NEW YORK POSTGAMBINO KIN'S DIAL AND DASHBy MURRAY WEISS, STEFANIE COHEN and ERIC LENKOWITZFebruary 9, 2008 -- Bada-brrrrring. Reputed Gambino capo Nicholas "Little Nick" Corozzo was able to elude the feds' rubout of more than 100 of his associates Thursday - allegedly thanks to a timely, heads-up phone call from his daughter, who had just watched her mobster husband hauled away in cuffs, sources told The Post yesterday.
Vincent "Skinny" Dragonetti was busted as he walked out of his Bellmore, LI, home a few minutes ahead of the early-morning synchronized sweep. That gave his wife, Bernadette, enough time to warn her dad, who lives a few blocks down the same street.
Corozzo was so quick in fleeing that he left behind his wallet, sources said.
Bernadette refused to answer a Post reporter's questions yesterday, slamming the door in his face.
Corozzo remained on the lam as new details emerged about the historic mass arrest - which involved charges of murder, corruption, extortion, drug dealing and loan-sharking from the city to Sicily.
Its central figure, Staten Island truck-company owner Joseph Vollaro, wore a wire for more than two years.
The ex-con provided intricate details of the Gambino crime family's inner workings at meetings and meals with top bosses, sources said.
Vollaro, who had been staring at a life sentence after he was pinched with two kilos of cocaine in 2004, made the deal in exchange for his freedom and entry into the witness-protection program.
His wife has decided not to join him in the program, which he entered last week as the feds were putting the finishing details on Thursday's massive bust, sources said. The couple has no kids.
As valuable as Vollaro was in bringing down one of the city's biggest crime syndicates, the feds apparently didn't know what to expect when he first agreed to help with their large-scale investigation.
Vollaro, who shared a federal prison cell with Corozzo and began doing business with the Gambinos when he got out in 1999, was initially expected to help with a multifaceted national drug investigation. But he cozied up to the "family" so well over the next few years that he was even on the verge of becoming a made man when the hammer fell on the organization, the sources said.
Vollaro's sweetheart deal sickened the rogues gallery of thugs he ratted out.
"Everybody thought he was a nice guy," said Joel Winograd, the lawyer for Leonard "The Conductor" DiMaria, who, among other things, is charged with money laundering, stealing union benefits and gambling.
"He's probably in Hawaii on the beach spending his illegally obtained drug-dealing money right now."
The evidence obtained by Vollaro was a key building block for many of the extortion and racketeering cases.
The multiple murder charges - for crimes that date back as far as 30 years - were brought with extensive wiretap evidence gathered by longtime Gambino associate Peter Zuccaro, 52.
Zuccaro was a key member of one of Corozzo's biggest crews run by Ronnie "One Arm" Trucchio. He and several other associates cut a deal with the feds after his conviction in Tampa, Fla., in 2005 on extortion and other charges.
Zuccaro, a trusted member of the late John Gotti's inner circle, provided a treasure trove of damning evidence - including information on the murder of court officer Albert Gelb, which was allegedly committed by hit man Charles Carneglia.
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Staten Island AdvanceDirty dealings alleged at NASCAR site By JOHN ANNESE and PETER N. SPENCER
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Lots of Staten Islanders looked at the proposed NASCAR track and saw a traffic disaster barreling their way.
The Gambino crime family saw a gravy train. The mobsters found a couple of corrupt officials working for the track's developer, set it up so that one of their favored companies would be the only firm laying dirt on the property, then waited for what they expected would be millions of dollars' worth of kickbacks.
That scenario was spelled out in hundreds of pages of federal court documents released yesterday to support one of the largest organized crime roundups in decades and expose the purported grip the mob has had on one of the largest construction markets in the United States.
As a result of the three-year investigation, two former employees of the track developer have been indicted alongside the hierarchy of the Gambino crime family.
The heads of several Staten Island contractors, including a controlling partner in Andrews Trucking Co., the Travis-based carter hired to bring dirt fill to the property for five months in 2006, also were indicted. Agents swarmed the Andrews' lot in Travis Wednesday and took away trucks, computers and financial records.
Had International Speedway Corp. -- NASCAR's sister company and the developer of several of the circuit's racetracks -- succeeded with its controversial proposal to build a raceway on the West Shore, it would have needed roughly 3.8 million cubic yards of clean fill to raise the elevation of the property and cap off an environmental cleanup job.
The Gambinos got a piece of the project in January 2006, the feds allege, when Recine Trucking, a company controlled by Gambino family acting underboss Domenico Cefalu, became one of the first companies hired to bring fill to the site.
And once they had their foot in the door, they kept it there.
Ernest Grillo -- a Gambino soldier and the ex-husband of John Gotti's reputed goumada, Shannon (Sandy) Connelly -- acquired "exclusive dumping rights" for an unnamed businessman who had been paying the Gambinos extortion money for years, according to federal documents. That same businessman made kickbacks to the Gambinos in exchange for permission to run and later sell a cement company on the Island and operate a portable cement plant on the Liberty View Harbor construction site, the feds allege. He also allegedly helped Grillo compile a list of construction companies that would be required to pay tribute to the family.
Over the next five months, the feds allege, Cefalu and four other Gambinos -- three captains, Leonard DiMaria, Nicholas Corozzo and Frank Cali, and a soldier, Vincent Dragonetti -- worked out the details of how much the businessman would have to kick back to the family. They settled on 50 cents per yard of fill for Corozzo and DiMaria, and another 50 cents per yard for Cefalu and Cali. The deal fell through, and a new one was worked out, putting $1 per yard of fill into Corozzo and DiMaria's pockets.
ISC's financial officials had predicted the company would shell out close to $20 million to place the fill on the 675-acre site. The Gambinos would have gotten a $3.8 million slice of that, based on the allegations.
Although the documents don't reveal the name of the fill company being extorted by the Gambinos, ISC hired Andrews Trucking Co. in May 2006, the same month the court papers say the mobsters finalized their kickback arrangements.
CONTAMINATED DIRT
By September, ISC lost its permits to lay fill on the site, after the state Department of Environmental Conservation learned Andrews had been using contaminated dirt.
The developer was slapped with a $562,500 fine last May, and agreed to remove all 44,000 cubic yards that had been placed.
The unnamed businessman also was forced to pay $9,000 to Todd Polakoff, construction manager at the site for an ISC subsidiary, on behalf of his boss, William Kilgannon. Polakoff, 30, and Kilgannon, 49, were both indicted yesterday alongside the entire organizational structure of the Gambino crime family.
Scott Matter, a spokesman for ISC, said both men had worked for North American Testing Company, a design and construction subsidiary of the speedway giant, in 2005 and 2006. Both left the company in December 2006 "for other employment," Matter said.
Matter said ISC first learned of the allegations yesterday, adding that no one from the company or any of its subsidiaries had been questioned by any of the agencies in the probe.
"ISC has not been contacted by law enforcement agencies as part of the investigation leading to today's announcement but stands ready to cooperate in any way possible if asked," he said.
Michael Printup, ISC's project manager for the track proposal and the public face of the speedway developer on the Island, did not return a phone call seeking comment last night.
Although he's not listed as the owner of record for Andrews Trucking, the feds claim Huguenot resident Joseph Spinnato was actually pulling the strings for the trucking firms, along with Master Mix and Dump Masters of N.Y.
Spinnato and Sarah Dauria, the principal of S.R.D. Contracting in Graniteville, then set up "no show" jobs for Gambino associates and looted tens of thousands of dollars from the Teamsters Union's health and pension funds.
The federal documents detail at least a half-dozen alleged conversations between the unnamed businessman mentioned in the NASCAR plot, Ms. Dauria and Spinnato about falsifying company records ahead of audits by Teamsters Local 282 during the past three years.
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