Guilty Pleas in Organized Crime Gambling Ring

Two men with reputed ties to organized crime pleaded guilty on Tuesday to participating in an illegal gambling ring run out of a wholesale produce market at Hunts Point in the Bronx.

John Caggiano, who the authorities say is an associate in the Genovese crime family, admitted in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that he “knowingly advanced and profited from unlawful gambling.” In exchange for his plea to enterprise corruption, a felony, Mr. Caggiano, 59, will receive a sentence of one and a half to four and a half years in prison. He must also forfeit $176,000.

His co-defendant, Douglas Maleton, 60, admitted that he had been a runner for the numbers and sports-betting operation and pleaded guilty to attempted enterprise corruption, for which he will receive a one-year sentence. He must forfeit $591.

“Today’s pleas go a long way to ridding our public wholesale markets of organized crime,” said Michael J. Mansfield, the chairman of the city’s Business Integrity Commission, which was created in 2001 to help end mob influence in the trash-hauling companies and wholesale markets.

Mr. Mansfield also said Tuesday’s pleas were only part of the battle. “There are always going to be influences of organized crime in an organization that has the ability to generate $1.2 billion in sales,” he said.

Mr. Caggiano and Mr. Maleton were 2 of 11 men who were arrested in November 2006 as part of a gambling ring that the authorities said generated $200,000 a year in profits. All but one of the 11 men have pleaded guilty. Robert Russo, who the authorities contend is the head of the operation, is scheduled to go on trial next month.

Mr. Caggiano, the son-in-law of Dominick Cirillo, the former acting boss of the Genovese family, owned and operated C&S Wholesale Produce Inc., one of the terminal market’s biggest produce wholesalers. The authorities said that he ran the day-to-day operations of the ring, often conducting business from his headquarters at C&S.

The commission began investigating the company in 2004, Mr. Mansfield said. By 2006, after the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges against the 11 men, the commission began its own proceedings against C&S, Mr. Mansfield said. In May 2007, the commission expelled C&S from the market, finding that the company “lacked good character, honesty and integrity,” Mr. Mansfield said.

Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, said the investigation relied on “quite extensive electronic surveillance over a long period of time.”

The case was under Mr. Morgenthau’s jurisdiction because some of the operations were run out of an apartment in Lower Manhattan, the authorities said.

Justice Bruce Allen is scheduled to formally sentence Mr. Maleton on Oct. 10 and Mr. Caggiano on Nov. 3. Both men declined to comment.

Thanks to John Eligon

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A Who's Who, and Who's Where, of Mafia Families

Although six leaders of the Genovese crime family were convicted of racketeering last year, investigators still rank the Genoveses as the nation's most potent and insulated Mafia faction. The family is said to be the largest gang, with 200 to 250 ''made,'' or inducted, members and almost 1,000 associates -- people who assist the family's underworld operations.

Joseph J. Coffey, the former commanding officer of New York State's Organized Crime Task Force and a consultant to the New Jersey and Nevada gambling commissions, described the Genovese family, with its extensive network of gambling and loan-sharking operations in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, as ''the Ivy League of the underworld,'' referring to its reputation among law enforcement officials as the most successful organized-crime family.

Federal and state officials have identified Dominick V. Cirillo, a longtime capo, or captain, as the acting Genovese boss. They say Mr. Cirillo, 68, of the Bronx, took over last year in the wake of the racketeering conviction and imprisonment of Vincent Gigante, 70, his predecessor.

Law enforcement analysts see the Gambino crime family as the area's second-most-powerful group. But they say its influence has been undermined by a spate of convictions of its leaders and the defection of a former underboss, Salvatore Gravano.

John J. Gotti, 57, the family boss, is serving a life sentence without parole for murder and racketeering, and his son, John A. Gotti, 34, who Federal and state officials say was appointed as the acting boss by his father six years ago, is being held without bail, awaiting trial on racketeering, fraud and extortion charges.

Investigators identify John J. D'Amico, 63, a Gambino capo with homes in Hillsdale, N.J., and on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as the family's primary leader. Mr. D'Amico's prestige, the authorities say, increased after the indictment in January of the younger Mr. Gotti, and the conviction and imprisonment last year of Nicholas Corozzo, 58, another high-ranking capo.

J. Bruce Mouw, the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Gambino squad, said that although the younger Gotti has the title of acting boss, the family actually has been run by a committee consisting of Mr. D'Amico, Mr. Corozzo and Peter Gotti, a capo who is John J. Gotti's brother. John J. Gotti's attempt to oversee the family from a Federal prison in Marion, Ill., floundered, Mr. Mouw asserted. ''They are in a sad state,'' he said. ''They have no real boss, no underboss and no consigliere.''

As a sign of the Gambinos' problems, law enforcement agents note that its crews -- units led by capos -- are down to 12 from a high of 21, and that active soldiers now number about 150, compared with 250 in 1986 when John J. Gotti seized power.

Although overall mobster influence appears to be declining, the authorities believe that the Bonanno family has gained strength and is approaching the Gambinos as the country's second-most-dangerous Mafia faction.

The Bonanno organization, the authorities say, has 100 active members and is the only New York family with an active boss, Joseph C. Massino, 55, of Howard Beach, Queens. And, unlike other mob families, it has no top leaders in prison or under indictment.

Murderous family disputes, turncoats and numerous convictions have severely weakened the Lucchese and Colombo crime families in the last decade, investigators say. Each group is estimated to have about 120 members and is led by acting bosses and committees. Joseph A. DeFede, 64, a capo from Howard Beach, is the temporary Lucchese chief, and Andrew Russo, 63, of Old Brookville, N.Y., who is in jail for parole violations, is the Colombo family's acting boss.

In describing the Mafia's gradual decline in the area, Robert T. Buccino of the New Jersey Attorney General's office said that in 1969, the apparent peak of the mob's influence, more than 200 Mafia capos and soldiers flourished in the state. Today, he said, the number of active New Jersey mobsters is about 20.

Thanks to Selwyn Raab

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