Gene Gotti, Brother of Mafia Godfather John Gotti, to Be Released from Prison

If the late John Gotti’s long-jailed brother finds the 21st-century Mafia unrecognizable later this month, he knows where the blame lies.

Gene Gotti, behind bars since 1989 for running a multi-million dollar heroin distribution ring, is set for a Sept. 15 release from the Federal Correctional Institution in Pollock, La. The Long Island father of three, now 71, wore a white jogging suit and cracked wise about his upcoming prison time when surrendering in the last millennium at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse.

Back in the ’80s heyday of his immaculately-dressed older brother and the Gambino family, FBI bugs captured Gene discussing topics from drug dealing to hiding illegal cash to changes in mob hierarchy.

The recordings of the Gambino capo and his mob associates became the first damaging domino to fall for the family in 1983, setting in motion the demise of their criminal empire.

What remains is a faint whisper of the roar that followed the ascension to boss of John (Dapper Don) Gotti, who took over after ordering the Dec. 16, 1985, mob assassination of predecessor “Big Paul” Castellano — in part to save his smack-dealing sibling’s life.

“What is Genie coming home to?” mused one long-retired Gambino family hand and Gotti contemporary. “There’s nothing left.”

When Gene Gotti started his 50-year prison bid, George H.W. Bush was in year one at the White House, an earthquake rocked the Bay Area World Series and the lip-syncing duo Milli Vanilli topped the charts.

Gene Gotti was convicted at his third federal drug-dealing trial, with jury tampering cited for a mistrial in the first one and a hung jury in the second. He and brother John were also cleared in a 1987 federal racketeering case where a juror was bribed.

Angel Gotti, Gene’s niece and the daughter of John, expects her uncle to find his footing in freedom.

“My uncle has been away 29 years so I'm sure he will be spending all his time with his wife, kids and grandchildren,” Angel told the Daily News.

Gene became one of five Gotti brothers to embrace “The Life” of organized crime. Though John emerged as the top gun, Gene earned his own spurs and became a valued mobster.

“He was a bona-fide wiseguy,” said ex-FBI agent Bruce Mouw, former head of the agency’s Gambino squad. “He wasn’t there because of his brother. He made it on his own.” But bona fide wiseguys are hard to find in 2018. Big brother John is dead 16 years, and sibling Peter appears destined to die behind bars, too. John’s namesake son Junior Gotti quit the mob after doing time for a strip club shakedown; he then survived four prosecutions that ended in mistrials. The Gotti crew’s Bergin Hunt & Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens, is gone, replaced by the Lords of Stitch and Print custom embroidery shop.

Even the Mafia “brand” is down: The recently-released movie with John Travolta playing the “Teflon Don” grossed a mere $4.3 million — hardly “Godfather” numbers.

“The American Mafia has a recruitment problem: Who the hell wants to be a member?” said mob expert Howard Abadinsky, professor of criminal justice at St. John’s.

The new generation is filled with wanna-bes “who have either seen too many Mafia movies or losers who do not have the smarts or ambition for legitimate opportunity,” he added.

The older generation was not always a Mensa meeting, either — and Gene Gotti was Example A.

By the early 1980s, Gene was partnered with pals John Carneglia and Angelo Ruggiero in a lucrative heroin operation that ignored a Mafia edict against dope dealing. Gambino boss Castellano imposed a death penalty for violators, worried that drug convictions with lengthy jail terms provided an incentive for mobsters to rat out the family’s top echelon.

Gotti and his cohorts not only ignored the decree, they were caught discussing their drug dealing on an FBI bug planted in Ruggiero’s home. “Dial any seven numbers and it's 50/50 Angelo will pick up the phone,” a disgusted Carneglia later observed of his chatty cohort.

For Mouw, the recordings that led to Gene Gotti’s August 1983 arrest altered the landscape for the feds and the felons under their watch. “Without those conversations, a lot of things could have changed,” he said.

Instead, Castellano was soon pressing the Gotti faction for the damning tapes turned over by prosecutors as part of pre-trial discovery. The boss’ demand was greeted with excuses and delays, until Castellano was whacked 10 days before Christmas outside a Midtown steakhouse.

Decades later, it’s too late to change anything — including Gene’s decision to reject a plea deal that might have freed him after just seven years in prison.

“His brother John said no,” recalled Mouw. “He and Carneglia, they would have been home 20 years ago.”

The past is the past. What does the future hold for Gene Gotti?

“That’s the big question,” said Mouw. “Are you going to retire and enjoy your grandchildren? Or are you going to get active, and return to jail?"

Thanks to Larry McShane.

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Why Does a Career Russian Organized Crime Expert Bruce Ohr Upset Donald Trump So Much?

Followers of President Donald Trump’s personal Twitter feed know him as a frequent critic of the U.S. Justice Department. Although his favorite targets remain special counsel Robert Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, lately the president has pushed another, rather unknown name into his crosshairs: Bruce Ohr.

Here, we’ve saved you a lot of Googling.

Who is Bruce Ohr?

Ohr has been with the Department of Justice (or “Justice” Department, as per the president) for nearly three decades. He started as a prosecutor in New York before transferring to Washington, D.C., where he was eventually named associate deputy attorney general.

His focus is international organized crime ― particularly Russian organized crime. Colleagues and family members told The New York Times he has an upstanding reputation as “a scrupulous government official.” CNN reported that Ohr was viewed as “a consummate government servant.”

In certain posts, Trump called him a “creep” and a “disgrace.”

Ohr was demoted in December 2017. In a statement provided to Fox News at the time, a Justice Department official suggested he was doing too much ― “wear[ing] two hats” ― and the new role will allow him to focus back on organized crime.

Is that all?

Not quite. Ohr knows Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the Trump dossier, because Steele once worked for the FBI as a “confidential human source” over an unspecified time. (The agency kept the receipts.) Ohr communicated with him as a Justice Department official.

When Steele shared information with Mother Jones magazine shortly before the 2016 election, reportedly out of frustration, the FBI stopped using him as a source. But Ohr continued to talk to him and pass his information along to the FBI, even though he wasn’t officially involved with any investigation pertaining to Trump.

The so-called Nunes memo ― a much-hyped document authored by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) ― claims Steele told Ohr he really, really did not want Trump elected president.

Additionally, Ohr is married to Nellie Ohr, who formerly worked for Fusion GPS, the company that used funding from Democrats to compile a dossier containing several appalling claims about Trump. He didn’t initially tell Justice Department leadership about the scope of his wife’s work or his continued interactions with Steele.

Why does this matter?

Thanks to his wife and to Steele, Ohr is loosely connected to the Russia investigation. For that he has found himself at the center of a theorized anti-Trump conspiracy. (Phrases such as “RIGGED!,” “WITCH HUNT!” and “Fake Dossier” tend to materialize in the president’s complaints about him on Twitter.)

On Tuesday, Republicans in the House brought him in for a closed-door interview about his contacts with Steele. He was also questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee in December 2017.

To the right, Ohr’s behavior taints the Russia investigation into possible coordination between that nation and Trump’s campaign. But the idea misses one big point: The Russia investigation didn’t start because of the Trump dossier. It was prompted by the actions of George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser.

What could Trump do to him?

The president could revoke Ohr’s security clearance, as he has threatened to do in recent weeks. That would make it pretty hard for Ohr to do his job.

To fire Ohr, Trump would have to lean on Sessions, an ostensible Trump supporter in the doghouse for recusing himself from overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Why is this all coming up now?

Conservative media have seized on the Ohr story, implying that the Russia investigation was born out of partisan prejudice. The president’s channel of choice, Fox News, is particularly preoccupied with it lately, and Trump has on multiple occasions cited the news outlet’s coverage in his tweets.

Thanks to Sara Boboltz.

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Vishal Savla, Chicago Financial Advisor, Pleads Guilty of Fraud for Swindling Investors Out of Millions

A Chicago financial advisor who told clients that a “fat finger” trading error caused major losses to their investments admitted in federal court that he actually lost all of their funds through poor trading.

VISHAL SAVLA, 37, of Chicago, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. Savla operated VCAP LLC, a Chicago investment fund that purported to trade in equities, options and futures contracts.

The guilty plea was announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; and Jeffrey S. Sallet, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sunil Harjani.

Savla admitted in a plea agreement that from 2014 to earlier this year, he raised approximately $2.3 million from investors on the promise of substantial returns. VCAP was largely unsuccessful during that time, losing approximately 96% in 2014 and more than 99% in the first eleven months of 2016. Savla continued to solicit and accept investments, and he sent clients phony account statements that fraudulently showed large profits instead of heavy losses, the plea agreement states. At one point in December 2016, according to the plea agreement, Savla falsely represented to clients that he accidentally committed a “fat finger trade” – an error when entering a trade online – that caused VCAP to decline by approximately 90% in a single day. Savla admitted in the plea agreement that there was no such error, and that trading losses had caused the decline.

In addition to the losses incurred by investors, Savla’s plea agreement acknowledges that he borrowed funds from family and friends to help repay VCAP investors. One family member, after being told by Savla about the purported “fat finger” mistake, loaned Savla $500,000, the plea agreement states. Savla used this money to partially repay some of the VCAP investors.

Savla also admitted in his plea agreement that he spent approximately $260,000 of investor funds for his own personal benefit, including living expenses. VCAP did not have any cumulative trading profits that allowed for these withdrawals.

Wire fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle set sentencing for Jan. 9, 2019, at 10:00 a.m.

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American Capitalism Made Donald Trump, Not the Mafia

President Trump’s ruminations after the criminal conviction of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and the guilty plea entered by his former personal attorney Michael Cohen have been likened to that of a mafia boss. “With Mob-Tinged Vocabulary, President Evokes His Native New York” read The New York Times White House memo headline Friday.

No doubt, Trump’s references to “rats” and former insiders “flipping” on him creates the sense he orbits in a solar system of self-interest, outside the bounds of our criminal justice system that’s defined by absolute values of right and wrong. But Trump’s amoral alignment that has him flying "above the law" is not just one we can ascribe to organized crime but to how we police American capitalism itself.

This is no trivial matter, since Trump is the first President that has been bestowed upon our republic by the business world and with the ever-exploding costs of campaigns, certainly likely not to be the last. And it is easy to understand from Trump’s previous brushes with law enforcement how he would now come away annoyed with how he and his associates are being treated.

For up until now, Trump’s battles with the government as a businessman were ones that were civil in nature, where government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission or the Security Exchange Commission made allegations, and his lawyers negotiated a resolution with Trump, perhaps paying a fine, but with Trump not having to admit any wrongdoing.

This regulatory deference to capital, corporations and the people who run them is baked into our system and repeatedly comes to the rescue of serial offenders like Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, who have ruthlessly preyed upon the public, paid their fines and gone on to prosper.

Even though these laws often have criminal penalties attached to them, they are rarely invoked. By the time the former government regulators-turned pricey white-collar defense lawyers get done, the penalties are hardly a speed bump.

Shoplifters trying to score dinner go to jail. But if your heist is really, really big like millions of foreclosed homes, our politicians go golfing with you and ask you for campaign cash. The bigger you think, the greedier your ambition, and the bigger your bank account, the more our jurisprudence has your back.

Back in 2002 the SEC issued a cease and desist order against Trump’s Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. for issuing a “fraudulent” press release that gave the public and investors the “false and misleading impression that his company had exceeded earning expectations through operational improvements, when in fact it had not.”

“Trump Hotels consented to the issuance of the Commission’s order without admitting or denying the Commission’s findings,” the SEC said in a press release. “The Commission also found that Trump Hotels, through the conduct of its chief executive officer, its chief financial officer and its treasurer, violated the antifraud provisions of the Securities Exchange Act by knowingly or recklessly issuing a materially misleading press release.”

There was no fine, just whatever punishment the markets might exact in how it priced the stock.

At the time of the alleged violations, Trump was chairman of the company. He issued a statement that he had “great respect for" the SEC and its chairman, Harvey Pitt and that he was “very happy that this all worked out."

It was all very civil.

Back in the summer of 1986, Trump ran afoul of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act, which requires the disclosure of mergers or acquisitions to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice so those agencies can insure the transactions will not negatively impact national commerce or have anti-trust implications.

In 1988 the FTC charged that “in two separate transactions, Trump acquired stock in Holiday Corp. and Bally Manufacturing Corp. through Bear Stearns in an amount well beyond the dollar threshold at which he should have filed pre-merger notifications with the FTC and DOJ. Trump eventually made the appropriate filings but not within the time frame established by the HSR Act.”

Trump paid a $750,000 fine, but of course the FTC press release had the business boilerplate, “This judgment is for settlement purposes only and does not constitute an admission by Trump that he violated the law.”

"I firmly believe that I was in full compliance with the Hart, Scott, Rodino Act reporting requirements,’’ Trump said in a statement, adding he only agreed to the settlement ''to avoid protracted litigation with the Federal Government over a highly technical disagreement between the F.T.C. and the business community.''

Generations of enabling American corporations and characters like Donald Trump to get away with their self-dealing has left us with vast wealth and income inequality that only grows wider.

They bought the law, so there is no great equalizer.

No, we can’t blame Donald Trump on the mafia. He is a product of no-holds barred American capitalism where the law is only for the unincorporated little people.

Thanks to Bob Hennelly.

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Remembering Sidney Korshak - Fabled Fixer for the Chicago Mob

Sidney R. Korshak, a labor lawyer who used his reputation as the Chicago mob's man in Los Angeles to become one of Hollywood's most fabled and influential fixers, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 88.

His death came a day after that of his brother, Marshall Korshak, a longtime Chicago politician who died in a hospital there at the age of 85.

Although the two brothers shared a law office in Chicago for many years, their careers diverged considerably. Marshall Korshak led a distinctly public life as a glad-handing Democratic machine politician, serving, among other things, as State Senator and city treasurer and dispensing thousands of jobs as a ward boss. But Sidney Korshak pursued power in the shadows.

It was a tribute to Sidney Korshak's success that he was never indicted, despite repeated Federal and state investigations. And the widespread belief that he had in fact committed the very crimes the authorities could never prove made him an indispensible ally of leading Hollywood producers, corporate executives and politicians.

As his longtime friend and admirer, Robert Evans, the former head of Paramount, described it in his 1994 book, "The Kid Stays in the Picture," Mr. Korshak could work wonders with a single phone call, especially when labor problems were an issue.


"Let's just say that a nod from Korshak," Mr. Evans wrote, "and the teamsters change management. A nod from Korshak, and Santa Anita closes. A nod from Korshak, and Vegas shuts down. A nod from Korshak, and the Dodgers can suddenly play night baseball."

Sometimes, to be sure, it took more that one call. At one point when police had him under surveillance, Mr. Korshak, who was careful not to make business calls on telephones that might be tapped, was seen entering a public phone booth carrying a paper bag full of coins.

Although Mr. Korshak generally made his calls to solve major problems faced by clients like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Gulf and Western, M.C.A., Las Vegas hotels and other large corporations, he also used his clout on lesser matters.

Among the stories circulating yesterday, for example, was one about the time the comedian Alan King was turned away at a plush European hotel by a desk clerk who insisted that there were simply no rooms available. Mr. King used a lobby phone to call Mr. Korshak in Los Angeles and before he hung up, the clerk was knocking at the door of the phone booth to tell Mr. King that his suite was ready.

The son of a wealthy Chicago contractor, Mr. Korshak graduated from the University of Wisconsin and received a law degree from DePaul University in 1930. Within months of opening his law practice, according to extensive research conducted by Seymour M. Hersh and Jeff Gerth for The New York Times in 1976, he was defending members of the Al Capone crime syndicate.

His reputation was made in 1943 when a mobster on trial for extorting millions of dollars from Hollywood movie companies testified that when he had been introduced to Mr. Korshak by a high-ranking Capone mobster, he had been told, "Sidney is our man."

That became even more apparent in 1946, when a Chicago department store chain faced with demands for payoffs from rival unions engaged him, and the problem almost magically disappeared.

Within months, Mr. Korshak, who had been shunned by the city's business elite, was in demand for his services as a labor lawyer who could stave off demands from legitimate unions by arranging instant sweetheart contracts with friendly unions, often the teamsters.

Mr. Korshak, who sometimes boasted that he had paid off judges, solidified his standing among Chicago's business, civic and social leaders by giving ribald late-night parties featuring some of Chicago's most beautiful and willing showgirls."Sidney always had contact with high-class girls," a former Chicago judge told The Times in 1976. "Not your $50 girl, but girls costing $250 or more."

Mr. Korshak moved to California in the late 1940's and found Hollywood executives as eager as Chicago businessmen to hire him to insure labor peace.

He added to his reputation and his usefulness when it became known that he could arrange loans of millions of dollars from the teamsters' infamous Central States Pension Fund, which, among other things, helped finance the growth of the Las Vegas casino industry, often with Mr. Korshak serving as the intermediary and sometimes as silent partner.

It was a reflection of his power that when Mr. Korshak showed up unexpectedly at a Las Vegas hotel during a 1961 teamsters' meeting, he was immediately installed in the largest suite, even though the hotel had to dislodge the previous occupant: the union's president, Jimmy Hoffa.

In an era when mob figures were forever being gunned down by rival gangsters or sent to prison by determined prosecutors, Mr. Korshak seemed to lead a charmed life. That was partly because his mansion was protected by extensive security measures, partly because he was adept at using his role as a lawyer as a shield against probing grand jury questions and partly because he was careful to distance himself from the fruits of his own activities.

He never, for example, served as an officer of the various corporations formed to carry out his complex schemes. Even his legal work left no paper trail. Never licensed to practice in California, he maintained no Los Angeles office and had bills mailed from Chicago. He was famous for never taking notes or even reading contracts.

As a result, he became so valuable to the mob and its corrupt union allies that lower-level mobsters were ordered never to approach him, lest they tarnish his reputation for trust and integrity.

At the same time, he was so valuable to more or less legitimate businesses that the executives who hired him would never breathe a word against him.

Mr. Korshak is survived by his wife, Bernice; three children, Harry of London, and Stuart and Katy of Beverly Hills, and five grandchildren.

Marshall Korshak is survived by his wife, Edith; two daughters, Marjorie Gerson and Hope Rudnick of Chicago; four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Thanks to Robert McG Thomas Jr. on January 22, 1996

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