Report Links Three Montreal Canadiens Players to Man with Possible Organized Crime Ties

National Hockey League officials are investigating a report linking three Montreal Canadiens players to a man with possible ties to organized crime.

The NHL “is aware of the reports and is in the process of gathering additional information,” Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said today in an e-mailed statement.

Montreal’s La Presse newspaper reported today that defenseman Roman Hamrlik and forwards Andrei and Sergei Kostitsyn have relationships with Pasquale Mangiola, who was arrested last week during a police raid on street gangs and drug dealers, according to a Feb. 17 Montreal police statement. He could be charged with conspiracy and possessing and trafficking cocaine.

Andrei Kostitsyn told La Presse after his team’s game in Pittsburgh last night that he knows Mangiola but that he knew nothing about his situation. None of the Canadiens players mentioned by La Presse has been accused of wrongdoing. Andrei’s brother Sergei said today he can’t comment, according to a broadcast on Montreal radio station CKAC.

Donald Beauchamp, a spokesman for the club, told reporters at a televised press conference in suburban Montreal today that Canadiens players won’t be available to comment on non-hockey related matters.

Canadiens General Manager Bob Gainey said he’s “very concerned” by the report and won’t tolerate the kind of behavior the newspaper described. The Canadiens, winners of an NHL record 24 Stanley Cups, are celebrating their centenary season this year. “We’ve made the players understand that this is not the kind of conduct that is part of people in our organization,” he said. “As young athletes, they have to make stronger choices than the person besides them. We’ve upped the message, we’ve upped the intensity.”

Off-ice behavior may be one of the reasons the team hasn’t performed well, Gainey said. The Canadiens have won three of their last 15 games. “I can only go on what I know today, and what I know today is not good for our team,” he said. “It doesn’t reflect well on our team or on the individuals. It cannot be extinguished as a possible inhibitor to our performance.”

Canadiens head coach Guy Carbonneau, in comments broadcast in Quebec by television network RDI, said the club must do a better job of monitoring what its players do outside the rink. “Our players are adults and we try to protect them as best we can, but they are in demand all over the place,” Carbonneau said. “One thing is for sure, we are going to tighten the leash, and tighten it quite a bit.”

Gainey said he’s not surprised by the report, given the level of interest for hockey in Montreal. The Canadiens have sold out 168 consecutive games, stretching back four years. “It’s not very surprising if you have a sense of how many people would like to get their tentacles not only on the players individually, but into the organization,” he said.

While the team regularly fields requests for appearances at charity events, “there are also people who are looking for trophy friends or the possibility of being close to somebody who earns a million dollars plus,” he said. “They are still young kids and some of them could still be in high school.”

Thanks to Frederico Tomesco

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Labor Union Drops Attorney Who Was Mentioned by Witness at Family Secrets Mob Trial

The union representing hotel and restaurant workers severed ties with a politically connected Chicago lawyer whose name surfaced at the Family Secrets Chicago mob trial.

Samuel Banks was on the payroll of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, and its successor organization, Unite Here, since at least 1989. A court-appointed union watchdog raised questions more than a decade ago about what Mr. Banks did for his salary there.

In August 2007, former mob-linked burglar Sal Romano testified at the Family Secrets trial that he had bribed police officers through Mr. Banks and another lawyer. Mr. Banks, who is also a criminal defense attorney, hasn’t been charged with wrongdoing.

Mr. Banks is the brother of Chicago Alderman William Banks (36th), father of tollway board member James Banks and father-in-law of state Rep. John Fritchey, D-Chicago. Mr. Banks did not return calls.

Mr. Banks and the union parted ways at the end of last year. A labor leader said the split had nothing to do with the accusation made at the trial. “It was based primarily on finances,” said Henry Tamarin, an executive vice-president of the international and president of Chicago-based Unite Here Local 1, which represents roughly 15,000 workers, including those on strike at the Congress Hotel.

U.S. Labor Department records indicate Local 1 paid Mr. Banks $48,000 for “legal counsel” in 2007. As for Mr. Banks’ role at Local 1, “he generally advised us politically,” Mr. Tamarin said.

Mr. Banks also was on the international union payroll as a lobbyist and was paid $88,000 in 2007, the most recent year federal records are available. His employment ended with the new year, a spokesman confirmed.

Unite Here groups contributed at least $25,000 over the past three years to the campaign fund of William Banks, and at least $10,000 to Mr. Fritchey, now running for Congress.

Mr. Banks was a close associate of the late Ed Hanley, who ran the international union until he was forced out in 1998 amid corruption allegations by a court-appointed monitor.

Around that time, the monitor, former U.S. Justice Department attorney Kurt Muellenberg, released a report that, among other things, questioned what Mr. Banks and other consultants did for the union since their work was not documented or itemized.

Thanks to Robert Herguth

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Mob Informant Testifies that Actor Was Mobster On and Off the Screen

GOODFELLAS star FRANK SIVERO had links to real life mafia bosses and hitmen, a mob informant has testified in court.

On Wednesday (18Feb09), a New York court was shown photographs of Sivero posing with Charles Carneglia, who is on trial charged with five murders, including the slaying of an off-duty cop. Prosecution witness Kevin McMahon claims Sivero - who played Frankie Carbone in the 1990 movie - was a regular visitor at the Brooklyn junkyard where cops believe Carneglia dissolved the bodies of his victims in acid. And he suggested the 57-year-old actor, who is not accused of any crime, used his underworld connections to settle vendettas. McMahon, a former associate of jailed New York crime boss John Gotti, told the court, "(Sivero) had some kind of problem with somebody in jail, I am not exactly positive." When approached by the New York Daily News, Sivero's agent Mitchell Shankman declined to comment.

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Mob Informant Supports Las Vegas Mob Museum

Yesterday started and ended with the mob. It’s just like living in a Scorsese movie sometimes.

In the morning, mob-turned-informant Frank Cullotta, focus of crime author Denny Griffin’s gripping biography “Cullotta,” said in a phone interview from an undisclosed location (me, I was in my kitchen) that he thought the proposed Mob Museum in Las Vegas is a “great idea.” The former “Hole In The Wall Gang” member, friend and bodyguard/muscle guy of Tony “The Ant” Spilotro and admitted double-murderer also says he has been approached by someone who is involved in the development of the mob museum to help add some authenticity. Cullotta refuses to say who has contacted him, but that he has been asked to provide some personal items and personal, inside information and anecdotes about his days helping the “Chicago Outfit” skim profits from their Vegas casinos through abject violence, theft and intimidation.

I asked if that overture included audio narration for some of the displays, and Cullotta thought for a moment. “That could be. I haven’t thought of that, but I’ve got a distinctive voice,” he said in a thick Italian-type accent. “Maybe I should try to trademark my voice. It’s really recognizable. That’s why I was never good with a wiretap.”

You and me both, brother.

Later in the day, I got word that Cullotta, also famous as a technical advisor and bit actor in the film “Casino” (the Frank Vincent character was based on him) would appear on ABC’s “Nightline,” having been interviewed recently by reporter Neal Karlinsky for the piece. It was the third in a series of reports, the first being about repo men and the second about the chimp in L.A. that got free from a residence and nearly killed a woman. Click here for the report.

Karlinsky’s report treaded familiar territory. He spoke with Cullotta, a product of the Witness Protection Program who still uses a secret name. “I was a gangster, burglar, murderer, extortionist, arsonist,” he said to a dutifully impressed Karlinsky. “I was all the things you don’t want to be. But I'm not like that no more. I’m a different man now.”

Mayor Oscar Goodman was interviewed in his City Hall office, and took Karlinsky on a tour of the old downtown courthouse, which would be home to the $50 million Mob Museum. Goodman estimates 800,000 people a year would visit the attraction, which is equal parts fascinating and controversial.

“This is the quintessential mob museum, there’s nothing quite like it,” Goodman said. When asked if an art museum would be a more appropriate use of the space, Goodman said, “Anyone who says this should be an art museum should go jump in the lake, with concrete shoes on!”

Playing to the cameras was the mayor. He also said he was grateful for being known as a “mob attorney” because it “put me in financial position to run for mayor.”

During our phone conversation, Cullotta said the museum would certainly help preserve Las Vegas’ history – whether we like it or not. “We have too many people who don’t know how Vegas was built,” he said. “I mean, we are losing our history, tearing it down. We have kids who don’t even know who Frank Sinatra was.” As for the argument that the museum, by its very existence, would glorify crime and criminals, Cullotta said, “People want to know about this part of our past. You make a movie about Jack the Ripper, and people flock to see it. It’s the same with this museum.”

In front of the camera, Cullotta said “The Outfit” would help dig Vegas out of the recession if the crew were around today. He is the last survivor of the original Chicago team in Vegas. “Vegas is having a rough time,” he said, “but I guarantee if the Outfit was still around there would be money here, somehow.”

I expect we will hear from Cullotta again, as part of some sort of Vegas history reclamation project.

Thanks to John Katsilometes

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The Mob's Roach Motel

Kevin McMahon never had a chance. Both his parents were junkies.

McMahon was born addicted to heroin, he said Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court. Then, when he was 6, Mommy and her boyfriend killed Daddy. Mommy went away. Grandma took little Kevin in for a few years, but she couldn't handle him in their rough East New York neighborhood, so when, he said, he was 12 or 13, she threw him out into it. He slept in alleys and yards, and one day, he found a cabana and went inside. He was discovered by the owner. The good news: The owner and his wife took Kevin into their home, and over time, they essentially adopted him.

The bad news: The owner was top John Gotti hit man John Carneglia. And he took Kevin right under his gun-bearing wing.

A teenager. Perfect chum. Just the age when kids with not enough love or luck are feeling the most vulnerable. And McMahon isn't the only one the Mafia grabbed at this impressionable age. Peter Zucarro, who also testified at the ongoing trial of mob hit man Charles Carneglia, John's younger brother, said that he was about 13 when neighborhood mobsters started giving him money for doing errands, sucking him in. "I wanted to be just like them," Zucarro said.

One problem: The mob is like a Roach Motel. You crawl in, but you can't crawl out.

Both Zucarro and McMahon and other informants have referred to themselves as "property." The capos owned them. In this democracy, they volunteered to live in a military dictatorship. They obeyed any order. Anything to feel like they belonged.

It's like the story of the child soldiers in Africa, kidnapped and then rewarded for killing. In his great book "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier," Ishmael Beah tells of a contest the grownups would hold between the kids "for who could slice the prisoners' throats quickest. ...A lot of things were done with no reason or explanation. Sometimes we were asked to leave in the middle of a movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and start the movie where we left off as if we had just returned from intermission."

In the mob, you followed orders or you would be killed, as anyone who has a TV set knows. But with law enforcement's ongoing destruction of the Italian-American Mafia, why do we care? Because youth gangs have filled the void. "There are now a million gang members in the U.S., up 200,000 since 2005," according to a report released last week by the National Gang Intelligence Center, and they commit 80% of crimes in some communities.

The MS-13 gang, with roots in El Salvador, is particularly brutal, and many gangs are using the Internet "to develop working relationships with foreign drug traffickers."

"Gangs give a sense of feeling safe, of discipline, of belonging," FBI gang expert Linda Schmidt has said. Schmidt recommends that the government fund programs "that our young people can turn to" and that they be "24/7 - like gangs are."

Thanks to Joanna Molloy

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