Godfather of Pittsburgh

Just when I thought these "Reality" TV shows couldnt get any worse...

Thanks Dante, its worth a look might be funny if nothing else.

Anyone catch the premiere episode last night? I did, I thought it was on par with shows like Growing up Gotti and Jersey Shore aka disrespectful and degrading towards Italian-Americans, the show was downright atrocious!

Here is an interesting article I found on the father in law Junior Williams.....

At the time of his downfall earlier this year, Junior Williams was grossing $139,479 to $208,697 weekly in numbers bets, court records show. He dodged taxes on more than $4 million in income for the year 2000, according to the Internal Revenue Service.


Adolph "Junior" Williams used to boast he was so connected he could get secret grand jury transcripts leaked to him the very day people testified against his Mafia-connected numbers enterprise.

Now the aging gambling kingpin could spend the rest of his life in a federal prison.

Federal judges have rejected his plea that a severe heart condition should qualify him for leniency. Instead, he must serve four years in prison for his role in a gambling business that generated at least $2.5 million annually.

In taking down Williams, 69, federal authorities say they've finally vanquished the top Mafia numbers operator in the area. Court records depict Williams as a determined businessman who built a gambling empire from humble roots.

Williams' business: running a daily number lottery that began long before the Pennsylvania Lottery. Bet a dollar and hit the three numbers, Williams' cronies handed you $600. That's $100 better than the state lottery -- and no deduction for taxes.

Williams grew up the son of impoverished Italian immigrants in the Hill District, according to court records and testimony taken in connection with 1996 and 2003 federal prosecutions of his activities. His older brother, Salvatore Williams, gave up a football scholarship to help the family of 11 children. A neighbor killed his sister at age 4. From that bleak existence, the Williams brothers built an extensive gambling enterprise.

At the time of his downfall earlier this year, Junior Williams was grossing $139,479 to $208,697 weekly in numbers bets, court records show. He dodged taxes on more than $4 million in income for the year 2000, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

He pleaded guilty to running his illegal numbers racket from 1998 to 2001, and to tax evasion from January 2000 to February 2001.

"He was operating a large-scale gambling business," said U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan. "This was sort of an alternative family business. Certainly, in recent years, he was the largest numbers racket operator in the area."

He'll serve time as the state considers placing a larger bet on the type of business that made him so rich. Pennsylvania not only has a numbers lottery, it's now considering legalizing slot machines to feed a starved budget.

"It seems to me the problem was that Junior's time went by him," said attorney John Doherty, the former chief disciplinary counsel for the system that disciplines corrupt lawyers in Pennsylvania.

Doherty, who grew up in the Hill District with the Williams family, recalls that operating a numbers racket once was an accepted business, albeit illegal. It was the poor man's stock market, he said.

"Consider the fact that many of our parents and/or grandparents would stop to play a number on their way home from daily Mass from either Epiphany or St. Peter's Church," Doherty said in one letter he wrote in 1996 to U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch, urging leniency for Williams' older brother, Salvatore, who was convicted of running the illegal gambling business. "Consider the fact that even the priest had a 'dream book' to check the number as a result of the subject of last night's dream."

Salvatore Williams, a free man these days, declined to comment.

Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht and Sal Sirabella, who would go on to become Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy's deputy mayor, also wrote letters on Salvatore Williams' behalf. Sirabella since has gone on to work for Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll. Sirabella said he urged leniency because his former wife's family knew Salvatore Williams.

Wecht, who grew up about a block from the Williams family in the Hill District, said numbers running was just a part of the way people lived.

"When the state does it with lotteries, it's considered OK," Wecht said. "But when other people do it in an entrepreneurial way, it becomes a big crime. I've never understood the big problem with numbers writing."

Others don't see Williams as so benign.

Consider the devastation his gambling operations caused families, they say.

"People always say, 'It's just gambling,'" said Robert Young, of the Allegheny County Police Department, who for years has busted up numbers operations in the Pittsburgh area and illegal sports wagering operations. "Well, if that's the case, why do I get the calls all the time from the women saying their husband lost all their money on bets. I get the calls from the daughters, the sons, the nieces and nephews."

Young said those who run gambling enterprises often move into other vices.

"I've arrested people for lottery violations," he said. "And a couple of years down the line, our other guys arrest them for narcotics violations."

The now-defunct Pennsylvania Crime Commission reported in 1991 that the numbers enterprise headed by Junior and Salvatore Williams dominated the Hill District, Pittsburgh's East End and the McKees Rocks area.

The report identified the Williamses as associates of the Pittsburgh Mafia family controlled by Michael Genovese, of West Deer. They also were linked with the gambling enterprise headed by another crime family associate, Paul "No Legs" Hankish, who provided protection to the brothers' organization, the report added. Hankish, who controlled Mafia operations in Wheeling, W.Va., died in prison.

The Williamses took over the gambling business of kingpin Anthony "Tony" Grosso, who was imprisoned in 1987, and agreed to pay some of the profit to the Mafia, the report said.

"After Tony passed away, Junior just expanded," Young said. "I would assume he saw there was a vacuum to fill and filled it. He became the King of the Hill."

Young said numbers rackets like those run by Junior Williams will continue to thrive in the Pittsburgh area despite Williams' recent sentencing.

"They pay six to one instead of the five to one the state lottery pays, and you have to pay taxes on what you win from the state," Young said. "They won't ever go away. They make too much money at it."

Electronic surveillance conducted on the Williams enterprise, headquartered at 1420 Fifth Ave., Uptown, in 1991 revealed that Williams was forwarded information on planned police raids.

At one point, a businessman sought $500,000 from Williams to help him through a bad streak. Williams said he would have the money in about a week. The businessman offered to sell property near Three Rivers Stadium for $650,000, and Williams said he would discuss the offer with Salvatore.

The surveillance also captured Williams talking with associates about having an unnamed magistrate fix a parking ticket in McKees Rocks, and how he had politicians and law enforcement officials in his back pocket. He boasted that he "was receiving computer printouts the very day that people were testifying about him before the grand jury."

Williams and five other siblings were prosecuted in federal court eight years ago for running the gambling operation that took over part of the empire once controlled by Grosso.

However, the 1990s conviction, which also involved Salvatore Williams, didn't slow down Junior.

An investigation conducted by the Internal Revenue Service, Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Investigation and the FBI found that Junior Williams continued his illegal gambling activity despite his 15-month federal prison sentence in the mid-1990s.

U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch in April sentenced Williams to two years in prison for his continuing gambling activity.

"Once on supervised release, or maybe even before then, you immediately continued to engage in the same type of criminal conduct for which this court sentenced you and from which you derived substantial illegal profits," Bloch said. "Thus, you have proven to the court that you have no regard for the law, and now you must pay the price for your continued criminal conduct."

U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry tacked on two years, which Williams will have to serve consecutively to the two-year sentence Bloch imposed.

Some in law enforcement don't see Williams' recent conviction and sentences as the end of an era.

"He'll keep running it from afar," Young said. "There's no doubt in my mind. I know his operations are still going. They make too much money to give it up."


http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/trib.../s_147857.html

Another good article on the father in law of the show....

Last member of numbers ring sentenced to 15 months in prison
November 21, 2003 12:00 AM



By Torsten Ove Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Adolph "Junior" Williams' gray-haired gambling gang, once a substantial source of income for the Pittsburgh Mafia, is officially out of business with the sentencing yesterday of Eugene Williams, the last ring member awaiting his fate.

U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry gave Williams, 52, of Carnegie, a year and three months in prison, where he joins his brother Adolph, 69, and two of their sisters, Joanne Williams, 58, and Antoinette DePofi, 62.

Another sister, Phyllis Caliguiri, 71, is serving probation.

Eugene Williams' sentence ends a major investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, state police and FBI into a multimillion-dollar enterprise that not even prison could slow down.

When the crew first went to jail in the mid-1990s, Adolph Williams maintained control of the operation from behind bars. The ring netted about $2.5 million a year selling numbers based on the Pennsylvania Lottery.

"A witness in the current case, Gabe Fontana, testified that Junior Williams continued to run the business throughout the 1995-96 federal judicial process of indictment, hearings, appeals, pleas and imprisonment," wrote IRS agent Jean L. Seneway in an investigative report. "In spite of all the penalties he has faced, he continues in arrogant defiance of state and federal laws against running an illegal numbers business."

In addition to the Williams family, more than a dozen other members of the ring have been sentenced.

Ringleader Adolph Williams, of Scott, pleaded guilty in March and was sentenced in July to two years at the federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va. That sentence was tacked onto another two-year term for violating the terms of his 1996 release from prison, where he'd been sent after pleading guilty to running the same gambling enterprise.

The government has seized $4 million in cash and all of the assets Adolph Williams bought with his gambling money in what ranks as one of the largest forfeitures here in recent years.

The assets include a house owned by one of his daughters; condominiums at Seven Springs Resort; two boats; a hunting camp in Tionesta, Forest County; an apartment in Miami; a hotel; two horse trailers; a Rolex watch; and valuable coins.

Investigators said the Williams family has apparently been a freelance operation in recent years, but it was once a money pipeline for La Cosa Nostra. All three Williams brothers were identified by the now-defunct Pennsylvania Crime Commission as associates of the Pittsburgh mob controlled by Michael Genovese of West Deer.

The Williams brothers operated a sports and numbers operation in the Hill District, East End and McKees Rocks dating to the mid-1970s. Eugene Williams also has an arrest record for distributing heroin and possession of marijuana.

According to the crime commission, the family took over the numbers racket controlled by the late Tony Grosso, a powerful independent operator who ran the largest numbers bank in Pittsburgh and employed many black numbers writers in the Hill District. Unlike most gambling bosses, Grosso did not pay tribute to the Mafia.

When he went to prison in 1986, the mob seized the opportunity to take over his old territory. The Williams brothers moved in.

The family operated two businesses at that time, Guglielmo Jewelry Store in the Clark Building, Downtown, and Sugar's Deli and Produce on Fifth Avenue. Adolph Williams owned the deli business, and the building itself was owned by the late Antonio Ripepi, a longtime La Cosa Nostra member, authorities said.

The Williams family used the deli to collect and sort bets. At one time, Salvatore Williams, another brother, also owned more than 40 properties in the Hill District, according to the crime commission.

The current case began with Fontana, who had worked for Adolph Williams in the mid-1990s and cooperated as the result of a plea deal.

With information from Fontana and other witnesses, federal agents secured wiretaps on Adolph Williams' phone and that of DePofi, and on her fax line, in 2000 and 2001.

The taps revealed the structure of the enterprise.

Once agents had enough evidence, they executed search warrants on Jan. 29, 2001, at Williams' house and the homes of DePofi, Joanne Williams and Adolph Williams' daughter, Carla Williams. Authorities also searched EZ Tanning and Nails, Carla's business.

Records found in those searches showed that the ring accepted $125,000 a week in wagers from people betting on the state lottery.


Torsten Ove can be reached at tove@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2620.

Sounds about right. Italian American stereotypes are one of the last acceptable prejudices on television. At least thirty or forty years ago, guys like John Travolta and Tony Danza were playing fictional characters. These assholes are real .

I will say however with me being from the Jersey/NYC area, it was extremely weird to hear a Tony Soprano wannabe with a thick and heavy Pittsburgh Yinzer accent...

I agree with you 100% PB, imagine they had a Black family reality TV show were all they did was have multiple out of wedlock children, sit around drinking kool aid/eating watermelon & fried chicken....

Exactly! There would be complete outrage, Al Sharpton would be marching to the TV Channel's HQs with a thousand screaming Black people, but its perfectly acceptable for it to happen again and again to Italian Americans...

Take it as a sign that "we've made it" and move on. You don't see Irish people complcomplaining about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish... Unless you're hanging out with me

In all seriousness, though, the guy himself is Italian. So it is similar to the constant black holes on black culture (chief keef - gotta be the first time he's mentioned on gangsterbb) getting record deals.

Of course. It's sickening. When you lower yourself to the stereotype, it's even worse than when someone else does it.

I just watched the first episode on you tube nd I cant believe I actually finished the whole episode.. they will put anybody on tv these days.

Ill be really surprised if this show dont get cancelled lol

Watched it last night this show blows, another embarrassing tick against my race.

The whole storyline about Vince's brother-in-law Sam Perri opening up Club Controversy is bull. He may be managing it as a a front,but the club was originally opened by Pat Risha and his "associates",under the name Club Marquise. Risha is the nephew of Jeff Risha,a very well connected gambling figure. Some say he has ties to Thomas "Sonny" Ciancutti,widely believed to have be the last actual made guy in Pittsburgh.
Perri is a well known local "gintaloon" who pretty much does what he is told.

An ironic twist: Club Erotica was formerly called Stiffy's,and before that it was Mancini's Lounge. You could see major musical acts,and, if you knew the right people, a nice casino
upstairs. One of the owners was Bobby Mancini,who was murdered during a power struggle for control of gambling in the Mckees Rocks area. No charges were ever filed,but unofficially,the order was most likely given by Vince's father-in-law,Junior.

I'm not releted to these people, so I can't be offended.

it's reality tv what did you expect?

italian is not a race scalish

thanks for the info lou

No problem. Depending on how the series unfolds,I may have some more stuff to share. Suffice to say,I'm Italian,from the Pittsburgh area,and over the last 30 years or so,I've run into a few people.

This is a disgrace to my race I'm soooo MAD

I know, right?

ruined my italian day

Watch it will go on for 5 seasons because of people from places like Utah/Nebraska/Kansas ETC and Middle America's fascination with things they dont get to see everyday (albeit horrible and offensive stereotypes with "actors").

For instance, I'm fascinated with watching Alaska State Troopers on Nat Geographic because I have lived my whole life in Jersey and its something I don't get to see everyday, so I guess you can say I get it somehwat...

No, it'll go on because of all the hard ons on these forums that say they "don't watch that shit" but set their dvr's every week so they don't miss a minute.

Can someone please explain to me how the father in law is Italian with a last name of Williams?!? Maybe Lou_Para you know...

Ruining an Italian Day...Now...Now....That Speaks Volumes !!!

I say to my customers as they leave the store have an Italian one instead of good one because I'm that god damn proud !!!

Super Italians forever!! (Never mind that they don't speak a word of the language except for what they pick up in an Eros Ramazzotti song).

It was a horrible show, this coming from a non-Northerner and non-Italian. They played the stereotype HARD!

I'll go ya one better. His real first name is Adolph! His parents came over from Italy and settled in the East end of the city. No one knows for sure,but I've heard different stories about the name.The most common is that the family wanted to assimilate,and avoid some of the hardships associated with an Italian surname. There may be someone out there with more info,and if so please share. I've always wondered about it myself.

Junior's birthday is coming up (I think it's Nov. 28 or 29),so they may have a celebration on the TV show.Maybe he'll reminisce and give us the story.

NO WAY! LOL There's no way there is an Italian named "Adolph" LMFAO...

Maybe Adolfo and that's typically more commonly Spanish, but is Italian as well???!!! I swear you hear something new on this board everyday lol....Thank you for the response Lou

Lol. True

I thought it was a stereotypical presentation of what some people envision as Italians, but I can live with it. Having grown up there, I recognize the Pittsburgh accent right away.

However, for someone who grew up in Italy, he sure seems to have lost the Italian accent completely.

When I first went out to Pittsburgh their accents reminded me of people from Fargo, the northpole, or even Canada .."don't cha kno"

yes Adolfo is also an Italian first name.

and given the guy's age it totally makes sense that he was named like that.

certain first names died off throughout the generations but they are nonetheless Italian: Rodolfo, Annibale, Beniamino, Bonaventura, Terenzio, Ugo, Fiorenzo, Benito, etc…

there are many first names that are common in Spain, Italy and Portugal for obvious historic and linguistic reasons: Roberto, Alberto, Mario, Alvaro, Moreno, Antonio, just to name a few

You didn't know that Hitler was from 114th and Pleasant? His parents moved him to Austria because his father couldn't digest garlic. Acid reflux. True story.

I would have found their behavior stereotypical if they acted to be like that.

If this is who they really are and how the naturally behave than it's not a stereotype, it's simply who they really are.

A certain attitude comes first, then racists make assumptions and generalizations and transform that specific trend into a stereotype.

But just because it's a stereotype it doesn't mean that there aren't REAL people who REALLY behave like that.

Well, that's what I said earlier in the thread. Virtually all stereotypes are true sometimes. And when you lower yourself to that stereotype, you can't blame the media. It's on you at that point.

exactly

who was born first? the mafia or the stereotype that all italians were part of it?

I heard that Hitler ate lunch at a Chinese joint and an hour later he was hungry for power.

Very clever, Lou!

Here's an article I found in my files:

FALLEN GAMBLING KINGPIN
Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh, Pa., by Chris Osher
October 3, 2003

At the time of his downfall earlier this year, Junior Williams was grossing $139,479 to $208,697 weekly in numbers bets, court records show. He dodged taxes on more than $4 million in income for the year 2000, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
Adolph “Junior” Williams used to boast he was so connected he could get secret grand jury transcripts leaked to him the very day people testified against his Mafia-connected numbers enterprise. Now the aging gambling kingpin could spend the rest of his life in a federal prison. Federal judges have rejected his plea that a severe heart condition should qualify him for leniency. Instead, he must serve four years in prison for his role in a gambling business that generated at least $2.5 million annually.

In taking down Williams, 69, federal authorities say they’ve finally vanquished the top Mafia numbers operator in the area. Court records depict Williams as a determined businessman who built a gambling empire from humble roots. Williams’ business: running a daily number lottery that began long before the Pennsylvania Lottery. Bet a dollar and hit the three numbers, Williams’ cronies handed you $600. that’s $100 better than the state lottery – and no deduction for taxes.

Williams grew up the son of impoverished Italian immigrants in the Hill District, according to court records and testimony taken in connection with the 1996 and 2003 federal prosecutions of his activities. His older brother, Salvatore Williams, gave up a football scholarship to help the family of 11 children. A neighbor killed his sister at age 4. From that bleak existence, the Williams brothers built an extensive gambling enterprise.
At the time of his downfall earlier this year, Junior Williams was grossing $139,479 to $208,697 weekly in numbers bets, court records show. He dodged taxes on more than $4 million in income for the year 2000, according to the Internal Revenue Service. He pleaded guilty to running his illegal numbers racket from 1998 to 2001, and to tax evasion from January 2000 to February 2001. “He was operating a large-scale gambling business,” said U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan. “This was sort of an alternative family business. Certainly, in recent years, he was the largest numbers racket operator in the area.”

He’ll serve time as the state considers placing a larger bet on the type of business that made him so rich. Pennsylvania not only has a numbers lottery, it’s now considering legalizing slot machines to feed a starved budget. “It seems to me the problem was that Junior’s time went by him,” said attorney John Doherty, the former chief disciplinary counsel for the system that disciplines corrupt lawyers in Pennsylvania.

Doherty, who grew up in the Hill District with the Williams family, recalls that operating a numbers racket once was an accepted business, albeit illegal. It was the poor man’s stock market, he said. “Consider the fact that many of our parents and/or grandparents would stop to play a number on their way home from daily mass from either Epiphany or St. Peter’s Church,” Doherty said in one letter he wrote in 1996 to U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch, urging leniency for Williams’ older brother, Salvatore, who was convicted of running the illegal gambling business. “Consider the fact that even the priest had a ‘dream book’ to check the number as a result of the subject of last night’s dream.”

Salvatore Williams, a free man these days, declined to comment. Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht and Sal Sirabella, who would go on to become Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy’s deputy mayor, also wrote letters on Salvatore William’ behalf. Sirabella since has gone on to work for Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll. Sirabella said he urged lenience because his former wife’s family knew Salvatore Williams. Wecht, who grew up about a block from the Williams family in the Hill District, said numbers running was just a part of the way people lived. “When the state does it with lotteries, it’s considered OK,” Wecht said. “but when other people do it in an entrepreneurial way, it becomes a big crime. I’ve never understood the big problem with numbers writing.”

Others don’t see Williams as so benign. Consider the devastation his gambling operations caused families, they say. “People always say, ‘It’s just gambling,’” said Robert Young, of the Allegheny County Police Department, who for years has busted up numbers operations in the Pittsburgh area and illegal sports wagering operations. “Well, if that’s the case, why do I get the calls all the time from the women saying their husband lost all their money on bets. I get the calls from the daughters, the sons, the nieces and nephews.” Young said those who run gambling enterprises often move into other vices. “I’ve arrested people for lottery violations,” he said. “And a couple of years down the line, our other guys arrest them for narcotics violations.”

The now-defunct Pennsylvania Crime Commission reported in 1991 that the numbers enterprise headed by Junior and Salvatore Williams dominated the Hill District, Pittsburgh’s East End and the McKees Rocks area.

The report identified the Williams as associates of the Pittsburgh Mafia family controlled by Michael Genovese, of West Deer. They also were linked with the gambling enterprise headed by another crime family associate, Paul “No Legs” Hankish, who provided protection to the brothers’ organization, the report added. Hankish, who controlled Mafia operations in Wheeling, W. Va., died in prison.

The Williams took over the gambling business of kingpin Anthony “Tony” Grosso, who was imprisoned in 1987, and agreed to pay some of the profit to the Mafia, the report said. “After Tony passed away, Junior just expanded,” Young said. “I would assume he saw there was a vacuum to fill and filled it. He became the King of the Hill.”

Young said numbers rackets like those run by Junior Williams will continue to thrive in the Pittsburgh area despite Williams’ recent sentencing. “They pay six to one instead of the five to one the state lottery pays, and you have to pay taxes on what you win from the state,” Young said. “they won’t ever go away. They make too much money at it.”

Electronic surveillance conducted on the Williams enterprise, headquartered at 1420 Fifth Ave., Uptown, in 1991 revealed that Williams was forwarded information on planned police raids. At one point, a businessman sought $500,000 from Williams to help him through a bad streak. Williams said he would have the money in about a week. The businessman offered to sell property near Three Rivers Stadium for $650,000, and Williams said he would discuss the offer with Salvatore. The surveillance also captured Williams talking with associates about having an unnamed magistrate fix a parking ticket in McKees Rocks, and how he had politicians and law enforcement officials in his back pocket. He boasted that he “was receiving computer printouts the very day that people were testifying about him before the grand jury.”

Williams and five other siblings were prosecuted in federal court eight years ago for running the gambling operation that took over part of the empire once controlled by Grosso. However, the 1990s conviction, which also involved Salvatore Williams, didn’t slow down Junior. An investigation conducted by the Internal Revenue Service, Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Investigation and the FBI found that Junior Williams continued his illegal gambling activity despite his 15-month federal prison sentence in the mid-1900s. U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch in April sentenced Williams to two years in prison for his continuing gambling activity. “One on supervised release, or maybe even before then, you immediately continued to engage in the same type of criminal conduct for which this court sentenced you and from which you derived substantial illegal profits,” Bloch said. “thus, you have proven to the court that you have no regard for the law, and now you must pay the price for your continued criminal conduct.”

U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry tacked on two years, which Williams will have to serve consecutively to the two-year sentence Bloch imposed. Some in law enforcement don’t see Williams’ recent conviction and sentences as the end of an era. “He’ll keep running it from afar,” Young said. “There’s no doubt in my mind. I know his operations re still going. They make too much money to give it up.”

Here's another:

LAST MEMBER OF NUMBERS RING SENTENCED TO 15 MONTHS IN PRISON
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pa., by Torsten Ove
November 21, 2003

Adolph “Junior” Williams’ gray-haired gambling gang, once a substantial source of income for the Pittsburgh Mafia, is officially out of business with the sentencing yesterday of Eugene Williams, the last ring member awaiting is fate. U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry gave Williams, 52, of Carnegie, a year and three months in prison, where he joins his brother Adolph, 69, and two of their sisters, Joanne Williams, 58, and Antoinette DePofi, 62. Another sister, Phyllis Caliguiri, 71, is serving probation.

Eugene Williams’ sentence ends a major investigation by the Internal Revenue Service, state police and FBI into a multimillion-dollar enterprise that not even prison could slow down. When the crew first went to jail in the mid-1990s, Adolph Williams maintained control of the operation from behind bars. The ring netted about $2.50 million a year selling numbers based on the Pennsylvania Lottery. “A witness in the current case, Gabe Fontana, testified that Junior Williams continued to run the business throughout the 1995-96 federal judicial process of indictment, hearings, appeals and pleas and imprisonment,” wrote IRS agent Jean L. Seneway in an investigative report. “In spite of all the penalties he has faced, he continues in arrogant defiance of state and federal laws against running an illegal numbers business.” In addition to the Williams family, more than a dozen other members of the ring have been sentenced.

Ringleader Adolph Williams, of Scott, pleaded guilty in March and was sentenced in July to two years at the federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va. That sentence was tacked onto another two-year term for violating the terms of his 1996 release from prison, where he’d been sent after pleading guilty to running the same gambling enterprise. The government has seized $4 million in cash and all of the assets Adolph Williams bought with his gambling money in what ranks as one of the largest forfeitures here in recent years. The assets include a house owned by one of his daughters; condominiums at Seven Springs Resort; two boars; a hunting camp in Tionesta, Forest County; an apartment in Miama; a hotel; two horse trailers; a Rolex watch; and valuable coins.

Investigators said the Williams family has apparently been a freelance operation in recent years, but it was once a money pipeline for La Cosa Nostra. All three Williams brothers were identified by the now-defunct Pennsylvania Crime Commission as associates of the Pittsburgh mob controlled by Michael Genovese of West Deer. The Williams brothers operated a sports and numbers operation in the Hill District, East End and McKees Rocks dating to the mid-1970s. Eugene Williams also has an arrest record for distributing heroin and possession of marijuana.

According to the crime commission, the family took over the numbers racket controlled by the late Tony Grosso, a powerful independent operator who ran the largest numbers bank in Pittsburgh and employed many black numbers writers in the Hill District. Unlike most gambling bosses, Grosso did not pay tribute to the Mafia. When he went to prison in 1986, the mob seized the opportunity to take over his old territory.
The Williams brothers moved in. The family operated two businesses at that time, Guglielmo Jewelry Store in the Clark Building, Downtown, and Sugar’s Deli and Produce on Fifth Avenue. Adolph Williams owned the deli business, and the building itself was owned by the late Antonio Ripepi, a longtime La Cosa Nostra member, authorities said. The Williams family used the deli to collect and sort bets. At one time, Salvatore Williams, another brother, also owned more than 40 properties in the Hill District, according to the crime commission.

The current case began with Fontana, who had worked for Adolph Williams in the mid-1990s and cooperated as the result of a plea deal. With information from Fontana and other witnesses, federal agents secured wiretaps on Adolph Williams’ phone and that of DePofi, and on her fax line, in 2000 and 2001. The taps revealed the structure of the enterprise. Once agents had enough evidence, they executed search warrants on Jan. 29, 2001, at Williams’ house and the homes of DePofi, Joanne Williams and Adolph Williams’ daughter, Carla Williams. Authorities also searched EZ Tanning and nails, Carla’s business. Records found in those searches showed that the ring accepted $125,000 a week in wagers from people betting on the state lottery.

You don't suppose that the hunting camp in Tionesta, maybe named Charlie's Roost, was formally owned by Jo Jo Pecora?

Thank the Lord!

http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/tv-radio/...es/201412020183