Its because the goverment has limited resources and all a lot of shark money goes to drug dealers that become informants.

i think its one of the weakest...no murder no drugs...the feds love murder and drugs...shows that they dont have much and are jumpin the gun

They were buying and distributing marijuana, thats what it says on the indictment.

yes you are correct...perhaps its the life i choose to live over these years but marijunia isn't a real drug...weed trafficing is nothing like coke or heroin trafficking where the real money is@!

Marijuana is a big money maker and there is alot of violence behind it with the groups that supply it, youve got vietnamese, mexicans, jamaicans, albanians. The dea are probably trying to flip or get info of of these guys on their suppliers.

Looking at those names, i cant see a candidate for flipping. But on the other hand, many guys flipped whom we didnt expect.

Lets say im 80% sure no one will flip

‘Mob wives’ rat helps feds make bust

Federal agents busted several high-ranking Bonanno crime-family members yesterday and charged them with racketeering and extortion, authorities said.

Among those arrested in the joint FBI-Drug Enforcement Administration probe was a senior member of the Bonanno ruling administration, as well as capo Anthony “TG” Graziano, the father of “Mob Wives” star Renee Graziano.

Her ex-husband, ex-mob associate Hector Pagan, is now a DEA informant who gave the feds information that led to the massive sweep.

Anthony Graziano, 71, was released recently from prison but then quickly ensnared in an earlier DEA probe that predated yesterday’s developments.

In that previous case, Pagan reportedly wore a wire and secretly recorded conversations for the feds with his ex-father-in-law while discussing the collection of a loan-shark debt.

Graziano was indicted by Brooklyn federal prosecutors on those earlier charges just last week.

Yesterday, Bonanno ruling administration member, Vincent “Vinny TV” Badalamente, was charged with shaking down several restaurants and bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn and also allegedly “took over” a bar on Coney Island Avenue after its owner failed to pay back a debt, Brooklyn federal prosecutors said.

Bonanno capo Nicholas “Nicky Mouth” Santora was charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and illegal gambling, according to an indictment unsealed yesterday.

Also charged in the sweep, were acting capo Vito Balsamo and soldier Anthony Calabrese, officials said.

Prosecutors hit Calabrese with an extortion charge for allegedly participating in a heated sit-down to discuss a financial settlement over a secret pizza sauce recipe that a Bonanno-associated Staten Island pizza joint allegedly stole from Brooklyn’s L&B Spumoni Gardens, which has ties to the Colombo crime family.

Calabrese was caught on a secret FBI tape saying, “I went there and argued . . . I f–king had a screaming match with the f–king Colombo guys for three hours.”

A Gambino crime-family associate, James LaForte, also was arrested in the early-morning raids, sources said.

All of those charged pleaded not guilty at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court, except Graziano, who will be arraigned next week.

After the arrests yesterday, Renee Graziano reportedly suffered a panic attack and was hospitalized, according to TMZ.

Source:http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/mob_wives_rat_3LtzcI9xLcPfHvtesKNQPP

You referring to New York? They got Vietnamese in NY, I thought we only had to deal with them in Westminster. That and marijuana dealing is typically small time shit with a far less violent clientele and dealers.



Yeah I think this also. Remember when they fucked up that Christmas party bust in '09? They really thought they were going to disrupt a making ceremony.

Nicholas, your sort of wrong and right. yes weed aint the same as coke or heroin however its sold by a wide array of people, from your harmless neighbourhood pot head to violent street gangs. Like i said before weeds a big moneymaker because in the hood now its one of the main drugs the younger generation do, crack coaine market is big but it has stabilized meaning it wont reach the peaks it did in the eighties, The bulk of heroin users are coming from the suburbs.

One or two of the guys caught in this case will probably give something without getting on the witness stand or they will become a confidential informant giving the dea info on drug traffickers. Thats what the dea will try and do anyway.

As for vietnamese gangs in ny a few of them started their.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Kill_(gang)

Good stuff Marty....Scorsese; here in California the legal marijuana clinics took away a lot of drug dealers who profited off the stuff. Though a vast majority of the drug dealers are not gang members. Cocaine varies, a big difference in dealers between L.A. and Orange County. I can second the upping heroin statistics and the background of users, it is becoming more popular amongst white, middle class kids. Though most are smoking it.

What was Pagan looking at before he flipped? I'm almost curious to watch Mob Wives to see how it affects Renee 'The little Gorilla' Graziano

Yeah heroins alot purer especially afghan heroin. clinics have definately put alot of dealers out of business but they targets for robberies and shakedowns still. Theirs always a way for criminals to profit off of legalising drugs.

I think pagan was looking at armed robbery charges for the card games he held up but i doubt hes the only informant on this case.Why did they let this guy so close after he was on that tvshow with his family, it sort of makes them look like a joke and tourist sideshow instead of a serious violent criminal gang.

as for renee, bitch probably have some sort of meltdown, then have some more plastic surgery to make herself feel better. i hear she has a son, if i were him id be running off with my dad into witness protection rather than sticking around to deal with her shit.

Plastic surgery can't make an ugly woman pretty. Any plastic surgeon will tell you that. A nip here and a tuck there, in moderation, can take a few years off your looks. But for a beast like Renee, there's absolutely no hope .

Her and that big ang should do tranny porn.

Don´t know if this is old news (since I don´t follow the show) but Big Ange apparently has a conviction for drug dealing.

This indictment (note the name of Luca DiMatteo, but I don´t think it´s THE Luca DiMatteo, the Lucchese capo), found on the smoking gun web site:


http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/raiola-complaint

Luca DiMatteo is a Colombo capo.

As far as the NY families involvement in drugs go, if you look at the indictments, they are most involved in marijuana and cocaine. Also prescription drugs in recent years. And ecstasy. Those type of drugs fit the suburban environment of the mob now, as far as their customer base goes.

Could the DEA be filling the FBI manpower void?

yes it does, santora is charged with some marijuana

while its true that afgan heroin is of very high quality, little of it makes its way to the us outside from small amounts on the east coast and chicago/detroit. the majority of the afgan heroin is shipped to the ever expanding russian/european markets. in the us the majority of heroin in the northeast is south american(columbian) whiloe on the west coast its mainly tar from mexico with a small amount of southeast asian powder from vietnam/burma/thialand. this explains why once the italians fell out of the heroin importation buisness in the late 80's, it was hard to get back in as other ethnic gangs swiftly moved in and were much more prone to violence.

yeah it was about 6am when i posted that i don't even know why i said that....i must have looked over the weed deal then tried to justify my statement by saying weed is weak and blah blah....so i was wrong....but i still feel its a pretty weak indictment...not gonna cripple the bonnanos

^^^ yep, reminds me of the ligambi indictment a little bit

i wonder who steps up now for boss

fat tony rabito?

italians fell out because of the feds who busted them hard in the pizza connection trial and italian police that dismantled the heroin labs in sicily

i think catalano is the boss since 2009
vinny asaro the acting underboss and tony rabito acting consigliere right now

what are you basing this off?

Exactly.

right, maybe should of clarified this in my post. my point was that after the italians fell off in the distibution side in the us, production sharply decresed in sicily leading to more production and refinement in other parts of the world, along with the criminal groups in those same areas moving into the retail markets in the us. im sure the five families still are involved in mid-level dealing, they just arent the dominant importers anymore.

for the same reasons they put johnny gambino and dom cefalu at the top of the gambino family
catalano is an old school boss, he was acting boss for rastelli at the beginning of the 80s, he faced 30 years he's obviously extremely secretive and affidable

So nothing more than an assumption? Got it. Hey, here's an idea. How about we just wait until the feds identify the next guy before we start announcing somebody is. Can you guys really not stand a power vacuum that much?

And by the way, Peter Gotti, Jackie D'Amico, Danny Marino, and Bobby Vernace were also recently boss, acting boss, or on the ruling panel. And they're not zips. So just because John Gambino happened to be on the panel, and Dom Cefalu is the current boss, doesn't mean there's a zip takeover. Much less in another family.