Posted By: Beanshooter
Richie Martino - 07/23/15 01:58 PM
Article on Martino in Gangland:
July 23, 2015 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Mob's Phone Sex King Back On The Streets, $14 Million Poorer
Richard (Richie From The Bronx) Martino, who masterminded phone sex, internet porn and "telephone cramming" scams that likely earned more cash for the Gambino crime family than anyone else, is back on the streets after spending nine years behind bars. And according to well-informed sources Martino, who ran a massive,18-year-long $650 million consumer fraud scheme, is again quietly earning a living as a wiseguy.
Before he went to prison in 2006, Martino forfeited $14.3 million of a $14.9 million judgment. Since then, he's anted up another $339,000. He's also still on the hook for two more years of post-prison supervised release restrictions. But usually reliable Gang Land sources say Martino, 55, is now in a crew headed by acting capo Andrew (Sonny) Campos, 46, who was a codefendant in their 2004 indictment.
"He's flying under the radar these days but he's back with the same guys he was with when they were all riding high," said one source. Also allegedly part of the Campos crew are onetime capo Salvatore (Tore) Locascio, 55, and longtime associate Zef Mustafa, 53, both of whom were key players in the giant consumer frauds orchestrated by Martino.
Richie From The Bronx was an instant hit when he was proposed by Tore's dad, then-consigliere Frank (Frankie Loc) Locasio as a Gambino member.
On Jan 4, 1990, the last year of John Gotti's life as a free man, the Dapper Don was heard praising Locascio for proposing Martino during a taped talk in an apartment above Gotti's Manhattan headquarters, the Ravenite Social Club.
"I want guys that done more than killing," said Gotti, who had killed his way to the top by gunning down then-boss Paul Castellano four years earlier.
"I like the Richies," he said. "They're young, twenty something, thirty something ... beautiful guys ...Ten years from now, these young guys we straightened out, they're gonna be really proud of them."
Martino hit the ground running. By age 35, with the important backing of then-capo Tore Locascio, he was a multi-millionaire, the mob's king of phone sex. By then, the elder Locascio and Gotti were already three years into their life sentences for their 1992 convictions for racketeering and murder.
Martino was sophisticated. Using satellite hookups, high speed computers, and scores of telephone lines, his companies offered a wide range of phone sex choices in several languages for charges from $3.95 to $30 a minute. He had offices on Manhattan's East Side. He controlled 64 companies, and hired "artists" in the Dominican Republic to talk dirty for minimum wages. He used a phone switching station in Kansas to obtain telephone lines.
When he needed to be, Richie From The Bronx was also savage. In 1992, after he determined that British porn publisher Richard Desmond had fleeced him out of $1 million in advertising fees, he demanded his money back. When Desmond refused, and then insulted him as "stupid" and "common," Martino didn't sue. He reverted to his hoodlum upbringing. He arranged for a Desmond executive, Philip Bailey, to be abducted by three hoods while the exec was in Manhattan searching for ads for phone sex 1-900 numbers and other porn-related materials. As Bailey later told the cops, he was pistol-whipped, slashed and tortured — a Taser-type stun gun applied to his testicles.
After the assault, the attackers told Bailey he was "lucky" they needed him alive: "We want our advertising money back. If your boss sets foot here, he's a dead man. A fucking dead man. Tell your boss, you're the message."
The Internet-based porn scheme used pop-up ads to trick gullible web surfers to submit credit card information as a come-on for "free tours" of adult entertainment sites. Instead, the sites used a cyber-age gizmo to temporarily disable the "back" button and all other exit modes from the site. As viewers paged through the website, their charges mounted. The average "free tour" cost about $60. The total haul identified in court records was $230 million, but law enforcement sources say the scam grossed about $300 million.
The second scheme, called "telephone cramming," reaped even more cash. A cool $420 million. Callers were solicited in magazine, newspaper, and TV ads to dial "free" 800 numbers to obtain "free" samples of sex, psychics, or horoscopes. Instead of freebies — chat lines, dating services, phone sex and other services — the callers had their phone numbers logged and were billed an average of $40 a month for voice mail service they never asked for, or received.
The charges were placed on phone bills by a Missouri-based company he ran — USP&C, a so-called "billing aggregator" — that entered into billing/collection agreements with telephone companies, under the same rules that regulated long distance providers. The wiseguy firm inserted a single page, designed to look like the customer's telephone company bill, into the multi-page phone company bills that most Americans never read.
Take John and his wife, a New York couple with two teenaged girls, and two phone lines. They had always trusted Verizon, their "established and successful phone company" and paid their monthly bills — which fluctuated between $100 and $300 — because they "assumed the bills were accurate," John told the FBI. Even when a bill ran higher than $350, they were generally "too busy" to read their itemized bills, which were often 10 pages long. They griped to themselves, and just paid the bill.
In late 2003, after John had lost his job and he went on a budget kick, he noticed a $25 charge for a "voice mail" plan he hadn't asked for and didn't have. He complained to Verizon. That's when he learned that the charge had come from USP&C. He called, was treated rudely, but got the $25 charge rescinded, and most importantly to him then, it disappeared from future bills.
A year later, he was astounded to learn from the feds that he had been paying a "mob surcharge" for four years, and had been bilked out of $1200.
In 2005, on the eve of trial, Martino & Company copped plea bargains, rather than take their chances at trial.
As part of the deal, Martino did not have to admit ordering the terrible beating that Richard Desmond's executive received in New York. "I met with Desmond in London England and threatened him with economic harm should he or his company attempt to engage in business in the United States," he said.
"I just want to say," Martino stated at his sentencing, "that I was sorry to everyone that was hurt through my actions in this time frame Your Honor. That's it."
Locascio got 30 months and forfeited $4.7 million. Campos received 21 months, and forfeited $300,000. Mustafa took 48 months and forfeited $1.7 million. The trio's accounts are paid in full, but Richie From The Bronx still has an outstanding balance, according to court records.
Martino started small, with a $25 payment in January. And even though the amounts of his next six monthly payments were stepped up considerably — to $350 — it's very unlikely that Martino will ever pay the $336,842 he still owes. At the current rate, it will take 936 more monthly payments, or 78 more years, for Richie From The Bronx to pay off his debt to society.
Unless Martino hits the lottery — or outlives the 98-year old mob Methuselah, John (Sonny) Franzese by a few decades — most of his remaining forfeiture bill is likely to be written off as a bad debt.
July 23, 2015 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Mob's Phone Sex King Back On The Streets, $14 Million Poorer
Richard (Richie From The Bronx) Martino, who masterminded phone sex, internet porn and "telephone cramming" scams that likely earned more cash for the Gambino crime family than anyone else, is back on the streets after spending nine years behind bars. And according to well-informed sources Martino, who ran a massive,18-year-long $650 million consumer fraud scheme, is again quietly earning a living as a wiseguy.
Before he went to prison in 2006, Martino forfeited $14.3 million of a $14.9 million judgment. Since then, he's anted up another $339,000. He's also still on the hook for two more years of post-prison supervised release restrictions. But usually reliable Gang Land sources say Martino, 55, is now in a crew headed by acting capo Andrew (Sonny) Campos, 46, who was a codefendant in their 2004 indictment.
"He's flying under the radar these days but he's back with the same guys he was with when they were all riding high," said one source. Also allegedly part of the Campos crew are onetime capo Salvatore (Tore) Locascio, 55, and longtime associate Zef Mustafa, 53, both of whom were key players in the giant consumer frauds orchestrated by Martino.
Richie From The Bronx was an instant hit when he was proposed by Tore's dad, then-consigliere Frank (Frankie Loc) Locasio as a Gambino member.
On Jan 4, 1990, the last year of John Gotti's life as a free man, the Dapper Don was heard praising Locascio for proposing Martino during a taped talk in an apartment above Gotti's Manhattan headquarters, the Ravenite Social Club.
"I want guys that done more than killing," said Gotti, who had killed his way to the top by gunning down then-boss Paul Castellano four years earlier.
"I like the Richies," he said. "They're young, twenty something, thirty something ... beautiful guys ...Ten years from now, these young guys we straightened out, they're gonna be really proud of them."
Martino hit the ground running. By age 35, with the important backing of then-capo Tore Locascio, he was a multi-millionaire, the mob's king of phone sex. By then, the elder Locascio and Gotti were already three years into their life sentences for their 1992 convictions for racketeering and murder.
Martino was sophisticated. Using satellite hookups, high speed computers, and scores of telephone lines, his companies offered a wide range of phone sex choices in several languages for charges from $3.95 to $30 a minute. He had offices on Manhattan's East Side. He controlled 64 companies, and hired "artists" in the Dominican Republic to talk dirty for minimum wages. He used a phone switching station in Kansas to obtain telephone lines.
When he needed to be, Richie From The Bronx was also savage. In 1992, after he determined that British porn publisher Richard Desmond had fleeced him out of $1 million in advertising fees, he demanded his money back. When Desmond refused, and then insulted him as "stupid" and "common," Martino didn't sue. He reverted to his hoodlum upbringing. He arranged for a Desmond executive, Philip Bailey, to be abducted by three hoods while the exec was in Manhattan searching for ads for phone sex 1-900 numbers and other porn-related materials. As Bailey later told the cops, he was pistol-whipped, slashed and tortured — a Taser-type stun gun applied to his testicles.
After the assault, the attackers told Bailey he was "lucky" they needed him alive: "We want our advertising money back. If your boss sets foot here, he's a dead man. A fucking dead man. Tell your boss, you're the message."
The Internet-based porn scheme used pop-up ads to trick gullible web surfers to submit credit card information as a come-on for "free tours" of adult entertainment sites. Instead, the sites used a cyber-age gizmo to temporarily disable the "back" button and all other exit modes from the site. As viewers paged through the website, their charges mounted. The average "free tour" cost about $60. The total haul identified in court records was $230 million, but law enforcement sources say the scam grossed about $300 million.
The second scheme, called "telephone cramming," reaped even more cash. A cool $420 million. Callers were solicited in magazine, newspaper, and TV ads to dial "free" 800 numbers to obtain "free" samples of sex, psychics, or horoscopes. Instead of freebies — chat lines, dating services, phone sex and other services — the callers had their phone numbers logged and were billed an average of $40 a month for voice mail service they never asked for, or received.
The charges were placed on phone bills by a Missouri-based company he ran — USP&C, a so-called "billing aggregator" — that entered into billing/collection agreements with telephone companies, under the same rules that regulated long distance providers. The wiseguy firm inserted a single page, designed to look like the customer's telephone company bill, into the multi-page phone company bills that most Americans never read.
Take John and his wife, a New York couple with two teenaged girls, and two phone lines. They had always trusted Verizon, their "established and successful phone company" and paid their monthly bills — which fluctuated between $100 and $300 — because they "assumed the bills were accurate," John told the FBI. Even when a bill ran higher than $350, they were generally "too busy" to read their itemized bills, which were often 10 pages long. They griped to themselves, and just paid the bill.
In late 2003, after John had lost his job and he went on a budget kick, he noticed a $25 charge for a "voice mail" plan he hadn't asked for and didn't have. He complained to Verizon. That's when he learned that the charge had come from USP&C. He called, was treated rudely, but got the $25 charge rescinded, and most importantly to him then, it disappeared from future bills.
A year later, he was astounded to learn from the feds that he had been paying a "mob surcharge" for four years, and had been bilked out of $1200.
In 2005, on the eve of trial, Martino & Company copped plea bargains, rather than take their chances at trial.
As part of the deal, Martino did not have to admit ordering the terrible beating that Richard Desmond's executive received in New York. "I met with Desmond in London England and threatened him with economic harm should he or his company attempt to engage in business in the United States," he said.
"I just want to say," Martino stated at his sentencing, "that I was sorry to everyone that was hurt through my actions in this time frame Your Honor. That's it."
Locascio got 30 months and forfeited $4.7 million. Campos received 21 months, and forfeited $300,000. Mustafa took 48 months and forfeited $1.7 million. The trio's accounts are paid in full, but Richie From The Bronx still has an outstanding balance, according to court records.
Martino started small, with a $25 payment in January. And even though the amounts of his next six monthly payments were stepped up considerably — to $350 — it's very unlikely that Martino will ever pay the $336,842 he still owes. At the current rate, it will take 936 more monthly payments, or 78 more years, for Richie From The Bronx to pay off his debt to society.
Unless Martino hits the lottery — or outlives the 98-year old mob Methuselah, John (Sonny) Franzese by a few decades — most of his remaining forfeiture bill is likely to be written off as a bad debt.
