Does the Mob Partner with Motorcycle Gangs?

The Target 12 Investigators take you inside the mafia, revealing a partnership you might not expect, the mob and outlaw motorcycle gangs.

The Target 12 Investigators uncover secrets from decades ago. Documents shedding light on an historic partnership between the mob and outlaw motorcycle gangs. But does that relationship still thrive?

At first glance, any relationship between the rough exterior of an outlaw motorcycle gang member and the image of a dapper Italian mobster may appear strange. But it's a loose partnership that has survived for decades.

Motorcycle gangs and La Cosa Nostra; strange bedfellows in the world of organized crime.

Supervisory Special Agent Sallet: "It's a cooperative relationship..."

Here in Rhode Island, the partnership was forged, decades ago.

Major Steven O'Donnell, Rhode Island State Police: "Raymond Patriarca Senior pushed them aside, but had his thugs around him kind of embrace them, where they would pay tribute."

Known simply as "The Man," Raymond Patriarca Senior ran the powerful New England crime family, and nothing happened without his 'OK'.

Major Steven O'Donnell of the Rhode Island State Police says Patriarca looked the other way when bikers committed crimes-of-profit, including moving and manufacturing drugs. The Target 12 Investigators obtained a classified DEA report from that era. In it the feds, in 1979, called it a "marriage of convenience... It allows the [motorcycle gang] To continue its activities without interference from organized crime and in return pays a percentage [to the mob.]"

Supervisory Special Agent Jeffrey Sallet of the FBI Providence, says wiseguys view outlaw biker gangs as valuable in a very specific area.

Supervisory Special Agent Sallet: "Create fear. And I think that's something outlaw motorcycle groups specialize in, is creating fear."

Outlaw bikers were an effective tool in making someone, pay-up. But does that relationship exist today?

Major O'Donnell: "Yes, without question."

Investigators say wiseguys still turn to outlaw bikers as a tool for intimidation. O'Donnell cites a recent case when an associate of the Patriarca crime family, David Achille, was caught on a police wiretap. He was discussing the use of a Hell's Angels member for a classic shakedown.

Major O'Donnell: "They'd have him take a ride and go see one of these people that were affecting the bottom line at their job."

Achille was scooped up by police before anything went down. Special Agent Sallet says for a victim of an extortion case, an outlaw biker is a scary presence.

Supervisory Special Agent Sallet: "They advertise who they are. That's how they generate their fear."

Advertising, like this: gang jackets, patches, tattoos. These pictures are part of a federal criminal case against Jeffrey Dillon. A man the government says is the head of the Fall River motorcycle gang The Sidewinders.

Dillon is facing charges for weapons possession and intent to deal drugs. Prosecutors are using the photographs of Dillon's "one percent" tattoo, as evidence. O'Donnell says the tattoo boasts they are the one percent of biker's that proudly, break the law.

Major O'Donnell: "That puts you in a higher regard in the biker world, which is a warped regard."

The U.S. Attorneys office hasn't linked Dillon to any faction of the Patriarca crime family. Dillon's defense attorney Jack Cicilline, says his client is an avid hunter, and that Dillon was unaware as a convicted felon, he was not allowed to possess firearms.

Dillon's trial is set to begin next month. O'Donnell is quick to point out there is a world of difference between the everyday motorcycle enthusiast and those considered an outlaw. He says the bad guys represent about one percent of the biker population.

To know more about this partnership, including an extensive interview with investigators about outlaw motorcycle gangs watch the extended video within this web page.

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Guilty Plea from Mafia Cop

A former New York police detective accused of moonlighting as a hit man for the mob pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of filing a bogus income tax return, federal prosecutors said.

Louis Eppolito, currently in federal custody, faces sentencing May 9 in U.S. District Court here. The maximum penalty in the case is three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Greg Brower, U.S. attorney for Nevada, said that according to a plea agreement, Eppolito and his wife, Frances, filed a tax return for 2000 that reported income of just over $127,000 when their actual income was more than double that amount.

Brower said Eppolito also failed to declare $175,000 in income from screenplay writing in 2001 and 2002.

Eppolito and another former New York detective, Stephen Caracappa, were accused of participating in at least eight mob-related killings while working for the Luchese crime family. The two detectives retired in the early 1990s and moved to Las Vegas, where they were arrested in March 2005.

In 2006, a New York jury found the pair guilty of a racketeering conspiracy responsible for multiple murders and other crimes. Two months later a federal judge dismissed that case after determining that the statute of limitations had expired for the racketeering charges, which allegedly occurred from 1986 and 1990. The judge's decision is under appeal.

The men still face drug and money laundering charges.

Eppolito's 1992 autobiography, "Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob," details his police career and his Mafia connections.

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R.I.C.O. Author Represents Pig Slaughterhouse Suing Union for Racketeering

Smithfield Foods, which raises, kills and processes more pigs than any company on earth, does not like some of the things a union has been saying about conditions at its giant slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., where 4,650 people work and 32,000 hogs die every day.

So Smithfield has filed a racketeering lawsuit against the union, on the theory that speaking out about labor, environmental and safety issues in order to pressure the company to unionize amounts to extortion like that used by organized crime.

“It’s economic warfare,” explained G. Robert Blakey, one of Smithfield’s lawyers. “It’s actually the same thing as what John Gotti used to do. What the union is saying in effect to Smithfield is, ‘You’ve got to partner up with us to run your company.’ ”

One hesitates to argue with Mr. Blakey, who helped write the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the 1970 law Smithfield is suing under, as a staff lawyer in the Senate. But what Mr. Blakey calls extortion sounds quite a bit like free speech.

Gene Bruskin, the director of the union’s organizing drive and a defendant in the suit, said his work “bears no relationship to the Mafia whatsoever.”

“If we kidnapped the C.E.O. and we said, ‘We know where your children go to school,’ that’s a Mafia-like act,” Mr. Bruskin said. “If we told the truth about how the company abuses workers to its customers, that’s traditional free speech.”

Smithfield says the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International, and its officials violated RICO by issuing press releases, contacting civil rights and environmental groups, organizing protests and calling for boycotts. But the most striking assertion in the suit, one Smithfield devotes five pages to, is that the union was engaged in racketeering when it urged local governments in New York, Boston and other cities to pass resolutions condemning the company. After meeting with the union in 2006, a dozen members of the New York City Council sponsored a resolution calling for the city to stop buying meat from Smithfield’s Tar Heel factory “until the company ends all forms of abuse, intimidation and violence against its workers,” citing a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington that Smithfield had engaged in “intense and widespread coercion” in battling unionization at its Tar Heel plant.

Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito was a sponsor of the resolution, and she said she had been happy to meet with representatives of labor and business groups to hear their concerns. The practice Smithfield calls racketeering is, Ms. Mark-Viverito said, what others call lobbying. The First Amendment has a name for it, too: the right to petition the government.

Ms. Mark-Viverito said Smithfield’s lawsuit made no sense to her as a matter of logic, to say nothing of principle. But it did resonate as an exercise of corporate power. “It’s a wacky strategy,” she said, “that is aimed at coercing the union into backing off.”

Perhaps the union should file its own RICO suit based on the company’s RICO suit.

Smithfield’s lawsuit contains other nuggets. It complains, for instance, that the union interfered with its relationship with Paula Deen, “a celebrity chef” who has a contract to promote Smithfield products on her show on the Food Network. The union has demonstrated at Ms. Deen’s public appearances.

In a recent court filing, Smithfield added another complaint: the union “deprived Smithfield of an incomparable marketing opportunity” by persuading Oprah Winfrey not to allow Ms. Deen to promote Smithfield hams on Ms. Winfrey’s show.

Smithfield’s 94-page lawsuit sputters with an outrage not always grounded in a sure command of the English language. A union representative, for instance, was said to have made “salacious statements” at a water permit hearing by arguing that granting the permit would damage the environment.

The suit seeks more than $17 million, an order barring the union from publishing “reports or press releases designed to mislead the public,” another barring demonstrations “at Paula Deen events,” and a third barring the union “from participating in the drafting, encouraging, sponsorship and/or passage of public condemnations of plaintiffs by cities, townships or other organizations.”

The courts seem receptive to this new kind of racketeering suit. Last week, Judge Robert E. Payne of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., rejected a motion to dismiss the case, which is now scheduled for trial in October.

Mr. Blakey said he knew of six racketeering suits against unions for so-called corporate campaigns meant to pressure companies into unionizing by drawing attention to their asserted shortcomings. Five of the suits survived motions to dismiss, he said, at which point the unions generally entered into settlements.

“When they settle,” Mr. Blakey said, “it normally breaks the campaign.”

A century ago, Upton Sinclair educated the nation about the filth, degradation and misery that pervaded Chicago’s stockyards by writing down what happened in them in “The Jungle.”

Sinclair figures in the Smithfield suit, too.

“On or about April 20, 2007,” the suit says, a union organizer named Jason Lefkowitz had the temerity to quote Sinclair in a critique of Ms. Deen in an online newsletter. That’s right: Smithfield maintains that it is a form of racketeering to quote an American master.

Mr. Blakey said it was perfectly appropriate to cite activities protected by the First Amendment as evidence of racketeering, and he seemed to have little sympathy for the argument that some things should be hashed out through debate rather than litigation.

On the other hand, listen to Upton Sinclair, as quoted in the RICO suit. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” Sinclair wrote, “when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Thanks to Adam Liptak

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Chased by the Mob in "3 Days Gone"

Director Scott McCullough has completed his first feature film. 3 Days Gone is a thriller about a man who wakes up after being buried alive for three days to find that he is being pursued by the mob and is a suspect in the murder of his best friend.

The film stars Michelle Stafford, a winner of two Emmy Awards for her role on The Young and the Restless, and Chrisopher Backus, who has appeared on such shows as The O.C. and Will & Grace. The producers have already sold rights to the moviefor several markets and are planning to put the film out on the festival circuit as they seek a theatrical distributor.

McCullough became involved in the project through writers/producers Oliver Coltress and Charles Wesley. The director said that he was attracted by the quality of the script. “When this opportunity came up, I was excited,” McCullough said. “The quality of the script also allowed us to get some actors we wouldn’t otherwise have had. We had five or six hundred submissions for each role. My experience in commercials also helped.” Casting was done by Michael Sanford of Sanford Casting.

McCullough shot the film in Los Angeles in just 12 days, covering an average of more than eight pages of script and an average of 40 set-ups per day. The director used the new Red One digital cinema camera in the production, shooting in 4K resolution. It was his first time using the system, and he came away favorably impressed. “The footage looks great,” he said. “I was able to use the lenses that I like from 35mm film and it generated very crisp images.”

“Only a handful of feature films have been shot with the Red One and originate in 4K resolution,” McCullough added. “It’s the cutting edge of filmmaking today.”

Making a feature film on a modest budget is not, however, without challenges. On several occasions shooting locations fell through at the last minute forcing the director to improvise. McCullough said that his experience in directing commercials and music videos helped him overcome such obstacles. “You have to be willing to work with some uncertainty because the actors are depending on you and the producers are depending on you,” he observed. “I’ve been in those situations before and I have the experience to know what I want to shoot, how to set up quickly, be decisive and get what I need without wasting time.”

Despite the lack of an expansive budget, McCullough found the experience of shooting a long narrative story enervating. “Working with the actors was very rewarding,” he said. “I do a lot of car commercials and don’t often get a lot of lines of dialogue. Having the opportunity to shoot eight or even 14 pages of script in a day and having the actors respond to me was great. I loved it.”

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Biggest New York Mafia Take Down in 20 Years Hits the Gambino Family

The FBI struck a decapitating blow today to the Gambino crime family, taking out its leaders and the last vestiges of late boss John Gotti, the Daily News has learned.

Up to 60 mobsters are expected to be charged on racketeering, murder and extortion charges, including acting boss John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico who was Dapper Don's longtime sidekick, underboss Dominic Cefalu and consigliere Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo, sources said.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily News in 2005, D'Amico denied running the Gambino family. "I'm the boss of my house and my bathroom," he said.

Gotti's brother Vincent and his nephew Richard, will be charged today with the 2003 attempted murder of Howard Beach bagel shop owner Angelo Mugnolo.

Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell, FBI officials and representatives from the Italian National Police are scheduled to discuss the largest Mafia takedown in more than two decades, at a press conference later this morning.

Another Gotti crony, Charles Carneglia is facing charges for the murders of an armored car driver during a robbery, the 1976 murder of a court officer and the 1990 rubout of gangster Louis DiBono.

Nicholas (Little Nick) Corozzo, a reputed capo believed to be the heir apparent to run the family, will be charged with a 1996 double murder in Brooklyn in which one of the victims was a bystander.

Officials are also expected to discuss the arrests of dozens of Mafioso members in Sicily in coordination with today's raids. The Sicilian wiseguys have ties to the Gambino crime family through reputed New York soldier Franki Cali, sources said.

During the lengthy investigation, the FBI learned that disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy was betting on basketball games with bookies. Donaghy pleaded guilty last summer and is cooperating with authorities.

Thanks to John Marzulli

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