FBI Cleans Up the "Trash Czar" and The Waste Management Industry

He was dubbed the “trash czar” by the media—James Galante, businessman and majority owner of 25 trash companies that controlled about 80 percent of the trash, or carting, industry in Connecticut and parts of eastern New York. But earlier this summer, Galante’s reign ended when he pled guilty in federal court after a long-term multi-agency investigation of wrongdoing in the waste-hauling industry. Thirty-two others—including Galante’s employees, his accountant, a silent partner with ties to New York organized crime, and a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family—were also charged in the case and have all pled guilty.

Galante was operating what’s known as an illegal “property rights system”—when carting companies affiliated with organized crime groups assert they have a monopoly over certain “stops,” or customer accounts (mostly commercial and municipal customers in this case). These companies collude with one another to divvy up the stops, fix prices, and rig contract bids. They also pay a so-called “mob tax” to keep their piece of the action.

The result is a loss of competition and higher prices for customers. And woe to the carting companies that try to compete legally in this type of marketplace. They find their trucks and other equipment vandalized, their employees threatened or assaulted by mob muscle, and their economic livelihood at stake.

The FBI's case began in February 2003, after Galante sent a threatening note to another trash company over a disputed contract. The company contacted the FBI's New Haven office, and they decided to introduce an undercover agent into the mix. The agent started working as the victim company’s “strategic marketing planner,” with oversight over new trash hauling contracts that put him in direct contact with Galante and his people. Later, the undercover agent was actually hired by Galante as a salesman.

During the operation, which also included extensive use of court-authorized wiretaps, the FBI discovered more than 40 refuse companies working within the property rights system. They identified links between Galante’s enterprise and organized crime. They collected mounds of evidence against Galante and other members of his criminal enterprise. And because they intercepted phone calls containing threats against individuals and companies, they were able to warn intended victims.

Public corruption also reared its ugly head. For a property rights system to work, a criminal enterprise needs the help of corrupt local government and/or law enforcement officials. And so it was in this case—also charged were a former mayor, a federal drug agent, and a Connecticut state trooper who unlawfully accessed the FBI's National Crime Information Center database to check a license plate for Galante.

Special thanks to the FBI's partners who worked with them on this case—the Ansonia, Milford, and New Haven police departments; the Connecticut State Police; the Connecticut Department of Corrections; the Internal Revenue Service; the Department of Labor; the Drug Enforcement Administration; and the Marshals Service.

Part of Galante’s plea agreement involves the full forfeiture of his companies, which were valued at up to $100 million. The federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies who worked with the FBI will be receiving millions of dollars in forfeiture proceeds. And one other note: because of the case, a new state agency in Connecticut now oversees the refuse hauling industry and requires background checks on trash companies.

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American's Most Wanted on The Chicago Syndicate - 11/08/08 Episode

Roy “Bubba” Massey
Cops say notorious bad boy Roy "Bubba" Massey led Arkansas State Police on a high speed chase that ended in a fiery crash before he was taken into custody.

Russell McCollum
Police say Russell Victor McCollum appears to be a responsible, straight-laced guy; cops in Tennessee say he's anything but.

Joseph Roman
New York City Det. Kenny Kearns had mixed feelings about pursuing his latest fugitive, Joseph Roman, because Roman once worked in his family's restaurant in the Bronx. "The streets got him," Kearns says, and in turn, cops say Roman got involved in a murder.

Candido Peraza
Cops in Ontario, Calif. are determined to bring Candido Renteria Peraza to justice for the fatal hit-and-run of 7-year-old Nathan Sitompul. Cops say a drunken Peraza struck Nathan, who was riding his bike at the time. Peraza stopped, but when he saw Nathan struggling to get to his feet, Peraza took off, running over Nathan again.

James Perry
Cops want accused North Carolina drug slinger James Ricky Perry off the streets and back behind bars. They say Perry has been dealing since the 1980s, and not even a stint in the slammer could change his ways.

Humberto Fortanelli
Police say Humberto Fontanelli and his cellmate David Ray escaped from a Fordyce, Ark. prison on New Year's Eve 2007. Cops picked up Shannon Ray four days later, but say that Fortanelli is still on the run. AMW sat down with Ray and got a first-hand look at exactly how the escape went down, and where his co-partner in crime, Humberto Fortanelli, could be hiding out.

Shannon Ray
Dental floss and razors might have gotten David Ray out of jail, but they weren't enough to keep him out. Ray was arrested in the early morning hours of January 4, 2008 by cops in Memphis, Tenn.

Unknown Melissa Witt Killer
On January 13, 1995, cops in Arkansas made a gruesome discovery in the Ozark Mountains: the body of beloved Forth Smith teenager Melissa "Missy" Witt, brutally murdered. Now, John Walsh and the AMW team are working to hunt down a killer.

Unknown Ann Pressly Killer
Cops in Arkansas are searching for the unknown suspect who beat a television anchorwoman to death. Anne Pressly, 26, died nearly a week after she was beaten in her home, and as a precautionary measure, cops have distributed pepper spray to local television news personalities who may be targeted as well. Police say the pepper spray was donated by an anonymous donor.


Anthony Forgione
Okaloosa County Sheriff's Deputy Anthony Forgione, 33, was shot and killed by a suspect who had barricaded himself inside a Fort Walton Beach home. Cops say the suspect, Mark Rohlman, was committed for a mental evaluation, but left and hid inside his childhood home with a shotgun. Deputy Forgione entered the home with the Sheriff's Office Special Response Team when he was fatally wounded by the suspect's gunfire, according to police.

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Has the Russian Mafia Stolen Over 500,000 Bank and Credit Card Accounts?

Researchers at RSA's FraudAction Research Lab discovered one of the largest stolen data caches ever. Over the last 30 months a trojan virus, known as Sinowal, Torpig and Mebroot by various anti-virus companies, has stolen 270,000 online banking account credentials and 240,000 credit and debit account numbers. The virus is so sophisticated that it changes constantly to avoid detection by anti-virus programs, in fact, a test of the most recent virus showed that only 10 out of 35 security applications were able to detect it.

Sinowal works by hiding in the Master Boot Record of computers waiting till its victims visit one of 2700 bank and e-commerce sites where it displays new fields in to the existing website to capture personal and private information such as Social Security numbers, account numbers and passwords.

At this point it is not apparent who is behind the attacks but there is some interesting, if not revealing, evidence that suggests the Russian Mafia may be behind this crime.

Sinowal was tied to the Russian Business Network in its early days. The Russian Business Network was a hosting company in St. Petersburg, Russia that was disbanded last year after media pressure due to thier cyber-crime friendly policies and clients. With 500,000 stolen identities and accounts from at least 27 countries it is interesting that none were from Russia. Additionally, one of the Sinowal web servers also contained a spoof of the U.S. Marshals Web Site with bogus wanted posters for famous Russian people such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Leonid Brezhnev, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin. What's more interesting is that these names were also the user names for gang members that logged in to this illegal web server.

Is all this proof? No, but that will be difficult to obtain. It does lead to a high level of suspicion though. Identity Theft Labs has stated previously that we fully expect large criminal organizations to become involved in identity theft, if they haven't already, because it is profitable and low risk. The Russian Mafia has already taken their operations in the U.S. in to other non-traditional income streams such as insurance fraud and personal injury lawsuits. Can identity theft really be far behind or have they already entered this criminal market? It may not be proven but the odds say that they have already hatched their master plan.

Thanks to Identity Theft Labs

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Organized Crime Increasing Activity on the World Wide Web

Research findings from Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) latest Security Intelligence Report indicates that organized crime activity on the Internet is increasing and more general awareness and education should be increasing as well.

Mohammad Akif, national security and privacy lead for Microsoft Canada, explains the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report is conducted semi-annually, with its most recent volume spanning the six-month period from January 1 to June 30, 2008. Data is collected by analyzing over 450 million unique computers around the world, in addition to utilizing other security and vendor Web sites, such as the National Vulnerability Database
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Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the report, Akif said, is realizing that organized crime on the Internet continues to increase.

“As the operating system (OS) becomes harder to attack, hackers and criminals are moving to the application layer,” Akif said. “In the last six months, 90 per cent of the vulnerabilities that were disclosed affected applications, whereas only 10 per cent affected the OS.”

Akif said the majority of today's malicious activities are driven by a motive for financial gain. As such, in Canada, he said the rise of malware or potentially unwanted software (PUS) is increasing. To put things into perspective, Akif said for the first six months of the year, there were 72 per cent more distinct computers found in Canada that reported malware or PUS, compared to findings from the last report.

The top two categories that were reported for disinfected machines in Canada were Trojan downloader and droppers at 24.7 per cent, and Adware at 23.2 per cent. PUS ranked third, coming in at 21.8 per cent. In Canada, Akif said the top threat is Zlob, a Trojan downloader and dropper. Zlob, he explains, takes advantage of Internet users by opening up pop-up boxes that appear to be official, but in fact, aren't.
“These will be boxes like, ‘You have spyware, so click here for free software to get your computer clean,'” he said. “Depending on the intensity and severity of this, your computer can then be breached and compromised. We saw 86,000 variants of Zlob in the last six months and we feel the reason this number is so high is because there's a financial upside to it.”

PUS is also another problem for users to be cautious of, Akif said. PUS will notice end-user buying patterns and behaviour on the Internet. In Canada, this PUS is better known as ZangoSearchAssistant. By monitoring end-user purchasing habits and online behaviour, reports are then sent back to servers, which in turn store and sell the information to companies that can then solicit messages out to try to make money.
The key to solving these vulnerability problems, Akif said, is to raise general awareness levels. Akif said some people aren't educated about, or are simply unaware of security practices they could use to protect themselves and their workplace and information.

“Customers should be enabling a firewall, enabling automatic updates with Windows Vista, Windows Server and Windows XP, and they should also be installing up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware programs,” he said. “Users should also not go to Web sites they don't trust and should uninstall software they don't frequently use.”
To further help educate the market on security practices, Microsoft is currently in the process of updating its partner portal and is working to get programs such as its Hack and Defend workshops in place. Hack and Defend, Akif said, is a workshop designed for Microsoft partners and customers.

“This is a free workshop that Microsoft is conducting for partners to come in and see how some of these attacks are being conducted,” he said. “We show them what can be done to protect against and to prevent them from happening. These workshops will be conducted in the Q3, February and March 2009 timeframe. We're still figuring out which cities we'll have these workshops in, but we'll also have them available as Web casts for customers to participate in too.”

Thanks to Maxine Cheung

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"What're you going to do now, tough guy?"

A jailed reputed mobster was charged on Monday with the 1977 slaying of a gangland rival who used his last words to taunt him in a motel parking lot.

"What're you going to do now, tough guy?" Giovanni "Coca Cola" Larducci asked when Michael Coppola's gun jammed during the New Jersey confrontation on Easter 1977, prosecutors said.

Coppola has bragged to cooperators that he responded by pulling out another pistol from an ankle holster and shooting Larducci dead, prosecutors said.

The slaying was recounted in court papers alleging Coppola also infiltrated and shook down a labor union for the Genovese organized crime family.

Coppola pleaded not guilty on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn to murder, extortion and other charges.

Defense attorney Henry Mazurek said outside court that the evidence against Coppola is flimsy. His client, he said, was "more than optimistic about beating these charges."

Coppola, 62, was arrested last year after becoming one of New Jersey's most-wanted fugitives. He went underground in 1996 with the help of his wife to duck a court order requiring him to submit a DNA sample in the Larducci slaying.

Over the next 11 years, the couple used various aliases while splitting time between an apartment in Manhattan owned by a Genovese associate and a home in San Francisco, prosecutors said. Following Coppola's capture in New York, investigators said they discovered a book in his apartment titled "The Methods of Attacking Scientific Evidence
."

A DNA sample taken from Coppola last year was compared to that from hair found on a hat left at the motel parking lot. The FBI analysis found that "Coppola could not be excluded as the source of the hair," court papers said.

Coppola already was serving time after pleading guilty to charges related to his flight. If convicted of the new charges, he faces life in prison.

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