A NEW chapter has been written in the 86-year history of the Transport and General Workers Union after it agreed a merger with the New York Mafia.
Members of the T&G voted unanimously to join forces with the largest of the so-called 'Five Families' after 800,000 horses' heads were found at the bottom of working class beds across the UK.
The new super-union will have more than three million members and be controlled from the back of a delicatessen in Queens.
The merged union's new general secretary, Peter 'Fair Day's Pay' Clemenza, said: "I would like to pay tribute to my great friends from across the water who have come to a most sensible decision. "But remember what we agreed: play it cool and you don't wind up in the back of no refrigerated truck with a hook in a place you don't want it. Capice?"
Clemenza said British trade unionists would benefit from a stronger bargaining position as well as a share of the proceeds from gambling, prostitution and 'those big, fat trucks coming out of La Guardia, just ripe for the picking'.
He added: "We are keen to sit down with your chancellor of the exchequer and tell him how things are gonna be from now on."
In the UK the merged union will be known as Workers Uniting, while in the US it will continue to be known as 'the thing' or by its more formal name 'this thing of ours'.
Thanks to The Daily Mash
Saturday, July 05, 2008
"Mafia Cop" Gets Prison for Filing False Tax Return
A former New York police detective accused of moonlighting as a hit man for the mob has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for filing a false income tax return.
A U.S. District Court in Nevada also ordered Louis Eppolito to pay $102
,000 in restitution.
Eppolito and another former New York detective were accused of participating in at least eight mob-related killings while working for the Luchese crime family.
A New York jury found them guilty of a racketeering conspiracy responsible for multiple murders and other crimes. A federal judge later ruled the statute of limitations had expired for the charges.
The decision is under appeal.
Eppolito has been in federal custody since he was arrested in Las Vegas in 2005.
Prosecutors say he received credit for time served in Tuesday's sentencing, but will be transferred to New York authorities under a detention order in the racketeering case.
A U.S. District Court in Nevada also ordered Louis Eppolito to pay $102
,000 in restitution.Eppolito and another former New York detective were accused of participating in at least eight mob-related killings while working for the Luchese crime family.
A New York jury found them guilty of a racketeering conspiracy responsible for multiple murders and other crimes. A federal judge later ruled the statute of limitations had expired for the charges.
The decision is under appeal.
Eppolito has been in federal custody since he was arrested in Las Vegas in 2005.
Prosecutors say he received credit for time served in Tuesday's sentencing, but will be transferred to New York authorities under a detention order in the racketeering case.
Was Over $2 Billion in City Contracts Awarded to Alleged Mob Connected Construction Company
An affidavit filed in federal court in Brooklyn suggests that officials with the Schiavone Construction Company, a contracting giant working on some of the largest public works projects in New York City, were involved in variety of schemes involving organized crime in recent years.
The affidavit, filed in 2005 as part of an organized crime investigation that has led to scores of arrests, says that Schiavone executives plotted to evade a requirement that they seek to hire businesses owned by women on a city project by using a front that was actually meant to funnel money to a mob-connected trucking executive.
In the affidavit, a federal agent, citing secretly recorded tapes of Schiavone officials and statements by the trucking executive, details the steps Schiavone officials said they would take to help carry out the scheme.
They included an offer by senior Schiavone executives to hire a secretary and install a telephone line at the front company’s offices just for Schiavone projects. Another Schiavone employee was recorded saying that he would provide signs bearing the front company’s name to mask the ownership of the mob-connected trucks, and heard coaching the trucking executive on how to file job paperwork. Another employee was recorded telling the trucking executive that a woman should answer the phone at the front company’s job-site trailer, and directing how she should greet callers.
Schiavone, which was formed in the 1950s and grew into one of the largest heavy-construction companies in the New York area, has been awarded more than $2 billion in public works projects in recent years, including New York City’s massive Croton water filtration plant in the Bronx, said to be the subject of the fraud scheme. Work on the construction of the Second Avenue subway is another of its projects.
Until the company was sold to a Spanish conglomerate late last year, 50 percent of it was owned by Raymond J. Donovan, the labor secretary in the Reagan administration. He was tried and acquitted in 1987 on state fraud charges that accused him of stealing $7.4 million from a subway contract through a scheme involving a Genovese crime family associate and a minority-owned subcontractor.
The 2005 affidavit quotes Nicholas Calvo, a carting company executive identified by prosecutors as a Genovese crime family associate, telling a union official that Schiavone Construction had ties to the Genovese family.
Mr. Calvo told the union official that he had obtained work for another trucking company at the New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, another massive project where Schiavone holds a city contract, through his influence over Schiavone, according to the affidavit. Mr. Calvo, who was arrested earlier this year in the broader organized crime investigation, pleaded guilty this month to extortion conspiracy charges in United States District Court in Brooklyn.
No charges have been brought against Schiavone Construction or the officials implicated in the scheme detailed in the affidavit, although its head of tunneling operations, Anthony Delvescovo, and a lower-level worker, Michael King, were among 62 people indicted in the broader investigation.
The affidavit, which was originally filed under seal, was disclosed last week by Dominic F. Amorosa, a lawyer for one of the defendants in the broader case, who attached it to another document he filed seeking to have wiretap evidence against his client suppressed.
Schiavone’s general counsel, Mary Libassi, said in a written statement on Monday that some of the affidavit’s allegations against Schiavone were untrue, and that the company was cooperating with the investigation, which is being overseen by the United States attorney in Brooklyn.
“Schiavone has operated and continues to operate within the law,” she said. “In its projects, Schiavone has used appropriately certified minority, women’s and disadvantaged business enterprises.”
Of the 62 people charged in the broader case, just Mr. Delvescovo and Mr. King were indicted on charges related to Schiavone. Fifty-three of the defendants have either pleaded guilty or have agreed to, and nine — including the two men — are expected to go to trial in the coming months.
Mr. Devescovo’s lawyer, Avraham C. Moskowitz, said his client was not recorded once on the hundreds of hours of tapes made by the trucking executive. “And that, in and of itself, should cast doubt on the government’s case,” he said. “There is no evidence that my client got a penny from anybody.”
Mr. King’s lawyer, Marc A. Agnifilo, defended his client and played down his role in the case, saying he operated a jackhammer and had “almost no decision-making authority whatsoever.”
It is unclear from the affidavit whether the scheme was ever carried out. But city records show that T & M Maintenance, the company listed in the affidavit as the front in the supposed scheme, was a subcontractor to Schiavone on the Croton water filtration plant project, doing $1.2 million in work.
The company is listed in city records as a certified Women’s Business Enterprise and a Minority Business Enterprise.
The affidavit said that the mob-connected trucking executive who was part of the scheme, Joseph Vollaro, had met with Schiavone executives about the plan while he was cooperating in the investigation with federal and local authorities.
“Certain of the executives have instructed the CI that the CI is to perform the work at the Croton Project under the guises of a company portraying itself as a legitimate women’s business enterprise,” the affidavit said, referring to Mr. Vollaro by the abbreviation for his role as a confidential informant. “In fact, the executives understand that the CI’s company will be doing the work.”
Under a state program, Schiavone was required to make a “good-faith effort” to subcontract at least 17 percent of the work to minority companies and 5 percent to companies owned by women.
The affidavit said that Mr. Vollaro had agreed with the president of T & M, Marina Poetsma, to pay her a fee of 7 percent of the contract payments to use her company’s name. Mr. Vollaro’s company was to keep the remaining 93 percent, according to the affidavit, which did not include the total dollar amount of the payments.
A man who answered the phone at T & M’s offices on Staten Island said that the company and Ms. Poetsma had done nothing wrong. “Whatever she did, it was all legal,” said the man, who would not give his name. “You wouldn’t be awarded a contract otherwise. Don’t believe everything you read,” he added, referring to the affidavit. “The City of New York is not stupid.”
The affidavit was sworn to by Jonathan Mellone, a special agent with the federal Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General, which is investigating the case along with the F.B.I., the state Organized Crime Task Force, the city Department of Investigation and federal prosecutors. It also described several other schemes involving Schiavone.
Among them were instances of bribes and kickbacks, and a scheme in which Mr. Vollaro was to pay $40 a truck load — including all the loads from the Schiavone jobs — for unlimited access to a landfill project in New Jersey known as Endcap.
Mr. Vollaro’s criminal record dates to a 1989 drug conviction in New Jersey. He also served a federal prison sentence for loansharking. He began cooperating with investigators in early 2005 when they caught him with a kilogram of cocaine.
The Croton project, at the center of the alleged scheme involving Schiavone and T & M, is a massive, controversial undertaking by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which has been plagued by delays and by costs that have soared to nearly $3 billion from $660 million.
One of the biggest water filtration plants in the world, it is being built in a 10-story hole that Schiavone helped excavate out of bedrock in the Bronx. Once entombed in the man-made cavern below Van Cortlandt Park, it will be able to filter 300 million gallons of water a day.
Thanks to William K. Rashbaum
The affidavit, filed in 2005 as part of an organized crime investigation that has led to scores of arrests, says that Schiavone executives plotted to evade a requirement that they seek to hire businesses owned by women on a city project by using a front that was actually meant to funnel money to a mob-connected trucking executive.
In the affidavit, a federal agent, citing secretly recorded tapes of Schiavone officials and statements by the trucking executive, details the steps Schiavone officials said they would take to help carry out the scheme.
They included an offer by senior Schiavone executives to hire a secretary and install a telephone line at the front company’s offices just for Schiavone projects. Another Schiavone employee was recorded saying that he would provide signs bearing the front company’s name to mask the ownership of the mob-connected trucks, and heard coaching the trucking executive on how to file job paperwork. Another employee was recorded telling the trucking executive that a woman should answer the phone at the front company’s job-site trailer, and directing how she should greet callers.
Schiavone, which was formed in the 1950s and grew into one of the largest heavy-construction companies in the New York area, has been awarded more than $2 billion in public works projects in recent years, including New York City’s massive Croton water filtration plant in the Bronx, said to be the subject of the fraud scheme. Work on the construction of the Second Avenue subway is another of its projects.
Until the company was sold to a Spanish conglomerate late last year, 50 percent of it was owned by Raymond J. Donovan, the labor secretary in the Reagan administration. He was tried and acquitted in 1987 on state fraud charges that accused him of stealing $7.4 million from a subway contract through a scheme involving a Genovese crime family associate and a minority-owned subcontractor.
The 2005 affidavit quotes Nicholas Calvo, a carting company executive identified by prosecutors as a Genovese crime family associate, telling a union official that Schiavone Construction had ties to the Genovese family.
Mr. Calvo told the union official that he had obtained work for another trucking company at the New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, another massive project where Schiavone holds a city contract, through his influence over Schiavone, according to the affidavit. Mr. Calvo, who was arrested earlier this year in the broader organized crime investigation, pleaded guilty this month to extortion conspiracy charges in United States District Court in Brooklyn.
No charges have been brought against Schiavone Construction or the officials implicated in the scheme detailed in the affidavit, although its head of tunneling operations, Anthony Delvescovo, and a lower-level worker, Michael King, were among 62 people indicted in the broader investigation.
The affidavit, which was originally filed under seal, was disclosed last week by Dominic F. Amorosa, a lawyer for one of the defendants in the broader case, who attached it to another document he filed seeking to have wiretap evidence against his client suppressed.
Schiavone’s general counsel, Mary Libassi, said in a written statement on Monday that some of the affidavit’s allegations against Schiavone were untrue, and that the company was cooperating with the investigation, which is being overseen by the United States attorney in Brooklyn.
“Schiavone has operated and continues to operate within the law,” she said. “In its projects, Schiavone has used appropriately certified minority, women’s and disadvantaged business enterprises.”
Of the 62 people charged in the broader case, just Mr. Delvescovo and Mr. King were indicted on charges related to Schiavone. Fifty-three of the defendants have either pleaded guilty or have agreed to, and nine — including the two men — are expected to go to trial in the coming months.
Mr. Devescovo’s lawyer, Avraham C. Moskowitz, said his client was not recorded once on the hundreds of hours of tapes made by the trucking executive. “And that, in and of itself, should cast doubt on the government’s case,” he said. “There is no evidence that my client got a penny from anybody.”
Mr. King’s lawyer, Marc A. Agnifilo, defended his client and played down his role in the case, saying he operated a jackhammer and had “almost no decision-making authority whatsoever.”
It is unclear from the affidavit whether the scheme was ever carried out. But city records show that T & M Maintenance, the company listed in the affidavit as the front in the supposed scheme, was a subcontractor to Schiavone on the Croton water filtration plant project, doing $1.2 million in work.
The company is listed in city records as a certified Women’s Business Enterprise and a Minority Business Enterprise.
The affidavit said that the mob-connected trucking executive who was part of the scheme, Joseph Vollaro, had met with Schiavone executives about the plan while he was cooperating in the investigation with federal and local authorities.
“Certain of the executives have instructed the CI that the CI is to perform the work at the Croton Project under the guises of a company portraying itself as a legitimate women’s business enterprise,” the affidavit said, referring to Mr. Vollaro by the abbreviation for his role as a confidential informant. “In fact, the executives understand that the CI’s company will be doing the work.”
Under a state program, Schiavone was required to make a “good-faith effort” to subcontract at least 17 percent of the work to minority companies and 5 percent to companies owned by women.
The affidavit said that Mr. Vollaro had agreed with the president of T & M, Marina Poetsma, to pay her a fee of 7 percent of the contract payments to use her company’s name. Mr. Vollaro’s company was to keep the remaining 93 percent, according to the affidavit, which did not include the total dollar amount of the payments.
A man who answered the phone at T & M’s offices on Staten Island said that the company and Ms. Poetsma had done nothing wrong. “Whatever she did, it was all legal,” said the man, who would not give his name. “You wouldn’t be awarded a contract otherwise. Don’t believe everything you read,” he added, referring to the affidavit. “The City of New York is not stupid.”
The affidavit was sworn to by Jonathan Mellone, a special agent with the federal Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General, which is investigating the case along with the F.B.I., the state Organized Crime Task Force, the city Department of Investigation and federal prosecutors. It also described several other schemes involving Schiavone.
Among them were instances of bribes and kickbacks, and a scheme in which Mr. Vollaro was to pay $40 a truck load — including all the loads from the Schiavone jobs — for unlimited access to a landfill project in New Jersey known as Endcap.
Mr. Vollaro’s criminal record dates to a 1989 drug conviction in New Jersey. He also served a federal prison sentence for loansharking. He began cooperating with investigators in early 2005 when they caught him with a kilogram of cocaine.
The Croton project, at the center of the alleged scheme involving Schiavone and T & M, is a massive, controversial undertaking by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, which has been plagued by delays and by costs that have soared to nearly $3 billion from $660 million.
One of the biggest water filtration plants in the world, it is being built in a 10-story hole that Schiavone helped excavate out of bedrock in the Bronx. Once entombed in the man-made cavern below Van Cortlandt Park, it will be able to filter 300 million gallons of water a day.
Thanks to William K. Rashbaum
11 Things to Know When Arrested
I had reader suggest a link called 11 Things to Know When Arrested. Now, we have several readers here who are members of the legal community on the the defense side, as well as on the prosecution side. We also have several members of the law enforcement community who are readers from the local, state and federal levels. I thought we might get some comments on the advice in the above post. There already appears to be some spirited discussion reading the comments concerning #10, which states Do Not Refuse an Alcohol Test.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Mitchell A. Mars Foundation to Honor a Mob-Busting True Public Servant
Powerful politicians often refer to themselves as "public servants," even as they warn young people against cynicism.
They stand proudly and brag loudly of their life's passion for the public good, even while filling the pockets of friends and family with public money.
A few even have a chorus of silky voices to sing their praises so we don't notice how closely they're attached to the belly of the beast. But there are true public servants, still. They don't get the benefit of the silky chorus, because silk costs money, and if public servants are doing their job properly, they're not using your government's purse to make somebody's somebody rich.
I'm thinking of a true public servant, the late Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars. He led the prosecution of the historic Family Secrets trial last year as he was dying of cancer. Young Americans seeking a role model for public service might consider using Mars as a compass so they don't get lost.
Though ill, Mars prosecuted the bosses of Chicago's organized crime—the Chicago Outfit underworld that reaches through politics into our lives on a daily basis.
"Few people tooted their own horn less," U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said at a memorial service for Mars in the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse last week.
The event was held in the large ceremonial courtroom on the 25th floor, the same courtroom in which Mars faced down and convicted the Outfit bosses: the brutal Frank Calabrese Sr., Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Jimmy "Shamrock" Marcello; the quiet enforcer Paulie "the Indian" Schiro; and corrupt Chicago cop Anthony "Twan" Passafiume Doyle.
It was Doyle, the police messenger boy for the Outfit's Chinatown crew, who perhaps gave Mars his greatest praise on a government tape, a recording taken when members of the Outfit were panicking about the growing case against them. "I said, I'll bet you it's that [expletive] Mitch Mars, that's what I think," Doyle said.
It wasn't the first or the last time the Outfit used a sleeper cop—or even a chief of detectives—to carry messages. "That was the Outfit's view of Mitch Mars, and there is no finer compliment," said First Assistant U.S. Atty. Gary Shapiro.
As the muscled-up Twan—who according to testimony is the servant of reputed Outfit street boss Frank "Toots" Caruso—made that remark just a few years ago, consider what was happening.
The federal investigation had sprung an internal leak that would lead to charges against a deputy federal marshal and would almost compromise the case. Chicago machine politicians were shrieking that the FBI should spend less time on corruption and more on chasing two-bit gun cases. A few critics ridiculed the idea that there even was an Outfit. But Mitch Mars and his team didn't give in.
"He was a public servant of the highest order," said Mars' closest friend, Thomas Moriarty, a special investigator in the U.S. attorney's office. Mars and Moriarty were born on the South Side and were raised Sox fans.
When he said the phrase "public servant," Moriarty felt the need to qualify the statement, acknowledging that roiling political corruption has smeared the phrase.
"That Mitch Mars," Moriarty said. "He was a patriot's patriot. . . . Chicago, a world-class city, had a malignant tumor: organized crime. Nothing bothered Mitch Mars more. . . . It became Mitch's quest to destroy this tumor, and he did."
FBI Special Agent Mike Maseth, who worked the Family Secrets case, noted that Mars was a Chick Evans scholar at Marquette, and that his love of golf helped provide the full scholarship that shaped Mars' life.
"If you watched the U.S. Open tournament, you would have noticed that there was something not right about Tiger [Woods]. That was what Mitch did last summer in this very courtroom.
"All of us knew there was something not quite right about Mitch, but he came here every day and worked on that case. On Aug. 30, he delivered one of the best closing arguments this courtroom, this building had ever seen," Maseth said.
I was privileged to be one of the lucky few to see Mars deliver that closing in the courtroom. A quote from the closing is now on a plaque in a third-floor conference room honoring Mars.
"Criminal cases are about accountability and justice, not only for the defendants, but also justice for our system, justice for our society, and justice for the victims," Mars told the jury. "Our system works. It is the greatest system in the world. But it only works when those who should be held accountable are held accountable."
The Mitchell A. Mars Foundation—created by his law-enforcement colleagues to establish an Evans scholarship in his name—is scheduled to hold a fundraiser on Sept. 22 at Cog Hill in Lemont.
Those of us who keep saying we need good public servants—not cynical politicians—should also be held accountable.
So save the date. Sept. 22. Cog Hill.
Thanks to John Kass
They stand proudly and brag loudly of their life's passion for the public good, even while filling the pockets of friends and family with public money.
A few even have a chorus of silky voices to sing their praises so we don't notice how closely they're attached to the belly of the beast. But there are true public servants, still. They don't get the benefit of the silky chorus, because silk costs money, and if public servants are doing their job properly, they're not using your government's purse to make somebody's somebody rich.
I'm thinking of a true public servant, the late Assistant U.S. Atty. Mitchell Mars. He led the prosecution of the historic Family Secrets trial last year as he was dying of cancer. Young Americans seeking a role model for public service might consider using Mars as a compass so they don't get lost.
Though ill, Mars prosecuted the bosses of Chicago's organized crime—the Chicago Outfit underworld that reaches through politics into our lives on a daily basis.
"Few people tooted their own horn less," U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said at a memorial service for Mars in the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse last week.
The event was held in the large ceremonial courtroom on the 25th floor, the same courtroom in which Mars faced down and convicted the Outfit bosses: the brutal Frank Calabrese Sr., Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Jimmy "Shamrock" Marcello; the quiet enforcer Paulie "the Indian" Schiro; and corrupt Chicago cop Anthony "Twan" Passafiume Doyle.
It was Doyle, the police messenger boy for the Outfit's Chinatown crew, who perhaps gave Mars his greatest praise on a government tape, a recording taken when members of the Outfit were panicking about the growing case against them. "I said, I'll bet you it's that [expletive] Mitch Mars, that's what I think," Doyle said.
It wasn't the first or the last time the Outfit used a sleeper cop—or even a chief of detectives—to carry messages. "That was the Outfit's view of Mitch Mars, and there is no finer compliment," said First Assistant U.S. Atty. Gary Shapiro.
As the muscled-up Twan—who according to testimony is the servant of reputed Outfit street boss Frank "Toots" Caruso—made that remark just a few years ago, consider what was happening.
The federal investigation had sprung an internal leak that would lead to charges against a deputy federal marshal and would almost compromise the case. Chicago machine politicians were shrieking that the FBI should spend less time on corruption and more on chasing two-bit gun cases. A few critics ridiculed the idea that there even was an Outfit. But Mitch Mars and his team didn't give in.
"He was a public servant of the highest order," said Mars' closest friend, Thomas Moriarty, a special investigator in the U.S. attorney's office. Mars and Moriarty were born on the South Side and were raised Sox fans.
When he said the phrase "public servant," Moriarty felt the need to qualify the statement, acknowledging that roiling political corruption has smeared the phrase.
"That Mitch Mars," Moriarty said. "He was a patriot's patriot. . . . Chicago, a world-class city, had a malignant tumor: organized crime. Nothing bothered Mitch Mars more. . . . It became Mitch's quest to destroy this tumor, and he did."
FBI Special Agent Mike Maseth, who worked the Family Secrets case, noted that Mars was a Chick Evans scholar at Marquette, and that his love of golf helped provide the full scholarship that shaped Mars' life.
"If you watched the U.S. Open tournament, you would have noticed that there was something not right about Tiger [Woods]. That was what Mitch did last summer in this very courtroom.
"All of us knew there was something not quite right about Mitch, but he came here every day and worked on that case. On Aug. 30, he delivered one of the best closing arguments this courtroom, this building had ever seen," Maseth said.
I was privileged to be one of the lucky few to see Mars deliver that closing in the courtroom. A quote from the closing is now on a plaque in a third-floor conference room honoring Mars.
"Criminal cases are about accountability and justice, not only for the defendants, but also justice for our system, justice for our society, and justice for the victims," Mars told the jury. "Our system works. It is the greatest system in the world. But it only works when those who should be held accountable are held accountable."
The Mitchell A. Mars Foundation—created by his law-enforcement colleagues to establish an Evans scholarship in his name—is scheduled to hold a fundraiser on Sept. 22 at Cog Hill in Lemont.
Those of us who keep saying we need good public servants—not cynical politicians—should also be held accountable.
So save the date. Sept. 22. Cog Hill.
Thanks to John Kass
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)