Looking like trouble for at least 3 mafia familys there were behind little Nicky Scarfo and his son.
There are 3 bosses or former or current and many soldiers in on the possible takeover of Philly.
The Bosses(or former) are the ones that Nicky was and is locked up with and there solders.(or high ranking skipper with the ok)I would think.
The amount and who are involved are not being exposed yet ,but i bet there are guys in Philly looking over there shoulder.
The ones in N.Y. had there Bosses blessing ? But i don't think that would be the case in Philly..

There were so many people saying that they did not have anyone behind them ,well that is out the window.

I guess time will tell,or a rat.

Serp

I always felt WS has been trying to take over philly rackets since Skinny wasn't on the streets and have been successful in gaining sports related activity . What's ur thoughts on that

Obviously they did that in South J

What other fam is looking or has to expanded there , L's ?

Jr ain't gonn rat and I suspect no one above him was then exposed

Feel free to PM but expansion into Philly and SJ by others has always been of interest to me

Thank You - again feel free to PM

I wonder if Jr. Will flip after his father dies.

This is as close to knowing who what and where, and who is in, as it gets without a rat. I guess.I hear that there is one of them in the wings to.But the thing that got me was the other familys.
I guess the old guard holds some sway...

Flip may be to late then.

Who is "one of them"? Is Nicky Scarfo the old guard?

If I knew names that is not in the news ,I would not post it. And yes the old guard and it does not surprise me that he has the supporters but it does surprise a lot of other people.
What does suprize me is the level of the other supporters...

I barely understood a word of that

NY moving in on Philly is all I'm getting.

Have to agree with Tommy.

No point in posting something if you want to keep it private or if only one or two people understand your meaning. Do so via PM.

But if you post to the board, please make it understandable.

My fault I think it is that guy George Anastasia
Could be the guy that has the gangland site. I d.on't know his name. and I'm using voice text,sorry all....Does not come out as you say it...

Just looked on the Gangland front page it's on there. Can't read the full article as I don't subscribe, will someone copy paste it me in a PM please?

There u go tommy

This Week in Gang Land
By George Anastasia

Some Pointed Questions About That Junior Gotti Proffer Session

Gang Land Exclusive Gotti's lawyer has raised a stink about how John Alite was able to get his hands on an FBI memo (known as a 302) that details a proffer session Junior had with federal prosecutors back in 2005.

I reprinted the full five-page memo in Gotti's Rules, my book about Alite and Junior Gotti that was published on January 27. Junior's lawyer Charles Carnesi may scream and holler about how the document made its way into the book, but from where I'm standing that's just another example of the Gotti camp attempting to control the narrative.

The issue shouldn't be how the memo got into the book, but rather what the memo says.

Since Gang Land first broke the story in 2006 about Gotti's attempt to cut a deal with the feds, Junior and his people have been in spin control, offering different versions of the why and what of that sitdown with the authorities. It wasn't what it seemed, say Junior and his apologists.

My purpose in reprinting the memo in total was to let those who read it draw their own conclusions. I've read and reread the document more than a dozen times and each time I come away with two questions.

According to the FBI memo, Junior told the feds during his proffer session that the suicide death of John Cennamo, a witness to a bar brawl and fatal stabbing at the Silver Fox Lounge back in 1983, was actually a murder. Cennamo's death was staged to appear that he had taken his own life, but in fact he had been killed on the orders of the elder John Gotti because Cennamo was implicating Junior in the stabbing death of Danny Silva.

Junior Gotti, who has denied he stabbed Silva to death during the Silver Fox brawl, said Angelo Ruggiero, Willie Boy Johnson and Joe Watts killed Cennamo whose body was found with a noose around its neck hanging from a tree.

My first question is this: If Junior was not involved in the Silva stabbing, why did his father want Cennamo permanently silenced?

My second question goes to the Junior's racketeering trial in 2009.

Alite testified for nearly a week during that trial and at one point talked in detail about the staged suicide and the murder of Cennamo. Gotti and his lawyers have called Alite a liar, sneak, lowlife and reprobate. They have painted him as a less than credible drug dealer who said whatever the government wanted in order to get out from under the criminal charges he was facing.

In his Cennamo testimony, however, Alite's story is backed up by Gotti's proffer. Since a deal was never finalized, none of that information could be used by prosecutors, but that doesn't change the reality.

told him Cennamo was killed on the elder Gotti's orders. Alite said Junior fingered Ruggiero, Johnson and John Carnegllia (not Joe Watts) as the gangsters who "helped" Cennamo hang himself.

During the trial, Carnesi challenged Alite's every word and, among other things, portrayed Cennamo's death as a suicide.

"The answer to the first question is simple," Carnesi told Gang Land. "John Gotti did not want Cennamo dead. Cennamo, as the overwhelming evidence establishes, was not murdered; he committed suicide. The medical examiner was unequivocal in concluding that the death was a suicide. There were no signs of a struggle, and his family and friends saw him earlier that day, some within 15 minutes of his death and said he was seriously depressed over losing his job and his breakup with his girlfriend. Willie Boy Johnson, whose name Gotti included in his fictitious account of the incident, was in fact an FBI informant for over 19 years and never reported anything about Cennamo's death to his FBI handlers."

"In 2005," the lawyer continued, "my client attended a proffer session with his then-attorneys to seek revenge on his perceived enemies. He lied to the government, and provided useless information. What he did in that hour-long meeting is indefensible, and he has regretted it ever since. But he realized it was wrong and did not proceed. In the ensuing ten years, no one has ever been prosecuted, and the only one who has suffered is Gotti. He was tried four times within five years and spent 32 months incarcerated on charges on which he was never convicted."

"As to the second question," said Carnesi, "Alite's testimony is not backed up by Gotti's proffer. On the contrary, it is a product of Gotti's proffer. Alite clearly read the proffer prior to testifying and conformed his testimony accordingly. Of course, that means someone on the prosecution team gave him prior information and that he tailored his testimony accordingly, even if it was not truthful. The answers to Mr. Anastasia's questions about what really happened can be found, not in the 302, but in Gotti's Rules. [Page 308: 'Alite's perspective was that the prosecutors had locked themselves into versions of events provided by cooperating witnesses who had come on board before Alite agreed to testify. In fact, he said that he felt he had to tailor his story to fit theirs so that what went before the jury was consistent. As a result, Alite believes the truth sometimes got lost in the telling.']

The lawyer posed two follow-up questions of his own:

"When Alite gave you the 302, did he tell you how and from whom he had obtained it? The answer to that question does not appear in your book or in any debriefing of Alite that I have ever seen. To my knowledge, Alite never spoke about that until he became aware that we were pressing for an investigation.

"And, having read his ludicrous cover story in Gang Land last week, did Alite not tell you how he obtained the document because he was protecting a government source, maybe a gangster who carries a badge, or did he want to save the scoop for Gang Land?"

The FBI memo, citing Junior Gotti as its source, tells a much different story about the proffer session than the one that Carnesi is promoting.

There's also this.

Back in 2006, when he was asked about Gotti's proffer session, Carnesi told Gang Land that Junior never considered cooperating and that he "steadfastly maintains that he did not incriminate anyone in any criminal activity during that meeting."

Again, the FBI memo suggests otherwise.

In addition to detailing the Cennamo murder/suicide, the memo indicates that Junior Gotti talked about two other homicides, tying one to Watts and another to Danny Marino.

In writing Gotti's Rules I did not press Alite on how he got the FBI document. My impression was he wanted to protect his source or sources. I respected that. What's more, I didn't want the book to include the debate that's now taking place over that issue.

The points I wanted to make were that the proffer session, as both Gang Land and the New York Post reported in 2006, had in fact taken place. And I wanted to provide the reader with what the FBI said Junior had talked about to authorities at that meeting.

Those points get lost in the argument over how Alite got the memo.

As I reread it again, I come back to my second question.

Does Joe Watts or Danny Marino believe Junior Gotti did not incriminate them in any criminal activity?



FirstPlus Was Not The Only Takeover Scarfo Junior Was Planning

Nicodemo S. Scarfo, the son of jailed Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo D. (Little Nicky) Scarfo, was involved in more than one attempted takeover when he secretly grabbed behind-the-scenes control of a Texas mortgage company and fleeced it of $12 million back in 2007.

Scarfo, who is awaiting sentencing following his conviction for looting FirstPlus Financial, was also plotting a power grab that would have put him and his father back on top of the Philadelphia mob, according to an FBI affidavit that has surfaced in the FirstPlus case.

Scarfo, 49, is due to be sentenced on March 25. The one time scion of the Philadelphia crime family has been behind bars since his arrest in 2011. He is looking at 30 years to life following his conviction on racketeering conspiracy, fraud and related offenses.

Scarfo is no stranger to prison life, with two prior convictions for racketeering and gambling.

His lawyer and lawyers for three others convicted following a six-month trial in federal court in Camden last year insist that Scarfo was targeted because of his mob ties. They argue that the specter of organized crime prejudiced the jury, and made it impossible for the defendants to get a fair trial.

Lawyers argued that the looting of FirstPlus back in 2007 was a "garden variety white collar crime" dressed up to look like a mob bust out in order to impress and scare the anonymously chosen jurors. Judge Robert Kugler rejected that argument, offered in both pre-and post-trial motions.

Scarfo and his partner-in-crime, mob associate Salvatore Pelullo, were convicted of siphoning $12 million out of the troubled mortgage company. Mob or no mob, that's quite a garden.

In an attempt to support their argument that authorities started out looking for organized crime and were determined to find the mob no matter what the evidence might show, the defense has entered a number of documents that provide a look at what the feds were focusing on when they happened upon the FirstPlus fraud.

According to an affidavit from the FBI case Agent Joseph Gilson, Scarfo Jr. (like John A. Gotti, he is referred to as "Junior" even though he and his father have different middle names) was trying to take back control of the Philadelphia crime family for his imprisoned father around the same time he and Pelullo launched the behind-the-scenes takeover of FirstPlus in 2007.

What's more, Gilson said in the affidavit submitted with an application for court-ordered wiretaps, Little Nicky was backing the play from his prison cell in Atlanta.

"Scarfo Sr. has secured the backing of some of the New York LCN Families in this attempt to take control of the Philadelphia LCN Family and is directing his son, Scarfo Jr., in the attempted takeover," Gilson wrote.

Neither Scarfo had much standing in the Philadelphia underworld at the time. The elder Scarfo was perceived as a psychopath whose penchant for violence had destabilized the once low-key and highly efficient organization run by the late Angelo Bruno.

Junior, who survived an assassination attempt at a South Philadelphia restaurant on Halloween night in 1989, was seen as his father's proxy. He left the Philadelphia-South Jersey area after the shooting and relocated to North Jersey, eventually becoming a member of the Luchese family.

While Gilson's affidavit doesn't mention which New York families were supporting the Scarfo power grab in 2007, it's a safe bet that the Luchese organization, at least the faction loyal to jailed boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso, was behind the move.

Amuso, in prison with the elder Scarfo, had arranged for Scarfo Jr. to be formally initiated into the Luchese family as a favor to Little Nicky.

In 2006 the younger Scarfo had left North Jersey and moved back to the Atlantic City area. He briefly ran a restaurant in the seashore town of Margate and later went into the construction business. Rumors surfaced at the time that Junior was trying to recruit local mobsters who might still be loyal to his dad.

The Philadelphia crime family over the past three decades has been a bloody soap opera with brother turning on brother in a rampage that has decimated what is left of the organization.

Gilson noted as much in his affidavit, writing at one point in the 94-page document that, "It's difficult to chart the history of the Philadelphia Mafia given its frequent personnel changes caused by the violent deaths of several of its members."

If you're keeping score, about two dozen mob members and associates were killed during the bloody reign of Little Nicky Scarfo between 1981 and 1989. A dozen more were convicted and jailed for lengthy prisons terms with the elder Scarfo. The chaos continued through the 1990s with John Stanfa, Ralph Natale (who later became a cooperating witness) and Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino spending time atop a crime family in disarray.

Whether Scarfo Jr. ever had a real shot at retaking control, or was actually planning such a bold move, is open to much speculation.

Tapes from a New Jersey State Police investigation in a multi-million dollar Luchese-run bookmaking operation in North Jersey around this time indicate that the younger Scarfo had fallen out of favor and had been demoted from capo to soldier.

Whether anyone would have lined up behind him in a move against then Philadelphia boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi is doubtful. The FBI affidavit cites a sole confidential informant who said Scarfo Jr. attempted to recruit Joseph Ciancaglini Jr.

Gilson quotes the source who said Scarfo approached Ciancaglini and asked if "he wanted to be with" him in a power grab.

The younger Ciancaglini "had not been active in the affairs of the Philadelphia LCN Family since the attempt on his life (in 1993)," Gilson wrote in his affidavit.

Ciancaglini is one of three brothers, sons of jailed Philadelphia mob capo Joseph (Chickie) Ciancaglini. They were in many ways a crime family within a crime family. And like the broader Philadelphia mob, they had gone in different directions.

Joe Jr. was Stanfa's underboss and was shot and nearly killed in an ambush orchestrated, authorities believe, by Merlino and Ciancaglini's own brother, Michael Ciancaglini in March 1993.

That summer, Michael Ciancaglini was killed in the Stanfa-Merlino war.

A third brother John, sat out the violence while serving a federal sentence for racketeering but later emerged as a Merlino ally and headed back to prison when he, Skinny Joey and five others were convicted in 2001.

While none of this had anything to do with the FirstPlus takeover, federal authorities argued that the mob connections of Scarfo and Pelullo were the driving force behind the multi-million dollar extortion.

Gilson noted that the reputations of Scarfo and Pelullo were not lost on the FirstPlus officials who were forced to go along. One director, according to a source cited by the FBI agent, said he believed what Pelullo was doing was extortion, but he declined to cooperate with authorities.

He told the informant that "he did not want to be a rat and end up at the bottom of a lake for cooperating with law enforcement authorities."

The sentencings of Pelullo, who had two prior fraud convictions, and former FirstPlus CEO John Maxwell and Maxwell's brother William, a lawyer who served as outside counsel for the firm, are also scheduled for next month.



Who's The Boss? And Why Would He Want To Be?

Joseph LigambiThe Philadelphia mob doesn't issue an annual report but several sources in law enforcement and the underworld say that the organization has undergone a quiet realignment since mob boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi hung the feds out to dry for a second time in a racketeering trial, and came back to South Philadelphia early last year.

Unk is now 73 and has apparently slid over to the role of consigliere. According to sources, he's smart enough to realize that that's a safer and more secure position. He's semi-retired and happy to be.

Most sources believe Stevie Mazzone and Johnny Ciancaglini are street bosses who control or at least oversee the bookmaking and loansharking operations that are still sources of income. Ciancaglini's aforementioned father Chickie, now 80, was released from a halfway house earlier this year after doing nearly 30 years for racketeering. He is still highly regarded and has become one of the "old heads" who could lend stability to the often chaotic crime family.

Chickie Ciancaglini was a genuine tough guy who nevertheless realized that violence for violence sake was no way to run an organization. How far his influence is felt could determine how well the organization functions.

But who's the boss?

No one is stepping forward to claim the mantle, but speculation is that Phil Narducci is at least in contention for the top spot. For now, say those sources, Narducci, along with Johnny Ciancaglini and Mazzone, is part of a ruling committee that is steering the crime family. Narducci, just 53, recently returned home. He, along with his brother Frank, the Pungitore brothers, Joseph and Anthony, Charlie Iannece and Chickie Ciancaglni were all part of the Scarfo crime family indicted and jailed back in the late 1980s. Virtually everyone is back home now except Scarfo and Frank (Faffy) Iannarella.

Faffy gets out shortly. Scarfo's release date is 2033 when he will be 103.

It's not so much a question of putting the old gang back together as it is an attempt to take the different pieces and put together a new, better functioning organization.

Two wild cards remain, say both underworld and law enforcement sources.

Joey Merlino is not a favorite of most of the recent returnees. But it appears Joey is content to remain in Florida. He's now serving a four-month prison sentence for a parole violation but is expected back in Boca Raton and back at the restaurant that bears his name by the spring.

Merlino is the host and greeter at Merlino's a posh dining spot that features home-style and modern Italian cuisine. Merlino can't be an owner because his criminal record doesn't mix with a liquor license. But he's the main attraction and apparently happy to be.

A return to South Philadelphia appears unlikely.

George Borgesi, Ligambi's nephew, is the second question mark.

The volatile one-time mob capo comes off supervised release in July. Like his uncle, he beat the feds in a racketeering case and a retrial. He once had control of gambling and loansharking in the Philadelphia suburbs. Where he might fit in the new structure is a question that everyone is asking.

At the end of the day, however, given the murder, mayhem, turncoat testimony and prosecutions that have been the mark of the Philadelphia mob for the past three decades, the real question is why would anyone want to be in charge?

Ok..quite possible that Scarfo was demoted because he wanted to take over philly and he had the backing of Amuso( the brooklyn faction of the lucchese). I would think the bronx guys were happy with the way things were and perhaps had some sort of amicable arrangement with philly at the time; why ruin a good thing?
I guess the bronx told amuso to screw off and demoted scarfo jr as a show of good faith to philly( not that they needed too)?

The sad thing is they are being followed by the feds due to gambling and extortion, as stated on this site many times there are much larger gambling operations that have gone on in Philly without the mafia involvement and then the extortion thing is legal today through montel williams and yet the feds go after these south philly guys who gamble amongst themselves, when basically you could go to delaware to place bets, get an online account or whatever....at then end of the day they want to ring up joey for the murders and the way he has snubbed his nose at the feds for however long.....sugarhouse, parx and chester all have cards and craps...i guess the easy access loans on the street are a big deal....and again n and west philly drug gangs are big time with killings and money and the way they are run these days

Merlino you are entirely right and this is an issue that has been driving me nuts

The Feds use of resources is atrocious and down right criminal to me

There should be almost no manpower dedicated to non violent gambling activities by LE, not with the sever gang problems sprawling across this country

The Feds will never stop gambling , the activity is legal in many us cities and it's very clear CN has reduced violence significantly in their activities . The deeds being done by many of our financial leaders is far far far worse to the average man . Our fed leaders are rather pathetic and have no clue on how to prioritize