Murray Richman: The King Daddy Scumbag in a business full of scumbags. Cocksucker deserves hemorrhoids the size of boccie balls.

Feds ask judge to ignore plea for leniency by alleged mobster


By Rich Calder

June 23, 2014

He says he’s no Tony Soprano — but he sure sounds like one.

The feds have asked Manhattan federal Judge Kevin Castel to ignore a plea for leniency by real-life wiseguy Anthony Bazzini when he’s sentenced Tuesday, saying his claim that he only threatened a confidential government witness with bodily harm because the wired-up informant beat him for thousands of dollars in business deals is just ridiculous.

Before copping a plea in January to being part of the massive gangland effort to control the New York-New Jersey garbage carting industry, Bazzini also bizarrely tried to distance himself from comparisons to the fictional mob boss on HBO’s “The Sopranos” played by the late James Gandolfini — and even asked Castel to screen potential jurors to ensure none have a “bias” against Italian-Americans based on the show.

But a description of Bazzini, 54, of Glen Head, LI, painted by Assistant US Attorney Brian R. Blais in recent court papers sure makes him sound like Soprano, who also had an infamous temper and used the garbage-carting business as a mob front.

“The defendant has a history of engaging in quite troubling threatening behavior,” including a 2003 federal conviction “where Bazzini threatened to cut off his stockbroker’s ‘mother’s hands,’ to put the broker’s brother in ‘four casts’ and to ‘kill’ the broker’s whole family after Bazzini suffered losses in the stock market,” Assistant US Attorney Brian R. Blais wrote Castel.

“Resort to threats of bodily harm in the face of perceived monetary sleights – especially by an individual with a pattern of making such threats – is not behavior that should be rewarded with leniency.”

Blais also noted that despite the “perceived slight” by the witness – “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

He said Bazzini deserves the 12 to 18 months in prison he faces after pleading guilty to interfering with commerce by threatening bodily harm between 2011 and 2012.

However, Bazzini’s lawyer, Raymond Perini, in a June 11 memo asked Castel to go easy on his client because the government witness, referred to as “Mr. Hughes,” is a “liar and a thief” who provoked the threats. He also claimed Hughes accidentally recorded himself saying that getting Bazzini to threaten him “would be good.”

“Mr. Bazzini was pushed beyond his limits and reacted accordingly,” the lawyer wrote.

The feds say Bazzini is the “ghost owner” of Galaxy Carting in Ronkonkoma, which also did business in New Jersey.

He and 31 other reputed mobsters were busted in January 2013 for allegedly scheming with rival Mafia families to trash efforts to clean up the garbage business — and using strong-arm tactics to shake down owners of legitimate companies and secretly assume control of their operations.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/23/feds-ask-judge-to-ignore-plea-for-leniency-by-alleged-mobster/

Bazzini's a made guy with the Gambino's right? Anybody know much about him, what crew he's in etc.

One hour left till his sentencing. Wonder what Castel is going to slap him with?
I'll say, ummmm 9 months.

Of course. He's not going an inch outside of the guidelines. Not with a made guy. Not when the sentence is so short to begin with.

sentence?

I think the guidelines call for something like 9 to 15 months.

What did he get?

?

He got 1 year and 1 day, 3 years probation

You hit it pb, guidelines were 12-18 he went 1 inch inside them lol, fuckin stickler, that Castel.

What'd I tell ya?

(not laughing at the sentence, just the predictability of it )

I bet Matsumoto over in Brooklyn would've let him walk, maybe even given him a lollipop on the way out the door.

But they knew better than to petition for a change of venue. At the end of the day, it's just a year. Know what I mean?

Haha all he would have to do is tell her hes going blind and that he cant piss standing up anymore, and maybe have james caan write a touching letter for good measure.

Hemorrhoid the size of bocci balls?! Just saw that! A HAHAHAHAHAHA. I swear, there should be a radio talk show about this subject, I'd call in every day and crow bar in a mention of Murray just to hear you insult him.

Step into the 21st century, Delly. They'd have Scott Caan right the letter now. Little midget that he is .

Too funny! lol
Your Honor, I've had this horrifying zit under my balls for the last few weeks, It really hurts.

Dear Judge,
Please excuse Juan Epstien from prison, James Caan is his best friend and says he will be tearful if you lock him up.
Bless you
Signed
Epstien's Mom

Yeah, especially when the original charges were RICO based and maxed at 40 years. All in all, Bazzini's lawyers did a great job for him. These slaps on the wrists getting handed down are proof that this case went belly-up.

It's official, 30% of the defendants have had charges dismissed completely.
Really rubs my rhubarb.

By Jerry Capeci

Snake Bites Mob Garbage Case Again; Feds Drop Charges Against Last Three Defendants
Gang Land Exclusive!Carmine FrancoThe office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara quietly announced this week that it is dismissing charges against the last three defendants in the snake-bitten7 labor racketeering case that the FBI made against Genovese gangster Carmine (Papa) Smurf Franco and 28 others. All told, prosecutors have now dropped the charges against 10 of the 29 defendants in the indictment.

Throwing in the towel before trial against more than a third of the defendants in the 16-count indictment wasn't the way things were supposed to turn out. When the arrests were announced, the case was hailed by Bharara and New York FBI boss George Venizelos as a major blow against the Mafia's control over the waste hauling industry in New York and New Jersey. Instead, this foray against the mob rivals the losing ways of the luckless Mets.

In a two paragraph court filing, prosecutors told Manhattan Federal Judge P. Kevin Castel they were deferring the prosecution of the owner of a Jersey City garbage company and two truck drivers charged with stealing about 130 tons of cardboard between March and July of 2012. The trio, Thomas Giordano, 43, the owner of Galaxy Carting of New Jersey, Michael Russo, 51, and Louis Dontis, 59, were set for trial next month. The charges are slated to be officially dismissed later this summer.

The three men were tape recorded by FBI informer Charles Hughes in dozens of conversations in which they allegedly discussed truckloads of stolen cardboard, and a surprisingly simple, relatively lucrative mob scam. Drivers snatched the cardboard from sites in Brooklyn, Bayonne and beyond. It was then put up for sale by Giordano at a market price that ranged between $106 and $125 a ton, according to an FBI summary of talks that Hughes recorded from March of 2009 until January 8, 2013 – a week before the indictment was unsealed.

But in an apparent effort to keep their key witness, undercover operative Hughes, off the stand, prosecutors have decided to drop the charges. A major concern is that Hughes would have to admit that he became a government witness only after he was arrested for soliciting sex with a girl he believed was 15 years old.

In January, prosecutors gave super sweet plea deals to Gambino mobster Anthony Bazzini and mob associate Scott Fappiano, who faced 20 years if convicted, rather than subject Hughes to a biting cross-examination about that by their lawyers.

But prosecutors had no leverage to wangle guilty pleas from the alleged cardboard thieves. "They rejected plea deals of zero-to-six months early on," said one source.

"There was no way they were going to plead to anything," said one defense attorney whose client accepted a plea offer before it became known that Hughes was a convicted sex pervert. "My guy got a really nice disposition, but he's not happy. And there's one other guy I know who's upset that he didn't hold out until the end," the lawyer added.

Sources say that following his arrest in August, 2008, Hughes, now 44, was detained until March of 2009, when he was released on bail and wired up by the FBI to see if he could deliver on a claim that he had worked in the waste hauling industry in his teens and could make cases for the feds. News that his cooperation stemmed from a sex-solicitation arrest surfaced five months ago.

Law enforcement sources say the primary reason the government decided to give Fappiano and Bazzini — who received a year and a day sentence on Tuesday — much better plea offers was a "real fear" that jurors would be so outraged by Hughes's conduct that they would hold it against the government for making a deal with him, ignore the law and acquit, no matter what.

Whether the FBI and U.S. attorney's office should have entered a cooperation agreement with Hughes in the first place is a bone of contention for some law enforcers. But that issue is difficult to assess since his case is still under seal as are the specifics of his deal with the feds.

But there is agreement by several law enforcement officials, and virtually every defense lawyer Gang Land spoke to, that the decision by Judge Castel to permit defense lawyers to question Hughes about lies he told both his wife and the "teenager" he thought he was seducing convinced prosecutors to give deals to Bazzini and Fappiano in January.

Prosecutors Bruce Baird and Patrick Egan had tried to limit the cross examination, but when Castel indicated during a pretrial session that he was going to grant defense lawyers Raymond Perini and Lee Ginsberg some leeway in their questioning of Hughes, the prosecutors gave the gangsters a plea offer they couldn't refuse.

"The mobsters were charged with extortion but it's really stealing garbage stops and bid-rigging," said one source. "That's pretty tame stuff for jurors to deal with compared to having sex with little girls who but for the grace of God could be their daughters or granddaughters. The chance of jury nullification was very real."

The decision to toss the charges against the alleged cardboard thieves was presumably even easier to make: The total value of the stolen cardboard was about $16,000, an amount not likely to sway jurors versus a sex-scheming witness.

Nor was playing the dozens of tapes Hughes made without having him testify to authenticate them a good option. Some conversations appear to back up the notion that the men knew they were dealing in stolen cardboard. For instance, according to the indictment, on May 29, 2012, Giordano was recorded saying "he did not care where the cardboard came from as long as it went to him."

But others, like one a few days earlier, according to an FBI summary obtained by Gang Land, appear to tilt the other way. In one such conversation, Dontis is heard telling Hughes that "he doesn't want to do anything wrong. He's not a brokester, he's just a hard working Greek who just wants to make money."

Even if convicted, the trio could have received non jail terms, or sentences of less than a year behind bars.

Giordano's attorney, Michael Bachner, the only lawyer who responded to a Gang Land request for comment, said he and his client were pleased by the deferred prosecution decision. "From the get go," said Bachner, "we have taken the position that Mr. Giordano should not be prosecuted. And while it took longer than we would have wished, we're gratified with the result."

Neither Bharara, nor the FBI, would comment about this week's deferred prosecution, or the embarrassing decision to drop the charges against a third of the defendants in the case. They also declined to discuss the status of Hughes, including whether he is behind bars, or if, as prosecutors indicated last week, he is free on bail, and what type of supervision he has now.

In court papers, prosecutors wrote that Hughes "remains in virtual hiding, fearful for his safety and the safety of his close family members." His "ability to earn a living and to support his family is essentially non-existent," they wrote, adding that his "life will never return to the way it was prior to his arrest."

Prosecutors also wrote that different accounts they gave defense lawyers about how roll-off containers belonging to a Bazzini-connected carting company ended up in a Giordano company storage lot were caused by "miscommunication or misunderstanding" between Hughes and his supervising FBI agents, "rather than a deliberate effort by (Hughes) to mislead the government."

NJ Transit battles Papa Smurf(and loses)

article from Oct 2014

http://www.northjersey.com/news/nj-trans...amily-1.1114198

Most people would not choose to owe Carmine Franco — or his associates — anything. But that’s exactly the situation NJ Transit finds itself in, owing more than $8 million to the family of Franco, a convicted mob boss currently serving time in federal prison for racketeering.

In May, Franco admitted that he orchestrated a Mafia scheme to control North Jersey’s garbage business through threats and intimidation, forcing many owners out of their own businesses. But NJ Transit isn’t backing off.

This morning, the agency plans to dedicate another $150,000 to challenge a court ruling that gave Franco’s family $8.1 million for a piece of land needed to build new train tunnels under the Hudson River — a project that was canceled by Governor Christie in 2010.

And the costs for the public transit agency may not stop there. A private contractor has found that cleaning up the disputed parcel could cost $2 million, a bill the Franco family now says is NJ Transit’s responsibility.
Carmine Franco before his sentencing in 1998.

That’s on top of another $2 million NJ Transit already has paid lawyers over property disputes related to the canceled rail tunnel project.

“They’ve just procrastinated,” said Paul V. Fernicola, the attorney representing Franco’s family. “How long is this process supposed to take?”

Nancy Snyder, a spokes­wom­an for NJ Transit, declined on Tuesday to discuss the parcel or the agency’s appeal.

The legal fight centers on an awkward, 1.89-acre triangle of weeds and broken concrete that spills into Weehawken, Union City and Hoboken. Owned for years by Carmine Franco, who deeded it to his wife Mary and sister-in-law Carol, it was an industrial site used by a hodgepodge of auto repair, jitney bus and salvage yard companies, according to records filed in Superior Court in Hudson County.

Carmine Franco, who is 78 and from Ramsey, was known to his mob associates in the Genovese crime family as “Papa Smurf” and “Uncle Sonny.” Convicted in the early 1980s and again in the late 1990s for mob-related conspiracies, he was banned for life from the waste-hauling industry in New Jersey and many New York jurisdictions.

Franco eluded that ban, helping to create an alliance between the Genovese, Gambino and Lucchese crime families to exert control over the trash industry by using proxies to hide his role. He also admitted to mail fraud, wire fraud, and overbilling customers at a waste transfer station in West Nyack, N.Y., which he controlled.

When he was convicted, Franco faced a possible prison sentence of 45 years. His lawyers responded with a request that he be sentenced to a year of community service, at a church. Manhattan federal Judge Kevin Castel ultimately sentenced Franco to one year in prison. He also was ordered to forfeit $2.5 million to the United States.

The land originally caught the eye of NJ Transit officials in 2008 when the agency was looking for properties for its massive project to build a pair of train tunnels between New Jersey and New York. The project was called Access to the Region’s Core.

The agency sued for condemnation in December 2009, and initially offered to pay the Franco family $934,000, according to court filings by NJ Transit. A second appraisal increased the offer to $990,000.

Seven months later, Christie canceled the ARC tunnel project. In the years since, NJ Transit has done little with the land, other than surround it with a chain link fence festooned with signs marking it as NJ Transit property.

Meanwhile the surrounding neighborhood was experiencing a transformation. Thanks partly to NJ Transit’s light rail trains, which pass immediately north of the site, the area has exploded in recent years with new luxury condominiums and apartment buildings. All that development has left the Franco family’s 1.89-acre plot as one of the last large pieces of bare ground, just a few minutes’ walk from ferry lines to Manhattan.

Facing condemnation, the Francos hired an architect and an engineer to reimagine their land, and seek a higher price. Instead of a polluted bus parking lot, the architect envisioned residential buildings up to 13 stories tall, with 126 units and sweeping views of New York.

When its capacity for redevelopment was considered, the land’s value skyrocketed to $9.1 million, Fernicola said. After a 12-day trial a Hudson County jury largely agreed, ordering NJ Transit to pay the Franco family $8.1 million.

“Clearly NJ Transit substantially undervalued the property,” Fernicola said. “This property has amazing views of Manhattan.”

In addition to the site’s potentially growing value, NJ Transit also may have to deal with its contamination. The agency’s first, preliminary environmental study of the parcel, dated Sept. 16, 2008, found “a petroleum-like odor” and “elevated levels of contaminants … in both soil samples and groundwater samples,” according to court documents. A second study in March 2012 found PCBs and other pollutants, and estimated it would cost nearly $2 million to remove contaminated soil, remove drums of chemicals and cap dangerous portions of the site.

NJ Transit argues in court filings that the Franco family should pay to clean the site. Fernicola counters that because New Jersey law requires agencies that take land through condemnation to file two lawsuits simultaneously — one to condemn the property and a second to recover cleanup costs from the former owners — NJ Transit already has missed its only chance to get cleanup money from the Franco family.

Years after it started the condemnation process, “all NJ Transit has done was remove a single gasoline container” from the site, according to a legal brief filed in 2012 by Fernicola.

NJ Transit’s administration committee is scheduled to vote this morning on whether to spend another $150,000 on legal fees associated with the case. The agency originally allocated $2 million in November 2008 for lawyers working on property acquisitions related to the ARC tunnel.

Email: maag@northjersey.com

that judge is pure govt. tough sentencer

a year and a day is a break.. gets his good time..month and a half off or so..think it is 54 days

Those are the three words the want to hear at sentencing: and a day.

Do 6 months in MCC or MDC then halfway house were he probably already is. Merlino must be getting out anyday

I know this was a while back, just skimming through the thread. In my opinion, a cop-turned-mob-enforcer deserves some kind of sentence...he walks while the other guys faced 40 years in prison? At least the wiseguys were honest about who they were. Gross.

This whole story is pretty entertaining. Never thought that garbage would interest me for more than a millisecond but it's true, you never think about where your trash goes, or who picks it up for that matter. And that's one reason the mob could corner the market.

Just stay away from the garbage.

/me chuckles at getthesenets.