Monacello is like a broken record. They did a real shitty job making this case over a decade. Think about how much money was wasted! Even if there found guilty, that was still a waste a money. and then everyones paying taxes and basically paying for them to be in jail. lol funny how it all works

That asian guy, the US Atty? I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up working as appointed council in East PA Small Claims Court.

It's hard to say how it's really going from just reading the articles. But it does sound like just a total replay of the first trial to me.

Is anybody here getting the daily audio off of the PACER site?

If I didn't have Law finals I would be catching that. Damn… do they archive the audio?

Really not sure how long the audio is made available. But i think they post it a day or two later. But again i'm not sure.

One guy was getting it and posting up the mp3's during the first trial but i've lost contact with him.

As a student of that stuff, I'd really like to hear the entire trial over xmas break. Damn, that's a shame.

If anyone has audio recordings of either Ligambi trial, PM me. $ for copies.

Frank i think you can just sign up for a PACER account. You put a credit or debit card on record on the site and they bill you as you go depending on what you download. I can't remember the prices though...but i don't think it's too expensive. The audio files probably cost more then the transcripts though.

Just went on there and registered. Neat site.

The Bonnano guy from NY (Aponnick) buried Georgie today. Back on tomorrow to put the fork in him. Can't wait to see what Borgesis' attorney has for cross examnaition of him.

Is Aponnick made? I always thought he wasn't but a recent article said he was. Plus Aponnick doesn't sound Italian unless it's northern Italy.

who is the guy with the sunglasses? I don't think he is hot and sexy or ugly, but he isn't bad looking, I am just wondering why he is wearing sunglasses in a fully lit room? Maybe they are prescription or he has astigmatism or something?

if your talking about the article from yesterday that stated Aponnick was a made member of the Bonnano Family, that was a mistake. If you check Bigtrial.net, they edited that rightfully calling him an associate, cause thats what he was. there was another mistake calling Borgesi the "alleged underboss", they also corrected that to "reputed capo". you can almost always tell the little differences from when its Anastasia writing the post and when its Cipirano.

http://www.bigtrial.net/2013/12/witness-puts-price-tag-on-mob-membership.html

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Witness Puts Price Tag On Mob Membership

By George Anastasia
For Bigtrial.net

An outsider can buy his way into the Philadelphia mob for $10,000.

Cash.

That, at least, is what New York mob informant Anthony Aponick said he was asked to cough up to George Borgesi while they were cellmates in a federal prison in West Virginia back in 2003.

"He said I would become a member of his crew," said Aponick as he testified today at the racketeering conspiracy retrial of Borgesi and his uncle, mob boss Joe Ligambi. "He wanted $10,000."

The membership fee was just 10 percent of what Boston mobster Bobby Luisi said he had to pay Joey Merlino back in the late 1990s to become a made member of the organization. Whether that was a reflection of an economic downturn in the underworld or whether Aponick was getting a special discount could not be determined. Like Aponick, Luisi became a close associate of Borgesi's. And like Aponick, he eventually became an FBI informant.

Aponick said his dealings with Borgesi also came with an ominous warning.

"Listen, no matter what, don't fuck me," he said Borgesi told him as Aponick was about to be released from prison in 2003. "If you fuck me, I'll kill you and your whole family."

Aponick, who was already cooperating with the FBI by that time, disregarded the warning.

Aponick celebrated his 43rd birthday this morning by making his public debut as a government witness. Describing himself as an associate of the Bonanno crime family in New York, he said he befriended Borgesi after being transferred to the federal prison in Beckley, W. Va., in 2002.

Borgesi was serving a 14-year sentence for a racketeering conviction. Aponick had been sentenced to 93 months for a series of armed robberies. They and several other mob members and associates hung out together in the federal institution, Aponick said.

He described Borgesi as a "serious" mobster, but also as a funny and witty individual whom he genuinely liked. He said that laughed, joked and cooked meals together, and eventually became cellmates.

While reticent to discuss mob business at first, Aponick said Borgesi eventually confided in him and also urged him to move to Philadelphia after he was released from prison. While he was not a full-blooded Italian-American (his mother was Italian, but his father was Ukrainian and Lithuanian), Aponick said Borgesi assured him that he could become a made -- formally initiated member -- of the Philadelphia mob.

The price tag was $10,000.

Aponick is due back on the stand when the trial resumes tomorrow. His testimony is considered crucial to the government's case against Borgesi who prosecutors allege continued to run a mob operation from prison while serving his 2001 sentence for a racketeering conviction.

Dressed in a gray, sharkskin suit, white shirt and tie, and speaking with a thick Brooklyn accent, the five-foot-six Joe Pesce-look-alike gangster testified for nearly four hours. Much of what he said supported and corroborated the testimony of Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello, another Borgesi associate who finished three days of testimony on Tuesday.

Among other things, Aponick said Borgesi boasted of his own involvement in 11 mob murders, some of which he had been charged with acquitted and others for which he had avoided prosecution.

"He told me he beat 11 murders," said Aponick. "Im from the streets. When you say you bheat something, that means you did it."

Like Monacello, Aponick described Borgesi, 50, as someone who enjoyed his status as a mob leader and his reputation for violence.

"He told me he was the `coon-see' (consigliere)," Aponick said. He also said that Borgesi told him his uncle (Ligambi) was the boss but that the crime family "belonged" to Joey Merlino, Steven Mazzone and Borgesi, all three of whom were convicted in the 2001 racketeering case.

Borgesi is the only one of seven defendants in that case still in jail.

"He said the family belonged to him, Merlino and Mazzone," Aponick said. "His uncle was minding the store (and) would have a step aside" when they came out of prison. If not, Borgesi said, Ligambi or anyone else trying to run the organization "would have serious problems."

Aponick said he began cooperating with the FBI in September 2002 while he was Borgesi's cellmate. He said he did so because he was finishing his 93-month sentence and didn't want to go back into the mob life. His cooperation earned him a six-month reduction in that jail term.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Aponick said he was a Bonanno crime family associate for more than 20 years and was engaged in gambling, drug dealing, hijacking, extortions and robberies for the organization. He said Borgesi encouraged him to leave New York and move to Philadelphia where he would become part of the crew being run by Monacello while Borgesi's was in jail.

He said he described Monacello as "his man on the street."

"I had never been to Philadelphia," Aponick said. But he went along with the plan as part of his cooperating agreement with the FBI.

He, like Monacello, also said he was surprised that Borgesi used his wife Alyson to relay messages about mob business to him and other associates.

"It's not customary to get a woman involved to that extent," he said after detailing messages relayed to him in letters and phone calls by Borgesi's wife.

He said he and Borgesi discussed setting up an after hours club and a men's clothing store through which they could run gambling and loansharking operations in the Philadelphia area. But he said Borgesi told him repeatedly to stay away from his uncle.

"He said his uncle was greedy," Aponick said.

The jury was also shown a video of Aponick meeting in Brooklyn with Borgesi's brother Anthony and Mauro Goffredo, a Borgesi associate in the trash business, while Aponick was in a halfway house in New York completing his prison term.

The jury has already heard a phone conversation Borgesi had with Monacello and Aponick after Aponick came to Philadelphia and met with Monacello at Ralph's, a restaurant on Ninth Street. The tape is expected to be played again so that Aponick can explain parts of what the government contends was coded conversation. Borgesi made the call from prison where all phone calls are taped and monitored.

Aponick's motivation for testifying and his credibility are both expected to be challenged when cross-examination begins some time tomorrow. One of the things the jury has yet to hear is that shortly after his release from prison in 2003, and while he was cooperating with the FBI, Aponick robbed several banks in New York. He was arrested for those robberies and his cooperation agreement negated.

But he managed to convince federal authorities to give him a second chance. His new deal resulted in a three-year sentence for the bank robberies and his agreement to help make the case against Borgesi.

Aponick was not called as a witness in the first trial that ended with a hung jury on the conspiracy count that Borgesi and Ligambi now face,.

The defense will argue that Aponick has used Borgesi as a trading chit to get out from under his own criminal problems. That same argument has been presented to the jury in an attempt to undermine Monacello's testimony.

Damn… that's pretty damning. I score it 50 points, Government. 50 points, Philly Family.

My prediction:
-Georgie dies in the can.
-Uncle Joe skates free and joins Skinny Joey in Florida. He's the real deal, the 10% that doesn't die or end up in prison.
-US Atty Han accepts transfer to US Public Defender's, Southern District of New Jersey
-George Anastasia writes a new book, "Bringing Down the Philly Mob, Part: IIIIIIII."

Lol

What time does court usually start?

not made

This Apponick guy.. you gotta be kidding me. i cant believe they dont have any better witnesses then morons like Anthony Apponick who tries hittin up monacello for a 10k loan the first day he meets him. and then he says he was going to pay 10k to get made in philly. he was probably going to use the 10k for drugs and never come back to philly again.

Might be time for the higher ups in the Philly mob to begin questioning the usefulness of a guy like Borgesi. He's clearly a shit magnet; Luisi, Monacello, and Apponick? These guys are supposed to be making better choices of who they include in their circle. Borgesi is doing a pretty horrible job of surveying the talent. Plus, he's an arrogant guy with a Napoleon complex that attracts law enforcement attention like flys on shit.

He's clearly an idiot and a loser. If Joe gets off and Borgesi he should turn his back on him and shelve him for being stupid...

this guy cut a deal with the feds got out and robb abunch of banks no jurys will believe this guy. always thought the consig was surposed to be cool and calm not biteing guys heads.

At least half of the Philly family are just like Borgesi, tough but extremely dumb. Street thugs, nothing more. He's probably well liked in the family because most of them are morons, just like George.

He'll probably get found guilty next year, do another good stint in prison, come out and go straight back in again.

Just shows how weak the Philly family are, this guy is a captain and was acting administration, embarrassing.

At trial today no way the jury convicts these guys on the crazy testimony given by Apponick....guy tripped over his stories left ans right and was made to look like a POS big time by defense....saw some jurors making ugly faces at the guy

"At least half of the Philly family are just like Borgesi, tough but extremely dumb. Street thugs, nothing more. He's probably well liked in the family because most of them are morons, just like George."

LOLLL!!!! Extremely Dumb...

yep I was there today also, Aponick got eaten alive! The jurors were clearly not psyched

Although I agree completely it baffles me that people still consider Joe Ligambi Boss. He was never boss, only acting boss, which is a postion he no longer holds.

What kind of ugly faces? "Go fuc yourself" ugly faces? "This guy is a rat bastard" ugly faces? or "what a moron" ugly faces?
LOL!

I have to say I'm a little put off that the guy would cooperate with the feds for a lousy 6 month reduced sentence. To me it would be a bigger pain in the a$$ to get dressed up, put on a uncomfortable suit and tie, and have to sit there for hours and pay attention while a bunch of lawyers asked me a bunch of smartly worded questions about somewhere I have never lived or worked personally myself.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2013

Words And Meanings Argued At Mob Trial
By George Anastasia
For Bigtrial.net


What was said in a taped telephone conversation or written in the letter or Christmas card was not in dispute.

But what the words meant was the focus of nearly four hours of cross-examination today after mob informant Anthony Aponick, 43, spent a second day on the witness stand in the racketeering conspiracy retrial of George Borgesi and his uncle, mob boss Joseph Ligambi.

Aponick, a New York mob associate who was Borgesi's cellmate in a federal prison in Virginia for parts of 2002 and 2003, clashed repeatedly with Christopher Warren, Borgesi's defense attorney.

Warren, trying to underscore in the jury's mind that much of what Aponick has testified to is uncorroborated, came back again and again to a simple query.

"We just have to take your word?" the lawyer asked.

"It's the truth," Aponick responded.

The verbal tap dance went on for most of the day and will likely continued tomorrow when Warren concludes his questioning and Ligambi's lawyer, Edwin Jacobs Jr., takes his turn at discrediting the second key prosecution witness to testify in the case.

Aponick was forced to concede that some of the conversations and letters he had received from Borgesi and Borgesi's wife Alyson were, in fact, about legitimate business ventures they hoped to undertake in the Philadelphia area, including home building and remodeling.

But he said mobsters often use legitimate businesses as "fronts" or "covers" for illegal activities and that was what he said he and Borgesi were planning.

To which Warren again posed the question, "To give that criminal meaning we again have to believe you?"

At other times Aponick said words like "house," "chick" and "paper" that appeared in letters or were spoken in taped conversations were coded references to Borgesi's demand that Aponick cough up $10,000 in order to become a member of Borgesi's mob crew in Philadelphia.

Warren also focused on the $134,000 federal authorities had spent to relocate Aponick and provide him with a monthly stipend and other expenses while he was a cooperating/protected witness. An itemized rundown of the payments that was part of the cross-examination resulted in a barbed exchange between the witness and lawyer.

"I'm confused," Aponick said at one point.

After Warren had gone over some numbers again to clarify, the lawyer asked, "Still confused?"

Aponick quickly replied, "A little bit. I think everybody is."

The expenses the government paid, Aponick said, included surgery for an eye problem. And in an apparent reference to a comment made by Borgesi, he said, "Now I'm not a cross-eyed, junkie fat rat, I'm just a rat."

That, in its own way, was another reference to the debate over words and meanings. That Aponick is a former mobsters turned cooperating witness -- a rat underworld terminology -- is not in dispute. Whether he is telling the truth is the issue.

At another point Aponick told Warren that the lawyer had a problem with "past, present and future tenses" when framing his questions. In his turn, Warren asked Aponick again and again about Christmas greetings, holidays cards and references to food, football games and family members that were part of the written correspondence between Aponick and the Borgesis.

"Is this some cryptic, hidden Mafia meaning?" Warren asked a half dozen times after pointing to seemingly innocuous comments. Aponick conceded in most cases the words were simply what they implied....but not always.

Neither the witness nor the lawyer gave an inch during the verbal sparring match.

Aponick conceded he had "betrayed" the trust federal authorities had placed in him by committing eight bank robberies after his release from prison in September 2003 and while he was working as a confidential informant for the FBI in building a case against Borgesi.

"I made some bad personal choices," he said. But then offered a classic underworld explanation,

Aponick said he was in debt to members of the Colombo crime family for about $50,000 in gambling losses.

"I figured all the government could do was put me back in jail," he said. "They (the Colombos) could kill me." He said about $25,000 from the bank robberies went to the Colombos, but stumbled when asked about the total amount he had grabbed and what the rest of the money was used for.

He denied Warren's inference that he was a drug addict -- "I haven't used drugs since 1997," he said -- but said the money went for "expenses."

Aponick also tried to refute Warren's contention that he has consistently "played" the government by working deals to get out from under his own criminal problems. When he was asked if he hadn't offered to cooperate back in 1997 when he was arrested for a series of armed robberies, Aponick said he had "talked" with authorities, but never agreed to cooperate.

"If I had cooperated," he said, "the entire Bonanno crime family would be in jail and we wouldn't be here."

Warren also hammered away at a "pitch" letter Aponick wrote to authorities seeking their help yet again after his arrest for the bank robberies. In the letter, Aponick said he was hoping for a three-year sentence, rather than the four-to-eight years he was facing. He said if the feds would vouch for him, he'd gladly go back to work on the Borgesi case, writing that he'd be "back in business against old Georgie Boy" and offering to "work for free."

Warren zeroed in again, asking Aponick if his entire plan was simply to "set Georgie up" in order to curry favor with the government.

Aponick denied it.

"I'm just here to tell you what he told me," he said.

He also admitted that he had been drummed out of the Witness Security Progam again in August after an arrest. But he said the charges was unfounded. While the judge has barred specific questions about the incident, a pretrial hearings provided some details.

Aponick was arrested in a domestic dispute case for allegedly throwing his wife out of a moving car. Those charges were later dismissed. Judge Eduardo Robreno said at the pretrial hearing that he would not allow the conspiracy trial to become a stage to rehash that case.

The conspiracy case against Borgesi is based primarily on the testimony of Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello and Aponick. The government alleges that while serving a 14-year sentence for a racketeering conviction in 2001, Borgesi continued to run a mob operation from prison.

Monacello, who testified earlier, has been described as Borgesi's "point man" on the street in gambling and loansharking businesses. Aponick said he was to join Monacello in those businesses and expand them for Borgesi.

The debate over what was said and what it meant is expected to continue when Aponick returns to the stand tomorrow. A key issue for the defense is trying to offer a legitimate reason why Aponick, a New York mobster, ended up meeting with Monacello in a Ninth Street Italian restaurant shortly after his release from prison and why Borgesi, from prison, called Monacello while the dinner meeting was in progress.

The tape of that call has been played twice for the jury with both Monacello and Aponick offering explanations of what was said and what was meant. That meeting and that phone call go to the heart of the case against Borgesi.

George Anastasia can be contacted at George@bigtrial.net.

Read more at http://www.bigtrial.net/2013/12/words-and-meanings-argued-at-mob-trial.html#AltcqGJpBAFgDcad.99

So what happens to Joe if he gets off? He's been "boss" (acting boss.. whatever) for over 13 years. What, does he just file in line with a crew and crack heads at age 73?

Just my guess is that if he has enough money he'll retire down to boca with joey. But if he needs the money, and he doesnt retain the acting boss position, he might go back to doing what did before, making book. After all, the philly mob is really just a glorified crew of book makers.