Buffalo Mafia

The Buffalo New York Mafia family is not written about much and I have only touched on it.

I was told about the family by Jimmy Caci who was originally from Buffalo.  Jimmy had a brother Salvatore “Sam” Caci who was the LIUNA local 210 president for years.  There was also Al Caci and Charlie Caci aka Bobby Milano who were in Palm Springs, California.  I've written in past blogs about the first use of WITSEC in the Buffalo case where Bobby Milano and Fat Stevie Cino were locked up because of Paddy Calabrese.

Stefano Magaddino was born on October 10, 1891, in Castellammare, Sicily.  Because of Stefano there is a Buffalo Family.  Stefano along with his brothers Antonio and Pietro got into a feud with the Buccellato brothers in their native Sicily.  Pietro was murdered by the Buccellato faction and the remaining Magaddinos left for Brooklyn New York.

While in Brooklyn the Buccellato Clan tried to ambush Stefano and killed two innocent bystanders.  Soon after the attempted ambush a couple of Buccellatos were killed and Stefano made his way upstate to Buffalo.  

Stefano was soon taking over rackets in Buffalo and with Prohibition he quickly became an important figure in Organized Crime.  Buffalo is situated so close to Canada that the waterways became a waypoint for smuggled booze.  It was so important that Moe Dalitz made a deal with him to use the waterways to smuggle booze for Cleveland.  

The money was pouring into the family and Stefano was able to send money to Salvatore Maranzano who was in the middle of a war for control of the New York Cosa Nostra.

The Commission was soon formed and Stefano along with his cousin Joe Bonanno were sitting on it.  After the repeal of Prohibition the Buffalo Family branched out into Gambling, Shylocking and Labor racketeering.  They moved into parts of Ohio and Canada expanding the family.  

The FBI claimed there was no such thing as the Mafia until the Apalachin Mafia Summit in 1957.  A few leaders blamed Stefano for the debacle and someone even tossed a grenade through his window.  

In the early 1960’s Stefano’s cousin Joe Bonanno decided to make a move to take control of the Commision and the Cosa Nostra.  He was planning on killing Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese and Stefano himself to gain power.  The Commision found out because Joe Colombo went to a Gambino and they stripped Bonanno of his position.  Some of the family did not want their leader gone so this was the beginning of the Banana War that lasted from 1964-68 until Bonanno had a heart attack.  It was during this war that Bonanno was supposedly kidnapped on orders from Stefano and held captive.  

Bonanno had made a lot of inroads into Canada where Stefano also had crews working.  Even today there is still a rogue faction of the Bonanno family.  They were active during the reign of Big Joey Massino and they were even used when the Capos were killed as portrayed in Donnie Brasco.  

Stefano had began to slow down by late 1960’s giving up control of the day to day running of the rackets to his underboss Fred "Lupo" Randaccio.  

More to come...

The Birth of WitSec

The first known Cosa Nostra turn coat was Joseph Valachi and the US Government ended up building him his own suite after he flipped in FCI La Tuna in Texas. The fact that he lived helped the Government, but they need to be able to dangle an even greater reward for cooperation.  That reward would be Witness Protection. Also known as Witness Security or WitSec and like any Government program there must be that first person to go through and see if it works.  That person happened to be a man named Pasquale "Paddy" Calabrese, a criminal in Buffalo, New York. Paddy was an up and coming armed robber who knew the guys in the Buffalo Cosa Nostra family.  Paddy wanted to impress Frederico "Freddie Lupo" Randaccio, the feared Underboss of the family headed by Boss Stefano Maggadino.

On December 29, 1964 Paddy and two men walked into the Buffalo City Hall and held up the Treasurer’s office.  They fled (after stealing $16,245 in cash and $284,000 in checks) to a waiting stolen car that they would abandon a couple of miles away. The Buffalo police put out an APB but the men got away. Paddy was hiding out when Steve Cino showed up and told him that Soldiers Pat Natarelli and Freddie Lupo wanted to see him. Paddy had gotten their attention and he was to meet them at Pat’s home the following night.  Paddy arrived the next night and Steve and Pat were already there.  They started telling him that the family had some big scores lined up out of town if he was interested. Freddie Lupo arrived and they started laying them out for him.

A man who used to be with the Buffalo Family but was now living in Los Angeles, had started working with the Family there.  The man was Charles Caci but went by his stage name Bobby Milano.  Bobby Milano was a talented singer who had bad timing because it was now the 1960's and he sang ballads much like Frank Sinatra.  Bobby was close to another former Buffalo Crime Family Associate named Louis Sorgi who just happened to be head of security at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Louis Sorgi had two scores set up at the hotel for Paddy. One he was to rob the wife of Penzoil oil Millionaire Walker Mccune of her jewelry worth over $400,000; the other the Armoured Car Service that picked up the cash at the hotel weekly.  They gave Paddy expense money and he hopped a plane for Los Angeles where Bobby picked him up.  A few days later Steve Cino flew into town. They met Louis Sorgi at the hotel where he showed them the suite that Mrs. Mccune always occupied, and then he showed him a tunnel that the armoured car guard used to pick up the days’ cash receipts.  Paddy wondered how he could get inside the suite and a smiling Bobby Milano showed him a pass key that would open every door in the hotel.

The plan was set, but like all things criminal, something big came up. The Buffalo Police had identified Paddy as one of the City Hall robbers and he was wanted. The Underboss ordered Steve Cino back to Buffalo so he would not be found with Paddy. Paddy waited five days and then he surrendered to the Buffalo Police.

Everything seemed to be fine at this point because there was never a robbery and the Buffalo family went on its business. Paddy sat in lock up facing a lot of time but he thought Randaccio would take care of bail and get him a lawyer.  He sat and he went through a number of interrogations by the Buffalo Police and at that time I am sure they were brutal.  No lawyer and no bail came, so he finally gave up the robbery and the planned robberies.  Once Paddy started talking, the FBI and the US Attorney stepped in and decided to move him, his girlfriend and her two children from a previous marriage.

Paddy and his family became the first to be moved in what would morph into the Wittiness Protection Program.  Once they were away safe they arrested Freddie Lupo, Pat Natarelli, Steve Cino and in Los Angeles they arrested Louis Sorgi and Bobby Milano.  One of the things Bobby had on him at his arrest was the passkey to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

They went to trial and Freddie Lupo, Pat Natarelli, Steve Cino got 20 years for violations of the Hobbs Act and other charges,  Bobby Milano and Louis Sorgi both received 10 years from the judge. Paddy was whisked away into the void that would become WitSec.  The story did not end there because the two children that belonged to Paddy’s now wife had a father who wanted to see them.  He tried everything, going to the police, the FBI everyone but he all he got was stone-walled. He finally retained a lawyer and sued the Government.  He tried for many years with the Buffalo family keeping a watchful eye on his progress.

This would become the basis for the book Hide in Plain Sight and later a movie directed by James Caan by the same name.  Years later Jimmy Caci would tell me the story because he hated James Caan because he used the Caci name as the informant in the film.  They were so pissed that Bobby went and spoke to Gene Gotti about it because James Caan supposedly was connected to Andrew Russo in the Colombo Family.  The Mob had many problems at this time and this one fell by the wayside.

Jimmy, Bobby and Stevie are all gone.  The Buffalo guys Freddie Lupo, Pat Natarelli are gone.   Paddy Calabrese the first man in WitSec passed away on October 13 2005 where he had been a Private Investigator.

JIMMY CACI

Dominic Vincent Caci aka Jimmy Caci. Jimmy was the real deal. The last of the true La Cosa Nostra guys on the West Coast. He was the link to the past. That past is now gone. I spent a lot of time with Jimmy. I used to visit him in Terminal Island FCI, Taft, North Las Vegas jail and other places. He taught me a lot and I will never forget him. I spoke to him a month before he passed. he sounded like the same old Jimmy. He asked about my ex-wife Tabitha Stevens and my father who also has passed. Jimmy was one of a kind. He would not cuss in front of a woman, he drew pictures on napkins for kids. He was what the Cosa Nostra used to be. He did a lot of time and in the end he came to realize that it was a dead end life.

I will miss you Jimmy. RIP

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Published:September 4, 2011, 12:00 AM

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Updated: September 4, 2011, 2:15 PM

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Vincent D. “Jimmy” Caci liked to delight little children by drawing pictures for them.

A friend recalled that Caci would sit at a restaurant table, pick up a napkin, sketch a clever little drawing on it, and with a friendly smile, hand it to a kid sitting nearby.

But others saw a more fearsome side of Caci.

Cops say he was a tough-as-nails mobster who specialized in loansharking and shakedown schemes in Buffalo, and later in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Caci, described by associates as one of the toughest mobsters ever to emerge from Buffalo’s underworld, died of an illness last month in Palm Springs, Calif., two weeks after his 86th birthday.

He was quietly buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheektowaga, a low-key farewell for a man who lived a stormy life, rubbed elbows with big-time mobsters and entertainers, and got involved in some high-profile criminal investigations.

“Guys like Jimmy are part of a dying breed,” said Ronald M. Fino, a former Buffalo mob associate and FBI witness who now works as a private investigator in Norfolk, Va. “The guys who ran things in the Buffalo mob back in the ’60s, there’s only a few of them left.”

“He was tough, he was a strong man,” added a Buffalo businessman who knew Caci for decades. “Jimmy was a stand-up guy. He was in and out of prisons all his life and never ratted on anybody.”

Caci’s mob career blossomed after he left Buffalo in the 1970s and became a feared mob leader in Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Las Vegas. Authorities said he was one of a number of Buffalo mobsters who took leadership positions after moving to Nevada or California.

After he was sentenced to 46 months in a telemarketing fraud case in 1996, the California Attorney General’s Office wrote this about Caci in its annual report on organized crime: “Caci’s imprisonment has left an organized crime leadership void in the Palm Springs area, with no one moving in to take his position.”

“Jimmy was very successful after he made the move out west,” Fino said. “People liked him, because if he was your friend, he would help you out and wouldn’t ask anything in return.”

Caci was born in Westfield in Chautauqua County, but was raised on Buffalo’s West Side. His parents, who had nine children, ran a fish market and clam stand.

He got involved with the Buffalo Mafia and in schemes to take over vending machine companies in Western and Central New York.

In 1972, after his arrest for allegedly trying to blow up a vending machine company outside Syracuse, Caci was sentenced to three years in state prison. Police had put the company under surveillance after learning that mob figures had been trying to take it over.

Police said they found dynamite, a blasting cap and a timing device when they arrested Caci and two co-defendants in a field near the company.

While Caci was serving time in that case, he went on trial in Buffalo’s federal court in 1974. In that case, Caci and other alleged mobsters were accused of trying to extort a Binghamton vending machine operator. In that case, Caci was acquitted.

He had some more good fortune in Buffalo’s federal court in 1978, when District Judge John T. Curtin dismissed charges that Caci tried to sell a painting, valued at $18,000, that had been stolen in a Las Vegas burglary.

Prosecutors failed to prove that Caci knew the painting was stolen, Curtin ruled.

In July 1976, Buffalo Police charged Caci and four other men with loitering at a large dice game at a shopping plaza at West Ferry and Grant streets. The disposition of the case was not available last week.

After moving to Palm Springs, Caci returned to Buffalo for a visit in October 1983, but got busted at the Peace Bridge for failing to declare $26,660 he was carrying in his hip pocket. He later was convicted of failing to declare the cash, but details on his sentence also were unavailable last week.

Following a highly publicized California mob probe in 1988, a judge in Los Angeles sentenced Caci to a year in prison, after he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge. One of his co-defendants in that case was Peter Milano, whom police called the boss of the LA mob.

Caci was back in prison in 1996 after his telemarketing fraud conviction. In 1998, federal prosecutors filed a racketeering case that tried to connect Caci to an effort by Buffalo and Los Angeles mobsters to take over mob operations in Las Vegas, but Caci was never convicted of that.

That case ended in April 2001, when a federal judge in Las Vegas sentenced Caci to six months in prison for conspiring to sell counterfeit travelers’ checks.

At that sentencing, Caci — then 75 — asked the judge for leniency, saying he had numerous health problems.

Caci also spoke at that time to a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“When I was a young kid, I was raised not to be an informant . . . That doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong,” columnist John Smith quoted Caci as saying. “When I talk, I might give the impression that I’m a wiseguy, but it’s not true . . . I’m not a criminal. I’m not a gangster. I’m not a Mafia guy.”

Caci had two younger brothers who also were well known in Buffalo’s organized crime circles.

Salvatore “Sam” Caci, a construction worker who was president of Laborers Local 210 during a time when federal agents said it was controlled by Buffalo’s mob, died in 2002. He was 72.

Charles J. Caci, a singer and actor whose stage name was Bobby Milano, died in 2006 at age 69. He was a talented crooner whose friends included Frank Sinatra, Frankie Avalon and Jerry Vale. He was married for many years to actress and singer Keely Smith.

But the entertainer also had trouble with the law. In 1967, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiring to hold up an armored car messenger in Beverly Hills, Calif.

He was sentenced to four months of home confinement in 2001, after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell counterfeit travelers’ checks in Las Vegas.

The Buffalo News made efforts to get comments from Jimmy Caci’s son in Palm Springs, and other family members in Buffalo, but was unsuccessful.

One Buffalo relative of Caci, who answered the telephone at the home of Caci’s sister, said the family does not want to talk about Caci.

“His life is over. ... He did what he did,” the man told a reporter. “He has nieces and nephews who love him. ... Why do you have to bring up all this now?