New Jersey Fun with the DeCavalcantes

The FBI still goes after Cosa Nostra or mafia families, and in the last few years they have hit the New Jersey-based DeCavalcantes pretty hard.

Last week a judge gave Charles “Beeps” Stango, a capo in the DeCavalcante family, ten years in a case that included murder-for-hire.  

The DeCavalcante crime family is the crime family that the show Sopranos was loosely based on.  Law enforcement now claims that they operate under the Gambino crime family. I laugh out loud when I think about the Sicilians, who run the Gambinos, actually wanting to deal with a bunch of American Cosa Nostra.

Beep’s crew engaged in everything from bookmaking, to loansharking, to selling cocaine and untaxed cigarettes.  The FBI was watching them and intercepted some good wire talk about their drug deals.  One of the conversations they were able to record was one of Beeps talking about the structure of the family and who did what.  It is a very damning recording.  He explains that he goes way back with Goombah Frankie, aka Frank Nigro, who was also taken down in the investigation.  Nigro also happens to be the consigliere of the family.  

Beeps explains to the informant who made the recording what place the consigliere holds in the family.  Equal with the underboss, but a representative of all the men.  

He goes on to explain that if you have a beef, you go to your capo, who takes it to the consigliere, who will settle the dispute.

This is where he tells the informant that the family is under the Gambinos now after being independant since the beginning.

Beeps brags about “planting the family flag,” or setting up crews, in New Orleans, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Beeps then had a beef with another capo and another made guy in his crew.  He told the informant that they were disrespectful to him and the underboss.  He wanted the guy hurt, acid thrown in his face or put in a wheelchair.  

He wanted the informant to use a crew from outside Elizabeth, New Jersey that would not be recognizable to the locals.  He considered throwing “pineapples” (grenades) to blow up the guy.

The informant found two unknown outlaw bikers who would do the job.   Beeps offered them fifty thousand dollars to handle the guy.  This time he wanted him dead and he told them.  He also told his son on the phone, and Nigro, while it was being recorded.

The recordings go on and on about setting up the murder and why.  They are between Beeps and Nigro, Beeps and his son and many with the informant. The two would-be hitmen would later turn out to be undercover FBI agents.  

They recorded a meeting at a bar with his son Anthony and two females, where they discussed starting a high end escort business.  They went over paperwork the girls would sign stating that they would not commit illegal acts.  Beeps wanted his son to open a bar as a front for the business.

The informant also did a couple of ‘buy walk’ cocaine deals.  A ‘buy walk’ is when law enforcement buys illegal drugs, pays for them, and lets the dealer go about business.  This is different when law enforcement does ‘buy busts’ and takes everyone down at the time of the deal.  They did a couple of deals with Anthony for two hundred grams of cocaine to strengthen the case against him.  Then the FBI upped the amounts to five hundred gram deals.

The informant got some great tapes of them discussing where they got the cocaine from and how it was brought into the country.

The six others arrested with Beeps Stango have all plead guilty and will be sentenced.

In the old days, a capo would be insulated from street dealings - and forget about having to “hire out” a killing.  The guys in any mafia crew would not get paid to murder - they just did what they were told to do.  Old age and repeated government assaults have weakened the family.

I doubt Beeps Stango will ever be a play on the street again.

Mafia Drugs & Gambling Busts Continue

The Waterfront Commission of New York and New Jersey began decades ago and is still making cases against the mafia in 2016.  This new case grew out of a broader investigation into mafia activities along the waterfront.  They write that they will announce more developments at a later time.

This week they took down a multi family crew that distributed marijuana and oxycodone as well as ran an online sportsbook.  

The operation worked like this. John Kelly and Richard Sinde were the ringleaders and coordinated the business.  They would buy marijuana from legal farms in California and have it shipped to New York, where it is still illegal and can command a higher price.  

California is the wild west of weed.  They have laws that say you can grow it for medical and personal use.  Yet you can also grow as a collective.  You can get a marijuana card for as little $25 for a doctor visit.  You can get a card from the state for $100.  It’s only for medical use, but that is a joke. There are so many stores and growers, why bother arresting anyone anymore. The whole business is in a grey area because it is not legal for recreational use, but that is what many people use it for on a daily basis.  So it is a highly unregulated business.  They could just make it legal and tax the actual business, or they could make it illegal.  

Destiny Saetern and Michael Giammarinaro worked on some of the grow operations in California.  They would purchase marijuana from different growers and pack 5-15lbs into boxes to mail or ship UPS or Fedex to New York.  Often they would pack 100-150lbs into boxes and it would be driven to New York in a van.

Stephen Gallo would pick up the packages in New York and then take them to various warehouse or homes to repackage for distribution.

Michael “Mickey Boy” Paradiso, a Gambino capo who did a long stretch for dealing heroin, was taken down in the investigation.  

Lawrence Dentico, the grandson of Genovese capo “Little Larry” Dentico, ran part of the operation from his home in California.

The marijuana part of the operation brought in $350k a month in sales.  Over a 21 month period they sold $15 million in marijuana.  

They also particiapated in an online gambling operation Bklynsportscenter.com, which brought in millions.  This was run just like all the other mafia operated sportsbooks.  A better can bet online or call a wireroom.  He can bet his limit or what he has posted with a local connected bookie. He is paid on Tuesdays or Wednesdays by the local bookie.  

They also had another profitable side business selling oxycodone pills.  They made an $18k profit just on the pills they sold to an undercover agent at the end of the operation, but it is unknown how much they made on oxycodone deals that were not caught.

This was a pretty well set up business.  They took in the cash in New York and New Jersey. They collected it and it was laundered through Regional Food Brokers Inc.

They ended up taking down about two dozen members and associates of all five New York mafia families. After all the work law enforcement did on this case, have people stopped gambling, smoking weed or taking pills? No.

The Genovese Family and “Operation Fistful”

It is a crime group that people claim is “dead,” yet law enforcement keeps taking down different crews that still pull down cash. The latest bust went down in New Jersey, called “Operation Fistful.”  It was a joint investigation by the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice and the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, conducted with assistance from the New York and Queens County District Attorneys’ Offices and other law enforcement agencies.

The operation targeted a group of associates that were part of a New Jersey crew operating under the supervision and control of two alleged “made” members of the Genovese crime family: Charles “Chuckie” Tuzzo, 82, of Bayside, N.Y., (“capo”), and Vito Alberti, 57, of Morristown NJ, a Genovese “soldier.”

The investigation centered on the check cashing businesses of Genovese associate Domenick Pucillo. He ran both legal and illegal check cashing business that he used to launder and shylock money through. The shylock operation was a simple but profitable enterprise.  Pucillo would make loans to those close to him for 1 point or 1% a week which comes to 52% a year.  The other shylocks would add a half point or much more, and then put it to work by loaning it out.  The business took in 4.7 million dollars in interest alone while the investigation had them under surveillance.

The operation was mainly based out of Tri-State Check Cashing, Inc., with headquarters at 17 Avenue A in Newark, NJ which was owned by Pucillo.  Vito Alberti got a piece of the whole shylock business and loans that he handled he took 2 points off the top.  They would have people who got the loans give them checks which they would cash weekly at the check cashing business so it looked like a legitimate transaction.

Vincent Coppola, the son of Genovese Capo Michael Coppola, ran a sports betting operation that took in 1.7 million and generated 400k in profits that he shared with Alberti and Capo Chuckie Tuzzo at the same time.

They also had a very lucrative side business which they named Viriato Corp. Viriato was used for their illegal check cashing business that was run out of a neighborhood bar.  They cashed over 400 million in checks and took in 9 million in tax free fees, which they all split.  People would write them large checks to cover under the table payroll or whatever they wanted to get cash for that was not traceable.  They did not have to file a CTR aka Currency Transaction Report like you do at a bank for anything over or totaling 10k.  

Viriato Corp got the cash from Tri-State Check Cashing and cashed checks, which they deposited and then wrote big checks to Tri-State which they filed CTRs on.

They then gained control of GTS Auto Carriers which transported cars from the docks to other locations.  They looted the company and used it to launder more checks through while the task force was watching.

The whole operation was a cash machine.  They took in almost 700k in cash from a drug dealer who paid them a fee to launder it, and then they used that cash to cash checks.  

It's a circle of undeclared cash kept in play by mixing it up with their legitimate businesses.  So much for a dying crime industry. The mafia is alive and well in New York and New Jersey.  This was just one small part of a crew that involved one made guy in the family and his capo. Imagine what the rest of the family has going on.