Danny Marino, Gambino Capo

Danny Marino has lived a charmed life as mafia royalty.  Danny was born into the Gambino crime family.  Danny’s uncle was Gambino family Capo Carmine Lombardozzi, known as the “King of Wall Street.”   Carmine brought in a huge amount of money for the Gambinos through stock fraud and shylock loans.  He had been one of those arrested, along with Paul Castellano, at the meeting in Apalachin.  

Danny was arrested in 1963 at the funeral for Carmine's father, when he punched an FBI agent.  Danny has a track record for punching people.  Later in life he would be thrown out of a casino for punching a guy in the face.

Danny played the Mafia game very well, and when John Gotti took over the family he was a well respected Capo.  He was also working with the Genovese and Lucchese family to topple Gotti.

Gaspipe Casso claimed that he was in on the car bombing that killed Gambino Underboss Frank DeCicco.  A few years later when Sammy Gravano turned against Gotti and other Gambinos, Danny helped Gotti.

Danny and a few others had someone tap Sammy’s wife and kid’s phones illegally before the Gotti trial.  It failed to stop Sammy from taking the stand.  

I've written about Danny and Frank Hydell but he was not the only guy he tried to silence before they gave up family secrets. Danny conspired to murder Thomas Spinelli with other Gambinos, because they feared he would tell the truth to a Federal Grand Jury.

Danny was into construction racketeering, gambling, shylocking, extortion and murder.  He has had a few rough years since the FBI came down on the Gambinos.  It is well known that Junior Gotti had a proffer session with the Feds and during that meeting he gave up Danny Marino because he hated him.  

I know guys who were locked up with Danny and they all say the same thing about him.  He kept to himself and he was cheap.  The guy would never go for anything, he never helped new arrivals, Wiseguys or not.  Danny would never help himself, he would workout and walk around afraid.  Danny was not afraid of anyone there, he was afraid he would catch another case.

He was close to Jojo and Chuckie Russo but behind his back they called him Ricochet because he would bounce off the walls anytime he was called by the guards.

Danny is free now, and what role he plays in the family is not known.  He is old and he has money, so maybe he will just fade into the background or Florida where old mob guys often retire.

RIP Pasquale Amato

This past week, on March 19th, a man forgotten by his crime family passed away at the Coleman Federal Penitentiary outside of Orlando, Florida.  The man was Pasquale “Patty” Amato; a former Capo in the Colombo Family.  Patty had become a Capo in 1988 and his crew pulled down a lot of cash from their Shylocking business.  Patty would capitalize his guys with cash and they would kick up a percentage to him every week.  Thomas Ocera was a made guy in Patty’s crew, and besides shylocking he also owned a restaurant in Long Island called the Manor Merrick.

In October of 1989 the police raided his restaurant and seized his shylock pay/owe book.

Ocera started drinking heavily and told others that he was going to be killed soon.  You have to wonder what else was in that book, but he knew he was living on borrowed time.  Vic Orena ordered his murder in November because he was skimming money from the shylock business.   

Patty, along with a crew member named Jack Leale, used to have early morning meetings at the Manor with Ocera.  After the police seized the shylock book, the meeting stopped.  Jack Leale convinced Ocera to meet at Patty’s house and when he walked inside Jack and Patty used a garrott to kill him.  They placed Ocera’s body in the trunk of a car Leale borrowed from his brother-in-law and he drove away with other crew members.   Leale and his brother-in-law Bonfiglio assisted by others buried Ocera in Forest Park Queens.  The next day Leale took over two underground gambling clubs that Ocera had owned as a reward for the murder.

The FBI was led to Ocera’s final resting place by another crew member on October 3, 1991.  They quickly issued a warrant for Jack Leale’s arrest. It proved too late because Leale would be found 4 weeks later shot to death in a Long Island parking lot.  In January of 1992 the FBI raided Patty’s home where they found a Davis Industries 380 caliber pistol that was from the same lot as others that had been found on Colombo family members.  

The Colombos were in the middle of their civil war and Patty had gone with Vic Orena against the Persico Faction.  He was acting Underboss for a time while Orena was locked up and then he was back to being a Capo.  The FBI had enough evidence by April 1992 to take down Patty and Orena hoping to put a stop to the war.  They had nothing on Patty for the war but they had enough to charge both with RICO crimes that covered the war and the crimes committed for the Orena faction.

Patty was able to get his case severed from Orena and the rest of the guys, but he was convicted of racketeering in January of 1993.  

The Colombo war had a huge impact on the family and its ability to make money.  Most of the normal business that both sides were doing before the war began stopped.  My friends in Wild Bill’s crew went from pulling down big money to getting $200 a week. Shylocking stopped and the customers went away.  

Patty had loaned his crew members cash to put on the street at 1 percent a week interest and they in turn loaned it out for more.  The war stopped all of that and destroyed their bookmaking and gambling clubs.

Patty had lost his appeals and settled into life in Federal Prison when Greg Scarpa Jr.  (who was also incarcerated) came forward with a story.  The story was that his father, Greg Scarpa Sr., also known as the Grim Reaper, had worked with a rogue FBI Agent and set up Vic Orena and Patty Amato.  

Greg Scarpa did work as an informant and how far the FBI Agent went was never proven.  Patty’s appeal was denied and he died last week; all but forgotten by the crime family he pledged undying loyalty to when he was inducted.

The last of the Old Time Gambinos

Arnold “Zeke” Squitieri and Alphonse “Funzi” Sisca go way back to the days before John Gotti was made in the Gambino Family.  They worked with Gene Gotti, Sal Ruggiero and Angelo Ruggiero selling heroin.  They were given long sentences just like Gene Gotti, so they missed most of the John Gotti mess.   Zeke was made Underboss in 1999 by John Gotti and in 2002 when Peter Gotti went away he was bumped up to Acting Boss.  Zeke was still on parole for his 1989 heroin conviction so he relied heavily on Funzi to be his eyes and ears on the street.  He would use him to pass orders to the lower ranks.  

They committed all the usual crimes that gangsters commit, like extortion of construction companies, restaurants and nightclubs.  One that I had not heard about in a long time was the illegal numbers business.  Numbers or Policy games are an illegal lottery that used to be played in poor or immigrant neighborhoods.  In Florida the Cuban version was called Bolita.

The other term policy came from old time cheap life insurance policy that was seen as a long term gamble.  To play the game a bettor would pick a three digit number and at the end of the day the operator would take the last three digits of the “Handle” the amount of the total bets at a racetrack that was published in the racing form everyday.  These Gambinos ran a numbers game up to 2005 where they took in 2k a day in bets.  

The Sportsbook they ran made them 155k just on the Superbowl one year.  This goes back to what I've written in the past about gambling being the lifeblood of the Mafia.  

They didn't stop there either.  They were stealing money from the Union and extorting trucking companies.  

Shylocking was a huge earner for them as it always made money.  It is very similar to the way today’s payday loan places operate.  As long as shylockers who call themselves payday loan businesses give the government their cut, they are free to operate.

Things were moving along and the family seemed to be recovering from the succession of Gottis that held the top spot.  Junior Gotti had not yet gone in for his proffer session. The session that he now claims he lied during.  He wants us to forget that he broke Omerta the number one rule of Cosa Nostra.  He needs to accept that he is the same as John Alite, Mikey Scars and all the rest of us.  The only problem?  All those guys built their success in the mafia themselves and were not born with a Mafia silver spoon in their mouths.

Enter Joaquin “Jack” Garcia or as he was known on the street: Jack Falcone.   In the FBI it was known as Operation Jack Falcone.  Jack was an undercover FBI Agent who posed as Sicilian drug dealer and jewel thief from Miami. It seems a bit close to the Donnie Brasco Operation but if it isn’t broken, why fix it.  Jack hooked up with Greg DePalma a long time Gambino Soldier who was a sometime Capo.  DePalma became famous in the 1970s when he and the Gambinos infiltrate the Westchester Premier Theater.  There is a famous picture that includes DePalma, Carlo Gambino, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Fratianno and others.  

DePalma liked to talk and that was good for Jack because he was a good listener.  The operation would end in 2005 when FBI supervisors shut it down.  This was after DePalma wanted to make Jack Falcone a Gambino.  

Today Alphonse Sisca is the Boss of the New Jersey Faction of the Gambino Family.  

The family is run by the Sicilians and most of the Gotti Era guys are locked up or laying low.

LA and New Orleans - Mafia News

Los Angeles and New Orleans have Mafia news this week.  Last week the Los Angeles County Sheriff arrested Joe Isgro, music & movie producer and Shylock. He was being held on a no bail hold in the Van Nuys jail, which was strange because why not men's central?  Some say it was for running a gambling ring, but time will tell when he has his court date.


I will give you a little background on Joe Isgro.  He has been in the record business for a long time.  He was close to Joey Piney Armone who handled it for the Gambino Family. He was an independent record promoter and he worked on some really big albums like Michael Jackson in his glory days.  He would send his people out to radio stations and make sure his artist got airplay.  How he did that is where he almost ran into trouble.  The Government tried to make a case against him in the late 80's saying that he was involved in Payola.  They said he paid station managers and others to get his artists songs on rotation for a lot of airplay.  The case fell apart because the judge said the Government conduct was outrageous. Brian Ross from NBC news claimed to have followed Joe Isgro to the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York where he had the Presidential Suite and had meetings with John Gotti and Joey Piney Armone. Joe would claim that it never happened.  I do know that Joe used to meet Joe Dente (Genovese Family) at Nicky Blairs on Sunset Blvd.  Joe Dente used to conduct business out of a booth there and Joe was with him a lot. I met Joe at a house in the Valley off Balboa Blvd and he had some questionable people around him.  Uncle Tony, Valentino and Anthony Gambino worked there.  One time he
didn't like a message I was relaying to him from Jimmy Caci (LA Capo) and he jumped up from behind his desk and said,  "I'm a wiseguy, so he cant talk to me that way."   I went back to his Raging Bull records office on Ventura Blvd with Louie Gelfuso (LA Capo) and we all bullshitted for an hour. Joe's luck ran out in September of 2000 when he was sentenced to 50 months in Federal Prison for his Beverly Hills Shylock operation. He is now 66 years old and who knows what this new case will bring.

New Orleans, the Big Easy is the birth place of the American Mafia and was once ruled by one man for decades.  Carlos Marcello ran his family with an iron fist but he did not induct enough people into the family to insure its continued survival after he was locked away. There must still be people down there who operate because the Feds indicted two men for driving around in an assassins van.  This is what went down: the New Orleans police were on routine patrol when their automatic license plate scanner detected a stolen plate on a van.  They pulled over the van and there were two men inside Joseph Gagliano Jr and Dominick Gullo.  Also in the van were two cut down dining room chairs bolted to the floor. They also found a 22cal rifle and a suppressor and 8 inches of cannon fuse.  A scope for the rifle was found in a side panel in the van and it was equipped with custom sliding windows on the side and the rear perfectly in lined with the cut down chairs.This made for a perfect firing position.  In other words, this was a van custom outfitted for murder.

Who were the two guys in the murder van?  Joseph Gagliano is the son of Frank Gagliano, also known as Fat Frank, the underboss of the New Orleans Mafia Family.  Fat Frank passed away in 2006 and the boss of the family Anthony Carollo passed away in 2007.  The FBI and others continue to watch what is left of the organization, but little is known about the membership. Joseph Gagliano once worked with John Vaccaro, an LA Family Soldier in Jimmy Caci's crew. They put together teams of card cheats that had inside help to cheat Louisiana Casino's out of more than 500k!  John Vaccaro was from New Orleans and he knew Carlos Marcello well. Joesph Gagliano was also arrested for participating with Joseph Corrozo and John Gammarano, both high ranking Gambinos in a bid to bring Joker Poker Machines to New Orleans.  This case will take a long time to play out but it will be interesting to follow it and see what there is to learn about New Orleans crime families.

Nicodemo Scarfo & Lucchese Scams

Halloween night 1989.  A lone man walks into Dante & Luigi's restaurant in South Philly wearing a Batman mask.  He walks straight towards a table of three men pulls out a Mac 10 and opens fire.  He fires five times at one man, striking him in the chest twice, the neck and arm, until he falls on the floor in a pool of blood. The masked man quickly exits the restaurant and drops the Mac 10 on the sidewalk outside.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr.

Lying in the pool of blood: Nicodemo Scarfo Jr.  Luck was on his side that night because none of the wounds were life threatening.  In fact he didn't even need a blood transfusion. The bullets missed vital organs and blood vessels.  That is the way hits go sometimes.

The shooting gave the FBI an inside look into the mind of the 24 year old up and coming Mobster.  He had thrown his weight around because his father was the boss and one of the most violent in the country. Times had changed and  Nicodemo Scarfo Sr was now locked up in Federal Prison for the rest of his life.  They recovered a laptop computer belonging to the young Scarfo and they soon discovered bookmaking and shylocking records.  This was new because very few Mobsters even knew what a computer was at the time.

The shooter would be identified in court years later as Skinny Joey Merlino, the son of imprisoned Underboss Salvatore "Chuckie" Merlino.  Skinny Joey and Nicodemo Jr had been close friends at one time, but when the elder Scarfo had a falling out with the Merlinos they stopped being friends.  Joey was tired of Nicodemo Jr acting like he was the new boss of Philly and he was trying to lead his young turks into a power position.  Nicodemo Jr was also collecting street tax and bringing messages from his father at the time, so this could have been a message to his father.

Nicodemo not only survived, but thanks to a close friendship that his father has with Lucchese Family boss Vic Amuso, he was Made into the Lucchese Family.  He quickly left Philly and started working with the Lucchese New Jersey crew.  The Lucchese Family has always had a strong presence in New Jersey so it was a good choice.  

The FBI would would also install a key logger system on Nicodemo Jrs computer so they could monitor his usage and passwords.  They had to use this "Bug" because he was using an encryption software called PGP and they could not get into his files.  Nicodemo would challenge this in pretrial motions, but like all things FBI they claimed that after the 9-11 attacks they had to use software like this and keep it secret.  They would use the information to indict him on racketeering charges.

Once he was out of prison, he was right back at things with Lucchese family in New Jersey.  He was promoted to Capo and he helped run the Lucchese's New Jersey factions Gambling business.  They went online and started taking action using the website BIGACTIONSPORTS.COM.  They also had a wireroom in San Jose, Costa Rica, with more than 20 people working the room and processing the bets.  In 2007 Nicodemo Jr was no longer in charge because he had moved on to bigger things. He would brag to people that he could steal more with a computer than 10 guys with guns.  They started calling him “Nick Promo”, “Mr. Apple” and “Mr. Macintosh” for his computer skills.

The state would launch an investigation aimed at taking down the Lucchese Family in New Jersey.  It would last a  year and was called Operation Heat.  This time they took down 34 people on gambling charges.  In the 15 months they were watching the crew they recorded 2.2 billion dollars in wagers!  Just so Operation Heat would get even more headlines, the State also indicted Edwin and Dwayne Spears , Edwin Spears is a high ranking member of the Nine Trey Gangster set Bloods.  They called it an alliance but it was just two Lucchese guys: Joseph Perna and Michael Cetta, financing an operation with a corrections officer to smuggle cellphones and drugs into prison. So much for the Mafia Bloods connection.

Nicodemo Scarfo Sr

Nicodemo was working on something much bigger at this time.  He and Sal Pellulo decided to target a company in Texas called First Plus Financial Group, a publicly traded company.  First Plus Finacial Group was a Texas Based Mortgage company.   In April of 2007 they replaced its management and board of directors with their own people.  They then had the board purchase two corporations owned by Nicodemo Jr and Sal Pellulo for millions of dollars and thousands of shares of stock..  The problem was the two companies had little or no value.  They then had the board pay out huge amounts of cash that went to them as consultants.  Nicodemo Jr bought a huge house using $250,000 he got from the scam.  He set up trusts for his kids that were used to launder the cash from the scam.  Sal Pellulo bought an $800,000 jet to travel to Texas and Florida. Then the best part of the scam is that they then helped the stock price rise and they sold their shares for a profit!  Nicodemo Scarfo Sr and Vic Amuso were on the indictment as indicted co conspirators in the whole scam.  They were called Uncle Nicky, Mr MacArthur and Uncle Vic or Papa.  They were helping him, calling shots, two bosses that were locked up for life!

We shall see soon what happens because they are set to begin trial and neither Nicodemo Jr nor Sal Pellulo ever had their names on any of the paperwork.

Milwaukee Phil

3600 Fluer Drive, Des Moines, Iowa

To the kids who lived at 3600 Fluer in Des Moines, Iowa the smiling man was known as Phil, but to the outside world he was known as Milwaukee Phil.

Milwaukee Phil was not a person to take lightly.  He had worked for Al Capone, but it would be his cousin Lou Fratto who brought him into the Outfit.  Soon he was working with two other old friends of Lou Fratto, Sam "Teets" Battaglia and John Marshal Caifano as an enforcer, mainly in Milwaukee and Chicago.  They saw that he was very good at taking care of whatever task he was given.  Many jobs required him to take trips to 3600 Fluer in Iowa which was a good meeting place because there was no surveillance there at all, and no heat.  This was the home of Lou Fratto, who was his cousin and the boss of the Iowa Mafia.

Phil was much more than an enforcer because he could think on his feet.  He soon started working for Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik who ran the "Corruption Squad" for the Outfit.  This was probably the most important Crew in the Outfit because they handed out the cash to law enforcement and politicians to keep the wheels greased.

The grease or payoff was what kept the Outfit on top for so many years and this is the real reason they kept away from drugs.  It was easy for a Judge to give a guy a slap on the wrist for gambling or Shylocking but selling hard drugs would never work the same.  These were important times in Phil’s life because he learned how the administration kept the Outfit on top.  When Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik died he was replaced  by another fixer, Llewelyn Morris Humphreys or Murray Humphreys aka The Hump.  Once again, the Outfit chose a non-Italian to handle their payoffs.     

The Hump

Phil would learn two important things from The Hump.  One was Union takeover and the other was the art of staying in the shadows, because the Mafia was intended to be a secret organization.  The Hump also had a favorite quote, "The difference between guilt and innocence in any court is who gets to the judge first with the most".

Phil must have taken the Hump’s advice to heart because he was quietly building an empire of vice in Milwaukee where he controlled a large gambling and shylock territory and it has been said that he was in control of a lot of the high end prostitution.  He worked with the leaders of the Milwaukee family but he was always an Outfit man.

It was at this time that he started working with Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti dealing with The Outfits headaches that they could not payoff.  In May of 1962 Phil and Chuckie were taken in and questioned by police when they were caught sitting in a car.  The car turned out to be a "Hitmobile"  The car was designed with hidden gun racks, secret compartments, controls to turn off and on headlights and tail lights basically everything you needed to carry out a hit.  They told police that they were waiting for a friend.  The terrible twosome must have been good at their job because in nearly two decades of "Work"  they were brought in numerous times and questioned about murders but they were never charged.  Phil was said to have carried out up to 14 hits for the Outfit.

Phil soon found himself working with another non-Italian, this time a Greek named Gus Alex who was tough and carried out many hits and was very good at corrupting the people he needed.  Gus took over being in charge of Chicago’s non-Italian connected guys when The Hump died of a sudden heart attack caused by some overzealous FBI Agents who pushed him too far and his heart could not take the stress.

Gus Alex

Gus Alex’s most famous hit was probably when he and Lenny Patrick shotgunned James Ragen, the owner of the racewire in the street which he would not sell to the Outfit.

Milwaukee Phil learned a lot from Alex that would serve him during his rise in the Outfit.  In 1967 Lou Fratto was indicted along with the Milwaukee Mafia Boss Frank Balistrieri and Kansas City Boss Nick Civella on ITAR Charges because of a 300lb con man named Allen Rosenberg.  

It has been said that Phil helped put an end to the Conman who was found in March of 1967 riddled with bullets and handcuffed to a car.  Lou would pass away in November of that same year.  Milwaukee Phil had left a trail of murder and mayhem in the 1960's, one of the most famous was the M&M where he and Tony Spilatro used a vice on the head of a Chicago hood to get him to tell them who his partner was in murdering an Outfit guy.  The hood gave up his friend and they were both found with their throats cut.  

At the end of the decade Phil had moved into the top spot of the Outfit but his reign would be short lived. Despite controlling restaurants, nightclubs and stripjoints, Phil was convicted of extortion and sent to prison.  He would die while locked up in 1971.