Did Philly have guys operating in NY? And what were if any, Bruno's rackets or business interests outside of Philadelphia?
In the 1970s, Antonio Caponigro backed a monte game in the Bronx in the back of a garage on 181st Street run by Joseph Licata. Licata was also in charge of Caponigro's shylock money to drug dealers who played in the monte game as well as six-figure loans to guys from the garment district. The monte game moved to Mulberry Street in the late-1970s and partnered with a couple of Gambino captains. Businessmen, artists, wiseguys and drug dealers would bet at the game. Caponigro's brother-in-law Alfred Salerno owned a jewellery booth in the diamond district in Manhattan.
In the 1980s, George Fresolone briefly moved the wire room for his bookmaking operation to an apartment in Manhattan and then to Queens until they got busted.
Joseph Sodano was partners with the Gambino family in some gambling business in New York and had connections to Frank LoCascio and John Gotti.
John Praino was a high-stakes Bronx bookmaker who came to the North Jersey crew of the Philadelphia family for protection from the other families. Praino just wanted to be left alone and had to be talked into being straightened out in 1990.
