this article was inthe saturday issue of the boston herald..
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=186117Police slice pizzeria drug shop: Reputed mob boss’ son bagged in bust
By Michele McPhee
Boston Herald Police Bureau Chief
Saturday, March 3, 2007 - Updated: 01:15 AM EST
The dough wasn’t the only thing flying at a Boston pizzeria as more customers came through the doors seeking a drug high than a pizza pie, cops say.
Police knew they were on a roll yesterday when they went to the owner’s Revere house, shook an industrial-sized can of Al Dente sauce, and it sounded more like a baby’s rattle than tomato paste.
They punctured the can and said it was filled with coffee grounds, masking the smell of the 2.2 pounds of cocaine inside.
Waving that 6-pound can in a Chelsea courtroom, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Dean Mazzone, chief of the narcotics unit, said, “The idea that a kilo of cocaine would be inside a sealed gravy can shows the sophisticated level of this dealer.”
Domenic DiCenso, 39, the owner of West End Pizza, on Friend Street near the TD BankNorth Garden, is the son of a reputed mobster who was rubbed out by a bomb blast 27 years ago, the Herald has learned.
State Police and Revere narcotics cops sparked their own Pizza Connection case after receiving a tip that two of DiCenso’s workers were allegedly selling cocaine in the same basement spot where the dough was flipped.
“For every one or two customers that came in for a slice, eight or 10 came in for cocaine,” said one investigator who worked on the six-month probe. Undercover officers also bought drugs in the location, Mazzone said.
DiCenso was busted at 34 Bryant St. in Revere yesterday, where elite drug squad cops sliced through his home, recovering two machine guns with defaced serial numbers and a silencer along with three handguns - including one weapon that had been reported stolen - and knots of cash.
DiCenso was held on $1 million bail on multiple gun and firearms charges. Possession of a silencer alone carries a life sentence.
The arrest comes nearly three decades after the alleged dealer lost his father, Francesco DiCenzo, when the family lived in Boston’s North End.
The elder man was killed at age 42 after a bomb blast ripped through his North Cambridge eatery, Franco’s pizza and breakfast shop, on Feb. 7, 1980.
DiCenzo was a made member of a New England’s Mafia crime family, several police sources told the Herald.
Two workers at the West End pizzeria, Aldo Sravia, 30, of East Boston and Jose Rivera, 33, of Cambridge, also were busted yesterday in connection with selling the drug coke along with slices. They were arraigned at Boston Municipal Court yesterday.
“This was a critical case,” said state police Detective Lt. William N. Christiansen. “We recovered a substantial amount of drugs and took some very dangerous weapons off the streets.”
