Cherry Hill

Any one got a current list of members of this crew?
Is Lorenzo Maminno acting capo or official?

Cherry Hill is a very tight knit heavily Jewish Community. John Gambino is infamous for Valentino's which was torched back in the day but there aren't any Cherry Hill Gambino's..

Lorenzo Mannino is in John Gambinos crew which was always different than the cherry hills gambinos. its always the misconception that they were the same but the cherry hill gambinos were in jeresey being run by rosario gambino who was a member of the sicilian mafia and John gambinos crew was in Brooklyn under the gambino family.

But with John Gambino being apart of the three man street panel thing that the Gambinos have going, and that recently an article came out saying that Mannino was a captain it looks like Mannino might have taken over JGs crew. but idk for sure.

Valentino's was Joe and Rosario Gambino's restaurant. They also gave Angelo Bruno a piece of it as tribute back in the late 1970's.

The so-called Cherry Hill Gambinos were the philly area branch of John Gambino's crew. He was the big boss of that pipeline....Rosario took care of all local matters because John was always in NY and never lived here.

^^^ thats what i used to think to Giancarlo but didnt Phil Leonetti or some informant say that Cherry Hill didnt anser to New York bc Rosario was made in Sicily, and that came out during a sit down between the Philly guys and John Gotti and Gotti said he didnt have any control over them or something like that?

Mannino runs the zip crew in Brooklyn.

Obama and Mannino are boys. Obama did a shout out to Lorenzo when honoring some guy from the DOJ

Yes...Gotti told Scarfo and Leonetti that Rosario was not a made LCN guy but that he was a sicilian mafioso. That pipeline really belonged to the Gambino families clan back in Palermo but John ran the usa side of it. There was a fed chart showing Rosario answered to one of the DiMaggio's back in sicily. He's one of the top guys in that clan. Really it was all 3 of the brothers working together...but John Gambino was the top guy. Sorry if i confused you...it's strange how they had one foot here with the Gambino LCN family and another foot in their home town clan.

lol i remember reading that article

Heres the chart i mentioned Del.

Notice how Joe and John Gambino are linked to Big Paul but Rosario isn't...he's linked to one of his relatives in the clan back home.

thanks for clearing that up, thanks i havent seen that chart before.

It really gets confusing with these guys...at least to me it is...how they operated here and back home. In reality some of them answered to Castellano and from what i can tell others reported back home. But John Gambino was no doubt the boss of the american side of the pipeline. A lot of people were involved that we probably never heard of. You find out new details on it all the time as more documents from back then become public from FOIA requests and old trial transcripts.

A guy from RD is waiting on some files he requested on these guys and if theres anything interesting in them i'll let you know.

Two Philly Mobsters ratted on the Sicilian's back then and they mentioned it in a documentary which I thought was surprising consider the siggy's whacked them those guys.

The main guys that got popped were the LaPorta brothers Paolo and Giovanni. They went down hard in the 1980's...big heroin and coke guys according to the feds. Supposedly they did a lot of business with Cesare Bonventre. I read they were caught on tape bad mouthing him and weren't pleased with the quality of the merchandise they got from him. Don't know who the 2 philly guys were that set them up but i think they must of been fellow sicilian mafioso's....not positive though.

Heres a pic...it's identified as being the 2 LaPorta brothers but the guy on the left looks to me like Alberto Ficalora who was one of their main guys...the other shorter guy is one of the LaPorta's but i'm not sure which one. Big guy might be that undercover fed.



Heres another one...same guys. That big guy is definitely the undercover fed. I bet thats either a bunch of cash or a kilo of heroin in that bag he's carrying.

from what i remember the two guys that set them up were from the philly family,when they decided to cooperate the deal they made was that they werent going to give up anyone from their family but they would help bring down the sicilian dealers you mentioned by introducing the cop(forget his name) to the sicilians as a dealer looking for a supplier.

Could be Del...i'm really not sure.

Ya im just going off what the cop said in his interview on that documentary Nino mentioned, i think it was called "the 10 commandments of the mafia".

I forget his name but that fed was also on one of the shows about the pizza connection. I read he retired and became a private investigator. I liked the story he always tells about LaPorta's real young son being there when one of the deals went down. There was a few pounds of heroin and a bunch of kilo's of coke on the table and the fed said he was real uneasy about the kid being there so LaPorta asked the kid what he saw and the kid says "I see Nothing"..lol!

haha smart kid

Heres Joe and Rosario Gambino's restaurant/club Valentino's in Cherry Hill NJ before it was torched. It was their south jersey headquarters and where Bruno and Castellano used to meet.

Check out the sign...they had the Village People playing at the time.

Nice find Giancarlo on the undercover pictures. Definitely Ficalora and I think Giovanni LaPorta.

So Antonio and Mario Gambino were Sicilian LCN or US LCN?

As far as i know they were not made guys here in the USA. Not sure if they were made in sicily. All i really know about them is that they were at the time younger relatives of the Gambino's and from what i've read they answered to Rosario and Erasmo Gambino. But i really don't know what their mafioso status/ranking was back then.

Antonio was convicted in the case but Mario was acquitted.

Another big name was Francesco Gambino from Torretta....definitely a high ranking mafioso and was sentenced to i think 40 years. He died a couple of years ago in prison.

The Gambino's were imbreds so they could confuse the government by saying whow as who in their nuclear family

Dellacroce Wasn't it the 2 brothers they found weeks apart in 1983 stuffed in their trunks at the diner's in Jersey.Matthew Sollena and Salvatore Sollena and I can't think of his brother's name.

When I said I couldn't think of his brothers name that's who I meant,Salvatore.

The Sollena case was the one Yogi and Ligambi were charged but the charges were later dropped. After Yogi flipped he told the feds that Joe Gambino told him he killed one of the Sollena's and one of his guys killed the other one. I think years later Naimo confirmed it after he also rolled.

Matteo and Sal Sollena were either nephews or cousins of Gaetano Badalamenti and were serious guys themselves.

Yogi also said Joe Gambino told him the Sollena's were killed because they stole money from the Gambino's and lost it at the casinos. They found Sal Sollena in the trunk of a car parked at a diner in Collingswood and his brother Matteo was found in another car trunk parked in Marlton NJ.

interesting. I never heard that about those deaths. How did you learn about that? Is it in a book? Do you know much about Yogi Merlino? I was curious about him. Standard Google search reveals nothing.

thanks.

Nicky..mostly from reading news articles about the case over the years.

Heres one article when Yogi and Ligambi were charged.

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1985/Two-In...9cc101fca60caba

And heres another one when they said what Yogi told the feds after he flipped about the Sollena murders.

"Philadelphia mobster-turned-informant Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino, who was at one point a suspect in the Matteo Sollena slaying, has told federal investigators that Giuseppe Gambino apologized to him for that mix-up. Merlino, who began cooperating with authorities shortly after his 1988 conviction on federal racketeering charges, said Giuseppe Gambino told him he had killed Matteo and one of his associates had killed Salvatore Sollena. The Sollenas were killed, Merlino said he was told by Gambino, because they were ''robbing money from the Gambinos and losing it all gambling at the casinos in Atlantic City."

http://articles.philly.com/1992-09-21/news/26021859_1_mobsters-la-cosa-nostra-law-enforcement

Wasn't he the Fed who ran the "King's Court" for Donny Brasco in Florida? I remember reading his book and he seems far from the screw-up they portrayed him as in the movie version.

He tired to infiltrate Pittsburgh and Rochester crew in the 1970s before Florida and in Florida he had a couple of other operations going on using the King's Court and trying to get to Traffacante. He had both the Bonnanos and Gambinos trying to get their hooks in to him. It was he, not Pistone who was recognized by a District Attorney he knew in an airport while with Lefty and had to threaten the guy to play it off for Lefty.

He later was a main under cover agent in Pizza Connection II and then retired shortly thereafter.

The DEA Agent in the photos is Frank Panessa.

Tony i'm not sure if he was the guy you mentioned but it's definitely possible. I'll have to check that....i have the book somewhere around here.

Tony Pro, I do not think it was Frank Panessa in the Kings Court down in Florida as that agent was describe as lean and a bit cut I believe or I could be wrong.

Thanks Giancarlo and Giacomo, I just remembered the guy's name and it seems they aren't the same people. The FBI agent I'm thinking of was Edger Robb (undercover name Ed Rossi). He wrote about his experience in a book called "Friend of the Family", pretty decent book.

The look on their faces says a 1000 words. I think they knew the minute he left with that bag that they had f'd up.