New Week, Same Story for the Mafia

I have been writing this blog in one form or another since 2003. First it was Crimeman and then Hollywood Mafia, now Breakshot Blog.  After hundreds of posts nothing much has changed, except that the guys are dying off and their world has grown smaller.

A few weeks ago I went to dinner with two friends, Andrew Didonato and Frank Calabrese Jr. We had a good time reminiscing about old days.  We all have been away from the life for more than a decade.  Some of our old friends are still in the life getting themselves in trouble. Some people never learn and the price they pay is high.  The three of usl agree that life is much better now than when we were in the life. I have spoken to a number of guys who left the life and not one has said he made a mistake to leave it behind him.

This week, several events took place.

Battista (Benny) Geritano, a Gambino associate and part of a bank robbery crew, found himself in trouble yet again.  He is already in prison for stabbing Nunzio Fusco in a Bayridge Brooklyn bar during a fight.  He got off the hook previously when he stabbed a famous pizza maker on the street in Brooklyn.

He is now in Federal court because of threatening letters he sent from prison to commit extortion.  He fired his court appointed lawyer and start asking everyone in the court what role they served in the court.  The Judge ordered him to have a mental health exam.

The Gambinos have some other headlines this week. Two associates were charged in a large scale pain pill ring.  Raymond Raimondi and Vincent Maniscalco and four others were charged with selling thousands of pills.  They filled prescriptions all over Staten Island and Brooklyn, so they could resell the pills. They sold twenty five thousand dollars in pills to undercover NYPD Detectives in front of Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn.

Carmine Avellino is a Lucchese family capo, who along with his brothers helped murder two innocent men in 1994.  Robert Kubecka and David Barstow, owners of an East Northport carting company, had helped the FBI investigate the mafia’s influence in waste hauling business and were shot to death in their office on Long Island.

Avellino plead guilty to a lesser charge that did not include the double murders and did seven years in prison.

He was back to his old tricks in 2010 when he worked with two cousins to put pressure on a man who owed a one hundred thousand dollar debt.  He was arrested in 2014 and last week he was sentenced to one year of house arrest.

Avellino, now seventy one years old, suffers from poor health. Two heart attacks and Parkinson's are just a few of his many ailments.

You have to love these guys who are perfectly able to commit crimes, but then claim sickness so they can stay home.

That wraps up the world of the Mafia for May 2017.  

I will be putting more of my writing efforts into other projects and blogs in the coming months, but I am sure the Mafia will still make headlines!

Patsy Parrello: Genovese Oldfella

The mafia never stops delivering a story. I often wonder what to write about, but every week I have a few fresh stories to choose from.  This week is no different.  

The FBI really screwed up their big mafia takedown that was all the news last summer. They arrested 46 people from various east coast families, all interconnected.  They snared some big fish, like one time Philly Boss Joey Merlino and Genovese capo Pasquale (Patsy) Parrello.  The FBI had some issues with their informant and at least two special agents working on the case.  The majority of those picked up during the sweep have opted to take generous plea bargains offered by the US Attorney’s office.

Parrello is one of those who decided not to roll the dice and plea out this week. He copped to three counts of conspiracy to commit extortion for sending guys to collect his loanshark debts.  He will face between five and six and a half years in federal prison.  This deal is a far cry from the 60 years Parrello was facing for three racketeering counts he was charged with.

The FBI had a confidential human source who was close to Parrello and Merlino.  He recorded hundreds of hours of tape, but they failed to debrief him properly and some other problems came to light.  So rather than lose the case, they group was offered reduced charges.  

Merlino, who has spent a lot of time in prison, has not bitten on the deal as of yet.  Merlino was still on supervised release and did time for a violation while the FBI was making this case.

Parrello, a Genovese family capo and the owner of Pasquale's Rigoletto Restaurant on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, is no stranger to trouble.  In 2001 Parrello was charged in a 98 count indictment of embezzling funds that totaled more than one million dollars from Local 11 and Local 964 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.

He and some other Genovese used S&F Carpentry, a unionized company based in Tuckahoe, N.Y., To pay and use non union workers.  They destroyed payroll records and threatened members of the union if they complained about non union workers on jobs.

He would end up doing a 7 year sentence for that case.  

This case involved having his guys attack a panhandler who was bothering people outside his restaurant. Threatening debtors, running gambling and other assorted scams.

Most people would be happy with just owning Pasquale's Rigoletto Restaurant.  The problem is, Parrello is no normal person, and I suspect if he lives till the end of this sentence it will not be the last we have heard of him.

For any of you who have not been to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, it is worth the trip.  It is the real Little Italy, unlike the three small blocks called that in Manhattan.  Stop by Pasquale's Rigoletto Restaurant, they put out a great plate.

Bonanno Capo Vincent Asaro, known for his involvement in the famous Lufthansa airlines heist made famous in the movie Goodfellas, is a degenerate gambler who lost what little of the loot he got from the robbery.

Last year he beat the case the government brought against him for the robbery and murder.

He is now locked up on another case.  This week the government claimed he wanted to have the federal prosecutor on his case murdered. The Feds do not want him released on bail because he reportedly told another defendant in this case, ‘we need to take care of this bitch,’ and not  to ‘f**k it up like Vinnie.’  He was referring to Vincent Basciano, the boss of the Bonanno family who was taken down by the former boss of the family who recorded him while they were locked up together.

Like I said, the mafia always delivers!

DeCavalcante Family: Still Here For Now

One mafia family that has often been mentioned but tends to remain beneath the shadow of the five New York Families is the Decavalcante family, also known as the New Jersey family.  The FBI claims that it is under the control of the Gambino family.  In the last month or so a number of them have been put away.

The family is named after Simone “Sam” Decavalcante, who took over as boss of the Elizabeth New Jersey faction in 1964. There had been a long string of bosses in the New Jersey area even before Prohibition.  Once Prohibition was in effect there was a lot of money at stake, so they fought a lot of local battles.  When Sam took over the family he consolidated groups and crews, doubling the amount of made men in his family before 1969 when he went to prison.

When he was released, he retired to Florida, remainingl an advisor to the family until the 1990’s. The family has fallen a bit from its heyday. They no longer sit on the Commission and while they work all over the Tri-State area, they do not control rackets like they used to.

One of their soldiers, Jerry Balzano, was caught on video attacking another motorist in a road rage incident a couple of months ago.  Balzano had previously been taken down along with over a hundred other mobsters on Mafia Take Down Day back in 2011.

It seems Jerry and several others smuggled in truckloads of cigarettes and sold them much cheaper as they avoided having to pay the state tax that applied to their sale.  He also helped some guys steal a tax refund check that was worth fifteen thousand dollars.  The indictment also charged him with collecting loan shark loans from a debtor in North Carolina.

He ended up taking a plea for racketeering and serving almost two years in prison.  He was then on supervised release when he was violated for possession of a firearm and sent back to prison for an additional four months.

Four months really does not seem like a lot of time, considering he is a felon.  The new case is all made by him on video and he comes off pretty bad, mostly because of his yelling. It will be interesting to see how much time the judge gives him for this case.

This is the mafia family the Sopranos is supposed to based on, and oddly enough they do behave like a bunch of TV clowns.

This past March, Charles Stango, a capo in the family, pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy and was given ten years.  Six other men, including his son, have all pleaded guilty and are either already serving sentences or will be shortly.

The family has fallen a long way in recent years.  

They used to have a lot of control with the unions for construction projects.  They controlled a number of landfills and other illegal dump sites. In the 1960’s the family ran a twenty million dollar a year gambling business.  Today, they swindle checks and sell cocaine.

Court Updates: Colombo's Persico Denied Appeal & Gambino Connected Former NYPD Gets Off Easy

The escort business business paid off big time this week for Michael Rizzi, a former NYPD officer connected to the Gambino family.  The judge sentenced him to a mere fifteen months in prison.  Rizzi took control of Pure Platinum Models when the former owner, Marc J. Shulman, pleaded guilty to money laundering back in 2015.  The prosecution claimed they had links between Mr. Shulman's holding companies and Michael Rizzi’s BJM company.  BJM catered to big money clients staying at the nicer hotels in Manhattan.  BJM had a dozen drivers to shuttle the girls to clients.

They charged hourly rates between $400-$2000 an hour and offered package deals, for example, $7,200 for twelve hours or $8,400 for fourteen hours. BJM had over two million dollars in credit card charges while in business. This was Rizzi’s second brush with the law since he retired from the NYPD due to a back injury.  He was arrested in a gambling sting and was said to be a super agent by the NYPD Organized Crime Investigation Division.  He was able to plead that case out to misdemeanor gambling.

In other court news, the Colombo boss Carmine Persico, now 83 years old and supposedly, “old and feeble,” had his appeal of his 100 year sentence denied.  Persico had appealed under the old Rule 35, because he was convicted over two decades ago in the Mafia Commission case.  He claimed that his sentence was unfair because he was not given all the evidence, such as Greg Scarpa being an informant. Scarpa had supplied a lot of the information the government used in Persico’s sentencing.  Persico claimed that Scarpa gave them information on murders he was involved in. Scarpa also gave the FBI different accounts of who was boss of the family at the time as did a number of other informants.  Persico claimed he did not have the power to order a hit.   He also fought back against the use of information given to the court by Donnie Brasco aka Joe Pistone.

He cited new information that came to light after Joey Massino flipped to Team USA about the murder of Carmine Galante.  The Government had always claimed the Galante murder was ordered by the Commission, which Persico was a member of at the time. Massino claims it was never Commission business, just Bonanno family business that they conducted.

Carmine Galante made himself the boss of the Bonanno family while the real boss Philip Rusty Rastelli was locked up.  Galante also tried to control the Sicilian heroin traffickers whom he had around him.

The Appeals court did not see that any of the evidence was explosive enough to grant him a resentencing.  He is 32 years into a 100 year sentence and he now is the only remaining person incarcerated who was convicted in the Commission case.

Considering the half a century of mayhem that the whole Persico clan has created in Brooklyn, many would say that Carmine Persico is where he belongs.

The Carmine Galante murder took place shortly after he had finished eating lunch and was enjoying a cigar. A picture taken shortly after he was shot dead in the courtyard of a Brooklyn restaurant shows him with a cigar still clenched in his mouth.

One of the men who was with Galante, but not shot at the time was then 27 year old Baldassare Amato aka Baldo. Baldo was supposed to be one of Galante's bodyguards.  Baldo was convicted in 2006 of racketeering, which included the murders of Sebastiano Di Falco and Robert Perrino.  The murder of DiFalco was carried out because he didn't agree to give up his restaurant.  Baldo is said to have pulled the trigger himself in the Perrino murder after he was lured to a social club.  The Bonanno family was afraid Perrino was going to help with the investigation of the mafia infiltration of the the New York Post newspaper delivery operation.  Perino's body was buried and then reburied, but the FBI still found it.  

Baldo was sentenced to a life sentence and he had tried to appeal claiming that his lawyer did not represent him because he had formerly represented Bonanno boss Joey Massino who later became a witness against him.

The judge recently rejected his appeal and let his sentence stand.

If you read much about guys in the life all this is pretty normal.  Others will take their places and life on the streets will continue moving forward.

Gambino Cash & Escorts

Business on the street keeps moving no matter how many people go down.  There are always others waiting in the wings to step up and replace them.  I wrote before that crime does not pay.  A large number of people disagreed with me and argued that it does indeed pay.   One person posted an article claiming that a crime group made more than McDonald’s.  They missed my point.  It is the toll it takes on the person, I am talking about - the consequences for their family and friends.  It was not the balance sheet I was referring to, it was the fact that there are no real happy endings to the stories involving the Mafia.

Michael Rizzi an ex-NYPD officer who branched out into the lucrative business of escort services.   Rizzi went before a judge this week for sentencing.  He told the judge that he initially started off with a completely legal escort service, and it grew out of hand.  The judge laughed at him.  Rizzi has plead guilty to laundering money from the illicit sex workers and is awaiting his sentencing.  He had over two million dollars in credit card charges from October 2012 until May of 2016.

The escort girls went on dates for up to two thousand dollars an hour. The judge did not believe that anyone would pay that amount of money for dinner.  Rizzi is on a disability pension from the NYPD and he also owns an adult store.  Rizzi controlled over eighty adult websites and the parent company BJM-Manhattan Stakes and Entertainment.

There were some customers of the escort service that had spent over one hundred thousand dollars with the service. A few that paid in excess of twenty five thousand for one night.  In 2009, Rizzi was taken down in Queens because of his involvement with a mafia backed sportsbook.

Rizzi had married into the Gambino crime family.  His wife Jill is the daughter of Gambino soldier Richard Juliano Jr., and the niece of Gambino capo Joseph "Sonny" Juliano.

Sonny has a long history with gambling, loan sharking and adult businesses.  When I first began spending time in NYC, he was said to control some Manahatten stripbars.  He also had some large loans out, including some documented in a book that were photographed for the FBI.

Sonny was arrested in a 2003 gambling case was based in Albany, New York. The business had over ninety runners who picked up bets and paid out.  They also had a huge numbers business that was based on race track handles and state lotto numbers.  The business netted over three million dollars a year, yet Sonny claimed only one hundred and six dollars of income on his 2000 income taxes.

It is laughable that the Attorney General at the time was Eliot Spitzer, who served two terms in that office before being elected governor.  He had to step down as governor when he was caught paying for high end escorts.

It was alleged that he spent over eighty thousand dollars on the escort, including some campaign funds.

Sonny took a plea deal in his case and was given 1-1/2 to 4-½ years in state prison.  He forfeited $550,000 in gambling cash and paid $37,000 in taxes.

Richard plead guilty and face two to four years in prison.

Michael Rizzi will face up to four years next week.

So how does crime pay?

April 2017 Mafia Court Tales

In the real world, as opposed to the make believe world of Hollywood, most defendants facing charges never go to trial.  97% of federal defendants take plea deals. In state court, 94% take deals.

Considering these facts, it comes as no surprise that some of the Bonanno family defendants that have been held for four years with a deadlocked jury, facing retrial, chose to take a deal.

Anthony Santoro, Vito Badano and Ernest Aiello all plead guilty on April 7, 2017. They had been charged with enterprise corruption, loansharking, bookmaking and drug sales.  They sold Viagra and Cialis to customers.

They are all in a crew that is overseen by Bonanno capo Nicky Santora, who did not plead guilty.

The NYPD had their phones tapped and had placed a bug in Nicky Santora’s car.  Anthony Santoro was caught on tape threatening people and running the bookmaking operation.  He would freeze customers accounts, set credit limits and handle the day to day business.  

Anthony Santoro, also known as “Skinny,” took a gamble and went to trial.  He is a funny, personable guy, and there ended up being a mistrial.

This time he decided to take a plea deal.  He pleaded out to attempted enterprise corruption and will forfeit $45,900.00.  He is facing a sentence of 4 to 8 years, according to the deal.  He also still has an 8 month federal sentence to serve for another gambling case in Connecticut.

Vito Badano and Ernest Aiello also plead guilty to attempted enterprise corruption and face 3-7 and 2-4 years in prison.

In other mafia news, Gregorio Gigliotti, the owner of the Queens restaurant Cucino a Modo Mio, was sentenced to 18 years for his part in a smuggling group that brought 120 kilos of cocaine into the United States hidden in a food shipment.  Gregorio had ties to the Ndrangheta in Italy and his son Angelo had ties to the Genovese family in New York.  

Gregorio’s wife Eleonora has plead guilty to conspiracy for her role in the group, which included transporting cash to Central America for the cocaine.  She is still awaiting sentencing.  

Angelo will face a judge for his sentencing.

In yet more mafia news, Joey Merlino, also known as “Skinny Joey,” who was and may still be the boss of the Philadelphia crime family, has been offered a plea deal along with the other 45 men arrested in his case.

It has been said that they took the racketeering charges away from many of those charged and offered them a very good deal instead.

They had to do this because the FBI agents who handled informant John Rubio, a Genovese associate, did not debrief him correctly, or record him.  Two of the agents and a supervisor are also being probed for leaking confidential information to Gangland News.

Who knows if Joey Merlino or Genovese capo Pasquale “Patsy” Parrello will take the deal or push for trial.  Only time will tell.  

Merlino had just been released from supervision for 2001 conviction in Philadelphia.  He was released from prison in 2011 after which he moved to Florida, where he was going straight running a restaurant.  Most of these new charges take place while he was serving his 3 years of supervised release.

These guys never seem to learn that crime does not pay.

Dirtnap for a Corrupt Mafia Cop

This week saw the demise of a man who, in my opinion, is worse than any other mobster I have written about on this blog.  John Gotti, Nicky Scarfo and Gaspipe Casso were all bad guys, no question.  Those men were mafioso and lived their lives accordingly: criminals who would lie, steal, cheat and murder according to the code they lived their lives by.  

Stephen Caracappa, on the other hand, was an NYPD detective who sold his badge to the Lucchese crime family. Why Stephan and his partner in crime fellow detective Louis Eppolito did not receive the death penalty is beyond me.  These two rogue detectives were sworn to uphold the law and they were responsible for good of the public.  Instead, they betrayed everyone in uniform as well as every citizen of this country.  They cost the taxpayers 18.4 million dollars in lawsuit settlements alone, and that is not where the damage they dealt ended. They murdered, or had a hand in the murders of, at least seven people, including one completely innocent man.

On April 8, 2017 Stephen Caracappa died of cancer.  He died in Butner, FCI where they house sick criminals like Carmine Persico and others.  

Caracappa not only sold information to Gaspipe Casso and the Luchese family, he committed murder for him. In 1990 he and his partner pulled over Gambino Edward Lino on the Belt Parkway and they shot him.  They dropped off another man they kidnapped so that he could be tortured.

They also sold bad information to Gaspipe that resulted in the Christmas day murder of Nicholas Guido, an innocent man who was just showing off his new car.

Guido happened to have the same name as one of the men who shot at Gaspipe Casso when they tried to murder him.  The Guido they were seeking had fled the state in fear of being found.  

Diamond dealer Israel Greenwald got into trouble with the mafia in 1985 when he traveled to Great Britain to help a friend purchase some treasury bills.  He thought the deal was an honest one.  When he returned, the FBI questioned him about his business.  Burton Kaplan, a drug dealer connected with Gaspipe Casso, hired Caracappa and Eppolito to find him and murder him so he could not talk to the FBI.

The two law enforcement officers used police databases to find out Greenwald's address and the kind of car he drove.  They pulled over his car, flashed their badges and told them they were taking him in for a hit and run.  They took him to a Brooklyn warehouse where they murdered and buried him.  Greenwald was not found for twenty years and his family had been left to wonder what became of him.

Greenwald's family lost everything because they could not prove he died.  The last they saw him when he left for work.  Caracappa had appealed his case and just recently asked a judge to grant him release because he was dying of cancer.   The judge rightly told him there was nothing he could do for him.

New Jersey Fun with the DeCavalcantes

The FBI still goes after Cosa Nostra or mafia families, and in the last few years they have hit the New Jersey-based DeCavalcantes pretty hard.

Last week a judge gave Charles “Beeps” Stango, a capo in the DeCavalcante family, ten years in a case that included murder-for-hire.  

The DeCavalcante crime family is the crime family that the show Sopranos was loosely based on.  Law enforcement now claims that they operate under the Gambino crime family. I laugh out loud when I think about the Sicilians, who run the Gambinos, actually wanting to deal with a bunch of American Cosa Nostra.

Beep’s crew engaged in everything from bookmaking, to loansharking, to selling cocaine and untaxed cigarettes.  The FBI was watching them and intercepted some good wire talk about their drug deals.  One of the conversations they were able to record was one of Beeps talking about the structure of the family and who did what.  It is a very damning recording.  He explains that he goes way back with Goombah Frankie, aka Frank Nigro, who was also taken down in the investigation.  Nigro also happens to be the consigliere of the family.  

Beeps explains to the informant who made the recording what place the consigliere holds in the family.  Equal with the underboss, but a representative of all the men.  

He goes on to explain that if you have a beef, you go to your capo, who takes it to the consigliere, who will settle the dispute.

This is where he tells the informant that the family is under the Gambinos now after being independant since the beginning.

Beeps brags about “planting the family flag,” or setting up crews, in New Orleans, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Beeps then had a beef with another capo and another made guy in his crew.  He told the informant that they were disrespectful to him and the underboss.  He wanted the guy hurt, acid thrown in his face or put in a wheelchair.  

He wanted the informant to use a crew from outside Elizabeth, New Jersey that would not be recognizable to the locals.  He considered throwing “pineapples” (grenades) to blow up the guy.

The informant found two unknown outlaw bikers who would do the job.   Beeps offered them fifty thousand dollars to handle the guy.  This time he wanted him dead and he told them.  He also told his son on the phone, and Nigro, while it was being recorded.

The recordings go on and on about setting up the murder and why.  They are between Beeps and Nigro, Beeps and his son and many with the informant. The two would-be hitmen would later turn out to be undercover FBI agents.  

They recorded a meeting at a bar with his son Anthony and two females, where they discussed starting a high end escort business.  They went over paperwork the girls would sign stating that they would not commit illegal acts.  Beeps wanted his son to open a bar as a front for the business.

The informant also did a couple of ‘buy walk’ cocaine deals.  A ‘buy walk’ is when law enforcement buys illegal drugs, pays for them, and lets the dealer go about business.  This is different when law enforcement does ‘buy busts’ and takes everyone down at the time of the deal.  They did a couple of deals with Anthony for two hundred grams of cocaine to strengthen the case against him.  Then the FBI upped the amounts to five hundred gram deals.

The informant got some great tapes of them discussing where they got the cocaine from and how it was brought into the country.

The six others arrested with Beeps Stango have all plead guilty and will be sentenced.

In the old days, a capo would be insulated from street dealings - and forget about having to “hire out” a killing.  The guys in any mafia crew would not get paid to murder - they just did what they were told to do.  Old age and repeated government assaults have weakened the family.

I doubt Beeps Stango will ever be a play on the street again.

Crime never pays, you will always get what's coming.  The latest made guy to find that hard truth out is Bonanno crime family soldier Ronald Giallanzo.   A lifetime criminal who has been with the Bonannos for over 16 years, Giallanzo been involved in everything from stock schemes to bookmaking.  

In fact, he was arrested along with my old friends John Baudanza, Little Craig Marino and Jerry Degerolamo in 2006 when they were busted for their stock pump-and-dump business.

They stole more the 20 million dollars with their penny stocks.

They used familiar sounding stocks to draw victims to buy them.  They had names like, America's Hedge Fund, Orex Gold Mines Corporation, Legends Sports and Motorsports USA, so you can see how people, mostly a lot of retired senior citizens, would fall for it.

They controlled over 20 brokerage houses where they paid brokers commission, over 25%, to push these so called “house stocks.”  The bonuses were paid in cash because most of these businesses brought in little or no revenue.

Giallanzo’s life of crime seemed to pay off. He made millions over the years, managing sportsbooks for the family.  

He was among those caught by the FBI going to a Bonanno family Christmas party a few years back.  He and most of the others were still on parole, and they had “do not associate” rules in effect.

The FBI set up and used video and still pictures to get a number of the mobsters violated.

Giallanzo had to go before a judge because he still had time on his parole.  The US Attorney wanted him to serve 2 years for the violation.

Giallanzo’s lawyer argued that the same judge had given other men in similar situations a year and a day.  The judge ended up giving him a year and a day.

The Federal government now wants their pound of flesh, so they served Giallanzo legal papers to seize his Queens home.  It's a nice 3,500 square foot home on 86th in Howard Beach.  

It is owned on paper by his wife, but the Feds claim the money to construct, remodel and purchase all came from criminal proceeds. The seizure laws are in favor of the government, because anyone that faces seizure of property must prove that it is not from illegal activity.

Last year Giallanzo’s Uncle Vincent Asaro, who was part of the crew that robbed Lufthansa airlines for 6 million in cash, was acquitted on those charges and murder.  Yet Vincent Asaro and the rest are marked men.

Theodore Persico Sr aka Teddy passed away this week.  He was the brother of imprisoned Colombo family boss Carmine Persico.  He was a capo and part of the ruling panel for the Colombos.  He was also one of the point men during the civil war in the 1990’s.  He was one of the reasons his son Teddy Jr. was so eager to give the go ahead to murder Joe Scopo.  Teddy Jr. gave the order while attending his grandmother's funeral in Brooklyn while on furlough from prison.  

I will write more on Teddy Sr next week.

Bonanno Family: Locked Up Again

The FBI hit the Bonanno family with another big indictment this week. This time they took down ten guys with a 37 count indictment.  The Bonannos just cannot seem to get a break from the FBI.  Ronald Giallanzo aka Ronnie G has been a high roller for awhile, and the Feds were already moving to seize his home in Howard Beach, Queens.

Ronnie G was involved in pump and dump stock scams with my old buddy John Baudanza who is a Lucchese guy. He has made a lot of money from running sportsbooks and a large loan sharking book.  The Feds want to take in excess of twenty six millions dollars he has made over the years with gambling and loan sharking.

They claim at one point he had over three million dollars in loans out on the street.  They also had to make a big deal out the fact he kept running his loan sharking business while he was locked up in federal prison. I guess it is hard for some feds to fathom that a guy going away for a short time will not walk away from his business.

They are charging him with running a sportsbook way back in 2005.  I still do not know how I feel about arresting people for loan sharking. I understand that it is against the law. But why do they only enforce certain federal laws and not others?  

I have written about loan sharking before, and I still do not understand why they must protect people from their own bad decisions. Loan sharks never force a debtor to take their money and spend it.  The debtor seeks them out and asks for the loan.  In return, they agree to make certain  payments.

It is like the so called “predatory lending banks” with home loans.  No matter how a bank writes up the paper work and what it entails, the debtor is the one with the choice whether or not to agree and sign.

I do not gamble, but I used to be involved in sportsbooks.  We never forced anyone to place a bet.  The one thing I do understand is why the feds get involved when the bookie threatens his debtors.

Ronnie G and three other Bonanno soldiers are indicted in this case.  They claim Ronnie G is an acting capo. Michael Padavona, Michael Palmaccio and Nicholas “Pudgie” Festa are soldiers in the family.  

Ronnie G would give Michael Padavona, Michael Palmaccio and Nicholas “Pudgie” Festa cash at low interest rate to put out on the street.  They would collect on the loans and pay him every week.

One time Ronnie G and another Bonanno associate grabbed a guy, threw him into a car and beat him over a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan.  The guy was so afraid he pissed his pants.

Another time, Ronnie G and Michael Padavona wanted to deal with a guy who robbed their crew, so they had guys out looking to kill him.  They even exchanged shots with the guy in 2006 on the streets of Howard Beach for a few months.  

The indictment charges all the guys with a lot of racketeering acts, ranging  from selling drugs to robbery.

Just last week they charged Vincent Asaro, Ronnie G’s uncle, with more crimes after he beat them in the decades old Lufthansa robbery case.

The FBI seems to have a lot of great informants placed in the Bonanno family.  I am sure they have them in all the families right now and soon we will know. A Bonanno capo has flipped, so there should be more indictments in the pipeline.

This is their life, but does crime really pay?

Oldfella, Lufthansa and John Gotti

Anyone who has seen the movie Goodfellas will know about what happened on Dec. 11, 1978.

That was when a group of masked men forced their way into the secured cargo building of Lufthansa Airlines and stole 6 million in cash and jewels.  One of the men who was part of the conspiracy was Vincent Asaro, the Bonanno family capo in charge of their airport rackets.  He received very little of the cash and what he did take home, he lost gambling.

He has taken down some big scores over the years and made money with the family.  He has been promoted, demoted and promoted again because of his habits.  He involved his son Jerome in the life - they are both capos.

Vincent Asaro took a huge gamble in 2015 and took his case to trial.  Despite his cousin Gaspare Valenti wearing a wire and testifying against him, he was acquitted in 2015.  He walked free until this week.

Here is one of the crimes Vincent Asaro was charged with this week. In April of 2012, Asaro was in Howard Beach, Queens when another motorist pulled in front of him at a stoplight.  This pissed him off so he chased him until he could figure out where he lived.  All one has to do is take a look at Asaro’s picture and you can imagine how he drives. Asaro drives an associate of the Bonanno family to where the car is parked in the Broad Channel section of Queens.  He then orders the associate to torch the car.  The associate then recruits two men to help him, Matthew Rullan aka Fat Mat and none other than John J. Gotti.  Can you believe the grandson of the former Gambino family boss, John Gotti, is going to torch a car for an aging Bonanno family capo?

The unnamed associate, whom I suspect as flipped, drove with John Gotti in his Jaguar to a service station where they filled up a container with gasoline.  They doused the car and Fat Matt ignited it.  The problem was, there was an NYPD officer in an unmarked car who watched them torch the car.  The NYPD car chased the Jaguar for a short distance before giving up the chase because it was dangerous.

Asaro then made the associate drive him the next day to the place where the burned out car was taken to confirm the job was done.  Imagine that you are a capo in one of the five New York Mafia families, and you are involved in torching a car for cutting you off in traffic.

It gets better.  Two weeks after the arson, John Gotti, Fat Matt and a man named Michael Giudici decide to rob the bank where John Gotti’s girlfriend is a teller.

On April 18, 2012 Michael Giudici walks into Maspeth Federal Savings and Loan Association at 5:45pm before they close.  He walks up to a teller and hands a note over that says, “I Have A Bomb.” The teller places $5,491 in cash on the counter, which Giudice takes and then flees the bank.  John Gotti and Fat Mat are waiting and they all drive away.

These master criminals walked away with only $1830 dollars a piece, that is, unless they also had to kick some of that up to someone above them.  They now face up to 20 years for that small payday.  John Gotti is already locked up in prison for eight years for being caught selling pills.  

Vincent Asaro is facing less time, but I suspect the Feds will be hitting him with more charges soon.  A Bonanno capo was unmasked as cooperating, and at this point nobody knows for just how long he’s been cooperating.

Merlino's Luck

Joey Merlino, the flashy former boss of the Philadelphia crime family, is one of the luckiest mobsters in the mafia.  Merlino has survived numerous assassination attempts and gotten away with murder.  He has done a lot of time, but none that took him off the streets for good.  He has lived a charmed life with lots of toys.  

He was out in Los Angeles and even made it on TMZ at the airport with Howard Stern wack packer Johnny Fratto. I wonder if he actually got one of these wannabe Hollywood types to buy his life’s rights?

Merlino might have hit the prosecutorial lottery in his latest case.  Merlino, along with 46 other members and associates of the mafia, were picked up on charges ranging from illegal gambling to medical fraud in 2016.

The problem is with the informant in the case, John Rubeo, a former Genovese associate.

John Rubeo recorded over 800 conversations with various mobsters including Merlino.  

The problem is, John Rubeo erased a lot of the conversations.  

I have nothing for respect for the FBI.  All the agents I ever had dealings with were consummate lawmen.  They were all by the book and kept their word to me.

I wore two wires most of the time, really small MP3 recorders hidden in things like my watch. It only had an on switch and there was no speaker.  I recorded and dropped them off and then was given new ones everyday. All my calls I recorded through their system and I had no access to the system.  My car was wired, and again I only had an on switch.  I had to meet my handlers and there were always two of them, a couple times a week.  They would debrief me and write it down for 302’s.  I used to forward text and emails via email daily.  I wonder how was it possible for Joph Rubeo to delete any conversations.  How did they not properly debrief him?

Two agents and their supervisor are in hot water over the lapses.

It is possible that Merlino and the 46 others including a Genovese underboss and capo could walk free.  It does leave a huge hole in the case, because as defendants they are entitled to all the evidence even that which maybe exculpatory.

If evidence has been destroyed, how could they possible have a fair trial?

Joey Merlino may actually walk on this case and his life rights could turn into another really bad Hollywood mafia movie.

NYPD Assistant Chief Edward Delatorre, is one of the best real estate investors in New York.

This guy is so good that he was able to get four properties that belonged to various Bonanno family members, including Vinny Basciano and Dominick Cicale, located in the Bronx, at below market rates.

I wonder why he even bothers to work for the NYPD anymore.  A company owned by his wife bought a lot that at one time had a home on it where the Bonanno’s had an initiation ceremony.  The home belonged to Cole's mother.  The home is gone and the lot had a 990,000 dollar loan against it.  Delatorre's wife’s company bought it and sold it to an LLC owned by Delatorre.

Much like many of today’s political elite, these people are excellent investors!  Just look at some of the people in Congress and Senate who never hold a private sector job, yet leave office with millions in the bank.  Why do they not share their investment secrets with us regular people?