The indictment of La Cosa Nostra continues in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn this week. After 62 mobsters and associates of the Gambino crime family were arrested and indicted earlier this month, eight more members of the Luchese crime family were indicted Thursday.
The 35-page indictment was unsealed hours after the mobsters and their associates were arrested in New York in the morning. Six of the defendants are charged with racketeering and conspiracy; one defendant is charged with illegal gambling, and one defendant is charged with extortion. The defendants, including longstanding Luchese captain Domenico Cutaia, his son Salvatore Cutaia and his son-in-law John Daudanza, both crime-family soldiers, were arraigned Thursday before a federal judge.
Salvatore Cutaia was specifically mentioned by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn as having been secretly recorded during a telephone conversation making threats to a man in North Carolina who had borrowed money from his father.
“You’re going to make me get on a [expletive] plane and come down to Carolina and go crazy on you,” the younger Cutaia was recorded saying to the man, according to the U.S. Attorney. “I’m going to come down there with 10 guys...”
Michael “Mikey Bones” Corcione, also a Luchese crime-family soldier and made member of the Mafia, is also indicted for racketeering. The racketeering charges brought against the defendants identify predicate acts dating back to the 1980s and include loansharking, extortionate collection of credit, marijuana distribution conspiracy, illegal gambling, bank fraud, extortion and mail fraud. According to the memorandum filed today in support of having three of the defendants detained in jail, the extortions included various threats of violence.
In addition to the racketeering counts, the indictment alleges 17 substantive charges, including illegal gambling conspiracy, mail fraud conspiracy, bank fraud conspiracy and marijuana distribution conspiracy.
Each of the defendants, except one, faces 20 or 30 years in prison if convicted. Additionally, the indictment seeks forfeiture of the proceeds of the racketeering activity, including Baudanza’s house.
