Friends of ours: Joseph "Little Joe" Scarbrough, Genovese Crime Family, Harry Aleman, Lawrence "Little Larry" Dentico
Friends of mine: Peter "Petey" Caporino
Joseph Scarbrough came to his sentencing on federal racketeering charges yesterday with his wife, his daughter and a stack of letters from his friends and West Orange neighbors who insisted the genteel girls softball coach couldn't be the mobster the government said he was.
Prosecutors brought their own stack of papers -- transcripts of Scarbrough regaling an FBI informant with his war stories from decades inside the Genovese crime family. On the tapes, Scarbrough boasts of reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars in burglaries and cargo thefts, of his ties to corrupt cops and of running with violent mob crews.
"Harry (Aleman) was one of the most cold, calculating, (expletive) smartest killers that (expletive) hit Chicago, he really was ..." Scarbrough said, recalling a mob enforcer during a conversation three years ago. "Good man. Good (expletive) man. I loved the guy and vice versa."
The tapes won.
Turning aside arguments that the mob allegations were exaggerated, U.S. District Judge William Martini sentenced Scarbrough to five years in prison. After presiding over all the prosecutions in the long-running FBI investigation, the judge said he believed evidence that Scarbrough was an influential Genovese associate who supervised millions of dollars in gambling and loan-sharking from a Hoboken social club. "Somehow it was clear to everybody that Joe Scarbrough was the guy running the niche operation here in New Jersey," the judge said.
Scarbrough, 67, was the last of 15 reputed mobsters or associates to be sentenced in Newark after pleading guilty to charges ranging from racketeering to illegal gambling. Most received prison terms of less than three years.
One, Lawrence "Little Larry" Dentico, 82, a reputed ranking captain, was ordered yesterday to serve 51 months in prison. But Scarbrough, known as "Big Joe," was the government's key target. His last arrest was in 1977, a stretch of freedom that Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Faye Schwartz called lucky, given his history of crime. "We believe now is the day of reckoning, your honor," she said.
In a final exclamation point, the prosecutors again used Scarbrough's longtime friend and associate, Peter "Petey" Caporino, to seal his fate. Schwartz and Assistant U.S Attorney Jill Andersen gave the judge transcripts from three conversations that Caporino, a Genovese associate from Hasbrouck Heights, secretly recorded during more than a decade of work as an FBI informant.
In them, Scarbrough reveled in some of his crimes, like the time he said he made $170,000 hijacking a tractor-trailer full of hair dye in Jamesburg or the time he and a partner stole duffel bags filled with records from a company that made and sold safes. "We had (expletive) safes all over the United States ... where they were delivered, combinations, in banks," he said. "It supported us and kept us going for years."
He talked about a special safecracking tool he used -- "a thermo burning bar," he called it -- that he said he found 25 years after a cellmate first told him about a unusual heated drill Navy divers used to carve into sunken German battleships. But he was just as animated about the ones that got away. More than once on the tapes, Scarbrough blamed "bad breaks" or not enough time for ruining what might have been million-dollar heists.
"You never know, ya know? Even with scores," he told Caporino. "You never know when one is going to come along with a good one ... big payment. The biggest thing is you have to be here when it happens."
Scarbrough said he used to rely on a Hoboken police officer -- now dead -- to tip off the mobsters when officers were on the way. He also bragged about beating a woman in a traffic dispute and said he helped steal an unsuspecting man's car for a hitman to use as a getaway car.
Scarbrough said he staked out city parking lots to find a car that stayed untouched night after night. Using a Hoboken police officer's name, he said he called the state motor vehicles office, gave the license plate number and asked for details on the registered owner. Then, posing as the owner, Scarbrough said, he called a car dealer, said he was out of the area, had lost his key and needed the code for a locksmith to make a new one.
With a new key in hand, the hitman used the car to stake out and kill his target, Scarbrough said. "When I see these cases on (expletive) court and I know what we were capable of doing, I'm really skeptical," Scarbrough told Caporino.
Rarely did the conversations include names or dates. At the hearing, defense attorney Michael Koribanics asked the judge to disregard the tapes, arguing that the government never proved any of the crimes Scarbrough appears to take credit for. He noted the current case included no evidence of violence -- only some perceived threats -- and suggested the government exaggerated its mob claims. "Perhaps he's a blowhard, (but) this is not blowhard material, Mr. Koribanics," Martini responded, noting the detail on the tapes. "You can't make this stuff up."
Scarbrough also agreed to forfeit $256,000 in illegal proceeds. The judge ordered him to report to prison by Oct. 10.
Outside the courtroom, Scarbrough cordially shook the hands of the FBI case agent and prosecutors. He declined to discuss the case in detail, but was resigned by the outcome. "No use crying over spilled milk, ya know?" he said.
Thanks to John P. Martin
Showing posts with label Genoveses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genoveses. Show all posts
Monday, August 21, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Wiretapped Calls Could Close Case On Genovese Suspects
Friends of ours: Genovese Crime Family
Prosecutors said evidence against seven men accused of running the Genovese crime family's South Florida operation includes thousands of hours of phone intercepts and more than 150 undercover videotapes.
According to a prosecutor, investigators recorded about 12,000 phone calls through court-ordered wiretaps over more than a decade. Prosecutors also have some 10,000 pages of seized documents. A judge said that because of the amount of evidence she will recommend a trial date not be set until early March.
All seven defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit extortion and robbery and other counts. The men were arrested June 30, 2006.
Prosecutors said evidence against seven men accused of running the Genovese crime family's South Florida operation includes thousands of hours of phone intercepts and more than 150 undercover videotapes.
According to a prosecutor, investigators recorded about 12,000 phone calls through court-ordered wiretaps over more than a decade. Prosecutors also have some 10,000 pages of seized documents. A judge said that because of the amount of evidence she will recommend a trial date not be set until early March.
All seven defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit extortion and robbery and other counts. The men were arrested June 30, 2006.
Friday, August 11, 2006
The Feds Say That Galante Diverted Millions from Trash Businesses
Friends of ours: Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello, Genovese Crime Family
Friends of mine: James Galante, David Magel
A Danbury trash magnate arrested in a Mafia case in June diverted millions of dollars from his businesses to his minor league hockey team, no show jobs, race cars and questionable stockholder repayments, federal authorities said Thursday.
James Galante, whose businesses handle about 80 percent of southwestern Connecticut's garbage, carved out exclusive routes for his companies and paid Genovese crime family boss Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello $120,000 a year for mob muscle to enforce his territories, authorities said. That meant higher prices for businesses and homeowners, authorities said.
Galante and Ianniello were among 29 people arrested in connection with the alleged scheme. In a related development Thursday, another trash hauler became the first defendant in the case to plead guilty.
Galante's defense attorneys challenged a court order putting federal marshals in charge of his businesses, saying they were ruining the businesses. But federal authorities said they had improved the cash flow by stopping diversions that amounted to more than $4 million last year. They also said the businesses are now facing competition.
"If any 'blame' is to be assigned for the changes wrought by these incidents, it lies squarely on the shoulders of the defendants, who decided many years ago to operate the 25 companies as an illegal bid-rigging and price-fixing cartel," prosecutors wrote.
A hearing is planned Tuesday on the challenge to the federal monitoring. "Our position is by their own admission they're running it into the ground," said Hugh Keefe, Galante's attorney. "You took a guy's business away from him and turned it over to a bunch of incompetents."
Keefe said the reported diversions will be dealt with during the trial. "Even if that was true, the business itself was thriving up until the day the feds decided they knew more about running a trash business than Jimmy Galante."
Authorities said they were monitoring the businesses, not taking them over, and denied they intended to sell the businesses. Galante owns the Danbury Trashers team of the United Hockey League. The team was disbanded after Galante's arrest in June.
Meanwhile, the trash hauler who admitted his involvement in the scheme Thursday, David Magel, 33, of Baldwin Place, N.Y., pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in U.S. District Court in New Haven. Magel is general manager of CRP Carting in Elmsford, N.Y.
Prosecutors said the scheme was enforced by extortion and threats, and participants sought to operate it in eastern New York. Magel met with several other members of the enterprise, two of whom were associated with an unidentified Connecticut-based trash carting company, at a diner in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., in 2004, authorities said.
After the meeting, Magel engaged in a series of telephone calls with other members of the enterprise to implement the scheme, prosecutors said. On Dec. 21, 2004, investigators intercepted one conversation between Magel and two members affiliated with the Connecticut carting company during which Magel agreed to provide inflated quotes to customers of the other participants in the conspiracy, authorities said.
"I'm shootin' for the ... gusto here," Magel said in the conversation. Magel faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Oct. 25.
Keefe said he was not sure if Magel's guilty plea would affect Galante. Authorities would not comment on whether Magel was cooperating against the other defendants.
Thanks to John Christofferson
Friends of mine: James Galante, David Magel
A Danbury trash magnate arrested in a Mafia case in June diverted millions of dollars from his businesses to his minor league hockey team, no show jobs, race cars and questionable stockholder repayments, federal authorities said Thursday.
James Galante, whose businesses handle about 80 percent of southwestern Connecticut's garbage, carved out exclusive routes for his companies and paid Genovese crime family boss Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello $120,000 a year for mob muscle to enforce his territories, authorities said. That meant higher prices for businesses and homeowners, authorities said.
Galante and Ianniello were among 29 people arrested in connection with the alleged scheme. In a related development Thursday, another trash hauler became the first defendant in the case to plead guilty.
Galante's defense attorneys challenged a court order putting federal marshals in charge of his businesses, saying they were ruining the businesses. But federal authorities said they had improved the cash flow by stopping diversions that amounted to more than $4 million last year. They also said the businesses are now facing competition.
"If any 'blame' is to be assigned for the changes wrought by these incidents, it lies squarely on the shoulders of the defendants, who decided many years ago to operate the 25 companies as an illegal bid-rigging and price-fixing cartel," prosecutors wrote.
A hearing is planned Tuesday on the challenge to the federal monitoring. "Our position is by their own admission they're running it into the ground," said Hugh Keefe, Galante's attorney. "You took a guy's business away from him and turned it over to a bunch of incompetents."
Keefe said the reported diversions will be dealt with during the trial. "Even if that was true, the business itself was thriving up until the day the feds decided they knew more about running a trash business than Jimmy Galante."
Authorities said they were monitoring the businesses, not taking them over, and denied they intended to sell the businesses. Galante owns the Danbury Trashers team of the United Hockey League. The team was disbanded after Galante's arrest in June.
Meanwhile, the trash hauler who admitted his involvement in the scheme Thursday, David Magel, 33, of Baldwin Place, N.Y., pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in U.S. District Court in New Haven. Magel is general manager of CRP Carting in Elmsford, N.Y.
Prosecutors said the scheme was enforced by extortion and threats, and participants sought to operate it in eastern New York. Magel met with several other members of the enterprise, two of whom were associated with an unidentified Connecticut-based trash carting company, at a diner in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., in 2004, authorities said.
After the meeting, Magel engaged in a series of telephone calls with other members of the enterprise to implement the scheme, prosecutors said. On Dec. 21, 2004, investigators intercepted one conversation between Magel and two members affiliated with the Connecticut carting company during which Magel agreed to provide inflated quotes to customers of the other participants in the conspiracy, authorities said.
"I'm shootin' for the ... gusto here," Magel said in the conversation. Magel faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Oct. 25.
Keefe said he was not sure if Magel's guilty plea would affect Galante. Authorities would not comment on whether Magel was cooperating against the other defendants.
Thanks to John Christofferson
Monday, July 10, 2006
Feds: Indictment Targets Genovese Crime Family
Friends of ours: Genovese Crime Family, Renaldi "Ray" Ruggiero, Albert "Chinky" Facchiano, Liborio S. "Barney" Bellomo
Friends of mine: Joseph Dennis Colasacco, Francis O'Donnell, Charles Steinberg, Mitchell Weissman
A federal judge considered Friday whether five reputed South Florida members of the Genovese crime family should remain in jail pending trial on charges of extortion, robbery, money laundering and other acts of racketeering.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer was expected to decide whether Renaldi "Ray" Ruggiero, 72, whom federal prosecutors identified as a Genovese capo or captain, and four of his co-defendants should be released before trial.
Ruggiero and Joseph Dennis Colasacco, 54, Francis O'Donnell, 47, Charles Steinberg, 30, Mitchell Weissman, 54, and Genovese "soldier" Albert "Chinky" Facchiano, 96, were arrested June 30. Facchiano, of Miami, was released on a $100,000 bond on Friday.
The case, considered the latest blow to New York's most powerful Mafia family, deals with 10 years of alleged criminal activity, including murder. The family's reputed acting boss, Liborio S. "Barney" Bellomo, and 31 others were arrested in February in New York.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Kaplan told the court the investigation of the group began in 2001 and lasted mainly through 2003, when Internal Revenue Service agents searched Ruggiero's home. More than 130 undercover recordings of the men's conversations "bought out the violent nature of the defendants," Kaplan said.
Prosecutors alleged that Colasacco beat a man with a gun while Weissman held a baseball bat over him. The victim eventually escaped, covered in blood, Kaplan said. The men later met the victim at Ruggiero's Palm Beach restaurant, aptly named Soprano's, to again threaten him, prosecutors said.
Ruggiero's attorney, Michael Salnick, repeatedly stopped prosecutors who claimed his client was connected to the Mafia or that he was a dangerous person. Salnick asked the court that his client be released before trial, noting that Ruggiero suffers from serious health problems. Salnick noted that Ruggiero has no passport and has left the country only once in 20 years.
The indictment covered alleged illegal enterprises from 1994 to the present, with a few specific examples. In one instance in 2003, Ruggiero allegedly gave approval to Colasacco to extort a man identified as "Victim-1."
Prosecutors claimed the victim was lured to O'Donnell's office, where a gun was held to his head and he was ordered to pay $1.5 million. Prosecutors said Ruggiero feigned innocence when confronted by the victim and promised to intercede, but later agreed to split the money with other defendants.
The group is also accused of laundering money through as many as six companies. An undercover agent gave O'Donnell $250,000 in cash to launder and "made it clear the cash was from drugs," Kaplan alleged.
If convicted under the racketeering charges, Ruggiero could face up to 120 years in prison and fines of up to $1.75 million. Convictions would result in slightly lower maximum sentences for the other defendants.
Friends of mine: Joseph Dennis Colasacco, Francis O'Donnell, Charles Steinberg, Mitchell Weissman
A federal judge considered Friday whether five reputed South Florida members of the Genovese crime family should remain in jail pending trial on charges of extortion, robbery, money laundering and other acts of racketeering.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer was expected to decide whether Renaldi "Ray" Ruggiero, 72, whom federal prosecutors identified as a Genovese capo or captain, and four of his co-defendants should be released before trial.
Ruggiero and Joseph Dennis Colasacco, 54, Francis O'Donnell, 47, Charles Steinberg, 30, Mitchell Weissman, 54, and Genovese "soldier" Albert "Chinky" Facchiano, 96, were arrested June 30. Facchiano, of Miami, was released on a $100,000 bond on Friday.
The case, considered the latest blow to New York's most powerful Mafia family, deals with 10 years of alleged criminal activity, including murder. The family's reputed acting boss, Liborio S. "Barney" Bellomo, and 31 others were arrested in February in New York.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Kaplan told the court the investigation of the group began in 2001 and lasted mainly through 2003, when Internal Revenue Service agents searched Ruggiero's home. More than 130 undercover recordings of the men's conversations "bought out the violent nature of the defendants," Kaplan said.
Prosecutors alleged that Colasacco beat a man with a gun while Weissman held a baseball bat over him. The victim eventually escaped, covered in blood, Kaplan said. The men later met the victim at Ruggiero's Palm Beach restaurant, aptly named Soprano's, to again threaten him, prosecutors said.
Ruggiero's attorney, Michael Salnick, repeatedly stopped prosecutors who claimed his client was connected to the Mafia or that he was a dangerous person. Salnick asked the court that his client be released before trial, noting that Ruggiero suffers from serious health problems. Salnick noted that Ruggiero has no passport and has left the country only once in 20 years.
The indictment covered alleged illegal enterprises from 1994 to the present, with a few specific examples. In one instance in 2003, Ruggiero allegedly gave approval to Colasacco to extort a man identified as "Victim-1."
Prosecutors claimed the victim was lured to O'Donnell's office, where a gun was held to his head and he was ordered to pay $1.5 million. Prosecutors said Ruggiero feigned innocence when confronted by the victim and promised to intercede, but later agreed to split the money with other defendants.
The group is also accused of laundering money through as many as six companies. An undercover agent gave O'Donnell $250,000 in cash to launder and "made it clear the cash was from drugs," Kaplan alleged.
If convicted under the racketeering charges, Ruggiero could face up to 120 years in prison and fines of up to $1.75 million. Convictions would result in slightly lower maximum sentences for the other defendants.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
2 Palm Beach County Men Among Mafia Suspects
Friends of ours: Genovese Crime Family, Renaldi "Ray" Ruggiero
Friends of mine: Mitchell Weissman, The "Sopranos "
In the hunt to take down the legendary Genovese organized crime family, investigators nabbed two associates in Palm Beach County.
They found Renaldi "Ray" Ruggiero, a 72-year-old living in a modest suburban home in Palm Beach Gardens. He is described as the "capo" in charge of the family's South Florida operations.
They also found his alleged associate, Mitchell Weissman, 54, in Boca Raton. He is not a made man, but helped the mafia carry out its traditional work of extortion, robbery, money laundering, loan sharking, possession of stolen property and bank fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Both are transplants from New York.
The two men were arrested on Friday after a grand jury indicted them along with five others from Broward and Miami-Dade counties on multiple charges including racketeering.
Until now, Ruggiero had a clean criminal record in Florida. A woman answered the door at his home, but declined comment.
Weissman was arrested once in 1994 by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on a domestic battery complaint by his wife, Sandra Weissman. At the time, she had an injured eye and told the deputy she feared violence would continue. The outcome of the case was not immediately available, but the couple is still married, state records show. Weissman did not return calls for comment.
The mafia's dealings in the indictment reads like a script for the mob drama, The Sopranos, except the scenes are set among South Florida's palm trees instead of northern New Jersey.
The cast of codefendants include those nicknamed "the Baker," "the Old Man," and "the Fat Man."
In one case, Ruggiero lured a victim to a codefendant's Coral Springs office, where a gun was held to the man's head in an effort to extort $1.5 million from him. Ruggiero later feigned that he was going to help the victim, even though he had already cut a deal to split the victim's money with the assailants, according to the indictment.
In another, Ruggiero was part of the conspiracy to rob a Boynton Beach bookie of $39,000, the indictment says.
The government is also trying to take up to $3 million of money and assets the seven men have acquired — including the three-bedroom homesteaded Palm Beach Gardens house Ruggiero bought in the Siena Oaks development in 1990 for $157,900.
Weissman lives at a house in Boca Raton he acquired from Ruggiero in 2003, county property records show.
Thanks to Rochelle Gilken
Friends of mine: Mitchell Weissman, The "Sopranos "
In the hunt to take down the legendary Genovese organized crime family, investigators nabbed two associates in Palm Beach County.
They found Renaldi "Ray" Ruggiero, a 72-year-old living in a modest suburban home in Palm Beach Gardens. He is described as the "capo" in charge of the family's South Florida operations.
They also found his alleged associate, Mitchell Weissman, 54, in Boca Raton. He is not a made man, but helped the mafia carry out its traditional work of extortion, robbery, money laundering, loan sharking, possession of stolen property and bank fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Both are transplants from New York.
The two men were arrested on Friday after a grand jury indicted them along with five others from Broward and Miami-Dade counties on multiple charges including racketeering.
Until now, Ruggiero had a clean criminal record in Florida. A woman answered the door at his home, but declined comment.
Weissman was arrested once in 1994 by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office on a domestic battery complaint by his wife, Sandra Weissman. At the time, she had an injured eye and told the deputy she feared violence would continue. The outcome of the case was not immediately available, but the couple is still married, state records show. Weissman did not return calls for comment.
The mafia's dealings in the indictment reads like a script for the mob drama, The Sopranos, except the scenes are set among South Florida's palm trees instead of northern New Jersey.
The cast of codefendants include those nicknamed "the Baker," "the Old Man," and "the Fat Man."
In one case, Ruggiero lured a victim to a codefendant's Coral Springs office, where a gun was held to the man's head in an effort to extort $1.5 million from him. Ruggiero later feigned that he was going to help the victim, even though he had already cut a deal to split the victim's money with the assailants, according to the indictment.
In another, Ruggiero was part of the conspiracy to rob a Boynton Beach bookie of $39,000, the indictment says.
The government is also trying to take up to $3 million of money and assets the seven men have acquired — including the three-bedroom homesteaded Palm Beach Gardens house Ruggiero bought in the Siena Oaks development in 1990 for $157,900.
Weissman lives at a house in Boca Raton he acquired from Ruggiero in 2003, county property records show.
Thanks to Rochelle Gilken
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Mob Murder Suggests Link to International Drug Ring
FBI file on Rockford Mobster Joseph J. Maggio shows likely motive for his 1980 killing and Mob efforts to gain access to FBI files - By Jeff Havens
Friends of ours: Joseph J. Maggio, Joseph Zammuto, Pietro Alfano, Gaetano Badalamenti, Frank J. Buscemi, Jasper Calo, Joseph Zito, Frank G. Saladino, Charles Vince, Phillip J. Emordeno, Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero, Michael Sa Bella, Tony Riela, J. Peter Balisrieri, Bonanno Crime Family, Carmine "Lilo" Galante, Gambino Crime Family, Carlos Gambino, Pasquale Conte Sr., Tommaso Buscetta, Frank Zito, Vito Genovese, Genovese Crime Family, Paul Castellano, Joe Bonanno, John Gotti
Friends of mine: John S. Leombruni, "Donnie Brasco"
He was found dead in the back seat of his car along Safford Road by two Winnebago County Sheriff's deputies on April, 6, 1980. The victim, Rockford Mob member Joseph J. Maggio, was shot once in the side of the head at close range with 6.35mm bullet, which was made in Austria.
His killer has never been charged, and the shooting remains an open and unsolved case. However, according to Maggio's extensive FBI file, a "prime suspect" was identified by unknown sources, and the motive for his killing was "a result of his objection to LCN [La Cosa Nostra or Mafia] entry into the narcotics business in Rockford." And according to an October 1984 FBI document, an unknown informant "was instructed by his 'associates' in either Las Vegas or Los Angeles that Maggio had to be killed. [Redacted] 'associates' are members of the LCN."
Maggio's murder and FBI file provides another piece to the puzzle that may one day directly link Rockford to the Mafia-run heroin and cocaine smuggling conspiracy of the 1970s and 1980s, which was known as the "Pizza Connection."
Of the nearly 1,500 pages The Rock River Times requested from Maggio's FBI file, only 90 pages were released by the U.S. Justice Department. Most of the 90 pages released were heavily redacted or censored for content.
However, the information that was released shows the Mob's determination to not only scam ordinary citizens out of money through businesses that appear completely legitimate, but also gain access to FBI files.
ORIGINS
Less than two months before Maggio was killed, he and other Mafia members met "several times" in February 1980 with Rockford Mob boss Joseph Zammuto in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. — where Zammuto vacationed during the winter each year.
Exactly what was discussed at the meeting is not known. However, Maggio's heavily redacted file indicates an unknown individual or group "began dealing narcotics in Rockford in August 1980, with Zammuto's sanction."
As to who began dealing drugs with Zammuto's approval is not known due to Maggio's redacted FBI file. However, what is known is John S. Leombruni was convicted in 1983 for trafficking cocaine in Rockford and the surrounding area.
According to a March 4, 1984 article in the Rockford Register Star, "There were indications in 1982 that a six-moth investigation by the FBI of cocaine traffic in Rockford had turned up Mob connections. Twelve persons were indicted, including John S. Leombruni, who was described as the city's biggest cocaine dealer. ...Leombruni had lived in Las Vegas the year before his arrest." And according to the Register Star article, an FBI affidavit indicated, Leombruni "was run out of town by 'the Mafia chief in Las Vegas.' Court approved wiretaps showed Mob involvement in the Rockford cocaine case FBI agents said, but were not allowed as evidence in Leombruni’s trial." He was tried in federal court in Rockford.
The sequence of incidents, from published sources, suggests a strong link between the Rockford Mob and other participants in the Pizza Connection, whose second in command for Midwest operations was Oregon, Ill., pizza maker Pietro Alfano.
According to a source for The Rock River Times, Alfano, now 70, "retired" and returned to Sicily shortly after his release from federal prison in 1992. As of 2004, Alfano's son operated the restaurant, which was still in business in Oregon.
Ralph Blumenthal, reporter for The New York Times and author of the 1988 book Last Days of the Sicilians, wrote that Alfano immigrated to the United States between 1963 and 1967 from Cinisi, Sicily, a town about 8 miles west of Palermo near the Mediterranean Sea.
Cinisi was also the hometown of former Sicilian Mob boss Gaetano Badalamenti, who was born in 1923, and died in 2004. Badalamenti became head of the Sicilian Mafia in 1969, but fled for his life to Brazil in November 1978 in the wake of the "Mafia wars" in Sicily.
Alfano and other Mob members born in Sicily, but working in United States, were referred to as "Zips" by their American-born counterparts. According to Selwyn Raab, former New York Times reporter and author of the 2005 book Five Families: The rise, decline and resurgence of America's most powerful Mafia empires, the term "Zip" may be Sicilian slang for "hicks" or "primitives."
DRUGS AND INTELLIGENCE FILES
On April 8, 1984, Alfano and Badalamenti were apprehended by police in Madrid, Spain. Authorities charged that they, along with 29 others overseas and in the United States, participated in a multinational, $1.65 billion heroin/cocaine smuggling and money laundering conspiracy.
The conspiracy stretched from poppy fields in Afghanistan to banks in Switzerland, ships in Bulgaria and Turkey, pay phones in Brazil, and pizza restaurants in New York, Oregon, Ill., and Milton, Wis. The conspiracy would become known as the "Pizza Connection," the successor to the 1950s' and 1960s' "French Connection."
Interim Chief of the Rockford Police Department Dominic Iasparro, head of the Rockford area Metro Narcotics task force, has been with the agency for about 32 years. Iasparro recalled area drug trafficking during the time of the Pizza Connection.
"As I understand it, the drugs weren't coming out here—they were staying in New York," Iasparro said during an April 12, 2004 interview.
In addition to being head of the local narcotics unit, Iasparro was also responsible for destroying police intelligence files concerning Rockford Mob members in the mid-1980s that Iasparro said was part of a nationwide effort to purge such information. Maggio's dossier was among the files requested by The Rock River Times last year, but apparently destroyed during the purge.
IMMIGRATION AND SPONSORSHIP
Under what circumstances Alfano arrived in the United States is not clear. However, what is clear is Alfano and other Zips in the Midwest and on the East Coast were employed in the pizza business. Also apparent is former Rockford Mob boss Frank J. Buscemi was reported by the Register Star to have facilitated the immigration of "several cousins to Rockford from Sicily and set them up in business."
What is not certain is whether Buscemi, a Chicago native, sponsored Alfano's move to Illinois. Buscemi was owner of Stateline Vending Co., Inc., and Rondinella Foods Co., before his death in Rockford on Dec. 7, 1987. Rondinella was a wholesale cheese, food and pizza ingredient distributor.
Stateline Vending began operating from the basement of the Aragona Club on Kent Street before moving to 1128 S. Winnebago St., which was owned by former Mafia Advisor Joseph Zito and Mobster Jasper Calo. The vending business eventually settled at 326 W. Jefferson St., in Rockford, before it was dissolved in 1988, after Buscemi’s death.
Winnebago County court documents from 1988 indicate alleged Rockford Mob hit man Frank G. Saladino worked for Rondinella in the 1980s when Buscemi owned the business. Saladino was found dead April 25, 2005 in Hampshire, Ill., by federal agents that went to arrest him on charges of murder and other illegal Mob-related activities.
According to Buscemi's recently released FBI file, Buscemi was also the target of a federal investigators from 1981 to 1986 in connection with Maggio's murder and "extortionate business practices."
"These allegations involved Buscemi's cheese distribution business, RONDINELLA FOODS, and his vending machine operation, STATE-LINE VENDING." Buscemi's also indicates that the investigation produced "numerous leads of extreme value, including contacts between Frank J. Buscemi and the subject of an ongoing Boston drug task force investigation."
Despite the years of investigations, Buscemi was never charged with any crime before his death in 1987. Also unknown is whether Zammuto's only sister, whose married name is Alfano, was related to Pietro Alfano through marriage.
BUSINESS MEETING
The Mob's historic ties to the vending machine business is significant in establishing an indirect link between the Rockford Mob and the Pizza connection because of a meeting that took place in July 1978 in Milwaukee between Mob members from New York, Milwaukee and Rockford.
In July 1978, federal court documents show Rockford Mafia Advisor Joseph Zito, Mob Underboss Charles Vince, and Phillip J. Emordeno along with other members of the Milwaukee and New York Mafia were alleged to have tried to extort money from a competing upstart vending machine company owner. The owner of the company the Mob members tried to shakedown, was actually an undercover federal agent named Gail T. Cobb who was masquerading as Tony Conte, owner of Best Vending Co.
According to page 229 of Raab's book, legendary FBI agent Donnie Brasco, whose real name was Joseph P Pistone, was "used" by Bonanno Mob soldier Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero "on cooperative ventures with other families in New York, Florida and Milwaukee."
Blumnenthal wrote on page 42 of his book that in 1978 Pistone traveled to Milwaukee to vouch for Cobb, and "Pistone helped Cobb cement an alliance between the Bonanno and [Milwaukee Mob boss Frank P.] Balistrieri clans."
Actor Johnny Depp portrayed Pistone in the 1997 movie Donnie Brasco, during the time in the late 1970s when Pistone infiltrated organized crime. ("Lefty Guns" Ruggiero was played by Al Pacino.)
The Register Star described the 1978 meeting in their March 1984 article as being partly arranged by Rockford Mob members. The article concluded the meeting "confirmed long-held intelligence information that...[the Rockford Mob] possessed the influence to deal directly with the Milwaukee and New York organized crime families." The meeting was set to quash a possible violent conflict between Cobb and Mafia members.
Ruggerio's Mob captain, Michael Sa Bella contacted Tony Riela—a New Jersey Mob member with ties to the Rockford Mafia. Riela called Rockford to schedule the meeting, and Ruggiero called Zito several times. Vince also called Balistrieri’s son J. Peter Balisrieri shortly before the meeting.
According to the Register Star article, "on July 29, 1978 Cobb met the three Rockford men and Ruggiero at the Centre Stage Restaurant in Milwaukee. ....Ruggiero told Cobb that the vending machine business in Milwaukee was controlled by the mob," and if Cobb wanted to enter the business he would have to share his profits with the Mafia or be killed. Since the New York and Milwaukee crime families worked together, "Cobb also was told he would have to pay a portion of his profits to the Bonanno family," which was headed at that time by Carmine "Lilo" Galante.
DEATH ON THE PATIO
Blumenthal wrote that the shotgun assignation of Galante in the mid-afternoon on July 12, 1979 while he was dining on the patio of a restaurant in Brooklyn, N.Y., marked a tipping point in the power struggle to control drug trafficking in America. Pizza Connection prosecutors believed Galante’s murder "cleared the way for Sicilian Mafia rivals in America to set up the Pizza Connection."
Raab said on page 207 that Galante attempted to injure the other four New York Mob family's interests in the drug trade, especially the Gambino crime family. "Perhaps even more grievous, after Carlo Gambino's death [Galante] had openly predicted that he would be crowned boss of bosses."
Although Frank Balistrieri and others would be sent to prison as a result of Cobb and Pistone's efforts, no Rockford Mob members were indicted in the Milwaukee case. The same may also be said about the Pizza Connection conspiracy.
SHOOTING ON THE SIDEWALK
Unlike Galante, Alfano survived a Mob attempt on his life.
After emerging from a Balducci's delicatessen in Greenwhich Village N.Y. the evening of Feb. 11, 1987, Alfano was shot three times in the back by two men who emerged from a red car. The shooting occurred during the October 1985 to March 1987 Pizza Connection trial.
Blumenthal wrote the failed assassination attempt was allegedly arranged by Gambino family associates, which left Alfano paralyzed below the waist and confined to a wheel chair.
Blumenthal alleged Salvatore Spatola, a convicted heroin and cocaine smuggler, said the attempted killing of Alfano had been arranged by Pasquale Conte, Sr.— a captain in the Gambino family.
The exact motive for Alfano's shooting appears to be a mystery. However, Blumenthal wrote that convicted New Jersey bank robber Frank Bavosa told the FBI and New York police he and two other men were paid $40,000 to kill Alfano "allegedly because of his continuing drug-trafficking activities."
AUTONOMOUS BUT UNITED
Even though the Rockford Mob has historically been considered part of the Chicago Mafia, which is known as "The Outfit," Tommaso Buscetta, Sicilian Mafia turncoat and lead witness in the Pizza Connection trial testified that Italian-based Mobsters based throughout the world acted as one in achieving their objectives.
Supporting that claim is a statement from Thomas V. Fuentes, special agent in the organized crime section for the FBI. During a 2003 broadcast on the History Channel, Fuentes said a Nov. 14, 1957 meeting of Mafia bosses from throughout the United States in Apalachin, N.Y., was in part to decide whether American Mob members would act cohesively to cash in on the drug trade.
Specifically, Fuentes said: "We believe that the main purpose was for the bosses of the American families to decide whether or not they would engage jointly in heroin trafficking with their cousins in Sicily."
Rockford Mob Consuleri Joseph Zito's brother, Frank Zito, boss of the Springfield, Ill., Mob was one of those who attended the Apalachin conference, according Joseph Zito's FBI file.
Also in attendance at the Apalachin meeting with Zito were at least 58 other Mob members, which included Carlo Gambino; Vito Genovese, boss of the New York Genovese crime family; Gambino’s brother-in-law Paul Castellano; and Joe Bonanno. Castellano would be Gambino’s successor after Gambino’s death in 1976. Castellano was murdered in 1986, and was succeeded by John Gotti, who died in a Missouri prison medical center June 10, 2002.
SCAM IN ALABAMA
In addition to a probable motive for Maggio's killing, Maggio's FBI file shows Mob's determination to not only steal money from citizens, but gain access to FBI files.
Maggio was convicted on Dec. 6, 1972 on seven counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy. The conviction was obtained after an unidentified male informant said the conspiracy involved a "boat registration scheme", wherein the name United States Merchant Marine was used to collect funds for a national boat registration service.
"He said they planned to circulate a letter to all boat owners for a $10 contribution, which would then be used as a registration fee for a registry to be maintained by the company [United States Merchant Marine Service, Inc.]. ...
"[Redact] had asked him if he had any idea how the United States Merchant Marine Service could patch into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Crime Information Center (NCIC)."
Maggio was born Aug. 30, 1936 in Rockford, where he lived his entire life, until his death at age 43. Maggio married in 1959, and had three sons and one daughter. He became a made Mob member in approximately February 1965.
About the author: Jeff Havens is a former award-winning reporter for the weekly newspaper The Rock River Times in Rockford, Ill. Havens lived most of his life in the Rockford area, and wrote dozens of news articles about the Mob in Rockford and Chicago.
Friends of ours: Joseph J. Maggio, Joseph Zammuto, Pietro Alfano, Gaetano Badalamenti, Frank J. Buscemi, Jasper Calo, Joseph Zito, Frank G. Saladino, Charles Vince, Phillip J. Emordeno, Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero, Michael Sa Bella, Tony Riela, J. Peter Balisrieri, Bonanno Crime Family, Carmine "Lilo" Galante, Gambino Crime Family, Carlos Gambino, Pasquale Conte Sr., Tommaso Buscetta, Frank Zito, Vito Genovese, Genovese Crime Family, Paul Castellano, Joe Bonanno, John Gotti
Friends of mine: John S. Leombruni, "Donnie Brasco"
He was found dead in the back seat of his car along Safford Road by two Winnebago County Sheriff's deputies on April, 6, 1980. The victim, Rockford Mob member Joseph J. Maggio, was shot once in the side of the head at close range with 6.35mm bullet, which was made in Austria.
His killer has never been charged, and the shooting remains an open and unsolved case. However, according to Maggio's extensive FBI file, a "prime suspect" was identified by unknown sources, and the motive for his killing was "a result of his objection to LCN [La Cosa Nostra or Mafia] entry into the narcotics business in Rockford." And according to an October 1984 FBI document, an unknown informant "was instructed by his 'associates' in either Las Vegas or Los Angeles that Maggio had to be killed. [Redacted] 'associates' are members of the LCN."
Maggio's murder and FBI file provides another piece to the puzzle that may one day directly link Rockford to the Mafia-run heroin and cocaine smuggling conspiracy of the 1970s and 1980s, which was known as the "Pizza Connection."
Of the nearly 1,500 pages The Rock River Times requested from Maggio's FBI file, only 90 pages were released by the U.S. Justice Department. Most of the 90 pages released were heavily redacted or censored for content.
However, the information that was released shows the Mob's determination to not only scam ordinary citizens out of money through businesses that appear completely legitimate, but also gain access to FBI files.
ORIGINS
Less than two months before Maggio was killed, he and other Mafia members met "several times" in February 1980 with Rockford Mob boss Joseph Zammuto in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. — where Zammuto vacationed during the winter each year.
Exactly what was discussed at the meeting is not known. However, Maggio's heavily redacted file indicates an unknown individual or group "began dealing narcotics in Rockford in August 1980, with Zammuto's sanction."
As to who began dealing drugs with Zammuto's approval is not known due to Maggio's redacted FBI file. However, what is known is John S. Leombruni was convicted in 1983 for trafficking cocaine in Rockford and the surrounding area.
According to a March 4, 1984 article in the Rockford Register Star, "There were indications in 1982 that a six-moth investigation by the FBI of cocaine traffic in Rockford had turned up Mob connections. Twelve persons were indicted, including John S. Leombruni, who was described as the city's biggest cocaine dealer. ...Leombruni had lived in Las Vegas the year before his arrest." And according to the Register Star article, an FBI affidavit indicated, Leombruni "was run out of town by 'the Mafia chief in Las Vegas.' Court approved wiretaps showed Mob involvement in the Rockford cocaine case FBI agents said, but were not allowed as evidence in Leombruni’s trial." He was tried in federal court in Rockford.
The sequence of incidents, from published sources, suggests a strong link between the Rockford Mob and other participants in the Pizza Connection, whose second in command for Midwest operations was Oregon, Ill., pizza maker Pietro Alfano.
According to a source for The Rock River Times, Alfano, now 70, "retired" and returned to Sicily shortly after his release from federal prison in 1992. As of 2004, Alfano's son operated the restaurant, which was still in business in Oregon.
Ralph Blumenthal, reporter for The New York Times and author of the 1988 book Last Days of the Sicilians, wrote that Alfano immigrated to the United States between 1963 and 1967 from Cinisi, Sicily, a town about 8 miles west of Palermo near the Mediterranean Sea.
Cinisi was also the hometown of former Sicilian Mob boss Gaetano Badalamenti, who was born in 1923, and died in 2004. Badalamenti became head of the Sicilian Mafia in 1969, but fled for his life to Brazil in November 1978 in the wake of the "Mafia wars" in Sicily.
Alfano and other Mob members born in Sicily, but working in United States, were referred to as "Zips" by their American-born counterparts. According to Selwyn Raab, former New York Times reporter and author of the 2005 book Five Families: The rise, decline and resurgence of America's most powerful Mafia empires, the term "Zip" may be Sicilian slang for "hicks" or "primitives."
DRUGS AND INTELLIGENCE FILES
On April 8, 1984, Alfano and Badalamenti were apprehended by police in Madrid, Spain. Authorities charged that they, along with 29 others overseas and in the United States, participated in a multinational, $1.65 billion heroin/cocaine smuggling and money laundering conspiracy.
The conspiracy stretched from poppy fields in Afghanistan to banks in Switzerland, ships in Bulgaria and Turkey, pay phones in Brazil, and pizza restaurants in New York, Oregon, Ill., and Milton, Wis. The conspiracy would become known as the "Pizza Connection," the successor to the 1950s' and 1960s' "French Connection."
Interim Chief of the Rockford Police Department Dominic Iasparro, head of the Rockford area Metro Narcotics task force, has been with the agency for about 32 years. Iasparro recalled area drug trafficking during the time of the Pizza Connection.
"As I understand it, the drugs weren't coming out here—they were staying in New York," Iasparro said during an April 12, 2004 interview.
In addition to being head of the local narcotics unit, Iasparro was also responsible for destroying police intelligence files concerning Rockford Mob members in the mid-1980s that Iasparro said was part of a nationwide effort to purge such information. Maggio's dossier was among the files requested by The Rock River Times last year, but apparently destroyed during the purge.
IMMIGRATION AND SPONSORSHIP
Under what circumstances Alfano arrived in the United States is not clear. However, what is clear is Alfano and other Zips in the Midwest and on the East Coast were employed in the pizza business. Also apparent is former Rockford Mob boss Frank J. Buscemi was reported by the Register Star to have facilitated the immigration of "several cousins to Rockford from Sicily and set them up in business."
What is not certain is whether Buscemi, a Chicago native, sponsored Alfano's move to Illinois. Buscemi was owner of Stateline Vending Co., Inc., and Rondinella Foods Co., before his death in Rockford on Dec. 7, 1987. Rondinella was a wholesale cheese, food and pizza ingredient distributor.
Stateline Vending began operating from the basement of the Aragona Club on Kent Street before moving to 1128 S. Winnebago St., which was owned by former Mafia Advisor Joseph Zito and Mobster Jasper Calo. The vending business eventually settled at 326 W. Jefferson St., in Rockford, before it was dissolved in 1988, after Buscemi’s death.
Winnebago County court documents from 1988 indicate alleged Rockford Mob hit man Frank G. Saladino worked for Rondinella in the 1980s when Buscemi owned the business. Saladino was found dead April 25, 2005 in Hampshire, Ill., by federal agents that went to arrest him on charges of murder and other illegal Mob-related activities.
According to Buscemi's recently released FBI file, Buscemi was also the target of a federal investigators from 1981 to 1986 in connection with Maggio's murder and "extortionate business practices."
"These allegations involved Buscemi's cheese distribution business, RONDINELLA FOODS, and his vending machine operation, STATE-LINE VENDING." Buscemi's also indicates that the investigation produced "numerous leads of extreme value, including contacts between Frank J. Buscemi and the subject of an ongoing Boston drug task force investigation."
Despite the years of investigations, Buscemi was never charged with any crime before his death in 1987. Also unknown is whether Zammuto's only sister, whose married name is Alfano, was related to Pietro Alfano through marriage.
BUSINESS MEETING
The Mob's historic ties to the vending machine business is significant in establishing an indirect link between the Rockford Mob and the Pizza connection because of a meeting that took place in July 1978 in Milwaukee between Mob members from New York, Milwaukee and Rockford.
In July 1978, federal court documents show Rockford Mafia Advisor Joseph Zito, Mob Underboss Charles Vince, and Phillip J. Emordeno along with other members of the Milwaukee and New York Mafia were alleged to have tried to extort money from a competing upstart vending machine company owner. The owner of the company the Mob members tried to shakedown, was actually an undercover federal agent named Gail T. Cobb who was masquerading as Tony Conte, owner of Best Vending Co.
According to page 229 of Raab's book, legendary FBI agent Donnie Brasco, whose real name was Joseph P Pistone, was "used" by Bonanno Mob soldier Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero "on cooperative ventures with other families in New York, Florida and Milwaukee."
Blumnenthal wrote on page 42 of his book that in 1978 Pistone traveled to Milwaukee to vouch for Cobb, and "Pistone helped Cobb cement an alliance between the Bonanno and [Milwaukee Mob boss Frank P.] Balistrieri clans."
Actor Johnny Depp portrayed Pistone in the 1997 movie Donnie Brasco, during the time in the late 1970s when Pistone infiltrated organized crime. ("Lefty Guns" Ruggiero was played by Al Pacino.)
The Register Star described the 1978 meeting in their March 1984 article as being partly arranged by Rockford Mob members. The article concluded the meeting "confirmed long-held intelligence information that...[the Rockford Mob] possessed the influence to deal directly with the Milwaukee and New York organized crime families." The meeting was set to quash a possible violent conflict between Cobb and Mafia members.
Ruggerio's Mob captain, Michael Sa Bella contacted Tony Riela—a New Jersey Mob member with ties to the Rockford Mafia. Riela called Rockford to schedule the meeting, and Ruggiero called Zito several times. Vince also called Balistrieri’s son J. Peter Balisrieri shortly before the meeting.
According to the Register Star article, "on July 29, 1978 Cobb met the three Rockford men and Ruggiero at the Centre Stage Restaurant in Milwaukee. ....Ruggiero told Cobb that the vending machine business in Milwaukee was controlled by the mob," and if Cobb wanted to enter the business he would have to share his profits with the Mafia or be killed. Since the New York and Milwaukee crime families worked together, "Cobb also was told he would have to pay a portion of his profits to the Bonanno family," which was headed at that time by Carmine "Lilo" Galante.
DEATH ON THE PATIO
Blumenthal wrote that the shotgun assignation of Galante in the mid-afternoon on July 12, 1979 while he was dining on the patio of a restaurant in Brooklyn, N.Y., marked a tipping point in the power struggle to control drug trafficking in America. Pizza Connection prosecutors believed Galante’s murder "cleared the way for Sicilian Mafia rivals in America to set up the Pizza Connection."
Raab said on page 207 that Galante attempted to injure the other four New York Mob family's interests in the drug trade, especially the Gambino crime family. "Perhaps even more grievous, after Carlo Gambino's death [Galante] had openly predicted that he would be crowned boss of bosses."
Although Frank Balistrieri and others would be sent to prison as a result of Cobb and Pistone's efforts, no Rockford Mob members were indicted in the Milwaukee case. The same may also be said about the Pizza Connection conspiracy.
SHOOTING ON THE SIDEWALK
Unlike Galante, Alfano survived a Mob attempt on his life.
After emerging from a Balducci's delicatessen in Greenwhich Village N.Y. the evening of Feb. 11, 1987, Alfano was shot three times in the back by two men who emerged from a red car. The shooting occurred during the October 1985 to March 1987 Pizza Connection trial.
Blumenthal wrote the failed assassination attempt was allegedly arranged by Gambino family associates, which left Alfano paralyzed below the waist and confined to a wheel chair.
Blumenthal alleged Salvatore Spatola, a convicted heroin and cocaine smuggler, said the attempted killing of Alfano had been arranged by Pasquale Conte, Sr.— a captain in the Gambino family.
The exact motive for Alfano's shooting appears to be a mystery. However, Blumenthal wrote that convicted New Jersey bank robber Frank Bavosa told the FBI and New York police he and two other men were paid $40,000 to kill Alfano "allegedly because of his continuing drug-trafficking activities."
AUTONOMOUS BUT UNITED
Even though the Rockford Mob has historically been considered part of the Chicago Mafia, which is known as "The Outfit," Tommaso Buscetta, Sicilian Mafia turncoat and lead witness in the Pizza Connection trial testified that Italian-based Mobsters based throughout the world acted as one in achieving their objectives.
Supporting that claim is a statement from Thomas V. Fuentes, special agent in the organized crime section for the FBI. During a 2003 broadcast on the History Channel, Fuentes said a Nov. 14, 1957 meeting of Mafia bosses from throughout the United States in Apalachin, N.Y., was in part to decide whether American Mob members would act cohesively to cash in on the drug trade.
Specifically, Fuentes said: "We believe that the main purpose was for the bosses of the American families to decide whether or not they would engage jointly in heroin trafficking with their cousins in Sicily."
Rockford Mob Consuleri Joseph Zito's brother, Frank Zito, boss of the Springfield, Ill., Mob was one of those who attended the Apalachin conference, according Joseph Zito's FBI file.
Also in attendance at the Apalachin meeting with Zito were at least 58 other Mob members, which included Carlo Gambino; Vito Genovese, boss of the New York Genovese crime family; Gambino’s brother-in-law Paul Castellano; and Joe Bonanno. Castellano would be Gambino’s successor after Gambino’s death in 1976. Castellano was murdered in 1986, and was succeeded by John Gotti, who died in a Missouri prison medical center June 10, 2002.
SCAM IN ALABAMA
In addition to a probable motive for Maggio's killing, Maggio's FBI file shows Mob's determination to not only steal money from citizens, but gain access to FBI files.
Maggio was convicted on Dec. 6, 1972 on seven counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy. The conviction was obtained after an unidentified male informant said the conspiracy involved a "boat registration scheme", wherein the name United States Merchant Marine was used to collect funds for a national boat registration service.
"He said they planned to circulate a letter to all boat owners for a $10 contribution, which would then be used as a registration fee for a registry to be maintained by the company [United States Merchant Marine Service, Inc.]. ...
"[Redact] had asked him if he had any idea how the United States Merchant Marine Service could patch into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Crime Information Center (NCIC)."
Maggio was born Aug. 30, 1936 in Rockford, where he lived his entire life, until his death at age 43. Maggio married in 1959, and had three sons and one daughter. He became a made Mob member in approximately February 1965.
About the author: Jeff Havens is a former award-winning reporter for the weekly newspaper The Rock River Times in Rockford, Ill. Havens lived most of his life in the Rockford area, and wrote dozens of news articles about the Mob in Rockford and Chicago.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Book Club: Five Families: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires
Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family, Bonanno Crime Family, Colombo Crime Family, Lucchese Crime Family, Genovese Crime Family. John "Dapper Don" Gotti, Vincente "The Chin" Gigante, Charles "Lucky" Luciano
Selwyn Raab recently met with Gotham Gazette's Reading NYC Book Club to discuss his book Five Families: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires, a history of the Mafia from its origins in Sicily to the present day. The following is an edited transcript of the event.
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Mr. Raab, your book focuses largely on the fall of the New York crime families, but the title includes the phrase "resurgence." What's going on with the Mafia in New York City right now?
SELWYN RAAB: Up until 9/11, there had been a 20-year long, concentrated attack against the Mafia, based on the Racketeer Influence Corruptions Act, popularly known as RICO. What was important about RICO was that for the first time it gave prosecutors an effective tool to go after the big shots in organized crime. At the attack's peak, there were 200 people working full time on just investigating the five Mafia families in New York -- the Gambino, the Bonano, the Colombo, the Lucchese, and the Genovese. The FBI had a specific squad following each family, and were able to bust John Gotti, Vincente "The Chin" Gigante, and other bosses, even though they didn't pull a trigger or shake anyone down themselves.
[This prosecution was coupled with a] concentrated effort to knock the Mafia out of some industries. Waste collection and construction were two immense moneymakers for them, and they've been hurt in both industries, especially commercial garbage collection. There is now some oversight by city agencies, licensing etc. The Mafia has been severely wounded in some of these big industries – but not mortally.
As soon as 9/11 occurred, terrorism justifiably became a prime concern and objective for the FBI and most police departments, including New York's. This created a reprieve – suddenly you had this tremendous diminution of people investigating the mob.
Today, the Mafia is still making money in gambling and loan sharking. The penalties for these crimes are very small, nobody goes away for a long time, and bosses are never brought up on charges. Still, this is terrific seed money to keep them going.
The Mafia is still very big on Wall Street, counterfeit credit cards, and phone scams. But a lot of the most recent action has been in the suburbs, where the theory is the local police departments don't have the expertise to stop them.
FORMING THE MAFIA
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Is there a fundamental difference between the Mafia and other types of organized crime?
SELWYN RAAB: We've always had organized crime groups – you had Irish and German gangs on the Bowery, Jewish bootleggers, the Italians, and so on. To oversimplify, prohibition changed all these gangs from street thugs to executives. The money was so big that they could expand, and when prohibition ended, they had big organizations to go into different things like labor racketeering.
But the Italians had a business genius named Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano saw the handwriting on the wall – prohibition was going to end, and what were gangs going to do for loot? He also saw the lack of a central organization. Luciano had a major convention [of Italian gangs] in Chicago in 1931, and said we can't have fights among ourselves anymore, because it's bad for business. He turned the Italian gangs into a semi-military organization based on what had been going on in Sicily, where each family had a boss, underboss, consigliere, and soldiers.
If you knocked out the leaders of the Jewish or Irish gangs, they dissolved, because there was no military setup. But Luciano set up the Mafia so that the individual is secondary to the organization; the theory was that the organization had to survive at any cost. If the boss died or was arrested, the organization replaced him, and he set up another hierarchy.
To stop disputes between families, Luciano created something called the Commission comprised of representatives from each of the five New York families. Immediately, they had more power than anyone else in the country.
Luciano also urged the Mafiosi to diversify their activities. Instead of having just gambling or loan sharking as other gangs did, they went into labor racketeering. They were a mirror image of capitalism: whatever works.
That distinction still exists today. The Mafia has such a lot going for it. The Latin Americans – Columbians and Mexicans – are into one thing: narcotics. They don't have the know-how to do these other kinds of crimes. Same thing with the Asian gangs, the Chinese. They may be involved in smuggling immigrants, or do shake down rackets on stores or restaurants in Chinatown and Queens. But they're not involved in other things.
THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZED CRIME ON NEW YORK CITY
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Why did New York City's Mafia families have such a disproportionate amount of power within the nationwide Mafia right from the beginning?
SELWYN RAAB: We can thank Benito Mussolini partly for this. The Mafia had always been very strong since it started out in Sicily in the 18th century, where people once thought of them as liberators because they fought against the foreign invaders, protecting the small farmers, peasants, and businessmen. They developed into a tyrannical organization, and they grew very powerful both politically and financially. When Benito Mussolini came into power, he saw them as a threat and started a crackdown. He rounded people up and put them in cages, sent them away for life, or killed them.
Because of this, a lot of the young Mafiosi in the 1920s emigrated to the United States, and the major place they went was New York City. They liked New York. It was very profitable. There was a big Italian American population, bigger than anywhere else. They settled into New York because they were welcomed here.
The curse of New York is that there are still five powerful Mafia families here. In the rest of the country it wasn't that hard to combat the Mafia – you just had to knock off one family and there would be no one around to fill their shoes. Here, if there is a devastating blow to one family, that vacuum can be filled by one of the others. They know if it's a good opportunity, and they'll take advantage of it.
PHILIP ANGELL: In New York City organized crime families were involved in a lot of very public rackets – the trash business, the construction business, the ready-mix concrete business. These were pretty open secrets for a long time. Do you have any sense of why this was tolerated by the political, financial, and law enforcement establishment?
SELWYN RAAB: Well, one major reason was that J. Edgar Hoover didn't want the FBI to do anything with the mob. They didn't do anything until after his death in 1972.
I started as a reporter in New York in the 1960s on the education beat. I was working for a year when there was a big scandal: schools were falling apart. I was assigned to the story and found so many connections. There were secret Mafia partners to all these construction firms that were allowing ceilings to collapse, and building shoddy buildings. There was a big investigation, and eventually the city got rid of some of the people who worked for the Board of Education and banned some of the contractors. But they never went after the Mafia.
So I started asking around: Why don't you do anything about the Mafia? "It's too hard," I was told. But the real reason was that the Mafia was paying off the politicians and the judges. Every stone you turned up in this town had to do with the Mafia. Garbage, the fish market, you name it.
Also, when you talked to mayors off the record they'd say: 'everything runs smoothly now. If you fool around with the construction industry, there will be a strike. If you do anything about trying to regulate the garbage industry, they won't pick up the garbage. If you try to do anything about the fish market, restaurants won't get any fish. Leave well enough alone. They're not bothering anybody.'
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Can you point to any industries that the Mafia ruined or ran out of town?
SELWYN RAAB: I used to speak to people in the garment center, and they said you had a choice: either you get protection from the mob, or you sign up with the union and pay the union dues. The union will let you be non-union, but you have to be hooked up with some family. In fact, the corrupt unions were getting part of the payoffs.
There were mob families running all the trucking in the garment center – the Colombos and the Luccheses. You couldn't be an independent trucker and go into the garment center. You'd have flat tires, and your drivers would be beaten up. These weren't the only reasons – there were runaway industries for cheaper labor elsewhere, too– but they added an extra inducement. Why bother?
It wasn't just the garment industry. Garbage haulers wouldn't come into New York because they knew it wasn't worth the effort. If you came in you'd be shaken down, and if you didn't pay them off there would be a strike, because they controlled the Teamsters on the garbage locals.
A lot of fish wholesalers wouldn't come into New York for many years. They would rather go to New England, or the big fish markets in Baltimore, where they wouldn't have this trouble.
PHILIP ANGELL: And the important thing to remember is that it was underwritten by violence, no matter what industry.
ROMANTICIZING THE MOB
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Why do people have such a romantic view of this?
SELWYN RAAB: Well, that's Hollywood. American entertainers have always had a vicarious love affair with criminals. They're interesting people; you're more interested in rogues than good guys. Do you want to do a story about the founder of the Red Cross or Salvation Army? No one is too interested in that.
One of my pet peeves is a movie like the Godfather, where we set up the idea that there are good Mafiosi and bad Mafiosi. Don Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, he's a white hat, a good guy cowboy. At one point, he's opposed to narcotics, and as a result there's an attempt on his life by the bad Mafiosi. But who wins? The good guys. They try to create this image that it's not so simple, that you can identify with them.
I don't watch the Sopranos every week, but when I do watch what I see is a soap opera not about a mob family, but a dysfunctional suburban family. If you're a middle-aged man, you can easily identify with Tony Soprano. His kids are rebelling against him, his wife is smarter than him and wants to leave him, he doesn't have the old time loyalty when he goes to the office anymore. He has all these midlife crises, even though he lives in a mini mansion, has a harem of beauties throwing themselves at him, and he's got big cars and all the money in the world. Yet he's got these crises; you can sympathize with him. You don’t see him for the most part killing people.
You get a vicarious kick out of watching these people. Look at the great lives they lead: they sleep late, they don't have to go to work, they make a lot of money, they have a lot of woman friends. It looks good.
There's one other aspect which I think is a subtext to all of this, which makes these movies popular and is why people romanticize the Mafia: they're antiestablishment. In the Godfather, they talk about how the Italian Americans couldn't get a break. They had to become a government onto themselves, because the WASP establishment wouldn't allow them to become bankers or big businessmen. You can see it also in the Sopranos. His father was a laborer. What a choice: drive a truck for a living, or could he work for the mob and make a lot of money, be comfortable, take care of your family?
GOTHAM GAZETTE: But how much of that is true?
SELWYN RAAB: Well, I've talked to a few made men. They always rationalized what they did and why they did it. But they have always been into anything that will bring them money.
Thanks to the GOTHAM GAZETTE
Selwyn Raab recently met with Gotham Gazette's Reading NYC Book Club to discuss his book Five Families: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires, a history of the Mafia from its origins in Sicily to the present day. The following is an edited transcript of the event.
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Mr. Raab, your book focuses largely on the fall of the New York crime families, but the title includes the phrase "resurgence." What's going on with the Mafia in New York City right now?
SELWYN RAAB: Up until 9/11, there had been a 20-year long, concentrated attack against the Mafia, based on the Racketeer Influence Corruptions Act, popularly known as RICO. What was important about RICO was that for the first time it gave prosecutors an effective tool to go after the big shots in organized crime. At the attack's peak, there were 200 people working full time on just investigating the five Mafia families in New York -- the Gambino, the Bonano, the Colombo, the Lucchese, and the Genovese. The FBI had a specific squad following each family, and were able to bust John Gotti, Vincente "The Chin" Gigante, and other bosses, even though they didn't pull a trigger or shake anyone down themselves.
[This prosecution was coupled with a] concentrated effort to knock the Mafia out of some industries. Waste collection and construction were two immense moneymakers for them, and they've been hurt in both industries, especially commercial garbage collection. There is now some oversight by city agencies, licensing etc. The Mafia has been severely wounded in some of these big industries – but not mortally.
As soon as 9/11 occurred, terrorism justifiably became a prime concern and objective for the FBI and most police departments, including New York's. This created a reprieve – suddenly you had this tremendous diminution of people investigating the mob.
Today, the Mafia is still making money in gambling and loan sharking. The penalties for these crimes are very small, nobody goes away for a long time, and bosses are never brought up on charges. Still, this is terrific seed money to keep them going.
The Mafia is still very big on Wall Street, counterfeit credit cards, and phone scams. But a lot of the most recent action has been in the suburbs, where the theory is the local police departments don't have the expertise to stop them.
FORMING THE MAFIA
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Is there a fundamental difference between the Mafia and other types of organized crime?
SELWYN RAAB: We've always had organized crime groups – you had Irish and German gangs on the Bowery, Jewish bootleggers, the Italians, and so on. To oversimplify, prohibition changed all these gangs from street thugs to executives. The money was so big that they could expand, and when prohibition ended, they had big organizations to go into different things like labor racketeering.
But the Italians had a business genius named Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano saw the handwriting on the wall – prohibition was going to end, and what were gangs going to do for loot? He also saw the lack of a central organization. Luciano had a major convention [of Italian gangs] in Chicago in 1931, and said we can't have fights among ourselves anymore, because it's bad for business. He turned the Italian gangs into a semi-military organization based on what had been going on in Sicily, where each family had a boss, underboss, consigliere, and soldiers.
If you knocked out the leaders of the Jewish or Irish gangs, they dissolved, because there was no military setup. But Luciano set up the Mafia so that the individual is secondary to the organization; the theory was that the organization had to survive at any cost. If the boss died or was arrested, the organization replaced him, and he set up another hierarchy.
To stop disputes between families, Luciano created something called the Commission comprised of representatives from each of the five New York families. Immediately, they had more power than anyone else in the country.
Luciano also urged the Mafiosi to diversify their activities. Instead of having just gambling or loan sharking as other gangs did, they went into labor racketeering. They were a mirror image of capitalism: whatever works.
That distinction still exists today. The Mafia has such a lot going for it. The Latin Americans – Columbians and Mexicans – are into one thing: narcotics. They don't have the know-how to do these other kinds of crimes. Same thing with the Asian gangs, the Chinese. They may be involved in smuggling immigrants, or do shake down rackets on stores or restaurants in Chinatown and Queens. But they're not involved in other things.
THE IMPACT OF ORGANIZED CRIME ON NEW YORK CITY
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Why did New York City's Mafia families have such a disproportionate amount of power within the nationwide Mafia right from the beginning?
SELWYN RAAB: We can thank Benito Mussolini partly for this. The Mafia had always been very strong since it started out in Sicily in the 18th century, where people once thought of them as liberators because they fought against the foreign invaders, protecting the small farmers, peasants, and businessmen. They developed into a tyrannical organization, and they grew very powerful both politically and financially. When Benito Mussolini came into power, he saw them as a threat and started a crackdown. He rounded people up and put them in cages, sent them away for life, or killed them.
Because of this, a lot of the young Mafiosi in the 1920s emigrated to the United States, and the major place they went was New York City. They liked New York. It was very profitable. There was a big Italian American population, bigger than anywhere else. They settled into New York because they were welcomed here.
The curse of New York is that there are still five powerful Mafia families here. In the rest of the country it wasn't that hard to combat the Mafia – you just had to knock off one family and there would be no one around to fill their shoes. Here, if there is a devastating blow to one family, that vacuum can be filled by one of the others. They know if it's a good opportunity, and they'll take advantage of it.
PHILIP ANGELL: In New York City organized crime families were involved in a lot of very public rackets – the trash business, the construction business, the ready-mix concrete business. These were pretty open secrets for a long time. Do you have any sense of why this was tolerated by the political, financial, and law enforcement establishment?
SELWYN RAAB: Well, one major reason was that J. Edgar Hoover didn't want the FBI to do anything with the mob. They didn't do anything until after his death in 1972.
I started as a reporter in New York in the 1960s on the education beat. I was working for a year when there was a big scandal: schools were falling apart. I was assigned to the story and found so many connections. There were secret Mafia partners to all these construction firms that were allowing ceilings to collapse, and building shoddy buildings. There was a big investigation, and eventually the city got rid of some of the people who worked for the Board of Education and banned some of the contractors. But they never went after the Mafia.
So I started asking around: Why don't you do anything about the Mafia? "It's too hard," I was told. But the real reason was that the Mafia was paying off the politicians and the judges. Every stone you turned up in this town had to do with the Mafia. Garbage, the fish market, you name it.
Also, when you talked to mayors off the record they'd say: 'everything runs smoothly now. If you fool around with the construction industry, there will be a strike. If you do anything about trying to regulate the garbage industry, they won't pick up the garbage. If you try to do anything about the fish market, restaurants won't get any fish. Leave well enough alone. They're not bothering anybody.'
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Can you point to any industries that the Mafia ruined or ran out of town?
SELWYN RAAB: I used to speak to people in the garment center, and they said you had a choice: either you get protection from the mob, or you sign up with the union and pay the union dues. The union will let you be non-union, but you have to be hooked up with some family. In fact, the corrupt unions were getting part of the payoffs.
There were mob families running all the trucking in the garment center – the Colombos and the Luccheses. You couldn't be an independent trucker and go into the garment center. You'd have flat tires, and your drivers would be beaten up. These weren't the only reasons – there were runaway industries for cheaper labor elsewhere, too– but they added an extra inducement. Why bother?
It wasn't just the garment industry. Garbage haulers wouldn't come into New York because they knew it wasn't worth the effort. If you came in you'd be shaken down, and if you didn't pay them off there would be a strike, because they controlled the Teamsters on the garbage locals.
A lot of fish wholesalers wouldn't come into New York for many years. They would rather go to New England, or the big fish markets in Baltimore, where they wouldn't have this trouble.
PHILIP ANGELL: And the important thing to remember is that it was underwritten by violence, no matter what industry.
ROMANTICIZING THE MOB
GOTHAM GAZETTE: Why do people have such a romantic view of this?
SELWYN RAAB: Well, that's Hollywood. American entertainers have always had a vicarious love affair with criminals. They're interesting people; you're more interested in rogues than good guys. Do you want to do a story about the founder of the Red Cross or Salvation Army? No one is too interested in that.
One of my pet peeves is a movie like the Godfather, where we set up the idea that there are good Mafiosi and bad Mafiosi. Don Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, he's a white hat, a good guy cowboy. At one point, he's opposed to narcotics, and as a result there's an attempt on his life by the bad Mafiosi. But who wins? The good guys. They try to create this image that it's not so simple, that you can identify with them.
I don't watch the Sopranos every week, but when I do watch what I see is a soap opera not about a mob family, but a dysfunctional suburban family. If you're a middle-aged man, you can easily identify with Tony Soprano. His kids are rebelling against him, his wife is smarter than him and wants to leave him, he doesn't have the old time loyalty when he goes to the office anymore. He has all these midlife crises, even though he lives in a mini mansion, has a harem of beauties throwing themselves at him, and he's got big cars and all the money in the world. Yet he's got these crises; you can sympathize with him. You don’t see him for the most part killing people.
You get a vicarious kick out of watching these people. Look at the great lives they lead: they sleep late, they don't have to go to work, they make a lot of money, they have a lot of woman friends. It looks good.
There's one other aspect which I think is a subtext to all of this, which makes these movies popular and is why people romanticize the Mafia: they're antiestablishment. In the Godfather, they talk about how the Italian Americans couldn't get a break. They had to become a government onto themselves, because the WASP establishment wouldn't allow them to become bankers or big businessmen. You can see it also in the Sopranos. His father was a laborer. What a choice: drive a truck for a living, or could he work for the mob and make a lot of money, be comfortable, take care of your family?
GOTHAM GAZETTE: But how much of that is true?
SELWYN RAAB: Well, I've talked to a few made men. They always rationalized what they did and why they did it. But they have always been into anything that will bring them money.
Thanks to the GOTHAM GAZETTE
Saturday, March 11, 2006
The Other Problem at the Port
Friends of ours: Gambino Crime family, Genovese Crime family, Anthony Anastasio
With all the recent talk about security vulnerabilities at the nation's ports, one subject goes virtually unmentioned. The men who actually control many of the nation's docks, especially on the Eastern seaboard, are in the hip pocket of the Mafia and have been for decades.
Regardless of whether or not a Dubai-owned company manages operations at these ports -- currently the source of much hand-wringing in Washington -- many of those with the most direct access to the billions of tons of cargo that move through those ports owe their jobs to the mob.
How can that be? It all has to do with the peculiar institution of the union hiring hall. No matter who owns or operates the ports, the union, not the employer, actually assigns workers to jobs. You can't work unless you carry a union card. And on East Coast and Gulf ports, the union card belongs to the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA), one of the most mobbed-up unions in the country.
In July 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against the ILA, which targets the entire 31-member ILA executive council, including the president, secretary-treasurer, executive vice president, general vice president and more than two dozen others.
In a press release accompanying the suit, the Justice Department notes, "For decades the waterfront has been the setting for corruption and violence stemming from organized crime's influence over labor unions operating there, including the ILA and its affiliated locals, as well as port-related businesses. Since the late 1950s, two organized crime families -- the Gambino family and the Genovese family -- have shared control of various ports, with the Gambino family primarily exercising its influence at commercial shipping terminals in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and the Genovese family primarily controlling those in Manhattan, New Jersey and the Port of Miami."
The Justice Department has already won convictions against more than a dozen high-level Gambino and Genovese mobsters who controlled docks on the East Coast and is also seeking convictions of several ILA officials. The government has charged these men with extorting money from waterfront businesses and terminal operators and extorting thousands of dollars from individuals seeking employment on the docks, among other crimes.
And this recent spate of ILA indictments is only the most recent example in the long history of organized crime control over the union. New York University law professor James B. Jacobs describes that history in his new book, "Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement." "Cosa Nostra became the primary power on the New York harbor waterfront in 1937, when Anthony Anastasio . . . took control of the six New York harbor locals," says Jacobs, and it has remained so ever since. In the 1970s, the federal government won convictions of more than 100 mobsters, including 20 ILA officials, among them ILA Vice President Anthony Scotto.
Yet despite this sordid history, few lawmakers who profess concern about port security seem in the slightest bit worried that the ILA's role on the docks may constitute a huge security risk. The ILA contributes millions of dollars each election cycle. In the 2004 election cycle, the ILA's political action committee (PAC) had over $7 million cash on hand to distribute to candidates.
Among the top recipients of ILA PAC money in the last few elections were Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, all of whom represent states with important ports. Some of these same senators are among the chief critics of the Dubai port deal, but they are noticeably silent when it comes to mob influence in the union that actually controls who works on these ports.
Union bosses who would rob their members of pensions and health benefits, extort money to secure jobs on the docks, and use the docks to run gambling, loan sharking and other illegal enterprises could just as easily facilitate terrorists hoping to slip agents or weapons into the country, perhaps unwittingly, for the right price. But few in Washington seem to have considered the risk. The Dubai deal is not the only port issue that deserves more congressional scrutiny; ILA corruption surely deserves a close look as well.
Thanks to Linda Chavez
With all the recent talk about security vulnerabilities at the nation's ports, one subject goes virtually unmentioned. The men who actually control many of the nation's docks, especially on the Eastern seaboard, are in the hip pocket of the Mafia and have been for decades.
Regardless of whether or not a Dubai-owned company manages operations at these ports -- currently the source of much hand-wringing in Washington -- many of those with the most direct access to the billions of tons of cargo that move through those ports owe their jobs to the mob.
How can that be? It all has to do with the peculiar institution of the union hiring hall. No matter who owns or operates the ports, the union, not the employer, actually assigns workers to jobs. You can't work unless you carry a union card. And on East Coast and Gulf ports, the union card belongs to the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA), one of the most mobbed-up unions in the country.
In July 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against the ILA, which targets the entire 31-member ILA executive council, including the president, secretary-treasurer, executive vice president, general vice president and more than two dozen others.
In a press release accompanying the suit, the Justice Department notes, "For decades the waterfront has been the setting for corruption and violence stemming from organized crime's influence over labor unions operating there, including the ILA and its affiliated locals, as well as port-related businesses. Since the late 1950s, two organized crime families -- the Gambino family and the Genovese family -- have shared control of various ports, with the Gambino family primarily exercising its influence at commercial shipping terminals in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and the Genovese family primarily controlling those in Manhattan, New Jersey and the Port of Miami."
The Justice Department has already won convictions against more than a dozen high-level Gambino and Genovese mobsters who controlled docks on the East Coast and is also seeking convictions of several ILA officials. The government has charged these men with extorting money from waterfront businesses and terminal operators and extorting thousands of dollars from individuals seeking employment on the docks, among other crimes.
And this recent spate of ILA indictments is only the most recent example in the long history of organized crime control over the union. New York University law professor James B. Jacobs describes that history in his new book, "Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement." "Cosa Nostra became the primary power on the New York harbor waterfront in 1937, when Anthony Anastasio . . . took control of the six New York harbor locals," says Jacobs, and it has remained so ever since. In the 1970s, the federal government won convictions of more than 100 mobsters, including 20 ILA officials, among them ILA Vice President Anthony Scotto.
Yet despite this sordid history, few lawmakers who profess concern about port security seem in the slightest bit worried that the ILA's role on the docks may constitute a huge security risk. The ILA contributes millions of dollars each election cycle. In the 2004 election cycle, the ILA's political action committee (PAC) had over $7 million cash on hand to distribute to candidates.
Among the top recipients of ILA PAC money in the last few elections were Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, all of whom represent states with important ports. Some of these same senators are among the chief critics of the Dubai port deal, but they are noticeably silent when it comes to mob influence in the union that actually controls who works on these ports.
Union bosses who would rob their members of pensions and health benefits, extort money to secure jobs on the docks, and use the docks to run gambling, loan sharking and other illegal enterprises could just as easily facilitate terrorists hoping to slip agents or weapons into the country, perhaps unwittingly, for the right price. But few in Washington seem to have considered the risk. The Dubai deal is not the only port issue that deserves more congressional scrutiny; ILA corruption surely deserves a close look as well.
Thanks to Linda Chavez
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Canaries Get Tweet Salvation
Friends of ours: Junior Gotti, Bonanno Crime Family, Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, Patrick DeFilippo, Vito DeFilippo, Gambino Crime Family, Salvatore LoCascio, Genovese Crime Family, Joseph Ida, John Gotti, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo
Today's rats escape sleepin' with fishes
The stampede of Mafia turncoats joining Team U.S.A. is radically changing the way gangsters try to beat the rap. Faced with damning testimony from high-ranking rats, wiseguys are wising up to the fact that it's futile to deny they're in the mob.
It was once a violation punishable by death to publicly acknowledge one's membership in a crime family. But John A. (Junior) Gotti has done it. So too has a gaggle of gangsters in the hope the wiseguys can neutralize the government's weapons.
"He's in the Bonanno family," declared defense lawyer Barry Levin last week at the trial of Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano, once the clan's acting boss. "We don't care. So if you spend three weeks listening to the Bonanno family, you've heard it here. You can take a nap."
Levin's strategy so infuriated prosecutors they asked the judge to instruct the jury that it was out of bounds. The lawyer for Basciano's co-defendant Patrick DeFilippo was also up front with jurors about his client's mob lineage. "His father Vito was a member ... and it was as natural for him at that time a long time ago to join as it was, say, for me to become a lawyer," said attorney Richard Levitt.
Recently, lawyers for Gambino capo Salvatore LoCascio and Genovese soldier Joseph Ida admitted their clients were made men, but insisted each had decided to quit the Mafia.
It's a long way from the bold denials John Gotti's mouthpiece Bruce Cutler was making in 1990 when he said: "There is absolutely no evidence of what prosecutors call an Italian-American Mafia in America."
Mafia historian Thomas Reppetto recalled that Chicago gangster Joey (The Clown) Lombardo even took out an ad in a newspaper in 1992 to proclaim he wasn't in the Mafia anymore. Lombardo was indicted last year on a raft of charges.
For years wiseguys and their lawyers nervously tiptoed around naming the criminal enterprise when pleading guilty to racketeering. Has omerta - the Mafia's code of silence - been revised? "Apparently so," said former federal prosecutor Edward MacDonald. "There's no point in contesting membership anymore. The evidence is so overwhelming. You might as well concede the obvious."
Thanks to John Marzulli
Today's rats escape sleepin' with fishes
The stampede of Mafia turncoats joining Team U.S.A. is radically changing the way gangsters try to beat the rap. Faced with damning testimony from high-ranking rats, wiseguys are wising up to the fact that it's futile to deny they're in the mob.
It was once a violation punishable by death to publicly acknowledge one's membership in a crime family. But John A. (Junior) Gotti has done it. So too has a gaggle of gangsters in the hope the wiseguys can neutralize the government's weapons.
"He's in the Bonanno family," declared defense lawyer Barry Levin last week at the trial of Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano, once the clan's acting boss. "We don't care. So if you spend three weeks listening to the Bonanno family, you've heard it here. You can take a nap."
Levin's strategy so infuriated prosecutors they asked the judge to instruct the jury that it was out of bounds. The lawyer for Basciano's co-defendant Patrick DeFilippo was also up front with jurors about his client's mob lineage. "His father Vito was a member ... and it was as natural for him at that time a long time ago to join as it was, say, for me to become a lawyer," said attorney Richard Levitt.
Recently, lawyers for Gambino capo Salvatore LoCascio and Genovese soldier Joseph Ida admitted their clients were made men, but insisted each had decided to quit the Mafia.
It's a long way from the bold denials John Gotti's mouthpiece Bruce Cutler was making in 1990 when he said: "There is absolutely no evidence of what prosecutors call an Italian-American Mafia in America."
Mafia historian Thomas Reppetto recalled that Chicago gangster Joey (The Clown) Lombardo even took out an ad in a newspaper in 1992 to proclaim he wasn't in the Mafia anymore. Lombardo was indicted last year on a raft of charges.
For years wiseguys and their lawyers nervously tiptoed around naming the criminal enterprise when pleading guilty to racketeering. Has omerta - the Mafia's code of silence - been revised? "Apparently so," said former federal prosecutor Edward MacDonald. "There's no point in contesting membership anymore. The evidence is so overwhelming. You might as well concede the obvious."
Thanks to John Marzulli
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Grandy Jury Indicts 32 New York Mobsters
Friends of ours: Genovese Crime Family, Liborio Bellomo, Ralph Coppola, Michael "Chunk" Londonio, John "Buster" Ardito, Ralph "The Undertaker" Balsamo, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianiello, Gambino Crime Family, Junior Gotti
The acting boss of the city's most powerful crime family and 31 others are charged in a new indictment with racketeering crimes, including murder, extortion, drug trafficking and money laundering, authorities announced Thursday.
The indictment "delivers an absolute body blow" to the Genovese family's structure, said FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon. He said 30 people had been arrested. The 42-count indictment unsealed Thursday accuses the defendants of engaging in criminal activity for more than a decade.
U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia also released details about a corrupt lawyer whom he said had enabled the family's acting boss to order a murder from prison and direct other crimes. The lawyer, Peter J. Peluso, pleaded guilty last summer, admitted his role in the murder and agreed to cooperate against his client, Liborio S. Bellomo. Bellomo was charged with authorizing the 1998 murder of Ralph Coppola, a former Genovese soldier and acting capo, as part of a wide-ranging racketeering conspiracy involving violent extortion, drug dealing, firearms trafficking and murder.
The arrests follow a three-year investigation into the family's activities in the Bronx, Harlem and the Westchester County suburbs north of the city.
Garcia said Peluso pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, admitting participation in numerous crimes, including extortion and obstruction of justice, as he shuttled important messages between family members, some of whom were in prison. He said he carried one message from Bellomo sanctioning Coppola's murder, Garcia said.
The prosecutor said the brazen nature of the crime family was demonstrated in December, when authorities went to arrest Michael "Chunk" Londonio. He fired shots at New York State troopers, wounding two of them, before being killed in the return fire. "I would look at the Londonio shooting as the best example we have of the public safety threat organizations like this pose," Garcia said. "It adds to an overall impression of violence, viciousness reaching the streets of our community."
The indictment and court papers related to Peluso's guilty plea were unsealed in the same Manhattan courthouse where John Gotti Jr., whose father headed the Gambino crime family, was on trial for allegedly arranged the kidnapping of Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. A similar indictment last year charged members of the Gambino family with racketeering.
Others indicted by the grand jury include longtime Genovese captain John "Buster" Ardito and Ralph "The Undertaker" Balsamo, who oversaw a large cocaine distribution network in New York, according to the indictment.
Ardito, Balsamo and others also are charged with attempting to tamper with several witnesses, including one who had his ear partially bitten off in a fight with a Genovese soldier.
The Justice Department has yet to decide whether to seek the death penalty for Bellomo. There have only been three federal executions since 1977 versus more than 940 by the states in that time, Justice Department data show.
Federal agents say Bellomo is one of a string of chiefs to run the Genovese mafia family since the 1992 arrest of Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who dominated the mafia for most of the 1980s and 1990s before dying in prison last year.
Last July, 20 Genovese members were indicted in New York on racketeering charges in a separate case including another reputed acting boss, Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianiello. A month later, 14 accused Genovese family members were indicted in New Jersey.
The acting boss of the city's most powerful crime family and 31 others are charged in a new indictment with racketeering crimes, including murder, extortion, drug trafficking and money laundering, authorities announced Thursday.
The indictment "delivers an absolute body blow" to the Genovese family's structure, said FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon. He said 30 people had been arrested. The 42-count indictment unsealed Thursday accuses the defendants of engaging in criminal activity for more than a decade.
U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia also released details about a corrupt lawyer whom he said had enabled the family's acting boss to order a murder from prison and direct other crimes. The lawyer, Peter J. Peluso, pleaded guilty last summer, admitted his role in the murder and agreed to cooperate against his client, Liborio S. Bellomo. Bellomo was charged with authorizing the 1998 murder of Ralph Coppola, a former Genovese soldier and acting capo, as part of a wide-ranging racketeering conspiracy involving violent extortion, drug dealing, firearms trafficking and murder.
The arrests follow a three-year investigation into the family's activities in the Bronx, Harlem and the Westchester County suburbs north of the city.
Garcia said Peluso pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, admitting participation in numerous crimes, including extortion and obstruction of justice, as he shuttled important messages between family members, some of whom were in prison. He said he carried one message from Bellomo sanctioning Coppola's murder, Garcia said.
The prosecutor said the brazen nature of the crime family was demonstrated in December, when authorities went to arrest Michael "Chunk" Londonio. He fired shots at New York State troopers, wounding two of them, before being killed in the return fire. "I would look at the Londonio shooting as the best example we have of the public safety threat organizations like this pose," Garcia said. "It adds to an overall impression of violence, viciousness reaching the streets of our community."
The indictment and court papers related to Peluso's guilty plea were unsealed in the same Manhattan courthouse where John Gotti Jr., whose father headed the Gambino crime family, was on trial for allegedly arranged the kidnapping of Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. A similar indictment last year charged members of the Gambino family with racketeering.
Others indicted by the grand jury include longtime Genovese captain John "Buster" Ardito and Ralph "The Undertaker" Balsamo, who oversaw a large cocaine distribution network in New York, according to the indictment.
Ardito, Balsamo and others also are charged with attempting to tamper with several witnesses, including one who had his ear partially bitten off in a fight with a Genovese soldier.
The Justice Department has yet to decide whether to seek the death penalty for Bellomo. There have only been three federal executions since 1977 versus more than 940 by the states in that time, Justice Department data show.
Federal agents say Bellomo is one of a string of chiefs to run the Genovese mafia family since the 1992 arrest of Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who dominated the mafia for most of the 1980s and 1990s before dying in prison last year.
Last July, 20 Genovese members were indicted in New York on racketeering charges in a separate case including another reputed acting boss, Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianiello. A month later, 14 accused Genovese family members were indicted in New Jersey.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Few heads at Chin Funeral
Friends of ours: Vincent "Chin" Gigante, John Gotti, Mario Gigante, Genovese Crime Family, Frank Costello
Pallbearers carry a coffin with the body of former Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante out of St. Anthony of Padua Church in the Village after a simple service attended by few mobsters. There were no garish floral arrangements yesterday and only a few shiny limos with refrigerator-size guys. Hardly a capo showed up. Mostly, the funeral of the legendary Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante was a quiet reminder of an Old World Greenwich Village that is disappearing day by day.
Gigante, after all, was an underworld dinosaur, an old-time gangster who dodged prison for decades by shuffling unshaven about the Village in a bathrobe, muttering that Jesus was his lawyer. His final tribute reflected the fallen state of the Mafia, with hardly any mobsters seen paying their final respects at the St. Anthony of Padua Church on Sullivan St.
It was a modest affair, nothing like the 2002 funeral for mob boss John Gotti, when 19 open-air cars packed with flowers paraded about Queens.
The attendees mainly were family and friends, including Gigante's brother, Mario, a reputed captain in the Genovese family, Gigante's wife, Olympia, and several of his children.
The service was held a few blocks down Sullivan St. from the tiny apartment where Gigante lived for years with his mother. It was presided over by another of his brothers, the Rev. Louis Gigante.
Rev. Gigante, who stood by his sibling even after Vincent had admitted the crazy act was just that, did his best to preserve the image of his brother as a man misunderstood. "The world had a different view of him through the media," he declared. "But we, his family, his friends, the people of Greenwich Village, me, his brothers, his mother and father, we all knew him as a gentle man, a man of God."
To a church three-quarters full, the priest presented the powerful gangster as a lonely throwback wedded to his rapidly changing neighborhood. "Vincent never traveled," the priest said. "He was always on Sullivan St., walking and helping others, neglecting himself."
No mention was made of Gigante's status as Godfather of the most powerful crime family in America. No one recalled that Gigante once parted the hair of mobster Frank Costello with a bullet, shouting, "This one's for you, Frank!"
Instead there was the story of a 77-year-old man dying alone in a prison somewhere in the Midwest, neglected. As the priest saw it, the government that pursued his brother for decades finally did him in. "In the eight years Vincent was in prison, I visited him 19 times. There wasn't a day he didn't suffer," said Rev. Gigante. "He did his time like a man. He was going to come home. He was dying to come home. But he couldn't. They allowed him to die."
Then the white-gloved pallbearers did their job, carrying the coffin piled high with red and white poinsettias down the aisle and into the pre-Christmas chill.
In the end, Vincent (Chin) Gigante emerged from his childhood church, carried out into a Village the old mob boss would have barely recognized.
Thanks to Greg Smith
Pallbearers carry a coffin with the body of former Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante out of St. Anthony of Padua Church in the Village after a simple service attended by few mobsters. There were no garish floral arrangements yesterday and only a few shiny limos with refrigerator-size guys. Hardly a capo showed up. Mostly, the funeral of the legendary Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante was a quiet reminder of an Old World Greenwich Village that is disappearing day by day.
Gigante, after all, was an underworld dinosaur, an old-time gangster who dodged prison for decades by shuffling unshaven about the Village in a bathrobe, muttering that Jesus was his lawyer. His final tribute reflected the fallen state of the Mafia, with hardly any mobsters seen paying their final respects at the St. Anthony of Padua Church on Sullivan St.
It was a modest affair, nothing like the 2002 funeral for mob boss John Gotti, when 19 open-air cars packed with flowers paraded about Queens.
The attendees mainly were family and friends, including Gigante's brother, Mario, a reputed captain in the Genovese family, Gigante's wife, Olympia, and several of his children.
The service was held a few blocks down Sullivan St. from the tiny apartment where Gigante lived for years with his mother. It was presided over by another of his brothers, the Rev. Louis Gigante.
Rev. Gigante, who stood by his sibling even after Vincent had admitted the crazy act was just that, did his best to preserve the image of his brother as a man misunderstood. "The world had a different view of him through the media," he declared. "But we, his family, his friends, the people of Greenwich Village, me, his brothers, his mother and father, we all knew him as a gentle man, a man of God."
To a church three-quarters full, the priest presented the powerful gangster as a lonely throwback wedded to his rapidly changing neighborhood. "Vincent never traveled," the priest said. "He was always on Sullivan St., walking and helping others, neglecting himself."
No mention was made of Gigante's status as Godfather of the most powerful crime family in America. No one recalled that Gigante once parted the hair of mobster Frank Costello with a bullet, shouting, "This one's for you, Frank!"
Instead there was the story of a 77-year-old man dying alone in a prison somewhere in the Midwest, neglected. As the priest saw it, the government that pursued his brother for decades finally did him in. "In the eight years Vincent was in prison, I visited him 19 times. There wasn't a day he didn't suffer," said Rev. Gigante. "He did his time like a man. He was going to come home. He was dying to come home. But he couldn't. They allowed him to die."
Then the white-gloved pallbearers did their job, carrying the coffin piled high with red and white poinsettias down the aisle and into the pre-Christmas chill.
In the end, Vincent (Chin) Gigante emerged from his childhood church, carried out into a Village the old mob boss would have barely recognized.
Thanks to Greg Smith
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Christmas on the Lam
Sing a sad Christmas song for Joe Dogs.
On Dec. 25, when much of the world opens presents beneath the tree or enjoys a turkey dinner, Joe Iannuzzi will spend another lonely holiday far from his family, his friends, his city. Maybe knock back a couple of drinks, probably shed a few tears.
"It's sad," says Joe Dogs, whose nickname pays homage to a long fascination with gambling on greyhounds. "Very sad." And very predictable, given Iannuzzi's past. Once a made member of New York's Genovese crime family, Iannuzzi survived a vicious mob beating in 1981 that left him near dead. He awoke in a Florida hospital to find a priest giving him the last rites.
Months later, Iannuzzi recovered. He became convinced that revenge, even more than laughter, was the best medicine. He became an informer, testified at a dozen trials, put away some old pals. A botched mob hit sent him into the federal Witness Protection Program. And now, 24 years after he flipped for the feds, every Christmas brings a reminder of what he left behind.
Joe Dogs may eat alone on Christmas, but he's not the only one. Since 1971, more than 7,700 witnesses were relocated after testifying for the federal government at the risk of their lives. Not all wound up as lonesome as Iannuzzi; 9,800 family members were relocated with them. But they're all far from home, and for many, the holidays are a melancholy time.
"There's tremendous pressure to return home. We sympathize with it, but that's absolutely forbidden," says Dave Turner of the U.S. Marshals Service, which runs witness protection.
Ianuzzi hasn't gone home. He abandoned the high-end world of New York and Florida for low-profile homes in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama. He now resides in an undisclosed Midwest location where "I gotta travel 100 miles to go to a decent restaurant."
He's gotten used to the rootless life but not Christmas on the lam. "The very worst for me," Iannuzzi says over the phone from his apartment, his accent still betraying his New York roots. "I never had the warm feelings that a normal individual would have during that holiday. ... I haven't been around my family since 1982. "You count the Christmas days."
It wasn't always this way. When he was with the mob, every day was a holiday, and he greeted every maitre d' and doorman with a flash of cash. The son of a suburban bookie, he grew up among mobsters north of the Bronx. His first arrest came at age 14. He worked briefly as a dognapper, returning the pilfered pooches once their owners posted a reward.
Iannuzzi had a straight gig as a cook, working in diners and hot dog stands. It was at a classy restaurant in Cleveland that he received professional training, emerging as a saucier. But after a year, he longed for home. "It was time for me to leave," he says. "So I stole a car and went back to New York. It was less expensive that way. I stole a pink Lincoln. Can you imagine? I kept it for a couple of months then parked the car near a place called 'Buzzy's Big Nightclub.' "It still had the Ohio plates."
Three marriages and five kids followed as Iannuzzi burrowed deeper into organized crime. He moved to Florida and became the protege of Gambino soldier Tommy Agro - a hoodlum straight off a Hollywood lot, with a flashy wardrobe, a big bankroll and a short fuse.
Iannuzzi provided muscle for Agro, who loaned him money to launch a loan-sharking operation. But as Joe Dogs fell behind on the payments, their friendship faded and Agro's anger grew. On Jan. 19, 1981, inside a Florida pizzeria, Iannuzzi took a terrible beating from his one-time mentor and some cronies.
His last memory before everything went black was Agro's alligator loafer sinking forcefully into his ribs. When he finally recovered, Iannuzzi joined up with the FBI and taped his fellow Mafiosi discussing their illicit businesses. "All these guys convicted themselves with their big mouths," Iannuzzi says. "All I did was tape it. They all talked their heads off."
When the chatter finally stopped, Colombo boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico went to jail along with another dozen mobsters - including the brutal Agro, who died of cancer in 1987.
Iannuzzi went into witness protection after surviving a murder attempt on a Florida interstate. Today he demurs when asked if he's ever killed somebody: "My answer is, 'That's a rude question.' Let's go onto another subject."
Iannuzzi soon was supplementing his witness protection stipend as a writer. But he was booted from the program in October 1993 after violating its rules: He returned to New York to promote "The Mob Cookbook" on David Letterman's show. He would have to protect himself.
Iannuzzi just published another book, "Cooking on the Lam," which intersperses recipes for brook trout amandine and strawberries with Grand Marinier sauce with tales of life in and out of the mob. It's his fourth book; in his biggest non-mob score, he was paid $250,000 for his autobiography. "How many people wrote one book, much less four?" he asks. "I'm trying to do things the hard way: honest."
Iannuzzi stays in contact with one of his daughters, who calls him 10 times a day. "She loves her dad," he says. He avoids contact with all of his other old friends and stays away from New York and its environs.
Iannuzzi knows sitting alone on Christmas is not necessarily the worst thing. Henry Hill, the infamous mob informant whose story became the Oscar-winning movie "GoodFellas," won't be alone this Christmas - he'll share his meal with the rest of the inmates at the Lincoln County Jail in North Platte, Neb. Hill, a fellow witness protection alumnus, is finishing up a six-month stretch following his July arrest on drug charges.
At 74, Joe Dogs has slowed down quite a bit. He recently survived "triple A surgery" - operations on his aorta, abdomen and an aneurysm. He shares his apartment with two Yorkshire terriers and confides some of the tamer old tales to a few locals.
"Some of them are still scared to death of me," says Iannuzzi. "I don't know why. I'm a nice guy. I say that every day to myself."
Thanks to Larry McShane
On Dec. 25, when much of the world opens presents beneath the tree or enjoys a turkey dinner, Joe Iannuzzi will spend another lonely holiday far from his family, his friends, his city. Maybe knock back a couple of drinks, probably shed a few tears.
"It's sad," says Joe Dogs, whose nickname pays homage to a long fascination with gambling on greyhounds. "Very sad." And very predictable, given Iannuzzi's past. Once a made member of New York's Genovese crime family, Iannuzzi survived a vicious mob beating in 1981 that left him near dead. He awoke in a Florida hospital to find a priest giving him the last rites.
Months later, Iannuzzi recovered. He became convinced that revenge, even more than laughter, was the best medicine. He became an informer, testified at a dozen trials, put away some old pals. A botched mob hit sent him into the federal Witness Protection Program. And now, 24 years after he flipped for the feds, every Christmas brings a reminder of what he left behind.Joe Dogs may eat alone on Christmas, but he's not the only one. Since 1971, more than 7,700 witnesses were relocated after testifying for the federal government at the risk of their lives. Not all wound up as lonesome as Iannuzzi; 9,800 family members were relocated with them. But they're all far from home, and for many, the holidays are a melancholy time.
"There's tremendous pressure to return home. We sympathize with it, but that's absolutely forbidden," says Dave Turner of the U.S. Marshals Service, which runs witness protection.
Ianuzzi hasn't gone home. He abandoned the high-end world of New York and Florida for low-profile homes in Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama. He now resides in an undisclosed Midwest location where "I gotta travel 100 miles to go to a decent restaurant."
He's gotten used to the rootless life but not Christmas on the lam. "The very worst for me," Iannuzzi says over the phone from his apartment, his accent still betraying his New York roots. "I never had the warm feelings that a normal individual would have during that holiday. ... I haven't been around my family since 1982. "You count the Christmas days."
It wasn't always this way. When he was with the mob, every day was a holiday, and he greeted every maitre d' and doorman with a flash of cash. The son of a suburban bookie, he grew up among mobsters north of the Bronx. His first arrest came at age 14. He worked briefly as a dognapper, returning the pilfered pooches once their owners posted a reward.
Iannuzzi had a straight gig as a cook, working in diners and hot dog stands. It was at a classy restaurant in Cleveland that he received professional training, emerging as a saucier. But after a year, he longed for home. "It was time for me to leave," he says. "So I stole a car and went back to New York. It was less expensive that way. I stole a pink Lincoln. Can you imagine? I kept it for a couple of months then parked the car near a place called 'Buzzy's Big Nightclub.' "It still had the Ohio plates."
Three marriages and five kids followed as Iannuzzi burrowed deeper into organized crime. He moved to Florida and became the protege of Gambino soldier Tommy Agro - a hoodlum straight off a Hollywood lot, with a flashy wardrobe, a big bankroll and a short fuse.
Iannuzzi provided muscle for Agro, who loaned him money to launch a loan-sharking operation. But as Joe Dogs fell behind on the payments, their friendship faded and Agro's anger grew. On Jan. 19, 1981, inside a Florida pizzeria, Iannuzzi took a terrible beating from his one-time mentor and some cronies.
His last memory before everything went black was Agro's alligator loafer sinking forcefully into his ribs. When he finally recovered, Iannuzzi joined up with the FBI and taped his fellow Mafiosi discussing their illicit businesses. "All these guys convicted themselves with their big mouths," Iannuzzi says. "All I did was tape it. They all talked their heads off."
When the chatter finally stopped, Colombo boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico went to jail along with another dozen mobsters - including the brutal Agro, who died of cancer in 1987.
Iannuzzi went into witness protection after surviving a murder attempt on a Florida interstate. Today he demurs when asked if he's ever killed somebody: "My answer is, 'That's a rude question.' Let's go onto another subject."
Iannuzzi soon was supplementing his witness protection stipend as a writer. But he was booted from the program in October 1993 after violating its rules: He returned to New York to promote "The Mob Cookbook" on David Letterman's show. He would have to protect himself.
Iannuzzi just published another book, "Cooking on the Lam," which intersperses recipes for brook trout amandine and strawberries with Grand Marinier sauce with tales of life in and out of the mob. It's his fourth book; in his biggest non-mob score, he was paid $250,000 for his autobiography. "How many people wrote one book, much less four?" he asks. "I'm trying to do things the hard way: honest."
Iannuzzi stays in contact with one of his daughters, who calls him 10 times a day. "She loves her dad," he says. He avoids contact with all of his other old friends and stays away from New York and its environs.
Iannuzzi knows sitting alone on Christmas is not necessarily the worst thing. Henry Hill, the infamous mob informant whose story became the Oscar-winning movie "GoodFellas," won't be alone this Christmas - he'll share his meal with the rest of the inmates at the Lincoln County Jail in North Platte, Neb. Hill, a fellow witness protection alumnus, is finishing up a six-month stretch following his July arrest on drug charges.
At 74, Joe Dogs has slowed down quite a bit. He recently survived "triple A surgery" - operations on his aorta, abdomen and an aneurysm. He shares his apartment with two Yorkshire terriers and confides some of the tamer old tales to a few locals.
"Some of them are still scared to death of me," says Iannuzzi. "I don't know why. I'm a nice guy. I say that every day to myself."
Thanks to Larry McShane
Remembering the PJ Don
Friends of ours: Vincent "Chin" Gigante, Genovese Crime Family, John Gotti, Paul Castellano, Gambino Crime Family. Thomas Eboli, Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, Phillip Lombardo, Mario Gigante
Vincent "Chin" Gigante, boss of the Genovese crime family, who was noted for walking the streets of the Village near his Sullivan St. social club dressed in pajamas and bathrobe and mumbling to himself, died in a federal prison hospital in Missouri on Dec. 19 at the age of 77. He was serving a 12-year sentence for racketeering, conspiring to kill the late John Gotti for Gotti's role in the unsanctioned killing of the Gambino crime boss Paul Castellano, and for obstructing justice by pretending - successfully for three decades - to be mad in order to avoid criminal prosecution. Gigante died of an apparent heart attack at 5:15 a.m. in the same Springfield, Mo., federal prison medical center where Gotti and other underworld bosses died.
He was a promising light-heavyweight boxer whose ring career in the 1940s was managed by Thomas Eboli, a reputed mobster. Impressed by Gigante's 21 boxing wins, the mob boss Vito Genovese took him under his wing. A doorman at The Majestic apartments on Central Park West identified Gigante as the shooter in the 1957 attempted assassination of the crime lord Frank Costello, whom Genovese was trying to supplant. Costello survived the shooting but refused to identify Gigante and the charges were dropped.
Gigante rose in the Genovese family and in 1985 became the boss, succeeding Philip Lombardo, according to a Daily News article. But Chin began his bizarre and deceptive behavior as early as 1969 when he was first hospitalized for psychiatric examination. He finally gave up the mad act in 2003 after federal investigators found prison witnesses who heard Gigante speaking very sanely on the telephone, according to a Daily News article
Gigante got his nickname because his mother called him Vincenzo (pronounced Vinchenzo). Born March 29, 1928, he was the third of five brothers. His mother moved into the Mitchell-Lama co-op at 505 LaGuardia Pl., and Gigante - who always had an apartment of his own in the South Village - frequently visited there until she died a few years ago.
City Councilmember Alan Gerson, who grew up in 505 LaGuardia Pl. and still lives there, said it was known that Gigante often came by the apartment of his mother, who spoke little English and was affectionately regarded in the building. "He spent quite a bit of time visiting his mother, both visiting and overnight," Gerson said. "He was a frequent, regular visitor, until he went out of town, so to speak."
Neighbors reportedly knew the building was sometimes under surveillance by federal agents and that Gigante brought associates there for meetings. The apartment is now home to a surviving brother, Reverend Louis Gigante, a retired priest, former Bronx councilmember and director of a Bronx nonprofit housing organization.
An older brother, Mario, 80, reputed to be an elder in the Genovese crime family, also survives. Vincent Gigante leaves five children that he had with his wife, Olympia, and three more children he had with another woman, Olympia Esposito.
Thanks to Albert Amateau
Vincent "Chin" Gigante, boss of the Genovese crime family, who was noted for walking the streets of the Village near his Sullivan St. social club dressed in pajamas and bathrobe and mumbling to himself, died in a federal prison hospital in Missouri on Dec. 19 at the age of 77. He was serving a 12-year sentence for racketeering, conspiring to kill the late John Gotti for Gotti's role in the unsanctioned killing of the Gambino crime boss Paul Castellano, and for obstructing justice by pretending - successfully for three decades - to be mad in order to avoid criminal prosecution. Gigante died of an apparent heart attack at 5:15 a.m. in the same Springfield, Mo., federal prison medical center where Gotti and other underworld bosses died.
He was a promising light-heavyweight boxer whose ring career in the 1940s was managed by Thomas Eboli, a reputed mobster. Impressed by Gigante's 21 boxing wins, the mob boss Vito Genovese took him under his wing. A doorman at The Majestic apartments on Central Park West identified Gigante as the shooter in the 1957 attempted assassination of the crime lord Frank Costello, whom Genovese was trying to supplant. Costello survived the shooting but refused to identify Gigante and the charges were dropped.
Gigante rose in the Genovese family and in 1985 became the boss, succeeding Philip Lombardo, according to a Daily News article. But Chin began his bizarre and deceptive behavior as early as 1969 when he was first hospitalized for psychiatric examination. He finally gave up the mad act in 2003 after federal investigators found prison witnesses who heard Gigante speaking very sanely on the telephone, according to a Daily News article
Gigante got his nickname because his mother called him Vincenzo (pronounced Vinchenzo). Born March 29, 1928, he was the third of five brothers. His mother moved into the Mitchell-Lama co-op at 505 LaGuardia Pl., and Gigante - who always had an apartment of his own in the South Village - frequently visited there until she died a few years ago.
City Councilmember Alan Gerson, who grew up in 505 LaGuardia Pl. and still lives there, said it was known that Gigante often came by the apartment of his mother, who spoke little English and was affectionately regarded in the building. "He spent quite a bit of time visiting his mother, both visiting and overnight," Gerson said. "He was a frequent, regular visitor, until he went out of town, so to speak."
Neighbors reportedly knew the building was sometimes under surveillance by federal agents and that Gigante brought associates there for meetings. The apartment is now home to a surviving brother, Reverend Louis Gigante, a retired priest, former Bronx councilmember and director of a Bronx nonprofit housing organization.
An older brother, Mario, 80, reputed to be an elder in the Genovese crime family, also survives. Vincent Gigante leaves five children that he had with his wife, Olympia, and three more children he had with another woman, Olympia Esposito.
Thanks to Albert Amateau
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Vincent "The Chin" Gigante Dies
Friends of ours: Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, Genovese Crime Family
US mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who avoided jail for decades by wandering Manhattan streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers as part of an elaborate feigned mental illness, has died in prison. He was 77.
Mafioso Gigante died at the US Medical Centre for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, early today, said prison spokesman Al Quintero. "The cause of death is currently unknown. He had a history of coronary disease."
Dubbed the "Oddfather" for his bizarre behaviour, the former Genovese crime family head, an ex-boxer whose lengthy string of victories over prosecutors ended with a July 1997 racketeering conviction, finally admitted his insanity ruse at an April 2003 court hearing.
After nearly a quarter-century of public craziness, Gigante calmly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his deception. He then chatted amiably with his son, shook hands with defence lawyers and even laughed at one point.
US mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who avoided jail for decades by wandering Manhattan streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers as part of an elaborate feigned mental illness, has died in prison. He was 77.
Mafioso Gigante died at the US Medical Centre for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, early today, said prison spokesman Al Quintero. "The cause of death is currently unknown. He had a history of coronary disease."
Dubbed the "Oddfather" for his bizarre behaviour, the former Genovese crime family head, an ex-boxer whose lengthy string of victories over prosecutors ended with a July 1997 racketeering conviction, finally admitted his insanity ruse at an April 2003 court hearing.
After nearly a quarter-century of public craziness, Gigante calmly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his deception. He then chatted amiably with his son, shook hands with defence lawyers and even laughed at one point.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Lawyer: Mob client's body in trunk
Friends of ours: Lawrence Ricci, Genovese Crime Family
A body believed to be that of a mobster who vanished during his waterfront corruption trial was found in the trunk of a car parked behind a diner in New Jersey. Investigators had yet to identify the victim positively as Lawrence Ricci, a reputed Genovese family capo last seen on October 7. But Ricci's lawyer said the body found Wednesday at the Huck Finn Diner in Union, New Jersey, was definitely his client.
"There's not the slightest doubt. The vehicle was the last vehicle he was seen in. Does anyone think it's somebody other than him?" said attorney Martin Schmukler. Schmukler won an acquittal for Ricci in federal court in Brooklyn after the mobster's disappearance. The 60-year-old Ricci had been accused of steering a dockworkers union contract to a mob-connected pharmaceutical company.
One news report suggested he was killed after ignoring a Mafia "request" to cop a plea in the waterfront trial. A law enforcement official was also quoted as saying the slaying was the result of an unrelated power struggle in Ricci's mob crew. The answers will eventually come out, said Ronald Goldstock, former head of the New York state Organized Crime Task Force. "In the old days, you might never find out," Goldstock said. "In current times, you will because somebody will talk. You can't keep these mob guys quiet anymore."
A body believed to be that of a mobster who vanished during his waterfront corruption trial was found in the trunk of a car parked behind a diner in New Jersey. Investigators had yet to identify the victim positively as Lawrence Ricci, a reputed Genovese family capo last seen on October 7. But Ricci's lawyer said the body found Wednesday at the Huck Finn Diner in Union, New Jersey, was definitely his client.
"There's not the slightest doubt. The vehicle was the last vehicle he was seen in. Does anyone think it's somebody other than him?" said attorney Martin Schmukler. Schmukler won an acquittal for Ricci in federal court in Brooklyn after the mobster's disappearance. The 60-year-old Ricci had been accused of steering a dockworkers union contract to a mob-connected pharmaceutical company.
One news report suggested he was killed after ignoring a Mafia "request" to cop a plea in the waterfront trial. A law enforcement official was also quoted as saying the slaying was the result of an unrelated power struggle in Ricci's mob crew. The answers will eventually come out, said Ronald Goldstock, former head of the New York state Organized Crime Task Force. "In the old days, you might never find out," Goldstock said. "In current times, you will because somebody will talk. You can't keep these mob guys quiet anymore."
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Pier Pressure
Friends of ours: Alex "The Ox" DeBrizzi, Anthony Scotto, Gambino Family, Genovese Family, George Barone, Tommy Cafaro
Friends of mine: Al Cernadas
Mob domination of the dock workers' union is the stuff of legend in New York. For more than half a century, the International Longshoremen's Association has provided a haven for a rogues' gallery of hoodlums, ranging from Alex "The Ox" DeBrizzi, who kept his local union's treasury in a jar at home, to the urbane Anthony Scotto, the ex-Mafia capo who called mayors and governors his friends. With leadership like that, the ILA had a decades-long losing streak in the city's courtrooms, as scores of officials were convicted of extortion, racketeering, and worse crimes perpetrated from their waterfront roosts. But that streak ended dramatically this month when a pair of high-salaried ILA officials won acquittal on fraud and conspiracy charges in Brooklyn federal court. "This case is about the Mafia's stranglehold on the ILA," prosecutors promised jurors when the case got under way in late September. But eight weeks later, the jury found Harold Daggett, the head of New Jersey's most powerful local union, and Arthur Coffey, the leader of its growing Florida chapters, not guilty on all counts. Jurors even voted to acquit a third defendant, an alleged captain in the Genovese crime family who disappeared and was believed to have been murdered midway through the trial. "The jury was so disgusted they acquitted an empty chair," said Gerald McMahon, a defense attorney in the case.
The only conviction was of a man named Al Cernadas, the former leader of a large Newark local union who had the bad luck to have pled guilty before the trial began, admitting that he knew about, but failed to prevent, a mob plot to foist an expensive medical plan upon the members.
Immediately after the acquittals on November 8, the union issued a press release hailing the verdict. "Today is a wonderful day for our ILA," said international union president John Bowers, whose father and uncle once ruled the "pistol local" on Manhattan's West Side docks, so named because that weapon settled all disputes.
Two days later, Bowers's office announced that the union had taken additional cleanup steps. A new code of ethics that bars officials from associating with organized crime figures, among other prohibitions, was made a permanent part of the ILA constitution; an outside investigator - former state appellate judge Milton Mollen - was given an expanded, three-year term to look into corruption allegations, and a former top federal judge, George C. Pratt, was named to serve as a final arbiter on ethical matters. "It is a checks-and-balances system to show that the ILA is serious about reform and protecting members' rights," said union spokesman James McNamara.
The union's other acknowledged goal is to short-circuit a civil racketeering case against the ILA filed in Brooklyn by the U.S. Department of Justice this summer. The lawsuit alleges that the union has long been controlled by the Gambino and Genovese crime families and calls for a court-im posed trusteeship and the ouster of Bowers and other top officials. When the lawsuit was filed in July, Bowers accused the government of perpetuating "an outdated stereotype" of the union and focusing on "stale allegations of wrongdoing." Bowers said the feds had ignored its efforts to turn itself around, including adopting the ethics code and hiring Judge Mollen.
"The ILA's commitment to honest trade unionism and vigorous representation of its members' interests is second to none," said Bowers. But not everyone's been convinced. Tony Perlstein, co-chairman of a group called the Longshore Workers' Coalition which has members at ports around the country, said the union has much further to go. "I don't believe having an ethics counsel is sufficient," he said. The coalition is demanding direct elections for members of the union's executive council and salary caps for officers. (At the Brooklyn trial, prosecutors made a point of introducing evidence of the high salaries paid Coffey, who took in $353,000 in 2003, and Daggett, who topped out at $475,000 the same year.)
Part of the government's problem was that the defendants were not accused of violent crimes, while its own witnesses had murder and mayhem on their resumes.
The prosecution's most compelling testimony came from George Barone, an ailing 81-year-old former top ILA leader and Genovese mobster. Barone, whose testimony helped convict a group of Gambino mobsters at an earlier trial, said he had committed more hits than he had counted. "I didn't keep a scorecard, y'know," he barked at one point. His tool of choice was a gun, and his deadly m.o., defense attorney McMahon pointed out, was one shot to the chest to stun the victim, followed by a kill shot to the head.
At some point in the early 1980s Barone had threatened to kill Daggett, then a young union official. Barone told the story in a matter-of-fact manner, acknowledging that Daggett's demise was discussed and that someone had pegged a shot in his direction during the confrontation. But then an unusual thing happened. Guided by George Daggett, his attorney (and cousin), Harold Daggett took the stand and gave his own account of the incident.
He was in the midst of making plans to build a new headquarters for his union, Local 1804-1, moving it from the lower West Side docks to northern New Jersey, where the jobs had already migrated, when a mob messenger named Tommy Cafaro told him that Barone wanted to see him. Daggett said he agreed to get in the car, and it raced up the FDR Drive to East 115th Street. There, he was escorted into a large fruit and vegetable store, through a steel door to a darkened room at the rear. "It was dark, boxes all around, no windows," said Daggett. A single lightbulb illuminated Barone, who sat with his back to him. Two other men stood at the door. On the floor was a large, empty canvas bag with an open zipper. All of a sudden, Barone threw down the paper he'd been reading and snarled at Daggett: "You motherfucker, who the fuck are you to take this local away from me? I'm going to fuckin' kill you." Daggett broke down sobbing as he told the story ("blubbering," as the Daily News' John Marzulli reported it). Judge Leo Glasser told him to relax and take a drink of water. Daggett soldiered on. " 'This is my fuckin' local; I built this local,' " he said Barone screamed. " 'I'll kill you, your wife, and children.' He pulled out a gun and shoved it in my head. I said, 'Please, don't do this to me,' and he cocked back the trigger, and he said, 'I will blow your brains all over the fuckin' room. I'm going to kill you.' "
Barone didn't shoot. Instead, after some more growling, he told Daggett he could leave. But he couldn't. "I was so nervous I urinated all over myself," Daggett testified. "I couldn't walk. I said, 'I can't move.' I thought one of them was going to shoot me in the back of the head, and I opened the door, and I could hardly walk. I walked and I kept thinking, 'They're going to shoot me.' " At the door, Barone dismissed the staggering Daggett. "Take this guy back to his local," Barone instructed his emissary.
Pending the outcome of the trial, Daggett and Coffey were both suspended from their posts, albeit with pay. Since their acquittal, "they're unsuspended," an ILA spokesman said. But Judge Mollen, the union's ethical-practices counsel, still has jurisdiction over any violations he finds. "I have obtained the transcript of the trial and I have a big stack of it on the floor," he said. "I am reading."
Thanks to Tom Robbins - Village Voice
Friends of mine: Al Cernadas
Mob domination of the dock workers' union is the stuff of legend in New York. For more than half a century, the International Longshoremen's Association has provided a haven for a rogues' gallery of hoodlums, ranging from Alex "The Ox" DeBrizzi, who kept his local union's treasury in a jar at home, to the urbane Anthony Scotto, the ex-Mafia capo who called mayors and governors his friends. With leadership like that, the ILA had a decades-long losing streak in the city's courtrooms, as scores of officials were convicted of extortion, racketeering, and worse crimes perpetrated from their waterfront roosts. But that streak ended dramatically this month when a pair of high-salaried ILA officials won acquittal on fraud and conspiracy charges in Brooklyn federal court. "This case is about the Mafia's stranglehold on the ILA," prosecutors promised jurors when the case got under way in late September. But eight weeks later, the jury found Harold Daggett, the head of New Jersey's most powerful local union, and Arthur Coffey, the leader of its growing Florida chapters, not guilty on all counts. Jurors even voted to acquit a third defendant, an alleged captain in the Genovese crime family who disappeared and was believed to have been murdered midway through the trial. "The jury was so disgusted they acquitted an empty chair," said Gerald McMahon, a defense attorney in the case.
The only conviction was of a man named Al Cernadas, the former leader of a large Newark local union who had the bad luck to have pled guilty before the trial began, admitting that he knew about, but failed to prevent, a mob plot to foist an expensive medical plan upon the members.
Immediately after the acquittals on November 8, the union issued a press release hailing the verdict. "Today is a wonderful day for our ILA," said international union president John Bowers, whose father and uncle once ruled the "pistol local" on Manhattan's West Side docks, so named because that weapon settled all disputes.
Two days later, Bowers's office announced that the union had taken additional cleanup steps. A new code of ethics that bars officials from associating with organized crime figures, among other prohibitions, was made a permanent part of the ILA constitution; an outside investigator - former state appellate judge Milton Mollen - was given an expanded, three-year term to look into corruption allegations, and a former top federal judge, George C. Pratt, was named to serve as a final arbiter on ethical matters. "It is a checks-and-balances system to show that the ILA is serious about reform and protecting members' rights," said union spokesman James McNamara.
The union's other acknowledged goal is to short-circuit a civil racketeering case against the ILA filed in Brooklyn by the U.S. Department of Justice this summer. The lawsuit alleges that the union has long been controlled by the Gambino and Genovese crime families and calls for a court-im posed trusteeship and the ouster of Bowers and other top officials. When the lawsuit was filed in July, Bowers accused the government of perpetuating "an outdated stereotype" of the union and focusing on "stale allegations of wrongdoing." Bowers said the feds had ignored its efforts to turn itself around, including adopting the ethics code and hiring Judge Mollen.
"The ILA's commitment to honest trade unionism and vigorous representation of its members' interests is second to none," said Bowers. But not everyone's been convinced. Tony Perlstein, co-chairman of a group called the Longshore Workers' Coalition which has members at ports around the country, said the union has much further to go. "I don't believe having an ethics counsel is sufficient," he said. The coalition is demanding direct elections for members of the union's executive council and salary caps for officers. (At the Brooklyn trial, prosecutors made a point of introducing evidence of the high salaries paid Coffey, who took in $353,000 in 2003, and Daggett, who topped out at $475,000 the same year.)
Part of the government's problem was that the defendants were not accused of violent crimes, while its own witnesses had murder and mayhem on their resumes.
The prosecution's most compelling testimony came from George Barone, an ailing 81-year-old former top ILA leader and Genovese mobster. Barone, whose testimony helped convict a group of Gambino mobsters at an earlier trial, said he had committed more hits than he had counted. "I didn't keep a scorecard, y'know," he barked at one point. His tool of choice was a gun, and his deadly m.o., defense attorney McMahon pointed out, was one shot to the chest to stun the victim, followed by a kill shot to the head.
At some point in the early 1980s Barone had threatened to kill Daggett, then a young union official. Barone told the story in a matter-of-fact manner, acknowledging that Daggett's demise was discussed and that someone had pegged a shot in his direction during the confrontation. But then an unusual thing happened. Guided by George Daggett, his attorney (and cousin), Harold Daggett took the stand and gave his own account of the incident.
He was in the midst of making plans to build a new headquarters for his union, Local 1804-1, moving it from the lower West Side docks to northern New Jersey, where the jobs had already migrated, when a mob messenger named Tommy Cafaro told him that Barone wanted to see him. Daggett said he agreed to get in the car, and it raced up the FDR Drive to East 115th Street. There, he was escorted into a large fruit and vegetable store, through a steel door to a darkened room at the rear. "It was dark, boxes all around, no windows," said Daggett. A single lightbulb illuminated Barone, who sat with his back to him. Two other men stood at the door. On the floor was a large, empty canvas bag with an open zipper. All of a sudden, Barone threw down the paper he'd been reading and snarled at Daggett: "You motherfucker, who the fuck are you to take this local away from me? I'm going to fuckin' kill you." Daggett broke down sobbing as he told the story ("blubbering," as the Daily News' John Marzulli reported it). Judge Leo Glasser told him to relax and take a drink of water. Daggett soldiered on. " 'This is my fuckin' local; I built this local,' " he said Barone screamed. " 'I'll kill you, your wife, and children.' He pulled out a gun and shoved it in my head. I said, 'Please, don't do this to me,' and he cocked back the trigger, and he said, 'I will blow your brains all over the fuckin' room. I'm going to kill you.' "
Barone didn't shoot. Instead, after some more growling, he told Daggett he could leave. But he couldn't. "I was so nervous I urinated all over myself," Daggett testified. "I couldn't walk. I said, 'I can't move.' I thought one of them was going to shoot me in the back of the head, and I opened the door, and I could hardly walk. I walked and I kept thinking, 'They're going to shoot me.' " At the door, Barone dismissed the staggering Daggett. "Take this guy back to his local," Barone instructed his emissary.
Pending the outcome of the trial, Daggett and Coffey were both suspended from their posts, albeit with pay. Since their acquittal, "they're unsuspended," an ILA spokesman said. But Judge Mollen, the union's ethical-practices counsel, still has jurisdiction over any violations he finds. "I have obtained the transcript of the trial and I have a big stack of it on the floor," he said. "I am reading."
Thanks to Tom Robbins - Village Voice
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Acquittal for Union Execs and Mafia Capo
Friends of ours: Larry Ricci, Genovese Crime Family
Friends of mine: Harold Daggett, Arthur Coffey
Two longshoremen's union executives and a Mafia capo were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they tried to help the mob keep its grip on the New York waterfront. The verdict may be little consolation for defendant Larry Ricci, a Genovese family captain who remains missing after disappearing in the middle of the trial _ the possible target of a mob hit.
"I hope it brings some solace to the family. You know, at least that a jury saw innocence here," said Ricci attorney Martin Schmukler, who finished the trial with his client absent. "He's either been abducted _ that is unlikely because he'd be far too difficult a person to keep hostage _ or killed."
Either way, defense attorneys said, the acquittals of International Longshoremen's Association officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey could cripple a federal lawsuit seeking to shake the mob's grasp on the ILA by taking control of the powerful union. Supporters and relatives gasped and burst into tears as Coffey and Daggett were declared not guilty of extortion and mail fraud conspiracy charges. Daggett, 59, and Coffey, 62, were charged with conspiring with the Genovese family to install Daggett as the mob-controlled puppet president of the ILA. They had faced 20-year maximum sentences if convicted.
Brooklyn prosecutors have moved for a trustee to oversee the New York-based union, which inspired the 1954 film "On the Waterfront
." The union represents 45,000 dockworkers and other employees at three dozen ports from Maine to Texas. "Today is a wonderful day for the ILA," president John Bowers said in a statement. "We rejoice in the happy outcome."
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf did not comment on the civil lawsuit but said her office would continue to prosecute union corruption. "We respect the jury's verdict in this case and will continue our vigorous efforts," the spokesman said.
A law-enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said authorities remain unconvinced that Ricci disappeared because he was murdered. A failure to show up now that he has been acquitted would be more convincing, the official said.
Ricci, 60, who had faced a maximum five-year sentence if convicted, had been free on $500,000 bond on a mail and wire fraud conspiracy charge for allegedly trying to steer a lucrative union health care contract to a mob-linked firm. He was last seen in Carteret, N.J., on Oct. 7, three weeks into the trial. He switched from one borrowed car to another as if he thought he was being followed, but he was not being tracked by police or federal agents, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
If he reappears he could face a possible five-year sentence for skipping bail mid-trial. If Ricci was killed by the mob, it could have been for a reason unrelated to the trial, the official said. A hit would be evidence that a decades-long effort to uproot the mob has not completely robbed it of the power and money derived from gambling, loan-sharking and labor corruption.
"When people disappear like that from the Mafia they usually don't turn up alive," said Selwyn Raab, author of "Five Families
," a history of organized crime in New York. "There's always somebody circulating who knows how to do these things. ... They've been doing it for a long time and they think they can get away with it."
Daggett, who had been suspended as the ILA International's assistant general organizer, alternated between relief and anger as he left the courthouse a free man. "The truth'll set you free," he said. "Where do I go to get my reputation back now?"
Thanks to Michael Weissenstein
Friends of mine: Harold Daggett, Arthur Coffey
Two longshoremen's union executives and a Mafia capo were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they tried to help the mob keep its grip on the New York waterfront. The verdict may be little consolation for defendant Larry Ricci, a Genovese family captain who remains missing after disappearing in the middle of the trial _ the possible target of a mob hit.
"I hope it brings some solace to the family. You know, at least that a jury saw innocence here," said Ricci attorney Martin Schmukler, who finished the trial with his client absent. "He's either been abducted _ that is unlikely because he'd be far too difficult a person to keep hostage _ or killed."
Either way, defense attorneys said, the acquittals of International Longshoremen's Association officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey could cripple a federal lawsuit seeking to shake the mob's grasp on the ILA by taking control of the powerful union. Supporters and relatives gasped and burst into tears as Coffey and Daggett were declared not guilty of extortion and mail fraud conspiracy charges. Daggett, 59, and Coffey, 62, were charged with conspiring with the Genovese family to install Daggett as the mob-controlled puppet president of the ILA. They had faced 20-year maximum sentences if convicted.
Brooklyn prosecutors have moved for a trustee to oversee the New York-based union, which inspired the 1954 film "On the Waterfront
." The union represents 45,000 dockworkers and other employees at three dozen ports from Maine to Texas. "Today is a wonderful day for the ILA," president John Bowers said in a statement. "We rejoice in the happy outcome."A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf did not comment on the civil lawsuit but said her office would continue to prosecute union corruption. "We respect the jury's verdict in this case and will continue our vigorous efforts," the spokesman said.
A law-enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said authorities remain unconvinced that Ricci disappeared because he was murdered. A failure to show up now that he has been acquitted would be more convincing, the official said.
Ricci, 60, who had faced a maximum five-year sentence if convicted, had been free on $500,000 bond on a mail and wire fraud conspiracy charge for allegedly trying to steer a lucrative union health care contract to a mob-linked firm. He was last seen in Carteret, N.J., on Oct. 7, three weeks into the trial. He switched from one borrowed car to another as if he thought he was being followed, but he was not being tracked by police or federal agents, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
If he reappears he could face a possible five-year sentence for skipping bail mid-trial. If Ricci was killed by the mob, it could have been for a reason unrelated to the trial, the official said. A hit would be evidence that a decades-long effort to uproot the mob has not completely robbed it of the power and money derived from gambling, loan-sharking and labor corruption.
"When people disappear like that from the Mafia they usually don't turn up alive," said Selwyn Raab, author of "Five Families
," a history of organized crime in New York. "There's always somebody circulating who knows how to do these things. ... They've been doing it for a long time and they think they can get away with it."Daggett, who had been suspended as the ILA International's assistant general organizer, alternated between relief and anger as he left the courthouse a free man. "The truth'll set you free," he said. "Where do I go to get my reputation back now?"
Thanks to Michael Weissenstein
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Lawyer: Cleared mobster may be dead
Friends of ours: Lawrence Ricci, Genovese Crime Family
Friends of mine: Harold Daggett, Arthur Coffey
Two executives of the International Longshoremen's Association and a reputed mobster who went missing mid-trial were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they helped the Mafia keep its grip on the New York waterfront. Supporters gasped and burst into tears as a federal jury in Brooklyn found union officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey not guilty of extortion and fraud charges.
The jury also acquitted Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Genovese crime family associate who had been accused of wire and mail fraud. But the victory may turn out to be empty for Ricci, who vanished in the middle of the trial and is suspected to have been slain by the mob. His attorney said after the verdict that he believed Ricci had been killed, but he hoped the verdict gave his family solace. This reminds me of a scene in the movie Casino. All the mob bosses are sitting around discussing the big trial that is coming up and talking about who they can trust. They get to one guy in particular and as they go around the table, everyone agrees that this guy is a good man and can be trusted. Finally one of them goes: "Eh, why take the chance?" Bam, the guy is whacked. Same thing here with Ricci. The guy gets acquitted, but the mob thought, Eh, why take the chance?
Prosecutors had accused Ricci of working to award a lucrative union contract to a mob-tied pharmaceutical company. Daggett and Coffey were charged with conspiring with the Genovese crime family to install Daggett as the mob-controlled puppet president of the ILA.
Friends of mine: Harold Daggett, Arthur Coffey
Two executives of the International Longshoremen's Association and a reputed mobster who went missing mid-trial were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they helped the Mafia keep its grip on the New York waterfront. Supporters gasped and burst into tears as a federal jury in Brooklyn found union officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey not guilty of extortion and fraud charges.
The jury also acquitted Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Genovese crime family associate who had been accused of wire and mail fraud. But the victory may turn out to be empty for Ricci, who vanished in the middle of the trial and is suspected to have been slain by the mob. His attorney said after the verdict that he believed Ricci had been killed, but he hoped the verdict gave his family solace. This reminds me of a scene in the movie Casino. All the mob bosses are sitting around discussing the big trial that is coming up and talking about who they can trust. They get to one guy in particular and as they go around the table, everyone agrees that this guy is a good man and can be trusted. Finally one of them goes: "Eh, why take the chance?" Bam, the guy is whacked. Same thing here with Ricci. The guy gets acquitted, but the mob thought, Eh, why take the chance?
Prosecutors had accused Ricci of working to award a lucrative union contract to a mob-tied pharmaceutical company. Daggett and Coffey were charged with conspiring with the Genovese crime family to install Daggett as the mob-controlled puppet president of the ILA.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
A Mafia case that matters
Friends of ours: Genovese Crime Family, Gambino Crime Family, Vincent "Chin" Gigante, Peter Gotti, George Barone, Lawrence Ricci
Friends of mine: Harold Daggett, Arthur Coffey
Harold Daggett, of Sparta, will likely find out in the next few days which story a federal jury in Brooklyn believes: that he is a hardworking mechanic who worked his way up the ranks of the waterfront union, or — as the U.S. government says — that he is a "longtime associate" of organized crime. If the jury opts for the latter, Daggett, a 59-year-old father of three, could be headed to prison for up to 20 years.
After hearing the case for seven weeks in U.S. District Court, jurors spent all day Thursday deliberating and will return Monday morning to continue. Lawyers in the case hope they will reach a verdict by midweek. Daggett, the assistant general organizer of the International Longshoreman's Association, was indicted last year along with fellow executive Arthur Coffey, of Florida. Both are charged with extortion conspiracy and fraud for allegedly steering lucrative union contracts to mob-controlled businesses.
It's the latest offensive aimed at rooting out Mafia corruption on the docks — something the government has been trying to do for decades, since Marlon Brando starred in the 1954 film "On the Waterfront." Only now, the goal might be in sight.
Control of the docks has historically been shared by two of the "five families" of the New York Mafia — with the Genovese family in Manhattan, New Jersey and South Florida, and the Gambino family in Brooklyn and Staten Island. With the bosses of both families, Vincent "Chin" Gigante and Peter Gotti, along with other prominent mobsters, now in prison, prosecutors have turned to the allegedly corrupt officials who did their bidding for decades. "This is a big case," a well-known mob expert said Friday. "They've got all the gangsters, (and) this is a particularly important follow-up or complement to that."
On the heels of the current criminal case, the government also has filed a civil lawsuit against the ILA seeking to have just about every current executive permanently barred from union activity. Court-appointed monitors would then oversee new union elections.
Roslynn Mauskopf, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the lawsuit "seeks — once and for all — to end mob domination of this important labor union and put its future back into the hands of the rank-and-file members it was designed to serve."
The mob expert, who agreed to be quoted in this article on the condition that his name not be used, said the outcome of the Daggett-Coffey case may determine how the government will fare in the civil case — often called a "civil RICO" after the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. "Once (the feds) can convict these honchos, it'll go a long way toward establishing their civil case," the expert said. "This'll be like icing on the cake."
Coffey's defense attorney, Gerald McMahon — who in his opening statement called the case a politically-motivated attempt by the Justice Department to take over the union — said essentially the same thing. "Everybody knows that if they get a criminal conviction, it makes the civil RICO a slam dunk," McMahon said.
The core of the government's case is a meeting six years ago at a Miami Beach steakhouse between ILA president John Bowers and Genovese soldier George Barone. Coffey allegedly brought Bowers to the meeting. Bowers later recalled the encounter in a sworn deposition before the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. "You're doing a wonderful job," he said Barone told him. "We hope you stay forever. But if you ever leave, I would like to see Harold Daggett become president."
Bowers had been backing a Texas man not controlled by the Genovese family to be his successor, and Barone was there to let him know that was not a good idea, the government says. When asked by investigators how he responded, Bowers was matter-of-fact: "I am alone, one-on-one. I know of his reputation; I am not going to ask a lot of questions. I am figuring now how the hell to get out of the place."
Barone, 81, who has admitted murdering at least 10 people in his decades as a mobster, became an informant to avoid prison after a 2001 arrest, and is now the star witness for the prosecution. How reliable the jurors found Barone, and several other turncoats who testified in the trial, could be the deciding factor in their verdict.
The case may also rest on how reliable they found Daggett himself, who took the stand in his own defense during the trial's final week and denied that he even knows any mobsters — except, of course, for George Barone, who he said once held a gun to his head when he was trying to move his local out of Manhattan. "There is no mob in my local," Daggett testified.
Daggett, a third-generation dockworker who now earns almost a half-million dollars between his two jobs as the ILA assistant general organizer and president of the North Bergen local, lives in a gated mansion set back from a neighborhood of small-by-comparison three-garage homes on Green Road in Sparta. He is a parishioner at Our Lady of the Lake Roman Catholic Church and has been portrayed in his defense as an upstanding member of the community who fights for the rights of his laborers.
Daggett's lawyer, George Daggett — his cousin and the former Sussex County prosecutor — called the government's case an "anti-union prosecution" in his three-hour closing argument last week. "I'm pleased with the way the case went in," George Daggett said Friday. He added that he was pleased with what he saw as positive reactions, from some jurors, to his impassioned summation.
The case has had its unexpected twists. In the past two months, for instance, the number of defendants has dwindled from four to two. Or, if you will, 2 1/2.
A third ILA executive, Albert Cernadas — who also headed the union local in Port Newark — was named in a superseding indictment earlier this year but pleaded guilty a week before the trial began to a reduced conspiracy charge. Under the plea deal, he agreed to sever all ties with the union and will likely avoid significant prison time. Then, halfway through the trial, another defendant, a reputed Genovese captain named Lawrence Ricci, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Published reports cited investigative sources as saying they believed he had been killed by his fellow gangsters. However, Ricci remains merely "missing" in the eyes of the law, and he is still technically a defendant in the case. The judge in the case has instructed the jury not to draw any "negative inference" from his absence.
Thanks to BRENDAN BERLS
Friends of mine: Harold Daggett, Arthur Coffey
Harold Daggett, of Sparta, will likely find out in the next few days which story a federal jury in Brooklyn believes: that he is a hardworking mechanic who worked his way up the ranks of the waterfront union, or — as the U.S. government says — that he is a "longtime associate" of organized crime. If the jury opts for the latter, Daggett, a 59-year-old father of three, could be headed to prison for up to 20 years.
After hearing the case for seven weeks in U.S. District Court, jurors spent all day Thursday deliberating and will return Monday morning to continue. Lawyers in the case hope they will reach a verdict by midweek. Daggett, the assistant general organizer of the International Longshoreman's Association, was indicted last year along with fellow executive Arthur Coffey, of Florida. Both are charged with extortion conspiracy and fraud for allegedly steering lucrative union contracts to mob-controlled businesses.
It's the latest offensive aimed at rooting out Mafia corruption on the docks — something the government has been trying to do for decades, since Marlon Brando starred in the 1954 film "On the Waterfront." Only now, the goal might be in sight.
Control of the docks has historically been shared by two of the "five families" of the New York Mafia — with the Genovese family in Manhattan, New Jersey and South Florida, and the Gambino family in Brooklyn and Staten Island. With the bosses of both families, Vincent "Chin" Gigante and Peter Gotti, along with other prominent mobsters, now in prison, prosecutors have turned to the allegedly corrupt officials who did their bidding for decades. "This is a big case," a well-known mob expert said Friday. "They've got all the gangsters, (and) this is a particularly important follow-up or complement to that."
On the heels of the current criminal case, the government also has filed a civil lawsuit against the ILA seeking to have just about every current executive permanently barred from union activity. Court-appointed monitors would then oversee new union elections.
Roslynn Mauskopf, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the lawsuit "seeks — once and for all — to end mob domination of this important labor union and put its future back into the hands of the rank-and-file members it was designed to serve."
The mob expert, who agreed to be quoted in this article on the condition that his name not be used, said the outcome of the Daggett-Coffey case may determine how the government will fare in the civil case — often called a "civil RICO" after the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. "Once (the feds) can convict these honchos, it'll go a long way toward establishing their civil case," the expert said. "This'll be like icing on the cake."
Coffey's defense attorney, Gerald McMahon — who in his opening statement called the case a politically-motivated attempt by the Justice Department to take over the union — said essentially the same thing. "Everybody knows that if they get a criminal conviction, it makes the civil RICO a slam dunk," McMahon said.
The core of the government's case is a meeting six years ago at a Miami Beach steakhouse between ILA president John Bowers and Genovese soldier George Barone. Coffey allegedly brought Bowers to the meeting. Bowers later recalled the encounter in a sworn deposition before the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. "You're doing a wonderful job," he said Barone told him. "We hope you stay forever. But if you ever leave, I would like to see Harold Daggett become president."
Bowers had been backing a Texas man not controlled by the Genovese family to be his successor, and Barone was there to let him know that was not a good idea, the government says. When asked by investigators how he responded, Bowers was matter-of-fact: "I am alone, one-on-one. I know of his reputation; I am not going to ask a lot of questions. I am figuring now how the hell to get out of the place."
Barone, 81, who has admitted murdering at least 10 people in his decades as a mobster, became an informant to avoid prison after a 2001 arrest, and is now the star witness for the prosecution. How reliable the jurors found Barone, and several other turncoats who testified in the trial, could be the deciding factor in their verdict.
The case may also rest on how reliable they found Daggett himself, who took the stand in his own defense during the trial's final week and denied that he even knows any mobsters — except, of course, for George Barone, who he said once held a gun to his head when he was trying to move his local out of Manhattan. "There is no mob in my local," Daggett testified.
Daggett, a third-generation dockworker who now earns almost a half-million dollars between his two jobs as the ILA assistant general organizer and president of the North Bergen local, lives in a gated mansion set back from a neighborhood of small-by-comparison three-garage homes on Green Road in Sparta. He is a parishioner at Our Lady of the Lake Roman Catholic Church and has been portrayed in his defense as an upstanding member of the community who fights for the rights of his laborers.
Daggett's lawyer, George Daggett — his cousin and the former Sussex County prosecutor — called the government's case an "anti-union prosecution" in his three-hour closing argument last week. "I'm pleased with the way the case went in," George Daggett said Friday. He added that he was pleased with what he saw as positive reactions, from some jurors, to his impassioned summation.
The case has had its unexpected twists. In the past two months, for instance, the number of defendants has dwindled from four to two. Or, if you will, 2 1/2.
A third ILA executive, Albert Cernadas — who also headed the union local in Port Newark — was named in a superseding indictment earlier this year but pleaded guilty a week before the trial began to a reduced conspiracy charge. Under the plea deal, he agreed to sever all ties with the union and will likely avoid significant prison time. Then, halfway through the trial, another defendant, a reputed Genovese captain named Lawrence Ricci, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Published reports cited investigative sources as saying they believed he had been killed by his fellow gangsters. However, Ricci remains merely "missing" in the eyes of the law, and he is still technically a defendant in the case. The judge in the case has instructed the jury not to draw any "negative inference" from his absence.
Thanks to BRENDAN BERLS
Lawyer calls Mafia case 'anti-union'
Friends of ours: Genovese Crime Family, Lawrence Ricci
He had been talking for three hours straight, minus one 10-minute break, and George Daggett was just wrapping up his closing argument Tuesday afternoon in defense of his cousin, Harold, who is on trial on union corruption charges.
"The actions of Harold Daggett are inconsistent with the government's case," Daggett told the 12 jurors and two alternates as he concluded.
Seconds later, after Daggett said "Thank you" and strode back toward the defense table, half the courtroom gallery — a few dozen family members and supporters — erupted into applause.
That didn't sit well with the judge, who had barely said a word all day.
"Another outburst like that, and I'll exclude you from the courtroom," U.S. District Court Judge I. Leo Glasser said, rising to his feet. "That's inappropriate behavior, and I'll have none of it."
Glasser's brief chiding was merely a punctuation mark at the close of a lengthy day in court, during which the jury heard the end of the government's closing argument and two out of three defense lawyers'.
Harold Daggett, a Sparta resident and top executive in the International Longshoreman's Association, is charged along with fellow executive Arthur Coffey with extortion conspiracy and mail fraud in connection with the union's reputed ties with the Genovese crime family.
A third defendant, reputed Genovese captain Lawrence Ricci, disappeared midway through the trial, which started Sept. 20. He is unofficially believed to have been killed, but the jurors have been told not to draw any "negative inference" from his unexplained absence.
Ricci's lawyer, Martin Schmukler, also gave his closing argument Tuesday, speaking for about an hour. Schmulker's closing drew mainly on the argument that, outside the questionable testimony of several mob informants, there is no evidence against his client "other than a person socializing with other people."
Schmukler also drew laughter from the courtroom when he held up an unflattering mug shot of Ricci — introduced into evidence after Ricci disappeared — and said, "I'd be afraid to show this picture to his mother."
George Daggett, in his closing, was likewise dismissive of the informants' testimony — especially one of the government's star witnesses, former hit-man George Barone — but also went on the attack against the government lawyers, accusing them of bending facts and changing dates in order to get a conviction. "This is an anti-union prosecution," Daggett said more than once.
Daggett also painted his client as an honest man who, in moving his ILA local from Manhattan to North Bergen, kept it out of Mafia control. For instance, when Harold Daggett was made the secretary-treasurer of the northeastern district of the ILA, he refused to hire a mob accountant known as "Tax Doctor" to handle the funds.
"He (instead) went to Father Cassidy, in Sparta Township, out by the Delaware Water Gap," George Daggett said. "Is that an associate of the Genovese family, who takes $18 million and puts it under the care of a guy that was recommended by the parish priest?"
Tuesday was the second full day of closing arguments. Gerald McMahon, Coffey's attorney, will give his summation today, followed by a "rebuttal summation" in which the government can respond to the defense lawyers' statements. Glasser will then issue his instructions to the jury before they begin deliberating.
He had been talking for three hours straight, minus one 10-minute break, and George Daggett was just wrapping up his closing argument Tuesday afternoon in defense of his cousin, Harold, who is on trial on union corruption charges.
"The actions of Harold Daggett are inconsistent with the government's case," Daggett told the 12 jurors and two alternates as he concluded.
Seconds later, after Daggett said "Thank you" and strode back toward the defense table, half the courtroom gallery — a few dozen family members and supporters — erupted into applause.
That didn't sit well with the judge, who had barely said a word all day.
"Another outburst like that, and I'll exclude you from the courtroom," U.S. District Court Judge I. Leo Glasser said, rising to his feet. "That's inappropriate behavior, and I'll have none of it."
Glasser's brief chiding was merely a punctuation mark at the close of a lengthy day in court, during which the jury heard the end of the government's closing argument and two out of three defense lawyers'.
Harold Daggett, a Sparta resident and top executive in the International Longshoreman's Association, is charged along with fellow executive Arthur Coffey with extortion conspiracy and mail fraud in connection with the union's reputed ties with the Genovese crime family.
A third defendant, reputed Genovese captain Lawrence Ricci, disappeared midway through the trial, which started Sept. 20. He is unofficially believed to have been killed, but the jurors have been told not to draw any "negative inference" from his unexplained absence.
Ricci's lawyer, Martin Schmukler, also gave his closing argument Tuesday, speaking for about an hour. Schmulker's closing drew mainly on the argument that, outside the questionable testimony of several mob informants, there is no evidence against his client "other than a person socializing with other people."
Schmukler also drew laughter from the courtroom when he held up an unflattering mug shot of Ricci — introduced into evidence after Ricci disappeared — and said, "I'd be afraid to show this picture to his mother."
George Daggett, in his closing, was likewise dismissive of the informants' testimony — especially one of the government's star witnesses, former hit-man George Barone — but also went on the attack against the government lawyers, accusing them of bending facts and changing dates in order to get a conviction. "This is an anti-union prosecution," Daggett said more than once.
Daggett also painted his client as an honest man who, in moving his ILA local from Manhattan to North Bergen, kept it out of Mafia control. For instance, when Harold Daggett was made the secretary-treasurer of the northeastern district of the ILA, he refused to hire a mob accountant known as "Tax Doctor" to handle the funds.
"He (instead) went to Father Cassidy, in Sparta Township, out by the Delaware Water Gap," George Daggett said. "Is that an associate of the Genovese family, who takes $18 million and puts it under the care of a guy that was recommended by the parish priest?"
Tuesday was the second full day of closing arguments. Gerald McMahon, Coffey's attorney, will give his summation today, followed by a "rebuttal summation" in which the government can respond to the defense lawyers' statements. Glasser will then issue his instructions to the jury before they begin deliberating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)