Guilty Plea in Hobbs Act Extortion Conspiracy Involving Extortion of Restaurant and Social Clubs

Denis Nikolla pleaded guilty to two counts of Hobbs Act extortion conspiracy, one count of threatening physical violence in furtherance of an extortion plan, and one count of brandishing a firearm. The proceeding took place before United States District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano. When sentenced, Nikolla faces up to life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years.  One of his co-defendants, Besnik Llakatura, who served as a police officer with the New York City Police Department during the charged crimes, previously pleaded guilty in this case.  

The plea was announced by Robert L. Capers, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Diego Rodriguez, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office, and William J. Bratton, Commissioner, New York Police Department.

According to prior court filings and facts presented during the plea proceeding, between May and November 2013, Nikolla, Llakatura and their co-defendant conspired and attempted to extort a Queens restaurant owner, demanding regular payments in exchange for so-called “protection.” The extortion began shortly after the victim opened a restaurant in Astoria when he was visited by the co-defendant and told that he had opened a business in “our neighborhood” and, as a result, “you have to pay us” $4,000 per month. The restaurant owner sought help from his friend Llakatura.

Unbeknownst to him, Llakatura, an NYPD officer in Staten Island since 2006, was conspiring with the co-defendant in the extortion. Llakatura actively discouraged the restaurant owner from going to the police and sought to leverage his position of trust as a friend and a police officer to persuade the victim that he had no choice but to make the demanded payments, warning the victim that the co-defendant and his associates would physically harm him if he did not pay. When the victim resisted, Nikolla threatened him with physical violence and chased him at gunpoint down the street in Queens. Over the course of five months, each of the three defendants took turns collecting monthly payments from the Astoria restaurant owner, ultimately collecting $24,000 in so-called protection money.

Between April 2012 and November 2013, Nikolla and the co-defendant also conspired and attempted to extort the proceeds of two nightclubs located in Queens, New York, and used a firearm in their efforts to do so. In or about April 2012, around the time that one of the clubs was opened, Nikolla approached the owner with an extortion demand, indicating to the victim that other businesses in the area were paying him for so-called “protection.” Nikolla demanded $200 per week from the owner for each of the two nightclubs. After the owner refused to pay, Nikolla retrieved a firearm from the codefendant’s side, stuck the firearm in owner’s ribs, and informed the owner that if he wasn’t paid, Nikolla would come to the owner’s house and beat up the owner in front of the owner’s wife and children.

Finally, during 2013, Nikolla, Llakatura, and the co-defendant also conspired and attempted to extort a proprietor of two social clubs in Astoria. Nikolla, accompanied by the co-defendant, made the initial extortion demand, seeking payments of $1,000 per week from the proprietor for so-called “protection.” The proprietor refused to make the demanded payments and ceased going to his social clubs out of fear for his safety. Court-authorized wiretaps of the defendants’ telephones revealed evidence of Nikolla’s participation in this extortion conspiracy with Llakatura and the co-defendant, and their attempts to locate the victim. In one instance, Nikolla, Llakatura, and the co-defendant threatened, punched, and pulled a gun on a friend of the victim in an effort to make the friend locate the victim. The victim ultimately fled to a foreign country for a period of time to avoid the defendants’ extortionate threats.

The co-defendant is scheduled to commence trial later this month.

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Grape Street Crips Crack-Cocaine Distributor Sentenced to Over 14 Years in Prison

A drug supplier for the Grape Street Crips street gang was sentenced to 176 months in prison for his role in distributing large quantities of crack-cocaine in and around Newark, New Jersey, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Jihad Coles, a/k/a “Half Dead,” 31, of Newark, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to distribute 280 grams or more of crack-cocaine. Judge Salas imposed the sentence in Newark federal court.

In May 2015, over the course of three weeks, 50 alleged members and associates of the Grape Street Crips were charged in criminal complaints that alleged drug-trafficking, physical assaults, and witness intimidation. The charges were the result of a long-running investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the FBI, in conjunction with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the Newark Police Department and Essex County Sheriff’s Office Bureau of Narcotics. Over the course of the entire investigation, 71 defendants have been charged with federal and state charges.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Coles admitted that between March 2012 and August 2012 he conspired with others to distribute hundreds of grams of crack-cocaine at the Mildred Terrell Homes public-housing complex located on Riverview Terrace in Newark, New Jersey. As a long-time member of the Grape Street Crips, Coles admitted that he served as an organizer and leader of the crack-cocaine distribution conspiracy.

In addition to the prison term, which will be served consecutively to a state prison term that he is currently serving, Coles was sentenced to five years of supervised release.

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Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror with @GenMhayden

The 1990s ushered in a new era of technological advances that changed nearly every imaginable facet of human existence. The rise of the Internet meant the world got a whole lot smaller as email and online forums facilitated communications worldwide. The proliferation of cell phones allowed calls to be made from nearly anywhere in the world.

This was a dream come true for the average Joe, but a nightmare for America’s largest and most powerful spy agency, the National Security Agency. With funding reduced, a downsized workforce, and antiquated IT systems, the job NSA Director Michael Hayden walked into in 1999 was no walk in the park. The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 shortly thereafter made fulfilling the mission downright Herculean.

In “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror,” Hayden recounts the step-by-step journey of reinventing the NSA technologically, undertaking long overdue organizational changes, and trying to balance liberty and security in a rapidly changing world. All while carrying out the mission the NSA has had since the agency’s founding under President Truman in 1952 — “intercepting communications that contain information that would help keep Americans free and safe and advance [America’s] vital national security interests.”

Sometimes, indeed oftentimes, that mission included the development of programs that were deemed controversial. Among those detailed in “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror” is Stellarwind, a presidentially authorized program that gave the NSA the ability to access a large percentage of the calls entering and leaving the United States. The agency would only access and collect the call if it had probable cause that one or both ends were al Qaeda related. Typically under-reported is the fact that the overwhelming majority of calls intercepted were actually foreign-to-foreign, Hayden notes.

Kick-starting a program such as this was not a matter of drawing up plans within the agency and then executing them; no, it required intricately assessing the legalities, securing presidential approval, briefing a select few members of Congress, ramping up the agency’s infrastructure to be able to carry out the program, and more.

Hayden’s detailed accounts truly gives the reader a new-found appreciation for all the hoops that must be jumped through in order to instate programs that serve to keep Americans safe in a post-9/11 world, and how seriously the agency guards the privacy of U.S. persons—regardless of how it’s reported. Therein lies another issue Hayden dedicated significant portions of the book to: discussing the efforts the agency undertakes to keep these programs secret so they actually work. Inevitably, however, they are leaked to the press, and Hayden takes the reader through the process of how he handled the media once it was on to a story and what he did to manage public relations for the agency once the news broke.

During his tenure at the NSA and later as director at the CIA, calming the storm—whether on the Hill, in the media, or among the public—was commonplace. The discussions about misjudgments over WMDs in Iraq, the controversial practice of waterboarding, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the CIA’s black sites were just some of the more interesting segments of the book that Hayden had to address while director—and he doesn’t hold back fascinating details about each that only an insider at his level would be privy to.

The book predominately focuses on the shifting intelligence landscape in the 2000s while he was heading up the NSA and CIA, but Hayden also offers a brief glimpse into his life and background. He confronts the heavy personal, familial, and moral burdens those in the field of espionage undertake while protecting America and its national security interests.

American intelligence has undergone fascinating changes in the age of terror and Hayden’s account offers the reader a long overdue perspective to counter the often incomplete and flawed version of the story in the media, particularly after Edward Snowden’s leaks. And while the subject matter is serious and at times dense, Hayden has a knack for explaining complex programs simplistically, never bogging the reader down with extraneous detail or inundating the pages with Washington’s alphabet soup. Those interested in learning the truth about what goes on behind some of America’s most tightly sealed agencies will find tremendous value in this compelling book.

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Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster

Here is the shocking true saga of the Irish American mob. In Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, bestselling author and organized crime expert T. J. English brings to life nearly two centuries of Irish American gangsterism, which spawned such unforgettable characters as Mike "King Mike" McDonald, Chicago's subterranean godfather; Big Bill Dwyer, New York's most notorious rumrunner during Prohibition; Mickey Featherstone, troubled Vietnam vet turned Westies gang leader; and James "Whitey" Bulger, the ruthless and untouchable Southie legend.

Stretching from the earliest New York and New Orleans street wars through decades of bootlegging scams, union strikes, gang wars, and FBI investigations, Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, is a riveting tour de force that restores the Irish American gangster to his rightful preeminent place in our criminal history -- and penetrates to the heart of the American experience.

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International Drug Trafficking Fugitive, Antonio Vottari, with Links to the Mafia Arrested

An international drug trafficking fugitive with links to the Mafia has been arrested at Rome's airport after flying from Australia, according to reports from Italy.

Antonio Vottari, 31, was apprehended by police at the Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino airport on Tuesday after he stepped off a flight from Australia, according to Il Quotidiano and other Italian news reports.

Vottari has been on the run for five years, wanted on drug crimes. He was convicted in his absence and sentenced to seven-and-half years in prison for trafficking cocaine as part of a syndicate operating in South America, Holland, Belgium, Germany and Italy.

The syndicate, Rai News reports, was managed by a notorious San Luca clan of the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia. The clan, which bears the surname of the former fugitive, was led by Bruno Pizzata​. Pizzata, known as the king of cocaine, is serving a 30-year prison term for drug trafficking after his arrest in 2011 in Germany.

Italian Mafia experts told Fairfax Media that clans from the same area of Italy have been historically present in Australia, therefore it was "no surprise" he was arrested coming back from Australia.

The Australian Federal Police and the Department of Immigration have been contacted for comment. The Department of Immigration would not comment on whether they were aware Vottari was present in the country. An AFP spokeswoman said it was a matter for Italian authorities.

It is not clear which Australian airport he left from nor how long he had been in the country.

Thanks to Tammy Mills.

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