Recent Take Downs

“Colombo capo gets 12 years for ordering murder while attending grandmother’s wake.”

These were the headlines about Teddy Persico Jr in the New York Newspapers last week.  He really wanted Joe Scopo dead because the guys led by Joe Scopo had tried to kill his father.  So now, Teddy gets his "Do Over," only this time he will be going back home to prison, which has become his home over the years.  I liked Teddy the best out of all those guys, but with friends like Eddie Garofalo, Teddy never had a chance of a real life when he was released.   He will be 62 and still have a 3 year tail after he gets out.  He will have put in 33 plus years!  That means if his family has held onto power until he gets out, he has a chance of becoming Boss.  Maybe he can get a 5 year run before he goes back to his home at an FCI.  Teddy would have had a much better life if he would have just driven a truck.  Teddy just finished a 17 year sentence when he was released.  From the minute he was released he was going back.  He got 4 1/2 more years first, and now, he got another 12 years.  He can thank his buddy Eddie.  

A long time ago I had told the FBI about a place in the Bronx off Pelham called Balsamo's Funeral home.  They took it down and filed it away.  Later they told me they thought some Lucchese used it as a meeting place.  I told them it was a Genovese place, but they said I was wrong.  One guy liked what I told him.  This guy was an investigator from the Orange County California Organized crime squad.  When he went to NY on business, he had some guys drive him by it.  He took some pics with the guys standing around outside near a Social Club and Bodega, they were Genovese.

It took the FBI until February of 2006 to crack that place, but they ended up taking a lot of the Genovese guys down.  The indictment states that they used the funeral home for meetings.  They rolled it up into a large RICO case, which included the murder of Ralph Coppola, for which the FBI blamed Liborio "Barney" Bellomo, the acting boss of the Genovese family.  It was to be a death penalty case, but it fell apart like so many have in recent years.  They had no proof that the crooked lawyer they flipped had ever met Barney, so he took a plea deal and was given one more year.  

Ralph Balsamo was not as lucky.  He was involved in a massive bookmaking operation in Hunts Point Market and the Terminal Produce Market.  They took in over a million in bets.  He was also involved in a large scale drug operation with a group known as the Tanglewood Boys.

When State troopers tried to arrest one of the ring leaders, Michael Londonio, they had a no knock warrant so they kicked the door in and charged inside.

The bedroom door was closed but Londonio opened fire, striking one trooper in the leg and hitting another in his ballistic vest and helmet.  He was killed when they returned fire.  Michael Londonio had made over a million dollars in drug sales in that same month before he was killed.

When Ralph Balsamo was arrested, he admitted to the FBI he knew Londonio and he was surprised they knew about him.  He would later take a plea and get 92 months, which is not a bad deal.  He had a lot of letters from all the charitable work he has done in his pre-sentencing report and he claimed to have bought another funeral home in Mount Carmel where he was going to relocate when he was released.  

We shall see how that plan works out.  You come in alive and leave dead: that is the Cosa Nostra.