Sunday, October 12, 2014


US Attorney Says: Five Families "Still There"


U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara: The Mob Is “Still There” | Vanity Fair: At Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, contributing editor Bryan Burrough asked U.S. attorney Preet Bharara a question he said he has always wanted to ask a U.S. attorney: what’s going on with the mafia?

“The mob is still there,” Bharara said. “The Five Families are still there, they’re still extorting business, they’re still using baseball bats.”Interestingly, he acknowledges this while fully aware of the fact that the Feds have cut their manpower and resources to combating OC in New York. As we reported in Why New York's Five Families Have Regained Power, the New York Mafia in fact "has quietly staged a comeback and is now more powerful than it has been in years," said Richard Frankel, special agent in charge of the Criminal Division for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office.

The fact is, the American Cosa Nostra was organized specifically to perpetuate itself. No matter how many single individuals are knocked out of the box by death or prison, the structured institution itself, currently pegged at about 8,000-strong (including inducted members and associates), continues. And learns. The key factor now is anti-terrorism, which is benefiting the Mafia in New York the same way Communism helped buffer it for the greater part of the 20th century. While the FBI sacrifices resources on one menace to chase another one, the mob gets back to work.It's the same story in Italy; while the cops kept the focus on the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Ndrangheta turned itself into a $72 billion a year criminal empire stretching across the globe that kills anyone and digs bunkers in the street in broad daylight.

Read more: http://www.cosanostranews.com/2014/10/us-attorney-says-five-families-still.html#more