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.

Los Angeles 1970's

Gambling Racket in LA

The gambling plot started while Nick Licata was still boss of the LA Family.  He was sick at the time and he would die in October of 1974 in a hospital in Santa Monica.  The Underboss Dominic Brooklier was running the family day to day so he was in fact the acting boss.  They wanted to get some more gambling places up and running.  

John Vaccaro and John Ludlow Dubeck came from Las Vegas to run a restaurant on Sunset Blvd.  It was in a well known high rise office building.  John Vaccaro had a long history in gambling that could be traced all the way back to begninnings in New Orleans. In fact, he would later serve time for cheating slot machines in Las Vegas.  They opened an after hours gambling spot on Sunset Blvd at the restaurant Forget about the fact that the house always wins, they decided to hedge their bets.  They had card games and table games like craps. They also had John DocJon Deems.  DocJon was a wizard with cards and dice.   

They set up the games and the split went like this.  Luigi "Louie" Gelfuso and Pete Milano would get 20% of the profit.  Gelfuso the guy who worked at Nick Licata’s bar and now in Milano’s would later find locations for the games which included a house in the San Fernando Valley.   I met Gelfuso later in life and I liked him. He came to los Angeles from Providence, Rhode Island and he fell right in with the guys.  He was very close to Pete and Carmen Milano but he was a loyal guy.   Gelfuso's job was to provide security and collect markers from those who didn't have enough to cover their losses. John Vaccaro was to get 50% and he was supposed to cut in Dubeck and a lawyer named Calaway.  Vaccaro would run the game and the lawyer would provide legal services.  

Everything of course went bad because being Mobsters they were short sighted and greedy.  People started to complain about being cheated at the tables and that is a bad thing when you have an illegal casino.  They had enough problem just getting people to the games.  This was a Milano crew game and Milano was in charge because it was his crew.  Louie's son Michael Gelfuso told me about setting up the tables and the games. Being in his twenties at the time he found it exciting and fun.  The problem with Gambling in LA is that the LAPD Vice Squad knows everyone and when people get cheated they complain to LAPD Vice Squad and they come down on the guys running the games.  Soon LAPD and the FBI raided the games. Milano had a bail bonds business and he posted bonds for those guys who were picked up at the games.  

Things soon became even worse for the LA Family because the Feds took down everyone for running the gambling business and they had a star witness.  The star witness was John Ludlow Dubeck and he knew more than enough to put everyone away.

Things do not always work out for the good guy in life.  Sometimes they turn out bad.  Early in the morning of March 19th 1974 in Las Vegas John and Francis Dubuck returned from working the late shift at their jobs in a casino.  John was a shift manager and Francis was a cocktail waitress.  They were tired when the parked their car in their space and began the short walk to their apartment.  They had just walked into the garden courtyard when a man dressed in dark clothing stepped out of the shadows and let loose with two shots from a sawed off shotgun. He was so close he could not miss either person and they were both killed. They were scheduled to testify in the upcoming gambling trail of the LA Family.  They had been offered Witness Protection and refused. They had probably felt safe in Las Vegas since there had been no mob killings in the town.  It was against the commission rules to kill in Las Vegas because it would bring heat and unwanted attention to the Gaming Capital.  So the LA Family must have gone to the commission for the okay.  It was probably through Chicago because LA and the Cleveland family were close to Chicago.  This was the first of the major killings in gangland done with a shotgun. This is a big deal because there would be a large number of people killed with 22 Cal pistols.  The other killing would come two years later in California and that was when two men in a van blasted turncoat killer Joseph Barboza with a shotgun.

This is just the start of the killings that would come and be connected with the LA Family. The LAPD gave them the name the Mickey Mouse Mafia but they could kill. Louie and Michael Gelfuso have passed away.  Pete Milano passed away.  I just found out that Docjon Deems passed away.  Docjon contacted me years ago and sent me a dvd that he made. He was a facebook friend and his page is still up.