Former Head of Chicago Federal Organized Crime Strike Force Opposes the Merging of Mob Unit

The acting U.S. attorney for Pennsylvania's Eastern District announced last week that the office's organized-crime strike force will be merged into a unit prosecuting drug dealers.

This is shortsighted.

A little history: The public first became aware of the national scope of organized crime in 1957, when police in Apalachin, N.Y., raided the private home of Joseph Barbero and discovered a meeting of nearly 100 mob chieftains from across the country. It was a national meeting, and it exposed the broad geographic reach of organized crime.

Until then, organized crime had been regarded as confined to small, localized, ethnic areas. In response to the growing awareness to the contrary, the organized-crime strike forces were created in the 1960s. They comprised an independent, nationwide network of prosecutors, directed by the Department of Justice in Washington, with expertise in conducting investigations into the widespread networks of organized-crime families.

The strike forces were in the forefront of sophisticated federal law enforcement. They initiated the use of the investigating grand jury, the process of immunizing reluctant witnesses, electronic surveillance, and witness protection for cooperating accomplices.

They moved federal law-enforcement agencies into the investigation of labor racketeering on the waterfront, and of the construction, hotel and resort, and casino-gaming industries. They initiated investigation of the misuse of union pension funds. Because strike-force attorneys were not burdened with the day-to-day cases that confront U.S. attorneys, they were able to concentrate on the many activities of the mob.

I'm not talking about prosecuting mobsters for killing one another. That is important, but the real danger of organized crime is the threat to the economic fabric of the country.

I'm talking about prosecuting organized crime as a sophisticated business, which requires experience and expertise in investigation and in the courtroom. The strike-force attorneys were successful because they had the time and skill to concentrate on this highly structured illegal enterprise.

The strike forces were merged into the U.S. attorneys' offices in the 1980s as a result of an internal bureaucratic struggle within the Department of Justice. Once that occurred, it was only a matter of time until those strike-force attorneys would be reassigned to whatever hot area needed support in the U.S. attorneys' offices.

I headed both the Chicago and Philadelphia federal strike forces and was the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia. I sat in both chairs a long time - a total of 15 years as a prosecutor.

My fellow U.S. attorneys often joked that they welcomed the assignment of special task forces to cover the latest crisis, because they would eventually absorb the new personnel and quietly assign them to local-office roles. This should not happen to the strike-force attorneys.

Organized crime's operation has not declined. It simply has become more sophisticated and taken on different forms, and there is a need to pursue organized crime in its modern, more sophisticated mode. Once established in any industry, it does not disappear with the prosecution of a few associates.

The strike-force attorneys do not work alone, but in tandem with units in other cities. Using this exchange of intelligence and skills, they have been able to make significant cases in numerous cities against the full scope of organized crime in national industries.

Joel Friedman, the former head of the Philadelphia strike force, went to Chicago in the 1970s to assist me in setting up a sting operation that he originated in New York. Such cooperative efforts aren't formed in an instant; they take months or years to forge.

Dismantling this machinery at this point destroys years of effort, as occurred when the Carter administration removed the agent operatives from the intelligence agencies. We are still paying for it.

I do not diminish the need for drug prosecutions. Drug dealers have been a major problem for more than 30 years. Numerous national task forces and drug czars have not diminished their influence and significance. Perhaps it is time to rethink the national law-enforcement strategy on drugs, but that's beyond the scope of this article.

Transferring the strike-force attorneys to a drug unit may aid that effort for a short while. However, in time, the strike-force attorneys will simply be removed from organized-crime prosecutions. They will be assigned to the next crisis area instead of devoting their skills to prosecuting the most sophisticated organized crime.

Thanks to Peter Vaira

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The Mitchell A. Mars Foundation to Honor Prosecutor Who Fought the Mob and Won

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars, who fought the Chicago Outfit and won, died of cancer shortly after his historic prosecution of the Family Secrets case and mob bosses. A scholarship has been established in his name.

Mars was a great public servant. In a state where public servants are too often all about serving themselves and their friends, Mars was one of the good guys who fought for the public interest against the Outfit and their political puppets.

In his memory, his federal law-enforcement colleagues have established the Mitchell A. Mars Foundation.

If you wish to donate to the foundation, which will fund a Chick Evans Scholarship, you may go to www.mitchmars.org for further instructions

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Genovese Crime Family Associate, John "Rocky" Melicharek Sentenced to Almost 15 Years of Federal Time

An associate of the Genovese Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra was sentenced last Wednesday in federal court to 14 1/3 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to robbery, extortion and firearms charges.

John Melicharek, also known as “Rocky,” was an associate in the crew of Genovese Family captain, or “capo” Angelo Prisco.

One of the crimes with which he was involved was a home invasion in Orange County. Melicharek and his co-conspirators targeted the cash proceeds of the business owned by one of the home’s occupants. He helped plan the robbery, recruiting a break-in team, and procured guns for use during the robbery.

Melicharek then drove the break-in team to the victim’s home. The members of the team entered the home, tied up and assaulted the victim who was inside, and searched the home for cash and other valuables.

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Convictions of Mafia Cops are Reinstated

The racketeering convictions of two retired New York City detectives who helped to kill at least eight men in their role as mob assassins were ordered reinstated by a federal appeals court. It ruled that a trial judge wrongly overturned the jury’s guilty verdicts two years ago.

The decision means that the two highly decorated detectives — Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa — will now face sentencing for their convictions in one of the most spectacular cases of police corruption in city history.

The two men seem certain to spend the rest of their lives in prison. In 2006, after they were convicted of racketeering conspiracy, the trial judge, Jack B. Weinstein of United States District Court in Brooklyn, issued but did not officially impose life prison sentences for each man. Then, saying the five-year statute of limitations for racketeering had run out, the judge overturned the convictions despite what he called “overwhelming evidence” that the two men were “heinous criminals” who were guilty of the “most despicable crimes of violence and treachery.”

But in a 70-page opinion released on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, concluded that Judge Weinstein’s view of the conspiracy was too narrow, and that it had continued to exist within five years of when the men were charged.

Although murders and other serious crimes that the men were accused of occurred in Brooklyn in the 1980s and 1990s, prosecutors used more recent and less serious charges — money laundering and narcotics distribution in Las Vegas in 2004 and 2005 — to bring the earlier acts under the umbrella of an ongoing criminal enterprise.

Judge Weinstein, in throwing out the men’s convictions, had found that the recent crimes were “singular, sporadic acts of criminality,” and could not be considered part of the earlier conspiracy, which included kidnapping, bribery and obstruction of justice. Because the older crimes dated back more than five years, the men, thus, could not be prosecuted for them.

“The government’s case against these defendants stretches federal racketeering and conspiracy law to the breaking point,” Judge Weinstein wrote.

Judge Weinstein had also decided that the earlier conspiracy ended when the two detectives retired and left the New York area and other co-conspirators were arrested. But Judge Amalya L. Kearse, writing for the appellate panel, said Judge Weinstein’s views of the criminal enterprise were too restrictive, given the evidence presented at the trial.

For example, Judge Kearse said, even after the two detectives retired in the early 1990s, one gave his pager number to Burton Kaplan, a former associate of the Luchese crime family who was the government’s key witness and testified about the services that both detectives had provided to organized crime.

She said the appeals panel concluded that the criminal enterprise had not ended before 2000, and thus the prosecution was not disallowed. Joining in the decision were Judges Robert D. Sack and Peter W. Hall.

Benton J. Campbell, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, whose office had appealed the case, said: “We are gratified by the decision of the Court of Appeals reinstating the jury verdict against the two defendants, who can now be sentenced for the extremely serious crimes that they committed.”

A police spokesman had no comment. Lawyers for each of the two men, who have been held without bond, did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

Prosecutors charged that the two men, who both joined the police force in 1969, had taken thousands of dollars to carry out the mob murders and to leak law enforcement information, disclosing the identities of witnesses and compromising investigations.

In the first of the mob killings, in 1986, the two detectives, driving in an unmarked police car and using a siren, pulled a jeweler named Israel Greenwald over on a Long Island road, according to a government brief summarizing the trial testimony.

The detectives told Mr. Greenwald that he was needed in a lineup concerning an automobile accident. They then drove him to a garage, where he was shot to death.

Prosecutors said the detectives had first offered their services to Mr. Kaplan through a cousin of Mr. Eppolito’s who was also a mobster. Mr. Kaplan entered into an agreement with the detectives to pay them regularly. “The defendants were paid $4,000 a month for information, and tens of thousands of dollars for murders and kidnappings,” the government brief said.

At the trial, the jury also found that the men murdered a capo in the Gambino family in his Mercedes-Benz on the Belt Parkway; and that they kidnapped a Staten Island man, put him in a trunk, and delivered him to another mobster who tortured him for hours before killing him.

Judge Kearse, in the decision, cited the payments to the detectives as one factor that supported the prosecution’s view that the conspiracy spanned the entire period of the indictment, from 1979 to 2005. She said that the jury had been told the principal purpose of the enterprise, as the indictment charged, was to generate money for the detectives, through legal and illegal activities.

Judge Kearse also noted that prosecutors had told the jury that the two men had “received money for each crime in New York, and they broke the law for money in Las Vegas.”

Thus, she ruled, the jury could have inferred that the conduct was “sufficiently similar in purpose” to show that “the enterprise that began in New York continued to exist in Las Vegas.”

Thanks to Benjamin Weiser

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Sopranos Actor to be Tried Separately for Murder of Off-Duty Cop

"Sopranos" actor Lillo Brancato will be tried separately from his allegedly trigger-happy cohort for the murder of an off-duty cop, a Bronx judge ruled Friday.

Brancato, who got his acting break as a teen in Robert De Niro's movie "A Bronx Tale," is slated to go on trial on Oct. 28.

Supreme Court Justice Martin Marcus ruled Brancato and pal Steven Armento will have separate days in court following a push by prosecutors to have the pair tried together.

The decision could benefit Brancato because the actor has claimed he had no idea Armento, 51, had a gun when the pair broke into an apartment next door to off-duty cop Daniel Enchautegui in search of drugs in December 2005.

When Enchautegui confronted them outside his home in Pelham Bay, the Bronx, Armento shot him, police said. Before he died, the officer returned fire, wounding Armento and Brancato.

"We want Lillo Brancato to be tried on his actions that night and the jury to make a decision based on his role or his lack of role," said his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina.

"Mr. Brancato is very different than his codefendant. He didn't have a gun, he didn't shoot anyone ... he got shot," said Tacopina.

Armento will be the first of the twosome to stand trial before Marcus on Sept. 29.
Armento's hospital statements, meanwhile, will be used during his trial despite a bid by his lawyer to have them tossed because he was heavily medicated during interviews with cops - a claim that was debunked by doctors.

Thanks to Chrisena Coleman

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