this is not the full article not breaking board rules barney bellomo is now confirmed as the boss of the family and petey Red is the number two he is known for ties to the newspaper industry




This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci


Barney (The Boss) Bellomo, Once The Brainy Kid From The Bronx, Now Reigns Supreme In Genovese Family

While facing indictment in the late 1980s, the late and legendary Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante selected Liborio (Barney) Bellomo as acting boss of the powerful Genovese crime family. Now, more than 25 years later and after his own convictions, the Bronx-based college-educated wiseguy has made it to the top on his own and now rules the crime family, Gang Land has learned.

That's according to authoritative law enforcement officials and other reliable sources who tell Gang Land that the 59-year-old mobster is calling the shots in the time-honored tradition of the sophisticated crime family that is often referred to as the Ivy League of organized crime — quietly and without calling any attention to himself for the last few years.

"Barney's smart, he's tough, he's low-key, and everybody respects him," said one reliable Gang Land source.

He also appears to have learned from the master: Sources say Bellomo is using longtime Lower East Side capo Peter (Petey Red) DiChiara to relay orders and information to Genovese family members. DiChiara, the sources, say is serving as, "street boss" or acting boss for Bellomo, relaying messages to and from capos and important family soldiers.

The arrangement is similar to one long employed by the cagey Gigante who long fooled the law about his mob role by having Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno serve as the "upfront" boss for his crime clan, while keeping below the radar himself. DiChiara, 73, the sources say, may wear an additional hat as well, that of the family's consigliere.

Gang Land's sources declined to explain exactly how Barney's directives get relayed to Petey Red — perhaps they're not so sure themselves. But they insist that Bellomo has been behind the increased activity in and around Petey Red's social club at Market and Cherry Streets

"Barney's the boss," said one law enforcement official. "He's the reason why people from Brooklyn and the Bronx have been showing up in lower Manhattan in the last few years."

DiChiara has maintained a social club at 73 Market Street since the 1990s. And except for a five year period when he was serving a federal prison stretch for racketeering a decade ago, it has been a busy place. But until recently, its regular patrons and visitors, for the most part, were members of Petey Red's crew.

In the past, that crew has included some of Gang Land's most active players, among them Salvatore and Frank DeMeo, Salvatore (Sammy Meatballs) Aparo, his son Vincent, and Rosario (Ross) Gangi. All of those wiseguys, however, were snared in 2002 along with Petey Red, after a three year FBI sting operation during which mob associate Michael (Cookie) D'Urso tape recorded hundreds of conversations.

Based on D'Urso's undercover work from 1998 to 2000, Petey Red was hit with a slew of racketeering charges as a Genovese capo who oversaw loansharking gambling, extortion, labor bribery, and a lucrative check cashing scheme from 1993 to 2001.

Released from prison in 2007, DiChiara earned payoffs from the sales of stolen newspapers and magazines in 2009, according to police reports about an investigation of the mob-tarred newspaper industry by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. He was not charged in that probe, or with any other wrongdoing since then.

But, as Gang Land reported in 2014, in an exclusive report about DiChiara's newspaper industry ties, Genovese wiseguys from Queens, Long Island, and beyond, like capo Daniel Pagano of Ramapo, were also spotted at Petey Red's place. Law enforcement sources report that Pagano, who began serving a 30 month prison stay last year, and others were stopping in to see DiChiara in order to pass on information to Bellomo, or receive directives from him.

In recent weeks, neighborhood sources say DiChiara, who has diabetes, hasn't been well. One feared he may have been hospitalized, but that could not be confirmed.

Bellomo's seven-year stint as acting boss for Gigante — from 1989 to 1996 — cost Barney 12 years behind bars. He was there from June of 1996 until he entered a halfway house in July of 2008 for three separate extortion convictions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in shakedowns during the early 1990s.

In two of the racketeering indictments, he was accused of ordering a mob hit, but in both cases, he was able to beat back the murder charge by copping a plea deal to extortion. He helped beat one charge by volunteering to take a lie detector test. He passed. Since his release from federal custody in December of 2008, Bellomo has been squeaky clean. He had no issues regarding three years of post prison supervised release, and he has no problems with the law since then.

On paper, he's the changed man who worked hard to keep his four children "on the straight and narrow … through emails, telephone calls and monthly visits" during his years behind bars as his attorney Barry Levin declared he was in 2007, when Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced him to 41 months, but only a year of that was added to Bellomo's time behind bars.

Yet, numerous local and federal law enforcement officials confirm that Barney Bellomo is the reigning boss of the powerful Genovese crime family while overseeing a lucrative empire of his own.

These sources say Bellomo earns substantial rental income every month from numerous apartment buildings worth millions of dollars that he owns in the Bronx and northern suburbs — where he still resides when he is not in his Miami Beach condo on Collins Avenue.

Bellomo also has financial interests in construction companies that he uses to repair and refurbish rundown apartment buildings he buys, the law enforcement sources say.

"I'm not saying we can prove he's committed a crime, but there's no doubt that he's the boss of the crime family," said one official, who like all the law enforcement sources, spoke only under a promise of anonymity. He declined to offer any specific details regarding the key aides that help Bellomo manage the affairs of the largest borghata in the city, some 200 or so made men.

During the early 1990s, when Bellomo was the family's acting boss, he amazed then-gangster and wannabe mobster D'Urso with how much he knew about him, according to FBI reports and the recollection of a law enforcement source.

It happened in 1995, a year after D'Urso survived a bullet in the head in a plot allegedly instigated by mob associate Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito. Despite explicit orders not to retaliate, Cookie tried to gun down his nemesis, not once, but twice. The second time, D'Urso wounded his victim.

After Polito was shot, sources say, mobster Ross Gangi pulled D'Urso aside and warned him: "Barney heard about the shooting. He said to tell you if we find out it's you, you got a major problem."

Several attorneys who have represented Bellomo codefendants in his three cases — there were more than 75 all together — say that they never heard Barney raise his voice, that he was always a gentleman during pre-trial and post conviction meetings, and that he is a proud father and rock-solid family man.

A widower — his wife Camille died of cancer in 2013 — Bellomo has three sons and a daughter, Sabrina, who was 16 when her father was imprisoned. She passed the state bar in 2006, quickly joined her father's defense team, and made him proud. She also earned her dad a rare compliment from a sentencing judge, with a moving, emotional plea for her dad, whom she called a "good father," and what his years in prison meant to her and her younger brothers.

"I think the only person that can really relate to the way we feel is a person who's lost a parent," Sabrina said, "because they're the only ones who really know what it feels like not to have that parent beside them for all those moments that are supposed to be special."

She and her brothers "were all at different stations in our lives" and had individual difficulties growing up without having their dad around when they needed him, she recalled.

"One day that was particularly hard for me was my law school graduation," she said. "I remember thinking to myself, 'Oh, my God, daddy missed my high school graduation, my college graduation, and now he's missing my law school graduation.' Days like that make you wish as though they weren't even going to happen because then you won't have to be sad by the fact he wasn't there."

But her youngest brother, Liborio, whose nickname is also Barney suffered the most from his father's arrest, Sabrina said. Young Barney was nine when their dad was arrested. His hurt, she explained, was a nagging and constant reminder of how the whole family continued to suffer.

"My little brother Barney had made him a Father's Day present right before my father was indicted on June 10, 1996," she recalled. "And my dad was gone that Father's Day and every Father's Day since. And that gift still sits wrapped, and Barney still has it, and it's waiting to be opened."

When Bellomo's all grown up 27-year-old daughter returned to her seat, Kaplan turned to the three-time-convicted wiseguy and said: "You certainly have something to be proud of in the young lady sitting next to you."

Attorney Levin told Gang Land he didn't have anything to add to what he stated at Bellomo's sentencing and attorney Bellomo did not respond to a voice mail message. If nothing else, Gang Land hopes the Bellomo family took a picture of Barney opening his 1996 Father's Day Gift in 2008.