I would be thankful if anyone knows much about former Gambino capo and powerhouse Anthony Scotto. He took over "Tough Tony" Anastasia running the waterfront and unions and was by all accounts ridiculously powerful. Apparently he even may have been in contact at some point with President Carter such was his power! Gotti in his infinite wisdom appeared to shelf him in the 80s and replace him on the Waterfront, and then his mob career seems to have petered out.
What interests me most though is how he seems to be seen by many as a respectable union guy and a man in general. he's even lectured at Harvard University on labor relations! His daughter is apparently a New York News Anchor and Anthony has made quite a few public appearances.
Can anyone add more info on this guy? Thanks

From what I understand, today he spends most of his time running his hugely successful midtown restaurant. By all accounts, he seems to have distanced himself from the life.

Whenever Rosanna Scotto covers a mob case on television, I can't help laughing out loud. Because to the best of my knowledge, during her more than twenty year career she's never even mentioned her father's past. I mean, I guess it's no one's business, but she is a journalist.

They honestly seem like decent people to me. I've seen them on television and I've eaten at Fresco by Scotto a few times. The family is as friendly in real life as they are on the Today Show.

But, that doesn't mean that Anthony Scotto didn't hurt a few people (or worse) when he was younger. You have to remember that even the most innocuous looking old man was young at one time .

PB did he basically retire in the 80s from the mob? It can't be understated in my opinion the power and wealth he wielded, they sure don't have guys and rackets like that anymore!
PS. did Scotto, Anthony himself appear on the today show?!

So, you can retire from the life?

Apparently so..In fact quite a few have done now, even Gotti jr appears to have...

That question has probably been answered in Turnbull's "Myths and Realities" thread.

I'd say that today it's a myth that you "go in alive and come out dead." More and more guys have walked away in recent years without ratting (Michael Franzese and Junior Gotti being two very public examples).

Even years ago, when some of the lower level made guys got too old to earn, they were pretty much put out to pasture. It's a romantic, Hollywood like notion to think that you're going to call on an 85 year old man to do a hit, but it's not very realistic.

I wonder though if that is the case in other ethnic crime organizations.

If you believe Gravano's book then his capo Aurello was allowed to "retire" when Gotti took over.

Gravano is easy to decode. If something in no way at all adds up, he's making it up and it was a sociopath move. Like the Louie Milito / Dibernardo murders.

Turns out my ma knows Anthony Scotto pretty well. I brought him up somehow, and she had no idea he was even connected. Even back then when he was in the life, he attended social gatherings, and nobody had the faintest idea. Joey Gallo was a well known social figure beacuse he was connected. But with Scotto, nobody knew. Apparently he was dating a girl that went to all the prestigious New York gatherings, and he would come along. My mom says at the time when she met Rosanna, she had to pick him up from jail. But she assumed it was for a DUI or something minor. Nobody has ever been so effective at blending in to mainstream life. Living a high profile life yet never attracting any illicit attention. He's a genius, really.

There's also not a single violent blemish on his record as far as I could tell. I'm sure he was a LOT more popular on the Waterfront than the Anastasia brothers. I would put him right up there with Johnny Dio in terms of the Unions. He was just on the Today show here 4 nights ago cooking with his daughter.

It's also ironic that he got so far without violence, or at least as far as we know. Because he's physically imposing, and according to my parents, all they remember were his callused and tough hands, very intimidating. Maybe he didn't need the reputation.

Scotto was so skilled at fooling the masses that Carter was actually going to name him US Secretary of Labor. The Secretary of Labor is the 10th in line to be President. If he hadn't been indicted, he would have taken the job. Carter didn't even put two and two together until then.

Ah, come on, Barrett. In Amagansett, Elmo is considered intimidating .

Scotto is a pretty common name but I wonder if that Gambino associate who got wrapped up in that prostitution thing last year from Staten Is, he was only 24-25, is a distant relative? Mike Scotto. Theres been a couple Scottos made and or associated with the Gambinos if im not mistaken...wonder if theyre all related

Anthony Scotto has to be one of the most successful gangsters of all time. He set his family up nice and they're successful, spent minimal time in the can in relation to what he's (allegedly) done, owns an insanely successful business, and hasn't caught a sneak bullet to the head by one of his peers. Honestly these days it really doesn't get much better than that in regards to "the life"

tt120 I had also wondered if he may have been some distant relative, though it is a common name...yeah that guy was like 24 if he does his time like a man he's going to be progressing at a young age.

I cant say one way or another since I dont know the kid but IMO he just seems like another young staten island hothead oxy/steroid dealer wanna-be wiseguy. who knows though maybe he'll be the next Anthony Scotto some day?

Like Pussy said on the Sopranos: "you can't get anyone good anymore, there either on drugs or psycho's"

haha...exactly. theres no shortage of sociopaths around here with a vowel @ the end of their name out for an easy $, but I doubt we'll ever see the likes of an Anthony Scotto again. If an upcoming gangster is 1/100th as successful as him they should consider themselves lucky

Is it true that Scotto married Tough Tony Anastasio's daughter?

I think so yeah, I know they are related.

I had to bump this thread. So this guy has been completely forgiven by the public now? Scotto has been on tv and stuff I heard. He made a ton of money and is now enjoying retirement, I guess crime does sometimes pay.

Nicky, if you find Tony Scotto interesting, these articles might be interesting as well:

From Utica Press, Sep 20, 1980:

"Convicted union waterfront boss Anthony Scotto was ordered
in Brooklyn Supreme Court Friday to surrender his $120,000-a-year-plus-expenses post as vice president of the AFLCIO
International Longshoremen's Association.
It was from this base and as boss of the Brooklyn waterfront that Scotto, convicted of racketeering, became a power in Democratic politics and a crony of mayors, governors and even presidents.
Justice Leonard Scholnick also stripped Anthony Anastasio of his post as executive vice president of Brooklyn ILA
Local 1814, of which Scotto is president.
The pair were convicted Nov. 15 of shaking down waterfront employers for more than $200,000 in return for reducing
exaggerated accident claims by ILA members and for throwing business to firms employing ILA men.
Scotto was sentenced Jan. 22 to five years in federal prison and fined $75,000.
Anastasio, a cousin of Scotto's wife, got
two years. Both are appealing the convictions. If upheld, the sentences would mean that both men would lose their union posts under federal law.
However, the bistate New York-New Jersey Waterfront Commission ordered the immediate removal of Scotto and Anastasio, from their union offices.
The ILA challenged the commission's order, claiming that federal law holds precedence and that Scotto and Anastasio
were entitled to hold their posts until their federal appeals are heard.
The commission then went into state court seeking a permanent injunction stripping them of their union jobs."

///While in prison, I believe Joe Biccardo functioned as the acting capo for Scotto´s crew.
The Anastasio named in this article is the same Anastasio (Anthony) who committed suicide in 2010.

In 1969, The FBI listed Scotto as a captain in the Gambino Family.

In Utica Press 1969 (Sorry, don´t know the exact date):

"Scotto, who has been photographed in the White House with former president Johnson, said wednesday there was "no truth" to the official report. "This isn´t the first time a thing like this has been said against me, and I guess it won´t be the last time as long as my name is Scotto and not Schwartz or O´Hara.""

The article also quotes Scotto saying: "I am not in a position to question their alleged informant because I don´t know who he is supposed to be, but as far as I´m concerned there´s no truth to it. This was started by the Waterfront Commission years ago. It´s an anti labor tactic."

In Gloversville Leader, Jan 27 1972:

"....Scotto began to emerge as a major power in New York in
1963 when he inherited ILA Local 1814 from his father-in-law,
Anthony "Tough Tony" Anastasia, brother of the late Albert
Anastasia of Murder, Inc.
By custom, the president of the 9,000-member local is elected
a vice president of the 45,000-member parent union.
Scotto also inherited Tough Tony's feud with Gleason, and is frequently mentioned as a challenger to Gleason for the
union presidency.
From 1814's headquarters at 343 Court St. in Brooklyn, Scotto, his relatives and associates rule over at least eight other ILA locals. Included are two which were headed by Joseph
Colozzo, also identified in the Justice Department report as a Gambino captain.
Tall, suave, college-educated and politically active, Scotto's
political alliances cross party lines. In 1961 he was involved
in a citizens committee for Athur Levitt who was running in a primary contest for mayor against incumbent Robert Wagner, a fellow Democrat. In 1966, Scotto headed a labor committee for Democrat Frank O´Connor who was running for govonor. Scotto supported Lindsay [the New York mayor at the time, if I´m not mistaken] as a Republican and has continued backing him as a
Democrat.
His first association with the Lindsay administration was in
1965 when he was named a director of the New York City
Commercial Development Corp., a firm formed under the
aegis of Lindsay's Department of Commerce as a broker for
federal Small Business Administration loans....
The following year, 1966, Lindsay appointed Scotto to the
New York City Council on Port Development and Promotion, an official city policy-making body headed by Lindsay. Scotto
is still a member.
"Mr. Scotto...is as vitally concerned and informed as the
other members about the port needs," Lindsay said of his reasons
for Scotto's appointment..."

///Anthony Scotto´s middlename is Michael. I think it is possible that the Mike Scotto mentioned in a post above could be a relative of Anthony. A nephew? A son?

Thanks very much HK! Very interesting!

Also found some interesting stuff on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site regarding Tony Scotto:

"Only recently the "Saturday Evening Post" carried a feature
article by Budd Schulberg credited as a water-front expert of sorts which set forth his analysis of present conditions, based on his inquiry of several months duration, as compared with the violent days of previous years with which he dealt in his prize-winning movie "On the Waterfront"....

Schulberg emphasized that reform on the Brooklyn docks did not end with Tony Anastasio's death "for one of the cleanest breaks with the past was the choice of Anastasio's son-in-law Anthony Scotto, a man outside the Mafia aristocracy, to head the huge 15,000-man Brooklyn ILA local which represents approximately one-half the working force of the port."
Schulberg describes Scotto as a "young, modern, intelligent,
forward-looking leader, who represents a refreshing change from the Mafia that held these Brooklyn docks at gunpoint when I first came in. (Circa 1950)"....

With regard to Anastasio's transformation into a labor leader militantly representing the best interests of the rank and file our investigations under the Criminal Intelligence Program
determined a few years ago that Anastasio was a caporegima in La Cosa Nostra answering to family boss Carlo Gambino, a commission member. Shortly before his death Anastasio himself admitted to New York Agents in confidence that he was responsible to Gambino....

...Top echelon informants who are members of La Cosa Nostra in New York have identified Scotto as a La Cosa Nostra member in the Carlo Gambino family, answering to the same superiors who controlled Anastasio. Following Anastasio's death a member-informant in the Gambino group reported that Scotto was acting as "caporegima" in Anastasio's place and that it was indicated he would probably be made permanent in this position.
Informants have also identified Scotto's father John Scotto, also active in ILA affairs, as a member of La Cosa Nostra.

In Anthony Scotto La Cosa Nostra has an ideal representative in that he is on the record completely "clean". He has no arrest
record, he is a college graduate and is accepted in legitimate circles. As a matter of fact, Scotto was nominated by the U S Junior Chamber of Commerce this past year for its "Ten Outstanding Young Men Award", which nomination Scotto declined because of a "wide philosophical gap between the Jaycees and labor unions".

At the ILAs convention in Miami this past year during voting for top posts in this huge International, Scotto was the
leading candidate for Executive Vice President, the number one
position to the President, until, at the last minute he shifted his own 110 vote bloc to another candidate. Informants close to ILA affairs have stated that in the future Scotto will be the man most likely to succeed Thomas "Teddy" Gleason in the ILA presidency...."

HK I had also wondered about the Scotto kid who got busted in 2010 with Marino and others, is he related? Perhaps someone on here may know about him or his background. I think he was only 25 or something.

I think they may be related, but honestly I can´t say for sure.
Anthony Scotto´s middlename is Michael...

I was also surprised at his age, 25 is young, I mean I know he's not made but still, usually the guys busted today are at least 30 plus.

I heard Scotto was a a candidate for the secretary of labor under Carter for a minute. Tony Scotto's family is all over the TV in New York, with the family's restaurants around town and his daughter Rosanna who hosts a morning TV show with...the NYPD Commissioner's son. Only in New York.

Here's an interesting blog post I found about the Anastasia-Scotto waterfront:

http://americanunderworld.blogspot.com/2011/11/anastasia-waterfront-to-he-brink-of.html

The Anastasia Waterfront
To the Brink of Respectability

For decades the waterfronts of Brooklyn were under the control of one family that took to the docks in the early 1920s upon their arrival in America and rose to the pinnacle of labor racketeering in the United States. The presence of the Anastasia family was an everyday aspect of life on the docks but that presence evolved over the decades from one of ‘respect’ to one of ‘respectability.’ The first Anastasia on the waterfront would eventually be one of the most infamous underworld bosses in history while the last would earn the upper world respectability so many mobsters had strived for, nearly rising to the highest labor position in the land.

It began when a young Umberto Anastasio, Americanized to Albert Anastasia, began working on the docks soon after arriving in New York. Albert worked on the docks with his three brothers Anthony, Gerardo and Joseph. They all made some inroads up the chain either as union representatives or stevedores for the shipping companies. But it was Albert who stood out the most among the Anastasia brothers. Through sheer violence and intimidation, Albert would soon become a force to be reckoned with on the Brooklyn piers all the while his influence continued to grow across the full realm of the violent Prohibition underworld. Albert would play a leading role in the upheaval that the New York underworld saw in the late Prohibition period, eventually taking part in the assassination of top mobster Joe “The Boss” Masseria and being named as underboss of the Mangano crime family when the city’s Mafia Commission was formed. In the years following the Castellemmarrese War, he would become the head of the syndicate’s enforcement arm with Lepke Buchalter that would become known as Murder, Inc and earn Anastasia the moniker “The Lord High Executioner.”

As he rose in the ranks of the New York mob, Albert passed direct control of the docks to his brother Anthony. “Tough Tony,” as he was known, was a tough union organizer and long time president of the Local 1814 of the International Longshoreman’s Association, overseeing all the cargo and rackets moving through the Brooklyn docks. Gerardo became a business agent for Local 929 and Joseph served as a foreman for one of the stevedore companies. During World War II, Albert and Tough Tony were major figures in the agreement made between the government and the mobsters who controlled the docks that led to Charlie Luciano’s release from prison. The deal that was brokered was for the mob to act as guardians against German agents looking to sabotage the ports of New York and New Jersey, in return Luciano would be moved to a medium security prison and eventually released, though deported. At the same time, you would expect that some immigration issues would have disappeared as well considering that for most of the war the Anastasia’s were illegal alien enemy nationals.

When Albert became the boss of their Mafia family in the early 1950s, Anthony Anastasia was at the peak of his power in the ILA and was reaching a sense of respectability in the labor world. Albert was one of the most powerful mob bosses of one of the most powerful crime families in the United States, a member of the national syndicate commission and full control of Brooklyn port at its peak volume. But his reign was fraught with treachery from the start when he made his boss, Vincent Mangano, vanish and discontent began to grow both within his own family and throughout the national syndicate. Things would change on the Brooklyn waterfront for Tough Tony in October 1957, when Albert was famously murdered in the barbershop at the Park Sheraton Hotel. Anthony remained the head of Local 1814 but his influence began to wane. He was also becoming leery of the intentions of the new leadership in the New York Mafia, particularly the conniving Vito Genovese. Eventually, ‘Tough Tony’ became so disillusioned and embittered that he began secretly talking to the FBI and in recorded conversations, admitted his brother needed to die. Before law enforcement could use his information, Anastasio passed away of natural causes still at the head of his local.

The mantle of the Anastasia waterfront empire was passed to Tough Tony’s nephew Anthony ‘Todo’ Anastasio and son in law Anthony Scotto. Both were made members of the Gambino family and continued the family’s grip on the docks. Scotto would lead the way as president of the local and Todo rising to VP. Scotto took it a step further by using his union influence to become a political insider and fundraiser for the Democratic Party in New York, gaining respectability among labor leaders and politicians alike. He even became friendly with the mob’s greatest enemy, Robert Kennedy, having the ILA support his Senate campaign as he rose to the position of national organizer in the union, making him among the top three officers in the union. At the same time, Todo ran the family’s more traditional rackets on the waterfront like bookmaking and loan sharking while working as vice president of the Local 1814. Scotto’s stature in the legitimate labor world continued to grow as he became arguably the most powerful labor racketeer in the country, made a grab for the national presidency of the ILA and was even named as a possible candidate for Secretary of Labor in the Jimmy Carter administration. If that had happened, then the Gambino crime family would have had a member in the cabinet, with the president’s ear, and in charge of national labor policy. But just as Scotto was reaching upper world respectability, both he and Todo were convicted in 1979 for taking $350,000 in bribes over a several year period. After getting out in the mid 1980s, new Gambino boss John Gotti replaced Scotto as family’s top man on the docks.

Anthony Scotto slowly withdrew from direct mob activity after his release from prison and has been active in numerous legitimate operations as well as some consulting with other unions. Like Tommy Gambino, Don Carlo’s son who was Scotto’s equivalent in the garment trucking industry, Anthony Scotto has faded out of the rackets and into retirement. His family, which includes a daughter that is a local TV personality, runs several successful Italian restaurants in New York. Todo Anastasio didn’t fade into retirement like his cousin Anthony but continued his work in the rackets and union organizing. For more than two decades after his release, Todo stayed on the street and on the waterfront until being convicted in 2010 for arson, extortion and racketeering. In May 2010, the 81 year old Anthony ‘Todo’ Anastasio decided he was too old for prison and before he reported to serve his sentence he sat at his kitchen table and put two bullets in his chest. With his passing, the Brooklyn waterfront saw the end of an era that stretched back almost 90 years. The Age of the Anastasias

From the time that Albert Anastasia cracked his first head on the piers to the day his elderly nephew was convicted for the final time the Anastasia family represented powerful figures at the Brooklyn docks. The period encompassed the entire history of the modern Mafia in America, providing insight into its creation, rise to power and virtual control of significant sectors of the economy, to what has been dubbed numerous times as its demise. But you can be sure that as long as ILA Local 1814 remains in Brooklyn, the Mad Hatter, Tough Tony, Scotto and Todo will be remembered.

Thanks Old Smoke!

A relative of mine knew a guy named Scotto back in the 60s/early 70s who seemed to run Bensonhurst. At the very least he was the biggest neighorbood bookie, at most perhaps a soldier or Capo? All my relative remembers is he commanded a lot of respect.

anytime

Recently chatting with my distant family in the NYC area.
Aunt told me in my dad's younger days (Circa 70s)
He used to work for a guy named Scotto.

NEver really questioned much more into it. As not to pry and seem liek a mob geek. But the way she phrased it and didn't elaborate made me think she was refering to Anythony.

Added to the fact she grew up in Williamsburg.
And he in the Kickerbocker/Bushwick area. Onlya dds to the intrigue.

He's quite a low-profile guy. Pressed to find more information.
Wish me and my father weren't estranged. love to know more info about the guy and his capacity working for him on the waterfront.

PS: Apparently, his impression on my pops was so great, that he inspired him to learn Italian (Read/Write) and also kinda masquerade in that culture for a bit as a guinea. Which is pretty odd considering my dad's a Puerto Rican dude (Altho Passable as an Italian). That and given the fact that the Latin neighborhoods in those areas used to be Italian. It makes sense.
(Just thought I'd share. Found it pretty interesting that someone would do that)