All Blog Posts Tagged 'NYC' (111)

By David Amoruso

Alleged New York Mafia associate Paul Ragusa was sentenced to 6 years in prison on Tuesday for possessing nine firearms, including three automatic assault rifles and a silencer. 48-year-old Ragusa was busted in Operation OTremens, a joint investigation which unearthed a partnership between Mafia families…

By David Amoruso

Lucchese crime family boss Michael “Big Mike” DeSantis got to the top of the hill in an unusual way: A letter from his…

By David Amoruso



Leroy "Nicky" Barnes is a legend of African American organized crime history. Once a dope fiend himself, he kicked the habit, and became the main distributor of heroin in Harlem, NY. In 2007 his autobiography "Mr Untouchable: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Heroin's Teflon Don" was released. In it Barnes tells his story. How he…

By David Amoruso

In the seventies, Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen was dominated by The Westies, an Irish gang of mobsters with a reputation for deadly violence. In the movie The Kitchen, moviegoers get to experience that scene, but with a twist: The women are taking over!

Starring Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany…

By David Amoruso

Former Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas passed away yesterday. He was 88. Lucas was immortalized in 2007 with the release of “American Gangster”, which detailed his rise and fall but fictionalized a lot of events. Denzel Washington starred as Lucas.

Born in North Carolina, Lucas moved to New York after the Ku Klux Klan…

By David Amoruso

Many question how much power an 85-year-old imprisoned-for-life Mafia boss actually has over his crime family. Mob leader Vic Amuso (above) answered with a letter that said: Total power. From behind bars, he orchestrated the complete rearrangement of the Lucchese family’s leadership.…

By David Amoruso

Is John Wick indestructible? Movie audiences are about to find out in the third installment of the blockbuster movie franchise starring Keanu Reeves as the skilled assassin placed on a universal hit list by the Italian and Russian Mafias, the Chinese Triads, and the Japanese Yakuza. But…

By David Amoruso

The son of late New York Mafia boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday. 51-year-old Vincent Esposito (photo above, left) admitted conspiring with other Genovese crime family mobsters in extorting union officials.

Esposito is the…

By David Amoruso

It’s hard to run an honest loansharking business these days. Just ask Colombo Mafia family soldier Jerry Ciauri. Together with several other mobsters he ran gambling and loansharking operations in Brooklyn and Staten Island. He was doing okay until a rat in his crew began nibbling on money and then ran off…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

A female leader of the “Billie East Side Bloods,” a gang that is part of the United Blood Nation, and several gang members were sentenced to prison on drug and gun charges on Tuesday. At sentencing, the judge characterized the group as one of the most dangerous criminal organizations the federal…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Greed kills more people than cancer, the street saying goes. It is especially true in the murder of Vincent Zito, prosecutors say. They arrested 59-year-old Anthony Pandrella, an alleged associate of the…

By David Amoruso

There are no happy endings in the Mafia. Either you find yourself in prison or you end up six feet under in a casket. The latter will apply to Gambino crime family boss Francesco Cali, who was shot and murdered in front of his Staten Island, New York, home on Wednesday night.

The 53-year-old mob…

By David Amoruso

Colombo crime family boss Carmine Persico has passed away. He was 85. The New York Mafia boss was known for his tenacity and ruthlessness. Despite being locked up for life, he maintained an iron grip on his mob family from behind bars. He was a pure survivor. Right up until the moment he sighed his last…

By David Amoruso

Nine members of a drug ring were arrested on Wednesday and charged with trafficking in heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine through an auto body shop in the Bronx, New York. “These defendants were a network that outwardly offered to fix cars but was really an organization that would supply a fix of heroin or…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Justice never forgets. Two members of the New York drug crew Black Rain were indicted for their role in two 1992 murders. Both men are now into their 50s and 60s but will face charges for these cold case murders and other crimes dating back to the early 1990s.

60-year-old Darin “Satch”…

By David Amoruso

Sometimes wars cross paths. In the case of Haji Abdul Satar Abdul Manaf (photo above), an Afghani accused of importing heroin into the United States and engaging in narco-terrorism for both the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, the wars on drugs and terror intertwine into a dangerous…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

A member of the Black P-Stone gang pleaded guilty on February 1, 2019, to participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy. 36-year-old Arthur Taylor participated in a crew that was responsible for distributing more than 100 grams of…

By David Amoruso

As a vor v zakone, mob boss Razhden Shulaya (above) was an official member of a century-old criminal tradition. As such, he was treated as Russian Mafia royalty. He used that position to run a sprawling organization involved in kidnapping, assault, fraud, extortion, and money laundering throughout the…

By David Amoruso

Genovese crime family mobster John Tortora Jr. (photo above) was hit with a superseding indictment on Wednesday charging him with destruction of evidence, falsifying records, and obstruction of justice. In August he had already been charged with racketeering and murder-for-hire. These latest charges stem…

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

Fifteen members and associates of the Bloods were charged on Wednesday with trafficking crack cocaine throughout Long Island. Three separate indictments were unsealed in federal court in Central…