Arthur Nigro Gets Life in Prison

A former Mafia boss from The Bronx and two violent henchmen were slapped with life sentences for a slew of crimes that included rubbing out a high-ranking mobster in Massachusetts.

One-time reputed acting Genovese family boss Arthur “Little Guy” Nigro and brothers Fotios “Fred” Geas and Ty Geas -- who all professed their innocence -- showed no emotion upon learning in Manhattan federal court that they would die behind bars.

Earlier this year, a jury needed only about an hour to convict them of multiple murder conspiracies, including a 2003 hit on Genovese capo Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, a suspected mob informant.

The trial featured testimony from Mafia turncoat Anthony “Bingy” Arillotta, who infamously recalled that he had to strip naked before his induction ceremony to reassure Nigro and other nervous mobsters that he wasn’t wearing an FBI wire.

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Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Extradition of Genovese Family Soldier from Italy to Face Racketeering Charges for His Alleged Role in Two Murders and Other Crimes

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that EMILIO FUSCO was extradited from Italy to face racketeering and other charges in connection with his role as a made member of the Genovese organized crime family. FUSCO arrived in New York , and was arraigned in Manhattan federal court.

FUSCO was charged, along with co-defendants FELIX TRANGHESE, TY GEAS, FOTIOS GEAS, and ARTHUR NIGRO, in a superseding indictment (the “indictment”) unsealed in July 2010. TRANGHESE pled guilty in January 2011, and NIGRO, FOTIOS GEAS, and TY GEAS were convicted by a jury on April 1, 2011, of racketeering charges, multiple murder charges, and multiple extortion charges.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney PREET BHARARA stated: “Emilio Fusco will finally face the justice he deserves—something that he never afforded his alleged victims.”

According to the indictment and testimony and evidence presented at the trial of FUSCO’s co-defendants:

FUSCO was a made member of the Genovese organized crime family, in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 2003, prior to being sentenced for an earlier racketeering conviction, FUSCO obtained a court document showing that Genovese family capo Adolfo Bruno had spoken with an FBI agent about FUSCO’s status in the Genovese family. Thereafter, Arthur Nigro, who was then an acting boss of the Genovese family, gave the order to murder Bruno. FUSCO and others conspired to carry out the murder, and Bruno was killed on November 23, 2003.

Less than three weeks before Bruno’s murder, FUSCO, along with another Genovese family soldier and two associates, murdered an individual named Gary Westerman to maintain and increase their position in the Genovese organized crime family and to prevent Westerman from providing information to law enforcement about crimes committed by members and associates of the Genovese organized crime family.

FUSCO is charged with one count each of racketeering conspiracy, racketeering, conspiring to commit extortion, extortion, and interstate travel in aid of racketeering. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence on each racketeering count of life in prison, a maximum sentence on each extortion count of 20 years in prison, and a maximum sentence on the interstate travel count of five years in prison.

A conference in the case is scheduled before U.S. District Judge P. KEVIN CASTEL on June 17, 2011, at 12:00 p.m.

Sentencing for NIGRO, FOTIOS GEAS, and TY GEAS is scheduled for July 15, 2011, at 11:15 a.m. TRANGHESE is scheduled to be sentenced on July 15, 2011, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. BHARARA praised the efforts of the FBI’s New York Field Office, the FBI’s Springfield, Massachusetts, Resident Agency, and the Massachusetts State Police for their outstanding work in the ongoing investigation. He also thanked the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs and the United States Marshals Service for their involvement in the extradition process.

This case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Organized Crime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys MARK LANPHER, ELIE HONIG, and DANIEL GOLDMAN are in charge of the prosecution.

The charges contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

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Arthur Nigro and Henchmen Found Guilty of Murder

A former boss of New York's Genovese crime family and two henchmen were found guilty of murder and other crimes in the latest blow to the Big Apple mafia.

Arthur Nigro, a former acting boss of the Genovese, was found guilty following a three-week trial in New York.

Nigro and two other defendants were convicted in the 2003 murder of a mob rival who had made contact with the FBI. Nigro's two associates were also convicted in a second slaying that year.

The three also were found guilty of a slew of other crimes, including attempted murder, murder conspiracies, racketeering and extortion. They all face mandatory life sentences.

"The jury's swift verdict in this case takes some very dangerous men off the streets -- men who clearly did not think twice about killing anyone who got in their way," Preet Bharara, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. "Today's verdict makes it clear that those who so flagrantly and repeatedly violate the law will be punished."

La Cosa Nostra in New York has been severely weakened since the widespread breaking of the previously solid code of silence, with mobsters repeatedly informing on former comrades in exchange for leniency.

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Anthony Arillotta Details Cold-blooded Mafia Murders

Mafia turncoat Anthony J. Arillotta took the witness stand for a second day in an ongoing mob murder trial in federal court in lower Manhattan on Thursday, detailing for jurors two cold-blooded murders and a third attempt on a union official’s life in 2003.

Standing trial are Arillotta’s reputed henchmen and confidantes, Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 44, of West Springfield, and his brother Ty Geas, 39, of Westfield, plus New York’s onetime acting boss of the Genovese crime family, Arthur “Artie” Nigro, 66, of Bronx, N.Y.

Arillotta, 42, of Springfield, was in 2010 charged along with the trio in a wide-ranging murder and racketeering indictment that includes the 2003 murder-for-hire of former Springfield mob boss Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, the slaying of low level operator Gary D. Westerman, and the attempted murder of union official Frank Dadabo in New York the same year.

Arillotta testified he decided to turn prosecution witness almost immediately after his arrest in February 2010, and has pleaded guilty to the murders and attempted murder, plus a laundry list of extortions and drug and gun charges, in the hopes of escaping a life behind bars.

On Thursday, Arillotta spent several hours under direct examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark D. Lanpher, calmly recounting first the attempt on Dadabo’s life in May 2003. He told jurors that Nigro ordered the hit on Dadabo over a union beef and gave him two guns fitted with silencers to do the job, which Nigro labeled in mob terms: “a piece of work.”

After waiting quietly on a city bench in the Bronx early that morning, Arillotta said he and Ty Geas ambushed Dadabo as he headed for his car. Fotios Geas was waiting in a nearby car to whisk the shooters away, according to the witness.

“As soon as we seen him, we jumped up, got our guns and started walking fast ... When we got into the street, the target was opening his car door ... Ty was right up in his window, firing his gun. He started emptying his gun and the window shattered. I went to the left and fired into the car,” Arillotta testified.

“How did he look?” Lanpher asked.

“He looked, uh, dead,” Arillotta answered.

But Dadabo survived. Lanpher asked how Nigro reacted during a later conversation when the two discussed the failed murder attempt.

“He said we had to get better at head shots,” Arillotta told the jury.

That shooting, however, propelled Arillotta to a secret induction ceremony into the Genovese crime family in August 2003. He was taken to a small, almost empty apartment in the Bronx, and asked a series of questions by Nigro to pledge his allegiance.

“He asked: if my wife was lying in bed dying and he called for me, would I come? I said yes. He said he comes first before anything,” Arillotta recounted, adding that he offered up his trigger finger to be pricked with a needle.

Nigro wiped the blood on a blank piece of paper Nigro then lit on fire, offering it to Arillotta to cup in his hands.

“He said I’m never to talk to law enforcement and if I did I would burn like the paper. I wiped my hands with the ashes,” he said.

Arillotta had begun his ascension. He had been made.

For Bruno’s part, his stock had been plummeting and the order came down from Nigro that Bruno had to be taken out, Arillotta told jurors. During dinners at a steakhouse in the Bronx in 2003, Nigro complained to Arillotta that Bruno wasn’t turning in enough crime revenue to his New York superiors and drank too much. The final breach came when Bruno’s name cropped up in a pre-sentencing summary for a fellow gangster, Emilio Fusco, who was readying to be sentenced for racketeering and loan-sharking convictions.

According to the report, Bruno had in 2001 casually confirmed to an FBI agent that Fusco had been made while Bruno was in prison, infuriating Fusco - who promptly circulated the paper in the underworld. Felix Tranghese, another made Genovese member from East Longmeadow, brought the offending document to Nigro in New York, Arillotta testified.

“They said to kill him,” Tranghese reported upon returning to Western Massachusetts, according to testimony.

“How did you react upon hearing Felix report the order,” Lanpher asked Arillotta.

“I wasn’t too surprised ... I mean, it’s kinda harsh but that’s a big no-no,” he responded.
But, Bruno proved to be a difficult target, ducking proposed trips to New York and dinner parties during which he was supposed to be killed. Ultimately, Freddy Geas recruited his friend and former prisonmate, Frankie A. Roche, of Westfield, a tattooed fringe player whom Geas referred to as his “crash dummy,” due to Roche’s reckless nature.

Conveniently, Roche and Bruno were embroiled in a pre-existing dispute over a bar fight and there was a fair amount of machismo being traded between the men.

Fusco, who also is charged in the case but is waiting extradition from Italy, where he fled before his arrest, provided Roche with a .45-caliber pistol. Roche waited for Bruno on Nov. 23, 2003, outside Bruno’s standing Sunday night card game and emptied the clip into him in the parking lot.

Arillotta then gave Freddy Geas $10,000 to give to Roche to get out of town, he testified.
Perhaps the most grisly killing he described for jurors was the fatal shooting of ex-convict and Arillotta’s brother-in-law, Gary D. Westerman. Westerman was regarded as a slippery thief even among thieves, a police informant and he had married Arillotta’s sister-in-law, 30 years his junior - creating an uproar in the family.

After the Dadabo fiasco, a series of failed attempts against other rivals’ lives and before the Bruno killing, Arillotta said Ty Geas exploded on Nov. 4, 2003, during a meeting among the brothers and Arillotta behind a cigar shop.

“(Ty) said ‘No one was getting killed! We’re about nothin,’ we’re weak. No one’s dyin’!’ He was all amped up, he got Freddy all amped up and he got me amped up,” Arillotta testified.

So, they set out to kill Westerman that night, the Geases luring him to a home in Agawam with a promise of cash and marijuana they could rob inside. Arillotta and Fusco waited in the shadows in the garage while the brothers led him around the house, according to testimony.

“I heard yelling and like, ‘Ouch! Ouch!” Arillotta told jurors. He had not heard the gunshots Ty Geas leveled at Westerman through a silencer, he later learned.

They leapt from the garage and saw the brothers dragging a seemingly unconscious Westerman across the grass toward a wooded area. Fusco grabbed a shovel and smashed it into Westerman’s face, Arillotta said. He responded in kind and began bludgeoning Westerman with a shovel from behind.

They dragged him toward an eight-foot hole that had already been dug, ironically, on Bruno’s orders weeks before because Bruno was mulling having Tranghese killed while the two were at odds. Fotios Geas checked Westerman’s pockets, took his watch and snapped his cell phone in half, according to testimony.

“Freddy pulled out a gun about five inches from Gary Westerman’s head and pulled the trigger, then Ty dragged him by his feet into the hole,” Arillotta testified, and the four began filling the hole. He added that the participants hardly spoke of the murder after, but that Freddy Geas once briefly marveled at the teamwork the murder required.

Seven years later, Arillotta led law enforcement officials to the spot where Westerman had been shot and buried, so a team of FBI agents and state police only had to dig one hole to unearth his remains.

Defense attorneys have not had a chance to cross-examine Arillotta, who will continue testifying in U.S. District Court on Monday. The trial was suspended until then.

Thanks to Stephanie Barry

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Ivy League Gangster Now a Criminal Informant?

More than forty wiseguys who took an oath to take their Mafia secrets to the grave have later changed their minds and cut deals with the feds to tell all they knew. But while mob squealing was a growth industry in recent years, the elite Genovese family has managed to keep its members mostly in line. Known in mob parlance as "the Westside" because that was its traditional geographic base of power, the Genovese's are considered so good at what they do that admiring agents dubbed them "the Ivy League of organized crime."

Until recent weeks, the family had suffered only three known defectors. But Ganglandnews.com is reporting that the feds have quietly won a key new recruit to their side.

Late last month, a Genovese soldier named Anthony "Bingy" Arillotta, who was being held in the federal lockup downtown to face a murder rap, was released from prison custody, destination untold. Arillotta, 42, had been running things for the family in Massachusetts. He was accused of masterminding the whacking of his predecessor, Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno who was gunned down in a Springfield, Mass. parking lot in 2003. His switch in loyalties is bad news for a lot of wiseguys, especially his former acting boss, Arthur "Little Guy" Nigro, who is also accused in Bruno's murder.

Actually, the Bruno hit showed signs of severely declining standards for the Genovese crew. The shooter recruited to carry out Big Al's murder, a tattooed ex-con named Frankie Roche, turned squealer himself a couple of years ago. They way he told the story, he waited for the mobster to finish his usual Sunday night card game. "I walked up to Bruno and said, 'Hey Al, you looking for me?' and I popped him." Nice line. Bad form.

Thanks to Tom Robbins

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