Below is another sample of the weekly North American mob column I will be launching next month. Please take a look and throw me some feedback.

SCOTT BURNSTEIN's MOB INSIDER - July 22, 2014

Windy City mafia absorbs blow, Westside wiseguys bite the dust in rackets bust


Buzz, buzz.

Chicago mobsters Bobby Panozzo and Paul Koroluk of the Outfit’s Grand Avenue crew were stung last week. And the 54-year old Panozzo could be stung again soon……with murder charges.

Operating a sub-group within the Grand Avenue faction, identified as “The P-K Crew” (the pair’s initials), Panozzo and Koroluk, and two subordinates, one being Panozzo’s namesake and 22-year old son, Bobby, Jr, were nabbed last Thursday in a police sting operation by Cook County narcotics detectives for running an elaborate armed-robbery ring targeting unprotected drug houses, as well as engaging in home invasions, arson, burglary, drug trafficking, attempted murder and possibly murder.

The racketeering and home invasion charges carry maximum 60-year prison sentences. Using tips from street gang members, a police radio scanner and stolen police uniforms, the P-K’s raided a series of area drug houses before the cops could. Their traditional home invasions were brutal and bloody; Panozzo chopped off one victim’s ear for lying to him in the midst of Panozzo robbing him.

The robbery crew was caught in the act, set-up by the cops and tricked into thinking they were ripping off a 45-kilo shipment of cocaine from a stash house on South Brandon Avenue in the city’s Hegewisch district, when in fact they were walking into a carefully-planned bear trap, the culmination of an investigation called, “Operation Crew Cut”.

Walking out of the purported stash house early Thursday morning, Panozzo, Koroluk and their associates were met by a swat team of Chicago police officers.Panozzo and the half-Polish, half-Italian Koroluk, 55, are both Grand Avenue mob crew veterans, first reporting to Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, currently imprisoned, and now taking orders from Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, Lombardo’s replacement as capo of the city’s Westside.

Sources close to the investigation, say Vena, a person dubbed “the most dangerous gangster in Chicago” by organized experts, the Windy City media and fellow mobsters alike, was “very close” to be indicted in the case, too. FBI wiretaps and street informants tie Vena to pocketing a percentage of the scores Panozzo and Koroluk were taking down.

Gangster running buddies for years, Panozzo and Koroluk were groomed in the art of robbery by Joey the Clown himself. The pair came up in a Lombardo-overseen burglary crew headed by his driver, James (Jimmy Legs) D’Antonio. FBI documents related to D’Antonio claim that Panozzo and Koroluk actually went along on the final actual robbery job the Clown personally participated in during an early 1980s jewelry store heist. By that time, Lombardo was already a capo and according to the report took a liking to Panozzo, nicknaming him “Bobby Pinocchio” for his talent for deception. The young Panozzo and Koroluk are alleged to have acted as look-outs on the job.

The P-K crew has been on law enforcement’s radar for the past couple years. In 2012, crew members Louie Capuzi and Frank Obrochta, were nailed on charges of burglary, home invasion, insurance fraud and prostitution and are currently awaiting trial.

Last fall, Chicago Police discovered Panozzo and Koroluk tried to put a murder contract on a witness in a forthcoming home invasion case. Then in the winter, Panozzo and Vena were mentioned at the trial of Windy City cop-turned-mobster Steve Mandell, convicted in February of attempting to kidnap, torture and eventually murder a pair of associates and one of their wives, in a ploy to assume control of one associate’s strip clubs and the other’s real estate assets. Testimony and FBI surveillance photos revealed that Panozzo and Mandell dined with Vena at Vena’s favorite Italian eatery, La Scrola (also a "forever fav" of the Lombardo when he was on the streets).

Part of the indictment against Panozzo released Saturday quotes a confidential federal informant as accusing Panozzo of the murder of an elderly woman back in 1987, a homicide he is said to have bragged about. The informant said the murder was preceded by the woman signing over her property to Panozzo and concluded with him allegedly killing her by throwing her down three different flights of stairs in her apartment building.

Law enforcement sources in the Windy City tell the Mob Insider that a first-degree homicide charge against Panozzo could be added to the indictment before the case hits trial and that the FBI and Chicago PD detectives are investigating Panozzo’s connection to a currently unsolved October 1987 murder that took place in an apartment complex on W. Ohio Street and matches the informant's description of events.

Less than a decade ago, Panozzo and Koroluk were arrested and convicted on similar burglary charges and were sentenced to seven-year prison bits in 2006. A source close to the Grand Avenue crew claims Panozzo also helps Vena, someone he’s very close to, look after the crew’s loan sharking business and that he has a reputation on the city’s Westside as a “tough-as-nails collector.”

One of the street gangs feeding the P-K gang with information on what drug houses to rob was allegedly the C-Notes, according to the Chicago Crime Commission, a longtime “Outfit JV team,” made up of Italians and hispanics that Vena was once a member of and maintains close ties with.

Retired Chicago PD organized crime investigator Robert McDonald used to keep tabs on Panozzo and Vena in the 1980s.

“We’d watch Lombardo’s young guys and Bobby and Albie were two you always knew weren’t guys you messed with, they were the type of individuals that really enjoyed the work, took pleasure in inflicting pain,” he said. “Lombardo knew there was always room in the Outfit for guys like that and he made sure they were utilized from a young age.”

Motor City mob mourns loss of longtime Godfather, reflects on his legacy

Detroit’s “Last Don” Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco was laid to rest late last week, in a wake and funeral fit for a king.

The nation’s longest-sitting mob boss at the time he died, Tocco passed away from natural causes at age 87 last Monday night and was laid out at Bagnascos-Calcaterra Funeral Home in Macomb County, the same funeral home (different location) that hosted memorial services for his two and only predecessors back in the 1970s. His funeral was held Friday at St. Claire of Monticello Catholic Church and he was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Southfield, next to his father, Michigan’s first modern-day Godfather William (Black Bill) Tocco and brother, his recently-deceased consigliere Anthony (Tony T) Tocco.

Crowds packed into the funeral home run by members of the Tocco family, and church to say goodbye to the regal mob dignitary, respected and feared in the underworld and beloved in his community. Alleged street boss Peter (Specs) Tocco, 66, Black Jack’s favorite nephew, greeted mourners at the door. Reputed underboss Anthony (Chicago Tony) La Piana, 70, Tocco’s protégé and nephew via marriage and newly-crowned Detroit mob don Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone, 62, were present helping preside over the precession as well.

Deposed 84-year old capo Frank (Frankie the Bomb) Bommarito's appearance to pay his respects to the departing don was met by Jackie Giacalone, whose father and deceased Family underboss Billy was the Bomb’s best friend, immediately leaving. Bommarito and the younger Giacalone have been fighting since Billy Jack passed away two and a half years ago.

Not surprisingly, FBI agents peppered the crowd and shot surveillance photos from the across the street, noting those in attendance, just like they did four decades ago when Tocco’s father Black Bill and uncle, Joseph (Joe Uno) Zerilli, died after ruling a near half-century atop the crime syndicate they co-founded unchallenged.

Zerilli and Black Bill Tocco, brother-in-laws and best friends, won the "Crosstown Mob War” at the end of Prohibition and established the Motor City’s LCN branch in 1931, with Tocco serving as boss from 1931-1936 and Zerilli from 1936-1977, even earning a forthcoming seat on the national mafia Commission. Jack Tocco was “acting boss” of the crime family beginning in the early 1970s and was officially anointed the new don on June 11, 1979 at a ceremony at a posh hunting lodge near Ann Arbor.

Black Bill Tocco died of a heart attack in 1972, while Joe Uno held on until 1977 when he died of natural causes after never spending a night in jail. Until the Family’s recent power-shift, seeing Jack Tocco pass the reins to Jackie Giacalone and Tony La Piana, the Detroit mob had always been in the direct-hands of him or his blood relatives.

Bagnascos Funeral Home, the business itself, is entrenched in Detroit mob lore. Founded by Sicilian immigrant and alleged mafia soldier Frank (The Undertaker) Bagnasco at the start of the 20th Century, he was a key lieutenant to Black Bill Tocco and Joe Zerilli when they created what came to be known as the Detroit LCN crime family. Detroit Police Department files indicate Tocco and Zerilli may have even held a piece of silent ownership in the funeral parlor.

The Undertaker was eventually taken under though himself in September 1937, shot-gunned to death as he entered his house on the city’s Eastside, after feuding with Tocco, out on an appeal bond from his recently incurred tax evasion conviction. Before Tocco headed to federal prison for a six-year stint, he was questioned, but never charged with arranging Bagnasco’s murder.

In the years following the Bagnasco slaying, his sons, Salvatore (Sammy B) Bagnasco and Anthony (Tony B) Bagnasco, took over the business and like their dad before them, became reputed “made” members of the Detroit mob. Sammy B was able to look past the fact that Black Bill Tocco had ordered his father’s execution and became his son-in-law, marrying his daughter. The Bagnasco brothers died in the 1990s. Bill Bagnasco, Sammy B’s son and Jack Tocco’s nephew, runs the funeral home now.

One person noticeably absent from Black Jack’s wake and funeral was his first-cousin and former underboss, Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli (Joe Uno’s son) and Tony Z's wife, Rosalie, the daughter of one-time New York mega don, Joe Profaci. Tocco and Zerilli had a bitter falling out in the wake of the expansive Operation GameTax bust of 1996 and their respective convictions and federal prison sentences, resulting in Black Jack pulling his cousin’s stripes and demoting him from the No. 2 spot in the Family after he was released from behind bars in 2009.

Black Jack’s brother and primary advisor Tony Tocco was married to Joe Profaci’s other daughter, Carmela, making both Tony T and Tony Z brother-in-laws to Colombo Crime Family capo Salvatore (Jersey Sal) Provenzano currently in semi-retirement down in Florida.

According to sources close to the situation, the main issues at the center of the dispute were Tocco blaming Zerilli for the court case, since it was his crew that provided the bulk of the evidence at trial, and a purported four million dollars of missing money Tony Z believes he was shorted from by Tocco in the sale of the racetrack the two co-owned together, but were forced to unload once they were convicted in the Gametax bust.

“It’s a great day, one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time,” the 86-year old Zerilli said from Florida upon hearing the news of his adversary’s passing.

The pair of mob princes were raised side-by-side in their families’ Grosse Pointe Park’s “compound,” attending college together at the University of Detroit-Mercy and making their bones in tandem with the 1947 strangulation of Greek wiseguy Gus Andromulous (per U.S. Senatorial hearing testimony). Besides being given the Hazel Park Raceway to run as a college graduation gift in 1949 from their fathers, the young Tocco and Zerilli each held ownership interests in car dealerships, real estate, restaurants and various other business endeavors, both legitimate and illegitimate.

Although Tony Z made a habit of getting pinched (starting with his 1967 arrest and subsequent conviction for stealing six million dollars from and maintaining a hidden ownership in the Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, which led to his imprisonment and removal in favor of Black Jack as his father’s heir apparent), Tocco proved elusive to law enforcement efforts to lock him up. That was until Gametax came down and he was convicted at trial in 1998. It was the first felony of his underworld career, dating back literally 50 years. He had taken pride in dodging the attempts to saddle him with the mobster label. Sentenced to a suspicious two years in prison in the case (originally one year if not for a prosecutor's appeal), Tocco had been out of prison since 2002. Zerilli’s been free since 2009.

Fancying himself a new generation “board room gangster,” and benevolent community leader, instead of reveling in his mob power Tocco bristled at the notion that he was perceived in the public as a mafia boss – he filed close to a dozen slander and defamation law suits against members of the press and law enforcement between the 1970s and his 1996 arrest, adamantly denying his gangland ties.

“Jack always wanted it both ways, he wanted the people that needed to know he was the boss to know and bow to him and he wanted the rest of the world to view him as this patronized saint, a humanitarian that is a victim of ethnic stereotypes,” commented his former nemesis on the other side of the law, retied U.S. Prosecutor Keith Corbett, lead attorney in the Gametax investigation and prosecution. “He was a racketeer though, a very adept racketeer at that and despite what he wanted, that’s what he’s going to be remembered for when it's all said and done.”

The lengths he went to clear his name were the inspiration for an Academy Award-nominated screenplay by Detroit movie screenwriter Kurt Luedke, 1981’s Absence of Malice, starring Paul Newman, as the son of a former mobster, unjustly accused of being a Mafiosi and a suspect in a high-profile labor union boss’ disappearance and murder.

Tocco died a top suspect in the famed Jimmy Hoffa slaying. Hoffa, the mob ally-turned enemy and dethroned Teamsters President hell-bent on reclaiming his post against the mafia’s wishes, vanished from a Metro Detroit restaurant parking lot on the afternoon of July 30, 1975.

After seeking numerous mediators to help smooth out the bad blood between him and his cousin and former boss, including Bill Bagnasco, Tony Z threw down the gauntlet in December 2012 and went to the FBI, pointing the Feds to property once owned by Tocco and where he was told Hoffa was taken to, killed and buried 39 years ago this month in maybe the most recognized unsolved murder in American history. Last summer, the FBI dug up the desolate parcel of farmland to no avail.

Tony Z was in prison for the Frontier case at the time Hoffa was murdered. At trial in their GameTax case, Zerilli and Tocco were both convicted of holding past hidden ownership in the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and The Edgewater Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada.

Named a capo in the 1960s, Black Jack married the daughter of Detroit underboss Angelo (The Chairmen) Meli and headquartered his crew out of Melrose Linen Service on the city’s Northeast side.

Retired FBI agent Sam Ruffino recalls staking out Melrose late one July evening in 1985, hours after veteran area mob soldier Peter (Fast Pete) Cavataio was killed for his subversive behavior and running around with imprisoned gangsters wives and girlfriends.

“We’re watching the place real close the night Pete Cavataio got whacked and Jack and his brother Tony T and Billy Giacalone and Tony “The Bull” Corrado (both capos in the Family then) pull up and out comes with them Fast Pete’s kid,” Ruffino said. “They take’em up to the office and we got a bug in there, so we can hear what they’re saying, and Jack says, ‘It’s over, there’s no beef, keep quiet if anybody comes around asking questions keep your mouth shut. And oh, by the way, where’s his stash.’ Everyone knew Cavataio was sitting on like a million large in cash but nobody knew where it was.’ We thought the kid might have even been forced to set the old man up. Either way, that says it all, ya know, ‘your dad’s dead, now where is all his money?’

Cavataio, Tony the Bull Corrado’s brother-in-law, was kidnapped in broad daylight outside a BBQ restaurant he owned in Southfield, discovered the next day, tortured and shot in the back of the head in an abandoned garage in Southwest Detroit. His murder has never been solved.

Ruffino remembers one more thing about that night back in ’85.

“When Jack and the boys are leaving, he spots us sitting at the edge of the road by Melrose and gives us the finger,” the former G-man remembered with a chuckle.

FBI wiretaps from the Gametax case reveal Jack’s and his brother’s reputation for trying to avoid attention from law enforcement at all costs.

“Jack and Tawn (another nickname for Tony Tocco) are triple fucking cautious,” opined a solider and relative of theirs. “They keep their heads down more than anyone. That used to be the big fucking joke when they were all coming up back in the day. Ya know, if you wanted to get them off a score or to get them off your back, you’d just say, ‘I’m feeling a lot of heat lately’ and the Toccos would go running for the hills.”

The consummate mob politician and statesmen, Black Jack forged close ties with mafia bosses from other regions, such as Chicago’s John (Johnny No Nose) DiFronzo, L.A’s Peter (Shakes) Milano, Buffalo’s Joseph (Lead Pipe Joe) Todaro, New Jersey’s John (The Eagle) Riggi and Pittsburgh’s Mike Genovese, to further solidify his power. Tocco, Chicago-born Tony La Piana, and No Nose Di Fronzo were known to attend the Kentucky Derby every spring together.

An FBI surveillance unit followed Tocco on an Eastcoast mob meet-and-greet in the months after he took over from his uncle Joe Zerilli as don of Detroit, breaking bread with soon-to-be slain Philly Godfather Angelo Bruno in Pennsylvania and Five Family bosses Paul Castellano, Anthony (Tony Ducks) Corrallo, Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and Carmine (The Snake) Persico in New York.

“Jack Tocco’s passing represents the end of an era and a time where the mafia still had its swagger,” Corbett said. “The Detroit Family is still pretty fearsome, they remain violent and active, but they don’t have that aura anymore like they did when Jack was coming up and on top at first and really until Gametax, where that whole façade was kind of shattered. And like they say with Humpty Dumpty, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” you know, it will just never be the same.”

Borgesi scratching his head regarding boss report, Philly wiseguy trying not to make waves

Good ole’ Georgie Boy was just as shocked reading the news about himself, as most of those who were reading it about him were.

Last week, in a story on CoasNostraNews.com that has since been revised, George (Georgie Boy) Borgesi, the-recently released from prison 50-year old Philadelphia mafia stalwart was named the new boss of the Philly mob. Borgesi, the nephew of don Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi, reached out to multiple people in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey media, expressing his dismay and confusion with the report that he deemed false, wondering where Coasnostranews' sources were getting their information.

Despite his pedigree and gangster past, the Philly mafia’s one-time consigliere is desperately trying to keep a low profile on the heels of his dozen-year plus trip to the can that came to an end a few months back.

The original printing of the story reported that Borgesi was using mob associates and brothers Mike and Stevie Salvo (roofers union) as his main proxies on the street, “grabbing everything back that was his before he went to jail” and taking over for the retiring Ligambi.

In January, Borgesi was sprung from federal prison after a 13-year stay on racketeering charges coupled with his beating further mafia-related charges alongside his uncle that came his way as he was about to be released from his 2000 conviction.

Ligambi and his nephew both beat the racketeering case twice at trial, most recently earlier this year, via hung-juries and acquittals.

Underworld sources in South Philly tell the Mob Insider that Ligambi is the syndicate’s current consigliere and Borgesi “might be able to get his stripes back as a capo or Ligambi’s replacement in his old post in the future, but for now, he’s merely a soldier.”

The sources peg Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino, convicted with Georgie Boy back in 2000, as boss of the crime family, ruling from afar in South Florida, relying on street boss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone and underboss John (Johnny Chang) Ciangalini to handle day-to-day affairs in Pennsylvania.

Borgesi is re-entering the Philadelphia mob at a delicate juncture right now, as multiple factions and eras jockey for position in a possible powder keg of a local gangland scene.

Thanks Scott, great reads!

Paging SonnyBlackstein in jolly ol London....

[i]Underworld sources in South Philly tell the Mob Insider that Ligambi is the syndicate’s current consigliere and Borgesi “might be able to get his stripes back as a capo or Ligambi’s replacement in his old post in the future, but for now, he’s merely a soldier.”

The sources peg Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino, convicted with Georgie Boy back in 2000, as boss of the crime family, ruling from afar in South Florida, relying on street boss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone and underboss John (Johnny Chang) Ciangalini to handle day-to-day affairs in Pennsylvania.
[/i]

I know these sources probably aren't as good as your British sources with the inside knowledge on the philly mob....but take it for what it's worth. LOGIC.....

Thanks scott cool read.

Good stuff Scott.

Well, this tidbit about Vena coming close to being indicted in the round up is very interesting indeed.

rock n roll cant wait for more!!!

Good read Scott.

Thanks for the post.