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.