This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

Feds Look To Put Genovese Gangster Where He Says He Belongs: In Jail

Gang Land Exclusive! If the goal of the federal prison system is to rehabilitate, it failed miserably when it came to Michael (Mikey P) Palazzolo. Indeed, it only made him nastier, according to federal prosecutors.

After serving nearly 11 years behind bars for being part of a gang that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered drug dealers, Palazzolo liked to boast that he still "belonged in jail." And as an enforcer for the Genovese crime family, he went right on threatening to "break the face" of those who owed him money, according to court filings by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office.

When a former girlfriend called him a "rat for even speaking" to an FBI agent who contacted Mikey P after he had been badly beaten in a barroom brawl, Palazzolo allegedly enlisted three mob cronies to throw her a beating, according to prosecution filings last week.

"The defendant was incensed and wanted (the girlfriend) severely injured … because he had spent over 10 years in prison rather than cooperate with the government, and calling him a rat was a true insult to his reputation," the prosecutors wrote in asking Judge Ronnie Abrams to permit them to introduce evidence about the plot at Palazzolo's upcoming racketeering trial.

Mikey P's allegedly violent reaction to his ex-girlfriend's slur occurred in 2010, during the eight years covered in a racketeering conspiracy indictment. The charges include nine separate assault and extortion counts against Palazzolo, all stemming from violence he's accused of committing while serving as a collector-enforcer for two rival Genovese capos.

The plot against the girlfriend included two plans to assault her with an "asp, an expandable metal baton," according to prosecutors. Both plans failed, the second when the woman decided not to attend a "jewelry party." Palazzolo next "suggested" that his cohorts carry out "the assault at her residence," wrote assistant U.S. attorneys Abigail Kurland, Scott Hartman and Rebekah Donaleski.

The turmoil between Palazzolo and the Westchester woman began in the fall of 2010 after Mikey P had "received a severe and visible injury to his head in a bar fight." FBI agent Thomas Hallinan and Rockland County Detective William Michella visited Palazzolo "in public at his place of work to inquire about the injury" on October 28, 2010, the prosecutors wrote.

Palazzolo "refused to discuss the injury" but after his ex-girlfriend, who apparently believes gangsters should not even be civil when the law comes calling, called the FBI and spoke to Agent Hallinan, she berated Mikey P to the point he was ready for blood, or as he told a cooperating witness, "was seeing red rats," the prosecutors wrote.

Palazzolo, 50, was hit with racketeering conspiracy charges last year along with powerful capo Daniel Pagano, who copped a plea deal to bookmaking charges and was sentenced to 27 months, which he began serving last month.

Mikey P rejected a similar plea bargain. And since then, prosecutors have twice upped the ante by adding more charges against him. He faces up 20 years if convicted. In last week's filing, they disclosed that Palazzolo also did some enforcing and collecting work for Genovese capo Thomas (Figgy) Ficarotta.

In January of 2009, Palazzolo and a crony involved in the assault plot against Mikey P's ex, flew to Florida to collect a $36,000 debt that a Genovese associate owed Figgy. At the time, Mikey P was also working for Jet Waste, a private sanitation company that was run by Ficarotta's wife, Kathleen, according to the prosecutors. Neither Ficarotta, 61, nor his wife, have been charged with any wrongdoing.

Sources told Gang Land that authorities learned about Palazzolo's ties to Figgy while the Rockland County District Attorney's office was tapping several phones of Pagano underlings Frank Fea and his son Alfred in 2009 and 2010. The Feas, along with Alfred's wife Tracey, were all hit with bookmaking charges in 2010. Like Pagano, all three copped plea deals.

Mikey P, who has been tape-recorded discussing his use of steroids, often recalled his time behind bars — from 1991 to 2002 — as he made threats of violence against others, the prosecutors wrote. These victims included persons from whom he was trying to collect overdue debts for himself, his mob superiors or for cohorts who had hired him for that purpose.

"This is why they put me in prison," Palazzolo told an extortion victim "who owed the defendant money and … from whom the defendant was trying to collect," wrote prosecutors Kurland, Hartman and Donaleski, noting that Mikey P routinely "spoke about violence in connection with his duties."

He was not reluctant to turn his words into actions, wrote prosecutors, who detailed Palazzolo's efforts to collect a $250,000 debt from a general contractor who owed the money to a cohort for "multiple electrical projects" they had worked on.

After reminding the contractor that he "spent approximately 12 years in prison," (Mikey P stretched the truth a bit at times) and telling him that deadbeats like him would "typically be put in a hospital over this debt," Palazzolo "pushed the broken edge of a rake into (his) neck," and then "pushed a firearm into the back of his head," the prosecutors wrote.

The contractor paid Palazzolo more than $40,000 "over a period of several months" and was then pressured to "take out mortgages to repay the debt," the prosecutors wrote.

Mikey P's prison-toned muscles were the subject of a tape-recorded conversation between two cronies who joined with Palazollo in March of 2012 in an effort to extort $600,000 from a thief who had stolen a load of marijuana from a drug dealer in the crew, according to the court filing.

"I'm bringing the real Michael with me, the Real McCoy," said one, who called then-47-year-old Palazzolo a "kid" and was probably a little long in the tooth. "Michael was the main man. Let's put it this way, this kid could throw 75 different combinations and you would never see them coming. They took the heavy bags out of the prison gym because of this guy."

Palazzolo and Company made a trip to locations in Queens and Long Island to try and find the marijuana thief and recover the $600,000 but were never able to get the job done.

But Palazzolo, who had to take time off from a landscaping job he had at the time, wasn't working on consignment, and didn't lose any money during the fruitless endeavor.

That's because he hired himself out as "muscle" for a buddy whose load of pot had been stolen, and received "approximately $200 for the job, the equivalent of the salary the defendant lost by missing a day of work to participate in the extortion," the prosecutors wrote.

Palazzolo's lawyer has not yet filed a response to the government's request and did not respond to a Gang Land request for comment.



Turncoat Shines Light On Lufthansa Heist; Turns Out The Lights For Mob Capo

He's still on the witness stand, and the trial is far from over, but a slight, unlikely-looking, longtime mob associate has shined a bright new light on the storied 1978 Lufthansa Airlines robbery. At the same time, key government witness Gaspare (Gary) Valenti seems to have turned out the lights on the defendant, his 80-year-old cousin, Bonanno capo Vincent Asaro.

In dramatic, riveting testimony, Valenti described how he followed Tommy DeSimone, the Joe Pesce character in GoodFellas, into the Lufthansa cargo vault. And he told how he and Asaro helped plan the daring $6 million heist with mastermind James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, the Robert DeNiro character in the 1990 movie classic.

As if one movie reference wasn't enough for one trial, the courtroom also mimiced another memorable scene, this one from the Godfather Part II, as Valenti's mobster son, Anthony (Fat Sammy) Valenti, gave the malocchio, or evil eye, to his turncoat father as he spilled his guts about the Lufthansa heist and other mob secrets going back to the 1960s.

With Asaro, and the entire federal courtroom in Brooklyn watching and listening intently, Valenti, speaking softly and in a low, raspy voice, described the thrill of seeing DeSimone kick open two boxes and finding oodles and oodles of cash, much more than they had expected.

"Tommy put his hand in and took out two packets of money," he testified. "They had $125,000 in $100 bills. He said, 'This is it! This is it!'"

"There were burlap sacks of gold chains, crates of watches, metal boxes with drawers in them," Valenti testified. "And each drawer had diamonds and emeralds and rubies. All different stones. We made a chain and loaded everything into the van."

The score, which included 50 boxes of cash and jewelry, Valenti testified, was much greater than the $2 million in loot they had expected — and contained $1 million more in cash than the $5 million that was officially reported stolen.

"It was euphoria," he testified. "We thought there was $2 million in cash, and there was $6 million. Without the gold. Without the German money."

Defense attorneys are sure to question it later, but Valenti's tale from the witness stand is the first testimony by a participant in the 38-year-old robbery, one of the largest in U.S. history, that was described Monday by federal prosecutor Lindsay Gerdes as "truly the score of all scores."

Valenti, 68, said the other active participants in the robbery were Joseph (Joe Buddha) Manri, Anthony Rodriguez, Angelo Sepe, Louis Cafora, Danny Rizzo, and Burke's son, Frank. He also said two other GoodFellas characters were part of the robbery scheme: bookmaker Marty Krugman, the Morris Kessler (Morrie the Wig Guy) character, and the first turncoat in in case, Henry Hill, who was played by Ray Liotta in the film.

Of all the named participants, only Asaro and Valenti, who testified that he and his cousin "were very close, we had a bond," are still alive. Many any of them — as graphically depicted in GoodFellas — were killed on Burke's orders in an effort to stymie the federal investigation into the robbery.

Valenti, who identified an FBI surveillance photo of Asaro and Gambino boss John Gotti, testified that the late Dapper Don received a cut because Burke and Asaro wanted "to keep the peace among the families. We didn't want retribution or anyone to rob us."

Both he and Asaro got their full $750,000 shares, he testified. But he implied that his cousin had gotten more, and that he deserved more as well. The reason, he began to say, was that the shares got bigger when several members of the robbery team "died and some went missing" after the heist. But he was stopped from completing that thought by Judge Allyne Ross, who has ordered prosecutors from introducing any evidence about the post-heist murders.

His trial testimony was at odds with prior government filings, which stated that Asaro had cheated Valenti out of his $750,000 share of the loot.

His anger at his cousin, who constantly berated him, he testified, helped drive him to contact the FBI several years ago and tell them he and Asaro had taken part in the Lufthansa heist and that he would be willing to cooperate and wear a wire against his cousin if the feds sponsored him into the federal Witness Protection Program.

"I called the FBI," Valenti testified. "I needed help financially to support my family."

Under gentle questioning by assistant U.S. attorney Nicole Argentieri, the lead prosecutor in the case, Valenti testified that the robbery was dutifully planned, with participants making two dry runs to the Lufthansa cargo terminal, and meeting at Burke's home the night of the robbery to go over then plan again. Their getaway, however, was a haphazard affair.

Asaro and Jimmy Burke were in a crash car about a mile away, prepared to follow the robbers and block any pursuing police cars that happened by, Valenti testified. But when they robbery van got to the rendezvous, they realized they hadn't decided where to take the loot.

"It's amazing," Valenti recalled. "A robbery that big and nothing was ever discussed about where to go afterward. Vinny yelled out, 'Bring it to my cousin's house!' And that's where we went, to my house."

Burke also had other things on his mind. He had to get back to a halfway house where he was completing a sentence for extortion. Asaro drove him there while the robbery crew spent hours counting the cash and sorting the jewelry and gold coins they had stolen in the basement of his East New York, Brooklyn, home, while his family slept, unaware of what was happening, Valenti testified.

During his testimony on Tuesday, Valenti's burly 48-year-old wiseguy son, Anthony glared at his father. The father never looked anywhere near the spectator section of the courtroom where his son was sitting with members of Asaro's family.

On Tuesday, Fat Sammy declined to comment about the case. But on Monday, he told the Daily News: "I'm here for Vinny," adding that he had "nothing to say" about his estranged father.



Feds Hold Back Pro-Defense Info About Murder Charge Until Jury Selection

In 2012, a year before the remains of murder victim Paul Katz were unearthed, his son Lawrence told the FBI's Lufthansa case agents that two FBI agents had told him and his late mother years ago that James Burke and a mob hitman who had since died — not Vincent Asaro — were suspects in his father's murder, according to court papers filed this week by defense lawyers.

In the filing, Asaro's attorneys Elizabeth Macedonio and Diane Ferrone state that on July 23, 2012, Katz told agents Adam Mininni and Robert Ypelaar that the "two agents dressed in suits showed up unannounced" at his mom's workplace "with new information" and told them that his mom might "have to testify" about her late husband's disappearance.

Mininni and Ypelaar are the two agents seen escorting Asaro in the perp-walk photo that accompanies most stories about the trial.

Asaro And AgentsThe new information dovetails with pre-trial indications by Asaro's lawyers that a now deceased low-level Luchese crime family associate named Joseph Allegro, who had been arrested with Katz in October, 1969, was the man responsible for the death of Katz.

According to an NYPD Missing Persons Report, which Judge Ross has ruled the defense can introduce into evidence, Dolores Katz told police that her husband Paul never came home after leaving to meet Allegro in the early evening of December 6, 1969.

In the "new information," which was not fully disclosed in the court papers, the agents told the dead man's son and widow "that Jimmy Burke had a role in Paul Katz's murder, and that he had used a hitman who was also killed," wrote lawyers Macedonio and Ferrone.

Calling the three year old information they received on the last day of jury selection "exculpatory material" that tends to absolve their client of Katz's murder, Macedonio and Ferrone asked Ross to put off the start of the trial to give them time to investigate the new material.

Prosecutors have not responded to the filing, and did not respond to Gang Land queries about it. Judge Ross has not ruled on the issue, but it's likely that the judge will make sure the defense has adequate time to look into the new information before allowing Lawrence Katz, a tentative prosecution witness, to take the stand.

Does anyone know much about this guy ?? I believe he was a hitter , Capeci in his article today states he is a captain in the genovese family , any pics of the guy ?? And if he is a captain do we know whose crew he took over

I think he's an associate, not captain. He works for two separate captains.

He is an idiot for not pleading out.

I was talking about ficarotta not the other guy pal

to be honest we prob dont even know half of the capos are in NY if you think of the size of the mob in general. The westsdie must have 20+ capos

from what i have been able to find he is 46


i think his father was a big player back in the day i think his name was anthony

If he is a captain this is prob closest to the truth Thomas figgy ficarotta was made and put in Joseph “Joe Lefty” Loiacono crew . Wen he died massera took over that crew and prob still runs it today , if ficarotta is a captain it's most likely he has been given part of his crew or took it over completely due to massera' advanced age

Palozollo seems like all brawn and no brains. Not exactly Genovese material.

You'd be surprised, Mulberry. Even the "Ivy League" has their share of morons. Just not as many.

yeah this guy seems like a real scumbag

Thanks for posting the column, Palazzolo's ex girlfriend sounds like a real sweetheart.

there has to be someone at the bottom of the chain even the westside

Mulberry, you're a great poster and please no offence but this is one of the stupidest comments on this forum.

What do you think the Genoese family does? How do you think they enforce their rackets? Nice guys who talk shit out? Collect loan shark debts/extortion etc etc over cups of tea?

Jeezus. The families are crime families who operate illegal rackets via force and coercion.
That this guy isn't 'Genovese material' is frankly hysterical.

What was Tino Fuirama who clipped God knows how many guys? Half fucking garrotted with fucking piano wire? Was he Genovese material?

Perspective people. Please.