The Arrests Continue

The past has a way of catching up with you when you live the mafia life.  If you committed murder you are safe only when you are the last one alive. In the last two weeks the FBI arrested two men who were formerly the boss and a capo in the New England family.  

The FBI took down Robert DeLuca, now 70, at his Coral Springs home in Florida.  DeLuca was a capo in the family and started cooperating in 2011.  DeLuca was sentenced to one day in prison in 2014 for his cooperation.

Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme was arrested Wednesday at a Connecticut hotel.  The former boss of the New England family had flipped when he found out that Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi were informants in 1999.  He agreed to cooperate against Flemmi, Bulger and their FBI handler John Connolly Jr.  Then Flemmi flipped and told the FBI about the time he walked in on Frank Salemme Jr. strangling Steven A. DiSarro. Flemmi told the FBI that DiSarro was murdered because he was close to someone who was an informant.  DiSarro was the front guy for Salemme and his son in the nightclub The Channel in 1993.

Cadillac Frank has already served 5 years for lying to the FBI during his debriefing about the DiSarro murder.  He has been living in Atlanta in the Witness Relocation Program as Richard Parker.

The FBI just recently dug up Steven DiSarro’s remains when they searched the property of Billy Ricci, a longtime New England family associate. Billy Ricci had a marijuana grow operation on the property and was busted this year.  

They are both charged with murdering a federal witness which can carry the death penalty.

Joey Merlino the one time boss of the Philadelphia family was granted his freedom after his wife and friends posted a 5 million dollar bond secured by property.

The thirty page indictment is really broad, so I am betting that there will be a superseding indictment coming down.  

They claimed at the bond hearing that Joey Merlino was caught on tape acting like a boss and that he was trying to put the Philly family back together again.

The FBI had an undercover agent and a cooperator that vouched for the agent who both made audio and video tapes of Merlino.  The cooperator had a casino style gambling club in Yonkers and he worked with a Genovese family gangster who gave him permission to move to Florida to work with Merlino.

This is how Merlino got sucked into the Healthcare fraud. It involves a compound that can cost up to 10k a tube and the crooked doctors prescribe it on a trial basis with 10 refills.  That means they can stick the insurance companies with a 100k bill.  It is the snake oil of our time. I am sure we have paid for this out of our taxes.

One guy who knows that you cannot keep a secret in today's mafia is Teddy Persico Jr., who is now doing 12 years for a few crimes including ordering the murder of renegade capo Joe Scopo when he was on furlough from prison to attend his grandmother's funeral. Teddy was doing 25 years for drug trafficking at the time.

The FBI had a few witness that told them about his part in the murder, but they were able to seize a picture from Rao’s and some letters Teddy sent to the guy from prison that helped their case. It helped a lot that the guy kept every letter.

Teddy who did 17 years in state prison for dealing drugs was already headed back within hours of his release, he just didn't know it. If you want to read about it, it is detailed in my book Breakshot. What does Teddy have to worry about next? Scooby.

The DeCavalcante Organized Crime Family

I was just having a conversation about the FBI using deep undercover agents like Donnie Brasco and Jack Falcone.  The people I was discussing the subject were wondering why the FBI would spend so much time and money on the Cosa Nostra.  They felt that it was no longer a threat.  I explained to them that the Cosa Nostra was still International in scope and much more dangerous than the flavor-of-the-moment crime group.  

Lets go back to the 80s.  Jamaican Posse, Medellín Cartel and many Mexican groups along the border, but they have no staying power. The Cosa Nostra is like a cancer that you can't get rid of, even with aggressive treatment.  They are able to bounce back because of their structure and because they are a secret group.  When the FBI takes down a crew or the administration, others, known and unknown, can step up and keep running the organization.  

I was surprised when I heard the FBI took down a crew in the DeCavalcante family of New Jersey.  The other families in New York have such a foothold in New Jersey that I forget that the state has its own family.  The FBI had an agent undercover for 3 years in the DeCavalcante family and they were active.  Charles Stango lived in Henderson, Nevada just outside of Las Vegas, but he was still a Capo in the DeCavalcante family.  Anthony Stango, his son, lived in Brick Township, New Jersey and handled his father’s day-to-day operations in New Jersey.  Charles Stango, also known as “Beeps,” took money from the undercover FBI Agent who has been under since 2012.  The Agent had become close to Beeps and last year, just before Christmas, Beeps shared his plans to murder a member of the family.  

Beeps had given the contract to the FBI undercover and told him to kill or maim the other man known as the “Pet” because he had disrespected an older member of the family.  He wanted him shot or blown up in his business in Elizabeth, NJ.  

The order was given in Las Vegas in a meeting between Beeps and the FBI agent and it was recorded by the agent.  Beeps had assured the agent that the DeCavalcante Administration was on board with the murder.  The FBI had the proof because they had intercepted calls between Frank Nigro the family Consigliere and Paul Colella who was the go-between to higher ups in the administration. They all sought and were given permission to murder the wayward member.

Beep’s son and other crew members also distributed cocaine on a large scale in New Jersey and were caught by the FBI.

They were looking to expand into Toms River, New Jersey, where they were going to open a nightclub as cover for a high-end escort business that would cater to businessmen in the area.

Sex sells, and the amount of money that a high end escort business can bring in is staggering.

When I told the FBI and IRS about Nici’s Girls and Exotica 2000 they could not believe the amount of money they made.

In all, the FBI was able to take down 10 members and associates of the DeCavalcante Family from two crews. This was a different bust than other recent ones, because they didn't take down a gambling or shylock operation, which is the staple of Mafia.  They did bust them for selling large amounts of cigarettes.

This quote from U.S. Attorney Fisherman sums it up well, “Though its ranks have been thinned by countless convictions and its own internal bloodletting, traditional organized crime remains a real problem.”