Gangland News brief recap 03-23-2023

Genovese wiseguys get a sweet plea deal

Elio "Chinatown" Albanese and Carmine "Baby Carmine" Russo, pleaded guilty to a felony drug conspiracy count last week.

Two aged and ailing Genovese mobsters arrested for the possession and sale of opioid pills, a charge carrying prison terms up to 25 years, have each gotten plea deals of 75 hours of community service.

Chinatown and Baby Carmine obtained and filled 17 prescriptions for Oxycodone.

On January 9, 2020, Albanese obtained the first of what became multiple scripts for Oxycodone, according to their 18-count indictment. The next day Albanese passed the pills to cohort Louis Ventafredda on Mulberry Street. On September 20, Albanese and Ventafredda, a Russo cousin, did it again.

Soon after they were arrested in November, sources say the prosecutors turned over discovery to the defense stating that the longtime partners in crime had gotten $10 a pill, sometimes more, for Oxycodone pills they had sold to their much younger codefendants, Ventafredda, 40, and Ivan Iorizzo, 39, for their ultimate re-sale to opioid users in Staten Island.

Attorney Vincent Licata, who represented both men, claims that the pills were intended for personal use, not distribution. "They weren't fraudulent prescriptions," Licata insisted. "They're both septuagenarians with a lot of ailments and are in constant pain."


Skinny Teddy Persico

If Skinny Teddy wants to be released, he has to win an acquittal of all charges at his trial later this year.

Persico has been incarcerated for more than two years, a month longer than the maximum he faces for violating his supervised release. But there's no way that he's getting out of the Metropolitan Detention Center while charges are still pending against him, according to the ruling by his trial judge last week.

Persico, 59, is charged with extortion in the 20-year-long $2600 a month shakedown of a Queens-based construction workers union. He’s also charged with money laundering and other crimes in the indictment of 15 defendants, including the Colombo family's successor boss to Carmine Persico, Andrew "Mush" Russo, who died last year, about six months after he was indicted.


Mikey "Nose" Mancuso

Back on February 16, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis angrily ordered Robert Capers(the Chief U.S. Department of Probation official in Brooklyn) to appear before him within 10 days after the judge scolded the prosecutor and the probation officer about the proposed guilty plea to the VOSR that the government had agreed to accept from Mancuso, and he refused to go along with it.

This was the second time the judge had refused to accept a guilty plea. The sentencing guidelines can potentially send Mancuso back to prison for 5-11 months.

While it's not a crime to be a member of a crime family, or even a boss of a Mafia family, it would seem to be a crime for Mikey Nose to admit he "participated in the criminal affairs of the Bonanno crime family as 'boss,'" as the VOSR stated.