Talk-Show Host Charlie Rose Survives Botched Mafia Hit Attempt

Bring me the head of Charlie Rose!

No, not the PBS talk-show host. The other one the legendary Mafia-busting prosecutor.

Unfortunately, bumbling mob cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa and the Mafia assassin they dispatched to Long Island didn't know the difference and nearly bumped off public television's dapper yapper.

So says "Friends of the Family," a new book about the mob cops by retired detective Tommy Dades and Brooklyn prosecutor Michael Vecchione, who cracked the case.

The authors write that the disgraced NYPD detectives gave bad information to their benefactor, Luchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, who dispatched a triggerman to the talk-show host's house, not knowing it wasn't the home of a Brooklyn federal prosecutor he wanted dead.

The killer never saw Rose and left, according to the book.

"It's a surprise it's all new to me," the TV host told The Post.

He confirmed that he's owned a home for years in Bellport, which is near the beach on eastern Long Island, about 20 miles west of Quogue.

Casso told FBI agents the house was in "the Hamptons," according to the book.

Casso was furious with Mafia-busting prosecutor Charles Rose, believing that Rose embarrassed him by leaking a story about Casso having killed his former architect for having an affair with the mobster's wife.

The bloodthirsty Casso did the unthinkable and put out a contract on the former assistant US attorney, who died of a brain tumor in 1998.

"Naturally, the only people Casso trusted to get Rose's address were the cops," the book says. "Casso was captured before he could make his move against Rose, but supposedly he did get an address for the prosecutor in the Hamptons. One of his people waited at the house for the prosecutor to show up, but for whatever reason Rose never got there.

"That was truly fortunate it turned out to be the wrong Charlie Rose . . This was the home of the TV show host, not the prosecutor."

"It's a 'wow' revelation in the book," said Vecchione, who heads the investigation unit of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office. "I mean, Charlie Rose!"

The 1992 incident wasn't the first goof by the corrupt former detectives, whom Casso paid $4,000 a month to help kill rival hoods and supply tips on turncoats and probes.

Caracappa and Eppolito, who were sentenced to life on March 6, were asked to find the address of Nicholas Guido, a conspirator who tried to knock off Casso in a botched hit.

The cops got the wrong information; this time, Casso's henchmen killed an innocent Brooklyn man also named Nicholas Guido.

The book says Casso told FBI agents that Eppolito, Caracappa and an unnamed uniform cop ripped off millions in heroin in a notorious heist of the French Connection evidence from the NYPD property office.

The book "Friends of the Family" comes out May 12.

Thanks to Brad Hamilton

Tweet

Charles Carneglia Offers His Help

Just-convicted Mafia hit man Charles Carneglia was such a helpful guy. A source recalls once telling Carneglia about a wealthy New Jersey man who had threatened him. "Charles said, 'I'll take care of it,' " the source recalls. "He said, 'We plant a gun under the seat of the guy's car and then we call the state troopers and say he was waving it at us.' I said, 'This guy doesn't care about paying a gun fine.' Charles says, 'You're forgetting there's going to be a few bullets missing from the gun. The troopers are going to find them in the brain of the body in the trunk!' I said, 'Charles, thanks, but no thanks.'"

Thanks to Rush & Molly

Tweet

Genovese Crime Family Associate Pleads Guilty

A longtime associate of the Genovese organized crime family has pleaded guilty to securities fraud for selling $2.1 million of worthless stock, according to federal officials.

Frank Schwamborn, 48, of Farmingdale, took over a Ronkonkoma company, called World Cyberlinks, which had been set up to produce docking stations for Palm Pilots, but which did not actually make any products, officials said.

Schwamborn had the company transfer stock to a number of companies he had bought or set up in return for services, officials said. He took control of these companies using money he made selling cocaine, federal prosecutors said.

The companies never performed any services for the Cyberlinks company, officials said. But the stock transfers were backdated to get around the rule requiring that stock used to pay for services had to be held for a year before they could be resold, officials aid.

Among the companies, which prosecutors say are now out of business: Burdette Ltd., on the Isle of Man; Puritan Management of Bay Shore; FRF Holding of North Babylon, and Candles, a restaurant in Bay Shore that also was known as Park 70 Bistro and Giovanna's.

Schwamborn has been held in jail without bail awaiting trial on the charges because of a history of threats made against agents, police officers and state and federal prosecutors involved in the case and other investigations, officials said.

A postal inspector said in an affidavit at the time of Schwamborn's arrest that he was an associate of organized crime who had his own crew, which was "a collection of thieves, drug dealers, prostitutes, 'leg breakers,' and stockbrokers."

A number of stock investors, who were possible witnesses against Schwamborn, had been asked to move because of "credible death threats" by him, the affidavit said. Schwamborn has denied the allegations.

Schwamborn previously served 55 months in prison after a conviction for racketeering and money laundering in an other case related to the Genovese family, officials have said.

The Schwamborn investigation was conducted jointly by federal prosecutors and Suffolk prosecutors, postal inspectors and agents of the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division, officials said.

Federal prosecutors Burton Ryan and Charles Kelly declined to comment after the plea yesterday. Schwamborn's attorney could not be reached for comment.

Schwamborn faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sandra Feuerstein in Central Islip, as well as 5 years supervised release and a $250,000 fine. As part of a plea deal, Schwamborn also agreed to forfeit the $2.1 million he made in the scheme, officials said.

Thanks to Robert E. Kessler

Tweet

Arrest Warrant Issued for Henry Hill

"Henry Hill."

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Kyle Brodie matter-of-factly read the name Wednesday in a roll call of small-time suspects: the unlicensed driver; the work-release probationer.

"No answer," yelled the bailiff.

With that, the mobster-turned-FBI informant -- whose life inspired the movie epic "Goodfellas" -- was facing two $25,000 arrest warrants.

Once linked to an NCAA point-shaving scandal and a $5 million airport heist, Hill at age 65 is wanted for failing to appear on tickets alleging that he was drunk in public in San Bernardino.

"I would have been asking for his autograph," said Desiree Gallegos, 27, who was in the courtroom for a suspension of house arrest terms.

Reached by phone later in the day, Hill said he was unaware he needed to be present. He said he had visited the downtown court on Monday to advise the clerks that he would be having hernia surgery later this week and wanted a new date. "I was hoping the court would understand," Hill said from his San Fernando Valley home. "I did a few days in jail already."

The cases stem from two arrests in May 2008. In the first, a patrol officer saw an intoxicated man standing in the intersection at Redlands Boulevard and Club Drive. The second ticket came 10 days later, when a drunken man refused to leave the lobby of the Fairfield Inn on Harriman Place.

Hill said he was in alcohol rehabilitation at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA Medical Center in Loma Linda at the time. He failed to appear for his first arraignment last July.

He was arrested in Los Angeles earlier this year and again booked at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.

Because of jail crowding, he was released before his arraignment. "I don't remember much of all that, but I've been sober a month now," Hill said. "I don't want to drink anymore."

The Brooklyn native is a frequent caller to Howard Stern's radio show, where he plugs his mob-related watercolor painting, with scenes like a rat with a handgun and three well-dressed men digging a hole in the ground.

The "Goodfellas" movie ends with Hill, played by Ray Liotta, entering federal witness protection. Drug trafficking charges were leveraged for his testimony implicating cohorts in murders and the 1978 heist of $5.8 million in cash from a Lufthansa Airlines vault at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

In real life, drug arrests caused Hill to be removed from the federal program in the early 1990s. He dabbled in restaurants and spaghetti sauce sales.

These days, when he's not collaborating on Mafia-related film, television and book projects, Hill said he works with the FBI as an organized-crime consultant and counsels young street gang members about the lifestyle.

The man who once masterminded gambling enterprises now plays bingo at San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino in Highland.

"Hollywood makes it up to be glamorous, but it's not," Hill said of his days with New York's Lucchese crime family. "You're either in jail for the rest of your life or you're dead."

Thanks to Paul Larocco

Tweet

Al Capone Still Helping Chicago

The Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed after Willis Group Holdings after Sears' naming rights expired on the one hundred and ten story skyscraper. The building is very secure. Osama bin Laden didn't go near it for fear of angering the Capone family.

Tweet