Mob witness describes triple life
Caporino was businessman, numbers runner and FBI informant
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
BY JOHN P. MARTIN
Star-Ledger Staff
Peter "Petey Cap" Caporino spent about 40 years in the mob and nearly half that time as an FBI informant, but looks neither part, which might explain why he was successful at both.
Now 69, Caporino has a slight frame, thick white hair and wire-rimmed glasses. At his courtroom debut yesterday as a mob turncoat, he could have passed for a school administrator or maybe even a museum curator, wearing a light gray double-breasted suit and delivering clipped phrases in a slightly nasal North Jersey accent.
What poured forth, however, was Caporino's criminal autobiography, one that began with him running numbers as a young man at a freight company and ended with him running a hidden recorder during hundreds of conversations with Genovese crime family associates.
Caporino's library of tapes led to charges last summer against 16 defendants, prompting prosecutors to proclaim they had delivered "a body blow" to the state's dominant crime family. Fifteen of them, including high-ranking captain Lawrence "Little Larry" Dentico, have pleaded guilty.
Michael Crincoli, accused of running loansharking operations from a Jersey City deli, was the lone holdout, the one who forced Caporino, the well-known and liked Hasbrouck Heights resident, from the shadows to the witness stand.
Crincoli's trial, now in its third week before U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, had so far been a parade of diner owners who testified they had borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from Crincoli at extortionate rates.
As the government's crowning witness, Caporino is expected to spend the next two days explaining to the jury his role as a prolific mob informant. Prosecutors hope he can persuade them Crincoli was not, as his attorney contends, a businessman lending friends money, but part of the organized crime family with Caporino.
"When you say 'our family,' what family were you with?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Schwartz asked.
"The Genovese," Caporino replied, matter of factly.
Caporino said he grew up in Hoboken, served three years in the Army and returned to work at a freight company in Fairfield. A co-worker asked if he wanted to help collect bets from workers.
"He said, 'I'll work the platform, you work the drivers,'" Caporino recalled. "I was a numbers runner."
Bettors won when their numbers matched the winning horses that day at Aqueduct or other racetracks. Caporino said he kept 25 percent of his gross collections, and passed the rest up the ladder.
After his father died, Caporino left the warehouse to take over the family business -- an amusement company that placed pinball machines and pool tables in taverns, he said.
But his numbers ring continued, growing got so big that he soon was introduced to James "Jimmy Nap" Napoli, a powerful Genovese captain. Caporino agreed to pay Napoli 25 percent of his proceeds. In return, he got protection; he was under the mob's wing.
"He said, 'If anyone ever approaches you, you just tell them you're with me, mention my name,'" Caporino recalled.
In 1969, the year of storybook seasons for the Jets and Mets, Caporino expanded into sports bookmaking. From then on, the names of his bosses changed but the operations remained largely the same.
After Napoli went to prison, Caporino said, he began paying $2,500 weekly tribute to Louis Anthony "Bobby" Manna, the New Jersey-based Genovese consigliere. He made his payments through intermediaries at reputed mob hangouts, like Casella's restaurant in Hoboken, and succeeded in getting Manna to ultimately lower his payoffs to $850 a week.
When Manna went to jail in 1988, Caporino said, he paid tributes to his wife, Ida Manna. And in 1998, he shifted his tribute to Joseph "Big Joe" Scarbrough, an associate in West Orange, who pleaded guilty in the case earlier this year.
Caporino had a club, the Character Club, along Monroe Street in Hoboken, where friends came to toss back drinks and "have a good time," he said. All the while Caporino had secretly been helping the FBI.
"I was an informant," he testified, his voice dropping a notch.
For how long? Schwartz, the prosecutor, asked.
"More than 15 years," Caporino replied.
Crincoli watched the witness intently at times, sometimes cracking a half-smile. Other times, he kicked his head back as if he was bored. Caporino rarely returned glances toward the defense table, instead focusing on the prosecutor.
In 2002, Caporino, his wife and about 30 others were arrested on state gambling charges. He decided to become a cooperating FBI witness.
"My wife had been to prison before, and I knew she couldn't do it again," Caporino testified. "I knew she wouldn't be able to do the time."
The couple also has a disabled adult daughter.
Caporino wore a pager for his numbers ring, so agents gave him one with a hidden recorder that they could activate remotely. Toward the end of the three-year probe, he said, they let him turn it on and off by himself.
He taped hundreds of conversations, although prosecutors are expected to play only about 30.
Caporino said he had been considering giving up the business, or relocating his operations. At one point, he said, he went to Philadelphia to meet with an associate who had relocated his betting rooms there.
"He told me how great it was down there, how you could operate much freer than you could up here," Caporino said. "So I went down for a look-see."
But he never made the move.
