Capeci is reporting that Petey Red DiChiara and the Genovese has consumed the Bonanno's old grip on the newspaper business. He also says the Petey Red operates out of a club on the Lower East Side.
Is this believable? I thought all the old LES social clubs were shuttered.
Just curious because you hardly expect to see a story that says: "Lower East Side mobsters take over newspaper business". At least not in 2014.
"Take over the newspaper business" is a stretch but there have been some cases in recent years involving the mob and the Newspaper & Mail Deliverers Union. Back in 2009 the union offices were actually raided in an investigation into ongoing corruption and mob ties. Besides getting relatives no show jobs (DiChiara and Colombo underboss Benjamin Castellazo did this most recently) the DiChiara crew was "bootlegging" newspapers by using non-union drivers to distribute stolen newspapers and magazines from which they got kickbacks. That's been a mob racket for decades.
Traditionally, the Bonannos were involved with the
New York Post while the Luccheses were involved with the
New York Times and
New York Daily News.
A good article about some of this came out in 2001 -
http://www.villagevoice.com/2001-03-06/news/the-newspaper-racket/
