Gambino Captain Gets Jail

Friends of ours: Gambino Crime Family, Alphonse Sisca, Arnold Squitieri

A mafia captain who pleaded guilty to helping oversee a racket that engaged in illegal gambling, loansharking and extortion has been sentenced to more than more six years in prison.

Alphonse Sisca, 63, was sentenced Wednesday to six years and three months. The sentence is the latest blow for Sisca. After he was imprisoned last year, his son died of tongue cancer, Sisca's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, his daughter-in-law got thyroid cancer and his mother-in-law passed away.

At his sentencing last week, one-time Gambino chieftain Arnold Squitieri begged US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to have mercy on Sisca. Hellerstein said Wednesday that Sisca's sentence was tempered by the "unbroken grief'' his family has had to endure.

Thanks to 1010WINS

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Junior Gotti Offers to Testify

Friends of ours: "Junior" Gotti, John Gotti

John "Junior" Gotti, according to his attorneys, is willing to do the unthinkable: Take the witness stand and testify about his life in the Mafia.

In a letter filed in federal court on Tuesday, Gotti's lawyers said the reputed scion of the Gambino crime family is anxious to tell a jury about how he abandoned mob life after his last prison stint and has "no allegiance to it."

He has only one condition: He doesn't want prosecutors asking him "immaterial" questions about his affairs, the letter said.

Just what topics does Gotti want off limits?

For starters, according to the letter, he doesn't want to be asked whether he laundered money, ran a loan sharking business, tampered with witnesses, extorted people in the construction industry or conspired to kidnap Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.

"Those questions would serve no purpose other than to confuse the issues and to harass, annoy and humiliate Mr. Gotti," his attorney Sarit Kedia wrote in the letter to U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin.

There also is another concern: While Gotti is prepared to testify about his own actions, Kedia wrote, he is unwilling to testify about "certain facts" that "might implicate other people in crimes."

"In other words, Mr. Gotti is indisposed to becoming a de facto cooperator," she wrote.

In other words, don't hold your breath for Gotti's testimony anytime soon.

Prosecutors didn't immediately respond to the motion, and it would be an extraordinary departure from accepted practice if they agreed to limit what they might ask Gotti on the stand.

Jurors have twice deadlocked on whether Gotti was part of a criminal racket that, among other things, conspired to kidnap Sliwa in retaliation for comments he made on a radio program about his father, John Gotti.

Sliwa was shot when he entered a rigged cab for a ride to work. He recovered from his wounds.

At "Junior" Gotti's first retrial, his lawyers acknowledged that their client was involved in the mob but said he gave up the life after pleading guilty to racketeering in 1999.

He chose not to testify. His third trial is scheduled for this month. He could face 30 years in prison if convicted.

Thanks to David B. Caruso

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Treating Pimps Like Al Capone

You know it's hard out here for a pimp
When he tryin' to get his money for the rent

Lyrics from the Oscar-winning song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp''

And it just might get even harder if the flesh peddlers in America don't file their W-2s or hold on to their receipts.

Congress is considering unleashing the same forces that toppled the likes of infamous 1930s Chicago gangster Al Capone on the brazen street hustlers, brothel and escort service operators and others making a pretty — and mostly untaxed — penny in the multi-billion-dollar prostitution and sex trafficking trade.

No, we're not talking cops or even the clergy here. We're talking about that most feared of government agents: the tax collector.

Proposed legislation approved by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in late June could provide the feds a tried-and-true — but also nontraditional — way of prosecuting those cashing in on the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of young girls and women annually.

The bill, chiefly sponsored by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, would set aside $2 million to create a unit within the Internal Revenue Service to deal exclusively with the operators of an underground sex economy that stretches from the seedy streets and motels of red-light districts to the online porn industry.

The proposal pumps more muscle into current federal tax laws. The proposed legislation significantly stiffens the penalties pimps face for failure to file income tax returns for themselves or even W-2 forms for their "employees.''

If criminal activity is substantiated, the proposal would tag pimps with a maximum 10-year federal prison sentence and $50,000 for each W-2 form that is not filed. Ouch.

"The thugs who run these trafficking rings are exploiting society's poorest girls and women for personal gain," Grassley told reporters recently. "The IRS goes after drug traffickers. It can go after sex traffickers."

Of course, this sounds at first glance like a pimp-in-the-sky idea. Even given recent years of great awareness about human trafficking, both domestic and international, law enforcement has traditionally and historically been lax in making busting pimps a top priority. But those in the local trenches of this problem think it's not a bad idea.

"From what I'm reading, it sounds like a good idea and a long time coming,'' said St. Paul police Sgt. John Bandemer, a vice cop and also project manager for a local Justice Department grant to rescue human trafficking victims and help prosecute their exploiters. The Twin Cities area has been designated by the federal agency as one of the 13 "hot spots'' in the nation for sex trafficking.

Bandemer says one of the more difficult aspects of prosecuting pimps of all types is often the unwillingness of exploited victims to testify. Fear of being harmed or bringing harm to their family members often is a key reason.

"The tax laws have been a great thing for us in the past when going after drug dealers,'' he added. "I think it's good to find nontraditional ways to stop these guys and prosecute them for their illegal activities.''

Capone, who posed as a used furniture dealer, reportedly made $105 million by 1929 through prostitution, illegal gambling and alcohol sales during the Prohibition era. He eluded the law through bribes and witness tampering or intimidation. But treasury and IRS agents teamed up in 1931 and dug up receipts from some of his illicit earnings. He pleaded guilty to tax evasion and watched his mob empire crumble during his 11 years in the slammer.

Vednita Carter, who runs Breaking Free, a St. Paul-based nonprofit that provides services to prostituted girls and women in the Twin Cities area, likes the idea but has some concerns.

"It's usually the women that get busted, and my concern is whether they will go after former victims who are forced to recruit others and even run part of the trade,'' she said. Carter, however, also believes the paper chase might serve as another useful route in dismantling prostitution rings.

In testimony before Congress last year, a street outreach specialist for a group based in Washington, D.C., similar to Breaking Free provided an interesting estimate of one local pimp's annual haul.

"A victim sex-trafficked from her early teens was generating an estimated $130,000 in profits for her trafficker each year,'' Tina Frundt told legislators. "We sat down and figured out that the pimp was making about $24,000 a month between her and other women and about $642,000 a year tax-free.''

Go get them, tax man.

Thanks to Ruben Rosario

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$1 Million Will Get You Al Capone's Home

Friends of ours: Al Capone

For a former home of possibly the country’s most notorious mobster, the three-story building with beige siding at 21 Garfield Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is totally unremarkable. Of course, the young Al Capone and his family moved there in the early 1900’s, long before he made his name as a murderous bootlegger in Roaring Twenties Chicago.

The house, one of at least two on Garfield Place where the Capone family lived after their move from Vinegar Hill, just east of the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, is for sale. The broker handling it, Peggy Aguayo of Aguayo & Huebener, said recently that a buyer was about to go into contract, for a little more than $1 million.

Ms. Aguayo, who lives in Park Slope, said she was unaware that the Capones had lived in the building, though she knew they had lived at 38 Garfield Place. At any rate, she said, she doubted that the building’s infamous former resident affected its value one way or the other for the buyers, who plan to maintain it in its current state, as a three-family house.

Capone stories still abound among old-timers in the neighborhoods where he spent his formative years. For example, Carroll Gardens residents will be happy to tell you that he was married at St. Mary Star of the Sea church on Court Street. But Laurence Bergreen, author of the 1994 biography “Capone: The Man and the Era,” said there was little at the time to distinguish the future Public Enemy No. 1 from his young compatriots in Brooklyn’s street gangs, which had names like the South Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors.

“Other people were doing those same things and went on to become mechanics or dentists, or nothing,” Mr. Bergreen said. “He did not come from a criminal background. His father was a barber, his mother was a seamstress, and those weren’t mob trades.”

Still, Mr. Bergreen said, the Al Capone of Garfield Place was no angel. He was often truant from Public School 133 on Butler Street, and he was finally kicked out of school for hitting a teacher (as the story goes, she hit him first). He also picked up a case of syphilis that incapacitated him later in life, probably while hanging out by the Brooklyn docks.

Today, even Capone might be impressed with the potential for legal moneymaking in Park Slope real estate. But Mr. Bergreen, who spent time on Garfield Place years ago researching his book, said some residents there had other treasure in mind. “People were wondering if there was cash stashed in the walls,” he said. “I heard that more than once.”

Alas, whoever buys 21 Garfield will most likely have to be satisfied with rental income, Mr. Bergreen said, adding, “Capone was poor then.”

Thanks to Jake Mooney

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