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?