This excerpt was published in Gangland on 1/4/1999

"Last year in Gang Land was either the year of the stool pigeon or the year of the jailbird. Take your pick. It doesn't matter. These birds of the same feather are getting harder to tell apart through their sheer stupidity.
Speaking of sheer stupidity, we start our look at the past year by presenting Gang Land's first annual Ernest Volkman award to John Lombardi. The Volkie, we're sad to say, will be an annual award to the so-called journalist who makes the most mistakes and comes up with the most unadulterated drivel in one article, book, or television appearance or who consistently exhibits the wretched and pathetic journalistic non-skills of Ernest Volkman".

In his awful book, "Gangbusters," Volkman, (Gang Land, Nov. 2) made so many factual errors that you'd need a computer and a couple of cyber geeks to count them. Under a threat of a lawsuit from a couple of gangsters, Volkman, his publisher, and Penthouse Magazine -- which printed excerpts from the book -- had to publicly fess up to the erroneous drivel.