The Chicago Syndicate: Russian Mafia
The Mission Impossible Backpack

Showing posts with label Russian Mafia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russian Mafia. Show all posts

Monday, November 07, 2011

“Figuring Out How to Do What’s Right…" Keynote Address by Michael Franzese

Ever wonder what it’s like to be in the mafia? What about being at a corporation when an ethical scandal is discovered? What do you do when you’re at work and a baseball player is shooting up behind you?
Ethical dilemmas are a part of everyone’s life, both personal and professional. You will be faced with a range of ethical questions here at Bryant, at home, and in the workplace. So how do you know what decision to make? When are you crossing the line?

On Tuesday, November 8th, the Interfaith Center is sponsoring “Figuring Out How to Do What’s Right…” featuring a panel discussion and keynote speaker Michael Franzese. The panel will consist of Gina Spencer, an ombudsman at Covidien who worked at Tyco when a scandal was uncovered in 2002, Professor Tom Roach, who teaches the ethics-based classes here at Bryant, and Kevin McNamara, a writer for the sports section of the Providence Journal. The panel will discuss where values come from, how to find the courage to make the right decision, and examples of ethical dilemmas that come up with their work.

Following the panel, keynote speaker Michael Franzese will take the stage. Franzese, a former member of the Colombo family, will discuss life in organized crime and working with the Russian Mafia. He will talk about leaving a life of crime, deciding between right and wrong, and how his life has improved since leaving the Mafia.

The event will be hosted by Professor Mike Roberto, and takes place on November 8th in the MAC. The panel discussion will begin at 2PM, with Franzese to follow at 3PM. For more information, please contact John Nesbitt, Program Coordinator of the Ronald K. & Kati C. Machtley Interfaith Center at jnesbitt@bryant.edu.

Thanks to Katie Colton

Friday, February 04, 2011

The Russian Mafia Code

Like it's American counterpart, the Russian Mafia has a code that all members must follow. They have 18 rules to love by and if you break the rules, the punishment is death.

1. The crime family is your new family. Distance yourself from your real family.
2. Do not have a family of your own. No wives or children allowed. Girlfriends are okay.
3. Have another source of income, a real job.
4. Help other members with support, but material and otherwise.
5. Never reveal anything about your cohorts and associates.
6. If necessary, take the rap for a fellow thief.
7. Hold meetings to settle disputes.
8. Freely participate in these meetings.
9. Punish the guilty parties as determined at these meetings.
10 Do not flinch from performing these unpleasant duties even though the convicted party may be a friend.
11 Learn the "Fehnay" or Russian Mafia Slang
12 Never get in over your head with gambling debts.
13 Coach and mentor younger hoodlums-in-training
14 Always maintain a network of informants among the lower echelon of criminals
15 Be able to handle your liquor, nobody likes a sloppy gangster
16 Do not mingle with the police in social situations or join any social or community clubs. The Elks Club is vertoten
17 Avoid military service, stay out of the draft
18 Always keep your work to another member of the Russian Mafia

Monday, January 31, 2011

Why Does It Cost $2 Million to Build a $1 Million Building in New York City?

Until last week, not many people in America had ever heard of Vincenzo Frogiero. But thanks to an FBI indictment, Mr Frogiero has now been immortalised across America by his mobster moniker, 'Vinny Carwash'.

An alleged member of the New York City Gambino crime family, Vinny Carwash was just one of 124 suspected Mafia members rounded up across the north-east US in the biggest one-day mob bust in American history.

Now awaiting trial on racketeering charges, Frogiero is incarcerated in Brooklyn with fellow wise guys whose nicknames seem straight out of a Hollywood casting call for The Sopranos: Johnny Bandana, Junior Lollipops, Johnny Pizza, Jack the Whack and Tony Bagels.

In a pre-dawn raid last week, federal agents in New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island swooped on the homes of over 100 alleged mobsters and arrested them on charges that include murder, loan sharking, extortion and labour racketeering.

Among those rounded up were leading members of the five Italian-American families affiliated with 'La Cosa Nostra' -- the Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, Bonnano and Lucchese families. Those arrested included family bosses, underbosses, consiglieri, hit men, soldiers and associates.

By far the biggest coup for the Feds was the arrest of 83-year-old Luigi 'Baby Shacks' Manocchio, the former boss of New England's Patriarca crime family and a 60-year-old Mafia veteran.

"It is a reminder that the Mafia is alive and well and that we ignore organised crime at our own peril," Professor Jay Albanese, a criminologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Weekend Review.

The details contained in the FBI indictments read like plots straight from The Godfather or Goodfellas but federal authorities were quick to point out that, amusing nicknames aside, the Mafia in America today still poses a deadly and persistent threat.

"The notion that today's mob families are more genteel and less violent than in the past is put to lie by the charges contained in the indictments," said Janice Fedarcyk of the FBI's New York field office. "Even more of a myth is the notion that the mob is a thing of the past, that La Cosa Nostra is a shadow of its former self."

Ever since the birth of the American Mafia in the early 1930s, the north-east corridor between New York and Boston has remained the beating heart of the mob enterprise.

Despite a federal crackdown since the 1980s that has weakened the Mafia through mass arrests and stiffer sentences, La Cosa Nostra -- or 'our thing' -- has continued to prosper in the past decade. This is partly due to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 which saw the FBI divert resources and manpower away from the Mafia for the fight against al-Qa'ida and other terrorist threats.

Membership of the mob is still exclusively reserved for those of Italian extraction. Loyal members who meet the approval of their bosses have the opportunity to become 'made men' -- the highest honour that allows captains to shield themselves from direct criminal activity by having their legions of loyal soldiers do all the dirty work.

The lifestyle is fraught, dangerous and at times boring. "They are street people. They live on the street. They work on the street," said Jay Albanese. "They don't get up until late and they hang out at the restaurant all day just thinking of scams to make money."

"There is paranoia. There is distrust," he said. "You have bad guys killing each other because they don't trust each other. They say they have this blood loyalty and yet they turn each other in. It is really a cut-throat sort of an existence."

Just like Mafia bosses of old -- 'Scarface' Al Capone and his successor, Tony Arrcado aka 'Joe Batters' -- today's Mafioso are quick to dole out nicknames, but these aliases serve an important purpose when trying to confuse federal authorities who are inevitably tracking their movements by electronic surveillance.

"The nicknames serve a very utilitarian purpose," Professor Howard Abadinsky of St John's University told the Irish Independent. "It does confuse law enforcement and it does make it -- from a legal point of view -- very hard to specifically identify these individuals for prosecution purposes."

In recent years, federal authorities have boasted that the Mafia's grasp over New York institutions including labour unions, the waterfront, the Fulton fish market and the garment district has waned.

Experts point out that the organisation has been severely weakened through aggressive public prosecutions, a lack of recruitment opportunities and a declining sense of loyalty among the new guard. The FBI has also been successful at recruiting mob turncoats who are brave enough to disregard the Mafia's ancient vow of silence -- the omerta.

"In the old days you might be much more willing to do time for the group," said Prof Albanese. "People are more individual focused and out for their own profit now, and they're just not as willing to sacrifice for their group."

But despite these setbacks, the Mafia's unique ability to infiltrate business in America and to claim a piece of the action remains unrivalled among other organised crime groups, experts say.

Mobsters in New Jersey, New England and Rhode Island continue to profit from the "bread and butter" staples of Mafia enterprises: operating sports bookmakers, strip clubs, loan-sharking, and gambling operations.

Crime families such as the Genovese exert a tight control over New York's ports, using threats and violence to extort money from shippers and obstruct the flow of commerce. They control several key shipping and construction unions, charging kickbacks to unload ships and paying associates for "no show" jobs.

"If you didn't pay, your fish would sit there on the dock and rot," said Albanese. "It wouldn't be moved. If you didn't pay, you would be excluded from the [fish] market."

In a throwback to the kind of extortion and racketeering portrayed in On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando, the FBI indictments allege that members of the Genovese even tried to extort Christmastime payments from port workers in New York.

"To be shaking down waterfront workers in the 21st century really seems a throwback to the 1940s or 1950s," said Abadinsky. "You don't make a lot of money by shaking down longshoreman."

And the mob's ability to control key unions has also had a dramatic effect on New York's construction industry and property development.

"People have asked, 'Why does it cost $2m to build a $1m building in New York?'" said Albanese. "Well ... if you were going to pour cement in NYC you had to get union people to do it and you have the mob controlling the unions, so kickbacks had to be paid."

Mafia experts have praised last week's operation but point out that the impact may be short-lived. Exactly two years ago a similar mass arrest of mobsters took place across the northeast but many of them received light prison sentences and soon returned to the streets.

Experts predict that with the top leadership gone, the remaining families will face immediate and perhaps brutal leadership contests. In addition, other organised crime groups -- Russians, Albanians, Asians and Mexicans -- are waiting in the wings, eager to turn a profit on abandoned Mafioso turf.

"For the day to day operations of a crime family, you don't require the boss and the shop management to be there," said Abadinsky. "The people have their assignments and they will carry them out. In the meantime, these people will be replaced."

In time, Vinny Carwash -- and his pals, Meatball, Mush, Hootie and Johnny Bandana -- may well be back on the streets. But if not, there will always be a new crop of eager soldiers to take their places.

"The removal of the current crop of Mafia barons will probably engender a new generation of mobsters," wrote Selwyn Raab in the New York Times. "There have always been, and always will be, ambitious, greedy, wise guys who are willing to risk long prison sentences for the power and riches glittering before them.

"The Mafia is wounded, but not fatally," he said.

Thanks to Caitriona Palmer

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Armenian Organized Crime Mobsters Target Medicare Scams Along with Credit Card Fraud, Identity Theft and Mortgage Fraud

Endeavor Diagnostics billed itself as a thriving medical laboratory that performed more than $1 million of work for Medicare patients.

When two FBI agents went to inspect it, they found an empty San Fernando Valley office with only a desk and a fax machine. There were no workers, no patients and no biological samples.

Behind the door of the facade were signs tying the operation to a sprawling network of phantom enterprises allegedly set up by Armenian mobsters to try to defraud Medicare of $163 million for services never provided.

Dozens of arrests around the country Wednesday highlighted a criminal demographic rarely seen, but one that officials say is rooted in California and growing in reach and sophistication.

"They are victimizing our systems, they are victimizing business, they are victimizing private citizens," said Glendale police Lt. Steve Davey, who heads up a task force tackling Eurasian crime. "Their ultimate goal is oligarchy - to see if they can infiltrate government."

Few criminal groups can match the sophistication of Armenian scammers, who developed an uncanny savvy for probing weaknesses in government systems and were hailed as heroes when they exploited their Soviet republic homeland, authorities said. They have been known for devising complex white collar schemes such as credit card fraud, identity theft and mortgage fraud.

Indictments released Wednesday in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere show how various cells, largely working on their own but often sharing techniques, set up fraudulent medical businesses using stolen physician identities. After becoming licensed Medicare providers and submitting claims, the fake office billed the government, which would pay money to fraudulent bank accounts. Many claims were bogus but sometimes criminals would provide a small service then submit an inflated bill.

In Los Angeles, for example, they would provide a scooter worth about $1,000, but profit after billing Medicare for a top-end electric wheelchair worth six times as much, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Matt McLaughlin said.

The groups have been known to recruit people with a nominal sum to become a fake patient, then bill Medicare for services supposedly rendered.

"It's great camouflage," McLaughlin said. "We have to deconstruct each element to prove a fraud."

Prosecutors also allege that conspirators paid corrupt doctors to carry out unnecessary testing on purported accident victims, then charged the government for the treatment.

In all, $163 million in fraudulent bills were submitted, with Medicare actually paying out $35 million, according to the documents.

The complex operation was allegedly overseen by Armen Kazarian, who melded into Glendale's large Armenian population after arriving as an asylum seeker in 1996 and mostly stayed out of view of the police. Kazarian, 46, who is in custody in Los Angeles, is known by the Soviet term "thief in law," which is the rough equivalent of a "godfather." Authorities say it is only the second time such a figure, known in Russian as a "vor v zakone," has been arrested in the U.S.

Nearly half of Glendale's 200,000 residents have an Armenian background. Following the 1915 massacre of Armenians in Turkey, a diaspora spread around the globe, with many arriving in Fresno and the East Coast.

Successive waves of immigrants followed major geopolitical upheavals, including the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and a small Armenian community in Hollywood quickly expanded to Glendale and the surrounding areas

In the mid-1980s, sons of Armenian immigrants from the Hollywood area banded together to form a gang called Armenian Power to protect themselves against Hispanic gangs. The community initially saw members as vigilante protectors but the group soon morphed into a street gang like any other, carrying out drive-by shootings and other crimes such as kidnappings, drug deals and burglaries, Glendale Officer Rafael Quintero said. But most crime in the Armenian community is carried out quietly and centers on sophisticated identity theft schemes. Police started picking up on these activities at the end of the 1990s and Glendale's task force was established in 2000, Davey said.

Several police agencies have task forces focused on Eurasian crime but Los Angeles police Lt. Stephen Margolis said this operation illustrates how the law enforcement community overall should pay closer attention.

"The sophistication and the pervasiveness of this type of criminal activity is years in the making," Margolis said. "Hopefully this will serve as a wake up to the extent of the seriousness this problem presents at a national level."

Zaven Kazazian, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Armenian-American Chamber of Commerce, said much of the crime in the community is carried out by people raised under communist rule in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, where exploiting a corrupt government was seen as fair game. "It is a different cultural background," Kazazian said. "Everybody was out for themselves."

Kazazian stressed that only a handful of Armenians are engaged in criminal enterprises and cautioned against making generalizations. "We are embarrassed by it and we do not have any affiliation with them. They do not represent the true Armenian people," he said. "It's like saying all Italians are part of the Mafia. That's just stupid."

Prosecutors say the crime ring was known as the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian Organization, named after its principal leaders Davit Mirzoyan, 34, of Glendale and Robert Terdjanian, 35, of Brooklyn.

Most of the 44 people charged are from the Los Angeles area and New York but arrests were also made in Georgia, New Mexico and Ohio.

The seven defendants named in the Los Angeles indictment have all pleaded not guilty. Defendants named in the New York portion of the case had either pleaded not guilty or were due to be arraigned Monday.

A call to Kazarian's defense attorney, Vicken Hagopian, was not immediately returned Friday.

As the "thief-in-law" of the operation, Kazarian was touted by authorities as the big catch. But the role of such "vor v zakones" is more subtle than that of a Mafia boss, Lt. Davey said.

Armenian crime bosses typically are nominated by other criminals and their main task is to mediate disputes between groups. Though they describe no actual violence, authorities allege Kazarian helped the Mirzoyan-Terdjanian Organization and would use threats to resolve disputes in the U.S., Armenia and other places.

Armenia has said it will cooperate with the U.S. in its investigation and Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan has said his nation was sorry.

Thanks to Thomas Watkins

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime Enforcement on Schedule

One of the most controversial sightseeing experiences in Las Vegas is moving along on schedule. Plans have been drawn and approved, and construction is underway on the $42 million Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime Enforcement. It’s set to open next spring and has already been nicknamed The Mob Museum.

It’s a throwback to the Mafia days of the 1940s all the way up to the 1980s before organized crime was kicked out of the Strip and Wall Street bankers moved in to provide investment dollars for savvy hotel operators. Dennis Barrie, who created Washington, D.C.’s Spy Museum and Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, is the brains behind our new 41,000-square-foot Mob Museum.

Dennis has just announced three major 16,400-square-foot exhibit components: the Mob Mayhem, complete with the bullet-ridden wall of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago that took out Las Vegas gangsters; the Skimming Exhibit that shows how the Mob took their profits illegally off the top; and Bringing Down the Mob, which features federal wiretapping tricks that ended Mafia control of our gaming city.

It’s not just about Las Vegas organized crime because the spotlight also is turned onto today’s Russian organized crime figures and the Mexican drug cartels that also affect Las Vegas. It cost the City of Las Vegas only $1 to acquire the unused Federal Services Administration building for the museum, and Mayor Oscar Goodman hopes the attraction will welcome 500,000 visitors each year.

Thanks to Robin Leach

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Mobsters in South Florida Use New Ways to Face New Rivals

Ever since the ruthless Chicago mobster Al Capone bought a mansion on Miami's Palm Island in 1928, South Florida has been a destination for organized crime figures who want to relax and do a little business.

The rackets have evolved over the years — loan-sharking, extortion and gambling have largely given way to stock scams, money laundering and white-collar fraud — and the Italians and Jews of yore have been joined by rival contingents from Russia, Israel and South America. But the culture of greed and violence has remained a constant.

Mobsters generally prefer to keep a low profile hereGangsters of Miami: True Tales of Mobsters, Gamblers, Hit Men, Con Men and Gang Bangers from the Magic City, but La Costa Nostra — "this thing of ours" — is once more in the headlines, this time connected with Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein.

Upon his return from Morocco last November, Rothstein reportedly went to work for the FBI, even as agents were dismantling his $1.2 billion investment fraud.

Roberto Settineri, the alleged Sicilian mobster whom Rothstein is credited with bringing down this month, appears to have the same short fuse and propensity for violence, according to a Miami Beach police report, that has marked mob behavior for a century.

As Settineri lunched at Soprano Cafe on Lincoln Road in January, he got into a heated argument with a security guard, stood up, and pulled back his leather jacket to reveal a black semi-automatic pistol.

"I will put this gun in your f------ mouth now. I know where you live. I'll go to your f------ house and kill you and your family," Settineri told the guard, according to his arrest report.

The pending aggravated assault charge against Settineri, 41, is the least of his concerns. Federal prosecutors allege he was a key intermediary between a crime family in Sicily and the Gambino crime family in New York City.

Settineri and two of his reported associates — security firm operators Daniel Dromerhauser, of Miami, and Enrique Ros, of Pembroke Pines — were indicted March 10 on federal charges of money laundering and obstruction of justice for reportedly shredding two boxes of documents at Rothstein's request and laundering $79,000 for him.

The Mafia's traditions in South Florida date to the 1930s gambling heydays in Broward, when Meyer Lansky and his associates came south to claim a piece of the action in dozens of "carpet joints" — classy casinos that operated around Hallandale under the beneficial eye of a crooked sheriff.

"It goes back to the 1920s and Al Capone. Capone had a house on Palm Island … and that was his alibi for the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre," said Richard Mangan, a 24-year Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

"Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Hallandale was Las Vegas Southeast," said Mangan, who now teaches a class called "Organized Crime and the Business of Drugs" at Florida Atlantic University's School of Criminology. "Clubs like La Boheme were operating. A made [formally inducted] mob member named Anthony "Tony" Plates would set up shop in the Diplomat Hotel during the winters, plying politicians with booze and hookers."

The gambling generated so much cash that the gangsters suppressed their violent natures.

"The Mafia had an understanding that there would be no killings in Broward County because it was such a lucrative business," said Robert Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University Law School and a gambling-law expert.

By the early 1950s, government scrutiny forced the mobsters out of their illegal casinos but not the county. They still had their hands in local dog and horse tracks and jai lai frontons, as well as in shakedown schemes. They expanded their gambling ventures to Cuba under the tutelage of Lansky, who lived for years in a canal home in Sunny Isles, a popular mob neighborhood.

"Many of the mob people — Chicago, New Orleans, New York — would come down here because they owned casinos in Havana, and [Cuban leader Fulgencio] Batista was more than happy to take bribes," Mangan said.

Hundreds of them made Broward their second or retirement home.

New York's five organized crime consortiums — the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Colombo and Lucchese families — have always considered Florida to be "open," with no one family claiming exclusive rights to operate in the Sunshine State. "This is open territory for anyone with the mob for whatever they want to do," said Nick Navarro, a 30-year law enforcement official who was Broward's sheriff from 1984 to 1993. "It's a beautiful part of the country and this is where they like to come down."

With the dramatic expansion of air conditioning in the 1950s and cheap jet flights, Florida had a commercial building boom over the next decades, drawing more mobsters.

"The Mafia has long been involved in the rigging of construction contracts," Jarvis said.

By 1968, a state crime commission concluded, "South Florida, especially Dade and Broward counties, has become a haven for many known Mafia figures and associates, though their activities know no local boundaries within the state."

In more recent years, "The Teflon Don," Gambino boss John Gotti, maintained a residence in Fort Lauderdale. So did Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, the brutal head of a Mafia family operating in Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

Underbosses, consiglieres and soldiers from all the families are well represented, from Palm Beach Gardens to the Keys.

They still get involved in gambling, loan sharking, strip clubs, prostitution, drug dealing and extortion, but have gravitated toward more sophisticated crimes — such as stock and Medicare fraud — that don't carry the same risks.

They have faced increased competition from Israeli organized crime and Russian mobsters.

"The biggest change has been the Russian mafia," Mangan said. "The Russians started moving in after the fall of communism. They primarily set up in South Beach. They started opening banks in Antigua and Aruba."

Federal prosecutors roll out indictments against the Italian Mafia every year, charging everything from murder to money laundering, but younger Mafiosi come up the ranks to fill the voids left by the prison sentences and old-age deaths of top family members.

"It's a funny thing — it's always said that the Mafia has been destroyed and all the old chieftains are dead or in jail; but every time you turn around, there is a story about the Mafia," Jarvis said.

"To the extent that the Mafia exists anywhere, it would have its hand in South Florida because it still has all the attributes that made it so attractive in the 1930s — warm weather, a lot of wealth, a lot of opportunity. Why wouldn't the Mafia be here? Everyone else wants to be in South Florida."

Thanks to Jon Burnstein and Peter Franceschina

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Russian Mafia Expands to 300,000 Members

After avoiding any use of the term “Russian mafia” in the last few years, law enforcement personnel in Europe and elsewhere are now speaking about it again, noting that it includes “up to 300,000 people” and dominates the criminal world in many countries around the world, according to a Moscow investigative journalist.

In “Versia,” Ruslan Gorevoy says that law enforcement personnel in many countries -- including Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, France, Mexico, “and even the US” -- have been surprised by how “confidently” criminal groups consisting of people from the former USSR now dominate their national criminal worlds.

Indeed, the “Versiya” reporter continues, the Russian groups, which include “up to 300,000 of our compatriots,” have succeeded in pushing aside local groups and establishing their own “spheres of influence” to the point that they no longer need to “clarify relations with the help of arms.”

Gorevoy describes some of the most notorious cases involving Russian organized criminal groups abroad before using interviews with Russian officials to suggest some more general conclusions. He recalls the discovery that drug traffickers were using submarines to move their product from South America to Mexico.

These submarines, he points out, “were purchased as scrap metal” from a Ukrainian firm that was involved in decommissioning Soviet diesel subs, then repapered in the Romania city of Konstanza before sailing across the Atlantic. While they were ultimately discovered, it is impossible to say how many tons of drugs they carried or even what the situation is today.

The US navy, he notes, has taken great pride in reporting its interdiction efforts in this regard, but knowing” the abilities of Russian criminal groups, Gorvey continues, “it is possible” that such vessels may still be playing a role. The tone of his article suggests that he personally would not bet against these groups.

In Spain, the “Versiya” journalist continues, Russian criminal groups control 90 percent of the drugs and illegal arms flows and have been involved in the murder of Paddy Doyle, a leading Irish criminal who was operating there. His death and the ensuing trial led to the publication of numerous articles about Russian organized crime.

Russian officials have been dismissive of much of that coverage. Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of the Duma’s legal affairs committee, told Gorevoy that “certain groups may have an ethnic character [there], but this still does not provide the foundation for claims about the presence of a specific national mafia of this or that country.”

Poland, Gorevoy continues, was “the first country of Europe into which organized crime from Russia began to penetrate,” pushing out, together with criminals from Ukraine and Belarus Romanian and Albanian criminal organizations that had dominated the situation there before the Russians arrived.

The Polish police have not been able to “liquidate” Russian organized crime, and “according to certain data, at the present time,” there are as many as 20,000 Russian criminals operating in that country, making it, in numerical terms at least, “the largest Russian criminal diaspora in the world.”

But it would be a mistake to focus only on Poland or Eastern European countries like Romania and Hungary, where the Russian criminal presence is large. Over the last decade, the Russian mafia has reached around the world, including Australia where it has been involved in electronic crime, Singapore, London and various countries in the Western hemisphere.

Interpol, the international police agency, does not maintain the kind of files which allow for an even approximate assessment of the number of Russian criminals operating abroad. But last year, the National Prosecutor of Italy concluded that there are “up to 300,000” criminals from Russia operating in other countries.

One of the largest or at least most profitable activities of Russian criminals abroad, the Italians said, is money laundering, with the Russian mafia “laundering” funds in the US, in the Marianas, and Guam. In addition, they added, Russian criminals are charging Mexican drug lords 30 percent for laundering drug profits from sales in the US.

In Italy itself, prosecutors reported, “representatives of the Russian mafia in 2008 formed an alliance with local [criminal groups, including the Cosa Nostra]” and took under joint control “practically 100 percent of the agricultural enterprises of Italy and at the same time practically all shippers, both international and domestic.

The German newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” reports, citing sources official and otherwise, that there are approximately 160,000 Russian criminals in Europe, compared to 70,000 of Italian origin, 40,000 of American background, and 37,000 from Asian countries. The Russians have corrupted at least some officials in order to cover their tracks, the paper said

The Munich paper’s Rudolph Himelli said that “Russian mafiosi are better organized and permit themselves to commit the boldest crimes, remaining in practice unpunished,” crimes that are “of a completely different order of magnitude than those committed by Turkish immigrants or criminals from countries in Eastern Europe,” including illegal arms sales to Libya and Iraq.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and vice speaker of the Russian Duma, says that none of this information justifies any suggestion that there is a Russian mafia operating abroad let alone implying that Moscow is somehow responsible for it.

“Yes,” Zhirinovsky acknowledges, “people from the republics of the former USSR really occupy an important position in the international criminal community, and in recent years this position can even be called a dominant one. But here is one ‘but’: many of these people already have been living abroad for a long time” and have exchanged Russian passports for foreign ones.

Consequently, he continues, they are now “more the representatives of Western and not our culture.” Indeed, the LDPR leader insists, “the fact that these people left Russia may testify only that our law enforcement organs do not allow them to make their way” in their homeland, while the police in other countries are not as successful.

That argument may convince some Russians or provide a justification to some in the West who would like to ignore this issue, but Gorevoy’s article suggests that Zhirinovsky’s claims will not be persuasive to justice officials in Europe or elsewhere who on a daily basis have to combat a larger and more active Russian mafia.

Thanks to Paul Goble

Monday, March 15, 2010

Multiple Country European Mafia Round Up

Police across Europe arrested 69 suspected members of a Georgian-run mafia, including 24 in Spain, which was leading the investigation, a National Court spokeswoman told CNN Monday.

Other arrests were in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, whose prosecutors worked with their Spanish counterparts on the case. There were also a few arrests in France and Italy, said the spokeswoman, who by custom is not identified.

The suspects, wanted for drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering, and in a few cases for murder plots, were thought to have operated at a level close to the street, controlling local mafia networks, she said -- they are not thought to be high-style mafia kingpins living in mansions and surrounded by luxuries.

Some Spanish media reported the suspects were linked to a Russian mafia, but the court spokeswoman said investigators had told her it was Georgian-run.

In Spain, the national police worked with regional police in Catalonia and the Basque region to make the arrests, mainly in the Barcelona and Valencia areas, she said.

There has long been speculation that mafias were involved in money laundering through Spain's housing and real estate bubble along the Mediterranean coast, where second homes were built for vacationers from Spain and northern Europe.

Tens of thousands of these homes remain unsold or unfinished in the economic downturn.

Numerous local Spanish politicians have been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes or kickbacks to permit rampant construction that far exceeded demand.

Thanks to Al Goodman

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Russian Mafia Involved with Saab Sale?

The U.S. Government participated in stopping General Motors from selling Saab to a Dutch automaker in December due to possible involvement in the deal by the Russian Mafia, a Swedish media outlet is reporting.

According to the Dagens Industri newspaper, the Swedish government asked its security force, the Sapo, to investigate the financial affairs of the Convers Group, a Russian investment group owned by the family of billionaire Alexander Antonov that was one of the major shareholders of Spyker when the Dutch automaker made the offer to buy Saab in December. That investigation reportedly turned up a "strong suspicion" of ties between the Antonovs and organized crime, information that was passed on to the FBI. The report goes on to say the the board of General Motors was then contacted by the U.S. Government and told to stop the sale.

Since then, Spyker founder Victor Muller has assumed ownership of the 4.6 million shares in Spyker that were controlled by the Convers Group, through a recently created holding group called Tenaci, which is run by Muller. This move apparently opened the door to another offer to purchase Saab, which was accepted by GM last week.

A spokesman for Spyker tells Foxnews.com that Victor Muller says the report is "nonsense and speculation."

In the weeks leading up to the sale several media outlets reported that GM was wary of the Antonovs' involvement over concerns that intellectual property rights could be transferred to competing automakers. When asked during a conference call following the agreement if GM was satisfied with the exclusion of the Antonov family from the deal, GM Vice President for Corporate Planning and Alliances John Smith responded, "as part of finding a sustainable solution for Saab, we are happy with the structures of the company that Victor Muller has put in place for Saab Spyker and I'll just leave it at that."

When contacted by Foxnews.com about the Dagens Industri story, General Motors issued the following statment:

"We are declining to comment in any way on the specifics of any negotiations, as they were covered by confidentiality agreements. Our interest was in finding a buyer that could create a viable future for Saab, and we believe we did."

Thanks to FoxNews

Monday, January 25, 2010

Russian Mafia Makes an Appearance on 24

'24' Season 8, Episodes 3and 4 continued to ramp up the tension and stakes on Jack Bauer's latest bad day. A number of murders, an assassination attempt, a betrayal or two, and the return of former FBI agent Renee Walker occurred.

Spoilers surely followed.

It seems that the Russian Mafia's agent inside the New York Police Department has managed to get a spot in the escort for President Hassan by forcing another officer to switch shifts with him at gun point. Then he killed the officer and his wife. Then Jack Bauer found the corpses, and much to his consternation, he was found with the corpses by two other police officers, one of whom is very much into street justice for cop killers.

The upshot was that the Russian hitter planted a bomb to detonate under President Hassan's limo. Fortunately Jack Bauer was about to persuade the more reasonable officer of his bona fides and warn CTU just in a nick of time, allowing the heroic Cole Ortiz to foil the assassination at great risk to himself.

The upshot of the aftermath is that faithless brother, Farhad Hassan, is unmasked and is forced to go on the run, the Russian Mafia guy is killed, Hassan's reporterette girl friend is set free with apologies all around, and Brian Hastings has one more mistake to smooth over.

Now why would the Russian Mafia want to take out the President of the Islamic Republic. It seems that the Russians would like to sell the Islamic Republic some spent fuel rods that can be turned to weapons grade uranium of which nuclear bombs can be made. President Hassan had demurred. His brother would very much like to work a deal. If this means that President Hassan has to die and little brother take his place, the cause of Jihad sometimes required martyrs.

Thanks to Mark Whittington

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Central European Organized Crime

Central Europe and especially the Czech Republic and Hungary, are used as centers for coordination, communication and conciliation between very powerful international crime syndicates, which have managed to install their HQs of their operations and gain access in the heart of the EU.

Although it has not been a subject of special reporting by the media in Europe, when assessing organized crime activities in Europe, one should take into serious consideration the situation in this region.

Hungary

Hungary has the unique geo-economic advantage of occupying the middle of Europe between the east and the west side of the Continent and in the midst of the important axis of the Danube as well as the Baltic-Aegean one. As an effect, crime syndicates were apt in using this country as a major transit ground for their pan-European operations and as a base for coordinating their cells in other regions.

Similarly, the accumulation of capital in this country as in most former communist countries was made during the '90s, partly due to smuggling and illegal activities, thus the very criminal activity occurred in an institutionalized societal manner along with corrupted practices in the security and the judicial sectors.

The local criminal networks in Hungary and Budapest in particular, are less significant in the hierarchy of than that of the infamous Italian Mafia or the Chinese triangles. They were basically formed by former members of security forces and pre-existing black marketers who maintained contacts with local authorities. The rapid development of the above had as a result the control of up to 20% of local GDP, due to a number of endogenous and exogenous factors.

First, the geo-economic position of the country facilitates to a maximum degree the traffickers to move illicit cargo by road and rail routes. For example from Ukraine tobacco and women are trafficked towards Austria and from Romania illegal immigrants are transferred, whilst from Croatia and Serbia weapons and drugs are being imported.

Hungary has adequate public infrastructure and storage services (Logistics), providing a strong argument for crime syndicates to pursue their activities there. In order for criminal groups to transform themselves into an integrated organized crime structure, there has to be the necessary infrastructure that will enable them to have a continuous and smooth flow of contraband merchandise, which in turn will provide economies of scale for their operations. Under this assumption, Hungary seems as a perfect destination.

Another important factor was the widespread corruption in the local security forces and the coexistence of former and present executives with links to members of the organized crime. The result was poor security controls and in general non-compliance with the law.

Currently Budapest hosts the global epicenters of illegal pornographic material, contraband cigarettes and is also a meeting point and negotiation center between the heads of international crime groups in the sectors of arms, women and drugs trafficking.

Money laundering is also another thriving illegal industry, closely associated with the above.

According to recent information the Hungarian Security Council, a government agency providing guidelines and action against crime in the country, disturbing trends for the foreseeable future, were noted. Indeed confidential reports of the local police, found that the number of criminal organizations has increased considerably after 2007, as well as their, turnover. Also, it is estimated that construction companies and business groups involved in public procurement are now subject of the control of organized crime, and it is also very interesting that groups coming from China and Latin America, have managed to establish their presence there, in order to increase their positions in Western Europe via Budapest.

Furthermore the Hungarian intelligence service (NBH) in a report in 2008, stated that after the accession to the EU in 2004, a great increase was witnessed in the turnover of the organized crime groups, which became more flexible and multifaceted, effectively penetrating more legitimate businesses. Hungarian officials-many of whom have been trained in schools of the FBI in U.S- are actively fighting the flow of black money that tends to lead traces back into, key executives in many respectable businesses, not directly associated with illegal activities.

In general, taking into account that the current global financial crisis creates the need for many legitimate businesses of fresh capital, one can assume that Hungary will have to face more challenges in those issues in the short-term.

So far the security forces of Germany, Italy, Austria, Sweden and USA work very closely with the authorities and has made several successful joint operations.

Czech Republic and Slovakia

The Czech Republic is an economically and socially developed country in Central Europe that has been facing for years serious issues relating with the activities of organized crime. Local security authorities relay in their reports, that they are facing some 100 organized groups in the country with at least 3,000 members. Alongside, other 5,000 people have auxiliary roles in these organizations which are also staffed by accounting, legal and other professional functions.

Of all these criminal groups, 30 are integrated and internationalized, reaching the gold standard of the "International Mafia" with diverse activities in many countries around the world.

Local leaders of criminal networks are nationals of the former Soviet Union and especially Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Also Croats, Serbs, Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Vietnamese and Chinese make up the majority of the groups. There are also groups from Turkey and Greece specialized in money laundering and managing drug loads moving to Germany as well as, illegal prostitution.

Finally, there is definite presence, of the so-called Italian mafia and various groups from Latin America, Lebanon, Iran and Nigeria. The Czech nationals tend not to create their own organizations but to adhere to foreign and not as heads but as support staff, which both demonstrates the prevalence of foreign organized crime in society and also the difficulty for the authorities to collect information on the important criminal echelons.

On the other hand, Czechs arch-criminals have managed to form groups outside the country and particularly in France, Italy, Croatia and Bulgaria. Occasionally there are reports of activity in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus regarding the above.

The Czech Republic because of its extensive borders with Germany, which is considered as the prime market of smuggled goods and drugs in Europe, facilitates trafficking to there and acts as a coordinating center for groups wishing to enter Germany. Moreover, in recent years several cases have been revealed, of coordination and delivery of drugs original source from the Middle East to the U.S. via Prague and Ostrava.

Further in the borders between the Moravian province and Poland, there is widespread tobacco, alcohol and drug contraband mainly being managed by organized groups of Romany and local kingpins.

Regard illegal migration and trafficking, the Czech Republic is infamous as a place of concentration and transit of Ukrainian and Moldovan nationals sent to Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

In Slovakia also the issue of organized crime is high on the news and the police reports. The country "hosts" 50 groups with over 700 regular members. Most of those are foreigners, Kosovo-Albanians, Ukrainians, Russians and Georgians working with local elements.

Slovakia from the late 90s has been informally divided into zones of influence between these groups in order to avoid unnecessary turf wars that had claimed many victims over the past years. The capital Bratislava has a strong Albanian presence, specializing in the illegal prostitution industry with annual turnover that may exceed 50 million Euros.

Further Slovakia has become a center of negotiation between pan-European criminal groups that regularly meet on mountain vacation hotels in the south of the country and agree into wider activities.

According to occasional news and information, the Romanian teams specializing in car theft "divide" their illegal sales when negotiating in the Slovakian territory and representatives of other groups from Germany and the Netherlands divide the market relating to illegal prostitution. Finally, the narcotics contraband provides the opportunity for contacts between different groups from the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Turkey, Albania-Kosovo and Germany that agree on promoting substances in specific locations.

In Slovakia there is an extensive weapons smuggling network, which mainly imports weaponry from Moldova, the Caucasus and the Balkans. At times customers have come even from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East looking for explosives and anti-tank rockets and missiles.

Finally one of the fastest growing groups are the Chinese and Vietnamese, who now have formed a well-structured organized crime network that stretches from Athens Greece to Glasgow, Scotland, a development that will most certainly occupy the actions of the European security Authorities in the coming years. The Vietnamese, especially are consider as prime dealers and distributors of contraband cigarettes, clothing and other consumer items.

The Vietnamese network is also specialized in illegal immigration from East Asia to Europe and it is of trans-border nature, since the Vietnamese in Czech (Prague, Brno, Ostrava), are in contact with their fellow compatriots in Germany, Poland and Austria, thus a wider ethnic network emerges that has expanded considerably over the past 15 years.

Lastly, there is a strong trend of "Phony marriages" to be recorded, especially between Vietnamese organized members and locals, in order to facilitate the integration of the former in the society. Similar finding have been found regarding Albania, Russian and nationals from the ex-Yugoslavian countries. Therefore the members of the crime syndicates are able to firmly root themselves in the EU and attain the status of the citizen that protects them from expulsion should their activities become known to the authorities.

In Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, 90% of drugs sold within the territory are being distributed by foreigners. Typically, there is an abundance of hard drugs in Prague and Budapest, and the price of heroin is half than that sold in Berlin and Paris and so are other drugs like ecstasy tablets. This creates what is called "Narco-tourism" which along with "sex tourism" in the same cities creates ideal conditions for the accumulation of large amounts of black capital for the criminal organizations.

It is indicative of the great economic momentum gained by the criminal syndicates that only in Budapest it is roughly be estimated that 1,000 "International escorts" are being illegally employed earning an income of excess of 80 million Euros for organized crime syndicates.

A similar situation occurs in other countries, and if one adds the whole range of illegal sex industry in Central Europe (Clubs, entertainment, movies, brothels, internet-phone appointments, etc), then it could be safely estimated that an annual turnover of over 5 billion Euros is being generated. As it can be seen, the so-called "real economy" is being greatly influenced by the parallel-illegal one, creating a symbiosis that is based in the importation of substantial amounts of capital.

In recent years, Prague has witnessed the establishment of Russian originating criminal groups that have set up perfectly legitimate businesses and in particular hotels, restaurants and real estate companies, in order to launder capital. More than 150 have been made known over the past few year and they also include businesses, mansions and horse riding clubs in the tourist regions of Karlovy Vary and Marianske Lazne.

As far as Karlovy Vary is concerned, it already being named as a "Russian city", due to the sheer amounts of investments made there by Russians, quite a few of those of highly questionable nature.

The ultimate goal of this new strategy is -according to a confidential report by the Czech Ministry of Interior- the penetration by the Mafiosi of the economic and political life of the country and already numerous cases of corruption involving mayors, and local council heads has been recorded

The research on organized crime activities in Central Europe, may gain further notice for the European security architecture, since the countries located in this geographical zone, are being used as stage points for further inclusion of criminal structures in the larger EU countries such as Germany and to a lesser extent France and Italy.

Moreover the European integration process and the lack of border controls, creates a unique opportunity for further empowerment of those criminal networks, that are able to tap into their specialization and acquired experience and further enlarge their illegal activities, as is the case over the past twenty years.

The collapse of Communism in 1989 provided a challenge for the security authorities across the EU that it is becoming vividly clear nowadays and will most certainly be of importance regarding the future of the Continent that has to confront a series of important challenges relating to the security of its citizens.

Thanks to Ioannis Michaletos and Marketa Hanakova.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

GANGSTERS OF MIAMI: True Tales of Mobsters, Gamblers, Hit Men, Con Men And Gang Bangers from the Magic City

Rising from a swampy flatland a little more than a century ago, Miami has grown to become a trend-setting metropolis known for tourism, fashion, nightlife and style. Miami is also the city of Hollywood's "Scarface" Tony Montana, television's Miami Vice and popular culture's "Cocaine Cowboy." Ron Chepesiuk's Gangsters of Miami (Barricade Books, November 2009) digs beyond the headlines and fantasy to provide a close up look at the real role that mobsters, gamblers, hit men, drug lords, con men and other gangsters have played in making America's youngest city also one of its most fascinating.

Known as the Magic City, Miami has always been the home for a colorful variety of gangsters. They include the notorious smugglers of the Prohibition era, such as Gertrude Lythgoe, Bill McCoy, James Horace Alderman, the Ashley Gang, and Red Shannon; famous mobsters like Al Capone and Meyer Lansky who helped make Miami a gambling Mecca, the Cuban Mafia and its syndicate, La Compania, led by godfathers Jose Battle Sr. and Jr.; the marijuana traffickers of the early and mid 1970s, most notably the legendary Black Tuna Gang; drug lords of the Medellin and Cali cartels and master minds of the cocaine explosion, such as Griselda Blanco, the so-called Black Widow Blanco, Pablo Escobar, the "King of Coke" and Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela; the Russian Mafia with colorful characters like Ludwig "Tarzan" Feinberg, who came to America after the fall of the Soviet Union; and the street gangs that plagued Miami after the advent of crack cocaine in the mid 1980s, led by such vicious gang bangers as Anthony "Little Bo" Fail and Corey "Bubba" Smith.

The book also provides details of headline making cases and characters like the tourist murders of the early 1990s, the Operation Swordfish money laundering investigation; the Yahweh Ben Yahweh investigation, the Don Aronow and James Callahan murders, the Andrew Cunanan murder of noted fashion designer Gianni Versace, and the rise and fall of Chris Paciello, the so-called "King of South Beach." Gangsters of Miami also investigates the police and governmental corruption that has plagued the Magic City since its early days.

Gangsters of Miami is a lively and well-documented account of Miami's gangs and gangsters, showing that fact can be more riveting than fiction. The praise for the book has been lavish:

Steve Morris, Publishers of the New Criminologist web site, said "Chepesiuk's aptitude for revealing the inner workings of organized crime within a community is once again on display here as the reader is cast into Miami's bloody underbelly. A remarkable achievement by the author."


Scott M. Dietche, author of The Silent Don: The Criminal Underworld of Santo Trafficante Jr. calls the book "one of the most complete looks at crime in South Florida."


Lew Rice, Former Special Agent in Charge, DEA and author of DEA Special Agent: My Life on the Front Line hailed Gangsters of Miami as a "must read for anyone interested in an historical and colorful account of crime in the Magic City."


Ron Chepesiuk, an award-winning investigative journalist, has been described as "the master of high octane journalism." He is the author of Gangsters of Harlem and Black Gangsters of Chicago, Drug Lords, a Fulbright Scholar, an adjunct professor in the journalism department of UCLA's Extension Division and a consultant to the History Channel's Gangland documentary series. He has also been interviewed by the Biography Channel, Discovery, the History Channel, Black Entertainment Television, and NBC's Dateline.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Medicare Fraud Creates Easy Money for Organized Crime

Lured by easier money and shorter prison sentences, Mafia figures and other violent criminals are increasingly moving into Medicare fraud and spilling blood over what was once a white-collar crime. Around the nation, federal investigators have been threatened, an informant's body was found riddled with bullets, and a woman was discovered dead in a pharmacy under investigation, her throat slit with a piece of broken toilet seat.

For criminals, Medicare schemes offer a greater payoff and carry much shorter prison sentences than offenses such as drug trafficking or robbery. "We've seen more people that used to be involved in (dealing) drugs are switching over to health care fraud because it's not as dangerous," Miami FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said.

Medicare scammers typically make their money by billing Medicare for medical equipment and drugs that patients never receive - and never needed. Some pay homeless people on Los Angeles' Skid Row for Medicare or Social Security numbers to use in fake billing invoices. Others intimidate elderly victims to use their Medicare numbers, federal authorities say.

Most Medicare schemes are based in cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston. And rather than building an elaborate hierarchy like the Mafia or other gangs, many Medicare con artists use common street criminals to recruit patients and doctors, authorities said.

A Medicare scammer could easily net at least $25,000 a day while risking a relatively modest 10 years in prison if convicted on a single count. A cocaine dealer could take weeks to make that amount while risking up to life in prison.

"Building a Medicare fraud scam is far safer than dealing in crack or dealing in stolen cars, and it's far more lucrative," said Lewis Morris, lead attorney at the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general's office.

It's unclear how many violent crimes are tied to Medicare fraud because most of them are carried out by someone within the hoax who attacks another person taking part in the crime.

One Southern California criminal task force has arrested about 50 suspects for Medicare fraud in the last three years. And 11 members of New York's Bonanno family were indicted in May in a Medicare fraud scheme in South Florida. They were accused of stealing patients' Medicare numbers and using them to submit false claims. Other allegations included identity theft and conspiring to commit murder.

Even criminals with violent records, including a convicted murderer, have been able to obtain Medicare supplier licenses. Applicants with felony records can only be rejected if their convictions are 10 years old or less.

"It's outrageous that those trusted to provide medical care are really nothing but common criminals," said federal prosecutor Kirk Ogrosky, who heads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force across the United States.

Guillermo Denis Gonzalez spent 14 years in prison for second-degree murder, but after his 2006 release, records showed he soon bought a business called DG Medical in the Miami suburb of Hialeah and applied to be a Medicare supplier. Within two months, federal investigators were alerted that the Medicare claims the company were making were fraudulent and suspended its license. By then, the sham company had illegally netted $31,000.

Last month, he pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud and now awaits sentencing. He is also charged in a gruesome killing in May 2008 in which police say he repeatedly stabbed a man with a kitchen knife, crushed his face with a mallet, then cut off the victim's head and dismembered the body before stuffing the parts in trash bins. The killing might be related to Medicare fraud, authorities said.

His attorney, Stephen Kramer, has declined to comment.

Medicare-fraud investigations used to focus mainly on patient records and financial papers, but now the crime scenes are increasingly bloody:

- In 2007, authorities found Juana Gonzalez lying in a pool of blood on the floor of her Miami pharmacy. Her cousin was charged with second-degree murder, accused of taking a piece of a broken toilet and slitting Gonzalez's throat. Federal authorities said they were investigating the pharmacy for Medicare fraud and believe the crimes are related.

- In 2004, a week after the FBI issued search warrants on more than 50 fraudulent Medicare storefronts in Miami, the body of Ernesto Valdes was found in the back seat of his car, riddled with bullets. Federal authorities said he had information that could have linked players in the $148 million fraud scheme. No one has ever been charged in his slaying.

- In 2006, members of a Russian-Armenian organized crime ring were indicted for allegedly bilking Medicare of more than $20 million through a group of medical clinics they ran in the Los Angeles area. The group included Konstantin Grigoryan, a former colonel in the Soviet army, family members and others with past criminal records.

"They don't have the typical structure that we see in Italian mobs. They'll work with whoever can make them money. And if they don't get their way, they won't be ashamed to kidnap somebody, to shoot somebody," said Glendale Police Lt. Steve Davey, who leads the Southern California Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.

The violent crimes are mostly to settle a debt or silence a witness.

"It's in-house. Typically professional hits, generally unsolved. Usually it's just a bullet in the head, nobody saw anything," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Stephen Opferman.

The Armenian gangs have also aggressively pursued elderly patients, intimidating them to obtain their Medicare numbers, Opferman said. Police have received reports from family members who feared their grandmother had been abducted, only to learn later that she was picked up in a van and taken to a fake store where her Medicare number was swiped.

The groups have broken into computer banking systems or paid moles to provide key information from court clerk's offices and various government agencies, Davey said.

In Los Angeles, two federal authorities investigating Medicare fraud say colleagues have been threatened and had their cars followed.

Sometimes Medicare fraud turns violent without the involvement of organized crime. Illinois podiatrist Ronald Mikos was sentenced to death for the 2002 fatal shooting of a patient to keep her from telling a federal grand jury how he defrauded Medicare. He shot the woman six times as she sat in her wheelchair at her home. Her subpoena was found on the floor next to her.

Thanks to Kelli Kennedy

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Russian Organized Crime Enterprise Expanding to Cleveland?

They looted computer buyers, insurance companies and their own countrymen in a series of scams and extortions that caused police in Northeast Ohio to scramble for years.

But were the crimes, committed by Russian immigrants, part of a sinister, organized mob or were they unconnected acts linked only by the ancestry of the criminals?

Authorities say the disjointed Russian criminal network in Cleveland is hardly the structured version of the Italian Mafia during the city's mob wars, but its links offer a shadowy threat that often sprouts into the public's consciousness through white-collar crimes.

This week, a district attorney in upstate New York said an investigation into what he called organized Russian crime in suburban Cleveland plugged a $27 million marijuana pipeline that flowed from an Indian reservation to Northeast Ohio. Three people from Greater Cleveland, including Konstantin Sorin, were among several charged.

Authorities seized $1.3 million in cash, 14 vehicles and two utility trailers. One man, Daniel Simonds, who made drug runs from upstate New York to Cleveland, was found shot to death in his home in May 2008.

Jeffrey Buck, Reminderville police chief, said the marijuana pipeline was organized crime, with Russians involved. He declined to discuss whether the network could be deemed the Russian mob.

Richard Blake, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted dozens of Russian crime cases in Cleveland, acknowledged what he called "criminal elements" in Northeast Ohio, but he stopped short of saying that they were part of a broader, organized mob.

Blake agreed with the work of James Finckenauer, a criminal justice professor at Rutgers University who studied the Russian mob for the U.S. Justice Department. Finckenauer said in an interview Thursday that unlike the better known Italian Mafia, what people call the Russian mob is more of a loosely linked network of criminals with no central leadership.

In his research, Finckenauer found that about 15 organized Russian groups operate in the United States, with a handful maintaining their links overseas. The networks are built of individuals cooperating with each other, rather than orderly ranks following orders from above, according to Finckenauer.

"Generally, there's no capo [or leader] as there was in the traditional La Cosa Nostra," Blake said.

The FBI has investigated Russian crime in Cleveland for years. A spokesman for the FBI declined to say whether Northeast Ohio is a hub of the Russian mob.

About 24,000 people with Russian ancestry live in Cuyahoga County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The hub is Mayfield Heights and other eastern suburbs. The local Russian community grew dramatically in the 1990s, when many Jews fled religious persecution in the former Soviet Union. Cleveland's Jewish community helped to resettle more than 6,000 Russian Jews.

Some Russian leaders say little about crime. Olga Sonis, a Beachwood-based refugee counselor who has helped to resettle hundreds of Russian immigrants, said she has never heard about mob troubles here. Grigoriy Topolynskiy, the president of the American Association of Jews from the former Soviet Union, told a reporter he wouldn't discuss it Thursday, saying, "I'll give you a call in a few days."

Others say the Russian mob is an easy stereotype to make, so those Russians accused of crimes are automatically linked to the "mob," similar to Italians and the Mafia.

"There are multitudes of Russian people here who are warm, good people," said Kenneth Kovach, the executive director of the International Community Council in Cleveland. "They are the vast majority."

The council is a networking group representing most of the international cultures of Northeast Ohio. Kovach also the choir director at St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Tremont.

But Kovach said he believes he sees evidence of what Blake and other authorities say exists in Cleveland, threads of a loosely linked group of criminals. He said he attended an FBI citizens academy class a few years ago. During a break, he and some agents talked about organized crime. Kovach, who has made 19 trips to Russia in the past 15 years, said an agent told him that outside of New York, Cleveland is a key place for the Russian mob.

"I believe it is here, but I'm not sure of the extent of it," he said. "I believe it is in the white-collar crime, not in crimes of violence."

Some major crimes committed by Russians in Cuyahoga County have followed that pattern. In 2001, Blake, the federal prosecutor, helped convict about 25 Russian immigrants in an insurance scam involving high-priced cars. The case stemmed from an undercover FBI investigation.

That same year, police found two Russian men stopped along Interstate 271, near Fairmount Boulevard, with machine guns, silencers, duct tape, bulletproof vests and ammunition. They were prepared to rob a computer store owner.

In 1999, Igor Abramovsky, a Twinsburg computer store manager, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for bilking customers and threatening to kill people who complained about his bad business. A few years earlier, two Russian men approached a half-dozen Cleveland business owners and demanded a total of about $25,000 to $50,000 in loans from their fellow countrymen, which were never paid back.

Thanks to John Caniglia

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

"Nothing But Money" - How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street

Over the years, Wall Street has seen its share of miscreants, from Jay Gould to Bernie Madoff. During the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s, New York's five Mafia families realized they could steal just as easily from investors as they could from the carting industry or the Fulton Fish Market. Utilizing a time-honored "pump and dump" scam, the mob came to Wall Street and walked away with millions. In "Nothing But Money," Daily News I-Team editor Greg B. Smith (author of "Made Men (Seven Brothers)" and "Mob Cops") takes us inside DMN Securities, a mob front that was 100% scam. Here informant Jeffrey Pokross talks with corrupt stock promoter Cary Cimino about eliminating a broker named Warrington Gillet 3rd. Cimino was arrested; the hit never took place.

August 3, 1999

At 4:20 p.m. Jeffrey Pokross stepped out of a yellow cab into the summer heat of midtown Manhattan. From there he crossed the most famous piece of sidewalk in the city and entered the air-conditioned bar of Sparks Steakhouse, a restaurant known the world over for the gangster who'd died where Jeffrey had just tread.

Pokross was supposed to be meeting Cary Cimino, and Cary had picked the locale. He certainly had a crude sense of humor. Nearly 14 years earlier, around Christmas 1985, the then-boss of the Gambino crime family, Paul Castellano, had had a dinner reservation at Sparks. He didn't quite make it. On the sidewalk in front, four men wearing white long coats and black Russian hats shot down Big Paulie and his driver while shoppers with bags of Christmas gifts in hand dove for cover. There lay Big Paulie on the cold ground in his expensive winter coat, blood oozing, his reign finished and Sparks' reputation sealed. Guides on tourist buses pointed it out. Effete restaurant guides described it as a "macho bastion" with "too much testosterone," but Cary loved the place. It was real New York, not Tribeca or SoHo or all those other precious neighborhoods where people like his former best friend, Francis Warrington Gillet 3rd, hung out. This was where real men ate red meat and drank red wine and reveled in the success they had achieved on their own terms - not because Daddy gave them a trust fund.

Pokross was vaguely aware of his mission. Cary had asked for the meeting because of certain concerns he had about being arrested at any minute. As usual, all the concerns involved Francis Warrington Gillet 3rd. Cary was convinced that Warrington was a cooperating witness. Cary barely spoke on the phone anymore and never to Warrington. He had recently become convinced somebody was following him on the street. After Cary requested the meeting, the FBI wired up Pokross and tasked him with exploring Cary's Warrington-phobia.

At the Sparks bar, Pokross ordered Absolut on the rocks with a twist of lime. This was a Tuesday in August and Manhattan wasn't its usual bustling self. The people who could afford to were already out in the Hamptons. The rest were waiting for the weekend to do the same. Still the bar was unusually crowded and Cary was late. Pokross chatted with the bartender and checked his cell phone voice mail. There he discovered a message from Cary saying he was sitting at the bar at Sparks. Pokross looked down the bar.

"Hey, Cary," he said, pushing his way through the crowd to the other end of the bar.

"How long you been sitting there?" Cary asked, startled.

"Five minutes," Pokross said. "You got to be kidding. You were sitting over there?"

They both laughed, and Cary lied about how he was turning 39 in a month. Pokross sipped his vodka and asked Cary what he was up to.

Cary said, "Disappearing to L.A. for six months, then I'm going to move off to London, then I'll disappear into an Eastern European country like Prague or Hungary for a year or two, let it all blow over. I'm not fleeing the law because I'm not under indictment. There's no warrant for my arrest, so if I'm in a different country, I'm not on the lam."

"What do you expect a problem from?" Jeffrey asked.

Cary replied, "Anything we've done in the past. It's going to come up and bite us in the ass."

Pokross asked Cary if he'd approached any of his friends to see if they'd been questioned.

"What do you mean?" Cary asked.

"Well Warrington has vanished," Jeffrey said. "Where's Warrington? Down at his folks' farm?"

"Yeah. Why don't you call him?"

"Why don't you call him?"

"I don't speak with him anymore," Cary said. "We had a huge fight."

Jeffrey knew all about Cary and Warrington. He'd heard the original tape, which he'd turned over to the FBI, and he also suspected (but did not know for sure) that Warrington was, like him, cooperating. He'd heard all kinds of things. Warrington had fled New York after his arrest, even while his case was still pending. He'd moved back to his mother's horse farm in Maryland, and despite his rich upbringing, he was actually desperate for money. Pokross pointed to his glass and ordered another Absolut, this time with tonic. Cary ordered a Diet Coke.

"Do you think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie with him or what do you wanna do?" Jeffrey asked.

"Why don't you call him?"

"And ask him what?"

"Has he been approached by the feds? He got arrested. It was sealed."

Pokross: "What happens when something gets sealed?"

Cimino leaned forward and answered, "'Cause he's cooperating."

"Then why would you want to call him?"

"Right."

Pokross handed Cary two recent news releases from the Dow Jones newswire, about two stock promoters who'd been convicted of securities fraud in the Spaceplex deal. They discussed what Pokross called "our mutual exposure points." This was another name for anybody involved in their schemes who might now be talking to the FBI. Warrington was a "mutual exposure point."

"Let's go over Warrington for a minute."

"There's nothing to go over," Cary said. "He's about to turn state's evidence. He's untouchable. Unless you want to whack him."

"I think you broached that issue at one point before," Jeffrey said, recalling Cary's reference to a "dirt lunch" some months before. "I really don't think that's the way to do it."

"Why?" Cary persisted. "If you whack him, you, um, his testimony is no good in court. Because you can't cross-examine the witness."

Jeffrey couldn't resist: "As they say, dead men tell no tales."

"Right. So the bottom line is..."

"What do you suppose I do with him?" Jeffrey asked. This appeared to be a carefully worded question. He was not suggesting that he himself should do anything regarding Warrington. He was just exploring what Cary might think to do with the guy.

"Have Jimmy take care of him," Cary said, obligingly. "I don't care how it's done, just take care of him. He's not married anymore," he added, as if this might seal the case. "His wife left him."

"She did?"

"She lives in New York now."

"Who lives in New York?"

"She does," Cary said. "He can't even feed his family. He's been living in the same cottage without electricity. Go down there, have them put a gun in his mouth."

"No," Jeffrey said. "You never pull a gun unless you're willing to use it."

"No, no, no," Cary said. "You miss the point."

"What's the point?"

"Put the gun in his hand, put the gun in his mouth, pull the trigger, make it look like suicide. It's not hard to believe he committed suicide, he's so down and out."

"Oh, I mean, I think that's a little involved, don't you?"

"What's it going to cost us, ten Gs?" Cary asked. "You got to get rid of him."

"Why don't you put the whole ten grand up? I don't want any part of it."

"What, are you afraid to kill someone now?"

"It's not the first thing on my wish list, no."

"But you don't want to go to jail. What would you rather have, five years in jail or whack Warrington? They are going to use the majority of his testimony against us. Do you want to destroy the case against us?"

Jeffrey asked, "Do you think he's a credible witness?"

"Yeah."

"You do?"

"He has checks," Cary said.

"Did you ever give him checks?"

"No," Cary said. He paused. "Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. He cashed a check that had a fictitious name, but it doesn't matter. He's a credible witness. The core of the case against you is Warrington. The core of the case against us requires testimony. If you eliminate the testimony, you eliminate the case."

When they finished, Pokross left Sparks and walked around the corner. He got into a leased car parked on the street, pulled up his shirt and pulled off the wires taped to his chest. He handed the wires and the tiny recorder tucked in his waistband to Special Agent Kevin Barrows of the FBI. Jeffrey Pokross, after all, was a reliable cooperating informant, skilled at coaxing out culpability. With Cary Cimino, they were learning, you didn't need much coaxing.

Thanks to Greg B. Smith

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Degenerate Gambler Accountant Aides the Feds in Bringing Down Mobsters

Las Vegas has always been an attractive place for the hail-fellow, the hustler, and the man on the make.

With its shadowy history, seductive setting and proximity to a limitless river of cash, it brims with dreamers, scufflers and schemers. It's a spot where a guy who knows a guy can make a good living.

It was perhaps the ideal spot for the FBI to turn a man like Stephen Corso loose with a recording device. By all accounts, Corso was the street-wise guy Las Vegas tourists fantasize about and most locals rarely experience, the one who exists in dimly lighted bars and nondescript strip mall offices.

Corso was an accountant by training, a salesman by calling, and a high-rolling degenerate gambler by compulsion when he got caught swiping clients' money to feed his blackjack Jones and penthouse lifestyle. He spent $5 million that didn't belong to him and was on his way to a prison stretch when he began cooperating with the FBI in 2002.

From what I've pieced together from public documents and street sources, the smooth-talking accountant found his true calling as an undercover informant. Reliable sources say Corso worked his way into the local mob scene and pulled the pants off some very experienced wiseguys.

According to a federal document from the Eastern District of Virginia, where Corso's efforts helped nail securities attorney David Stocker on a "pump and dump" stock manipulation scheme with connections reaching into the Securities and Exchange Commission, the accountant was a one-man La Cosa Nostra census worker.

"He provided information related to the activities of individuals with ties to several LCN organized crime families to include: the Chicago Outfit, Lucchese LCN, Bonanno LCN, Genovese LCN, Colombo LCN, Philadelphia LCN, Decavalcante LCN, and Gambino LCN," the document states. "Corso was also instrumental in providing FBI agents with information on individuals with ties to Russian organized crime, Youngstown, Ohio gangsters, and the Irish Mob which exists in the Boston, Mass. area."

Sounds like the guy did everything but dig up Jimmy Hoffa. Corso back-slapped his way into the Las Vegas underworld, then used his accounting and tax preparation skills to give the wiseguys a financial endoscopic treatment.

He played an integral role in sealing the deal in the lengthy "Mafia Cops" case, in which Las Vegas residents and former NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were found guilty of acting as contract killers for the Lucchese crime family. Corso's work in Las Vegas proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Mafia Cops continued their criminal conspiracy years after leaving New York.

"Corso's testimony was critical to the ... conclusion that the conspiracy continued into the limitations period," one government document states.

It's as simple as this: No Corso, no Mafia Cops conviction. And it will be intriguing to see whether the government gets a victory in a related drug case involving Eppolito's son, Anthony Eppolito, and Guido Bravatti now that Corso has been sentenced to a year and a day for his own transgressions.

It's also been reported Corso worked in connection with the Crazy Horse Too investigation. I imagine former Crazy Horse official Bobby D'Apice, who now resides at government expense, won't be sending his former tax consultant, Corso, a letter of reference.

At his February sentencing in Connecticut, U.S. District Judge Janet Hall seemed almost apologetic. Although she called Corso's crime "an extraordinary violation of trust," she admitted, "I can't find the words to describe the value, at least in my judgment, of this cooperation."

The feds have a long tradition of going to embarrassing lengths to help their most effective informants. Not this time. Corso, the accountant, will serve longer than some informants with murder convictions.

Who could blame him if he told the government to get stuffed? The FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut credit Corso with generating at least seven arrests, 20 convictions, and $4.2 million in seizures and forfeitures. And it isn't over.

"The LCN is well known for its tradition of seeking retribution against those who cooperate with law enforcement," a federal memo states. "Corso knew of the danger, but continually put himself in harm's way for the benefit of the government."

So much for loyalty.

Now all Stephen Corso has to do is watch his back the rest of his life.

Thanks to John L. Smith

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Can Mobster Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso Answer a Mystery Around the French Connection Case?

In prison, far from the Brooklyn haunts where his name was scrawled in blood, Anthony Casso stews. He stews over old vendettas. He stews over betrayals of the flesh — heart problems and prostate cancer.

Mr. Casso has served 15 years at a “supermax” prison in Colorado. And Mr. Casso, the once fearsome underboss of the Lucchese family who is now serving multiple life sentences amounting to 455 years for murder, stews over his secrets: unsolved crimes that, he says in an outpouring of letters, he is eager to help close if only he could show the authorities where the bodies are buried (especially if it entails a trip outside the gates).

“I would go out there in a heartbeat,” Mr. Casso said on Friday in a telephone call to a former detective seeking the mobster’s help in clearing his own name. But as much as he hopes for a taste of freedom, or a reduction of his sentence, prosecutors question what his information may be worth and what perils may lie in reopening contact with an antagonist some compare to the fictional monster Hannibal Lecter.

Dangling as a prize is the answer to one of New York’s most scandalous mysteries: how 400 pounds of heroin and cocaine, much of it seized in the so-called French Connection drug bust in 1962, were spirited out of the police property vault for resale back on the street. By the time the record theft was discovered in December 1972, the drugs — then valued at $73 million — had been replaced with flour and cornstarch.

Who committed the deed? There were four narcotics detectives,” Mr. Casso wrote the former detective, Pat Intrieri, in October, amplifying information he offered in his 2008 biography, Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss. “One worked inside the property clerk’s office.” One, he added, was later shot to death; Mr. Casso said he remembers where the gun was thrown. But Mr. Casso, 66, whose mob nickname was Gaspipe, says he is having trouble with exact locations. So, naturally, he would like to get out, if only for a day, to be helpful. Or at least win some leniency along the lines of a plea deal he says the government reneged on: six and a half years in prison.

“Of course he’d like to get out — he’s serving 55 million years,” said Michael F. Vecchione, chief of the rackets division in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Like other prosecutors, Mr. Vecchione has little stomach for Mr. Casso. But without any promises, he has arranged to visit Mr. Casso on Tuesday at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., where he has been undergoing cancer treatment, although it would take corroboration far beyond the mobster’s word to make any case.

“I bet you when the state guys come, they don’t know half the things,” Mr. Casso said on Friday to Mr. Intrieri, who relayed his remarks to The New York Times.

There is little chance that Mr. Casso, now 15 years behind the stoutest walls America can contrive, will ever see his release — not after pleading guilty in 15 murders and being tied to some 22 others.

He has also been accused of plotting to kill a federal judge and prosecutors, and violating the terms of his agreement to turn informant as one of the highest-level mobsters ever to flip — becoming the only major Mafia defector to be thrown out of the federal witness protection program.

Mr. Casso has also waffled on whether he corrupted an F.B.I. agent and hired two New York City police detectives, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, as mob assassins. The former detectives are to be sentenced on March 6 on racketeering charges.

If, moreover, he still wonders why the authorities are leery of his offers, Mr. Casso may have provided the answer to his biographer, Philip Carlo. In his 2008 book, “Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss,” Mr. Carlo, a longtime friend of the Casso family, outlined several of the mobster’s escape schemes, including the planned ambush of a van carrying him back from court after his capture in New Jersey in 1993.

“He’s where he should be,” said Gregory O’Connell, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who initially interviewed Mr. Casso with his late partner, Charles Rose, and called him “the most treacherous sociopath we ever dealt with.”

But a man can dream, and for Mr. Casso, that means being back once again in the Brooklyn sunshine, pinpointing old Mafia execution grounds and the watery grave of a murder weapon. Not rising at 5 a.m. every day to meticulously clean his cell in a federal “supermax” prison in Florence, Colo., that also houses the likes of the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski; the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; and such fellow mobsters as Gregory Scarpa Jr. and Salvatore Gravano, known as Sammy the Bull.

“I think he got a raw deal,” said Joshua L. Dratel, the latest of Mr. Casso’s many lawyers. Mr. Dratel said Mr. Casso was “poor at playing the system” and threatened major cases by exposing Mr. Gravano and other government witnesses and federal agents as liars. Mr. Casso has long claimed that the records of his F.B.I. debriefings, never made public, would show that the government covered up his warnings of moles in its ranks and that to get out of their plea deal with him, prosecutors used other Mafia turncoats as witnesses instead.

Perhaps Mr. Casso’s staunchest pen pal is Mr. Intrieri, 79, a onetime decorated New York detective lieutenant who was convicted of tax evasion in 1976 in the aftermath of the French Connection drug thefts. Mr. Intrieri, who has drafted a memoir asserting his innocence, saw new information on the case in Mr. Carlo’s book and said he found Mr. Casso’s accounts of unsolved crimes credible.

“He wants to get out a little bit, I guess; he’s going stir-crazy,” Mr. Intrieri said, after getting more than a dozen phone calls from Mr. Casso in recent weeks. “But his goal is a sentence reduction.”

The drugs at the core of the mystery — popularized as “The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy” in a 1969 book by Robin Mooreand an Academy Award-winning film that followed two years later — were secreted in compartments in a 1960 Buick loaded aboard the liner United States sailing from Le Havre, France, to New York. The car and its 112 pounds of heroin were later claimed by a Lucchese family underling, Patsy Fuca, who, as it happened, was being tailed by a pair of dogged New York narcotics detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.

The drug bust in January 1962 was widely hailed as a record. But the heroics proved short-lived. In six thefts between March 1969 and January 1972, someone signing the register as Detective Joseph Nunziata, a member of the narcotics bureau’s widely corrupt special investigations unit, and using fictitious badge numbers, removed the French Connection drugs along with another 300 pounds of heroin and cocaine from the police property vault at 400 Broome Street (now a New York University dorm).

Handwriting analysis and a discovered fingerprint never established that Detective Nunziata actually signed the police register. But eight months before the thefts were discovered, Detective Nunziata, charged with corruption in an unrelated case, was found shot to death in his car. It was ruled a suicide.

Mr. Moore, the author, wrote that as far back as 1967, he and Detectives Nunziata, Egan and Grosso joked about stealing the French Connection heroin.

Many suspects emerged, including Vincent Papa, a major drug dealer; Frank King, a retired narcotics detective and private eye working for Mr. Papa; and Mr. Intrieri, who upon his retirement had joined Mr. King as a bodyguard for one of Mr. Papa’s sons — “the biggest mistake of my life,” Mr. Intrieri now says. (Mr. Papa’s lawyer was overheard on a wiretap asking Mr. King, “Do we have anything to worry about the handwriting analysis?”) After providing what he thought was confidential information on four corrupt narcotics detectives, Mr. Papa was stabbed to death in prison.

Also under scrutiny was Vincent Albano, another former narcotics detective, who had served under Mr. Intrieri and had survived a mysterious hail of bullets in 1969, only to be slain in 1985.

Thomas P. Puccio, then a Brooklyn federal prosecutor, focused on Mr. King and Mr. Intrieri, but failed to tie them to the drug thefts. Mr. Puccio charged them instead with tax evasion for unexplained income, winning convictions and five-year sentences for both, along with three years for tax evasion by Mr. Albano. But the case remained a puzzle, Mr. Puccio conceded in an interview. “We never really conclusively solved it,” he said.

Still indignant over his conviction more than 30 years later, Mr. Intrieri — who held 15 police citations for bravery and valor — saw in Mr. Carlo’s book that Mr. Casso had named Mr. Albano and a mob associate as two of the French Connection thieves. The book related how Mr. Albano had been shot to death in Brooklyn in 1985, and how Mr. Casso had supplied the gun and helped dump the body on Staten Island.

Mr. Carlo, in an interview, said Mr. Casso had told him Mr. Albano had conceived the drug heist and asked Mr. Casso how to carry it out.

Mr. Intrieri, in his own manuscript, “The French Connection: The Aftermath,” told of running into Mr. Albano several times over the years — including in 1980 while Mr. Albano was casing a Queens bank — and said that Mr. Albano had laughed at hearing that Mr. Intrieri was a suspect in the drug thefts.

By opening an exchange of letters with Mr. Casso — a correspondence that grew to include this reporter — Mr. Intrieri elicited other details, and other crimes.

Mr. Casso offered details of the 1986 car bombing aimed at John Gotti that killed his Gambino family underboss, Frank DeCicco; the killing of a Russian mob associate, Michael Markowitz, in 1989; and the apparently unreported killing of a Jewish drug importer near Mr. Albano’s office around 1980, among other crimes.

Officials at the Federal Medical Center in North Carolina did not respond to repeated requests to interview Mr. Casso by phone.

“I’ll be here awhile receiving treatments for prostate cancer,” Mr. Casso wrote Mr. Intrieri in December. “Just my luck.”

As for the gun that killed Mr. Albano, Mr. Casso supplied a hand-drawn map with imperfect punctuation showing, he said, where it had been thrown: “Its in Sheepshead Bay.”

He also sketched a site where, he said, another mob victim was buried, calling it: “Drawing for the Colombians remains.”

Mr. Intrieri said that his follow-up inquiries gave credence to Mr. Casso’s information and that it was worth giving the old mob boss a chance to hand prosecutors new evidence. “I sincerely believe that until he goes to the site, he won’t remember,” Mr. Intrieri said.

Thanks to Ralph Blumenthal

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