Originally Posted By: gangstereport
Originally Posted By: Blackjack2121
Originally Posted By: CabriniGreen
Who did the Gambinos meet with? Them being, who exactly? Merlino, or Ligambi? Or someone else?


[b]Probably the same group of people that were caught on tape with Stefanelli

If that is true they have met multiple times, they must have some joint real estate rackets or something else going on

It seems they answer to the Gambinos rather than the Genovese like they used to.,I wonder when that changed


i am not sure i think that meeting was really about the philly mob asking for help because the lucheses were moving in on terriorty and they also discussed the decavancte family

Then again the whole gambino administration was there look at this old gangland article[/b]

Gambino capo Alphonse Trucchio will soon be hit with as many as 10 years behind bars for drug dealing. He’ll have a lot of time to reflect on the good old days, and to think even harder about those who helped put an end to them.

One moment will be easy to remember, providing the Bureau of Prisons allows him to bring this picture with him into stir. As you can see, it’s from 2009 when Trucchio – a second generation wiseguy – threw a Christmas party for his crew.

That’s Trucchio, five big guys from the left, in the gray suit with his left hand on the shoulder of the smiling mob associate crouching beside the cocktail table filled with what look like choice beverages. The guy on the far left of the snowflake-laden card, the one still waiting for the holiday spirit to strike, is Trucchio’s right-hand-man, soldier Michael (Roc) Roccaforte.

Trucchio had good reason to smile. The young mobster had recently been promoted to capo. This made him the head of the Queens-based moneymaking crew once led by his imprisoned-for-life father, Ronald, a contemporary of late mafia boss John Gotti.

But the widest grin seems to be on the shortest man in the group. He’s standing two over from Roccaforte, the only one toasting the occasion with a drink in his hand. That’s mob associate Howard Santos and he’s got a secret reason to smile: He was wearing a wire for the FBI that day. The secrets he recorded helped launch the Mafia Takedown Day arrest of Trucchio, Roccaforte and 19 others on racketeering and drug trafficking charges.

Another moment for the capo to remember came a few months later, when Trucchio took part in a rare mob summit meeting with the boss of the Philadelphia crime family.

The May 2010 sitdown, Gang Land has learned, took place in an undisclosed New Jersey restaurant. The meeting between leaders of the two crime families included wiseguy John Gambino, a key member of a ruling panel that was running the Gambino family at the time, according to recently filed court papers.

Roccaforte, whose own plea deal calls for the same 121 months maximum as Trucchio, also attended the conference.

At the session, Philly mob boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi and his top aides sought help in resolving ongoing issues they had with the Luchese family and with the so-called real Sopranos, the Newark based DeCavalcante clan that has been viewed as subservient to the Gambinos since the heyday of the late Dapper Don.

The reason we can report this is because the conversation was taped by another turncoat wiseguy, Nicholas (Nicky Skins) Stefanelli, the Gambino soldier who began cooperating with the FBI when he and his son were nabbed for drug dealing. Stefanelli’s stint as an informant ended with a bang, as Gang Land reported three months ago: Just days before the feds were to end the undercover aspect of his work and prepare him to testify against mobsters and associates from eight Mafia families in six states, Nicky Skins shot and killed the informer who gave him up to the FBI, and then committed suicide.

But his tapes live on, and the one he recorded on May 19, 2010 should become a Gang Land classic. On it, Gambino, an aging Sicilian-born cousin of family patriarch Carlo Gambino, and Philadelphia capo Joseph (Scoops) Licata, and the then-33-year-old Trucchio are heard commiserating about the inroads the feds have made against them in recent years, and some of the things they should do to avoid their own returns to the big house.

“We still got to stay with the old rules,” said Licata, 70. “If you don’t know the families, the grandmothers, the grandfathers, forget it….If you don’t know them a lifetime, or somebody good recommends, there ain’t nothing you can do.”

The 71-year-old Gambino agreed, and stressed the need to be very careful about who gets inducted into the family. “The only way to survive: You need quality, not quantity,” he said.

“Guys made it about money,” chimed in Philly wiseguy Louis (Big Lou) Fazzini, 45. “It’s not about money, it’s about brotherhood,” he said.

“Money clouds people’s judgment,” agreed Trucchio, who allegedly made millions of dollars heading up drug dealing scams over the past decade and has agreed to forfeit $100,000 as part of his plea deal. “That’s what gets people locked up,” he added.

“The green-eyed monster,” noted Licata, according to the papers filed last week by Philadelphia prosecutors in a successful effort to detain the two mobsters as dangers to the community.

“During the meeting,” prosecutors wrote in recently filed court papers, “Licata bragged that he was incarcerated with a former boss of the Gambino family and predicted to members of the Luchese and Genovese families that he would become a rat,” an apparent reference to John (Junior) Gotti. Licata and the former acting Gambino boss, who stymied four federal juries by admitting his wiseguy status but insisting that he had quit the mob, were inmates at Ray Brook federal prison in upstate New York from 1999 to 2003.

Licata also wondered aloud about the fate of John Gambino and the other members of the three-capo panel that was running the family when “the old leaders,” namely Joseph (Jo Jo) Corozzo, his brother Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo and Little Nick’s longtime partner-in-crime, Leonard DiMaria were “released from prison.”

No reply by the Gambino contingent is noted in the court papers, but Licata was probably saying nice things about the Corozzos and DiMaria because he knew that Nicky Skins, a Newark resident, was proposed for membership by them and was in a crew that was then headed by an acting capo handpicked by the Corozzo contingent.

If they’re smart, all three should thank the mob gods they were in prison while Nicky Skins was wearing his wire, and look to retire. Nick will be 80 when he gets out in 2020. Jo Jo, 70, is unlikely to get out for another five years, assuming he agrees to a plea deal to his still pending racketeering case. Lenny, 71, just got out and has three years of supervised release ahead.

Sources say Gambino capo Daniel Marino was slated to attend the confab, but couldn’t when he was hit with racketeering and murder charges a month earlier and detained without bail. Like the Corozzo group, Marino, 71, should be looking to get a retirement package when he is released in 2014.


GR or anyone really, which faction or crew or whatever you want to call it likely has the most made guys in it? If I'm guessing, I would say Ligambi/Merlino?

Also, why is it that Ligambi and Merlino are different factions? I mean uncle joe was made acting by Joey, they clearly get along just fine, if anything I could see maybe 3 factions,but does anyone know why they are distinguishing Uncle joe and skinny? IMO Skinny is the boss, Uncle Joe is acting theyre one in the same faction with Stevie as the street boss or UB and johnny chang and his pops as consigs

"No, no, you aint alrite Spyder you got alotta fuckin problems"