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Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205271
03/15/06 10:00 AM
03/15/06 10:00 AM
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This article was written on March 9th in USA Today.

The mafia is on shaky ground
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The Sopranos returns to HBO television Sunday night with a dark story line: The indictment of a Mafia associate in New York threatens the family business in New Jersey. But the problems of Tony Soprano's fictional crew are small compared with the woes facing what's left of the real Mob.
The storied Italian-American Mafia has been diminished by relentless prosecutions and by a weariness of Mob life that has led some younger members to consider what would have been unthinkable in previous generations: getting out.

The Mafia remains active in various criminal enterprises. However, wiretap transcripts and other court filings, as well as interviews with former mobster Michael Franzese and historians of organized crime, reveal how its influence is dwindling:

• Cosa Nostra, once a nationwide organization of Italian-American mobsters, is down to one outfit in Chicago and New York City's five organized crime families — the Bonannos, Colombos, Gambinos, Genoveses and Luccheses. They are "about all that's left," Mob historian Selwyn Raab says.

• During the past eight years, men alleged to have been the bosses or acting bosses of all five crime families in New York have been convicted and imprisoned.

John "Junior" Gotti, son of the late "Dapper Don" John Gotti, is being tried here on federal racketeering charges, including the kidnapping and shooting of radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa in 1992. Another accused acting boss — Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano of the Bonannos — is being tried on racketeering charges that include murder. At least 64 alleged Cosa Nostra members or associates are awaiting trial on federal charges.

•Omertà, the Mafia's code of secrecy, isn't what it used to be.

Since 2002, the lengthy prison sentences that federal racketeering convictions can carry have led at least a dozen "made" mobsters to agree to testify against colleagues in return for recommendations of leniency. Court records say that in January 2005, Bonanno boss Joseph "Big Joe" Massino wore a concealed recorder to collect evidence against his alleged successor, Basciano, while the men visited in jail.

Two Mafia leaders in their 40s who grew up in what mobsters call "the life" — Gotti and Salvatore "Tore" LoCascio, a Gambino family capo, or crew leader — have said in court pleadings that they have retired from organized crime and are pursuing legitimate careers. A wiretap transcript in court records suggests that Basciano also was considering a career switch when he was arrested in November 2004.

And Franzese — now a writer and public speaker — simply walked away from organized crime after leaving prison in 1995.

Although Mafiosi swear to an oath to remain gangsters until death, none appears to have suffered a reprisal.

Meanwhile, some of the Mob's most vaunted traditions seem shopworn.

When Franzese was inducted into the Colombos in 1975, he says, there was a solemn ceremony followed by a banquet. In the mid-1990s, when "Little Joe" D'Angelo was "straightened out" (Mob slang for inducted) by the Gambinos, he got a hamburger in a Queens diner, D'Angelo testified last week at the Gotti trial.


He said the Mob bosses who inducted him, including "Junior" Gotti, didn't bother to burn a picture of a saint in D'Angelo's hands, as ritual required. Instead, someone wrote "saint" on a piece of paper and drew a cross.

"The new (Mafia) guys are less professional and less focused" than their predecessors, says Robert Castelli, a detective for the New York State Organized Crime Task Force from 1984-95 who teaches at Iona and John Jay Colleges.

However, "they're like your grass. You keep cutting it, and it keeps growing back."

An enduring mystique

Cosa Nostra was founded in 1931 by legendary gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano to impose order on the nation's violent criminal rackets. The structure he set up for each family — boss, underboss, consigliere (counselor), capos and soldiers — helped the Italian-American Mob become a permanent feature of the underworld landscape.

"There were Irish gangs before (the Mafia), and certainly Russians and Jamaicans and what-have-you since," says Raab, author of Five Families, a history of the Mafia in New York City. "But they all fade when the individual in charge goes." Only Cosa Nostra, he says, has been able to "re-create itself"' from generation to generation.

The Mafia's traditions — besides secrecy, members' vow to defend their family's honor — along with books and films such as The Godfather series fostered an enduring mystique that has helped make The Sopranos a ratings hit.

"It's a lifestyle that has as much to do with ignorance and pathology as anything else," says Randy Mastro, a federal Mob prosecutor in the 1980s and later New York City's deputy mayor. But "they still have media allure."

Recent indictments suggest that Cosa Nostra continues to make much of its money through unglamorous crimes such as labor racketeering, bookmaking and lending cash at exorbitant rates.

At Junior Gotti's trial, D'Angelo, the Gambino soldier, testified that the family used a Laborers Union local it had corrupted to permit contractors to hire non-union help.

The contractors then kicked back part of their savings to the Gambinos. Contractors also provided no-show jobs for people such as himself who were "with the Gambinos," D'Angelo told the court.

There was big money in other forms of labor racketeering. Mastro says that Mob control of New York City's private trucking industry inflated the cost of hauling garbage to $1.5 billion annually by the mid-1990s. By eliminating this "Mob tax," through oversight and a series of prosecutions, Mastro says city officials have shaved $600 million a year off hauling costs.

James Jacobs, a New York University law professor and author of Mobsters, Unions and Feds, says Mafiosi were hired by union organizers in the early 20th century to combat company toughs. Now, he says, they specialize in "selling the rights of workers."

The baby boomer generation of mobsters added some wrinkles to the Mafia's methods. Two decades ago, when he was with the Colombos and in his 30s, Franzese moved in on a scheme hatched by a Romanian-born criminal that used shell corporations to defraud the U.S. government of taxes on retail gasoline sales. The scam netted $150 million over two years, a presidential commission on organized crime later found.

Per family rules, Franzese says, he kept some of the money and "whacked up" the rest to his Mob superiors. He pleaded guilty to racketeering and was jailed in 1985. Franzese was released on parole in 1990, then returned to prison in 1991 for a parole violation. He finished his sentence in 1995.

Now 54 and based in Los Angeles, he speaks regularly to athletes and business groups about Mob life and his conversion to Christianity, which he says occurred while he was imprisoned.

The Mob's Internet scams

In recent years, mobsters also have used technology in their moneymaking schemes. A Gambino family soldier, Richard "Richie from the Bronx" Martino, ran a telephone and Internet scam whose profits dwarfed Franzese's take, court records say.


New York Daily News
Martino

Martino, born in 1959, lured users with offers of free sex chats and pornography. Sophisticated software then tagged their phone and credit card numbers with unauthorized charges.

The scheme, which ran from 1996 to 2002, exploited changes in telecommunications law to boost profits by adding local fees, a federal indictment alleged.

The take: $230 million, according to Roslynn Mauskopf, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn.

The scheme was run through incorporated businesses that had offices and professional staffs. The corporate culture could be unorthodox, however. Court records say that in 1991, a salesman for a firm that Martino believed had cheated him was abducted from a Manhattan street, beaten and shot in the groin with a stun gun.

Per Mob rules, Martino shared his receipts with Salvatore LoCascio, his capo in the Gambino family, the indictment charged. LoCascio pleaded guilty to participating in the fraud but argued at his sentencing that the money he received — $10 million — was a royalty for helping to set up what he believed was a legitimate company.

LoCascio, a community college dropout also born in 1959, later agreed to sell some of his property — a home in Scarsdale, N.Y., and two homes and a shopping mall in Naples, Fla., valued at more than $10 million — to settle a $4.7 million forfeiture ordered by the court.

Then, through his attorney, LoCascio did something remarkable for a man who'd sworn to be loyal to the Mafia until death: He admitted he had been a member of organized crime in New York City, but argued that he had dropped out of the Mob after moving to Florida in 2000.


LoCascio said he became a stay-at-home dad who takes care of his wife, Diane, a multiple sclerosis patient, and coaches Little League baseball. "I have made a genuine effort to start a life ... (and) will continue to remain a law-abiding citizen and be productive in my community," LoCascio said.

U.S. District Court Judge Carol Amon sentenced LoCascio to 2½ years in prison, a relatively lenient punishment that Amon said was largely because of Diane LoCascio's illness. Martino, who also pleaded guilty, got nine years.

Nightclubs and easy money

Is it really possible to say arrivederci to Cosa Nostra and live to tell the tale?

Franzese, who is writing a book on the perils of sports gambling, believes the Mafia "let it go" in his case because he relocated to California and didn't testify against family members. Franzese says he expects more defections as Mob life becomes more difficult.

"The life has major attractions — friends everywhere, doors opening to a million rooms, all the Mob lore," he says. "You don't think about the consequences right away. (Eventually) you find out it's just the opposite of everything you thought."

Meanwhile, prosecutions and untimely deaths continue to thin the ranks.

Wiretap transcripts filed in the Basciano case indicate that the Bonannos have fewer than 100 soldiers, about half their historical strength. Jim Margolin, spokesman for the FBI in New York City, says the other four families are similarly afflicted.

However, as Castelli suggests, would-be "wise guys" apparently keep coming. In 2002, the Bonannos were considering whether to induct about 10 prospective family members, according to information gathered by a defector, James "Big Louie" Tartaglione, federal court records say.

Joseph Coffey, who tracked the Mafia for more than 30 years as a detective for New York City police and the state anti-Mob task force, predicts Cosa Nostra will continue to attract recruits no matter how many leaders are imprisoned.

"It's the high life, the nightclubs, the bimbos, the easy money," Coffey says. "It's always been that."

Don't tell that to D'Angelo, the Mob turncoat. In court papers, he estimated that during his 20 years in organized crime, he made about $600,000 — or only about $30,000 a year.

Last July, when he agreed to plead guilty to racketeering, D'Angelo said he had $259 in cash, a mortgaged house titled in his girlfriend's name and thousands of dollars in uncollectible street loans.

Through the years, D'Angelo said, he ignored advice from more senior mobsters such as Junior Gotti, who warned him before his induction that "it's not an easy life."

Now, having confessed in court to two slayings, stock fraud, illegal gambling, labor racketeering, construction fraud and extortion, D'Angelo is in federal custody awaiting sentencing. He agreed to testify against Gotti in hope of receiving a lenient sentence, he said. Asked by a prosecutor what sentence he could get, D'Angelo answered correctly: "Up to life."

And what sentence is he hoping for? "Like everybody in prison," D'Angelo told the prosecutor, "I'm hoping to go home yesterday."


____________________________________________________________


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205272
03/17/06 08:35 AM
03/17/06 08:35 AM
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Don Cardi Offline OP
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Here's the latest update on the trial of the two Mafia Cops.


Witness: "Mafia Cops" laughed about murder

By Anthony M. DeStefano
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER
Posted March 16 2006


Just before he was murdered, James Hydell begged his killers to dump his body on the street so his mother could get money on his life insurance policy, the key witness in the "Mafia Cops" trial said Wednesday.

In the second day of his dramatic testimony in Brooklyn federal court, witness Burton Kaplan, tied the defendants, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, to 12 gangland hits and murder plots.
Kaplan, a longtime associate of the Luchese crime family, choked up twice as he told of Hydell's final plea. Hydell was kidnapped after Eppolito and Caracappa tracked him down, Kaplan testified, after a request by former acting Luchese boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.

" 'I know you are going to kill me, Anthony,'" Hydell said, according to Kaplan. " 'I want you to promise me one thing, that you throw my body in the street so my mother can get the insurance policy.' "

Casso promised to grant Hydell that request, but hid the body, Kaplan said. Hydell was killed because his name was on a list provided by Eppolito of people suspected of taking part in an aborted attempt to murder Casso, Kaplan testified.

Hydell is one of the eight gangland homicide victims allegedly tied to Eppolito and Caracappa in the racketeering case. Prosecutors contend the two men worked as hitmen for the Luchese family and provided sensitive law enforcement information to the mob in exchange for thousands of dollars. The court is allowing evidence of uncharged homicides allegedly involving them to be presented to the jury.

During a full day of testimony under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Henoch, Kaplan, who is currently serving 27 years for a drug charge, said he regularly requested information from Eppolito and Caracappa, to pass on to Casso.

But in one twist, Kaplan seemed to help the defense on one of the murder allegations. Prosecutors have charged that an innocent man named Nicholas Guido was killed in a case of mistaken identity based on information provided by the defendants.

However, Kaplan testified that while Casso learned through Eppolito that a man named "Nicholas Guido" was involved in the attempt on Casso's life, Casso got the wrong victim's identity through a contact at a utility company. Casso was angered when Eppolito asked for a $4,000 payment for that information, Kaplan said.

During a break outside the courtroom, Eppolito angrily told Newsday such testimony showed he wasn't involved in Guido's death and railed against the use by newspapers of crime scene photos of the dead man in his car on a Brooklyn street.

Kaplan said he initially used Eppolito's cousin, Frank Santoro Jr., as an intermediary between Eppolito and Caracappa. But after Santoro died in 1987, he dealt with the two detectives directly.

He also said he and the two detectives laughed as they talked about the contract murder of a Manhattan jewelry merchant who was killed because Kaplan feared he might turn informant.

The victim, Israel Greenwald, had been part of a plan to fence a stolen U.S. Treasury bill, said Kaplan. Greenwald was kidnapped by Santoro, Eppolito and Caracappa and shot dead by Santoro, said Kaplan, for $30,000. Kaplan explained that while he paid Santoro $30,000 for the hit, Eppolito and Caracappa only got $25,000.

"We all laughed at that," said Kaplan, explaining that he and the cops figured during a meeting at a Staten Island cemetery that Santoro secretly pocketed the extra $5,000.

Trial testimony continues Thursday before Judge Jack Weinstein.

------------------------------------------------------------


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205273
03/23/06 07:05 AM
03/23/06 07:05 AM
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Att'y burns 'Mafia cops'

Backs middleman claim

BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A topnotch defense attorney turned prosecution witness yesterday at the Mafia cops trial, backing up ex-client Burton Kaplan's claim he was the middleman between the mob and two allegedly crooked detectives.
In an unusual move, lawyer Judd Burstein went to prosecutors last year and suggested they ask Kaplan to waive his attorney-client privilege now that he was the government's chief witness in the Mafia cops case.

He agreed, paving the way for Burstein to corroborate Kaplan's testimony linking ex-cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa to numerous gangland killings when they were on the force.

The lawyer said he began representing Kaplan in 1985.

"It never even crossed my mind that he had a propensity toward violence," said Burstein, a noted defender who has handled mob, white-collar and big-money divorce cases.

Then after published reports in 1994 that Luchese crime family capo Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso was spilling his guts about two dirty cops on his payroll, Kaplan revealed a dark secret to his lawyer.

"He said, 'This is a big problem for me,'" Burstein said. "'I was the go-between for Casso and these two cops.'"

Kaplan adamantly refused to cooperate - even after he drew a 27-year sentence for drug trafficking - until 2004, when he thought Eppolito or Caracappa was going to rat him out.

Eppolito lawyer Bruce Cutler suggested Burstein came forward because he had read media reports last summer that the judge might toss the case on a legal technicality.

Another government witness, Steven Corso, testified yesterday how Eppolito was so desperate to raise cash for his screenplay business he was willing to launder drug money and involve his son Anthony in a drug deal.

Corso, a crooked accountant working undercover, wanted to buy designer drugs for some investors he claimed were coming to Las Vegas, where Eppolito and Caracappa had moved after retiring from the NYPD.

"Tony can handle that for you," Eppolito told Corso, who even recorded Eppolito in a hospital where the ex-cop was recovering from heart surgery.

Where the money was coming from was of no issue to Eppolito, according to recordings played yesterday.

"Do you care what [the investor] does for a living?" Corso asks Eppolito on one tape.

"If this is the biggest drug dealer in the United States, I don't give a f--k," Eppolito responds, adding, "If you said to me, 'Lou, I wanna introduce you to Jack Smith, he wants to invest in this film,' [and] he says '$75,000 comes in a f-----g shoebox,' that's fine with me, I don't care."

-----------------------------------------------------------


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205274
03/26/06 08:46 PM
03/26/06 08:46 PM
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Europe -- The Times March 27, 2006

Mafioso shoots sister over 'dishonour'
Report by Richard Owen

An old Sicilian tradition is revived as a young woman who had a child out of wedlock is shot.

ITALY was shocked at the weekend by a revival of the Mafia tradition of “honour killing” after a member of a Calabrian Mafia clan shot his sister for having a child by her lover.

Giovanni Morabito, 24, nicknamed “Ringo”, gave himself up to police in Reggio Calabria after confessing that he had shot his sister, Bruna, 32, four times in the face at Messina in Sicily and left her for dead.

He told police with what officers described as “terrifying calm” that he had tried to kill her because she had had a son, Francesco, two weeks ago by “a man who was not her husband”.

Witnesses said that Bruna fell to the ground, her pink woollen hat lying near by in a spreading pool of blood.

Doctors in Messina later said that she was gravely ill after two bullets were extracted from her head.

Police said that Giovanni had shown no remorse, admitting: “I shot her, I shot my sister . . . She had a child by a man she was not married to.

“It is a question of honour. I would have shot her in the back, but she turned round. I am not sorry. On the contrary, I am proud of what I did.”

He said that he had waited until she had had her baby because under the Mafia code “you don’t kill pregnant women”.

Police said that Bruna and Giovanni came from a powerful clan in the Calabrian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta. Their uncle is Peppe (Giuseppe) Morabito, 72, known as “Don Peppe u Tiradrittu” (“Don Peppe the Straightshooter”), the acknowledged head of the Morabito clan in the village of Africo in Calabria.

Don Peppe was arrested two years ago near Reggio Calabria after 15 years on the run. Investigators are still unravelling his clan’s lucrative trade in cocaine and its links with Colombian drugs gangs.

Investigators suggested that Bruna had been targeted not only because of the child but also because she had tried to distance herself from her Mafia family. After taking a law degree she had found a job as a government lawyer in Messina. She had separated from her husband and begun a relationship with a civilian employee at the Messina police station, whom she had hoped to marry after obtaining an annulment.

Police said they believed that Giovanni, who had a police record for petty crime, had acted on instructions from more senior members of the clan offended by her “betrayal”.

Giovanni, however, insisted that he had acted alone because of the “dishonour”. He was stunned when told his sister was still alive, declaring: “But she was supposed to die.”

Corriere della Sera, the newspaper, said that the murder attempt was “reminiscent of the kind of things that happened a hundred years ago in the darker corners of Sicily”.

Mario Centorrino, deputy rector of Messina University and an expert on the Mafia, said: “Anyone who thought the ’Ndrangheta were too busy with the lucrative drugs trade to revive their archaic codes of behaviour will have to think again.”

Times Article Link

Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205275
03/27/06 09:23 AM
03/27/06 09:23 AM
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From Sunday\'s Bright One, the Chicago Sun-Times, is this interesting article about Joey "Doves" Aiuppa and his alleged record-setting catch of a muskie up in Wisconsin (ya hey dere...). There is a sidebar running inside the main article and that is also posted after the first article.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/outdoors/cst-spt-bowman26.html

The case of the world-record muskie
March 26, 2006
BY DALE BOWMAN STAFF REPORTER


They were on the lam.

At least the late Joseph "Joey Doves'' Aiuppa, who became the reputed Chicago crime lord, was on the lam in Wisconsin's North Woods.

"He was always on the lam,'' said James "Pepsi'' Buonomo, who, as usual, was running with Aiuppa.

Their run in the fall of 1949 become part of the murky fishing lore swirling around Louis Spray's much-disputed all-tackle muskie record of 69 pounds, 11 ounces.

"Every time they were looking for [Aiuppa], I had to leave right then and there,'' said Buonomo, who kept a bag of clothes always packed. "When I used to go with the old man, Uncle Joe, I did all the driving. I have been in places I cannot believe where the hell we've been.''

Their runs often became hunting and fishing trips in northern Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Canada or Mexico.

Buonomo might be 91, but the wiry man retains his appetites --eggs, bacon, fried potatoes and buttered toast were his breakfast at Riviera Restaurant in Northlake last week -- and his memory.

From Al Capone to Betty Loren Maltese, fishing and hunting in northern Wisconsin has a storied history with those connected to the Chicago mob.

"A lot of guys liked to hang out, I say all the hoodlums,'' Buonomo said with a laugh.

In the fall of 1949, Buonomo went grouse hunting while Aiuppa went muskie fishing.

Here I pick up part of the story as told to Spence Petros. The Hall of Fame angler ran into Aiuppa and Buonomo while crappie fishing in the northwest suburbs years later.

"[Aiuppa] said, 'I used to love to muskie fish. It was great. You could shoot them,''' Petros recalled. "After talking a little while, he said, 'I caught the world-record muskie.'''

Aiuppa meant Spray's muskie.

Petros made a sarcastic crack back, but Aiuppa responded, "I caught the record muskie below the Winter Dam.''

"I said, 'It's illegal to fish there,'" Petros said.

To which Aiuppa said, "I know. That's why it's so good.'"

There was another good reason for Aiuppa not claiming the record: He was on the lam.

Petros remembered Aiuppa saying he sold the muskie to Spray for $50, but Buonomo said Aiuppa ended up not taking the money.

"That was how the fish story started,'' Buonomo said. "Joe told [Petros], 'I caught the biggest muskie.' And it's true. He don't lie. I tell you the truth. He didn't have to lie about nobody. He told the truth. That's the truth. He did catch that fish. That's it.''

Petros told the story to the late John Husar, who wrote a column in the June 19, 1991, Tribune. At that point, Spray's muskie was not the record. Art Lawton's 69-15 muskie was. Lawton's fish from the St. Lawrence River was disallowed in 1992.

Search for Pepsi

On Oct. 20, 2005, the World Record Muskie Alliance filed a protest against Spray's record. On Jan. 16, the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, in Hayward, Wis., vehemently denied the WRMA protest.

In an off-hand discussion about the decision in January, Petros reiterated the Aiuppa story. He had bumped into Pepsi at an outdoor show several years ago.

He suggested I put a notice in my column that I was trying to find Pepsi. A host of readers, including a nephew of Aiuppa, set up contact.

Neither Aiuppa, who died in 1997, nor Buonomo had been talked to by Husar, the Hall or the WRMA.

"I wish he was here, sit there and talk to him,'' Buonomo said. "Just like me and you want to talk.''

500 doves

Aiuppa earned his nickname when busted with some 500 doves in his vehicle. Buonomo admitted both men passionately loved shooting doves and quail.

"He would shoot, but he protected, too,'' said Buonomo, who told of Aiuppa feeding quail in winter. "He was not a meat hog or anything like that. I wish he was alive. I would have him sitting right here with you. You never find a man like him.''

Buonomo was dedicated to Aiuppa.

"One day we're up in Canada, and they're trying to get his mother to go to the court in his place,'' Buonomo said. "He called in. 'Peps, I'm going home.' He said, 'They ain't gonna take Mama in.' I drove 27 hours from Canada.

"He was the greatest. No copper in the city of Chicago can talk bad about him, either. Nobody. He was a straight shooter.''

Aiuppa was sent up on conspiracy charges. He was suspected of ordering several spectacular mob hits, since fictionalized in the movie "Casino.''

"He went to jail for nothing,'' Buonomo said. "They didn't have nothing on him at all.''

A restless angler

As a fisherman, few had anything on Aiuppa, either.

"I'd row the boat, and he would cast,'' Buonomo said. "If you went with him, five or six days you had to cast. We caught a lot of fish.''

They would go to the Hayward area or Wollaston Lake in Canada. Aiuppa was a restless fisherman, a lure changer.

"He would have four poles in the boat,'' Buonomo said. "If he had one on, he gave it to the guide. Then cast [another] one out.''

Buonomo could not remember with what lure Aiuppa caught the big muskie.

When asked about Spray, Buonomo shrugged, "Louie Spray was, I don't know. He had the place, the tavern, and I've been there a couple times.''

Spray's muskie disappeared in a fire in 1959. Asked if there was a picture of Aiuppa with the muskie, Buonomo said no.

"I wish I could tell you more about that fish," he added.

So do I.


http://www.suntimes.com/output/outdoors/cst-spt-bowside26.html

When it comes to muskie saga, I'm buying Pepsi
March 26, 2006
BY DALE BOWMAN


Every big fish story has holes. They're like jury trials: Whom do you believe?

Did Louis Spray catch the all-tackle record muskie?

Spence Petros believes the late Joseph "Joey Doves'' Aiuppa's tale of catching the world-record muskie, then selling it to Spray. It was Petros who introduced the story of Aiuppa and the trophy muskie on "The Outdoor Writers'' on ESPN in 1991.

Petros is a former bail bondsman and nephew of an old-style Chicago precinct captain. He has a b.s. detector a city-block long.

Aiuppa passed his believability test. "He had the strongest aura of anybody I've ever met,'' Petros said.

He's cynical enough that after he first heard the story, he went home and double-checked the dates Aiuppa gave for catching his muskie. They matched the Oct. 20, 1949, time frame when Spray claimed to catch his 69-pound, 11-ounce muskie from the Chippewa Flowage in northern Wisconsin.

Whom do I believe? Of the three major players in this saga -- Aiuppa's longtime outdoor companion, James "Pepsi'' Buonomo; the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame, and the World Record Muskie Alliance -- I find Buonomo the most believable.

That's not proof; that's a gut response.

On Oct. 20, 2005, the WRMA filed a 93-page protest against Spray's record (worldrecord muskiealliance.com). I think some WRMA members have axes to grind, but they made their case, and parts of it I'd even call iron-clad.

By comparison, the Hall has zero credibility with me when it comes to defending Spray's record. On Jan. 16, officials at the Hall gave such a fatally flawed response (freshwater-fishing.org) to the WRMA protest as to be a joke.

The story lives.


tony b.


"Kid, these are my f**kin' work clothes."
"You look good in them golf shoes. You should buy 'em"
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205276
03/27/06 11:03 PM
03/27/06 11:03 PM
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 263
NY
Chancre Offline
Capo
Chancre  Offline
Capo
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 263
NY
Mafia drugs submarine siezed

Calabrian mob ordered vessel to shift Colombian cocaine

(ANSA) - Rome, March 27 - Mafia drug traffickers were building a submarine to bring cocaine from Colombia to Italy, Italy's anti-Mafia chief said Monday.

Speaking after on his return from the South American country, national anti-Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso said the Calabrian mafia, known as the 'Nrangheta, was dealing in such huge amounts of drugs that it could afford to have such an expensive mode of transport built.

He said they had chosen a submarine in order to beat coastal radar systems which detect incoming ships. "The 'Ndrangheta brings in 400 kilos of cocaine a year," Grasso said in an interview on Italian TV.

"The submarine, which was under construction in Colombia, has been impounded".

"They were going to use the sub to elude radar controls".

Grasso said cocaine costs just 3 dollars a gramme in Colombia and had a street value of 50-100 euros per gramme in Italy, depending on the quality.

He said Italian and Colombian police were trying to stop the trade in every way, including destroying crops, but efforts needed to be made to stem demand.

"We have to ask ourselves why demand keeps on rising".

Action was needed, he said, to stop people turning to cocaine to make themselves more efficient and productive.

Most experts agree the 'Ndrangheta, which specialises in drug smuggling from South America, is now more powerful and more dangerous than Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia.

The Calabrian mob is believed to generate an annual turnover of some 35 billion euros, more than Calabria's entire legal economy.

The Italian government launched an unprecedented campaign against the 'Ndrangheta in the wake of the October 16 murder of top local politician Francesco Fortugno.

It bolstered police and prosecution forces in Calabria and appointed a top police officer to lead the murder hunt and try to wrest swathes of the region from the mafia's grip.

The operation led to a series of successes and finally, last week, the arrest of Fortugno's killers.

Police are now using turncoat testimony to try to find out who ordered the murder.

Meanwhile the drive to re-establish full state rule continues.

Since 1995, 30 town councils have been dissolved because they were deemed to be controlled by the 'Ndrangheta. Last year, dozens of local administrators received threats.

Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205277
04/03/06 10:54 AM
04/03/06 10:54 AM
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 3,146
under there
bogey Offline
Underboss
bogey  Offline
Underboss
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under there
8 from Gambino crime family plead guilty
Targets of FBI undercover operation admit to racketeering


NEW YORK - Eight members and associates of the Gambino organized crime family, including an acting underboss, have pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, authorities said Friday.

The eight were among 11 people charged with racketeering in a prosecution aimed at taking down current and future leaders of a crime family more than a century old.

In all, more than 30 people were arrested on various charges.

The arrests stemmed from a probe in which an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the mob during a three-year period with an act so convincing he was considered for membership, authorities said.

The eight defendants, including acting underboss Anthony Megale, entered their pleas in recent days in federal court in Manhattan. They had faced trial in May; three others still face trial.

The pleas were "significant additional steps in the steady march toward reducing the influence of organized crime," said Mark Mershon, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office.

In his plea, Megale admitted extorting money from a Greenwich, Conn., restaurant; a New Jersey trucking company; and from the owners of a Westchester County construction company.

"I have never threatened anybody for anything," Megale said. "But, it could be by me talking to them, I could be implying a threat to them without them realizing it."

The eight agreed to forfeit a total of about $550,000 for their roles in a decade-long racketeering scheme including assaults, extortion, loansharking, union embezzlement, illegal gambling, trafficking in stolen property and fraud.


President of the long_lost_corleone Fan Club
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205278
04/04/06 06:04 PM
04/04/06 06:04 PM
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 5,453
California
X
XDCX Offline
XDCX  Offline
X

Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 5,453
California
Ex-FBI agent charged in four mob slayings

From CNN.com

NEW YORK (AP) -- It was at one of their weekly meetings in 1992 that FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio allegedly made it easy for his favorite mob informant to kill a gangland rival.

Prosecutors say DeVecchio told the informant, Colombo crime family captain Gregory Scarpa Sr., where the rival lived in Brooklyn.

He said the man always paused to unlock his front gate of his driveway when leaving for work every day at 4 a.m. -- confidential information honed from FBI surveillance.

The man was later gunned down, on his driveway, at 4 a.m.

Nearly 14 years after the slaying, DeVecchio was charged on Thursday with that killing and three others involving Scarpa in what prosecutor Michael Vecchione called "one of the worst cases of law enforcement corruption in the history of this country."

The 65-year-old former agent pleaded not guilty at his arraignment and was released on $1 million bond after agreeing to electronic monitoring. He did not speak at the hearing, where one of the two alleged mob hit men behind the slayings was denied bail. The second suspect was in Florida, awaiting extradition.

Prosecutors argued against bail, saying that the defendant's many supporters in law enforcement could help him flee the country. The comment drew angry murmurs from dozens of former FBI agents packed into the courtroom.

Defense attorney Douglas Grover told a judge his client had been an honest investigator who played a key role in the war on organized crime. He said that the agent already was cleared in previous investigations, and he accused prosecutors of relying on evidence from convicted mobsters eager to lie in exchange for leniency.

DeVecchio "was and always will be a man of the law," he said.

At an earlier news conference, District Attorney Charles Hynes said the case stemmed from the unusually close relationship between DeVecchio -- then head of the FBI's Colombo crime family squad -- and Scarpa, a shadowy government informant and Colombo captain nicknamed "The Grim Reaper."

The pair met each week during the 1980s and 1990s and discussed a bloody civil war within the Colombo family. DeVecchio "counseled Scarpa to protect himself by eliminating imminent threats," Hynes said.

DeVecchio warned Scarpa in 1984 that the girlfriend of the Colombo consigliere was cooperating with authorities, Hynes said. As a result, he said, she was shot and killed in a Brooklyn social club -- a pattern prosecutors said was repeated in the three other killings.

In return, Scarpa gave DeVecchio weekly cash payments and enhanced the agent's reputation within the FBI by helping him solve important cases, the district attorney said.

The corruption allegations weren't the first against DeVecchio.

At a 1996 hearing, DeVecchio's supervisor testified that four years earlier he had ordered the agent to cease having contact with Scarpa after other agents alleged the informant was still committing crimes. He said he later learned DeVecchio was still keeping in touch with him through Scarpa's longtime girlfriend, Linda Schiro.

The Department of Justice declined to prosecute DeVecchio after an internal probe, and the agent quietly retired in 1996 and moved to Sarasota, Florida. Scarpa died in prison in 1994.


"Growing up my dad was like 'You have a great last name, Galifianakis. Galifianakis...begins with a gal...and ends with a kiss...' I'm like that's great dad, can we get it changed to 'Galifianafuck' please?" -- Zach Galifianakis



Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205279
04/06/06 12:37 PM
04/06/06 12:37 PM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
Caporegime
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The Ravenite Social Club
Staten Island Home Is Searched for Evidence of Mob Murder

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: April 6, 2006

Acting on information provided by a cooperating witness, F.B.I. agents yesterday searched for evidence of a mob murder inside a Victorian mansion on a Staten Island hilltop, according to several law enforcement officials.

Late in the afternoon the agents halted their work at the house, the landmark Kreischer mansion at 4500 Arthur Kill Road in the Charleston section, said several officials, who were granted anonymity because the investigation is continuing. One agent was seen carrying three large plastic garbage bags from the house.

The F.B.I. lab will conduct forensic tests on evidence removed from the building, one of the officials said.

The search was by members of the F.B.I. squad that investigates the Bonanno crime family, several officials said, but they would not disclose the identity of the suspected victim.

Futher details about the case were not available. A woman who came out to the mansion's wrought-iron gate and would not comment or give her name referred questions to the F.B.I. A spokesman for the agency, James Margolin, confirmed the search but would not say whether agents had concluded that a murder had been committed in the mansion.

The Bonanno crime family, which for roughly two decades resisted the government's efforts to get its members to become witnesses, has been riven by defections in recent years.

Among the turncoats were the family's boss, Joseph C. Massino, who began cooperating with federal authorities in 2004, and his brother-in-law and underboss, Salvatore Vitale, who did so in 2003.

In fact, the Kreischer mansion, which was built by Balthasar Kreischer in 1885 for his son Charles, high on a hill overlooking the older man's brickworks, for many years housed a restaurant that was used for meetings by another man identified by the authorities as a Bonanno mobster.

That man, John Zancocchio, 48, who federal authorities have identified as a Bonanno soldier, met with other Bonanno figures and a Gambino family captain at the restaurant in early 1998, according to testimony of F.B.I. agents and a federal probation officer in an unrelated federal case.

Mr. Zancocchio, the son-in-law of the former underboss of the family, is serving a federal prison term after pleading guilty to charges in a 2002 indictment in Miami that also led to the conviction of his father-in-law.

At the time, according to the testimony, the establishment was owned by Joseph and Andrea McBratney. Mr. McBratney, whom the authorities called a Bonanno associate, is the son of James McBratney.

The elder McBratney was slain on Staten Island in the late 70's by John Gotti. The killing earned Mr. Gotti membership in the crime family that he went on to run until his conviction in 1992 on murder and racketeering charges and his death in prison 10 years later.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting for this article.

-----------------------------------------------------------


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205280
04/06/06 03:20 PM
04/06/06 03:20 PM
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,246
MistaMista Tom Hagen Offline
Underboss
MistaMista Tom Hagen  Offline
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'Mafia cops' convicted of murder
NYPD detectives moonlighted as mob hit men, jury finds

Thursday, April 6, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two decorated former New York City police detectives were convicted Thursday of murder while on the payroll of a Mafia underboss in one of the most astounding police corruption cases in city history.

The federal jury deliberated for two days in the case against Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, who spent a combined 44 years on the force and once worked as partners.

They face up to life in prison.

Eppolito, 57, and Caracappa, 64, were accused of leading a double life for years: respected city detectives who moonlighted as hired killers for Luchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Wenner described the case against the so-called "Mafia cops" as "the bloodiest, most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen."

The defendants showed no visible reaction, while Eppolito's family wept as the verdict was read.

The men were accused in eight murders, with prosecutors charging that the two used their positions as crime fighters to aid the crime family -- at a price of $4,000 a month.

Their salary increased when the detectives personally handled the killing, authorities said; they earned $65,000 for the slaying of a mobster during a phony traffic stop.

Casso also referred to the pair as his "crystal ball," providing inside information on law enforcement interest in the mob world, authorities said. Caracappa, who retired in 1992, helped establish the city police department's office for Mafia murder probes.

Eppolito, the son of a Gambino crime family member, was a much-praised street cop -- although there were suggestions that some of his arrests followed tips provided by mobsters. The contrast between his police work and his "family" life was detailed in his autobiography, "Mafia Cop."

Eppolito also played a bit part in the classic mob movie "GoodFellas." After retiring in 1990, he unsuccessfully tried his hand at Hollywood script writing.

Since their March 2005 arrests, the men have said they are innocent. But neither one took the stand to refute charges in the trial that began March 13.

The key prosecution witness was Burton Kaplan, an acknowledged drug dealer who spent four days on the stand linking the pair to an assortment of murders between 1986 and 1990. Kaplan testified that he served as middleman between Casso and the detectives.

Casso, known as one of the most brutal mobsters in the city, was reportedly involved in 36 murders himself.

Both sides considered calling him as a witness, but ultimately decided Casso came with too much baggage -- even after he wrote a letter from prison insisting the detectives were innocent of several crimes.

The details of the alleged killing spree were chilling. The detectives allegedly "arrested" a mobster named Jimmy Hydell in 1986, but instead delivered him to Casso for torture and execution.

That same year, the pair allegedly furnished the underboss with information to locate Nicholas Guido, a mobster involved in a planned hit on Casso. Their inaccurate tip led to the slaying of an innocent man who was having Christmas dinner at his mother's house.

The detectives also were charged with killing Gambino family member Eddie Lino during what began as a routine traffic stop, and finished with Caracappa allegedly shooting the mobster.


I dream in widescreen.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205281
04/14/06 03:25 PM
04/14/06 03:25 PM
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 74
Corleone, Sicily
Dominic Corleone Offline
Button
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Button
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Posts: 74
Corleone, Sicily
Anti-mafia raids net 46 suspects
Italian police in anti-mafia raid
Police have been cracking down on mafia across Italy
Police in Sicily have arrested 46 people suspected of helping a fugitive mafia boss.

Anti-mafia investigators in Palermo said those detained had helped Bernardo Provenzano stay in contact with the mafia during his 41 years on the run.

Some are also accused of murder, extortion and having arms and drugs.

About 1,000 police took part in the raids, which are the latest attempt to squeeze the Italian mafia, and follow dozens of arrests in Naples.

Mr Provenzano, nicknamed The Tractor, is said to have succeeded Toto Riina as the head of the Sicilian Mafia after his arrest in 1993.

Those held include Francesco Pistoia, who allegedly passed commands from Mr Provenzano to his lieutenants.

[QUOTE] Taps reveal plot[QUOTE]

A statement from investigators said the arrests were ordered because some of the most dangerous suspects were planning to flee, and because they continued to plan criminal activities.

Some Italian news reports say police phone taps had unearthed a plot to kill an Italian judge.

The arrests follow a crackdown on mafia activity in Naples, where violence between rival gangs has left about 100 people dead in the past year.

Last week a 45-year-old man was found decapitated and burned in his car in apparently the latest mafia-linked attack in Naples.

****On Friday, Cosimo Di Lauro, son of alleged mafia godfather Paolo Di Lauro, was arrested in the city.

Further south in the Calabria region, in the "toe" of Italy, where there has been a spectacular rise in mafia activity, there have been dozens more arrests.


All right, you are what you are. It’s your nature. You stay close to me. You don’t do anything. You keep your mouth shut, and your eyes open. And you do what I tell you. Understand?
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205282
04/21/06 09:38 AM
04/21/06 09:38 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
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Gambino? What's a Gambino?
Thomas Zambito
Originally published on April 21, 2006



Arnold (Zeke) Squitieri didn't get past seventh grade, but the acting boss of the Gambino crime family knows enough not to admit the existence of the Mafia.
Squitieri waved off Federal Magistrate Michael Dolinger yesterday when the judge asked whether he was pleading guilty to being part of a criminal enterprise known as the Gambino crime family.

Attorney Gerald Shargel jumped to his feet saying, "Mr. Squitieri makes no concession to the name of the enterprise."

Dolinger read the charges again, this time editing out the Gambino name. But the 70-year-old mobster wanted to be sure he had it right. "With the Gambino name out of it?" he asked.

Squitieri then pleaded guilty to racketeering charges that include shaking down construction companies in New Jersey, Westchester and Long Island.

Afterward, he turned to his wife, Marie, sitting in the front row of the courtroom with the couple's two daughters and son, and said, "I did it for you. I pleaded guilty because of you."

A third daughter, Ginger, a practicing attorney, sat at her father's side and assisted Shargel in the case.

Her dad is among a dwindling number of mafiosi reluctant to break the old mob code that denies the existence of the secret society.

Under a plea deal, Squitieri faces up to nine years in prison when sentenced July 28.

Squitieri took over the top post in the Gambino hierarchy after Peter Gotti's 2002 racketeering arrest. He had been named underboss by Dapper Don John Gotti himself.

------------------------------------------------------------


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205283
04/21/06 01:47 PM
04/21/06 01:47 PM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Turnbull Offline
Turnbull  Offline

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
I heard the Gambinos have contacted Office Temps Inc. about hiring a new Don. :rolleyes:


Ntra la porta tua lu sangu � sparsu,
E nun me mporta si ce muoru accisu...
E s'iddu muoru e vaju mparadisu
Si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205284
04/21/06 01:51 PM
04/21/06 01:51 PM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
Caporegime
Don Cardi  Offline OP
Caporegime

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The Ravenite Social Club
Quote:
Originally posted by Turnbull:
I heard the Gambinos have contacted Office Temps Inc. about hiring a new Don. :rolleyes:


Maybe they should offer it to Curtis Sliwa!


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205285
04/21/06 06:44 PM
04/21/06 06:44 PM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Turnbull Offline
Turnbull  Offline

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Great idea, DC! I can hear it now: "The Gambino Hour on WABC Radio--live and in person with Don Curtis Sliwa!" He gets on the air and says, "Today I'm wearing my Brioni beret. I'm announcing that the Guardian Angels are now being called the Guardian Angelos. From now on, they're gonna be selling protection to subway riders, not giving it away. And instead of shaking down sports bars, we're gonna shake down Yankee Stadium. I tell you, the Gambinos will rise again!"


Ntra la porta tua lu sangu � sparsu,
E nun me mporta si ce muoru accisu...
E s'iddu muoru e vaju mparadisu
Si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205286
04/25/06 04:55 AM
04/25/06 04:55 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 4,190
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Don Jasani Offline
Underboss
Don Jasani  Offline
Underboss
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 4,190
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Just a point of fact here, there are at least 30 countries with Mafia or Mafia type organizations of various different ethnic/religio-cultural backgrounds. I believe.



Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205287
04/26/06 09:42 AM
04/26/06 09:42 AM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Turnbull Offline
Turnbull  Offline

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Sure! Anywhere in the world where suckers are lining up to be fleeced, where people's greed and lust overcome reason and law, you're going to have organized criminals ready, willing and able to accommodate them. I will bet that almost every country in the world--large and small, advanced and "underdeveloped"--has some form of organized crime.
As has been noted here before: "Mafia" has become a generic name for organized crime gangs and even would-be gangsters, whether or not they're Italian or in any way connected to the real Mafia. The morons who shot up Columbine High School called themselves the "Trench Coat Mafia."
In fact, "Mafia" is so generic that it has been applied to almost any group that's supposedly organized and powerful. John F. Kennedy used to refer to his group of lifelong close advisers (Dave Powers, Kenny O'Donnell, Larry O'Brien, his brother Bobby) as his "Irish Mafia."


Ntra la porta tua lu sangu � sparsu,
E nun me mporta si ce muoru accisu...
E s'iddu muoru e vaju mparadisu
Si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205288
04/27/06 05:11 AM
04/27/06 05:11 AM
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 7,952
It's fun to stay in the YMCA
Turi Giuliano Offline
Turi Giuliano  Offline

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 7,952
It's fun to stay in the YMCA
And what about the Velvet Mafia!


So die all who betray Giuliano
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205289
04/27/06 06:59 AM
04/27/06 06:59 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
Caporegime
Don Cardi  Offline OP
Caporegime

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
.....and Elvis's Memphis Mafia!


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205290
04/27/06 09:35 AM
04/27/06 09:35 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
Caporegime
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Nobody saw nuttin', so no jail in shoot

BY MAUREEN SEABERG and TRACY CONNOR
DAILY NEWS WRITERS


Charges were dropped yesterday against an ex-cop accused of shooting a reputed mobster at Staten Island's Top Tomato market after all the witnesses - including the victim - clammed up.
Retired NYPD Officer Patrick Balsamo won't be going to jail, but whether Gambino henchmen are shopping for a pair of concrete shoes in his size is an open question.

"The families are talking and everything seems to be okay, [but] I'm gonna take a low profile," Balsamo, 49, told neighbor Isabella Busacca, 58.

Asked outside court if he's scared, Balsamo was noncommital. "I don't know," he said.

But he defended his actions.

"Look at my record. I was never arrested before. I was a highly decorated cop," he said. "I have my family to look out for."

Balsamo was arrested in December for allegedly plugging reputed Gambino capo Carmine Sciandra in the gut after accusing Sciandra's brother of groping his 18-year-old daughter, a cashier.

The shooting wasn't caught on video, and Sciandra says he didn't see his assailant, so prosecutors had no choice but to dismiss the charges.

"Whether he didn't see him or doesn't want to say, I don't know," said Bill Smith, a spokesman for the district attorney.

Originally published on April 27, 2006

-----------------------------------------------------------

I don't think that we've seen the last of the " Tomato Wars."


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205291
05/01/06 11:18 AM
05/01/06 11:18 AM
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 18
belgium
M
marco's lover Offline
Wiseguy
marco's lover  Offline
M
Wiseguy
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 18
belgium
It has been ages that I have posted here...

In a Belgian newspaper I spot this weekend that in Sicily shopowners are fed up with organised crime. Coming friday will be their day of liberty; they'll chose not to pay the pizzo anymore.

Apperantly, 80 procent of shop- and restaurant owners participate under constraint in this long time extortion, which can led to 5% of the profit for the mafia.

Those who had the courage not to pay the pretection money, saw their businesses go up in flames and the wrong-doers where never caught.

Since Bernardo Provenzano has been caught, some tradespeople have gained the courage to stand up to the maffia. Some extortions were taped with secret camera's and those maffiosi are locked behind bars for the next four years. This only adds the new found courage and gives more elan to the anti-pizzo movement.

On Friday the 5th of May the anti-pizzo movement will organise a 'pizzo-free day' by selling their products in open air. "De open air is from everybody and no-one can claim protection money for that" is the notion behind the idea.

The movement calls itself 'Farewell Pizzo' and says: "People who pay protection money are a people without dignity. The newspaper La Repubblica talked about a small but significant revolution.

---- Most prolly I have made grammical errors, sorry for that!! ----

Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205292
05/01/06 11:59 AM
05/01/06 11:59 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
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Don Cardi  Offline OP
Caporegime

Joined: Aug 2001
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Quote:
Originally posted by marco's lover:

In a Belgian newspaper I spot this weekend that in Sicily shopowners are fed up with organised crime. Coming friday will be their day of liberty; they'll chose not to pay the pizzo anymore.
They must have watched last night's episode of The Sopranos!


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205293
05/02/06 01:12 AM
05/02/06 01:12 AM
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 341
Caldwell, North Jersey
JRCX Offline
SicilianCulture.com
JRCX  Offline
SicilianCulture.com
Capo
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 341
Caldwell, North Jersey
Going back to the 1980s, one of the most funny things (in an odd way), is that pizzerias were actually opium smuggling chains... sure, they served good pizza, but much of that flour going in, that white powder was not flour but actually heroin/opium, who could tell?? How did it get there? They say 1 in every 5 Alitalia flights (Italy's #1 airline) carried the stuff out of sicily and into the USA. "Oh how can i scam thee, let me count the ways".


"There are 2 types of people in the world, Italian, and those who wish they were Italian."

# # # JRCX
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205294
05/09/06 09:57 AM
05/09/06 09:57 AM
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 18
Oswego, IL, USA
Struck By the Thunderbolt Offline
Wiseguy
Struck By the Thunderbolt  Offline
Wiseguy
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 18
Oswego, IL, USA
Associated Press
Reputed Miami Mafia Boss Pleads Guilty
05.06.2006, 06:00 PM


The 76-year-old reputed godfather of an organized crime family has pleaded guilty during his federal racketeering trial because of declining health, his lawyer said
Jose Miguel Battle Sr. is awaiting sentencing for serving as the boss of "The Corporation," a crime ring that authorities said operated in New York, Florida and Latin America over four decades.

But Battle suffers from kidney and liver failure, diabetes and cardiac problems, his lawyer said.

"He's just very sick," said attorney Jack Blumenfeld. "This way, he can die at home rather than in jail."

Battle faces 20 years to life in prison for racketeering conspiracy if he lives long enough to be sentenced. He was set to be released from a federal detention center on a $1 million bond.

Battle and five others were accused of committing five murders, four arson attacks resulting in eight deaths, and more than $1.5 billion collected from drug trafficking, bookmaking and numbers rackets.

Battle pleaded guilty on April 27; his trial began in March.


Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news immediately.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205295
05/09/06 11:25 AM
05/09/06 11:25 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
Caporegime
Don Cardi  Offline OP
Caporegime

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Two stories related to John, Jr. Gotti :

Gag the teflon mom? No way!

She's Gotti right to talk, judge sez

BY THOMAS ZAMBITO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

No one puts a muzzle on Mama Gotti. Not even a federal judge.
Prosecution complaints that the Dapper Don's widow flaps her lips too much didn't register with Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin yesterday.

The judge said she doubted even Victoria Gotti's son or his defense lawyer could persuade her to put a sock in it.

"I bet neither of them could control her," Scheindlin said as John (Junior) Gotti and attorney Charles Carnesi shared a knowing chuckle.

The outspoken matriarch's habit of speaking her mind became a topic of debate during a pretrial hearing in her son's racketeering case. Defense lawyers were complaining about law-enforcement leaks — and prosecutors pointed out that their client's mother hasn't exactly taken the vow of omerta.

True enough.

She shared diaries about her husband and son with the Daily News last summer and regularly chatted up the press during her son's last two trials.

When mob snitch Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo testified that late Gambino boss John Gotti had a love child with a mystery woman, his wife had plenty to say.

"If anybody finds this other family, we could use some cash," she said sarcastically after the bombshell.

"DiLeonardo is a vile and vicious man," she fumed. "He needs to be spiteful. ... John Sr. is an easy target. He is not here to defend himself."

Scheindlin said it was clear that Mrs. Gotti was "furious" about DiLeonardo's testimony — and that nobody should have expected her to hold her tongue.

The judge also pointed out that since she wasn't on trial, she wasn't bound by any of the gag orders that affected other parties to the case.

Junior's first two cases ended in mistrials, and prosecutors are putting him back on trial — much to his mama's chagrin.

In a March interview, she accused prosecutors of trying to railroad her kid and described one assistant U.S. attorney as "foaming at the mouth."

She also took aim at Curtis Sliwa — the radio talk show host Junior is accused of putting a hit on — calling him "a sick puppy in need of serious therapy."

Junior's new trial starts July 5, and defense lawyers are trying to quash more than a dozen subpoenas sent to his relatives and alleged associates.

They claim prosecutors are trying to intimidate defense witnesses so they'll clam up before they can take the stand for Gotti.

Scheindlin ruled that prosecutors must wait until the new trial is over before they can haul two of those witnesses, Gotti's brother Peter and pal Steve Dobies, in front of a grand jury.

which brings us to this story :

Judge Warns Feds To Stay Away From Gotti Brother, Pal


NEW YORK -- A judge on Monday warned the government to steer clear of John "Junior" Gotti's brother and a close friend in a grand jury mob probe until after Gotti's third trial on racketeering charges in July.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin commented after defense lawyers accused the government of letting its agents tell prospective grand jury witnesses that they can thank Gotti for their subpoenas. Scheindlin said that "to say that's who you can blame, that's almost the government sending out an attack dog."

Gotti lawyer Charles Carnesi said cavalier comments by federal agents were not made for a legitimate purpose.

"It's done to generate some sort of anger at Mr. Gotti," he said during a hearing before the July 5 start of Gotti's third racketeering trial.


Defense lawyers said the government has sought to put Gotti's younger brother, Peter Gotti, and a friend, Steven Dobies, before a grand jury looking into new information about the Gambino crime family.

Both men testified as defense witnesses for Gotti at his last trial, which ended in March with a deadlocked jury.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor Hou told the judge that the comments by agents would be inappropriate but not illegal.

Since the end of Gotti's last trial, prosecutors have sent grand jury subpoenas to Gotti's relatives and suspected Gambino crime family members and associates.

-2006 by The Associated Press

___________________________________________________________

Looks to me like the Federal Government may be a bit fustrated here and are basically trying to do whatever it takes to get Junior put in jail.

I'm not saying that Junior is a model citizen who does not deserve to be put in jail. But to try and use the tactic of telling prospective witnesses that "they can thank Gotti for their subpeonas," tells me that they are stepping over the line beause of their fustration and embarassment of not being able to put this guy away.


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205296
05/17/06 09:42 AM
05/17/06 09:42 AM
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
Don Cardi Offline OP
Caporegime
Don Cardi  Offline OP
Caporegime

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 18,238
The Ravenite Social Club
FBI Agent Says Gambino Captain Wanted Him To Become Made Man

NEW YORK -- As an undercover FBI agent, Joaquin Garcia infiltrated the mob with remarkable ability. He befriended an ailing Gambino captain, dined in style and was introduced to wiseguys.

Garcia testified Tuesday that he was so persuasive that the captain -- on trial in Manhattan court -- recommended he become a made man.

"We had discussions that he was going to propose me to La Cosa Nostra," Garcia testified at the racketeering trial of Gregory DePalma. "So he was going to put my name on the list."

Prosecutors played a Nov. 5, 2004, tape of conversations between Garcia and DePalma in a car and a restaurant in which the agent said he was grateful for the chance to join the family. "I'm honored for that," Garcia said. "You know that I will never let you down."

The tape is among 5,000 hours of conversations the government says were recorded when Garcia started working for DePalma shortly after the Gambino captain finished a prison sentence for racketeering in February 2003. Garcia said he posed as Jack Falcone, or Big Jack, until 2005.

DePalma was arrested again before Garcia could be inducted into the family.

For a second day, Garcia testified in a courtroom ordered closed to protect his identity. Reporters listened in a nearby room to an audio feed of the proceedings.

The trial is unusual because Garcia lived in the belly of the mob for so long and because the defendant is an ailing 74-year-old man who prosecutors claim has tried to exaggerate his illnesses to win leniency from judges.

The government played a tape of a conversation in which DePalma, who sits in court with an oxygen tube in his nose and a blanket over his lap, could be heard boasting of his acting ability after he was sentenced in 1999.

"The judge said, 'I never sentenced a man in my life that was this sick,"' DePalma is heard saying on the tapes. "He says, 'How can I give this man time?"'

DePalma said he wore an oxygen mask and did not shave for a week before the court appearance, according to the tape.

"Oh, I got the global award, the Academy," he said. "I got the Emmy."

Garcia testified there was some truth to DePalma's frailty.

"Greg DePalma's an ill man," Garcia told the jury. "Make no mistake about that. He's had a series of heart attacks, diabetes. He has half a lung."

The agent also called DePalma a "strong man."

He added: "I used to joke with him, 'You're just like a cockroach. You could survive a nuclear attack."'

On Monday, jurors listened to secretly taped conversations in which DePalma boasted of his power and prestige after he was freed from prison. DePalma's defense lawyer told the jury last week that his client was a great exaggerator trying to be something he was not.

-AP

------------------------------------------------------------


It looks like we may have another "Donnie Brasco" type of a book/movie coming out.


Don Cardi



Don Cardi cool

Five - ten years from now, they're gonna wish there was American Cosa Nostra. Five - ten years from now, they're gonna miss John Gotti.




Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205297
05/17/06 11:13 AM
05/17/06 11:13 AM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Turnbull Offline
Turnbull  Offline

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,485
AZ
Quote:
Originally posted by Don Cardi:

The government played a tape of a conversation in which DePalma, who sits in court with an oxygen tube in his nose and a blanket over his lap, could be heard boasting of his acting ability after he was sentenced in 1999.

"The judge said, 'I never sentenced a man in my life that was this sick,"' DePalma is heard saying on the tapes. "He says, 'How can I give this man time?"'

DePalma said he wore an oxygen mask and did not shave for a week before the court appearance, according to the tape.

He must have been watching "Casino."


It looks like we may have another "Donnie Brasco" type of a book/movie coming out.


Don Cardi
Pistone will have to take another course in "Literary Embellishments."


Ntra la porta tua lu sangu � sparsu,
E nun me mporta si ce muoru accisu...
E s'iddu muoru e vaju mparadisu
Si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205298
05/23/06 01:46 PM
05/23/06 01:46 PM
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 229
Chicago, IL
Donatello Noboddi Offline
Made Member
Donatello Noboddi  Offline
Made Member
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 229
Chicago, IL
The buzz word in Chicago as of late is "clout". In the wake of the city's political patronage and hired truck scandals the Chicago Sun-Times is running a series about the Roti family and their ties to The Outfit and City Hall.

Roti
http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/roti/roti.html

More items in the Sun-Times' Special Sections folder -
Clout
http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/clout/index.html

Crime Inc.
http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/crime/index.html


I came, I saw, I had no idea what was going on, I left.
Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205299
05/30/06 05:58 PM
05/30/06 05:58 PM
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 5,453
California
X
XDCX Offline
XDCX  Offline
X

Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 5,453
California
From CNN.com

Quote:
Trials can turn goodfellas into sickfellas

Feds: Reputed Gambino capo is latest to use 'Sicilian flu' defense


NEW YORK (AP) -- And the Oscar goes to ... Gregory DePalma?


In 1999, the Gambino family captain showed up in court unshaven with an oxygen mask, claimed to be desperately ill and convinced a judge to reduce his prison sentence from 13 years to six.

Later, though, the FBI secretly recorded him boasting of his acting ability: "Oh, I got the global award, the Academy. I got the Emmy."

DePalma, now 74, is on trial again in another mob case, reasserting his claim of ill health as he spends his days in a courtroom with an oxygen tube up his nose and his feet resting on a stool.

Trying to dodge prosecution through illness -- or coming down with the "Sicilian flu," as federal agents once derisively called it -- is a long-standing Mafia defense, so familiar it has inspired plotlines on "The Sopranos" and "Law & Order."

The most famous case of all involved Vincent Gigante, the "Oddfather" who avoided conviction for nearly three decades with his well-documented crazy act.

Gigante shambled through his Greenwich Village neighborhood in bathrobe and slippers, whether it was time for breakfast, lunch or dinner. FBI agents serving him with a subpoena once found him standing naked in a running shower, clutching an open umbrella.

Gigante was found guilty in 1997 of racketeering and murder conspiracy, and finally admitted his ruse six years later. He died in prison last year at 77.

"Gigante got a lot of exercise walking around the Village," said mob expert Howard Abadinsky.

The majority of cases run to heart problems rather than head cases.

Joe Bonanno, one of the founding fathers of New York City's mob, was summoned to testify in 1985 at a federal prosecution of the Mafia's ruling commission. He was 80, retired and living in Arizona at the time, and his lawyer, William Kunstler, argued that the mobster was so ill that the stress of testifying would be too much for him.

Bonanno served 14 months for contempt, coming out of prison in 1986.

He died ... 16 years later, at the ripe old age of 97. Kunstler had died seven years earlier at 76.

Another mobster, Buffalo boss Stefano Maggodino, once claimed after an arrest that he was too sick to get fingerprinted. At a bedside arraignment, he told the assembled authorities, "Take the gun and shoot me. That's what you want!" He survived for another five years.

Not everyone lived as long as they did. Aniello "Neill" Dellacroce was arraigned by telephone in April 1985 from his Staten Island home, where he was laid up with heart disease and cancer. Dellacroce was dead before the end of the year.

"When you start to think of the lifestyles these guys live, there's a good chance it's not going to be so healthy," Abadinsky said. "One of the things that always fascinated me is that these guys didn't die earlier."

At his current trial, DePalma's attorney described him as a "broken-down man" who is missing a lung and suffers from an assortment of serious illnesses, including diabetes and heart disease.

But federal prosecutor Scott Marrah said surveillance photos will show DePalma "on the move, an energetic, active man."


"Growing up my dad was like 'You have a great last name, Galifianakis. Galifianakis...begins with a gal...and ends with a kiss...' I'm like that's great dad, can we get it changed to 'Galifianafuck' please?" -- Zach Galifianakis



Re: Real Life Organized Crime News #205300
06/05/06 08:07 AM
06/05/06 08:07 AM
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 276
Walter Mosca Offline
Capo
Walter Mosca  Offline
Capo
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 276


"Jonny Tightlips... you're shot!
- whered' they get you?"
"I ain't sayin' nutin'."
"But what'll I tell the Doc?!"
"Tell'um to suck a lemon."
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