Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Diego Rodriguez, Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), William J. Bratton, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), and James A. McCarty, Acting District Attorney for Westchester County, announced today the unsealing of an Indictment charging 46 defendants for their alleged roles in a sprawling and long-running racketeering conspiracy composed of leaders, members, and associates of the Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, Bonanno, and Philadelphia Organized Crime Families of La Cosa Nostra (“LCN”), who worked together to engage in a multitude of criminal activities throughout the East Coast of the United States between Springfield, Massachusetts, and Southern Florida (the “East Coast LCN Enterprise” or the “Enterprise”). The defendants are charged with racketeering conspiracy, arson, illegal trafficking in firearms, and conspiracy to commit assault in aid of racketeering.
Thirty-nine of the defendants charged were taken into custody. During the arrests, law enforcement officers recovered, among other items, three handguns, a shotgun, gambling paraphernalia, and more than $30,000 in cash.
Two defendants, CONRAD IANNIELLO and PASQUALE MAIORINO, a/k/a “Patty Boy,” were already in federal custody on other charges. Another defendant, JOHN LEMBO, was already in custody on state charges and will be transferred to federal custody. Six defendants, JOSEPH MERLINO, a/k/a “Joey,” PASQUALE CAPOLONGO, a/k/a “Patsy,” a/k/a “Pat C.,” a/k/a “Mustache Pat,” a/k/a “Fish,” FRANK TRAPANI, a/k/a “Harpo,” CARMINE GALLO, CRAIG BAGON, BRADLEY SIRKIN, a/k/a “Brad,” were arrested this morning in Florida, and will be presented in federal court in West Palm Beach later today. Two defendants, FRANCESCO DEPERGOLA, a/k/a “Frank,” and RALPH SANTANIELLO were arrested this morning in Massachusetts, where they face additional federal charges, and will be presented in federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts later today. All other defendants arrested today will be presented in Manhattan federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judges Barbara Moses, Frank Maas, and Gabriel W. Gorenstein this afternoon. Two defendants, NICHOLAS DEVITO, a/k/a “Nicky,” and ANTHONY CIRILLO, surrendered today. One defendant, HAROLD THOMAS, a/k/a “Harry,” is expected to surrender in the next few days. Three defendants, ANTHONY CAMISA, a/k/a “Anthony the Kid,” LAURENCE KEITH ALLEN, a/k/a “Keith Allen,” and WAYNE KREISBERG remain at large. The case is assigned to United States District Judge Richard J. Sullivan.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Today’s charges against 46 men, including powerful leaders, members and associates of five different La Cosa Nostra families, demonstrate that the mob remains a scourge on this city and around the country. From loansharking and illegal gambling, to credit card and health care fraud, and even firearms trafficking, today’s mafia is fully diversified in its boundless search for illegal profits. And as alleged, threatening to assault, maim and kill people who get in the way of their criminal schemes remains the go-to play in the mob’s playbook.”
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Diego Rodriguez said: “The indictment reads like an old school mafia novel, where extortion, illegal gambling, arson and threats to ‘whack’ someone are carried out along with some modern-day crimes of credit card skimming. But the 40-plus arrests of mob associates, soldiers, capos, and a boss this morning show this isn’t fiction. As alleged, Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, and Bonanno LCN crime families are still carrying out their criminal activities from Mulberry Street here in New York City to areas of Springfield, Massachusetts. The FBI, working with our task force partners from the New York Police Department, are just as steadfast investigating and rooting out organized crime as wise guys are to bringing it our streets. We thank all our partners on this multi-year investigation, including the FBI field offices from New Haven, Newark, Miami and Boston for their assistance with operations.”
NYPD Commissioner William J. Bratton said: “The charges applied today to these 46 individuals deal a significant blow to La Cosa Nostra, which the NYPD is committed to putting out of business. As alleged, in typical mob fashion, the rackets ran from Springfield to South Florida and left no scheme behind. These mobsters seemed to use every scheme known to us, from arson, to shake-downs, violence, health care fraud, and even untaxed cigarettes to keep the racket going. I want to thank my friends Preet Bharara and Diego Rodriguez for their work at the Justice Department and FBI for making today’s case possible and their collaborative efforts during my tenure as Commissioner of the NYPD.”
Westchester County Acting District Attorney James A. McCarty said: “I want to congratulate the prosecutors and investigators whose combined efforts resulted in today’s indictment. Those charged with these crimes believe they can commit them at will, undetected and without consequence. These dedicated members of law enforcement through their actions, have made it clear that those individuals who commit these crimes will be rooted out.”
According to the allegations in the Indictment[1], which was filed in Manhattan federal court, and other publicly filed documents:
The instant charges are the culmination of a multi-year joint investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), FBI-NYPD Organized Crime Task Force, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), and this Office. The evidence includes thousands of hours of consensual recordings obtained by a cooperating witness (“CW-1”) and an FBI Special Agent working in an undercover capacity (“UC-1”). CW-1 worked under PASQUALE PARRELLO, a/k/a “Patsy,” believed to be a Genovese Capo in charge of a crew based out of a restaurant that bears his name in the Bronx, New York (Pasquale’s Rigoletto, hereinafter “Rigoletto”). At one point, with PARRELLO’S approval, CW-1 began working under JOSEPH MERLINO, a/k/a “Joey,” believed to be the Boss of the Philadelphia Crime Family, who resided in southern Florida for part of the year. UC-1 worked under EUGENE O’NOFRIO, a/k/a “Rooster,” a Genovese Acting Capo in charge of crews on Mulberry Street in New York, New York, and Springfield, Massachusetts. As evidenced by the consensual recordings made by CW-1 and UC-1, the myriad criminal schemes pursued by PARRELLO, MERLINO, O’NOFRIO, and their underlings were in many respects intertwined.
The Enterprise charged in the Indictment is composed of leaders, members, and associates of the Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, Bonanno, and Philadelphia Crime Families of LCN, who worked together and coordinated with each other to engage in a multitude of criminal activities throughout the East Coast of the United States, including in Springfield, Massachusetts, the Bronx and Manhattan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Southern Florida. The members of the Enterprise have been involved in gambling, extortionate collection of loans, other extortion activities, arson, conspiracies to commit assaults in aid of racketeering, trafficking in unstamped and cigarettes, gun trafficking, access device fraud, and health care fraud. The members of the Enterprise include, but are not limited to, PASQUALE PARRELLO, a/k/a “Patsy,” a/k/a “Pat,” JOSEPH MERLINO, a/k/a “Joey,” EUGENE O’NOFRIO, a/k/a “Rooster,” CONRAD IANNIELLO, ISRAEL TORRES, a/k/a “Buddy,” ANTHONY ZINZI, a/k/a “Anthony Boy,” ANTHONY VAZZANO, a/k/a “Tony the Wig,” a/k/a “Muscles,” ALEX CONIGLIARO, FRANK BARBONE, RALPH BALSAMO, PASQUALE MAIORINO, a/k/a “Patty Boy,” JOHN SPIRITO, a/k/a “Johnny Joe,” VINCENT CASABLANCA, a/k/a “Vinny,” MARCO MINUTO, PAUL CASSANO, a/k/a “Paul Cassone,” DANIEL MARINO, JR., a/k/a “Danny,” JOHN LEMBO, a/k/a “Johnny,” MITCHELL FUSCO, a/k/a “Mitch,” REYNOLD ALBERTI, a/k/a “Randy,” VINCENT TERRACCIANO, a/k/a “Big Vinny,” JOSEPH TOMANELLI, a/k/a “Joe,” AGOSTINO CAMACHO, a/k/a “Augie,” NICHOLAS DEVITO, a/k/a “Nicky,” ANTHONY CASSETTA, a/k/a “Tony the Cripple,” NICHOLAS VUOLO, a/k/a “Nicky the Wig,” BRADFORD WEDRA, MICHAEL POLI, a/k/a “Mike Polio,” PASQUALE CAPOLONGO, a/k/a “Patsy,” a/k/a “Pat C.,” a/k/a “Mustache Pat,” a/k/a “Fish,” ANTHONY DEPALMA, a/k/a “Harpo,” a/k/a “Harp,” JOHN TOGNINO, a/k/a “Tugboat,” MARK MAIUZZO, a/k/a “Stymie,” JOSEPH DIMARCO, HAROLD THOMAS, a/k/a “Harry,” RICHARD LACAVA, a/k/a “Richie,” VINCENT THOMAS, a/k/a “Vinny,” ANTHONY CAMISA, a/k/a “Anthony the Kid,” FRANK TRAPANI, a/k/a “Harpo,” ANTHONY CIRILLO, CARMINE GALLO, JOSEPH FALCO, a/k/a “Joe Cub,” FRANCESCO DEPERGOLA, a/k/a “Frank,” RALPH SANTANIELLO, LAURENCE KEITH ALLEN, a/k/a “Keith Allen,” CRAIG BAGON, BRADLEY SIRKIN, a/k/a “Brad,” and WAYNE KREISBERG, the defendants.
To protect and expand the Enterprise’s business and criminal operations, members and associates of the Enterprise assaulted, threatened to assault, and destroyed the property of people who engaged in activity that jeopardized: (i) the power and criminal activities of the Enterprise and the power and criminal activities of their respective LCN Families; (ii) the power of leaders of the Enterprise; and (iii) the flow of criminal proceeds to the leaders of the Enterprise. Members and associates of the Enterprise promoted a climate of fear in the community through threats of economic harm and violence, as well as actual violence, including assault and arson. Members and associates of the Enterprise generated or attempted to generate income for the Enterprise through firearms trafficking, extortion, operating illegal gambling businesses, health care fraud, credit card fraud, selling untaxed cigarettes, making extortionate extensions of credit, and other offenses. Members and associates of the Enterprise at times engaged in criminal conduct or coordinated their criminal activities with leaders, members, and associates of their respective LCN Families. At other times, members and associates of the Enterprise met with leaders, members, and associates of their respective LCN Families to resolve disputes over their criminal activities.
Enterprise members PASQUALE PARRELLO, a/k/a “Patsy,” a/k/a “Pat,” JOSEPH MERLINO, a/k/a “Joey,” and EUGENE O’NOFRIO, a/k/a “Rooster,” the defendants, supervised and controlled other members of the Enterprise engaged in illegal schemes, including those that were the objects of the conspiracy. At various times, members and associates of the Enterprise (including those who are leaders, members, and associates of different LCN families) met, coordinated, and worked together with PARRELLO, MERLINO, and O’NOFRIO, and each other, as well as other members and associates of their respective LCN Families, to engage in criminal activity.
To avoid law enforcement scrutiny, members and associates of the Enterprise conducted meetings surreptitiously, typically using coded language to make arrangements for meetings, and meeting at rest stops along highways and at restaurants.
Certain members and associates of the Enterprise engaged in and conspired to engage in the following violent crimes:
Arson of Vehicle Belonging to Victim-1
In early 2011, an individual (“Victim-1”) operated an illegal gambling establishment on Saw Mill River Road, Yonkers, New York, which was around the corner from a similar establishment (the “Yonkers Club”) run by ANTHONY ZINZI, a/k/a “Anthony Boy,” and other associates of the charged Enterprise. ZINZI and others paid PARRELLO tribute from the profits from the Yonkers Club.
While PARRELLO was on federal supervision stemming from a federal conviction in this Court, the Yonkers Club struggled. Indeed, Victim-1’s club was more successful than the Yonkers Club. ZINZI suggested to other members of the conspiracy that they light Victim-1’s vehicle on fire while it was outside of Victim-1’s club. Then, on or about March 7, 2011, co-defendant MARK MAIUZZO, a/k/a “Stymie,” and others not charged in the above-referenced Indictment located Victim-1’s vehicle, poured gasoline into the vehicle, and lit it on fire.
Conspiracy to Assault and Assault of Victim-2
On or about June 5 and 6, 2011, PARRELLO ordered ZINZI and Ronald “The Beast” Mastrovincenzo (now deceased) to assault a panhandler (“Victim-2”) in the area of Arthur Avenue and Fordham Road, Bronx, New York. ZINZI and Mastrovincenzo enlisted the help of ISRAEL TORRES, a/k/a “Buddy,” and others. Victim-2 had been bothering some female customers in the parking lot nearby Rigoletto, and these women complained to PARRELLO.
ZINZI, TORRES, Mastrovincenzo, and others, on PARRELLO’s orders to “break” Victim-2’s knees, went looking for Victim-2. Eventually, Victim-2 was beaten by Mastrovincenzo and CW-1 (prior to CW-1’s cooperation with the Government). A New York State wiretap revealed that after the beating, Mastrovincenzo told ZINZI, in sum and substance: “[r]emember the old days in the neighborhood when we used to play baseball? . . . A ball game like that was done.” After the beating, TORRES and ZINZI helped Mastrovincenzo and CW-1 in hiding and disposing of evidence.
Conspiracy to Extort Victim-1
PASQUALE CAPOLONGO, a/k/a “Patsy,” a/k/a “Pat C.,” a/k/a “Mustache Pat,” a/k/a “Fish,” a Luchese associate and longtime bookmaker, placed large bets on behalf of several “professional gamblers,” to help conceal their status as professionals. CAPOLONGO also placed bets himself as a gambler. In 2011, CW-1 gave CAPOLONGO access to gambling accounts controlled by individuals known as bookmakers so that CAPOLONGO could place bets on those accounts on behalf of professional gamblers. In turn, CW-1 received approximately 10 percent of the winnings and was also responsible to the bookmaker for the losses. As part of this arrangement, in late 2011, CAPOLONGO obtained betting accounts on Victim-1’s book through CW-1. In December 2011, CAPOLONGO, on behalf of his bettors, won approximately $30,000 from sports wagers CAPOLONGO placed in Victim-1’s book. Victim-1 refused to pay CAPOLONGO.
On or about December 12, 2011, CW-1 met with PARRELLO and explained that CAPOLONGO won approximately $30,000 on sports wagers and that CW-1 was unable to collect because Victim-1 was refusing to pay despite CW-1’s affiliation with PARRELLO. CW-1 asked PARRELLO to intervene on his behalf and sought assistance in collecting the approximately $30,000 debt from Victim-1. PARRELLO agreed to help collect the debt.
Between about December 2011 and March 2014, PARRELLO sent ZINZI, TORRES, VINCENT TERRACCIANO, a/k/a “Big Vinny,” and others to threaten and intimidate Victim-1, and collect the money for the debt. On one such occasion, PARRELLO told them: “You get Buddy [TORRES] and let Buddy go there and choke him [Victim-1], choke him. I want Buddy to choke him, choke him, actually choke the motherfucker…and tell him, ‘Listen to me…next time I’m not gonna stop choking… I’m gonna kill you.’”
Conspiracy to Extort Victim-3
Victim-3 was working as a bookmaker and had accounts with defendant JOHN TOGNINO, a/k/a “Tugboat,” who worked under by ALEX CONIGLIARO. CONIGLIARO suspected that Victim-3 had allowed professional bettors to place bets and, as a result of their winning bets, CONIGLIARO owed approximately $400,000 to the winning bettors.
On or about February 21, 2012, PARRELLO summoned Victim-3 to Rigoletto. There, CONIGLIARO, PARRELLO, and IANNIELLO confronted Victim-3 in a small room in the basement of the restaurant, threatening and intimidating him. Ultimately, CONIGLIARO refused to pay the money owed.
Conspiracy to Extort Victim-4
An unindicted co-conspirator (“CC-1”) operated a gambling club in the Bronx, New York. CC-1 was affiliated with PARRELLO, and, from in or about 2012 to in or about 2013, CC-1 paid PARRELLO approximately $500 per week in tribute in connection with the Bronx gambling club. Another individual, Victim-4, owed tens of thousands of dollars to CC-1. PARRELLO directed CW-1 to find Victim-4 to collect the money. TORRES and co-defendant JOHN SPIRITO, a/k/a “Johnny Joe,” a made member of the Bonanno family, tried to get a picture of Victim-4. The plan was to identify Victim-4, bring Victim-4 to an isolated area, and confront Victim-4 about the debt.
Conspiracy to Extort Victim-5
Victim-5 was a gambler who gave CW-1 access to gambling accounts. As a result, Victim-5 incurred a debt that he did not pay. At the same time, Victim-5 separately owed money to defendants VINCENT CASABLANCA, a/k/a “Vinny,” and PASQUALE MAIORINO, a/k/a “Patty Boy,” members of the Luchese and Bonanno crime families, respectively. PARRELLO worked with others, including members of the Genovese and Bonanno crime families, to ensure that Victim-5 paid the debt. Among other things, PARRELLO stated, in a recorded conversation, that members of PARRELLO’s crew should:
[C]ut his [Victim-5’s] fuckin’ tire. That way he has to change the tire. So then you know you can catch up with him. Give him a flat. Take the air out of the tire, whatever the fuck you got to do. Then you catch up with him because then he’s there, ya know, he’s got to get it fixed, he can’t go nowhere, and then you surround the mother fucker. That’s how yous do it.
PARRELLO further stated, “go ahead, get this motherfucker. Don’t make a mistake. Get your fuckin’ money.” Co-defendant ZINZI provided an icepick to use to slash the tire of Victim-5’s car in order to carry out PARRELLO’s order. Eventually, Victim-5 agreed to make weekly payments on Victim-5’s outstanding debt.
Conspiracy to Assault Victim-6
On or about January 22, 2013, Genovese associate and defendant ANTHONY VAZZANO, a/k/a “Tony the Wig,” a/k/a “Muscles,” was stabbed in the neck by Victim-6 during an altercation at a bar in the Bronx, New York (the “Bar”). VAZZANO was at the Bar with Mastrovincenzo and others when the stabbing occurred. After that, associates of PARRELLO’s crew, including Mastrovincenzo and TORRES, among others, at PARRELLO’s direction, agreed to assault Victim-6 in retaliation for the stabbing. During one such conversation, TORRES stated that they would “whack” and “maim this mother fucker [Victim-6].” PARRELLO instructed Mastrovincenzo to “keep the pipes handy and pipe him, pipe him, over here [gesturing to the knees], not on his head.”
Gun Trafficking
Between about January and March 2012, MITCHELL FUSCO, a/k/a “Mitch,” sold eleven firearms on three separate dates to CW-1. Mastrovincenzo also sold guns to CW-1 and the Enterprise, including six firearms on five separate occasions between 2012 and 2013. During a June 27, 2012 consensually recorded conversation, PARRELLO asked CW-1 if the guns were “clean” and directed CW-1 to “get some nines.”
On or about August 20, 2012, CW-1 met with Mastrovincenzo and ZINZI. During this recorded meeting, Mastrovincenzo asked CW-1 and ZINZI how many guns he should get, and ZINZI told Mastrovincenzo, “at least a hundred.”
Additional Criminal Activity
In addition to the violent crimes described above, members and associates also conspired to, and in some cases did, work together and coordinate with each other to perpetrate a number of other crimes.
a. Loansharking. Members of the East Coast LCN Enterprise, including, but not limited to, PARRELLO, O’NOFRIO, HAROLD THOMAS, VINCENT THOMAS, a/k/a “Vinny,” FRANCESCO DEPERGOLA, a/k/a “Frank,” and RALPH SANTANIELLO, the defendants regularly made and took extortionate loans (“loansharking”) as part of the business of the East Coast LCN Enterprise. In connection with one such loan, HAROLD THOMAS said to AGOSTINO CAMACHO, a/k/a “Augie,” who owed an outstanding debt to HAROLD THOMAS: “If you don’t have my money the first of the month you will never hear another sound I give you [my] word on that. . . . If you miss don’t call me. You’ve had enough breaks. I’ve just given you the biggest break in your life. . . . [I]n about a minute I’m going to go over to the car and take the fucking pistol and I’m going to kill you.”
b. Gambling. Illegal gambling was a significant part of the regular course of business of certain members of the East Coast LCN Enterprise. Dozens of members of the Enterprise engaged in two different types of illegal gambling activities as a way to generate money for the Enterprise: (1) casino-style club gambling and (2) sports gambling.
i. Casino-Style Club Gambling. At various times relevant to the Indictment, PARRELLO, TORRES, ZINZI, VAZZANO, CAMACHO, and MAIUZZO, a/k/a “Stymie,” the defendants operated the above-mentioned Yonkers Club. Several nights a week, the Yonkers Club held poker tournaments, dice tournaments, and took bets on horse races. The owners of the Yonkers Club (the “House”) took a percentage of the gambling proceeds. Additionally, the Yonkers Club generated profits through the installation of illegal poker machines.
ii. Sports Gambling. At various times relevant to the Indictment, multiple members of the East Coast LCN Enterprise operated several gambling operations as a way to enrich the Enterprise. Members of the Enterprise, playing different roles in the sports gambling operations, utilized gambling websites based in the United States and abroad to keep track of wagers and proceeds.
c. Cigarettes. Receiving, causing others to receive, and profiting from the purchase of contraband cigarettes was part of the regular business of certain members of the East Coast LCN Enterprise, including, but not limited to, PARRELLO, O’NOFRIO, TORRES, ZINZI, VAZZANO, SPIRITO, CASABLANCA, REYNOLD ALBERTI, a/k/a “Randy,” TERRACCIANO, JOSEPH TOMANELLI, a/k/a “Joe,” CAMACHO, NICHOLAS DEVITO, a/k/a “Nicky,” NICHOLAS VUOLO, a/k/a “Nicky the Wig,” BRADFORD WEDRA, HAROLD THOMAS, RICHARD LACAVA, a/k/a “Richie,” and VINCENT THOMAS, the defendants. At various times relevant to the Indictment, these defendants obtained, caused others to obtain, and profited from the obtaining of, hundreds of cases of contraband cigarettes, which did not bear a stamp evincing payment of applicable cigarette taxes, with a street value of more than approximately $3 million.
d. Credit Card Fraud Conspiracy. In or around 2012, PARRELLO, TORRES, PASQUALE MAIORINO, a/k/a “Patty Boy,” JOHN LEMBO, a/k/a “Johnny,” and ALBERTI, the defendants, and others known and unknown, conspired to obtain and use a credit card “skimmer” — a small device that captures and retains unwitting credit card owners’ personal identifying information — to steal credit card information and use the information to create new fraudulent credit cards which could, in turn, be used to make unauthorized purchases.
e. Health Care Fraud. At various times relevant to the Indictment, PARRELLO, MERLINO, RALPH BALSAMO, CAMACHO, DEVITO, MICHAEL POLI, a/k/a “Mike Polio,” CARMINE GALLO, BRAD SIRKIN, a/k/a “Brad,” and WAYNE KREISBERG, the defendants, were involved in a scheme targeting providers of health insurance (the “Victim Insurers”), by causing, and causing others to cause, corrupt doctors to issue unnecessary and excessive prescriptions for expensive compound cream (“Prescription Compound Cream”) that were then billed to the Victim Insurers. Had the Victim Insurers known the fraudulent nature of the scheme — that wrongful kickbacks were paid to doctors to write, and to patients to request and receive, unnecessary and excessive prescriptions for the Prescription Compound Cream — the Victim Insurers would not have issued reimbursements for the Prescription Compound Cream.
Mr. Bharara praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this case. He thanked the NYPD for their assistance. Mr. Bharara also noted that the investigation is continuing.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Kramer, Abigail Kurland, Jessica Lonergan, and Jonathan Rebold, along with Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Abinanti of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, are in charge of the prosecution. The case is being handled by the Office’s Violent and Organized Crime Unit.
Friday, August 05, 2016
Video of 40 Reputed East Coast Enterprise Suspects from 4 Mafia Crime Families Arrested by FBI
Across five states, the FBI arrested suspects from four major Mafia crime families who allegedly formed an unusual alliance called the "East Coast Enterprise."
Tuesday, August 02, 2016
Would Donald Trump Be Out of Business without Russian Mob Money?
Earlier this month, GRU (Russian military intelligence) hackers broke into the computers at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, stealing their files. Then, July 22, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, thousands of emails drawn from these files and embarrassing to the Hillary Clinton camp were publicly released through WikiLeaks with the clear intention of dividing the Democratic Party and electing Donald Trump president.
Asked about this by the press on July 27, Trump openly proclaimed he favored such Russian hacking, and hoped Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and company would do more of it to help expose Hillary. This remarkable and potentially felonious statement provoked a firestorm of criticism, so Trump subsequently walked it back—a rare event for the Don—saying he had been speaking “sarcastically.”
The fact that the GRU did actually conduct a black operation inside the United States to assist Trump, however, makes it not so easy to dismiss. Furthermore, this chain of events comes within a context that supports the theory of a Trump-Kremlin alliance.
Putin has praised Trump, and rather than reject such praise Trump has returned it, calling the Russian dictator “a real leader” and dismissing his many murders of journalists and political opponents at home and abroad as “unproven.”
Last January, a British court found Putin had ordered the murder by Polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB (secret police) agent who revealed the 1999 apartment building bombings in Moscow that Putin used to seize dictatorial power were the work of Putin’s FSB. Disturbingly, the billionaire appears be fine with that.
Furthermore, Aleksandr Dugin, the chief composer of the Kremlin’s new ideological synthesis of communism and fascism and its leading organizer of pro-Moscow ultranationalist and identarian fifth column movements in the West, has endorsed Trump. “In Trump we trust,” says Dugin, apparently proposing we substitute Trump for God in the American national slogan. The Russian state-owned propaganda agency Russia Today (RT), which broadcasts internationally, including within the United States, has also been unstinting in its support for Trump.
Not only that, there is a money trail. Russian organized crime channels have funneled many millions of dollars into Trump’s businesses. Without these funds, Trump would be out of business, as, in consequence of his string of cons and failures, legitimate financiers in the West will no longer lend him money.
Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, formerly chief henchman to Putin-allied Ukrainian dictator Victor Yanukovych, was himself directly involved in transferring millions of dollars of such Russian mob funds to the Don.
Nor is Manafort the only leading member of the Trump camp with deep ties to the Kremlin. Trump energy advisor Carter Page is a major investor in the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. As a Gazprom investor, Page has a personal financial interest in ending Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, a move which, along with recognizing the Russian annexation of Crimea, Trump himself said in his press conference July 27 he was considering.
But it gets worse. Page actually endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, going so far as to compare U.S. support for Ukrainian independence to police killings of black youth. “The deaths triggered by U.S. government officials in both the former Soviet Union and the streets of America in 2014 share a range of close similarities,” wrote Page in January 2015.
Then there is Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who had dinner with Putin last year. Such fraternization has borne fruit for the Kremlin, as evidenced by Trump operatives earlier this month eliminating language in the GOP platform advocating U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense.
Trump has also expressed support for Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, who in alliance with Russian and Iranian military forces is flooding Europe with refugees, thereby stoking the fortunes of the Kremlin-allied ultra-right parties operating as part of Dugin’s fascist international. These include the anti-NATO French National Front, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has also endorsed Trump. The National Front’s current leader, Marine Le Pen, also supported the Russian takeover of Crimea, and is being openly bankrolled out of Moscow.
Most importantly, Trump supports gutting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an objective that has been Moscow’s number-one foreign policy priority since the beginning of the Cold War. He has denounced NATO as being “obsolete,” and called for sharply reducing U.S. commitments to the alliance that has been the bulwark of American security since World War II. Not only that, Trump has stated that as president he would not necessarily honor the U.S. treaty commitment to defend a NATO ally if Russia attacks it.
So in summary, here’s the deal: In exchange for Russian funds and black operations support, Trump will break the western alliance and hand Europe over to Kremlin domination.
This presents us with two questions. First, is Trump a Quisling? Second, if he is, then can partisan loyalty be sufficient grounds for members of the Republican Party to acquiesce in participating in a Kremlin plot against the United States of America?
Thanks to Robert Zubrin.
Asked about this by the press on July 27, Trump openly proclaimed he favored such Russian hacking, and hoped Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and company would do more of it to help expose Hillary. This remarkable and potentially felonious statement provoked a firestorm of criticism, so Trump subsequently walked it back—a rare event for the Don—saying he had been speaking “sarcastically.”
The fact that the GRU did actually conduct a black operation inside the United States to assist Trump, however, makes it not so easy to dismiss. Furthermore, this chain of events comes within a context that supports the theory of a Trump-Kremlin alliance.
Putin has praised Trump, and rather than reject such praise Trump has returned it, calling the Russian dictator “a real leader” and dismissing his many murders of journalists and political opponents at home and abroad as “unproven.”
Last January, a British court found Putin had ordered the murder by Polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB (secret police) agent who revealed the 1999 apartment building bombings in Moscow that Putin used to seize dictatorial power were the work of Putin’s FSB. Disturbingly, the billionaire appears be fine with that.
Furthermore, Aleksandr Dugin, the chief composer of the Kremlin’s new ideological synthesis of communism and fascism and its leading organizer of pro-Moscow ultranationalist and identarian fifth column movements in the West, has endorsed Trump. “In Trump we trust,” says Dugin, apparently proposing we substitute Trump for God in the American national slogan. The Russian state-owned propaganda agency Russia Today (RT), which broadcasts internationally, including within the United States, has also been unstinting in its support for Trump.
Not only that, there is a money trail. Russian organized crime channels have funneled many millions of dollars into Trump’s businesses. Without these funds, Trump would be out of business, as, in consequence of his string of cons and failures, legitimate financiers in the West will no longer lend him money.
Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, formerly chief henchman to Putin-allied Ukrainian dictator Victor Yanukovych, was himself directly involved in transferring millions of dollars of such Russian mob funds to the Don.
Nor is Manafort the only leading member of the Trump camp with deep ties to the Kremlin. Trump energy advisor Carter Page is a major investor in the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. As a Gazprom investor, Page has a personal financial interest in ending Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, a move which, along with recognizing the Russian annexation of Crimea, Trump himself said in his press conference July 27 he was considering.
But it gets worse. Page actually endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, going so far as to compare U.S. support for Ukrainian independence to police killings of black youth. “The deaths triggered by U.S. government officials in both the former Soviet Union and the streets of America in 2014 share a range of close similarities,” wrote Page in January 2015.
Then there is Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who had dinner with Putin last year. Such fraternization has borne fruit for the Kremlin, as evidenced by Trump operatives earlier this month eliminating language in the GOP platform advocating U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense.
Trump has also expressed support for Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, who in alliance with Russian and Iranian military forces is flooding Europe with refugees, thereby stoking the fortunes of the Kremlin-allied ultra-right parties operating as part of Dugin’s fascist international. These include the anti-NATO French National Front, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has also endorsed Trump. The National Front’s current leader, Marine Le Pen, also supported the Russian takeover of Crimea, and is being openly bankrolled out of Moscow.
Most importantly, Trump supports gutting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an objective that has been Moscow’s number-one foreign policy priority since the beginning of the Cold War. He has denounced NATO as being “obsolete,” and called for sharply reducing U.S. commitments to the alliance that has been the bulwark of American security since World War II. Not only that, Trump has stated that as president he would not necessarily honor the U.S. treaty commitment to defend a NATO ally if Russia attacks it.
So in summary, here’s the deal: In exchange for Russian funds and black operations support, Trump will break the western alliance and hand Europe over to Kremlin domination.
This presents us with two questions. First, is Trump a Quisling? Second, if he is, then can partisan loyalty be sufficient grounds for members of the Republican Party to acquiesce in participating in a Kremlin plot against the United States of America?
Thanks to Robert Zubrin.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
The Democrat National Convention was almost Fixed by the Mafia
After a dramatic Republican National Convention in Cleveland which saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic Party.
U.S. national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said, “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and UPS, stayed home this year, the host committee was able to raise nearly US $60 million from American businesses. Yet historically the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones.
Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention. As I explain in my book Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime, from which this article is adapted
, the nomination that year had come down to a contest between two New York politicians. Al Smith was a reform-minded former governor aligned with Tammany Hall, the Manhattan-based Democratic political machine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the sitting governor, was running against him, and he was not aligned with Tammany.
If Roosevelt was to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, he needed to neutralize the Tammany threat. That meant figuring out what to do about the Mob.
Through their control of liquor and vice-markets in southern Manhattan, Tammany’s stronghold, the Italian-American Mafias and Jewish-heritage gangs that made up the New York Mob had developed growing power in Tammany affairs over the preceding years.
The Mob leadership now saw a huge strategic opportunity at the Democratic National Convention to leverage that power into something even bigger: influence over the next occupant of the White House.
Mob leaders Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky all accompanied the Tammany Hall delegation to the convention in Chicago. Their Mafia associate Al Capone provided much of the alcohol, banned under prohibition, and entertainment.
Costello shared a hotel suite with Jimmy Hines, the Tammany “Grand Sachem,” who announced support for Roosevelt. But another Tammany politician, Albert Marinelli, announced that he and a small bloc were defecting and would not support Roosevelt.
Marinelli was Tammany’s leader in the Second Assembly District, its heartland below Manhattan’s 14th Street. During Prohibition he had owned a trucking company – run by none other than Lucky Luciano. Luciano had helped Marinelli become the first Italian-American district leader in Tammany, and in 1931 forced the resignation of the city clerk, whom Marinelli then replaced. This gave Luciano and Marinelli control over selection of grand jurors and the tabulation of votes during city elections.
Now, the two were sharing a Chicago hotel suite.
Why were Costello and Luciano backing rival horses, and through them, rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination? Was this a disagreement over political strategy?
On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Mob was playing both sides, to place themselves as brokers in the Democratic nomination process.
Roosevelt needed the full New York state delegation’s support – and thus Tammany’s – if he was going to win the floor vote at the convention. But he also needed to avoid being tainted by the whiff of scandal that hung stubbornly around Tammany – and the Mafia.
Roosevelt responded to the split by issuing a statement denouncing civic corruption, while carefully noting that he had not seen adequate evidence to date to warrant the prosecution of sitting Tammany leaders, despite an ongoing investigation run by an independent-minded prosecutor, Sam Seabury. Picking up his signal, Marinelli threw his support behind Roosevelt, giving him the full delegate slate and helping him gain the momentum needed to claim the nomination.
The Mob’s role may not have been decisive. Roosevelt’s nomination had numerous fathers, not least John “Cactus Jack” Garner, a rival presidential candidate to whom Roosevelt offered the vice presidency in return for the votes of the Texas and California delegations. But it was a factor.
If the Mob leaders were not quite kingmakers as they had hoped, they were certainly players. As Luciano reportedly put it, “I don’t say we elected Roosevelt, but we gave him a pretty good push.”
Luciano was nonetheless a newcomer to national politics, and seems to have been quickly outsmarted by his candidate. Having secured the nomination, Roosevelt loosened the reins on Seabury’s corruption investigation, making clear that if it developed new evidence, he might be prepared to back prosecutions after all.
Seabury quickly exposed significant Tammany graft in the New York administration. The city sheriff had amassed $400,000 in savings from a job that paid $12,000 a year. The mayor had awarded a bus contract to a company that owned no buses – but was happy to give him a personal line of credit. A judge with half a million dollars in savings had been granted a loan to support 34 “relatives” found to be in his care. Against the backdrop of Depression New York, with a collapsing private sector, 25 percent unemployment and imploding tax revenues, this was shocking profligacy and nepotism.
By September 1932, the mayor had resigned and fled to Paris with his showgirl girlfriend. In early 1933, Roosevelt moved into the White House and broke off the formal connection between Tammany Hall and the national Democratic Party for the first time in 105 years. He even tacitly supported the election of the reformist Republican Fiorello La Guardia as New York mayor.
Luciano was pragmatic about having been outsmarted. “He done exactly what I would’ve done in the same position,” he reportedly said. “He was no different than me … we was both s—ass double-crossers, no matter how you look at it.”
Thanks to James Cockayne.
U.S. national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said, “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and UPS, stayed home this year, the host committee was able to raise nearly US $60 million from American businesses. Yet historically the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones.
Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention. As I explain in my book Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime, from which this article is adapted
, the nomination that year had come down to a contest between two New York politicians. Al Smith was a reform-minded former governor aligned with Tammany Hall, the Manhattan-based Democratic political machine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the sitting governor, was running against him, and he was not aligned with Tammany.If Roosevelt was to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, he needed to neutralize the Tammany threat. That meant figuring out what to do about the Mob.
Through their control of liquor and vice-markets in southern Manhattan, Tammany’s stronghold, the Italian-American Mafias and Jewish-heritage gangs that made up the New York Mob had developed growing power in Tammany affairs over the preceding years.
The Mob leadership now saw a huge strategic opportunity at the Democratic National Convention to leverage that power into something even bigger: influence over the next occupant of the White House.
Mob leaders Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky all accompanied the Tammany Hall delegation to the convention in Chicago. Their Mafia associate Al Capone provided much of the alcohol, banned under prohibition, and entertainment.
Costello shared a hotel suite with Jimmy Hines, the Tammany “Grand Sachem,” who announced support for Roosevelt. But another Tammany politician, Albert Marinelli, announced that he and a small bloc were defecting and would not support Roosevelt.
Marinelli was Tammany’s leader in the Second Assembly District, its heartland below Manhattan’s 14th Street. During Prohibition he had owned a trucking company – run by none other than Lucky Luciano. Luciano had helped Marinelli become the first Italian-American district leader in Tammany, and in 1931 forced the resignation of the city clerk, whom Marinelli then replaced. This gave Luciano and Marinelli control over selection of grand jurors and the tabulation of votes during city elections.
Now, the two were sharing a Chicago hotel suite.
Why were Costello and Luciano backing rival horses, and through them, rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination? Was this a disagreement over political strategy?
On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Mob was playing both sides, to place themselves as brokers in the Democratic nomination process.
Roosevelt needed the full New York state delegation’s support – and thus Tammany’s – if he was going to win the floor vote at the convention. But he also needed to avoid being tainted by the whiff of scandal that hung stubbornly around Tammany – and the Mafia.
Roosevelt responded to the split by issuing a statement denouncing civic corruption, while carefully noting that he had not seen adequate evidence to date to warrant the prosecution of sitting Tammany leaders, despite an ongoing investigation run by an independent-minded prosecutor, Sam Seabury. Picking up his signal, Marinelli threw his support behind Roosevelt, giving him the full delegate slate and helping him gain the momentum needed to claim the nomination.
The Mob’s role may not have been decisive. Roosevelt’s nomination had numerous fathers, not least John “Cactus Jack” Garner, a rival presidential candidate to whom Roosevelt offered the vice presidency in return for the votes of the Texas and California delegations. But it was a factor.
If the Mob leaders were not quite kingmakers as they had hoped, they were certainly players. As Luciano reportedly put it, “I don’t say we elected Roosevelt, but we gave him a pretty good push.”
Luciano was nonetheless a newcomer to national politics, and seems to have been quickly outsmarted by his candidate. Having secured the nomination, Roosevelt loosened the reins on Seabury’s corruption investigation, making clear that if it developed new evidence, he might be prepared to back prosecutions after all.
Seabury quickly exposed significant Tammany graft in the New York administration. The city sheriff had amassed $400,000 in savings from a job that paid $12,000 a year. The mayor had awarded a bus contract to a company that owned no buses – but was happy to give him a personal line of credit. A judge with half a million dollars in savings had been granted a loan to support 34 “relatives” found to be in his care. Against the backdrop of Depression New York, with a collapsing private sector, 25 percent unemployment and imploding tax revenues, this was shocking profligacy and nepotism.
By September 1932, the mayor had resigned and fled to Paris with his showgirl girlfriend. In early 1933, Roosevelt moved into the White House and broke off the formal connection between Tammany Hall and the national Democratic Party for the first time in 105 years. He even tacitly supported the election of the reformist Republican Fiorello La Guardia as New York mayor.
Luciano was pragmatic about having been outsmarted. “He done exactly what I would’ve done in the same position,” he reportedly said. “He was no different than me … we was both s—ass double-crossers, no matter how you look at it.”
Thanks to James Cockayne.
The Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System of Investigating and Classifying Violent Crime
The landmark book standardizing the language
, terminology, and classifications used throughout the criminal justice system
Arranged according to the primary intent of the criminal, the Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crime, Third Edition features the language, terms, and classifications the criminal justice system and allied fields use as they work to protect society from criminal behavior.
Coauthored by a pioneer of modern profiling and featuring new coverage of wrongful convictions and false confessions, the Third Edition:
The definitive text in this field, Crime Classification Manual, Third Edition is written for law enforcement personnel, mental health professionals, forensic scientists, and those professionals whose work requires an understanding of criminal behavior and detection.
, terminology, and classifications used throughout the criminal justice systemArranged according to the primary intent of the criminal, the Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crime, Third Edition features the language, terms, and classifications the criminal justice system and allied fields use as they work to protect society from criminal behavior.
Coauthored by a pioneer of modern profiling and featuring new coverage of wrongful convictions and false confessions, the Third Edition:
- Tackles new areas affected by globalization and new technologies, including human trafficking and internationally coordinated cybercrimes
- Expands discussion of border control, The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Homeland Security
- Addresses the effects of ever-evolving technology on the commission and detection of crime
The definitive text in this field, Crime Classification Manual, Third Edition is written for law enforcement personnel, mental health professionals, forensic scientists, and those professionals whose work requires an understanding of criminal behavior and detection.
A History of the Jews
Less a seminal contribution than a distillation of a wide range of sources
, this history of the Jews focuses on their four-millennia interplay with, and adaption to, other, often hostile, civilizations a "world history seen from the viewpoint of a learned and intelligent victim.'' Weaving biblical and archeological data, Johnson (Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties), History of Christianity) is particularly deft at placing the patriarchs and early Israelites (the Bronze Age through the destruction of the First Temple) in their historical context. His dense, somewhat arbitrary, capsule extols Judaic rational scholarship which contributed to ethical monotheism and the 18th-century economic system, in turn and denigrates mystic kabbalah``heresy of the most pernicious kind.'' Although Johnson, who seeks to acknowledge ``the magnitude of the debt Christianity owes to Judaism,'' traces ``an inherent conflict'' between the religion and the state of Israel through the various ages, the work is incontrovertibly sympathetic to Zionism.
A History of the Jews.
, this history of the Jews focuses on their four-millennia interplay with, and adaption to, other, often hostile, civilizations a "world history seen from the viewpoint of a learned and intelligent victim.'' Weaving biblical and archeological data, Johnson (Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties), History of Christianity) is particularly deft at placing the patriarchs and early Israelites (the Bronze Age through the destruction of the First Temple) in their historical context. His dense, somewhat arbitrary, capsule extols Judaic rational scholarship which contributed to ethical monotheism and the 18th-century economic system, in turn and denigrates mystic kabbalah``heresy of the most pernicious kind.'' Although Johnson, who seeks to acknowledge ``the magnitude of the debt Christianity owes to Judaism,'' traces ``an inherent conflict'' between the religion and the state of Israel through the various ages, the work is incontrovertibly sympathetic to Zionism.
A History of the Jews.
Friday, July 15, 2016
Explosion of Chicago's Black Street Gangs
Explosion of Chicago's Black Street Gangs-1900 to Present, is the bible on the social pathology of street gangs in Chicago. It should be read by all professionals working with young adults, especially those involved in law enforcement.
Preface:
"This commentary is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of Chicago's Black street gangs
, nor does it purport to be based on scientific data. However, as one who has worked with and observed Black street gangs for over twenty-five years, I believe I do have some insight about them. Furthermore, I believe as a Black social practitioner my insight gives a perspective on Black street gangs that has not been provided by many white academicians and social scientists.
What this commentary attempts to do is to trace the evolution of Chicago's Black street gangs and identify those factors that have made many of them the violent gangs they are today. In doing so, I have tried to separate myth from fact and list critical realities we must face if we are to have a significant impact on Black street gangs. Although I do not provide solutions to the Black street gang problem, I believe some strategies for remedying the problem can be extrapolated from my commentary."
Preface:
"This commentary is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of Chicago's Black street gangs
, nor does it purport to be based on scientific data. However, as one who has worked with and observed Black street gangs for over twenty-five years, I believe I do have some insight about them. Furthermore, I believe as a Black social practitioner my insight gives a perspective on Black street gangs that has not been provided by many white academicians and social scientists.What this commentary attempts to do is to trace the evolution of Chicago's Black street gangs and identify those factors that have made many of them the violent gangs they are today. In doing so, I have tried to separate myth from fact and list critical realities we must face if we are to have a significant impact on Black street gangs. Although I do not provide solutions to the Black street gang problem, I believe some strategies for remedying the problem can be extrapolated from my commentary."
Official Mafia III Accolades Trailer - The Fall's Most Promising Open-World Game
With over 60 E3 accolades
, 12 awards and a host of top-ten recognitions, Mafia III is poised to be Fall’s Most Promising Open-World Game.
Mafia III Deluxe Edition - PlayStation 4: - It’s 1968 and the rules have changed. After years in Vietnam, Lincoln Clay knows this truth: Family isn’t who you’re born with, it’s who you die for.
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
9 Vehicles from Drug Kingpin Included in U.S. Marshals Online Auction
The U.S. Marshals Service is holding an online auction, ending Thursday for the sale of 10 high-end vehicles at www.appleauctioneeringco.com. Nine of the vehicles are from the drug kingpin Alvaro Lopez Tardón case in Miami.
The auction, already underway, has drawn hundreds of bids. A 2003 Ferrari Enzo, with 13,088 miles, is currently at more than $1.9 million.
The vehicles will be shown during a preview Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Miami Marlins Park, 501 Marlins Way, Miami, FL 33125.
Vehicles being sold from the Tardón case include an Enzo Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron 16.4, Rolls-Royce Ghost, Ferrari F430, Maybach 57S, and four luxury SUVs (two Mercedes and two Range Rovers). A Bentley Continental GTC, also for sale in this auction, is from a New Jersey case.
Tardón, 41, a Spanish national, was the head of an international narcotics trafficking and money laundering syndicate which distributed over 7,500 kilograms of South American cocaine in Madrid and laundered over $14 million in narcotics proceeds in Miami by buying high-end real estate, luxury and exotic automobiles and other high-end items. After a seven-week trial in 2014, Tardón was convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and 13 counts of money laundering. He was sentenced to 150 years and is serving his sentence at the Miami Federal Detention Center.
The auction, already underway, has drawn hundreds of bids. A 2003 Ferrari Enzo, with 13,088 miles, is currently at more than $1.9 million.
The vehicles will be shown during a preview Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Miami Marlins Park, 501 Marlins Way, Miami, FL 33125.
Vehicles being sold from the Tardón case include an Enzo Ferrari, Bugatti Veyron 16.4, Rolls-Royce Ghost, Ferrari F430, Maybach 57S, and four luxury SUVs (two Mercedes and two Range Rovers). A Bentley Continental GTC, also for sale in this auction, is from a New Jersey case.
Tardón, 41, a Spanish national, was the head of an international narcotics trafficking and money laundering syndicate which distributed over 7,500 kilograms of South American cocaine in Madrid and laundered over $14 million in narcotics proceeds in Miami by buying high-end real estate, luxury and exotic automobiles and other high-end items. After a seven-week trial in 2014, Tardón was convicted on one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and 13 counts of money laundering. He was sentenced to 150 years and is serving his sentence at the Miami Federal Detention Center.
Tuesday, July 05, 2016
Sidney Korshak was The Myth, Mr. Silk Stockings, The Duke and The Fixer
Some mobsters get ridiculous nicknames.
The Clown.
No Nose.
The Weasel.
But others, like Chicago mob lawyer Sidney Roy Korshak, get nicknames more reflective of their importance.
To the rich and powerful, Korshak was "The Myth."
He was "Mr. Silk Stockings" and "The Duke."
And most appropriately, he was "The Fixer."
Korshak was the ultimate fixer, in Chicago and later in sunny California, where he thrived in the shadows.
Need a criminal case fixed? Call Korshak.
Teamsters threatening to cripple your business and they're not in a mood to negotiate? Call Korshak.
Looking for an investment to launder the blood out of your mobbed-up money?
You get the picture.
His life spanned much of last century, and in his heyday he was the ultimate bridge between big business, politicians, Hollywood, Las Vegas and the mob. When the mob needed a smooth operator to work in the worlds where rough-hewn Chicago mobsters wouldn't fit in, Korshak -- the brother of the late Chicago Democratic politician Marshall Korshak -- was the man of choice.
He was the velvet encasing the hammer.
He
's now the subject of a new, exhaustive look at his exploits in investigative reporter Gus Russo's magnum opus:Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers.
Russo tackled the Chicago mob in his 2003 book The Outfit. In Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers he expands on that work of melding big business and organized crime.
Russo underscores the Outfit's desire to move a lot of its money into legitimate and quasi-legitimate businesses and investments, and the need of organized crime for legitimate-looking men to help smooth that transition.
No one would typify that more than Korshak, a product of Lawndale and DePaul University Law School who started representing mobsters in Chicago courthouses and ended up charging $50,000 a year as a retainer for "labor relations" for national businesses.
Early in the book, Russo does a masterful job of establishing the ethnic and political foundations for Korshak's beginnings in the Jewish section of the Lawndale neighborhood and in the 24th Ward of consummate machine politician Jacob Arvey.
In a neighborhood filled with young men hot for success, Korshak stood out. Russo shows how Korshak's friends from the same background would weave their way into Korshak's orbit again and again throughout his life, from MCA's Jules Stein to the Pritzker family, from mobster Alex Louis Greenberg to Appellate Court Justice David Bazelon.
Russo's ambition is to mark Korshak's place in the so-called Supermob of mainly Jewish lawyers and businessmen who often got a boost from mobsters early on in their careers and dealt with gangsters with varying degrees of involvement throughout their lives.
The amount of research in the book is staggering. It's a testament to Russo's doggedness to bring the full story to light, but it also turns into one of the book's main weaknesses.
Russo empties his notebooks into the tome. Some of the tales make for a good read but are ancillary. So his story, at times, gets away from him. Still other tales undermine the confidence one has in the reporting in the book. In one instance, Russo suggests Korshak is a man with a taste for teenage girls, with little to back it up. In another, Russo makes a convincing case for how former President Reagan had close ties to members of the Supermob, only to undermine it with innuendo.
Russo shows how Reagan carried out orders of the Supermob when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild and effectively betrayed his own members in the 1950s to the benefit of Lew Wasserman's MCA. But then, Russo provides an account from the actress Selene Walters, who contends Reagan raped her one night. Two weeks later, Reagan married Nancy Davis, the woman who would become the first lady.
There are no interviews in the book with any of Walters' contemporaries at the time to see if she told them a similar story. There's no mention of any police report.
The accusation stands alone unsupported, and it's not worthy of the excellent reporting elsewhere in the book. Because salaciousness aside, Russo pulls plenty of substantive dirty deeds done by Korshak into the light.
Korshak would have cringed.
Thanks to Steve Warmbir
The Clown.
No Nose.
The Weasel.
But others, like Chicago mob lawyer Sidney Roy Korshak, get nicknames more reflective of their importance.
To the rich and powerful, Korshak was "The Myth."
He was "Mr. Silk Stockings" and "The Duke."
And most appropriately, he was "The Fixer."
Korshak was the ultimate fixer, in Chicago and later in sunny California, where he thrived in the shadows.
Need a criminal case fixed? Call Korshak.
Teamsters threatening to cripple your business and they're not in a mood to negotiate? Call Korshak.
Looking for an investment to launder the blood out of your mobbed-up money?
You get the picture.
His life spanned much of last century, and in his heyday he was the ultimate bridge between big business, politicians, Hollywood, Las Vegas and the mob. When the mob needed a smooth operator to work in the worlds where rough-hewn Chicago mobsters wouldn't fit in, Korshak -- the brother of the late Chicago Democratic politician Marshall Korshak -- was the man of choice.
He was the velvet encasing the hammer.
He
's now the subject of a new, exhaustive look at his exploits in investigative reporter Gus Russo's magnum opus:Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers.Russo tackled the Chicago mob in his 2003 book The Outfit. In Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers he expands on that work of melding big business and organized crime.
Russo underscores the Outfit's desire to move a lot of its money into legitimate and quasi-legitimate businesses and investments, and the need of organized crime for legitimate-looking men to help smooth that transition.
No one would typify that more than Korshak, a product of Lawndale and DePaul University Law School who started representing mobsters in Chicago courthouses and ended up charging $50,000 a year as a retainer for "labor relations" for national businesses.
Early in the book, Russo does a masterful job of establishing the ethnic and political foundations for Korshak's beginnings in the Jewish section of the Lawndale neighborhood and in the 24th Ward of consummate machine politician Jacob Arvey.
In a neighborhood filled with young men hot for success, Korshak stood out. Russo shows how Korshak's friends from the same background would weave their way into Korshak's orbit again and again throughout his life, from MCA's Jules Stein to the Pritzker family, from mobster Alex Louis Greenberg to Appellate Court Justice David Bazelon.
Russo's ambition is to mark Korshak's place in the so-called Supermob of mainly Jewish lawyers and businessmen who often got a boost from mobsters early on in their careers and dealt with gangsters with varying degrees of involvement throughout their lives.
The amount of research in the book is staggering. It's a testament to Russo's doggedness to bring the full story to light, but it also turns into one of the book's main weaknesses.
Russo empties his notebooks into the tome. Some of the tales make for a good read but are ancillary. So his story, at times, gets away from him. Still other tales undermine the confidence one has in the reporting in the book. In one instance, Russo suggests Korshak is a man with a taste for teenage girls, with little to back it up. In another, Russo makes a convincing case for how former President Reagan had close ties to members of the Supermob, only to undermine it with innuendo.
Russo shows how Reagan carried out orders of the Supermob when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild and effectively betrayed his own members in the 1950s to the benefit of Lew Wasserman's MCA. But then, Russo provides an account from the actress Selene Walters, who contends Reagan raped her one night. Two weeks later, Reagan married Nancy Davis, the woman who would become the first lady.
There are no interviews in the book with any of Walters' contemporaries at the time to see if she told them a similar story. There's no mention of any police report.
The accusation stands alone unsupported, and it's not worthy of the excellent reporting elsewhere in the book. Because salaciousness aside, Russo pulls plenty of substantive dirty deeds done by Korshak into the light.
Korshak would have cringed.
Thanks to Steve Warmbir
Friday, July 01, 2016
Famed Pizzeria Owner Gunned Down in Reputed Mob Hit
An owner of a popular Brooklyn pizzeria was fatally shot outside his home on Thursday night, the police said.
The victim, Louis Barbati, 61, an owner of L&B Spumoni Gardens
, was shot twice in the torso outside 7601 12th Avenue in the Dyker Heights neighborhood around 7 p.m., the police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Donna Padmore, 56, of East New York, a home health aide who works across the street from Mr. Barbati’s home, said she heard three or four shots. She said she heard Mr. Barbati’s wife screaming, “He got shot! He got shot!”
Then, she said, she saw neighbors rushing to the home, where at least one bullet hole and two nicks in the white fence were visible late Thursday night.
The police said no arrests had been made.
L&B Spumoni Gardens, which has been run by the Barbati family for four generations, is a well-loved institution in Gravesend, neighboring Bensonhurst, and beyond, known for its Sicilian-style pizza pies and frozen dessert that forms part of its name.
The restaurant, with a sign declaring it was established in 1939, occupies a hodgepodge of one-story buildings on 86th Street.
After the restaurant’s windows and doors creaked open for business Friday morning, a man inside the eatery — his voice booming on a loudspeaker — told a group of reporters to leave. “No leaning on the fence,” he said. “Go take a walk somewhere. Thank you.”
A short time later, two men apologized but said the killing had left everyone’s emotions raw. “The family is really upset right now,” one of the men said.
Customers who approached seemed to do so with care. A news conference organized by Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and a city councilman from the area was called off.
In an interview Thursday night, Mr. Adams said that shootings were rare in the 68th Precinct, which includes Dyker Heights, Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton. Mr. Adams noted that the shooting happened on the last day of Gun Violence Awareness Month in New York.
“The bullet might have stopped when it hit the owner,” Mr. Adams said, “but it is sending ripples throughout the community.”
A two-block area around Mr. Barbati’s home was cordoned off on Thursday night as the police investigated the shooting.
The street where the killing occurred is in a neighborhood with many Italian-American families. During the warm months, neighbors throw block parties with the kind of communal activities more common in suburban areas. At Christmastime, the area is known for elaborate light displays and decorations that draw thousands of visitors.
Thanks to Christopher Mele and Al Baker.
The victim, Louis Barbati, 61, an owner of L&B Spumoni Gardens
, was shot twice in the torso outside 7601 12th Avenue in the Dyker Heights neighborhood around 7 p.m., the police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.Donna Padmore, 56, of East New York, a home health aide who works across the street from Mr. Barbati’s home, said she heard three or four shots. She said she heard Mr. Barbati’s wife screaming, “He got shot! He got shot!”
Then, she said, she saw neighbors rushing to the home, where at least one bullet hole and two nicks in the white fence were visible late Thursday night.
The police said no arrests had been made.
L&B Spumoni Gardens, which has been run by the Barbati family for four generations, is a well-loved institution in Gravesend, neighboring Bensonhurst, and beyond, known for its Sicilian-style pizza pies and frozen dessert that forms part of its name.
The restaurant, with a sign declaring it was established in 1939, occupies a hodgepodge of one-story buildings on 86th Street.
After the restaurant’s windows and doors creaked open for business Friday morning, a man inside the eatery — his voice booming on a loudspeaker — told a group of reporters to leave. “No leaning on the fence,” he said. “Go take a walk somewhere. Thank you.”
A short time later, two men apologized but said the killing had left everyone’s emotions raw. “The family is really upset right now,” one of the men said.
Customers who approached seemed to do so with care. A news conference organized by Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and a city councilman from the area was called off.
In an interview Thursday night, Mr. Adams said that shootings were rare in the 68th Precinct, which includes Dyker Heights, Bay Ridge and Fort Hamilton. Mr. Adams noted that the shooting happened on the last day of Gun Violence Awareness Month in New York.
“The bullet might have stopped when it hit the owner,” Mr. Adams said, “but it is sending ripples throughout the community.”
A two-block area around Mr. Barbati’s home was cordoned off on Thursday night as the police investigated the shooting.
The street where the killing occurred is in a neighborhood with many Italian-American families. During the warm months, neighbors throw block parties with the kind of communal activities more common in suburban areas. At Christmastime, the area is known for elaborate light displays and decorations that draw thousands of visitors.
Thanks to Christopher Mele and Al Baker.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate
Posted directly outside President Clinton's Oval Office
, Former Secret Service uniformed officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family.
Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate, is the most anticipated book of the 2016 election.
, Former Secret Service uniformed officer Gary Byrne reveals what he observed of Hillary Clinton's character and the culture inside the White House while protecting the First Family.
Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate, is the most anticipated book of the 2016 election.
Chicago's Summer of Bloodshed 2016 Grows as Politicans Ignore Threat of Gangs
2016 is turning out to be Chicago's Summer of Bloodshed.
272-278 people were murdered during the first six months of this year. Over 1300 people were shot and wounded.
Going into summer, 16 people were killed and 87 wounded this month alone. This week, six people were shot and killed and 87 wounded. It appears the numbers will not abate as the weather heats up.
Most of these murders are directly related to the gang and drug business. Retaliations, competition, and other factors of violence that go hand in hand with organized criminal enterprises.
The gangs are fomenting a guerrilla war on our city. It is a war of violence. murder, and mayhem. The politicians are not concerned about or ignore the scope and power the gangs hold in this city. This war is costing scores of lives, many of them innocent people. It is a war that terrorizes whole neighborhoods.
For too many years, well over a decade, the politicians kept convincing the people of Chicago the gangs are fractured, their leadership either in prison or retired, and there is no real gang structure. The killings are by small "factions" or independents.
Chicago should know better. Chicago politicians are not known for honesty or integrity.
The major gangs are highly organized and structured. Why else would gang members young and old, show up at a murder trial of fellow Latin Kings wearing their colors?
It appears the Latin Kings are telling Chicago, the police, courts, and public, "We are here, we are here to stay, there is nothing you can do about it."
This is in your face public relations.
Need further proof? The Outlaws, one of the most notorious criminal motorcycle gangs, boldly put their South Side headquarters on the corner of 25th and Rockwell. There is what appears to be a bullet proof barrier protecting the entryway and a steel clad door behind it. Federal authorities claim the Outlaws are major meth manufacturers and distributors. They are also known for violence, mayhem, and murder.
Make no mistake. Chicago gangs are organized, structured, and are responsible for the murderous chaos in various neighborhoods. The politicians refuse to acknowledge it or let the police crack down.
The violence problem is not going to get solved by treating gangs as if they do not exist. It is not going to abate by believing the gangs are fractured and the violence is caused by independents and wannabes.
Gangs are criminal organizations. They are not social clubs or neighborhood protection organizations. They are not a social science phenomena, as academics would have us believe. Gangs are organized crime groups. Their only purpose and reason for existence is crime. Crime is their business. In some areas, crime is the only economy.
All members of gangs are criminals. Gang members have no positive social redeeming values. They are a detriment to society. They are the enemy within, a cancer on our city.
Traditional organized crime, which ruled this city for decades, is a mere shadow of its former self. Yet, they are still monitored for criminal activity. Over one thousand murders are attributed to the Outfit, from the Capone era to the present. Few, if any, were innocent victims.
We do not know if anyone is closely monitoring Chicago's street gangs. We only know what the politicians want us to know. Next to nothing.
For some inexplicable reason, the gangs are not considered to be as dangerous to society as the Chicago Outfit. They are not treated as organized criminal enterprises to be destroyed. Yet, day after day, week after week, month after month, the death toll rises.
Politics plays an important role in crime. The gang organizations have been left alone for way too long. The "reasons" are too many to list. They all boil down to the same things, cowardice and corruption.
City Hall and the County Building are dens of cowards. The politicians fear being labeled racist. Many enable the gangs and benefit by their existence. They are associates of organized crime.
If the politicians will not allow law enforcement to expose the gang leadership, structure, and membership, then it is time for some other organization to do it.
The Chicago Crime Commission is toothless. They tout the same lame excuses as the politicians. Former Mayor Daley pulled out their teeth and claws when they were about to expose organized crime's incestuous relationship with Chicago politicians. From then on, the CCC has been an unreliable and sometimes laughable source on organized criminal enterprises in Chicago. They, like the politicians, refuse to fight the good fight. They keep trying to justify deserving their grant money and other donations.
Something new and courageous is needed to get information to the people. To expose the gangs, their associates and enablers, and their structure and leadership. Make no mistake. All the illicit money generated is going to the top. There needs to be a structure for that.
A new organization is needed to investigate, expose, and report on these organized criminal enterprises, their associates, and enablers. It needs to be funded properly and privately. No government grants. Those are controlled by the very politicians whose heads are in the sand.
There are enough well meaning, civic minded, wealthy people in Chicago who could fund an intelligence, organized crime research, and reporting organization. It would need to be a hybrid group of former law enforcement, prosecutors, and journalists. A Better Government Association on steroids. A group that would be fearless, dauntless, and bold. As bold as the Outlaws, whose club is proudly festooned in one of Chicago's gang infested areas.
Chicago's millionaires, billionaires, major businesses, and financial sectors finance a host of organizations. The arts, architectural preservation, parks and recreation, programs for youth, museums, and other civic and cultural groups. It is time they focused on law and order.
All the great things about Chicago are tarnished by the daily murder, mayhem, and bloodshed on the streets. If the politicians will not do their jobs or let the police do theirs, then it is time for others to take up the mantle. With enough publicity and exposure of organized criminal enterprises, the politicians will have no choice. They will have to act. Swiftly and harshly.
Chicago is becoming the laughing stock of the nation. There is no reason for this.
It is time for good people to do something. If it means embarrassing the politicians, so be it.
The next innocent victim could be your child.
Thanks to Peter Bella.
272-278 people were murdered during the first six months of this year. Over 1300 people were shot and wounded.
Going into summer, 16 people were killed and 87 wounded this month alone. This week, six people were shot and killed and 87 wounded. It appears the numbers will not abate as the weather heats up.
Most of these murders are directly related to the gang and drug business. Retaliations, competition, and other factors of violence that go hand in hand with organized criminal enterprises.
The gangs are fomenting a guerrilla war on our city. It is a war of violence. murder, and mayhem. The politicians are not concerned about or ignore the scope and power the gangs hold in this city. This war is costing scores of lives, many of them innocent people. It is a war that terrorizes whole neighborhoods.
For too many years, well over a decade, the politicians kept convincing the people of Chicago the gangs are fractured, their leadership either in prison or retired, and there is no real gang structure. The killings are by small "factions" or independents.
Chicago should know better. Chicago politicians are not known for honesty or integrity.
The major gangs are highly organized and structured. Why else would gang members young and old, show up at a murder trial of fellow Latin Kings wearing their colors?
"The courtroom was full of Latin Kings wearing gold jerseys, and family members and other friends, old Kings, young Kings, future Kings. They were angry. They smirked. First they murmured, then they got louder." (John Kass/Chicago Tribune)
It appears the Latin Kings are telling Chicago, the police, courts, and public, "We are here, we are here to stay, there is nothing you can do about it."
This is in your face public relations.
Need further proof? The Outlaws, one of the most notorious criminal motorcycle gangs, boldly put their South Side headquarters on the corner of 25th and Rockwell. There is what appears to be a bullet proof barrier protecting the entryway and a steel clad door behind it. Federal authorities claim the Outlaws are major meth manufacturers and distributors. They are also known for violence, mayhem, and murder.
Make no mistake. Chicago gangs are organized, structured, and are responsible for the murderous chaos in various neighborhoods. The politicians refuse to acknowledge it or let the police crack down.
The violence problem is not going to get solved by treating gangs as if they do not exist. It is not going to abate by believing the gangs are fractured and the violence is caused by independents and wannabes.
Gangs are criminal organizations. They are not social clubs or neighborhood protection organizations. They are not a social science phenomena, as academics would have us believe. Gangs are organized crime groups. Their only purpose and reason for existence is crime. Crime is their business. In some areas, crime is the only economy.
All members of gangs are criminals. Gang members have no positive social redeeming values. They are a detriment to society. They are the enemy within, a cancer on our city.
Traditional organized crime, which ruled this city for decades, is a mere shadow of its former self. Yet, they are still monitored for criminal activity. Over one thousand murders are attributed to the Outfit, from the Capone era to the present. Few, if any, were innocent victims.
We do not know if anyone is closely monitoring Chicago's street gangs. We only know what the politicians want us to know. Next to nothing.
For some inexplicable reason, the gangs are not considered to be as dangerous to society as the Chicago Outfit. They are not treated as organized criminal enterprises to be destroyed. Yet, day after day, week after week, month after month, the death toll rises.
Politics plays an important role in crime. The gang organizations have been left alone for way too long. The "reasons" are too many to list. They all boil down to the same things, cowardice and corruption.
City Hall and the County Building are dens of cowards. The politicians fear being labeled racist. Many enable the gangs and benefit by their existence. They are associates of organized crime.
If the politicians will not allow law enforcement to expose the gang leadership, structure, and membership, then it is time for some other organization to do it.
The Chicago Crime Commission is toothless. They tout the same lame excuses as the politicians. Former Mayor Daley pulled out their teeth and claws when they were about to expose organized crime's incestuous relationship with Chicago politicians. From then on, the CCC has been an unreliable and sometimes laughable source on organized criminal enterprises in Chicago. They, like the politicians, refuse to fight the good fight. They keep trying to justify deserving their grant money and other donations.
Something new and courageous is needed to get information to the people. To expose the gangs, their associates and enablers, and their structure and leadership. Make no mistake. All the illicit money generated is going to the top. There needs to be a structure for that.
A new organization is needed to investigate, expose, and report on these organized criminal enterprises, their associates, and enablers. It needs to be funded properly and privately. No government grants. Those are controlled by the very politicians whose heads are in the sand.
There are enough well meaning, civic minded, wealthy people in Chicago who could fund an intelligence, organized crime research, and reporting organization. It would need to be a hybrid group of former law enforcement, prosecutors, and journalists. A Better Government Association on steroids. A group that would be fearless, dauntless, and bold. As bold as the Outlaws, whose club is proudly festooned in one of Chicago's gang infested areas.
Chicago's millionaires, billionaires, major businesses, and financial sectors finance a host of organizations. The arts, architectural preservation, parks and recreation, programs for youth, museums, and other civic and cultural groups. It is time they focused on law and order.
All the great things about Chicago are tarnished by the daily murder, mayhem, and bloodshed on the streets. If the politicians will not do their jobs or let the police do theirs, then it is time for others to take up the mantle. With enough publicity and exposure of organized criminal enterprises, the politicians will have no choice. They will have to act. Swiftly and harshly.
Chicago is becoming the laughing stock of the nation. There is no reason for this.
It is time for good people to do something. If it means embarrassing the politicians, so be it.
The next innocent victim could be your child.
Thanks to Peter Bella.
The grandson of Meyer Lansky is a temperature control guy in Tampa
Gary Rapoport may be the grandson of deceased mobster Meyer Lansky, but in Tampa, he has another claim to fame. Rapoport, owner of 3-G's Gas Service, is the force behind outdoor heating and cooling units for more than 300 restaurants and bars in the Tampa Bay region. The business owns between 500 and 600 patio heaters, plus about 1,500 propane tanks, he said. 3-G's sells or leases those heating and cooling units to bars and restaurants throughout Tampa Bay. Then he or one of his three employees stop by once a week or so to change out the propane tank with a full one, billing the bar or restaurant the cost of fuel. Rapoport's biggest client, he said, is likely the Beach Bar and Restaurant formerly known as Hogan's Beach, which rents out 20 heaters and five or six fire pits each winter. In a recent interview with Tampa Bay Times, Rapoport recently sat down with the Tampa Bay Times' Alli Knothe to talk about business, family and a Cuban hotel and casino that he claims has his family's name on it.
How did you start this business?
I started the business about 10 years ago with a pickup truck and five or six propane tanks. It started out just as a joke really. A friend and I were sitting at a bar, and they ran out of propane (for the heater). I said I have some at home, and can run and get it. That was the birth of the 3G's: Gary's Got Gas. I tried to clean up (the name) and change it to something else but it didn't stick. Our motto is "Bustin' our a-- to bring you gas," and people just laugh when they see me driving down the road.
I've been told that this time of year your back yard looks like a graveyard for heating units.
During the summertime we tend to grow a lot of steel trees in the back yard. Now we've moved them all out to keep zoning happy.
The last couple of winters have been pretty mild in Tampa. How has that affected your business?
We've focused on evaporative cooling for bars and restaurants, like air conditioning for the outdoors (during the summer). I hate those misting fans because you feel the water hitting your neck. I'm selling a new design from a company out of Arizona. Out west they use a lot of evaporative cooling because it was such a dryer climate, and I wanted to try them out here. I bought eight or nine units and left them out for a week at some bars and restaurants. Half of my customers wouldn't give them back. That's the birth of a product line for me.
What's it like to be the grandson of Meyer Lansky?
Meyer was a tremendous influence on me
. I grew up with him in Miami. He was a driver for me to learn a lot and get educated. He wanted us to have the same enthusiasm for reading and following your interest as he had. Some people look at him in the negative way. He had a lot of problems when he moved to this country. My grandfather took a beating from the Italian gangs. He kept getting back up and getting knocked back down. His tenacity, his desire to keep going in life got him ahead. Ben Siegel, Charlie Luciano, my grandfather and Frank Costello. They were like the four main guys. Two Italians, two Jews.
Charlie became the head of the Mafia and my grandfather became the accountant. He was the person who held all the money.
You spent some time as a small business loan officer before you started 3G's. Did you grandfather's career inspire you to get into that field?
It's a long story. I was in the bar and nightclub business for 20 years until I decided to make a change. I went to work for my wife's mom, and we did community mental health centers. I felt it was really rewarding work. The mental health thing ended because we lost government funding. The only other thing I really knew was the bar business. I became co-owner of Rock City, a rock-and-roll steak house. Unfortunately that ended my marriage because you've got to be there at night and my wife didn't want me to be there at night.
After the divorce, I went to work at Home Depot for eight or nine years. When the housing crunch came my best friend said come work with me at Regions Bank. I worked for them for a year. They laid me off, and I sold restaurant equipment for a while and then went to another bank where I did small business loans.
What does the future hold for you?
I developed this business and really stayed with it. Everything I made went back into it to help it grow. I went to all the trade shows, I kept adding equipment and meeting people. I'm a street warrior. It's about finding the right fit for (bar and restaurant owners). Half of their square footage is outside. We help them keep it warm in the winter and keep it cool in the summer. My hobby with my ten propane tanks has turned out to be quite a good business.
There's still money in Cuba that I'd like to get my hands on. (Lansky) is still listed as the owner of the Havana Riviera, and the Del Marina Hemingway with Frank Sinatra. We knew that Castro seized the hotel shortly after they opened and that's where the money stayed.
Thanks to Alli Knothe.
How did you start this business?
I started the business about 10 years ago with a pickup truck and five or six propane tanks. It started out just as a joke really. A friend and I were sitting at a bar, and they ran out of propane (for the heater). I said I have some at home, and can run and get it. That was the birth of the 3G's: Gary's Got Gas. I tried to clean up (the name) and change it to something else but it didn't stick. Our motto is "Bustin' our a-- to bring you gas," and people just laugh when they see me driving down the road.
I've been told that this time of year your back yard looks like a graveyard for heating units.
During the summertime we tend to grow a lot of steel trees in the back yard. Now we've moved them all out to keep zoning happy.
The last couple of winters have been pretty mild in Tampa. How has that affected your business?
We've focused on evaporative cooling for bars and restaurants, like air conditioning for the outdoors (during the summer). I hate those misting fans because you feel the water hitting your neck. I'm selling a new design from a company out of Arizona. Out west they use a lot of evaporative cooling because it was such a dryer climate, and I wanted to try them out here. I bought eight or nine units and left them out for a week at some bars and restaurants. Half of my customers wouldn't give them back. That's the birth of a product line for me.
What's it like to be the grandson of Meyer Lansky?
Meyer was a tremendous influence on me
. I grew up with him in Miami. He was a driver for me to learn a lot and get educated. He wanted us to have the same enthusiasm for reading and following your interest as he had. Some people look at him in the negative way. He had a lot of problems when he moved to this country. My grandfather took a beating from the Italian gangs. He kept getting back up and getting knocked back down. His tenacity, his desire to keep going in life got him ahead. Ben Siegel, Charlie Luciano, my grandfather and Frank Costello. They were like the four main guys. Two Italians, two Jews.Charlie became the head of the Mafia and my grandfather became the accountant. He was the person who held all the money.
You spent some time as a small business loan officer before you started 3G's. Did you grandfather's career inspire you to get into that field?
It's a long story. I was in the bar and nightclub business for 20 years until I decided to make a change. I went to work for my wife's mom, and we did community mental health centers. I felt it was really rewarding work. The mental health thing ended because we lost government funding. The only other thing I really knew was the bar business. I became co-owner of Rock City, a rock-and-roll steak house. Unfortunately that ended my marriage because you've got to be there at night and my wife didn't want me to be there at night.
After the divorce, I went to work at Home Depot for eight or nine years. When the housing crunch came my best friend said come work with me at Regions Bank. I worked for them for a year. They laid me off, and I sold restaurant equipment for a while and then went to another bank where I did small business loans.
What does the future hold for you?
I developed this business and really stayed with it. Everything I made went back into it to help it grow. I went to all the trade shows, I kept adding equipment and meeting people. I'm a street warrior. It's about finding the right fit for (bar and restaurant owners). Half of their square footage is outside. We help them keep it warm in the winter and keep it cool in the summer. My hobby with my ten propane tanks has turned out to be quite a good business.
There's still money in Cuba that I'd like to get my hands on. (Lansky) is still listed as the owner of the Havana Riviera, and the Del Marina Hemingway with Frank Sinatra. We knew that Castro seized the hotel shortly after they opened and that's where the money stayed.
Thanks to Alli Knothe.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Chris Darden - In Contempt!
#1 New York Times Bestseller
. For more than a year, Christopher Darden argued tirelessly for the prosecution, giving voice to the victims in the 0.J. Simpson murder trial. In Contempt, is an unflinching look at what the television cameras could not show: behind-the-scenes meetings, the deteriorating relationships between the defense and prosecution teams, the taunting, baiting, and pushing matches between Darden and Simpson, the intimate relationship between Darden and Marcia Clark, and the candid factors behind Darden's controversial decision for Simpson to try on the infamous glove, and much more. Out of the sensational frenzy of "the trial of the century" comes this haunting memoir of duty, justice, and the powerful undertow of American racism. A stunning masterpiece told with brutal honesty and courage.
. For more than a year, Christopher Darden argued tirelessly for the prosecution, giving voice to the victims in the 0.J. Simpson murder trial. In Contempt, is an unflinching look at what the television cameras could not show: behind-the-scenes meetings, the deteriorating relationships between the defense and prosecution teams, the taunting, baiting, and pushing matches between Darden and Simpson, the intimate relationship between Darden and Marcia Clark, and the candid factors behind Darden's controversial decision for Simpson to try on the infamous glove, and much more. Out of the sensational frenzy of "the trial of the century" comes this haunting memoir of duty, justice, and the powerful undertow of American racism. A stunning masterpiece told with brutal honesty and courage.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
10th Street Gang Member Sentenced for His RICO Conviction Involving 2 Murders
U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced that Douglas Harville, 28, who was convicted of Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Conspiracy (RICO Conspiracy), was sentenced to 210 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph M. Tripi, who handled the case, stated that between 2000 and 2010, the defendant was a member of the 10th Street Gang. As a part of his involvement in the gang, Harville participated in the murder of Brandon McDonald and Darinell Young on April 17, 2006 on Pennsylvania Street in Buffalo. The victims were innocent bystanders who were standing in front of a house when the defendant and six other gunmen mistook them as rival 7th Street Gang. During the ensuing shooting, in which several handguns and shotguns were used, Brandon MacDonald was shot in the chest and Darinell Young was shot in the leg. Four additional victims were also shot and suffered injuries.
Harville, a 10th Street Gang member also possessed firearms, sold marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine, and other controlled substances on the West Side of Buffalo.
The defendant is one of 44 10th Street Gang members and associates convicted in this case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph M. Tripi, who handled the case, stated that between 2000 and 2010, the defendant was a member of the 10th Street Gang. As a part of his involvement in the gang, Harville participated in the murder of Brandon McDonald and Darinell Young on April 17, 2006 on Pennsylvania Street in Buffalo. The victims were innocent bystanders who were standing in front of a house when the defendant and six other gunmen mistook them as rival 7th Street Gang. During the ensuing shooting, in which several handguns and shotguns were used, Brandon MacDonald was shot in the chest and Darinell Young was shot in the leg. Four additional victims were also shot and suffered injuries.
Harville, a 10th Street Gang member also possessed firearms, sold marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine, and other controlled substances on the West Side of Buffalo.
The defendant is one of 44 10th Street Gang members and associates convicted in this case.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
What did Roy Cohn Teach @realDonaldTrump
The future Mrs. Donald J. Trump was puzzled.
She had been summoned to a lunch meeting with her husband-to-be and his lawyer to review a prenuptial agreement. It required that, should the couple split, she return everything — cars, furs, rings — that Mr. Trump might give her during their marriage.
Sensing her sorrow, Mr. Trump apologized, Ivana Trump later testified in a divorce deposition. He said it was his lawyer’s idea.
“It is just one of those Roy Cohn numbers
,” Mr. Trump told her.
The year was 1977, and Mr. Cohn’s reputation was well established. He had been Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting consigliere. He had helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for spying and elect Richard M. Nixon president.
Then New York’s most feared lawyer, Mr. Cohn had a client list that ran the gamut from the disreputable to the quasi-reputable: Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, Claus von Bulow, George Steinbrenner. But there was one client who occupied a special place in Roy Cohn’s famously cold heart: Donald J. Trump.
For Mr. Cohn, who died of AIDS in 1986, weeks after being disbarred for flagrant ethical violations, Mr. Trump was something of a final project. If Fred Trump got his son’s career started, bringing him into the family business of middle-class rentals in Brooklyn and Queens, Mr. Cohn ushered him across the river and into Manhattan, introducing him to the social and political elite while ferociously defending him against a growing list of enemies.
Decades later, Mr. Cohn’s influence on Mr. Trump is unmistakable. Mr. Trump’s wrecking ball of a presidential bid — the gleeful smearing of his opponents, the embracing of bluster as brand — has been a Roy Cohn number on a grand scale. Mr. Trump’s response to the Orlando massacre, with his ominous warnings of a terrorist attack that could wipe out the country and his conspiratorial suggestions of a Muslim fifth column in the United States, seemed to have been ripped straight out of the Cohn playbook.
“I hear Roy in the things he says quite clearly,” said Peter Fraser, who as Mr. Cohn’s lover for the last two years of his life spent a great deal of time with Mr. Trump. “That bravado, and if you say it aggressively and loudly enough, it’s the truth — that’s the way Roy used to operate to a degree, and Donald was certainly his apprentice.”
For 13 years, the lawyer who had infamously whispered in McCarthy’s ear whispered in Mr. Trump’s. In the process, Mr. Cohn helped deliver some of Mr. Trump’s signature construction deals, sued the National Football League for conspiring against his client and countersued the federal government — for $100 million — for damaging the Trump name. One of Mr. Trump’s executives recalled that he kept an 8-by-10-inch photograph of Mr. Cohn in his office desk, pulling it out to intimidate recalcitrant contractors.
The two men spoke as often as five times a day, toasted each other at birthday parties and spent evenings together at Studio 54. And Mr. Cohn turned repeatedly to Mr. Trump — one of a small clutch of people who knew he was gay — in his hours of need. When a former companion was dying of AIDS, he asked Mr. Trump to find him a place to stay. When he faced disbarment, he summoned Mr. Trump to testify to his character.
Mr. Trump says the two became so close that Mr. Cohn, who had no immediate family, sometimes refused to bill him, insisting he could not charge a friend.
“Roy was an era,” Mr. Trump said in an interview, reflecting on his years with Mr. Cohn. “They either loved him or couldn’t stand him, which was fine.” Mr. Trump was asked if this reminded him of anyone. “Yeah,” he answered. “It does, come to think of it.”
The gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who knew everyone, had no idea who he was.
“This kid is going to own New York someday,” Mr. Cohn told her, gesturing at a tall 20-something bachelor at a dinner party in the early 1970s. “This is Donald Trump.”
“Yeah, so?” Ms. Adams recalled replying.
Mr. Cohn, the son of a prominent New York judge, had taken an uncommon interest in Mr. Trump.
The two had met not long before at a private disco called Le Club, and instantly hit it off while discussing a nettlesome obstacle for Mr. Trump. The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department was suing him and his father, accusing them of refusing to rent to black tenants. Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohn that their lawyers were urging them to settle.
“Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court,’” Mr. Trump later recalled Mr. Cohn advising him. Mr. Trump did just that, with Mr. Cohn as his lawyer. Not only did Mr. Cohn countersue the government for $100 million, he filed a blistering affidavit on Mr. Trump’s behalf, mocking the case. “The Civil Rights Division did not file a lawsuit,” Mr. Cohn wrote. “It slapped together a piece of paper for use as a press release.” The Trumps ultimately settled the case by agreeing to make apartments available to minority renters, while admitting no wrongdoing.
For Mr. Trump, the benefits of his new representation were obvious. Mr. Cohn was one of the most famous and feared lawyers in America. He would later appear on the cover of Esquire beneath an ironic halo, and earn a posthumous parody on “The Simpsons.” But Mr. Cohn saw something in Mr. Trump, too. “He could sniff out a power-to-be, Roy could,” said Susan Bell, Mr. Cohn’s longtime secretary.
After helping convict the Rosenbergs as a young federal prosecutor and then working in Washington as a top aide to McCarthy, Mr. Cohn had returned to New York, starting a boutique practice in his shabby but elegant townhouse on East 68th Street.
The division of labor in the firm was clear.
“We called him the rainmaker,” said Michael Rosen, a partner who handled many of the firm’s organized-crime cases. “We did all of the grunt work, if grunt work means preparing the case and trying the case.”
Mr. Cohn lived on the third floor, often traipsing downstairs in his bathrobe well after the workday had begun and taking clients upstairs to a small sun porch. The elevator rarely worked. In the winter, the lawyers stuffed towels around the windows to keep out the cold.
Parties and business meetings tended to blur, with celebrities like Andy Warhol and Estée Lauder crowding in and spilling out. “That townhouse was a workhorse,” recalled Mr. Trump, a familiar presence there himself.
He and Mr. Cohn became social companions, lunching at “21” or spending evenings at Yankee Stadium in the owner’s box of Mr. Steinbrenner, another Cohn client.
After Mr. Fraser entered Mr. Cohn’s life, the two were frequent dinner guests at Donald and Ivana’s Trump Tower apartment, with its Michelangelo-style murals. They were also regulars at Mr. Trump’s box at the Meadowlands, the home of his sports team, the New Jersey Generals of the short-lived United States Football League.
Mr. Cohn was the master of ceremonies at a Trump birthday party at Studio 54; years later, Mr. Trump returned the favor with a birthday toast of his own at a party in the atrium of Trump Tower, joking that Mr. Cohn was more bark than bite. “We just tell the opposition Roy Cohn is representing me, and they get scared,” Mr. Trump said, according to a cousin of Mr. Cohn’s, David L. Marcus, who attended. “He never actually does anything.”
Among the many things Mr. Trump learned from Mr. Cohn during these years was the importance of keeping one’s name in the newspapers. Long before Mr. Trump posed as his own spokesman, passing self-serving tidbits to gossip columnists, Mr. Cohn was known to call in stories about himself to reporters.
It was also through Mr. Cohn that Mr. Trump met the political operative who has played a leading, if behind-the-scenes, role in his campaign: Roger Stone.
When Mr. Stone, the roguish former Nixon adviser and master of the political dark arts, came to New York in 1979 to court support for Ronald Reagan’s presidential bid, he arrived with a box of index cards filled with the names of actors and producers. And Roy Cohn.
“I made an appointment and I pitched him on Reagan, and he said, ‘You have to meet Donald and Fred Trump,’” Mr. Stone recalled in an interview.
Eventually, Mr. Cohn and Mr. Trump became so inseparable that those who could not track down Mr. Cohn knew whom to call.
Once, Mr. Cohn chartered a plane with friends, without Mr. Trump, trashing it during a midair party. He refused to pay. So the airline found Mr. Trump, asking if he could help. He called Mr. Cohn, more amused than concerned. “I said, ‘Roy, what are you going to do about this? I mean, you destroyed the plane,’” Mr. Trump recalled. “He said, ‘Eh, we’ll pay them someday.’”
By the time Mr. Trump started getting serious with a Czech model named Ivana Winklmayr, Mr. Cohn had become something of an expert on marriage.
“It’s difficult to imagine and admit that the flush of the moment may become the flush of the toilet as the relationship goes down the tubes,” he wrote about the importance of prenuptial agreements in his book “How to Stand Up for Your Rights and Win!”
According to “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention,” a book by the journalist Wayne Barrett
, Mr. Cohn advised Mr. Trump against marrying Ms. Winklmayr, but insisted that if he must, there had to be a prenuptial agreement. He would handle it himself.
The agreement, completed only weeks before the wedding, did not quantify Mr. Trump’s net worth — “impossible to accurately determine due to the illiquid nature of his holdings” — and took a bearish view of Mr. Trump’s earning potential and a modest view of his tastes.
“Donald’s standard of living is basically simple,” it said, calling Mr. Trump’s preferred lifestyle “neither opulent nor extravagant.”
When the marriage dissolved a few years after Mr. Cohn’s death, Mrs. Trump’s lawyers charged that she had not had proper representation on the prenup. Her initial lawyer had worked for Mr. Cohn on at least one case, and was a frequent passenger on Mr. Cohn’s yacht, the Defiance. The divorce case eventually ended with a settlement. The prenup was just one of many Trump deals, some more conventional than others, in which Mr. Cohn was intimately involved.
He used his connections to help Mr. Trump secure zoning variances and tax abatements critical to the construction of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and the Trump Plaza.
After one Cohn coup, Mr. Trump rewarded him with a pair of diamond-encrusted cuff links and buttons in a Bulgari box.And if Mr. Cohn did not always feel comfortable charging a friend for his services, Mr. Trump was hardly one to put up a fight.
“Roy said, ‘I’ll leave it to Donald to give me what he thinks is fair,’” Mr. Fraser recalled of one lengthy Trump tax case in particular. “But, of course, Donald didn’t give him anything.”
Some work would have been difficult to bill. For instance, Mr. Cohn lobbied his friends in the Reagan White House to nominate Mr. Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry to the federal bench. (Questioned last year about this, Mr. Trump said his sister “got the appointment totally on her own merit.”)
“He was a very good lawyer if he wanted to be,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.Asked about Mr. Cohn in 1980, Mr. Trump was more blunt in his assessment: “He’s been vicious to others in his protection of me.”
It started with a cut that would not stop bleeding.
Mr. Cohn’s diagnosis came not long after his former companion, Russell Eldridge, had gotten his. Mr. Eldridge had spent most of his final days in a private suite overlooking Central Park in Mr. Trump’s Barbizon Plaza Hotel.
Ms. Bell, Mr. Cohn’s secretary, recalled that Mr. Trump’s secretary, Norma Foerderer, had billed Mr. Cohn for the room, and later called to say that Mr. Cohn had not paid.“I said, ‘Guess what, Norma, he’s not going to,’” Ms. Bell said. “And she kind of knew it.”
Mr. Cohn remained in his townhouse. Until the end — and even under interrogation by Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” — he insisted that he had liver cancer, not AIDS.He received experimental AZT treatments in Washington and continued working. But his clients could not help but notice that his health was deteriorating.
Mr. Trump started gradually moving cases elsewhere, he said, never telling Mr. Cohn why. “There’s no reason to hurt somebody’s feelings,” he said.“He was so weak,” Mr. Trump added. “He was so weakened that he really couldn’t do it.”
Mr. Cohn never spoke about Mr. Trump’s decision, but was plainly crushed, according to Ms. Bell. She remembers it happening not gradually, but “overnight.”
Even as his health was failing, Mr. Cohn, whom government prosecutors had unsuccessfully pursued for decades on charges including conspiracy, bribery and fraud, faced a final indignity: He was facing the prospect of disbarment. Among other offenses, he was charged with coercing a dying multimillionaire client — during a late-night visit to the man’s hospital room — to amend his will to make Mr. Cohn an executor of his estate.
The hearings were closed to the public. But true to form, Mr. Cohn, riding to the daily proceedings in a red Cadillac convertible, insisted on a spectacle, describing his accusers as “a bunch of yo-yos just out to smear me up.”
The prominent figures whom Mr. Cohn summoned to testify on his behalf included Barbara Walters and William F. Buckley Jr.And, of course, Mr. Trump. He described his friend in simple terms.“If I summed it up in one word,” Mr. Trump told the hearing panel, “I think the primary word I’d use is his loyalty.”
Gaunt, frail and besieged, Mr. Cohn nevertheless managed to attend a dinner with Mr. Fraser at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., shortly after Mr. Trump purchased the property in late 1985. It was a last glimpse at his final, fair-haired project.
“I made Trump successful,” he would occasionally boast, according to Mr. Marcus, Mr. Cohn’s cousin, a former journalist who chronicled Mr. Cohn’s last months for Vanity Fair.
In June 1986, Mr. Cohn was disbarred for “unethical,” “unprofessional” and “particularly reprehensible” conduct.
To this day, Mr. Trump rues the outcome. “They only got him because he was so sick,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “They wouldn’t have gotten him otherwise.”
During his final days, Mr. Cohn called Mr. Trump, ostensibly for no particular reason. “It was just a call: ‘How are things going?’” Mr. Trump recalled. “Roy was the kind of guy — I don’t think he ever thought he was dying, frankly.”
About a week later, in August 1986, Mr. Trump received another call.Mr. Trump hung up the phone, repeating the news to an associate in his office: Roy Cohn was dead.“I said, ‘Wow, that’s the end of a generation,’” Mr. Trump remembered. “‘That’s the end of an era.’”
Mr. Fraser inherited all of Mr. Cohn’s possessions: the townhouse, his weekend place in Greenwich, Conn., his Rolls-Royce, his private plane and much more. But the Internal Revenue Service, collecting on Mr. Cohn’s tax debts, confiscated nearly everything.
He did get to keep the cuff links Mr. Trump had given Mr. Cohn. Years later, Mr. Fraser had them appraised; they were knockoffs, he said.
Mr. Fraser soon returned to his native New Zealand, where he now works as a conservationist at the Auckland Zoo. He has not spoken with Mr. Trump since Mr. Cohn’s death, but he has no doubt that if his former lover were still alive, he would be an enthusiastic supporter of the Trump campaign.
“Having trained or mentored someone who became president,” he said, “that would have been quite exciting for Roy.”
Thanks to Jonathan Mahler and Matt Flegenheimer.
She had been summoned to a lunch meeting with her husband-to-be and his lawyer to review a prenuptial agreement. It required that, should the couple split, she return everything — cars, furs, rings — that Mr. Trump might give her during their marriage.
Sensing her sorrow, Mr. Trump apologized, Ivana Trump later testified in a divorce deposition. He said it was his lawyer’s idea.
“It is just one of those Roy Cohn numbers
,” Mr. Trump told her.The year was 1977, and Mr. Cohn’s reputation was well established. He had been Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting consigliere. He had helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for spying and elect Richard M. Nixon president.
Then New York’s most feared lawyer, Mr. Cohn had a client list that ran the gamut from the disreputable to the quasi-reputable: Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, Claus von Bulow, George Steinbrenner. But there was one client who occupied a special place in Roy Cohn’s famously cold heart: Donald J. Trump.
For Mr. Cohn, who died of AIDS in 1986, weeks after being disbarred for flagrant ethical violations, Mr. Trump was something of a final project. If Fred Trump got his son’s career started, bringing him into the family business of middle-class rentals in Brooklyn and Queens, Mr. Cohn ushered him across the river and into Manhattan, introducing him to the social and political elite while ferociously defending him against a growing list of enemies.
Decades later, Mr. Cohn’s influence on Mr. Trump is unmistakable. Mr. Trump’s wrecking ball of a presidential bid — the gleeful smearing of his opponents, the embracing of bluster as brand — has been a Roy Cohn number on a grand scale. Mr. Trump’s response to the Orlando massacre, with his ominous warnings of a terrorist attack that could wipe out the country and his conspiratorial suggestions of a Muslim fifth column in the United States, seemed to have been ripped straight out of the Cohn playbook.
“I hear Roy in the things he says quite clearly,” said Peter Fraser, who as Mr. Cohn’s lover for the last two years of his life spent a great deal of time with Mr. Trump. “That bravado, and if you say it aggressively and loudly enough, it’s the truth — that’s the way Roy used to operate to a degree, and Donald was certainly his apprentice.”
For 13 years, the lawyer who had infamously whispered in McCarthy’s ear whispered in Mr. Trump’s. In the process, Mr. Cohn helped deliver some of Mr. Trump’s signature construction deals, sued the National Football League for conspiring against his client and countersued the federal government — for $100 million — for damaging the Trump name. One of Mr. Trump’s executives recalled that he kept an 8-by-10-inch photograph of Mr. Cohn in his office desk, pulling it out to intimidate recalcitrant contractors.
The two men spoke as often as five times a day, toasted each other at birthday parties and spent evenings together at Studio 54. And Mr. Cohn turned repeatedly to Mr. Trump — one of a small clutch of people who knew he was gay — in his hours of need. When a former companion was dying of AIDS, he asked Mr. Trump to find him a place to stay. When he faced disbarment, he summoned Mr. Trump to testify to his character.
Mr. Trump says the two became so close that Mr. Cohn, who had no immediate family, sometimes refused to bill him, insisting he could not charge a friend.
“Roy was an era,” Mr. Trump said in an interview, reflecting on his years with Mr. Cohn. “They either loved him or couldn’t stand him, which was fine.” Mr. Trump was asked if this reminded him of anyone. “Yeah,” he answered. “It does, come to think of it.”
The gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who knew everyone, had no idea who he was.
“This kid is going to own New York someday,” Mr. Cohn told her, gesturing at a tall 20-something bachelor at a dinner party in the early 1970s. “This is Donald Trump.”
“Yeah, so?” Ms. Adams recalled replying.
Mr. Cohn, the son of a prominent New York judge, had taken an uncommon interest in Mr. Trump.
The two had met not long before at a private disco called Le Club, and instantly hit it off while discussing a nettlesome obstacle for Mr. Trump. The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department was suing him and his father, accusing them of refusing to rent to black tenants. Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohn that their lawyers were urging them to settle.
“Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court,’” Mr. Trump later recalled Mr. Cohn advising him. Mr. Trump did just that, with Mr. Cohn as his lawyer. Not only did Mr. Cohn countersue the government for $100 million, he filed a blistering affidavit on Mr. Trump’s behalf, mocking the case. “The Civil Rights Division did not file a lawsuit,” Mr. Cohn wrote. “It slapped together a piece of paper for use as a press release.” The Trumps ultimately settled the case by agreeing to make apartments available to minority renters, while admitting no wrongdoing.
For Mr. Trump, the benefits of his new representation were obvious. Mr. Cohn was one of the most famous and feared lawyers in America. He would later appear on the cover of Esquire beneath an ironic halo, and earn a posthumous parody on “The Simpsons.” But Mr. Cohn saw something in Mr. Trump, too. “He could sniff out a power-to-be, Roy could,” said Susan Bell, Mr. Cohn’s longtime secretary.
After helping convict the Rosenbergs as a young federal prosecutor and then working in Washington as a top aide to McCarthy, Mr. Cohn had returned to New York, starting a boutique practice in his shabby but elegant townhouse on East 68th Street.
The division of labor in the firm was clear.
“We called him the rainmaker,” said Michael Rosen, a partner who handled many of the firm’s organized-crime cases. “We did all of the grunt work, if grunt work means preparing the case and trying the case.”
Mr. Cohn lived on the third floor, often traipsing downstairs in his bathrobe well after the workday had begun and taking clients upstairs to a small sun porch. The elevator rarely worked. In the winter, the lawyers stuffed towels around the windows to keep out the cold.
Parties and business meetings tended to blur, with celebrities like Andy Warhol and Estée Lauder crowding in and spilling out. “That townhouse was a workhorse,” recalled Mr. Trump, a familiar presence there himself.
He and Mr. Cohn became social companions, lunching at “21” or spending evenings at Yankee Stadium in the owner’s box of Mr. Steinbrenner, another Cohn client.
After Mr. Fraser entered Mr. Cohn’s life, the two were frequent dinner guests at Donald and Ivana’s Trump Tower apartment, with its Michelangelo-style murals. They were also regulars at Mr. Trump’s box at the Meadowlands, the home of his sports team, the New Jersey Generals of the short-lived United States Football League.
Mr. Cohn was the master of ceremonies at a Trump birthday party at Studio 54; years later, Mr. Trump returned the favor with a birthday toast of his own at a party in the atrium of Trump Tower, joking that Mr. Cohn was more bark than bite. “We just tell the opposition Roy Cohn is representing me, and they get scared,” Mr. Trump said, according to a cousin of Mr. Cohn’s, David L. Marcus, who attended. “He never actually does anything.”
Among the many things Mr. Trump learned from Mr. Cohn during these years was the importance of keeping one’s name in the newspapers. Long before Mr. Trump posed as his own spokesman, passing self-serving tidbits to gossip columnists, Mr. Cohn was known to call in stories about himself to reporters.
It was also through Mr. Cohn that Mr. Trump met the political operative who has played a leading, if behind-the-scenes, role in his campaign: Roger Stone.
When Mr. Stone, the roguish former Nixon adviser and master of the political dark arts, came to New York in 1979 to court support for Ronald Reagan’s presidential bid, he arrived with a box of index cards filled with the names of actors and producers. And Roy Cohn.
“I made an appointment and I pitched him on Reagan, and he said, ‘You have to meet Donald and Fred Trump,’” Mr. Stone recalled in an interview.
Eventually, Mr. Cohn and Mr. Trump became so inseparable that those who could not track down Mr. Cohn knew whom to call.
Once, Mr. Cohn chartered a plane with friends, without Mr. Trump, trashing it during a midair party. He refused to pay. So the airline found Mr. Trump, asking if he could help. He called Mr. Cohn, more amused than concerned. “I said, ‘Roy, what are you going to do about this? I mean, you destroyed the plane,’” Mr. Trump recalled. “He said, ‘Eh, we’ll pay them someday.’”
By the time Mr. Trump started getting serious with a Czech model named Ivana Winklmayr, Mr. Cohn had become something of an expert on marriage.
“It’s difficult to imagine and admit that the flush of the moment may become the flush of the toilet as the relationship goes down the tubes,” he wrote about the importance of prenuptial agreements in his book “How to Stand Up for Your Rights and Win!”
According to “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention,” a book by the journalist Wayne Barrett
, Mr. Cohn advised Mr. Trump against marrying Ms. Winklmayr, but insisted that if he must, there had to be a prenuptial agreement. He would handle it himself.The agreement, completed only weeks before the wedding, did not quantify Mr. Trump’s net worth — “impossible to accurately determine due to the illiquid nature of his holdings” — and took a bearish view of Mr. Trump’s earning potential and a modest view of his tastes.
“Donald’s standard of living is basically simple,” it said, calling Mr. Trump’s preferred lifestyle “neither opulent nor extravagant.”
When the marriage dissolved a few years after Mr. Cohn’s death, Mrs. Trump’s lawyers charged that she had not had proper representation on the prenup. Her initial lawyer had worked for Mr. Cohn on at least one case, and was a frequent passenger on Mr. Cohn’s yacht, the Defiance. The divorce case eventually ended with a settlement. The prenup was just one of many Trump deals, some more conventional than others, in which Mr. Cohn was intimately involved.
He used his connections to help Mr. Trump secure zoning variances and tax abatements critical to the construction of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and the Trump Plaza.
After one Cohn coup, Mr. Trump rewarded him with a pair of diamond-encrusted cuff links and buttons in a Bulgari box.And if Mr. Cohn did not always feel comfortable charging a friend for his services, Mr. Trump was hardly one to put up a fight.
“Roy said, ‘I’ll leave it to Donald to give me what he thinks is fair,’” Mr. Fraser recalled of one lengthy Trump tax case in particular. “But, of course, Donald didn’t give him anything.”
Some work would have been difficult to bill. For instance, Mr. Cohn lobbied his friends in the Reagan White House to nominate Mr. Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry to the federal bench. (Questioned last year about this, Mr. Trump said his sister “got the appointment totally on her own merit.”)
“He was a very good lawyer if he wanted to be,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.Asked about Mr. Cohn in 1980, Mr. Trump was more blunt in his assessment: “He’s been vicious to others in his protection of me.”
It started with a cut that would not stop bleeding.
Mr. Cohn’s diagnosis came not long after his former companion, Russell Eldridge, had gotten his. Mr. Eldridge had spent most of his final days in a private suite overlooking Central Park in Mr. Trump’s Barbizon Plaza Hotel.
Ms. Bell, Mr. Cohn’s secretary, recalled that Mr. Trump’s secretary, Norma Foerderer, had billed Mr. Cohn for the room, and later called to say that Mr. Cohn had not paid.“I said, ‘Guess what, Norma, he’s not going to,’” Ms. Bell said. “And she kind of knew it.”
Mr. Cohn remained in his townhouse. Until the end — and even under interrogation by Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” — he insisted that he had liver cancer, not AIDS.He received experimental AZT treatments in Washington and continued working. But his clients could not help but notice that his health was deteriorating.
Mr. Trump started gradually moving cases elsewhere, he said, never telling Mr. Cohn why. “There’s no reason to hurt somebody’s feelings,” he said.“He was so weak,” Mr. Trump added. “He was so weakened that he really couldn’t do it.”
Mr. Cohn never spoke about Mr. Trump’s decision, but was plainly crushed, according to Ms. Bell. She remembers it happening not gradually, but “overnight.”
Even as his health was failing, Mr. Cohn, whom government prosecutors had unsuccessfully pursued for decades on charges including conspiracy, bribery and fraud, faced a final indignity: He was facing the prospect of disbarment. Among other offenses, he was charged with coercing a dying multimillionaire client — during a late-night visit to the man’s hospital room — to amend his will to make Mr. Cohn an executor of his estate.
The hearings were closed to the public. But true to form, Mr. Cohn, riding to the daily proceedings in a red Cadillac convertible, insisted on a spectacle, describing his accusers as “a bunch of yo-yos just out to smear me up.”
The prominent figures whom Mr. Cohn summoned to testify on his behalf included Barbara Walters and William F. Buckley Jr.And, of course, Mr. Trump. He described his friend in simple terms.“If I summed it up in one word,” Mr. Trump told the hearing panel, “I think the primary word I’d use is his loyalty.”
Gaunt, frail and besieged, Mr. Cohn nevertheless managed to attend a dinner with Mr. Fraser at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., shortly after Mr. Trump purchased the property in late 1985. It was a last glimpse at his final, fair-haired project.
“I made Trump successful,” he would occasionally boast, according to Mr. Marcus, Mr. Cohn’s cousin, a former journalist who chronicled Mr. Cohn’s last months for Vanity Fair.
In June 1986, Mr. Cohn was disbarred for “unethical,” “unprofessional” and “particularly reprehensible” conduct.
To this day, Mr. Trump rues the outcome. “They only got him because he was so sick,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “They wouldn’t have gotten him otherwise.”
During his final days, Mr. Cohn called Mr. Trump, ostensibly for no particular reason. “It was just a call: ‘How are things going?’” Mr. Trump recalled. “Roy was the kind of guy — I don’t think he ever thought he was dying, frankly.”
About a week later, in August 1986, Mr. Trump received another call.Mr. Trump hung up the phone, repeating the news to an associate in his office: Roy Cohn was dead.“I said, ‘Wow, that’s the end of a generation,’” Mr. Trump remembered. “‘That’s the end of an era.’”
Mr. Fraser inherited all of Mr. Cohn’s possessions: the townhouse, his weekend place in Greenwich, Conn., his Rolls-Royce, his private plane and much more. But the Internal Revenue Service, collecting on Mr. Cohn’s tax debts, confiscated nearly everything.
He did get to keep the cuff links Mr. Trump had given Mr. Cohn. Years later, Mr. Fraser had them appraised; they were knockoffs, he said.
Mr. Fraser soon returned to his native New Zealand, where he now works as a conservationist at the Auckland Zoo. He has not spoken with Mr. Trump since Mr. Cohn’s death, but he has no doubt that if his former lover were still alive, he would be an enthusiastic supporter of the Trump campaign.
“Having trained or mentored someone who became president,” he said, “that would have been quite exciting for Roy.”
Thanks to Jonathan Mahler and Matt Flegenheimer.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Gangsterismo - The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966
Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966, is an extraordinary accomplishment, the most comprehensive history yet of the clash of epic forces over several decades in Cuba. It is a chronicle that touches upon deep and ongoing themes in the history of the Americas, and more specifically of the United States government, Cuba before and after the revolution, and the criminal networks known as the Mafia.
The result of 18 years’ research at national archives and presidential libraries in Kansas
, Maryland, Texas, and Massachusetts, here is the story of the making and unmaking of a gangster state in Cuba. In the early 1930s, mobster Meyer Lansky sowed the seeds of gangsterismo when he won Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista’s support for a mutually beneficial arrangement: the North American Mafia were to share the profits from a future colony of casinos, hotels, and nightclubs with Batista, his inner circle, and senior Cuban Army and police officers. In return, Cuban authorities allowed the Mafia to operate its establishments without interference. Over the next twenty-five years, a gangster state took root in Cuba as Batista, other corrupt Cuban politicians, and senior Cuban army and police officers got rich. All was going swimmingly until a handful of revolutionaries upended the neat arrangement: and the CIA, Cuban counterrevolutionaries, and the Mafia joined forces to attempt the overthrow of Castro.
Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966, is unique in the literature on Cuba, and establishes for the first time the integral, extensive role of mobsters in the Cuban exile movement. The narrative unfolds against a broader historical backdrop of which it was a part: the confrontation between the United States and the Cuban revolution, which turned Cuba into one of the most perilous battlegrounds of the Cold War.
The result of 18 years’ research at national archives and presidential libraries in Kansas
, Maryland, Texas, and Massachusetts, here is the story of the making and unmaking of a gangster state in Cuba. In the early 1930s, mobster Meyer Lansky sowed the seeds of gangsterismo when he won Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista’s support for a mutually beneficial arrangement: the North American Mafia were to share the profits from a future colony of casinos, hotels, and nightclubs with Batista, his inner circle, and senior Cuban Army and police officers. In return, Cuban authorities allowed the Mafia to operate its establishments without interference. Over the next twenty-five years, a gangster state took root in Cuba as Batista, other corrupt Cuban politicians, and senior Cuban army and police officers got rich. All was going swimmingly until a handful of revolutionaries upended the neat arrangement: and the CIA, Cuban counterrevolutionaries, and the Mafia joined forces to attempt the overthrow of Castro.Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966, is unique in the literature on Cuba, and establishes for the first time the integral, extensive role of mobsters in the Cuban exile movement. The narrative unfolds against a broader historical backdrop of which it was a part: the confrontation between the United States and the Cuban revolution, which turned Cuba into one of the most perilous battlegrounds of the Cold War.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Tonight Del Quintin Wilber, author of A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad, Appears on Crime Beat Radio
Del Quintin Wilber, author of A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad, appears on tonight Crime Beat Radio.
Bestselling author Del Quentin Wilber tells the inside story of how a homicide squad---a dedicated
, colorful team of detectives―does its almost impossible job
Twelve homicides, three police-involved shootings and the furious hunt for an especially brutal killer--February 2013 was a good month for murder in suburban Washington, D.C.
After gaining unparalleled access to the homicide unit in Prince George's County, which borders the nation's capital, Del Quentin Wilber begins shadowing the talented, often quirky detectives who get the call when a body falls. After a quiet couple of months, all hell breaks loose: suddenly every detective in the squad is scrambling to solve one shooting and stabbing after another. Meanwhile, the entire unit is obsessed with a stone-cold "red ball," a high-profile case involving a seventeen-year-old honor student attacked by a gunman who kicked down the door to her house and shot her in her bed.
Murder is the police investigator's ultimate crucible: to solve a killing, a detective must speak for the dead. More than any recent book, A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad, shows what it takes to succeed when the stakes couldn't possibly be higher.
Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex-mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world’s most fascinating subject: crime.
Bestselling author Del Quentin Wilber tells the inside story of how a homicide squad---a dedicated
, colorful team of detectives―does its almost impossible job
Twelve homicides, three police-involved shootings and the furious hunt for an especially brutal killer--February 2013 was a good month for murder in suburban Washington, D.C.
After gaining unparalleled access to the homicide unit in Prince George's County, which borders the nation's capital, Del Quentin Wilber begins shadowing the talented, often quirky detectives who get the call when a body falls. After a quiet couple of months, all hell breaks loose: suddenly every detective in the squad is scrambling to solve one shooting and stabbing after another. Meanwhile, the entire unit is obsessed with a stone-cold "red ball," a high-profile case involving a seventeen-year-old honor student attacked by a gunman who kicked down the door to her house and shot her in her bed.
Murder is the police investigator's ultimate crucible: to solve a killing, a detective must speak for the dead. More than any recent book, A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad, shows what it takes to succeed when the stakes couldn't possibly be higher.
Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex-mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world’s most fascinating subject: crime.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Just as with The Mob, Extortion is a Top ISIS Money-maker
Despite territorial losses last year and declining oil revenues, ISIS remains financially strong, primarily because it has borrowed a page from the Mafia and stepped up one of its money-makers: extortion.
A new report on ISIS finances from a European think tank, the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT), says extortion is now the primary revenue generator for what it calls “one of the most powerful groups in the recent history of terrorism,” with some 8 million people under its control in Syria and Iraq.
“ISIS exerts its authority over a wide range of industrial and commercial activities, natural resources and raw materials, from oil to agricultural products, including minerals,” the report says. “While the exploitation of these natural reserves constitutes one of its primary sources of financing, the majority of its funds currently comes from widespread extortion from the population under its control, mainly in the form of taxes, confiscations and fees.”
CAT says that the radical Islamic terror group uses these resources to finance its military efforts and fund its expansion, especially into Libya, while remaining self-sufficient.
Like the mob groups Camorra and ‘Ndarangheta in Italy and drug cartels in Mexico, ISIS relies on a diversified set of criminal activities, but extortion has become all-important to its survival.
What ISIS calls taxes and fees go beyond normal government levies. In addition to a tax on all economic activity and revenues and zakat, a tax on income and wealth observant Muslims must pay, ISIS raises funds with other levies. They include: a tax of from 10 percent to 50 percent on the salaries of Syrian or Iraqi government employees living in areas controlled by the Islamic State; a tax for protecting religious minorities; multiples taxes on agricultural products at various points in the value chain; custom duties on trucks crossing into ISIS-controlled territory; and fees for water, electricity and phones. Homes of dignitaries and people fleeing are confiscated and looted, the report says.
ISIS also uses its strict interpretation of sharia law to squeeze the populace it controls through fines and penalties for “transgressions,” according to CAT.
CAT estimates that ISIS oil revenue for 2015 was about $600 million, compared with more than $1 billion in 2014. It attributed the drop to air strikes by coalition and Russian forces on refining, storage and transport facilities.
To compensate for that loss, ISIS has stepped up extortion, earning about $800 million in 2015, compared to $360 million in 2014, the CAT report says.
Including money made from other criminal behavior such as kidnapping and ransoms and trafficking in antiquities and humans, CAT estimates that the total revenues of the Islamic State dropped from $2.9 billion in 2014 to $2.4 billion in 2015. Despite setbacks, it said the economic collapse of ISIS is far off and its military defeat is not “imminent.”
Thanks to Ciro Scotti.
A new report on ISIS finances from a European think tank, the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT), says extortion is now the primary revenue generator for what it calls “one of the most powerful groups in the recent history of terrorism,” with some 8 million people under its control in Syria and Iraq.
“ISIS exerts its authority over a wide range of industrial and commercial activities, natural resources and raw materials, from oil to agricultural products, including minerals,” the report says. “While the exploitation of these natural reserves constitutes one of its primary sources of financing, the majority of its funds currently comes from widespread extortion from the population under its control, mainly in the form of taxes, confiscations and fees.”
CAT says that the radical Islamic terror group uses these resources to finance its military efforts and fund its expansion, especially into Libya, while remaining self-sufficient.
Like the mob groups Camorra and ‘Ndarangheta in Italy and drug cartels in Mexico, ISIS relies on a diversified set of criminal activities, but extortion has become all-important to its survival.
What ISIS calls taxes and fees go beyond normal government levies. In addition to a tax on all economic activity and revenues and zakat, a tax on income and wealth observant Muslims must pay, ISIS raises funds with other levies. They include: a tax of from 10 percent to 50 percent on the salaries of Syrian or Iraqi government employees living in areas controlled by the Islamic State; a tax for protecting religious minorities; multiples taxes on agricultural products at various points in the value chain; custom duties on trucks crossing into ISIS-controlled territory; and fees for water, electricity and phones. Homes of dignitaries and people fleeing are confiscated and looted, the report says.
ISIS also uses its strict interpretation of sharia law to squeeze the populace it controls through fines and penalties for “transgressions,” according to CAT.
CAT estimates that ISIS oil revenue for 2015 was about $600 million, compared with more than $1 billion in 2014. It attributed the drop to air strikes by coalition and Russian forces on refining, storage and transport facilities.
To compensate for that loss, ISIS has stepped up extortion, earning about $800 million in 2015, compared to $360 million in 2014, the CAT report says.
Including money made from other criminal behavior such as kidnapping and ransoms and trafficking in antiquities and humans, CAT estimates that the total revenues of the Islamic State dropped from $2.9 billion in 2014 to $2.4 billion in 2015. Despite setbacks, it said the economic collapse of ISIS is far off and its military defeat is not “imminent.”
Thanks to Ciro Scotti.
The Italian Mafia is Funding ISIS Terrorism
The Italian Mafia and an Islamic terrorist group meet up at a hash-smuggling operation… It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but unfortunately, according to the anti-Mafia and antiterrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti, it’s the grim reality in the country of Italy. The Italian prosecutor claims that hash is being purchased by the Italian Mafia from Libya, which is being smuggled in by the Islamic terrorist sect ISIS.
The North African hash is being used a major source of income for the Islamic State, and the Italian Mafia is apparently a loyal customer. It’s quite profitable for the Mafia as well, which earns about 32 billion euros ($36.10 billion) a year through their illegal drug trades, a sizable portion of which is made up of hash and cannabis. It’s seems reasonable for Roberti to assume that ISIS is heavily involved. According to Ahmad Moussalli, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut, territorial expansion by ISIS on the Syrian border has put them in control of a vast amount of cannabis fields.
Instead of trying to crack down even more viciously on Italy’s use of cannabis and hash, which the government already spends millions on combating, Roberti has come forth with a much more level-headed approach. Instead, the prosecutor believes that the time has come for Italy to rescind their harsh marijuana laws, citing that decriminalization would negatively affect both the Mafia and the Islamic State.
The decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help land a potentially critical blow to the funding of ISIS, which according to a recently published IHS Conflict Monitor report, has already dropped from $80 million in monthly revenue to $56 million since the middle of 2015. According to Roberti, a major portion of the terrorist cell’s revenue comes from drug trafficking, and decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help put a major dent in that.
To Roberti, it makes sense to persecute the Mafia and the Islamic State in a similar manner, seeing as that Italian Mafia families, particularly in the south, have been long proponents of terrorist activities. The Mafia and ISIS could be more intertwined than it would seem at first glance, as both are heavily dependent on drug trafficking as a revenue source. But does Roberti have a sound argument for decriminalization? I would have to argue that he does.
"We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking. On the contrary, it's increasing," said Roberti. "Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?"
Not only does Roberti argue that the Mafia is a potential revenue source for ISIS, he also believes that Italy’s young Muslim community is in serious danger of becoming radicalized as well. This radicalization may be much more prevalent if the terrorist organization is receiving a vast amount of money from the Italian Mafia. According to the most recent data from the Italian government, approximately 3.5 million Italians between the ages of 15-64 used cannabis in 2014, and as long as it remains strictly illegal, the Italian Mafia network will certainly have a black market void to fill.
Recent reports in Italy have shown that the most prominent Sicilian Mafia family, called Cosa Nostra, has quite the operation setup already. The organization has figured out a way to import and distribute hashish without getting themselves heavily involved. State prosecutors from Palermo have stated that once the hashish is imported, it is then distributed by Nigerian criminal organizations that have immigrated to Italy. These African immigrants are reportedly operating under Cosa Nostra, doing all of the street work for the mob bosses.
As these long-established crime organizations like Cosa Nostra continue to operate under the shadows, it will continue to be a costly and steep challenge for the Italian government to overcome. But, if Italy considers the decriminalization of cannabis and hashish, they could effectively defeat the crime organization within their country, as well the possible terrorist threats that creep right outside their borders.
Thanks to Tyler Koslow.
The North African hash is being used a major source of income for the Islamic State, and the Italian Mafia is apparently a loyal customer. It’s quite profitable for the Mafia as well, which earns about 32 billion euros ($36.10 billion) a year through their illegal drug trades, a sizable portion of which is made up of hash and cannabis. It’s seems reasonable for Roberti to assume that ISIS is heavily involved. According to Ahmad Moussalli, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut, territorial expansion by ISIS on the Syrian border has put them in control of a vast amount of cannabis fields.
Instead of trying to crack down even more viciously on Italy’s use of cannabis and hash, which the government already spends millions on combating, Roberti has come forth with a much more level-headed approach. Instead, the prosecutor believes that the time has come for Italy to rescind their harsh marijuana laws, citing that decriminalization would negatively affect both the Mafia and the Islamic State.
The decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help land a potentially critical blow to the funding of ISIS, which according to a recently published IHS Conflict Monitor report, has already dropped from $80 million in monthly revenue to $56 million since the middle of 2015. According to Roberti, a major portion of the terrorist cell’s revenue comes from drug trafficking, and decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help put a major dent in that.
To Roberti, it makes sense to persecute the Mafia and the Islamic State in a similar manner, seeing as that Italian Mafia families, particularly in the south, have been long proponents of terrorist activities. The Mafia and ISIS could be more intertwined than it would seem at first glance, as both are heavily dependent on drug trafficking as a revenue source. But does Roberti have a sound argument for decriminalization? I would have to argue that he does.
"We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking. On the contrary, it's increasing," said Roberti. "Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?"
Not only does Roberti argue that the Mafia is a potential revenue source for ISIS, he also believes that Italy’s young Muslim community is in serious danger of becoming radicalized as well. This radicalization may be much more prevalent if the terrorist organization is receiving a vast amount of money from the Italian Mafia. According to the most recent data from the Italian government, approximately 3.5 million Italians between the ages of 15-64 used cannabis in 2014, and as long as it remains strictly illegal, the Italian Mafia network will certainly have a black market void to fill.
Recent reports in Italy have shown that the most prominent Sicilian Mafia family, called Cosa Nostra, has quite the operation setup already. The organization has figured out a way to import and distribute hashish without getting themselves heavily involved. State prosecutors from Palermo have stated that once the hashish is imported, it is then distributed by Nigerian criminal organizations that have immigrated to Italy. These African immigrants are reportedly operating under Cosa Nostra, doing all of the street work for the mob bosses.
As these long-established crime organizations like Cosa Nostra continue to operate under the shadows, it will continue to be a costly and steep challenge for the Italian government to overcome. But, if Italy considers the decriminalization of cannabis and hashish, they could effectively defeat the crime organization within their country, as well the possible terrorist threats that creep right outside their borders.
Thanks to Tyler Koslow.
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