Full Story with Video
Relatives of one of those killed in the shooting console each other in Juarez on Sunday.
CNN) — As many as 15 gunmen stormed into a house party in Juarez, Mexico, in the early hours of Sunday morning and opened fire, killing at least 13 people and injuring 13 others in one of the deadliest attacks the city has seen this year, a police official said.
CNN) – In a messy drug bust this week, investigators uncovered more than 700 pounds of marijuana stuffed in a septic tank truck full of human waste, Arizona police said Friday.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano
REGGIO, Italy, Jan. 25 (UPI) — An anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy was sent a bullet Monday, a third apparent warning from the southern Italian ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate, officials said.
Drugs and weapons confiscated by federal agents
SAN DIEGO – Three men arrested during a nationwide sweep targeting La Familia, a Mexican cartel known for its violence and control over the methamphetamine trade, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and drug charges.
CNN) — A British couple held hostage by pirates for more than three months have told of brutal treatment at the hand of their captors who they say are perilously close to killing them
Milan, 19 Jan. (AKI) – Police arrested ten people in northern Italy on Tuesday in connection with the illegal traffic of dangerous waste. Six suspects were placed under house arrest, while four were jailed, in an operation which was part of a broader anti-mafia investigation, police said.
Police are investigating businesses allegedly involved in the illegal management and transport of waste.
A total of 41 people are under investigation including bank managers, according to Italian paramilitary police.
Police have carried out 18 searches, closed six offices and two waste management plants, confiscated 15 waste transport trucks and three luxury vehicles in the
Eduardo Teodoro Garcia Simental, a.k.a “El Teo”, one of Mexico’s most-wanted drug lords with possible connections to the Arellano Felix brothers or Tijuana cartels.
It was a huge win for the often-overmatched Tijuana cops warring with the increasingly savage cartels
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
One of the world’s most feared mafia bosses accused of arms dealing, drug running, uranium trafficking and multiple murders has been captured by around 50 police commandos in Moscow
The pock-marked Semyon Mogilevich, known as the “Brainy Don” because of his economics degree, has reportedly ruled a powerful Eastern European organised crime ring since the 1990s.
He is thought to be worth around $100 million. He is wanted by the FBI, Interpol and the UK police for numerous international crimes including fraud, racketeering and money laundering
Police seized Mr Mogilevich, 61, and a large group of his bodyguards outside a Moscow supermarket on Wednesday night, Russian police confirmed today
State television showed footage of the alleged mobster as police held him and bodyguards against their luxury cars. They also broadcast film of the rarely photographed figure in custody, wearing jeans, a cap and leather jacket.
“Sergei Schneider has been arrested. He is better known as Semyon Mogilevich. He has several names, several nationalities and has been wanted for more than 15 years,” said Anzhela Kastuyeva, a Moscow police spokeswoman.
The arrest was made in connection with an investigation into an alleged $2 million tax evasion scheme run in connection with Arbat Prestige, a successful chain of Russian cosmetic stores. Vladimir Nekrasov, the owner of Arbat-Prestizh, was arrested in the same raid.
Monya Elson, a known associate of Mr Mogilevich, claimed in an interview given ten years ago that the Ukrainian was “the most powerful mobster in the world”.
An investigation by US newspaper the Village Voice, which apparently brought a death threat for its author, cited classified FBI and Mossad documents claiming that he was responsible for trafficking nuclear materials, drugs, prostitutes, precious gems, and stolen art. He was also said to have run a series of contract hit squads operating in the US and Europe.
Mr Elson claimed Mr Mogilevich, who was born in the Ukraine, controlled everything going in and out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, which he called a ‘’smugglers’ paradise
The Mogilevich family were reported to live in two opulent villas near Prague where they reportedly operated torture chambers run by young enforcers trained by veterans of the Soviet-Afghan war.
In December 1994, British police officers, tipped off by their counterparts in eastern Europe, first began investigating allegations that the Mogilevich organisation might be laundering profits from arms dealing, prostitution, extortion and drug trafficking through a firm of London solicitors.
Detective Sergeant John Wanless, who investigated the Red Mafia’s role in the UK at the time told the Sunday Times: “Semion Mogilevich is one of the world’s top criminals, who has a personal wealth of $100m. As a result of the effect of his financial impact on the City of London, he clearly falls in the category of a core criminal.”
In 1999 London investigators attempted to question him once again, this time over a $10 billion money-laundering scheme that unwittingly embroiled the Bank of New York and a network of other leading financial institutions in the UK, America and six other countries
Mr Mogilevich is also included on the FBI wanted list for racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. The Bureau warns that he should be considered armed, dangerous and an escape risk.
During a 2005 speech in Hungary Robert Mueller, then FBI director said: “Right here in Budapest, Ukrainian-born Semion Mogilevich established the headquarters of his powerful organized crime enterprise.”
The group engaged in drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution and money laundering, and organized stock fraud in the United States and Canada in which investors lost over 150 million dollars.”
UK authorities and the FBI are unlikely to ever get the opportunity to question the man even after his arrest as Russia has no extradition treaty with either country
A suspected Mafia leader has hanged himself in prison in Sicily hours after being arrested, Italian police say.
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
Ex-FBI agent gets screwed
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
Frail, wizened and wheelchair-bound with a heart complaint, 78-year-old Joey Lombardo hardly cuts the figure of a ruthless Mafia godfather allegedly behind more than a dozen Chicago murders in the 1970s and 1980s. But to the authorities in the Windy City, the gangster nicknamed “the Clown” for his wisecracks and sharp wit is perhaps their biggest catch since Al Capone almost 80 years ago
Lombardo and a handful of senior associates appeared in a federal court this week on conspiracy to murder and racketeering charges, at the start of a four-month trial that promises more intrigue than an entire series of the gangland drama The Sopranos.
The defendants were indicted along with 11 others in 2005 after an intensive FBI operation that investigators code-named “Family Secrets”, because it involves a mob captain, Nicholas Calabrese, giving evidence against his brother about Spilotro’s murder.
custody last September, he underwent heart surgery after his lawyer repeatedly complained that the authorities were ignoring his chest pains. While he was on the run, he wrote to a federal judge that he refused to give himself up because medical care in prison was “a farce”.
Although the trial is touted as the last of Chicago’s great mob courtroom dramas, Capeci believes that the mafia continues to thrive in Chicago and elswhere. “Despite pronouncements that the law enforcement community has issued for decades about the mob being dead, it’s alive and well in major metropolitan areas around the country,” he said. “There are a lot of wannabe gangsters looking to move up into the hierarchy of organised crime
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.
Into the Fray
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?’ “
On the job
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 has new site
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.
Affleck approves
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.”
Joe Perry battling infection
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
Frank Calabrese Sr. has been convicted in the government’s landmark Operation Family Secrets.
(Sun-Times file)
(Sun-Times file)
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.
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.”
Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
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
Safe distance: The Saint has been appearing in court via satellite, reportedly due to ‘dysfunctional bowels.’Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent aka “Public enema no 1″
Not for nothing is Anthony “the Saint” St. Laurent called “Public Enema No. 1.”
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
In prison, far from the Brooklyn haunts where his name was scrawled in blood, Anthony Casso stews. He stews over old vendettas. He stews over betrayals of the flesh — heart problems and prostate cancer. And Mr. Casso, the once fearsome underboss of the Lucchese family who is now serving multiple life sentences amounting to 455 years for murder, stews over his secrets: unsolved crimes that, he says in an outpouring of letters, he is eager to help close if only he could show the authorities where the bodies are buried (especially if it entails a trip outside the gates). “I would go out there in a heartbeat,” Mr. Casso said on Friday in a telephone call to a former detective seeking the mobster’s help in clearing his own name. But as much as he hopes for a taste of freedom, or a reduction of his sentence, prosecutors question what his information may be worth and what perils may lie in reopening contact with an antagonist some compare to the fictional monster Hannibal Lecter. Dangling as a prize is the answer to one of New York’s most scandalous mysteries: how 400 pounds of heroin and cocaine, much of it seized in the so-called French Connection drug bust in 1962, were spirited out of the police property vault for resale back on the street. By the time the record theft was discovered in December 1972, the drugs — then valued at $73 million — had been replaced with flour and cornstarch.
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
Before he became a mob rat, Gambino associate John Alite says he was a horndog who had a secret affair with Mafia princess Victoria Gotti.
Alite took center stage Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court in the murder trial of reputed hit man Charles Carneglia, but much of his testimony was about how close he was to John A. (Junior) Gotti – and the mob scion’s older sister.
“I was fooling around with his sister Vicky Gotti on the sneak,” Alite said, roughly fixing the time frame in the late 1980s, when she was married to her then-husband, Carmine Agnello.
Alite said the husband came after him and he ended up shooting one of Agnello’s goons. Alite said Junior refused to give him permission to retaliate against Agnello.
Reached for comment, Victoria Gotti ridiculed the heavily-tattooed thug’s claim of a tryst with her.
“He’s an out-and-out liar – he’s vermin,” she said. “This animal [Alite] had a crush on me from the first time I met him. He was in our bridal party and he tried to kiss me at my wedding. He missed the cheek by a lot.
“Carmine knew he had a crush on me. That’s why he despised him.
“In Mr. Alite’s dreams would someone like me even give him a second glance let alone ‘fool around’ with him. I was raised a good Catholic girl and always played by the rules.
“He’s an out-and-out liar – he’s vermin,” she said. “This animal [Alite] had a crush on me from the first time I met him. He was in our bridal party and he tried to kiss me at my wedding. He missed the cheek by a lot.
“Carmine knew he had a crush on me. That’s why he despised him.
“In Mr. Alite’s dreams would someone like me even give him a second glance let alone ‘fool around’ with him. I was raised a good Catholic girl and always played by the rules.
“I met and married my first and only boyfriend. I never slept with Alite or anyone else.
“Dare him to take a lie detector test. I will take a lie detector test anytime, anywhere.”
“Dare him to take a lie detector test. I will take a lie detector test anytime, anywhere.”
Alite said Junior Gotti’s refusal to approve a retaliatory strike against Agnello was one of the reasons their close friendship broke up.
Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Burlingame, the witness said he grew up around gangsters in Woodhaven, Queens, and had a promising future at one time as a baseball pitcher.
He said he threw out his arm after one semester at the University of Tampa and returned to his old stomping grounds selling cocaine in bars on Jamaica Ave. in Queens.
He said he threw out his arm after one semester at the University of Tampa and returned to his old stomping grounds selling cocaine in bars on Jamaica Ave. in Queens.
Alite met Junior Gotti in the early 1980s and began paying him a cut of his $1 million-a-month drug profits. He said he and Junior were best friends for a decade. After rival drug dealers robbed an associate, Junior Gotti accompanied them on a drive-by in which two of the rivals were shot, he testified.
“After that [Junior] didn’t look at me like some college kid no more,” Alite said.
Getting close to the younger Gotti was Alite’s opening to the Mafia big leagues. They became inseparable, and Junior and his late father, Gambino crime boss John Gotti, reaped the profits of Alite’s litany of crimes.
“You name it, we did it,” Alite said.
“After that [Junior] didn’t look at me like some college kid no more,” Alite said.
Getting close to the younger Gotti was Alite’s opening to the Mafia big leagues. They became inseparable, and Junior and his late father, Gambino crime boss John Gotti, reaped the profits of Alite’s litany of crimes.
“You name it, we did it,” Alite said.
Alite was Albanian, so he could never be inducted into the Gambino family, but he had his own crew, as did two other non-Italian, uniquely powerful mob associates – James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke and Joseph (Joe) Watts.
On Feb. 14, 1988, Junior Gotti was best man at Alite’s wedding in Queens. The date was selected not because it was Valentine’s Day, but as a sign of respect for Junior because it was his birthday.
Wearing a gray sweat suit, the heavily tattooed thug said Junior’s bad-mouthing of his other close friends left him feeling it was only a matter of time before he would be left out in the cold, too.
“I didn’t believe in the life,” Alite said. “It’s kind of like reading a brochure when you’re a kid. You’re going to Paradise Island and everything looks nice, but you forgot to read the fine print.”
Wearing a gray sweat suit, the heavily tattooed thug said Junior’s bad-mouthing of his other close friends left him feeling it was only a matter of time before he would be left out in the cold, too.
“I didn’t believe in the life,” Alite said. “It’s kind of like reading a brochure when you’re a kid. You’re going to Paradise Island and everything looks nice, but you forgot to read the fine print.”
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
A former Chicago police officer accused of joining forces with the mob and collecting loan shark debts and extortion payments was sentenced today to 12 years in federal prison.
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
The FBI plans to resume digging in a Long Island field used by mobsters as a burial ground.
FBI spokesman James Margolin said agents plan to use heavy excavation equipment to search for two victims of mob hits believed to buried in the East Farmingdale industrial park.
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 .
A feared Gambino family hit man known for dissolving corpses in acid faced life without parole after his Tuesday conviction for racketeering and four murders
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Charles Carneglia, 62, betrayed no emotion as the Brooklyn federal jury returned its verdict at the start of the day. He never looked at the courtroom crowd – including the wife and twin daughters of one murder victim – as he was led away
Charles Carneglia, 62, betrayed no emotion as the Brooklyn federal jury returned its verdict at the start of the day. He never looked at the courtroom crowd – including the wife and twin daughters of one murder victim – as he was led away
“I’m happy the animal who murdered my father will be in jail the rest of his life,” said Milta Delgado-Wheeler, whose father was killed by Carneglia during a 1990 Kennedy Airport heist.
“He has no remorse for the victims or families he has hurt.”
Jurors apparently reached their verdict late Monday – and then slept on it before coming back. In addition to the murders, Carneglia was convicted of extortion and robbery charges after the jury deliberated for five days.
Carneglia – one of John Gotti’s most-trusted hitmen – was found guilty of killing armored car guard Jose Delgado Rivera at Kennedy Airport.
The slain guard’s widow, retired NYPD detective Ana Delgado, gasped loudly before bursting into tears as the verdict was returned. The defendant faces a June sentencing.
Carneglia was not found guilty in the March 1976 slaying of court officer Albert Gelb. Prosecutors said Carneglia killed Gelb to prevent his testimony in a gun case.
“While we didn’t get exactly what we wanted, it’s important this guy will sit in a jail cell the rest of his life and wake up every morning and not be able to see the sun,” said court officers union head Dennis Quirk.
Seven mob turncoats portrayed Carneglia as a murderous Gambino family enforcer and a member of the late mob boss Gotti’s inner circle.
Prosecutors said Carneglia became a made man in 1990 after murdering fellow Gambino member Louis DiBono in a garage beneath the World Trade Center. Carneglia was convicted of that murder.
The other two victims were a pair of mob associates, both stabbed through the heart: Sal Puma in 1983 and Michael Cotillo in 1977.
Co-conspirator Kevin McMahon, a 5-foot-2 hood known to other mobsters as “The Midget,” provided the most damning evidence against Carneglia – including witness accounts of the Rivera and DiBono slayings.
McMahon was a homeless teen when he was taken in by Carneglia’s brother, John. On the witness stand, he recounting growing up in the mob, spinning tales of jury tampering, body disposal, torture and murder.
Carneglia dissolved the bodies of some victims with acid, prosecutors say.
Carneglia’s lawyer offered a combination defense, citing his client’s heavy boozing and heavy beard as evidence the mobster had turned his back on the Mafia.
Carneglia, employing a strategy used by John A. (Junior) Gotti, claimed he left the Gambino family in 2001 – well beyond the five-year statute of limitations for racketeering.
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
For months, Michael Marcello passed along key information about a top mob snitch during his 2003 prison visits to his half-brother, James “Little Jimmy” Marcello — the Chicago Outfit’s top boss.
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.
Ralph “Ralphie Head” Abruzzo, granted a one-night reprieve from house arrest, covers Louis Prima tunes in South Philly last night
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
Mr Messina and Ms Di Leo run a shop in Palermo selling mafia-free goods.
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.
Mob tape may play role at sentencing
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
Magazine publisher Frank DiMateo has filed a lawsuit against Degenerate Dirtbag Curtis Sliwa over a YouTube video the Guardian Angels leader made, charging DiMateo’s publishing company was part of an organized crime money laundering outfit. .In his January 20 YouTube video (which has been taken down by Sliwa), Sliwa is seen crouched down next to a news kiosk in a New York City Subway (btw, it is against the law to photograph the New York City subway station and it is unknown if Sliwa had permission to shoot there) holding DiMateo’s MobCandy magazine. In his trademark rat-a-tat-tat, moolah-schmoolah delivery, Sliwa contends the magazine is “put out by the .” He then states MobCandy does not have sponsors and asked, “how are they able to exist when they have no advertising?”. Answering his own question, Sliwa concluded, “Maybe they’re laundering money through vendors, drug dealers, criminals — people with lots of fat cash, who got to be able to launder it properly before they can use it — [a] great opportunity for these mags.”
Mafialife.com’s Chris Chiarmonte posted a video response to Sliwa’s charges, proving that the lifestyle magazine actually has many sponsors and Mob Candy is a legitimate
http://www.therightperspective.org/sliwa-sued-for-mob-slander/
Anthony Nicodemo
Reputed mob soldier Anthony Nicodemo was sentenced to two a four-year suspended sentence and fined $10,000 this morning for his role in an alleged mob-linked, illegal sports betting ring run out of the poker lounge of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Michael Donio imposed the sentence following a brief hearing in which he rejected the state’s argument that the book-making connection was connected to organized crime.
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
FEDERAL COURT | Accused of leaking witness security info
Michael Vecchione of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was critical of fed role in Mafia cop case.
There’s a new Mafia turf war in Brooklyn – but this time, it’s the prosecutors who are doing battle.
Michael Vecchione the rackets bureau chief in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, has rankled the feds by claiming in a new book that they swiped the celebrated Mafia cops case and then hogged all the glory
Michael Vecchione the rackets bureau chief in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, has rankled the feds by claiming in a new book that they swiped the celebrated Mafia cops case and then hogged all the glory
.
Vecchione complains in “Friends of the Family” that federal prosecutors claimed most of the credit for nailing crooked NYPD Detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa
Vecchione complains in “Friends of the Family” that federal prosecutors claimed most of the credit for nailing crooked NYPD Detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa
.
While turf battles between local and federal law enforcement agencies are common, Vecchione’s stinging criticism is unusual because he still works for the district attorney and is supposed to cooperate with the feds on ongoing cases
While turf battles between local and federal law enforcement agencies are common, Vecchione’s stinging criticism is unusual because he still works for the district attorney and is supposed to cooperate with the feds on ongoing cases
.
“I don’t see how anybody can deal with him after he’s violated the sanctity of confidential conversations for mercenaryreasons,” a federal law enforcement source said
“I don’t see how anybody can deal with him after he’s violated the sanctity of confidential conversations for mercenaryreasons,” a federal law enforcement source said
.
The feds agreed to let Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office announce arrests and prosecute one of the murders linked to the Mafia cops, the book claims
The feds agreed to let Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office announce arrests and prosecute one of the murders linked to the Mafia cops, the book claims
.
But they went back on their word, according to the book, which Vecchione wrote with retired NYPD Detective Thomas Dades and author David Fisher
But they went back on their word, according to the book, which Vecchione wrote with retired NYPD Detective Thomas Dades and author David Fisher
.
“For them to tell us that they didn’t say exactly what they said to me was such an act of cowardice and betrayal that I couldn’t find words to explain it,” Vecchione said
“For them to tell us that they didn’t say exactly what they said to me was such an act of cowardice and betrayal that I couldn’t find words to explain it,” Vecchione said
.
Eppolito, 60, and Caracappa, 67, were convicted in 2006 of participating in eight murders for Luchese crime boss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso and leaking confidential information to the gangster.
Casso revealed in 1994 the cops had been on his payroll for years
Eppolito, 60, and Caracappa, 67, were convicted in 2006 of participating in eight murders for Luchese crime boss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso and leaking confidential information to the gangster.
Casso revealed in 1994 the cops had been on his payroll for years
.
But the feds couldn’t make a case against the rogue detectives until a decade later when Dades and the district attorney’s office helped expose their involvement in the murder of a mob associate.
Vecchione unleashed his harshest attack on Greg Andres, the current criminal division chief of the U.S. attorney’s office.
But the feds couldn’t make a case against the rogue detectives until a decade later when Dades and the district attorney’s office helped expose their involvement in the murder of a mob associate.
Vecchione unleashed his harshest attack on Greg Andres, the current criminal division chief of the U.S. attorney’s office.
“As far as Vecchione was concerned, Andres was a typically arrogant poker-up-his-ass, know-it-all fed,” the book states. “His animosity toward Andres went back to a wiseguy case … in which Andres [credited] the FBI for work it hadn’t done.
“
Hynes, who approved Vecchione’s book deal, insisted there’s no feud
Hynes, who approved Vecchione’s book deal, insisted there’s no feud
.
“Our working relationships with the U.S. attorney’s office are excellent and any bump in the road that might have occurred was just that. There are no problems between us and I don’t expect any,” Hynes said.
Andres and U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell declined comment.
“Our working relationships with the U.S. attorney’s office are excellent and any bump in the road that might have occurred was just that. There are no problems between us and I don’t expect any,” Hynes said.
Andres and U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell declined comment.
But former top federal prosecutors panned the book.
“Public confidence in the integrity of the Brooklyn DA’s office is only eroded when a rackets bureau chief writes and shops a book about a murder case he is investigating and preparng for trial,” said George Stamboulidis, managing partner of the law firm Baker Hostetler.
Thomas Seigel, the former chief of the U.S. attorney’s organized crime section – who was not involved in the Mafia cops case – said: “The incredibly dedicated members of state and federal law enforcement typically and laudably refrain from criticizing their colleagues in the press, let alone a book, over internal squabbles. It is hard to see how law enforcement as a whole benefits from such personal and public criticism.”
Vecchione and Dades wrote the book three years ago but held off its publication until the defendants had exhausted their appeals.
The 2006 jury verdict was thrown out by Judge Jack Weinstein on a legal technicality but reinstated by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The cops were recently sentenced to life in prison.
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.
By Peter Gelzinis
Tommy Donahue got through yesterday with his hope intact. That was more than he expected.
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
Italy: Six women among mafia suspects arrested in north
Reggio Calabria, 20 April (AKI) -
Reggio Calabria, 20 April (AKI) – Six women were among 35 people arrested by anti-mafia police on Monday on suspicion of murder, attempted murder, extortion and association with the Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta. The female suspects are alleged to have played a prominent role in the ‘Ndrangheta’s Caia-Gioffre and Lagana crime families.
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.
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.
The Italian government has vowed to route the mafia. http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3233224806
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:
Mexican cartels unloading drugs to
Italian mafia
Mexican drug traffickers are funneling cocaine to Italian organized crime, and some shipments are moving through Dallas.
“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.
Camorra syndicate
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.
Cartel crackdowns
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
thanks Jason Trahan
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
MAFIA RING IN NORTHERN ITALY BUSTED
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.
Former state Civil Service commissioner William P. Monahan (left) filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo
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) –
Deliberations under way in U.S. marshal’s trial
US Marshal Ambrose
Deliberations under way in U.S. marshal’s trial
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)
Total of 34 charged
Lawrence Ackerman
A Clifton mailman, a Fort Lee insurance executive and a food vendor at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field participated in a Mafia-run sports gambling ring that handled more than $1 million in illegal wagers each week, authorities charged today.
A total of 34 people have been charged for their roles in the ring, 28 of whom were swept up during a series of raids across North Jersey and Westchester County that began Tuesday, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said. Detectives executed 20 search warrants that netted $1.2 million, he said.
At least four others turned themselves in today and were brought to Superior Court in Hackensack with the 28 who were arrested. All pleaded not guilty to charges of promoting gambling and conspiracy to promote gambling. Five were charged with racketeering.
The ring was divided into separate bookmaking and money laundering operations, one led by John “Blue” DeFroscia of Warren, a reputed soldier in the Genovese crime family, and the other headed by an alleged family associate, Thomas Conforti of Fairfield, Molinelli said. Both men ran a large network of bookies and passed part of the profits to the Genovese crime family hierarchy, he said
The ring employed a system of code names and passwords for gamblers to place wagers on sporting events by calling telephone numbers or visiting Web sites, he said. The “wire room” that provided the betting lines and accepted the wagers was located in Costa Rica in an effort to keep the ring beyond the reach of American authorities, Molinelli said.
Bookies in the North Jersey area collected losses and paid winnings to the bettors, Molinelli said.
Molinelli said that DeFroscia, 48, and Conforti, 44, used middle men to insulate themselves from their bookies, hoping to escape detection by law enforcement. Michael Cirelli, 49, of Nutley served as Conforti’s right-hand man, while DeFroscia employed Paul “Shortline” Weber, 40, of New Rochelle, N.Y., and Gerald “Jay” Napolitano, 60, of Belleville, Molinelli said.
Weber, Napolitano and other ranking members would discretely exchange cash with co-conspirators in parking lots, bookstores and diners or on the street, Molinelli said. Investigators watched as Napolitano met with one of his bookies, or “agents,” Louis Orangeo, 41, of Newark, several times in Clifton parking lots, the prosecutor said.
Orangeo, a carrier with the U.S. Postal Service, would meet with Napolitano in his mail truck along his Clifton route, passing an envelope through a window as though it was a piece of mail, Molinelli said.
Weber, who works for Aramark, the food vending giant, exchanged cash with members of the ring at both Yankee Stadium and Citi Field while detectives watched, Molinelli said.
“In one transaction he would sell a hotdog and a beer, and in the next transaction, he would be either paying out money to somebody who won or receiving money from someone who lost,” Molinelli said.
Almost half of the $1.2 million was seized from Weber, Molinelli said.
“That is not hot dog money; that’s gambling money,” Molinelli said.
Molinelli said there were no instances of extortion or violence in these operations, but he said bettors could be in danger if they end up owing money to the bookies.
“Organized crime has a very good collection rate,” he said. “You don’t want to be a bettor who owes money to these individuals.”
The Genovese family historically has been the most powerful and entrenched Mafia syndicate in North Jersey.
The investigation, dubbed “Operation Strike Out,” began in September 2008 and initially focused on money laundering, Molinelli said.
Conforti was among 10 people indicted in 2003 on charges they operated an Atlantic City-to-Las Vegas sports betting ring that funneled thousands of dollars a day into the coffers of organized crime. That ring was connected to a North Jersey faction of the New York City-based Lucchese crime family. Conforti was described as a “co-leader” of the ring, where illegal bets were accepted over a network of toll-free telephone numbers.
Conforti’s attorney, Vincent Scoca, said his client maintains his innocence but declined to comment further.
Robert Walsh, 44, of Fort Lee was also nabbed in this latest raid.
In 2000, Walsh was among three reputed mob associates arrested on charges of trying to peddle “cheesy” counterfeit art in a carefully orchestrated mob plot. He later pleaded guilty to the charges.
Authorities said DeFroscia works at Clark Printing and Graphics on Market Street in Saddle Brook. However, an employee there said that DeFroscia didn’t work there.
“We have to get all the information and we will make a decision as to what we are going to do,” said DeFroscia’s attorney, Richard Verde.
Orangeo has worked as a mail carrier in Clifton for “several years,” said Todd Piasecki, supervisor at the post office on Paulison Avenue. Piasecki said he was shocked to hear of Orangeo’s arrest, adding that, as far as he knew, Orangeo was still employed as a mail carrier.
Molinelli said that no bettors were arrested, but he said he hoped the sweep would send a message. There are a lot of bettors out there that tomorrow are going to read the paper … and are going to say, ‘You know, maybe I better really stop this,’” he said. “That’s something that we always strive for.”
How many Italys are there? David Lane’s book about the Mafia suggests that there are at least two: the official state, and another with laws of its own. In the second, people call each other honourable – they become part of an onorata società – and they stand in local elections; it’s just that they murder people. But why? It’s a mystery this book never quite clears up.
The bloodshed is unremitting. Officials in Reggio Calabria, on the toe tip of Italy, were surprised that a blood feud claimed only 600 lives. In other blood feuds, children have been killed, either for being from the wrong family, or else just getting in the way. When Pope John Paul II came to Agrigento, to remind people that killing is wrong, two priests were shot shortly afterwards as a counter-reminder, and the Cosa Nostra bombed churches in Rome
read more Tom Payne
Royal’s horrible attack a bloody scene
Man who attacked Royal’s shaved head like De Niro in Taxi Driver
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver
The man who drove his car into a crowded Dutch royal parade had shaved his hair into a Mohican like the homocidal anti-hero of the film Taxi Driver before launching the attack
Investigators are focusing on the theory that 38-year old Karst Tates, who died of his injuries yesterday, had embarked on a mission of vengeance against society after losing his job as a night-shift security guard earlier this year.
His neighbours and locals in the town of Huissen have described an isolated but polite man whose dress sense resembled that of Travis Bickle, the loner played by Robert de Niro in the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which he plots to assassinate the US president.
“He wore rolled trousers with high black boots. His hair was often very short and totally shaved at the sides,” said one neighbour
Tates was attempting to attack Queen Beatrix and other members of the royal family during an annual parade in Appeldoorn, 60 miles east of Amsterdam.
They looked on in shock as he crashed his black Suzuki Swift car at high speed into spectators. Five people were killed and 12 others were injured as he rammed through two police barricades and smashed through a crowd celebrating Queen’s Day towards an open top bus carrying members of the royal family.
Pulled from his smashed-up car by police, he told an officer that the attack was aimed at the royal family.
Officials have revealed that Mr Tates was carrying a map of the queen’s route but his precise motive has remained unclear.
“It is very difficult now that we no longer have the suspect to reconstruct what was behind this,” said Fred de Graaf, Apeldoorn’s mayor.
“An element of uncertainty will remain because you can no longer question the suspect. So the last piece of the puzzle will remain in question.”
Neighbours have described Mr Tates as a “neat, polite and rather reserved man” who faced eviction from his house, which new occupants were due to occupy this weekend.
He had removed most of his possessions in the days before the attack.
“He had been inaccessible to his family for months. He reappeared last month and said he was depressed,” said a local.
Following the attack celebrations were cancelled for Queen’s Day, the Dutch national holiday that draws millions of people to street fairs, parades and parties around the country. The royal family is now reassessing its security and plans for next year’s event.
Mobs unseen Victims
John Kass: “Murder isn’t just between the killer and target, especially Outfit murders. The victims are found among living survivors, legitimate folk spaced apart, often unknowing, as if on a vince reaching back
The 1997 killing of Sam Annerino touched the life of U.S. Marshal John Amberose .
The Mobs unseen Victims
Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti took his own life rathen than face prison
Big Jim Colosimo Killed
Seven were gunned down in the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929
John Kass
May 3, 2009
Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose — convicted last week of passing information to the Chicago Outfit about a top mob witness — was only 7 years old when Joe the janitor was found dead.
His name? Joseph Lipuma.
A few miles to the east in Evergreen Park lived Joe Lipuma’s young nephew. A top student at Evergreen Park High School, an excellent athlete, he was so impressive that he was accepted as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But he didn’t like the military life, came home after a year, went to law school, and became a federal prosecutor before becoming a criminal defense attorney.
Recently, at John Ambrose’s trial, I met that man. He was John Ambrose’s attorney, Francis Lipuma, Joe’s nephew. I disagree with him about Ambrose, but I couldn’t help admiring his skill in the courtroom.
I was just a kid — a freshman — when my uncle was killed,” Frank Lipuma told me the other day after the Ambrose guilty verdict. “All I really remember about it was pain. Pain and sadness throughout my house, throughout my family.”
Just in case you think I’m drawing some nefarious inference about Frank Lipuma, let me be clear: I’m not.
Lipuma was an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago. To become a federal prosecutor, applicants must undergo a rigorous FBI background check.
They reach back into your childhood, interview your friends from elementary school and scrub your family. If there were anything there, the FBI would have found it. But what they did find was a young man who felt the pain of his Uncle Joe’s death but never learned why he was killed
“I do remember the funeral home found he’d been shot, and that police thought it was a heart attack, but someone had put a gun behind his ear,” Frank Lipuma told me. “It was terrible, all that pain in the family then. He was involved with people. There was just speculation. He knew Annerino, they said. I was just a kid playing baseball, trying to get to college.”
Through weeks of testimony in Ambrose’s trial, we heard about the Outfit informant he was supposed to protect: the deadly hit man turned star government witness in the historic Family Secrets case, Nicholas Calabrese.
Calabrese was in the federal witness protection program. Ambrose was convicted of leaking information to the mob about what Calabrese told the feds concerning dozens and dozens of unsolved Outfit murders.
One of the murders involved Annerino, the friend of Joe Lipuma and Ronnie Magliano who was known as “Sam the Mule.”
The leaked information was contained in the FBI’s 2002 threat assessment detailing Nick Calabrese’s cooperation, a document prosecutors alleged was read by Ambrose before he leaked details of it to the mob through an Outfit messenger boy:
“Nicholas Calabrese will testify that he, along with Joseph LaMantia, Frank Calabrese Sr. and Frank Saladino, planned and attempted to murder Samuel Annerino. Ronald Jarrett, who is deceased [murdered], also participated in the planning. … Though the attempt was unsuccessful, Nicholas Calabrese later learned that the murder was later carried out by Joseph Scalise. William Petrocelli and Anthony Borsellino also participated in the murder, but are deceased.”
I asked Frank Lipuma if he became a federal prosecutor in part to find out who killed his Uncle Joe, but he wouldn’t say: “I couldn’t find any hard facts. I deal in facts.”
The Chicago Outfit has many victims, and some might consider Ambrose to be one of them. He wanted to ingratiate himself with the bosses. He’ll soon be fired from federal service and may even serve prison time. Joe Lipuma was a victim, too, and so was his family.
Murder isn’t just between killer and target, especially Outfit murders. The victims are found among living survivors, legitimate folk spaced apart, often unknowing, as if on a vine reaching back through time, remembering.
source John Kass
Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa
Monday, May 4th 2009, 4:00 AM
Mafia cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were partners as detectives, partners in crime, neighbors in Las Vegas – and cellmates after being convicted as mob hit men.
Mafia cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were partners as detectives, partners in crime, neighbors in Las Vegas – and cellmates after being convicted as mob hit men.
Now, their illicit partnership has been broken up forever
.
Caracappa, 67, who requested a prison on the East Coast, has been shipped out to Victorville Penitentiary in California to serve his life-plus-80-year sentence
.
The high-security prison 86 miles northeast of Los Angeles was once home to notorious inmates John Walker Lindh – the so-called American Taliban – and Ingmar Guandiqu suspected of killing Capitol Hill intern Chandra Levy.
The high-security prison 86 miles northeast of Los Angeles was once home to notorious inmates John Walker Lindh – the so-called American Taliban – and Ingmar Guandiqu suspected of killing Capitol Hill intern Chandra Levy.
Two prisoners have been slain there since it opened in 2004, and a bomb exploded in the prison in February.
“It’s not a good place to be, but it’s better than where he was,” said Caracappa’s lawyer Daniel Nobel.
Sources said the laconic Caracappa was miserable having to spend every waking moment with a loudmouth like Eppolito in the Brooklyn federal lockup in Sunset Park
.
Because they’re ex-cops, they were locked down 23 hours a day as a safety precaution and kept away from other inmates.
Because they’re ex-cops, they were locked down 23 hours a day as a safety precaution and kept away from other inmates.
“If you have two persons together in a small cell that is the size of a closet for some New Yorkers, most marriages would dissolve under those circumstances,” Nobel said of their time at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Eppolito, 60, is still awaiting word from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons as to which cinder-block tomb he will be sent to die.
“It was very peculiar to me that they were housed together,” said Eppolito’s lawyer Joseph Bondy. “The alternative was solitary confinement.”
Eppolito and Caracappa are appealing their convictions, arguing that their trial lawyers were incompetent.
In a letter to Judge Jack Weinstein, Eppolito’s daughter Andrea wrote, “ The rest of my life will be dedicated to bringing him home where he belongs.”
Read more John Marzulli
(ANSA) Messina, May 5 – Police on Tuesday took into
custody five suspected Mafia figures and in doing so believe
they may have been able to avoid a bloody feud between rival
gangs here in Sicily.
The arrests were made in connection with the gangland
slayings of Carmelo De Pasquale last January and Carmelo
Mazza in March which appeared to be the result of a power
struggle between clans in the nearby town of Barcellona Pozzo
di Gotto.
Those arrested were named as Angelo Caliri, 42; Stefano
Lino Coppolino, 28; Michele Coppolino, 25; Francesco
Chiovetta, 27; and Cosimo Graziano Scardino, 50.
All were arrested on charges of Mafia association, while
Caliri and Stefano Coppolino also face charges of aggravated
extortion and intimidation.
Investigators said Coppolino and Caliri were lieutenants
under Mazza and took over his extortion ring after the boss
was gunned down.
They were arrested in Asti, in northwestern Italy, where
they apparently fled in fear of being the target of an attack
by a rival gang seeking to move in on the late boss`
`business`. thanks ansa also
Palermo, 5 May (AKI) – Italian police on Tuesday seized real estate, bank accounts and other assets worth over 300 million euros owned by prominent mafia suspects, including Salvatore Biondino, the former driver of jailed ‘boss of bosses’ Toto Riina.
The assets were seized during the ‘Scanner’ operation on the orders of magistrates in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. The operation had been probing around 70 companies and individuals.
Investigators analysed bank and financial accounts and the sale and purchase of real estate and companies registered in false names.
The real owners, traced by investigators were mafia suspects believed to be linked to another jailed mafia boss, Salvatore Lo Piccolo.
A building and demolition firm and a hospital equipment firm were among the assets seized in the operation.
All the suspects, including Biondino, allegedly belong to the Carini crime family. They were arrested on 21 January 2007.
In a separate operation on Tuesday, police arrested five mafia suspects in the northeastern Sicilian port city of Messina.
The unnamed suspects are accused of extortion and acts of violence towards a priest.
Lo Piccolo, and his son Sandro, were arrested last November as they attended a meeting of a governing body of the Sicilian Mafia – or ‘cupola’ – in a villa outside Palermo.
Lo Piccolo replaced Bernardo Provenzano, Riina’s successor as the Mafia ‘Godfather’, who was arrested in 2006 after over 40 years on the run. thanks
Security
The mafia may exert undue influence over the Italian wind market
Anti-Mafia magistrates in Sicily have opened a sweeping investigation into the wind power sector where local officials, entrepreneurs and crime gangs are suspected of collusion in the construction of lucrative wind farms before their eventual sale to multinational companies.
Italy grants some of the most generous subsidies for wind power in the Europe, which makes the market ripe for exploitation. Even if a wind farm isn’t in use, Italy’s national grid operator pays wind farm owners anyway.
Prosecutors suspect the hand of the Mafia in fixing permits and building wind farms that are then sold on to Italian and eventually foreign companies.
In an effort to assert its control over the sector, the Mafia is suspected of destroying two wind towers that were in storage in the port of Trapani after their delivery by ship from northern Europe, local officials told the FT.
“It is a refined system of connections to business and politicians. A handful of people control the wind sector. Many companies exist but it is the same people behind them,” said Mr Scarpinato, whose investigations have focused on the evolution of the Mafia into a modern business organisation.
evolving and finding new business opportunities, including the renewable energy sector, by exploiting its historic grip over territory, construction and ability to corrupt local officials.
Several wind farms built by companies suspected of being linked to the Mafia have not functioned for one or two years, in some cases because of shoddy construction. “This is the amazing thing, that developers got public money to build wind farms which did not produce electricity,” the prosecutor said.
thanks Jay Yarow
Six ex-Toledo players charged in point-shaving
Six former players — three each from Toledo’s basketball and football programs, as well as two Detroit area businessmen — were charged with conspiracy to commit sports bribery in an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
University of Toledo officials have known for two years the bad news was coming. It finally struck Wednesday when six former players — three each from Toledo’s basketball and football programs, as well as two Detroit area businessmen — were charged with conspiracy to commit sports bribery in an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. read more http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/sports/college/football&sa=NCF&eid=4146980#bodyText
Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio
Raymon Patriarca
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Attorney Raymond Mansolillo , a former federal agent himself, is now representing the man state and federal authorities have pegged as boss of the New England crime family for the past 13 years, Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio.
“This is old history it’s an old game and they just obsess. It’s like a big game hunter trying to get the white tiger that no longer exists,” said Mansolillo, during an exclusive interview with Target 12 Investigator Tim White.
When asked if Manocchio is indeed the boss, Mansolillo said, “It’s a myth.”
The attorney claimed the feds are wasting resources and taxpayer money.
“It’s time that Federal Hill stop getting the reputation as you know, mobsters and lobsters, it’s ridiculous,” he said.
Manocchio, who turns 82 next month, has not been charged with a crime. However, he sought Mansolillo’s representation after a run-in with the feds late last fall.
Law enforcement sources said Manocchio was at Euro Bistro , a Federal Hill restaurant Manocchio frequents, when a worker from a Providence strip club handed him an envelope stuffed with several thousands of dollars in cash.
Minutes after Manocchio took the envelope, two federal agents, including veteran organized crime fighter Joseph Degnan, moved in and seized the money. Investigators believe the cash is “tribute money” or a payment made to a kingpin of a crime family.
Though Manocchio has not been charged with a crime, sources said the FBI is attempting to apply significant pressure.
Mansolillo would not get specific on the on-going probe, however he said the FBI’s “obsession” with cracking down on old school mobsters is tired.
“You have all these resources put on him and the agencies can tell you they follow him from one place to another to another to another. What does that mean? What is it doing?” Mansolillo asked. “We’re wasting precious resources and taxpayer’s money.”
Mansolillo, who spent more than 15 years as a federal agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, said law enforcement should be focusing on powerful Eurasian and Asian crime syndicates – crime families the FBI itself calls the new face of organized crime.
Mansolillo: It’s been over for 25 years.
Tim White: The mob doesn’t exist here?
Mansolillo: The mob is defunct here.
Mansolillo’s assessment of organized crime in New England is not shared by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeffrey Sallet.
“It is the top priority for organized crime for the New England region,” Sallet said.
Sallet runs the Providence-based New England Organized Crime Office for the FBI. He said the agency assesses threats region by region.
“Because we have people working one threat does not mean we do not have the appropriate amount of people working another threat,” Sallet said. “Just because [La Cosa Nostra] is not leaving people dead in the streets does not mean they are not having an impact on the state or society that we live in.”
Sallet would not discuss the investigation into Manocchio. However, Mansolillo said he’s reached out to the Providence office of the FBI to let them know he’s now representing the boss.
“If they have an issue with him, we’ll walk through the front door and we’ll walk right out the front door after that,” he said.
Click here to see what Mansolillo said about Manocchio’s name appearing in court documents surrounding the alleged assassination attempt by reputed capo Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent.
thanks Tim White
Mobster arrested last year by Italian police. (Marcello Paternostro/AFP/Getty)
Still very much in the game
Two themes have emerged from recent media coverage of organized crime. On the one hand, protests like those held in Naple two months ago and sweeping arrestsare said to signal the decline of the Mob. On the other, the international financial crisis is said to present new opportunities for mafiosi to take advantage of credit-constrained conditions to seize control of businesses and gain ground against the law.
As to the first point, this sort of give-and-take between the forces of order and disorder has been going on for most of a century. Mussolini near broke thembut the US occupation put them back in business. Corruption is ingrained in certain parts of the world; see the municipal scandal in Naples and a medical scam in SicilyAs to the second, cash is king and the mafia has cash.
Stepping back, the larger issue is that organized crime is not a problem, for problems can be solved. It is a condition with which one deals. The last major round of globalization (1870-1914) saw the large local mobs — Sicilian Mafia,, Neapolitan Camorra Chinese Tongs Corse Unione etc. — all go worldwide. Today, as in the past, globalization offers new vistas for such groups. Two points.
. Drugs and people are huge businesses for smugglers and illegal local dealers. The failure of the First World to be serious about either of these things creates quite rich transnational networks. Such networks can be used to move terrorists, weapons, restricted nuclear technologies, etc. The smart ones won’t do it — brings down too much scrutiny from the police — but enough of the players are undereducated thugs with attitude who will deal in anything for a short-term profit. As these crews tend to be linked but mostly independent, rather than the top-down Godfather-type empires, one can always find some wild boy who will do your deal.
2. Cultural “diversity” means demographic replacement in many areas. This, in turn, creates situations of social chaos and lack of cohension which, again, leave openings on the internal security front. Italy and Spain, for example, are both in the process of becoming national states that lack a clearly defined national population as immigrants with little interest in becoming genuine socio-cultural nations, dilute the native population
thanks Stanford Review read down
Informant squeals copper forces sex on her
Barbara Lenahan
A gum-chewing motor-mouth Brooklyn drug addict known as The Blond testified Thursday she was forced to have sex with a cop and was paid off in cocaine for ratting out her dealers.
Barbara Lenahan, looking older than her 40 years as she mumbled and spoke so fast that court officers could barely keep up with her, fingered NYPD Sgt. Michael Arenella as one of the cops she gave information to.
But the brunt of her testimony seemed to damage dirty cop Jerry Bowens, who pleaded guilty this year to conspiring with Arenella to rip off an undercover officer posing as a drug dealer
.
Lenahan said Bowens, 43, who is facing charges of killing his girlfriend Catherine Donofrio and shooting her friend Melisssa Simmonsin March, recruited her as an informant after an Oct. 19, 2007, drug arrest.
Lenahan said Bowens, 43, who is facing charges of killing his girlfriend Catherine Donofrio and shooting her friend Melisssa Simmonsin March, recruited her as an informant after an Oct. 19, 2007, drug arrest.
“trial.He said I could work for him. He’d also give me something on the side, whatever I wanted, whatever, cocaine,” Lenahan said, nervously twirling a tissue as she stammered before Justice Gustin Reichbach at Arenella’s bench
Seven days later, Bowens met alone with Lenahan and forced her to have sex. read more Scott Shifrel
Busted Suitcase Carmine Agnello SR
whining goldbrick Carmine Agnello Jr
May 13, 2009
Posted: 1:54 am
May 13, 2009
“We don’t consider him our father.”
Victoria Gotti’s eldest son, CarmineAgnello Jr ., blasted his namesake yesterday for leaving the mob princess and his brothers on the verge of homelessness.
“My dad did this to us,” said Agnello Jr., 23. “He decided once he got out of jail he was going to get another life, and he left us behind with the burden.”
“He did his kids wrong, and he did his wife wrong,” Carmine said outside the Old Westbury, LI, mansion where he temporarily lives with Victoria, the ex-wife of Carmine Sr., and a daughter of late mob boss John “Dapper Don” Gotti
To be honest with you, we don’t consider him our father,” Carmine said of himself and younger brothers, John and Frank
Last week, an appeals court signed off on putting the Gotti mansion in foreclosure after mortgage holder JPMorgan Chase said the former reality star failed to make two years’ worth of payments on the property.
Gotti, whose well-gelled brood’s show “Growing Up Gotti” was based at the 6-acre estate, owes $650,000 on the mortgage note. She recently has been trying to sell the residence, which is currently listed at $3.2 million
Gotti has said the elder Agnello, 48, secretly took out an $850,000 mortgage on the property in 1996.
Land records show Agnello signed the mortgage in both of their names — using the power of attorney she granted him.
Gotti, 46, said she only became aware of the mortgage after being granted full ownership of the house in 2005. She promptly defaulted and set off a legal tussle that resulted in last week’s foreclosure decision
Carmine Jr., said his father — an auto shredder who was released from prison in early 2008 after serving a nine-year racketeering stint — hasn’t stepped up to take responsibility for the loan or much else.
We’ve had to take this thing on our shoulders, without any help from him,” said Carmine, who told The Post he and his brothers soon will be featured in a new LA-based reality series. “We were forced to mature quick and take his place.”
The CW Post student said his dad, who last year married the daughter of a prominent Armenian terrorism leader and now lives in Cleveland, doesn’t call him or his brothers on their birthdays, graduations or other important dates.
Asked how Victoria Gotti was dealing with the prospect of losing her home, Carmine Jr. said, “My mother is a strong woman. But we’ll get through it, and she’ll get through it.”
Victoria Gotti
A multimillion-dollar deal to save Victoria Gotti’s mansion from foreclosure hinges on her 83-year-old former mother-in-law, who still works every day at a Queens scrap metal yard.
Gotti hopes to pay off her crushing mortgage once she gets control of about a dozen of her ex-husband’s Carmine Agnello’s commercial properties, which he forfeited to the feds when he pleaded guilty to racketeering in 2001
The government has agreed to let Gotti take ownership as long as she can pay off the liens. She could then sell or lease the properties to save her house.
But there’s a wrinkle
A recent title search showed Agnello’s elderly mother, Marie, owns three of the properties. If she refuses to give them up, the government could call off the whole deal.
The delicate situation hasn’t stopped Victoria from bad-mouthing her ex for taking an $856,000 loan out against the house without her knowledge. She also contends he’s a deadbeat dad.
“Too many fathers walk away from their responsibilities, and my ex-husband is one of them,” she said outside Brooklyn Federal Court on Wednesday.
Earlier in court, Gotti ignored her lawyer’s shushing and suggested Marie Agnello’s ownership is a sham. “I believe she [Marie] didn’t even know she had an interest in those properties,” she told Magistrate Robert Levy.
Wearing a black dress and black boots and toting a large Marc Jacobs handbag, Gotti didn’t seem troubled about her financial problems. Her money woes came to light this week after the Brooklyn Appellate Division gave JPMorgan Chase permission to foreclose on her Old Westbury L.I., mansion.
“I’m never going to lose that house,” Gotti vowed. “The only way is by selling it and we wanted out of there, anyway.”
There are no takers for the $3 million spread.
Meanwhile, four burly employees of the Jamaica scrap metal and auto glass business escorted a Daily News reporter off the premises after he tried to interview Marie Agnello, who was working behind a tinted, bulletproof glass window. John Marzulli read down
Mobster Trial, and a Flash of a Violent Past
Vladimir S. Barsukov attending a fashion show in Russia in 2003, right. Mr. Barsukov is being tried on charges of illegal corporate raiding, extortion, fraud and attempted murder, among other crimes.
A leader of one of the country’s most powerful criminal syndicates, the one-armed mobster — who has a bullet lodged in his chest from a failed assassination attempt — amassed authority and influence through the bloody gang wars of the 1990s and once rivaled St. Petersburg’s elected leaders for control over Russia’s imperial capital.
Now, Mr. Barsukov is on trial in Moscow, charged with illegal corporate raiding, extortion, fraud and attempted murder, among other crimes. His arrest by itself appears to be a victory for Russian authorities over a remaining vestige of the powerful criminal clans that once held this city hostage at gunpoint
Mr. Barsukov “is the last of the cohorts of the very authoritative criminal leaders of the 1990s,” said Vadim Volkov, a Russian mafia expert at the European University at St. Petersburg, who has written extensively about organized crime. “Others were either put behind bars, died or were killed.”
Mr. Barsukov’s trial offers a glimpse into a violent period of Russia’s post-Soviet past that has taken on a mythological cast in today’s relative stability. It was a time when a shaky government and an ill-equipped police force stood by helplessly as rival criminal gangs bloodied the streets of major Russian cities seeking control over the wealth spilling from a crumbling empire.
At least eight armed guards, some with automatic rifles, were stationed in the courtroom for a recent hearing in Moscow, where Mr. Barsukov’s trial is being held because of security concerns in St. Petersburg, prosecutors said.
Read more: MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Zoran Kostic,
LYON, France – The arrests in Paris earlier this week of two suspected key members of the Pink Panthers, an international gang of jewel thieves, demonstrates the benefits of police closely cooperating against transnational crime, a top INTERPOL official has said.
With INTERPOL having set up an international Pink Panthers cell in July 2007 to coordinate the worldwide campaign across its 187-strong membership against the group, INTERPOL’s Executive Director of Police Services, Jean-Michel Louboutin, said that the latest arrests demonstrated the importance of sharing vital police data in the face of transnational crime.
The arrests are a clear example of the results which can be achieved through law enforcement around the world cooperating and sharing essential information for police on the ground to follow up on,” said Mr Louboutin.
“INTERPOL therefore congratulates the Swiss and French authorities whose collaborative efforts led to the arrests of these two dangerous individuals.”
Close cooperation between Swiss and French police in the wake of a jewelry raid last week in Lausanne, Switzerland, led to the arrest of Nicolai Ivanovic, aged 36, and Zoran Kostic, aged 38, both of whom are suspected of being key members of the gang accused of carrying out a 100-million-Euro series of jewel robberies over the past 10 years. read more INTERPOL
How to cast a Sinatra biopic
The film has yet to set a start date, but it will reportedly cover Sinatra’s life from his boyhood in Hoboken to his death in 1998 at age 82. With that, we gave casting a whirl.
As Sinatra: Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese’s muse since 2002’s “Gangs of New York,” has got the blue eyes and loves biopics (“The Aviator”). The film, which has yet to set a start date for shooting, will reportedly cover Sinatra’s life from his boyhood in Hoboken to his death in 1998 at age 82.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/galleries/how_to_cast_sinatra_biopic_/how_to_cast_sinatra_biopic_.html#ixzz0FcmoCRQH&B
On crime & thrillers: Once a prince of the city — Q&A with crime writer and former NYPD detective Robert Leuci
Robert Leuci, the former New York City detective who was the subject of the book and film The Prince of the City, is a crime writer who lives in Rhode Island, far from the mean streets of New York.
Robert Daley’s first-rate true crime book and Sidney Lumet’s brilliant and haunting film with Treat Williams portrayed Leuci when he was a young detective and a member of the elite narcotics Special Investigating Unit (SIU).
- The SIU narcotics detectives had city-wide jurisdiction and little supervision over their selected cases, which was unusual in a bureaucracy like the New York Police Department (NYPD). These “princes of the city” were the most aggressive and talented detectives in the war on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s. And some of them were corrupt.
Leuci, as he recounts in his memoir All the Centurions: A New York City Cop Remembers His Years On the Street, 1961-1981 (Harper), committed acts of corruption, but he came forward and volunteered to make cases for the prosecutors (including a young Rudolph Giuliani) against corruption in the criminal justice system.
He was not, he stresses, caught in a criminal act and forced to do, which is the path taken by so many crooked cops and assorted criminals. read more http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/05/14/once-a-prince-of-the-city-a-q-a-with-crime-writer-and-former-nypd-detective-robert-leuci/
Raffaele Amato
NAPLES, Italy — A purported Neapolitan mafia boss who was one of Italy’s top cocaine importers has been arrested in Spain, prosecutors said Sunday.
Raffaele Amato, involved in a murderous turf war within the Camorra crime syndicate, was picked up Saturday in Marbella in a joint Italy-Spain operation, Naples prosecutor Giovandomenico Lepore said in a statement.
Amato is accused of several homicides in connection with a feud dating back to 1991 between two Camorra clans that left more than a dozen people dead, he said.
He was a top killer for boss Paolo Di Lauro, who was trying to keep control of the clan from rival Antonio Ruocco, Lepore said.
In 2006, Di Lauro was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison on charges of Mafia association, extortion and drug trafficking. On Sunday, prosecutors added subsequent charges to his sentence, along with six other people already behind bars.
Amato was arrested in Spain in 2005 but was freed a year later on a technicality.
The head of the Naples police squad, Vitrorio Pisani, said Amato had since become “the principal, or one of the principal importers of cocaine in Italy.”
The Camorra, the equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia for the Naples area, controls drug and arms trafficking, prostitution, extortion and illegal betting rackets thanks AP read down
Did the Mafia kill JFK?
Oswald
A new book claims to have finally solved one of the world’s great riddles – who was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.For nearly 50 years the mystery of who murdered John Fitzgerald Kennedy has haunted the world’s imagination.
Was the killer Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, as the Warren Commission found? Or was it a conspiracy and Oswald merely a patsy, as he claimed before his own murder?
Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK pointed the finger at everyone: from Kennedy successor Lyndon Johnson, to the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia and shadowy figures in the Pentagon.
Stone’s conspiracy was so massive and implausible that it had the unintentional effect of discrediting serious researchers who questioned the official version – putting them on a par with people who study UFOs.
Two years later Gerald Posner’s book, Case Closed, hit back against the conspiracy theorists, arguing that Oswald was the killer and he had acted alone.
For the past 15 years interest in the subject has waned as it seemed everything that could be known about the case was already before the public.
But during that time two amateur historians have been quietly working away, digging through archives and official documents and interviewing the surviving players from the era.
What they have turned up is fascinating and should be enough to make the strongest sceptic think again.
Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination, the product of 20 years’ work by authors Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, claims to have solved the mystery once
read more James Campbell
Franco Letizia
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
ROME — Italian police arrested one of the country’s “most-dangerous” fugitives in raids early Tuesday that netted at least 70 suspected members of the the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate. The search for dozens more was still under way, police said.
Officers in the southern city of Caserta, 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Naples, said they arrested Franco Letizia shortly after midnight in a home in a nearby town. Letizia is accused of running extortion rackets and is the suspected chief of the Bidognetti crime clan, police said.
Investigators suspect Letizia, 31, took over the reins of the clan after the capture in January of Giuseppe Setola, who was considered the mastermind of a bloody crime spree last year to eliminate rivals and to punish businessmen who refused to pay protection money to the Camorra.
Arrested along with Letizia were two suspected mobsters accused of helping him elude capture. Letizia, who is on Italy’s list of 100 most-dangerous fugitives, had been on the run for more than a year. Caserta police said they pinpointed his hideout in San Cipriano d’Aversa after several months of intercepting phone conversations
In a separate operation in Naples, police chief Vittorio Pisani said officersfrom several police forces delivered a major blow to the Camorra’s Amato-Pagano clan, which was believed to have emerged victorious in a bloody turf war in the early 1990s with the Di Lauro crime family.
The Amato-Pagano clan is currently “the most powerful clan in the city,” Pisani told Sky TG24 TV.
Carabinieri paramilitary police said that by early afternoon at least 67 suspects were arrested in Naples and the surrounding countryside in raids against the Amato-Pagano clan.
Carabinieri spokesman Angelo Mazzagatti said officers from several police forces were still looking for about three dozen other suspects named in warrants, although several of those named were already in jail in other investigations.
The raids were dealing a “decisive blow against those responsible for hateful crimes, linked to international drug trafficking,” Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said in a statement.
The Naples sweep follows the capture in Spain on Saturday of Raffaele Amato, an alleged Camorra boss who investigators say was one of Italy’s top cocaine importers.
Amato is accused of several murders dating from the turf war that left more than a dozen people dead.
Pisani said Tuesday’s sweep against the Amato-Pagano clan also targeted illicitly gained wealth of Amato as well as other mobsters. Sky quoted investigators as saying assets were seized in Spain, Luxembourg, Germany and elsewhere in Europe thanks associated press
BOOK HIM: Retired police Sgt. Thomas Feeney is taken into custody yesterday after cops caught him following a bank
heist.
Last updated: 10:23 am
May 20, 2009
Posted: 1:47 am
May 20, 2009
A retired NYPD sergeant who was heavily in debt and having marital problems held up a Long Island bank yesterday, police said.
Thomas Feeney, 46, who did security work at Scores strip club after leaving the force in 1994, walked into a branch of the Roslyn Savings Bank in Huntington Station and presented a note to a teller, Suffolk County cops said.
The unemployed father of two allegedly demanded money or he would use the loaded .38-caliber pistol he had in his waistband
The teller handed over an undisclosed sum of cash.
After doing so, another bank employee courageously followed Feeney as he walked to his Honda Pilot SUV parked in a nearby Waldbaum’s supermarket parking lot, police said
read more SELIM ALGAR, LARRY CELONA and ANDY GELLER
Sex and “Skiing”: 7 Busted in Craigslist Prostitution Ring
Scott Rosenberg, center, and Josef Davenport, right, are led from the 112th precinct following their arrest for their participation in a Craigslist prostitution ring in the Queens
Seven people have been indicted on charges of running a Queens based prostitution ring that used Craigslist to find clients, law enforcement officials said.
Five of the seven suspects have been charged with corruption, conspiracy and money laundering. They’re scheduled to appear in state Supreme Court today in Queens, where authorities say the Ozone Park operation was based, according to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
Five of the seven suspects have been charged with corruption, conspiracy and money laundering. They’re scheduled to appear in state Supreme Court today in Queens, where authorities say the Ozone Park operation was based, according to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
read more
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) — A top Mexican drug cartel suspect has been arrested along with 12 accomplices, including five women, federal authorities said
Along with the suspects, officials said they also confiscated a Cessna 550 airplane, two cars, a large quantity of drugs and cash, firearms and a hand grenade.
Soldiers acting on anonymous tip arrested the eight men and five women, including one minor, National Defense said in a release Tuesday.
Authorities said they confiscated 40,680 pesos (U.S. $3,150), $29,385 (379,507 pesos), 13 packages of marijuana weighing 13 kilograms (29 pounds), three computers and 28 cell phones. read more
Mafia arsenal, fake bills found
Police see signs of looming Palermo ‘war’
ANSA) – Palermo, May 21 – Italian police on Thursday seized millions of counterfeit dollars, an arsenal of weapons and a fake police uniform from a top Cosa Nostra family.
They said the operation indicated the clan was gearing up for a war for control of organised crime in the Sicilian capital.
Two sawn-off shotguns, a pump-action shotgun, a .357 magnum revolver and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found stashed inside walls in two Palermo homes.
The ten million of fake dollar bills are believed to have been stockpiled by late boss Gaetano Lo Presti to fund a looming war, police said.
There have been several recent sweeps that have provided evidence of moves to claim the Palermo throne from the jailed dons once commanded by ex-boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano.
Provenzano was arrested three years ago after 43 years
in hiding.
Cosa Nostra is not thought to have elected a supreme boss to replace him but the Palermo post is up for grabs, police say.
Thursday’s operation was hailed by Anti-Mafia Commission member Carlo Vizzini who said it showed evidence of links with Cosa Nostra in the United States but also ‘’signs of desperation”.
resd more (ANSA)
MAFIA BOSS RELEASED THANKS TO LEGAL RUSE
Superboss Provenzano
ANSA) – Palermo, May 21 – A reputed Cosa Nostra chieftain
was released this week because the statute of limitations for
his appeal expired after his trial was interrupted, it was
learned on Thursday
Diego Di Trapani was released on Wednesday and is now
said to be in his home town of Cinisi, where he is forbidden
to travel to nearby Palermo and must sign in every day at the
local police department.
The mobster is alleged to be a key lieutenant to
Salvatore Lo Piccolo, a Palermo boss who took over the reins
of the city`s organized crime network following the April
2006 arrest of long-time fugitive superboss Bernardo
Provenzano
read more (ANSA)
Lawyer charged with role in killing of federal witness
Attorney Paul Bergrin, 53, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor whose clients have included rap stars and a soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was charged with arranging the killing of one witness and trying to hire a hit man to kill another.
A North Jersey defense lawyer devised a unique strategy for getting his clients off in murder cases: kill the witness, authorities charged today, linking the former federal prosecutor to a hit on an FBI informant
read more PETER J. SAMPSON
Update on sex ring
QUEENS ‘DIAL-A-HOOKER’ Update
alleged Queens sex ring that ran ads on Craigslist like those pictured above, is led away by an officer yesterday
COURT DATE: Scott Rosenberg, one of five people arrested in connection with the ring..
A round-the-clock Queens prostitution ring that got its clients through racy ads on Craigslist has been busted by state authorities — the latest in a string of crimes linked to the controversial Web site.
The Ozone Park-based outfit, Room Service Entertainment, was so hush-hush that it dealt with its clients in code, according to a 47-count indictment unsealed yesterday.
The ring — which allegedly employed five bookers and 20 to 30 ladies of the evening during the year and a half it operated — advertised in Craigslist’s “erotic services” section.
Room Service’s Internet ads included explicit photos, a phone number to arrange “dates” as well as messages such as, “I’m a sexy little. . .”
Craigslist has been linked to two horrific murders recently. One victim was a Brooklyn newsman who was stabbed to death
read more By ANDY GELLER
Cosa Nostra is not thought to have elected a supreme boss to replace him but the Palermo post is up for grabs, police say.
Thursday’s operation was hailed by Anti-Mafia Commission member Carlo Vizzini who said it showed evidence of links with Cosa Nostra in the United States but also ‘’signs of desperation”.
MAFIA BOSS RELEASED THANKS TO LEGAL RUSE
Superboss Provenzano
ANSA) – Palermo, May 21 – A reputed Cosa Nostra chieftain
was released this week because the statute of limitations for
his appeal expired after his trial was interrupted, it was
learned on Thursday
was released this week because the statute of limitations for
his appeal expired after his trial was interrupted, it was
learned on Thursday
Diego Di Trapani was released on Wednesday and is now
said to be in his home town of Cinisi, where he is forbidden
to travel to nearby Palermo and must sign in every day at the
local police department.
said to be in his home town of Cinisi, where he is forbidden
to travel to nearby Palermo and must sign in every day at the
local police department.
The mobster is alleged to be a key lieutenant to
Salvatore Lo Piccolo, a Palermo boss who took over the reins
of the city`s organized crime network following the April
2006 arrest of long-time fugitive superboss Bernardo
Provenzano
Salvatore Lo Piccolo, a Palermo boss who took over the reins
of the city`s organized crime network following the April
2006 arrest of long-time fugitive superboss Bernardo
Provenzano
read more (ANSA)
Lawyer charged with role in killing of federal witness
Attorney Paul Bergrin, 53, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor whose clients have included rap stars and a soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was charged with arranging the killing of one witness and trying to hire a hit man to kill another.
A North Jersey defense lawyer devised a unique strategy for getting his clients off in murder cases: kill the witness, authorities charged today, linking the former federal prosecutor to a hit on an FBI informant
read more PETER J. SAMPSON
Update on sex ring
QUEENS ‘DIAL-A-HOOKER’ Update
alleged Queens sex ring that ran ads on Craigslist like those pictured above, is led away by an officer yesterday
COURT DATE: Scott Rosenberg, one of five people arrested in connection with the ring..
A round-the-clock Queens prostitution ring that got its clients through racy ads on Craigslist has been busted by state authorities — the latest in a string of crimes linked to the controversial Web site.
The Ozone Park-based outfit, Room Service Entertainment, was so hush-hush that it dealt with its clients in code, according to a 47-count indictment unsealed yesterday.
The ring — which allegedly employed five bookers and 20 to 30 ladies of the evening during the year and a half it operated — advertised in Craigslist’s “erotic services” section.
Room Service’s Internet ads included explicit photos, a phone number to arrange “dates” as well as messages such as, “I’m a sexy little. . .”
Craigslist has been linked to two horrific murders recently. One victim was a Brooklyn newsman who was stabbed to death
read more By ANDY GELLER
ANSA) – Palermo, May 22 – A major Mafia scam to defraud
leading international banks, including a branch of the
now-defunct Lehman Brothers, of over $1 billion has been
thwarted by police with the arrest of 19 people.
Police said the fraud attempt was by an international
organized crime gang headed by Leonardo Badalamenti, the son
of the late Sicilian `capomafia` Gaetano `Don Tano`
Badalamenti.
Badalamenti was among those arrested in Friday.
Investigators explained that the fraud involved using
counterfeit Venezuelan bonds as guarantees to open accounts
and receive credit from Lehman Brothers` Baltimore branch as
well as a branch of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank and one of a
a leading British bank, whose name was not released because
Investigators explained that the fraud involved using
counterfeit Venezuelan bonds as guarantees to open accounts
and receive credit from Lehman Brothers` Baltimore branch as
well as a branch of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank and one of a
a leading British bank, whose name was not released because
the investigation is still in progress.
read more ANSA
ARREST MADE IN CSI WORKER’S MURDER
Cops made an arrest in the murder of Michelle Lee, the crime lab worker who was found last month in her bedroom with a knife sticking from her throat
.Gary McGurk, 23, of 48-56 58th Place in Queens, was charged with Lee’s murder, according to the NYPD. He was hit with second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon charges.
He pleaded not guilty today.
The John Jay College student faces a maximum 25 years to life in prison if convicted.
Cops had used a full-court press in the investigation, putting up a $12,000 reward.
The case obviously caused great concern and upset throughout the department,” Police Commissioner RayKelly said at the time. “I can assure you this is very aggressive investigation.”Lee’s body was found by her roommate. The medical examiner ruled that Lee was killed by a blow to the head with an iron.
Authorities believe the 24-year-old was stabbed, burned on the stomach with the iron and tied up afterward because her killer wanted it to look like she had been tortured or had been the victim of a sex crime thanks NY Post
It could have been a face-off between a mob boss and Bank of America honcho Ken Lewis
It could have happened had Italian police not thwarted a $2.2 billion scam orchestrated by the Sicilian Mafia to be carried out on already burdened financial firms, like BofA, international banking giant HSBC and now-defunct brokerage Lehman Brothers.
Cops busted as many as 20 people across the globe, including in the Italian provinces of Sicily, Puglia and Tuscany, as well as Spain, Venezuela and Brazil.
Among those arrested during yesterday’s international bust was Leonardo Badalamenti, son of famous Cosa Nostra boss Gaetano Badalamenti, who died in federal prison in 2004 while serving time for importing heroin to the US through pizzeria storefronts
The junior Badalamenti, who hasn’t lived in Italy in at least 30 years, was nabbed in Venezuela.
He fled Sicily in the 1980s after his family was defeated during the so-called Mafia wars, Italian publications report.
According to investigators, after persuading corrupt Venezuelan officials to issue the mobsters fake government bonds, Badalamenti and his crew planned to use the rogue securities to obtain credit lines totaling as much as $2.2 billion from BofA, Lehman, HSBC and other reputable financial firms
Back in 2003 and 2004, the Mafia tried to use the bonds to obtain $500 million credit lines from various banks. At the time, UK authorities thwarted the scam before the banks were duped.
The gang planned to invest the money in a construction business that would fund high-end residences in Tuscany, Puglia and other Italian hot spots.
During the raid, police also seized goods worth nearly $7 million, including several buildings and a Tuscan farmhouse.
The senior Badalamenti, known commonly as Don Tano Badalamenti, was the mob boss of his hometown of Cinisi, Sicily, and head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission.
He was sentenced to 45 years in 1987 as a leader of the so-called Pizza Connection, a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzeria storefronts to distribute heroin.
thanks http://www.nypost.com/seven/05232009/business/mafia_bank_scam_bust_170598.htm
Mafioso Rosario Gambino
ROME — Italian authorities took into custody on Saturday a top boss from the Gambino Mafia clan who was deported from the United States after spending more than two decades in jail for drug trafficking.
The 67-year-old Rosario Gambino arrived at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport on a flight from Miami. Wearing a gray jumpsuit and looking frail he sat in a wheelchair as he was escorted out by police officers.
Gambino, an Italian-born New Jersey resident, was considered a top mobster in the New York-based crime family led by his late cousin Carlo Gambino
Gambino has been wanted in Italy since 1980 on separate drug and Mafia-connected charges, and he is expected to face trial. Calls to a lawyer representing him in Italy were not answered Saturday afternoon.
Before being transferred to a Rome jail, Gambino was served the original 1980 arrest warrant signed by Giovanni Falcone, one of Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutors.
Falcone was killed by the Sicilian mob in a 1992 bomb attack, and Gambino’s return coincided with the anniversary of the murder, which was being commemorated across Italy. Salvatore “Toto” Riina, then the Mafia’s boss of bosses, was arrested in 1993 and later convicted with others of plotting the hit.
thanks The Herald
Sadistic: Kray’s grandson, Norman Jones and his son Joseph, right, tortured their victim before killing him
Murdered: John Finney was attacked because the Joneses claimed he had stolen a consignment of their drugs
Infamous family: Norman Jones’s father-in-law Charlie Kray, centre, with twins Reggie, left, and Ronnie in the East End in 1965
Gangster Charlie Kray’s grandson and former son-in-law have been jailed for life for torturing, killing and beheading a man who they claimed had stolen drugs belonging to them.
Norman Jones and his son Joseph hacked off John Finney’s hands and slashed his body, then cut off his head.
They acted after a consignment of drugs went missing from one of their vehicles at a farm where the father-of-four lived in a caravan.
Mr Finney was issued with death threats by Jones, 50, a millionaire from Highgate, North London, and his 24-year-old son, from Barnet.
Mr Finney started receiving anonymous calls demanding the ‘gear’ and warning ‘a lump of lead would be put in him’ and he could end up ‘in a box’.
In a campaign to intimidate the 42-year-old scrap metal dealer, the pair then fired shots near his home in Northaw, Hertfordshire, on 1 February last year, St Albans crown court heard.
Finally, after staging a dry run of the murder plot, they kidnapped Mr Finney and drove him 30 miles at gunpoint in a van to a business unit in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where he was interrogated, tortured and killed
He is believed to have died from a shot to the head.
The pair then set fire to the van in an attempt to get rid of the evidence.
Mr Finney’s naked body was found two weeks later behind a garage block. His head and his hands were never found.
Although the father and son had the industrial unit cleaned twice, spots of Mr Finney’s blood were found on a wall.
Keys to Mr Finney’s truck were found in the torched van
Joseph Jones, who wept as he was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison, claimed he was playing poker on the night Mr Finney was killed.
His father, who was jailed for a minimum of 33 years, said he had never met the victim. He claims he made his £7million fortune from horse racing and property.
Judge Mr Justice MacDuff told them: ‘You are both evil men. You lack any semblance of humanity.’
Two other men also on trial for Mr Finney’s murder were cleared.
In a statement, Mr Finney’s family said: ‘The past year has been so very hard for us as a family.
‘We have had to try to understand why a loving son
Detective Chief Inspector Bill Jephson, who led the investigation, said: ‘John was the victim of a calculated and pre-planned savage attack.
‘We will never fully understand the motive for such brutality and only those individuals responsible for John’s death will know exactly what happened to him.’
Charlie Kray was the elder brother of gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie.
He was seen as the quieter one of the trio who brought terror to London in the Sixties. He died aged 73 while serving a 12-year
thanks mail online
Mob moll
Mob boss , Greg Scarpa and girlfiend Linda Schiro
The star witness in the ill-fated case against FBI supervisor Lindley DeVecchio is trying to cash in on a new book about the case — claiming the author used her story without giving her a cut.
Mob moll Linda Schiro — whose testimony in 2007 was supposed to bring down DeVecchio for allegedly colluding with her murderous boyfriend, Gregory “The Grim Reaper” Scarpa — has fired off several letters threatening a lawsuit against Sandra Harmon, author of “Mafia Son.”
“You had an agreement with Linda Schiro regarding a significant amount of material that you have included in the Work,” wrote Schiro’s lawyer, Quinn Heraty, in an e-mail dated last January.
Harmon met with Schiro years ago, but no book came of their interviews. thanks ALEX GINSBERG
Crime boss who cheated the tax man
Organized crime boss Craig Johnson
The luxury assets of an organised crime boss were up for sale yesterday as the Government battles to recover the cost of a massive tax swindle.
An eight-bedroom stately home, fleet of prestige vehicles and hoard of personalised number plates were up for grabs.
The goods have been seized from Craig Johnson who used the profits from a £138 million mobile phone VAT scam to fund a pop star lifestyle.
Johnson is serving a 12-year jail term and has been
read more Daily Mail Reporter
Deborah Hussey
Stevie “The Rifleman” Flemmi
Whitey Bulger
A judge is allowing lawsuits by families of three people killed, allegedly by fugitive James “Whitey” Bulger and his associates, to go forward. US District Judge William Young ruled yesterday that lawsuits filed by the families of Deborah Hussey, Debra Davis, and Louis Litif can go to trial.
All three were killed in the 1980s. The families allege the FBI acted negligently because of its corrupt relationship with Bulger and his cohort Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, who were informants. They say the FBI failed to control Bulger and Flemmi, who were emboldened to commit killings. The government contended that the lawsuits are barred by the statute of limitations. The trial is expected to begin in July. Bulger is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Flemmi is serving a life sentence in 10 killings. (AP)
thanks
Jailed gangster directed assassination at Man Utd game
Gangster Bobby Spiers mastermind in underworld dispute
A security boss who organised a botched execution as he watched a Manchester United football match has been jailed for life.
Robert “Bobby” Speirs, of Prestwich, arranged to kill David Totton at the Brass Handles pub in Salford while watching a game at Old Trafford.
Two hired gunmen fired shots in the pub during the match on 12 March 2006, but were then shot dead themselves.
Speirs, 40, must serve at least 23 years for conspiracy to murder.
Speirs’ rival Mr Totton was shot, along with Aaron Travers, when 19-year-old gunman Richard Austin pulled the trigger six times, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Would-be assassins
His accomplice Carlton Alveranga, 20, fired his weapon only for it to jam, and both men were jumped on by drinkers and disarmed
‘Underworld dispute’
Mr Justice Williams said Speirs had planned for at least one person to be killed in a “professional gangland execution” to sort out an “underworld dispute”. read more BBC
Misfire is right…
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Gotti hitman Joe Watts
A reputed hit man for the late Gambino boss John Gotti was chauffered to mob meetings in a limousine owned by a Staten Island funeral home, the feds say in court papers.
Investigators were secretly conducting surveillance of Gambino mobsters in the summer of 2006 when longtime mob associate Joseph Watts popped up on their radar being driven in a sleek, black limousine.
Watts, 67, was observed meeting Gambino capo Leonard DiMaria at Aunt Suzie’s and La Villa – Italian restaurants on Fifth Ave. in Park Slope.
Watts, 67, was observed meeting Gambino capo Leonard DiMaria at Aunt Suzie’s and La Villa – Italian restaurants on Fifth Ave. in Park Slope.
It was later determined that the limousine … was registered to John Vincent Scalia Home for Funerals,” Assistant Brooklyn U.S. Attorney James Gatta wrote in court papers.
Watts was on supervised release for an earlier conviction at the time he broke bread with DiMaria and was prohibited from associating with wiseguys.
He faces up to two years in prison for the violation, and Watts is currently under indictment in Manhattan for the 1989 slaying of Staten Island businessman Fred Weiss.
Cops say Watts was a backup shooter at Gotti’s request for the rubout of then-Gambino boss Paul Castellano, but Watts has never been charged with that murder.
CASINO MELTS CON MAN’S FROZEN ASSETS
Tropicana Resort and Casino
An Atlantic City casino somehow extracted nearly $50,000 from a frozen bank account to cover bad bets by the ringleader of a $200 million subprime mortgage scam, court papers reveal.
A lawyer for Aleksander “Shorty” Lipkin said he was “quite baffled as to how” the Tropicana Resort and Casino was able to withdraw the money from Lipkin’s Chase savings account.
The attorney, Murray Richman, said the money should be credited toward Lipkin’s restitution for scamming lenders.
Lipkin, who will be sentenced next month in Manhattan federal court, is prepared to surrender another $133,000 in cash, a $2 million home in Hewlett Harbor, LI, and an $800,000 Upper West Side apartment, Richman wrote . thanks BRUCE GOLDING
Chicago Outfit street boss Tony Spilotro and lawyer 
Frank Masterana Spilotro Associate
Frank Masterana, a gambler and bookmaker known from the Strip to Santo Domingo, died Sunday at age 80 in the Dominican Republican, according to a longtime family friend
A member of Nevada’s list of ecluded persons better known as the Black Book, Masterana was born in Canton, Ohio Jan. 26, 1929, and moved to Las Vegas to work for “Doc” Stacher in the early 1950s. read more
Arrests in Naples as Italian police seek to weaken organized crime
Italian police have arrested at least 41 alleged members of a mafia-like crime ring in the southern city of Naples
Several bosses from the Sarno clan, a top local crime family, and dozens of other suspects were arrested Wednesday and charged with drug trafficking, extortion and illegal weapons possession.
The group forced businesses to pay protection money, or pizzo, and sold cocaine smuggled from Spain, according to Angelo Mazzagatti, of the Carabinieri paramilitary police.
The suspects were also accused of creating a mafia-like association.
Mazzagatti described the Sarnos as a “very invasive” clan, adding that they had exerted control in the city “not with a mafia war but with strategic alliances.”
Wednesday’s arrests are part of larger crackdown conducted over the last few months targeting the Sarno, ‘Ndrangheta, and the Amato-Pagano clans.
hf/AFP/AP thanks rob mudge
Anti-mafia sentiment has led to demonstrations in Naples
Sliwa
Gambino gunman Michael Yannotti
The Gambino gunman who tried to silence radio host Curtis Sliwa wants the feds to give back his cash and bling.
Michael Yannotti — who’s doing 20 years for racketeering — filed papers yesterday seeking the return of a Rolex watch, gold chain and $1,010 seized when he was busted by the FBI. Defense lawyer Diarmuid White argued that while Yanotti was convicted of conspiracy, he beat the rap for loan-sharking, which the feds claimed provided his loot
Prosecutors claim Yannotti shot Sliwa in the back of a stolen taxi in June 1992 on orders from John “Junior” Gotti, allegedly as payback for the Guardian Angels founder’s on-air trash talk against Gotti’s father, “Dapper Don” John Gotti.
Jurors acquitted Yannotti of attempted murder, but federal Judge Shira Scheindlin said evidence identified him as Sliwa’s assailant.
A spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s Office declined comment.
A spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s Office declined comment.
thanks BRUCE GOLDING
Bulgarian Mafia Boss
One of the infamous Galevi brothers, who are allegedly amongst Bulgaria’s central mafia bosses and are currently in custody, has denied his run for member of parliament is an attempt to escape justice.
“Plamen Galev will demand that he is stripped from immunity should he be elected member of parliament,” his lawyer Menko Menkov said on Monday.
Hundreds of Bulgarians have already signed up in support of Galev’s nomination for member of parliament. His candidature can be registered in the Central Election Commission in Sofia only after 10,000 signatures are collected in his support.
“I am not a member of the initiative committee that nominated Plamen Galev for MP, but it is clear that people believe him, they don’t believe in the crimes, of which he is accused,” Menkov said, adding that his client has never obstructed the investigation against him.
Plamen Galev and Anguel Hristov have been in custody for six months already on charges of establishing and leading an organized crime group and racketeering.
The two came to the public’s attention after it was leaked to the media that the former Interior Minister Rumen Petkov had met with them while they were under investigation for organized criminal activities.
The information spurred a scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of Petkov as Interior Minister.
thanks http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=103946
Sarno’s old Boss. Ernest Rocco Infelice.
Video Poker war
CHICAGO — A reputed mob boss, a police officer and five other men were charged Thursday in a sweeping racketeering indictment that alleges eight years of armed robberies, burglaries, jewel thefts and arson based in the western suburbs of Chicago.
Michael “The Large Guy” Sarno, 51, of Westchester allegedly masterminded much of the group’s illegal activity, including a February 2003 pipe-bomb explosion that wrecked the storefront offices of a company distributing video poker machines
Prosecutors say the bombing was a message from organized crime to stop intruding on its $13-million-a-year video poker gambling business.
Sarno, 51, went to prison in the early 1990s as a member of an organized crime family based in the western suburbs headed by Ernest Rocco Infelice.
Federal agents searched Sarno’s home last July and also raided the headquarters and various hangouts of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. An alliance has developed between the violence-prone club and the Chicago mob, prosecutors say. read more Mike Robinson
see video http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/iteam&id=6836820
Paul Bergrin
A federal judge in Newark last night refused to grant bail to a prominent defense attorney accused of murder and witness intimidation, saying it is impossible to guarantee he would not flee or commit violence if freed.
Paul Bergrin, 53, is accused of trying to shield his clients from prosecution by helping arrange the murder of one witness, enlisting a hit man hoping to kill a second and encouraging others to lie or go into hiding
“The government has proven, by clear and convincing evidence, that no conditions or combination of conditions exist that will reasonably ensure the safety of the community,” U.S. District Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo said in a written opinion filed shortly after 8 p.m.
During a two-day bail hearing that concluded Thursday, Bergrin’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, argued the charges against his client are groundless. Prosecutors, he said, have little evidence to support their accusations against the one-time federal prosecutor.
“He crossed no ethical line,” Shargel said.
But prosecutors say Bergrin used his Newark law office to coordinate a vast racketeering enterprise that specialized in targeting those scheduled to testify against gang members and drug dealers.
“Mr. Bergrin participated in numerous plots to kill witnesses,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gay said.
read more JOE RYAN
Paris jewel thief takes $8m haul
Paris was basking in summery temperatures when the robber struck
Jewellery worth more than 6m euros (£5m, $8m) has been stolen from an exclusive Paris store in broad daylight by a lone gunman, police sources say.
Dressed in a suit and fedora, the man entered Chopard on Place Vendome and reportedly made staff hand over 15 pieces of jewellery at gunpoint.
The mid-afternoon hold-up lasted two minutes, after which the robber, said to be in his 50s, calmly walked out.
Chopard jewellery is worn by stars at the Oscars and Cannes film festival.
Place Vendome is an elegant old square known for its luxury hotels, and is also home to numerous jewellery stores as well as the French justice ministry.
In December, armed robbers stole jewels worth at least 80m euros ($102m) from a store near the French capital’s famous Champs-Elysees avenue.
As many as four robbers, two disguised as women, raided the Harry Winston’s store and stole nearly all its valuables
‘Like any other customer’
According to the first set of information we received, it was a man in his 50s, dressed in a chic costume and wearing a Borsalino [fedora] hat,” Olivier Lebon, a police union representative, told Reuters news agency.”He came in like any other customer, pointed his gun at employees and asked for about 15 pieces.”
It was not immediately known if the robber had an accomplice waiting for him outside the store.
A sales assistant working in an adjacent jeweller’s store told AFP news agency she had heard and seen nothing. “We were working,” she added.
Late on Saturday afternoon, the store at No 1 Place Vendome stood closed behind iron shutters, an AFP correspondent reports.
Only some leather handbags could be seen in the window, and no trace of a robbery could be seen from the outside.
The French capital was basking in sunshine on Saturday, with temperatures rising to a summery 23C, AFP reports.
At least some of the capital’s beau monde would have attending the French Open, one of the tennis world’s most prestigious events, at the city’s Roland Garros stadium.
Among Chopard’s commissions is the Golden Palm awarded at the Cannes festival.
Founded in 1860, the firm has branches in major cities across the world . thanks BBC
Club 418, on Worthington Street in Springfield, was the site of a fatal shooting early Saturday morning. State police offiicers arrested a suspect immediately following the incident
SPRINGFIELD – Police on patrol in the entertainment district arrested a 24-year-old Springfield man early Saturday after a shooting rampage at a strip club that killed one victim and seriously injured four others, authorities said.
A sixth person suffered knife wounds.
Marcus J. Blanton, of 27 Hyde Ave., was being held pending arraignment Monday in Springfield District Court on numerous charges, including one count of murder and four counts of assault to murder, Springfield Police Lt. John M. Bobianski said.
A motive for the shooting rampage remains unknown at this point, police said.
Bobianski said a caller at 1:37 a.m. reported numerous shots fired inside Club 418, a strip club.
Massachusetts State Police Community Action Team members “were right around the corner from the scene, patrolling,” Bobianski said. The officers arrested the suspected shooter as he was leaving the club, he said.
“(The suspect) dropped the gun when he saw the officers,” Bobianski said.
One of the victims, a 23-year-old Springfield man, died at 2:20 a.m. at the Baystate Medical Center emergency room of gunshot wounds to the chest, abdomen and back, he said.
According to police reports, the shots were fired
The victim’s name will not be released until his next of kin have been notified, Bobianski said.
This is the seventh homicide in the city since the start of 2009.
Club 418 “has had problems in the past,” but its record isn’t much different from other strip clubs, police said.
“They are all about the same. And that’s the second this year,” Bobianski said, referring to the January fatal shooting of a man at the Mardi Gras at 91 Taylor St.
The city has four topless clubs, he said.
Personnel at Club 418 Saturday night refused to comment on the shooting. The club’s manager referred questions to Springfield attorney Daniel D. Kelly.Reached late Saturday, Kelly said, he believed two employees may have been injured in the shooting and that the man who died may have been a patron
On behalf of the management and employees, he expressed condolences and concern for the victims and their families.
“We’re reviewing our safety procedures,” he said. “Unfortunately, no safety procedure is flawless and we’ll continue to review our procedure when all the facts of are known.”
“We are cooperating with police, and when all the facts are gathered, we’ll have a more detailed statement later in the week,” he said. “Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, a determined individual with a gun can often do such acts.”
In August, Club 418 was essentially put on probation by the License Commission after two dancers fought and one hit another with a stiletto-heel shoe. The commission found the club in violation for hindering an investigation by failing to call police after a fight between dancers June 12.
In 2007, a July 28 shooting inside Club 418 left a 26-year-old man with injuries to the stomach and groin and led to five arrests.
Club 418 is owned by Helen Santaniello, 582 Pinewood Drive, Longmeadow
thanks ALEX PESHKOV
A Rolls-Royce car of Head of the St.Petersburg Sea Port Oil-Loading Terminal Sergey Vasilyev and a Chevrolet Tahoe of his bodyguards were attacked at the crossing of Levashovsky Avenue and Ordinarnaya Street. One bodyguard was killed, two others and Vasilyev wounded
Businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin) attends a fashion show of Valentino, Lanvin, YSL models
The man said to be the country’s last mafia boss is accused of ordering a rival’s murder
A ONE-ARMED multi-millionaire, who is alleged to be the last of the Russian crime bosses of the 1990s to stay in business, has gone on trial in Moscow, accused of ordering a botched attempt to murder a rival in his silver Rolls-Royce.
Vladimir Barsukov, 53, who is rumoured to have had links in the past to Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, is also charged with setting up a crime syndicate once seen as the most powerful mafia gang in St Petersburg, the country’s crime capital in the years after the fall of communism.
At the height of his power he had 2,000 foot soldiers under his command, security experts say.
Barsukov, who lost his right arm in an assassination attempt by a rival gang in 1994, dominated the courtroom last week from his seat at the back of a bulletproof glass cage. His alleged lieutenants, who shared the cage with him, listened attentively as he whispered to them.
Prosecutors and a panel of judges were equally respectful as he challenged a witness through an intercom.
“I’m innocent and this trial is a farce,” Barsukov told The Sunday Times during the hearing. “I don’t fear this court and I’m far from broken. The only judgment that matters to me is God’s. I’m in very good spirits and when I look back on my life I’ve no regrets whatsoever.”
He is accused of having been responsible for the attempted murder in 2006 of Sergei Vasiliev, a powerful businessman who controlled St Petersburg’s oil terminal.
Two men armed with AK-47 assault rifles raked Vasiliev’s Rolls-Royce with fire as he drove through the city centre. One of his bodyguards died and two were badly injured. Vasiliev, too, was seriously wounded. When he awoke from a coma he accused Barsukov, who faces a life sentence if he is found guilty.
“Barsukov is in a league of his own,” said a St Petersburg businessman who has known him for more than a decade. “The decision to put him away for good is a political one which was taken at the highest level.”
In the early 1990s Barsukov was said to have had dealings with Putin, who had recently resigned from the KGB to become St Petersburg’s deputy mayor.
No link between Putin and any criminal activity has ever been proved. Barsukov himself has denied being acquainted with Putin and no connection between the two men has ever been established – but both emerged from the chaos of the 1990s as powerful figures in St Petersburg.
During the mafia wars Barsukov became known as Russia’s Al Capone, after the Chicago gangster whose gang dominated the bootleg liquor business during the prohibition era of the 1920s and 1930s.
An attempt to kill Barsukov left him in a coma for a month after he was sprayed with machinegun fire. His right arm was amputated at the shoulder and bullets pierced his stomach, chest and lungs. He still has bullet fragments lodged in his heart.
read more Times on line
Junior Gotti
Junior’s fighting back.
Lawyers for John A. (Junior) Gotti are accusing Manhattan federal prosecutors of judge-shopping, witness intimidation and calculated press leaks in an “unparalleled” effort to jail the mob scion for the rest of his life.
Lawyers for John A. (Junior) Gotti are accusing Manhattan federal prosecutors of judge-shopping, witness intimidation and calculated press leaks in an “unparalleled” effort to jail the mob scion for the rest of his life.
Lawyers John Meringolo and Charles Carnesi say the feds, stung by three Gotti mistrials in four years, are hellbent on convicting the Dapper Don’s son for conspiring in three gangland murders – even if it means committing misconduct. Gotti’s trial is slated to begin in September.
In papers filed in Manhattan Federal Court, the defense team asks Judge Kevin Castel to toss out a racketeering indictment handed up last summer. “It is indubitable the four indictments are, in essence, one continuous and calculated effort by the government to prosecute Mr. Gotti,” the lawyers write
.
They accuse the feds of committing “underhanded and life-threatening” tactics by handing out subpoenas to potential defense witnesses in April 2006 so they couldn’t take the stand on Gotti’s behalf.
They accuse the feds of committing “underhanded and life-threatening” tactics by handing out subpoenas to potential defense witnesses in April 2006 so they couldn’t take the stand on Gotti’s behalf.
“The government’s aim was not only to potentially have Mr. Gotti’s physical well-being put in jeopardy, but also to achieve its desired tampering with witnesses,” the lawyers add.
In recent weeks, the Gotti camp has shown signs of coming unhinged in part by the perception that Castel is siding with prosecutors.
Why don’t you just hang him now!” Gotti’s mother, Victoria, shouted during an April hearing, when Castel shot down a defense team request for government money to pay for a second lawyer
Gotti’s lawyers were unsuccessful in having the pending trial heard before Judge Shira Scheindlin who presided over the previous three mistrials. Aside from having a role in the slayings, Gotti, 45, is accused of cocaine trafficking in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
“Regardless of the previous results, Mr.Gotti should not be forced to once again put his life and liberty in jeopardy merely for the satisfaction, pride and perceived justice of the government,” the lawyers say. “The unfettered abuse taking place by the government in its inquisition against Mr. Gotti, such a notorious target even after three failed attempts, is precisely the scenario which erodes public confidence in the criminal justice system
Chicago Outfit Alfonso “Al” Tornabene dead
Pizzeria owner had longtime mob ties, officials have said
By Bob Goldsborough | Special to the Tribune
June 1, 2009
By Bob Goldsborough | Special to the Tribune
June 1, 2009
Suburban pizzeria owner Alfonso “Al” Tornabene was reported to be a high-ranking member of the Chicago Outfit who at one point helped run the criminal organization while one of its leaders was in federal prison.
A longtime resident of Stickney, Mr. Tornabene, 86, died of complications related to peptic ulcer disease Sunday, May 17, in MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn.
Mr. Tornabene opened Villa Nova Pizzeria in Stickney in 1955. The pizzeria has expanded to Orland Park, Lockport and Michigan City, Ind., and is now owned by his daughter and her husband.
“Al was a fairly nice guy,” said a neighbor, Raymond Mirous. “He kept to himself and never bothered nobody.”
Although authorities said Mr. Tornabene had been a member of the Chicago Outfit for decades, he was not publicly identified as being part of the organization until 1997, when the Chicago Crime Commission published its “New Faces of Organized Crime” handbook.
The book identified Mr. Tornabene as a lieutenant for the West Side Crew, which at that time was run by Anthony Centracchio, according to the commission.
In testimony at the 2007 Family Secrets trial, a mob informant told federal authorities that Mr. Tornabene helped run the Outfit while James Marcello was imprisoned from 1992 until 2003.
Court records also showed that Mr. Tornabene presided over a 1983 ceremony that made several mobsters full members of the Outfit, including Frank Calabrese Sr. and his brother, Nick, who later was the star witness in the Family Secrets trial.
In September 2007, James Wagner, then head of the Chicago Crime Commission, told the Tribune that Mr. Tornabene, whose nickname was “the Pizza Man,” at that time was behind Outfit activities in the south suburbs.
Survivors include a daughter, Mary Adamczyk, a sister, Concetta “Teena” Donofrio, and a granddaughter. His wife, Betty, died in 1988.
Services were held. thanks Bob Goldsborough
Mafia scheme to steal from Wall Street investors in ’90s exposed in new book
Mob Hit – Informant Jeffrey Pokross wore a wire tioo get info from a stock promoter at Sparks, where a Gambino boss was gunned down in 1985.
Original publication from “Nothing But Money” by Greg B. Smith, © 2009. Published by Berkley.
Over the years, Wall Street has seen its share of miscreants, from Jay Gould to Bernie Madoff. During the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s, New York’s five Mafia families realized they could steal just as easily from investors as they could from the carting industry or the Fulton Fish Market. Utilizing a time-honored “pump and dump” scam, the mob came to Wall Street and walked away with millions. In “Nothing But Money,” Daily News I-Team editor Greg B. Smith (author of “Made Men” and “Mob Cops”) takes us inside DMN Securities, a mob front that was 100% scam. Here informant Jeffrey Pokross talks with corrupt stock promoter Cary Cimino about eliminating a broker named Warrington Gillet 3rd. Cimino was arrested; the hit never took place
Over the years, Wall Street has seen its share of miscreants, from Jay Gould to Bernie Madoff. During the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s, New York’s five Mafia families realized they could steal just as easily from investors as they could from the carting industry or the Fulton Fish Market. Utilizing a time-honored “pump and dump” scam, the mob came to Wall Street and walked away with millions. In “Nothing But Money,” Daily News I-Team editor Greg B. Smith (author of “Made Men” and “Mob Cops”) takes us inside DMN Securities, a mob front that was 100% scam. Here informant Jeffrey Pokross talks with corrupt stock promoter Cary Cimino about eliminating a broker named Warrington Gillet 3rd. Cimino was arrested; the hit never took place
thanks read more
Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa lived up to his moniker of Degenerate Liar after admitting he once scrawled the letters “KKK” in a self-inflicted “hate crime” to get attention and sympathy.
The confession came out during sworn testimony at the 2006 trial for alleged Gambino crime family leader John Gotti, Jr.
Under oath, Sliwa told cross-examiner Charles Carnesi, the lawyer for Mr. Gotti, that he spray painted the moniker of the Klu Klux Klan on the wall of his apartment because he was about to be evicted.
Sliwa told the court it was one of many examples he has used over the years to get attention, publicity and sympathy from the public to further himself.
Sliwa called the staged events “the dumbest thing I ever did in my life.”
thanks http://www.therightperspective.org/2009/06/01/sliwa-committed-self-inflicted-hate-crime/
Mexican soldiers
CNN) – More than 40 people, including two police officers, were killed in a spate of shootings in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez since the weekend, authorities said.
One officer was shot Tuesday night and another early Wednesday in similar circumstances, said Alexandra Folis, a spokeswoman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office. In both instances, the officers were in uniform, but in their personal vehicles, when unknown gunmen opened fire.
Over the weekend, 33 people were killed, and nine were reported dead Monday. The violent surge is the latest chapter in a turf war between drug cartels that has left more than 400 dead in Juarez this year
According to the police, all victims were killed in separate incidents except for those involved in a raid Sunday on a drug rehabilitation clinic.
Four armed men forced themselves into the Leyes de Reforma rehabilitation clinic and opened fire, killing five patients. A similar attack on another rehabilitation clinic happened in August last year.
This spate of killings, however, did not raise alarm in a city that has become accustomed to the violence that is attributed to the drug trade and turf wars.
“We had a noticeable spike (in killings) this weekend, but it is not something unique to this month,” police spokesman Jacinto Segura said.
In February, the city’s police chief quit after drug cartels threatened to kill a policeman every day that he remained on the job.
Last year, drug violence was blamed for the deaths of 78 Mexican soldiers and more than 6,000 civili
24,000 tablets of ecstasy
The suspect was arrested on Sunday after 24,000 tablets were seized
Police have arrested a British man in connection with one of the island’s biggest ever hauls of ecstasy, when more than 24,000 tablets were seized.
Europa Press reports 26 year old N.S. was arrested in Sant Josep on Sunday as part of the Ibiza Drugs Squad’s Operation Calm, which began in early 2009 when officers located a British-registered vehicle on the south western coast thought to have been used by suspected British drug dealers last year. The vehicle was parked in a private parking area in Cala de Bou, in Sant Josep de Sa Talaia. When police searched the vehicle, they found the ecstasy tablets packed in a bag inside the boot, each of them marked with a dollar sign and a star. They also found 924 grams of MDMA powder.
Officers traced the vehicle to the British owner of an apartment on the urbanisation where, after a court-authorised search, they discovered large quantities of cash hidden around the flat: almost 230,000 € plus 15,400 pound sterling. Police surveillance of the suspect’s known haunts led to his arrest last weekend when he returned to the island for the summer season.
The biggest ever haul of ecstasy on Ibiza was in 2003 when 235,000 tablets were seized from an Italian drugs gang. The largest prior to that was 28,000 tablets found hidden in picture frames in 2001.
thanks
Catania Jail
Maurizio Gasparri, Senate whip outraged at ruling
Family help needed for unhappy don, court rules
ANSA) – Catania, June 3 – An Italian Mafia boss has been released
from jail because he is suffering from depression
The tribunal granted his request for house arrest, voicing the hope that ”the affection of his family will help him recover”.
Catania prosecutors firmly opposed the move, arguing in vain that ”the individual is a danger to society”.
They also noted that Ieni, who is serving an eight-year sentence for racketeering, had already been moved out of solitary confinement to a prison clinic where he was being treated.
”I wonder at this point what therapy is available to the relatives of those murdered by Mafia bosses whose hands are dripping blood but who present themselves in court like lambs to the slaughter”.
Maurizio Gasparri, Senate whip for Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, called the ruling ”disgraceful”.
”This creates a very dangerous precedent and greatly undermines the credibility of the institutions,” he said.
He said ”too many” judges had let Mafia bosses out of the tough high-security regime mandated for them, which the government has recently tightened.
A member of the Northern League, Senator Gianpaolo Vallardi, said the ruling ”insulted” the memory of late anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both murdered in 1992, and was likely to demoralise those risking their lives to fight the Mob.
Vallardi called on Justice Minister Angelino Alfano to ”intervene”
Giacomo Maurizio Ieni, 52, a top don in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania, broke down in tears before a parole board, saying: ”I’m really depressed and I can’t take prison any more”.
thanks
looks like Victoria Gotti is staying put.
In a move that would have made her late father John Gotti proud, the Mafia princess cut a deal with the feds that will save her Long Island mansion from foreclosure
Gotti, 46, even appears to have out-maneuvered her elderly former mother-in-law.
The Gambino glamour girl will pay an undisclosed sum for 11 commercial properties that were once owned by her ex-con ex-husband, Carmine Agnello.
Agnello’s mother was demanding $4 million for three of properties even though they had been appraised – even before the recession – at only $2 million.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Newman strongly suggested Wednesday those parcels might be forefeited to the government if it turns out Angello is the real owner.
“There are substantial curiosities in the history of those properties…somebody needs to be put under oath,” Newman said in Brooklyn Federal Court.
The announcement of a deal caps years of litigation by the feds to collect a $10 million judgment against Agnello, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in 2001.
Agnello, who got out of prison earlier this year, still owes the feds about $7 million, and they slapped liens on his property.
Under the deal with Gotti, the government will release the liens, allowing her to sell the property and pay off a $700,000 mortgage on her Old Westbury mansion – the setting for the reality show “Growing Up Gotti.”
Gotti was not in court and did not respond to requests for comment
thanks John Marzulli
Police officials gather on a road near Arizpe, Mexico, in the northern state of Sonora . (AP Photo/El Diario Sonora Nogales)
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican police found 11 bodies in an abandoned vehicle near the U.S. border on Thursday, some with their hands and legs cut off and left with threatening messages scrawled by suspected drug hit men.
The bodies of the men, who were shot to death, were found in the northwestern state of Sonora in a stolen SUV with Arizona plates, the state attorney general’s office said.
A state attorney general’s office spokesman said drug cartels were likely behind the attack, although he declined to give details about the messages left on the bodies.
The killings came a day after drug gangs shot up a police station in a nearby town as violence flared in the state dominated by Mexico’s top trafficker, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.
Guzman’s cartel, based in the neighboring coastal state of Sinaloa, is one of four powerful gangs whose battles for control of smuggling routes into the United States have killed 2,500 people this year. There were 6,300 drug-related killings in 2008.
Violence is also spilling into U.S. border states like California and Arizona, worrying Washington.
U.S. President Barack Obama visited Mexico City in April and promised to crack down on the flow of American weapons into Mexico that has helped drug gangs amass huge arsenals.
thanks
Vito Genevese
“Benny Eggs ” getting busted
The crime family formed 80 years ago and named after Vito Genovese has endured like no other.
The Genovese family has somehow avoided the top-level defectors who have hobbled all four of New York’s other families.
The Genovese clan — considered the most powerful crime family in America — has found insidious new ways to make money in the 21st century.
Take the subprime mortgage frenzy that forced thousands of homes into foreclosure. A Genovese associate found a way to get a piece of that.
The caper was run by Dominick DeVito, a 45-year-old dedicated con artist the FBI identifies as an associate of reputed Genovese capo Patsy Parrello
During the runup of housing prices from 2002 to 2004, DeVito ran a bogus real estate investment scheme, buying up multimillion dollar properties in suburban Westchester County.
He and his pals made up income histories to con banks into handing out multiple mortgages, then sold them at inflated prices.
They also took out more loans using the inflated values of the houses as collateral, then defaulted on the loans. Several houses wound up in foreclosure
They managed to fit three scams into one, obtaining insurance payments by claiming water damage caused by broken pipes in the homes — after breaking the pipes themselves.
DeVito was sentenced in March to 51 months in prison and is to surrender Sept. 15. His lawyer, George Santangelo, declined comment on DeVito’s mob ties
The Genovese family benefitted from the loosening of due diligence by banks during the housing spike. Prosecutors say loanshark victims sometimes obtained home equity loans to pay off debts to their mob bankers.
The Genovese family also found ways to use new technology to improve on old reliable scams such as illegal gambling, law enforcement sources say.
In last year’s prosecution of Daniel Leo, former boss of the family, prosecutors said he controlled multiple bookmaking operations that reaped millions of dollars.
What was new was that not all transactions were person-to-person: some customers placed bets through offshore sites via the Internet.
The mob also may have inspired a Long Island con man’s $100 million Ponzi scheme. Nicholas Cosmo owed Genovese family associates tens of thousands of dollars in gambling debt, authorities said.
Cosmo was busted in January and investigators have since questioned a Genovese associate turned mob informant, Michael (Cookie) D’Urso, about Cosmo.
The Genovese family also took full advantage of the city’s building boom through control of several construction firms. They even got in on the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site
thanks Greg B. Smith
Soldiers stand next to cash seized by Mexico’s army that is on display for the media in Mexico City Sept. 18, 2008. (Reuters
Drug organizations have been moving operations to countries in Africa and the Middle East
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Imagine Mexican drug cartel operatives strolling with robed business prospects in the souks of Damascus and Tehran. Or cash-laden Mexican traffickers setting up business offices in African cities like Kinshasa and Accra. Or maybe even Mexican drug syndicate emissaries plying the streets of Baghdad outside the Green Zone.
There’s nothing fictional about any of this. According to recently released reports (and here) from the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, Mexican drug organizations have gone very far afield to maintain one of their most lucrative activities — producing and shipping over the U.S. border almost all of America’s methamphetamine. They’ve done it by moving operations to the failing states of Africa and off-the-grid Muslim countries, according to control board and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials.
It’s a strategy aimed at keeping drug mafias rich — and therefore strong — while they’re under unprecedented fire at home in a military crackdown by President Felipe Calderon, whose strength is bolstered by U.S. cooperation.
“The remarkable thing is that … we have gathered evidence that behind most of these cases involving African and Middle Eastern countries there were Mexican trafficking organizations,” Rossen Popov, chief of the board’s precursors control section, said in a telephone interview from his office in Austria. “The Mexicans are very active around the world. They’re quite innovative.”
Mexican cartel emissaries are trolling the Middle East, securing huge tonnage loads of the otherwise tightly regulated raw chemicals that make methamphetamine — pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. Posing as legitimate pharmaceutical traders and operating out of bogus storefront companies in Africa, they strike import deals with chemical companies elsewhere. Some of these partners are in Syria, Iran, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. read more by Todd Bensman
Carlo Gambino, 67, reputed to be the Mafia’s “Boss of All Bosses.”
John Gotti
The Gambino crime family has come home.
The gang of wiseguys that spawned John Gotti has returned to Brooklyn, the place where family boss Carlo Gambino gave his name to one of the world’s deadliest criminal enterprises.
The last time Brooklyn held such a distinction was when Gambino’s brother-in-law, Paul Castellano, headed the family. That ended in 1985, when Gotti’s henchmen gunned down “Big Paul” and his bodyguard outside Manhattan’s Sparks Steak House.
That moved the seat of power to Queens and a little social club called the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club, where overweight mobsters in velour sweatsuits strolled Ozone Park streets on walk-talks as FBI agents clicked away on surveillance cameras.
These days, the FBI says those secret chitchats are more likely to take place in the heart of Bensonhurst, along an 18th Ave. that looks a lot different than the one where mob snitch Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano plotted some of his 19 rubouts.
Asian eateries rival Italian salumerias and greasy pizza places. Tali’s — the bar where mob associate Mike DeBatt was killed on orders from Gravano in 1987 — is a Vietnamese restaurant.
The boss’ job has been handed over to a three-man panel that includes Gotti acolyte Daniel Marino, a veteran wiseguy who earned his bones making money, not murder, FBI agents say.
Marino, with the help of longtime gangsters Giovanni (John) Gambino and Bartolomeo (Bobby) Vernace, oversees a slimmed-down criminal gang of 200 made men and 300 associates that fills its coffers with cash from drugs, extortion and loansharking, the FBI
While the feds have choked off most of the Gambinos’ influence in the city’s major labor unions, they refuse to concede a surefire moneymaker that’s been their golden goose for decades.
Over the last year, the FBI has turned up so-called “wildcat unions” made up of wiseguys whose Mafia ties have gotten them permanently banned from organized labor.
Of course they’re always looking for new ventures.
Take energy-drink maker, American Blast Ltd. Manhattan federal prosecutors say longtime Gambino associate Joe Watts used the Manhattan company to launder the proceeds from Gambino criminal schemes. His daughter, Robyn Russo, is the CEO and Marino’s son, Dan Marino Jr., is the president.
“It’s certainly not the end of them,” says Gerald Conrad, a veteran agent who heads the FBI’s Gambino squad from Queens offices not far from Gotti’s old base in Howard Beach. “They’re still making wiseguys.”
thanks Thomas Zambito
Junior Gotti
Junior could have used his mama Monday.
Mob scion John A. (Junior) Gotti remained holed up in a cell at a Brooklyn federal lockup, unable to make a scheduled court appearance because he wasn’t feeling well.
At a May hearing, his mother, Victoria, screamed, “Why don’t you just kill him now!” when Manhattan Federal Judge Kevin Castel turned down Gotti’s request for public money to pay for a second lawyer on his defense team
Gotti’s lawyers say he still hasn’t received treatment for kidney stones that cropped up last summer when he was arrested on racketeering conspiracy charges.
Gotti, 45, is accused of conspiring in three gangland murders and trafficking in cocaine in the 1980s and 1990s.
Castel set a Friday deadline for a written report detailing Gotti’s medical condition. Lawyer Charles Carnesi said Gotti received medication when his kidney stones were infected but could need surgery.
Gotti’s fourth racketeering trial in the last five years is slated to begin Sept. 14
thanks Thomas Zambito
Protection money of 250 euros a month in Naples
ANSA) – Naples, June 10 – The Naples Mafia forced cemetery flower sellers to pay protection money, police said Wednesday.
Each flower seller was expected to pay a ‘pizzo’ of 250 euros a month, police said after arresting 32 people from a Camorra clan operating in the seaside town of Portici near Naples
City-centre shops had to pay out between 500 and 2,000 euros a month while lowly street vendors were hit by a pizzo of 30-40 euros a week
Extra protection fees were demanded at Christmas, Easter and the mid-August Ferragosto holiday.
The owners of a historic seafood restaurant were forced to flee Portici for northern Italy after a string of arson attacks sparked by their refusal to pay out, police said.
Extra protection fees were demanded at Christmas, Easter and the mid-August Ferragosto holiday.
The owners of a historic seafood restaurant were forced to flee Portici for northern Italy after a string of arson attacks sparked by their refusal to pay out, police said. thanks ansa
Nickolas Manocchio
PROVIDENCE — A Coventry contractor who was indicted in an FBI undercover kickback scheme has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge and is likely to go to federal prison.
Gerald Diodati, a Seekonk resident, signed the agreement Monday and is scheduled to enter the plea July 31 before U.S. District Judge William E. Smith. Two weeks ago, one of Diodati’s codefendants, Harold L. Tillinghast Jr., pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with the government
In Diodati’s plea agreement, there is no mention of his cooperation with prosecutors.
The lone remaining defendant in the case is Nicholas Manocchio, of Cranston. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting.
In November, Tillinghast, Manocchio and Diodati were indicted on charges that they participated in a kickback scheme involving Rising Sun Mills, a redevelopment project on Valley Street in the city’s Olneyville neighborhood.
Manocchio was Tillinghast’s boss at the Providence offices of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
The investigation that led to the charges was launched seven years ago when the FBI opened a fictitious construction firm, Hemphill Construction, which was pursuing work in Rhode Island and elsewhere in Southern New England. The business was in a retail plaza on Atwood Avenue in Johnston near a Providence Journal news bureau.
few months after setting up shop, an undercover agent posing as a principal owner of Hemphill Construction met with Tillinghast and Diodati. They allegedly reached a deal under which Diodati and others would make payments in excess of $1,000 to Tillinghast and Manocchio.In April 2003, Tillinghast allegedly told Diodati and the undercover agent that he would try to get Hemphill Construction a demolition contract at Rising Sun Mills. The deal involved a $2,000 kickback to Tillinghast, the authorities said.
The kickback scheme also had a backdrop of organized crime activity, authorities say. Matthew L. Guglielmetti Jr., a capo regime in the Patriarca crime family, did construction work at Rising Mills and participated in some of the meetings at Hemphill’s office. He is now serving a long sentence in federal prison on drug charges.
Tillinghast is the son of the late Harold L. Tillinghast Sr. and a nephew of Gerald M. “Gerry” Tillinghast, two mobsters who were convicted of killing loan shark George Basmajian in the 1970s.
Two years ago, Gerry Tillinghast was released from prison and worked at Diodati’s firm, Rhode Island Construction Services, in Coventry. thanks W Zachary Malinowski
Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno was a chip-on-his-shoulder mob-shooter who transplanted to “Tinsel Town ” from Cleveland.. Jimmy was a member of the Cohen mob before he joined the Los Angeles Crime Family…Fratianno had over a dozen mob hits under his belt. “The Weasel” never thought while on a mob ordered rubout , when he coined the phrase ”I’ll take the back seat” that it would become infamous in underworld folk lore.. He said it to get sure-shot aim at two tough hoods.. He blasted them both in the back of their heads from the back seat of their sedan…Fratianno was always a rock-solid stand-up guy, until he sold his mob amico’s down the river when he finked to the feds..Fratianno hid out in Palm Springs, right under the nose of a few of the sob sisters in the Los Angeles Crime Family. He died a miserable, dismal, death, demented from Alzheimer’s disease.
Tim Donaghy
You remember Tim Donaghy, don’t you? He’s the former NBA referee who not only participated in gambling on NBA games in which he officiated, but went to prison for it.
During his sentencing, word leaked out that Donaghy informed the FBI that the NBA routinely instructed its referees to manipulate the outcomes of key games.
Of course, the NBA denied these allegations. The league claimed Donaghy had no credibility. After all, he was a criminal. Never mind the fact that the league, which often boasted of the thoroughness of its background checks on its officiating crew members, employed the man for 13 years.
Now on June 10th came word in the form of an official press release that Donaghy would be released from prison and sent to a halfway house to complete his sentence.
But another piece of information in that press release was a bit more interesting: Donaghy was beaten to the point of requiring surgery by a fellow inmate in November of 2008. An inmate with “mob ties.”
If this is true, there is potentially even more to Donaghy’s story that has yet to come to light.
Never before were Donaghy’s gambling associates considered to be linked to the mafia. Not even the FBI alluded to such connections. Yet to those who know and understand illegal gambling and bookmaking, this revelation should come as no surprise.
Illegal sports gambling (meaning your friendly neighborhood bookmaker) is often a mob run activity. And considering the literal billions of dollars wagered illegally on sporting events each year, it is one of the mafia’s most profitable endeavors.
Why should this concern the NBA and its fans? Because if Donaghy was indeed mob connected and perhaps even controlled, we’re dealing with a whole new level of corruption within the league.
If the mob could sink their hooks into one ref, no doubt they could do it with another, or with a coach, player, or even all of the above
In fact, it is a well known fact that the mafia has historically been behind several college level basketball fixes and point shaving scandals. To think that this has not happened on the pro level, even though there hasn’t been a major revelation of such activity, is naive.
Perhaps Donaghy was just the tip of the ugly iceberg. Perhaps there are more Tim Donaghys lurking on the hardwood that have yet to be revealed. If there are, the NBA is not keen to expose them.
It is possible that Donaghy’s prison beat down could have been just that, a beat down. Or, it acted as a message sent.
Donaghy is reportedly working on a book detailing his 13 years in the NBA, a majority of which was spent gambling. Likely there will be many behind-the-scenes revelations, including more on how the NBA asked its referees to manipulate games for the league’s profit.
But after this attack, how much information about the mob may make that final draft? Was Donaghy “instructed” to keep quiet about the mob’s ties to the NBA? Only Donaghy can say for certain.
Meanwhile the NBA will dread the release of its former referee’s book. For a whole new round of conspiracy theories will be hatched on that day.
Will Tim Donaghy become the NBA’s version of Jose Canseco? I, for one, can’t wait to find out.
thanks Brian Tuohy
Joaquín Guzmán Loera
BADIRAGUATO, Mexico — As a child, Joaquín Guzmán Loera was so poor that he sold oranges to scrape together money for a meal. Since then, the 52-year-old has built a business empire and a personal fortune currently tied for number 701 on Forbes magazine’s list of global titans.
He also has another ranking: Mexico’s most wanted man
Mr. Guzmán is the informal CEO of one of the world’s biggest drug-trafficking organizations, the so-called Sinaloa cartel, named for its home state of Sinaloa. It smuggles a big part of the marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines that end up on American streets, and it has links to organized crime in 23 countries, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.
Mr. Guzmán’s rivalries and turf wars have contributed to a drug-war death toll that stands at 11,000 in the past two and a half years, an average of 366 murders per month. His feuds stretch back more than two decades, leaving a trail of tombstones that act as milestones of the narcotics business south of the border
Part Al Capone and part Jesse James, Mr. Guzmán has become a narco folk hero. He is feted on YouTube videos and by musicians who pen ballads, known as corridos, in his honor. He is known throughout Mexico simply as “El Chapo,” Mexican slang for a short and stocky man
Adding to his mystique, “El Chapo” has survived several assassination attempts by rival gangs, including a 1993 attack that killed a Roman Catholic cardinal. He also pulled off the greatest escape in modern Mexico: from a maximum security prison in 2001 — in a laundry cart. Ever since, he has stayed a step ahead of Mexican and U.S. officials in a game of cat and mouse that is now in its ninth year.
Each year that Mexico is unable to catch “El Chapo” his legend grows — a direct challenge to the authority of the Mexican state. Last year, he flouted authorities by hosting a party, complete with cases of whiskey and a norteño band, in a remote Mexican village to watch his 18-year-old girlfriend, Emma Coronel, win a local beauty contest. Months later, he married her.
With each year, too, questions grow about why Mexico, together with help from the U.S., can’t find him — despite a $5 million bounty offered by Washington (tips can be sent to chapotips@usdoj.gov) and a $2 million reward from the Mexican government.
U.S. and Mexican officials say Mr. Guzmán has used money and cruelty to build a well-disciplined organization that protects him. He is believed to be hiding in the towering Sierra Madre mountains that run through Sinaloa and bordering states, making the task of finding him a bit like finding Osama bin Laden in the forbidding mountains of Pakistan. Another factor: Mr. Guzmán is believed to have bribed enough Mexican law-enforcement and army officials to get timely tip-offs that allow him to avoid capture.
On at least three occasions during the past three years, Mexican security agencies have gotten leads on Mr. Guzmán, only to find he had vanished by the time they turned up, according to a U.S. official. Part of the problem is logistics. In the mountains, the capo’s people can spot a caravan of military vehicles coming from miles away, giving him time to flee on anything from a helicopter to horseback.
Over the past few years, Mr. Guzmán has regularly visited a ranch in the remote mountains of Chihuahua state to check on his marijuana crop, according to a 2008 Mexican intelligence document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The ranch, owned by Mr. Guzmán’s associates, has an airstrip and an underground tunnel for access. “On at least three visits, he has arrived with a caravan of at least six vehicles, under the protection of some authorities in the Mexican army,” the document says.
Mexico’s Defense Ministry said in an email that it was unaware of the allegations, but added that “various criminal organizations have used army clothing and vehicles as a cover for their activities.”
In April, the archbishop in Durango, a state known for its scorpions, outlaws and rugged wilderness, declared that Mr. Guzmán was living there. “Just up the road from [the town of] Guanaceví, that’s where he lives, but, well, we all seem to know this except for the authorities,” Archbishop Héctor Gonzalez Martinez told local reporters.
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Whiteys Brother, Jack “Jackie” Bulger
The new South Boston convention hall may have been named “Convention Center of the Year” in the United States.
But underneath the gleaming glass-and-steel wonder is a rough-and-tumble cast of characters accused or convicted of murders, bank robberies, assaults, mail fraud, credit-card scams and other crimes – all tied to Boston’s Teamsters Local 82, which provides workers to show sponsors at the publicly owned Boston Convention & Exposition Center in Southie and John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in Back Bay.
A review of records by the Herald found that at least two members of Teamsters Local 82 who have criminal records were recently issued special full-floor access passes at the $1 billion Southie center.
The review also found that some ex-cons have been given Teamster jobs at the Southie and Hynes centers soon after serving time in prison for violent crimes.
Among the more controversial Teamsters who have recently worked at convention center shows are:
Richard Geary, 53, a former Boston Housing Authority police officer convicted of fatally shooting former professional boxer Johnny Pretzie outside a South Boston bar in 1988.
Joseph “Jo Jo” Burhoe, 39, of Charlestown, who was recently released from prison after pleading guilty to robbing a Citizens Bank branch in a Shaw’s supermarket in Medford in 2001.Bernard “Bo” Piscopo, 40, of Dorchester, who is awaiting trial on a charge of second-degree murder for the alleged brutal stabbing of a Revere carpenter at a South Boston saloon two years ago.
The Herald has previously reported that ex-con John “Jackie” Bulger, younger brother of fugitive gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and Vincent Federico, a convicted killer whose Mafia initiation ceremony was secretly recorded by the FBI, have recently worked as Teamsters in Boston’s convention center halls.
The Herald review shows there are more convicted felons working at the convention centers than them, though an exact figure is difficult to determine.
The Teamsters, some of whom can make well over $100,000 a year, help load and unload trucks with staging, electronics and other gadgets used at center shows. Smaller shows often use only a handful of part-time Teamsters, but larger shows, like the recent International Seafood convention, can employ hundreds of part-time union workers.
Jim Rooney, executive director at the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority that runs the two sites, emphasized that Teamster workers are not official employees of the authority and said that they’re hired by outside show-staging companies who have contracts with the union.
Rooney, who has run the South Boston facility since its opening five years ago, said Local 82 has been “quite productive” in making the center a nationally recognized success and that the criminal backgrounds of many Teamsters haven’t spilled over into operations.
While Rooney said there have been no major incidents at the South Boston facility, the center is clearly run on a tight trust-but-verify basis. It has more than 200 security cameras and is installing a new photo-ID security system that Rooney said rivals operations at top casinos. Rooney said the security is aimed at everyone working at the centers.
Teamsters Local 82 has been rocked for years by inter-faction fighting, creating tensions within the union over lucrative, part-time jobs at the centers.
There have been charges and counter-charges of off-site and on-site fights among members of warring union factions, according to court and union documents. read more Jay Fitzderald
(49) Comments | Post / Read Commentsdj
Nothing wrong with them trying to hold down a job but you put a whole group of ex-cons on one job site you are asking for trouble. You can take the convict out of the prison but you can’t take the con out of the convict.
#686148 – Jun 15, 2009 3:53 AM EDT
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This guy Perry calls hiring murders and bank robbers political. This is what happens when the rank and file members of any union let the elected think they are the owners.
ss
Anyone who’s ever worked a convention knows how much a racket the labor is. You set up a booth, which is basically an 8-by-8 piece of floor. If you want carpet, you have to pay to have someone bring the carpet and roll it out. If you want a power outlet for your laptop, then you have to pay for the outlet (which is reasonable), and then pay someone to plug your laptop into the outlet. This is all in the name of ’safety’, but everyone knows it’s just because of the union trying to squeeze as much money out of the conventions as they can.
Messina Denaro
ANSA) – Trapani, June 16 – Thirteen Mafia suspects were arrested Tuesday in an operation police said had helped them close the net on fugitive kingpin Matteo Messina Denaro.
”Today’s operation is part of a strategy of capturing Messina Denaro by drying up the water he swims in,” said Palermo Chief Prosecutor Francesco Messineo.
The arrests took place in the provinces of Trapani, Palermo, Rome and Piacenza.
The 13 had been active in helping the 47-year-old Messina Denaro elude capture, police said.
Also arrested in Tuesday’s sweep, which involved 300 police, was a former finance guard, Achille Felli, who had been working as an aide to a leading former member of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Carlo Vizzini.
Vizzini, who sacked Felli after his arrest, recently stepped down after being named in a probe into the suspected misappropriation of a hoard left by Vito Ciancimino, Sicily’s first mayor to be arrested for Mafia links.
Messina Denaro, who is reportedly idolised by Cosa Nostra younger troops because of his charisma and ruthlessness, has managed to become one of the world’s top drug dealers despite being on the run for 16 years, the FBI says.
Notes found in Provenzano’s farm hideout in 2006 showed that the Trapani boss had been in constant touch with the ‘boss of bosses’.
The young boss sent more messages than any other Mafia leader to the sheepfarm outside Corleone where Provenzano, 73, was smoked out after 43 years in hiding.
In all of them he addressed the widely venerated Don in ”intimate” terms and signed off each note as ”your nephew Alessio”.
All these were signs that the Armani-clad, Ray-Ban-wearing ‘playboy’ had poked his nose in front of the older Palermo rackets king Lo Piccolo in the line of Mob succession, police said.
Denaro may look like a slick manager on the make, police say, but he sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months pregnant girlfriend.
Some 37 inmates in 15 jails were also searched after evidence they had been sending messages to Messina Denaro, who is believed to be the Sicilian Mafia’s top boss.
The Cosa Nostra chieftain based in this western Sicilian city, who has been on the run since 1993, is believed to be expanding his criminal empire abroad and police found evidence of trips to Austria, Greece, Spain and Tunisia.
Messina Denaro is suspected of travelling under fake ID papers supplied by the Rome-based head of a showbiz security firm, Domenico Nardo.
Nardo was arrested along with the courier suspected of taking messages from Trapani to Palermo in the aftermath of the April 2006 arrest of long-time fugitive superboss Bernardo Provenzano.
Palermo boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo appeared to be vying with Messina Denaro for control of Cosa Nostra but his arrest in November 2007 has left the scene clear for the Trapani boss to take command, police say.
The 13 had been active in helping the 47-year-old Messina Denaro elude capture, police said.
thanks
Judy Moran, left, at the 2004 funeral of her husband, shot in a gambling club. She is charged over her brother-in-law’s murder
Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney
It is a tale worthy of a Scorsese script: warring factions and families embark a bloody battle to reign over a city’s organised crime scene, spanning two decades and involving death, destruction and mayhem on the streets of one of Australia’s biggest cities. But this drug turf war is fact, not fiction, and this week it erupted again
The underworld battle – dubbed Victoria’s gangland war – began in 1998 and has resulted in the deaths of more than 30 people. On Monday, after two years of relative peace, it was re-ignited with the broad daylight killing of a member of one of the leading families.
The alleged murder was followed by a dramatic series of events which left even the hardened police investigating the Sopranos-style saga scratching their heads in disbelief.
The story, centred around the Moran and Williams’ family battles, has been the subject of many books. It was immortalised in two high-rating television series, called Underbelly, in Australia. A third series is being written, and this week’s events may give screenwriters plenty of fodder
Even the Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland – who previously ran the Purana task force which has been investigating Melbourne’s organised crime networks for two decades – admitted that the saga is so far-fetched it is hard to fathom.
Fact is almost stranger than fiction with what we’ve seen,” Commissioner Overland said on Wednesday. “If you were a scriptwriter and sat down and wrote this stuff you’d probably say, ‘look, no, it’s a bit far fetched no one will believe it’.”
This week came an extraordinary turn of events with the killing of Des “Tuppence” Moran, 61, the last male member of the family, as he sipped his daily coffee in a café in suburban Melbourne. The death of Des Moran, considered one of the more amiable members of the family, was initially regarded by Victorian police as not gangland-related, but a dispute related to a previous attempt on his life in March, when a masked gunman shot at him while he sat in his car.
About 15 minutes after his death, Mr Moran’s sister-in-law Judy Moran – the matriarch of the family – arrived at the crime scene in tears screaming “Dessy, Dessy”. Within 24 hours she had been charged in relation to his death.
Mrs Moran is a widow. Her husband Lewis, Des Moran’s brother, was killed during the gangland wars along with her two sons, Jason and Mark.
Mrs Moran was charged along with a family friend Suzanne Kane, the sister-in-law of Jason Moran, and Kane’s de facto boyfriend Geoffrey Amour. Mrs Moran, 64, and Ms Kane, 45, were charged with being an accessory after the fact. Amour was charged with murder.
Police alleged during a court hearing that Mrs Moran had dumped the suspected getaway car and was monitored talking about disposing of items used in the murder. A police search of Mrs Moran’s home had uncovered three handguns, a loaded shotgun, stolen number plates and clothing – including a wig – matching the description of that worn by the two gunmen who shot her brother-in-law.
On Wednesday Mrs Moran was refused bail by a Melbourne magistrate after police deemed her a flight risk. Jelena Popovic said she was concerned about Mrs Moran’s access to several firearms and that she was “unacceptable risk to the community”.
In a further twist, Mrs Moran’s house was severely damaged on Tuesday night by what police were describing as a “suspicious” fire.
It was just the latest chapter in the gangland war, in which the Moran family played a major role, battling for control of Melbourne’s drugs trade. Other players include Carl Williams, currently serving life in prison for three murders, the Carlton Crew, an Italian-Australian criminal organisation, and underworld figure Mick Gatto, a professional mediator and former heavyweight boxer.
There are fears that this week’s events – while seemingly kept within one family – could lead to a renewal of hostilities.
Commissioner Overland was at pains to say that while “violence begets violence”, the police are keen to “get on top and put a stop to it”. “The community wants to know – is this a restart of the gangland wars? I don’t believe it is,” he said on Wednesday. “The evidence or briefings that I’ve got indicate to me that its not, but we’ll obviously continue to watch the situation pretty carefully
thanks
Mourners and TV news crews converge on the spot where 3-week-old Luis Angel Garcia was slain in 2007.
After an infant was mistakenly slain in a shooting, the Mexican Mafia wanted those responsible killed. The shooter, attacked by members of his own gang and left for dead, is now aiding investigators
By Scott Glover
June 18, 2009
June 18, 2009
When a stray bullet from a gang member’s gun struck 3-week-old Luis Angel Garcia in the heart and killed him in 2007, police, politicians and ordinary Angelenos expressed outrage over the infant’s death.
But they weren’t the only ones
Members of the Mexican Mafia, the notorious prison-based organization that authorities say controls Latino street gangs, demanded that those responsible be killed, according to an indictment unsealed this week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The edict, known as a “green light,” was aimed at members of the 18th Street gang, who were thought to have killed the baby during a botched attack on a street vendor who’d refused to pay “rent” to conduct business in the gang’s territory near MacArthur Park.
Hoping to avoid the Mexican Mafia’s wrath, the 18th Streeters decided to take care of the problem themselves, according to authorities. In the days after the baby’s slaying two gang members lured the shooter to Mexico under the false pretense that he was being hidden from police investigating the murder, the indictment states. Once there, they attempted to strangle him and left “him for dead on the side of a road,” according to prosecutors.
The shooter, identified in court papers as “unindicted co-conspirator #1,” survived the attack and is now cooperating with prosecutors in their pursuit of his former gang.
Though prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office have declined to comment, most of the account was revealed in a 114-page indictment unsealed Tuesday. The document charges about 40 members and associates of the Columbia Lil Cycos — a clique of the 18th Street gang — with being involved in a racketeering conspiracy that allegedly involved murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and other crimes. One murder victim was a 22-year-old man who was mistaken for a rival gang member, authorities allege. Also charged in the case was a defense attorney accused of serving as an intermediary between the gang and the Mexican Mafia.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Brian R. Michael said the charges filed against the gang show that it has broadened its activities by taxing not just drug dealers, but also “hard-working folks who are barely making ends meet,” such as the street vendor who was attacked.
That the attack was carried out on a street bustling with shoppers, including women and children, represents “a level of violence that, even for this gang, is pretty extraordinary,” Michael said.
Identified in the indictment by his initials — G.M. — the gang member cooperating with authorities was charged in state court last year with the baby’s killing, according to a source close to the case.
That source, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said G.M. has been helping both state and federal authorities with their prosecutions of 18th Street gangsters and is being held in protective custody.
Deputy L.A. County Dist. Atty. Victor Avila, the lead prosecutor on the murder case in state court, said six defendants are awaiting trial. Avila declined to comment on whether any plea deals have been offered or accepted.
According to authorities, the gang’s intended target in the Sept. 15, 2007, shooting was Francisco Clemente, a 37-year-old street vendor who had been refusing to pay the $50 weekly “rent” that he and others working near the corner of 6th Street and Burlington Avenue were expected to pay gang members.
The alleged shooter, flanked by numerous other gangsters, strode up to Clemente and opened fire at close range, authorities said. Clemente was struck several times in the chest, but survived. The baby, who was in a stroller, was hit by a single bullet and died.
The killings of innocent children and women go against Mexican Mafia rules, in part because they often result in intense police activity and disrupt their criminal enterprises, according to authorities.
The source who asked not to be identified said the gangsters who took G.M. to Mexico tried to strangle him with a rope. When he lost consciousness, they assumed he was dead and rolled him down a steep hillside in a rural area.
When G.M. came to, he contacted family members in Mexico and arranged for them to pick him up, the source said. He was later found by Los Angeles police detectives at an undisclosed location and surrendered.
murdered billionaire banker Edouard Stern
Cecile Brossard
A mistress who shot dead one of France’s richest men after he called her a ‘whore’ during a bondage session was jailed for eight-and-half years today.
Cecile Brossard murdered billionaire banker Edouard Stern while he was tied to a chair wearing a latex bodysuit at his penthouse flat in Geneva, Switzerland.
She shot her masked lover once between the eyes with his own gun and then again in the head, finishing with two more bullets to his torso, all at close range.
A court convicted her of murder rather than the lesser ‘crime of passion,’ ruling she had acted out of hatred and greed rather than passion.
The lovers fell out over a $1million gift Mr Stern had given her then decided to take back.
Moments before he died, the 50-year-old banker had taunted his mistress with the words: ‘A million dollars is a lot to pay for a whore.’
Mr Stern, a personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, met Brossard, now 40, while she was working at a shop at a Paris airport.
Over four years, the couple enjoyed regular bouts of sado-masochistic sex.
The father-of-three from a centuries-old banking dynasty conducted a relationship with Brossard that was
passionate, tumultuous and full of emotional blackmail, according to her lawyers.Mr Stern’s secret life was only exposed after his body was found handcuffed and clad head-to-toe in a flesh-coloured latex bodysuit in February 2005.
Sex toys littered the bedroom of his luxury apartment, which was full of antiques worth millions of dollars.
An argument had erupted after Brossard asked him for $1million as a token of his love, Geneva High Court was told. The money was paid into her Swiss bank account.
But she said she lost control during one sex session when Mr Stern blocked the account and called her a ‘whore.’
‘On the night it happened, I felt an explosion in my head and took a gun he kept in his bedside drawer,’ she told the court.
‘I pointed the weapon at his face and fired the first shot. The gun must have been six inches from his face. I think I hit him between the eyes.
‘He got up, turned halfway round on himself and fell. I fired another round at his head.’
She pleaded guilty to killing her lover, but claimed the shooting was a crime of passion.
‘I am a woman who was desperately in love with a man and I remain so,’ she said.
But the jury decided Brossard was guilty of murder and said she could have ‘run away, cried or collapsed’ instead of shooting him twice in the head and twice in the body with his own gun.
She also admitted to having cleaned up the crime scene and thrown the murder weapon — later recovered — into Lake Geneva before fleeing to Italy and then Australia.
‘Her cynical, deliberate and manipulative behaviour was not that of a reasonable woman who commits a crime under an excusable emotion or despair,’ the jury said.
They accepted, however, that the Frenchwoman had acted in a state of ‘diminished responsibility’, which meant she escaped the maximum 20 years jail term.
She was arrested after returning to Switzerland and has served four years on remand after confessing to the killing. With good behaviour she could be free in two years.
During her one-week trial Brossard described the moment of Mr Stern’s death as ‘abominable’.
She told the court: ‘I beg forgiveness but know I cannot be forgiven for an act such as that.
‘It was a moment of passion and madness. I did not intend for him to die.’
The Stern family’s lawyer had insisted Brossard planned the killing for financial gain.
He told the court: ‘She stirred up the fantasies of a 50-year-old man, who became dependent on a sexually deviant little blonde from the suburbs.
‘This woman is venomous.’
He accused her of ‘incredible duplicity’ in asking the billionaire’s children to release the $1million he had blocked – just ten days after murdering their father.
In a final emotional appeal for clemency on Tuesday, Brossard apologised to the banker’s estranged wife and children ‘from the bottom of my heart’ and promised never to sully the memory of France’s 38th richest man.
Brossard, who has made at least one suicide attempt, is now said to be in a fragile mental condition and suffered delusions her lover was still alive.
The defence claimed Mr Stern cruelly promised to marry her but had no intention of doing so.
Intimate details of the lurid case shocked Geneva’s old-money elite.
thanks mail online
MOB SCENE: Curtis Sliwa (left) and “Junior” Gotti leave court separately yesterday after the mob scion allegedly said, “You’re going down.”
Former mob target Curtis Sliwa claims John “Junior” Gotti gave him the equivalent of a Mafia “kiss of death” yesterday during a dramatic courtroom confrontation.
The incident unfolded after a routine pretrial conference, when the jailed Gambino family scion rose from his seat, turned around and pointed into the gallery.
The Guardian Angels founder and talk-radio host immediately leaped to his feet and gestured back, cursing Gotti and calling him a “son of a bitch.”
“When I flipped him the bird and said ‘eff you,’ he had that big demonic smile on his face,” Sliwa said afterward. “He was eye-fornicating me.”
The brief exchange stunned observers and left Sliwa visibly shaken.
He noted that the incident occurred two days before the 17th anniversary of his near-fatal shooting by Gambino henchmen after they picked him up in a stolen taxi with rigged doors.
The failed rubout — along with an earlier baseball-bat beating — was allegedly ordered by Gotti as payback for Sliwa’s on-air diatribes against his father, the late “Dapper Don” John Gotti.
“Obviously, for him this is a blood feud — a vendetta,” Sliwa said.
Sliwa — who is set to testify at Gotti’s upcoming racketeering retrial — said he reported yesterday’s threat to the FBI, calling it a classic case of witness intimidation.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment.
Gotti lawyer Charles Carnesi said Sliwa got it all wrong.
Carnesi said Gotti was actually pointing to a friend and said, “He’s going down,” referring to how Carnesi was headed for a meeting with Gotti in a secure interview room.
Also yesterday, Carnesi said Gotti — noticeably thinner after a recent kidney-stone ailment — had called off a planned interview with “60 Minutes” that was to air on the eve of his Sept. 14 retrial.
Carnesi said the popular TV show had been pursuing a sit-down for several years, but officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center blocked it.
He also asked the judge to crack down on what he said were law-enforcement leaks during Gotti’s earlier trials that hurt his defense.
Federal Judge P. Kevin Castel said he wouldn’t impose a gag order, but would sign a stipulation from both sides agreeing not to discuss the case outside of court.
The judge also refused a defense request to refer to federal prosecutors as “the prosecution” instead of “the government” during jury selection.
Prosecutor Elie Honig argued that tradition dictated the terms, noting that Gotti would be called “the defendant,” not “the criminal defendant, or the accused triple murderer.”
thanks
The Mafia has been blamed for the fraud, which outstrips all previous counterfeiting operations
The counterfeit bonds, with a face value of $134 billion, were hidden in the false bottom of a briefcase.
Italian police detained the two smugglers, who were carrying Japanese passports, as they attempted to cross the Swiss border
Newser) – The counterfeit bonds with a face value of $134 billion seized near the Swiss border are probably the work of the Mafia, say Italian and American secret services. The mystery surrounding the suitcase stuffed with fake US Treasury bonds deepened yesterday, after a blog revealed that police had released the two smugglers. They were carrying Japanese passports but may not actually be citizens. “We don’t know where they are now,” an official in Tokyo told the Financial Times.
Last month, Italian prosecutors broke open a bond scam run by the Sicilian Mafia, aided by corrupt officials in the Venezuelan central bank, which centered on $1 billion in fake financial instruments. But the staggering size of the recently seized bonds—worth more than all the outstanding US paper securities—has dumbfounded investigators and fueled conspiracy theories. Italian police would not answer questions about the smugglers’ whereabouts
thanks
Salvatore Miceli,
ROME (Reuters) – A top Sicilian mafia boss on Italy’s list of 30 most dangerous men has been arrested in Venezuela, the interior ministry said on Sunday.
On the run since 2001 for mafia links and drug trafficking, Salvatore Miceli, 63, was arrested in Caracas during the night by Italian police and Interpol agents, the ministry said.
“The capture of boss Miceli is a big blow to the Cosa Nostra,” said Giuseppe Luma, a former head of Italy’s anti-mafia parliamentary commission, referring to the Sicilian mafia.
Part of powerful godfather Matteo Messina Denaro’s network, Miceli oversaw major drug trafficking deals together with the Calabrian mafia ‘Ndrangheta and via contacts with Colombian drug cartels, said Luma, now a centre-left senator.
Italian police have inflicted major blows on the Sicilian mafia with the arrests of several top mafiosi in recent years, including that of the “boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano in 2006 and his heir apparent Salvatore Lo Piccolo in 2007.
thanks reuters
Suspected organized crime boss Assi Abutbul is escorted in court.
Photo: Channel 10
organized crime boss
The Tel Aviv District Court on Monday sentenced crime boss Assi Abutbul to 13 years in prison for heading a criminal organization. Abutbul additionally received a two-year suspended sentence and a NIS 500,000 fine.
The court also sentenced Albert Sitbon, an associate of Abutbul, to 11 years in prison.
Abutbul’s offenses, which included more than 20 counts of extortion and threats against Israeli businessmen and new immigrants from
France, constituted a threat “to society and the state,” the judges said
The State Attorney’s Office had demanded a 25-year sentence for Abutbul, saying, “The defendant’s name was one of the organizations’ tools.”
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Guns sit on display during a presentation of arms captured in an operation against the Gulf cartel in Mexico City
Suspected member of the Gulf Cartel Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa is presented to the press after his arrest at federal police headquarters in Mexico City, Wednesday, April 29, 2009.
The powerful cartels that control the drug trade in Mexico increasingly have help north of the border—in the form of American teenagers, some as young as 13, who work as smugglers and assassins. The New York Times profiles one boy, who was recruited by the Gulf Cartel to kill on command along the interstate that connects Laredo to Dallas. “It was like a James Bond game,” says Rosalio Reta, 19, who is now serving a 70-year jail sentence
Reta attended a Mexican training camp, where he learned to shoot assault rifles, before returning to America. He lived in an expensive house in Laredo and was provided with a $70,000 Mercedes, plus access to firearms and women. Convicted of two murders in America, Reta also killed an unknown number of people in Mexico, but he acknowledges no doubts about his choice of profession. “I like what I do,” he told police. “I don’t deny it.”
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Loose talk: Nikolay Mihailov, the Liverpool reserve team goalkeeper, has got himself invoved in a dispute following comments made about Nikoleta Lozanova (pictured), his former girlfriend
Nikolay Mihailov, the Liverpool reserve team goalkeeper,
Mihailov, who ended last season on loan at Steve McClaren’s FC Twente, is being shadowed round the clock by at least three minders after an acid attack on his £170,000 Ferrari sports car.
Reports in Bulgaria claim that a violent row began when local mob godfather Georgi ‘The Head’ Stoilov began dating Mihailov’s former girlfriend, model Nikoleta Lozanova, who was crowned Bulgaria’s ‘Playmate of the Year’ in 2006.
Mihailov allegedly joked to local media that if his new girlfriend was a Ferrari, Nikoleta must be a broken down Trabant from the old East Germany.
The next day, Mihailov woke to find that his Ferrari had suffered £17,000 worth of damage following an acid attack that had destroyed the car’s paintwork.
Authorities suspect involvement from the Stoilov family, one of Bulgaria’s most powerful Mafia clans.
Family boss Stoil Stoilov was assassinated together with three of his bodyguards in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia in January 2004 when a huge bomb took out the lift they were in.
Mihailov is now reportedly in hiding while club bosses decide whether he should remain in Bulgaria or return to Anfield.
The 20-year-old, who is the son of former Reading and Bulgaria goalkeeper Borislav Mihailov, has yet to make a senior appearance for Liverpool following his arrival from Levski Sofia two years ago.
He appeared to have little future at Anfield following manager Rafael Benitez’s decision to loan him to FC Twente, but with Charles Itandje set to leave the club and doubts over the future of Benfica target Diego Cavalieri, Mihailov could find himself as second choice behind Pepe Reina at the start of the new season
Catanzaro, 25 June (AKI) – Italian police on Thursday arrested 10 suspected members of the Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta accused of extortion and threatening local businesses. Police made the arrests in the southern city of Catanzaro on the order of local anti-mafia prosecutors, and the operation was backed up by soldiers and sniffer dogs.
Besides extortion and threats, the suspects are accused of armed robbery and drug trafficking.
They allegedly belong to the ‘Ndrangheta’s Passafaro-Cossari and Falcone crime families.
The businesses allegedly targeted by the suspects were mainly building firms and shopkeepers in the area around Catanzaro.
Thursday’s arrests follow an investigation that began in 2003 and 2004 into an underworld dispute that included several murders and the setting alight of property including bulldozers and diggers owned by local construction firms.
The Italian government has vowed to clamp down on the mafia and this year has seen the arrests of scores of suspects including a number of alleged mafia bosses as well as the seizure of millions of euros of assets by police.
As recently as Monday, police in the northern Italian city of Lecco on Monday arrested 20 ‘Ndrangheta suspects allegedly operating in the surrounding Lombardy region. The suspects allegedly belonged to a gang involved in embezzlement, drugs trafficking and other unspecified crimes.
Anti-mafia police last week seized real estate including a motel, luxury vehicles, company shares and bank accounts worth around 60 million euros from four suspected members of the ‘Ndrangheta.
The assets were seized on the orders of magistrates in the city of Cosenza.
The Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta has become one of the most powerful criminal organisations in Italy and is reported to have extended its power base through the European drug trafficking market. It also has strong links in Canada, Australia and other parts of the world.
thanks
The coffin of underworld figure Desmond ‘Tuppance’ Moran is carried following a funeral service in Melbourne
Melbourne underworld figure Mick Gatto (3rd L) at the funeral service of Desmond ‘Tuppence’ Moran in Melbourne
MELBOURNE (AFP) — The last remaining patriarch of Melbourne’s most notorious mobster family was laid to rest, closing one of the bloodiest chapters in Australia’s gangland history.
Desmond “Tuppence” Moran, 60, was gunned down by men in balaclavas in the city’s Ascot Pasta and Deli Cafe last week, the latest violent episode in a nine-year turf war so sensational it inspired a smash-hit television series.
Moran’s brother Lewis and nephews Jason and Mark were among the 25 gangland murders fictionalised in the drama “Underbelly”, and he was the last remaining male in the Moran family.
Well-known mobsters and figures from the horse-racing world were among some 300 mourners who packed the Roselyn Court wedding reception rooms to pay their respects to Moran in an intensely private service.
Security was tight, with uniformed police guarding the doors and media barred from entry, Australian Associated Press reported.
Close relatives and colourful associates have been implicated in Moran’s murder, including Lewis’s widow and family matriarch Judy, in a plot allegedly fuelled by simmering bad blood and grudges over money.
Geoffrey “Nuts” Amour is accused of pulling the trigger, while his girlfriend Suzanne Kane — a member of another crime family closely linked to the Morans — has been charged as an accessory.
Victoria state’s police Commissioner Simon Overland has described the murder and subsequent suspicious fire at Judy Moran’s house as “stranger than fiction”.
“If you were a scriptwriter and sat down and wrote this stuff you’d probably say: ‘Look, no, it’s a bit far-fetched. No one will believe it.’,” Overland said this week.
“Underbelly”, one of Australia’s top-rating shows last year, could not be shown in Melbourne because some of the characters depicted were still facing trial in real life. thanks AFP)
Reuters – Mexican soldiers patrol a street in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco June 10, 2009. Eighteen people …
MONTERREY, Mexico – Mexican soldiers have captured a suspected drug cartel operator with a list of the names of local police officers who apparently received payoffs, the army said Saturday
.
A statement said Omar Ibarra was caught Friday on a street in the northern city of Monterrey. It said he possessed the names of 33 policemen in the wealthy suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia “who presumably received money from this individual.”
A statement said Omar Ibarra was caught Friday on a street in the northern city of Monterrey. It said he possessed the names of 33 policemen in the wealthy suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia “who presumably received money from this individual.”
San Pedro officials were not immediately available for comment.
Ibarra also had two hand grenades, two packages of marijuana and a 9-mm submachine gun with a silencer, the army said. One of his alleged accomplices was also captured with marijuana, cocaine and a gun, the statement said.
In the western state of Michoacan, gunmen opened fire on a car carrying two forensic investigators, killing one — a chemist — and wounding the other, a doctor.
The attack occurred Saturday in the city of Zamora, state prosecutors said in a statement.
Also on Saturday, nine men and two women were ordered to stand trial on organized crime and money laundering charges. They were arrested in the border city of Reynosa in March on suspicion of stealing oil from state-owned pipelines and smuggling it across the border to sell it to U.S. refineries
.
Four of the suspects, including, a former local leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, were also charged with selling stolen goods
Four of the suspects, including, a former local leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, were also charged with selling stolen goods
.
The Attorney General’s Office said the gang allegedly worked with the drug cartel hitmen known as the Zetas in the scheme to take oil and natural gas from the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos.
The Attorney General’s Office said the gang allegedly worked with the drug cartel hitmen known as the Zetas in the scheme to take oil and natural gas from the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos.
And in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, a women and her 3-year-old son were shot to death by unidentified assailants on a highway
.
Witnesses told state prosecutors that armed men fired on the car from a moving vehicle; the victim’s daughter and another woman were wounded in the attack
Witnesses told state prosecutors that armed men fired on the car from a moving vehicle; the victim’s daughter and another woman were wounded in the attack
.
Drug gangs are known to operate in Veracruz, where police reported that 51 central American migrants were found on a train along with 12 suspects who the migrants said had robbed, extorted and beaten them. The suspects and some of the train’s crew were detained for questioning.
Drug gangs are known to operate in Veracruz, where police reported that 51 central American migrants were found on a train along with 12 suspects who the migrants said had robbed, extorted and beaten them. The suspects and some of the train’s crew were detained for questioning.
The migrants told police in the town of Las Choapas that the suspects — two Mexicans and 10 Central Americans — had thrown a woman and two children off the train, presumably to their deaths
.
Drug gangs have also been known to prey on Central American migrants seeking to reach the United States
Drug gangs have also been known to prey on Central American migrants seeking to reach the United States
thanks AP
Anthony Fiato aka “The Animal” aka “Tony Rome.” Anthony fiato was a feared and vicious street boss in the Los Angeles Crime Family. Fiato’s crew was the enforcing arm of the Family.
Anthony Fiato was a predominant force in the Los Angeles Underworld. Fiato had strong ties to Patriarca Crime Family leaders, Jerry Angiulo, Nick Bianco, and JR Russo.
Fiato’s wealthy Jewish partner Puggy Zeichick bankrolled a seven figure juice loan operation that was backed by Anthony Fiato’s Mafia muscle. Fiato flipped to FBI informant, and wore a wire on many of his close Mafia Cohorts.
A multi-million-dollar treasure trove of art, jewels, ant iques, real estate and luxury cars was forfeited to Italian authorities yesterday by a man named as the longtime financier of the Mafia of Montreal.
“He is part of a criminal organization, the Mafia, but he has good taste,” said a spokesman for the Italy Direzione Investigativa Antimafia.
“We took away everything he had
Beniamino Gioiello Zappia, 71, known as “Don Tito,” is currently imprisoned in Italy for gangsterism and financial crimes, after a probe by the Rome-based anti-Mafia police targeted the European operations of the Rizzuto organization, a Mafia clan based in Montreal that has already been called the “pinnacle of organized crime” in Canada by the RCMP.
Earlier this year, police found hundreds of pieces of artwork, antiques and archaeological artifacts at Zappia’s homes in Milan and in Cattolica Eraclea, the Sicilian village that is also the hometown of Vito Rizzuto, the head of the Mafia in Montreal. The material was turned over to an Italian cultural office for identification and storage
read more Adrian Humphreys
Giovanni Strangio
Rome, 29 June (AKI) – A notorious Italian mafia boss, Giovanni Strangio, has generated a “fan club” on the social networking website Facebook with around 80 members. Strangio is alleged to be a key member of the Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta and accused of masterminding the massacre of six people in the German city of Duisburg in August 2007.
The 30-year-old was arrested in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, in March and extradited to Italy to stand trial over the massacre which is believed to be linked to a bitter feud between two Calabrian crime families.
Many of the fans who visited Strangio’s Facebook page have defended his innocence and supported ‘Ndrangheta.
“Keep on going Giovanni Strangio.. carry forward the ‘Ndrangheta Calabrese.. we are the strongest,” one message said.
According to the Italian daily, Il Messaggero, the Facebook page was created by someone called Teo Mil, who included a biography of Strangio’s life calling him, “an Italian criminal and member of the ‘Ndrangheta…A fugitive since 2007 included on the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy as well as in Germany.”
But the creator’s name has been removed from the site which is now filled with messages both supporting and denigrating Strangio. Most messages are written in Italian.
Some people have left critical messages on the page for the mafia boss and his supporters.
“You all are an embarrassment, you’re the accomplice of an assassin, the rejects of society!” one said.
Strangio is believed to have masterminded and led the massacre in Duisburg on 15 August 2007, allegedly in revenge for the killing of his cousin Maria Strangio on Christmas Day 2006.
Police believe the killings are part of a long-running feud among members of the Calabrian mafia.
The six Duisburg victims were linked to the Pelle-Votari clan and gunned down outside a pizza restaurant.
The killers, including Strangio, are understood to be members of the rival Nirta-Strangio clan based in the Italian town of San Luca in Calabria.
San Luca is a small town in eastern Calabria, a rugged, poor province of southern Italy that forms the toe of the Italian peninsula.
Italy’s main criminal organisations are the Neapolitan Camorra, the Sicilian mafia, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita in the southern Puglia region.
thanks ANSA
Carmen “The Cheeseman” DiNunzio
The reputed underboss of the New England mob will plead guilty to federal bribery charges and state gambling and extortion charges in an agreement that would send him to prison for six years, his lawyer said today.
A hearing for Carmen “The Cheeseman” DiNunzio has been scheduled for Wednesday in U.S. District Court. He is expected to plead guilty to bribing an undercover FBI agent posing as a state official in an attempt to win a $6 million Big Dig contract.
Another hearing is scheduled for July 8 in Salem Superior Court, where DiNunzio plans to plead guilty to gambling and extortion charges for allegedly forcing bookmakers to pay his gambling syndicate to stay in business.
His attorney, Anthony Cardinale, said prosecutors have agreed to wrap both cases together under one plea agreement and to recommend a sentence of six years in federal prison. He potentially faced a much longer sentence if he had been convicted of the charges at trial — up to 20 years on the state charges and 15 or more years on the federal charges, Cardinale said.
“It just has come to a point where a decision is made … that the best thing for my client to do is to accept responsibility and minimize — to the extent he can — exposure to incarceration,” said Cardinale, who confirmed the deal after an electronic notice of a change of plea hearing was filed in court.
spokeswoman for Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Steve O’Connell, a spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, declined to comment.
Prosecutors say DiNunzio, 51, known as “The Cheeseman” because he owns a cheese shop in Boston’s North End, has been underboss of the New England branch of the Mafia since 2004.
DiNunzio and two associates — Anthony D’Amore, 56, of Revere, and Andrew Marino, 43, of Chelmsford, were charged in federal court last year after getting caught in an undercover FBI bribery sting.
The men allegedly tried to pay off an FBI agent posing as a Massachusetts Highway Department inspector to secure a contract to provide 300,000 cubic yards of loam — soil composed of sand, silt, manure and clay — to the Big Dig highway project through central Boston.
Federal prosecutors said DiNunzio used his reputation as a high-ranking member of the Mafia as he negotiated the bribe. During a secretly recorded conversation on Oct. 9, 2006, he assured the FBI agent posing as a highway inspector that he could keep Marino from backing out of the deal. Marino had access to loam and trucks to carry the loam through his trucking company.
“I’m the Cheeseman,” DiNunzio said.
“You ask anybody about me,” he said.
The men allegedly agreed to pay the man $10,000 and 5 percent of revenue from the contract in exchange for assurances they would get the contract. They allegedly gave him the money during a September 2006 meeting.
DiNunzio was indicted separately on the state gambling and extortion charges in 2006. Associated Press
Comments
commonsemse813
Does the word STAND UP GUY mean anything anymore? If he took a deal in order to plead guilty then the RAT is about to start talking. Sit back and watch as guys are pulled in because this poor excuse for a boss doesn’t have what it takes. If two other guys are involved in the same case and you plead guilty aren’t you condemning them to the same? Cheeseman, yeah right, limberger cheese because this stinks to high heaven.
Snoop
OMG – The old Dons must be rolling over in their graves… Is this the best the Cosa Nostra can offer? Pathetic!
John “Junior” Gotti
John “Junior” Gotti “has amassed a staggering body count” that includes a bar patron he allegedly knifed to death in 1983, the feds charged yesterday in papers opposing the mob scion’s latest bid for release on bail.
“Gotti stabbed and killed Daniel Silva by his own hand,” prosecutors wrote, accusing him for the first time of murdering the 24-year-old during a brawl at the Silver Fox bar in Queens.
The feds said Gotti also “directly participated” in the subsequent murder of eyewitness John Cennamo, a friend of the victim’s “who had spoken to police about the incident.”
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office declined to say if Gotti would be formally charged in the killings.
Defense lawyer Charles Carnesi didn’t return a call for comment.
Comments
fatlewy says
When ever anyone defends Jr. he is a groupie or moron. Sorry buddy i see what is going on with this government. This man was tried 3 times and 36 jurors could NOT acquit or convict. Enough already. Obviously 36 people could not reach a decision for a reason. I believe this man has changed his life for the better. The equippment and the resources that the FBI have today they would have come up with “staggering” evidence against him and they have not. Sorry but my money is on Jr. I told you once before UV I am NOT an angel. Grow up coward. Jr. is gonna walk LMAO!!!
dijonsey says
This man and his family are pieces of garbage. They are glorified goons who prey on the weak. It amazing to me that outpour of accolades that this family recieves, it truly is disgusting. All of you on this blog who are defending the Gotti family, and the mafia in general are morons. They would discard of you quicker than dog feces on a running shoe if they felt disrespected by you. What or who gives anyone the right to take another persons life. He should rot and die in jail like his father.
7/1/2009 11:45 AM EDT
thanks bruce golding
Vito Roberto Palazzolo
ANSA) – Palermo, July 1 – A Sicilian fugitive has refuted
allegations that he was a leading crime figure and that he
led of life of luxury in South Africa.
Vito Roberto Palazzolo, 62, has received a definitive
nine-year sentence in Italy for `mafia association`. However,
prosecutors were never able to prove the accusation made by
the late anti-Mafia crusading judge Giovanni Falcone that he
was a `treasurer` for former Cosa Nostra super bosses
Salvatore (Toto`) Riina and Bernardo Pro
thankslife in italy
Jack Strew
Ronnie Biggs
Biggs’ son, Michael,
The Robber,
The Royal Mail train from which £2.6million was stolen in 1963. Biggs was part of the 15-man gang that carried out the robbery
Great train robber Ronnie Biggs is unable to eat or drink and could die if he does not respond to current treatment, his son said today.
Biggs, 79, who was refused parole yesterday after showing an utter lack of remorse, is being treated in a hospital in Norwich after being moved from a nearby prison on Sunday.
His son, Michael, said Biggs had pneumonia, plus fractures of the hip, pelvis and spine and was ‘deteriorating’.
Mr Biggs was speaking after visiting his father at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.
‘If he does not respond to the current treatment he is receiving there is a risk he could pass away,’ said Mr Biggs.
‘The pneumonia is extremely strong in his body at the moment. He is in a lot of discomfort,’ he said
Mr Biggs said he could not understand Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s decision not to grant his father parole.
He said Biggs was in such poor health that he posed no risk.
He could not understand what his father was trying to say or work out the words he was trying to write on a spelling board he uses to communicate.
But he said: ‘I could just see the disbelief in his eyes. He knows what is going n and realises that if he does come out of hospital, he will only be going back to prison.’
‘I would urge Mr Straw to come down to the hospital and see him,’ added Mr Biggs.
‘He cannot read or write. He cannot eat or drink.’
‘He is being held as a political prisoner when there are rapist, murderers and paedophiles who are allowed to go free, despite committing far worse crimes than him.’
Last night Jack Straw ruled that – despite the Parole Board saying the frail 79-year-old was safe to be released – he must stay in jail.
The Justice Secretary, whose shock decision divided MPs and legal experts, said Biggs had been ‘wholly unrepentant’ and did not deserve to be granted parole.
Insiders admitted it was rare if not unprecedented for a minister to reject the advice of the Parole Board in such circumstances.
It prompted immediate accusations that Mr Straw was chasing headlines that he is ‘tough’ on crime.
Tens of thousands of pounds of public money has also been wasted preparing Biggs for release, and finding him a £30,000-a-year place at a North London nursing home, where he was expected to see out his final days.
His Brazilian-born son Michael, who for eight years has campaigned for his release, lives close by.
Tory MP and former home office minister Ann Widdecombe said: ‘The prisons are bursting at the seams. The courts are being urged to let burglars go free, but one fairly doddery and very frail old man is being kept in prison.
‘If you have got a prison place, for goodness’ sake use it to lock up someone who is genuinely a risk to the public.’
But Mr Straw said: ‘Mr Biggs chose to serve only one year of a 30-year sentence before he took the personal decision to commit another offence and escape from prison, avoiding capture by travelling abroad
read more Mail Online
Comments
Alan Digby, Whitby says
I don’t have a problem with Biggs spending the rest of his life in prison, just as long as all the other thugs, villains, rapists, murderers get sentences worthy of THEIR crimes, but they don’t.
Compared to other far more vicious, violent and dangerous criminals than Biggs, his sentence was totally disproportionate to his crime, that doesn’t however make him a saint, but it does make a mockery of our judicial system
Compared to other far more vicious, violent and dangerous criminals than Biggs, his sentence was totally disproportionate to his crime, that doesn’t however make him a saint, but it does make a mockery of our judicial system
L. G., Berkshire says ;
It’s a shame that today’s muggers, murderers, thieves, thugs and rapists aren’t given similar sentences to that which Ronnie got. You might find that crime would drop.
The softly softly liberal approach has been proven to not reduce crime. It’s time to try other ways.
Anon, Manchester, says;
He hurt no one! He robbed a bank… how many bankers have robbed us! let him die a free man… hes no rapist or murdering thug.. The man is a legend!!!
Naples and Gela, 2 July (AKI) – Police on Thursday moved to arrest over 40 mafia suspects in the Naples area and in the Sicilian port city of Gela. Anti-mafia magistrates in Naples have issued arrest warrants for some 15 suspects suspected of numerous murders. The killings were committed during a turf war between local crime families in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The arrest of the 15 Naples mafia or Camorra suspects came as part of the ‘Spartacus End’ investigation of seven murders allegedly committed between 1988 and 1991 amid a deadly power struggle after the death of Camorra boss Antonio Bardellino.
Around 800 people were arrested during the ‘Spartacus’ probe, many of whom were jailed in a maxi-trial held in Santa Maria Capua Vetere north of Naples from July 1998 to June 2008, at which some 500 witnesses testified.
Sixteen Camorra members were given life sentences during the trial.
The 12 suspects arrested on Thursday in Gela are accused of mafia association and threats to force business people in the city to pay ‘protection money’, hire workers and purchase goods from certain suppliers, investigators said.
All the suspects belong to the local Emmanuello crime family, investigators allege. Police also seized two building firms which allegedly belonged