September 29, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By George Anastasia
'Sovereign' District of New York Nabs Skinny Joey Merlino; Gives His Crew A Pass
Gang Land Exclusive!Joseph MerlinoAs usual, when Philadelphia mob leader Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino first heard that investigators for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board were looking to bar him from the state's gambling halls, the quick witted crime boss had a ready reply.
"They're doing me a favor," Merlino said in an apparent reference to his gambling habit which, according to law enforcement and underworld sources, is often the root of his financial woes, and which have risen considerably since April, when the state agency filed a petition to put his name on the state's casino exclusion list.
But in a strange twist that says more about investigators than those being investigated, federal authorities in New York who hit Skinny Joey last month with racketeering charges that carry up to 20 years in prison seem to have done a much bigger favor for Merlino's Philadelphia mob crew.
Despite federal documents that say the 54-year-old mob boss was working to put the Philadelphia crime organization back together while a long-running investigation was underway, and despite federal assertions that Philadelphia was one of the locations where criminal activity had been taking place, no one with ties to the Philadelphia crime family other than Merlino has been named in the four-count racketeering indictment handed up in August. As a result, some of Skinny Joey's top associates in the City of Brotherly Love are waiting for the other shoe to drop — not believing they have dodged a bullet.
But if law enforcement sources in Philadelphia are correct, Joey's guys may have gotten a pass on this one.
John RubeoWhat sources in Philadelphia — and also in Florida — tell Gang Land is that the New York FBI and the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office played the five-year investigation very close to the vest.
And that has not set well with the other jurisdictions.
Only after the indictment was unsealed and arrests were made last month, said several sources, were investigators in Philadelphia given access to any of the secretly recorded conversations made by an FBI undercover agent and by mob associate John (J.R.) Rubeo, a top aide for Genovese capo Pasquale (Patsy) Parrello, who was cooperating with the FBI and who met frequently with Merlino in Florida and traveled with him to New York and New Jersey.
There was a Christmas party at Pasquale's Rigoletto, the gangster's Bronx restaurant in December of 2013 that at least two top Merlino associates attended. And sources say there was a summertime meeting at a bar-restaurant at the South Jersey Shore where Merlino and his Philadelphia entourage interacted with the informant, undercover agent and others.
Pasquale ParrelloPhiladelphia investigators would have liked to have had information gleaned from conversations at those meetings in real time, rather than after the fact.
The federal prosecutors in Manhattan, known officially as the Southern District of New York (SDNY), opted not to share.
"That's why it's known as the Sovereign District of New York," one Philadelphia law enforcement source said icily. "They don't play by the rules."
The view from Philadelphia, he and others said, is that the investigation that netted Merlino could have had a much greater impact against mob activity in Philadelphia and South Jersey. The fact that it won't, he added, is an example of how organized crime occasionally gets a boost from disorganized law enforcement.
Arrested in August after being charged with gambling and insurance fraud in the SDNY indictment, Skinny Joey is currently free on $5 million bail. He and his 45 co-defendants have a pre-trial hearing scheduled for Oct. 31 when more details from the case are expected to emerge.
In a court filing earlier this month, prosecutors told Manhattan Federal Court Judge Richard Sullivan that the grand jury is expected add more defendants to the already oversized racketeering conspiracy indictment. Sources say additional charges are also being contemplated for some of the original defendants.
Richard SullivanTo date, the indictment and a detention memo filed by federal prosecutors against 11 defendants — judges agreed to detain just three — offer a sketchy outline of the case, particularly when it comes to Merlino who has been named as one of the leaders of a newly created legal entity by the feds called the "East Coast LCN Enterprise." That doesn't exist in the real world, but in the SDNY indictment, it includes members and associates of the Genovese, Luchese, Bonanno and Gambino crime families as well as the Philadelphia mob.
Genovese crime family capos Parrello, 72, and Eugene (Rooster) O'Nofrio, 74, are the other two leaders of the enterprise, according to the indictment.
The detention memo alleged that Merlino, who moved to Florida after his release from prison in 2011, had been "working in earnest to rebuild the Philadelphia Crime Family." The memo also lists Philadelphia as one of the locations "throughout the East Coast" where the criminal activities being investigated took place.
But the only mobster with ties to Philadelphia who has been charged is Skinny Joey.
Eugene O'NofrioA month after his arrest in the racketeering case, Merlino's name was officially added to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board's exclusion list.
But his arrest and indictment had nothing to do with the move. Merlino became persona non grata after getting involved in an altercation at the Sugar House Casino in Philadelphia back in March.
The fracas — a shouting and pushing match between two groups of young gamblers in the early morning hours of March 9 — led state gaming regulators to take action.
Merlino has been banned from New Jersey casinos since 1988. But Pennsylvania, which legalized gambling in 2004, has taken a more passive approach to its exclusion list. Only after a potential undesirable is seen gambling, will the state consider putting him or her on the list.
Merlino, whose daughters attend Villanova University, was an occasional visitor to the gaming tables in Philadelphia and nearby Chester, PA, when he came north from his home in Florida to visit family and friends.
The pushing match at the Sugar House, picked up on a surveillance video, led the state to file a petition to have Skinny Joey barred. Merlino, who had the right to a hearing, opted not to oppose the move.
He clearly has more important things to worry about from the feds in New York.
But his associates in South Philadelphia may not.
Boston Bob Sends Skinny Joey His Best Wishes, And His Prayers
He used to be his partner in crime.
Now, he says, he's got him in his prayers.
Pastor Alonso Esposito is sending his warmest regards and best wishes to Joey Merlino as his old pal's current case moves forward. Esposito, the former Robert (Boston Bob) Luisi, knows what it's like. He's been there.
But since his release from prison two years ago, he's gone in a different direction. Taking a page out of New York mobster-turned-born-again-Christian Michael Franzese's play book, Luisi is now a pastor with a Sunday radio show and the author of a book about the Bible.
Once fascinated with the money, power, booze and broads that came with Cosa Nostra, Luisi said he's found a better way.
"I'm done with that life," the former Boston wiseguy said in a telephone interview from his home near Nashville, Tennessee. "I'm sorry for what Joey's going through. But you have to get away from it.
George Borgesi"You walk out of prison and go back to it, you're walking into an indictment or death. I loved those guys, Joey, Georgie (Philadelphia mob capo George Borgesi). I wish them nothing but the best. They're in my prayers."
Luisi , 55, was Merlino's point man in Boston in the late 1990s. The son of a slain mob associate, Boston Bob had had a falling out with the underworld powers that be in Beantown and aligned with Merlino and company, planting the Philadelphia flag in Massachusetts.
A self-described major money maker who had a piece of the gambling, loansharking and cocaine trade, Luisi got jammed up after South Jersey mob informant Ron Previte headed to Boston to arrange a series of cocaine deals.
Previte introduced Luisi to a buyer who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. The transactions were picked up on audio and video tape. Luisi and three of his top associates were indicted in Boston while Joey and company were charged in Philadelphia.
Ron PreviteLuisi at one point decided to cooperate, but the deal came undone. In retrospect, he says he's happy it worked out that way.
"I never wanted to hurt those guys," he says of his Philadelphia connections. "They always treated me well."
Even without Luisi's testimony, the feds were able to make their case in Philadelphia. In 2001, Merlino and six associates were convicted of racketeering charges tied to gambling, extortion and the receipt of stolen property. But Merlino was found not guilty of the cocaine count linked to the Boston deals set up by Previtie.
In a separate trial in Boston, Luisi was convicted of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to 15 years. He did most of his time, but got out of jail after agreeing to cooperate against a Boston mob figure.
By then he had had what he calls an "awakening." Relocated to Tennessee and given a new identify, he found work in construction and began a Christian ministry that has since become his fulltime calling.
He went public with his story earlier this year, first in an extensive interview with the Boston Globe.
Angelo Lutz"I had to come out," he said of his decision to leave the anonymity of the Witness Security Program. "I'm preaching and giving testimony. I felt like I was dishonest. I had to tell people who I was and what I had done."
His message to Merlino and company is that there is life after the mob.
"I put my head on my pillow at night and I don't worry about a thing," he said.
Not everyone, of course, is as tolerant or as accepting as Pastor Esposito.
Told that Boston Bob had found Jesus, Angelo Lutz, a Merlino co-defendant in 2001 and now the operator of a popular South Jersey restaurant, quipped, "I didn't know He was lost."
Mob Associate Ron Galati Decides Not To Fight
He hired the wrong hitmen.
And he's been paying for it ever since.
Longtime mob associate Ron Galati, already serving a 22-year sentence for his conviction in one murder-for-hire case, decided to fold rather go to trial on a second charge built around the testimony of the same two hitmen.
Galati, a South Philadelphia auto body shop operator described as an associate of mob leaders Joey Merlino, George Borgesi and Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi, entered "no contest" pleas to murder-for-hire and insurance fraud charges pending against him in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court last month.
He is to be sentenced on Dec. 9. The plea deal includes the stipulation that his sentence will run concurrently with the term he is currently serving in federal prison following his conviction two years ago in U.S. District Court in Camden. He is facing a potential 30 years to life in the murder-for-hire case and an additional 20 years for the insurance fraud. He's hoping his plea will lead to a sentence that doesn't exceed the 22 years he's doing in federal prison and gives him a chance to return home sometime in the distant future.
Joseph LigambiIn addition, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has agreed to drop insurance fraud charges pending against Galati's wife Vicky.
Galati was convicted in 2014 of plotting the murder of his estranged daughter's boyfriend. But the shooters he hired botched the job. The boyfriend was wounded as he left his townhouse in Atlantic City, but survived.
The shooters, Philadelphians unfamiliar with the Atlantic City neighborhood, were nabbed by police within minutes of the murder attempt and began talking while still in handcuffs.
They fingered Galati for planning the shooting, and said they had also been hired to take out two Philadelphia auto body shop owners whom Galati believed — correctly as it turned out — were cooperating in a massive insurance fraud investigation into Galati's body shop business.
"This guy is ratting on me on an insurance thing," Galati said of Joseph Rao, one of the targets, according to one of the alleged hitmen. "He's gotta go."
Victoria GalatiWhile the plotting sounded like something out of Goodfellas — a movie that Galati often quoted — the events themselves were closer to the plot line in a lesser known mob movie, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.
The plot to kill Rao and his son, Joseph Jr., was put on hold, according to authorities, after Galati and his hitmen, Ronald Walker and Alvin Matthews, learned that the father and son South Philadelphia body shop had been shut down by the city.
Investigators say the shooters then shifted their attention to Andrew Tuono, a one-time Galati friend who had begun dating Galati's daughter Tiffany, who was estranged from her family then. Tuono was shot multiple times outside his house near the Marina section of Atlantic City in November 2013. Tiffany Galati, who was by his side, was not hit.
Within hours the two shooters had given it all up, telling authorities about Ron Galarti's role in the botched Tuono hit and providing details about the plot to kill the Raos.
Walker and Matthews were key prosecution witnesses in the Tuono murder-for-hire trial in federal court in Camden in 2014 and were poised to take the stand again.
Ronald Galati Jr.Galati's decision to plead no contest to the second murder-for-hire charge and to conspiracy, bribery and insurance fraud charges tied to what the Philadelphia DA's Office said was a multi-million dollar scam built around fake accidents and bogus or overblown repair charges ended the Common Pleas Court case.
Galati's son, Ronald Jr., is also charged in the insurance fraud. He has pleaded guilty and will be sentenced with his father. Unlike his father, Ronald Junior has no criminal record. He is looking at a possible 3-to-5 year sentence, which the DA's office is expected to ask for. But because he has no priors and because he has not been linked to the South Philadelphia mob, he could get less. Probation is also a possibility.
At a hearing on Common Pleas Court in August, Tiffany Galati sat with her mother and brother as her jailed father, looking gaunt and unshaven, entered his no contest pleas.
Described as a row house princess, Tiffany Galati broke up with the boyfriend her father wanted killed shortly after the shooting and has since reconciled with her family.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Award-winning reporter/author George Anastasia covers the Philadelphia crime beat for
www.bigtrial.net.
