October 13, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

Two Crips Gangstas To Cop Pleas In Mob Rubout Plot; Feds OK Bail For Genovese Wiseguy

Gang Land Exclusive!In one of the most unusual mob rubout plots to make its way into federal court, a pair of Bronx street gangstas aligned with the Crips have agreed to plead guilty to being part of an alleged Genovese crime family plot to ambush and kill a hot-headed mob associate, Gang Land has learned.

And federal prosecutors say they are discussing plea deals with "virtually all" 18 defendants in the racketeering indictment, which includes six others who are charged with being part of an aborted $5000 murder-for-hire plot to whack gangster Joseph Bonelli in his Whitestone, Queens home two years ago.

But court documents obtained by Gang Land — some publicly filed, others not — indicate that Genovese soldier Robert (Old Man) DeBello, the lead defendant in the case and the only mobster charged in the murder conspiracy, won't be one of them. That's because prosecutors have no evidence against him, according to the documents.

Judge Laura SwainThat became clear last month when DeBello's lawyer made a forceful argument to Manhattan Federal Judge Laura Swain that she should set bail for his client since the feds never caught the aging gangster talking on thousands of secretly recorded tapes in the case — and had nothing on him other than "innuendo, supposition and conjecture."

Back in May, prosecutors asserted that DeBello was linked to the June 8, 2014 plot by a cooperating witness along with thousands of tape recorded talks, as well as the testimony of a federal mob expert and photos detectives took of the wiseguy meeting with mob associates days after two failed hit attempts.

But Froccaro wrote that after reviewing all of the "discovery" material, he found that his client didn't show up in a "single conversation" in 24,000 tape recorded talks. The lawyer also said there wasn't "a shred of physical or documentary evidence linking Mr. DeBello to the murder conspiracy, firearm use, extortion or gambling."

Luigi RomanoFroccaro also argued that De Bello deserved release on bail since codefendant Luigi (Louie Sunoco) Romano, the alleged moneyman who paid the $5000 cost of the murder contract, was released on a $1 million bond and permitted to work at his gas station from 6AM to 8PM every day.

The attorney challenged the government to disprove his assertion that "no government witness" would testify that DeBello "approved of the murder plot charged here, let alone the use of a firearm," that was seized from one of three Crips defendants who were stopped and arrested a few blocks away from Bonelli's home as they allegedly set out to kill him.

Froccaro also plucked words that a Nassau County prosecutor had used in a wiretap affidavit to argue that pictures of DeBello with other suspects on June 12, 2014 were proof of nothing since, as the assistant district attorney had written, "physical surveillance" merely identifies "individuals who met … without giving us substantive proof of any criminality."

Jordan EstesThe lawyer wrote that prosecution allegations that the Old Man had a "long history of violence" and thus was a danger to the community were "not accurate" but "inflammatory hyperbole" that was based "upon the conduct of others" in the case, but not the 74-year-old grandfather. DeBello, Froccaro wrote, had only a single 14-year-old prior criminal conviction — for an assault conspiracy "where no one was ever assaulted."

Judge Swain ordered a hearing, but days before the scheduled proceeding, prosecutors Samson Enzer and Jordan Estis notified the judge that the government was okay with the bail package — a $10 million bond secured by $3.5 million in property — submitted by Froccaro and asked the judge to approve it.

Samson EnzerA day after DeBello was released, the reason behind the government's unusual acquiescence with the defense request to undo an order of detention was evident in a so-called Brady Letter that cited "exculpatory material" about the murder plot that prosecutors sent to all defense lawyers.

In the letter, which was obtained by Gang Land, Enzer and Estis wrote that since the grand jury had voted to indict, a new witness, who confirmed many of the crimes in the indictment, had told the government that three of the eight defendants charged with murder conspiracy, including Old Man DeBello, were not involved in the plot. The others are mob associate Ryan (Baldy) Ellis, a 300 pound mob enforcer, and Bertram (Birdy) Duke, the brother of a cooperating witness.

Ellis, 35, and Duke, 48, are still detained without bail as dangers to the community.

Salvatore DelligattiEllis's attorney did not return a request for comment. Duke's lawyer, Aaron Goldsmith, told Gang Land that Judge Swain has referred his request for a fresh look at his client's detention to a Magistrate Judge, but the attorney said he has been unable to schedule a session.

Goldsmith said he and his client were both "excited" and "cautiously optimistic" about the information. "The problem, said Goldsmith, "is that the U.S. Attorney's office will sometimes discredit the witness who doesn't say what they want to hear and credit the story they like. My client has planned on going to trial anyway so unless and until the prosecutors do the right thing by us, we intend to use the information from this witness and present it to the jury at his trial."

Prosecutors identified Tyrone (Ty) McCullum, 38, and Sharif (QB) Brown, 32, as the two Crips defendants who "have expressed a desire to plead guilty" later this month under plea agreements that are being worked out. Sources say the plea deals call for 13 years behind bars.

Kelvin DukeMarcus Grant, 27, Genovese associate Salvatore (Fat Sal) Delligatti, 40, who allegedly hired the Crips though a longtime gangster pal named Kelvin Duke, and Romano, 38, are the remaining defendants indicted on various charges related to the murder plot against Joe Bonelli.

Kelvin Duke, 59, was tape-recorded talking to Delligatti while he was driving the hit team to Bonelli's house when they were arrested by Nassau County detectives on June 8, 2014. Along with mob associate Robert Sowulski, Duke is one of two known cooperating witnesses in the case.

It's unlikely that the new witness disclosed by the government is a cooperating witness in the case. Prosecutors Enzer and Estis stated they will disclose his identity two weeks before trial begins for any defendants who do not reach a plea deal with the feds. Any trial in the case is not expected to take place until next year.

Bulldog Defense Lawyer Plays Himself In Gotti Biopic

Charles CarnesiCriminal defense bulldog Charles Carnesi never took any acting lessons but the veteran attorney toiled through four racketeering trials with John (Junior) Gotti, so he seemed like a natural to Junior and his movie producers to play himself in the biopic about the erstwhile mob boss and his late father starring John Travolta.

Carnesi's task was to sum up the many trials that Junior endured, and sum up the lawyer did. First, he stressed how his client had given up the mob life to be with his family. He then went on to argue to the movie jury that prosecutors had dumped " "trash on the witness stand" in the person of a "murdering, drug dealing miscreant" whose only interest was to please "a government driven by obsession and ego" to convict his client.

Actor-attorney Carnesi never mentioned the name John Alite in his on-screen closing argument of about four or so minutes. (To ward off annoying and costly lawsuits, the names of living folks are rarely used in movies. That's why Jimmy Burke was named Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas.) But there's no doubt that the object of the lawyer's disaffection was Alite, the pint-sized gangster who was the key prosecution witness at Gotti's fourth — and last — racketeering mistrial in 2009.

"Sneaking up behind someone and shooting him in the head is not a display of courage," Carnesi told the movie jurors, who were probably played by residents of Cincinnati where the movie was shot, in response to a prosecution claim: "It is a display of deception, treachery, and a cold-blooded willingness to put his own interest first."

Charles Carnesi & Spencer Lofranco"Contrast that with the courage required of John, a man once in The Life who paid for his crime with many years in prison, and who had the courage to leave The Life" and the "courage to accept the consequences, even if it meant putting his life at risk," Carnesi said in the movie adaptation of the four and half hour closing argument he made in Manhattan Federal Court.

Carnesi told Gang Land that he thoroughly enjoyed himself while he was on set in August, when the movie, The Life and Death Of John Gotti, starring Travolta as the Dapper Don and Kelly Preston as Victoria Gotti, was made. Directed by Kevin Connolly, the movie is slated for release next year.

The longtime barrister certainly looks like he belongs in the courtroom shot at the defense table with Spencer Rocco Lofranco, a 23-year-old Toronto-born actor who plays Junior Gotti in the movie.

"I had a great time," he said. "The directors, the actors, the crew. They all made me feel very comfortable. They made it very easy for me. And watching John Travolta transform into John Gotti was amazing. The way he nailed his inflections and gestures was amazing to watch."

But Carnesi isn't planning to change careers at this stage. "It was a one-time thing," he said.

Alite: 'I Hope The Movie Shows He Was A Cooperator.'

John AliteJohn Alite, the former Gambino gangster who did his best to help the FBI send Junior Gotti away for life but wasn't able to get it done, had his own comments about his former partner-in-crime's biopic movie — and a few related topics.

For starters, he agrees that lawyer Carnesi is a good actor.

"Charlie Carnesi's an actor," said Alite. "He was a good actor in court; that's what he gets paid for. And now he's continuing to act. Only now, it's in a bullshit C movie."

Even so, Alite was more than a little disappointed that he didn't get the call to play himself in the movie, considering his many and varied roles with the Gotti clan.

"I hear I'm not even in the movie," he told Gang Land. "If they do a movie about the Gottis, I should be in it. I was there with him and his father in the 80s and 90s. The whole reign I was there."

John A. Gotti"In court," he continued, "Charlie Carnesi said I did all the killing. I shot 50 or 60 people. That's what the Gotti version was. I shot 50 or 60 people. But when it hits the big screen they'll say I'm a nobody."

"The story changes now, just like John's cooperation," said Alite, bringing up the proffer that Junior had with the FBI and Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office in 2005, a copy of which appeared in Gotti's Rules, a book about Alite's life by George Anastasia.

"I hope the movie shows that he was a cooperator," cracked Alite, noting that Gotti's chat with the FBI was in January of 2005, more than two years before his own first proffer with FBI agents and federal prosecutors in March of 2007.

"He only cooperated a little bit, against his enemies. So he was another Willie Boy Johnson, right," said Alite referring to the FBI's Source Wahoo, who was a top-echelon FBI informer against the elder Gotti for nearly two decades.

James CadicamoAlite insisted, as he has in the past, that he first received a copy of the FBI report that memorialized Junior's proffer with FBI agent Cindy Peil in 2006, while he was in a prison in Brazil, and said that he was told that it had come from Carnesi, something the lawyer has emphatically denied.

"That's the way it was presented to me," said Alite. "Did I get it from Charlie Carnesi? No. But that's the way it was presented to me," he said, adding that James Cadicamo, a Gambino family associate involved in criminal activity in Queens and Florida with him and others, had delivered the document to him.

"Jimmy Cadicamo brought it down to me," he said. "He visited Brazil and he brought it down to me."

Cadicamo, who was indicted in Tampa in a companion indictment to Junior Gotti's in 2008, copped a plea deal in his case and was sentenced to 105 months behind bars. Cadicamo, 44, was released from prison in March. Gang Land was unable to contact him, or his former attorney, yesterday

Another headline grabbing fed case that fell apart.

The old man put up 3.5 million for bail? Not bad for a soldier.

I was thinking the same thing. Even if its all properties thats alot of houses people are planking down. Never. Mind his lawyer read 24000 pages of discovery thats like 100k $$$.

It seems like the Feds were trying to scare some Genovese guys into cooperating. If so, it was not a good bluff. Even the guys that got caught are only getting 13 years.