Thank you, President [Mireille] Ballestrazzi, for that kind introduction – and for your tireless work to foster greater cooperation among the world’s law enforcement agencies. Thank you also to Secretary General [Jürgen] Stock for your leadership at Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) and your dedication to justice. My thanks as well to my colleagues from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security who have committed so much to this organization, including Alan Bersin, Jolene Lauria [Sullens] and our National Central Bureau. And thank you to everyone who is here with us today – distinguished leaders, passionate citizens and committed partners in the work that is our common cause. It is an honor to address this eminent assembly and a privilege to be able to return to Rwanda – a country of unsurpassed beauty and tremendous resilience.
I first came to Rwanda 10 years ago to conduct a witness tampering investigation for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. As you can imagine, the stories I heard were heart-rending. How does one comfort a woman who describes surviving a churchyard massacre by hiding under a pile of dead bodies and who went to the priest the next day for sanctuary, only to be turned away? How does one promise justice to another woman who still bears the scars of the machete in her skull and who collapses in tears as she recounts how she was betrayed to the Interahamwe by someone who promised to smuggle her to safety? These and other witnesses shared their stories with me with a faith that, first and foremost, justice could be achieved and that others would be helped if they shared their pain.
Serving that tribunal brought me face to face with what can happen both to a country and to the soul of its people when the rule of law collapses and justice cannot be found. But it also reminded me of the fundamental human rights that our community of nations must defend and protect. It reaffirmed my unwavering belief that upholding the rule of law is a government’s foremost responsibility – a responsibility that must be stronger than the desire for expedience, power or vengeance. Individuals in every nation have the right to a government that prizes their citizens’ self-determination over its own desire for influence and power, and the right to expect that no organization or individual is above the law. That is what the tribunal signified. And through the indictment of 93 perpetrators and the uncovering of buried truths, it demonstrated what the family of nations can accomplish when we find the moral resolve and the political will to work together.
It is that same commitment to collaboration and that same understanding of universal rights that fuels this important organization today. With 190 member countries and an unshakeable devotion to the rule of law, Interpol stands as an invaluable conduit for mutual assistance between law enforcement agencies across the world and a critical facilitator for international cooperation in matters of security, opportunity and human rights. You are ensuring secure global police information systems; providing round-the-clock support and operational assistance; driving innovation and fueling improvement; and expanding international capabilities to identify crimes and pursue wrongdoers. In all of your efforts, you are focused on working collaboratively to enhance the foundations and infrastructure essential to the work we share.
That work involves action against some of the most important and complex challenges of our time. You provide a network to coordinate counterterrorism aid and a partnership to help combat the threat of foreign terrorist fighters – a resource that is invaluable as we seek to stem illicit travel by individuals moving to and from conflict zones in Syria and Afghanistan. You join nations with one another in protecting cyber-security, helping to deprive cyber criminals of their mistaken sense of impunity and ensure that wrongdoers are held accountable – an effort that becomes more important every day. You assemble information on common challenges and best practices of law enforcement, helping nations to learn from one another and strengthen our procedures. In fact, the Interpol office in the United States has begun to offer Interpol members access to files in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center, starting with data on wanted persons, firearms and stolen vehicles, in order to assist police organizations worldwide. And you are working to protect some of the most vulnerable members of our society by partnering with law enforcement agencies at all levels to exchange intelligence on human trafficking and to support action against those who exploit human beings for financial gain.
This last issue – a crime that is nothing less than modern-day slavery – is one of my highest priorities as Attorney General of the United States and one of our foremost challenges as an international community. Because human trafficking is a largely hidden crime, it is difficult to precisely estimate how many millions of women, men and children are its victims. But we do know that it occurs in countries all over the world, including the United States. It is a crime that can take many forms – from forced physical labor to forced sex to child soldiers – and whose victims range from domestic workers to schoolchildren, to farmworkers, to countless others. And with its ties to organized crime, its preying on flows of migrants and its complex financing schemes, human trafficking is a truly global problem that demands a truly global response.
Fifteen years ago, a framework for that united effort was created by two documents: the U.N. Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons and the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPA. Together, these instruments acknowledged psychological coercion as a common factor in involuntary servitude; recognized the effectiveness of holistic approaches involving protection, prosecution and prevention; and articulated the need for international collaboration in alleviating this heinous crime.
In the new era of resolve ushered in by the TVPA and the Palermo Protocol, Interpol has been at the forefront of the global crusade against human trafficking. Whether developing tools and systems to help the global law enforcement community share intelligence, or partnering with bodies like the Organization of American States to pool resources and exchange best practices, or conducting operations like the one last June in the Ivory Coast that led to the arrest of 25 suspects and the rescue of more than 75 children, Interpol has helped dismantle trafficking networks, shut down illegal labor operations, apprehend smugglers and kidnappers and care for survivors.
Through efforts like these, the international community has come a long way in the last 15 years. But the fact that millions of individuals remain in forced labor reminds us of how far we still have to go. In addition to the persistent scope of the problem, new challenges are emerging – particularly the rise of the Internet as a forum for traffickers and criminal gangs’ reliance on child sex trafficking as a revenue stream. As we seek to develop innovative, comprehensive and nimble responses to these evolving threats, we must find ways to work even more closely together in order to end this affront to our values and stop this crime against humanity.
I am proud to say that the United States is deeply engaged in combating this devastating threat. Under my predecessor, Attorney General Eric Holder, the U.S. Department of Justice joined the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security in launching the Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team Initiative to create specialized units of attorneys and agents from across the federal government, enabling us to more effectively identify, apprehend and prosecute human traffickers and those who offer them material support. I was proud to announce earlier this year that we would be expanding that initiative into new cities to bring to bear the full weight of our law enforcement capabilities and investigative expertise. Just last month, in close conjunction with state and local law enforcement agencies, the FBI conducted its ninth annual “Operation: Cross Country” initiative against those who traffic in children for sexual exploitation, resulting in the arrest of hundreds of sex traffickers. And through the department’s Enhanced Collaborative Model Program, we have been able to give municipalities throughout the United States tens of millions of dollars in grant funding to bring together law enforcement and victim services providers to not only ensure that traffickers are brought to justice, but to fully address the issues faced by survivors in a holistic, comprehensive and victim-centered environment.
These are important steps forward and I hope that in the months and years ahead, we will continue to join together to build on our achievements, in our own nations and around the world. That work will not be easy, but it is deeply necessary. This country – through its history – and this organization – through its design – understand the importance of making progress, one individual at a time, as difficult as it may be. Every trafficker brought to justice represents a victory against inhumanity and a safer world for all nations. Every survivor pulled from the clutches of a trafficking organization is a human life with a new opportunity to imagine his or her own destiny. And every achievement we make together is a validation of our common mission to protect the rule of law.
When I shared my experiences at the tribunal with friends some years ago, one told me that the images painted by my words made him despair of the human race. Surely, such evil condemned mankind to a life that was indeed “nasty, brutish and short.” But I was not discouraged and I was compelled to explore why not in order to answer him. And it is because, when we are confronted with the admittedly irrefutable evidence of man’s inhumanity to man, be it the betrayal of genocide or the scourge of human trafficking, the destructive impetus of terrorism or the corruption of cyberspace, we turn to the law. Not because the law is perfect, but because it is the instrument through which we forge justice: fairly, impartially and transparently, even in the face of horrific crimes. It is how we ensure that no one receives preferential treatment and that all receive equal protection. It is how we honor the memories of the fallen and assure survivors they are not alone. It is how we punish those responsible for unspeakable crimes and how we ensure the innocent are not falsely accused or wrongly convicted. And it is ultimately how we create a better future – not only for the powerful, but for every citizen in our own nations and around the world.
As we gather here today, let us resolve to remember our part in that effort. Let us pledge to stand together in that fight. And let us continue, every day, to pursue our mission of a safer world, to advance our vision of a more just society and to hold close our hope of a brighter future for all.
Tuesday, November 03, 2015
Remarks by Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch at 84th Interpol General Assembly
Check Out "Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets" from @Scottyyz
Catering to lovers of the well-written word and the well-mixed drink
, Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets, is a lively look at the intertwining of alcohol and the underworld―represented by authors of crime both true and fictional and their glamorously disreputable characters, as well as by real life gangsters who built Prohibition-era empires on bootlegged booze. It celebrates the potent potables they imbibed and the watering holes they frequented, including some bars that continue to provide a second home for crime writers.
Highlighting the favorite drinks of Noir scribes, the book includes recipes for cocktails such as the Gimlet described in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, the Mojito Mulatta T.J. English drank while writing Havana Nocturne and the Dirty Martini favored by mob chronicler Christian Cippolini.
Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets, also lets us in on the drinking habits of notorious organized crime figures, revealing Al Capone’s taste for Templeton Rye, Meyer Lansky’s preference for Dewar’s Scotch and Gambino family hit man Charles Carneglia’s habit of guzzling Cutty Sark. With black and white illustrations throughout, Cocktail Noir is as stylish and irreverent as the drinks, often larger-than-life figures and culture it explores.
Authors Quoted Extensively: Dennis Lehane Patrick Downey T.J. English Scott Burnstein Christian Cippolini Chriss Lyon Gavin Schmitt Authors Discussed: Mario Puzo Gay Talese Peter Maas Raymond Chandler Dashiel Hammet Authors Honorably Mentioned: F. Scott Fitzgerald Dorothy Parker Stephen King Truman Capote
, Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets, is a lively look at the intertwining of alcohol and the underworld―represented by authors of crime both true and fictional and their glamorously disreputable characters, as well as by real life gangsters who built Prohibition-era empires on bootlegged booze. It celebrates the potent potables they imbibed and the watering holes they frequented, including some bars that continue to provide a second home for crime writers.Highlighting the favorite drinks of Noir scribes, the book includes recipes for cocktails such as the Gimlet described in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, the Mojito Mulatta T.J. English drank while writing Havana Nocturne and the Dirty Martini favored by mob chronicler Christian Cippolini.
Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets, also lets us in on the drinking habits of notorious organized crime figures, revealing Al Capone’s taste for Templeton Rye, Meyer Lansky’s preference for Dewar’s Scotch and Gambino family hit man Charles Carneglia’s habit of guzzling Cutty Sark. With black and white illustrations throughout, Cocktail Noir is as stylish and irreverent as the drinks, often larger-than-life figures and culture it explores.
Authors Quoted Extensively: Dennis Lehane Patrick Downey T.J. English Scott Burnstein Christian Cippolini Chriss Lyon Gavin Schmitt Authors Discussed: Mario Puzo Gay Talese Peter Maas Raymond Chandler Dashiel Hammet Authors Honorably Mentioned: F. Scott Fitzgerald Dorothy Parker Stephen King Truman Capote
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Former U.S. House Speaker John Dennis Hastert Pleads Guilty
JOHN DENNIS HASTERT, 73, of Plano, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of illegally structuring cash withdrawals in order to evade financial reporting requirements. The Honorable U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin scheduled a sentencing hearing for February 29, 2016, at 10:00 a.m.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois issued this statement following the guilty plea:
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois issued this statement following the guilty plea:
“Now that Mr. Hastert has pled guilty, and the Court has accepted his guilty plea, the case will proceed to sentencing. As part of the sentencing process in this case, as in all cases, we will provide the Court with relevant information about the defendant’s background and the charged offenses, and the defendant will have an opportunity to do the same, so that the Court can impose an appropriate sentence taking into account all relevant factors in the case. We have no further comment about the matter at this time.”
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Japan is Bracing for War among 'Yakuza' Crime Gangs
Japan is bracing for war.
Not with other countries, but with the nation's notorious gangsters.
A 43-year-old man was gunned down in the parking lot of a hot springs resort in western Japan earlier this month in what authorities say they fear could be the start of a deadly war among the nation's largest organized crime gangs, known collectively as the yakuza.
The powerful Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, which marked its 100th anniversary this year, split into two rival groups in September. Police arrested a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi in the hot springs shooting and identified the victim as a member of the breakaway group.
Analysts said the rupture was due to long-running disputes over succession plans and high fees that member groups were required to pay Yamaguchi-gumi leaders.
Japan’s National Police Agency warned of possible gang violence at an emergency meeting of senior officials from each of the country's 47 prefectures shortly after the split. "We don't have specific information thus far that the rift will develop into inter-gang conflicts, but there were incidents in the past which involved civilians," Takashi Kinoshita, chief of the JNPAs organized crime division, said at the meeting in early September, according to local media.
A dispute over the gang’s leadership in the early 1980s led to a two-year war that left an estimated 30 gangsters dead, 70 others wounded and more than 500 in police custody. However, there are no statistics on the number of civilians killed or injured in the violence.
Today, local news media report that yakuza groups are beginning to stockpile weapons and recruit members to carry out potential hits. The price of a handgun sold on the black market has risen from $2,500 to $10,000 in recent weeks, according to Asahi Shimbun, a leading mainstream newspaper.
Legal firearms are highly restricted in Japan. In a nation of roughly 127 million people, Japan had just 35 cases of firearm shootings in 2010, according to the most recent data available from the National Police Agency's “Crime in Japan” report.
Last month, in the western Japanese city of Toyama, one yakuza group paraded as many as 100 gangsters down a busy street in a show of strength. Two nights later, a rival group did the same nearby, Kyodo News Service reported. Authorities responded by sending scores of police to raid each group's headquarters, according to Kyodo.
Police estimate that Yamaguchi-gumi had about 10,000 core members and about 14,000 affiliated members before the split. About one-third are believed to have broken off to form a rival organization, called the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi.
Atsushi Mizoguchi, a journalist and author who has written extensively on the yakuza, said it is unlikely that senior leaders would order a full-on war. But he said at least some violence is likely as rival groups fight for turf.
“If organized criminals were able to establish viable revenues by invading the domain of others … it could lead to skirmishes in various places around the country. That could expand and eventually could well lead to a (violent) struggle,” Mizoguchi said at a Tokyo press briefing this week.
Jake Adelstein, a Tokyo journalist and authority on organized crime, is less sure. He points to the case of Tadamasa Goto, a yakuza boss who was ordered to pay $1.2 million in damages to the family of a real estate agent murdered by members of his gang in 2012. Although Goto was not charged in the death, he was still held liable.
“The situation is very different from what it was in the '80s,” Adelstein said. “It's not economically wise to have a gang war. The general public is no longer tolerant of yakuza conflict. It's costly to kill people.”
Yakuza gangs, long tolerated as a “necessary evil” in Japan, have been in slow decline since organized crime countermeasures were enacted in the early 1990s. Many gangs still operate semi-openly, however, with headquarters, business cards and legitimate-appearing front companies.
Yakuza engage in a variety of “serious criminal activities, including weapons trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, drug trafficking, fraud and money laundering,” according to a February 2012 report from the U.S. Treasury Department. Extortion, loan-sharking and “protection” rackets also are common yakuza activities in Japan.
President Obama issued an executive order in 2011 designating the yakuza as a “transnational criminal organization.” The Treasury Department has since frozen assets in the U.S. of more than a dozen yakuza bosses — including the leaders of the Yamaguchi-gumi and the breakaway Kodo-kai gang — and has forbidden Americans from doing business with them.
In a report issued in April, the Treasury Department labeled the Kodo-kai “the most violent faction within the Yamaguchi-gumi” and said the yakuza has engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States, but did not provide details. There is no indication that any yakuza violence as a result of the recent split could spread to the U.S.
Thanks to Kirk Spitzer.
Not with other countries, but with the nation's notorious gangsters.
A 43-year-old man was gunned down in the parking lot of a hot springs resort in western Japan earlier this month in what authorities say they fear could be the start of a deadly war among the nation's largest organized crime gangs, known collectively as the yakuza.
The powerful Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, which marked its 100th anniversary this year, split into two rival groups in September. Police arrested a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi in the hot springs shooting and identified the victim as a member of the breakaway group.
Analysts said the rupture was due to long-running disputes over succession plans and high fees that member groups were required to pay Yamaguchi-gumi leaders.
Japan’s National Police Agency warned of possible gang violence at an emergency meeting of senior officials from each of the country's 47 prefectures shortly after the split. "We don't have specific information thus far that the rift will develop into inter-gang conflicts, but there were incidents in the past which involved civilians," Takashi Kinoshita, chief of the JNPAs organized crime division, said at the meeting in early September, according to local media.
A dispute over the gang’s leadership in the early 1980s led to a two-year war that left an estimated 30 gangsters dead, 70 others wounded and more than 500 in police custody. However, there are no statistics on the number of civilians killed or injured in the violence.
Today, local news media report that yakuza groups are beginning to stockpile weapons and recruit members to carry out potential hits. The price of a handgun sold on the black market has risen from $2,500 to $10,000 in recent weeks, according to Asahi Shimbun, a leading mainstream newspaper.
Legal firearms are highly restricted in Japan. In a nation of roughly 127 million people, Japan had just 35 cases of firearm shootings in 2010, according to the most recent data available from the National Police Agency's “Crime in Japan” report.
Last month, in the western Japanese city of Toyama, one yakuza group paraded as many as 100 gangsters down a busy street in a show of strength. Two nights later, a rival group did the same nearby, Kyodo News Service reported. Authorities responded by sending scores of police to raid each group's headquarters, according to Kyodo.
Police estimate that Yamaguchi-gumi had about 10,000 core members and about 14,000 affiliated members before the split. About one-third are believed to have broken off to form a rival organization, called the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi.
Atsushi Mizoguchi, a journalist and author who has written extensively on the yakuza, said it is unlikely that senior leaders would order a full-on war. But he said at least some violence is likely as rival groups fight for turf.
“If organized criminals were able to establish viable revenues by invading the domain of others … it could lead to skirmishes in various places around the country. That could expand and eventually could well lead to a (violent) struggle,” Mizoguchi said at a Tokyo press briefing this week.
Jake Adelstein, a Tokyo journalist and authority on organized crime, is less sure. He points to the case of Tadamasa Goto, a yakuza boss who was ordered to pay $1.2 million in damages to the family of a real estate agent murdered by members of his gang in 2012. Although Goto was not charged in the death, he was still held liable.
“The situation is very different from what it was in the '80s,” Adelstein said. “It's not economically wise to have a gang war. The general public is no longer tolerant of yakuza conflict. It's costly to kill people.”
Yakuza gangs, long tolerated as a “necessary evil” in Japan, have been in slow decline since organized crime countermeasures were enacted in the early 1990s. Many gangs still operate semi-openly, however, with headquarters, business cards and legitimate-appearing front companies.
Yakuza engage in a variety of “serious criminal activities, including weapons trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, drug trafficking, fraud and money laundering,” according to a February 2012 report from the U.S. Treasury Department. Extortion, loan-sharking and “protection” rackets also are common yakuza activities in Japan.
President Obama issued an executive order in 2011 designating the yakuza as a “transnational criminal organization.” The Treasury Department has since frozen assets in the U.S. of more than a dozen yakuza bosses — including the leaders of the Yamaguchi-gumi and the breakaway Kodo-kai gang — and has forbidden Americans from doing business with them.
In a report issued in April, the Treasury Department labeled the Kodo-kai “the most violent faction within the Yamaguchi-gumi” and said the yakuza has engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States, but did not provide details. There is no indication that any yakuza violence as a result of the recent split could spread to the U.S.
Thanks to Kirk Spitzer.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
Chicago Calabrese Mob Family Saga Movie to Be Scripted by #BlackMass Writer
Black Label Media has set Black Mass scribe Mark Mallouk to script a film about Frank Calabrese Sr and the crime family he ran out of Chicago that was known as The Outfit. The story will be driven by Kurt Calabrese, the son who was brought into the crime game by his father, and watched as his brother, Frank Jr., volunteered to become an FBI informant — and didn’t ask for compensation or a sentence reduction — helping to bring down his father when the made man implicated himself in 13 gangland murders. Black Label Media will fully finance and Eric Shepherd and Jeff Chianakis will produce with Black Label’s Molly Smith, Thad Luckinbill and Trent Luckinbill.
Frank Calabrese Sr was an extortionist, loan shark and hitman, and brought his kids into the business when Kurt was just 12 years old, his brother a year older. He was by accounts a brutal person, and that and continual threats prompted Frank Jr. to wear the wire. Frank Sr was convicted and sentence to life in prison and he died behind bars in 2012.
Frank Calabrese Sr was an extortionist, loan shark and hitman, and brought his kids into the business when Kurt was just 12 years old, his brother a year older. He was by accounts a brutal person, and that and continual threats prompted Frank Jr. to wear the wire. Frank Sr was convicted and sentence to life in prison and he died behind bars in 2012.
Friday, October 23, 2015
Did Reputed Mob Associate Sammy Galioto Hide $3 Million to Avoid Paying Taxes?
How do you hide $3 million? Federal authorities say a ranking member of a Chicago mob family siphoned that much through an intricate scheme to avoid paying taxes.
Federal prosecutors are going after Salvatore "Sammy" Galioto the old fashioned way; the maneuver they used 80 years ago to take down Al Capone - tax evasion charges.
Authorities say Galioto tried to hide a $3 million consulting fee from a downtown condo deal. Galioto is part of a family that for 20 years has been into all sorts of deals - real estate, strip clubs, labor unions, health care and gambling.
"Where's the exit?" Galioto shouted to a courthouse deputy Thursday as he walked with urgency out of the Dirksen Federal Building.
The 54-year-old Kenilworth resident had just given up DNA and posted bail on these federal charges that he evaded U.S. income taxes by concealing $3 million in personal income.
Investigators say the scheme involved a Loop high-rise known as the Pittsfield Building; in 2007 Galioto received the handsome consulting for the sale of just nine floors. Instead of reporting the income, they say he filed false paperwork to cover it up and paid no taxes.
The beefy Galioto hails from a family with deep outfit connections.
He and his father - a one-time Chicago policeman - were first listed as mob associates on a Chicago crime commission list nearly 20 years ago.
Mobologists say the Galiotos were aligned with the late Tackets boss Sam "Wings" Carlisi, and that imprisoned mob boss Little Jimmy Marcello is related by marriage to the family.
Galioto and his father William were in the middle of a West Side movie studio groundbreaking in 1995 that was torpedoed once the family's history surfaced. After initially backing the deal, once the family's mob ties were made known, the administration of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley stumbled through damage control.
A few years later in Missouri, Galioto was indicted for Medicare fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
On Thursday after court, neither Galioto nor his attorney would discuss the latest criminal charges.
While it may seem unusual that Galioto was made to give up DNA in tax evasion case, federal prosecutors and Galioto's attorney say it is normal even in white collar cases.
His lawyer Cindy Giacchetti says nothing should be read into that as significant.
If convicted of all counts, Galioto faces 12 years in jail and a $1million fine.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie.
Federal prosecutors are going after Salvatore "Sammy" Galioto the old fashioned way; the maneuver they used 80 years ago to take down Al Capone - tax evasion charges.
Authorities say Galioto tried to hide a $3 million consulting fee from a downtown condo deal. Galioto is part of a family that for 20 years has been into all sorts of deals - real estate, strip clubs, labor unions, health care and gambling.
"Where's the exit?" Galioto shouted to a courthouse deputy Thursday as he walked with urgency out of the Dirksen Federal Building.
The 54-year-old Kenilworth resident had just given up DNA and posted bail on these federal charges that he evaded U.S. income taxes by concealing $3 million in personal income.
Investigators say the scheme involved a Loop high-rise known as the Pittsfield Building; in 2007 Galioto received the handsome consulting for the sale of just nine floors. Instead of reporting the income, they say he filed false paperwork to cover it up and paid no taxes.
The beefy Galioto hails from a family with deep outfit connections.
He and his father - a one-time Chicago policeman - were first listed as mob associates on a Chicago crime commission list nearly 20 years ago.
Mobologists say the Galiotos were aligned with the late Tackets boss Sam "Wings" Carlisi, and that imprisoned mob boss Little Jimmy Marcello is related by marriage to the family.
Galioto and his father William were in the middle of a West Side movie studio groundbreaking in 1995 that was torpedoed once the family's history surfaced. After initially backing the deal, once the family's mob ties were made known, the administration of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley stumbled through damage control.
A few years later in Missouri, Galioto was indicted for Medicare fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
On Thursday after court, neither Galioto nor his attorney would discuss the latest criminal charges.
While it may seem unusual that Galioto was made to give up DNA in tax evasion case, federal prosecutors and Galioto's attorney say it is normal even in white collar cases.
His lawyer Cindy Giacchetti says nothing should be read into that as significant.
If convicted of all counts, Galioto faces 12 years in jail and a $1million fine.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Micheál Martin, Leader of @FiannaFailparty, Charges @SinnFeinIreland "is a Mafia-like Organisation"
Micheál Martin clashed with Gerry Adams yesterday after saying that Sinn Féin "is a mafia-like organisation" which "fails to expose child abusers, racketeers and murderers" The Fianna Fáil leader also said Sinn Féin is "incapable of respecting anyone outside its own ranks".
During his speech at the Wolfe Tone commemoration, Mr Martin attacked Sinn Féin saying: "How dare they claim to own Irish republicanism? No organisation which fails to expose child abusers, racketeers and murderers can call itself republican."
Mr Adams hit back, saying Mr Martin was following the example of the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in trying to "criminalise the republican struggle". "However, like Thatcher, Micheál Martin will fail. Most citizens see through his cynical opportunism in relation to the peace process, which is all to do with fear about the electoral advance of Sinn Féin in the South," the Sinn Féin president said in a statement. "Unlike Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin has a mandate in both parts of this island and in the North we have been central to the ongoing and positive transformation of society."
At the Fine Gael presidential dinner on Saturday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny warned party members about the prospect of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil forming a government after the General Election. But Martin also believes that he can form a government after the General Election without going into coalition with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin.
Mr Martin's claim comes despite the latest opinion poll showing Fianna Fáil down a point to 19pc and Sinn Féin unchanged with the same percentage of the vote.
Fine Gael dropped three points to 24pc, while its Labour Party coalition partner is up two points to 8pc.
Speaking after Fianna Fáil's annual Wolfe Tone commemoration in Kildare, Mr Martin rejected the suggestion that his party would be unable to form a government if it did not agree to enter into a coalition with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin.
"We did well in the local elections and are fighting this campaign on our own merits, putting forward policies and issues which we think are important and central to the future of the country," he said.
"We must debate the issues and then people will decide who they are going to elect and in what numbers."
However, a Fianna Fáil spokesman later confirmed that Mr Martin was open to coalition with all other parties.
This would include the newly formed Socialist Party/Anti-Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit grouping, which is up two points to 7pc, and Shane Ross's and Michael Fitzmaurice's Independent Alliance, which is up a point to 5pc.
Lucinda Creighton's Renua Ireland is unchanged at 2pc, while the Social Democrats are at 1pc.
Independents were at 12pc in the Behaviour & Attitudes poll for the 'Sunday Times'.
However, the Irish Independent understands that some Fianna Fáil members are sceptical of Mr Martin's claim that he will lead his party into government without doing a deal with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin.
"We have to go in with someone and it's going to be an issue during the election campaign, so we may as well address it now," a senior FF TD said.
The source said it was more likely that Fianna Fáil would form a coalition with Fine Gael, as Sinn Féin has ruled out forming a government with FF.
"Reality has bypassed those who think we can't form a government with Fine Gael," the source said.
Thanks to Phillip Ryan.
During his speech at the Wolfe Tone commemoration, Mr Martin attacked Sinn Féin saying: "How dare they claim to own Irish republicanism? No organisation which fails to expose child abusers, racketeers and murderers can call itself republican."
Mr Adams hit back, saying Mr Martin was following the example of the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in trying to "criminalise the republican struggle". "However, like Thatcher, Micheál Martin will fail. Most citizens see through his cynical opportunism in relation to the peace process, which is all to do with fear about the electoral advance of Sinn Féin in the South," the Sinn Féin president said in a statement. "Unlike Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin has a mandate in both parts of this island and in the North we have been central to the ongoing and positive transformation of society."
At the Fine Gael presidential dinner on Saturday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny warned party members about the prospect of Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil forming a government after the General Election. But Martin also believes that he can form a government after the General Election without going into coalition with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin.
Mr Martin's claim comes despite the latest opinion poll showing Fianna Fáil down a point to 19pc and Sinn Féin unchanged with the same percentage of the vote.
Fine Gael dropped three points to 24pc, while its Labour Party coalition partner is up two points to 8pc.
Speaking after Fianna Fáil's annual Wolfe Tone commemoration in Kildare, Mr Martin rejected the suggestion that his party would be unable to form a government if it did not agree to enter into a coalition with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin.
"We did well in the local elections and are fighting this campaign on our own merits, putting forward policies and issues which we think are important and central to the future of the country," he said.
"We must debate the issues and then people will decide who they are going to elect and in what numbers."
However, a Fianna Fáil spokesman later confirmed that Mr Martin was open to coalition with all other parties.
This would include the newly formed Socialist Party/Anti-Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit grouping, which is up two points to 7pc, and Shane Ross's and Michael Fitzmaurice's Independent Alliance, which is up a point to 5pc.
Lucinda Creighton's Renua Ireland is unchanged at 2pc, while the Social Democrats are at 1pc.
Independents were at 12pc in the Behaviour & Attitudes poll for the 'Sunday Times'.
However, the Irish Independent understands that some Fianna Fáil members are sceptical of Mr Martin's claim that he will lead his party into government without doing a deal with either Fine Gael or Sinn Féin.
"We have to go in with someone and it's going to be an issue during the election campaign, so we may as well address it now," a senior FF TD said.
The source said it was more likely that Fianna Fáil would form a coalition with Fine Gael, as Sinn Féin has ruled out forming a government with FF.
"Reality has bypassed those who think we can't form a government with Fine Gael," the source said.
Thanks to Phillip Ryan.
Sam Galioto Indicted for Failing to Report $3 Million in Personal Income from Downtown Real Estate Deal
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, October 01, 2015
Teamsters Indicted for Attempted Extortion of @BravoTopChef Reality Television Production Company #TopChef
Four members of Teamsters Local 25 were arrested in connection with attempting to extort a television production company that was filming a reality show in the Boston area in spring 2014.
“The indictment alleges that a group of rogue Teamsters employed old school thug tactics to get no-work jobs from an out of town production company,” said United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz. “In the course of this alleged conspiracy, they managed to chase a legitimate business out of the City of Boston and then harassed the cast and crew when they set up shop in Milton. This kind of conduct reflects poorly on our city and must be addressed for what it is—not union organizing, but criminal extortion.”
“While unions have the right to advocate on behalf of their members, they do not have the right to use violence and intimidation,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division. “The strong-arm tactics the FBI has seen in this case are egregious and our investigation is far from over. Today’s arrests should send a message to those who think they can get away with manipulating the system that they better think twice.”
Mark Harrington, 61, of Andover; John Fidler, 51, of Holbrook; Daniel Redmond, 47, of Medford; and Robert Cafarelli, 45, of Middleton, were indicted on conspiracy to extort and attempted extortion of a television production company in order to obtain no-work jobs for fellow Teamsters.
According to the indictment, beginning in spring 2014, a non-union production company began filming a reality television show in and around Boston. The company hired its own employees, including drivers, for the filming of the show and did not need work performed by union members. Beginning on June 5, 2014, the defendants conspired to force the production company to pay Local 25 members for unnecessary work by threatening physical and economic harm to the company.
Among other things, the indictment alleges that on June 10, 2014, the defendants showed up at a restaurant in Milton where the production company was filming. The defendants entered the production area and began walking in lockstep toward the doors of the restaurant where they accosted film crew members and attempted to forcibly enter the restaurant. Throughout the morning, the defendants yelled racial and homophobic slurs at the film crew and others, threatened crew and cast members, and shouted profanities. The defendants also blocked vehicles from the entryway to the set, and used physical violence and threats of physical violence to try and prevent people from entering the set.
The charging statute provides a sentence of no greater than 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
“The indictment alleges that a group of rogue Teamsters employed old school thug tactics to get no-work jobs from an out of town production company,” said United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz. “In the course of this alleged conspiracy, they managed to chase a legitimate business out of the City of Boston and then harassed the cast and crew when they set up shop in Milton. This kind of conduct reflects poorly on our city and must be addressed for what it is—not union organizing, but criminal extortion.”
“While unions have the right to advocate on behalf of their members, they do not have the right to use violence and intimidation,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division. “The strong-arm tactics the FBI has seen in this case are egregious and our investigation is far from over. Today’s arrests should send a message to those who think they can get away with manipulating the system that they better think twice.”
Mark Harrington, 61, of Andover; John Fidler, 51, of Holbrook; Daniel Redmond, 47, of Medford; and Robert Cafarelli, 45, of Middleton, were indicted on conspiracy to extort and attempted extortion of a television production company in order to obtain no-work jobs for fellow Teamsters.
According to the indictment, beginning in spring 2014, a non-union production company began filming a reality television show in and around Boston. The company hired its own employees, including drivers, for the filming of the show and did not need work performed by union members. Beginning on June 5, 2014, the defendants conspired to force the production company to pay Local 25 members for unnecessary work by threatening physical and economic harm to the company.
Among other things, the indictment alleges that on June 10, 2014, the defendants showed up at a restaurant in Milton where the production company was filming. The defendants entered the production area and began walking in lockstep toward the doors of the restaurant where they accosted film crew members and attempted to forcibly enter the restaurant. Throughout the morning, the defendants yelled racial and homophobic slurs at the film crew and others, threatened crew and cast members, and shouted profanities. The defendants also blocked vehicles from the entryway to the set, and used physical violence and threats of physical violence to try and prevent people from entering the set.
The charging statute provides a sentence of no greater than 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
48 Mafia Suspects from the Most Active, Richest, Most Powerful Organized Crime Syndicate Arrested
Italian police have arrested 48 suspected members of the southern 'Ndrangheta mafia in a sweep that uncovered dealings in flowers and chocolates as well as drugs and arms, anti-mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti said.
The suspected members of two 'Ndrangheta clans also associated with illicit trafficking in the Dutch flower market and stolen Lindt chocolate.
The mafia centred in southern Calabria have "great flexibility, adapting to markets that offer the most opportunity to get rich," Rome deputy prosecutor Michele Prestipino told a news conference on Monday.
Working with Dutch prosecutors, Italian police uncovered several cells of one of the clans in The Netherlands, focusing on the flower trade. "This operation has shown that the 'Ndrangheta families today have the financial and human means to colonise outside their home territory," Prestipino said.
The probe also uncovered trafficking in 250 tonnes of Lindt chocolate worth more than seven million euros ($7.9 million), stolen in Italy late last year and sold on in Italy, Poland, Austria and Switzerland, the prosecutors said.
The 'Ndrangheta are the most active, richest and most powerful organised crime syndicate in Europe, according to Italian authorities.
The suspected members of two 'Ndrangheta clans also associated with illicit trafficking in the Dutch flower market and stolen Lindt chocolate.
The mafia centred in southern Calabria have "great flexibility, adapting to markets that offer the most opportunity to get rich," Rome deputy prosecutor Michele Prestipino told a news conference on Monday.
Working with Dutch prosecutors, Italian police uncovered several cells of one of the clans in The Netherlands, focusing on the flower trade. "This operation has shown that the 'Ndrangheta families today have the financial and human means to colonise outside their home territory," Prestipino said.
The probe also uncovered trafficking in 250 tonnes of Lindt chocolate worth more than seven million euros ($7.9 million), stolen in Italy late last year and sold on in Italy, Poland, Austria and Switzerland, the prosecutors said.
The 'Ndrangheta are the most active, richest and most powerful organised crime syndicate in Europe, according to Italian authorities.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
6 Reputed Members of Gangster Disciples Indicted for Roles in 5 Attempted Murders
Six alleged members of the violent Gangster Disciples Gang have been indicted by a federal grand jury for their roles in the attempted murders of five teenagers in South Memphis, Tennessee. Three alleged gang members previously had been charged in this case.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III of the Western District of Tennessee made the announcement.
Ranito Allen, aka Nito, 35; Florence Anthony, aka Nikki, 36; Edwin Carvin, aka Ren, 38; Brandon Milton, aka Lil Folk, 30; and Erik Reese, aka E, 35, all of Memphis, Tennessee, were charged in a superseding indictment unsealed today with five counts of attempted murder in aid of racketeering and related firearms offenses. In addition, Candice Wesley, 29, of Memphis, was charged with being an accessory after the fact.
According to the superseding indictment, the defendants are members of the Gangster Disciples, which is a nationally-known organized street gang that originated in the Chicago area and spread to other regions of the United States, including the greater Memphis area. The superseding indictment alleges that members and associates of the Gangster Disciples engaged in acts of violence, including murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault, as well as narcotics distribution and other criminal activities.
Specifically, the superseding indictment charges the defendants with participating in the attempted murders of five teenagers in South Memphis on or about June 21, 2014. According to the superseding indictment, the defendants did so for the purpose of gaining entrance to, or maintaining or increasing their positions in, the Gangster Disciples.
Tony Coburn, aka Blue, 26; Robert Mallory, aka Rambo, 33; and Almeda Burgess, aka Big Heavy, 28, previously were charged in this case. Mallory remains charged in the superseding indictment. Coburn pleaded guilty on July 28, 2015, to his role in the shootings, and Burgess pleaded guilty on Sept. 9, 2015, to being an accessory after the fact.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III of the Western District of Tennessee made the announcement.
Ranito Allen, aka Nito, 35; Florence Anthony, aka Nikki, 36; Edwin Carvin, aka Ren, 38; Brandon Milton, aka Lil Folk, 30; and Erik Reese, aka E, 35, all of Memphis, Tennessee, were charged in a superseding indictment unsealed today with five counts of attempted murder in aid of racketeering and related firearms offenses. In addition, Candice Wesley, 29, of Memphis, was charged with being an accessory after the fact.
According to the superseding indictment, the defendants are members of the Gangster Disciples, which is a nationally-known organized street gang that originated in the Chicago area and spread to other regions of the United States, including the greater Memphis area. The superseding indictment alleges that members and associates of the Gangster Disciples engaged in acts of violence, including murder, attempted murder and aggravated assault, as well as narcotics distribution and other criminal activities.
Specifically, the superseding indictment charges the defendants with participating in the attempted murders of five teenagers in South Memphis on or about June 21, 2014. According to the superseding indictment, the defendants did so for the purpose of gaining entrance to, or maintaining or increasing their positions in, the Gangster Disciples.
Tony Coburn, aka Blue, 26; Robert Mallory, aka Rambo, 33; and Almeda Burgess, aka Big Heavy, 28, previously were charged in this case. Mallory remains charged in the superseding indictment. Coburn pleaded guilty on July 28, 2015, to his role in the shootings, and Burgess pleaded guilty on Sept. 9, 2015, to being an accessory after the fact.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Friends of the Family: The Inside Story of the Mafia Cops Case
Detectives Louie Eppolito and Steve Caracappa were the most corrupt and dangerous cops in American history
. When they retired in the early 1990s, they left behind a pile of bodies—and for more than a decade, it looked like they were going to get away with it.
As highly decorated NYPD detectives with access to the department's most sensitive information, they sold their badges to the Mafia—and became murderers for the mob. Eventually they retired to Las Vegas, believing they had put their lives of murder and mayhem safely behind them. And they would have lived happily ever after, if not for one dedicated cop at the end of his career and an assistant district attorney. Detective Tommy Dades and Brooklyn Assistant DA Mike Vecchione turned this seemingly unsolvable cold-blooded case into one of the great law-and-order stories in the annals of New York City. And for the first time, in this book, Dades and Vecchione tell the whole inside story of the investigation.
For Detective Tommy Dades, the case began with a phone call from a distraught mother who just happened to mention an almost forgotten meeting that had taken place years earlier. Dades and Mike Vecchione had performed cold-case miracles before, but this one seemed impossible. Together, quietly and tenaciously, they began to uncover the hideous truth. A highly secret joint state and federal task force began building a body-by-body case against an incredible array of characters, from one of the most viciously insane Mafia bosses in history—who wanted to kill people he dreamed were plotting against him—to the one-eyed Jew who knew all the secrets. As the cold case got front-page-headline hot, Dades and Vecchione encountered an unexpected obstacle: the federal prosecutor plotted to take the case—and those headlines—away from Brooklyn.
For the first time, the two men who brought this incredible story to life reveal the epic confrontations that occurred behind the scenes and led to a stunning courtroom announcement—and came perilously close to destroying the case against the Mafia cops.
Friends of the Family: The Inside Story of the Mafia Cops Case, is the complete, inside story of the historic case that rocked the world of law enforcement.
. When they retired in the early 1990s, they left behind a pile of bodies—and for more than a decade, it looked like they were going to get away with it.As highly decorated NYPD detectives with access to the department's most sensitive information, they sold their badges to the Mafia—and became murderers for the mob. Eventually they retired to Las Vegas, believing they had put their lives of murder and mayhem safely behind them. And they would have lived happily ever after, if not for one dedicated cop at the end of his career and an assistant district attorney. Detective Tommy Dades and Brooklyn Assistant DA Mike Vecchione turned this seemingly unsolvable cold-blooded case into one of the great law-and-order stories in the annals of New York City. And for the first time, in this book, Dades and Vecchione tell the whole inside story of the investigation.
For Detective Tommy Dades, the case began with a phone call from a distraught mother who just happened to mention an almost forgotten meeting that had taken place years earlier. Dades and Mike Vecchione had performed cold-case miracles before, but this one seemed impossible. Together, quietly and tenaciously, they began to uncover the hideous truth. A highly secret joint state and federal task force began building a body-by-body case against an incredible array of characters, from one of the most viciously insane Mafia bosses in history—who wanted to kill people he dreamed were plotting against him—to the one-eyed Jew who knew all the secrets. As the cold case got front-page-headline hot, Dades and Vecchione encountered an unexpected obstacle: the federal prosecutor plotted to take the case—and those headlines—away from Brooklyn.
For the first time, the two men who brought this incredible story to life reveal the epic confrontations that occurred behind the scenes and led to a stunning courtroom announcement—and came perilously close to destroying the case against the Mafia cops.
Friends of the Family: The Inside Story of the Mafia Cops Case, is the complete, inside story of the historic case that rocked the world of law enforcement.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Can the Chicago Turned into a Cesspool of Debt and Corruption be Saved?
There is a dark cloud over Chicago that is getting increasingly difficult to ignore.
As summer comes to a close, murders are up 21% in the city from last year. The depravity seemed to hit a new low earlier this month when the dismembered body parts of a toddler were discovered in a lagoon in a city park. Police still don’t have any clue about who the child is.
Meanwhile, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to soon seek a massive property tax hike — the biggest in city history — to help make a $500 million pension payment due to city firefighters and police.
Chicago teachers started the school year last week without a labor contract, and the school system is mired in a monumental budget crisis. There could be 1,500 staff layoffs, and the city estimates a $1.1 billion budget deficit for next school year.
To add insult to injury, demographers concluded this week that the swampy oil town of Houston will displace Chicago as America’s third-largest city within a decade. Houston!
Maybe, I’m being too gloomy about the city I love. But it’s hard to ignore that Chicago is at an inflection point. The heart of the problem may be that it’s long been too easy to ignore the issues that have been facing this city for years.
Chicagoans have long talked about “two Chicagos.”
There’s the bustling downtown known as the Loop, with its world-class architecture, a culinary scene in the city’s patchwork of neighborhoods that proud Chicagoans like to boast is better than New York's and Los Angeles', and the enclaves on the north side and surrounding downtown where $1 million condos are plentiful.
Then there’s the other Chicago on the city’s south and west sides, where a vastly disproportionate number of the city’s 325 homicides this year have occurred. These are also the same neighborhoods, predominantly black and Latino, that have endured the brunt of dozens of school closures and seen the shuttering of mental health clinics in recent years as the city has become weighed down by debt.
For those of us who live in that leafier, more idyllic side of town, the violence and inequity in those neighborhoods that we rarely, if ever, visit can almost seem like it is in a foreign country — one that happens to be just miles away from our homes.
We read about the violence in the Monday papers that give us a macabre body count of those killed and wounded over the weekend. More often than not, the crime scenes are far from where we digest the grim mayhem over our cups of coffee. But occasionally reminders of the violence come to even the postcard version of Chicago, where I live and play.
Last week, I was out to lunch with my wife and daughter in the city’s West Loop, a popular neighborhood where airy lofts and some of the city’s most popular restaurants have replaced what in another era was a rancid-smelling meatpacking district.
As we walked through the neighborhood after lunch, we passed a club, Red Kiva, whose name seemed far too familiar to me — a guy who is rarely out after 8 p.m.
It took a couple of minutes before I remembered that I had read a couple of days earlier in one of those Monday morning violence roundups that a young man, LaVell Caron Southern, was gunned down soon after leaving the Red Kiva.
The story registered, in part, because Southern, 23, was a former standout football player at Mount Carmel High School, a sports powerhouse that produced former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb and former three-time NBA all-star Antoine Walker.
According to news reports, Southern had no enemies and was a good guy. His slaying was sadly just another tragedy in a seemingly endless trail of senseless violence that’s become part of this city’s backdrop.
After the remains of the dismembered toddler were discovered, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called it a “heinous, senseless crime.” It is one, he said, that “goes beyond human reason.”
The police chief’s outrage is appropriate.
Now, it’s time for my neighbors and me to be just as angry about the dark cloud that hovers over our city.
Thanks to Aamer Mashani.
As summer comes to a close, murders are up 21% in the city from last year. The depravity seemed to hit a new low earlier this month when the dismembered body parts of a toddler were discovered in a lagoon in a city park. Police still don’t have any clue about who the child is.
Meanwhile, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to soon seek a massive property tax hike — the biggest in city history — to help make a $500 million pension payment due to city firefighters and police.
Chicago teachers started the school year last week without a labor contract, and the school system is mired in a monumental budget crisis. There could be 1,500 staff layoffs, and the city estimates a $1.1 billion budget deficit for next school year.
To add insult to injury, demographers concluded this week that the swampy oil town of Houston will displace Chicago as America’s third-largest city within a decade. Houston!
Maybe, I’m being too gloomy about the city I love. But it’s hard to ignore that Chicago is at an inflection point. The heart of the problem may be that it’s long been too easy to ignore the issues that have been facing this city for years.
Chicagoans have long talked about “two Chicagos.”
There’s the bustling downtown known as the Loop, with its world-class architecture, a culinary scene in the city’s patchwork of neighborhoods that proud Chicagoans like to boast is better than New York's and Los Angeles', and the enclaves on the north side and surrounding downtown where $1 million condos are plentiful.
Then there’s the other Chicago on the city’s south and west sides, where a vastly disproportionate number of the city’s 325 homicides this year have occurred. These are also the same neighborhoods, predominantly black and Latino, that have endured the brunt of dozens of school closures and seen the shuttering of mental health clinics in recent years as the city has become weighed down by debt.
For those of us who live in that leafier, more idyllic side of town, the violence and inequity in those neighborhoods that we rarely, if ever, visit can almost seem like it is in a foreign country — one that happens to be just miles away from our homes.
We read about the violence in the Monday papers that give us a macabre body count of those killed and wounded over the weekend. More often than not, the crime scenes are far from where we digest the grim mayhem over our cups of coffee. But occasionally reminders of the violence come to even the postcard version of Chicago, where I live and play.
Last week, I was out to lunch with my wife and daughter in the city’s West Loop, a popular neighborhood where airy lofts and some of the city’s most popular restaurants have replaced what in another era was a rancid-smelling meatpacking district.
As we walked through the neighborhood after lunch, we passed a club, Red Kiva, whose name seemed far too familiar to me — a guy who is rarely out after 8 p.m.
It took a couple of minutes before I remembered that I had read a couple of days earlier in one of those Monday morning violence roundups that a young man, LaVell Caron Southern, was gunned down soon after leaving the Red Kiva.
The story registered, in part, because Southern, 23, was a former standout football player at Mount Carmel High School, a sports powerhouse that produced former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb and former three-time NBA all-star Antoine Walker.
According to news reports, Southern had no enemies and was a good guy. His slaying was sadly just another tragedy in a seemingly endless trail of senseless violence that’s become part of this city’s backdrop.
After the remains of the dismembered toddler were discovered, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called it a “heinous, senseless crime.” It is one, he said, that “goes beyond human reason.”
The police chief’s outrage is appropriate.
Now, it’s time for my neighbors and me to be just as angry about the dark cloud that hovers over our city.
Thanks to Aamer Mashani.
Whitey Bulger's Girlfriend, Catherine Greig, Indicted for Criminal Contempt
Catherine Greig, longtime companion of convicted killer James “Whitey” Bulger, was indicted in U.S. District Court in Boston in connection with her refusal to testify before a grand jury.
“Ms. Greig was ordered by the Court to testify before a grand jury about whether others assisted Mr. Bulger while he lived on the lam for 16 years,” said United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz. “By refusing to comply with that order, Ms. Greig has committed a new crime and this indictment seeks to hold her accountable. The grand jury is entitled to her testimony and flouting a federal court’s order has substantial consequences.”
“Catherine Greig has yet again failed to do the right thing,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division. “Her refusal to testify has hindered the FBI’s efforts to seek justice for the victims of his crimes. Our efforts to find those who assisted them during their lives as fugitives will not stop despite the fact that Ms. Greig has refused to testify.”
Catherine E. Greig, 64, was indicted on one count of criminal contempt. The indictment alleges that on Dec. 9, 2014, and continuing through Sept. 22, 2015, Greig refused to testify before a federal grand jury regarding an investigation into whether other individuals assisted Bulger while he was a fugitive from 1995 through 2011. In 2012, Greig was convicted of identity fraud and harboring James J. Bulger, and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.
The charge of criminal contempt provides for a prison sentence to be served subsequent to her current eight-year prison sentence and a fine. There is no fixed maximum penalty for criminal contempt, so courts may impose any sentence. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
“Ms. Greig was ordered by the Court to testify before a grand jury about whether others assisted Mr. Bulger while he lived on the lam for 16 years,” said United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz. “By refusing to comply with that order, Ms. Greig has committed a new crime and this indictment seeks to hold her accountable. The grand jury is entitled to her testimony and flouting a federal court’s order has substantial consequences.”
“Catherine Greig has yet again failed to do the right thing,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division. “Her refusal to testify has hindered the FBI’s efforts to seek justice for the victims of his crimes. Our efforts to find those who assisted them during their lives as fugitives will not stop despite the fact that Ms. Greig has refused to testify.”
Catherine E. Greig, 64, was indicted on one count of criminal contempt. The indictment alleges that on Dec. 9, 2014, and continuing through Sept. 22, 2015, Greig refused to testify before a federal grand jury regarding an investigation into whether other individuals assisted Bulger while he was a fugitive from 1995 through 2011. In 2012, Greig was convicted of identity fraud and harboring James J. Bulger, and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.
The charge of criminal contempt provides for a prison sentence to be served subsequent to her current eight-year prison sentence and a fine. There is no fixed maximum penalty for criminal contempt, so courts may impose any sentence. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob
Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob
I grew up in the Old Colony housing project in South Boston and became partners with James "Whitey" Bulger, who I always called Jimmy.
Jimmy and I, we were unstoppable. We took what we wanted. And we made people disappear—permanently. We made millions. And if someone ratted us out, we killed him. We were not nice guys.
I found out that Jimmy had been an FBI informant in 1999, and my life was never the same. When the feds finally got me, I was faced with something Jimmy would have killed me for—cooperating with the authorities. I pled guilty to twenty-nine counts, including five murders. I went away for five and a half years.
I was brutally honest on the witness stand, and this book is brutally honest, too; the brutal truth that was never before told. How could it? Only three people could tell the true story. With one on the run and one in jail for life, it falls on me. -- Kevin Weeks
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger
Writer Kevin Weeks was top Lieutenant to James "Whitey" Bulger
, head of the South Boston Irish Mob, who was on the run for more than 16 years before his capture on June 22, 2011. While on the FBI Most Wanted list with a two million dollar reward, Whitey had been second only to Osama bin Laden. Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger, is a story of murder, friendship and loyalty within the mob, using many situations that Weeks could have omitted from his NYT bestselling memoir, Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob. While Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger, is fiction, its insider knowledge makes it all the more intriguing, with hints toward where Whitey and his companion Catherine Greig may actually have spent those 16 years on the run.
In this story, Joey Donahue is released from prison after serving six years for racketeering and crimes committed as deputy to the infamous South Boston Irish Mob boss and psychopathic murderer Whitey Bulger. This time, he is determined to stay clear of the life of crime that has supported him for the past twenty-five years. After a year of trying unsuccessfully to find a job due to his notorious association with Bulger, Joey finally surrenders to the temptation of a friend's offer to join him in a fast score, a simple robbery of a drug dealer that should pay the bills until he finds a viable job. The robbery turns out to be a sting operation set up by the FBI for the express purpose of forcing Joey to cooperate in the frustratingly unsuccessful search for his onetime mentor. With Joey reluctantly partnered with an FBI agent, the hunt for Whitey takes place against an international backdrop until the old friends finally meet up in a high-stakes climax, ending the game of cat and mouse once and for all.
It is speculated that Bulger is also the inspiration for the ruthless crime kingpin Francis "Frank" Costello, played by Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning film The Departed.
, head of the South Boston Irish Mob, who was on the run for more than 16 years before his capture on June 22, 2011. While on the FBI Most Wanted list with a two million dollar reward, Whitey had been second only to Osama bin Laden. Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger, is a story of murder, friendship and loyalty within the mob, using many situations that Weeks could have omitted from his NYT bestselling memoir, Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob. While Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger, is fiction, its insider knowledge makes it all the more intriguing, with hints toward where Whitey and his companion Catherine Greig may actually have spent those 16 years on the run.
In this story, Joey Donahue is released from prison after serving six years for racketeering and crimes committed as deputy to the infamous South Boston Irish Mob boss and psychopathic murderer Whitey Bulger. This time, he is determined to stay clear of the life of crime that has supported him for the past twenty-five years. After a year of trying unsuccessfully to find a job due to his notorious association with Bulger, Joey finally surrenders to the temptation of a friend's offer to join him in a fast score, a simple robbery of a drug dealer that should pay the bills until he finds a viable job. The robbery turns out to be a sting operation set up by the FBI for the express purpose of forcing Joey to cooperate in the frustratingly unsuccessful search for his onetime mentor. With Joey reluctantly partnered with an FBI agent, the hunt for Whitey takes place against an international backdrop until the old friends finally meet up in a high-stakes climax, ending the game of cat and mouse once and for all.
It is speculated that Bulger is also the inspiration for the ruthless crime kingpin Francis "Frank" Costello, played by Jack Nicholson in Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning film The Departed.
Monday, September 21, 2015
The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath
Philip Carlo was a tough guy -- really
.
The prolific Brooklyn-born writer, spent most of his career writing about really bad people, such as L.A. serial killer Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker (Pinnacle True Crime)), Luchese family mobster Anthony ``Gaspipe'' Casso (Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss) and merciless Gambino contract killer Richard Kuklinski (The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer).
For his book, The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath, the intrepid author tracked down Tommy Pitera, a capo in New York's Bonanno crime family. Carlo got up close and personal with this infamous assassin, who presided over a huge drug-selling operation in the '80s and is currently serving seven life sentences.
Though the pictures are in black and white -- they get the, um, point across.
Thanks to MADELEINE MARR
.The prolific Brooklyn-born writer, spent most of his career writing about really bad people, such as L.A. serial killer Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker (Pinnacle True Crime)), Luchese family mobster Anthony ``Gaspipe'' Casso (Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss) and merciless Gambino contract killer Richard Kuklinski (The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer).
For his book, The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath, the intrepid author tracked down Tommy Pitera, a capo in New York's Bonanno crime family. Carlo got up close and personal with this infamous assassin, who presided over a huge drug-selling operation in the '80s and is currently serving seven life sentences.
Though the pictures are in black and white -- they get the, um, point across.
Thanks to MADELEINE MARR
GOMORRAH: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System
In the United States organized crime has entered a Tony Soprano twilight, as small-time bosses carve up ever-smaller wedges of a shrinking pie. In Italy, by contrast, all systems are go. In shipping, fashion and construction, to name just three booming businesses, the mob holds sway, often acting through, rather than despite, local government. All told, according to a recent report by an Italian small-business association, mob-related activity accounts for the single largest sector of the Italian economy.
Roberto Saviano, a young Italian journalist, counts the cost in “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System,” his savage indictment of the Neapolitan crime organization known as the Camorra. Although less well known than the Mafia, its Sicilian counterpart, the Camorra has held the economy of southern Italy in a tight grip for more than a century. With time it has adapted and modernized, spreading from Naples to outlying towns, while adding financial services and real estate to its expanding portfolio.
“Never in the economy of a region has there been such a widespread, crushing presence of criminality as in Campania in the last 10 years
,” Mr. Saviano writes.
The garment sweatshops of Secondigliano, a small town on the outskirts of Naples, provide Mr. Saviano with a case study. Day and night, highly skilled workers turn out low-cost counterfeits that compare favorably in quality with the originals from the big fashion houses. The factories are bankrolled by the Camorra, which lends money at low rates. Factory workers get their mortgages through the Camorra. Once completed, the clothes often find their way to boutiques owned by the Camorra all over Europe, many in Camorra-owned shopping malls.
The Camorra has come a long way since the days of cigarette smuggling. But despite the corporate face, it relies on age-old techniques of intimidation and violence, which Mr. Saviano describes in gruesome detail. When Cammoristi want to send a message, they do a thorough job. Enforcers make their point with one victim by sawing his head off with a metal grinder and blowing it up. The notorious Pasquale Barra, better known as the Animal, set new standards some years back when he ripped a target’s heart out with his bare hands and then bit into it.
Mr. Saviano, whose hometown, Casal di Principe, lies in the heart of Camorra territory, comes up with a total of 3,600 bodies since 1979, the year he was born.
Objective, analytic journalism is foreign to Mr. Saviano. The subject at hand is too personal, and in any case he takes a fiery, romantic view of the reporter’s mission. “I believe that the way to truly understand, to get to the bottom of things, is to smell the hot breath of reality, to touch the nitty-gritty,” he writes.
This passion for close-up, eyewitness reporting leads him to take small-time jobs in Camorra businesses, to show up whenever the police turn up a dead body and to mingle in the open-air drug market in Secondigliano, where fresh batches of heroin are tested on addict volunteers. If they drop dead, the batch is too potent.
The up-close style and the floridly noir prose make for vivid scenes. When he’s concentrating properly, Mr. Saviano also exposes the nuts and bolts of Camorra operations, complete with names and precise figures. His account of the drug trade, which the Camorra has shrewdly expanded to serve the casual, middle-class customer, is a model of muckraking journalism.
So are the chapters on the construction industry and the Camorra’s sinister trade in illegal waste dumping, much of it toxic. All over Italy highly trained experts in law and the environment make the rounds of Italian businesses, offering to ship everything from dead bodies to printer toner to illegal dumping sites in the south. This is worth billions of dollars a year.
From time to time Mr. Saviano takes flight on his own prose and, drunk with indignation, loses touch with the nitty-gritty. His chapter on the port of Naples, where Chinese entrepreneurs now control the illegal offloading of containers, makes for colorful reading, but Mr. Saviano neglects to explain how the Camorra fits in. Often names and killings speed by in a blur, devoid of context. Mr. Saviano never does explain the Camorra’s structure adequately.
Granted, it is a bewildering mess. The sheer scope of the Camorra’s businesses numbs even Mr. Saviano, who confesses to despair. Everything, he writes, seems to belong to the mob: “land, buffalos, farms, quarries, garages, dairies, hotels and restaurants.”
A small flicker of hope burns in a chapter devoted to Don Peppino Diana, a crusading priest who denounces the Camorra from his pulpit in Casal di Principe, organizes protest marches and sets up community programs to siphon support for the Camorra.
“He decided to take an interest in the dynamics of power and not merely its corollary suffering,” Mr. Saviano writes. “He didn’t want merely to clean the wound but to understand the mechanisms of the metastasis, to prevent the cancer from spreading, to block the source of whatever was turning his home into a gold mine of capital with an abundance of cadavers.”
On March 19, 1994, the name day of his patron saint, Don Peppino was approached in his church by armed men who shot him in the head at close range. He died instantly. Mr. Saviano, for his part, has been forced to live in hiding under police protection since his book was published last year in Italy.
Thanks to William Grimes
Roberto Saviano, a young Italian journalist, counts the cost in “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System,” his savage indictment of the Neapolitan crime organization known as the Camorra. Although less well known than the Mafia, its Sicilian counterpart, the Camorra has held the economy of southern Italy in a tight grip for more than a century. With time it has adapted and modernized, spreading from Naples to outlying towns, while adding financial services and real estate to its expanding portfolio.
“Never in the economy of a region has there been such a widespread, crushing presence of criminality as in Campania in the last 10 years
,” Mr. Saviano writes.The garment sweatshops of Secondigliano, a small town on the outskirts of Naples, provide Mr. Saviano with a case study. Day and night, highly skilled workers turn out low-cost counterfeits that compare favorably in quality with the originals from the big fashion houses. The factories are bankrolled by the Camorra, which lends money at low rates. Factory workers get their mortgages through the Camorra. Once completed, the clothes often find their way to boutiques owned by the Camorra all over Europe, many in Camorra-owned shopping malls.
The Camorra has come a long way since the days of cigarette smuggling. But despite the corporate face, it relies on age-old techniques of intimidation and violence, which Mr. Saviano describes in gruesome detail. When Cammoristi want to send a message, they do a thorough job. Enforcers make their point with one victim by sawing his head off with a metal grinder and blowing it up. The notorious Pasquale Barra, better known as the Animal, set new standards some years back when he ripped a target’s heart out with his bare hands and then bit into it.
Mr. Saviano, whose hometown, Casal di Principe, lies in the heart of Camorra territory, comes up with a total of 3,600 bodies since 1979, the year he was born.
Objective, analytic journalism is foreign to Mr. Saviano. The subject at hand is too personal, and in any case he takes a fiery, romantic view of the reporter’s mission. “I believe that the way to truly understand, to get to the bottom of things, is to smell the hot breath of reality, to touch the nitty-gritty,” he writes.
This passion for close-up, eyewitness reporting leads him to take small-time jobs in Camorra businesses, to show up whenever the police turn up a dead body and to mingle in the open-air drug market in Secondigliano, where fresh batches of heroin are tested on addict volunteers. If they drop dead, the batch is too potent.
The up-close style and the floridly noir prose make for vivid scenes. When he’s concentrating properly, Mr. Saviano also exposes the nuts and bolts of Camorra operations, complete with names and precise figures. His account of the drug trade, which the Camorra has shrewdly expanded to serve the casual, middle-class customer, is a model of muckraking journalism.
So are the chapters on the construction industry and the Camorra’s sinister trade in illegal waste dumping, much of it toxic. All over Italy highly trained experts in law and the environment make the rounds of Italian businesses, offering to ship everything from dead bodies to printer toner to illegal dumping sites in the south. This is worth billions of dollars a year.
From time to time Mr. Saviano takes flight on his own prose and, drunk with indignation, loses touch with the nitty-gritty. His chapter on the port of Naples, where Chinese entrepreneurs now control the illegal offloading of containers, makes for colorful reading, but Mr. Saviano neglects to explain how the Camorra fits in. Often names and killings speed by in a blur, devoid of context. Mr. Saviano never does explain the Camorra’s structure adequately.
Granted, it is a bewildering mess. The sheer scope of the Camorra’s businesses numbs even Mr. Saviano, who confesses to despair. Everything, he writes, seems to belong to the mob: “land, buffalos, farms, quarries, garages, dairies, hotels and restaurants.”
A small flicker of hope burns in a chapter devoted to Don Peppino Diana, a crusading priest who denounces the Camorra from his pulpit in Casal di Principe, organizes protest marches and sets up community programs to siphon support for the Camorra.
“He decided to take an interest in the dynamics of power and not merely its corollary suffering,” Mr. Saviano writes. “He didn’t want merely to clean the wound but to understand the mechanisms of the metastasis, to prevent the cancer from spreading, to block the source of whatever was turning his home into a gold mine of capital with an abundance of cadavers.”
On March 19, 1994, the name day of his patron saint, Don Peppino was approached in his church by armed men who shot him in the head at close range. He died instantly. Mr. Saviano, for his part, has been forced to live in hiding under police protection since his book was published last year in Italy.
Thanks to William Grimes
Kevin Weeks Calls Whitey Bulger #BlackMass Movie Bogus
From 1978-1994, Kevin Weeks served as a member of the Winter Hill Gang, and a close friend, confidant, and henchman to Whitey Bulger. And he says Johnny Depp’s film is bogus.
“We really did kill those people,” says Kevin Weeks, the former mobster and right-hand man to notorious crime boss Whitey Bulger. “But the movie is a fantasy.”
The film that has Weeks riled up is Black Mass. Directed by Scott Cooper, it stars Johnny Depp as Winter Hill Gang leader James “Whitey” Bulger, and depicts the menacing Irishman’s rise up the criminal ranks from low-level gangster to the most feared criminal in not just his native South Boston, but the state of Massachusetts. Whitey was able to rise so far so fast thanks to his special relationship with the FBI, especially agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton)—an old neighborhood friend on Whitey’s payroll who’d funnel him information in exchange for intel on the local Italian mafia, led by Gennaro Angiulo. Bulger was eventually arrested in 2011 at an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California, after being on the run for 17 years, and was indicted for 19 murders. He was convicted of 11 of those murders, and is serving two consecutive life sentences behind bars. Interestingly enough, while Whitey’s reign of terror was going on, his brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) was the most powerful politician in the state, serving as president of the Massachusetts State Senate.
Weeks, who’s portrayed in the film by Friday Night Lights’ Jesse Plemons, started out in 1976 as a bouncer at Whitey’s local haunt Triple O’s, and by 1978 he was serving as Whitey’s driver and personal muscle. He officially joined the Winter Hill Gang full-time in 1982, and, along with Johnny Martorano and Stephen Flemmi, served as one of Whitey’s devoted henchmen. In 1999, Weeks was arrested on a 29-count indictment in a RICO case. In exchange for his damning grand testimony against Whitey, Weeks received a 5-year prison sentence. He was released in 2004, and has since penned three books, including the recent Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger, which hit shelves on July 22.
And to say that Weeks is unhappy with the film would be a major understatement. “My character looks like a knuckle-dragging moron,” says Weeks. “I look like I have Down syndrome.”
According to Weeks, the filmmakers behind Black Mass “didn’t consult with anyone within the inner circle about the movie,” and as a result, there are major discrepancies between what really happened and what happens onscreen.
The Daily Beast spoke with Weeks—who saw the film opening night—who opened up about what Black Mass got right and wrong, the murders they committed, and a foiled attempt to assassinate Boston Herald journalist Howie Carr.
You saw Black Mass on Friday night. What did you think of it?
Very disappointing. The only resemblance to Whitey’s character was the hairline. The funny thing is, Whitey’s look didn’t really change at all, just his clothes. It’s like we were stuck in a time warp. And the mannerisms—the way that Whitey talked to us—he never swore at us. In all the years I was with that man, he never swore at me once. We never yelled at each other. The opening scene of me getting beaten up? That never happened. They also have me talking to a black FBI agent in the beginning of the film, but I wouldn’t talk to the FBI. I spoke to a DEA agent, Dan Doherty. And my cooperation came after Johnny Martorano started cooperating. Nothing in the film is chronological, really.
The biggest chronological discrepancy in the film was the death of Bulger’s son, which took place in 1973. The film makes it seem like his boy died later than that in order to position it as his motivation for upping his killing and crime activity.
They made it seem like that was the reason why. I wasn’t there for the death of his son—that happened before my time—but I was there for the death of his mother, which he took pretty bad. But really, Whitey was violent long before his son’s death. And the way the film portrays people like Stephen Flemmi and myself? We come across looking like a step away from Down syndrome, really. We’re portrayed as these low-life thugs that are borderline morons who haven’t washed for weeks. For all the money we were makin’, we came off like paupers. We dressed a certain way during the day, but at night we were wearing $2,700 Louis suits. There’s a scene early on in the film where Johnny Martorano’s character is at the bar Triple O’s, and is reaching into a peanut bowl, licking his fingers, and sticking them back into the bowl, and Whitey starts mocking him for it. First of all, Johnny Martorano was never in Triple O’s. Second, if Whitey ever started talking to Johnny like that—berating him—the movie would be over because Johnny would’ve shot him right then. As bad as Whitey was, Johnny was just as capable—if not more.
Right. Johnny was known as “The Basin Street Butcher.”
He was a violent killer. There’s another scene later on where Whitey is yelling at Stevie [Flemmi] in the car outside the police station where they’re waiting to pick up Deborah Hussey. The language is all wrong. We never really cursed like that unless we were grabbing somebody, and Whitey never would’ve berated Stevie, either. Stevie was a psychopath. Stevie would’ve killed him. And Stevie is portrayed as a very sympathetic character.
In the scene you mention, they pick up Hussey, take her to a house, and Whitey strangles her to death.
Right. And I’m already in the house—they show me in the background. The true story is that me and Jimmy went to that house and we were waiting for Stevie. That house was for sale, and we already had two bodies buried downstairs. When I get to the house with Jimmy, he says, “Oh, we’re waiting for Stevie and Deborah. Stevie might buy the place.” I go and use the bathroom upstairs, and as soon as I come down the stairs, I see Stevie and Deborah come in, and I hear boom-boom. I walk in and see that Jimmy had strangled her. I thought she was dead, but then Stevie put his head on her chest, said she was still alive, and he put a clothesline rope around her neck, put a stick in it and twisted. And then after, Stevie dragged her body downstairs and pulled her teeth out. So Stevie wasn’t all sympathetic, mourning, and sorrowful like he is in the movie. Stevie enjoyed murder.
Back to Johnny Depp’s performance as Whitey. The film made Whitey seem—relatively speaking—like a sympathetic character. He’s portrayed as a very loving family man.
He had a son, Douglas, and he did die of Reye’s syndrome, but Jimmy wasn’t this doting father. Lindsey [Cyr] lived in Quincy, and he used to preach to me all the time, “If you’re gonna be a criminal, you shouldn’t have kids. They’re a liability.” And that scene at the dinner table between Jimmy and Douglas where he tells his son, “Punch them when the other kid isn’t looking,” he didn’t talk to kids like that. He was my older son’s godfather and I remember the way he’d talk to my son. He just talked to him like he was a young kid. Oh, you playing baseball? Normal conversation. He didn’t bring business back to the house. So his portrayal of him, outside of the makeup, I couldn’t believe it. The hairline was fine but the teeth were terrible, too. Jimmy had one front tooth and a nerve in it had died so it was one shade less than white—a little yellow, ya know. And his girlfriend, Cathy [Greig], was a hygienist, so his teeth were in great shape except for that one tooth.
Whitey looks vampiric in the film—like a ghoul.
He really does. There’s one scene I have a really big problem with, and that’s a scene down in Miami. Now, I was never down in Miami and they never met Johnny [Martorano] down in Miami. They met Johnny out in a hotel by La Guardia Airport, and it was just Jimmy, Stevie, and Johnny who discussed the John Callahan murder, which came after Roger Wheeler. In the scene in the film, they have me down in Miami and we’re all sitting there. Callahan goes to give Jimmy a big of money and Jimmy says, “Give that to Kevin.” And I take it. And then Stevie supposedly propositions Brian Halloran to kill Roger Wheeler, and Jimmy notices Halloran’s demeanor and says, “Kevin, give him the bag with the $20,000 in it, and forget what you heard here.” That never happened. In fact, I didn’t know about Roger Wheeler’s death until the Callahan murder. So just by having me be there giving Halloran the money, they have involved me in a conspiracy to kill Roger Wheeler. I’ve been libeled. I wasn’t involved in that at all, so I have a big problem with that. I just don’t know where they get the right to put events in there that did not happen.
What about the turf war between the Winter Hill Gang and the Angiulo crime family?
Well, another scene in the beginning where Jimmy pulls up, I get in the car, then we drive somewhere and beat up a guy, and his name is “Joey Angiulo,” and he’s identified as Jerry Angiulo’s nephew. Just by saying that name, “Angiulo,” that never would’ve happened because if it did, there would have been a war. If it did, to make peace, Jerry Angiulo would’ve said, “Kill Kevin, and it’s over.” That scene did happen to another fellow, Paul Giaimo, and the story was that he’d slapped Whitey’s niece. We got him in the car, drove up to M Street Park, proceeded to give him a beating, then drove him up to Cassidy’s and left the body out front so all his friends could see. Then we found out later on that we beat up the wrong person. But by making up this name and saying “Angiulo” and the mafia, it was so unrealistic. There would have been bodies in the streets if that happened.
As far as the FBI is concerned, the film seemed to really let the Bureau off the hook. John Connolly and John Morris are the only FBI agents in the film who seem to know about Whitey’s double-dealing, and they’re portrayed as sympathetic pawns, to a degree.
The FBI were the ones that enabled Jimmy and Stevie to survive. There’s a scene early on in the film where Connolly and Jimmy make this “alliance,” and then Jimmy goes back and tells Stevie about how they’re going to use the FBI against the mafia. That didn’t happen because Stevie had already been an important since 1965. In 1967, Flemmi and Frank Salemme blew up Joe Barboza’s attorney, John Fitzgerald, and then Stevie and Frankie went on the run, with Frankie going down to New York and Stevie going up to Montreal. Stevie comes back to Boston in 1974, and then the following year, Jimmy becomes an informant. And Connolly was on the payroll. We considered Connolly a criminal, too. He was our informant, and that’s how it was portrayed to all of us—that we were paying for his information. That’s why no one suspected that Jim Bulger was informing on us, because every time we made a score we’d put money aside to pay our contacts in law enforcement, and we were getting good information. Jimmy used to tell me, “I can call any one of six FBI agents and they’ll come to me and jump in this car with a machine gun and go on a hit.” One FBI agent actually gave us 17 kilos of C-4 which we were going to use to blow up a reporter, Howie Carr. Howie thought it was a made-up story, until he found out it was the truth.
Why did Bulger want to assassinate Howie Carr?
He was just a vicious bastard. He was attacking everybody—innocent people and everything. There was a time when we weren’t doing much and everything was running smoothly, and he wrote an article about this kid in South Boston who got killed, and Jimmy decided to make him a hobby and shut him up once and for all. When I look back on it, I wish we did kill him. He’s still the most hated reporter in Boston. Everybody hates him.
And it wasn’t just the FBI that knew about Whitey and what he was doing. Jeremiah O’Sullivan, the head of the organized crime task force, was giving information to Connolly. Every time Whitey or Stevie’s name was mentioned they’d give the information to Connolly knowing that Connolly would be giving the information to us. They were all on the payroll. All of them were receiving presents all the time—money, wine, trips. Some agents you couldn’t give money to because they’d feel insulted, so you’d give them a crystal or a Chelsea Clock. Everybody had their weakness.
One mystery surrounding Whitey Bulger is the Lady of the Dunes—the nickname for the body of the mysterious woman found at the Race Point Dunes. Many believe Bulger murdered her.
That wasn’t him. What happened was, because of Deborah Hussey and Debra Davis being killed, he used to visit Provincetown. And he’d usually have his girlfriend or a young girl he was with. But Whitey didn’t kill her. That’s just people jumping on it and saying, “It could have been him.” He didn’t do it.
But Whitey did kill Debra Davis, you’re saying? That murder was never actually proven to be Whitey’s doing.
I wasn’t there for Debra Davis—it was just Jim Bulger and Steve Flemmi—but here’s the story I was told: [Whitey] told me how when he was in the house with Stevie, they grabbed Debra, dragged her downstairs to the basement, and put her in a chair. She was being killed because she was going to leave Stevie, and he’d told her too much—including about his relationship with John Connolly. So she’s in the chair and Stevie begins putting duct tape around her. She had beautiful hair, so Jim Bulger said to me, “When the duct tape went around her face and her hair, that’s when I knew it was over.” And Stevie kissed her on the forehead and said, “You’re going to another place now.” And then Jim Bulger’s exact words to me were, “And then she was strangled.” So he didn’t say who strangled her.
The relationship between Whitey and his brother Billy has always fascinated me—that the most notorious crime boss in Boston could have a brother who, as president of the Massachusetts State Senate, was the most powerful politician in Massachusetts.
OK, I was up at Billy Bulger’s house over 100 times with Jimmy. He never discussed any street business or crime with Billy. It was always conversations about regular family stuff. There’s no doubt in my mind that Billy knew Jimmy was involved in the rackets, but as far as the murders, if Billy did hear something about that I bet he’d choose not to believe it, because he’s a very religious man. There was the case of Senator John E. Powers, who was a judge. He fired Whitey from being a janitor at the courthouse. Billy never forgave him for that because after Whitey was fired from that job, he started committing all these crimes and stuff. So when it came to John E. Powers getting a raise or anything like that, it never made it past Billy Bulger in the Senate. So if someone was attacking his family, sure, he would stick it to that person whatever way he could legally. But as far as shielding Whitey from investigations? Billy never did that. Never.
Whitey’s attorney, Hank Brennan, recently shot down Black Mass, saying that “the real menace to Boston during that time and in other mob cases around the country—the federal government’s complicity in each and every one of those murders with the top echelon informant program.”
Well, [Jay Carney, Bulger's other attorney] is a buffoon. I mean, really. He was supposed to defend Jim Bulger, and when he stood up and gave his opening remarks, he basically admitted to every charge. What, he’s spoken to Jim Bulger for a hundred hours, and that’s supposed to make him something? Now, he speaks about Jim like he’s his best friend. He doesn’t know a thing about the real Jim Bulger, what’s happened, or anything. He’s literally a buffoon.
But it was the federal government that enabled us to get as far as we did. Without their interference, we would’ve been a short-lived gang. In some cases, we knew about investigations before they’d even been approved, or received financing. And it wasn’t just Connolly and the FBI. There was a bug in the Lancaster Street Garage that was given to us by a state trooper. The state police keep trying to pin it all on the FBI, but they were tipping us off, too. Whitey had his hands in everything. He had FBI. He had the Boston Police. He had Quincy Police. He had one guy in the DEA who was saying stuff to Connolly. He had people all over law enforcement that were giving information to him. With the movie, there’s no accuracy at all. The premise of corruption with the FBI is right, but as far as the events, the people, and the personalities? You could’ve told the truth and the movie would’ve been more violent than it is but they fabricated events. The movie is pure fiction.
Thanks to Marlow Stern.
“We really did kill those people,” says Kevin Weeks, the former mobster and right-hand man to notorious crime boss Whitey Bulger. “But the movie is a fantasy.”
The film that has Weeks riled up is Black Mass. Directed by Scott Cooper, it stars Johnny Depp as Winter Hill Gang leader James “Whitey” Bulger, and depicts the menacing Irishman’s rise up the criminal ranks from low-level gangster to the most feared criminal in not just his native South Boston, but the state of Massachusetts. Whitey was able to rise so far so fast thanks to his special relationship with the FBI, especially agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton)—an old neighborhood friend on Whitey’s payroll who’d funnel him information in exchange for intel on the local Italian mafia, led by Gennaro Angiulo. Bulger was eventually arrested in 2011 at an apartment complex in Santa Monica, California, after being on the run for 17 years, and was indicted for 19 murders. He was convicted of 11 of those murders, and is serving two consecutive life sentences behind bars. Interestingly enough, while Whitey’s reign of terror was going on, his brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch) was the most powerful politician in the state, serving as president of the Massachusetts State Senate.
Weeks
, who’s portrayed in the film by Friday Night Lights’ Jesse Plemons, started out in 1976 as a bouncer at Whitey’s local haunt Triple O’s, and by 1978 he was serving as Whitey’s driver and personal muscle. He officially joined the Winter Hill Gang full-time in 1982, and, along with Johnny Martorano and Stephen Flemmi, served as one of Whitey’s devoted henchmen. In 1999, Weeks was arrested on a 29-count indictment in a RICO case. In exchange for his damning grand testimony against Whitey, Weeks received a 5-year prison sentence. He was released in 2004, and has since penned three books, including the recent Hunted Down: The FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Whitey Bulger, which hit shelves on July 22.And to say that Weeks is unhappy with the film would be a major understatement. “My character looks like a knuckle-dragging moron,” says Weeks. “I look like I have Down syndrome.”
According to Weeks, the filmmakers behind Black Mass “didn’t consult with anyone within the inner circle about the movie,” and as a result, there are major discrepancies between what really happened and what happens onscreen.
The Daily Beast spoke with Weeks—who saw the film opening night—who opened up about what Black Mass got right and wrong, the murders they committed, and a foiled attempt to assassinate Boston Herald journalist Howie Carr.
You saw Black Mass on Friday night. What did you think of it?
Very disappointing. The only resemblance to Whitey’s character was the hairline. The funny thing is, Whitey’s look didn’t really change at all, just his clothes. It’s like we were stuck in a time warp. And the mannerisms—the way that Whitey talked to us—he never swore at us. In all the years I was with that man, he never swore at me once. We never yelled at each other. The opening scene of me getting beaten up? That never happened. They also have me talking to a black FBI agent in the beginning of the film, but I wouldn’t talk to the FBI. I spoke to a DEA agent, Dan Doherty. And my cooperation came after Johnny Martorano started cooperating. Nothing in the film is chronological, really.
The biggest chronological discrepancy in the film was the death of Bulger’s son, which took place in 1973. The film makes it seem like his boy died later than that in order to position it as his motivation for upping his killing and crime activity.
They made it seem like that was the reason why. I wasn’t there for the death of his son—that happened before my time—but I was there for the death of his mother, which he took pretty bad. But really, Whitey was violent long before his son’s death. And the way the film portrays people like Stephen Flemmi and myself? We come across looking like a step away from Down syndrome, really. We’re portrayed as these low-life thugs that are borderline morons who haven’t washed for weeks. For all the money we were makin’, we came off like paupers. We dressed a certain way during the day, but at night we were wearing $2,700 Louis suits. There’s a scene early on in the film where Johnny Martorano’s character is at the bar Triple O’s, and is reaching into a peanut bowl, licking his fingers, and sticking them back into the bowl, and Whitey starts mocking him for it. First of all, Johnny Martorano was never in Triple O’s. Second, if Whitey ever started talking to Johnny like that—berating him—the movie would be over because Johnny would’ve shot him right then. As bad as Whitey was, Johnny was just as capable—if not more.
Right. Johnny was known as “The Basin Street Butcher.”
He was a violent killer. There’s another scene later on where Whitey is yelling at Stevie [Flemmi] in the car outside the police station where they’re waiting to pick up Deborah Hussey. The language is all wrong. We never really cursed like that unless we were grabbing somebody, and Whitey never would’ve berated Stevie, either. Stevie was a psychopath. Stevie would’ve killed him. And Stevie is portrayed as a very sympathetic character.
In the scene you mention, they pick up Hussey, take her to a house, and Whitey strangles her to death.
Right. And I’m already in the house—they show me in the background. The true story is that me and Jimmy went to that house and we were waiting for Stevie. That house was for sale, and we already had two bodies buried downstairs. When I get to the house with Jimmy, he says, “Oh, we’re waiting for Stevie and Deborah. Stevie might buy the place.” I go and use the bathroom upstairs, and as soon as I come down the stairs, I see Stevie and Deborah come in, and I hear boom-boom. I walk in and see that Jimmy had strangled her. I thought she was dead, but then Stevie put his head on her chest, said she was still alive, and he put a clothesline rope around her neck, put a stick in it and twisted. And then after, Stevie dragged her body downstairs and pulled her teeth out. So Stevie wasn’t all sympathetic, mourning, and sorrowful like he is in the movie. Stevie enjoyed murder.
Back to Johnny Depp’s performance as Whitey. The film made Whitey seem—relatively speaking—like a sympathetic character. He’s portrayed as a very loving family man.
He had a son, Douglas, and he did die of Reye’s syndrome, but Jimmy wasn’t this doting father. Lindsey [Cyr] lived in Quincy, and he used to preach to me all the time, “If you’re gonna be a criminal, you shouldn’t have kids. They’re a liability.” And that scene at the dinner table between Jimmy and Douglas where he tells his son, “Punch them when the other kid isn’t looking,” he didn’t talk to kids like that. He was my older son’s godfather and I remember the way he’d talk to my son. He just talked to him like he was a young kid. Oh, you playing baseball? Normal conversation. He didn’t bring business back to the house. So his portrayal of him, outside of the makeup, I couldn’t believe it. The hairline was fine but the teeth were terrible, too. Jimmy had one front tooth and a nerve in it had died so it was one shade less than white—a little yellow, ya know. And his girlfriend, Cathy [Greig], was a hygienist, so his teeth were in great shape except for that one tooth.
Whitey looks vampiric in the film—like a ghoul.
He really does. There’s one scene I have a really big problem with, and that’s a scene down in Miami. Now, I was never down in Miami and they never met Johnny [Martorano] down in Miami. They met Johnny out in a hotel by La Guardia Airport, and it was just Jimmy, Stevie, and Johnny who discussed the John Callahan murder, which came after Roger Wheeler. In the scene in the film, they have me down in Miami and we’re all sitting there. Callahan goes to give Jimmy a big of money and Jimmy says, “Give that to Kevin.” And I take it. And then Stevie supposedly propositions Brian Halloran to kill Roger Wheeler, and Jimmy notices Halloran’s demeanor and says, “Kevin, give him the bag with the $20,000 in it, and forget what you heard here.” That never happened. In fact, I didn’t know about Roger Wheeler’s death until the Callahan murder. So just by having me be there giving Halloran the money, they have involved me in a conspiracy to kill Roger Wheeler. I’ve been libeled. I wasn’t involved in that at all, so I have a big problem with that. I just don’t know where they get the right to put events in there that did not happen.
What about the turf war between the Winter Hill Gang and the Angiulo crime family?
Well, another scene in the beginning where Jimmy pulls up, I get in the car, then we drive somewhere and beat up a guy, and his name is “Joey Angiulo,” and he’s identified as Jerry Angiulo’s nephew. Just by saying that name, “Angiulo,” that never would’ve happened because if it did, there would have been a war. If it did, to make peace, Jerry Angiulo would’ve said, “Kill Kevin, and it’s over.” That scene did happen to another fellow, Paul Giaimo, and the story was that he’d slapped Whitey’s niece. We got him in the car, drove up to M Street Park, proceeded to give him a beating, then drove him up to Cassidy’s and left the body out front so all his friends could see. Then we found out later on that we beat up the wrong person. But by making up this name and saying “Angiulo” and the mafia, it was so unrealistic. There would have been bodies in the streets if that happened.
As far as the FBI is concerned, the film seemed to really let the Bureau off the hook. John Connolly and John Morris are the only FBI agents in the film who seem to know about Whitey’s double-dealing, and they’re portrayed as sympathetic pawns, to a degree.
The FBI were the ones that enabled Jimmy and Stevie to survive. There’s a scene early on in the film where Connolly and Jimmy make this “alliance,” and then Jimmy goes back and tells Stevie about how they’re going to use the FBI against the mafia. That didn’t happen because Stevie had already been an important since 1965. In 1967, Flemmi and Frank Salemme blew up Joe Barboza’s attorney, John Fitzgerald, and then Stevie and Frankie went on the run, with Frankie going down to New York and Stevie going up to Montreal. Stevie comes back to Boston in 1974, and then the following year, Jimmy becomes an informant. And Connolly was on the payroll. We considered Connolly a criminal, too. He was our informant, and that’s how it was portrayed to all of us—that we were paying for his information. That’s why no one suspected that Jim Bulger was informing on us, because every time we made a score we’d put money aside to pay our contacts in law enforcement, and we were getting good information. Jimmy used to tell me, “I can call any one of six FBI agents and they’ll come to me and jump in this car with a machine gun and go on a hit.” One FBI agent actually gave us 17 kilos of C-4 which we were going to use to blow up a reporter, Howie Carr. Howie thought it was a made-up story, until he found out it was the truth.
Why did Bulger want to assassinate Howie Carr?
He was just a vicious bastard. He was attacking everybody—innocent people and everything. There was a time when we weren’t doing much and everything was running smoothly, and he wrote an article about this kid in South Boston who got killed, and Jimmy decided to make him a hobby and shut him up once and for all. When I look back on it, I wish we did kill him. He’s still the most hated reporter in Boston. Everybody hates him.
And it wasn’t just the FBI that knew about Whitey and what he was doing. Jeremiah O’Sullivan, the head of the organized crime task force, was giving information to Connolly. Every time Whitey or Stevie’s name was mentioned they’d give the information to Connolly knowing that Connolly would be giving the information to us. They were all on the payroll. All of them were receiving presents all the time—money, wine, trips. Some agents you couldn’t give money to because they’d feel insulted, so you’d give them a crystal or a Chelsea Clock. Everybody had their weakness.
One mystery surrounding Whitey Bulger is the Lady of the Dunes—the nickname for the body of the mysterious woman found at the Race Point Dunes. Many believe Bulger murdered her.
That wasn’t him. What happened was, because of Deborah Hussey and Debra Davis being killed, he used to visit Provincetown. And he’d usually have his girlfriend or a young girl he was with. But Whitey didn’t kill her. That’s just people jumping on it and saying, “It could have been him.” He didn’t do it.
But Whitey did kill Debra Davis, you’re saying? That murder was never actually proven to be Whitey’s doing.
I wasn’t there for Debra Davis—it was just Jim Bulger and Steve Flemmi—but here’s the story I was told: [Whitey] told me how when he was in the house with Stevie, they grabbed Debra, dragged her downstairs to the basement, and put her in a chair. She was being killed because she was going to leave Stevie, and he’d told her too much—including about his relationship with John Connolly. So she’s in the chair and Stevie begins putting duct tape around her. She had beautiful hair, so Jim Bulger said to me, “When the duct tape went around her face and her hair, that’s when I knew it was over.” And Stevie kissed her on the forehead and said, “You’re going to another place now.” And then Jim Bulger’s exact words to me were, “And then she was strangled.” So he didn’t say who strangled her.
The relationship between Whitey and his brother Billy has always fascinated me—that the most notorious crime boss in Boston could have a brother who, as president of the Massachusetts State Senate, was the most powerful politician in Massachusetts.
OK, I was up at Billy Bulger’s house over 100 times with Jimmy. He never discussed any street business or crime with Billy. It was always conversations about regular family stuff. There’s no doubt in my mind that Billy knew Jimmy was involved in the rackets, but as far as the murders, if Billy did hear something about that I bet he’d choose not to believe it, because he’s a very religious man. There was the case of Senator John E. Powers, who was a judge. He fired Whitey from being a janitor at the courthouse. Billy never forgave him for that because after Whitey was fired from that job, he started committing all these crimes and stuff. So when it came to John E. Powers getting a raise or anything like that, it never made it past Billy Bulger in the Senate. So if someone was attacking his family, sure, he would stick it to that person whatever way he could legally. But as far as shielding Whitey from investigations? Billy never did that. Never.
Whitey’s attorney, Hank Brennan, recently shot down Black Mass, saying that “the real menace to Boston during that time and in other mob cases around the country—the federal government’s complicity in each and every one of those murders with the top echelon informant program.”
Well, [Jay Carney, Bulger's other attorney] is a buffoon. I mean, really. He was supposed to defend Jim Bulger, and when he stood up and gave his opening remarks, he basically admitted to every charge. What, he’s spoken to Jim Bulger for a hundred hours, and that’s supposed to make him something? Now, he speaks about Jim like he’s his best friend. He doesn’t know a thing about the real Jim Bulger, what’s happened, or anything. He’s literally a buffoon.
But it was the federal government that enabled us to get as far as we did. Without their interference, we would’ve been a short-lived gang. In some cases, we knew about investigations before they’d even been approved, or received financing. And it wasn’t just Connolly and the FBI. There was a bug in the Lancaster Street Garage that was given to us by a state trooper. The state police keep trying to pin it all on the FBI, but they were tipping us off, too. Whitey had his hands in everything. He had FBI. He had the Boston Police. He had Quincy Police. He had one guy in the DEA who was saying stuff to Connolly. He had people all over law enforcement that were giving information to him. With the movie, there’s no accuracy at all. The premise of corruption with the FBI is right, but as far as the events, the people, and the personalities? You could’ve told the truth and the movie would’ve been more violent than it is but they fabricated events. The movie is pure fiction.
Thanks to Marlow Stern.
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