It's more likely that they got good deals through friends, i.e. mobbed up contractors. I wouldn't be surprised if those houses are bought and paid for. That's one thing that has always made mobsters rich - the stuff they don't have to pay for or get at a steep discount.

Anyway, this crew goes back to the 1990's when they were known for robbing dozens of night deposit boxes at banks in several states. They were also involved in drugs, trafficking hundreds of kilos of marijuana from the west coast to New York. D'Avanzo and 3 other guys were busted back in 2008 for an attempted bank burglary on Long in Staten Island.