Pension Laws Allow "Mafia Cops" to Keep Tax-Free Income Despite Convictions

A side door swung open, and the two retired police detectives, dressed in shapeless prison scrubs, walked into the courtroom. They looked as if they had been shipwrecked.

Nearly three years ago, the two men, Stephen Caracappa and Louis J. Eppolito, were convicted of serving as assassins and spies for the Mafia while they were employed as detectives for the Police Department.

A case of outsize horrors and drastic turns — plus celebrity lawyers, three books, and a conviction reversed, then restored — came to its reckoning Friday afternoon on the 10th floor of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. By day’s end, it would provide one more twist from its store of the absurd.

“These two defendants have committed what amounts to treason against the people of the City of New York and their fellow police officers,” said Judge Jack B. Weinstein of United States District Court.

He sentenced Mr. Eppolito to life plus 100 years, and fined him $4.75 million; Mr. Caracappa got life plus 80 years, and a fine of $4.25 million. The judge said both men were likely to have “hidden assets” from their crimes.

Yet one asset — in plain sight — might not be seized to pay their debts.

Both men have been drawing tax-free disability pensions from the city since they left the Police Department, according to city records. Mr. Caracappa, who retired in 1992 as a first-grade detective, receives $5,313 a month. Mr. Eppolito, who retired in 1990 as a second-grade detective, is paid $3,896 a month. Because they retired before they were accused of crimes, their pensions will continue.

Moreover, the pensions are not subject to seizure for payment of the fines, said Joseph A. Bondy, the lawyer for Mr. Caracappa. “I fought the government for Peter Gotti when they tried to garnish a disability pension, and we won,” said Mr. Bondy, who defended Mr. Gotti on murder and racketeering charges in 2004.

Under state law, public pensions are treated as property held in trust for the employees, and periodic efforts to make their forfeiture a penalty for corrupt public employees have failed. The Daily News reported last year that 450 corrupt former officials, judges and police officers were receiving pensions.

While both men have families, the two are likely to have little use in prison for the tax-free bounty that, in theory, they earned during the years that, a jury found, they were also killing for the Mafia, setting up informants for death or exposure, and poring through confidential police computers in service of the organized crime figures who were providing them with regular payoffs.

At 67, Mr. Caracappa has grown gaunt, the color so vanished from his face that it was hard to say where a scraggly gray beard met his pallid skin; Mr. Eppolito, 60, appeared to have lost weight behind bars, but remained a round, burly figure whose face reddened as a son and a daughter of two victims stood to describe their losses.

Their trial in 2006 lasted three weeks, and was built on testimony from Burton Kaplan, a wholesale garment dealer who had gone into multiple schemes with organized crime figures. He was the subject of “The Good Rat: A True Story” (Ecco, 2008), a pitch-perfect account by Jimmy Breslin, who described how Mr. Caracappa helped a Mafia patron hunt for a Nicholas Guido by using a police computer. But the detective provided the address of a different man, a young telephone installer with the same name as the hitmen’s prey. He was killed in front of his home in Park Slope.

The first reports of the detectives’ corruption were made in 1979, and they were implicated a number of times through the 1980s but were never charged, and managed to continue their rise within the police ranks, according to Greg B. Smith’s “Mob Cops” (Berkley, 2006).

In the courtroom on Friday afternoon, a son from one family, then a daughter from another stood to speak for murdered fathers. A man framed by the ex-detectives told them he hoped that they would suffer in prison for the rest of their lives, as he had for 19 years.

Both Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito protested their innocence on Friday. “You will never take my will to prove how innocent I am,” Mr. Caracappa said.

One of those who spoke was Yael Perlman, the daughter of a gem dealer, Israel Greenwald, whose business dealings with Mr. Kaplan went sour. He was pulled off a highway by the two detectives in 1986, killed and buried under an auto repair shop. She was 7 years old then, and it was not until 2005 that his remains were found. The lack of a body “prevented us from receiving the small material respite of life insurance,” Ms. Perlman said.

Told later that both men would continue to receive their police pensions, she said, “That’s sick.”

Thanks to Jim Dwyer

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American Mafia in a Pathetic State Thanks to "Rats"

Anyone looking for evidence of the pathetic state of America's once mighty Mafia could find it last week in one of Brooklyn's federal courtrooms.

On the defence bench, a bespectacled 62-year-old man in scruffy green sweater and grey trousers sat impassively as an alleged former workmate, a fellow hitman in New York's Gambino crime family, spilled the beans on everything from the murderousness of its menfolk to the infidelity of its women.

The trial of Charles Carneglia for five murders and racketeering charges has been electrified by the evidence of John Alite, a self-confessed assassin for the Gambino clan and their ruling family, the Gottis, who has "ratted" on his old friends.

Alite's lurid succession of claims included that John Gotti Jnr ordered a string of murders, that he (Alite) had an affair with Gotti's married sister, Victoria, and that two police officers helped in at least one of the Gambino murders.

If he sang like the proverbial canary, so too have dozens more New York Mafiosi. Guest appearances by former mobsters, turned state witness in order to secure a lenient sentence, are par for the course in Mafia trials nowadays.

The old days of "omerta", the code of silence that once bound members together and made prosecutions very difficult, were well and truly over.

"The Mafia began as a secret organisation but if you look at it now, you couldn't find a more 'un-secret' organisation," said Rick Porrello, a writer on the Mafia and a police chief in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. "It's hard to think of a major case that doesn't have a high-ranking Mafia witness for the prosecution, and these cases rely on them," he said.

Jim Margolin, a New York FBI special agent, said: "I'm sure the next prospective co-operator will be thinking: 'Well, why shouldn't I if the alternative is going to jail for 40 years.' The more others do it, the less loyalty there is to the family."

Mr Porrello also puts this down to the fact that, from the 1980s onwards, the Mafia was no longer run by the "street-hardened" gangsters of the mob's golden years but by their less disciplined offspring.

There is an old Mafia saying that "the family is only as strong as its boss". As soon as Gotti Snr was jailed and his son, not yet 30, took over, the Gambinos were eclipsed as New York's most powerful mob family.

In a conversation recorded by the FBI, "Junior" was heard complaining about the Mafia life and questioning the love of a father who would "put me with all these wolves".

Indeed, Alite claimed in court that he and Carneglia had plotted to murder "Junior" because they believed he was too "soft" to lead the Gambino family.

A witness protection programme, which proved that it could protect people who turned, was also crucial in encouraging mobsters to co-operate. In the past, they usually ended up dead.

Despite the stream of successful prosecutions, Mafia watchers say the families are still operating, albeit on a smaller scale and often in less serious crimes such as loan sharking and credit card fraud.

Mr Margolin said there was still an FBI squad devoted to each of the five New York crime families -- Bonanno, Genovese, Colombo and Lucchese and Gambino -- and "they're all busy".

"We're not at the point of declaring victory over the Cosa Nostra," he said.

Thanks to Tom Leonard

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"The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of a Mexican Mob Killer" Goes Deep into The Mexican Mafia

In and out of prison his whole life Rene "Boxer" Enriquez would land himself in Pelican Bay for the murders of fellow Black Hand members. The ultimate realization that he will live and die behind prison walls tears at his very soul and forces Boxer into an unheard of decision; turn against his Black Hand brothers and bring down the Mexican Mafia.

Boxer resides in an unknown prison somewhere in the United States under the witness protection program, a marked man by the Black Hand and a lonely soul buried by the regrets of a violent past.

"The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of a Mexican Mob Killer" was written by Chris Blatchford, who is no stranger to dangerous undertakings. Blatchford has investigated numerous stories that deal with the underground criminal element including a link between the Italian Mob and MCA/Universal's music and home video divisions for which he won a Peabody award.

Blatchford captures the gritty and violent inner working of Los Angeles' most notorious gang by narrating the life and times of Rene "Boxer" Enriquez, a Black Hand Mob leader turned stool pigeon.

The story hits with the force of a freight train, the grim reality of life behind bars steeped in every written word. The hopelessness and sheer terror described by Blatchford and Enriquez turns one's stomach upside down and forces the realization that evil is prevalent in our society.

"I became a regular user of PCP when I was 14. Not only did I use it, I made it and sold it too. I bought mint leaf by the ounce and cocui dust at the local Safeway and let it crystallize on dry ice. I sold it to other school kids, not a bad lucrative business for an eight grader," Boxer says.

With each turn of the page Enriquez transforms from a drug dealing juvenile delinquent to a hardened murderer and enforcer for the Black Hand. Blatchford saturates every sentence with the unmistakable scent of death and suffering, enough to turn a two bit thug into a model citizen. Prison-yard stabbings and cell block riots are illustrated in such a raw and powerful light; the viciousness lingers long after the book is closed.

"The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of a Mexican Mob Killer" is without a doubt a seminal work, casting its readers straight into the fires of hell.

It's frightening glimpse into a criminal underworld that is can only be described as unforgiving. Blatchford delivers a must-read for any crime drama enthusiast. Mario Puzo would be proud.

Thanks to Carlos Ramirez

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Arthur Gianelli, Reputed Mafia Associate, Led Sprawling Criminal Enterprise According to the Feds

Reputed Mafia associate Arthur Gianelli of Lynnfield headed a sprawling criminal enterprise whose members were involved in gambling, money laundering, loan sharking, arson, and extortion, a federal prosecutor said this morning.

Gianelli, 51, and his three co-defendants "committed hundreds of crimes between 1999 and 2005," Assistant US Attorney Fred Wyshak Jr. said during opening statements at their racketeering trial in federal court.

Millions of dollars flowed through the organization's gambling operation, which took bets on football games and later shifted its operation from Massachusetts to an Internet operation in Costa Rica. The organization also created phony companies to hide profits, Wyshak said.

Wyshak said Gianelli had ties to the Mafia, making weekly payments to reputed New England underboss Carmen "Cheese Man" DiNunzio. "It was that association between this organization and organized crime that allowed Gianelli to flex his muscle, that allowed Gianelli to make people pay money that didn't want to pay," Wyshak said. "Gianelli is under the umbrella of the Mafia."

But Gianelli's lawyer, Robert Sheketoff, told jurors that, based on the government's theory of the case, Gianelli would have been a victim of DiNunzio because of the payments he was forced to make. Also on trial are Dennis Albertelli, 56, and his wife, Gisele, 54, of Stow, and Frank Iacoboni, 65, of Leominster.

Gianelli is accused of using threats and intimidation in an unsuccessful bid to force the owners of two Boston bars to sell their businesses to him between 1998 and 2002.

Gianelli, Dennis Albertelli, and Iacoboni are also charged with arson for allegedly plotting to burn down the Big Dog Sports Grille in North Reading in 2003 in an attempt to intimidate the owners into selling them another bar that they were poised to open in Lynnfield.

Defense lawyers told jurors that the most serious charges in the case involve the extortion and arson, and urged them to be skeptical of those allegations and the witnesses who testify about them.

"This is not some extortion that took place in some back room," said Sheketoff, telling jurors that there was a legal dispute between Gianelli and the Big Dog owners after he invested heavily in their financially troubled business.

Calling one of the owners, Mark Colangelo, "a swindler and a thief,'' Sheketoff said "he took my client for $1 million and my client took him to court to get it back. The suggestion that he is a victim in this case is almost laughable.''

Gianelli's wife, Mary Ann, pleaded guilty yesterday to 19 counts of racketeering, money laundering, filing false tax returns, and illegally structuring cash transactions, just as she was about to stand trial with the others.

Thanks to Shelley Murphy

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Mafia Cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, to "Rot!" in Prision for Life

The murderous "Mafia Cops," sentenced to die behind bars for eight mob-ordered executions, received a venomous sendoff Friday from the son of one victim: "Rot!"

A packed Brooklyn federal courtroom erupted in cheers as Vincent Lino unloaded on Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa - the corrupt detective duo convicted of selling their badges to the Luchese crime family.

"These two lowlifes shot and killed my father," roared an angry Lino, whose mobbed-up dad, Edward, was killed for $65,000 in 1990. "May youse have a long life in prison," he said in a thick Brooklyn accent.

The portly Eppolito and his gaunt ex-partner sat quietly at the defense table for the final installment of their sordid career as cops-turned-contract-killers.

They earned $4,000 a month on the payroll of Luchese underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso from 1986 to 1990 to orchestrate murders and pass along confidential police information, prosecutors said.

The daughter of victim Israel Greenwald, a jeweler kidnapped and killed by the pair, addressed her father as she stood before his murderers. "This evil crime robbed us of a lifetime of memories of you," said an emotional Yael Perlman, her eyes closed tight. "Daddy, I can't even bring myself to imagine the anguish you felt."

Eppolito - sporting a sprawling white mustache - turned red as Perlman spoke, while a scowling, unshaven Caracappa betrayed no reaction.

Eppolito, the son of a mobster, was sentenced to life plus 100 years; Caracappa received life plus 80 years. Each was fined more than $4 million.

Both declared their innocence despite a Brooklyn jury's resounding April 2006 verdict that established the pair as the most corrupt cops in NYPD history.

"I am innocent of all these charges," said the 67-year-old Caracappa. "And you'll never take away my will to prove how innocent I am."

Eppolito, 60, apologized to the families of the dead, but denied any role in killing them.

"The federal government can take my life," Eppolito said. "I'm a man. They can't take my soul. They can't take my pride. They can't take my dignity.

"I was a hardworking cop. I never hurt anybody. I never kidnapped anybody. ... I never did any of this."

Although the duo was jailed after their convictions, the sentencing was delayed. Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein overturned the convictions on a technicality in 2006, but was reversed by an appeals court last September.

Weinstein handed down the lengthy terms after prosecutor Mitra Hormozi said the pair's "heinous offense" merited the life sentences.

Thanks to John Marzulli

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