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
Get the latest breaking current news and explore our Historic Archive of articles focusing on The Mafia, Organized Crime, The Mob and Mobsters, Gangs and Gangsters, Political Corruption, True Crime, and the Legal System at TheChicagoSyndicate.com
Monday, September 22, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
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
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
Related Headlines
Burton Kaplan,
Gambinos,
Louis Eppolito,
Luccheses,
Mafia Cops,
Stephen Caracappa
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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
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
Angelo Prisco, Captain with the Genovese Crime Family, Indicted for Multiple Crimes
MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; MARK J. MERSHON, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”); and WEYSAN DUN, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Newark Office of the FBI, announced that ANGELO PRISCO, a Captain in the Genovese Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra, has been charged by Indictment with various crimes including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, robbery, extortion, firearms crimes, stolen property crimes, and operating an illegal gambling business.
PRISCO committed various crimes on behalf of the Genovese Organized Crime Family. He oversaw and took part in a conspiracy to commit a string of home invasions and other armed robberies, during which the intended victims were robbed of cash proceeds of their businesses and other property. PRISCO also oversaw and participated in the extortion of Manhattan-based construction business; possessed, sold and transported stolen property; and operated an illegal gambling business. If convicted, PRISCO, 69, of Tom’s River, NJ, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
According to the Indictment filed in Manhattan federal court: From at least the 1970s through the present, PRISCO was a Soldier, and later a Captain, in the Genovese Organized Crime Family. As a Captain, PRISCO supervised, oversaw and profited from the criminal activities of his own crew of Genovese Family Soldiers and associates, operating in the New York City area and in New Jersey.
PRISCO committed various crimes on behalf of the Genovese Organized Crime Family. He oversaw and took part in a conspiracy to commit a string of home invasions and other armed robberies, during which the intended victims were robbed of cash proceeds of their businesses and other property. PRISCO also oversaw and participated in the extortion of Manhattan-based construction business; possessed, sold and transported stolen property; and operated an illegal gambling business. If convicted, PRISCO, 69, of Tom’s River, NJ, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Mr. GARCIA praised the work of the FBI’s New York and Newark Field Offices; the Orange County, New York District Attorney’s Office; the Westchester County, New York District Attorney’s Office; the New York State Police; the Morris County, New Jersey Prosecutor’s Office; the Rockaway Township, New Jersey Police Department; and the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.
Assistant United States Attorneys ELIE HONIG and LISA ZORNBERG are in charge of the prosecution.
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