A Kenilworth businessman has been indicted on charges he evaded federal income taxes by concealing $3 million he earned in connection with a high-rise real estate deal in downtown Chicago, federal authorities announced. SALVATORE GALIOTO earned $3 million in personal income as part of the acquisition of nine floors in a high-rise building at 55 E. Washington St. in Chicago in 2007, according to the indictment. The seller, Pittsfield Development LLC, paid the money as a consulting fee for closing the deal. Instead of reporting the money on his personal income taxes, Galioto caused false partnership tax returns to be prepared and filed, misstating that the $3 million was earned in 2008 by his company, 55 E. Washington Development LLC, according to the indictment.
The indictment was returned Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Chicago. It charges Galioto with one count of corrupt interference with the administration of Internal Revenue Service laws, and three counts of willfully making false and fraudulent statements to the IRS. Galioto, 54, also known as “Sam Galioto” and “Sammy Galioto,” will be arraigned on a future date to be set by the Court.
According to the charges, Galioto entered into a consulting agreement with Pittsfield on or about March 28, 2007. The agreement called for Pittsfield to pay $3 million to Galioto when the sale was completed. On or about Dec. 28, 2007, Galioto’s company purchased floors 13-21 from Pittsfield for $22,652,876.82, the indictment states.
Galioto concealed receipt of Pittsfield’s payment by having it paid to his relative as a nominee. The relative is identified in the indictment only as “Individual C.” On or about Dec. 31, 2007, Pittsfield sent a portion of Galioto’s consulting fee to Individual C in the form of a check for $962,121.75. Shortly thereafter, Galioto caused Individual C to sign and endorse the check over to Galioto, who took possession of it, endorsed it, and deposited it for his own use, according to the indictment. Galioto failed to report that money in his individual federal income tax returns for the years 2007 and 2008, the indictment alleges.
Instead, the false partnership returns were filed, misstating that Galioto’s company had earned the $3 million in 2008, the indictment alleges. The corrupt interference charge carries a maximum sentence of three years in federal prison and a $5,000 fine. Each count of making false and fraudulent statements to the IRS is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of $100,000.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Vincent Asaro's Goodfellas Airport Cash and Jewelry Heist Trial to Begin Today
For nearly four decades, it remained one of America's most infamous unsolved crimes: on Dec. 11, 1978, a crew of masked men stole $6 million in cash and jewelry from a Lufthansa Airlines cargo building at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
The brazen heist, which helped inspire the gangster movie "Goodfellas," left authorities largely frustrated until last year, when federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Vincent Asaro, a member of the Bonanno organized crime family, with participating in the theft.
His criminal trial is set to begin today in Brooklyn federal court before an anonymous jury.
Most of the other suspected participants in the robbery disappeared, were killed or died, making it difficult for authorities to piece the case together.
"Once you kill one guy, you gotta kill them all, because otherwise they'll get scared," said Howard Abadinsky, an organized crime expert and a professor at St John's University in New York. "He’s one of the few guys that's still alive."
Asaro, now 80, is accused of a litany of crimes stretching from 1968 to 2013, including murder, racketeering, arson and robbery. He was arrested alongside four other alleged members of the Bonanno family, who were charged with crimes unrelated to the Lufthansa heist.
Those defendants, Asaro's son Jerome, Jack Bonventre, Thomas DiFiore and John Ragano, all pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 21 to 90 months.
Asaro's defense lawyer, Gerald McMahon, did not respond to a request for comment but has said Asaro denies all the allegations.
The only man ever convicted for the Lufthansa heist was Louis Werner, a cargo agent and the inside man. Werner passed along the idea for the robbery in order to settle gambling debts.
The robbery's proceeds, most of which were never recovered, would be worth nearly $22 million today.
James Burke, an associate of the rival Lucchese crime family known as "Jimmy the Gent," was long considered the mastermind of the robbery; he died in prison in 1996 while serving time for murder. Burke inspired the character played by Robert De Niro in "Goodfellas."
"To pull it off at an airport – you hate to say criminals should get credit, but you have to credit them for pulling it off," Abadinsky said.
The investigation got a break in 2013, when federal agents dug up human remains from the basement of a home tied to Burke based on information from a cooperating witness. The remains were identified as Paul Katz, a former Burke associate.
Asaro and Burke strangled Katz with a dog chain in 1969 after becoming suspicious he was an informant, prosecutors said.
The evidence against Asaro includes recordings made by several cooperators, including high-ranking members of the Bonanno family, who hope to receive witness protection, according to court papers.
One expected witness at trial is Joseph Massino, a former boss of the Bonanno family who has previously testified for the government.
As recently as 2011, court filings say, Asaro was recorded complaining that he hadn’t gotten his share thanks to Burke. "We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get," he said, according to prosecutors.
The jury won't hear about the string of murders allegedly carried out in the robbery's wake to eliminate potential informants. Earlier this month, the judge overseeing the trial ruled that evidence of the killings would be too prejudicial to Asaro, who is not accused of carrying them out.
Asaro is charged with several other crimes, including setting a building on fire in Queens, robbing Federal Express of $1 million in gold salts, soliciting the murder of his cousin in the 1980s and loan sharking as recently as 2013.
Thanks to Joseph Ax.
The brazen heist, which helped inspire the gangster movie "Goodfellas," left authorities largely frustrated until last year, when federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Vincent Asaro, a member of the Bonanno organized crime family, with participating in the theft.
His criminal trial is set to begin today in Brooklyn federal court before an anonymous jury.
Most of the other suspected participants in the robbery disappeared, were killed or died, making it difficult for authorities to piece the case together.
"Once you kill one guy, you gotta kill them all, because otherwise they'll get scared," said Howard Abadinsky, an organized crime expert and a professor at St John's University in New York. "He’s one of the few guys that's still alive."
Asaro, now 80, is accused of a litany of crimes stretching from 1968 to 2013, including murder, racketeering, arson and robbery. He was arrested alongside four other alleged members of the Bonanno family, who were charged with crimes unrelated to the Lufthansa heist.
Those defendants, Asaro's son Jerome, Jack Bonventre, Thomas DiFiore and John Ragano, all pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 21 to 90 months.
Asaro's defense lawyer, Gerald McMahon, did not respond to a request for comment but has said Asaro denies all the allegations.
The only man ever convicted for the Lufthansa heist was Louis Werner, a cargo agent and the inside man. Werner passed along the idea for the robbery in order to settle gambling debts.
The robbery's proceeds, most of which were never recovered, would be worth nearly $22 million today.
James Burke, an associate of the rival Lucchese crime family known as "Jimmy the Gent," was long considered the mastermind of the robbery; he died in prison in 1996 while serving time for murder. Burke inspired the character played by Robert De Niro in "Goodfellas."
"To pull it off at an airport – you hate to say criminals should get credit, but you have to credit them for pulling it off," Abadinsky said.
The investigation got a break in 2013, when federal agents dug up human remains from the basement of a home tied to Burke based on information from a cooperating witness. The remains were identified as Paul Katz, a former Burke associate.
Asaro and Burke strangled Katz with a dog chain in 1969 after becoming suspicious he was an informant, prosecutors said.
The evidence against Asaro includes recordings made by several cooperators, including high-ranking members of the Bonanno family, who hope to receive witness protection, according to court papers.
One expected witness at trial is Joseph Massino, a former boss of the Bonanno family who has previously testified for the government.
As recently as 2011, court filings say, Asaro was recorded complaining that he hadn’t gotten his share thanks to Burke. "We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get," he said, according to prosecutors.
The jury won't hear about the string of murders allegedly carried out in the robbery's wake to eliminate potential informants. Earlier this month, the judge overseeing the trial ruled that evidence of the killings would be too prejudicial to Asaro, who is not accused of carrying them out.
Asaro is charged with several other crimes, including setting a building on fire in Queens, robbing Federal Express of $1 million in gold salts, soliciting the murder of his cousin in the 1980s and loan sharking as recently as 2013.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
New Report on CIA Cover-Up Involving JFK's Assassination
Just after noon on November 22, 1963, the US lost its 35th president to a bullet in Dallas.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy spurred numerous conspiracy theories, many of which doubted whether sniper Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and asserting that the CIA was involved. And now, a declassified 2013 report by CIA historian David Robarge details how, at the very least, the CIA knew much more than it has let on.
The report states that John McCone
, then the director of the CIA, withheld important information from President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" — also referred to as the "Warren Commission" — and that top agency officials were part of a "benign cover-up."
The spy agency acknowledges that McCone and other high-ranking CIA officials kept "incendiary and diversionary issues" from the investigation, much of which may have shed light on how Oswald spent his time in the years before the assassination.
"For a complete nobody, Oswald certainly did seem to hang out with well-connected people," University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, author of "The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy," told Business Insider in 2013.
According to the declassified report, the CIA decided to tell the Warren Commission only the "best truth" about Oswald. Having taken that decision, the CIA kept information from the inquiry that would almost certainly have led the inquiry down a different path.
Among the most important information McCone and other officials failed to divulge was that the CIA had spent years plotting the assassination of Fidel Castro. Not being aware of these plots, the Warren Commission could not know that was something to investigate — but the new information suggests it would have been valuable.
While living in New Orleans in 1963, for example, Oswald shared office space with a CIA-backed anti-Castro group.
Oswald had handed out pro-Castro literature with the address 544 Camp Street on it. FBI agent Guy Banister and a CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council also rented space at the same location.
"One thing that I've always wondered about is [Oswald's] time in New Orleans because he was apparently associated with Guy Banister, who clearly had FBI and CIA ties, and yet he's also scuffling on the street with [the local representative of] an anti-Castro group," Sabato told Business Insider in 2013. And Sabato's book notes that "it could be that Oswald was just a Forrest Gump-like character who popped up at interesting moments wherever he happened to live." "But just as conceivably, whether related to the Kennedy assassination or not, Oswald actually had secretive contacts with the CIA or the FBI, or both," he said.
The report also reveals that in 1978, McCone lied about failing to divulge the Castro plots.
When a House committee asked him whether the spy agency had withheld information from the commission about the plots to kill Castro, McCone said he couldn't answer because he had not been told about the plots.
The report says McCone's answer "was neither frank nor accurate." According to one of the lawyers of the Warren Commission cited in the report, McCone had discussed Robert Kennedy's uneasiness about the CIA withholding that information in 1975.
The US attorney general at the time of his brother's assassination, Robert Kennedy had been overseeing the spy agency's anti-Castro actions, which included some of the assassination plots.
According to the report, McCone thought "Robert Kennedy had personal feelings of guilt because he was directly or indirectly involved with the anti-Castro planning."
The report hints at the kind of questions the president's brother might have been asking himself, namely: "Had the administration's obsession with Cuba inadvertently inspired a politicized sociopath to murder John Kennedy?"
Though the report sheds some light on the extent of a CIA cover-up, it still leaves many questions unanswered. Numerous names and mentions throughout the report have also been redacted, suggesting that some information might never be publicly disclosed. And as to whether Oswald acted alone or with accomplices, those who doubt the Warren Commission's findings might never find a satisfying answer.
"For all attempts to close the case as 'just Oswald,' fair-minded observers continue to be troubled by many aspects of eyewitness testimony and paper trails," Sabato writes.
The report concludes that McCone could be accused of being a "co-conspirator" in a cover-up surrounding Kennedy's assassination only insofar as he kept the plot to kill Castro secret after November 22, 1963.
"As far as the CIA goes … it is clear beyond question that the CIA lied repeatedly to the Warren Commission and continued lying to the House Select Committee on Assassinations," Sabato said in 2013.
"Revealing nothing about the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Revealing very little about the fact they kept close tabs on Oswald: They knew what he was doing — they were evaluating him. I think they had something in mind. I don't subscribe to the hidden coup within the CIA, although I don't rule it out."
The CIA recently told Politico that the agency decided to declassify the report "to highlight misconceptions about the CIA's connection to JFK's assassination," including the infamous "Grassy Knoll" theory that asserts the CIA was behind the assassination.
New details could come out when thousands of CIA documents are scheduled to be released in October 2017.
Sabato said: "The president at that time will get to rule whether anything can remain secret and redacted."
Thanks to Barbara Tasch and Michael B Kelley.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy spurred numerous conspiracy theories, many of which doubted whether sniper Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and asserting that the CIA was involved. And now, a declassified 2013 report by CIA historian David Robarge details how, at the very least, the CIA knew much more than it has let on.
The report states that John McCone
, then the director of the CIA, withheld important information from President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" — also referred to as the "Warren Commission" — and that top agency officials were part of a "benign cover-up."The spy agency acknowledges that McCone and other high-ranking CIA officials kept "incendiary and diversionary issues" from the investigation, much of which may have shed light on how Oswald spent his time in the years before the assassination.
"For a complete nobody, Oswald certainly did seem to hang out with well-connected people," University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, author of "The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy," told Business Insider in 2013.
According to the declassified report, the CIA decided to tell the Warren Commission only the "best truth" about Oswald. Having taken that decision, the CIA kept information from the inquiry that would almost certainly have led the inquiry down a different path.
Among the most important information McCone and other officials failed to divulge was that the CIA had spent years plotting the assassination of Fidel Castro. Not being aware of these plots, the Warren Commission could not know that was something to investigate — but the new information suggests it would have been valuable.
While living in New Orleans in 1963, for example, Oswald shared office space with a CIA-backed anti-Castro group.
Oswald had handed out pro-Castro literature with the address 544 Camp Street on it. FBI agent Guy Banister and a CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council also rented space at the same location.
"One thing that I've always wondered about is [Oswald's] time in New Orleans because he was apparently associated with Guy Banister, who clearly had FBI and CIA ties, and yet he's also scuffling on the street with [the local representative of] an anti-Castro group," Sabato told Business Insider in 2013. And Sabato's book notes that "it could be that Oswald was just a Forrest Gump-like character who popped up at interesting moments wherever he happened to live." "But just as conceivably, whether related to the Kennedy assassination or not, Oswald actually had secretive contacts with the CIA or the FBI, or both," he said.
The report also reveals that in 1978, McCone lied about failing to divulge the Castro plots.
When a House committee asked him whether the spy agency had withheld information from the commission about the plots to kill Castro, McCone said he couldn't answer because he had not been told about the plots.
The report says McCone's answer "was neither frank nor accurate." According to one of the lawyers of the Warren Commission cited in the report, McCone had discussed Robert Kennedy's uneasiness about the CIA withholding that information in 1975.
The US attorney general at the time of his brother's assassination, Robert Kennedy had been overseeing the spy agency's anti-Castro actions, which included some of the assassination plots.
According to the report, McCone thought "Robert Kennedy had personal feelings of guilt because he was directly or indirectly involved with the anti-Castro planning."
The report hints at the kind of questions the president's brother might have been asking himself, namely: "Had the administration's obsession with Cuba inadvertently inspired a politicized sociopath to murder John Kennedy?"
Though the report sheds some light on the extent of a CIA cover-up, it still leaves many questions unanswered. Numerous names and mentions throughout the report have also been redacted, suggesting that some information might never be publicly disclosed. And as to whether Oswald acted alone or with accomplices, those who doubt the Warren Commission's findings might never find a satisfying answer.
"For all attempts to close the case as 'just Oswald,' fair-minded observers continue to be troubled by many aspects of eyewitness testimony and paper trails," Sabato writes.
The report concludes that McCone could be accused of being a "co-conspirator" in a cover-up surrounding Kennedy's assassination only insofar as he kept the plot to kill Castro secret after November 22, 1963.
"As far as the CIA goes … it is clear beyond question that the CIA lied repeatedly to the Warren Commission and continued lying to the House Select Committee on Assassinations," Sabato said in 2013.
"Revealing nothing about the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Revealing very little about the fact they kept close tabs on Oswald: They knew what he was doing — they were evaluating him. I think they had something in mind. I don't subscribe to the hidden coup within the CIA, although I don't rule it out."
The CIA recently told Politico that the agency decided to declassify the report "to highlight misconceptions about the CIA's connection to JFK's assassination," including the infamous "Grassy Knoll" theory that asserts the CIA was behind the assassination.
New details could come out when thousands of CIA documents are scheduled to be released in October 2017.
Sabato said: "The president at that time will get to rule whether anything can remain secret and redacted."
Thanks to Barbara Tasch and Michael B Kelley.
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Ex-Chicago Public Schools CEO, Pleads Guilty to Accepting Bribes and Kickbacks
BARBARA BYRD-BENNETT pleaded guilty in federal court to using her position as chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools to guide lucrative no-bid contracts to her former employer in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.
In a written plea agreement, Byrd-Bennett admitted that she steered no-bid contracts worth more than $23 million to two education-consulting firms, THE SUPES ACADEMY LLC and SYNESI ASSOCIATES LLC. In exchange, Byrd-Bennett expected to receive cash kickbacks from the companies, as well as a consulting job at SUPES upon her retirement from CPS. The kickbacks were to be paid to Byrd-Bennett in the form of a “signing bonus” on the first day of her new employment, according to the plea agreement.
Byrd-Bennett previously worked as a consultant for SUPES and Synesi before moving to CPS in May 2012. She served as CEO at CPS from Oct. 12, 2012, to June 1, 2015.
Byrd-Bennett, 66, of Solon, Ohio, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, mandatory restitution, and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greater. The Court will impose a reasonable sentence under federal sentencing statutes and the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines.
The Court will schedule a sentencing date at a later time. U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang scheduled a status hearing for Jan. 27, 2016, at 9:00 a.m.
In addition to the expected kickback from the contracts, Byrd-Bennett admitted in the plea agreement that the companies provided her with numerous other benefits, including meals and tickets to sporting events.
The Wilmette-based SUPES and the Evanston-based Synesi are also charged in the indictment, along with their respective former owners, GARY SOLOMON, 47, of Wilmette, and THOMAS VRANAS, 34, of Glenview. The four co-defendants are scheduled for an arraignment on Oct. 14, 2015, at 2:00 p.m., before Judge Chang.
In a written plea agreement, Byrd-Bennett admitted that she steered no-bid contracts worth more than $23 million to two education-consulting firms, THE SUPES ACADEMY LLC and SYNESI ASSOCIATES LLC. In exchange, Byrd-Bennett expected to receive cash kickbacks from the companies, as well as a consulting job at SUPES upon her retirement from CPS. The kickbacks were to be paid to Byrd-Bennett in the form of a “signing bonus” on the first day of her new employment, according to the plea agreement.
Byrd-Bennett previously worked as a consultant for SUPES and Synesi before moving to CPS in May 2012. She served as CEO at CPS from Oct. 12, 2012, to June 1, 2015.
Byrd-Bennett, 66, of Solon, Ohio, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, mandatory restitution, and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greater. The Court will impose a reasonable sentence under federal sentencing statutes and the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines.
The Court will schedule a sentencing date at a later time. U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang scheduled a status hearing for Jan. 27, 2016, at 9:00 a.m.
In addition to the expected kickback from the contracts, Byrd-Bennett admitted in the plea agreement that the companies provided her with numerous other benefits, including meals and tickets to sporting events.
The Wilmette-based SUPES and the Evanston-based Synesi are also charged in the indictment, along with their respective former owners, GARY SOLOMON, 47, of Wilmette, and THOMAS VRANAS, 34, of Glenview. The four co-defendants are scheduled for an arraignment on Oct. 14, 2015, at 2:00 p.m., before Judge Chang.
Monday, October 12, 2015
2008 Survey Names the Top 10 Criminal Organizations in the World
THEY trade in everything from stolen art to nuclear technology and leave rivals riddled with bullets in the streets of Moscow.
Now the worst thugs in the Russian Mafia have blasted their way to the top of the global organised crime league.
Moscow's Solntsevskaya Bratva, known as the Brotherhood, have just been named the worst criminal gang in the world in a major survey. And the planet's most famous mobsters, the "Five Families" of the New YorkMafia, barely scrape into the top 10.
The Brotherhood took over the underworld of south-west Moscow in the 1980s after godfather Sergei Mikhailov learned his criminal trade in the Siberian labour camps. Then, by linking up with other gangs, they built an empire worth tens of billions of pounds across Russia and beyond.
The survey says: "From its base in Moscow, this syndicate runs rackets in extortion, drug trafficking, car theft, stolen art, money laundering, contract killings, arms dealing, trading nuclear material, prostitution and oil deals."
Anyone who threatens the Brotherhood's business tends to end up dead.
They murdered a string of rival hoods in Moscow in the early 1990s and a bid to put Mikhailov on trial in Switzerland in 1996 had to be abandoned after several witnesses were shot or blown up.
Former FBI agent Bob Levinson says the Russian Mafia are "the most dangerous people on earth". But the survey, compiled by online men's mag AskMen, reveals that they have rivals in every corner of the world.
No 2 in the gangland top 10 are the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate, the biggest of Japan's Yakuza crime clans.
Based in the city of Kobe and run by mastermind Shinobu Tsusaka, the 40,000- strong Yamaguchi-gumi run extortion, gambling, vice, drugs and loan-sharking scams. They also take kickbacks from building projects and peddle online porn.
Third place in the poll goes to an Italian Mafia gang - but not the Sicilian Cosa Nostra or the Camorra of Naples. The little-known "'Ndrangheta", based in the southern district of Calabria, have ties to Colombian drug barons. Some believe they are responsible for 80 per cent of Europe's cocaine trade. While other Mafia gangs have been crippled by informers, the 'Ndrangheta have kept their vows of silence because the mob is built on close family ties.
Most gangs only care about cash. But the fourth mob on the list, India's D Company, have sinister ties to Islamic terror. Boss of bosses Dawood Ibrahim masterminded a wave of bombings that killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993. Ibrahim has links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and is widely believed to be hiding in Pakistan. He is rumoured to have had plastic surgery to alter his face.
Fifth on the list are the ruthless 14K triad from Hong Kong, who trade in human beings as well as drugs and assassinations.
The Sicilian Mafia only make sixth place in the poll after a string of high-profile arrests of their bosses.
Seventh are the Chinese Dai Huen Jai gang, many of whom are veterans of Chairman Mao's Red Guards.
One of the world's most violent mobs, theMexican Tijuana Cartel, take eighth place. Turf wars between the Cartel, led by Eduardo Arellano-Felix, and other gangs have killed hundreds in recent years.
Ninth spot goes to Taiwan's United Bamboo triad.
And despite their Hollywood reputation, the five New York Mafia families are left bringing up the rear.
The Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese clans have been relentlessly harried by the FBI. Many bosses are now behind bars, including Gambino godfather Nicholas Corozzo, who was held in March.
Top 10 criminal organizations
1 Solntsevskaya Bratva
2 Yamaguchi-gumi
3 'Ndrangheta
4 D Company
5 14K
6 Sicilian Mafia
7 Dai Huen Jai
8 Tijuana Cartel
9 United Bamboo
10 The US Mafia 'The Five Families'
Thanks to Ian Brandes
Now the worst thugs in the Russian Mafia have blasted their way to the top of the global organised crime league.
Moscow's Solntsevskaya Bratva, known as the Brotherhood, have just been named the worst criminal gang in the world in a major survey. And the planet's most famous mobsters, the "Five Families" of the New YorkMafia, barely scrape into the top 10.
The Brotherhood took over the underworld of south-west Moscow in the 1980s after godfather Sergei Mikhailov learned his criminal trade in the Siberian labour camps. Then, by linking up with other gangs, they built an empire worth tens of billions of pounds across Russia and beyond.
The survey says: "From its base in Moscow, this syndicate runs rackets in extortion, drug trafficking, car theft, stolen art, money laundering, contract killings, arms dealing, trading nuclear material, prostitution and oil deals."
Anyone who threatens the Brotherhood's business tends to end up dead.
They murdered a string of rival hoods in Moscow in the early 1990s and a bid to put Mikhailov on trial in Switzerland in 1996 had to be abandoned after several witnesses were shot or blown up.
Former FBI agent Bob Levinson says the Russian Mafia are "the most dangerous people on earth". But the survey, compiled by online men's mag AskMen, reveals that they have rivals in every corner of the world.
No 2 in the gangland top 10 are the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate, the biggest of Japan's Yakuza crime clans.
Based in the city of Kobe and run by mastermind Shinobu Tsusaka, the 40,000- strong Yamaguchi-gumi run extortion, gambling, vice, drugs and loan-sharking scams. They also take kickbacks from building projects and peddle online porn.
Third place in the poll goes to an Italian Mafia gang - but not the Sicilian Cosa Nostra or the Camorra of Naples. The little-known "'Ndrangheta", based in the southern district of Calabria, have ties to Colombian drug barons. Some believe they are responsible for 80 per cent of Europe's cocaine trade. While other Mafia gangs have been crippled by informers, the 'Ndrangheta have kept their vows of silence because the mob is built on close family ties.
Most gangs only care about cash. But the fourth mob on the list, India's D Company, have sinister ties to Islamic terror. Boss of bosses Dawood Ibrahim masterminded a wave of bombings that killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993. Ibrahim has links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban and is widely believed to be hiding in Pakistan. He is rumoured to have had plastic surgery to alter his face.
Fifth on the list are the ruthless 14K triad from Hong Kong, who trade in human beings as well as drugs and assassinations.
The Sicilian Mafia only make sixth place in the poll after a string of high-profile arrests of their bosses.
Seventh are the Chinese Dai Huen Jai gang, many of whom are veterans of Chairman Mao's Red Guards.
One of the world's most violent mobs, theMexican Tijuana Cartel, take eighth place. Turf wars between the Cartel, led by Eduardo Arellano-Felix, and other gangs have killed hundreds in recent years.
Ninth spot goes to Taiwan's United Bamboo triad.
And despite their Hollywood reputation, the five New York Mafia families are left bringing up the rear.
The Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese clans have been relentlessly harried by the FBI. Many bosses are now behind bars, including Gambino godfather Nicholas Corozzo, who was held in March.
Top 10 criminal organizations
1 Solntsevskaya Bratva
2 Yamaguchi-gumi
3 'Ndrangheta
4 D Company
5 14K
6 Sicilian Mafia
7 Dai Huen Jai
8 Tijuana Cartel
9 United Bamboo
10 The US Mafia 'The Five Families'
Thanks to Ian Brandes
The Good Rat - A True Story
Jimmy Breslin stared helplessly out the window of his office in The Daily News one afternoon in the 1970s, seeking inspiration — through a haze of cigar smoke — from the nondescript facade of a building across 42nd Street.
He betrayed no visible brain activity, not even a flicker of the genius that infused his columns
, one of which was close to being overdue. I know because I was his anxious editor. But his blank stare was an illusion. Mr. Breslin was eavesdropping. He was mining a rich lode of gossip from his assistant, Ann Marie, who was chatting on the telephone outside his office door.
Mr. Breslin is a very good listener. Almost imperceptibly, his head began to turn until he finally fixed his gaze on Ann Marie, and in one of those unheralded but defining moments in journalism, a series of columns about the underside of life in the Big City — with the names changed to protect the guilty and Mr. Breslin himself — was born.
In “The Good Rat: A True Story” (Ecco Press), Mr. Breslin recalls another of his eureka moments, which took place in a Brooklyn courtroom where he had gone to research a book about two cops turned Mafia hit men. One was fat and sad-eyed, the other thin and listless.
“Am I going to write 70,000 words about these two?” Mr. Breslin asked himself. “Rather I lay brick.” But when the trial started two years ago, he recalls, an unknown name on the prosecution witness list “turns the proceeding into something that thrills: the autobiography of Burton Kaplan, criminal.” Mr. Breslin had found his subject, a Brooklyn Tech dropout, father of a judge, who was “a great merchant, too great, and after he sold everything that did belong to him, he sold things that did not.”
And lucky for us. His book ingeniously synthesizes Burton Kaplan’s bizarre biography, his testimony, and Mr. Breslin’s memoirs of his own earlier exploits and encounters with characters who punctuated his columns but are mostly dead, imprisoned, or hidden in witness protection programs.
“You can drink with legitimate people if you want,” Mr. Breslin writes of his social circle, adding that he is a product of nights when the mobster Fat Tony Salerno looked around the Copacabana, scowled at him and asked, “ ‘Didn’t you go where I told you to?’ ”
Where had Mr. Breslin been told to go? That morning, he had encountered Mr. Salerno at a court engagement where the mobster complained, “You look like a bum,” and slipped him an East Side tailor’s business card.
“Tell him you want a suit made right away so you don’t make me ashamed I know you,” Mr. Salerno ordered.
The book is cleverly constructed, opening with an annotated cast of characters, and it delivers canny anthropological insights into organized crime (“The feds soon realized all they had to do was follow guys who kiss each other and they’d know the whole Mafia”). Mr. Breslin also criticizes John Gotti for having “violated New York’s revered rush-hour rules when he had Paul Castellano killed in the middle of it.”
Mr. Breslin’s account of a victim who was killed by mistake belies the idea that there are no innocent bystanders. And every page reveals his talent for putting a twinkle in your mind’s eye (the lawyer Bruce Cutler wore “a light khaki summer suit that could have used 10 pounds less to cover”). The book is Jimmy Breslin at his best.
Thanks to Sam Roberts
He betrayed no visible brain activity, not even a flicker of the genius that infused his columns
, one of which was close to being overdue. I know because I was his anxious editor. But his blank stare was an illusion. Mr. Breslin was eavesdropping. He was mining a rich lode of gossip from his assistant, Ann Marie, who was chatting on the telephone outside his office door.Mr. Breslin is a very good listener. Almost imperceptibly, his head began to turn until he finally fixed his gaze on Ann Marie, and in one of those unheralded but defining moments in journalism, a series of columns about the underside of life in the Big City — with the names changed to protect the guilty and Mr. Breslin himself — was born.
In “The Good Rat: A True Story” (Ecco Press), Mr. Breslin recalls another of his eureka moments, which took place in a Brooklyn courtroom where he had gone to research a book about two cops turned Mafia hit men. One was fat and sad-eyed, the other thin and listless.
“Am I going to write 70,000 words about these two?” Mr. Breslin asked himself. “Rather I lay brick.” But when the trial started two years ago, he recalls, an unknown name on the prosecution witness list “turns the proceeding into something that thrills: the autobiography of Burton Kaplan, criminal.” Mr. Breslin had found his subject, a Brooklyn Tech dropout, father of a judge, who was “a great merchant, too great, and after he sold everything that did belong to him, he sold things that did not.”
And lucky for us. His book ingeniously synthesizes Burton Kaplan’s bizarre biography, his testimony, and Mr. Breslin’s memoirs of his own earlier exploits and encounters with characters who punctuated his columns but are mostly dead, imprisoned, or hidden in witness protection programs.
“You can drink with legitimate people if you want,” Mr. Breslin writes of his social circle, adding that he is a product of nights when the mobster Fat Tony Salerno looked around the Copacabana, scowled at him and asked, “ ‘Didn’t you go where I told you to?’ ”
Where had Mr. Breslin been told to go? That morning, he had encountered Mr. Salerno at a court engagement where the mobster complained, “You look like a bum,” and slipped him an East Side tailor’s business card.
“Tell him you want a suit made right away so you don’t make me ashamed I know you,” Mr. Salerno ordered.
The book is cleverly constructed, opening with an annotated cast of characters, and it delivers canny anthropological insights into organized crime (“The feds soon realized all they had to do was follow guys who kiss each other and they’d know the whole Mafia”). Mr. Breslin also criticizes John Gotti for having “violated New York’s revered rush-hour rules when he had Paul Castellano killed in the middle of it.”
Mr. Breslin’s account of a victim who was killed by mistake belies the idea that there are no innocent bystanders. And every page reveals his talent for putting a twinkle in your mind’s eye (the lawyer Bruce Cutler wore “a light khaki summer suit that could have used 10 pounds less to cover”). The book is Jimmy Breslin at his best.
Thanks to Sam Roberts
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency
From the bestselling team of Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard comes Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency, a page-turning epic account of the career of President Ronald Reagan that tells the vivid story of his rise to power -- and the forces of evil that conspired to bring him down.
Just two months into his presidency
, Ronald Reagan lay near death after a gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing short of remarkable -- or so it seemed. But Reagan was grievously injured, forcing him to encounter a challenge that few men ever face. Could he silently overcome his traumatic experience while at the same time carrying out the duties of the most powerful man in the world?
Told in the same riveting fashion as Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, Killing Jesus, and Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General, Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency, reaches back to the golden days of Hollywood, where Reagan found both fame and heartbreak, up through the years in the California governor's mansion, and finally to the White House, where he presided over boom years and the fall of the Iron Curtain. But it was John Hinckley Jr.'s attack on him that precipitated President Reagan's most heroic actions. Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency, O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the scenes, creating an unforgettable portrait of a great man operating in violent times.
Just two months into his presidency
, Ronald Reagan lay near death after a gunman's bullet came within inches of his heart. His recovery was nothing short of remarkable -- or so it seemed. But Reagan was grievously injured, forcing him to encounter a challenge that few men ever face. Could he silently overcome his traumatic experience while at the same time carrying out the duties of the most powerful man in the world?Told in the same riveting fashion as Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, Killing Jesus, and Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General, Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency, reaches back to the golden days of Hollywood, where Reagan found both fame and heartbreak, up through the years in the California governor's mansion, and finally to the White House, where he presided over boom years and the fall of the Iron Curtain. But it was John Hinckley Jr.'s attack on him that precipitated President Reagan's most heroic actions. Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency, O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the scenes, creating an unforgettable portrait of a great man operating in violent times.
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