January 19, 2017 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

Bonanno Wiseguy Breaks Vow Of Omerta After Traffic Stop

Gang Land Exclusive!Peter LovaglioBonanno crime family wiseguy Peter (Pug) Lovaglio forgot all about his solemn oath of omerta after he was stopped by cops in Staten Island for driving without a license and found to be in possession of a switchblade knife last August 20 at about 3:45 in the morning.

"I'm in the Mafia," Lovaglio allegedly blurted out, according to court papers obtained by Gang Land. "I did 15 years in prison for racketeering. My license is suspended. I'm out on $50,000 bail for a felony assault bar fight, and I have a knife on me for protection in case I get into another bar fight."

Lovaglio gave this bizarre speech to police officer Joseph Perfetto in the Mariner's Harbor section, a commercial area with several ties to the Bonannos. Pug puffed up how much time he spent behind bars, but everything else rings true. The strange exchange between the cop and the hard drinking, always ready-to-rumble 55-year-old gangster has also fed growing concerns — which Gang Land has not been able to confirm — that Lovaglio has wandered even further from the true path of a Mafioso.

Kristin MaceOne usually knowledgeable source on the wiseguy side of the street acknowledged that there has been "a lot of smoke," and questions, revolving around Lovaglio in recent months.

A second, more neutral source, concurred, noting that there have been "quite a few" sightings of FBI agents hanging around Lovaglio's old haunts during the same time frame.

The feds, in the person of assistant U.S. attorney Kristin Mace, a deputy chief of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's organized crime unit, declined all comment about Lovaglio and his dealings with the mob and the law since his release from federal prison in March of 2015. So did Ryan Lavis, a spokesman for the Staten Island District Attorney's office, except to confirm that Lovaglio awaits trial on felony assault charges and is charged in a separate misdemeanor case with driving without a license and possessing a weapon.

His attorney, Patrick Parrotta, would only talk about the two state court cases that are pending in Staten Island, including an indictment charging Lovaglio with blinding a restaurateur in a vicious barroom assault in November of 2015 for which he is scheduled to appear in court today to set a date for trial.

Joseph Cammarano Jr.Sources say the bar fight that Lovaglio admitted to the cop caused him much grief with Bonanno crime family acting boss Joseph (Joe Saunders Jr.) Cammarano, who put Lovaglio "on the shelf" and stripped him of his rights and responsibilities for bringing heat on himself and the crime family in a drunken brawl. The fact that Fred Forte, the restaurant owner and victim of the assault is a retired cop made Pug's actions "even more intolerable," said one source.

And in the months after his arrest, sources say Lovaglio, an acting capo, was very upset about the possibility of having to go back to prison. "I can't go back to jail," he told a former Tottenville neighbor, who hasn't seen him in several months.

But Lovaglio wasn't worried about going back to prison when he was released in early 2015. He moved right back into action, sources say, because his strict post-prison supervised release restrictions had maxed out, and he knew the FBI, which has many fewer agents investigating mobsters these days, couldn't put him back behind bars merely for meeting other wiseguys.

"He knew they would have to make a case against him, and he was too smart for that," said one source.

So, in the months before his arrest, sources say, he had numerous dealings with mobsters from several crime families.

Richard GambaleThe sources say Lovaglio presided over a 2015 sitdown involving a $50,000 dispute between two marijuana smugglers, including a crew member named Anthony Perretti, who was stabbed to death in January of last year after he chased his sitdown-rival and assaulted him with a metal fence post in a South Shore industrial yard near Arthur Kill Road.

According to sources that include court records, published reports, and law enforcement sources, Lovaglio had ruled against Perretti, 43, a few months earlier in a feud he was having with the second alleged pot dealer, Richard Gambale, who was represented in the sitdown by a Gambino wiseguy. Sources say the dispute involved $50,000 of Perretti's money that authorities seized from Gambale when he went to purchase a load of pot from an out of state drug dealer.

Sources say Perretti wanted Gambale, whose own money was also seized, to make good on the cash he had lost, but Lovaglio ruled that since they were partners, and there was no doubt that the money had been seized, it was a cost of doing business and to forget about it.

Anthony PerrettiBut Perretti, a hot head who had served 16 years for a 1995 stabbing death, refused to accept Lovaglio's decision and continued pressing Gambale for his money. Peretti lost his life when Gambale ducked one blow, grabbed him with one arm and stabbed him 22 times with a work knife.

Gambale was originally indicted for murder but those charges were later dropped and he copped a plea deal to weapons charges for which he received an agreed-upon prison term of two-to-six years.

In court, Assistant District Attorney Lisa Davis stated that the guilty plea to lesser charges was justified because Gambale's attorney, Gerald McMahon, had established a viable "self-defense claim" based on the fact that Perretti had chased Gambale, jumped out of his car and struck Gambale in the shoulder with a metal pipe before he pulled out a knife and stabbed Perretti.

Lawyer Parrotta declined to discuss the Gambale case, or his defense strategy in Lovaglio's upcoming trial. But if the case ever goes to trial, he is sure to claim "self-defense."

Patrick ParrottaBack in November of 2015, the attorney told Gang Land that his client "was not the instigator" in the brawl and "was defending himself from the complainant," an ex-cop who was part of a large group of revelers "that was drinking heavily and became rowdy" and were "responsible for starting the altercation."

At the time, Parretta stated that there were "several eye-witnesses" who reported that Forte and his friends "were intoxicated" while partying at the Takayama Sushi Lounge he owned in Tottenville.

The lawyer laughed when Gang Land asked whether Lovaglio had told the arresting officer in August that he was in the Mafia, then quickly added that he never heard that, doubted that it happened, and stressed that his priority was the assault case, for which his client could face up to 25 years behind bars if convicted.

The other case, said Parrotta, "is relatively minor, and manageable. Of course it's important and I'm not dismissing its significance. But certainly our focus right now is on the trial-ready felony assault case. That's what's on my agenda. We're gearing up for it, and we'll be ready for it."

NYPD Honor Legion Lauds G-Men

Philip ScalaFeuds between New York City cops and FBI agents are the stuff of legend in tales of law enforcement in the Big Apple. But there was no sign of those mostly petty beefs last week as retired FBI supervisor Philip Scala and five current and former members of the FBI's Gambino family squad were honored by the NYPD Honor Legion for helping cops solve 36 murders during a long partnership with the police department's Cold Case Squad that began in 1998.

Scala and the agents were each presented a commemorative plaque thanking them for their work by Detective Oscar Hernandez, a longtime member of the Cold Case squad and the President of the Honor Legion, the police department's oldest fraternal organization, which was formed back in 1900.

The Honor Legion, which is composed almost entirely of current and former NYPD cops who have "been awarded medals or Honorable Mention for deeds of valor performed at imminent risk of life, or who have been commended for meritorious acts at personal risk," is expected to induct the six G-men, and three others who did not attend the event, at a later date.

Philip PanzarellaMost of the murder victims were gangsters or drug dealers. But several were not, Hernandez told the 200 cops, other law enforcement officials and family members who attended the special award ceremony at the Rex Manor Catering Hall in Brooklyn, noting that one was a highly decorated court officer, Albert Gelb, who was killed by mobster Charles Carneglia in 1976.

Two other victims, Hernandez said, were Richard Godkin and John D'Agnese, who were shot to death in a 1981 dispute over a spilled drink at the Shamrock Bar in Queens. Carneglia, 70, and capo Bartolomeo (Bobby Glasses) Vernace, 67, who was convicted in 2013 of the senseless barroom slayings, are each serving a life sentence in federal prison.

The joint NYPD-FBI task force also solved the 1992 Christmas Eve slayings of Thomas and Rosemarie Uva, whose daring exploits robbing Gambino and Bonanno crime family social clubs in the early 1990s were brought to life on the big screen in Rob The Mob, a 2014 movie that starred Ray Romano and Andy Garcia.

Honor Legion PhotoHernandez said the task force-partnership approach to solving dozens of mob murders was the brainchild of Scala and retired Detective-Lieutenant Philip Panzarella, the former head of the Cold Case Squad, who decided to work together "for the greater good" without the official approval by either the FBI or the NYPD.

Scala is at the right in the photo. Next to him is his former deputy, Gerard Conrad, who later took over the Gambino squad. Former New York FBI boss George Venizelos, who is next to Conrad, also praised the cooperative effort by the NYPD and the six honored G-men. From left to right are agents Paul Tambrino, Vincent O'Hara, John Janus and Bernardo Curra. Not present, but also cited by Hernandez, are agent Robert Herbster, retired G-men Richard Frankel and Robert Vandette, and David Shafer, the overall FBI organized crime supervisor at the time.

"We showed we could do pretty good work if we put aside our differences and functioned as a team," said Scala, who told Gang Land that while no NYPD detectives were members of his FBI squad, they provided "invaluable help" in many FBI cases, especially from 2005 to 2008, when the feds hit 62 mob-linked defendants, including the hierarchy of the Gambino family, with a huge labor racketeering indictment.

BOP Gives Sonny Franzese An Early Slide, But He's Too Sick To Leave

John FranzeseHis hard-nosed federal jailers changed their minds and decided to give John (Sonny) Franzese a late Christmas present, and let him out of prison on December 27, Gang Land has learned. But the legendary Colombo family wiseguy developed pneumonia and was deemed too sick to be placed into a halfway house. As a result, he is likely to still be stuck behind bars when his 100th birthday rolls around on February 6.

More importantly, according to his son Michael, doctors at the federal prison hospital in Ayers Massachusetts say his dad is on the mend and that the Bureau of Prisons may be able to re-schedule his placement into a half-way house in mid to late February, instead of waiting until his mandatory release date of June 25 before letting him out.

The 99-year-old gangster is believed to be the oldest of the 189,450 inmates in the federal prison system. At last count, 4,654 inmates were over the age of 65, about 2.5% of the prison population. But the BOP does not track how many inmates are over 90, and declined to say whether any inmate was older than Franzese.

Michael FranzeseThe wily old mobster was eligible for a halfway house placement a year earlier, in June of 2016. But the BOP apparently did not view him as a worthy candidate until he was six-months closer to his centennial.

In any event, if Franzese, who developed pneumonia after falling down and bruising his arm and undergoing treatment for that, overcomes his latest illness, he would make good on a pledge he made to the late Jacob Mishler, that he would complete the staggering 50 year prison term that the judge gave him in 1967 for his conviction for overseeing a bank robbery conspiracy in the 1950s.

In 2013, several days before his 96th birthday, Sonny told Michael that he still intended to keep his promise to Judge Mishler and "do the whole 50" years that he gave him. "He told me," said Michael, "that he's not dying until 2017, when his sentence is complete. He's vowing to keep his word to the judge."

Whenever he gets out, Sonny will be $9,838.62 lighter than he was last Christmas, when federal prosecutors in Brooklyn played Scrooge and took it out of his commissary account as payment towards $116,000 in restitution that he owes the government. Sonny's nephew contested that, claiming it was cash he sent his uncle and that the government had no right to seize it. But he threw in the towel in September, and Sonny's got about $250 left in his commissary account.