I will respond to everything shortly

Fourth question: You said:
"Members are still under surveillance by BPD and NYS Police, Im not sure about the Feds but they are thought to be viable per local and state law enforecement's definition."
Why have numerous law enforcement officials (I have listed many) denied that the Buffalo mafia exists. They have no reason to do so and it could only hurt any future cases for them if they're lying. By the way, this includes Buffalo federal prosecutor Lee Coppola, Erie County DA Frank J. Clark and Buffalo FBI agent Andrew Goralski. You are saying that LE are conducting surveillance on mobsters. I have given you clear evidence that LE does not consider these guys to be still active.

Also, if LE are conducting surveillance on these guys (which it's clear they're not), why have there been no busts in over 15 years? This can't be compared to Chicago or Detroit, since there is usually a bust every few years for those families (more so for Chicago, less so for Detroit). Usually investigations are finished in less than five years, when a case is made. It's extremely rare a mob investigation lasts over a decade. Since you are claiming "LE is keeping tabs on these guys" we can assume there's multiple investigations. Yet no cases.
By the way, your initial answer to this question above was "You know nothing about Buffalo or know anyone from here" - True, but it's common knowledge that LE don't follow people and watch people for 15+ years without making a bust...
Fifth question:
You said that the existence of the mob in Buffalo is not a secret, and people know what they do. Then why would the area's two leading news stations consistently report, complete with backed up sources, that the family is defunct. Why would acclaimed mob experts and journalists be trying to cover up the existence of this family?
Sixth question:
You said that the articles I posted could be easily misinterpreted. How in the hell do you misinterpret: "The Mafia is all but dead in Western New York. So what killed it?" with comments in the article such as ""“Most of the men who were responsible for the mob murders in Buffalo are dead,” he said. “The hit men who committed the murders are dead." "And no young people have emerged to replace them, Coppola said."" and """Today, both Cohen and Coppola estimate that there are no more than a handful of surviving mob members in the area, with no viable organization to unite them, and no leader."""
There is no ambiguity in these statements and no room for misinterpretation. These articles I posted explicitly state the Mafia is dead in Buffalo and Western NY.
Seventh question:
You noted that "Cops here are friends with members, are involved in crime themselves and corrupt prone, just like everywhere else." It seems you are implying that corruption is a big factor in why these alleged mobsters aren't getting busted "just like everywhere else." Except "everywhere else" where there is an active mafia family or criminal enterprise, there are busts. If you are implying that corruption in Buffalo is so prevalent that busts are impossible, that is a wild statement. Of course, if you are implying something different then I apologise for the confusion. Any insight?

Tampa, I know you will think I am crazy but I agree with Rooster about this. Law enforcement in Buffalo is very corrupt—Esspecialky in Niagara County and the city of Niagara Falls. (I live in Niagara County.) It is even more corrupt at the federal level. And unfortunately, our local papers take everything the Feds say as gospel truth. If you would like verification about how corrupt the Buffalo Field Office is, contact Buffalo area lawyer William Gary Iannaccone. He can detail how the Buffalo Mob and the FBI in WNY have been strange bed fellows since the 60’s. He is working to build a case against the government. According to his research the FBI used the Buffalo Mob and their drug trafficking for the MK Ultra program. He has evidence of some really strange and scary shit—including experimentation on poor Italian Americans with mob help.

I found this article very interesting, in it the claims made are that law enforcnent believes Gingello to be in control of the mod in Rochester but then Gingello denies? Who are we to believe, law enforcement or the Mafia?

http://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/latest-headlines/does-the-mob-exist-today/192643822

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/man_accused_of_running_the_luc.html

Cohen Bust

http://buffalonews.com/1990/09/07/1...ught-canadian-arrests-tied-to-local-mob/

Dated bust I didnt even know about

Nickle City, posted this on a different forum...maybe he can enlighten us a little.

I know an undertaker that did a funeral for someone in the Buffalo Crime Family from Niagara Falls a few years ago. Said there was a large Canadian faction in attendance and that everyone was coming up to talk to Butch. The unsabstanfiated report about the current administration seems to corraberate what this funeral director told me a few years ago.

Nicky, I believe that the Cohen bust is a direct link to the Buffalo Family because he was close to Nicoletti. Beacause this is what I heard not because what isnt documented in the article.

Tampa, I know you will think I am crazy but I agree with Rooster about this. Law enforcement in Buffalo is very corrupt—Esspecialky in Niagara County and the city of Niagara Falls. (I live in Niagara County.) It is even more corrupt at the federal level. And unfortunately, our local papers take everything the Feds say as gospel truth. If you would like verification about how corrupt the Buffalo Field Office is, contact Buffalo area lawyer William Gary Iannaccone. He can detail how the Buffalo Mob and the FBI in WNY have been strange bed fellows since the 60’s. He is working to build a case against the government. According to his research the FBI used the Buffalo Mob and their drug trafficking for the MK Ultra program. He has evidence of some really strange and scary shit—including experimentation on poor Italian Americans with mob help.

Nickle City, I appreciate the response and the insight... but come on...

Feds are pretty incorruptible compared to city and state cops. Nowhere in America in the past 50 years has the mob been able to infiltrate the feds at such a high level as you are indicating. As well as this, even city and state cops in most cities are relatively clean because there's so much regulation and guidelines that it's pretty hard to cultivate a decent number of seriously corrupt cops. This is why there really isn't that much mafia-police corruption nowadays - none at a federal level whatsoever, and very scattered cases at a city level.

Also, the mob weren't able to stop the fuzz in the 80s and 90s. Following that, even Todaro crime family 'truthers' like Giacomo and Rooster concede the family was decimated following the tailend of the 90s. So how can you possibly try and say that fed-level corruption is going on in the weakened Buffalo mafia today. Think about it: the Gambinos & Genoveses, with 250+ members haven't been able to infiltrate feds. How and why would a family with 25-35 active members (this seems to be the ballpark that Giacomo and Rooster are suggesting) be able to corrupt the feds of all people.

Thanks for the response NickleCity.

Buffalo's Unraveling Nexus of OC, CIA, FBI & Nazi-type Experiments
May 29, 2009 at 6:09am
By William G. Iannaccone.
NLG Buffalo Chapter

Like the 1937 founders of the National Lawyers Guild I'd like to carry on in the tradition of an antifascist ethos, born of personal experience.

"Son, there are things that people made me do. I don't have the heart to tell you. I want to leave you these papers. You're going to have to figure it out for your self. No one is going to help you. This way I'll know you'll be alright."

My mother spoke these words of wisdom as she handed me a file box brimming with documents giving me clues to my own family's once hidden past, before her passing in 1978.

The pieces of the puzzle fell neatly in place to reveal a clarion scenario. After years of investigation and pro se litigation I'd gathered the evidence and family testimonials to prove my father, a WWII veteran, and my self, were unwitting victims of the CIA's MK-ULTRA behavioral science program.

Buffalo, N.Y, hometown of OSS veteran "Wild Bill" Donovan, I found to be a city steeped in a mysterious unraveling nexus of organized crime; CIA; FBI, and Nazi-type experimenters.

In the book "Hide In Plain Sight," Leslie Waller chronicles the court cases of Thomas Leonard of Buffalo who ran into a legal brick wall in efforts to contact his children, who along with his estranged wife and hoodlum lover Paddy Calabrese went into hiding from November 1967 to July 1975 in Pres. Richard M. Nixon's premier witness protection program: Like Leonard, I too ran into legal road-blocks to thwart my cause for truth and justice.

The witness protection program was hatched out of Buffalo's and the nation's first OC Strike Force. Two men in Justice put the pilot Strike Force idea together and sold it to Attorney Gen. Ramsey Clark (1967-69): (1) Robert Dolan Peloquin a veteran of the "Hoffa Squad" and (2) Henry Peterson who was later caught in the Watergate squeeze. The FBI refused to assign personnel or open their files to the Strike Force (Waller 131-32).

On Feb. 27, 1967, in the N.Y. Chautauqua County Jail, Paddy Calabrese reportedly started singing to John J. Honan, Asst. Erie Co. DA and Buffalo PO Samuel N. Giambrone, providing the inside scoop on the Magaddino empire (Waller 141).

Waller writes the Buffalo Strike Force was advised by "elements within the Justice Department…One (of whom) who'd been in OSS and the CIA," wanted Calabrese in deep cover in a small Michigan town. Joe Fino, mob capo, had reportedly told Giambrone to keep Calabrese off the streets of Buffalo (Waller 187).

On May 8, 1967 – FBI raided Snowball's at Hamphire and Grant. Thirty-six were taken into custody for consorting with known criminals, including Natarelli, Randaccio and Stevie Cino.

The next morning all charges were dismissed. End of Episode. Beginning of speculation. What was the FBI doing, staging a raid it knew would end in dismissal?

Waller says Giambrone would not speculate about the mysterious FBI raid anymore than why Hoover was soft on the mob. (Waller 162-63).

In 1968 Magaddino and six associates were indicted on charges of gambling and racketeering. The Funeral Chapel in Niagara Falls was bugged by the FBI from 1962-65. Judge John O. Henderson ruled against the government. He told the FBI in May 1973 unless they produce untainted evidence the case would be dismissed. The FBI did not. Henderson threw out the indictments and was upheld by the USCA 2nd Circuit on May 8, 1974.

Six days later the U.S. Supreme Court freed thousands of OC figures indicted and found guilty of narcotics charges on grounds of tainted evidence.

Attorney Gen. John N. Mitchell had broken the law by not personally signing authorizations for wire-taps of evidence leading to the convictions. Waller pens, "Whether that was deliberate or accidental oversight is not known to this day" (Waller 254).

Italian authorities report from 1950 -60 Magaddino headed a ring that brought heroin from Italy and to Canada and Eastern US, bringing in 150 million a year (Waller 254).

Calabrese moved to Reno, Nevada in 1969 and stayed till 1974 visiting Buffalo three or four times during that time. Tom Leonard who was closest to the action is quoted, by Waller, as saying "You see what a lie this all was? The government claiming their lives were in danger and them going back and forth to Buffalo?" Waller concedes, "The question was inescapable was Paddy in danger or wasn't he?" (Waller 263-66).

Waller concludes: "There is a vast and growing overlap between the activities of all our intelligence organizations and the activities of organized crime. Frequently, as in the Bay of Pigs affair, the personnel are identical. The same agents serve two masters and are later recycled as hit men against Castro's person… As the Watergate currency, laundering indicates, not only does organized crime make cash contributions to the law establishment, but the establishment also tethers to organized crime" (Waller 275-78).

In a Buffalo News article on Feb. 2, 1989, by Michael Beebe, it was first reported that Local 210 member Ron Fino worked for the CIA form 1965 to 1969 as a SUNY at Buffalo student informer to infiltrate the Students for a Democratic Society. Ron's father Joe was a mob capo, supra. The CIA recruited students as part of Operation Chaos, an unauthorized domestic spying op in the late 1960's.

In the article Fino said, "he was feeding it (CIA) information on Students for a Democratic Society" who were organizing anti-Vietnam War protests. Curiously enough, scores in SDS swallowed up on campus LSD and many went from pragmatic left-wing radicals to wide-eyed, soul-searching, fringed avatars.

Millions of dollars of CIA research grants were paid to professors and psychological researchers at Universities across the U.S to experiment with psychedelic drugs (ABC News Closeup: Mission Mind Control, 1979 transcripts pg. 6, 25, &34).

Incidentally, in the same Buffalo News article, Fino said he used his Mafia connections to help the CIA look for possible mob connections in the John F. Kennedy assassination.

My investigations juxtaposed with my experiences aims to prove: (1) Fino not only infiltrated Students for Democratic Society for the CIA in the late 1960s at the University of New York at Buffalo in operation Chaos to provide information on SDS, but also to mentor provocateurs. And that, Fino used his underworld connections to target this student organization for neutralization, by the facilitation of drugs on campus to disorganize, discredit in the press, and politically disengage.

And that: (2) my father and I were subjected to a more individual specific yet related CIA parallel behavioral science project called MK-ULTRA that took place in stages over the years and was most active during the late 1960s, as described as follows:

My father, Peter, was unwittingly confined to the VA Canandaigua Hospital by my mother in 1948 soon after he obtained a legal separation. My mother wanted to be a mom: I was born in 1952, their only son. According to my elder cousins' testimony my father was given sub rosa psychoactive substances in his food since 1954. They further testify from 1957-1958 he was subjected to severe electro-shocks that resulted in symptoms of left hemisphere brain damage. According to my cousins, my illiterate mother was tricked into to signing consents for these unusual and cruel experiments.

In April 1953 the CIA began its clandestine mind control program code-named MK-ULTRA, authorized by Directorate Allen Dulles. The use of psycho active drugs for inhumane psychological experimentation has its roots in the ilk of mescaline studies conducted at the Dachau Nazi concentration camp, under the inauspiciousness of Dr. Hubertus Strughold. Severe, long-lasting, debilitating electro-shock was also a part of the MK-ULTRA psy-ops arsenal.

My father was released to the home environment in 1966 at the peak of his trauma. I was fourteen. I went from an unruly teacher's pet to a truant. The Family Court ordered me on probation May 8, 1968 one day after receiving an injection, by Bernard H. Smith, M.D., Head Neurologist-who appeared to me like a specter of Mengele- at Erie County Medical Center. In spite of a court order for the complete records, granted Dec.24th, 1985, filed in NYS Supreme Court, Index H 50258, (file incomplete) ECMC has yet to comply.

In Aug. through Dec.1968, during a Family Court ordered placement to ECMC, I was subjected to a salvo of a cruel type of pseudo-psychoanalytical torture and sexual molestation under hypnosis, by an Episcopalian Chaplin/therapist Lawrence B. Hardy.

In Aug. 1969 Hardy wrote in my medical records "Talked to pt's (patients) mother's attorney a Mr. Musarra who seemed like a pretty good fellow & was willing to go along w (with) our treatment plan."

Arthur F. Musarra, my mother's family lawyer and lawyer for Local 210 had in July 1965 devised reciprocal wills and waivers for my mother and father waving their rights against each other's estate in favor me.

Those wills, according to Surrogate Court Registration card 70602 were filed in the Erie County Surrogate's Court on Oct.15, 1965. Since, my father was declared incompetent in 1960, by William J. Regan, Erie Co. Justice, my father's waiver was fraudulent. Those wills, filed under my mother's name, were removed by Charles D. Wallace, Esq. on May 1, 1972. The Surrogate Court, to this day, refuses to acknowledge those 1965 wills (my father's will) in violation of SCPA section 2507 and Penal Law section 190.30-Concealment of a Will. My father passed away in 1992.

The 1040 Individual Tax Returns for my father and mother show that from 1956 – 1971 no social security number was used for my father. However, from 1973- 1976 my social security number is substituted for my father's. 1972 is missing.

My mother left me pictures of her taken in front of Hurrah's Casino in Las Vegas, in 1972, with her cousin Philip (Cheech) Napoli, of S.F. Cali. (whose father had known ties to Magaddino) and "Bucky" Ciminelli. See pic of my mum doing the laundry in Las Vegas https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/9059c887-f509-4fca-b318-bf61fabcce93

I'd bet it all: that under the shrewd esoteric eye of the Hugh's – Magaddino co-dominion- one million greenbacks of my father's VA disability funds invested in US Savings Bonds, since 1948, got lost in the wash.

And, I'd bet my Uncle Joseph Pezzino's John Hancock, on a forged piece of the rock, meant for me, negotiated at the M&T Bank, was just the tip of the ice berg. Joe hung out with Charlie Caci, a/k/a Bobby Angelli and other Local 210 insiders, including Ron Fino.

Surrogate, William J. Regan (who as County Judge declared my father incompetent in 1960 and did not appoint a committee) failed to do so again in the Surrogate proceedings in 1979.

Surrogate, John J. Honan (who as DA in 1967 reportedly got Calabrese to sing, presided over a 1981 Settlement Decree that was made prior to discovery and a full accounting made of the assets belonging to the estates of my mother and father. The decree was made without my knowledge and later reopened to include my father's interests: my father was not mentioned the 1974 and 1978 wills. Charles D. Wallace, Esq. who drafted the 74 & 78 wills for my mother, told the Surrogate he did not know my father was alive.

Four days before my father died on April 20, 1992, I was informed by SSA that he was entitled to Medicare; Husband's Insurance Benefits and Widower's from 1976. SSA had misinformed me in writing back on Jan. 25, 1984 that no benefits were being paid "on his account." SSA failed to mention my father was entitled to benefits on my mother's earnings record who worked at Trico, since 1948.

I litigated the case from 1992 to 2001, pro se (as party in interest and as proper party estate delegate) winning two consecutive appeals at the Second Circuit and then filing a writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court for pro se legal-work compensation. The case was rejected. The SSA inconceivably argued all along my father's 1976 application was filed incorrectly, yet refuses to produce it, to this day.

The application was "deemed" as filed correctly a few weeks prior to oral argument for my second appeal at the USCA 2nd Circuit.

As Administrator for my father's estate I just might have another shot in the U.S. Supreme Court for compensation for my pro se legal-work. I'd be the first pro se in U.S. history to get paid in a federal case as the prevailing party to overturn Kay V. Ehrler, 499 U.S. 432 (1991).

My investigations and litigations in following the money trail are continuing.

I'm also investigating leads to discover whether the US military resorted to chemical-biological warfare in gene mutation in conjunction with spraying the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War causing FSH Muscular Dystrophy in generations of Vietnamese civilians, some U.S. soldiers and in my son, Sol, caused by the March 7, 1968 injection, described supra, most likely research conducted for the U.S. Government, by the Veteran's Administration and/or SUNY at Buffalo Medical School related to the SUNY at Buffalo's Project Themis.
I've just begun my fight for truth and justice. I'm moving on.

Epilogue: What has surfaced since?

Of Henry Peterson and Robert Peloquin, the two DOJ officers who first launched the Strike Force idea in 1967. Peterson became involved in serving Nixon's interests during the Watergate cover-up and left the DOJ. (Waller 284)

Peloquin left the DOJ in late 1967 and went on to make a mysterious career out of organized crime. As early as 1966, on a DOJ official assignment in the Caribbean, he reported overtures by organized crime to take-over casino gambling in the Bahamas. Peloquin reported phenomenal success of ridding the casino of a mob take over. So successful, in fact, he formed his own concern to offer his services to businessmen worried of Mafia take-over of their companies. (Waller 284).

By late 1967 Peloquin resigned from the DOJ and went to work as VP of a company that operated the Paradise Island gambling as a subsidiary of the Mary Carter Paint Co. Eduardo Cellini, an aide of mobster Meyer Lansky from the early days of Havana was manager of the casino, under Peloquin. In early 1968, Mary Carter Paint Co. had changed its name to Resorts International Inc. (Waller 284).

Resorts International built a casino on Paradise Island. Richard Nixon was the guest of honor at the casino's grand opening on New Year's Eve 1968. James Crosby, Pres. of Resorts International, contributed $100,000 to Nixon's campaign. Crosby, Bebe Rebozo, Nixon's buddy, and Nixon partied with a bevy of movie stars, gangsters and GOP faithful. (Martin A. Lee "Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion," 245).


William G. Iannaccone is NLG legal worker member of the National Lawyers Guild Buffalo, N.Y, city chapter which he reorganized, along with a SUNY at Buffalo student chapter in the spring of 2007.
William has since 1985 worked with Richard D. Kaufman, Asst. U.S. Attorney and former member of the WNY Organized Crime Strike Force in investigations related to organized crime, including unsolved murders.
As a member of the NLG national Drug Policy Committee he is working on a proposed workshop "The Evidence: Timothy Leary/Mk-Ultra/Sicilian Mafia: The Dawning of the Drug War" for the Detroit Mich. 2008 Convention.
William attended SUNY at Buffalo and graduated with a BA in the Social Sciences Interdisciplinary-Legal Studies program, in May 2004. As a second generation MK-ULTRA survivor he is working on a book/film script revealing his unique insider's look into MK-ULTRA, the CIA's ultra secret behavioral science program, mentored by Prof. Mark Shechner, his former English professor, at SUNY at Buffalo.

EX-FBI OFFICIAL PULLS AT UNION'S INFAMOUS ROOTS


By Stephanie Mencimer June 7, 1998
When W. Douglas Gow moved onto the fifth-floor of the Washington headquarters of the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) in 1995, he changed the locks and swept for bugs. He demanded file cabinets impervious to firebombing and hacker-proofed his computers using the protocols of his former employer, the FBI.
The quintessential G-man with starched white shirt and spit-shined shoes, Gow was thus ensconced in the belly of the beast -- a union whose alleged organized crime ties date back to Al Capone. A retired FBI deputy director, he had been hired by LIUNA to conduct an extraordinary experiment in labor reform -- a self-policing plan that many saw as fraught with conflicts. Working from within, Gow was placed in charge of a no-holds-barred investigation designed to weed out allegedly corrupt LIUNA members.
Some of them worked just outside Gow's office door.

Three years later, Gow and the internal strike force have shaken the roots of the 750,000-member blue-collar union and been blasted along the way by everyone from ditch diggers to members of Congress. The effort, just extended by the Justice Department for another year, has been slow, expensive and decidedly uphill. Its long-term effects on union leadership are still unclear.

But as experiments go, the mob-busting efforts of Gow and his team have been viewed by reformers as a promising new tool in reconstructing the culture within a historically troubled union. Since the 1930s, the government has fought against organized crime's labor influence -- first with select prosecutions of tainted members, and more recently with broad court supervision of union affairs and elections stemming from civil lawsuits brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
LIUNA's approach offers a third option -- letting the union itself bear the cost and responsibility for keeping its membership clean.
LIUNA hired Gow as inspector general in 1995 to avert a threatened Justice Department RICO suit. A draft complaint alleged that four LIUNA presidents -- including current President Arthur A. Coia -- had been controlled by organized crime. It identified more than 80 LIUNA officials who had been convicted of major crimes and said that criminal influence was evident at the local and international levels. It demanded Coia's removal, threatening to seize control of LIUNA as it had the Teamsters in 1989.

Coia and a team of white-collar defense lawyers offered a compromise: To avoid a lawsuit, the union would create an internal -- but completely autonomous -- strike force of former federal agents and prosecutors to enforce a strict new ethics code. If the effort failed, LIUNA would yield to a government takeover. Justice accepted the deal and has been closely monitoring the progress.
Gow set out on tricky footing. One of his first tasks was to investigate Coia himself. At 55, Coia was a Democratic Party stalwart touted by LIUNA as the new face of American labor.
But Gow's team reopened unresolved issues from Coia's past and honed in on the Justice Department's allegation of organized crime affiliations. Its findings led attorney Robert Luskin, acting as internal prosecutor, to file disciplinary charges against Coia last November. If "barred conduct" is proven during the ongoing hearings, Coia could lose his $254,000-a-year job.
In a letter last fall to LIUNA's board, Coia expressed confidence that "when the truth is brought forward, I will be totally, completely and finally vindicated."

Coia's case stands out among hundreds of investigations now underway, a job that Gow says "is much larger than I imagined." Dozens of LIUNA members have been ousted and 30 locals and district councils have been taken over by the international.
But Coia's critics say Gow's work is far from finished. They complain that some already disciplined by Gow's team remain in union jobs. Because all the strike force members are on the union payroll, some question whether Gow and his colleagues are beholden to Coia and unlikely to discipline him or other high-ranking union officials.
Gow brushes off the suggestion. "You've probably heard that Mr. Coia tells us what to do and when to do it, but that's just baloney," he said in an interview in his spartan office. "I can't recite one instance where he has interfered with anything we have done."
Alex Corns, business manager of a LIUNA local in San Mateo, Calif., complained that Gow is up against an impossible challenge. "There's just not enough resources to fight what they've got to do. It would be like trying to fight a forest fire with six people."



When Gow took the $140,000-a-year job, the Justice Department handed him a road map to alleged corruption within LIUNA's international headquarters and 600 locals -- a 212-page draft racketeering complaint describing a union dominated by organized crime.
In LIUNA -- a union representing construction workers, chicken pluckers, hazardous waste handlers and various other trades -- organized crime had a 70-year grip on union business, prosectors alleged. The complaint spelled out criminal influence in matters ranging from the selection of officers to the awarding of service contracts. LIUNA's pension and welfare funds -- more than 300 in all totaling tens of billions of dollars -- were a magnet for organized crime, the complaint alleged. In the early 1990s, for example, prosecutors discovered that New York City's Mason Tenders District Council, a LIUNA affiliate, lost $50 million in pension funds through real estate investments allegedly controlled by organized crime.
Coia's leadership since 1993 had been troubling to the Justice Department, which described him in a memo to the White House as a "mob puppet." Coia was indicted in Florida in 1981 on racketeering charges, but the case was dropped after a judge ruled the statute of limitations had expired. He was accused of taking kickbacks from an insurance agent who dealt with LIUNA locals. Coia has said the charge was groundless and has denied being influenced by organized crime.
In recent years, Coia has had high visibility within the Democratic Party. He oversaw $1.4 million in union donations to the Democratic National Committee in 1994 and played golf with President Clinton. He supported one of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's favorite charities, the U.S. Botanic Gardens, and gave personally to Clinton's legal defense fund.
LIUNA invited Hillary Clinton to speak at a 1994 convention, but Paul Coffey, the former head of the Justice Department's organized crime and racketeering section, warned her in a memo that she should "avoid any direct contact with Coia, if possible" because the department was preparing to file a RICO suit. The first lady turned down the invitation.
Coffey was the same official who later approved Coia's cleanup plan, a decision that some Coia adversaries charged was politically motivated. Coffey denied that, testifying in a 1996 congressional hearing that Justice dropped the LIUNA lawsuit because, "we never had a union that said, We'll take on the mob before you file.' "
Gow recruited more than 60 former federal agents to examine whether members had engaged in "barred conduct" under LIUNA's rewritten ethics code. It called for expulsion of members who had been found guilty of crimes. But it also forbade members to assert their Fifth Amendment rights in a criminal case or obstruct Gow's investigations. Members could be expelled if a hearing officer determined after closed hearings that the ethics code had been broken.
An elaborate internal justice system was set up to provide due process. Defense attorney Luskin was hired as chief prosecutor -- or as he put it in an interview "to get the cockroaches out." The son of a Chicago labor arbitrator, Luskin once worked for the Justice Department's organized crime section and now has a Georgetown private practice. He said the union has paid his firm about $4 million since November 1994.
As its disciplinary judge, LIUNA hired Peter F. Vaira, a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia. To hear appeals, it retained W. Neil Eggleston, a former White House lawyer and House Iran-Contra committee special counsel.
LIUNA's team honed in on notoriously troubled locals and district councils around the country.
First on the list was Buffalo's Local 210 with 1,200 members, a local whose alleged organized crime ties worried then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. The local had not had a contested election since 1974, when John Cammilleri, a union member and alleged organized crime associate, was gunned down after supporting an opposition candidate.
Gow's agents assembled evidence to justify a trusteeship, a legal mechanism that allows the international to take over a local to correct financial malpractice or undemocratic practices.
Gow could no longer use traditional FBI tools -- tapping telephones or reading secret grand jury testimony. But he had help from Ronald Fino, Local 210's longtime business agent, who was in the federal witness protection program.
Gow said of the local's history: "They had all the common schemes -- contract rigging, no-show jobs, kickbacks, investments going wild and kickbacks on the investments."
Local 210's officers agreed to step down without a hearing, and Luskin appointed Gabriel Rosetti Jr., a 31-year union member from Rochester, N.Y., for a two-year stint as supervisor. Rosetti expected a smooth transition but arrived at the union hall on his first day -- Palm Sunday 1996 -- to find it blocked by 200 members chanting "Gabe go home!" The insurgents occupied the hall for three weeks until a federal judge ordered them out.
Insurgency leader John Tomasello was expelled for leading the protest. He complained in an interview that lawyers for the international "made it look like everybody in that union -- especially the Italians -- like they're criminals."
Some of Rosetti's tactics grew out of necessity, officials say. He said he discovered that the union was giving high-paid construction jobs to alleged Buffalo crime family associates. The local's finances were a mess, but officers had been leasing five Grand Cherokees at twice the market rate from a company in distant Rhode Island. Rosetti cut the local's staff and reduced the auto fleet to a single Buick Regal. But his effort to coax new leadership out of the rank-and-file was sabotaged, he believed, by former leaders who hoped eventually to return to power.
In early 1996, Luskin asked Vaira to eject 28 Local 210 members. Their cases were pending for 18 months, meaning that Rosetti not only had to live with the accused, he had to pay some of them.
Three on Luskin's list -- including Sam Capitano, the former business manager's son -- had been elected to $25,000-a-year advisory board positions created by Luskin.
Capitano attacked Rosetti at one meeting, grabbing a microphone and yelling "Gabe, you got no balls." The next day, the two got into a fistfight and Rosetti fired Capitano from the board -- an action Capitano has contested before the National Labor Relations Board. He is suspended from the union.
Vaira finally expelled most of the questioned members in early April and extended the local's supervision indefinitely. Luskin expects the local to appeal the decision in federal court.
When Gow traveled to Chicago in 1995 to investigate the Chicago Laborers District Council, a threatening message waited on his hotel voice mail: "Who do you think you're {expletive} dealing with? A bunch of kids from Waco?"
The anonymous call was a blunt reminder that the real seat of the union's power was in Chicago, LIUNA's birthplace.
The Justice Department alleged in the draft RICO complaint that Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo, an alleged high-ranking organized crime figure who died in 1992, endorsed all of LIUNA's international officers. In 1989, when Coia sought to replace his ailing father on LIUNA's executive board, he flew to Chicago and consulted with Vincent "Innocent" Solano, Accardo's right-hand man, according to Coia's testimony in a 1995 lawsuit.
The Chicago District Council, the collective bargainer for 21 locals and 19,000 workers, had been investigated by two Senate committees and the President's Commission on Organized Crime before the Justice Department accused it again of organized crime ties in the draft RICO complaint.
When Gow arrived, Bruno Caruso was council president. His father, Frank "Skids" Caruso, was described in the RICO draft complaint as a boss of gambling and extortion rackets. Based on Gow's work, in February hearing officer Vaira put the council under a trusteeship and Luskin appointed Chicago labor lawyer Robert Bloch as trustee.
Caruso, now out of a $186,000-a-year job, believes Gow's campaign is retaliation against him engineered by Coia, who he said sees him as a rival. He denied any criminal ties, saying the allegations stem from Italian American stereotypes.
"Winston Churchill, he smokes a cigar, he's astute. Other guys, they don't button their collar, they're casual," said Caruso in an interview. "I smoke a cigar, don't button my collar, Im a wise guy."
Caruso argued that the "so-called reform" would destroy the council's bargaining power in negotiating new contracts for construction workers.
Bloch took over the negotiations this spring. He invited representatives of all 21 locals to participate.
On May 29, after a 20-hour marathon session, the council emerged with a contract promising major improvements and a 35 percent pay increase.
"People are telling me this is the best contract they've ever had," Bloch said. "It is a tangible sign that things are really moving forward."
The challenge faced by Gow's team was nowhere more evident than the 1996 Laborers' convention in Las Vegas, a dazzling affair with Elvis impersonators, laser shows and swarms of federal agents keeping tabs on LIUNA's first contested presidential election in 25 years.
Coia was considered a shoo-in. Most members gathering from across the country had never seen the Justice Department's draft RICO complaint because Vaira barred dissidents from distributing it.
LIUNA's agreement with Justice required that the rank-and-file vote for president by secret ballot.
Giving them someone to vote for was another matter. Almost no one wanted to challenge Coia, who ran as a reformer.
The last attempt to oust an incumbent left an imprint. In 1981, when dissidents tried to nominate a challenger to run against President Angelo Fosco, then under a racketeering indictment, they were beaten on the convention floor, according to a report by the President's Commission on Organized Crime.
Coia's LIUNA pull dated back to his father, Arthur Ettore Coia, the international's secretary-treasurer for 20 years. The elder Coia built LIUNA into a Rhode Island political force while cultivating ties to Raymond L.S. Patriarcha, a one-time reputed head of New England's major crime family, according to the draft RICO suit.
The younger Coia had moved into the top job with little experience doing the low-paid labor of most of his members. Coia's Providence law firm, which represents LIUNA members and trust funds in New England, has allowed him to drive a Ferrari, play golf and breed Rottweilers. He splits his time between Washington and Rhode Island. He is still president of the Providence local his grandfather founded.
In 1989, LIUNA's board appointed Coia secretary-treasurer. He was named president when Fosco died in 1993.
The draft RICO complaint alleged that he had long associated with organized crime and conspired with the Buffalo crime family up through 1994 to create regional training centers in New York that were allegedly to be run by organized crime. Coia has denied any organized crime involvement. After some prodding, Bernard Scanlon of Long Island volunteered to run against Coia, calling himself the "sacrificial lamb." Chicago council President Caruso also jumped in. In the end, only a small percentage of LIUNA's membership voted. Coia was reelected overwhelmingly. Scanlon never rallied enough support to get on the ballot. Caruso got 30 percent of the vote.
Stephen Goldberg, a Northwestern University law professor who served as LIUNA's election officer, considered the election a limited success. In a report to the Justice Department, he wrote, "Although some progress has been made in transforming LIUNA into a participative political democracy, that progress is both limited and fragile." Coia may have triumphed, but his trials are not over. He spent most of April at his own disciplinary hearing, facing charges that he was influenced by organized crime and took vendor kickbacks. Coia and his lawyer, Howard Gutman, declined to comment but Coia has publicly denied the charges in the past. Dissidents who have monitored the case worry that the prosecutors and the judge, all paid by the union, will treat him with kid gloves.
LIUNA officials are confident that Coia will remain in power. Chief of staff Terence O'Sullivan said, "If it wasn't for him, we would not be sitting here talking about cooperative reform."
And some members say Coia's removal would not cure union problems. Robert Brown, a local business manager in Rochester said that if Coia steps down, his most likely successor is LIUNA Vice President Peter J. Fosco, son of former president Angelo Fosco. A new generation of Fosco leadership, dissidents say, would be like handing over the Teamsters to James P. Hoffa, son of James R. Hoffa, the longtime head of the union who disappeared in 1975. Fosco, whose father preceded Coia as president, said in a telephone interview he supports Coia's reform and declined to speculate on succession. But one thing has changed. In the old days, the Justice Department contends, no one could make it past LIUNA's board to the presidency without first winning approval from the mob. This year, if the board is forced to replace Coia, their candidate will have to pass muster with Douglas Gow first. CAPTION: INVESTIGATING THE BIG 4 In 1986, the President's Commission on Organized Crime recommended that the Justice Department go beyond criminal prosecutions of union members and use the civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to make systemic union reforms. It targeted the "big four" unions that the FBI alleged were "substantially influenced and/or controlled by organized crime" and in need of major cleanup. Here's a status report: Laborers International Union of North America President: Arthur A. Coia, appointed in 1993 Membership: 750,000. The union represents construction workers, mail handlers, hazardous waste haulers, chicken pluckers and others. Status: LIUNA headed off a RICO suit in 1995 by promising an internal cleanup. To date, dozens of members have been expelled, including two former vice presidents. More than 60 members quit before their cases resulted in disciplinary charges. Twenty-two matters have been referred to law enforcement for prosecution. The international has placed 30 locals and district councils in trusteeship or under supervision. Disciplinary charges are pending against Coia that could result in his ouster. In 1996, for the first time, rank-and-file members directly elected their general executive board officers by secret ballot. Previously, convention delegates chose the president and other officers. The three-year agreement with the Justice Department was extended for another year in January. International Brotherhood of Teamsters President: Ron Carey Membership: 1.4 million, the nation's largest union. It represents truck drivers, industrial workers, and others. Status: A RICO suit against the international resulted in a 1989 consent decree forcing the union to hold rank-and-file elections and naming a court monitor to root out corrupt members. More than 300 members have been expelled, 80 locals have been put into trusteeship and $15 million in misappropriated pension money has been recouped. The reform paved the way for the 1991 election of Ron Carey, a longtime member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Carey was reelected in 1996 by a narrow margin, defeating James P. Hoffa. But late last year, the election was overturned in the wake of a campaign finance scandal. Carey was disqualified, and three of his operatives pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy. Another was recently indicted on embezzlement charges. Congress is now investigating how a scandal erupted while the union was under government oversight.' Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union President: Edward Hanley, in office since 1973. Membership: 300,000. It represents bartenders, housekeepers, waiters and casino workers. Status: In 1995, HEREIU was put under federal supervision after the Justice Department settled a RICO suit against an Atlantic City local. The federal monitoring ended March 5, but a Public Review Board, headed by former Illinois governor James Thompson, will continue to oversee the union's internal reforms. Forty officials, members and union associates have been barred permanently or otherwise disciplined, but the monitorship ended this March without a supervised election, considered a crucial element to union reform. On May 20, the U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., unsealed a February agreement in which Hanley agreed to retire and leave office by July 31. Hanley had been a controversial figure. He asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned before a presidential commission about alleged ties to organized crime. International Longshoremen's Association President: John Bowers, in office since 1987 Membership: 65,000. It represents shipping and dock workers. Status: The union, which the AFL-CIO expelled for corruption in 1953 (but reinstated in 1959), was the inspiration for the movie "On the Waterfront." In 1990, the government filed a RICO civil suit against six ILA locals that represented workers on the New York and New Jersey waterfront. The suit described the influence of Gambino family head John Gotti and Genovese family boss Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno. Monitors were appointed to oversee the locals. Nine members and officers were removed, and Bowers, who was president of three of the locals, was barred from holding office in any of the locals. The government has not sought to takeover the union's international operation.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD
A CORRUPT UNION AND THE MOB
By Eugene H. Methvin

AUGUST 31, 1998

Eugene H. Methvin, a Washington-based Reader's Digest contributing editor, was a member of the 1983-'86 President's Commission on Organized Crime and directed its investigation into labor-management racketeering


On July 24, 1996, in the historic mahogany paneled hearing room where grim-faced congressmen once considered the impeachment of President Nixon, chairman Bill McCollum of the House Crime Subcommittee gaveled for order. "There will be no photographs permitted of this witness," the Florida Republican instructed. A hood over his head, 50-year-old Ronald M. Fino was led to the witness chair, a screen protecting him from spectators' view.

For 15 years, Fino was business manager of the Laborers' International Union of North America Local 210 in Buffalo, N.Y., and for eight years, one of the union's national officials. "During this time, I witnessed the gripping control of the union and its membership by La Cosa Nostra, and the defilement of its workers' dues and benefit funds," he testified. For all those years, Fino was also an undercover informant for the FBI. In more than 4,000 meetings with FBI agents, he detailed the mob's secret "shadow government" within the union, and how it reached into the Laborers' Washington headquarters just two blocks from the White House.

Fino's testimony struck at the heart of an illicit alliance in which a Mafia-dominated union provided multimillion-dollar campaign contributions and Justice Department racket-busters were shackled. The House subcommittee had confidential information that federal prosecutors had been thwarted in their plan to take over and clean up the union. But subcommittee Democrats blocked subpoenas to compel testimony from witnesses who might have revealed the fix. Instead they heaped ridicule on the witness. "Mr. Fino, do you believe space aliens are linked to the mob?" mocked New York's Charles Schumer.

It's not hard to grasp why Democratic congressmen wanted to undercut Fino's testimony. The Laborers, under president Arthur A. Coia, had managed to snuggle up embarrassingly closely to the Clinton administration. Even before Bill Clinton took office, the Laborers made a $100,000 loan to his inaugural committee. Over the next four years, the union and its political action committee gave various Democratic groups and candidates $4.8 million. Harold Ickes, Clinton's first-term deputy chief of staff, was a New York labor lawyer whose clients included the Laborers, its "education trust fund," and its New York-New Jersey political action committee.

Coia was a regular White House visitor. He was invited to a state dinner for the Japanese emperor, to join the president in greeting the pope in Denver, and to fly with Clinton on Air Force One to Rhode Island and Haiti. The House Crime Subcommittee documented more than 120 contacts in three years between Coia and the Clinton White House, including cash contributions, personal letters, and social-political invitations.

The most important, for Coia, was a meeting in the Oval Office with President Clinton and Ickes on October 21,1994. The White House had just asked the FBI for a "name check" preparatory to naming Coia to a prestigious presidential commission. The FBI's response was stark: "Coia is a criminal associate of the New England Patriarca organized crime family." Moreover, the Justice Department advised that its racket-busters were going to file a suit "within the next several weeks" that "will accuse Coia of being a puppet of the LCN [La Cosa Nostra]." Associate deputy attorney general David Margolis, an organized-crime specialist, repeatedly telephoned warnings to the White House about Coia.

- Nonetheless, in the Oval Office President Clinton presented Coia with a Callaway "Divine Nine" golf club and listened to Coia's complaints about the "low level negative response" his union was getting to applications for federal job-training grants. The president assigned Ickes to look after Coia's concerns. Altogether, in the four fiscal years 1994-1997 after Clinton took office, the Laborers received $50.5 million in federal grants. The day after the Oval Office meeting, Coia wrote a check for $50,000 as a personal "soft money" contribution to the Democratic National Committee. He also gave Clinton a hand-crafted golf club bearing the presidential seal.

This, then, was the union whose penetration by the mob Ronald Fino had come before McCollum's subcommittee, at great personal risk, to describe. Fino had joined the Laborers when he graduated from high school in Buffalo in 1964. His father, Joe Fino, was an ex-con and career mobster. Buffalo's new Mafia boss recognized in the intelligent and gregarious young Fino an excellent front man for the union. Fino was made a salaried agent for the 3,000-member Local 210, a mob fiefdom, and in 1974 was elected business manager. Increasingly disillusioned with the mob, Joe Fino persuaded his Buffalo gang bosses to "keep Ronnie clean" so he could ascend the union's national political ladder and position himself to bring greater power and riches to the Buffalo mob.

And so he did. As the trusted son of a widely known mafioso, Fino rose rapidly in the Laborers. On trips to Washington, New York, and Chicago, he was tutored by national and regional officers about the union's shadow mob government. "Telephones have cancer," he was instructed. All important business was to be conducted face to face. Fino was given the identities of "our people" in the union, told which Mafia families controlled them, and warned which union officials to avoid.

The union's No. 2 man was Arthur E. Coia, father of the current president and boyhood chum and minion of New England Mafia boss Raymond L. S. Patriarca. Coia senior became Ron Fino's mentor. An FBI bug in Patriarca's Providence, R.I., headquarters overheard Patriarca meddling in everything from union elections to decisions on who got kickbacks on coffee machines. His operating philosophy, recorded on FBI tape, was succinct: "Hit them, break their legs to get things your way."

Coia served as chairman of the trustees of the Laborers' multimillion-dollar job-training fund. In 1980, he promoted Fino to the board, explaining that the fund was to be used to provide jobs for gangsters and associates. Coia began to take Fino along on nationwide travels to inspect training sites-and to deliver "messages" to the union's mob operatives.

Fino was no innocent. When he was a child, his mother had told him that his father was "away in the Army." But when they visited Daddy, he realized the "army base" was actually Attica state prison. And his Uncle Nick was there too. His father and uncle were both "made" mafiosi,, and killers. In high school, he saw his father's picture plastered over the Buffalo News as a Mafia capo and acting boss.

But working as a Laborer while still a teenager, Fino developed a rapport with the union's rank-and filers-construction workers and manual laborers, for the most part-and a disgust for the "wise guys" who ran the union and gambled, loansharked,, sold drugs, and loafed on the job. Later, as Local 210's chief executive, he found that his every move to improve his members' lot was blocked by Mafia bosses. They compelled him to pack the union payroll with ex-cons, mobsters, and their relatives. He had to forge records to award pensions to "friends" who had not earned them. The adviser who invested Local 210's $83 million in pension and welfare funds was kicking back to the mob.

The FBI had noticed that Fino, though a "younger generation" mob associate, did not hang out with the gangsters. At a tennis club, a friendly agent cultivated him, and Fino began to complain about the Mafia stranglehold on his union. "Why don't you guys do something about these mob guys?" he asked. "We could," came the answer, "if people like you would help."

Fino agreed, provided he would never be identified or called to testify and nothing he reported would ever be used against his dad. After one pow-wow with a Mafia boss, he was able to tip the Bureau that the mob had corrupted an employee in the FBI's Cleveland office. He reported on Mafia Commission decisions allocating control of different locals among mob "families." He described plans to control and bilk federally funded union training programs.

In the mid-1980s, Fino's mentor suffered a stroke. Arthur A. Coia, by now the union's New England regional manager, succeeded his father as the Laborers' No. 2 national officer.. He and Fino began meeting dozens of times a year, and, like his father, the younger Coia said he had to "answer to" New England's mob boss, Raymond "Junior" Patriarca, who had succeeded his deceased father. Coia also reported to New York's Genovese gang.

The mob takeover of the union was so complete that Fino could no longer stomach it. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Valparaiso, Ind., Laborers officials who tried to lead rebellions were murdered. In Fino's Buffalo local, two members, both mafiosi, were murdered because the mob suspected them of informing for the FBI. Fino's own dad died. In November 1987, after reading a Reader's Digest article exposing his union's Mafia ties, Fino contacted the magazine and promised to provide inside information. He also agreed with his FBI handlers to wear a wire, recording his conversations with mobsters, and to testify publicly if necessary. The Fino tapes helped the Justice Department convict dozens of gangsters and seize control of a corrupt district council comprising 12 locals and almost 7,000 members. Prosecutors found that the mobsters had looted the council's seven trust funds of more than $50 million, leaving members and their widows with penurious pensions and without needed medical care.

In February 1993 the Laborers' president Angelo Fosco died. As he later admitted in sworn testimony, Arthur Coia had flown to Chicago and received the blessing of the Chicago mob for his elevation to succeed his father in the union's No. 2 job. According to a Justice Department memo urging his removal from office, Coia recognized "that by receiving mob approval to get his job, he too was a product of [mob] control. The [mob] has controlled the upper levels of the union so that graft and corruption can continue unabated at the local and district council level."

While Coia settled into the high life of a Laborers' president, driving a red Ferrari and enjoying a Florida retreat and an opulent Narragansett Bay home in Rhode Island, Fino continued his undercover work for the FBI. Then one day, before a high-level union meeting, Sam Cardinelli, a Mafia soldier, announced: "Ronnie, I gotta frisk you."

"Put your f-hands on me and I'll break 'em off," Fino answered.

"Out of respect for your father, I won't do it," Cardinelli responded-and Fino's concealed recorder captured the encounter.

Fearing that his cover had been blown, Fino went to Danny Domino, another Mafia soldier and a former Local 210 officer who owed him favors. "Something's wrong," Domino told him. "I don't know what, but I'll find out." Days later, the gangster sent word via a relative: "They know you've been cooperating with the Justice Department, and been doing it for years. There's a contract on you. Danny says get out of town fast."

Fino fled Buffalo and has been in hiding for the past nine years, much of it as a federally protected witness. His testimony has helped convict many union officials. Several pleaded guilty once they learned Fino had taped their conversations.

Despite the highly publicized convictions of Laborers officials in New York and elsewhere, Coia, like his father before him, did nothing to disrupt Mafia control. The Justice Department appealed to him repeatedly to place the corrupt New York council under trusteeship. Instead, Coia spent more than $400,000 in union funds hiring lawyers and investigators to dig for evidence to discredit Fino. They found little.

Arthur A. Coia today remains president of the Laborers' International Union of North America thanks to an unprecedented bargain he struck with the Justice Department. Two weeks after his 1994 Oval Office meeting with Clinton and Ickes, Justice Department racket-busters delivered to the union a draft racketeering complaint, relying heavily on Fino's testimony. Then strange things happened-events that are the subject of a House Judiciary Committee investigation. The Justice Department had a track record of winning 19 straight racketeering actions against crooked labor unions. Its suit against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, for instance, produced a court-ordered trusteeship in just nine months. Yet Justice made what many critics consider a sweetheart deal with Coia. The union was allowed to undertake its own house-cleaning, under Justice Department oversight. Coia hired as the union's internal prosecutor Robert A. Luskin, the criminal defense lawyer who arranged the unique compromise. To gather evidence, he hired a former FBI official, and to rule on any charges Luskin pressed, he hired a respected former U.S. attorney.

Union dissidents and federal investigators complain that the Justice Department made a bad bargain. The union's surrogate cleanup crew has no power to subpoena witnesses. Luskin reports to Coia instead of to a federal judge, and has kept rank-and-file Laborers largely in the dark. Moreover, the government cannot turn over FBI electronic surveillance or other critical evidence of mob penetration that would be available under a court-supervised trusteeship.

As Coia's hand-picked cleanup man, Luskin from the start seemed to drag his feet. More than a year elapsed before he prosecuted Fino's Local 210 in Buffalo, one of the country's most notorious mob-owned locals. He waited two-and-a-half years to seek a trusteeship over the equally corrupt Chicago district council, whose top officers-all of them gangsters or mob associate s 21 Laborers locals, 19,000 union members, and $1.5 billion in health and pension funds. Indeed, Luskin did not secure this trusteeship until February 9, 1998, two days before the original three-year term of the Justice Department's oversight agreement expired. Justice and the union agreed to a belated one-year extension.

Before the Laborers' 1996 national convention, Justice asked Northwestern University law professor Stephen B. Goldberg to research the union's delegate selection rules. He found them rigged "to discourage or discriminate against dissidents." Not one member of Long Island's Mafia-dominated Local 66, for instance, dared nominate veteran rebel Barney Scanlon. So Scanlon, 70 years old and "not afraid to die," nominated himself, and in federally supervised secret balloting actually won with a two-thirds majority.

Scanlon and other reformers proved to be a minor irritant. Coia's convention steamroller increased members' dues 27 percent to $228 a year, and eliminated their $1,500 death benefit. Then the convention voted to raise Coia's salary nearly 20 percent, to $250,000 a year, and to provide him with a new home in Washington. "Unconscionable!" protested Barney Scanlon. "The guy who pulls on his boots in the morning has to work for ten years to equal the salary you just voted."

The convention reelected the executive board to new five-year terms. But, at Justice's insistence, rank-and-filers were asked in a referendum if they wanted to switch to direct election when present executive board members' terms end in 2001. By a whopping 78 percent majority, 49,964 to 14,246, they chose to select their vice-presidents by direct one-member, one-vote elections.

Halfway through the three-year Justice-Laborers agreement, in July 1996, the House Crime Subcommittee summoned Paul Coffey, the Justice Department crime-fighter who had called Coia a Mafia puppet, to explain why Coia was still in control. "Is he a puppet today? We're not sure," Coffey testified. "He did what you don't normally see puppets do; he said, 'I can kick them out, too.' He's got no choice but to get rid of the mob. The minute he decides he won't do it, or he's slow in doing it, he goes, too."

Today, two more years have passed. Coffey has retired, and Coia still runs the Laborers. Ron Fino and other critics complain that Coia has survived for nearly four years by adopting a shrewd damage-control strategy, playing the public role of reformer while moving chiefly against his rivals in the "shadow government" and ignoring the mob overlords in his Northeast home base. Indeed, federal informants report that the Genovese family is now in complete control of the union.

Last November, when the three-year oversight agreement was about to expire and the Justice Department threatened to take over the union, Luskin moved finally to oust Coia. The charges: Coia "knowingly associated" with Mafia members and permitted them to influence the union, breaching his constitutional and fiduciary duties. Coia also "improperly accepted benefits" from a union service provider. The union's hearing officer, though, decreed that both the charges and hearing would be secret. Rank-and-filers are still waiting for his decision.

Meantime, the government's oversight agreement ends next January, and union members continue to suffer embezzlement, assaults, and other outrages:

In Fresno, Calif., Local 294 member Linda Cannon protested unfair hiring, fought harassment, filed internal union charges, and ran for office. "We are battling money, corruption, and more money," she proclaimed. She came within 16 votes of winning. The union's hearing of officer, a seasoned former federal racket-buster, found intimidation so extreme he ordered a new election. The incumbents then wrote each member, demanding he state whether he wanted a new election and return the letter-signed. "The business manager can use these letters to add to his blacklist for jobs," declared one member. Cannon lost again.

The Chicago mob shamelessly pirated the 2,000 member Local 225 in Desplaines, Ill. Its business manager for 10 years was a "made" mafioso, Joey Mazza, whom Luskin forced out in 1995. Replacing him was the mob underboss's nephew. He engaged in illegal bookmaking and charged the union for airfare and hotel stays with a girlfriend, a union employee. He and two other officers spent $33,000 for "meals" in just 10 months last year, at which point Luskin sought a trusteeship.

In California, San Francisco-area district-council boss Archie Thomas draws a yearly salary of $150,000. He put his son Craig, a convicted rapist, on a training center payroll, violating a federal law forbidding union employment of violent felons. Craig packed a .38 caliber pistol on the job. As he rummaged for change in the cafeteria, the gun fired. Police arrested him for being a felon in possession of a firearm and seized illegal drugs and chemicals for manufacturing methamphetamine at his home. He was convicted of two more felonies.

On July 31, 1997, in Hartford, Conn., vice president Steve Manos of Local 230 dared to question expenses at an executive-board luncheon meeting. The business manager erupted in profanity and called in the hulking sergeant-at-arms, who slammed the 53 year-old bantamweight Manos against the wall, hustled him out of the restaurant, and hurled him onto the sidewalk. A few months later, Ron Nobili, the reform-minded business manager of Bridgeport Local 665, at a meeting of all 10 Connecticut business managers, objected to $35,000 paid for billboard advertising to an ad agency owned by another business manager's son. The other business manager walked slowly around the conference table, flexing his fist, and slugged Nobili. In both cases, executive-board members of the union were present and did nothing to stop or reprimand the violent officials. Under the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act, these Laborers' officials have a duty to protect each member's "right to express at meetings his views upon any business properly before the meeting." Luskin has made no move to call the derelict board members to account.

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT GAVE AWAY TOO MUCH. RACKETEERS RAPED AND PLUNDERED THE UNION MEMBERS WHILE THE BOARD SAT BY.
Alex Corns, business manager of Daly City, Calif., Local 36, was part of a Gideon's army of rebels determined to defy Coia's convention combine. He opposed the dues hike, proposed salary cuts for top officers, and demanded a full accounting for every dollar spent on the cleanup process. For daring to protest, Corns saw his local's jurisdiction over fire-proofing work raided by other Laborers locals in the San Francisco Bay district council, depriving his members of jobs. His protests to Coia were ignored. After Corns appealed to the Justice Department, Luskin found Local 36's jurisdictional claim "beyond dispute" and concluded the raids violated the union constitution. Only then did Coia order an end to the retaliation.
Says Corns: "The Justice Department gave away too much. They saddled us until 2001 with the same Executive Board dominated by members who sat there doing nothing while the racketeers raped and plundered our members. The full three years is up, Coia's still in office enjoying his mansions and sports cars, he's got a $50,000a-year raise, and we lose benefits and pay higher dues. What kind of justice is that?"

The Laborers' struggle offers lessons for the entire nation. University of Pennsylvania law professor Clyde Summers, who helped draft the Landrum-Griffin Act's "union members' bill of rights," told Congress in May that four decades of experience have shown a need to provide more safeguards against labor racketeers: "To maintain an effective democratic process in the national unions, all national, intermediate and local officers should be elected by direct vote rather than through conventions or delegates." A direct vote of members should also be required to raise union dues, he urged. These reforms would help rank-and-filers "maintain adequate control" and make it more difficult to "stifle democracy and opposition groups."
Meantime, the Justice Department's effort to cleanse the Laborers Union of the brutal shadow government Ron Fino so courageously exposed drags on. A recent issue of Hard Hat Construction Magazine paid him well-deserved tribute: "Unlike most mob informants, Fino volunteered. He was not trying to turn in mob associates in exchange for a lighter prison sentence, and he was not trying to get rich. He tried to do the right thing, and he has paid the price. He lost his good [union] job, he lost his family, and the Buffalo Cosa Nostra put a price on his head. He lives on the run, while many of the mobsters he incriminated are still leading the plush life."

SOUTHMARK PRIME PLUS, L.P. v. FALZONE

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Civ. A. No. 91-127-JLL.
View Case Cited Cases Citing Case
768 F.Supp. 487 (1991)

SOUTHMARK PRIME PLUS, L.P., a Delaware Limited Partnership, Southmark Equity Partners III, Ltd., a California Limited Partnership, Southmark Investment Group 86, Inc., a Nevada Corporation, and Prime Plus Corp., Inc., a Nevada Corporation, Plaintiffs, v. Leonard F. FALZONE, Buffalo Laborers' Pension Fund, Laborers' International Union of North America, Local # 210, Realcap Company, a Texas General Partnership, Quantum Realty Corp., a Delaware Corporation, Concap Management, L.P., an Illinois Limited Partnership, William R. Arnold, Salvatore J. Caci, Louis P. Ciminelli, John A. Doyle, Peter G. Gerace, Edward D. Herrick, James C. Logan, Terry L. Noebel, Joseph R. Pieri, Robert C. Patterson, and Daniel J. Sansanese, Defendants.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

June 20, 1991.

Attorney(s) appearing for the Case

Robert K. Payson and Stephen C. Norman of Potter, Anderson & Corroon, Wilmington, Del., and Karen E. Katzman, Phillip A. Geraci and John J.P. Howley of Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler, New York City, of counsel, for plaintiffs.

Richard R. Weir, Jr. and Wayne J. Carey of Prickett, Jones, Elliott, Kristol & Schnee, Wilmington, Del., and Harold J. Boreanaz and Robert L. Boreanaz of Boreanaz, Carra, Boreanaz, Buffalo, N.Y., of counsel, for Pension Fund defendants.

Perry F. Goldlust of Heiman, Aber & Goldlust, Wilmington, Del., and Richard Lipsitz and William M. Feigenbaum of Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salisbury & Cambria, Buffalo, N.Y., of counsel, for Local # 210 defendants.

Steven J. Rothschild, Matthew F. Boyer and Karen L. Valihura of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Wilmington, Del., and David S. Steuer of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, Palo Alto, Cal., of counsel, for Realcap defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

LATCHUM, Senior District Judge.

The plaintiffs in this action have alleged several violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("1934 Act"), 15 U.S.C. § 78a et seq., and the Rules promulgated thereunder, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"), 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq., by the defendants. Defendants Laborers' International Union of North America Local 210 ("Local 210") and Buffalo Laborers' Pension Fund ("Pension Fund") (collectively "the movants") have moved pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(3) to dismiss this action for improper venue, and pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f), to strike portions of the complaint.

The Court heard oral argument on June 17, 1991 and has considered the briefs of the parties. (D.I. 44, 46, 48, & 53).

Venue Under § 78aa Of The 1934 Act

The defendants first contend that under 15 U.S.C. § 78aa the District of Delaware is not the proper venue for the plaintiffs' 1934 Act claims. The Court does not agree with this contention. Under § 78aa "venue lies in the district (1) in which any act or transaction constituting the violation occurred...."1 Jacobs v. Hanson, 464 F.Supp. 777, 781-82 (D.Del.1979). This basis for venue requires "but one act within the forum district which represents more than an immaterial part of the allegedly illegal events." Puma v. Marriott, 294 F.Supp. 1116, 1120 (D.Del.1969). See also, Jacobs v. Hanson, 464 F.Supp. at 782; Prettner v. Aston, 339 F.Supp. 273 (D.Del. 1972); Dauphin Corp. v. Redwall Corp., 201 F.Supp. 466, 469-70 (D.Del.1962). Additionally, while the single act within the district must be an integral part of the allegedly illegal events, the act within the district does not in itself have to be illegal. Jacobs v. Tenney, 316 F.Supp. 151, 158 (D.Del.1970); Prettner, 339 F.Supp. at 280; Jacobs v. Hanson, 464 F.Supp. at 782. Applying these criteria to the present case, the District of Delaware is in fact a proper venue for the plaintiffs' 1934 Act claims.

According to the plaintiffs' complaint, the defendants intended to illegally seize control of several businesses and circumvent federal disclosure requirements. The key to the alleged scheme of the defendants was the creation of a Delaware corporation that would mask the defendants' alleged affiliations with organized crime and act as a vehicle for the takeovers. Quantum Realty Corporation is the Delaware corporation allegedly organized for this nefarious purpose. The act of incorporating Quantum Realty in Delaware, while not illegal, was certainly a material and integral part of the defendants' alleged illegal scheme.

In Jacobs v. Hanson, minority shareholders brought suit against the officers and directors of a corporation because they allegedly made misrepresentations in connection
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with the corporation's sale of its assets. The success of the sale depended on special tax treatment that was only possible if the corporation also dissolved itself. The Court held that venue in Delaware over all the defendants, even those who were residents of other states, was proper because the certificate of dissolution was filed in Delaware. The filing of a certificate of dissolution in Delaware was an "act" within the district sufficient to make venue as to all defendants proper under § 78aa.

In Dauphin, the acts making venue proper as to all defendants under § 78aa were the organization of a Delaware corporation to act as a conduit for fraudulently obtained proceeds, and the amendment of the plaintiff's charter of incorporation so that it could issue additional stock. The defendants' fraudulent note was paid for with the newly issued stock of the plaintiff.

In Prettner, certain labor unions brought suit in an effort to block the proposed merger of Western Airlines and American Airlines. The suit named several officers of Western Airlines, who had no contacts with Delaware, as defendants. Under § 78aa, venue was nonetheless proper in Delaware with respect to these officers because a stockholders' meeting had been held in Delaware by American Airlines.

Local 210 and the Pension Fund emphasize that the act making venue in this district proper under § 78aa was not performed by the movants. Local 210 and the Pension Fund apparently believe that unless they filed Quantum Realty's certificate of incorporation, this act cannot make Delaware a proper venue in a suit by the plaintiffs against the movants. This argument fails to recognize the significance of the plaintiffs' allegation that each defendant was a co-conspirator in an illegal scheme expected to benefit each defendant. Once venue has been established under § 78aa vis a vis one defendant, venue is proper with respect to the defendant's co-conspirators.2 This concept is occasionally referred to as the "co-conspirator venue" theory.

The underlying logic of "co-conspirator venue" was recognized in this district as early as 1962. In Dauphin, Judge Steel explained why two acts in Delaware were sufficient to make venue proper as to all defendants in a securities case. "[The acts] were integral parts of the fraud for which all defendants were the intended beneficiaries. They were acts of material importance to the sale of the [fraudulent] note. This is sufficient to support the venue of this district." Dauphin, 201 F.Supp. at 469-70. This same concept, under the title of "co-conspirator venue" has been adopted in securities cases by at least three circuits and several district courts, including several in the Third Circuit.3 Under § 78aa, venue in this district is proper as to all defendants with respect to the 1934 Act claims.

Venue Under § 1965(b) Of RICO

In a RICO action, venue may be proper with respect to a particular defendant
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even though the venue provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 1965(a) and 28 U.S.C. § 1391 do not apply to that defendant. Bernstein v. IDT Corp., 582 F.Supp. 1079, 1087-88 (D.Del.1984); Farmer's Bank of the State of Delaware v. Bell Mortg. Corp. (Farmer's Bank II), 577 F.Supp. 34 (D.Del.1981). If venue is proper in a district pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1965(a) or 28 U.S.C. § 1391 as to one or more defendants, venue will also be proper with respect to defendants not covered by these venue provisions if, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1965(b), the "interests of justice" dictate that these other defendants be brought before the same court. See id. None of the cases cited by the defendants are to the contrary.4 On the other hand, several district court opinions in this circuit support the argument that the nationwide service of process provision of § 1965(b) can be used to satisfy RICO's venue requirements.5

Generally, when a defendant moves to dismiss for improper venue pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(3), the defendant bears the burden of proof. Myers v. American Dental Ass'n, 695 F.2d 716, 724-25 (3d Cir.1982), cert. denied, 462 U.S. 1106, 103 S.Ct. 2453, 77 L.Ed.2d 1333 (1983) ("[T]he defendant should ordinarily bear the burden of showing improper venue in connection with a motion to dismiss."); 1A-Pt 2 J. Moore, Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 0.340[2], at 4021-22 (2d ed. 1991). The plaintiffs in this case, however, do not rely on the general venue provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 1391. Instead, the plaintiffs claim that venue is appropriate against the movants under one of RICO's special venue provisions, namely, § 1965(b). Under § 1965(b), a plaintiff must "show[] that the ends of justice require" the district court to exercise its discretion and bring parties before the court that would not otherwise be subject to venue in the district. The plaintiffs have met this burden.

The venue provisions found in RICO balance two policy concerns. The first concern is the traditional one that a defendant should not be unfairly inconvenienced by a plaintiff's choice of forum.6 The second concern is that a RICO conspiracy should
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be tried as a whole, with all defendants before one court, whenever possible.7 Section 1965(b) strikes a balance between these two policy concerns by giving the court discretion to bring all defendants into a single district when the "ends of justice" require such action.8 Several factors can be considered by a court in making this "ends of justice" determination under § 1965(b).

First, if there is a district where venue is proper as to every RICO defendant, without resort to § 1965(b), under normal circumstances, a court in a different district will not further the ends of justice if it exercises its discretion under § 1965(b) to bring the same litigants into a district where venue would not otherwise have been proper. On the other hand, if no district is a proper venue as to all defendants without resort to § 1965(b), and at least one defendant is subject to venue in the district pursuant to § 1965(a) or § 1391, then the interests of justice weigh heavily in favor of the court bringing the other defendants before it under § 1965(b).9

In the present case, venue is clearly proper under § 1965(a) with respect to Quantum, the defendant Delaware corporation. The plaintiffs' complaint and their briefs also make it clear that there are several defendants and that they are widely dispersed. At this stage of the proceedings it is impossible to determine the specific contacts each defendant has with each possible forum. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that all the defendants are subject to venue in one district under §§ 1965(a) and 1391.10 The Court therefore concludes that the ends of justice would be significantly advanced if the Court exercised its discretion under § 1965(b) and brought all defendants to the District of Delaware. For this reason alone, the Court would be justified in exercising its discretion under § 1965(b).

Second, the movants will not be inconvenienced if they are required to defend against the plaintiffs' RICO claims in the District of Delaware. Venue is proper in the District of Delaware with respect to the plaintiffs' 1934 Act claims against both Local 210 and the Pension Fund. Regardless of whether venue is appropriate with respect to the RICO claims, Local 210 and the Pension Fund will be required to appear in this suit. Possible inconvenience to Local
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210 and the Pension Fund, therefore, is not a factor.

A third factor a court should consider when determining whether to exercise its discretion under § 1965(b) is judicial economy. Farmer's Bank II, 577 F.Supp. at 35. In the present case, this factor weighs heavily in favor of compelling the movants to appear and defend this suit in the District of Delaware.

As noted above, with respect to the 1934 Act claims there is certainly venue in this district as to all defendants. In order to litigate these claims the parties will have to address the existence of the alleged conspiracy and its connection to organized crime. This factual inquiry, in which the movants must participate, will be very similar to the factual issues raised by the RICO claims. Further, the other defendants have not objected to venue in this district and will therefore have to address the legal issues involved in the RICO claims. Since the movants will be required to litigate their role in the conspiracy and ties to organized crime anyhow, and the Court will be addressing the legal issues related to the RICO claims, it would be a serious waste of judicial resources to litigate this case in more than one district. For these reasons, the Court concludes that venue under RICO is proper in this district with respect to the movants.

Local 210's Motion To Strike Pursuant To Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(f)

In pertinent part, Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(f) permits the Court to strike "from any pleading any ... redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter." Essentially, Local 210 and the Pension Fund argue that the plaintiffs' allegations that Local 210 and the Pension Fund are connected to, and controlled by, organized crime are "impertinent" and "scandalous" and should therefore be stricken. (D.I. 44 at 16-19; D.I. 53).

As a general rule, motions to strike pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(f) are not favored.11 Further, a "[m]atter will not be stricken from a pleading unless it is clear that it can have no possible bearing upon the subject matter of the litigation."12 Put differently, the portions of the complaint that the movants find offensive cannot be struck unless they are immaterial to the complaint. Skadegaard v. Farrell, 578 F.Supp. 1209, 1221 (D.N.J.1984). In the present case, the plaintiffs' allegations that Local 210 and the Pension Fund are controlled by organized crime are central to both the plaintiffs' 1934 Act claims and their RICO claims. The crux of the plaintiffs' complaint is that organized crime figures conspired to seize control of certain businesses in violation of RICO and that the means they used were intended to hide the involvement of organized crime, in violation of the securities laws. In any event, the allegations in the complaint are not unreasonably derogatory or offensive.

At oral argument, the movants took particular exception to the complaint's references to newspaper articles supporting the plaintiffs' allegations. According to the plaintiffs, the references to the newspaper articles are relevant because they show that the defendants who are not members of organized crime, should have known they were conspiring with organized crime figures. For present purposes, this explanation satisfies the Court that this information was properly included in the complaint.

Due to the materiality of the offending allegations and the Court's reluctance to strike generally, the Court will deny the motions of Local 210 and the Pension Fund to strike pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(f). For reasons discussed earlier, the Court will also deny the movants' Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(3) motion to dismiss for improper venue. An Order in accordance with this Memorandum Opinion will follow.

FootNotes


1. The other bases for venue under § 78aa are the district "in which the defendant (2) is found, (3) is an inhabitant or (4) transacts business." Jacobs v. Hanson, 464 F.Supp. 777, 781-82 (D.Del.1979).
2. Some courts have held that the "co-conspirator venue" theory only applies where venue has been established over one conspirator by reason of an "act or transaction" performed in the district by that conspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy. In re Towner Petroleum Co. Securities Litig. — MDL 607, MDL Docket 607, slip op., 1986 WL 290, *16 n. 13, (E.D.Pa. June 30, 1986); Schreiber v. W.E. Hutton & Co., 382 F.Supp. 297, 298-99 (D.D.C.1974). For this reason, the Court has not addressed whether venue is proper over any of the defendants based on their "presence" in the District of Delaware under § 78aa.
3. See e.g., Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Vigman, 764 F.2d 1309, 1317-18 (9th Cir.1985) (citing several cases at 1317 n. 4 & 5); Hilgeman v. National Ins. Co. of America, 547 F.2d 298 (5th Cir.1977); Wyndham Assoc. v. Bintliff, 398 F.2d 614, 620 (2d Cir.1968), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 977, 89 S.Ct. 444, 21 L.Ed.2d 438 (1968); Booth v. Alvin Petroleum, Inc., Civil Action No. 85-3221, slip op., 1987 WL 6748, *2, 1987 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 1110, *6 (E.D.Pa. February 9, 1987); In re Towner Petroleum, 1986 WL 290, *12; Ferber v. Morgan Stanley Co., Inc., Civil Action No. 83-1470, slip op., 1984 WL 2397, Fed.Sec.L.Rep. (CCH) ¶ 99,684 (E.D.Pa. February 14, 1984); Carty v. Health-Chem Corp., 567 F.Supp. 1, 3 (E.D.Pa.1982); Hill v. Turner, 492 F.Supp. 61, 63 (M.D.Pa.1980); B & B Inv. Club v. Kleinert's, Inc., 391 F.Supp. 720, 728 (E.D.Pa. 1975); Arpet, Ltd. v. Homans, 390 F.Supp. 908, 911 (W.D.Pa.1975); In re Penn Cent. Sec. Litig., 338 F.Supp. 438, 440 (E.D.Pa.1972); Levin v. Great Western Sugar Co., 274 F.Supp. 974, 978 (D.N.J.1967).
4. The defendants only cited two cases in support of their position; Butcher's Union Local No. 498 v. SDC Inv., Inc., 788 F.2d 535 (9th Cir.1986); and Lisak v. Mercantile Bancorp, Inc., 834 F.2d 668 (7th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 1007, 108 S.Ct. 1472, 99 L.Ed.2d 700 (1988). In Butcher's Union, the court did not reach the venue issue. While the court in Lisak did reach the venue issue, its holding is not inconsistent with this Court's discussion of venue under 18 U.S.C. § 1965. In Lisak the court of appeals remanded the case to the district court but made several observations to facilitate the district court's reconsideration of the venue issue. First, the court of appeals noted that "[s]ection 1965(a) deals with venue in RICO cases, but § 1965(b) creates personal jurisdiction by authorizing service." Id. at 671. Despite this comment, the court of appeals clearly did not intend to foreclose the use of § 1965(b) in establishing venue. The appeals court explained that as long as venue was established with respect to any single defendant under § 1965(a) or 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b), venue would be proper as to the other RICO defendants under § 1965(b) if the interests of justice required their presence. Id. at 672. Section 1965(b) therefore can be used to establish proper venue in a district.
5. Shuman v. Computer Assoc. Int'l, Inc., 762 F.Supp. 114, 118 (E.D.Pa.1991); American Trade Partners, L.P. v. A-1 Int'l Importing Enter., Ltd., 757 F.Supp. 545, 556 n. 16 (E.D.Pa.1991); Gurnicz v. Guindon, Civil Action No. 90-3796, slip op., 1991 WL 1009, 3, 1991 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 112, 6 (E.D.Pa. January 2, 1991) ("Section 1965(b) provides for venue...."); American Trade Partners, L.P. v. A-1 Int'l Importing Enter., Ltd., 755 F.Supp. 1292, 1304-05 (E.D.Pa.1990); S.D. Warren Co. v. Engelman, Civil Action No. 87-8339, slip op., 1988 WL 97661, *4-5, 1988 U.S.Dist LEXIS 10474, 12-13 (E.D.Pa. September 20, 1988); Koropey v. Resort Dev. Corp., Civil Action No. 87-5355, slip op., 1988 WL 76132 1988 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 7346 (E.D.Pa. July 11, 1988); Bhatla v. Resort Dev. Corp., Civil Action No. 86-7099, slip op., 1987 WL 28367, *2-3, 1987 U.S.Dist LEXIS 11835, 7-8 (E.D.Pa. December 17, 1987); Shulton, Inc. v. Optel Corp., Civil Action No. 85-2925, slip op., 1986 WL 15617, *4-5 & n. 3, 1987-1 Trade Cas. (CCH) ¶ 67,436 (D.N.J. September 29, 1986); Leavey v. Blinder, Robinson & Co., Inc., Civil Action No. 85-7018, slip op., 1986 WL 10556, Fed.Sec.L.Rep. (CCH) ¶ 92,996 (E.D.Pa. September 18, 1986); Farmer's Bank of the State of Delaware v. Bell Mortg. Corp. (Farmer's Bank I), 452 F.Supp. 1278, 1282 & n. 8 (D.Del.1978) ("§ 1965(b) provides that the district court may summon other parties over whom there would not otherwise be venue in the district if `it is shown that the ends of justice [so] require....'").
6. 1A-Pt 2 J. Moore, Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 0.340[1.-1] at 4007 (2d ed. 1991) ("In general, limitations on venue afford a defendant some protection against being forced to defend an action in a district remote from his residence, or remote from the place where the events underlying the controversy occurred....")
7. Addressing the personal jurisdiction implications of § 1965(b) the court of appeals in Lisak noted: "Section 1965(b) authorizes nationwide service of process so that at least one court will have jurisdiction over everyone connected with any RICO enterprise." Id. 834 F.2d at 672.
8. Shulton, 1986 WL 15617, *4 ("The `ends of justice' provision furthers the congressional purpose of `eradicating organized crime in this country' by enabling plaintiffs `to bring all members of a nationwide RICO conspiracy before a court in a single trial,' without unnecessarily sacrificing any defendant's interest in having the action litigated in a forum convenient to it.") (citation omitted).
9. S.D. Warren, 1988 WL 97661, *5, 1988 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 10474, 13; Koropey, 1988 WL 76132, *1, 1988 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 7346, 3; Bhatla, 1987 WL 28367, *2-3, 1987 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 11835, 7; Shulton, 1986 WL 15617, *4 ("Generally, however, the ends of justice requirement [of § 1965(b)] is fulfilled when venue is properly laid in the district in question under section 1965(a) at least as to one defendant, and there exists no other district in which venue would be appropriate as to all defendants.").
10. At oral argument, counsel for the movants suggested that pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2) venue is proper as to all defendants in either the Western District of New York or the Northern District of Texas. In pertinent part § 1391(b)(2) states that venue is proper in "a judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred...." The movants have not informed the Court of any "events or omissions" occurring in the two preferred districts. The only event referred to by the movants is the filing of certain documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. (D.I. 44 at 15). On the other hand, the plaintiffs have shown that at least one crucial event occurred in Delaware, the formation of Quantum, and that it is impossible to say in which districts a "substantial part of the events" occurred because the defendants can be found in New York, Texas, Illinois, Delaware, California and possibly Vermont. (D.I. 46 at 14; Oral Argument). Despite the protestations of the movants, the Court cannot conclude, at this time, that there is another district in which venue is proper with respect to every defendant.
11. Milton Roy Co. v. Bausch & Lomb, Inc., 418 F.Supp. 975, 977 (D.Del.1976); Louisiana Sulphur Carriers, Inc. v. Gulf Resources and Chemical Corp., 53 F.R.D. 458, 461 (D.Del.1971); 2A J. Moore, Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 12.21[2] at 12-175 (2d ed. 1991).
12. 2A J. Moore, Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 12.21[2] at 12-175 to 12-176.