Historic Mafia Crackdown Today

Federal authorities orchestrated one of the biggest Mafia takedowns in FBI history Thursday, charging 127 suspected mobsters and associates in the Northeast with murders, extortion and other crimes spanning decades.

Past investigations have resulted in strategic strikes aimed at crippling individual crime families. This time, authorities used a shotgun approach, with some 800 federal agents and police officers making scores of simultaneous arrests stemming from different mob investigations in New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

They also used fanfare: Attorney General Eric Holder made a trip to New York to announce the operation at a news conference with the city's top law enforcement officials.

Holder called the arrests "an important and encouraging step forward in disrupting La Cosa Nostra's operations." But he and others also cautioned that the mob, while having lost some of the swagger of the John Gotti era, is known for adapting to adversity and finding new ways of making money and spreading violence.

"Members and associates of La Cosa Nostra are among the most dangerous criminals in our country," Holder said. "The very oath of allegiance sworn by these Mafia members during their initiation ceremony binds them to a life of crime."

In the past, the FBI has aggressively pursued and imprisoned the leadership of the city's five Italian mob families, only to see ambitious underlings fill the vacancies, said Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York office. "We deal in reality, and the reality is that the mob, like nature, abhors a vacuum," she said.

However, the FBI has gained a recent advantage by cultivating a crop of mob figures willing to wear wires and testify against gangsters in exchange for leniency in their own cases. "The vow of silence that is part of the oath of omerta is more myth than reality today," she said.

In the latest cases, authorities say turncoats recorded thousands of conversations of suspected mobsters. Investigators also tapped their phones.

In sheer numbers, the takedown eclipsed those from a highly publicized assault on the Gambino Crime Family in 2008, when authorities rounded up 62 suspects. All but one of the arrests resulted in guilty pleas.

Among those arrested Thursday were union officials, two former police officers and a suspect in Italy. High-ranking members of the Gambino and Colombo crime families and the reputed former boss of organized crime in New England also were named in 16 federal indictments unsealed Thursday.

The indictments listed colorful nicknames — Bobby Glasses, Vinny Carwash, Jack the Whack, Johnny Cash, Junior Lollipops — and catalogued murders, extortion, arson and other crimes dating back 30 years.

One of the indictments charges a reputed Gambino boss, Bartolomeo Vernace, in a double murder in the Shamrock Bar in Queens in a dispute over a spilled drink. Another charges an alleged Colombo captain, Anthony Russo, in the 1993 hit on an underboss during the family's bloody civil war.

Luigi Manocchio, 83, the reputed former head of New England's Patriarca crime family, was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He has long denied having mob ties. An indictment accuses him of collecting protection payments from strip-club owners. lso arrested was Thomas Iafrate, who worked as a bookkeeper for strip clubs and set aside money for Manocchio, prosecutors said. Iafrate pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court in Providence, R.I.

Other charges include corruption among dockworkers in New York and New Jersey who were forced to kick back a portion of their holiday bonuses to the crime families. Members of the Colombo family also were charged with extortion and fraud in connection with their control of a cement and concrete workers union.

Most of the defendant were awaiting arraignment on Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn. If convicted, they face a wide range of maximum sentences, including life in prison.

Thanks to Tom Hays

Roe Conn Selected for FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award

Local radio and television personality Roe Conn has been selected as the 2010 Chicago area recipient of the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award (DCLA), announced Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The DCLA is presented annually by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III to a recipient in each of the FBI’s 56 domestic field offices. Established in 1990, the DCLA is designed to publicly recognize an individual or organization that has helped with crime prevention and educational programs within their community and which have furthered the efforts of law enforcement. In selecting Mr. Conn as the 2010 recipient of this prestigious award, Director Mueller noted his many contributions over the years in assisting both the law enforcement community and related charities and benevolent organizations. Said Director Mueller, “Mr. Conn’s unwavering support of law enforcement in general, and the FBI in particular, has earned him the respect and admiration of police officers and FBI agents throughout the Chicago area. He has used the public airways as a means to educate and inform his listeners, while at the same time remaining an objective journalist.”

In announcing this award, Mr. Grant noted the dedication and personal involvement exhibited by Mr. Conn in assisting the Chicago FBI during the past several years. Mr. Grant added “Our employees were honored to have Roe Conn serve as the master of ceremonies at our 100th anniversary celebration in July of 2008. In addition, his frequent on-air discussion of FBI investigations and related issues has earned him a great following in our office.”

Mr. Conn serves on the board of directors for the USO of Illinois and has been active in supporting the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation and the Chicago Crime Commission, which demonstrates his ongoing dedication to aiding law enforcement.

Mr. Conn follows acclaimed journalist and documentarian Bill Kurtis, who was the 2009 Chicago DCLA recipient.

An awards luncheon honoring Mr. Conn is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. tomorrow at Harry Caray’s Restaurant, 33 West Kinzie in Chicago. Mr. Conn will also be invited to attend an awards ceremony, to be held in Washington, D.C. in March, at which time DCLA recipients from across the nation will be personally honored by Director Mueller.

Sonny Franzese, 93 Year-Old Mobster, Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison

Convicted mob boss John "Sonny" Franzese is so old, he knew Frank Sinatra in his heyday. He's so old, his recent extortion trial became nap time — even when his turncoat son took the witness stand against him. But a federal judge decided Friday that Franzese is not so old that he can avoid prison.

Franzese, 93, was sentenced to eight years in prison for extorting Manhattan strip clubs and a pizzeria on New York's Long Island.

The jailed Franzese appeared alert while sitting in a wheelchair in federal court in Brooklyn. But when asked if he wanted to speak, he managed only a fragmented mumble: "I never got a fair ..."

Federal prosecutors had sought at least 12 years behind bars for the underboss of the Colombo crime family — in effect, a life term. To bolster their argument, they had an FBI agent testify Friday that Franzese bragged about killing 60 people over the years and once contemplated putting out a hit on his own son for becoming a government cooperator. "For him to die in prison is not an inappropriate response to the life he's led," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina Posa.

Defense attorney Richard Lind argued that because of Franzese's advanced age and array of chronic illnesses, a long sentence was pointless. He labeled the talk of gangland carnage "pathetic boasting."

Sentencing a nonagenarian wasn't easy, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said. But he also said he needed to send a message that "you can never escape the consequences of a lifetime of organized crime."

The sentencing was the latest chapter of a criminal career dating to the Great Depression. Franzese's first arrest, for assault, came in 1938. Prosecutors say he was kicked out of the Army four years later after displaying "homicidal tendencies."

In 1947, court papers say, he raped a waitress in a garage. In 1966, he beat a murder charge accusing him of killing a rival and dumping the body — cement blocks chained to the feet — into a bay.

Franzese was convicted in 1967 in a bank robbery, sent to prison and paroled in the late 1970s. Though never convicted of another crime, authorities say he rose to second in command of the Colombos, one of New York's five Italian crime families.

According to Mafia lore, Franzese was a big spender and a regular at the Copacabana nightclub, where he hobnobbed with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. He also once had a stake in the classic porn film "Deep Throat." But in court papers, the government said Franzese's true legacy was something more akin to "Goodfellas."

The main reason Franzese dodged arrest in other murders is that he became good at making bodies disappear, the papers said. Investigators caught him on tape in 2006 describing his favorite recipe for that: Dismember victim in kiddie pool. Cook body parts in microwave. Stuff parts in garbage disposal. Be patient.
"Today, you can't have a body no more," the latest court papers quote him saying. "It's better to take that half an hour, an hour, to get rid of the body than it is just to leave the body in the street."

The FBI arrested Franzese in a mob takedown in 2008. A jury found him guilty last year on racketeering and other charges last year.

At trial, prosecutors used John Franzese Jr., a former Colombo associate turned paid informant, to help convince jurors that his father's frail appearance was deceiving. The defendant briefly dozed off when his son began testifying.

"I'm not talking about my father as a man," Franzese Jr. testified. "I'm talking about the life he chose. ... This life absorbs you. You only see one way."

Thanks to Tom Hays