Bonanno Family: Locked Up Again

The FBI hit the Bonanno family with another big indictment this week. This time they took down ten guys with a 37 count indictment.  The Bonannos just cannot seem to get a break from the FBI.  Ronald Giallanzo aka Ronnie G has been a high roller for awhile, and the Feds were already moving to seize his home in Howard Beach, Queens.

Ronnie G was involved in pump and dump stock scams with my old buddy John Baudanza who is a Lucchese guy. He has made a lot of money from running sportsbooks and a large loan sharking book.  The Feds want to take in excess of twenty six millions dollars he has made over the years with gambling and loan sharking.

They claim at one point he had over three million dollars in loans out on the street.  They also had to make a big deal out the fact he kept running his loan sharking business while he was locked up in federal prison. I guess it is hard for some feds to fathom that a guy going away for a short time will not walk away from his business.

They are charging him with running a sportsbook way back in 2005.  I still do not know how I feel about arresting people for loan sharking. I understand that it is against the law. But why do they only enforce certain federal laws and not others?  

I have written about loan sharking before, and I still do not understand why they must protect people from their own bad decisions. Loan sharks never force a debtor to take their money and spend it.  The debtor seeks them out and asks for the loan.  In return, they agree to make certain  payments.

It is like the so called “predatory lending banks” with home loans.  No matter how a bank writes up the paper work and what it entails, the debtor is the one with the choice whether or not to agree and sign.

I do not gamble, but I used to be involved in sportsbooks.  We never forced anyone to place a bet.  The one thing I do understand is why the feds get involved when the bookie threatens his debtors.

Ronnie G and three other Bonanno soldiers are indicted in this case.  They claim Ronnie G is an acting capo. Michael Padavona, Michael Palmaccio and Nicholas “Pudgie” Festa are soldiers in the family.  

Ronnie G would give Michael Padavona, Michael Palmaccio and Nicholas “Pudgie” Festa cash at low interest rate to put out on the street.  They would collect on the loans and pay him every week.

One time Ronnie G and another Bonanno associate grabbed a guy, threw him into a car and beat him over a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar loan.  The guy was so afraid he pissed his pants.

Another time, Ronnie G and Michael Padavona wanted to deal with a guy who robbed their crew, so they had guys out looking to kill him.  They even exchanged shots with the guy in 2006 on the streets of Howard Beach for a few months.  

The indictment charges all the guys with a lot of racketeering acts, ranging  from selling drugs to robbery.

Just last week they charged Vincent Asaro, Ronnie G’s uncle, with more crimes after he beat them in the decades old Lufthansa robbery case.

The FBI seems to have a lot of great informants placed in the Bonanno family.  I am sure they have them in all the families right now and soon we will know. A Bonanno capo has flipped, so there should be more indictments in the pipeline.

This is their life, but does crime really pay?

Nicky the Mouth: Bonanno Capo

Nicky Santoro has had a long run in the Mafia.  He was part of the Sonny Black crew that was taken down by FBI Special Agent Pistone aka Donnie Brasco. He has been part of the Bonanno crime family for decades as an associate, made guy, capo and underboss.  Today he is an inmate with the state of New York awaiting trial.  He has gotten away with a lot over the years, but something he can’t get away from has caught up to him: father time.  He is in a hospital bed,  on a no bail hold, and he has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Department of Corrections for negligent and malicious treatment.

I was down at BaMonte's in Brooklyn one Saturday many years ago, and I met Nicky in the parking lot with a loud mouth Colombo guy.  Nicky gave us some NFL jerseys.  Soon after that he was made a capo, then back to a soldier and finally after the boss Joey Massino flipped, he was briefly the underboss of the family.

He has been locked up on a number of charges in the past, but now he is just old and sick.

The state case of enterprise corruption ended in a mistrial last year after two months of trial.

The state is going to retry it, but they want to keep Nicky locked up.

The heart of the case revolves around an online gambling book and the selling of prescription drugs. This is hardly like the Tommy “Shots” Gioeli case. The problem is he has gotten away with a lot in the past.

In 1994 Genovese associate Michael D’Urso and his cousin Bonanno associate Sabatino Lombarti were playing cards at San Giuseppe social club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn when Giancarlo “John” Imbrieco shot D’Urso in the head and then shot Lombardi.  D’Urso survived the hit, but his cousin was killed.

He went to his Genovese capo Rosario Gangi, who told him not to retaliate.  The shooting went down because another Genovese associate owed them $60,000 for a gambling debt.  D’Urso tried to get one of the people involved in the hit, but failed twice.  He was warned by Gangi that if it was him who was behind the failed attempts, he was in big trouble.  So D’Urso went to the FBI and started wearing a wire.  He wore it for three years and took down at least 60 guys, including two bosses of the Genovese family.

It seems John Imbrieco who is now more than 15 years into his 20 year plea deal has asked the judge who sentenced him to give him some leniency.

Imbrieco wrote Judge Leo Glasser and told him that he was a changed man.  He has been a model prisoner, taking plumbing classes and even spin class.

Imbrieco noted that his coconspirator had their case overturned. The Judge asked prosecutors to work out a timed served deal.

The family of Sabatino Lombarti are outraged.  Lombarti might have been a loan shark, but he didn't shoot two people in the back of the head for money.

Once again more drama in the mafia world. I wonder, since most of these guys are getting up in years, if they will find a litigator to keep on retainer who specializes in mafia “slip and fall” civil suits?

Sonny Franzese will be 100 this year and he has not filed one yet.

The Bonanno Family Saga

The Bonanno family keeps getting hammered by law enforcement from every direction. The media likes to portray the Cosa Nostra as dead.  They make fun of the guys who get taken down, but the truth is, all the other crime groups wish they were like them.

The Cartels.  What happened to the Medellin Cartel?   The Cali Cartel?  The organizations before and since are gone.  Most of the drug Cartels are just that: drugs networks.  They are usually run by one person and when they get arrested or killed it's over.  They do not diversify into other areas like Unions, political corruption, waste, carting and the list goes on.  Cosa Nostra does that, and everything they can make money doing.

In July of 2013 the Manhattan District Attorney’s office came down on the Nicky Santoro crew of the Bonanno family.  They arrested 9 men including their Capo Nicky Santoro.

The media has made a big deal that they were selling Viagra and Cialis pills. What they failed to tell you is that they were trying to move 300,000 of them plus tens of thousand of Oxycodone pills.

They also ran a bookmaking operation that pulled in 7 million in bets.  It was a typical sportsbook feature, a special website and an 800 number that you could place bets.  Then they would settle up on Tuesdays if it was a grand or more either way.

One of the guys indicted, Nicholas Bernhard, was president of International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 917 which had about 1900 members. He is charged with using his position with the Union to enrich himself and the Bonanno family.

He had one of his guys loaning money to Union members and taking action for the sports book.

ERNEST AIELLO and VITO BADAMO were both acting Capo’s at various times during the investigation.  

Anthony Santoro known as Skinny was a soldier beneath them.  

They are on trial now and it is expected to go on until April.  The way the trials have been going I would not be surprised to see them all walk.  

If anyone has watched Donnie Brasco they may recall when Donnie walks into a Social club and some guys are busting open a parking meter.  That was in the late 1970’s early 1980’s.  That is what street guys do.  They hustle however they can to make cash.  Some guys make more than others.  I knew guys who made fake subway tokens and they made money doing it.  Others sold phone cards for long distance calls.  Some guys are in karting and they make money that way.

Nicky Santoro was part of the Sonny Black crew portrayed in Donnie Brasco. They claim the Bruno Kirby character was loosely based on him.  

I know that he was selling knock off NFL team jerseys in the mid 2000’s because he gave me a box in the Bamonte’s parking lot.  Today the FBI is looking for terrorists and Mexican drug cartel members moving tons of heroin.  They have let up on the five New York families of the Cosa Nostra. The last time they did that, the Bonanno family regrouped and rebuilt itself up into a good sized family.  You cannot count them out just yet.

Oldfellas

The Mafia has aged just like much of America and the rest of the world.  Guys who are up and coming no longer want a long apprenticeship.  They want everything now and have no intention of waiting.  Yet mafia leaders are living longer than ever.  The problem is just like the problem that faces legitimate Americans - they can no longer earn like they could in their heyday.  Today the problem with the aging Mafia is even more pronounced because the Feds take your assets away with powerful laws like RICO.  Let's say you own a business and property. Today they seize it and after your prison term you come back to nothing.  Not the case with Vincent Asaro, a former Bonanno Capo who is now on trial in Manhattan US District Court for (among other things) the 1978 robbery of $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewelry from Lufthansa Airlines.  It was most famously portrayed on the big screen in the movie Goodfellas.  

Vincent Asaro is now 80 years old and not only facing the robbery charge from the Lufthansa heist, but a 44 year old murder.  Paul Katz was an associate of Jimmy Burke’s, the Irish hoodlum made famous by Robert De Niro in Goodfellas.  Burke got information from his law enforcement sources that Katz was cooperating so he strangled him with a dog chain.  Burke and Asaro buried him in a vacant queens home under some concrete.  Years later Burke contacted Asaro from prison and had him move the skeleton to the basement of a home he owned.  It might never have been discovered, but one of the men who helped decided to cash in on his time in the Mafia.

Gaspare Valenti, a cousin of Asaro, was over his head in gambling debts.  So, he went to the FBI.  He started wearing a wire and he recorded over 1000 hours of conversations with many Bonanno family members. Valenti was paid by the FBI the whole time he was wearing a wire.  

The lawyer for Asaro is making a big deal about this, but Asaro’s words come from his mouth and that is a fact.  What the US Attorneys fail to realize is that American juries that are made up of mostly blue collar and retired people are sick of these government vendettas.  

They spend millions of dollars paying a loser criminal to record another older criminal for a crime that took place 30 years ago.  They cannot stop the killings today or the invasion from Mexico, but they waste resources to go after an old man?

The government spent 3 weeks presenting its case, which included playing some bad tapes of Asaro complaining he did not get his share of the famous heist.  He even spoke about being worried he would be put on the shelf by the Bonanno family.  The problem is that most of the tapes are bad and they are spoken in a code.  They have to be explained by Valenti and he did not come across as likable. Juries also resent that murderers and criminals get paid by the FBI when they have to work hard just to live.  The former Underboss Sal Vitale made an appearance on the stand. He was above Asaro and made millions and murdered many people, yet he is free?

The case rested on the tapes, yet as damning as they were, Asaro never says Lufthansa or admits directly to murder.  They brought in 33 witnesses and dozens of pictures but not one picture showed Asaro engaged in a criminal act.

Valenti did describe how the robbery of Lufthansa went down.  It is a riveting first hand description of what it was like to break in and steal so much cash.  They formed a chain and handed over 50 boxes of $125k in cash from the vault to the van.  How did they plan the robbery so well, only to forget to have a place to keep the cash afterwards?  They ended up keeping it at Valenti’s home for the next couple of days.  They had no idea that there would be so much cash and the heat it would cause.  The police found the black van just like in the movie Goodfellas.  They found the yellow styrofoam popcorn that was used in the boxes to pack the cash.  They just ate the details up, but all that showed them was that Valenti was in on the robbery.

Asaro’s lawyer spent just one afternoon on two witness and then rested.  The jury took two days but came back with a not guilty verdict on all counts.  After two years in custody, Asaro was free to go.  The first place he went was to get a plate of pasta.

"Gus" Farace

I had TV on in the background and an old movie starring Tony Danza came on.  It was called “Dead Or Alive: The race for Gus Farace.”  I had watched it many years ago, but it reminded me of the story.  

Constabile "Gus" Farace was a bad seed from an early age. Gus grew up in Tottenville, Staten Island, where his Mob connected father had a small store.  He was a large boy who loved to throw his weight around.  He joined a gang called the Bay Boys that used to brawl and destroy things in Tottenville.  Gus was pulled over by police in January 1977 and they found a pistol.  Not even a month later he was arrested for forgery.

Gus moved on to much worse crimes, and by December of 1979 he pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter.  Gus, the stellar person that he was, kidnapped two boys from Greenwich Village because he claimed they propositioned him.  So Gus and his three friends beat one to death with driftwood and their hands.  The other was lucky because he was able to dive into the water near where they took them, and he escaped.  He later identified Gus in a lineup, and after the plea deal Gus was given 7 to 21 years.  

It was while locked up that he met and became friendly with long time Bonanno member Jerry Chili.  Jerry liked Gus and they stayed in contact when Gus was released in 1985.  Gus started dealing weed right away and soon moved into cocaine.  He partnered up with Greg Scarpa Jr. in 1988 in a drug business.

On the night of February 28, 1989, Gus did the unthinkable.  He murdered an undercover DEA Agent on Staten Island. The Agent, Everett Hatcher, was the first DEA Agent murdered in New York.  Hatcher had made some small buys from Gus and he had set up a deal with him that night. Gus directed him to a deserted section of Staten Island where he drove up next to him in a van and shot him through his open window as they spoke.  Gus shot him 3 times in the head and got away because Hatcher’s back up had lost him.  

Gus had broken a rule that had gone back to the time of Lucky Luciano by murdering a DEA Agent.  The heat was immediate and the Feds poured into New York.  They began to grab and roust mobsters all over New York. They let them know that they would not be able to breath until Gus was taken off the street.  The Mafia decided Gus had to go.  The Lucchese family had a member Johnny Petrucelli hiding Gus in an upstate cabin.  Petrucelli had met Gus in prison, where Gus saved his life. They soon gave Petrucelli the contract to murder Gus and they told him either kill him or yourself.  They told him to leave the body in the streets so the Feds would know he was dead.  Petrucelli never carried out the hit and a few months later he was shot to death.  

On November 17, 1989, just before midnight on a Brooklyn Street, Gus was gunned down by three men.  James Galione, Mario Gallo and Louis Tuzzio caught him in his car on a Brooklyn street and blasted away.  They also hit his friend, another associate, who lived.  They really did the State of New York a favor because Gus was just a bad seed.

The Mafia Lives On

One of the things that makes the Mafia so dangerous when compared to drug trafficking groups or other criminal groups is their ability to keep doing business no matter what.   The Bonanno family has been hit hard in the recent years.  The FBI went after them with a vengeance and they took down the administration.  The Bonanno family had been the only one of the five families in New York that had never had a made guy turn rat.  That all changed when underboss Sal Vitale flipped on the family and his brother in law the boss Joey Massino.  Then Joey Massino did the unthinkable: he flipped.  Joey not only flipped, he also wore a wire on acting boss Vinny Basciano and took him down.  One of the guys caught up in the prosecution was John Palazzolo.

Palazzolo was inducted into the Bonanno family in 1977 just like Massino, during that time it was under the leadership of boss Rusty Rastelli.    Palazzolo was tasked with killing another made guy named Anthony Coglitore, who was involved in blowing up another member.  

In 1991 Palazzolo was called again to take part in another murder.  This time it was another made guy, Russell Mauro.  Mauro had been involved in selling drugs, but when everyone else went down and he did not, the Bonannos figured he was cooperating.  They decided to murder him and Palazzolo was the guy to lure him to the murder site.  Mauro was killed, stuffed into a body bag and placed in the trunk of a 1985 Lincoln that was left on a street in Queens.

The body was badly decomposed by the time the cops found it and there were few clues.

Palazzolo, as you can see, has a long criminal history that included fraud, theft of interstate shipments, loansharking and extortion.  When he was picked up in the big Bonanno family take down, he had just finished parole.  He ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder Mauro in aid of racketeering in April of 2006, and he was sentenced to 10 years.  

Palazzolo was released in 2012 at the age of 80, and he was right back to work with the Bonanno family. He was on parole and was not supposed to associate with felons.  Palazzolo was soon the street boss of the Bronx faction of the Bonanno family. Things were not going well and the Bronx faction was losing power to the others in Queens, so Palazzolo decided to make his move.

He started meeting with various men in the family.  One of those he met with was Fat Anthony Rabito. Fat Anthony is the Consigliore of the family and is a long time member of the family.  Fat Anthony had taken part in the murder of the three Capos during the internal war and had pleaded guilty to Racketeering.    

The problem is the FBI was watching when Palazzo and Fat Anthony had a lengthy meeting outside a Bayside Queens Diner parking lot.   Palazzo then met with another family man who was close to the boss Mikey “Nose” Mancuso.

The FBI decided they needed to make a move because they believed that Palazzo was going to make a move and it would cause more violence in the family.

Last week they took him down, which is surprising because the last time Palazzo was sentenced, back in 2006, he claimed that he had prostate cancer, Crohns disease and that he had to take 12 pills a day.  Today he is 82 years old and a veteran of the mafia.  Guys like him are the most dangerous because they have the years of knowledge.

The judge who was on his last case back in 2006 was the same judge on his case this week. The judge asked the US Attorney. “Is there still a leadership of the Bonanno family?” and she replied  “Unfortunately, yes.”  No matter who is locked up, or who dies, there is always someone else willing to step up and take the role.  

The Massino Family: The Last Boss

There are five Mafia families in New York. Of the five families, only one boss was left on the street, the rest were all locked up, with “acting bosses” or panels running in their absence.  

The last one left on the street was Joey Massino, boss of the Bonanno family.  Joey Massino had been in prison when Rusty Rastelli, the previous Bonanno family boss had passed away. The captains voted him in as boss and he inherited a family that had been in constant conflict for 25 years.  The ranks had been thinned and the remaining family was about 80 made members strong.

Joey started to change things for the better right away.  He suggested that his men close the Social Clubs because they made easy targets for the FBI.  The feds could set up surveillance and watch 50 men very easily at once.  Joey’s logic was simple, if his men were scattered the FBI could not be in 50 places at once.  

He also dropped the mandatory attendance of weddings, wake and other family events for the same reason.  Then he changed the rules on being made, he wanted anyone proposed for membership be around the crew for a minimum of 8 years.  After Donnie Brasco he decided there was no way the FBI would keep a Special Agent undercover for 8 years just to be made.

Joseph Bonanno, the founder of the modern Bonanno family had written a book.  The book spoke about the Cosa Nostra and even the Commission.  Joey felt that this was huge breach of Omerta and it was an embarrassment.  Joey changed the family name internally to the Massino Family.  He then started building up the family after so many years of neglect.  Each family was allowed to fill positions of those who had died and they were also allowed 10 new members a year. A list would be passed among the families of those proposed. The family would swell to 190 made members and 17 capos with people in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Canada.

Joey decided to break up his Massino family, so he put Sal Vitale in charge of so many capos, TG aka Anthony Graziano in charge of others and Tony Green Urso in charge of the rest.  He made this move for a number of reasons, but a main reason was that his brother-in-law, Sal Vitale, and John Gotti had plotted to get rid of him and take over the family in 1993.  Joey has stated that it was a good thing John Gotti had been away when he got home or he would not be on the stand testifying.

Joey called a meeting of the heads of the 5 families in the year 2000 and told the men to only come if they could make decisions.  Louie Bagels attended from the Lucchese Family, Joe Waverly came representing the Colombos, Peter Gotti came for the Gambinos and Skinny Larry attended for the Genovese.  They were to set important policy for the mafia across the country. They wanted guys who came home from prison to have to wait 10 years before they could be made.  They didn't want guys who took drug beefs still doing the same thing in the families.  They finally settled on a 5 year waiting period.  He told the other families at the meeting that the Massino family would only be inducting full-blooded Italians.  That was the only big meeting of all the five families while Joey was the boss.  

Early January 2003 Joey could see that the FBI was all over him.  They watched him day and night.  No matter where he went they followed him and they had guys outside of his house all night.  He knew that they were going to arrest him.  He knew that they had gotten his accountant to turn over all his records.  The noose was tightening, so on January 7 he slipped the FBI and met Bruno and Vinny Basciano at a diner close to his house.  There he told them he was going away and that he was leaving a panel to run the family.  He had found out from a lawyer on New Years’ Eve that Frank Coppa had flipped so he knew he was finished.  Vinny wanted to kill Sal Vitale before he was arrested, but Joey squashed it.  On January 9th the FBI came and took Joey away.  He asked them if they had gotten Sal and they said yes.  Joey knew that it was over and soon he found out how many guys had flipped on him.  It would turn out to be 7 guys who flipped on him, including his brother-in-law Sal Vitale.   

In January of 2004 the FBI came down with another massive indictment and took down the Bonanno family’s panel.   Joey sat through the trial where all his closest friends testified against him and he was convicted and facing life.  It was then he learned that the Feds were putting together a death penalty case against him for the murder of George from Canada. They said it was because George had accused TG Graziano of being on cocaine but it was because he murdered a wiseguy’s son in Canada.

Joey decided to flip but not until he saw what happened with the trial.  He was in his 70’s at the time, and he learned that the FBI was going to go after his wife.  He had married Josephine Vitale in 1960 and he had worked hard first in a factory and then on a food truck to provide for her.   He had built up his food truck business branching out to stocking other peoples trucks.  He had a deli and a catering business and he had saved this cash.  He had won the lotto 4 times and put that money away.  He had invested heavily in real estate for his family.  The FBI was going after his wife for money laundering.  The Bonannos had stopped giving him money from his book and shylock on the street.  Vincent Basciano had made himself acting boss and told people that the Commission okayed it.  Vinny took Joey’s money guys and placed them in his crew.  He made guys and broke and promoted Capos.  Then he had Randy Pizzola killed to show people he was boss.  The Genovese wanted to kill Vinny because they said he was like John Gotti in his suits but Joey told them no.  Joey went to a proffer with Edward McDonald as his shadow council. When the Government decided against the death penalty he started wearing a wire.

Vinny Basciano now locked up with him and was running his mouth.  He had made Michael Mancuso the acting boss but the rest of the family wanted to hear from Joey.  The Family was split into factions again.   Then it came out that Joey had flipped, the first official boss in the Cosa Nostra to flip and wear a wire.  Josephine gave the FBI 7 million in cash, over 500 gold bars and 5 properties to satisfy the forfeiture judgement against him.  She was allowed to keep 6 properties including her home, his mother’s house and four rental properties.  The rentals gave his wife an income of 270k a year.  

Joey would be sentenced to time served in 2013.

Mob Wives just announced a new cast member by the name of Natalie DiDonato, from Philadelphia.  Could she be related to Andrew DiDonato?

Andrew DiDonato: Surviving the Mob

Bonanno Family

The best inside secrets come from the guys who turn.  Nobody was a bigger coup for the government than Joey Massino.  Joey was Boss of the Bonanno family and not just any boss but the man who built it back up.  The Bonanno family had been decimated by internal strife and embarrassed by Donnie Brasco aka Joseph Pistone infiltrating the family.

Joey shut the social clubs and made a secret gesture where they tugged on their ear lobe to signify the Bonanno family.  He was able to get the family back on the Commission and he brought new blood into the family.  

Joey Massino wanted to flip even before his conviction.  He had attended a couple of proffer sessions in prison and the Government was still on the fence about a deal or no deal.  

Vincent Basciano, aka Vinny, had been in charge on the street as acting boss of the Bonanno family while Joey was behind bars.  He was able to make Captains or break them if necessary, and was the last word on the street for the Bonanno family.  Then Vinny was also arrested and housed at Brooklyn MDC. In November of 2004 Joey called a family meeting by using lawyers to set up co-defendant meeting so they could go over family business.

It was at one of these prison meetings that Joey Massino wore a wire for the FBI.  He got Vinny to talk about Randy Pizzolo, a guy who was an associate of his crew who was found murdered in Brooklyn.   Vinny spoke freely to Joey because, after all, he had been boss for over 13 years.  

Vinny had sent Joey’s wife 50k in a bottle of Dom while he was locked up.

Vinny told Joey that he had given the order to kill Randy Pizzolo because the kid was a rat and scumbag that he had brought a pistol to a meeting at Villa Sonoma with a made Bonanno family guy.  He had then gotten drunk and started running his mouth.  Vinny had chased him and he was told to go to Florida.  Randy would not leave New York and this bothered Vinny a lot.

Randy was lured to Greenpoint Brooklyn early one day and he was shot seven times by Anthony “Ace” Aiello, a made Bonanno man.  Vinny had told Joey on tape in MDC that Ace was his Luca Brasi, a fictional character from the The Godfather.  

Joey Massino also gave up how the Bonanno family inducted new members.  A Capo would place a guy who had been around them for a number of years on a piece of paper and give it to Joey.  Joey would then at his leisure look into the guy to see if he was “stand up.”  If he passed, Joey would put his name next to the name of a soldier who had died or gone away and that would be passed among the other five families.  If they had no objections he would induct them into the family.  He told the FBI that he personally attended 60-70 induction ceremonies over the years.

The Bonannos would bring a guy or two or even three into the room and say something along the lines of, “This is the life you chose. If not, there is the door, you can leave now.  If you choose this life, you are here until you die.” Once they say yes they start the ceremony.  They then go over the rules: you dont mess with a Wiseguy’s wife or daughter, you don’t sell drugs (which is a joke because they all make money this way), never bring a gun to a meeting, and you put everything on record with your Capo.

Then he said they would tell them if your wife is dying, your kids, your mother and you are called you must come. The Family, the Mafia comes first. They tell you to murder, your brother is dying, your kid, you have to murder, the Bonanno family always comes first.   They then told them that if they were told to kill their brother or best friend they had to right away.  After that they swear allegiance to the family and Omerta.  Then they are put with a Capo.  If it was a Capo who proposed them, then they are put with him.  If it was a soldier that proposed them, they are instead put with a Capo who needs another guy.

Buffalo Mafia

The Buffalo New York Mafia family is not written about much and I have only touched on it.

I was told about the family by Jimmy Caci who was originally from Buffalo.  Jimmy had a brother Salvatore “Sam” Caci who was the LIUNA local 210 president for years.  There was also Al Caci and Charlie Caci aka Bobby Milano who were in Palm Springs, California.  I've written in past blogs about the first use of WITSEC in the Buffalo case where Bobby Milano and Fat Stevie Cino were locked up because of Paddy Calabrese.

Stefano Magaddino was born on October 10, 1891, in Castellammare, Sicily.  Because of Stefano there is a Buffalo Family.  Stefano along with his brothers Antonio and Pietro got into a feud with the Buccellato brothers in their native Sicily.  Pietro was murdered by the Buccellato faction and the remaining Magaddinos left for Brooklyn New York.

While in Brooklyn the Buccellato Clan tried to ambush Stefano and killed two innocent bystanders.  Soon after the attempted ambush a couple of Buccellatos were killed and Stefano made his way upstate to Buffalo.  

Stefano was soon taking over rackets in Buffalo and with Prohibition he quickly became an important figure in Organized Crime.  Buffalo is situated so close to Canada that the waterways became a waypoint for smuggled booze.  It was so important that Moe Dalitz made a deal with him to use the waterways to smuggle booze for Cleveland.  

The money was pouring into the family and Stefano was able to send money to Salvatore Maranzano who was in the middle of a war for control of the New York Cosa Nostra.

The Commission was soon formed and Stefano along with his cousin Joe Bonanno were sitting on it.  After the repeal of Prohibition the Buffalo Family branched out into Gambling, Shylocking and Labor racketeering.  They moved into parts of Ohio and Canada expanding the family.  

The FBI claimed there was no such thing as the Mafia until the Apalachin Mafia Summit in 1957.  A few leaders blamed Stefano for the debacle and someone even tossed a grenade through his window.  

In the early 1960’s Stefano’s cousin Joe Bonanno decided to make a move to take control of the Commision and the Cosa Nostra.  He was planning on killing Carlo Gambino, Tommy Lucchese and Stefano himself to gain power.  The Commision found out because Joe Colombo went to a Gambino and they stripped Bonanno of his position.  Some of the family did not want their leader gone so this was the beginning of the Banana War that lasted from 1964-68 until Bonanno had a heart attack.  It was during this war that Bonanno was supposedly kidnapped on orders from Stefano and held captive.  

Bonanno had made a lot of inroads into Canada where Stefano also had crews working.  Even today there is still a rogue faction of the Bonanno family.  They were active during the reign of Big Joey Massino and they were even used when the Capos were killed as portrayed in Donnie Brasco.  

Stefano had began to slow down by late 1960’s giving up control of the day to day running of the rackets to his underboss Fred "Lupo" Randaccio.  

More to come...

Alessandro Taloni & Vito Rizzuto

Charged with importing over 100,000 Kilograms of marijuana from Canada to New York and Philadelphia between 1998 and 2012, this drug trafficking organization reached from California to Montreal and took in over a Billion dollars.  They worked with the Hells Angeles, Mexican Cartels, Bonanno Family and the Rizzuto Family.

A large amount of the Marijuana was grown hydroponically in Canada and then smuggled across the border in the US via the Indian Reservations that straddle the US-Canadian border.  This was an easy way for them to bypass US Customs at other entry points on the border.

They would use profits from marijuana to purchase cocaine from the Sinaloa Cartel and distribute it across the East Coast and Canada. They would obtain sizable loads of cocaine from the Cartel. They would break them down to between five and ten kilo's to smuggle into Canada.

The indictment has so many counts of exporting in excess of 1,000 kilograms of marijuana that it is hard to follow.  Then they had the problem that was recently so well portrayed by Walter White on Breaking Bad. They had to do something with all the cash. The Feds posed as money launderers that could help move money and make it clean.

Alessandro Taloni is a name most people have never heard.  He was an important part of the Bonanno Family's drug connection.  Taloni was born in Italy but has lived in Montreal for many years.  It was here that he became friendly with Vito Rizzuto and his crime family.  Taloni was an unknown until the head of the Drug Trafficking asked a DEA informant to move 1 million dollars in cash for him.  The Informant and the DEA told them they would move 200,000 at a time for a 6% charge which means they would launder 188,000 for the organization. A man in Los Angeles met with the Informant and after that meeting he was followed back to the Beverly Hills Hotel where he met Taloni and gave him a large suitcase which he placed in his trunk.  Taloni then left and drove to a home in Woodland Hills where he took the suitcase from the trunk and brought it inside.  The DEA sat on them in the house until Taloni left.   The DEA later pulled him over and found $80,000 in cash, a couple prepaid cell phones and an encrypted Blackberry.  The big surprise came when they searched his person and found Taloni was carrying a business card for a man named “Vito Rizz” and another for his Café Consenza in Montreal that served as his branch of the Bonanno family’s headquarters.

Vito Rizzuto

This was an eye opener for the DEA because Vito was as big as you get in International Organized Crime.  The DEA then went to the house in Woodland Hills and searched it where they found 49 kilo's of cocaine and 1.7 million in cash, numerous prepaid cellphones and a encrypted Blackberry.  Taloni had dropped off the cash but this was not the first time he had been observed in the company of the drug dealers. A few months before the Anaheim Police were watching a local cocaine dealer who met a man named Marc Canel-Pierre.  They followed Marc to Beverly Hills where he met Taloni in a parking lot.  They spoke for a few minutes and then Taloni removed a large bag from his trunk and gave it to Marc.  They then followed Marc to his home where they got a search warrant and found 34 kilo's of Cocaine and 1.6 million in cash.

Taloni loved Ferrari cars and the Ferrari racing team.  Many of his support letters from friends and family speak about his love of the cars.  All the cocaine was stamped Ferrari so I wonder how much pull he had in the organization.  I’ve read all his letters of support and one of them is a blessing from the Pope! I guess it didn't help much because he was given 10 years just the other day.  The one thing I find interesting is the fact that Taloni, who had a hair product business that sold to hair salons kept doing business in Beverly Hills.  That city seems to be very popular with the Zips.

Franky Boy & the Sicilians

How does a kid who started out working at his fathers Video and Record shop on 18th street in Brooklyn become the main contact between the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the American Cosa Nostra? Meet Franky Boy aka Francesco Paolo Augusto Calì.  He was born in March of 1965 in New York to an immigrant shopkeeper from Palermo. Franky Boy’s father has a clean record, but he had business ties to some of the Pizza Connection heroin dealers.  

This week I spoke to a few former Gambinos and they thought it was pretty strange Franky is now the Underboss, as they knew Franky Boy as a kid who worked in a record store and was never in the streets. They expressed surprise that he has morphed into a big deal because he never did any of the high risk cowboy crimes that the rest had done on their way up.

Franky Boy is part of the "NEW" American Cosa Nostra that relies on blood and clan ties to do its business.  He became close to Jackie "Nose" D'Amico, a Capo who ran a crew on 18th Ave in Brooklyn.  Franky was later heavily involved in the Phone Card scam that a number of the Crime Families took part in the 1990's. He worked with D'Amico and Joe Watts in the phone card business and that is where he made his name as an earner.  

The phone card scam was pretty easy.  I worked with a company that used to take part in the scam with the Colombos and the Luchese Family.  They set up a company funded with capital and then bought time from companies like Sprint, say a million dollars worth.  We would have these cool looking cards printed up and they would be sold in bodegas all over New York.  The scam?  Some of the cards did not have the right amount of time on them, say you bought a 90 min card, and it actually had 45 or less minutes on it.  The company I worked with basically ran a Ponzi.  They used money coming in to pay overdue balances owed to Sprint, but kept getting time and before they knew it the company owed 4 million.  When cell phones killed the phone card and phone booth business, the companies figured out that they could buy bandwidth and time and then wholesale it to huge companies and nations for long distance.  It was a huge money maker and it makes me wonder why those I worked with are still free....... Those out on the street need to look at their buddies who got money from these companies and have never had to pay for it.

Franky Boy married into Mafia royalty when he took Rosaria Inzerillo, a former waitress at Nino's Restaurant in Brooklyn, as his bride.  This week we have come full circle to where I started telling this trilogy.  Rosaria is the sister of Pietro "Tall Pete" Inzerillo, the Gambino Capo and cousin to Tommy Gambino who gave Roger Clinton 50,000.

Franky is also related to John Gambino, the brother of Rosario and Sal and one time boss of the Gambino Family.  The 50,000 dollars that went to Roger Clinton came from John's concrete company G&G Concrete. John would later move into his former partner in G&G’s home on Staten Island.

Franky Boy has attained a lot of power by being the driving force behind the alliance between Sicilian Mafia and the Gambinos.  He helped forge a deal that would let the Inzerillos head back to their homes in Palermo after having been outcasts in America since they fled the second Mafia war.  Today many have moved back to the Passo di Rigano area of Palermo, the first being Francesco Inzerillo the son of Tall Pete and no less than 5 other made men.  

Now we see the Gambinos working with the Sicilian Mafia and the ‘Ndrangheta to put together massive shipments of drugs.  There was a Mafia Summit in Toronto Canada in January of 2004 where men flew from Palermo to Toronto and others came from the US.  They met at Peppino's restaurant and later were together for 9 hours.

The Gambino Family today is looking a lot like the Bonanno Family of the past with a group of Zips or Sicilians taking power.  Franky Boy was arrested a few years ago with Lenny DiMaria and others in an old fashion Mob Extorting of a trucking company, but is now free after serving his time.

The Sicilians have control of at least 4 Mafia families in the US.  How long will the home grown American Mafioso take orders from them?  That only time will tell.

Franky Boy will continue to gain power while running his wholesale fruit and construction companies.