The Godfather Comes Mob-handed to PSP

Listen up wiseguy, we're going to make you an offer you can't refuse: read the rest of this article and we'll agree not to make any more puns based around The Godfather universe.

Refuse this personal favour, and, erm, we'll weep.

Based on Mario Puzo's The Godfather novel and the subsequent Paramount Pictures film, The Godfather Mob Wars is – believe it or not – all about going up in the world. Because after a life of cheap criminal antics, illegally downloading MP3s and so forth, you've been accepted into America's most famous criminal organization, the Mafia.

Little does post-War New York know what's going to hit it. By carrying out orders and earning respect, you can rise through the ranks to eventually become a Don yourself. (Must... not... pun.)

Mob hits, bank heists and extortion are on the menu, and the police, businessmen, racket bosses and rival mobsters (the Tattaglia, Cuneo, Barzini and Stracci families from the novel) are mere appetisers at your table.

Just like Al Pacino in the movies, you'll have to choose between brutal violence and skilful diplomacy to best progress. Loyalty and fear are your best weapons and the ones that will earn you the most respect, and therefore power. But we're told the choices affect how the action plays out, so you'll have to choose carefully if you want to see a happier ending than The Godfather III.

As you'd expect, there are some gruesome-sounding actions in the mix, too. The so-called BlackHand Control combat system will enable you to punch, kick, grab, and even choke someone with a stranglehold.

But to pacify the censors, you can also use pressure point targeting, which enables you to get a less-than-lethal lock on your opponent so they're able to give you valuable information. (Okay, nothing to do with the censors – it's really that stiffs can't talk.)

Feeling squeamish? Maybe you're not made for a life in the front line of the family business? Well, as an alternative to all this blood and guts, the PSP exclusive Mob Wars mode will also give you the option to instead engage in strategy-based a turf war as you take over New York one territory at a time.

As well as original missions, the game also boasts scenarios lifted from the films, enabling you to interact with its classic characters. Actors lending their voices include (a recording, we presume of) the late Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, James Caan as Sonny Corleone, and Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen.

We weren't convinced by the home console version of the game, but as ever we'll take the PSP version of The Godfather Mob Wars on its own merits. There's no firm date yet, but EA has previously hinted it will be out before the end of 2006.

See, no more puns. Strictly a matter of business.

Thanks to Owain Bennaallack

Truth About Sinatra Mafia Ties

Friends of ours: Lucky Luciano, Willie Moretti
Friends of mine: Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra biographers Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan have unearthed new evidence linking the late crooner to the Mafia, thanks to the confession of a dying mob boss. The husband-and-wife team published SINATRA: THE LIFE last summer and have since learned that claims they made in the tome about Ol' Blue Eyes' ties to organised crime were accurate.

In the hardback, the couple maintained the singing legend owed his career to the Mob, as Dons like American Mafia founder Lucky Luciano, whose family lived on the same street in small town Sicily as the Sinatras, gave him his first big break on the stages of the clubs run by the criminal masterminds. Summers and Swan's research also led them to believe that the Mafia continued to support Sinatra throughout his life - helping him reclaim his career when his popularity was waning in the late 1950s and 1960s - in return for his services.

Swan even spoke to comedian Jerry Lewis, who she claims told her that Sinatra once carried Mafia money for his mob boss pals. But it took the words of a dying man to help the biographers cement their claims, and they've added his testimony in the newly-released paperback version of their book. Summers explains, "To the Mafia, he (Sinatra) was an earner - they saw him as a potential earner and they helped him in special ways.

"Since the book came out I talked to a former journalist who remembered talking to one of the first mobsters to give Sinatra a hand, Willie Moretti. "He told our new contact, 'We made a good deal, we took good care of him.' That matches the things we've learned already and we put it in the new edition (of the book)."

Thanks to Contact Music

Canadian Teflon Don Moves Closer to US Court Date

Friends of ours: Vito Rizzuto, Bonanno Crime Family

The man alleged to be the don of the Canadian Mafia came a leap closer to an American courtroom yesterday after two Supreme Court of Canada rulings on extradition cases that mirror his own legal bid to stay in Canada.

Vito Rizzuto, the so-called Teflon Don from Montreal, allegedly participated in the 1981 slayings of three New York mob captains who were plotting an underworld coup. He has been fighting extradition since his arrest in January, 2004.

The legal arguments in his case are similar to those in two others that were rejected yesterday by Canada's highest court. One involved Brantford, Ont., resident Shane Tyrone Ferras, who is wanted in the United States on fraud and money laundering charges. The other involved Canadian citizen Leroy Latty, a man wanted in the United States on drug-trafficking charges.

Both challenged the constitutionality of two sections of Canada's Extradition Act. In its decision, however, the court upheld rulings by the Ontario Court of Appeal and found that neither section of the Extradition Act infringed upon the appellants' rights and freedoms.

"It sort of tightens the noose around Vito's neck. It means that his options are narrowing and that he is a giant step closer to being sent to the United States, which is something that any accused criminal dreads," said Lee Lamothe, co-author of The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the fall on whether to send Mr. Rizzuto, 60, to the United States to stand trial on racketeering charges. His lawyers did not return calls yesterday.

Mr. Rizzuto was the only Canadian arrested in the 2004 sweep that netted 27 alleged members of the Bonanno Mafia family, one of the notorious Five Families of New York.

U.S. authorities allege that Mr. Rizzuto was one of the hit men in the 1981 slaying of three rogue members of the Bonanno organization who were plotting to overthrow the head of the family while he was in prison.

Antonio Nicaso, author of several books on the Canadian mob, said the arrest highlighted the Canadian Mafia's cross-border reach. "His arrest changed the perception of the so-called Canadian Mafia . . . it showed there was a strategy that was going beyond the border."

A police report filed in Mr. Rizzuto's extradition case alleges that the Montreal resident, who has a penchant for Ferraris, Porsches and trips to St. Kitts, is considered a godfather in Canadian mob circles.

The report's allegations -- which have not been proved in court -- suggest his activities in the decade before his arrest included loan-sharking at the Montreal Casino, laundering money in Switzerland and ordering a hit on a Venezuelan lawyer.

Mr. Rizzuto earned the nickname Teflon Don because until the 2004 arrest, the only charges he had faced were for relatively minor offences, including disturbing the peace and impaired driving.

The Rizzuto name has popped up in many major U.S. drug busts over the thirty years, Mr. Lamothe said. "For the Americans, he is the face of the Sicilian Mafia in Canada . . . who helped flood America in the seventies and eighties with heroin," he said. "The Americans want him."

Thanks to Hayley Mick

Mafia Cops Denied Bail

Friends of ours: Lucchese Crime Family
Friends of mine: Louis Eppolito, Stephen Caracappa

Less than a month after he acquitted them of one of the most scandalous murder conspiracies in New York history, a federal judge denied bail today to the two retired detectives in the Mafia Cops case on a much less solemn charge: a plot to distribute less than one ounce of methamphetamine.

The drug charge was one of only two counts left from the original indictment of the men, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were found guilty on April 6 of taking part in at least eight murders for the Luchese family of the mob. Twelve weeks later, the verdict was reversed when the judge in the case, Jack B. Weinstein, ruled that the statute of limitations — five years for conspiracy charges — had run out.

Today, after he denied the two men bail, Judge Weinstein took them to task, as he did in his order of acquittal, calling them “dangerous criminals with no degree of credibility” and saying they had been “publicly shamed” at the very trial he had upended by tossing their convictions out. He said the drug charge — an alleged deal hatched over dinner in Las Vegas — was a “serious” charge and sternly ordered the federal marshals to haul the men off to jail.

Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa now inhabit a strange piece of legal real estate, one which might be labeled “guilty but acquitted.” After all both judge and jury in the case have found that there was ample — even overwhelming — evidence that they committed some of the worst official crimes since 1912, when a police lieutenant, Charles Becker, was charged with the murder of a two-bit gambler known as Beansie Rosenthal. Despite such evidence, the murder charges were effectively dismissed.

Although the government has said it will appeal Judge Weinstein’s order of acquittal, the judge himself said today that his decision to deny bail had nothing to do with the appellate case and was solely based on the fact the two men still have charges pending against them: the drug count (for both) and a count of money-laundering (for Mr. Eppolito alone). The government has said it will try the two men on the drug charge in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, though only after the broader appeal has been decided.

In the meantime, Mr. Eppolito (garrulous and portly) and Mr. Caracappa (austere and hatchet-thin) will return to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunnyside, Brooklyn, where they have been sharing a cell since their convictions. Daniel Nobel, Mr. Caracappa’s lawyer, asked Judge Weinstein if his client might be moved to a different jail, later saying, “I dare say most marriages would founder under similar circumstances.”

There were many reasons why Judge Weinstein could have granted bail — he did so before the trial began. At that point, the two men faced a damaging array of murder charges — which, by today, had been dismissed. Moreover, at the first bail hearing last July, the government itself had said that there was no “presumption” that the two detectives should be held on the methamphetamine charge, even though that charge was the very rationale Judge Weinstein offered today in denying bail.

Mr. Nobel and Joseph Bondy, Mr. Eppolito’s lawyer, said they were likely to appeal the judge’s ruling to a higher court. Mr. Bondy, in particular, said he thought Judge Weinstein might have kept the men in jail as way to offset their acquittals on what some saw as a technicality in the case. “I think there may have been a balancing aspect to the judge’s decision,” he said. “Perhaps from the judge’s point of view letting them go may have been inconsistent with his role pending a retrial.”

One of the arguments the prosecution raised against bail today was a concern that, if the men were freed, they might be tempted to threaten witnesses in the case. After all, having sat through an entire trial, they now know every witness by name.

In court papers filed last week, the prosecution mentioned one witness in particular — Steven Corso, a disgraced accountant, who told the court at trial that, in February 2005, Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa had agreed to help him find some methamphetamine for some “Hollywood punks” who were coming to Las Vegas. “With their liberty at stake, the defendants have a tremendous incentive to attempt to harm Corso to prevent him from testifying against them,” the papers said. Nonetheless, Mr. Corso himself sounded only marginally worried when he called The New York Times last month to discuss the outcome of the trial. Although he said there were times that “he was looking out for bullets,” his main concern seemed to be the paper’s coverage — of himself.

Thanks to Alan Feuer

Juror Rap Sheets, Tax Audits Requested by Lawyers in Mob Case

Friends of ours: James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, Tony "The Ant" Spilotro

Attorneys for a reputed mob boss asked a federal judge Monday to require the government to produce the rap sheets and tax audit information of prospective jurors as part of the jury selection process.

James Marcello's attorneys made no mention of the nasty legal bickering that erupted over the arrest records of several jurors at the close of former Gov. George Ryan's racketeering and fraud trial in April.

The attorneys merely said in a motion filed with U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel that a juror's failure to disclose his criminal record during the selection process could "give rise to an inference of bias."

"Such a juror could be motivated not to reveal his or her past because of a hidden agenda," the attorneys said. "In fairness, the parties ought to know it before or during jury selection."

Marcello is one of 14 defendants charged in a racketeering conspiracy indictment involving at least 18 long unsolved murders, including that of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, once known as the Chicago mob's man in Las Vegas.

Marcello, 63, of suburban Lombard has been described by FBI officials as the leader of organized crime in the Chicago area. The case, stemming from a long-running FBI investigation dubbed Operation Family Secrets, is due to go to trial next May.

The request for a criminal background check of prospective jurors and information concerning tax audits of them is unusual. But the turmoil surrounding the Ryan trial has led to considerable discussion of the issue among defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges.

In the Ryan case, two jurors were dismissed by U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer after the jury already had deliberated eight days. The Chicago Tribune disclosed that they had failed to indicate on a required court questionnaire that they had arrest records.

Later, Pallmeyer declined to dismiss four other jurors who were found to have failed to indicate that they had experiences with the court system ranging from a divorce to a 23-year-old theft charge for purchasing a stolen bicycle. She said their omissions were not as serious. Intense legal infighting over the issue dragged on for weeks.

The attorney who filed the motion on behalf of Marcello, Marc W. Martin, represented Ryan's co-defendant, businessman Larry Warner, at the seven-month trial that ended with the former governor's conviction.

Martin did not immediately return a phone call Monday afternoon. His office said he was in a meeting. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, Randall Samborn, declined to comment but said prosecutors most likely would file a written answer with the court.

In the wake of the Ryan turmoil, federal prosecutors urged criminal background checks for prospective jurors at the next major political corruption trial to take place in Chicago - that of Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage chief, Robert Sorich, and three other men. But U.S. District Judge David H. Coar, who presided over the Sorich trial, ruled out criminal background checks for jurors.

The four defendants were convicted July 6 in what prosecutors described as a scheme under which political campaign workers were illegally put on the city payroll. There were no noticeable jury problems.

Mafia Cops Request Bail

Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family
Friends of mine: Louis Eppolito, Stephen Caracappa

It was a sensational case that seemed finished when guilty verdicts and life sentences were announced earlier this year against the defendants, both former NYPD detectives accused of moonlighting as hitmen for the mob. But a stunning ruling last month has made a new scene possible: The portly and talkative Louis Eppolito and his spindly and taciturn former partner, Stephen Caracappa, walking out of jail.

The defendants were due back in court on Tuesday, when their lawyers are expected to ask U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein to free them based on his decision to toss out the verdict finding them guilty of participating in eight murders while on the payroll of a brutal mob underboss. The judge found that the statute of limitations had expired on the slayings, which occurred between 1986 and 1990.

Papers filed recently by the defense note that Eppolito, 57, and Caracappa, 57, each were out on $5 million bail for nine months before their convictions and return to jail on April 3. They argue that the similar conditions should apply while they await the outcome of a government appeal of Weinstein's ruling or, if it's upheld, a retrial on lesser charges stemming from a 2005 drug sting in Las Vegas, where the partners both had retired.

Eppolito ``respectfully submits that a reasonable bail pending the highly likely retrial on allegations that he distributed a small quantity of methamphetamine and laundered a small amount of money is appropriate,'' his attorney, Joseph Bondy, wrote in a July 21 letter to Weinstein. Bondy said his client hopes to return to Las Vegas, where he would ``live with his wife and near his children.''

Prosecutors, calling the evidence that the defendants were killers ``overwhelming,'' have argued that they are too dangerous to go free. ``The fact that these men, who swore to serve and protect, were so willing to betray the public trust by committing unspeakable acts of violence for money is a testament to the serious threat of danger to the community their release constitutes,'' wrote prosecutor Robert Henoch.

In his ruling, Weinstein said he agreed with the jury that Eppolito and Caracappa were guilty of murder, kidnapping and other crimes, but the law compelled him to set aside the verdict. The decision came less than a month after he told the pair they would receive life in prison _ a sentence that could still be imposed if prosecutors win their appeal.

Caracappa retired in 1992 after establishing the police department's unit for mob murder investigations. Eppolito, whose father was a member of the Gambino crime family, was a much-praised street cop who went on to play a bit part in ``GoodFellas'' and launch an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter.

In a jailhouse interview following his conviction, Eppolito called himself ``the most perfect scapegoat in history.''

Thanks to WINS

Bonanno Crime Family Linked to BetonSports

Friends of ours: Bonanno Crime Family

A newspaper in Costa Rica is reporting that BetOnSports is linked to the Mafia. They state, "a year ago, New York and federal officials busted a $360 million gambling operation linked to the mob and to a sports book in Costa Rica. It turns out the sports book, being used as a virtual wire room for persons linked to the Bonanno Mafia crime family, according to New York officials, was part of the BetonSports operation, using the name Safe Deposit Sports. The administrative contact for safedepositsports.com was Pablo Quiros Valenciano, who has a betonsports.com e-mail address, according to a lookup of the Safe Deposit Internet domain.

Overheard: Mafia Weather

The Weather Channel reported a power outage in New York's LaGuardia Airport last week due to record-high heat. It's really bad back East. In New Jersey, three guys suffocated inside a car trunk before they could die of their gunshot wounds.

Keep Family Business Out of Trial Say Reputed Mobster's Attorneys

Friends of ours: Frank Calabrese Sr., Nicholas W. Calabrese, Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo
Friends of mine: Frank Calabrese Jr.

Attorneys for a reputed mobster said Friday it would be "morally repugnant" for jurors at his upcoming trial to hear about telephone conversations with his wife that were tapped by federal investigators.

"This case involves enough of a distasteful spectacle due to the fact that the defendant's son and brother may testify against him," attorneys for Frank Calabrese Sr. said in papers filed in U.S. District Court. Calabrese, 69, of Oak Brook is among 14 defendants charged in the FBI's wide-ranging Operation Family Secrets investigation of 18 mob murders that went unsolved for years.

Brother Nicholas W. Calabrese, 63, of Chicago also is charged and son Frank Calabrese Jr. may take the witness stand at the trial currently scheduled for May 2007. Calabrese Jr. is not charged in the case.

The court papers said it would be "morally repugnant to see the defendant's spouse on the witness stand and the government attempting to reveal confidences" that were exchanged in telephone talks between them while she was at home and he was in the federal prison at Milan, Mich. "These conversations revolved around family matters and other family business," the court papers said. One such discussion in May 2000 concerned an alleged break-in at wife Diane Calabrese's Wisconsin home.

The Family Secrets case is the result of the biggest mob investigation in the Chicago area in decades. Among the murders involved is that of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the Chicago "Outfit's" longtime man in Las Vegas, who was killed and buried in an Indiana cornfield in an act of mob vengeance.

Defendants include Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, the reputed mobster known for his zany sense of humor who went on the lam after the indictment was returned and became the target of an intense FBI manhunt. Agents captured him in suburban Elmwood Park in January.