As the Mob Turns

Colombo underboss Benjamin Castellazzo, also known as Benji, or “the Claw,” did what any father who happened to be a mafia underboss would do for his son.  He used his power and position to get his son a job at the Union controlled Hudson News.  He had his cronies falsify work histories to get him a job.  This is a job that should have gone to a real hard working Union member.

The guy who Benji used to set up the job took a plea deal and was given no jail time, only probation.  Benji took a plea deal for some other crimes in 2013 and was given 63 month in prison. He claimed at the time time that he was living on $868 dollars a month in Social Security and food stamps.  He had a beautiful house before he was arrested and now he lives in a trailer park.  Benji was released from prison August 14th, so he will have at least a three year parole term.  He is 77 now, so that means he will be 80 before he can make any real moves on the street.  My question is how many moves can an 80 year old make on the streets?  This is what I've talked about in my past blogs.  What kind of life is that?

I've written about the case of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, the man who founded the Miami Subs food franchise. A real rags-to-riches success story, where he started working for a submarine sandwich shop and worked his way to partner.  When he helped build it into over 200 shops, he retired to Florida.  He started Miami Subs and again that took off and that made even more money.  He started SunCruz Casinos, a fleet of gambling boats that left Florida for international waters where the passengers could gamble.  He had some trouble because he may have bought some of the boats while he was not a citizen.  He sold SunCruz to Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan for $147.5 million. The whole deal was shady from the beginning because Gus kept a 10% silent partnership in the deal and accepted a 20 million dollar promissory note as a down payment.  

Jack Abramoff, a Washington insider, was behind the deal. He had two former college buddies front it for him.  Adam Kidan and Ben Waldman took over SunCruz and soon things went sour with Gus.  He claimed they committed fraud and worked with organized crime.  Kidan hired Anthony Moscatiello, aka Big Anthony, a reputed Gambino crime family member, to act as a consultant and supply beverages.  Big Anthony sold wine through a company so they paid them $145,000.  They also hired Anthony Ferrari, another associate to handle security for $95,000.

Gus was threatening to take this all away from them so they decided to murder him.

Gus was leaving his office in Fort Lauderdale when he was boxed in right off Federal Highway by two cars.  Another car pulled up and another man alleged to be John Gurino opened fire on Gus.  He died a few minutes later on Federal Highway.

It took until yesterday for them to convict Big Anthony of ordering the murder.  He now faces the death penalty.  He really does not have much to fear of being put to death by the state because he is 77 years old.  It takes decades to execute anyone today with the appeals process.

Anthony Ferrari was convicted, but spared the death penalty even though he was at the scene of the murder.

Another man, James Fiorillo, aka “Pudgy” will get 6 years for staking out Gus before the murder.  The shooter, John Gurino, had already tasted justice in 2003 when he was gunned down in a Deli Boca Raton Florida.  Who says that the life does not have consequences?

The Junk Mine - Carmine Agnello

Carmine Agnello is the former husband of Victoria Gotti and the father of 3 boys who starred in the reality show, “Growing up Gotti.”  A more appropriate title would have been, “Growing up Agnello,” but the public doesn’t have a fascination with Agnellos.

Carmine had to really love Victoria and/or fear her father, John Gotti.  Legend has it he was beaten and shot in the ass by some guys John Gotti Sr sent after him because of something he did to Victoria.  He ended up marrying her in a wedding that was attended by 1500 of their closest friends like something out of a B movie.

Carmine ran a junk yard in Willets Point, Queens and he virtually dominated the scrap metal business in the area. That was because Carmine's father-in-law, John Gotti Sr, became the boss of the Gambino Family and Carmine was inducted into the family.  

Carmine brought in huge amounts of money for Organized Crime.  In the 1990’s there were over 50,000 cars stolen in and around New York City.  It became such a problem that local law enforcement set up special squads to combat this problem.  They succeeded, but the business itself changed.

Carmine started with Jamaica Auto Salvage at 20 years old where he learned to strip cars of their parts and send the rest to metal dealers who bought the metal from him.

This brought him to where he was.  By the 2000’s New York Shredding was the biggest scrap metal wholesaler in the state.  It brought in over 250k a week.  Carmine was helped along by a deal he had with Caterpillar.  They provided the equipment and purchased his scrap.  

The hitch is Carmine needed a steady supply of scrap metal.  The NYPD set up a fake auto salvage where they paid more than he did per car and it put a dent in his operation.  He threatened them and had their place firebombed. A lot of this was caught on tape.

He would end up taking a 9 year sentence and making a 10 million dollar payment to the Government for his crimes.  During that time he got divorced from Victoria Gotti and his father-in-law John Gotti Sr passed away while incarcerated.

Carmine had a fresh start and while he was in prison he met a new woman named Danielle who he later moved to Cleveland to start a new life with away from Queens and the Gambino Family.

He started a towing company called Charity that hauled autos that were donated to charity.

He started a new scrap business and an auto parts place.  Life seemed to be on the right track for Carmine.

That was until July of this year when Cleveland Ohio District Attorney announced that Carmine was arrested in an operation they called Operation Goodfella where he was the target.  

They claimed that he was injecting racehorses he owned with performance enhancing drugs.  They also claimed that he was up to his old tricks in the salvage business.  

They claim he made upwards of 3 million dollars in a scam where he sold crushed cars full of sand to wholesalers.  They claim he was also buying stolen cars from thieves around town.

Carmine, not one to sit on the sidelines. has already struck back at the locals by filing a lawsuit against the locals that says they seized his property just to put his company's Eagle 1 and Eagle 2 out of business.  He claims in the suit that they raided his businesses for evidence of his doping racehorses and money laundering yet they took car crushers. heavy equipment, forklifts and many other pieces of equipment that he needs to do business.

It is always amazing to me when a guy like Carmine gets a second chance at life outside of the mafia.  A guy who left New York with money and a new wife and a fresh start.  

Well, it appears he fell into his old ways.  Time will tell.   Where there's smoke, there's fire.  

We will see where this will go.

The Cherry King of Brooklyn

The owner of Dell’s Maraschino Cherries in Brooklyn, Arthur Mondella, was living a secret life.

Much like the fictional character on TV’s Breaking Bad, Walter White.  Arthur Mondella wasn't making Crystal Methamphetamine, he was growing marijuana underneath his Cherry Factory.  

The grow area was hidden behind a false shelf held by magnets in a part of the factory that employees did not have access to.  Once behind the shelves, there was a door and behind that three bags with about a 100 lbs of marijuana.  There was a hole in the floor which led to a secret 2500 ft space that was divided up into an office, a grow room with 120 lights and irrigation system, ventilation system and seeds for 60 different strains of Marijuana.

When police found the hidden drug rooms, they also found over a 100k in cash, a Rolls Royce, a Porsche and a Harley.  

The police had gotten a tip about five years ago that Arthur was growing marijuana in the factory, but they were unable to get any proof.  They didn't smell anything outside, but that was masked by the 400,000 cherries being processed daily.  The police brought a drug dog which alerted them to drugs in the factory, but that alone was not enough to get a warrant.  They wanted to test the exhaust from the factory but they couldn't do that without a warrant.   They closed the case at that time, and it remained closed until 2013 when they got a tip from a disgruntled employee that the factory was dumping the red syrup waste into the water way.  The locals had long complained that the factory was polluting their neighborhood.  The residents told investigators to just look around at the bees buzzing around the neighborhood.  They had drank so much of the syrup they had turned red.

The police decided to get the Department of Environmental Protection involved.  The DEP made some checks and found that there was more than enough evidence for a search warrant.

On February 24, 2015 a twenty-five person squad served the warrant on the red bricked cherry factory in Red Hook.  

Arthur Mondella was cooperative for five hours while they search the factory, until one of the investigators noticed a shelf that looked funny.  It stuck out, and once they looked at it closely they saw it was held in place by magnets.  Arthur excused himself to use the restroom. He went to his office where he told his sister to take care of his kids and wife before shooting himself in the head.

The pistol he used was carried in an ankle holster.  He had gotten a concealed carry permit after he sued the city in 1995, citing the fact that his Red Hook Brooklyn neighborhood had a criminal element.  He was afraid that he would be kidnapped like the Tuxedo King who was buried alive in 1993 along the Hudson Parkway.  

The police claim that he was set up for and was capable of growing 1200 plants in the space they found, and it is the biggest grow operation they have ever taken down.  Arthur had just had a multi-million dollar upgrade done on the factory. Dell’s is still one of the biggest Maraschino Cherry distributors in the world. They changed the formula to be more inline with what people wanted.  Dells had really big accounts like TGI Friday's, Buffalo Wild Wings and Red Lobster.  It was making money as a cherry factory, but it was not enough for the Cherry King.

The factory used a tremendous amount of electricity, so there was no noticeable spike to draw attention to the hidden drug headquarters.  The police also found two very large generators inside the factory.  

Arthur was also being sued by a food supplier supplier in California.  He had gotten produce from the supplier on February 3, 2015 but had failed to place the money in PACA Trust that is used by fruit and vegetable suppliers and buyers as payment.  He kept $106,120.00 that was supposed to go to the supplier.  Consider what the police found, 100k in cash and 100lbs of marijuana.  The marijuana, if sold in California, would fetch 3k a pound and I know New York prices are sky high for product that is not as good.

I was also told that he had some Organized Crime Connections, but at this time they did not know what role if any they played in the case.  Still, Dell’s Maraschino Cherries, a business in Red Hook, Brooklyn that was started at the turn of the last century, was now growing marijuana.  

This has all just been uncovered in the past few weeks, and time will tell as the story continues to unfold.

I am sure a loosely similar storyline will appear on a future Law and Order SVU episode.  Fiction writers couldn't dream up better material.

Ndrangheta

There is another organized group from Sicily that has gone virtually unnoticed for years because of the rural area that spawned them.  They are the Ndrangheta or Honor Society and they are made up of approximately 100 families in and around Calabria.  They are now the largest organized crime group in the world with around 5,000 members worldwide.  Their structure is very close to the Cosa Nostra but most members of the families are related by blood and in some villages all the men belong to the Ndrangheta.  They are huge money makers by any standards because they pull in around 44 billion Euros a year or roughly 3% of Italy's GDP.  Over 60% of their cash comes from drugs.

Many years ago men from the Ndrangheta immigrated to far flung corners of the globe and with them they brought the Ndrangheta. They developed contacts in place like Columbia where they got close to the cocaine traffickers.  A lot of people think the Mexican cartels are in charge of cocaine trafficking but what they really are is the middle men.  The large Colombian traffickers from Medellin and California saw their empires and their freedom taken away because they imported cocaine into the US. So they found willing and able partners in Mexico.  The Ndrangheta formed a coalition with the Colombian traffickers and now they are the biggest cocaine importer to Europe.  They surpassed the American and Sicilian Mafia in that area.  They do work closely with the Mafia and in fact I’ve written about them before. They also move a lot of heroin.

They have operated for a long time in the US but have remained unknown.  They have been here for 100 years going way back to extortion plots in rural areas where Italians worked.  They had a long time member Vincenzo Coluccio in Los Angeles who was just deported on August 27 by Immigration and Customs. He was picked up by the DEA in 2010 for possession of methamphetamine, cocaine and a pistol. The Italian government wanted him back where he is wanted for drug trafficking.  They claim he is a high ranking member of Mazzaferro Crime Family based in Calabria. He was in charge of exporting the cocaine from Los Angeles using a courier system as well other methods to move large amounts overseas. They would have couriers pick up small carry on bags with compartments to carry the cocaine and they would book their travel from Los Angeles to all over the Mediterranean.  All these trips were book through Mirage Travel Agency which was owned by a Greek Italian.  Rocco Coluccio, an Italian American, was the long time head of the clan in Los Angeles until he was killed in a car accident and that is what brought Vincenzo Coluccio to the forefront. There was a coffee distributor in Inglewood, California that never really sold coffee but a few known Italian drug traffickers would stop by and then leave.  There was a similar one in Brooklyn near Henry and Union Streets. I am sure the Feds are keeping an eye on them.

The Ndrangheta controls Organized Crime on the East Coast of Australia since the 1920's.  They had a war in the 1960's over the Victoria Market in Melbourne which moves tens of millions in fruit every year.  They also imported more than 14 million ecstasy pills hidden inside tomato cans from Calabria.  This was the largest bust of pills in 2008.

They are very big in Canada because Canadian banking laws make it easy to launder cash profits.  They are in Spain which they use as a distribution point for Europe.

The Ndrangheta will continue to grow and become a bigger criminal organization as long as there is a war on terror keeping law enforcement busy.