Some habits die hard.
An ex-Colombo family mobster who left the Mafia to become a born-again Christian motivational speaker was busted in Tennessee for writing bad checks, officials said Monday.
Michael Franzese, the Brooklyn-born mobster once nicknamed "The Prince of the Mafia," was led from a plane on the runway in Knoxville in handcuffs Friday night, police said.
The ex-wiseguy - who has bragged that he made more money than Al Capone - downplayed the arrest in an interview with the Daily News, saying it was an "unfortunate misunderstanding" with a business associate.
"I didn't pass bad checks, I didn't take any merchandise. I didn't do anything wrong," said Franzese, 59. "It's a dispute with my former manager over a small amount of money - nothing more," said Franzese, the son of famed 92-year-old Colombo enforcer John (Sonny) Franzese.
The younger Franzese, who became a "made" Colombo soldier in 1975, made millions bootlegging gasoline until he was indicted in 1987. Deciding to leave the Mafia behind, he accepted a prison sentence and testified against his former family.
He served three years and upon his release wrote a series of mob-themed inspirational books with titles like, "The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven" and "I'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse: Insider Business Tips from a Former Mob Boss".
He tours the country speaking to church groups, students and professional athletes on the dangers of gambling and fraud.
He said he is worried how the arrest would affect his booming speaking business.
"I'm in a ministry right now and this story has already hurt," Franzese said. "I know I carry baggage from my previous life, but I worked hard to shed my past."
Franzese was in Knoxville to speak to a men's organization at a Baptist church but instead spent the night in jail after being picked up an outstanding warrant for bad checks.
His former manager "thought I owed him money and chose to get the police involved," said Franzese, who declined to elaborate on the specifics of the dispute. "It'll blow over."
A Knoxville police spokesman would not identify the complainant in the case.
Franzese, the founder of a youth counseling group called the Breaking Out Foundation, was released from jail Saturday morning on $7,500 bond and returned home to Southern California.
He vowed not to let the arrest deter him from his new mission.
"I am going to stay out there preaching my message," he said. "I have overcome a lot and I'm going to keep doing the best I can."
Thanks to Jonathan Lemire
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Former Mafia Prosecutor Now Uses Data Mining to Catch Tax Cheats
Another crazy idea popped into Bill Comiskey’s head: What if the tax department required banks to turn over their customers’ mortgage applications? Homebuyers fill them out at a time when they want to impress the bank with their incomes. They sometimes are not in the same mood when they fill out their tax returns. Investigators could compare the two records, look for clues.
Comiskey, the state’s lead tax enforcer, called Nonie Manion, director of the audit division, from the car. He was zipping across New York state to deliver another speech at another tax preparers convention. “Would this work?” he asked.
Every piece of personal information is on the table these days at the tax department, where a desire to collect taxes on the underground economy is prompting new and aggressive tactics. Comiskey, a one-time Mafia prosecutor, has been armed by lawmakers with new powers. His staff is for the first time pulling information from third parties into a continuous river of information about businesses and individuals.
The tax department is brainstorming a kind of data mining most often associated with Homeland Security.
Is a bar underreporting its sales? Annual reports from liquor wholesalers would show it.
Is a pizza franchise selling more pies than it is reporting to the state? The chain’s parent company might have to show how many pizza boxes it sent to the local shop.
Is a car dealer low-balling its sales? Check the records over at the DMV.
The new approach makes New York a leader in the pursuit of tax cheats and has put tax professionals and businesses on alert that New York is no longer soft on fraud. Some tax professionals say the state is being unnecessarily antagonistic, particularly toward cash businesses that do not keep great records.
Comiskey makes no apologies.
It is his job to “close the tax gap” — the term for the billions of tax dollars individuals and businesses do not pay every year.
If one person does not pay taxes, another person has to pay more. Honest taxpayers get squeezed, and the state’s schools, roads and health care systems suffer.
Comiskey brings the experience of a forensic investigator. But as a newbie to the tax department, he also feels free to throw out ideas that seem naive or impossible to people who have been auditing tax returns for a long time.
Some of the tax-hunting methods seem like common sense to him. For a long time, auditors shied away from talking to taxpayers. They had the power of subpoena, but chose instead to work with records requests or interviews with the tax preparer.
Now, auditors more often just talk to taxpayers. And the state Legislature just made it a crime for taxpayers to lie to investigators.
The audit division set a record in Comiskey’s first year, producing $3 billion in revenue — $1 billion more than the year before.
Criminal tax fraud investigations increased from 581 in the ’06-’07 fiscal year to 2,078 in the ’08-’09 fiscal year. Nearly 600 cases were referred to prosecutors that year, about three times as many as the last year of the previous administration.
Comiskey’s methods are catching a lot of attention from other states and from taxpayers.
Other states are also improving their investigative resources, but New York is unique in winning state legislation that requires third parties to supply information routinely, said Verenda Smith, speaking for the Federation of Tax Administrators, in Washington, D.C. And Comiskey is eager to tell people about it. He delivered 42 speeches across the state in 2009.
“It’s not a game of gotcha,” Smith said. “Gotcha is the last thing you want to have to deal with and should be the tiniest part of your work. Most people will pay correctly and on time if they know what to do. Even more people will pay correctly and on time if they know you can catch them.”
It does feel like gotcha to some business owners, who are challenging the state in its tax tribunal.
The tribunal in December delivered a rare victory to the taxpayer when it questioned the state’s method of estimating taxes owed by a Buffalo restaurant that could not produce its own receipts.
Similar cases are brewing all over the state, said Tom Riley, tax partner at ParenteBeard LLC, in Syracuse. But fighting the state is expensive and mostly a losing proposition. More-frequent audits are frustrating small-business owners, who cannot afford to fight. There’s a happy medium someplace, he said, but this is not it.
“Not that long ago, they were all about customer service, and taxpayers were customers and the pendulum swung one way,” Riley said. “Now it’s swung so much the other way, it’s become very difficult.”
Riley said the attitude is coming directly from the top of state government at a time when the state needs to close budget gaps.
In fact, Gov. David Paterson’s office is expected to announce this week that he wants to rely even more on tax fraud enforcement to balance next year’s budget.
Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer brought Comiskey to the tax department from the attorney general’s office in 2007. The two worked together in the AG’s office, where Comiskey led the Medicaid Fraud unit.
Before that, Comiskey spent 10 years on New York’s Organized Crime Task Force and had also worked in the AG’s criminal prosecution’s bureau and for district attorneys in Rensselaer County and Manhattan.
At the Medicaid Fraud Unit, investigators installed hidden cameras in nursing homes and saw nurses moving call bells away from patients so the staff could watch movies and socialize.
He brings those same techniques to his current job.
When he talks to groups, he likes to play real tapes of tax preparers who got caught in stings.
In 2007, the tax department decided to test the unregulated world of tax professionals. The investigators wore wires and visited tax preparers around the state, pretending to be new customers. Sometimes, they took the books of real businesses they had already stung for hiding income. They would even send in the real business owner with a hidden tape recorder.
Comiskey has been investigating fraud his entire career, but he was surprised to find so many tax preparers who put themselves at risk by fixing the books for strangers in exchange for a few hundred dollars.
“What you need to do is redo the books,” one said on tape. “Rip out these pages and do them again.”
The tax department did 170 undercover visits in three years. About 30 percent engaged in some type of fraud, he said.
The tax department’s staffing reflects the state’s new commitment. The staff grew from 2,562 in 2006 to 3,060 today. It is hiring 111 new auditors. The biggest growth was in the special investigations unit, which grew from 34 people in 2006 to 142 today.
Mark Klein, a tax attorney for Hodgson Russ LLP, in Buffalo, said he’s never seen anything like the state’s crackdown in his 30 years in the business.
The undercover stings are turning friends on friends, clients on their accountants, he said.
“It is rocking their world. It really is,” he said.
Klein hates to say it, but for a long time, New York taxpayers had the perception that they could skim a little off the top.
“New York has made it clear that they’re going to crack down,” he said. “They’re very much focused on cash businesses, and it’s getting to be like Big Brother.”
Klein is advising his clients to keep good records.
He said the state is catching some porpoises while fishing for tuna.
He said the state tax department asked a Syracuse bar for every sales receipt for every drink for the past three years. Of course, the bar doesn’t keep track of every drink sold, he said.
When there are no good records, the law allows the state to use outside information to estimate. The burden is then on the taxpayer to prove the state wrong.
In this case, Klein said, the state calculated a sales based on the cost of the bar’s rent. The bar is stuck.
“In that way, they’re catching a lot of honest tax people and making it appear as though they have a liability, when they don’t,” Klein said.
The State of New York Tax Appeals Tribunal recently shot down the state’s method of estimating sales volume at a restaurant called Mother’s, in downtown Buffalo.
The tribunal said the tax department used industry records in a way they were not intended to estimate taxes for the restaurant, which could not produce sales receipts.
“It must be pointed out that a lack of records does not equate to a presumption that taxable sales have been underreported,” the opinion said.
The tax department said that case was fact-specific and does not prevent the legally permissible use of third-party sources.
Comiskey said the fact that so many cases are upheld by the tribunal means that they are doing a good job of making reasonable estimates.
The department is just getting started on its new project to collect clues from third parties.
Comiskey wants to pour every available piece of information about a business into a computer database, where it can be quickly sorted, matched and analyzed.
The information will come from both private industry and state agencies. Surprisingly enough, the volumes of personal information collected by other government agencies — such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Health Department and the Department of State — are not already systematically collected and analyzed by tax auditors.
That is, in part, because the information has not always been kept in computer form, and, in part, because no one asked for it.
For at least 15 years, state law has required cigarette wholesalers to report the volume of sales to retailers. The information came on paper and sat mostly untouched in boxes.
Manion said businesses generally respond to these requests for information. But some businesses and even some other government agencies say they do not have enough information technology staff to comply.
The tax department is also working to routinely grab records of transactions from credit card companies. A 2009 bill did not make it through the state Legislature because banks convinced the tax department that their request would require extensive computer programming and that there could be problems with the data. It could be January 2012 before they start getting the information.
On the Big Brother issue, Comiskey and Manion said it’s true that privacy is sacrificed in administering tax laws. But, they point out, the government already knows about individuals’ medical problems, their earnings, their mortgage payments and their retirement contributions.
“It’s certainly not Big Brother when we’re asking businesses to provide us with what is essentially business information to help us administer tax laws fairly,” Comiskey said.
Thanks to Michelle Breidenbach
Comiskey, the state’s lead tax enforcer, called Nonie Manion, director of the audit division, from the car. He was zipping across New York state to deliver another speech at another tax preparers convention. “Would this work?” he asked.
Every piece of personal information is on the table these days at the tax department, where a desire to collect taxes on the underground economy is prompting new and aggressive tactics. Comiskey, a one-time Mafia prosecutor, has been armed by lawmakers with new powers. His staff is for the first time pulling information from third parties into a continuous river of information about businesses and individuals.
The tax department is brainstorming a kind of data mining most often associated with Homeland Security.
Is a bar underreporting its sales? Annual reports from liquor wholesalers would show it.
Is a pizza franchise selling more pies than it is reporting to the state? The chain’s parent company might have to show how many pizza boxes it sent to the local shop.
Is a car dealer low-balling its sales? Check the records over at the DMV.
The new approach makes New York a leader in the pursuit of tax cheats and has put tax professionals and businesses on alert that New York is no longer soft on fraud. Some tax professionals say the state is being unnecessarily antagonistic, particularly toward cash businesses that do not keep great records.
Comiskey makes no apologies.
It is his job to “close the tax gap” — the term for the billions of tax dollars individuals and businesses do not pay every year.
If one person does not pay taxes, another person has to pay more. Honest taxpayers get squeezed, and the state’s schools, roads and health care systems suffer.
Comiskey brings the experience of a forensic investigator. But as a newbie to the tax department, he also feels free to throw out ideas that seem naive or impossible to people who have been auditing tax returns for a long time.
Some of the tax-hunting methods seem like common sense to him. For a long time, auditors shied away from talking to taxpayers. They had the power of subpoena, but chose instead to work with records requests or interviews with the tax preparer.
Now, auditors more often just talk to taxpayers. And the state Legislature just made it a crime for taxpayers to lie to investigators.
The audit division set a record in Comiskey’s first year, producing $3 billion in revenue — $1 billion more than the year before.
Criminal tax fraud investigations increased from 581 in the ’06-’07 fiscal year to 2,078 in the ’08-’09 fiscal year. Nearly 600 cases were referred to prosecutors that year, about three times as many as the last year of the previous administration.
Comiskey’s methods are catching a lot of attention from other states and from taxpayers.
Other states are also improving their investigative resources, but New York is unique in winning state legislation that requires third parties to supply information routinely, said Verenda Smith, speaking for the Federation of Tax Administrators, in Washington, D.C. And Comiskey is eager to tell people about it. He delivered 42 speeches across the state in 2009.
“It’s not a game of gotcha,” Smith said. “Gotcha is the last thing you want to have to deal with and should be the tiniest part of your work. Most people will pay correctly and on time if they know what to do. Even more people will pay correctly and on time if they know you can catch them.”
It does feel like gotcha to some business owners, who are challenging the state in its tax tribunal.
The tribunal in December delivered a rare victory to the taxpayer when it questioned the state’s method of estimating taxes owed by a Buffalo restaurant that could not produce its own receipts.
Similar cases are brewing all over the state, said Tom Riley, tax partner at ParenteBeard LLC, in Syracuse. But fighting the state is expensive and mostly a losing proposition. More-frequent audits are frustrating small-business owners, who cannot afford to fight. There’s a happy medium someplace, he said, but this is not it.
“Not that long ago, they were all about customer service, and taxpayers were customers and the pendulum swung one way,” Riley said. “Now it’s swung so much the other way, it’s become very difficult.”
Riley said the attitude is coming directly from the top of state government at a time when the state needs to close budget gaps.
In fact, Gov. David Paterson’s office is expected to announce this week that he wants to rely even more on tax fraud enforcement to balance next year’s budget.
Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer brought Comiskey to the tax department from the attorney general’s office in 2007. The two worked together in the AG’s office, where Comiskey led the Medicaid Fraud unit.
Before that, Comiskey spent 10 years on New York’s Organized Crime Task Force and had also worked in the AG’s criminal prosecution’s bureau and for district attorneys in Rensselaer County and Manhattan.
At the Medicaid Fraud Unit, investigators installed hidden cameras in nursing homes and saw nurses moving call bells away from patients so the staff could watch movies and socialize.
He brings those same techniques to his current job.
When he talks to groups, he likes to play real tapes of tax preparers who got caught in stings.
In 2007, the tax department decided to test the unregulated world of tax professionals. The investigators wore wires and visited tax preparers around the state, pretending to be new customers. Sometimes, they took the books of real businesses they had already stung for hiding income. They would even send in the real business owner with a hidden tape recorder.
Comiskey has been investigating fraud his entire career, but he was surprised to find so many tax preparers who put themselves at risk by fixing the books for strangers in exchange for a few hundred dollars.
“What you need to do is redo the books,” one said on tape. “Rip out these pages and do them again.”
The tax department did 170 undercover visits in three years. About 30 percent engaged in some type of fraud, he said.
The tax department’s staffing reflects the state’s new commitment. The staff grew from 2,562 in 2006 to 3,060 today. It is hiring 111 new auditors. The biggest growth was in the special investigations unit, which grew from 34 people in 2006 to 142 today.
Mark Klein, a tax attorney for Hodgson Russ LLP, in Buffalo, said he’s never seen anything like the state’s crackdown in his 30 years in the business.
The undercover stings are turning friends on friends, clients on their accountants, he said.
“It is rocking their world. It really is,” he said.
Klein hates to say it, but for a long time, New York taxpayers had the perception that they could skim a little off the top.
“New York has made it clear that they’re going to crack down,” he said. “They’re very much focused on cash businesses, and it’s getting to be like Big Brother.”
Klein is advising his clients to keep good records.
He said the state is catching some porpoises while fishing for tuna.
He said the state tax department asked a Syracuse bar for every sales receipt for every drink for the past three years. Of course, the bar doesn’t keep track of every drink sold, he said.
When there are no good records, the law allows the state to use outside information to estimate. The burden is then on the taxpayer to prove the state wrong.
In this case, Klein said, the state calculated a sales based on the cost of the bar’s rent. The bar is stuck.
“In that way, they’re catching a lot of honest tax people and making it appear as though they have a liability, when they don’t,” Klein said.
The State of New York Tax Appeals Tribunal recently shot down the state’s method of estimating sales volume at a restaurant called Mother’s, in downtown Buffalo.
The tribunal said the tax department used industry records in a way they were not intended to estimate taxes for the restaurant, which could not produce sales receipts.
“It must be pointed out that a lack of records does not equate to a presumption that taxable sales have been underreported,” the opinion said.
The tax department said that case was fact-specific and does not prevent the legally permissible use of third-party sources.
Comiskey said the fact that so many cases are upheld by the tribunal means that they are doing a good job of making reasonable estimates.
The department is just getting started on its new project to collect clues from third parties.
Comiskey wants to pour every available piece of information about a business into a computer database, where it can be quickly sorted, matched and analyzed.
The information will come from both private industry and state agencies. Surprisingly enough, the volumes of personal information collected by other government agencies — such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Health Department and the Department of State — are not already systematically collected and analyzed by tax auditors.
That is, in part, because the information has not always been kept in computer form, and, in part, because no one asked for it.
For at least 15 years, state law has required cigarette wholesalers to report the volume of sales to retailers. The information came on paper and sat mostly untouched in boxes.
Manion said businesses generally respond to these requests for information. But some businesses and even some other government agencies say they do not have enough information technology staff to comply.
The tax department is also working to routinely grab records of transactions from credit card companies. A 2009 bill did not make it through the state Legislature because banks convinced the tax department that their request would require extensive computer programming and that there could be problems with the data. It could be January 2012 before they start getting the information.
On the Big Brother issue, Comiskey and Manion said it’s true that privacy is sacrificed in administering tax laws. But, they point out, the government already knows about individuals’ medical problems, their earnings, their mortgage payments and their retirement contributions.
“It’s certainly not Big Brother when we’re asking businesses to provide us with what is essentially business information to help us administer tax laws fairly,” Comiskey said.
Thanks to Michelle Breidenbach
Monday, January 18, 2010
Hotline Created to Report Haitian Earthquake Relief Fraud
The FBI and the National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) have established a telephone hotline to report suspected Haitian earthquake relief fraud. The number is (866) 720-5721. The phone line is staffed by a live operator 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also e-mail information directly to disaster@leo.gov.
The National Center for Disaster Fraud was originally established by the Department of Justice to investigate, prosecute, and deter fraud in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when billions of dollars in federal disaster relief poured into the Gulf Coast region. Its mission has expanded to include suspected fraud from any natural or man-made disaster. More than 20 federal agencies, including the FBI, participate in the NCDF, allowing it to act as a centralized clearinghouse of information related to Haitian relief fraud.
The FBI continues to remind the public to apply a critical eye and do their due diligence before giving contributions to anyone soliciting donations on behalf of Haitian victims. Solicitations can originate from e-mails, websites, door-to-door collections, mailings and telephone calls, and similar methods.
Therefore, before making a donation of any kind, consumers should adhere to certain guidelines, including the following:
* Do not respond to any unsolicited (spam) incoming e-mails, including clicking links contained within those messages.
* Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials asking for donations via e-mail or social networking sites.
* Beware of organizations with copy-cat names similar to but not exactly the same as those of reputable charities.
* Rather than following a purported link to a website, verify the legitimacy of non-profit organizations by utilizing various Internet-based resources that may assist in confirming the group’s existence and its non-profit status.
* Be cautious of e-mails that claim to show pictures of the disaster areas in attached files, because the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders.
* To ensure contributions are received and used for intended purposes, make contributions directly to known organizations rather than relying on others to make the donation on your behalf.
* Do not be pressured into making contributions, as reputable charities do not use such tactics.
* Do not give your personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions. Providing such information may compromise your identity and make you vulnerable to identity theft.
* Avoid cash donations if possible. Pay by debit or credit card, or write a check directly to the charity. Do not make checks payable to individuals
If you believe you have been a victim of fraud from a person or an organization soliciting relief funds on behalf of Haitian earthquake victims, contact the National Center for Disaster Fraud at (866) 720-5721. You can also fax information to (225) 334-4707 or e-mail it to disaster@leo.gov.
The National Center for Disaster Fraud was originally established by the Department of Justice to investigate, prosecute, and deter fraud in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when billions of dollars in federal disaster relief poured into the Gulf Coast region. Its mission has expanded to include suspected fraud from any natural or man-made disaster. More than 20 federal agencies, including the FBI, participate in the NCDF, allowing it to act as a centralized clearinghouse of information related to Haitian relief fraud.
The FBI continues to remind the public to apply a critical eye and do their due diligence before giving contributions to anyone soliciting donations on behalf of Haitian victims. Solicitations can originate from e-mails, websites, door-to-door collections, mailings and telephone calls, and similar methods.
Therefore, before making a donation of any kind, consumers should adhere to certain guidelines, including the following:
* Do not respond to any unsolicited (spam) incoming e-mails, including clicking links contained within those messages.
* Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials asking for donations via e-mail or social networking sites.
* Beware of organizations with copy-cat names similar to but not exactly the same as those of reputable charities.
* Rather than following a purported link to a website, verify the legitimacy of non-profit organizations by utilizing various Internet-based resources that may assist in confirming the group’s existence and its non-profit status.
* Be cautious of e-mails that claim to show pictures of the disaster areas in attached files, because the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders.
* To ensure contributions are received and used for intended purposes, make contributions directly to known organizations rather than relying on others to make the donation on your behalf.
* Do not be pressured into making contributions, as reputable charities do not use such tactics.
* Do not give your personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions. Providing such information may compromise your identity and make you vulnerable to identity theft.
* Avoid cash donations if possible. Pay by debit or credit card, or write a check directly to the charity. Do not make checks payable to individuals
If you believe you have been a victim of fraud from a person or an organization soliciting relief funds on behalf of Haitian earthquake victims, contact the National Center for Disaster Fraud at (866) 720-5721. You can also fax information to (225) 334-4707 or e-mail it to disaster@leo.gov.
Public Enemies on Mafia Wars
To help promote the Dec. 8 DVD and Blu-ray Disc release of Public Enemies, Universal Studios Home Entertainment teamed with Zynga for a cross-promotion with its online Mafia Wars game.
Mafia Wars is a role-playing game accessed through social media sites such as Facebook that lets users run their own crime family, participate in various crimes and steal loot. In early December Mafia Wars staged “Public Enemies Week
,” helping to promote the gangster flick with special jobs and loot objects based on the film’s plot.
The campaign, led by appssavvy, a direct sales team for the social media space, in partnership with the Los Angeles office of Ignited, a marketing innovations agency working on behalf of Universal, was touted as the first such promotion of its kind. Mafia Wars is played by more than 25 million Facebook users.
“Public Enemies on Mafia Wars is the blockbuster social media campaign of 2009,” said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of appssavvy. “The foundation of every campaign we’re involved with is focused on relevance and delivering something the end user will find valuable. This effort with Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Zynga demonstrated these fundamentals of social media marketing to perfection.”
Zynga reported Public Enemies Loot garnered nearly 55 million interactions during the week-long campaign, and tie-ins to Public Enemies activities within the game were posted to players’ Facebook news feeds more than 7.6 million times, delivering nearly a billion viral impressions. The campaign generated nearly 25,000 ‘Likes’ and more than 26,000 comments on the Mafia Wars Facebook fan page.
“Even John Dillinger would be impressed with the scope and success of this effort,” said Mike Wokosin, VP of digital marketing for USHE. “Mafia Wars was an incredibly dynamic environment to seamlessly integrate our property and to effectively engage a significant and relevant audience.”
Thanks to John Latchem
Mafia Wars is a role-playing game accessed through social media sites such as Facebook that lets users run their own crime family, participate in various crimes and steal loot. In early December Mafia Wars staged “Public Enemies Week
,” helping to promote the gangster flick with special jobs and loot objects based on the film’s plot.The campaign, led by appssavvy, a direct sales team for the social media space, in partnership with the Los Angeles office of Ignited, a marketing innovations agency working on behalf of Universal, was touted as the first such promotion of its kind. Mafia Wars is played by more than 25 million Facebook users.
“Public Enemies on Mafia Wars is the blockbuster social media campaign of 2009,” said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of appssavvy. “The foundation of every campaign we’re involved with is focused on relevance and delivering something the end user will find valuable. This effort with Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Zynga demonstrated these fundamentals of social media marketing to perfection.”
Zynga reported Public Enemies Loot garnered nearly 55 million interactions during the week-long campaign, and tie-ins to Public Enemies activities within the game were posted to players’ Facebook news feeds more than 7.6 million times, delivering nearly a billion viral impressions. The campaign generated nearly 25,000 ‘Likes’ and more than 26,000 comments on the Mafia Wars Facebook fan page.
“Even John Dillinger would be impressed with the scope and success of this effort,” said Mike Wokosin, VP of digital marketing for USHE. “Mafia Wars was an incredibly dynamic environment to seamlessly integrate our property and to effectively engage a significant and relevant audience.”
Thanks to John Latchem
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Is Ralph DeLeo the Street Boss of the Colombo Crime Family?
In Boston, home to the New England Mafia and a string of legendary former bosses like “The Cheese Man’’ and “Cadillac Frank,’’ Ralph DeLeo was a virtual unknown.
“Here, I’m nothing,’’ DeLeo said within earshot of an FBI bug. But in New York, he said, “Everybody is holding the door for ya, helping on your coat, giving you hugs . . . kissing you, and all this type of stuff. ‘Oh, you gotta sit in front, you gotta do this, are you comfortable? Can I get you coffee?’ ’’
But to the FBI, DeLeo, 66, of Somerville was somebody.
Agents tapped his cellphone from January through November of last year, then he was indicted last month on a federal racketeering conspiracy charge. The indictment filed in US District Court in Boston alleges that he is the “street boss’’ of New York’s Colombo family and runs a small crew based in Greater Boston involved in drug trafficking, extortion, and loansharking.
DeLeo is being held in Arkansas, where he’s also facing charges of cocaine trafficking. An FBI affidavit filed last week in courts in Boston and Arkansas detailed DeLeo’s alleged position in the New York mob and offered snippets of conversations from his bugged telephone calls.
The affidavit alleges that DeLeo is the highest-ranking member of the Colombo family who is not in prison, and ran the family’s business for most of last year. He allegedly reported to its boss, Carmine “The Snake’’ Persico, and acting boss, Alphonse “Allie Boy’’ Persico, who are in prison.
During an FBI-bugged call to his sister from New York last week, DeLeo, who had allegedly presided over a mob induction ceremony, admitted that he found his job “like overwhelming a little bit,’’ the affidavit said.
He described going to the ceremony in different groups and cars to “make sure we weren’t followed,’’ and added, “it was a big deal; people picking us up, taking us somewhere else and all that type of stuff, I wasn’t ready for all that.’’
In October 1989, New England mobsters did the same thing, arriving at a Medford home in different cars and groups. But it didn’t do them much good because the FBI had planted a bug in the house and captured its first-ever recording of a Mafia induction ceremony that led to a takedown of the hierarchy of the local mob.
Before the New England family was weakened by waves of prosecution, it was unheard of for another Mafia family to encroach on its territory.
The indictment alleges that in the past year DeLeo and three other men, Franklin M. Goldman, 66, of Randolph, Edmond Kulesza, 56, of Somerville, and George Wiley Thompson, 54, of Cabot, Ark., plotted to distribute marijuana and cocaine, extort money from victims, including one in Canton, and collect loansharking debts.
DeLeo allegedly paid $50,000 for 2 kilograms of cocaine that were transported from California to Massachusetts in December 2008, according to the indictment.
It’s not DeLeo’s first brush with the law.
He served a 25- to 40-year sentence in state prison at Walpole for kidnapping and armed robbery when he escaped in 1977.
He was convicted of killing an Ohio doctor in 1977 and sentenced to 15 years to life. But the state’s governor granted him clemency in 1991 and he has been free since 1997.
Unaware that his alleged encroachment into New England last year had drawn attention, DeLeo kept talking as the FBI kept listening.
During a March call to his sister from Florida, DeLeo lamented about all of the attention he was getting from other wise guys.
“They gave me too much attention,’’ DeLeo said, according to the affidavit. “You know, too many hugs, too many kisses. You know, holding the car door for me, holding doors for me, you know all that type of stuff. And, um, I’m not into that type of stuff. I’m, uh, you know, I’m . . . at heart I’m a regular guy, you know. Uh, you know to them I’m something else, but I’m really not that something else.’’
When his sister asked if he brought his girlfriend on the Florida trip, DeLeo said he was just “with the guys’’ because he was afraid she would be suspicious if she saw the royal treatment he was getting.
“You know what I mean, cause they definitely act like Sopranos and . . . the way they [pay] attention to me is, you know, they would huh, you know she would suspect something.’
Thanks to Shelley Murphy
“Here, I’m nothing,’’ DeLeo said within earshot of an FBI bug. But in New York, he said, “Everybody is holding the door for ya, helping on your coat, giving you hugs . . . kissing you, and all this type of stuff. ‘Oh, you gotta sit in front, you gotta do this, are you comfortable? Can I get you coffee?’ ’’
But to the FBI, DeLeo, 66, of Somerville was somebody.
Agents tapped his cellphone from January through November of last year, then he was indicted last month on a federal racketeering conspiracy charge. The indictment filed in US District Court in Boston alleges that he is the “street boss’’ of New York’s Colombo family and runs a small crew based in Greater Boston involved in drug trafficking, extortion, and loansharking.
DeLeo is being held in Arkansas, where he’s also facing charges of cocaine trafficking. An FBI affidavit filed last week in courts in Boston and Arkansas detailed DeLeo’s alleged position in the New York mob and offered snippets of conversations from his bugged telephone calls.
The affidavit alleges that DeLeo is the highest-ranking member of the Colombo family who is not in prison, and ran the family’s business for most of last year. He allegedly reported to its boss, Carmine “The Snake’’ Persico, and acting boss, Alphonse “Allie Boy’’ Persico, who are in prison.
During an FBI-bugged call to his sister from New York last week, DeLeo, who had allegedly presided over a mob induction ceremony, admitted that he found his job “like overwhelming a little bit,’’ the affidavit said.
He described going to the ceremony in different groups and cars to “make sure we weren’t followed,’’ and added, “it was a big deal; people picking us up, taking us somewhere else and all that type of stuff, I wasn’t ready for all that.’’
In October 1989, New England mobsters did the same thing, arriving at a Medford home in different cars and groups. But it didn’t do them much good because the FBI had planted a bug in the house and captured its first-ever recording of a Mafia induction ceremony that led to a takedown of the hierarchy of the local mob.
Before the New England family was weakened by waves of prosecution, it was unheard of for another Mafia family to encroach on its territory.
The indictment alleges that in the past year DeLeo and three other men, Franklin M. Goldman, 66, of Randolph, Edmond Kulesza, 56, of Somerville, and George Wiley Thompson, 54, of Cabot, Ark., plotted to distribute marijuana and cocaine, extort money from victims, including one in Canton, and collect loansharking debts.
DeLeo allegedly paid $50,000 for 2 kilograms of cocaine that were transported from California to Massachusetts in December 2008, according to the indictment.
It’s not DeLeo’s first brush with the law.
He served a 25- to 40-year sentence in state prison at Walpole for kidnapping and armed robbery when he escaped in 1977.
He was convicted of killing an Ohio doctor in 1977 and sentenced to 15 years to life. But the state’s governor granted him clemency in 1991 and he has been free since 1997.
Unaware that his alleged encroachment into New England last year had drawn attention, DeLeo kept talking as the FBI kept listening.
During a March call to his sister from Florida, DeLeo lamented about all of the attention he was getting from other wise guys.
“They gave me too much attention,’’ DeLeo said, according to the affidavit. “You know, too many hugs, too many kisses. You know, holding the car door for me, holding doors for me, you know all that type of stuff. And, um, I’m not into that type of stuff. I’m, uh, you know, I’m . . . at heart I’m a regular guy, you know. Uh, you know to them I’m something else, but I’m really not that something else.’’
When his sister asked if he brought his girlfriend on the Florida trip, DeLeo said he was just “with the guys’’ because he was afraid she would be suspicious if she saw the royal treatment he was getting.
“You know what I mean, cause they definitely act like Sopranos and . . . the way they [pay] attention to me is, you know, they would huh, you know she would suspect something.’
Thanks to Shelley Murphy
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