The New Pizza Connection

The quiet, hardworking Queen's pizza maker Gregorio Gigliotti who owned Cucino A Modo Mio (I Cook My Way) was really a member of the blood thirsty Ndrangheta.

The Ndrangheta hail from Calabria and control a huge amount of the drugs in Europe.  They only allow those with blood or marriage ties into their organization.  This cuts down on turncoats.  They have intermarried with many other Mafia families so they have a lot of power.

Gregorio ran the US part of a large Ndrangheta smuggling ring that imported cocaine from Costa Rica in shipments of cassava and yucca. They would pack the drugs in the roots in Costa Rica and they would be sent to Philadelphia or Delaware.

They would repackage them and hide them in the walls of cardboard boxes and they would be shipped to the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.  

Law Enforcement intercepted  shipments totaling 125 lbs of cocaine over the last year headed to both Philly and Delaware.  The FBI working with Italian authorities started watching the Queen's Pizzeria.  They soon had wires on all their phones and inside the restaurant.  They had them in their cars and homes and they started paying off.

The FBI soon came up with a name, Operation Columbus, and it went on for 10 months.  They picked up a lot of Gregorio and his violent temper. He wanted to dissolve  two Mafia debtors in acid or use baseball bats on them.  He was mad at Franco and Pino Fazio for them not paying on a consignment of drugs. They were two brothers who worked with as couriers between Costa Rica, United States and Italy.   The FBI watched as Franco, known as the Ambassador, dropped off 170k in payment to South American drug traffickers.

Even as the FBI was closing on them Gregorio sent his wife to Costa Rica with 400k to give to the suppliers. They intercepted some of the cocaine shipments to another New York business that Gregorio owned.  Fresh Farms Export Corp was started to handle the shipments from Costa Rica and to Europe.  

The FBI took down a shipment of 40 kilos of cocaine secreted inside boxes of cassava bound for Fresh Farms in October of 2014.

That didn't slow down Gregorio because the Ambassador, Franco Fazio, made two more money trips to Costa Rica before they seized another shipment of 15 kilos of cocaine.  It was again headed to Fresh Farms but this time it was hidden in produce.

This shows how these Mafia connected groups have sprung up again.  They are all similar to the Pizza Connection back in the 1980s.  Keep in mind that most of the guys from the Pizza Connection are now free men. The FBI is busy working terrorism now, so it gives them a lot of time to grow.  Since they do not take part in a lot of the family business in the US like bookmaking and shylocking, they do not get the same attention the Cosa Nostra gets.  

The central hub for this group was the Pizzeria in Queens.  The family worked there and the place served a great pie.  The FBI raided it last month and they got over 100k in cash, 7 guns and a pair of brass knuckles. They found more cash in their homes and they are now moving to seize up to 12 million in assets.

This is where the Cosa Nostra is headed.

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.