Mafia Influencing Insurgents in Iraq

In northern Iraq, insurgents are using Mafia-style rackets and extortion of legitimate businesses to fund deadly attacks on American and Iraqi forces. U.S. military units say they've uncovered a complex connection between insurgent shakedowns, government corruption and crooked businessmen that together pay for the insurgency in Iraq's largest northern city.

Throughout the war in Iraq, the U.S. military has worked to understand how the insurgency is financed. Two big sources of money are clear: kidnapping rings and smuggled cash. Now commanders in northern Iraq's largest city, Mosul, say they've uncovered a network of Mafia-style rackets.

Schemes include extortion and construction kickbacks that pump hundreds of thousands of dollars a month into the insurgency. And widespread corruption is complicating efforts to shut down those funding streams.

One such scheme involves real estate. A few months ago, a local government official informed one unit in Mosul that insurgents had muscled-in on sales of property, much of it government owned.

Commanders say insurgents threatened bureaucrats into signing phony deeds for homes and land confiscated from former Baath party officials who are now dead, in jail or have fled the country.

Insurgents then would sell the illegally obtained property to private buyers and pocket the money. An Iraqi whistle-blower said insurgents had threatened to kill his predecessor and are now threatening him.

Thanks to Eric Westervelt

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Whitey Bulger Makes Leap to The World's Most Wanted

AMERICA’S MOST WANTED becomes “The World’s Most Wanted” in a special broadcast Saturday, Nov. 17 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. Host John Walsh brings television’s top crime-fighting show to London to hunt for international fugitives including Whitey Bulger, the elusive Boston mobster who is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, and to search for new evidence in the disappearance of 4-year-old Madeleine McCann.

Bulger has been on the run for years, and possible sightings of him have been reported worldwide, most recently in Italy. AMW will reveal exclusive new information about the fugitive from some of the people who knew him best. In their first-ever television interviews, the convicted mob figure who gave Bulger his start in organized crime and Bulger’s former longtime girlfriend offer new insights and information about Bulger that viewers can use to help authorities finally track down this dangerous man. The story will also feature photos of Whitey Bulger that have never before been broadcast.

The episode will also include AMW’s investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, one of the world’s most closely watched missing-child cases. Recently, John Walsh met with Madeleine McCann’s parents to discuss their daughter’s disappearance. AMW correspondent John Turchin continues to cover the story from the tiny beach town of Praia da Luz, Portugal, where the girl vanished. Turchin analyzes the crime scene and breaks down possible scenarios of what may have happened to Madeleine—in an investigation that brings him face-to-face with the first official suspect in the case.

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Mob Tied to Altantic City Sports Gambling Ring

An illegal sports gambling ring run out of a high-stakes poker room in an Atlantic City casino was busted Wednesday, authorities said, and 18 people were arrested, including four with mob ties.

Since March 2006, the ring took in $22 million in bets on college and professional football and basketball in the poker room of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, said New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram.

The off-the-books exchanges of cash and casino chips were unraveled only when an informant told authorities what to look for using the casino's eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras, Milgram said.

The suspected ringleader of the operation, Andrew Micali, 32, of Ventnor City, New Jersey, is an associate of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, mob boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, according to a New Jersey law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the criminal complaints do not mention any reputed mob ties. Micali was charged with promoting gambling, money laundering and loan-sharking.

Three associates of Micali also were arrested. Vincent Procopio, 41, of Brigantine, New Jersey, was charged with promoting gambling. Anthony Nicodemo, 36, and Michael Lancellotti, both of Philadelphia, were charged with conspiracy to promote gambling.

"They sought to escape detection by enlisting casino employees in their crimes," Milgram said. "I'm pleased to say they greatly underestimated our vigilance and determination to keep organized crime out of Atlantic City casinos."

Twenty-three people in all are charged, and authorities were seeking five on Wednesday. Most were charged with promoting gambling or money laundering.

Unlike Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlantic City has no legal sports book.

Authorities said the Borgata cooperated with the investigation and let investigators use casino surveillance video. Borgata spokesman Rob Stillwell said the ring involved "rogue employees." No one was arrested on the casino floor, and the integrity of the casino's operations was never compromised, he said. The casino employees charged included poker room supervisors, dealers and a bartender.

The state Casino Control Commission was expected to punish the casino workers, commission spokesman Daniel Heneghan said.

The four men with alleged mob ties, along with Borgata supervisor Joseph Wishnick, 42, of Brigantine, were taken into custody Wednesday. Bail was set at $100,000 for Micali and $50,000 for the others. Wishnick was in custody Wednesday at the Atlantic County Jail. It was not immediately clear whether the others had posted bail or were waiting to be processed at the jail. None could be reached for comment by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The state Attorney General's Office said lawyers had not come forward for any of the 23 suspects.

If the charges are proven, the case would be among the most serious mob incursions into the Atlantic City casino industry since the first casino opened in 1978.

Milgram said authorities followed the money in the case from the casino to so-called "wire rooms" in Philadelphia. The wire rooms were used to tally the bets and calculate winnings and payouts for the ring.

The ring was publicized mainly by word of mouth among illegal gamblers, who were advised whom to see in the poker room to place their bets.

Authorities said the ring engaged in "massive money laundering" facilitated by casino employees who would not record certain exchanges of cash and gambling chips. This is a common method of money laundering at casinos called "chip washing," Milgram said.

"It involves taking cash, turning it into chips, 'washing' the chips by betting and then turning them in, and taking cash out," she said.

Losing bettors were forced to take out loans from the ring at more than 50 percent interest to cover their losses, authorities said.

In their search Wednesday, authorities seized more than $40,000 worth of cash and Borgata chips from a safe deposit box Micali maintained at the casino. The state also obtained a court warrant freezing Micali's bank account with more than $200,000 in it.

Fear of organized crime led New Jersey to institute tight controls when legal gambling began, but regulations have been loosened over the years.

The anxieties were expressed in a now-famous speech by then-Gov. Brendan T. Byrne when he signed the law authorizing casinos on June 2, 1977: "I've said it before and I will repeat it again to organized crime: Keep your filthy hands off Atlantic City. Keep the hell out of our state!"

This is the second high-profile sports betting charge in New Jersey in the past two years. In 2006, a state trooper, NHL hockey coach Rick Tocchet and a third man were charged with running a sports gambling ring. All later pleaded guilty.

Thanks to CNN

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Wiseguy Widow Fingers Crime Boss

The widow of wiseguy William (Wild Bill) Cutolo did Tuesday what prosecutors wanted her to do - she placed Colombo crime boss Alphonse Persico at the center of the crime.

Then things started unraveling for Marguerite (Peggy) Cutolo when defense lawyers suggested her husband was still alive and that she had stashed away up to $2.7 million in loanshark profits.

"I'm not lying," a visibly upset Cutolo said in Federal Court in Central Islip, L.I. "I've been distressed and depressed for eight years because I don't know where my husband was. My husband would have never run away."

She left witness protection to testify against (Allie Boy) Persico and former underboss John (Jackie) DeRoss, who are charged with her husband's murder - and whose first trial ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors say the gangsters orchestrated the murder because they believed Wild Bill was trying to take over the Colombo family.

Under questioning from prosecutors, Peggy Cutolo insisted her husband kept nothing from her. On the day he vanished, she said, "I knew he was meeting Allie Boy."

She said Cutolo's meeting with Persico in Bay Ridge on May 26, 1999, was unusual because on Wednesdays he usually visited his union office in Manhattan, got his weekly haircut at Bruno's in Bensonhurst, and dined with his crew at the Friendly Bocce Club in Brooklyn.

Cutolo was DeRoss' best man at his wedding. After he disappeared, DeRoss was more concerned about finding the piles of cash Cutolo stashed in their Staten Island mansion than finding her husband, the widow testified.

Peggy Cutolo admitted she hid $1.65 million in an air conditioning vent and moved it when the AC went on the fritz and the repairman - DeRoss' nephew - came to fix it. She said she took the money with her when she went into witness protection in February 2001. "My husband told me, 'If anything happened to me, you give them nothing,'" she testified.

When DeRoss' lawyer, Robert LaRusso, produced ledgers indicating Cutolo had $2.7 million at the time of his disappearance, the flustered widow explained her husband kept two sets of books - one for Colombo money, one for his money. "I just know what I counted," she said.

Asked what happened to the cash, Peggy Cutolo said, "The government let me have the money. I had to take care of the kids."

Thanks to John Marzulli and Corky Siemaszko

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Two Men Accused in Mob Killing

Prosecutors opened their murder case yesterday against two men accused of hiring assassins to kill an associate of the Genovese crime family in 1994.

The defendants, Carmine Polito and Mario Fortunato, had been found guilty of similar charges in federal court, but that conviction was overturned. A federal appeals court ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove the men had committed the crime to increase their underworld status. In June, a state appeals court ruled that the men could stand trial again in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Two of the confessed assassins are expected to testify, but the star witness is a man who was also shot in the attack. That witness, Michael D’Urso, has confessed to his own violent and diverse range of crimes, committed before he became a government informer.

Thanks to Michael Brick.

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