Pizza King Phone Call Highlights Testimony in U.S. Marshal Mob Witness Protection Program Trial

A 14-minute phone call by Deputy U.S. Marshal John Ambrose to a pizza restaurant owned by a family friend with reputed organized-crime ties highlighted the final day of prosecution testimony at Ambrose's trial Tuesday.

FBI Special Agent Edward McNamara testified that phone records showed Ambrose placed a call to The Pizza King, a South Side restaurant owned by his friend William Guide, hours after his second secret detail protecting mob witness Nicholas Calabrese ended. But Ambrose told agents in two 2006 interviews that he didn't speak to Guide until he happened to bump into him weeks after that detail ended, McNamara said.

Ambrose is accused of leaking Calabrese's secret cooperation early in the Family Secrets investigation to Guide, knowing organized crime would learn the details.

McNamara testified that Ambrose admitted telling Guide about Calabrese's visits to Chicago in the hope that Guide would help him track organized-crime fugitives in the future.

At a 2002 wrestling meet, Ambrose told agents, he "boasted" to Guide about protecting a prominent organized-crime witness, McNamara testified. On the second occasion, he told Guide that investigators had driven Calabrese to sites of several decades-old mob slayings.

The first two defense witnesses, Ambrose's colleagues in the Marshals Service, said they had used The Pizza King as a "staging area" for operations while Ambrose served on the fugitive warrant unit. Both praised Ambrose's honesty. "I would trust my life with him," said Supervisory Deputy Marshal Matt Block.

Thanks to Robert Mitchum

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The Mafia Has Been Replaced by Mexian Drug Cartels as the #1 Organized Crime Threat to the United States

Mexican drug cartels have displaced the mafia as the "number one organized crime threat" in the United States, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday as his Senate committee heard testimony in Phoenix on border violence.

Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican on Lieberman's panel, told FOX News that the United States needs to step up the fight against the drug cartels. The two senators were in Arizona, McCain's home state, to hear from local officials on their advice for dealing with the drug-fueled violence many fear is spilling across the border.

"This is literally a war," said Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "They're fighting for the turf."

Lieberman has said he plans to seek $380 million in additional funding to help law enforcement stop the flow of guns and drugs across the border. On Monday, he praised Mexican President Felipe Calderon's campaign to fight the cartels, but said cartels have already taken root north of the border -- driving a kidnapping surge in Phoenix and operating, he said, in at least 230 U.S. metropolitan areas.

"The Mexican drug cartels have become the number one organized crime threat in America, displacing the mafia," Lieberman told FOX News.

McCain said the federal government needs to approve border states' requests for more National Guard troops, something Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said is under review.

"I think we can have significant control of our border," McCain said. "We should heed the governors who are having to fight this ... all the time."

But Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the Department of Defense has effectively denied her request to send 250 additional National Guard troops to the Arizona-Mexico border to help authorities battle immigrant and drug smuggling and related violence.

The governor told Lieberman's committee meeting Monday that she was disappointed with the denial of her request to bring the number of troops at her state's southern boundary up to 400. One hundred fifty troops are already there as part of a long-standing border assistance program.

The Bush administration sent thousands of Guard troops to the border to perform support duties so that federal border authorities would be freed up to focus on border security. Bush's buildup began in 2006 and ended last year.

Thanks to Fox News

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Mexican Drug Cartels Working with Italian Mobsters

Mexican drug traffickers are funneling cocaine to Italian organized crime, and some shipments are moving through Dallas.

"We've got some of the major cartel members established here dealing their wares in Europe," said James Capra, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Dallas office.

Experts say warring cartels battered by unprecedented U.S. and Mexican government crackdowns are increasingly looking to Europe as an expansion market. Across the Atlantic, demand for cocaine is high and prices are up. A kilo sold for $20,000 in Dallas is worth up to three times as much overseas, experts say.

Mexican cartel operatives in North Texas "are dealing with Italy, Spain, you name it," he said. "They can operate their logistical center from here and coordinate between Mexico, Central America and Europe."

Italian capos are venturing to North Texas to get in on the action, says one mob expert.

"Places like Houston and Dallas are where these criminal organizations are most likely to invest their money," said Antonio Nicaso, an internationally recognized author and lecturer on Italian organized crime. "This is the right time, with the recession going on."

Dallas has long been a recognized distribution hub for drugs smuggled up the Interstate 35 corridor from Laredo. From here, narcotics head out across the country to Atlanta, Chicago, New England and elsewhere.

The revelation that the cartels are forming alliances with Italian syndicates came last year when the DEA revealed that the Mexican Gulf cartel, which supplies Dallas with cocaine, was working with New York associates of the powerful Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia.

Last August, the DEA arrested a Dallas County jailer accused of tipping off drug dealers to what appeared to be a small-time local narcotics conspiracy. The jailer, Brenda Medina Salinas, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. As others pleaded guilty and court documents piled up, it became clear that the drug pipeline in that case reached all the way to Europe and the clandestine world of the Camorra.

The Naples-based Camorra traces its roots to the 16th century. Ruthlessly violent when they need to be, Camorra members often smuggle behind quiet business fronts. They're known to work across ethnic and political lines.

Relatively little is known about the local Camorra associate, other than that he had ties to Dallas, Houston and Mexico. The Camorra associate was not charged in the case because agents had not developed enough information to nab him when they were forced to act because of Salinas' leaking information to co-conspirators.

Agents learned the Camorra associate's name last May. That's when DEA agents monitoring a meeting between him and his local contacts asked Dallas police to pull over the Camorra associate's car and check his identity.

He had just met with Higinio "Gino" Hernandez, a 30-year-old flooring installer from Carrollton, and Altin Kore, a 32-year-old Dallas man also charged in conspiracy. Kore is charged in the case but is a fugitive. Hernandez has pleaded guilty.

The DEA began investigating the Hernandez network after being tipped by Italian authorities in the fall of 2007. Their wiretaps on Camorra associates in Italy revealed a Dallas cocaine supplier.

Higinio Hernandez was close to his brother Henry "Tito" Hernandez, 34, of Dallas, who has also pleaded guilty. A third brother, Luis, 35, has been charged but is a fugitive.

Henry and Higinio worked for years as flooring installer subcontractors for Carpet One in Southlake.

"They were leading a double life," said prosecutor Ernest Gonzalez in Plano. "They were doing flooring by day, and at night they were conducting these drug transactions."

It was obvious to those around them that laying floors was not their only source of income.

When they were arrested last fall, federal agents seized Higinio's Cadillac Escalade and Lexus IS30, as well as Henry's Escalade.

Henry and Luis kept snapshots of themselves partying in limos with friends, booze and women. They also had dealings in Cuba, authorities say.

"They didn't hide their money," Gonzalez said.

Authorities say Higinio's supplier in Mexico was half brother Rodolfo Lopez, 35, another fugitive charged in the case.

While living in the U.S., Lopez forged the relationship with the Camorra associate and dealt with cocaine producers in Colombia and elsewhere, authorities say. Lopez eventually relocated to Mexico, where authorities say he directed shipments to his brothers in Dallas.

From Dallas, the cocaine was taken to Houston, where the Camorra associate operated a scented candle export business. It took about a month for the cocaine, smuggled amongst the candles, to make the voyage across the Atlantic to Italy.

Major ports attract Italian organized crime syndicates, which operate in at least 19 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department's latest Drug Threat Assessment.

The Hernandez case is considered somewhat of an anomaly among law enforcement. Federal agents for years have said that the mafia has no significant grip here.

Still, after a lull, mob influence nationwide seems to be increasing, experts say. Much of their work is partnering with the Mexican distributors and Colombian producers and supplying Europe with cocaine.

It's a good time to expand to Europe, as crackdowns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have made smuggling cocaine into Texas increasingly difficult. In the past year, authorities have arrested more than 500 Gulf Cartel and 750 rival Sinaloa Cartel members here and in Mexico.

Extraditions of Mexican narcos to the U.S. for prosecution are on the rise under President Felipe Calderón, who has deployed military troops to quell violence in border towns.

Still, a downside to dabbling in international markets is the increased scrutiny by a larger net of law enforcement agencies – which is what stopped the Hernandez ring.

Last spring, DEA agents in Dallas learned that a meeting was to take place between Higinio and the Camorra associate. On May 15, agents set up surveillance at a Chili's restaurant on Knox Street in Dallas.

It was not a pleasant meeting for Higinio. DEA agents were watching as the Italian poked a finger in his chest. The cocaine they were selling wasn't pure enough, he told Hernandez. Customers were complaining. After the meeting, Higinio reached out to his brother, Henry, to see if his own supplier, Moises Duarte, could get purer powder. But agents were forced to swoop in before any more cocaine made it to Italy.

The reason: Brenda Salinas. The 23-year-old befriended Henry Hernandez and Duarte on the club scene in Dallas, and eventually dated both men.

As a jailer with Dallas County, she had access to law enforcement databases. In July, when agents learned that she was feeding both men information, DEA agents felt they had to act. They arrested Duarte and set up stings on his cohorts.

So far, nine defendants – including Salinas – have pleaded guilty. Among them is an Albanian financial consultant from Dallas. He has ties to an ex-stockbroker being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an alleged pump-and-dump stock scam.

According to the DEA, the investigation is ongoing.

Thanks to Jason Trahan

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