Featured Blog Posts – March 2017 Archive (12)

By David Amoruso

Ronald “Ronnie G.” Giallanzo is described by authorities as a career criminal. His criminal record is pretty voluminous, which isn’t strange considering he’s been a made member of New York’s Bonanno crime…

By David Amoruso

Ralph Natale was the first official boss in the American Mafia to become a turncoat and testify against his former underlings. During a short spell in the 1990s, he led what was left of the Philadelphia crime family after nearly two decades of violence. In his biography Last Don Standing: The Secret Life of Mob Boss…

By David Amoruso

The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York, charged Bonanno crime family mobster Vincent Asaro (photo above, right), John J. Gotti (photo above, left), and five other men yesterday with a variety of crimes including arson, robbery, and home invasion. Both Asaro and Gotti – as well as two other defendants - pleaded…

By David Amoruso

The thief behind one of the biggest art heists in history stepped into the spotlight yesterday as he went on various Dutch talk shows to discuss how he stole two Van Gogh paintings worth millions from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002 and eventually sold them to a Camorra drug boss. In between, he also claims to…

By David Amoruso

Police in Italy scored a nice bonus this week when they busted a Neapolitan Camorra clan and recovered two stolen paintings from Vincent van Gogh worth $100 million in the process. The paintings of the Dutch master had been stolen in Amsterdam in 2002 and were missing ever since. Beside the painting, authorities seized…

By Alan Gunner Lindbloom

After high school, I lived a strange sort of double life. I had my normal friends, and then I had my cousins and the guys I hustled with. I tried working a few odd jobs, but hated manual labor and I always quit after a few days. I used to joke and tell people, “I think I’m allergic to work.” I was a hustler at heart. I knew how…

Filmmaker Joseph Alexandre’s fascination with the true story behind Martin Scorsese’s mob epic Casino started long before the movie’s release. It all began in the 1980s, while he was working at a Chicago style pizzeria and heard about “the guy,” a man who came around with his College Bowl picks. That “guy” was Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, the…

By David Amoruso

The 1971 hit on New York Mafia boss Joseph Colombo – in public at the second Italian Unity Day rally - was one of the most infamous of its kind. Though the hitman was killed on the scene, questions remained. Four decades later, Colombo’s son Anthony reached a point where he didn’t want to keep the story in anymore. In…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

The gang is back together! The entire (surviving) cast of The Godfather will reunite for one special evening. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire and the man behind the camera Francis Ford Coppola will come together on April 29 for the Tribeca Film Festival’s closing-night…

By David Amoruso

After more than thirty years, Gambino capo Bartolomeo “Pepe” Vernace finally had to face the music in 2013 when he was found guilty of a 1981 murder and various racketeering charges. His victim was an innocent bar owner who had nothing to do with the mob. Vernace on the other hand rose rapidly through the underworld while dodging murder…

By Milko

Panagiotis Vlastos was born in Athens, Greece, in 1971. Growing up in Metamorfosi, Vlastos got involved in crime at an early age, committing theft and burglaries. In the 1990s, he and another gangster named Kostas Nastoulis were fighting a gangland war against each other. In 1994, Vlastos murdered Yerasimos Nastoulis, a brother of Kostas, and…

By David Amoruso

Mike Pizzi is a prime example of what you can achieve with hard work and dedication. Starting out on the streets of New York, lacking a formal education, Pizzi went on to join the Marines as a teenager followed by a long and distinguished career as a U.S. Marshal. Now, he sits down with Gangsters Inc. to discuss his days…