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!

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.

The Purple Gang and Michael Meldish

There have been few hits ordered or carried out by any of the five new york Families in the last few years.  They had a moratorium on murder because of all the heat it causes.

Vinny Basciano as temporary boss of the Bonanno family ordered  Randolph "Randy" Pizzolo murdered and it caused him all kinds of trouble.  The Boss Joey Massino wore a wire on him and got him to admit his part in it.

Michael Meldish controlled a group of crazy thugs called the Purple Gang that were aligned with the Lucchese, Genovese and Bonanno families.  They took their name from the Prohibition Era gang also known as the Purple Gang or the Sugar Gang that operated in the Detroit area. A lot of former members have been absorbed into some of the five families. They controlled a lot of the drug trade in Harlem and the Bronx during the 1970-80’s. Meldish was also believed to have carried out at least 10 hits during that time.  Others talk about his involvement in many more murders.

It can be no surprise that Michael Meldish was murdered after getting out of prison and returning to his old ways.  He was found shot to death in his car in November 2013 in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. He was in the passenger seat after being executed by a passenger.  

The list of people who wanted him dead is long because he pissed off many powerful people over the years.  It is being said that the underboss of the Lucchese family Matty Madonna may get wrapped up in this murder.  Michael Meldish was said to run errands for him, but they had a falling out.  I hear Michael Meldish didn't care what anyone said and he wanted to do his own thing.  It is all about cocaine and who controls Westchester and Bronx cocaine territory. It is being said that it was being mostly run by (westside) Genovese guys at this point.  

What I have heard is that the Lucchese family got the Genovese family's okay to take out Michael Meldish. The only problem is the guy who is charged, Christopher Londonio, killed him only a block away from where some Genovese guys like Ralph Balsamo, Patty Falcetti and others hang their hats.  The Genovese might have given their blessing, but no way did they want it around them.  Sounds like Londonio might have some problems if he gets out of this situation.  

Londonio is going to have to use all the good will he has with Matty Madonna if he is ever on the street again.

Londonio could always blame it on the guy who law enforcement claim pulled the trigger, Terrance Caldwell, an associate.  Caldwell is also charged with shooting a Bonanno guy,  Enzo “The Baker” Stagno, in the chest, but he lived.

These guys were active and brought in cash for the family.  Look at the price drugs cost everyone.  You deal with low lifes and loose cannons that go to guns and start slinging lead at the drop of a hat.

The future of the Mafia is with crimes like gambling, loan sharking and fraud.  

Crimes that draw less attention.  The headlines are not so big when it's just a gambling bust with no bodies.

Rudy Giuliani

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been in the news lately because of his support of Donald Trump.  Most people know him as the mayor of New York City during the  9-11-2001 attacks by Islamic terrorists.

Rudy, as he is known, was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

He would become famous for prosecuting Wall Street insiders Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for insider trading.

One of the more famous cases was the Mafia Commission case.

The Mafia Commission was formed by Charles “Lucky” Luciano and the other heads of families in 1931.  They did it to stop the fight over who would be the boss of bosses.  The Commission approved who was boss of a family and set rules.  They also controlled a concrete club that took a peice of any building project that used more than two million in concrete.  

It was called the concrete club.  When a new boss took over the family they would send word to the Commission.  In 1981 when the boss of the Los Angeles family went away, Pete Milano became acting boss.  In 1984 he assumed the boss position and named his brother Carmen underboss. Carmen had worked in Cleveland as a lawyer and he knew all the guys in New York.  Carmen went to New York with some other Los Angeles guys to let the Commission know that Pete was the boss.  They approved it.  

Every boss had the same power, but the commission would settle disagreements between families. They also ordered murders like Bugsy Siegel, who stole money while building the Flamingo casino in Las Vegas.

They had a few moments when they were exposed.  One of those was the Apalachin meeting in 1957 that was raided by the local police.  

Rudy decided to crack down on the Mafia leadership instead of just settling for a few of the lower ranking members.  He used the RICO Act to bring them down.  The FBI had been able to infiltrate the Bonanno family with Donnie Brasco aka Special Agent Joseph Pistone.  He saw the civil war in the family from the ground level.  

They also were able to bug Paul Castellano, the boss of the Gambino family's home.  They bugged the Palma Boys Social Club where the front boss of the Genovese family, Fat Tony Salerno, held court every day.  They were able to bug the boss of the Lucchese family, Tony “Ducks” Corallo, in the car he was driven in everyday.  

They struck gold.  Fat Tony was heard talking to a soldier from the Cleveland family and another from the Buffalo New York family about settling a dispute over the boss of Buffalo.  He used the words, “The Commission.”

They also were able to place a bug in Jerry Langella, the acting boss of the Colombo family’s favorite table in Casa Storta in Brooklyn.  That bug gave them enough evidence to bug Colombo Ralph Scopo’s Union office where he discussed the Concrete Club business.

Rudy even subpoenaed retired boss Joe Bonanno who write the book, “A Man of Honor” about his life.  They were going to use what he wrote about the formation of the Commission to take down the Commission.   

The took down eleven defendants who would all be charged in the Commission's case.

He won a conviction against the eight defendants who made it to the end of the trial.

Rudy would retire from the US Attorney’s Office with a record of 4,152 convictions and only 25 verdicts were reversed on appeal.

As a US Attorney, Rudy Giuliani cleaned up Wall Street and brought down the Commission. As a result he had a large impact on the mafia family’s strength across the US.

Mafia Justice

This week I have three stories and three different takes on justice.  

The first one is takes us to Rhode Island where the former boss of the New England family, Frank Salemme, is facing charges for allegedly murdering Steven DiSarro, a nightclub manager, in 1993. DiSarro ran a Boston nightclub for Salemme and his son.  Frank and his son were worried that DiSarro would talk to the Feds.  They also believed he was stealing money from the club.  So Frank Salemme Jr. strangled him while Paul Weadick held his legs.  Salemme's son is dead now.  Paul Wedick and Salemme are facing charges of murdering a federal witness, which can carry the death penalty.  A former capo, Robert Deluca, and Steve Flemmi, a former partner of Whitey Bulger, both agreed to testify against the two men.  You have Robert Deluca telling the Feds that he told Salemme to get rid of him, only now coming forward after many years in the witness protection program. Steve Flemmi is also cooperating after being charged with murdering a lot of people.  

The next case is Colombo capo Luca Dimatteo.  His doctors claim he will be dead within the year due to cancer.  DiMatteo was charged with running an offshore bookmaking operation and shylocking.  He collected money from loans on a weekly basis once when he finished up his chemotherapy.  In 2004 he received a 57 month sentence for racketeering and went right back to the life within months of his release.  This time, Judge Leo Glasser did not want to hear about how sick he was.  DiMatteo was asking for home confinement, but the Judge gave him 33 months in prison.  The Judge told him, “You’ve done this to yourself.”

The third case brings us to New Jersey, where lawyer Cory Leshner helped Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. and other Lucchese family members loot a Texas mortgage company.  The lawyer helped them take over Firstplus Financial Group and steal 14 million dollars, which they then used to buy homes, yachts and a plane.  Before the case went to trial, Leshner agreed to cooperate and he testified against those he helped.  He agreed to a five year plea deal and admitted they stole millions.

Retired FBI Agent Joe Gilson testified last week at Lehshner’s sentencing hearing.  He told the court of a phone call he got from Leshner in the summer. Leshner told him he just wanted to call and thank him for saving his life. The Judge at the sentencing hearing gave him three years instead of five and three years of supervised release.  

The Judge has never lowered a sentence before, but he felt Leshner went above and beyond with his testimony and he had truly changed his life around. Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., on the other hand, was handed a 30 year sentence for his part in the fraud.

Lucchese Family and Sports Betting

Last week 6 Lucchese crime family members pleaded guilty to running a massive sports betting operation.  The size and scope of the operation and the amount of time the men will do demonstrates why the Mafia wants to stay in the gambling business.

They took in $2.2 billion in bets in 15 months on sporting events.  Here’s a little gambling math for you:  they got the Vig right off the top.  That is 10 dollars for every 100 dollars wagered.  That means IF that were all they made, they took $200 million off the top in 15 months time.  Then add in all the cash from parlays and teasers, and it's a much bigger profit.

They did this all using Costa Rican wire rooms and password protected websites that were based on servers in Costa Rica.  Gambling is all legal in Costa Rica.   In the US it is only okay in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, because there the huge corporations handle it.

There would be few large sporting events without gaming and all the shows and news that go with them.

The Lucchese guys had the wire rooms aka phone banks based in Costa Rica.  They give a customer a code name and an 800 number to call in their action.  They use local books to recruit customers, collect and pay off.  The money never actually makes it to Costa Rica because it is all done in cash in person in local bars.  Customers have a password for the website and a username.  They will have credit and collect from the bookie during the week.

One of the principals in the operation was Matthew Madonna, a name that many Mafia readers will know.  Matty was part of the Pleasant Avenue Connection of heroin selling fame.  Matty used to have cars full  of heroin dropped off to black heroin kingpin Leroy Nicky Barnes.  Nicky would get the keys to the car and later he would drop it back off filled with cash.  It was a sweet operation for them, that was later derailed because of Nicky's flashy ways.  

Matty went away and was given 30 years for selling heroin. He was summoned before a grand jury but never said a word and was given another year and a half for not cooperating.

Once he was released, he was inducted into the Lucchese family and quickly rose to Capo and soon he was on the ruling panel that ran the family.

Ralph V. Perna was the Capo who ran the New Jersey faction of the Lucchese family which included two of his sons Joseph and John.  He follows a long line of guys who ran the family in new Jersey.   For awhile Nicky Scarfo’s son was said to be running the faction, but he is down for a long time now.  Tumac was the longtime boss until the crazy crack smoker Gaspipe went on his murderous rampage.  

Joseph DiNapoli is another Lucchese Capo who went down for the sports betting operation.  DiNapoli was also on the ruling panel with Matty.  He made big money from labor racketeering and stock fraud. He has two brothers who are made in the Genovese family.

Back to the gambling bust.  Marty Taccetta, who is already serving life in prison, will get an extra 8 years tagged on his sentence.  All in all it is not that bad.  Ralph Perna will get 8 years while his sons will get 10 years.  Matty will get 5 years while rest will get 8 years.  The time is not a lot for the amount of cash they pulled down.  Did the Feds stop sports betting?  Not a chance.  That is why the lines are posted all over for every event.

Demolition Mafia

In New York City when a building goes up, they usually have to use a demolition company to take down the old buildings.  One of the keys to controlling the construction business is to control the trucking of materials.  The disposal of demolition and construction waste is a huge business in New York.   If a company wanted to dispose of the material legitimately, they would have to have it hauled very far from from New York City.  

The Mafia families have no problem with this.  They find a large piece of land that they can use as a dump and they start bringing in the trucks.  The more loads, the more they make.  If they had to haul the waste far away, it would cut into their profit.

The Gambinos had one dump site in an old rail yard in the Bronx where they brought in load after load of waste.

The Lucchese family found a landowner who owned land in Pennsylvania just 80 miles from the city who let them dump there.  They told them they were dumping clean waste. What they were doing was filling up a large impression with junk and covering it with dirt.  This dump brought in over $30k a week to the Lucchese family while it was open.

When I was in New York I went with Eddie Garafola to a dump site in New Jersey where he had trucks coming in, dumping, and a bulldozer covering the waste with dirt.  It was in some nice New Jersey swamplands.  I also know that they were paid on other occasions to take concrete to be recycled, and instead they just dumped it.  

They did it at every project including Shea Stadium and the World Trade Center site.

Eddie Garofalo Sr and his brother Manny were experts in this field.  The New York authorities called them the James brothers of the carting industry.  

Eddie G Sr. had demolished four buildings in Times Square before he was gunned down in front of his home by some Gambinos.  The State was looking into his activities just before he was murdered.

The Lucchese Family also had another dump with the Genovese family in Westchester County that was a huge money maker.  They turned it into a toxic waste swamp, the neighborhood started to complain and the State came in and seized trucks.  

They would end up murdering their guy Mike Salerno, but his illegal dumps were Lucchese owned property. That family did not care about anyone’s family. They felt that anything a wiseguy in their family owned or was working was Lucchese family property.

When Paulie Vario of Goodfellas fame died the new bosses Vic Amuso and Gaspipe Casso wanted to take his property for their own.  Never mind that Paulie had been earning his whole life, even before these men were inducted into the family.  

It is a good thing that Gaspipe’s front man took his home in Mill Basin after he went away.

Dumping waste is a huge business with a lot of cash at stake. The Mafia will always be in it, as long as there are corners to cut and cash to be made.

Local 580 & Murder

John  Morrissey was the business agent for Local 580 of the Architectural and Ornamental Ironworkers Union. He helped the Lucchese Family and three other New York families steal millions of dollars in kickbacks from replacing windows for the Housing Authority.  They would rig the bids so they controlled the millions of windows that required replacing every year.  The Mafia would get 1-2 dollars per window replaced by the companies they controlled.  If an outside company replaced windows they would break them or send unproductive Union workers to do the work.   The Mafia families all profited off this scam for over a decade until a Genovese associate named Peter Savino who handled the scam started working for the FBI.

John, also known as Sonny or Sonny Blue, was a tough Irish Union man.  He was a longtime Lucchese associate and helped his friend Vic Amuso, the new boss of Lucchese family, get up to speed with the scam.  The problem was that Sonny Blue worked closely with Peter Savino for years.

Savino had done more than a dozen hand-to-hand payoffs, all observed by the FBI, with Sonny Blue.  When I was working with the FBI and we had to exchange cash or payoff someone we would pick the place if possible.  If the target picked it, I would relay that to the FBI and they would thumbs up or thumbs down.  I would say can we meet someplace closer blah blah.  The FBI would ring the area with surveillance vehicles and agents.  Then they would get it all on tape.  If the area was too crowded they would use vehicles with remote cameras.  I would try to do the hand off in the open or in a place where they could get confirmation.  This would seal guys (like Uncle Manny Garafolo) fate.   Then again, he was only given a very light sentence.

Back to the Lucchese Family.  Under Vic Amuso and the crack head Gaspipe Casso, they operated the family through fear.  That is no way to run any business.  Nobody felt they were on solid ground. So when Vic and Gas got confirmation from the other families that Savino was an informant, they had to take action.  They could not get Savino because he was in WITSEC, so they started murdering people who they felt were weak and would lead to them.

This put the tough Irishman Sonny Blue in their sights, even though he was never close to flipping.   They gave the contract to Capo Fat Peter Chiodo, a man who could weigh between 450-550 lbs and was 6’5”.  They told him: Sonny is talking, make him disappear.

Fat Pete grabbed his associate Tommy Irish to drive Sonny Blue and himself way out to Morris County, NJ, where they were building a housing development to meet with Vic Amuso.  Sonny Blue was happy to see his friend, so he was very relaxed.  Once they arrived at the site they all walked into a model home they were using as an office. Once inside, Fat Pete left to find Vic and then another associate walked up behind Sonny Blue with a silenced pistol.  Sonny Blue turned and saw what was happening and he yelled, “I Am not a rat!”  The man fired and then the pistol jammed. Sonny Blue lay on the ground in pain saying it hurts, hit me again.  The backup shooter removed a snub nose pistol and fired 4 times but it did not kill Sonny Blue.  He was still in pain until the man cleared the silenced pistol and finally killed him.  They used a backhoe to dig a hole out behind the home and they dropped Sonny Blue in it.  He would not be found until Fat Pete flipped.  He missed the windows case.  

This is another example of the poor leadership of Vic and Gas.  The decline of the Mafia starts in the leadership and then trickles down.

The Brothers Hydell

People romanticize the Mafia in movies, but the truth is very far from the picture on the big screen.  

Betty Hydell, the sister-in-law of Gambino capo Daniel Marino, has plenty of reason to know that the real Mafia is not a bunch of good natured hoods cracking jokes and eating cannolis.  Betty lost two sons to two different crime families.

James Hydell took part in the attempted murder of Gaspipe Casso, who would end up living and later became the Lucchese family underboss.  James and a few Gambino guys had waited outside a Bensonhurst Brooklyn restaurant named the Blue Ox.  They shot him numerous times, and he lived.  Gaspipe heard through the grape vine who had tried to kill him, and he unleashed his corrupt cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, to bring James Hydell to him.  He planned to torture him to find out who else had been part of the attempted hit.  They went by his mother Betty Hydell’s house looking for him.  Years later she saw Eppolito on TV and she knew he was one of those looking for her son James before he disappeared.  James was kidnaped by the Mafia cops, thrown in their truck, and dropped off to Gaspipe in a parking lot.  Gaspipe took him and then tortured him for hours to find out who was with him on the attempted hit.    Then Gaspipe made him disappear so the family would never know what happened to him.

Legend has it that Betty hid some of Daniel Marino’s cash in a bank safety deposit. Frank Hydell, her other son, somehow stole it.  Betty had to give up her home to pay back the money her son had stolen.

I have been told that Frank Hydell was not like his brother, and had a big mouth.  He and some buddies were going to grab a score on 18th Ave Brooklyn from a night deposit at a bank.  Frank had a minivan that he had stolen from Long Island.  They were waiting in the minivan and that night it was cold.  They saw the man they were going to rob heading to the night deposit, but because of the cold, he ran instead of walking.  There was also an accident within sight on the corner, so there were a couple of cops close by and the guys called it off.  

The Gambinos began to suspect Frank, because a few times he should have been locked up for things but nothing happened.  A crew of bank robbers was taking down a score on 13th Ave Brooklyn and Frank drove his car. There was a snow storm that night and his car could not be moved.  The next morning he had to see his parole officer but nothing happened.

The Gambinos asked Marino, who was locked up at the time, if they could kill Frank.  He gave his blessing.

They used a Gambino associate named Eddie Boyle to murder Frank.  Frank’s own friend lured him to a Staten Island Stripclub where Boyle shot him in the back.

The Hydell brothers were no Saints. James was a bad guy who attempted to murder Gaspipe.  Frank was suspected of a murder, stole from his own uncle and was working with law enforcement.  In the end, they were murdered by their so-called friends.  

The Mafia is nothing funny or romantic, it is a deadly and serious criminal enterprise.

Nicholas Santora & Bonanno Family

Nicholas Santora is a second generation mobster, who continued in his father’s footsteps, like so many others have done. Modesto Santora was a soldier in the Colombo Family, and his son has far out shone his father when it comes to the Mafia. Nicholas was inducted into the Bonanno Family in the mid 1970s by then-boss Philip Rastelli and he was placed in Capo Mike Sabella's crew.

The Bonanno Family at the time was in a state of turmoil because boss Rusty Rastelli was away in prison and powerful Capo Carmine Galante had been released.  Carmine Galante began to make moves for the top spot in the family.  He also started to consolidate the Heroin business with the Sicilians. The other families including the Gambino family did not like this so they went to the Commission who handed down the order to kill Galante.  Nicholas was the messenger between the Capos loyal to Rusty setting up the hit.

On July 12th 1979 they blasted Carmine Galante as he was finishing up his lunch.   It ended up being an iconic killing because a reporter snapped a picture of his sprawled out body with a cigar still clenched in his teeth.

Sonny Black was upped to Capo and Nicholas was placed in his crew with a few notables like Lefty Ruggierro and Donnie Brasco. The crew was based in Brooklyn out of the Motion Lounge. Nicholas would head down to Florida to work with Donnie Brasco and with the worsening internal family problems, things would soon blow up.

It soon came out that fellow crew member Donnie Brasco was an FBI Agent.  Sonny Black would be executed and Nichalas was promoted to Capo of his crew.  He did not last long because he was given time for the whole Donnie Brasco Operation.

He was locked up until the 1990s, and when he was released he got right back to work.  Nicholas started working his gambling business and soon he was back on the rise.  Nicholas worked closely with Sal Vitale and Joey Massino.   The Massino family did not work out like they planned and Sal Vitale flipped after two Capos flipped on him.  Then Joey Massino flipped in order to save his assets and a death penalty trial.  Vinnie Basciano became boss and Nicholas was bumped up to underboss.

When Massino was still boss, a guy took me down to Bamonte's in Brooklyn on a Saturday afternoon.  There were a lot of Bonanno guys in the place and I even saw a Lucchese associate named Jerry Degerolamo, who didn't want me to tell anyone he was there.  We went out in the parking lot and Nicholas opened up his SUV gave us some NFL Jerseys.  I recorded the whole thing and later the FBI told me not to worry.  A few weeks later they took down everyone.  I left the jersey when I left New York - not a big loss since it was free.

Nicholas did a few years and came out as a Capo running his crew out of Brooklyn. He then worked with a man named Nicholas Bernhard who just happened to be the President of Local 917 of the Teamsters.  Santora and friends actively campaigned for him in 2010 and when he won he used his position to enrich himself and the Bonanno family.  He had a shop steward help the crew get players for their sportsbook from the Union and he also pushed shylock loans to them.  The Bookmaking took in 7 million in one year and they were selling Viagra and Cyalis, along with heavy pain killers.  A few years ago the NYPD Joint Taskforce took him down, and the case is currently still going on.  Somethings never change.