HBO, giddy over the success of its "Sex and the City: The Movie," may be going back for another dose of Carrie and company. But, wait, that's not all! There are also rumors "The Sopranos" might be getting "made" for the big screen. Bada bing, indeed!
We'd love to tell you HBO is planning a cross-over flick where characters from the two iconic shows meet up ("Samantha, meet Paulie Walnuts..."), but the alleged plans actually involve two separate movies. And, please note, we said "alleged." These are just rumors, albeit juicy ones that have launched a slew of blog postings and articles in the Buzz.
Access Hollywood reports that HBO execs have expressed public interest in doing another “Sex and The City” movie as well as a “Sopranos” flick. Meanwhile, Huffington Post notes that the fate of a Sopranos film would ultimately rest with the show's creator, David Chase. And, according to this video from Fox News, Mr. Chase ain't that interested. On a brighter note, the New York Post writes that there is currently "a lot of energy" about another "Sex" movie. A return to glittery Manhattan appears far more likely than another ticket to seedy Jersey.
For what it's worth, searches on both shows are still high, despite their being off the air. And, remember its called "show business" for a reason. If producers throw enough money on the table, we wouldn't be surprised if Tony came out of retirement for one more hit.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
British Union Votes to Merge with New York Mob Family
A NEW chapter has been written in the 86-year history of the Transport and General Workers Union after it agreed a merger with the New York Mafia.
Members of the T&G voted unanimously to join forces with the largest of the so-called 'Five Families' after 800,000 horses' heads were found at the bottom of working class beds across the UK.
The new super-union will have more than three million members and be controlled from the back of a delicatessen in Queens.
The merged union's new general secretary, Peter 'Fair Day's Pay' Clemenza, said: "I would like to pay tribute to my great friends from across the water who have come to a most sensible decision. "But remember what we agreed: play it cool and you don't wind up in the back of no refrigerated truck with a hook in a place you don't want it. Capice?"
Clemenza said British trade unionists would benefit from a stronger bargaining position as well as a share of the proceeds from gambling, prostitution and 'those big, fat trucks coming out of La Guardia, just ripe for the picking'.
He added: "We are keen to sit down with your chancellor of the exchequer and tell him how things are gonna be from now on."
In the UK the merged union will be known as Workers Uniting, while in the US it will continue to be known as 'the thing' or by its more formal name 'this thing of ours'.
Thanks to The Daily Mash
Members of the T&G voted unanimously to join forces with the largest of the so-called 'Five Families' after 800,000 horses' heads were found at the bottom of working class beds across the UK.
The new super-union will have more than three million members and be controlled from the back of a delicatessen in Queens.
The merged union's new general secretary, Peter 'Fair Day's Pay' Clemenza, said: "I would like to pay tribute to my great friends from across the water who have come to a most sensible decision. "But remember what we agreed: play it cool and you don't wind up in the back of no refrigerated truck with a hook in a place you don't want it. Capice?"
Clemenza said British trade unionists would benefit from a stronger bargaining position as well as a share of the proceeds from gambling, prostitution and 'those big, fat trucks coming out of La Guardia, just ripe for the picking'.
He added: "We are keen to sit down with your chancellor of the exchequer and tell him how things are gonna be from now on."
In the UK the merged union will be known as Workers Uniting, while in the US it will continue to be known as 'the thing' or by its more formal name 'this thing of ours'.
Thanks to The Daily Mash
"Mafia Cop" Gets Prison for Filing False Tax Return
A former New York police detective accused of moonlighting as a hit man for the mob has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for filing a false income tax return.
A U.S. District Court in Nevada also ordered Louis Eppolito to pay $102
,000 in restitution.
Eppolito and another former New York detective were accused of participating in at least eight mob-related killings while working for the Luchese crime family.
A New York jury found them guilty of a racketeering conspiracy responsible for multiple murders and other crimes. A federal judge later ruled the statute of limitations had expired for the charges.
The decision is under appeal.
Eppolito has been in federal custody since he was arrested in Las Vegas in 2005.
Prosecutors say he received credit for time served in Tuesday's sentencing, but will be transferred to New York authorities under a detention order in the racketeering case.
A U.S. District Court in Nevada also ordered Louis Eppolito to pay $102
,000 in restitution.Eppolito and another former New York detective were accused of participating in at least eight mob-related killings while working for the Luchese crime family.
A New York jury found them guilty of a racketeering conspiracy responsible for multiple murders and other crimes. A federal judge later ruled the statute of limitations had expired for the charges.
The decision is under appeal.
Eppolito has been in federal custody since he was arrested in Las Vegas in 2005.
Prosecutors say he received credit for time served in Tuesday's sentencing, but will be transferred to New York authorities under a detention order in the racketeering case.
Was Over $2 Billion in City Contracts Awarded to Alleged Mob Connected Construction Company
An affidavit filed in federal court in Brooklyn suggests that officials with the Schiavone Construction Company, a contracting giant working on some of the largest public works projects in New York City, were involved in variety of schemes involving organized crime in recent years.
The affidavit, filed in 2005 as part of an organized crime investigation that has led to scores of arrests, says that Schiavone executives plotted to evade a requirement that they seek to hire businesses owned by women on a city project by using a front that was actually meant to funnel money to a mob-connected trucking executive.
In the affidavit, a federal agent, citing secretly recorded tapes of Schiavone officials and statements by the trucking executive, details the steps Schiavone officials said they would take to help carry out the scheme.
They included an offer by senior Schiavone executives to hire a secretary and install a telephone line at the front company’s offices just for Schiavone projects. Another Schiavone employee was recorded saying that he would provide signs bearing the front company’s name to mask the ownership of the mob-connected trucks, and heard coaching the trucking executive on how to file job paperwork. Another employee was recorded telling the trucking executive that a woman should answer the phone at the front company’s job-site trailer, and directing how she should greet callers.
Schiavone, which was formed in the 1950s and grew into one of the largest heavy-construction companies in the New York area, has been awarded more than $2 billion in public works projects in recent years, including New York City’s massive Croton water filtration plant in the Bronx, said to be the subject of the fraud scheme. Work on the construction of the Second Avenue subway is another of its projects.
Until the company was sold to a Spanish conglomerate late last year, 50 percent of it was owned by Raymond J. Donovan, the labor secretary in the Reagan administration. He was tried and acquitted in 1987 on state fraud charges that accused him of stealing $7.4 million from a subway contract through a scheme involving a Genovese crime family associate and a minority-owned subcontractor.
The 2005 affidavit quotes Nicholas Calvo, a carting company executive identified by prosecutors as a Genovese crime family associate, telling a union official that Schiavone Construction had ties to the Genovese family.
Mr. Calvo told the union official that he had obtained work for another trucking company at the New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, another massive project where Schiavone holds a city contract, through his influence over Schiavone, according to the affidavit. Mr. Calvo, who was arrested earlier this year in the broader organized crime investigation, pleaded guilty this month to extortion conspiracy charges in United States District Court in Brooklyn.
No charges have been brought against Schiavone Construction or the officials implicated in the scheme detailed in the affidavit, although its head of tunneling operations, Anthony Delvescovo, and a lower-level worker, Michael King, were among 62 people indicted in the broader investigation.
The affidavit, which was originally filed under seal, was disclosed last week by Dominic F. Amorosa, a lawyer for one of the defendants in the broader case, who attached it to another document he filed seeking to have wiretap evidence against his client suppressed.
Schiavone’s general counsel, Mary Libassi, said in a written statement on Monday that some of the affidavit’s allegations against Schiavone were untrue, and that the company was cooperating with the investigation, which is being overseen by the United States attorney in Brooklyn.
“Schiavone has operated and continues to operate within the law,” she said. “In its projects, Schiavone has used appropriately certified minority, women’s and disadvantaged business enterprises.”
Of the 62 people charged in the broader case, just Mr. Delvescovo and Mr. King were indicted on charges related to Schiavone. Fifty-three of the defendants have either pleaded guilty or have agreed to, and nine — including the two men — are expected to go to trial in the coming months.
Mr. Devescovo’s lawyer, Avraham C. Moskowitz, said his client was not recorded once on the hundreds of hours of tapes made by the trucking executive. “And that, in and of itself, should cast doubt on the government’s case,” he said. “There is no evidence that my client got a penny from anybody.”
Mr. King’s lawyer, Marc A. Agnifilo, defended his client and played down his role in the case, saying he operated a jackhammer and had “almost no decision-making authority whatsoever.”
It is unclear from the affidavit whether the scheme was ever carried out. But city records show that T & M Maintenance, the company listed in the affidavit as the front in the supposed scheme, was a subcontractor to Schiavone on the Croton water filtration plant project, doing $1.2 million in work.
The company is listed in city records as a certified Women’s Business Enterprise and a Minority Business Enterprise.
The affidavit said that the mob-connected trucking executive who was part of the scheme, Joseph Vollaro, had met with Schiavone executives about the plan while he was cooperating in the investigation with federal and local authorities.
“Certain of the executives have instructed the CI that the CI is to perform the work at the Croton Project under the guises of a company portraying itself as a legitimate women’s business enterprise,” the affidavit said, referring to Mr. Vollaro by the abbreviation for his role as a confidential informant. “In fact, the executives understand that the CI’s company will be doing the work.”
Under a state program, Schiavone was required to make a “good-faith effort” to subcontract at least 17 percent of the work to minority companies and 5 percent to companies owned by women.
The affidavit said that Mr. Vollaro had agreed with the president of T & M, Marina Poetsma, to pay her a fee of 7 percent of the contract payments to use her company’s name. Mr. Vollaro’s company was to keep the remaining 93 percent, according to the affidavit, which did not include the total dollar amount of the payments.
A man who answered the phone at T & M’s offices on Staten Island said that the company and Ms. Poetsma had done nothing wrong. “Whatever she did, it was all legal,” said the man, who would not give his name. “You wouldn’t be awarded a contract otherwise. Don’t believe everything you read,” he added, referring to the affidavit. “The City of New York is not stupid.”
The affidavit was sworn to by Jonathan Mellone, a special agent with the federal Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General, which is investigating the case along with the F.B.I., the state Organized Crime Task Force, the city Department of Investigation and federal prosecutors. It also described several other schemes involving Schiavone.
Among them were instances of bribes and kickbacks, and a scheme in which Mr. Vollaro was to pay $40 a truck load — including all the loads from the Schiavone jobs — for unlimited access to a landfill project in New Jersey known as Endcap.
Mr. Vollaro’s criminal record dates to a 1989 drug conviction in New Jersey. He also served a federal prison sentence for loansharking. He began cooperating with investigators in early 2005 when they caught him with a kilogram of cocaine.
The Croton project, at the center of the alleged scheme involving Schiavone and T & M, is a massive, controversial undertaking by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which has been plagued by delays and by costs that have soared to nearly $3 billion from $660 million.
One of the biggest water filtration plants in the world, it is being built in a 10-story hole that Schiavone helped excavate out of bedrock in the Bronx. Once entombed in the man-made cavern below Van Cortlandt Park, it will be able to filter 300 million gallons of water a day.
Thanks to William K. Rashbaum
The affidavit, filed in 2005 as part of an organized crime investigation that has led to scores of arrests, says that Schiavone executives plotted to evade a requirement that they seek to hire businesses owned by women on a city project by using a front that was actually meant to funnel money to a mob-connected trucking executive.
In the affidavit, a federal agent, citing secretly recorded tapes of Schiavone officials and statements by the trucking executive, details the steps Schiavone officials said they would take to help carry out the scheme.
They included an offer by senior Schiavone executives to hire a secretary and install a telephone line at the front company’s offices just for Schiavone projects. Another Schiavone employee was recorded saying that he would provide signs bearing the front company’s name to mask the ownership of the mob-connected trucks, and heard coaching the trucking executive on how to file job paperwork. Another employee was recorded telling the trucking executive that a woman should answer the phone at the front company’s job-site trailer, and directing how she should greet callers.
Schiavone, which was formed in the 1950s and grew into one of the largest heavy-construction companies in the New York area, has been awarded more than $2 billion in public works projects in recent years, including New York City’s massive Croton water filtration plant in the Bronx, said to be the subject of the fraud scheme. Work on the construction of the Second Avenue subway is another of its projects.
Until the company was sold to a Spanish conglomerate late last year, 50 percent of it was owned by Raymond J. Donovan, the labor secretary in the Reagan administration. He was tried and acquitted in 1987 on state fraud charges that accused him of stealing $7.4 million from a subway contract through a scheme involving a Genovese crime family associate and a minority-owned subcontractor.
The 2005 affidavit quotes Nicholas Calvo, a carting company executive identified by prosecutors as a Genovese crime family associate, telling a union official that Schiavone Construction had ties to the Genovese family.
Mr. Calvo told the union official that he had obtained work for another trucking company at the New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, another massive project where Schiavone holds a city contract, through his influence over Schiavone, according to the affidavit. Mr. Calvo, who was arrested earlier this year in the broader organized crime investigation, pleaded guilty this month to extortion conspiracy charges in United States District Court in Brooklyn.
No charges have been brought against Schiavone Construction or the officials implicated in the scheme detailed in the affidavit, although its head of tunneling operations, Anthony Delvescovo, and a lower-level worker, Michael King, were among 62 people indicted in the broader investigation.
The affidavit, which was originally filed under seal, was disclosed last week by Dominic F. Amorosa, a lawyer for one of the defendants in the broader case, who attached it to another document he filed seeking to have wiretap evidence against his client suppressed.
Schiavone’s general counsel, Mary Libassi, said in a written statement on Monday that some of the affidavit’s allegations against Schiavone were untrue, and that the company was cooperating with the investigation, which is being overseen by the United States attorney in Brooklyn.
“Schiavone has operated and continues to operate within the law,” she said. “In its projects, Schiavone has used appropriately certified minority, women’s and disadvantaged business enterprises.”
Of the 62 people charged in the broader case, just Mr. Delvescovo and Mr. King were indicted on charges related to Schiavone. Fifty-three of the defendants have either pleaded guilty or have agreed to, and nine — including the two men — are expected to go to trial in the coming months.
Mr. Devescovo’s lawyer, Avraham C. Moskowitz, said his client was not recorded once on the hundreds of hours of tapes made by the trucking executive. “And that, in and of itself, should cast doubt on the government’s case,” he said. “There is no evidence that my client got a penny from anybody.”
Mr. King’s lawyer, Marc A. Agnifilo, defended his client and played down his role in the case, saying he operated a jackhammer and had “almost no decision-making authority whatsoever.”
It is unclear from the affidavit whether the scheme was ever carried out. But city records show that T & M Maintenance, the company listed in the affidavit as the front in the supposed scheme, was a subcontractor to Schiavone on the Croton water filtration plant project, doing $1.2 million in work.
The company is listed in city records as a certified Women’s Business Enterprise and a Minority Business Enterprise.
The affidavit said that the mob-connected trucking executive who was part of the scheme, Joseph Vollaro, had met with Schiavone executives about the plan while he was cooperating in the investigation with federal and local authorities.
“Certain of the executives have instructed the CI that the CI is to perform the work at the Croton Project under the guises of a company portraying itself as a legitimate women’s business enterprise,” the affidavit said, referring to Mr. Vollaro by the abbreviation for his role as a confidential informant. “In fact, the executives understand that the CI’s company will be doing the work.”
Under a state program, Schiavone was required to make a “good-faith effort” to subcontract at least 17 percent of the work to minority companies and 5 percent to companies owned by women.
The affidavit said that Mr. Vollaro had agreed with the president of T & M, Marina Poetsma, to pay her a fee of 7 percent of the contract payments to use her company’s name. Mr. Vollaro’s company was to keep the remaining 93 percent, according to the affidavit, which did not include the total dollar amount of the payments.
A man who answered the phone at T & M’s offices on Staten Island said that the company and Ms. Poetsma had done nothing wrong. “Whatever she did, it was all legal,” said the man, who would not give his name. “You wouldn’t be awarded a contract otherwise. Don’t believe everything you read,” he added, referring to the affidavit. “The City of New York is not stupid.”
The affidavit was sworn to by Jonathan Mellone, a special agent with the federal Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General, which is investigating the case along with the F.B.I., the state Organized Crime Task Force, the city Department of Investigation and federal prosecutors. It also described several other schemes involving Schiavone.
Among them were instances of bribes and kickbacks, and a scheme in which Mr. Vollaro was to pay $40 a truck load — including all the loads from the Schiavone jobs — for unlimited access to a landfill project in New Jersey known as Endcap.
Mr. Vollaro’s criminal record dates to a 1989 drug conviction in New Jersey. He also served a federal prison sentence for loansharking. He began cooperating with investigators in early 2005 when they caught him with a kilogram of cocaine.
The Croton project, at the center of the alleged scheme involving Schiavone and T & M, is a massive, controversial undertaking by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which has been plagued by delays and by costs that have soared to nearly $3 billion from $660 million.
One of the biggest water filtration plants in the world, it is being built in a 10-story hole that Schiavone helped excavate out of bedrock in the Bronx. Once entombed in the man-made cavern below Van Cortlandt Park, it will be able to filter 300 million gallons of water a day.
Thanks to William K. Rashbaum
11 Things to Know When Arrested
I had reader suggest a link called 11 Things to Know When Arrested. Now, we have several readers here who are members of the legal community on the the defense side, as well as on the prosecution side. We also have several members of the law enforcement community who are readers from the local, state and federal levels. I thought we might get some comments on the advice in the above post. There already appears to be some spirited discussion reading the comments concerning #10, which states Do Not Refuse an Alcohol Test.
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