FBI - Blog 2.0 - Gangsters Inc. - www.gangstersinc.org
2024-03-29T07:03:46Z
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The Russian Mafia: From the vory to the oligarchs
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview
2023-02-08T11:40:00.000Z
2023-02-08T11:40:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979261,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979261,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236979261?profile=original" width="600" /></a>Organized Crime has existed in Russia (former Soviet Union) for centuries. Under the communist regime corruption was as normal in Russia as snow falling during the winter. One of the big money makers for the Russian criminals was selling Western products on the black market, a market they controlled in the 1970s and 80s.<br /> <br /> It was also during this time that there was a wave of Russian émigrés who fled to North America. Most of these émigrés were Jewish, however a lot of Russians faked a Jewish passport, among them Russian criminals. Most of the Russians settled in Brighton Beach in New York, which has the largest Russian population outside of Russia.<br /> <br /> When the Soviet Union fell apart, Russian organized crime was unleashed unto the world. Russian organized crime can now be found everywhere, from the US to Israel to Spain and England. The Russians can be considered to be among the most powerful criminals in the world.<br /> <br /> Russian criminals are active in: Fraud, transnational money laundering, extortion, drug trafficking, weapon smuggling, auto theft, white slave trafficking/prostitution, hostage taking, extortion of immigrant celebrities and sport figures, transportation of stolen property for export, insurance and medical fraud, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, and murder.</p>
<div style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-3">PROFILES:</span></strong><br /> <br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/the-billion-dollar-don">The Billion Dollar Don</a><br /> Living in a KavKaz Nation - Profile of <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/living-in-a-kavkaz-nation-profile-of-new-york-crime-boss-roman-ni">New York crime boss Roman Nikoghosyan</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/coast-to-coast-pure-armenian-blood-gang-under-patronage-of-us-bas">Coast-to-Coast “Pure Armenian Blood” gang</a> under patronage of US-based “Vor v Zakone” busted by Feds<br /> Porsches and Yeezys – <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/porsches-and-yeezys-profile-of-new-york-crime-boss-aleksey-tsvetk">Profile of New York crime boss Aleksey Tsvetkov</a> <br /> “For him, I am a god” – Profile of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/for-him-i-am-a-god-profile-of-russian-mafia-boss-and-vor-v-zakone">Russian Mafia boss, and vor v zakone, Razhden Shulaya</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-charged-with-extortion-scheme">Boris Nayfeld</a> (flipped)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-leonid-lebedev">Leonid Lebedev</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-sergei-tsapok">Sergei Tsapok</a> (in prison)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-boss-rakhimov-and-the-sochi-olympics">Gafur Rakhimov</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-tariel-oniani">Tariel Oniani</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-viktor-bout">Victor Bout</a> (from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/viktor-bout-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison">prison</a> to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/arms-trafficker-victor-bout-is-back-in-moscow-after-prisoner-swap" target="_blank">freedom</a>)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-hitman-aleksandr">Aleksandr Solonik</a> (whacked)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-sergei-mikhailov">Sergei "Mikhas" Mikhailov</a> (in freedom)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-evsei-agron">Evsei "The Little Don" Agron</a> (whacked)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-semion-mogilevich">Semion Mogilevich</a> (in freedom)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-alimzhan">Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov</a> (in freedom)<br /> <br /> <strong><span class="font-size-3">ARTICLES:</span></strong><br /> <br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/suicide-squad-the-mafia-bosses-hitmen-and-gangsters-fighting-russ">Suicide Squad: The Mafia bosses, hitmen, and gangsters fighting Russia’s war in Ukraine</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/cold-case-amsterdam-the-mystery-behind-a-dismembered-russian-art">Cold Case Amsterdam: The mystery behind a dismembered Russian art smuggler</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/boss-of-brooklyn-s-eastern-european-mob-extradited-to-us-from-swi">Boss of Brooklyn’s Eastern European mob extradited to US from Switzerland to face racketeering charges</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/real-lord-of-war-back-from-the-shadows-as-pawn-in-international-p">Real “Lord of War” back from the shadows as pawn in international prisoner swap between US and Russia</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/brooklyn-pure-armenian-blood-member-admits-racketeering-and-fraud">Brooklyn Pure Armenian Blood member admits racketeering and fraud</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/money-launderer-of-powerful-us-based-russian-mafia-boss-pleads-gu">Money launderer of powerful US-based Russian Mafia boss pleads guilty</a> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/spanish-court-rules-that-investments-of-tambovskaya-malyshevskaya">Spanish court rules investments of Tambovskaya-Malyshevskaya</a> Russian Mafia clan not criminal<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-boss-razhden-shulaya-ran-nationwide-criminal-enterp">Russian Mafia boss Razhden Shulaya</a> ran nationwide criminal enterprise from Brighton Beach to Las Vegas<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/greedy-sharks-the-new-rule-for-banking-in-eastern-europe-makes-fr">Greedy Sharks:</a> The new rule for banking in Eastern Europe that makes fraudulent oligarchs billions<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-russian-oligarchs-turned-the-country-of-latvia-into-their-own">How Russian oligarchs turned Latvia</a> into their money laundering machine<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-crew-in-brighton-beach-busted-by-dea-irs">Russian mob crew in Brighton Beach busted by DEA, IRS</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-extortionist-pleads-guilty-after-mob-boss-flips-and-agree">Russian extortionist pleads guilty after mob boss flips, agrees to testify against him</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russia-arrests-top-officials-charges-them-with-taki">Russia arrests top officials, charges them with taking bribes from mob boss</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-money-laundering-ring-in-spain-busted">Russian Mafia money laundering ring busted in Spain</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-orders-the-internet-to-fuggedabout-him">Russian mob boss Sergei Mikhailov orders the internet to ‘fuggedabout’ him</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fugitive-russian-mobster-caught-in-pattaya-thailand">Fugitive Russian mobster caught in Pattaya, Thailand</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-released-on-bail-in-austria">Russian mob boss released on bail in Austria</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-two-russian-mobsters-got-caught-up-in-the-iraqi-civil-war">How two Russian mobsters got caught up in the Iraqi civil war</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-new-dawn-for-the-russian-mafia">A New Dawn For the Russian Mafia</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fifa-capo-sepp-blatter-boozing-with-russian-mob-boss">FIFA capo Sepp Blatter boozing with Russian mob boss</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-arrested-in-thailand">Russian mob boss arrested in Thailand</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/spain-police-bust-russian-mafia-gang-taganskaya">Spain police bust Russian Mafia gang Taganskaya</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/investigating-the-russian-mafia-on-its-home-turf">Investigating the Russian Mafia on its home turf</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/georgian-crime-clan-of-vors-busted-in-europe">Georgian Crime Clan of Vors Busted in Europe</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/viktor-bout-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison">Viktor Bout Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-dark-knight-of-mother">The Dark Knight of Mother Russia</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/miami-and-the-russian-mob-by">Russian Mob in Miami</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-russian-mafia-in-spain">The Russian Mafia in Spain: Operation "Troika"</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/an-american-businessman-in">An American Businessman in Moscow: The Story of Paul Tatum</a><br /> <br /> <strong>Puparo's look on Russian O.C.</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-russian-oc">Russia 1990 - 1994</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-russian-oc-1">Russia 1995 - 1999</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-russian-oc-2">Russia 21st Century<br /> </a> <br />
<div style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979275,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236979275?profile=original" width="607" /></a></div>
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Profile: Colombo family underboss John
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/colombo-underboss-john-sonny
2023-01-31T16:00:00.000Z
2023-01-31T16:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236972898,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236972898?profile=original" /></p>
<p>By David Amoruso</p>
<p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/colombo-mafia-family-legend-sonny-franzese-dead-at-103-a-man-must" target="_blank"><strong>Read Franzese's obituary here.</strong></a><br /> <strong>Also read: </strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/in-the-company-of-saints-the-life-and-times-of-america-s-oldest-m"><strong>In the Company of Saints. The life and times of America’s oldest Mobster</strong></a><br /> <br /> John “Sonny” Franzese is an old school gangster walking around in a world that has changed significantly since when he first started committing crimes. Born in Naples, Italy on February 6, 1917, he started his criminal career during a time when Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Joseph Profaci, Vincent Mangano, Gaetano Gagliano, and Joseph Bonanno had just become bosses of the five mob families in New York.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975295,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Those five men are all gone now. Many of the men who became boss after them have died as well. But Sonny Franzese is still here, breathing and walking the streets, demanding his cut from mob rackets. The road to the year 2010, however, hasn’t been paved in gold. Franzese has spent over 25 years in prison.<br /> <br /> His arrest record dates back to 1938 and includes arrests for felonious assault, rape, gambling, disorderly conduct, and vagrancy. In 1967 he was hit with a 50 year sentence after being convicted of planning several bank robberies. He was paroled several times since then but was always sent back to his cell after picking up his old life of crime and violating the conditions of his parole. Leaving the criminal life behind just was not possible anymore. Franzese had become a made member of the Colombo Crime Family and had made an oath to its boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-original-new-york-mafia-family-boss-giuseppe-profaci" target="_blank">Joseph Profaci</a>. He could only leave the Mafia if he died. And Franzese did not plan on dying anytime soon.<br /> <br /> Sonny began his criminal career as a member of the crew run by Colombo capo Sebastian “Buster” Aloi. He quickly rose through the ranks because of his toughness and willingness to engage in violence. In the book Quitting the Mob, written by Sonny’s son Michael, one such violent story is recounted.<br /> <br /> Franzese was in the back corner of a bar talking to a slim young man. It was around 2 a.m. and the bar was filled with patrons enjoying a night out. Everyone had a decent view of the back corner, but all were surprised when a shot rang out and the slim man slumped to the floor holding a gun. Standing next to the dead man was Sonny holding his own gun. The corpse was dragged out of the bar and Sonny continued his night out without a care in the world.<br /> <br /> This incident allegedly happened in the late 1940s and is one of the reasons why Sonny Franzese is so feared on the streets of New York. He is rumored to have killed over thirty people. He once told an associate: "I killed a lot of guys. ... You're not talking about four, five, six, ten." He was a favored hit man within the Colombo Family and was highly respected for his ability to switch between vicious killer and intelligent businessman with an amazing ability to earn money. He financed the classic porn movie "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068468/">Deep Throat</a>." The movie was made in 1972 for a “cheap” $22,000 and would go on to gross over $600 million dollars. Franzese was also involved in more traditional rackets such as extortion, gambling, and narcotics.<br /> <br /> With a keen eye for money-making scams and an impressive list of kills Franzese went on to become underboss of the Colombo Family. He would remain an important member even while inside prison. And when he was released on parole he would always go back to “the life”. By the 1970s both of his sons, Michael (photo left) and John Jr., had gotten involved with the mob. Michael became a captain and earned the Colombos hundreds of millions through a gasoline tax scam he had set up with Russian criminals.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975474,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />The media right away labeled Michael Franzese a “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyLHKQoZlRw">Prince of the Mafia</a>”. His father had schooled him in the ways of the mob and apparently had done an excellent job. But it turned out there was one big difference between father and son. When authorities arrested Michael on racketeering charges, he decided to make a deal with them. He would give information about certain people and in return he would get a second chance at life. After that Sonny has been rumored to have shunned his son. In the years that followed, Michael wrote several books and became a born-again-Christian.<br /> <br /> Sonny Franzese's life continued down a different path. In the past years, he has been hit with two separate indictments.<br /> <br /> The first came in June of 2008. Franzese and eleven other <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-colombo-crime-family" target="_blank">Colombo Family</a> mobsters, including Acting Boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/colombo-boss-thomas-tommy" target="_blank">Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli</a>, were charged with crimes ranging from murder to the theft of fur coats. At the age of 89, it would be impossible for Franzese to ever see freedom again if he was to be convicted.<br /> <br /> To be absolutely sure the old gangster would never see freedom again authorities brought a new indictment in May of 2010. At the age of 93, Franzese was charged with shaking down the Penthouse and Hustler strip clubs in New York City. The double hit by prosecutors would have caused enough shock but the worst was yet to come: Franzese’s son John Junior would testify against his own father during the upcoming trial.<br /> <br /> The trial began in June and showed the American public a 93-year-old in a wheelchair who frequently fell asleep during the trial. Not exactly the notorious hit man and underboss of the Colombo Crime Family people expected to see. But when his son took the stand Franzese was wide awake. John Junior explained that he became an informant because he wanted to change his life. He had a heavy drug habit and was stealing money from his mother and other family members to buy dope.<br /> <br /> His mother, 75-year-old Cristina Capobianco-Franzese, was also in attendance. After seeing her son on the stand she started a heated argument with Sonny in the men’s room. When she exited she screamed at reporters and jurors that Franzese “should plead guilty and let my son live his life. Give his kid a break and plead guilty. I want my son to have a break. It's the last child I have."<br /> <br /> Sonny Franzese was having none of it. The trial ran its full course and after three weeks, on July 7, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Franzese faces a maximum of twenty years in prison and will most likely die in a cell. When asked by reporters about this prospect Franzese remained indifferent. “I die outside, I die in jail. It don't matter to me. I gotta die someplace."</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><strong>UPDATE JUNE 24, 2017:</strong></span> On Friday, June 23, 2017, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/colombo-family-underboss-john-sonny-franzese-at-100-years-america" target="_blank">Franzese walked out of prison alive</a>, a free man. At 100 years, he plans to spend his remaing time with his family. He has been welcomed home by his son Michael laying to rest any rumors about Sonny shunning his son.</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><strong>UPDATE FEBRUARY 24, 2020:</strong></span> John Franzese passed away at 103. <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/colombo-mafia-family-legend-sonny-franzese-dead-at-103-a-man-must" target="_blank">Read the entire story here.</a></p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-colombo-crime-family">Colombo crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Georgia’s “Get Dat Money” gang boss sentenced to 20 years in prison for running meth ring behind bars
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/georgia-s-get-dat-money-gang-boss-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison
2021-05-06T13:00:00.000Z
2021-05-06T13:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/georgia-s-get-dat-money-gang-boss-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237156694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237156694?profile=original" /></a>By <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a> Editors</p>
<p>The boss of the “Get Dat Money” (GDM) drug trafficking organization in Macon, Georgia, was sentenced to serve 20 years in prison on Tuesday as the result of a lengthy investigation into the network’s illegal activities throughout Middle Georgia.</p>
<p>41-year-old Kelvin D. Carswell (photo above), who went by a variety of nicknames such as “K-9,” “Nine,” “Kinineso Harlem Carswell,” “9ne Oharlem,” and “Kninepunkin KinGcarswell,” had pleaded guilty to one count conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Meth" target="_blank">methamphetamine</a> on December 15, 2020.</p>
<p>“Many lives have been undoubtedly damaged, even destroyed, due to the actions of Kelvin Carswell and the members of the ‘Get Dat Money’ <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drug trafficking</a> organization. Carswell brazenly orchestrated a prolific meth trafficking organization from behind prison bars, and he has now received the maximum penalty provided by law. He, along with his co-conspirators, are being held accountable for their destructive choices,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Peter D. Leary.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>“The mansion”, prison, and Macon motels</strong></span></p>
<p>In 2017, the Macon office of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> and the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office initiated an investigation into the Carswell drug trafficking organization known as “Get Dat Money” or “GDM.” On May 30, 2012, Carswell had been incarcerated by the Georgia Department of Corrections, serving a sentence for attempted carjacking with a maximum release date of October 12, 2026.</p>
<p>The FBI received information in June 2017 that Carswell was orchestrating the sale of drugs while incarcerated at the Washington State Prison in Sandersville, Georgia. A search of Carswell’s prison cell uncovered a quantity of drugs and a cellular phone with multiple SD cards. Investigators discovered Carswell was texting his co-conspirators explicit instructions via his contraband cell phone to facilitate the distribution of methamphetamine, heroin and crack cocaine from prison.</p>
<p>The drugs, once obtained, were sold from a residence Carswell and his co-conspirators referred to as “The Mansion” located at 373 Fulton Street in Macon. Carswell’s co-conspirators would sell drugs out of “The Mansion” at his direction. Drugs were also sold by distributors working at the behest of Carswell at multiple motels located in Macon. Throughout the course of the conspiracy, Carswell’s co-conspirators obtained more than 10,000 grams of methamphetamine for distribution at his direction.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Those that go down</strong></span></p>
<p>Along with their boss, the following other members and associates of the drug trafficking group were sentenced on May 4:</p>
<ul>
<li>Terrico Wade, 40, of Macon, was sentenced to serve 71 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to distribution of methamphetamine on December 15, 2020.</li>
<li>Quateshia Carswell, 27, of Macon, was sentenced to serve 48 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release after she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine on December 1, 2020.</li>
<li>Trent Burton, 50, of Macon, was sentenced to serve 48 months in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to use of communication facility on December 16, 2020.</li>
<li>Jahmi Booker, 38, of Macon, was sentenced to serve 10 months in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to use of communication facility on December 15, 2020.</li>
<li>Jacobi Jones, Sr., 35, of Macon, was sentenced to serve seven months in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to misprision of felony on December 21, 2020.</li>
</ul>
<p>The following individuals were sentenced to prison on Monday, May 3:</p>
<ul>
<li>Chad Cummings, 37, of Macon, was sentenced to serve 60 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.</li>
<li>Trayvion Burney, 27, of Macon, was sentenced to serve 33 months in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony on January 27, 2021.</li>
<li>Henry Flowers, 32, of Macon, was sentenced to time served to be followed by one year of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to use of a communication facility on January 11, 2021.</li>
</ul>
<p>The following defendants are awaiting sentencing:</p>
<ul>
<li>Tabitha Whitehead, 36, of Macon, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine on December 21, 2020, and faces a maximum of twenty years imprisonment to be followed by at least three years of supervised release and a maximum fine of $1,000,000.</li>
<li>Davan Randolph, 49, of Macon, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine on December 15, 2020, and faces a maximum twenty years imprisonment to be followed by at least three years of supervised release and a maximum fine of $1,000,000.</li>
<li>Kelly Jones, 38, of Macon, pleaded guilty to use of communication facility on December 15, 2020, and faces a maximum of four years in prison to be followed by one year of supervised release and a maximum fine of $250,000.</li>
<li>Kewaunis King, 31, of Macon, pleaded guilty to use of communication facility on December 15, 2020, and faces a maximum of four years imprisonment to be followed by one year of supervised release and a maximum fine of $250,000.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/street-gangs" target="_blank">Street Gangs section</a> or <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/black-organized-crime" target="_blank">Black organized crime</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
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FBI offers $30,000 reward for information leading to arrest of fugitive Boston Chinatown’s Triad hitman
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/fbi-offers-30-000-reward-for-information-leading-to-arrest-of-fug
2021-01-13T13:54:41.000Z
2021-01-13T13:54:41.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fbi-offers-30-000-reward-for-information-leading-to-arrest-of-fug" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237155686,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237155686?profile=original" /></a>By <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a> Editors</p>
<p>Authorities are stepping up their hunt for Hung Tien Pham, a hitman of Boston Chinatown’s Ping On <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/triads-overview" target="_blank">Triad</a>, who is wanted for the brutal execution-style murders of five men at a Chinatown social club in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Boston" target="_blank">Boston</a>, Massachusetts, 30 years ago this week.</p>
<p>Pham (photo above) was known as a major associate of Asian organized crime at the time of his becoming a fugitive. If he is still alive, he would be 60 years old. He was born in Mong Cai, Quang Ningh Province, North Vietnam. He is a Vietnamese national of Chinese descent and is fluent in Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. At the time of the murders, he was a legal, permanent resident of the United States.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Boston’s Chinatown massacre</strong></span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237155897,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237155897?profile=original" /></a>In the early morning hours of January 12, 1991, Hung Tien Pham (right) entered an illegal gambling den located at 85A Tyler Street in Boston, Massachusetts, and allegedly shot six men, execution-style, while they were playing cards. Of the six victims, only one survived the attack, and he subsequently identified Pham, along with Nam The Tham and Siny Van Tran, as the shooters. Six days later, on January 18, 1991, a warrant was issued for Pham’s arrest following his indictment by a grand jury in Suffolk County Superior Court on five counts of murder, one count of armed assault with intent to murder, one count of conspiracy, and one count of carrying a firearm without a license.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-deadly-battle-for-control-over-new-york-s-chinatown" target="_blank"><strong>The deadly battle for control over New York’s Chinatown</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Following the massacre, it is alleged that Pham left his two children and their mother and drove to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to gamble and then to New York, New York, where he boarded a flight for Hong Kong on February 1, 1991. A federal arrest warrant was issued for Pham on February 15, 1991, by a United States magistrate judge in the District of Massachusetts, charging him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the crime of murder.</p>
<p>In addition to the quintuple homicide, Pham is also wanted by the Boston Police Department for another murder that occurred on January 8, 1991, four days before the massacre.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>International manhunt</strong></span></p>
<p>After a decade-long international manhunt, Tham and Tran were arrested in China and, following extensive diplomatic negotiations, returned to the United States in 2001. In 2005, Tham and Tran were convicted of murder in Suffolk County Superior Court and are currently serving five consecutive life sentences. Pham remains a fugitive and his last known location was Bangkok, Thailand, in the mid- to late-1990s.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: Asia’s Most Wanted Drug Lord - Profile of</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/asia-s-most-wanted-drug-lord-profile-of-triad-boss-tse-chi-lop-ni" target="_blank"><strong>Triad boss Tse Chi Lop, nicknamed “Brother Number Three”</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Investigators have determined that in the 1980s and early 1990s, Pham was a major associate of Asian organized crime, specifically the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/triads-overview" target="_blank">Ping On crime syndicate</a>, operating in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Toronto, Canada. He also has family in the San Francisco Bay area of California, South Korea, and North Vietnam, giving him various locations to find a hiding place or shelter.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> is offering a reward of up to $30,000 to anyone who can provide information leading to Pham’s capture and conviction. He should be considered armed and dangerous and an international flight risk. Pham has held a variety of jobs, including but not limited to, a cook, waiter, bicycle repairman, and floor sander. He was also known to be a big spender who liked flashy cars and cognac.</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AkavBXrjCWw?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p>The public is being asked to review Pham’s wanted poster which includes new photographs, including an age-progressed photo of him at 60 years old. An international publicity campaign launched this week includes the launch of a webpage on fbi.gov; social media outreach on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; and targeted publicity in the cities to which Pham has been tied. The public can play an active role in helping law enforcement find the subject by sharing links to the website and official social media content.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-chinese-godfather-profile-of-chinese-italian-crime-boss-zhang" target="_blank">The Chinese Godfather</a> - Profile of Chinese-Italian crime boss Zhang “Il Uomo Nero” Naizhong</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>“As alleged, this cold-blooded killer has been on the run for 30 years, and we’re hoping this reward will incentivize anyone with information on Pham’s whereabouts to come forward so we can we bring him to justice for his role in one of the bloodiest massacres in Boston’s history,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Division. “The six victims and their families who suffered so much deserve nothing less, and we will not rest until Pham has been held accountable for these horrific crimes.”</p>
<p>“For those of us who were in the Boston area 30 years ago, the massacre is something that cannot be forgotten. Five families lost their loved ones that night, the one surviving victim’s life was changed forever, and an entire neighborhood was traumatized. Boston remembers these lives that were brutally taken. It took years to find Pham’s co-defendants, and we will not rest until Pham is brought to justice and held accountable. There is no statute of limitations on murder. We will not stop looking until we find him,’’ said Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Call the Feds</strong></span></p>
<p>The FBI is offering a monetary reward of up to $30,000 for information leading to the location, arrest, and prosecution of this individual. Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts should take no action themselves but should immediately call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), their local law enforcement agency, or their nearest American embassy or consulate. Tips can also be submitted at tips.fbi.gov.</p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/triads-overview">Triads section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Genovese Mob Boss Fat Tony’s Crazy Christmas Card
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-boss-fat-tony-s-crazy-christmas-card
2020-12-21T16:00:00.000Z
2020-12-21T16:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-boss-fat-tony-s-crazy-christmas-card"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237025287,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237025287?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a></p>
<p>Ah Christmas! ‘Tis the season to be jolly. Genovese mob boss “Fat Tony” Salerno knew that all too well and pulled off a Christmas prank both edgy and extremely funny.</p>
<p>As a leading member of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese Crime Family</a> Anthony Salerno had enormous power. Not just in the criminal underworld, his corrupting influence extended into the legitimate world of construction, waste management, and various unions that gave him control over a wide array of businesses.</p>
<p>Yet, despite all that power, he still had to answer to a man above him. <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-vincent-chin">Vincent Gigante</a> was the true boss of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Genovese" target="_blank">Genovese Family</a> and was using Salerno as his front, his man on the streets, and the one who would take the hit when the FBI came knocking.</p>
<p>This wasn’t a sign of disrespect, though. Everyone knew the reasons behind it and for Salerno it came with the job. He was loyal, had sworn an oath and was never going to break it. He respected “Chin” Gigante and his boss respected him back. He could trust him.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=LCN" target="_blank">La Cosa Nostra</a> there are not many people you can trust.</p>
<p><a href="http://t.co/8oQrLl0a6f" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237026056,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237026056?profile=original" width="300" /></a>Besides Salerno, Gigante had another layer of protection against the Feds: His crazy act. For several decades, he managed to trick shrinks, doctors, judges, cops, and the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> into thinking he was a nutcase and unable to keep a job, let alone run a criminal brotherhood consisting of hundreds of members.</p>
<p>Gigante would wander the streets in a dirty bathrobe. Talking to parking meters, sometimes even urinating in public, he was quite the sight. In no way, shape, or form did he even remotely resemble a Mafia boss.</p>
<p>While the outside world discussed whether Gigante was crazy or not, whether he led a criminal empire or just the empire of dwarfs and unicorns in his head, the mob knew the truth. And in the 1980s, Tony Salerno was going to have some fun with Chin’s act.</p>
<p>The old man put on his pajamas, a robe, a baseball cap which he turned backwards, and put a cigar in his mouth. He then took a photo which you can see on the right. He sent this photo as a Christmas card to several fellow mobsters who no doubt recognized the man Salerno was impersonating and had to laugh at the scene.</p>
<p>Chin undoubtedly saw the card as well. And though he was a secretive man who hated outlandish behavior, there was no backlash at Salerno. Gigante could appreciate a good joke once in a while. Especially from his dear colleague Fat Tony.</p>
<p>In 1986, Salerno was convicted in the Commission Case and sentenced to 100 years in prison. He died there in 1992 at the age of 80.</p>
<p>Vincent Gigante’s crazy act officially ended in 2003 when he admitted lying about his mental health. He died two years later at age 77.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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The New England Crime Family
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family
2020-12-12T16:02:02.000Z
2020-12-12T16:02:02.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><strong>Estimate members</strong>: 30<br /> <strong>First Boss</strong>: Frank “Butsey” Morelli<br /> <strong>Primary activities</strong>: Involved in narcotics trafficking, video poker machines, robbery, extortion, loan sharking, gambling.<br /> <strong>Boss</strong>: Carmen DiNunzio<br /> <strong>Acting Boss</strong>: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mobsters-sentenced-to-prison-for-extortion-scheme">Anthony "Spucky" Spagnolo</a> (in prison)</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-4">ARTICLES:</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/homicide-at-rough-point-the-billionairess-and-the-mobbed-up-polic">Homicide at Rough Point: The billionairess and the mobbed up police chief</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/former-mob-hitman-crashes-liquor-store-has-drink-and-cigar-then-p">Former mob hitman crashes liquor store, has drink and cigar, then punches cop</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/mobster-robert-gentile-dies-at-85-takes-secrets-about-isabella-st">Mobster Robert Gentile dies at 85</a>, takes secrets about Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft to grave<br /> Never lie to the feds – Profile: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/never-lie-to-the-feds-profile-of-boston-mafia-boss-francis-cadill">Boston Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/patriarca-mafia-family-s-violent-and-medical-secrets-discussed-in">Patriarca Mafia family’s - violent and medical - secrets</a> discussed in Street Corner Soapbox podcast<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-new-england-mafia-family-capo-gets-66-months-in-prison-for">Former New England mob family capo gets 66 months in prison</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-italian-mafia-irish-gangs-chinese-tongs-bootleggers-gamblers">The Italian Mafia, Irish gangs, Chinese Tongs:</a> Welcome to Gangland Boston<br /> Profile: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-patriarca-mob-family-enforcer-frank-bobo-marrapese-jr">Patriarca mob family enforcer Frank “Bobo” Marrapese Jr.</a><br /> Profile: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mafia-boss-peter-limone-dies-at-age-83">Boston Mafia boss Peter Limone</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-england-mafia-capo-bobby-deluca-admits-conspiracy-in-1992-mur">Bobby DeLuca admits conspiracy in 1992 murder of mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-patriarca-crime-family-capo-anthony-st-laurent-sr">Profile: Capo Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent Sr.</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/camorra-still-possesses-stolen-rembrandt-art-hunters-say-could-bo">Could Boston heist painting have ended up in Italy with Camorra Mafia?</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mob-boss-frank-salemme-faces-hopeless-day-in-court">Boston mob boss Frank Salemme faces hopeless day in court</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-new-england-mob-boss-turned-snitch-francis-cadillac-salemm">Former mob boss Francis Salemme charged with murder of federal witness</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/patriarca-mob-family-capo-turned-snitch-charged-with-lying-about">Bobby DeLuca charged with lying about Boston club owner's murder</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mobsters-sentenced-to-prison-for-extortion-scheme">Boston mobsters sentenced to prison for extortion scheme</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mobster-goes-to-trial-for-hidden-interest-in-million-dolla">Boston mobster goes to trial for hidden interest in multi-million-dollar casino deal</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-england-mobster-sentenced-for-drug-conspiracy">New England mobster sentenced for drug conspiracy</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mafia-bosses-hit-the-streets-war-looming">Boston Mafia bosses hit the streets – War looming?</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fbi-releases-audio-of-boston-mafia-induction-ceremony">FBI releases audio of Boston Mafia induction ceremony</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-england-mafia-bust-emphasizes-mob-s-decline">New England Mafia bust emphasizes mob’s decline</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/joe-barboza-boston-barbarian">Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian</a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>VIDEO:</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/video-mafia-link-to-500-million-art-heist-discussed-in-new-episod" target="_blank">Mafia link to $500 million art heist discussed in Mob Talk</a></p></div>
WATCH: Philadelphia wiseguys moving around the neighborhood
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/watch-philadelphia-wiseguys-moving-through-the-neighborhood
2020-02-29T04:30:00.000Z
2020-02-29T04:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/watch-philadelphia-wiseguys-moving-through-the-neighborhood" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237136873,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237136873?profile=original" /></a>By <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a> Editors</p>
<p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family" target="_blank">Philadelphia mobsters</a> have been on the move lately, journalists George Anastasia and Dave Schratwieser report in their latest Mob Talk, going from one social club to the next. The two also discuss the death of Colombo family legend <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/colombo-mafia-family-legend-sonny-franzese-dead-at-103-a-man-must" target="_blank">“Sonny” Franzese</a> and the interesting arrest of a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Loansharking" target="_blank">loanshark</a>.</p>
<p>Members of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family" target="_blank">Philadelphia mob</a> love to get together. “It’s a South Philly thing,” Anastasia says. Recently, they opened up a social club past the Italian market around 9<sup>th</sup> and Catherine Street. Is it smart to be hanging out at a clubhouse?</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-map-shows-mob-social-clubs-in-new-york" target="_blank"><strong>New map shows mob social clubs in New York</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>“To be in a spot where you know you’re gonna meet, it kind of helps law enforcement in terms of who is who and who is associating with who. The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> and Philadelphia police are aware. On the flipside, if you are talking to guys on the streets [and ask them, they will answer]: We’re not doing anything [illegal] so what’s the difference?” Anastasia concludes.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/another-mob-social-club-bites" target="_blank"><strong>Another Mob Social Club Bites The Dust</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Then there was an interesting arrest by the Pennsylvania State Police. They busted Frank Scarpato, who lives in South Philly, and charged him with running a massive <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Loansharking" target="_blank">loansharking</a> business. He put out hundreds of thousands of dollars out on the streets over the past ten years, allegedly making threats, stalking debtors. The question for Anastasia and Schratwieser is: Is it standalone or connected to other things?</p>
<p><strong>Watch the entire episode of Mob Talk below:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1pF1xEvwg68?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family">Philadelphia crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
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Kansas City Mafia boss Nick Civella and betting on the Super Bowl
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/kansas-city-mafia-boss-nick-civella-and-betting-on-the-super-bowl
2019-11-24T07:32:21.000Z
2019-11-24T07:32:21.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kansas-city-mafia-boss-nick-civella-and-betting-on-the-super-bowl" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237133257,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237133257?profile=original" /></a>By Gary Jenkins for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a> via <a href="https://ganglandwire.com" target="_blank">Gangland Wire</a></p>
<p>In the 1969-1970 season of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=NFL" target="_blank">NFL</a>, the Kansas City Chiefs were headed to the Super Bowl against the favored Minnesota Vikings. Nationally, the Vikings were getting all the action to win with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Bookmaking" target="_blank">bookmakers</a> around the nation.</p>
<p>Locally, in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Kansas" target="_blank">Kansas</a>, the money was going down on the Chiefs. <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Civella" target="_blank">Mafia boss Nick Civella</a> called the tapped North View Social Club’s phone. This was the mob clubhouse known as “The Trap.” The main bookies, Dude Fontanello and Frank Tousa were worried about the “Book” being out of whack.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: “His demeanor was very vulgar, coarse and he used many profanities” -</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/his-demeanor-was-very-vulgar-coarse-and-he-used-many-profanities" target="_blank"><strong>The Kansas City Mob and the skimming of Las Vegas casinos</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Dude noticed too much local money going down on the Chiefs. They needed to “lay off” the Chief’s action to another city. At another city like <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Chicago" target="_blank">Chicago</a> or Minneapolis where there would be more money down on the Vikings.</p>
<p>You see, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mob</a> does not gamble with the “<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gangsters-inc-s-mafia-speak" target="_blank">Book</a>.” They equalize the number of bets on each team in any given contest. The losers pay the losing bet and a 10% “<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gangsters-inc-s-mafia-speak" target="_blank">Vig</a>” to the bookie. The winner gets his win while the Mob keeps the “Vig.” Vig is short for vigorsh.</p>
<p>What happened next? <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> wiretaps, arrests, and a murdered snitch.</p>
<p><strong>Watch and listen in the video below:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c0fL7y5BBow?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in">Organized Crime in North America section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
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Three Gangster Disciples bosses guilty of racketeering, triple murder in nightclub, murder of witness, and shooting
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/three-gangster-disciples-bosses-guilty-of-racketeering-triple-mur
2019-10-11T08:04:27.000Z
2019-10-11T08:04:27.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/three-gangster-disciples-bosses-guilty-of-racketeering-triple-mur" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237136275,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237136275?profile=original" /></a>By <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a> Editors</p>
<p>Three bosses of the Gangster Disciples national criminal organization were convicted in federal court Tuesday of racketeering conspiracy involving murder, attempted murder in aid of racketeering, drug trafficking conspiracy, and other crimes. This case is the latest of a series of trials and pleas for members and leaders of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=GD" target="_blank">Gangster Disciples</a>.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>“Extremely organized”</strong></span></p>
<p>“The Gangster Disciples are extremely organized and their reach is wide-spread across the United States,” U.S. Attorney Byung Pak told the press. “Their strict chain of command that carried their message of violence and crime throughout the organization posed a serious threat nationwide. They lured young people into the gang with the promise of a better life, and then inducted them into an appalling world of violence and crime.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: The Governor of Tennessee:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-governor-of-tennessee-gangster-disciples-boss-byron-montrail" target="_blank"><strong>Gangster Disciples boss Byron Montrail Purdy ruled state’s underworld</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>“Drug trafficking, thefts, violent assaults and murders are all crimes that the Gangster Disciples commit every day to protect their turf, increase their territory, control and recruit members and terrorize rival <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gangs" target="_blank">gangs</a>. They are merciless and have wreaked havoc in our neighborhoods for far too long,” said Special Agent in Charge Chris Hacker of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a>’s Atlanta Field Office.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/president-obama-gives-gangster-disciples-leader-a-sentence-reduct" target="_blank"><strong>President Obama gives Gangster Disciples leader a sentence reduction</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>According to U.S. Attorney Pak, the charges, and other information presented in court: The Gangster Disciples are a national gang with roots in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Chicago" target="_blank">Chicago</a> dating back to the 1970’s. The gang is highly structured, with a hierarchy of leadership posts known as “Positions of Authority” or “POAs.” The gang strictly enforces rules for its members, the most important of which is “silence and secrecy” – a prohibition on cooperating with law enforcement. Violations of the rule are punishable by death.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Boss level</strong></span></p>
<p>42-year-old Lewis Mobley, 43-year-old Vertuies Wall, and 30-year-old Lawrence Grice were in a position of power in the Gangster Disciples, prosecutors claimed. The evidence showed that the three men and their fellow gang members used the gang’s structure to carry out violent and serious crimes, including <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>, attempted murder, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Robbery" target="_blank">robbery</a>, bank and wire fraud, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drug trafficking</a>, and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Extortion" target="_blank">extortion</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: The Big Hen:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-big-hen-regional-enforcer-of-gangster-disciples-gets-30-years" target="_blank"><strong>Regional enforcer of Gangster Disciples gets 30 years in prison</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>The evidence also showed that each of the trial defendants held a position of authority within the gang’s structure. Mobley held a position in the gang’s security/enforcement arm, and exercised leadership over the enforcement team known as “HATE Committee,” that was responsible for committing murders, shootings, and other violence. Wall was the “First C,” or local leader, for the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Macon" target="_blank">Macon</a> area Gangster Disciples. Gang member Lawrence Grice also held a leadership position over Gangster Disciples in parts of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Texas" target="_blank">Texas</a> including the city of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Houston" target="_blank">Houston</a>.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Murder, murder, murder</strong></span></p>
<p>One such murder was a deadly shooting at a nightclub in Macon, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Georgia" target="_blank">Georgia</a>. Three people were killed and another three were wounded after gang member Wall and his subordinates started a gunfight with rivals.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/senator-declares-war-on-gangster-disciples" target="_blank"><strong>Senator Declares War On Gangster Disciples</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>On another occasion, gang member Lewis Mobley shot a teenage victim twice at point-blank range. Mobley believed that the victim had disrespected the gang by walking through a crowd while shouting a slogan and wearing the color associated with a rival gang.</p>
<p>In a third incident, a top Gangster Disciples leader summoned the gang’s National Chief Enforcer to travel across the country to kill a witness. The witness, who was scheduled to testify against a Gangster Disciple on drug charges, was shot dead in her home on the gang’s orders.</p>
<p>To date, 27 defendants have pleaded guilty, five were convicted at a separate trial, and three defendants are presently awaiting trial.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/street-gangs" target="_blank">Street Gangs section</a> or <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/black-organized-crime" target="_blank">Black organized crime</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
“Fuck you! Pay me!” – Lucchese Mafia family boss ordered hit on gangster who refused to pay his $100K debt
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/fuck-you-pay-me-lucchese-mafia-family-boss-ordered-hit-on-gangste
2019-10-08T05:30:00.000Z
2019-10-08T05:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fuck-you-pay-me-lucchese-mafia-family-boss-ordered-hit-on-gangste" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237128079,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237128079?profile=original" /></a>By David Amoruso for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a></p>
<p>Who said the New York Mafia lost its teeth? The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">Lucchese crime family</a>, one of the city’s five La Cosa Nostra families, begs to differ. At the opening of a trial in which two of its bosses and two underlings face racketeering and murder charges, prosecutors allege that they have no problem executing a murder contract.</p>
<p>Alleged mob leaders <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Madonna" target="_blank">Matthew Madonna</a> (photo above, middle) and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-steven" target="_blank">Steven Crea</a> (photo, right) were <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank">arrested in June of 2017</a> along with seventeen other Lucchese family wiseguys, including <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Londonio" target="_blank">Christopher Londonio</a> and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Caldwell" target="_blank">Terrence Caldwell</a>, and charged with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>, attempted murder, assault, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drug distribution</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Loansharking" target="_blank">loansharking</a>, illegal <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambling" target="_blank">gambling</a>, mail and wire fraud, and selling untaxed cigarettes.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Gunshot to the head</strong></span></p>
<p>One of the murder charges the men face, relates to the gangland killing of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Meldish" target="_blank">Michael Meldish</a> (photo above, left), at one time a feared hitman and part of New York’s Purple Gang, a group comprised of drug traffickers and murderers, many of whom later went on to join one of New York’s Mafia families. He was found shot to death in his car in November of 2013 in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Bronx" target="_blank">Bronx</a>. He was bleeding from both his ears, the deadly result of a gunshot to the head.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-mobster-planned-to-escape-from-metropolitan-deten" target="_blank">Lucchese family mobster planned to escape</a> from Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, prosecutors say</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>“Michael Meldish is dead because of these four men,” prosecutor Celia Cohen <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/10/07/lucchese-mob-boss-ordered-2013-hit-over-unpaid-100k-loan-prosecutors/" target="_blank">told the court</a> during her opening statement on Monday. She alleges that Madonna and Crea ordered the murder and Londonio and Caldwell were sent to ‘take care’ of the contract.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: Hanging with hitmen and Eddie Murphy: Profile of</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-family-capo-fat-pete-chiodo" target="_blank"><strong>Lucchese capo "Fat Pete" Chiodo</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Why? Because Meldish told Madonna to “fuck off” when he asked about $100,000 of his money that he had loaned his former associate, Cohen claims. “Not repaying a boss is a dangerous game,” she added.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
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<p> </p></div>
Son of New York Mafia boss Vincent “Chin” Gigante pleads guilty to racketeering charges
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/son-of-new-york-mafia-boss-vincent-chin-gigante-pleads-guilty-to
2019-04-12T09:00:10.000Z
2019-04-12T09:00:10.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/son-of-new-york-mafia-boss-vincent-chin-gigante-pleads-guilty-to" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237126467,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237126467?profile=original" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Esposito is the only son of longtime <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-boss-vincent-chin" target="_blank">Genovese crime family leader Vincent Gigante</a> and his mistress Olympia Esposito. The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> boss raised two separate families: One with his wife, the other with his mistress. Thanks to the groundwork laid by his deceased father, Esposito was able to use the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">mob family</a> and its muscle to lean on various union officials.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>$3.8 million in cash hidden at home</strong></span></p>
<p>In one case, he directed the long-running extortion of a union official for annual tribute payments of over $10,000, and had a number of lower-ranking associates collect money and convey threats to the man on his behalf. In another extortion scheme, Esposito’s guys extorted a different union official and a financial adviser for a cut of commissions made from union investments.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/keeping-the-new-york-docks-in-the-mafia-family-from-the-gigantes" target="_blank"><strong>How the Gigante family ruled the New York docks</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Authorities busted the scheme in 2017. At the time of Esposito’s arrest, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> executed a search warrant on his home and seized more than $3.8 million in U.S. currency hidden throughout the residence, along with an unregistered handgun, ammunition, brass knuckles, and lists of made members of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese crime family</a>. As part of today’s guilty plea, Esposito agreed to forfeit the more than $3.8 million seized by the FBI as criminal proceeds resulting from the offense.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>The other Gigante son</strong></span></p>
<p>Gigante’s other son, Andrew, also ran afoul with the law. In 2002, he was <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-associate-andrew" target="_blank">arrested along with his father</a> and several other Genovese mobsters and charged with running extortion rackets on the New York, New Jersey and Miami waterfronts. Andrew pleaded guilty in 2003, agreed to forfeit $2 million, and was sentenced to 2 years in prison.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>“Throwback behavior”</strong></span></p>
<p>“The shakedown of union officials, racketeering and extortion may sound like throwback behavior of mobsters who operated decades ago,” FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said. “However, the bread and butter of the mafia is to make money, so the illegal enterprises they’ve always engaged in are being used even in the modern era. The FBI New York Organized Crime Task Force will investigate whatever illicit activity the mob chooses to pursue, in order to stop their criminal behavior.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-a-rat-brought-down-the-colombo-mafia-family-crew-of-fat-jerry" target="_blank">How a rat brought down the Colombo Mafia family crew</a> of “Fat Jerry,” “The Mask,” and “Mumbles”</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman added, “As he admitted today, for more than a decade Vincent Esposito made millions with members of the Genovese Crime Family by extorting payments, demanding kickbacks, committing fraud, and instilling fear. Thanks to an extensive investigation by our law enforcement partners, Esposito has been unmasked as a criminal and put out of business.”</p>
<p>Esposito’s guilty plea carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He is scheduled for sentencing on July 10.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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<li><strong><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/about-gangsters-inc">About Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Gambino family mobster charged with treacherous murder and robbery of his dear 78-year-old friend
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-family-mobster-charged-with-treacherous-murder-and-robber
2019-03-16T02:30:00.000Z
2019-03-16T02:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-family-mobster-charged-with-treacherous-murder-and-robber" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237112491,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237112491?profile=original" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>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 <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview" target="_blank">Gambino crime family</a> in New York, on Wednesday and charged him with the robbery and murder of his 78-year-old friend.</p>
<p>Prosecutors claim that Pandrella met with Zito, a friend of many years, in Zito’s home on October 26, 2018. While there, he shot Zito in the back of the head at close range, and stole the assets of Zito’s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Loansharking" target="_blank">loansharking</a> business. Pandrella then cleaned up evidence that might link him to the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: Gambino Mafia family boss</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-mafia-family-boss-frank-cali-shot-dead-in-front-of-his-st" target="_blank"><strong>Frank Cali shot dead in front of his Staten Island mansion</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Astonishingly, later that same day, Pandrella returned to Zito’s home and met with his family, friends and relatives. In between the crying and sorrow, he tried to learn the status of law enforcement’s investigation.</p>
<p>Security camera footage caught Pandrella coming to and going from Zito’s residence at the time of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Robbery" target="_blank">robbery</a> and murder. Additionally, investigators recovered his <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=DNA" target="_blank">DNA</a> from the trigger of the murder weapon.</p>
<p>“An associate of the Gambino crime family allegedly shoots his friend in the back of the head, returns to the home to visit with the family and then thinks he can dispose of the evidence of the crime,” <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney told reporters. “It takes a certain type of evil to murder a friend in their own home, and then console the grieving relatives.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Members of West Baltimore gang Trained To Go guilty of 9 murders, drug trafficking, witness intimidation
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/members-of-west-baltimore-gang-trained-to-go-guilty-of-9-murders
2018-11-02T06:30:00.000Z
2018-11-02T06:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/members-of-west-baltimore-gang-trained-to-go-guilty-of-9-murders" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237104255,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237104255?profile=original" width="550" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>Eight men were convicted by a federal jury on Wednesday for their crimes committed for the West Baltimore gang known as Trained To Go (TTG). These included nine murders, drug trafficking, and witness intimidation, and dealing heroin, marijuana, and cocaine. Several of the defendants were also convicted of related drug and firearms charges. </p>
<p>“Federal, state and local law enforcement joined together to target the leaders and key members of one of the most violent gangs operating in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Baltimore" target="_blank">Baltimore City</a>,” said U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur. “Today’s convictions prove our continuing commitment to removing armed, violent criminals from our neighborhoods and bringing them to justice in the federal system, which has no parole—ever.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/high-ranking-bloods-gangster-arrested-for-organizing-murder-of-bo" target="_blank"><strong>Bloods gangster arrested for organizing hits on Bonanno family mobsters</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Trained To Go (TTG) is a criminal organization which operated in the Sandtown neighborhood of West Baltimore. Its members sold <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Heroin" target="_blank">heroin</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Cocaine" target="_blank">cocaine</a>, and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Marijuana" target="_blank">marijuana</a>, and used violence and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a> to defend their exclusive right to control who sold narcotics in their territory.</p>
<p>At trial, evidence proved that between May 20, 2010 and May 25, 2016, TTG gangsters committed acts of violence, including nine murders, shootings, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Robbery" target="_blank">armed robbery</a>, and witness intimidation. The violent acts were intended to further the gang’s activities, protect the gang’s drug territory, and maintain and increase a member’s position within the organization. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/nathan-barksdale-inspiration-for-the-wire-dead-at-54" target="_blank"><strong>Crime boss "Bodie" Barksdale, inspiration for The Wire, dead at 54</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Murders were committed in retaliation for individuals robbing TTG members of drugs and drug proceeds, or while TTG gangsters robbed others of their drugs and drug proceeds, as well as in murder-for-hire schemes. To make sure nobody talked to police, they engaged in witness intimidation through violence or threats of violence.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237104681,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237104681?profile=original" width="296" /></a>Much of this deadly violence was committed by 23-year-old Montana Barronette (right), who was <a href="https://www.wmar2news.com/news/crime-checker/baltimore-city-crime/feds-gang-implicated-in-10-baltimore-killings" target="_blank">singled out</a> by authorities as the number one trigger-puller in the city of Baltimore.</p>
<p>The investigation into the gang’s activities was conducted by the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> Baltimore Safe Streets Violent Gang Task Force, which includes FBI special agents and task force officers from the Baltimore, Baltimore County, and Anne Arundel County Police Departments. </p>
<p>The eight men all face a maximum sentence of life in prison on the racketeering and drug conspiracies. Three other TTG members, all of Baltimore, previously pleaded guilty. 25-year-old Brandon “Man Man” Bazemore pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, including three murders and an attempted murder, as well as to drug conspiracy. </p>
<p>Bazemore and the government have agreed that if the court accepts the plea, Bazemore will be sentenced to 25 years in federal prison at his sentencing on November 13, 2018. Co-defendants Hisaun Chatman (31) and James Woodfolk (20) pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy and were each sentenced to five years in prison, to be served concurrent to the state sentence each is currently serving.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/grape-street-crips-member-indicted-for-murder-of-bystander-at" target="_blank">Grape Street Crips member indicted for murder</a> of bystander at 2010 summer cookout</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Co-defendant Roger Taylor is still a fugitive, and the charges against him are pending. Anyone who may have information on the whereabouts of Roger Taylor is asked to contact the FBI-Baltimore Field office at (410) 265-8080.</p>
<p>The defendants convicted on Wednesday are: </p>
<ul>
<li>Montana Barronette, a/k/a Tana, and Tanner, age 23;</li>
<li>Terrell Sivells, a/k/a Rell, age 27;</li>
<li>John Harrison, a/k/a Binkie, age 28;</li>
<li>Taurus Tillman, a/k/a Tash, age 29;</li>
<li>Linton Broughton, a/k/a Marty, age 25;</li>
<li>Dennis Pulley, a/k/a Denmo, age 31;</li>
<li>Brandon Wilson, a/k/a Ali, age 24; and</li>
<li>Timothy Floyd, a/k/a Tim Rod, age 28.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/street-gangs" target="_blank">Street Gangs section</a> or <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/black-organized-crime" target="_blank">Black organized crime</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
“You only do two days: The day you go in and the day you come out” – Profile of Mafia capo Gene Gotti
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/you-only-do-two-days-the-day-you-go-in-and-the-day-you-come-out-p
2018-09-19T18:53:51.000Z
2018-09-19T18:53:51.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/you-only-do-two-days-the-day-you-go-in-and-the-day-you-come-out-p" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237115294,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237115294?profile=original" width="560" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Gene Gotti took a 50-year prison sentence and didn’t flinch. Just like his infamous big brother, John, the Teflon Don, Gene did his time and kept his mouth shut. Now, he faces his toughest challenge yet: Living life as a Gotti.</p>
<p>For a long time, life as a Gotti was simple. Though the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gotti" target="_blank">Gotti boys</a> had a sense of honor and pride among them, they also had a severe lack of respect for the law. In the 1960s, John and Gene were ferocious truck hijackers, targeting countless trucks transporting lucrative cargo from JFK airport.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interview-john-gotti-jr-sits-down-with-gangsters-inc" target="_blank"><strong>Former mob boss John Gotti Jr. sits down with Gangsters Inc.</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>The thefts became so frequent that authorities began an investigation. <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> agents kept a close watch on the comings and goings at the airport and one day in 1968 observed the Gotti brothers along with their close friend Angelo Ruggiero loading stolen dresses into a truck. Gene, John, and Angelo were arrested and pleaded guilty to the charges. They were sentenced to several years in Lewisburg federal prison.</p>
<p>Doing time didn’t bother them much. They kept their composure and carried on life on the inside. When they were released from prison in the 1970s, they went back to the streets with another notch on their belt.</p>
<p>Already operating as part of Carmine Fatico’s Ozone Park crew before they were imprisoned, they quickly rose up the ranks of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a>. All three were made members of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview" target="_blank">Gambino family of La Cosa Nostra</a> and became heavily involved in the narcotics trade.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-boss-john-gotti-s-grandson-is-introducing-the-world-of-mixed" target="_blank"><strong>Gotti's grandson is introducing the world of MMA to the family's fighting spirit</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Angelo Ruggiero’s brother Salvatore was a big-time drug trafficker and supplied the crew with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Heroin" target="_blank">heroin</a> and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Cocaine" target="_blank">cocaine</a> to distribute down the line. They received several kilos per shipment raking in as much as $2 million dollars over a 6-month period. Authorities knew this because they had bugged Ruggiero’s home and phones.</p>
<p>In the summer of 1983 Ruggiero and Gene and eight other crew members were arrested and charged with heroin trafficking and racketeering. The arrest caused quite a stir since Mafia leaders had explicitly forbidden their members from dealing dope. Anyone caught handling the stuff would face a death sentence. At least, that’s what they were told. In the meantime, the bosses accepted the drug money and looked the other way.</p>
<p>But with Paul Castellano as head of the family, Gene and company had a serious problem. Castellano was a businessman first. He obeyed the rules and didn’t like prison. When he found out one of his crews had been caught dealing drugs he wanted to know everything about it – even requesting the taped conversations. And though he was a businessman-type mob boss, he had no qualms about ordering murders.</p>
<p>Gene Gotti knew this.</p>
<p>So did his brother John. Fed up with Castellano’s treatment of himself and other Gambino mobsters and hungry for power, John set out to seize the throne for himself. He rallied a group of powerful Gambino family captains behind him and planned and executed one of the most notorious Mafia hits in American history when several shooters gunned down Paul Castellano and his underboss Tommy Bilotti in midtown <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Manhattan" target="_blank">Manhattan</a> on a busy night on December 16, 1985.</p>
<p>After that, Gene was made a capo by his brother and only had the United States government to worry about.</p>
<p>Still, with John Gotti’s newfound notoriety, new possibilities opened up. They tampered with the jury and tried to persuade jurors to make the ‘right’ decision. One even called such a visit by two men “threatening”.</p>
<p>All the help in the world, however, could not mute the wiretaps. Tapes in which Gene and others discuss the dirty business of coke and H. “The guy has already paid,” Gene says on one tape. “We owe him two kilos.”</p>
<p>On May 24, 1989, a jury found Gene guilty of trafficking heroin worth’ multiple millions. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.</p>
<p>If a sentence can be condensed into two days, the day he entered his cell and the day he stepped out a free man, then Gene Gotti faced a mindboggling change of reality.</p>
<p>Released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Pollock, Louisiana on September 14, 2018, Gene stepped out in a world that lacked his big brother John, who passed away in 2002. Though he’s not present in a physical manner, his spirit and legacy still weigh heavily on the world he left behind.</p>
<p>The motion picture <em>Gotti</em>, starring <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Travolta" target="_blank">John Travolta</a> as the Teflon Don, is in cinemas around the globe and John Gotti’s face continues to be plastered on the front pages of magazines and newspapers. What started out as infamy has become fame. Something the mob has no use for.</p>
<p>Nor does Gene, one suspects.</p>
<p>His release from prison is big news. The <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/09/17/gene-gottis-release-from-prison-has-mob-on-edge/" target="_blank">New York Post</a> even lay in wait for the 71-year-old Mafia captain when it managed to snap an exclusive photo of him outside his family home in Valley Stream, Long Island.</p>
<p>So what now? The Gambino crime family is currently being run by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-boss-domenico-cefalu" target="_blank">Sicilian Mafiosi</a> with extensive ties in the international drug trade. A man like Gene Gotti would fit in perfectly. Add to that the fact that he is a staunch practitioner of omerta, the code of silence, and it seems highly unlikely that the Gambinos don’t have a spot reserved for their long-lost brother.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gotti-jr-stands-tall-warns-people-behind-smear-campaign" target="_blank"><strong>John Gotti Jr. stands tall, warns people behind smear campaign</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Then again, he’s a Gotti. A name that rings louder than Al Capone nowadays. Why take on all that attention and heat?</p>
<p>Besides, all that is considering Gene even wants back in. Maybe he’s had enough of the life after serving 29 years locked up in a cell watching his older brother rot away from cancer doing a life sentence. Knowing that his brother Peter will be behind bars until 2032. A year he will unlikely live to see.</p>
<p>No, perhaps Gene will follow in the footsteps of his nephew John A. Gotti “Junior”: Go legit and live off the Gotti name in ways that don’t break the law. Time will tell.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Former New England Mafia family capo gets 66 months in prison for obstructing murder investigation
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/former-new-england-mafia-family-capo-gets-66-months-in-prison-for
2018-08-30T10:00:00.000Z
2018-08-30T10:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-new-england-mafia-family-capo-gets-66-months-in-prison-for" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237110273,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237110273?profile=original" width="420" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Former <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family" target="_blank">New England Mafia family</a> capo Robert DeLuca was sentenced to 66 months in prison in Boston federal court on Tuesday for obstructing a federal investigation into the murder of a Boston nightclub owner in the 1990s.</p>
<p>72-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=DeLuca" target="_blank">DeLuca</a> pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice and two counts of making false statements in November of 2016. He was charged with lying to federal prosecutors and agents regarding the investigation into the 1993 disappearance of Stephen DiSarro, who operated The Channel, a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Boston" target="_blank">South Boston</a> nightclub. DiSarro remained missing until March 2016, when authorities discovered his remains behind a mill in Providence, R.I. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-italian-mafia-irish-gangs-chinese-tongs-bootleggers-gamblers" target="_blank">The Italian Mafia, Irish gangs, Chinese Tongs</a>: Welcome to Gangland Boston</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>In 2011, DeLuca had agreed to cooperate with federal authorities after his arrest on racketeering charges. But he lied about his knowledge of DiSarro’s disappearance and other mob connected murders. As a result, DiSarro’s remains were not recovered until federal authorities received information from another source in March of 2016 regarding DiSarro’s burial site.</p>
<p>In June 2018, 84-year-old former <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family" target="_blank">New England mob</a> boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Salemme" target="_blank">Francis P. Salemme</a> and 63-year-old Paul M. Weadick were convicted of murdering DiSarro, who, at the time of his death, was a witness to crimes committed by Salemme and Weadick.</p>
<p>DiSarro had been approached by a federal agent and asked to cooperate with federal authorities. At the time, there were several ongoing federal investigations into Salemme and into his connection to The Channel. The crime boss had expressed his concerns to others that DiSarro might cooperate against him.</p>
<p>Salemme and Weadick are scheduled to be sentenced on September 13, 2018.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family">New England Patriarca crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Loyal Genovese family mobster guilty of crime and will do his time, all 25 years
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/loyal-genovese-family-mobster-guilty-of-crime-and-will-do-his-tim
2018-08-17T03:30:00.000Z
2018-08-17T03:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/loyal-genovese-family-mobster-guilty-of-crime-and-will-do-his-tim" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237107098,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237107098?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>He was convicted of a crime and he’s doing the time. Genovese crime family mobster Salvatore Delligatti (photo above) had previously been found guilty of racketeering and murder conspiracy charges and today was sentenced to 25 years in prison.</p>
<p>When facing such a harsh sentence, guys usually decide to flip to talk their way out of prison. 42-year-old Delligatti, however, is different. As an associate of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">New York’s Genovese Mafia family</a>, Delligatti had spent several years immersed in the world of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=LCN" target="_blank">La Cosa Nostra</a>. At least five years at the moment of his arrest in 2015, prosecutors allege.</p>
<p>During this period, he conspired with fellow mobsters to “participate in and conduct the affairs of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Genovese" target="_blank">Genovese family</a> through a pattern of racketeering activity that included a murder conspiracy, an <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Extortion" target="_blank">extortion</a> conspiracy, and the operation of an illegal sports betting business.” The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambling" target="_blank">gambling business</a> Delligatti was involved in was big and took bets from gamblers in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Manhattan" target="_blank">Manhattan</a> and Queens, while using an offshore wire room.</p>
<p>He was even down to commit <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>. In May and June of 2014, Delligatti hired several individuals from the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Bronx" target="_blank">Bronx</a> to ambush an intended victim outside his home in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Queens" target="_blank">Queens</a>. Delligatti offered to pay the would-be assassins several thousand dollars for the murder, and provided them with, among other things, a loaded .38 caliber revolver and a getaway vehicle. </p>
<p>Unbeknownst to Delligatti, he was wiretapped by the Nassau County Police Department and the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, and the hired hitmen were apprehended just a few blocks from the intended victim’s residence on June 8, 2014.</p>
<p>Caught red handed, Delligatti will now stay loyal to the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a>. Doing the time he earned with his crime. It’s part of that life. He knows it and continues to live it.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Genovese family mobster charged in 1997 murder-for-hire in Yonkers
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-family-mobster-charged-in-1997-murder-for-hire-in-yonker
2018-08-04T07:20:34.000Z
2018-08-04T07:20:34.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-family-mobster-charged-in-1997-murder-for-hire-in-yonker" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237115699,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237115699?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>A member of the Genovese crime family has been charged with a 1997 murder-for-hire. 61-year-old John Tortora Jr. was arrested Thursday morning in Yonkers by FBI agents and Yonkers PD detectives for his alleged role in the death of Richard Ortiz. </p>
<p>29-year-old Ortiz was stabbed to death in Yonkers on November 11, 1997. At that time Tortora was an alleged associate of New York’s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese family</a> and looking to work his way up. According to the indictment, he was involved “a wide range of crimes, including <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Extortion" target="_blank">extortion</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambling" target="_blank">gambling</a>, and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">narcotics trafficking</a>.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: Profile of</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-genovese-family-underboss-venero-mangano" target="_blank"><strong>Genovese family underboss Venero "Benny Eggs" Mangano</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>In particular, prosecutors claim, the rising mobster nicknamed “Johnny T.” hired others to kill Ortiz in order to further the goals of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Genovese" target="_blank">Genovese family</a>, resulting in Ortiz being brutally stabbed multiple times, causing his death.</p>
<p>Ortiz was working as a police informant and “was drinking inside the Mill Tavern […] when he got into an argument with men inside the bar. The argument moved outside, escalated and Ortiz was stabbed multiple times in the stomach and left for dead under a Saw Mill River Parkway underpass less than 100 feet away,” the <a href="https://eu.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/02/fbi-makes-arrest-21-year-old-yonkers-mob-hit/891949002/" target="_blank">Rockland/Westchester Journal News</a> reported.</p>
<p>Tortora is charged with conspiracy to commit racketeering, murder in aid of racketeering, and murder for hire. He faces life in prison and the death penalty if found guilty.</p>
<p>Tortora’s lawyer, Murray Richman, told the <a href="https://eu.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2018/08/02/fbi-makes-arrest-21-year-old-yonkers-mob-hit/891949002/" target="_blank">Rockland/Westchester Journal News</a> that his client “unequivocally denies the allegations.” Adding: “He did not know this young man. He did not order him killed or do it himself or have anything to do with it. Apparently the government has acquired a person who, maybe to benefit himself, has cast aspersions on my client.”</p>
<p>“The arrest of John Tortora should remind everyone that justice delayed is not justice denied,” <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said. “Whether a crime was allegedly committed decades ago or just days ago, the FBI will maintain the same tenacity and we will be relentless toward ensuring those who commit violent crimes be held accountable for their actions. The FBI New York Office never does these investigations alone, and we want to thank the Yonkers Police Department for their help in successfully solving a case from more than 20 years ago.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Is sentencing of Mafia boss the end of Genovese crime family’s Springfield crew?
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/is-sentencing-of-mafia-boss-the-end-of-genovese-crime-family-s-sp
2018-04-15T09:18:08.000Z
2018-04-15T09:18:08.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/is-sentencing-of-mafia-boss-the-end-of-genovese-crime-family-s-sp" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237105691,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237105691?profile=original" width="550" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Is the conviction of the one-time mob leader and several of his close associates the final nail in the coffin of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese crime family</a>’s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-springfield-mafia-crew-of-western-massachusetts-a-family-busi" target="_blank">Springfield crew</a>? Or will it be business as usual with new blood filling up the vacuum?</p>
<p>On Tuesday, 50-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Santaniello" target="_blank">Ralph Santaniello</a> (photo above) and 54-year-old Giovanni Calabrese were handed sentences of 5 and 3 years in prison, respectively. Santaniello was considered the leader of the crew when he was indicted two years ago.</p>
<p>Both men were arrested and charged in August of 2016 along with 52-year-old Gerald Daniele, 62-year-old Francesco Depergola, and 51-year-old Richard Valentini. The three men were also part of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-springfield-mafia-crew-of-western-massachusetts-a-family-busi" target="_blank">Springfield crew</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-family-turncoat-returns-to-old-stomping-grounds-in-s" target="_blank">Genovese family turncoat returns to Springfield</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>This crew belongs to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">New York’s Genovese crime family</a> and is involved in various illegal dealings in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Springfield" target="_blank">Springfield</a>, Massachusetts, including loansharking and extortion from legitimate and illegitimate businesses, such as illegal gambling businesses and the collection of unlawful debts.</p>
<p>To reach their goals, members used violence and exploited their relationship with the New York Mafia to scare victims into paying extortionate fees, prosecutors say. In 2013, for instance, Santaniello, Calabrese, Depergola and Valentini attempted to extort money from a Springfield businessman.</p>
<p>Santaniello assaulted the businessman, and he and Calabrese threatened to cut off the man’s head and bury his body if he did not comply. Over a period of two months, the victim paid $20,000 to Santaniello, Calabrese, Depergola and Valentini to protect himself and his business.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: Profile of</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-genovese-family-underboss-venero-mangano" target="_blank"><strong>Genovese Mafia family underboss Venero "Benny Eggs" Mangano</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, during a six-month period in 2015, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mobsters-of-genovese-crime-family-s-springfield-crew-plead-guilty" target="_blank">Daniele</a> extended two extortionate and usurious loans to an individual, and then, along with Santaniello and Calabrese, threatened the individual if he did not make payments on the loans.</p>
<p>In March 2018, Daniele was sentenced to two years in prison. In December 2017, Depergola pleaded guilty and Valentini was convicted by a federal jury; they are both scheduled to be sentenced on May 11, 2018. In November of 2017, Santaniello and Calabrese each <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mobsters-of-genovese-crime-family-s-springfield-crew-plead-guilty" target="_blank">pleaded guilty</a> to extortion and loansharking for which they were sentenced this week.</p>
<p>So, is this the end for the Springfield crew? One is inclined to say yes. However, they have faced such difficult times before. Many of its leaders and members were sent to prison in 2011 following the gangland killing of their longtime captain <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese" target="_blank">Adolfo “Al” Bruno</a> in 2003. Back then, we felt the end had arrived, but we were proven wrong.</p>
<p>Here we are again, asking that age-old question about the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">American Mafia</a> and its various families and crews: Is it finished? Though these convictions are not helpful, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=LCN" target="_blank">La Cosa Nostra</a> has proven to be a resilient organization. Is the Springfield crew able to recover from these two big busts within a decade? It may sound corny, but only time will tell.</p>
<ul>
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“Feed you to the fuckin’ lions” – Profile of Lucchese family soldier Anthony Grado
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/feed-you-to-the-fuckin-lions-profile-of-lucchese-family-soldier-a
2018-04-11T05:29:16.000Z
2018-04-11T05:29:16.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><strong><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/feed-you-to-the-fuckin-lions-profile-of-lucchese-family-soldier-a" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237057281,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237057281?profile=original" width="256" /></a></strong>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Lucchese crime family soldier Anthony Grado knows how to earn. Whether it’s extortion, loansharking or selling prescription pills he’ll know how to make a buck. One thing he hasn’t learned, however, is staying out of prison for his crimes.</p>
<p>It’s not always Grado’s own fault, mind you. Like when Robert Molini, his cousin was busted by the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=DEA" target="_blank">DEA</a> on September 9, 1992, for his role in a drug ring and decided to become an informant. A year earlier, Molini had come to Grado to borrow money so he could pay for a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Marijuana" target="_blank">marijuana</a> shipment.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Deadbeat</strong></span></p>
<p>Grado introduced his cousin to fellow mobster Thomas Anzeulotto, who loaned him a total of $40,000. Molini was to pay back the principal and 20% interest, which amounted to $4,000 for each loan within ten days. When he was unable to even pay back $3,500 things began getting stressful. Even more so when he missed subsequent payments.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank">New York's Lucchese Mafia family as deadly as ever in 2017</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>To get his cousin to honor his debts, Grado called Molini up and gave him an earful. He threatened him with what would happen if he didn’t pay back what he owed. His calls worked and pretty soon Molini came up with about $5,000.</p>
<p>Anzeulotto wasn’t satisfied of course. On June 8, 1992, Molini was ordered to come to Stella's pharmacy in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Brooklyn" target="_blank">Brooklyn</a>. He gave Grado $1,000 after which Anzeulotto approached, who demanded the rest of the sum in one installment.</p>
<p>He also wanted to know Molini’s home address, but Molini refused to give it. Wrong move. Confronted with the refusal, Anzeulotto punched him in the face and neck and smashed two of the windows of the car he borrowed to get to Brooklyn. He then took Molini to an abandoned park, pointed his gun at him and asked him again for his address.</p>
<p>Still refusing to budge, but recognizing his predicament, Molini gave a false address.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Prison</strong></span></p>
<p>By the time Molini began cooperating, the DEA was already hot on the crew’s tail. They had wiretapped the telephones of all those involved, intercepting multiple calls between the men. Prosecutors brought them to trial after which a jury convicted them on January 25, 1995.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-mobster-planned-to-escape-from-metropolitan-deten" target="_blank"><strong>Lucchese mobster planned to escape from Detention Center in Brooklyn</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Anzeulotto and Grado were found guilty of conspiring to make extortionate extensions of credit and to use extortionate means to collect extensions of credit. Anzeulotto was also convicted of the substantive loansharking offenses of making extortionate extensions of credit and using extortionate means to collect extensions of credit. Grado was acquitted of these <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Loansharking" target="_blank">loansharking</a> charges.</p>
<p>Grado was sentenced to over 5 years in prison followed by 3 years of supervised release, while Anzeulotto got 8 years behind bars.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Opioid opportunities</strong></span></p>
<p>After his release from prison, Grado went right back to work. These were new times offering new rackets. Prescription <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drugs</a> were all the rage and Grado immediately seized on the opportunity.</p>
<p>He provided a Brooklyn doctor with the names of people for whom he should write prescriptions. The doctor would then write said prescriptions in those names for medications containing <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Oxy" target="_blank">oxycodone</a>, usually without conducting any examination. Grado and his associates then filled the prescriptions and sold the pills. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-crime-family-boss-vittorio-vic-amuso" target="_blank"><strong>Profile of Lucchese crime family boss Vittorio Amuso</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>Sometimes, Grado would hold the doctor’s prescription pads himself and either had the doctor write the fraudulent prescriptions at his direction or completed the prescriptions and later advised the doctor of the details. In total, the man wrote prescriptions for over 230,000 oxycodone pills.</p>
<p><strong><span style="font-size:14pt;">“I’ll put a bullet right in your head” </span></strong></p>
<p>Before you curse at the doctor for his unprofessional behavior, keep in mind that he was facing Grado and his goons. In one conversation Grado told the doctor that he would make him write “a thousand scripts a day and fuckin’ feed you to the fuckin’ lions” if he wrote prescriptions without his approval. </p>
<p>In that same conversation, Grado also told the doctor that if his newly ordered prescription pads “go in anybody’s hands” besides the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Lucchese" target="_blank">Lucchese</a> mobster’s, that “I’ll put a bullet right in your head.” </p>
<p>These weren’t idle threats, either. Unsatisfied with the doctor, Grado ordered one of his associates to stab him. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-sold-oxy-from" target="_blank"><strong>Lucchese family sold "oxy" from ice cream truck</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p>As happened with the loansharking scheme in the early 1990s, this opioid racket was crushed by authorities as well. On April 5, 2018, 54-year-old Grado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute oxycodone. Upon sentencing, he faces up to 20 years in prison, as well as forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million.</p>
<p>“<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">Lucchese family</a> member Grado imperiled our community, threatening a doctor to force him to write prescriptions for oxycodone and then trafficking in the addictive drugs,” United States Attorney Richard Donoghue stated.</p>
<p>“Violent threats to a doctor by Mafia defendants, combined with their trafficking of oxycodone pills, posed an especially serious danger to our community,” he went on. “As demonstrated by today’s guilty pleas, this Office together with our law enforcement partners will be relentless in the prosecution of organized crime and those who contribute to the opioid epidemic.”</p>
<ul>
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The Springfield Mafia Crew of Western Massachusetts: A Family Business
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-springfield-mafia-crew-of-western-massachusetts-a-family-busi
2017-11-26T14:54:45.000Z
2017-11-26T14:54:45.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-springfield-mafia-crew-of-western-massachusetts-a-family-busi" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237097060,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237097060?profile=original" width="599" /></a>By Justin Cascio</p>
<p>The city of Springfield, Massachusetts, has a hundred-year long relationship with the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese Crime Family</a> of New York. Its ties to the Neapolitan Camorra may be equally old. Five associates and members of the Springfield Crew, including its former captain, Ralph Santaniello, are facing federal charges following last year’s arrests. Not among those charged: the Crew’s current reputed leader, Albert Calvanese.</p>
<p>As unusual as it was when <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Springfield" target="_blank">Springfield</a> Crew captain <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-family-turncoat-returns-to-old-stomping-grounds-in-s" target="_blank">Anthony Arillotta</a> turned government’s witness, it was stranger still when he ended Witness Protection with his release from prison, and returned to Springfield. Republican reporter Stephanie Barry wrote in May of this year: "Street sources say the city's so-called ‘new regime’ has reconciled his potential return because Arillotta's testimony didn't cause trouble for any of them, and that Arillotta was backed into a corner by federal investigators."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236996686,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236996686?profile=original" width="175" /></a>But the man who killed <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese" target="_blank">Big Al Bruno</a> (photo above) and took control of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese" target="_blank">Springfield Crew</a> in 2003 has not returned to leadership. Instead, Barry has identified Albert Calvanese as the Crew’s most recent captain. Calvanese remains untouched by the federal investigation that has resulted in the arrests of five Springfield area men, last year, on charges of loansharking and extortion.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237096485,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237096485?profile=original" width="103" /></a>Chief among them is Ralph Santaniello (right), identified at the time of the arrests as the ad hoc leader of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Springfield" target="_blank">Springfield</a> Crew. Ralph is the son of Amedeo Santaniello, who was a long time second in command to Al Bruno. Amadeo, his brother, Italo, and their wives pleaded guilty to conducting an illegal interstate gambling business under Big Al’s leadership, in 1988. Amadeo and Al had what Barry calls a “nuclear falling out” a few years after this, and Amadeo moved his family to Florida. The Santaniello family returned to Springfield after Bruno’s death.</p>
<p>Anna Santaniello, Amadeo’s wife, is the sister of Victor DeCaro. Victor was married to Adele Scibelli, the daughter of Francesco “Frankie Skyball” Scibelli. Soon after their wedding, Victor was found guilty of manslaughter and served three years. After he was released on parole in 1971, he managed a lounge in Agawam. His father in law dropped him off at work one day, and he was never seen alive again. According to the police, DeCaro was having an affair with the most recent wife of their boss, “Big Nose Sam” Cufari, and had not heeded verbal warnings from Skyball. Victor’s body was pulled from the Connecticut River on the third of July, 1972.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237097863,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237097863?profile=original" /></a>The Scibelli family are from Quindici, in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Naples" target="_blank">Naples</a>. The Santaniello and DeCaro families are from the neighboring town of Bracigliano. Together, they constitute a ground zero of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Camorra" target="_blank">Camorra</a>, where families have been waging bloody feuds for generations. <a href="https://mafiagenealogy.wordpress.com/2017/11/01/the-bosses-of-springfield-massachusetts/" target="_blank">The history of Mafia leadership in Springfield</a>, Massachusetts, is full of immigrants from these two towns. The current boss continues this tradition. Albert Calvanese (left) is Amedeo and Anna Santaniello’s nephew, and Ralph’s cousin, on his mother’s side. His ancestors on his father’s side are also from Bracigliano.</p>
<p>Sam Cufari (a Calabrian by birth), Springfield boss since the 1940s, continued to captain the Springfield Crew even after suffering a stroke, and remained its captain until his death at 82. Skyball (whose family was from Quindici) succeeded him and like Cufari, died an old man, of natural causes. A couple years before his death, he handed over leadership to Anthony Delevo, skipping his longtime second in command, Al Bruno. The competitive trend for control of the Springfield Crew accelerated after this. After Bruno’s murder, one of the soldiers from his generation, Felix Tranghese, a first cousin, once removed, of Skyball’s, testified that he was “‘shelved’ by a group of young upstarts in 2006,” when Anthony Arillotta ran the Crew. (Arillotta went to prison in 2011 for Bruno’s murder.)</p>
<p>Along with Arillotta, Santaniello and Calabrese considered themselves the heirs to Al Bruno’s extortion rackets, which towing company owner and city contractor Craig Morel had formerly paid to the slain boss. In last year’s federal indictment, Ralph Santaniello, Francesco Depergola, Giovanni “Johnny Cal” Calabrese, and Richard Valentini, are accused of taking part in Morel’s extortion. Santaniello, whom Barry calls “a longtime fixture in local criminal rackets,” threatened to cut off Morel’s head and bury his body in his own backyard. Santaniello and Calabrese pleaded guilty to four criminal counts including conspiracy and extortion. In addition, Santaniello and Depergola are charged with Genovese underboss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philly-mafia-boss-joseph-merlino-and-mobsters-of-5-different-crim" target="_blank">Eugene “Rooster” O’Nofrio</a> in a “profit-sharing” loan sharking scheme.</p>
<p>Francesco “Sammy Shark” Depergola was the only eye witness to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese" target="_blank">Al Bruno’s murder</a>, besides the shooter, Frankie Roche. Bruno died in Sammy’s arms. Depergola served two years for racketeering, beginning in 2006. The last co-defendant in this case, Richard Valentini, was sentenced with probation and a fine in 2005, for his part as “probably the third man from the top of an illegal sports betting ring” under Ralph Santaniello and Anthony Arillotta. Ralph’s mother, Anna, was indicted, for the second time, on gaming charges in the same operation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237098068,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237098068?profile=original" width="250" /></a>When the current defendants were in their twenties, Anthony Arillotta (left), Ralph Santaniello, and Gerald Daniele were charged with invading the home of Daniele’s former girlfriend and assaulting a guest with a baseball bat. The year after the home invasion, Daniele and Anthony Scibelli made false charges to the police against another of Daniele’s girlfriends. Gerald’s younger brother, Anthony Daniele, and Anthony Scibelli assaulted a man outside a bar in 1993. Gerald Daniele has also been charged with making fake IDs and running an illegal sports betting operation. Daniele, now 52, of Longmeadow, is charged in the federal indictment with making an extortionate loan.</p>
<p>Frankie Skyball’s brothers were both active in the Springfield Crew. Anthony or Antonio Scibelli, called “Turk,” born in 1914, was among the defendants in a gambling and racketeering case with his brother, and received a suspended sentence. Turk died in 1998. He has a son and at least one grandson who also bear his name. The Arillotta associate of the same name, born in 1967, is of no close relation to Skyball and his brothers. He is a grandson of Enrico Scibelli, who hosted the newly arrived DeCaro siblings in the 1950s and 60s, before they both married in Springfield. Anthony bragged in 1993 to his assault victim: "I'm a Scibelli. I'll put a bullet in you if you testify."</p>
<p>Santaniello and Calabrese are scheduled for sentencing at the end of January 2018.</p>
<p><strong><em>Justin Cascio is a Mafia genealogist and historian. He has written for Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement and The Mob Museum. You can find him on Facebook at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mafiagenealogy/">https://www.facebook.com/mafiagenealogy/</a> or reach him at likethewatch@gmail.com</em></strong></p>
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Members of Genovese crime family’s Springfield crew plead guilty to extortion charges
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/mobsters-of-genovese-crime-family-s-springfield-crew-plead-guilty
2017-11-08T01:30:00.000Z
2017-11-08T01:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mobsters-of-genovese-crime-family-s-springfield-crew-plead-guilty" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237093101,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237093101?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>Two associates of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese crime family</a>’s crew in Springfield, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to extortion-related charges on Monday. 50-year-old Ralph Santaniello and 54-year-old Giovanni Calabrese admitted to using threats of violence as they sought to collect their <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Loansharking" target="_blank">loansharking</a> debts.</p>
<p>Both men were arrested and charged in August 2016 along with Gerald Daniele, Francesco Depergola, and Richard Valentini. All men are alleged associates of the New York-based <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese La Cosa Nostra crime family</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-family-turncoat-returns-to-old-stomping-grounds-in-s" target="_blank">Genovese family turncoat returns to Springfield</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>The crew engaged in various criminal activities in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Springfield" target="_blank">Springfield</a>, Massachusetts, including loansharking and extorting legitimate and illegitimate businesses, such as illegal gambling businesses and the collection of unlawful debts. They allegedly used violence, exploited their relationship with the New York <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">mob</a>, and implied threats of murder and physical violence to instill fear in their victims.</p>
<p>In 2013, Santaniello, Calabrese, Depergola and Valentini allegedly attempted to extort money from a Springfield businessman. Santaniello assaulted the businessman and threatened to cut off his head and bury his body if he did not comply. Over a period of four months, the businessman paid $20,000 to Santaniello, Calabrese, Depergola and Valentini to protect himself and his business.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese" target="_blank">The Bruno Hit</a>: How the Genovese family's Springfield crew killed itself</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, during a six-month period in 2015, it is alleged that Daniele extended two extortionate and usurious loans to an individual, and then, along with Santaniello and Calabrese, threatened the individual if he did not make payments on the loans.</p>
<p>Each charge provides for a sentence of no greater than 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of $250,000 and forfeiture. Their sentencings are scheduled for January 29 and January 30, 2018.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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The sun was shining: The hit on New York Mafia underboss Frank Scalice
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-sun-was-shining-the-hit-on-new-york-mafia-underboss-frank-sca
2017-10-22T13:52:11.000Z
2017-10-22T13:52:11.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-sun-was-shining-the-hit-on-new-york-mafia-underboss-frank-sca" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237101081,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237101081?profile=original" width="564" /></a>By Thom L. Jones</p>
<p>In the only borough of New York to begin with the indefinite article, it was not unusual at end of day to watch “fathers trundling home with a monumental sadness on their shoulders”. * It was a hard place to live for the working man and his family. A good place for organized crime.</p>
<p>Frank Scalice lived at 211 Kirby Street in the outlier enclave of City Island. An unassuming, three-bedroom weatherboard-house built in 1940. In the Bronx. It was his domain. Nothing went down there of any consequence unless he sanctioned it. At least as far as it concerned the Anastasia Mafia crime family. He held a job as Vice President in a plastering company called Mario and Di Bono, in Corona, in the borough of Queens, since at least 1954, or earlier, and had a lock on the construction industries that was so tight, not even bags of cement could be moved in his borough unless he approved it. The company carried out substantial construction work at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) a hospital in the Bronx, and on many city-owned housing projects. Scalice turned up one day at the company, and somehow, he became one of the owners. </p>
<p>He was Cosa Nostra and everybody knew it. He was sometimes referred to in his older age as “Cheech or Ciccio,” often used as a diminutive of Frank, especially in Italian neighborhoods.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237100892,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237100892?profile=original" width="130" /></a>Francesco Scalici ** (right) was born in Palermo, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Sicily" target="_blank">Sicily</a>, on March 31st, 1893. He and his brothers came to America, settling in The Bronx, and by 1919, Frank was a United States citizen. There were at least six brothers and a sister, Rosa. The FBI claimed that in addition to Frank, four brothers-Salvatore, Giacomo, Giuseppe and Giovanni-were members of the mob. Frank, by 1919, also had his first criminal record on file for Grand Larceny-- burglary in New Rochelle. He married his first cousin, and one of their children was a mentally retarded deaf mute.</p>
<p>Twelve years after he arrived in America, he was the boss of a New York Mafia family. He had listed a butcher shop in the Bronx as a legitimate business enterprise. It was an area of commerce that seemed to appeal to his biological family members. His brother-in-law, on his wife’s side, Mafia capo David Amodeo, operated one in the Bronx and another crew boss, Michele Giacomo Scarpulla, Rosa’s husband, ran one, in Brooklyn. His sons, Angelo (another butcher) and Philip, were also part of the crime family.</p>
<p>Frank Scalice was possibly involved in bootlegging during the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Prohibition" target="_blank">Prohibition Years</a>, working with Vincenzo “Jimmy Marino” LePore, who lived on St Peter’s Avenue in the Bronx, and sometime in the 1920s, Frank had become a member of a Mafia family run by Salvatore D’Aquila who also lived in the Bronx and was murdered in 1928.</p>
<p>Between 1930 and 1931 an underworld war broke out in New York between factions headed by Giuseppe Masseria and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/american-mafia-s-boss-of-bosses-whacked-at-his-office" target="_blank">Salvatore Maranzano</a> over control of Cosa Nostra (the name the mob used to describe itself). Maranzano had the support of Scalice, and after the murder of his crime family head, Alfredo Mineo, in November 1930, Frank was then bumped up to head the family. When Maranzano ordered him to murder Vincent Mangano, a member of his group, and a close friend, he refused and brokered peace with Charlie Luciano (real name Salvatore Lucania,) who was Masseria’s right-hand man.</p>
<p>Maranzano was subsequently <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/american-mafia-s-boss-of-bosses-whacked-at-his-office" target="_blank">killed</a>, and it was agreed that Frank, because of his links to him, would step down as head of the family, and Mangano would replace him. Then as now, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> lives and dies by its politics.</p>
<p>Everything ran smoothly until 1951 when Vincent and his brother Philip were both murdered and the family was taken over by Albert Anastasia, the underboss at that time, who made “Cheech” his number two.*** Frank had gone from soldier to capo (crew chief) to boss, then back to capo and then up again in the rankings, all in twenty years.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237100700,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237100700?profile=original" width="191" /></a><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/deadly-bizarre-and-morbid-murder-inc-comes-to-the-mob-museum-in-l" target="_blank">Albert Anastasia</a> (right) replaced Vincenzo Mangano who replaced Frank Scalice who had replaced Al Mineo who had replaced Salvatore D’Aquila and who knows whom before him. Back to the turn of the 20th century when the family, like a primeval microcosm, had emerged from the underworld swamp of New York’s cluttered and swarming streets to metastasize into what would be a powerful underworld force in a city of millions. One that exists to this day, now known as <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview" target="_blank">The Gambino Crime Family</a>.</p>
<p>Anastasia was the first non-Sicilian to head this Mafia clan, and maybe his choice of Scalice was as much mob politics as anything.</p>
<p>Among the hundreds of “made” men under Anastasia’s control was one called Vincent J. Squillante, who would become a powerful capo with a meteoric rise within the family and the criminal underworld.</p>
<p>And the bad-news guy for Frank.</p>
<p>Born in East Harlem in 1917, there is little known of his early life. Married twice, with three children, he operated at one time as a commission fruit merchant. Jockey-size-- 5’2” and 122 lbs-- like many small men, he had an overbearing and forceful personality. In 1950, he became associated with the garbage removal industry and was somehow, with no background or experience, elected a director of the Greater New York City Cartmen’s Association, on a salary of $10,000 a year. Over $500,000 in today’s currency. He had no criminal record until 1953 when he pleaded guilty to failing to file tax returns. Through his control of Local 813 of The Teamsters Union working with its corrupt and unscrupulous head, Bernard Adlestein, Squillante, and his brother Nunzio became a dominant force in the garbage removal business which it was reported generated over $50 million annually. That’s the equivalent now of $500,000,000!</p>
<p>By the 1950s the Mafia families of New York were operating as well-oiled machines, driving their illegal endeavors: loan-sharking, illegal gambling, numbers, construction manipulation and above all drug trafficking. Frank was into this, boots and all, according to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.</p>
<p>Joe Amato, one of the bureau’s four agents in their New York office, the so-called “Italian Squad,” had been tracking him since 1946 and confirmed at a Senate hearing, The McClellan Committee, in November 1957, that Scalice worked in partnership with Harry Stromberg, a notorious Jewish criminal who worked as a banker for many criminals, especially those in the drug trade. Scalice was also being monitored visiting Italy and in particular, one well-known ex American gangster-<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-humble-origins-of-joe-masseria-and-lucky-luciano" target="_blank">Charlie “Lucky” Luciano</a>.</p>
<p>Frank had traveled to Italy during the winter of 1948 and 1949, and visited Luciano. There is a photograph (below) of them both, along with Charlie’s girlfriend of the time, taken on the terrace of the Excelsior, a five star hotel on Via Partenope, set in a five acres, lemon-scented garden, overlooking the Bay of Naples. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237101286,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237101286?profile=original" width="355" /></a>Since his release from prison in the USA and enforced deportation in January 1946, the Feds had been watching Luciano closely through agents based in their Rome office.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/luckys-luck-how-charlie" target="_blank">Lucky’s Luck</a>: How Charlie Luciano got out of jail and passed go</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Transported originally to Sicily, Luciano had re-located to Naples and the American and Italian law enforcement agencies suspected he was working, as he always had, on the wrong side of the track. He lived in the penthouse of a small, multi-story apartment building at Via Tasso 464, which he had purchased for $150,000, and ran a restaurant near the port, called “The San Francisco Bar and Grill.”</p>
<p>He had been one of the participants at a Mafia meeting held in Sicily in a hotel in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Palermo" target="_blank">Palermo</a> for four days in October 1957. Mafiosi from America and Sicily had gathered to sort out among other things, the best way to organize the rapidly growing <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drug trafficking</a> trade between the two countries.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-phantom-of-the-grand-hotel-sicily-the-mafia-a-mystery" target="_blank">The Phantom of The Grand Hotel</a>: Sicily, the Mafia, and a Mystery</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (now the DEA) believed, “Luciano was the guiding genius behind the expansion of the international dope traffic.” Maybe he was, although there is little to no hard evidence to support this. The Feds linked Luciano to almost every narcotic connection between Italy and America whether there was evidence or not. He was never prosecuted for anything connected to drugs. Maybe the agency simply wanted to neuter Luciano, and make him untouchable to traffickers. Whether he and Scalice ever worked together in the drug field is also open to speculation.</p>
<p>The major drug operations in Italy between 1948 and 1952 concerned the illicit trade in narcotics from legitimate wholesale chemists, over 1100 kilos, and this was taking place in Milan, Turin and Genoa, in Northern Italy. Just how much of this found its way into America is unknown, and through what sources, although Scalise along with another major drug trafficker, New York mobster, Jo Di Palermo, considered by law enforcement agencies to be “the dean of dope dealers,” may well have been involved.</p>
<p>Frank was not the only New York hood to visit Luciano, according to FBI files. They claim in the spring of 1948, Carlo Gambino and his brother, Paul, met up with Charley in Palermo. Carlo was a long-established capo in the family then run by Vincenzo Mangano. Law enforcement believed the meeting was about heroin, asserting that the Gambino brothers, “were reported to exercise control over the narcotic smuggling activities between the Mafia element in Palermo and the United States on behalf of Salvatore Lucania.”</p>
<p>The law kept their eyes on Scalice over the years. He was observed attending a meeting at a hotel frequented by the mob, in Miami, in March 1953, along with Scarpulla. In June 1955, Frank had been ordered to appear as a witness at a US Senate Committee, but claimed he was too sick following surgery.</p>
<p>By 1957, he was under suspicion by the New York Police in connection to three mob hits-Vincent Macri, Dominic Calicci and a man murdered in the kitchen of a Bronx restaurant, Tami’s Corner.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237100899,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237100899?profile=original" /></a>As the family’s second in charge, Frank led a busy life, traveling across the city to check on and coordinate the family’s criminal activities. Meetings had to be held with the capi who ran the crews that kept the wheels of criminal commerce rolling. He was also a man of predictable habits. One of which would be his downfall.</p>
<p>On June 17th, 1957, Frank drove a blue Cadillac from his island home the short distance into the Belmont area, parking it outside number 625 Crescent Avenue, and made the two-minute walk to his brother’s business. </p>
<p>Every Monday, he had lunch with Giacomo who ran a candy store on Arthur Avenue, the “Little Italy” of this most northern New York borough. Jack used the shop as a base for his criminal activities, as a soldier in Anastasia’s crime family It was less than seven miles from where Frank lived. They would go to Anne and Tony’s on the corner of 187th Street and stuff themselves on mozzarella and roast peppers and baked clams. The family restaurant, opened in 1927, is still serving the kind of food the brothers Scalice loved.</p>
<p>After they had eaten, Frank would often wander down the street, talking to people, as he did this Monday afternoon, pausing to chat to women pushing prams, and old men sitting in the sun, filling in time before they died. The kids would be playing ringolevio or stickball, or flies-are-up, perhaps standing in line at the Good Humor Man’s van to buy an ice cream or Popsicle. The start of the week was always a hectic time: mothers out shopping stocking up on groceries, suppliers delivering fresh produce; the side-walks crowded and busy with pedestrian traffic.</p>
<p>One of Scalice's favorite stops was at Enrico Mazzarae’s fruit and vegetable shop at number 2380, further down the Avenue, on the same side, from the diner where he would lunch with his brother.</p>
<p>The shop was a great spot for a hit. Easy to enter and exit, nowhere for the victim to escape and there were always lots of people around who would panic not understanding what was going on, the way people do when they are confronted with sudden, shocking violence. It would create chaos and plenty of diversion for the killers.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237101862,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237101862?profile=original" width="163" /></a>They would be two young men, <em>cugines</em>, associates of the family, **** anxious to get themselves made, hot to prove their worth. Vincent Squillante, it is alleged, was given the contract to kill Scalice by Anastasia, and most probably used someone he trusted to carry out the arrangements. The killers would know only him as their contact who was working for the man who in turn was setting up the job for Albert Anastasia. The degrees of separation would minimize the risk for the family boss. A classic style Mafia execution.</p>
<p>Vincent Squillante (left) had make a big thing of his relationship with Anastasia, claiming among other things, that he was Albert’s godson. However, his baptismal documents, dated June 7th, 1917, show no mention of Anastasia's name, which is hardly surprising, as he was only fifteen at the time and had just landed in New York as an immigrant from Calabria. Nevertheless, the myth persisted, and as a result, Squillante was much feared by less important racketeers and would be the subject of many police and federal investigations until he disappeared in September 1960.</p>
<p>A story circulated claiming he was shot dead by Anthony Gaggi, who had been close to Frank, who was a blood relative through Gaggi’s father. Nino Gaggi, who would become a capo in the family sometime in the future, told his nephew, Dominick Montiglio, he had shot Squillante, and the body had been dumped into an incinerator in the basement of a building on the lower east side of Manhattan, on 10th Street in what is now called The East Village. </p>
<p>At around one-thirty, Frank came strolling down the street, He was wearing light tan slacks and a yellow sports shirt. It was blindingly hot, the sun’s rays shimmering across the sidewalks, the passing traffic kicking up dust as a dark, old model sedan pulled up and double parked outside the fruit shop.</p>
<p>Scalice walked in and started talking to the owner; he was laughing, joshing the little fat genial storekeeper, before he walked across to a stand and started to choose some fruit. As he was about to pay for it, the two men walked into the store. They were dressed identically, in dark slacks and white shirts, sleeves rolled up. Wearing sunglasses. About the same height and build, wearing the same clothes, designed to confuse witnesses. They walked up to Frank, who stopped and looked at them in surprise. Each of the men pulled out a.38 caliber revolver and started to shoot. They fired five times, two of the bullets ripping into Frank’s throat, one blowing a hole in his right cheek, one shot going wide, and the last one banging into his right shoulder, spinning him around and tossing him in a heap on the floor. The two men stepped over the body, walked past the astonished shop owner, and climbed into the black car, which pulled away and disappeared into the afternoon traffic. It was all over in seconds.</p>
<p>People ran around in circles, shouting and yelling at each other. In a few minutes, a police patrol car came screaming down the street, followed shortly afterward by an ambulance, and then more police cars, and soon the block was crowded with cops and detectives. The body inside the shop, sprawled out on its back, leaking blood, flanked by crates of oranges on one side and heads of spinach on the other. Someone placed a drop-sheet over the body. A patrolman stood near it, writing in his notebook.</p>
<p>Outside, the sun was shining.</p>
<p>Enrico Mazzarae’s fruit and vegetable shop is now a hairdressing salon. Today, people come here to get their hair parted with a comb, not a bullet. Just half a block north was where Vincenzo Le Pore, Frank’s old bootlegging partner, had been shot dead outside a barber shop on Arthur Avenue in September 1931. A residual casualty of the 1930-31 underworld war that had given Frank such a gift. It was to say the least ironic, that he would lose it in the same street.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237101871,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237101871?profile=original" width="400" /></a>On June 18th, investigators from the Bronx’s District Attorney's, Office opened a safe deposit box at The Dollar Saving Bank on The Grand Concourse near Fordham Road. The box actually belonged to Scalice’s wife, although he had permission to access it. It contained $950 in cash, $2000 in Bearer Bonds and some of his wife’s jewelry. Searching the home on City Island, they found $192 in cash, which in addition to the $72 found on his body, was all they came across. He either stashed his wealth somewhere else or like so many mobsters, lived daily or weekly, from one scam to another. For all the efforts they put into it, and the hours they worked, along with the dangers they faced from within their own criminal satellites and the outside forces of law and order, most of the mob seemed to struggle to find enough for the weekly housekeeping bills. Investigators also found dozens of photographs of Charley Luciano and Frank’s loansharking ledger that contained the names of numerous well-known business men and public officials.</p>
<p>The absence of significant amounts of cash in his holdings was inexplicable considering that the Bronx District Attorney, David V. Sullivan referred to Scalice as “A big shot and kingpin in this area.”</p>
<p>Why Frank was murdered has never been confirmed. The Mafia keeps no bills of accounting and the only street information that law enforcement gathers, almost always comes from informants, who may or may not be playing a double game. It was rumored he had welshed on a big drug deal and paid the price. A source suggested that the killing was ordered not by Anastasia but by another New York boss, Vito Genovese, who was making a play to become the boss over all the city’s five clans and wanted Anastasia handicapped by the killing of his number two, so as to make him vulnerable.</p>
<p>Then there was the membership scam story that started to circulate not long after Scalice took the long drop.</p>
<p>Joe Valachi, the Genovese soldier who became a government informant in the early 1960s, becoming a fountain of underworld knowledge or a trickle of lies, depending on where, in the scheme of things, the observer was standing, claimed Frank was killed because he had been selling membership into the Anastasia crime family.</p>
<p>For $40,000 or maybe $50,000, men like Charlie Barcellona and Aniello Mancuso and Arthur Leo and Tony and Mike Sedotto, and Jimmy Massi and many more were earning their “button” a term the mob sometime used about the initiation rite, rather than doing it the traditional way-years of waiting and being watched, rite of passage, i.e. killing someone, recommendation by those who knew the applicant-instead becoming soldiers in the family by simply greasing the palm of the underboss. The “books” as the Mafia referred to its state of grace, had been closed since 1931, and only officially re-opened in 1954, although some mobsters had been made, under the counter, so to speak in the intervening years.</p>
<p>Anastasia was furious when he found out and ordered Frank to be de-franked. Apart from anything else, all these extra hoods in the neighborhood were Frank’s men, which made for sleepless nights for the king sitting uneasily on the throne, which was par for the course in the world of Cosa Nostra. A real cynical observer of the times claimed Frank was really killed because Albert, who had shared 50/50 in the initiation scam, got cold feet and decided to close down, forever, any possible future source of embarrassment that would have made him very vulnerable to the wrath of the other Mafia clans in the city. This kind of Machiavellian gesture seemed well-suited to Anastasia’s psychopathic profile, a man who was as cunning as a shiver of sharks.</p>
<p>Just what is fact and what is myth in all of this is dubious at best. As has been sometimes quoted, “There’s two sides to every story, and then there’s the truth.” </p>
<p>FBI files tell us that following Frank’s murder, some of his mob holdings were handed over to Arthur Leo, and some to “Pappa Dave” as David Amodeo was known on the street. Anastasia no doubt took his share.</p>
<p>Just a three minutes’ walk from where Frank had parked his car the day he died, in the opposite direction to his brothers candy shop, was the Scocozza Funeral Home at 657 Crescent Avenue, where his funeral service was held on June 23rd, and then he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, which is designated a National Historic Landmark of the Bronx and the nation, not because of all the hoods buried there as in St John Cemetery in Queens, although it has a few, like Jimmy Blue Eyes, and Tommy Gagliano and even Patsy Lo Lordo from The Windy City.</p>
<p>Frank had a grand send-off: 20 cars, eight of them carrying flowers.</p>
<p>They couldn’t bury his brother, Giuseppe, anywhere. After Frank’s murder, he apparently swore vengeance on the killers. When he realized that Albert was not doing anything to support him, he quietly disappeared but came out of hiding some weeks later. He was, it was rumored, invited to the Bronx home of Squillante, where a welcoming party in the basement, killed him, cut up his body, wrapped the bits in rubbish sacks and it was then delivered by one of Squillante’s garbage trucks, to one of his garbage dumps where no doubt the seagulls dined à la carte.</p>
<p>1957 was a less than auspicious year for New York’s Mafia. It was an Annus Horribilis if ever there was one.</p>
<p>Vito Genovese tried to kill Frank Costello the boss of the old Luciano Family and failed. Anastasia probably killed Frank Scalice and was himself killed, four months later, almost certainly by men under the direction of capo Carlo Gambino, who had replaced Scalise in the number two position and then became the family’s new boss in 1960. In November, at Apalachin, upstate New York, there was a major mob upheaval when dozens of Mafiosi from all over America were flushed out of a meeting by a country cop.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-meeting-at-apalachin-the" target="_blank">Mob Meeting at Apalachin</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Maybe the Chiefs and the Indians as they sat drinking and socializing in their clubs across New York, enjoying the easy camaraderie that men in the mob had with each other, organizing deals, running scams, comfortable in each other’s presence, consoled themselves with the thought that bad times were in some way like gypsies-they only stayed for a while. </p>
<p><em>* Jerome Charyn: Bitter Bronx: W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2015.</em></p>
<p><em>**Just when his named change occurred I have been unable to document. Most sources refer to him as Scalise, although that his not the name on his tombstone.</em></p>
<p><em>*** As always, when dealing with Mafia history, facts often are fiction and fiction make-believe. There are Mafia chroniclers who believe that the underboss of the Anastasia family at this time was actually Palermo born Salvatore Chiri who stepped down and retired sometime after Anastasia was murdered. Others claim he was simply the leader of the family’s Bergen, New Jersey crew, working under Ruggiero Boiardo aka Richie The Boot. An FBI reports states he was the family consigliere or counselor. Whoever he was, he was important enough in the scheme of things, to attend the infamous Apalachin Conference in 1957. </em></p>
<p><em> **** It’s been claimed the killers were Arthur Leo and Vincent Squillante, although this has never been confirmed. S. Jonathan Bass, a professor at Alabama's Samford University, alleges one of the killers that day was Rudy Pipilo, a 31-year-old, who as a result, made “his bones” into the Anastasia crime family. Pipolo features as one of the characters in HBO’s new TV series “The Deuce.”</em></p>
<p><strong><em>For more of Thom L. Jones stories check out his <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner" target="_blank">Mob Corner</a></em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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<p><strong>Copyright © Thom L. Jones & Gangsters Inc.</strong></p></div>
Sammy the Bull Gravano is a free man, but more importantly a poster boy for the dangers of dealing with gangsters
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sammy-the-bull-gravano-is-a-free-man-but-more-importantly-a-poste
2017-09-23T18:00:00.000Z
2017-09-23T18:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sammy-the-bull-gravano-is-a-free-man-but-more-importantly-a-poste" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237097064,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237097064?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Infamous Mafia turncoat Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano was released from prison last week. The 72-year-old mobster finished serving a 20-year sentence for running a $500,000-a-week ecstasy-trafficking organization in Arizona while still somewhat in the Witness Protection Program. His story serves as a prime example of the dangers of the government making deals with hardened criminals.</p>
<p>As the underboss of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview" target="_blank">Gambino crime family</a> boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gotti" target="_blank">John Gotti</a>, Gravano became a huge force in New York’s underworld. He made millions from construction and had an army of men that had his back.</p>
<p>He achieved this position by siding with Gotti in a power struggle between him and mob leader <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/photo/1985-murder-of-paul-castellano?context=album&albumId=6329524%3AAlbum%3A785" target="_blank">Paul Castellano</a>. With Gravano’s support, the crime king was shot to death at a crowded street in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Manhattan" target="_blank">Manhattan</a> in front of Sparks Steak House. It was a clear example that honor among thieves was a commodity that could easily be exchanged for treachery.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interview-john-gotti-jr-sits-down-with-gangsters-inc" target="_blank">John Gotti Jr. sits down with Gangsters Inc.</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>KING RAT</strong></span></p>
<p>Still, when Gravano, the man known as a bull for his prowess and tenacity as a streetfighter, decided to flip and become a government witness against Gotti, minds were blown. He became the highest-ranking turncoat in the history of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in" target="_blank">American Mafia</a> and immediately became a media celebrity.</p>
<p>He was on primetime news shows, on the cover of magazines and newspapers. Here was a real-life mobster, the right-hand of notorious John “The Teflon Don” Gotti, New York’s most famous <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> boss.</p>
<p>The public saw Gravano swearing to tell the truth and nothing but the truth in court as he confessed his involvement in 19 gangland killings, including the hit on boss Paul Castellano with his former pal Gotti, who sat across from him in the courtroom as he pointed his finger at him.</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>BULL LACKS ATTENTION</strong></span></p>
<p>Thanks to Gravano’s testimony, Gotti was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to life in prison. Also thanks to his testimony, Gravano was given a 5-year sentence for his many deadly mob crimes, and walked out of <em>the life</em> a free man with a new lease on a regular life.</p>
<p>Disappearing into the Witness Protection Program in 1994, he was given a new identity and became James Moran. He settled in Tempe, Arizona, where he ran a swimming pool installation company. Instead of being thankful for the second chance, The Bull hated it. He missed the hustle, he missed the respect. He moaned about the many rules he had to follow while in the program and decided to leave it behind.</p>
<p>Fed up with the lack of attention, Gravano also began talking to reporters, resulting in a nationally televised interview with Diane Sawyer and an autobiography titled <em>Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano’s Story of Life in the Mafia</em> co-written with author Peter Maas in 1997.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>WATCH: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/video-sammy-the-bull-gravano-s-entire-interview-with" target="_blank">Sammy the Bull's entire interview with Diane Sawyer</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Flashing his new life all over the media, his former colleagues in the Gambino crime family became enraged at such flagrant disrespect. A plot to murder the mob rat was put in motion, only to be stopped by the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a>.</p>
<p>If only the mob had just hung back and showed some patience.</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>ARIZONA DRUG KINGPIN</strong></span></p>
<p>While giving interviews to the media, Gravano had also gotten in the business of selling ecstasy pills to youngsters looking to party in Arizona. His son Gerard, nicknamed “Baby Bull,” had become close to a street gang known as The Devil Dogs, and for a man with Gravano’s gangster pedigree it wasn’t hard to take the reins and turn the operation into a major drug business making half a million dollars a week.</p>
<p>He did so while still close to federal agents, who frequently visited him in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Arizona" target="_blank">Arizona</a>.</p>
<p>After his arrest in February 2000, and his subsequent conviction in 2002, Gravano began serving a 20-year sentence.</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>MOB WIFE FAME</strong></span></p>
<p>While behind bars, Gravano’s daughter Karen became famous herself for her role in the reality television show Mob Wives, depicting women whose husbands, boyfriends, brothers, fathers or sons were part of the Mafia. She once <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/karen-gravano-hopes-president-trump-pardons-her-mob-dad" target="_blank">claimed</a> that <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Trump" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a> – then not yet elected president – might pardon her imprisoned father.</p>
<p>Trump never did and Gravano finished up his sentence on September 18. He was welcomed home by Karen, who told the New York Post that her dad was “in good health, great spirits and he’s anxious to move forward with the next phase of his life.”</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>DANGEROUS POSTER BOY</strong></span></p>
<p>Ah yes, the next phase. What might that be? Especially seeing that the two previous phases consisted of the Mafia and underworld slayings and street gangs and drug dealing. Now a free man, Gravano can walk the streets among you and I. Such is life one might say, but Gravano’s life was not supposed to be like this. He was supposed to serve life in prison alongside Frank Locascio and John Gotti.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/did-a-serial-killer-frame-mob" target="_blank">Did serial killer Kuklinski frame Gravano for cop's murder?</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Instead, he got off with 5 years and started up a brand-new criminal organization on the other side of the country. Should the government have seen this coming? Should it have done more to prevent such a fallback?</p>
<p>The government had John Gotti, but wanted to play it safe. Flipping Gravano was its golden ticket. With him by its side they locked him up for good and didn’t look back.</p>
<p>Though Gravano wasn’t the first mob snitch, he definitely was the most high-profile. His actions served as inspiration to countless other mobsters who opted to rat out their brothers-in-crime. The sweetheart deal showed there were perks to ratting and that life in the Witness Protection Program was quite enjoyable out there in sunny Arizona. Since then, the government added two legit Mafia bosses to its stable of witnesses – <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family" target="_blank">Philadelphia</a>’s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-philadelphia-mob-boss-ralph-natale-s-last-don-standing-rev" target="_blank">Ralph Natale</a> and New York’s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-joseph-massino" target="_blank">Joseph Massino</a>.</p>
<p>It takes one to catch one, authorities say. They need turncoats to take down the well-oiled and secretive criminal organizations. In the end, it’s for the greater good. They make a deal with the devil to take down ten more devils. In that respect, one can get behind the thinking.</p>
<p>Except that in Gravano’s case they had Gotti dead to rights. They had his own words on tape. They didn’t necessarily need his underboss corroborating everything. They only needed him if they wanted to be sure of a conviction. In doing so they made a deal with one devil and put him loose on the streets of Arizona where he trafficked narcotics to youths.</p>
<p>Gravano’s story serves as a reminder that for all its usefulness, there remain dangers when making deals with stone-cold gangsters. After a life of crime it’s hard to make a U-turn and become a law-abiding citizen. Gravano couldn’t do it. And for that he serves as the poster boy for the price of success and especially the dangers of using and setting free one devil to catch a few more.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Lucchese family mobster planned to escape from Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, prosecutors say
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-mobster-planned-to-escape-from-metropolitan-deten
2017-09-16T09:00:22.000Z
2017-09-16T09:00:22.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-mobster-planned-to-escape-from-metropolitan-deten" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237093860,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237093860?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>He’s a wiseguy who took his flossing seriously. Christopher Londonio, an alleged soldier in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">New York’s Lucchese crime family</a>, was charged Wednesday with planning to escape from the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn using dental floss, sheets, blankets, and a saw blade smuggled into the facility by a priest.</p>
<p>According to prosecutors, the breakout was concocted somewhere in June, by 43-year-old Londonio and another unnamed detainee. The imprisoned mobster used dental floss as a cutting tool to tamper with a window in the center. He also planned to solicit a priest to smuggle a saw blade into the facility, and secretly stockpiled a large number of sheets and blankets, intending to use them as a rope to aid in his escape. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-crime-family-boss-vittorio-vic-amuso" target="_blank">Profile of Lucchese family boss Vittorio Amuso</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>As usual when it comes to these high-profile <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> busts, the plan was foiled after a fellow detainee reported the escape plan to authorities.</p>
<p>“Although sounding like a script for a made-for-tv movie, the charges allege yet another serious federal crime against Londonio,” Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York told the press. “As alleged, with this latest chapter in his years-long life in the mob, Londonio adds to the string of crimes he must now face, in a criminal justice system he was desperately seeking to escape.”</p>
<p>Londonio has been detained at the MDC since February 2017 in connection with murder and racketeering charges pending in White Plains federal court. He was among nineteen members and associates of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Lucchese" target="_blank">Lucchese</a> La Cosa Nostra family <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank">charged</a> with racketeering, murder, narcotics offenses, and firearms offenses.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank">New York's Lucchese Mafia family deadly as ever in 2017</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Authorities have charged Londonio with the murder of drug boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Meldish" target="_blank">Michael Meldish</a>, a former leader of the infamous Purple Gang in New York which had longstanding ties to New York’s five Mafia families. Many of the current mob bosses started out as members of the Purple Gang. Londonio is also charged with playing a role in the shooting of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family" target="_blank">Bonanno family</a> soldier Enzo “The Baker” Stagno.</p>
<p>He will be arraigned on the new charge at the next pretrial conference, which is currently scheduled for September 20, 2017. The attempted escape charge carries a maximum prison term of five years. Londonio is represented by his lawyer Charles Carnesi.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/prison-breaks-from-mobsters-and-hitmen-to-serial-killers-and-drug" target="_blank">Prison Breaks: From mobsters to drug lords</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
Genovese family capo Eugene Onofrio doesn’t want to stand trial alongside Philadelphia Mafia boss Joseph Merlino
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-family-capo-eugene-onofrio-doesn-t-want-to-stand-trial-a
2017-07-21T10:30:00.000Z
2017-07-21T10:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-family-capo-eugene-onofrio-doesn-t-want-to-stand-trial-a" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237094899,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237094899?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>They may both be standup guys, but if it’s up to Genovese family capo Eugene “Rooster” Onofrio, he won’t stand trial alongside codefendant and Philadelphia mob boss Joseph Merlino. Apparently, Onofrio's legal team is making moves this week, claiming the 75-year-old capo wants to be tried separately from Merlino in the “<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philly-mafia-boss-joseph-merlino-and-mobsters-of-5-different-crim" target="_blank">East Coast La Cosa Nostra Enterprise</a>” case.</p>
<p>This request has everything to do with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Merlino" target="_blank">Merlino</a>’s reputation as a stone-cold mob killer – despite never having been convicted of murder. Onofrio is worried jurors might see him sitting next to 55-year-old Merlino (above, left corner) in the courtroom and lean toward judging the entire group of defendants based on one man’s violent street rep.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philadelphia-mob-boss-joey-merlino-stands-up-and-goes-to-trial" target="_blank">Philly Mafia boss Joey Merlino stands up and goes to trial</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Onofrio (above, right corner) is no stranger to the practice of violence, of course, as a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese family</a> captain he runs crews that operate in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Manhattan" target="_blank">Manhattan</a>’s Little Italy and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese" target="_blank">Springfield, Massachusetts</a>. Crews filled with men willing and able to hand out brutal mayhem whenever the order comes down from up the chain of command.</p>
<p>Prosecutors, however, are having none of it. They read out recorded conversations between Merlino, Onofrio, and a government witness in which the capo and mob boss casually discussed murder. “It’s easy to kill somebody,” Merlino is alleged to have said at one point, prosecutors said. Onofrio allegedly agreed, replying, “It’s simple.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-family-turncoat-returns-to-old-stomping-grounds-in-s" target="_blank">Genovese mob turncoat returns to Springfield</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Not yet satisfied that they agree on the practice of murder, Merlino figured he’d paint the scene. “You’re my friend, you trust me, I tell you, ‘Listen drive me home right now,’ get you in the car, I shoot you in the fuckin’ head, and it’s over with,” prosecutors said Merlino said.</p>
<p>A true case of he said he said. But prosecutors will not make these statements if they can’t back them up. And with tapes like these, Merlino and Onofrio face an uphill battle.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
<p> </p></div>
“He was a real man. He was old-school, a good guy.” - Profile: Boston Mafia boss Peter Limone
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/boston-mafia-boss-peter-limone-dies-at-age-83
2017-06-21T16:00:00.000Z
2017-06-21T16:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mafia-boss-peter-limone-dies-at-age-83" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237087892,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237087892?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The term standup guy is thrown around a lot in the underworld, sometimes deserved, other times not so much. But if you want to talk about standup guys, you can’t top Patriarca crime family boss Peter Limone. He was framed by the FBI and sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. And still he kept his mouth shut. No wonder they ended up making him boss.</p>
<p>Limone was born in Boston on May 7<sup>th</sup>, 1934 to Peter Limone and Antonia Lombardo. He grew up in the West End of Boston and later spent most of his life in Medford. As a youngster, Limone hooked up with the mobsters who ruled his neighborhood, showing much promise and quickly rising up the ranks thanks to his mob mentor and family underboss Enrico “Henry the Referee” Tameleo.</p>
<p>His rise was halted when Limone, Tameleo, Joseph Salvati, and Louis Greco were charged with the 1965 murder of Edward “Teddy” Deegan. Prosecutors based their case on testimony by Boston mob snitch <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/joe-barboza-boston-barbarian" target="_blank">Joseph “The Animal” Barboza</a>. After a trial, the four men were found guilty and sentenced to death – which was reduced to life in prison in 1970 when the state of Massachusetts abolished the death penalty.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/joe-barboza-boston-barbarian" target="_blank">Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Unbeknownst to the public, the judge, and the jurors, however, it turned out that Barboza had lied. He knew who the real killer was, but decided to point his finger at these four men because he had a beef with them. Salvati, Boston mob author Howie Carr writes, “refused to repay $200 he owed Barboza.”</p>
<p>Even worse, the FBI knew Barboza had lied. They knew the four men were innocent and would spend the rest of their lives in prison. They also knew who the real murderers were. But FBI agents H. Paul Rico and Dennis Condon didn’t care. They wanted to take down the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family" target="_blank">New England La Cosa Nostra family</a> at all costs. Also, they wanted to protect their star witness Barboza so he could wreck more havoc on his former colleagues.</p>
<p>Still, some men knew the truth. They knew Limone and company didn’t kill Deegan. But it would take years for them to open their mouths.</p>
<p>And so Limone and his pals sat in a cell. Year after year. On the streets of Boston things changed rapidly. An Irish gangster by the name of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-making-of-mob-boss-whitey-bulger" target="_blank">James “Whitey” Bulger</a> began taking over the rackets. No one seemed able to stop him. Those that tried either ended up dead or in prison.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family" target="_blank">Patriarca crime family</a>, especially, was hit hard by indictments as the FBI cracked down on the perceived greatest threat to law and order in the city. At that time no one could imagine that the FBI was scoring all these successes with the help of the big bad wolf, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Bulger" target="_blank">“Whitey” Bulger</a>, himself.</p>
<p>As the 1990s arrived, Limone had spent over two decades behind bars. By then, Tameleo had already passed away, in 1985. Greco had died behind bars as well. Only Limone and Salvati remained.</p>
<p>By the late 1990s, the unholy alliance between the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> and mob boss James Bulger had erupted onto the front pages of newspapers and was aired on primetime news shows. People wanted answers. Especially since Bulger had managed to escape his arrest with the help of his FBI handlers.</p>
<p>With the underworld realizing how they had been played by Bulger, it didn’t take long for more guys to flip and open their mouths. This proved to be the break Limone and Salvati were somehow, somewhere still hoping for.</p>
<p>In 1997, Boston hitman John Martorano told the FBI how <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/joe-barboza-boston-barbarian" target="_blank">Barboza</a> had called him in 1967 while he was already in protective custody. He told Martorano that he planned on framing Tameleo, Limone, Salvati, and Greco for the Deegan hit.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237088286,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237088286?profile=original" width="607" /></a>Martorano’s testimony and a largescale investigation into the FBI’s activities in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Boston" target="_blank">Boston</a> led to the discovery of documents that showed the FBI deliberately withheld evidence that the four men were innocent, then covered up the frameup for decades.</p>
<p>With this new evidence, the verdict against Limone and Salvati was overturned in 2001. After 33 years in prison they were finally able to live in freedom. They also filed a civil lawsuit and were rewarded a total sum of $101.7 million dollars, $26 million of which went to Limone.</p>
<p>You’d expect a newly released man with that much money in his bank account to take it easy and enjoy the rest of his life. You’d expect that, but that is not what Limone had in mind apparently.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fbi-releases-audio-of-boston-mafia-induction-ceremony" target="_blank">FBI releases audio of Boston Mafia induction ceremony</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Whether he was bored, felt that he had earned it after doing 33 years in the slammer, simply did not give a fuck and wanted to stick up his middle finger to the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a>, or whether he, despite all the egocentric mobsters out there, felt gratitude towards his crime family for sticking by him is unknown, but he decided to go back to “the life” and his colleagues in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family" target="_blank">Patriarca crime family</a>.</p>
<p>By the late 2000s, he had risen to the top administration in the family, becoming the boss in 2009.</p>
<p>The following year, he pleaded no contest to state charges of extortion, running illegal gambling operations, and loansharking, and was placed on probation for 5 years. A very light sentence, but what were prosecutors to do? The man had done his time and then some.</p>
<p>By now, he was in his late 70s. The last five years, Limone battled cancer and eventually lost. on Monday, June 19<sup>th</sup>, he died at age 83.</p>
<p>The man who helped him get out of prison told Howie Carr the following about Limone: “He was a real man. He was old-school, a good guy.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family">New England Patriarca crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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</ul>
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<p> </p></div>
New York’s Lucchese Mafia family deadly as ever in 2017, prosecutors say after indicting bosses and underlings
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto
2017-06-01T12:30:00.000Z
2017-06-01T12:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237087488,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237087488?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The year is 2017 and it is business as usual for the Lucchese crime family, one of New York’s infamous five Mafia families. While many thought the American mob had lost its teeth – gangland murders had become a rarity – prosecutors say that the Lucchese family proved them wrong in 2013 with one cold-blooded slaying reminiscent of the mob’s glory days and plenty of other violent deeds, including two shootings of Bonanno family gangsters, one because he had insulted Lucchese boss Steven Crea.</p>
<p>Yesterday, agents of the FBI and officers of the NYPD arrested 19 members and associates of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">Lucchese crime family</a> and charged them with murder, attempted murder, assault, drug distribution, loansharking, illegal gambling, mail and wire fraud, and selling untaxed cigarettes.</p>
<p>Headlining the indictment is the family’s hierarchy consisting of alleged acting boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Madonna" target="_blank">Matthew Madonna</a>, underboss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-steven" target="_blank">Steven Crea</a>, and consigliere <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-crime-family-capo-joseph-dinapoli" target="_blank">Joseph DiNapoli</a>. Madonna is considered “acting” or “street boss” because the Mafia (and authorities) still views <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-crime-family-boss-vittorio-vic-amuso" target="_blank">Vittorio Amuso</a>, serving a life prison sentence, as the titular head of the Luccheses.</p>
<p>Under the leadership of these men, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">Lucchese crime family</a> operated not like it was 2017, but as if it was still 1967 and La Cosa Nostra was the biggest player in town.</p>
<p>In those years long since passed, boss Matthew Madonna was one of the city’s biggest dope peddlers. Back then, he provided notorious <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/drug-boss-leroy-nicky-barnes" target="_blank">Harlem drug kingpin Leroy “Nicky” Barnes</a> with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Heroin" target="_blank">heroin</a>. The two had met in prison and became good friends and business partners. They also became very rich.</p>
<p>But the fast life came to a screeching halt when the whole drug ring was busted and Madonna received a 30-year sentence for drug trafficking in the mid-seventies. Upon his release from prison in the 1990s, Madonna began his rise in the Lucchese family, becoming part of a ruling panel overseeing the organization’s operations by the mid- to late-2000s.</p>
<p>Led by a man with a history in the drug business, it is no surprise to see the indictment that was revealed yesterday contain serious drug charges. Prosecutors allege the Luccheses trafficked in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Cocaine" target="_blank">cocaine</a>, heroin, prescription drugs such as oxycodone, and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Marijuana" target="_blank">marijuana</a>. Lucchese family soldier Joseph Datello (66) and associate Carmine Garcia (65) also conspired to import cocaine from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/drug-cartels" target="_blank">South America</a>, the indictment reads.</p>
<p>The two men, together with Lucchese family captains John Castelucci (57) and Tindaro Corso (56), and associate Richard O’Connor (63), also dealt in contraband cigarettes – a scheme where they profited from the purchase of “cigarettes that did not bear the stamp evincing payment of applicable cigarette taxes.”</p>
<p>Though 81-year-old Madonna is now labeled as the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">Lucchese family</a>’s supreme leader, for a long time, authorities pointed their finger at 69-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-steven" target="_blank">Steven Crea</a>. When Lucchese bosses Vittorio Amuso and Anthony Casso went on the lam in the early 1990s, Crea was one of several men tasked with running the family. After doing time in prison on a labor racketeering conviction, he was back on the streets in 2006 and considered the family’s acting boss.</p>
<p>Now, however, prosecutors say he is the family’s underboss. His son, 45-year-old Steven Junior, allegedly followed in his father’s footsteps and is labeled as a captain in the crime family.</p>
<p>The father and son worked together, prosecutors allege, while planning the demise of feared Purple Gang hitman Michael Meldish. The Purple Gang was a New York street gang filled with killers and drug traffickers, many of whom would go on to become high-ranking Mafiosi.</p>
<p>With such old connections, Meldish had a lot of dirt on several dangerous individuals. According to the indictment, in November of 2013, Madonna, Crea Sr. and Jr. gave orders to 43-year-old Christopher Londonio and 59-year-old Terrence Caldwell to “whack” the 62-year-old Purple Gang inductee.</p>
<p>On November 15, a woman, driving with her daughter, on Ellsworth Avenue in the Bronx saw a Lincoln parked with its driver’s door open and a man’s leg hanging out. When they went to investigate what they thought would be a possible stroke or heart attack, the two women discovered the gruesome scene of a gangland execution. Meldish was bleeding from both his ears, as he lay dead from a gunshot to the head.</p>
<p>It felt like 1967 alright.</p>
<p>Only it wasn’t. It was 2013 and the mob had not committed such brazen acts of murder in the streets for several years. Murders connected to the American Mafia can be counted on one hand – If they can be counted at all.</p>
<p>The hit on Meldish, however, was different. It was also part of an escalating pattern of violence handed out by the Lucchese family. Several months earlier, then-47-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family" target="_blank">Bonanno family</a> mobster Enzo “The Baker” Stango was shot and wounded by Caldwell as he sat in his SUV making a phone call.</p>
<p>Stango wasn't the only Bonanno mobster targeted by the Luccheses. In late 2012, 38-year-old Paul Cassano and 33-year-old Vincent Bruno, acting at the direction of father and son Crea, attempted to murder a Bonanno family associate who had shown disrespect toward Crea Senior.</p>
<p>It seems that Crea had quite a taste for blood, not <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-new-jersey" target="_blank">unlike his predecessors</a>. According to the indictment, in October of 2016, he also ordered Joseph Datello to go to New Hampshire and murder a man who cooperated with law enforcement.</p>
<p>Whacking a rat? Now that’s old school! That is going back in time, back to the sixties. Only, again, the sixties are long gone. So is J. Edgar Hoover. Today, we live in 2017. Today, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=FBI" target="_blank">FBI</a> is run by competent agents intent on taking down the Mafia and anyone deemed a threat to society. Agents that have a wide variety of tools at their disposal, including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO.</p>
<p>Madonna, Crea, and 81-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-crime-family-capo-joseph-dinapoli" target="_blank">DiNapoli</a>, another old-timer, know this. Yet, for some reason they decided to ignore it and run their organization as if it was 1967 and La Cosa Nostra ruled the underworld and parts of the world above, leaving a trail of blood in their path.</p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Philly Mafia boss Joey Merlino stands up and goes to trial
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/philadelphia-mob-boss-joey-merlino-stands-up-and-goes-to-trial
2017-05-23T16:51:27.000Z
2017-05-23T16:51:27.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philadelphia-mob-boss-joey-merlino-stands-up-and-goes-to-trial" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237079683,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237079683?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Try as they might, the feds can’t keep Philadelphia mob boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Merlino" target="_blank">Joseph Merlino</a> down. The man nicknamed “Skinny Joey” was one of over forty wiseguys from five different Mafia families <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philly-mafia-boss-joseph-merlino-and-mobsters-of-5-different-crim" target="_blank">hit with racketeering conspiracy charges</a> last year. Confronted with serious jail time, prosecutors hoped to break Merlino and get him to plead guilty for a lesser sentence, but he’s having none of it.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.bigtrial.net/2017/05/merlino-turns-down-plea-offer.html" target="_blank"><em>Gang Land News</em> column</a> by longtime <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family" target="_blank">Philadelphia mob</a> reporter George Anastasia, Merlino will plead not guilty in Manhattan Federal Court and take his case to trial instead. It’s an attitude we’ve come to expect from Merlino, but one that still speaks volumes about the Philly Mafia boss’ mindset.</p>
<p>That mindset? Call it old school Cosa Nostra.</p>
<p>Released from prison in 2011 after serving over a decade behind bars on racketeering charges, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Merlino" target="_blank">Merlino</a> looked to retire from “the life” and settle in Florida. He went into the restaurant business and enjoyed the sunshine.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/joey-merlino-living-like-a-boss-in-florida" target="_blank">Joey Merlino living like a boss in Florida</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>But according to prosecutors Merlino did no such thing. Instead, they claim, he ran several illegal gambling operations, including one that utilized a company named Costa Rican International Sportsbook. They also claim he was involved in a $157 million-dollar health care fraud in which he, together with various other mobsters, got corrupt doctors to issue unnecessary and excessive prescriptions for expensive compound cream that were then billed to insurers.</p>
<p>Much of the evidence against Merlino comes from Mafia turncoat John “JR” Rubeo, who wore a wire on his friends and colleagues. However, since the indictment came down, several others have joined the prosecution in return for leniency.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-philadelphia-mob-boss-ralph-natale-s-last-don-standing-rev" target="_blank">Ralph Natale's Last Don Standing</a> reveals gangster in desperate need of respect</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Apparently, that doesn’t faze Merlino. He will see them all in court. Though he may seem overconfident, he does actually have reason to. Because “… the handling of recordings made by the cooperator and the lack of supervision while Rubeo was on the streets in Florida have raised serious questions about whether the feds would be able to use much of that evidence in court,” <a href="http://www.bigtrial.net/2017/05/merlino-turns-down-plea-offer.html" target="_blank">George Anastasia writes</a>. Two FBI agents even face disciplinary action because of how they handled Rubeo, <em>Gang Land News</em> reported.</p>
<p>With that in mind, going to trial doesn’t seem like such a long shot. But even if it was indeed a long shot, the odds are that “Skinny Joey” would’ve met them head on all the same.</p>
<ul>
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Genovese mob family turncoat returns to old stomping grounds in Springfield despite possible threats on life
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-family-turncoat-returns-to-old-stomping-grounds-in-s
2017-05-09T09:02:18.000Z
2017-05-09T09:02:18.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-mob-family-turncoat-returns-to-old-stomping-grounds-in-s" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237082890,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237082890?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The balls on this guy. Former Genovese family mobster Anthony Arillotta (above) is causing quite a stir in his old stomping grounds of Springfield, Massachusetts. After climbing to the top of the city’s mob crew by arranging the 2003 murder of his predecessor, capo Adolfo Bruno, he left town with his tail between his legs after he became a witness for the government and testified against the Springfield and New York mobsters below and above him. But now, he has returned.</p>
<p>According to newspaper <a href="http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/05/anthony_arillotta_returns_to_springfield.html#incart_river_home" target="_blank">The Republican</a>, sources in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Springfield" target="_blank">Springfield</a> claim 48-year-old Arillotta is back in town, arriving sometime before May 1. Apparently, he decided not to join the government’s <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/once-a-crook-always-a-crook-the-gangster-who-joined-the-witness-p" target="_blank">Witness Protection Program</a> after he was released from prison, choosing instead to return to the city he once ruled as a mob kingpin.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-hit-how-the-genovese">The Bruno Hit: How the Genovese Springfield Crew killed itself</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>He served eight years for two murders, one attempted murder, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drug dealing</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Extortion" target="_blank">extortion</a>, and various other racketeering charges related to the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family" target="_blank">Genovese family</a>’s Springfield crew. His cooperation with authorities assured his current early homecoming as without it he would be serving life behind bars.</p>
<p>Now, he’s back in town. But things have changed drastically for him. He is divorced and has no place of his own, according to <a href="http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/05/anthony_arillotta_returns_to_springfield.html#incart_river_home" target="_blank">The Republican</a>, he is “staying with family members in Springfield.”</p>
<p>When one hears about a mob turncoat, one immediately has flashbacks to The Godfather and how they dealt with such individuals. For those who’ve followed the real-life version of the movie, they might remember the fate of Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, who ‘mysteriously’ fell from a building while in protective custody after deciding to testify against his former colleagues in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/deadly-bizarre-and-morbid-murder-inc-comes-to-the-mob-museum-in-l" target="_blank">Murder Inc.</a></p>
<p>Turncoat. Snitch. Rat. So many names for the people who decide to cooperate.</p>
<p>Yet, despite the animosity, despite the history, the days when the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> went out murdering those that had betrayed its secretive organization are long gone. Nowadays, those that are left on the street, unscathed by the turncoat’s testimony, just resume their illicit business like nothing happened.</p>
<p>What else can they do? Drop their lucrative dealings and spend money on a wild goose chase for the honor of Cosa Nostra? Those days are long gone. Too much heat. Too much problems. Even if they do manage to get to the rat and kill him, there will be another rat lined up to testify about the killing.</p>
<p>Don’t believe it? Well, ask former mobsters who snitched how they live their lives. Ask guys like Ron Previte and John Alite, who both opted out of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/once-a-crook-always-a-crook-the-gangster-who-joined-the-witness-p" target="_blank">Witness Protection Program</a> and are living – relatively – out in the open, near their old haunts.</p>
<p>Or, to stay close to home with this piece, ask former Genovese family associate <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-associate-peter-petey" target="_blank">Peter “Petey Cap” Caporino</a>, who began recording conversations with his mob colleagues in 2002, resulting in the arrest of sixteen Genovese wiseguys, including captain Lawrence “Little Larry” Dentico, who, together with fourteen others, pleaded guilty. As gratitude for his testimony, Caporino walked out of court a free man.</p>
<p>And what does this man do with all that freedom? He goes right back to his old neighborhood to run the same gambling operation he was running before. Totally clueless or simply realizing that the mob just isn’t that interested in whacking snitches anymore, Caporino went about his bets and bookmaking. Until some people started complaining about his operation to police.</p>
<p>Who were these people? Who knows. But on September 7, 2007, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/genovese-associate-peter-petey" target="_blank">Peter Caporino</a> was sentenced to seven years in prison.</p>
<p>It might not have been Mafia justice, but it was good enough for most. Perhaps even for some fellas who once pricked their trigger finger and swore loyalty to an ancient criminal brotherhood.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-genovese-crime-family">Genovese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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FBI sting operation snares Turkish Canadian drug boss – Tried smuggling 100 kilos of cocaine to Canada
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/fbi-sting-operation-snares-turkish-canadian-drug-boss-tried-smugg
2017-04-28T13:00:00.000Z
2017-04-28T13:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fbi-sting-operation-snares-turkish-canadian-drug-boss-tried-smugg" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237095271,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237095271?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The United States may be one of the biggest consumer markets for drugs of any kind, but at the same time there is no country on earth that enforces its anti-drug laws as rigorously. Smugglers, traffickers and kingpins the world over have taken note and fear ending up in a U.S. prison. Still, sometimes the lure of untold riches proves too strong. As was the case for Turkish Canadian drug trafficker Sezayir Bulamun, who was caught in an FBI sting operation.</p>
<p>Everything was looking pretty good for Sezayir Bulamun (photo above) back in 2012. The forty-something businessman ran a motorcycle business in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Laval" target="_blank">Laval</a>, near <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Montreal" target="_blank">Montreal</a>, and enjoyed the fruits of his labor. But instead of kicking back and perhaps riding his bikes, he began hatching a plan that would add some extra zeroes to his bank account. Together with some friends, Bulamun decided to smuggle 100 kilograms of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Cocaine" target="_blank">cocaine</a> from Mexico through the United States and into Canada.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-canadian-connection-flooding-the-u-s-with-dope" target="_blank">The Canadian Connection: Flooding the U.S. with dope</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>It was a decision that would bring him everything but the riches and fat bank account he hoped for.</p>
<p>He could’ve known that beforehand, of course. There is a reason the price of a brick of cocaine rises with every mile it travels up into North America. That reason being: It’s an extremely difficult undertaking. With U.S. Customs, Border Patrol, the DEA, and local police departments all keeping an eye out for possible drug shipments all along the Mexican border and up into the neighboring states.</p>
<p>But hell, Bulamun knew what he was doing. He’d buy the coke from a Mexican supplier – no doubt part of one of the infamous <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/drug-cartels" target="_blank">drug cartels</a> – and sell it to the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mafia-of-montreal-a-short" target="_blank">Italian Mafia in Montreal</a> where it would be distributed to smaller street dealers. It was the circle of dope life, the classic drug pipeline.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/arsonists-set-montreal-ablaze-as-deadly-mafia-war-continues" target="_blank">Arsonists set Montreal ablaze as deadly Mafia war rages on</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Bulamun sent a friend of a friend to Chicago to pick up the 100-kilo shipment and drive it to New Jersey from where it would travel to Canada. On November 27, 2012, that friend was at the exact spot where he needed to be, receiving the keys to a vehicle filled with one hundred packages wrapped in cellophane.</p>
<p>So far so good. That is except for the fact that the friend turned out to be an undercover agent working with the FBI. From that point on, with all the “dope on the table” and firmly under its thumb, the FBI began collecting more evidence against the crew of Canadian drug traffickers.</p>
<p>A day after collecting the coke shipment, the undercover agent met one of Bulamun’s associates who built a secret compartment in a trailer truck to hide the drugs as it traveled to Canada. Unbeknownst to him or Bulamun the cocaine was going nowhere near Canada, it would sit safely in a vault somewhere, evidence in a criminal case. In 2012, U.S. prosecutors charged Bulamun and his crew with drug trafficking and sought his extradition to the United States.</p>
<p>Two days ago, on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, 48-year-old Sezayir Bulamun pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to distribute more than five kilograms or more of cocaine. He admitted that between October 2012 and November 29, 2012, together with others, he conspired to pick up 100 kilograms of cocaine in Chicago, transport it to a warehouse in New Jersey, and then transport it to Canada.</p>
<p>The conspiracy count to which Bulamun pleaded guilty carries a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on August 4, 2017.</p>
<p>Bulamun’s downfall is a perfect example of a smooth anti-drug operation executed by the well-oiled law enforcement agencies in the United States. As we wrote before, there is a reason the price of drugs goes up as it moves through the United States, and it’s not because they sprinkle some extra dope on top.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in-canada-from-the-mafia-to-outlaw-bikers-and-dru">Organized Crime in Canada section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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