The Feds Say That Galante Diverted Millions from Trash Businesses

Friends of ours: Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello, Genovese Crime Family
Friends of mine: James Galante, David Magel

A Danbury trash magnate arrested in a Mafia case in June diverted millions of dollars from his businesses to his minor league hockey team, no show jobs, race cars and questionable stockholder repayments, federal authorities said Thursday.

James Galante, whose businesses handle about 80 percent of southwestern Connecticut's garbage, carved out exclusive routes for his companies and paid Genovese crime family boss Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello $120,000 a year for mob muscle to enforce his territories, authorities said. That meant higher prices for businesses and homeowners, authorities said.

Galante and Ianniello were among 29 people arrested in connection with the alleged scheme. In a related development Thursday, another trash hauler became the first defendant in the case to plead guilty.

Galante's defense attorneys challenged a court order putting federal marshals in charge of his businesses, saying they were ruining the businesses. But federal authorities said they had improved the cash flow by stopping diversions that amounted to more than $4 million last year. They also said the businesses are now facing competition.

"If any 'blame' is to be assigned for the changes wrought by these incidents, it lies squarely on the shoulders of the defendants, who decided many years ago to operate the 25 companies as an illegal bid-rigging and price-fixing cartel," prosecutors wrote.

A hearing is planned Tuesday on the challenge to the federal monitoring. "Our position is by their own admission they're running it into the ground," said Hugh Keefe, Galante's attorney. "You took a guy's business away from him and turned it over to a bunch of incompetents."

Keefe said the reported diversions will be dealt with during the trial. "Even if that was true, the business itself was thriving up until the day the feds decided they knew more about running a trash business than Jimmy Galante."

Authorities said they were monitoring the businesses, not taking them over, and denied they intended to sell the businesses. Galante owns the Danbury Trashers team of the United Hockey League. The team was disbanded after Galante's arrest in June.

Meanwhile, the trash hauler who admitted his involvement in the scheme Thursday, David Magel, 33, of Baldwin Place, N.Y., pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in U.S. District Court in New Haven. Magel is general manager of CRP Carting in Elmsford, N.Y.

Prosecutors said the scheme was enforced by extortion and threats, and participants sought to operate it in eastern New York. Magel met with several other members of the enterprise, two of whom were associated with an unidentified Connecticut-based trash carting company, at a diner in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., in 2004, authorities said.

After the meeting, Magel engaged in a series of telephone calls with other members of the enterprise to implement the scheme, prosecutors said. On Dec. 21, 2004, investigators intercepted one conversation between Magel and two members affiliated with the Connecticut carting company during which Magel agreed to provide inflated quotes to customers of the other participants in the conspiracy, authorities said.

"I'm shootin' for the ... gusto here," Magel said in the conversation. Magel faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Oct. 25.

Keefe said he was not sure if Magel's guilty plea would affect Galante. Authorities would not comment on whether Magel was cooperating against the other defendants.

Thanks to John Christofferson

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Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti

Francesco Raffaele Nitto, better known as Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti (January 27, 1888 — March 19, 1943) was an Italian-American gangster, one of the top henchmen of Al Capone and later a mob boss in his own right.

Nitti was born in Sicily in the 1880s; his gravestone lists his birth year as 1888, but his US immigration documents say 1883. He emigrated to New York City after the end of the First World War, and later moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he set up business as a barber, with a profitable line as a jewel fence on the side. He built an extensive network of associates in the Chicago underworld, and came to the attention of Chicago Mafia boss Johnny Torrio. Later, for Torrio's successor Al Capone, Nitti ran Capone's Prohibition busting liquor smuggling and distribution operation, importing whiskey from Canada and selling it through a network of speakeasies around the city. Nitti was one of Capone's top lieutenants, trusted for his leadership skills and business acumen; despite his nickname "The Enforcer", Nitti used Mafia "soldiers" and other underlings rather than undertake much of the violence himself.

In 1930 Nitti, like Capone, was charged with income tax evasion. Capone was sentenced to eleven years, Nitti to 18 months. Upon his release, he was hailed by the media as the new boss of the Chicago Mafia; in practice he lacked the control over the capos that Capone had enjoyed, and the Capone empire began to fragment, with Nitti acting as a frontman. On December 19, 1932 two Chicago police officers shot Nitti in his office, nearly killing him. Some historians believe they were acting under orders from Mayor Anton Cermak (who, they believe, wanted to redistribute Nitti's empire to gangsters favorable to him). One of the police officers shot himself (non-fatally) to make the shooting look like self-defense.

Unfortunately for the Chicago police (and whoever was behind the shooting), Nitti survived and was acquitted of attempted murder in a February of 1933 trial. The two Chicago police officers responsible for the Nitti shooting were then summarily dismissed from the police force. Cermak decided to take an extended vacation and hang out with President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Florida. On the night of Feb. 15, 1933, a former Italian army marksman, Giuseppe Zangara, was waiting in a crowd at Bayfront Park in Miami. Zangara had three things going for him as an Outfit assassin. He had an inoperable disease, he had a family and he had a gun. From about 30 feet, he popped Cermak in the chest. Roosevelt was not injured because he wasn't the target. Zangara was later executed.

In 1943, many in Chicago organization were indicted for extorting a number of the largest Hollywood movie studios. Many of the higher-ups in the mob, most notably Nitti's second in command Paul Ricca, believed Nitti should take the fall for the rest of them. Fearing another long prison term and possibly suffering from terminal cancer, Nitti shot himself dead in Chicago's Illinois Central railyard on March 19, 1943.

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Gotti Has Charges Thrown Out

Friends of ours: John "Junior" Gotti

A judge on Monday tossed out the latest racketeering and money laundering charges against John "Junior" Gotti, but the son of the late mob boss still faces trial on charges alleging he ordered the beating of Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin was a blow to the government just weeks before Gotti's third trial on racketeering charges. Juries deadlocked at two previous trials in the last year.

In May, the government brought new charges of racketeering, witness tampering and money laundering to counter Gotti's contention in 1999 that he left the mob in the late 1990s.

In throwing out the new racketeering and money laundering charges, the judge noted that Gotti pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1999 and that charges identical to some of the new ones were dismissed by the government after Gotti satisfied the terms of his plea agreement. "The plea agreement cannot be both a sword and shield," she wrote.

Lauren McDonough, a spokeswoman for prosecutors, said there was no comment. A call seeking comment from Gotti's lawyer, Charles Carnesi, was not returned.

The judge said the government had also argued that Gotti used money from his racketeering activities to operate two corporations he formed in the early 1990s. "The problem with this second theory is that it is based on nothing but surmise, speculation and conjecture," Scheindlin said.

The government alleges that Gotti ordered a baseball bat beating of Sliwa and a kidnapping several weeks later that ended with Sliwa being shot three times before he dived out of a moving taxi. Sliwa recovered.

If convicted at trial, scheduled to start August 21, Gotti could face up to 30 years in prison.

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Hoffa Helps Open Caesars Palace

Caesars Palace creator Jay Sarno was giving UPI reporter Myram Borders a pre-opening tour in August 1966.

"I recall Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa being introduced to the opening night audience as a man who was instrumental in securing major financing for the hotel development," Borders said in an e-mail. Hoffa even went on stage, took the mic and said a few congratulatory words, she added. The mobbed-up Teamster pension fund money helped finance the hotel development.

Borders, who ran the UPI office here for decades, was in the massive press room on opening night when she spotted some names on a Rolodex. They were private numbers of "the boys," she said, referring to organized crime bosses. As she was leaving the room, a PR honcho from New York saw the list of names she had taken down and "we had a major tug of war over my precious piece of paper."

Thanks to Norm!

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Sinatra Family and Biographer to End Feud Over Mafia Claims?

Frank Sinatra's leading biographer, Anthony Summers, is hoping to end the feud between himself and the crooner's family by meeting with Ol' Blue Eyes' daughter Tina. The Sinatra estate has dismissed claims the singer battled alcoholism and worked as a 'money mule' for the Mafia, which are detailed in SINATRA: THE LIFE, the book written by Oxford University-educated Summers and his wife Robbyn Swan.

The Sinatras vilified the writers as "clowns" for attempting to write about the crooner's life. Sinatra's daughter Nancy went so far to call them "garbage pickers" on her website - before the book was first published in May 2005. The biographers, who are standing by their research - which took four years to gather - insist the family was very keen to keep Sinatra's popular image intact. Swan explains, "We approached Sinatra's children and Barbara Marx-Sinatra, his last wife, Mrs. Nancy Sinatra, his first wife, and Mia Farrow, his third wife, about possible interviews and they all declined; some more politely than others.

"Nancy Sinatra, Frank's daughter, had numerous letters from us and was tracked down on her tour by our researcher, but several weeks before the book came out, she went on her website and disparaged fans from reading our book and vilified us as clowns and garbage pickers and said that she knew our book was garbage because we'd never bothered to approach the family. "You're dealing with people who not only want to have their own personal memories of their father, but they also want to own the public memories of Sinatra; they want to own what is published about him and whitewash his life." But Summers, whose book Honeytrap was used as the basis for hit British film Scandal, is now planning to meet with Sinatra's daughter TINA later this year, in an effort to end the war of words between the family and the biographers.

He adds, "Several people, who were close to Sinatra, have told us we should be proud of the book, and we got it right. "I suspect that Tina Sinatra is more open minded. I'm going to be in Los Angeles again shortly and I think I may touch base with her and see what she has to say."

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