Springfield (MA) Mob Crew’s ‘Our Gang’ Back Together Again Under New Management, But Same Faces, Lifelong Friendships Remain

Freshly-baptized Ralphie Santaniello and his boys’ return to the forefront of mafia affairs in Springfield (MA) is a reunion of sorts. Coming back with him will be the so-called usual suspects from his longtime inner circle, per sources with intimate knowledge of the situation.

Johnny Cal. Richie the Postman. Lou the Shoe and Frankie the Shark. Gerry D and even Fat Chickie should be making some cameos. In other words, the band is getting back together, minus Big Al, Bingy and The Animal.

Santaniello and his dad, Amedeo, seized power in the Springfield mob crew last week, leading a Genovese crime family-sanctioned mutiny to reclaim the regime back from renegade crew boss Albert (The Animal) Calvanese by taking back control of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club by force. Calvanese, 61, almost died in a horrific car crash earlier this spring and is recovering from breaking both his legs. He’s first cousins with Ralphie Santaniello and is Amedeo’s nephew. Although the Springfield crew has always been a satellite branch of the Genovese crime family, Calvanese never earned an official job appointment from the Westside and instead simply declared he was assuming command sans blessing out of the Bronx.

The Santaniellos ran the Springfield mob crew along with Calvanese in the first half of the 2010s, until Ralphie and most of his loyalists were busted and sent to prison in the summer of 2016 and Amedeo was forced on the shelf, with Calvanese coldly stealing their rackets for himself. Over the past few years, mafia shot callers in New York and Boston became increasingly irritated with Calvanese’s antics, which included allowing outed mob informants and leaders of the Latin Kings to do business on the grounds of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel club, filing a police protection order to keep the Santaniellos from stepping foot on the property and shunning sit-down requests and

According to sources on both sides of the law, 56-year old Ralphie Santaniello, received induction into the Genovese mob at a recent ceremony in New York and got the Westside’s sign-off of on his and his dad’s power play. Amedeo Santaniello, 85, is firmly back in the good graces of Genovese shot callers and being looked to by them to serve as his son’s pseudo underboss and consigliere in their tasking him with righting the ship in Springfield, these sources allege. The elder Santaniello reportedly angered imprisoned Genovese bosses in the late 2010s regarding a photo he was in with a known cooperator who put several influential and beloved Westside chieftains behind bars for life, but by now has recaptured his status and the faith in him from the powers that be in the Big Apple.

Last Monday morning, the Santaniellos’s men changed the locks and evicted the Calvanese camp from the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel club in Springfield’s South End. Then, on Thursday, local Goodfella Gerry Daniele called a meeting of the club’s roster of due payers and called a vote to allow a changeover of club administration and the Santaniellos to be let back in as members; the Santaniellos were unanimously voted back into the club’s ranks.

Daniele is part of Springfield’s “Our Gang,” the group of old-school Santaniello loyalists lining up back behind them like it’s the 2000s or 2010s all over again. Most of these guys have all known each other since childhood. Per more than five sources, Springfield mob stalwarts, Frank (The Shark) DePergola, Lou (The Shoe) Santos, Richard (Richie the Postman) Valentini and Giovanni (Johnny Cal) Calabrese. are alleged to be part of the Santaniellos’ remodeling plans, a kind of old is new vibe with veterans and smarter-from-past-mistake mobsters eager to help the Santaniellos bring the crew back to esteem for themselves, the city’s underworld pride in general and the bosses in New York for the Genovese clan.

Former bookie and Springfield mob figure David (Fat Chickie) Cecchetelli grew up with Ralphie Santaniello and was present last week when the club changed hands and Daniele successfully proposed Santaniello and his father to have their full-membership rights at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Club returned to them. Cecchetelli is retired from the mafia life and making a go off it in the film-production and social-media space. The entire group of Western Massachusetts knockaround guys, along with Calvanese, came up in the rackets in the Scibelli brothers and Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno regime of the 1990s and were contemporaries of one-time Springfield mob crew boss Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta, Big Al Bruno’s protege-turned-adversary-and-eventual-successor.

After Arillotta engineered Big Al’s headline-grabbing assassination at the urging of Genovese brass in New York City in the parking lot of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Club on November 23, 2003 and became a skipper at just 33 years old, he filled his crew’s top spots with his boyhood pals. Ralphie Santaniello was his right-hand man and Calvanese, his No. 1 loan shark and collector. “Lou the Shoe and “Fat Chickie” were his main bookmakers and Amedeo Santaniello and “Frankie the Shark” DePergola were his primary advisers, sounding boards and go-betweens with the New York mob. The Geas brothers (Freddy & Ty) were Arillotta’s most-trusted enforcers and Valentini, Calabrese and Daniele reported directly to the Santaniellos, according to federal-court filings and FBI records.

DePergola, 67, was Big Al Bruno’s driver and was with him when he was killed. Upon Arillotta flipping and the Geas getting locked up for facilitating the Bruno hit, both DePergola and Ralphie Santaniello were nominated for getting their respective buttons. Right before he cut his deal with the government, Arillotta suspected Lou the Shoe, a slick Dominican-born sports-gambling lieutenant, was talking to the feds and put a $10,000 murder contract on his head that’s wheels never got into motion. Calvanese’s decision to allow “Bingy” Arillotta, 55, to return to the Western Mass region and back into the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Club following his release from prison to record a podcast interview made waves in New York City and Boston and was at least partially related to his ouster, per a number of sources with intimate knowledge of the situation.