A Mafia turncoat who ushered in one of the biggest Mob trials in US history is now sharing tales of his former life as a streetwise soldier for the infamous Chicago Outfit, during the fascinating two-hour Family Secrets tour around the Windy City.
‘It’s not just a Mob story, it’s a family story, too,’ says Frank Calabrese Jr., who became so desperate to escape life in organized crime that he ratted out his own father, the Outfit’s Chinatown crew boss, Frank Calabrese Sr., by wearing a wire for the FBI and testifying against him at trial in 2007.
‘Nobody likes to hear their family called dysfunctional and nobody likes to be called a rat, but it is what it is,’ says Frank Jr., 58. ‘I hope that people can get takeaways from it.’
The Family Secrets tour operates several times a week and kicks off from Chicago Chop House in the heart of downtown. Frank Jr., perched at the front of a 37-seat bus, doesn’t hold back on exposing what Mob life is like, warts and all, as he revisits scenes from his family’s crimes and other landmarks.
‘Some things are embarrassing, but in order for people to understand, I have to be straight up with everybody on everything,’ he notes. ‘It does take a lot out of me, because I’m seeing these stories as I’m telling them.
While the bus winds its way throughout the city, including Little Italy, Chinatown and other neighborhoods, Frank Jr. relates his tale of growing up here with a dad who could be kind and loving one minute, then ‘sociopathic’ and ‘explosive’ the next.
He starts the tour with recollections of how Frank Sr., a made man who went by the nickname ‘Frankie Breeze,’ began grooming him at a young age to become proficient in loansharking, gambling and the Chicago way.
One tale he spins is the day Frank Sr. appeared to get into an altercation with a man in the family’s driveway. Upset, Frank Jr., then a teenager, ran and grabbed a baseball bat from the garage and snuck up on the duo.
‘I could see my dad look, and he had this little smirk on his face, like he was all proud of me,’ says Frank, adding there was no fight that day. ‘I didn’t know what my dad was capable of at the time, but years later I was like, “Boy, that guy was lucky.”’
Soon the pair started going on father-son field trips so Frank Jr. could watch and learn. One of his final tests occurred when his dad came home from his ‘so-called work’ and brought him into the bathroom. Frank Sr. turned on the ceiling fan and faucets in case the government was listening.
‘Son, we just killed two guys,’ Frank Jr. recalls his dad telling him as he watched the teen’s face carefully to see what his reaction to the news would be.
All Frank Jr. could think at the time was how his buddies’ fathers probably weren’t having similar conversations in their houses. ‘I’m so excited about it, but I can’t run and tell anybody,’ he says.
Very quickly, recounts Frank Jr. as the bus winds its way through Chicago traffic, he graduated to ‘violence, arson, collections’ and other sketchy gangland behavior. ‘I eventually bought in to all of this, and I was good at it.’
The longer Frank Jr. spent under the tutelage of his ruthless dad, the more Outfit tactics he added to his growing arsenal.
One trick Frank Sr. and other Mob bosses often employed was to tell the aspiring Mafioso they were on their way to kill somebody, even if they had no intention of carrying out a hit.‘They’re just testing you to see if you’re really up to it,’ explains Frank Jr., who today credits his uncle, Nick Calabrese — his dad’s brother and fellow made man — with protecting him from committing the most terrible of crimes: murder.‘I didn’t realize it until years later, but he saved me from my father,’ says Frank Jr. ‘He saved me from crossing a line I couldn’t cross back over.’
That doesn’t mean Frank Jr. didn’t learn how to test his friends’ loyalty by producing a dead body.
On the Family Secrets tour, Frank recounts for his guests the day his dad instructed him to place some sandbags in the trunk of his car and throw a sheet and shovel over them. He then told him to pull up to his pals and tell them he accidentally hit and killed a guy and he needed help burying the body. ‘Let me know how many guys get in the car,’ Frank Sr. told his son.
Hollywood has always played a large role in glorifying Mafia life, and Frank Jr. takes time during the tour to spin some of his favorite related tales, including his memory of seeing Casino, the 1995 film based in part on the Chicago Mob.
“It’s funny, because when I’m watching the movie in the theater I could see that they’re wrong about a lot of stuff, but I had to sit there and shut up because who am I gonna tell?” he laughs.
Talking about the movie, which showcases the Tangiers Casino, the cinematic substitute for the Chicago Outfit’s preferred real-life Vegas hangout, the Stardust, sparks another of Frank Jr.’s recollections.
In 1972, when he was 12, says Frank Jr., he traveled with his dad to Sin City and loved spending his time at the Circus Circus Hotel & Resort’s video arcade. Proving he was developing the chops for manipulation, Frank Jr. says he would wait for his pop to join 20 or 30 of his associates at the dinner table before asking him for money to go play games ‘My dad would give me three or four dollars,’ recalls Frank. ‘Then the guys would say, “Come here kid.” I’d leave there with like $200 or $300 dollars in my pocket!’
On occasion, West Coast royalty would head to Chicago, and Frank Jr. takes his tour bus to Rush Street, once the place to see and be seen for major entertainers, like rumored Mob man Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra, says Frank Jr, had connections to the Mafia, and he claims the Calabreses had ‘direct ties’ to Ol’ Blue Eyes, a Chicago club-scene favorite in the ‘50s and ‘60s, because Frank Sr. was close to the crooner’s longtime comedic opening act, Pat Henry. However, he adds, ‘that doesn’t mean Sinatra was involved in doing illegal activities.’
Despite his family’s familiarity with the glitz and glamour that comes with organized crime, Frank Jr. explains that working in the Mob actually required him to live life under the radar to keep the heat off his family and associates.
‘You learn deception,’ he says. For instance, instead of three-piece suits, fedoras and flashy jewelry, he and his cohorts wore baseball caps, ski jackets and eyeglasses to blend in with their surroundings and not appear too flashy. ‘We didn’t drive Mercedes and BMWs, like you see in the movies. We drove Fords and Chevys.’
And when the older Mob bosses got together to discuss business, it wouldn’t be at a fancy social club.‘They would meet at McDonald’s,’ says Frank Jr. ‘If you walked past them you would think they must be talking about retirement, but they could have been planning a high-profile murder.’
Not that anyone would understand if they happened to overhear. ‘We were so aware of the FBI that everything we did was in code,’ he points out. ‘I could talk to my father in a conversation and he has four names and I have four nicknames. You’d think we were talking about six to eight people and we were really just talking about one another.’
In fact, a discussion about recipes could really be about a hit.
What’s not coded on the tour is Frank Jr.’s refusal to sugarcoat the Mob’s deadlier side, and he goes into detail about the rise and fall of the Outfit’s most infamous upper echelon of villains, including Sam Giancana, who ruled from 1957 through 1966 and was alleged to have played a part in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Giancana’s fatal mistake, says Frank Jr., was he became too high profile. In 1975, Giancana was supposedly meeting somebody he trusted in the basement kitchen of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. He wound up dead, shot multiple times in the head and neck. Frank Jr. claims he and the FBI ‘know who did it’ and it was somebody nobody would ever suspect — but he refuses to tell.
Frank Jr. does spill information on his father’s sordid history of hits. He says he found out later in life that Frank Sr. was part of a crew of hit man dispatched to take care of guys ‘causing problems.’ His preferred method of killing, says his son, was ‘to strangle you and cut your throat ear to ear,’ a method Frank Sr. liked to call the Calabrese necktie.
Despite the intense times, life in the Mafia was filled with just as many boring days and nights, especially when it came to casing targets.
According to Frank Jr., surveillance often included getting a windowed van and putting a refrigerator or dishwasher box inside with little holes poked through the cardboard. One of the Outfit’s henchmen would have the unfortunate task of sitting inside the box with two jugs — one for drinking water and another for waste — and staring out at their target to gather information for as long as 24-hour stretches.
Life in the Mob also meant always looking over your shoulder and making sure the FBI wasn’t on your tail. But if they were, Frank Sr. ‘had a sense of humor,’ and he once wrangled the unwitting owner of a Greek diner into helping him throw off the Feds.
Frank Sr. went into the man’s restaurant, sat at the counter and ordered a cup of soup. When he finished, he asked to speak to the owner, who he hugged and shook his hand. When the proprietor asked if they knew each other, the mobster told him no and that he just wanted to compliment him on his fine food. He then darted out the door.
The FBI quickly descended on the diner and its confused owner. Agents demanded to know why he was speaking to Frank Sr., but they refused to buy the man’s pleas of ignorance.
‘Poor guy,’ laughs Frank Jr. ‘My father always used to do that.’
Other times, the mobsters wouldn’t have to worry about police following them because they would head to an auto yard, steal license plates from a car of similar make and model to what they were going to use in a crime and swap them in. ‘If the cops run the number while we’re driving it matches the car and it matches the color so they’re not going to pull us over,’ explains Frank Jr.
One of Frank Jr.’s favorite stories he recounts on the tour is about how his ‘master thief’ father loved to rob weddings. Frank Sr. would take advantage of the fact everyone was drinking and not paying attention to steal the purses filled with cash set aside for the newlyweds. Other times, Frank Sr. would be more brazen and bring a crew to help line up guests against the wall and steal their jewelry.
‘I don’t talk about this like I’m proud of it, but it was what we knew,’ explains Frank Jr.
As time passed, the elder Calabrese became increasingly paranoid and violent, and his son grew desperate to escape the Outfit. ‘I feared my dad more than anything,’ he reveals of the man who once held a loaded gun to his head and threatened to kill him.
Salvation, Frank Jr. says, finally arrived in 1995 when the feds indicted him, his father, and several Outfit crewmembers. He pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering, extortion, mail fraud, perjury and intent to defraud the IRS. The son and dad were eventually incarcerated together in Milan, Michigan, where Frank Jr., sentenced to serve 57 months, hatched a risky plan to free himself from his father’s omnipotence.
He mailed a letter to the FBI on July 27, 1998, and offered to help agents entrap the killer. In what became known as 'Operation Family Secrets', Frank Jr. agreed to wear a wire behind bars and tempt his dad into talking about several gangland murders.
‘I just wanted my father to leave me alone, and the only way I could figure out how to do that was to keep him locked up,’ he says of the life-changing realization.
Frank Jr. was released from prison in February 2000. Seven years later, the 'Family Secrets' trial he was responsible for sparking created a firestorm both in the press and behind the scenes. After testifying on the stand against his dad, Frank Jr. went into a private room, where he had tears rolling down his face because he realized their courtroom confrontation was probably the last time he would see the man alive.
Frank Calabrese Sr., found responsible for 13 murders — likely a fraction of the number he actually committed — died in solitary confinement of heart failure on Christmas Day 2012.
Confirmation he made the right choice by ratting on his dad came when Frank Jr., who wrote the 2011 memoir Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family, learned Frank Sr. tried to put out a $150,000 contract on his head before he died. He believes one of the big reasons he’s still alive to tell the tale is nobody trusted the cagey Mob boss to actually pay up once the job was completed.
Now ‘every day is like a gift,’ Frank Jr. says. ‘I try to be a good person and I try to surround myself with good people.’
And he gives tours and shares his story as a way to somehow make amends with his dark past.
‘I have to deal every day with what I know,’ Frank Jr. explains. ‘I’m not trying to glorify something. I want people to realize you can change your life around; I want to do something good.’
Thanks to Aaron Rasmussen.
Friday, August 03, 2018
Thursday, August 02, 2018
Reputed Mexican Mafia Leader Allegedly Ordered Killing of his Lieutenant from Prison
Prosecutors announced the indictment of eight alleged members of the Orange County Mexican Mafia involving a robbery that left a man dead and an attempted murder of one of their own in Placentia.
Suspected gang leader Johnny Martinez, 42, was incarcerated in the Salinas Valley State Prison in Monterey County when he allegedly orchestrated the crimes in 2017. He was already in prison for murder and two counts of attempted murder, officials said.
Martinez communicated with his No. 2 man, Gregory David Munoz, a 30-year-old inmate at the Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County, in connection with the murder of Robert Rios outside the victim's Placentia home, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office.
Munoz allegedly contacted three other accused gang members-Ysrael Jacob Cordova, 33, Ricardo Valenzuela, 38, and Augustine Velasquez, 22-to take money and drugs from Rios, according to officials.
Munoz then directed a man named Charles Coghill to retrieve a Chrysler 300 and semiautomatic firearms in Santa Ana, drive to an Anaheim hotel and pick up Cordova, Valenzuela and Velasquez on Jan. 19, 2017, OCDA said.
Cordova, Valenzuela and Velasquez then allegedly got out of the vehicle armed with the weapons, walked through Rios' front gate and confronted the victim in the front yard. Cordova shot Rios in the chest and left leg before he and the two others fled, according to prosecutors.
Emergency responders found the victim unresponsive outside the residence. He was later declared dead of a gunshot wound, OCDA said.
Security cameras at the home captured the crime, the agency said.
On or around July 28, 2017, Martinez allegedly directed Frank Mosqueda, 39, of writing a "kite" or message authorizing the murder of Munoz, his former top associate who had been released from prison.
Martinez read a text message from Munoz saying he was at his girlfriend's home in Placentia, according to OCDA. He then texted 30-year-old Omar Mejia, an inmate at Calipatria State Prison, to organize Munoz's murder, the agency said.
Mejia then allegedly asked Mosqueda, who was living in Huntington Beach, and Robert Martinez of Corona to commit the murder.
That evening, the two met in Placentia and drove to Munoz's location, OCDA said.
Shortly after 11:11 p.m., the pair assaulted Munoz and two female victims outside a home in Placentia, according to prosecutors. Mosqueda allegedly shot Munoz eight times, hitting him seven times in the legs back and arm. He also aimed the gun in the foreheads of the the other victims, OCDA said.
Munoz was taken to the hospital and survived his injuries, the agency added.
Placentia police arrested Mosqueda at his parole office in Irvine on Aug 8, 2017. Robert Martinez had been in custody at Orange County Jail, according to OCDA.
Johnny Martinez was charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, murder, first-degree residential burglary and street terrorism in Rios' murder. If convicted as charged, he could face life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
In the second incident, he was charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and street terrorism. He could face 75 years to life in state prison if convicted of those charges.
Charges against Munoz, Cordova, Valenzuela and Velasquez included conspiracy to commit a crime, murder, first-degree residential burglary and street terrorism. All of them could face life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
Robert Martinez, Mejia, Mosqueda were charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of of assault with a semiautomatic firearms and street terrorism. Robert Martinez and Mosqueda were also charged with one count each of being a felon in possession of a firearms.
They could face 75 years to life in state prison.
Coghill, the accused driver in the January 2017 murder, was charged in a separate case, according to OCDA.
"Our recommendation to the [Department of Corrections] is that these people be put some place and watched in some manner so they can't make these communications," O.C. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said.
The Mexican Mafia became "much more active and violent" since Johnny Martinez took control of the Orange County Jails in 2016, according to the agency. "You can't really predict who's the next straw man to come along when one gets deposed," Rackauckas said.
Suspected gang leader Johnny Martinez, 42, was incarcerated in the Salinas Valley State Prison in Monterey County when he allegedly orchestrated the crimes in 2017. He was already in prison for murder and two counts of attempted murder, officials said.
Martinez communicated with his No. 2 man, Gregory David Munoz, a 30-year-old inmate at the Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County, in connection with the murder of Robert Rios outside the victim's Placentia home, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office.
Munoz allegedly contacted three other accused gang members-Ysrael Jacob Cordova, 33, Ricardo Valenzuela, 38, and Augustine Velasquez, 22-to take money and drugs from Rios, according to officials.
Munoz then directed a man named Charles Coghill to retrieve a Chrysler 300 and semiautomatic firearms in Santa Ana, drive to an Anaheim hotel and pick up Cordova, Valenzuela and Velasquez on Jan. 19, 2017, OCDA said.
Cordova, Valenzuela and Velasquez then allegedly got out of the vehicle armed with the weapons, walked through Rios' front gate and confronted the victim in the front yard. Cordova shot Rios in the chest and left leg before he and the two others fled, according to prosecutors.
Emergency responders found the victim unresponsive outside the residence. He was later declared dead of a gunshot wound, OCDA said.
Security cameras at the home captured the crime, the agency said.
On or around July 28, 2017, Martinez allegedly directed Frank Mosqueda, 39, of writing a "kite" or message authorizing the murder of Munoz, his former top associate who had been released from prison.
Martinez read a text message from Munoz saying he was at his girlfriend's home in Placentia, according to OCDA. He then texted 30-year-old Omar Mejia, an inmate at Calipatria State Prison, to organize Munoz's murder, the agency said.
Mejia then allegedly asked Mosqueda, who was living in Huntington Beach, and Robert Martinez of Corona to commit the murder.
That evening, the two met in Placentia and drove to Munoz's location, OCDA said.
Shortly after 11:11 p.m., the pair assaulted Munoz and two female victims outside a home in Placentia, according to prosecutors. Mosqueda allegedly shot Munoz eight times, hitting him seven times in the legs back and arm. He also aimed the gun in the foreheads of the the other victims, OCDA said.
Munoz was taken to the hospital and survived his injuries, the agency added.
Placentia police arrested Mosqueda at his parole office in Irvine on Aug 8, 2017. Robert Martinez had been in custody at Orange County Jail, according to OCDA.
Johnny Martinez was charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, murder, first-degree residential burglary and street terrorism in Rios' murder. If convicted as charged, he could face life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
In the second incident, he was charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and street terrorism. He could face 75 years to life in state prison if convicted of those charges.
Charges against Munoz, Cordova, Valenzuela and Velasquez included conspiracy to commit a crime, murder, first-degree residential burglary and street terrorism. All of them could face life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
Robert Martinez, Mejia, Mosqueda were charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of of assault with a semiautomatic firearms and street terrorism. Robert Martinez and Mosqueda were also charged with one count each of being a felon in possession of a firearms.
They could face 75 years to life in state prison.
Coghill, the accused driver in the January 2017 murder, was charged in a separate case, according to OCDA.
"Our recommendation to the [Department of Corrections] is that these people be put some place and watched in some manner so they can't make these communications," O.C. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said.
The Mexican Mafia became "much more active and violent" since Johnny Martinez took control of the Orange County Jails in 2016, according to the agency. "You can't really predict who's the next straw man to come along when one gets deposed," Rackauckas said.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Operational Guide for Preventing Targeted School Violence Released by @SecretService Releases
The United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center released another tool in support of the effort to end the prevalence of targeted violence effecting the Nation, the world, and most importantly – our schools. ENHANCING SCHOOL SAFETY USING A THREAT ASSESSMENT MODEL – An Operational Guide for Preventing Targeted School Violence, was developed to provide fundamental direction on how to prevent incidents of targeted school violence.
The guide provides schools and communities with a framework to identify students of concern, assess their risk for engaging in violence, and identify intervention strategies to mitigate that risk.
The Secret Service created the National Threat Assessment Center in 1998 to focus on research, training and threat assessments related to various forms of targeted violence. Following the tragedy at Columbine High School in April 1999, the Secret Service partnered with the Department of Education to study 37 incidents of targeted violence that occurred at elementary and secondary schools. The goal of that study, the Safe School Initiative (SSI), was to gather and analyze accurate and useful information about the thinking and behavior of students who commit acts of violence. The findings of the SSI led to the establishment of threat assessment programs in schools – something the Secret Service remains fervently committed to.
“The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting tragedy served as the impetus to go beyond our past work and go in depth regarding the how - how do we solve this epidemic?” said Secret Service Director R. D. “Tex” Alles. “The report truly is an operational guide and I am confident that if embraced and followed by our Nation’s communities and schools, that we will together reduce the occurrence of violence and the tragic loss of life.”
To ensure no school goes overlooked, the new guide is available to the public and for download at DHS.gov/school-safety-and-security and www.SecretService.gov. The Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center will also be printing and distributing copies to schools across the country.
This report is not the end of the Secret Service’s work to prevent school shootings and targeted violence. Work is currently underway to release an updated comprehensive study with an anticipated completion date in the spring of 2019.
The guide provides schools and communities with a framework to identify students of concern, assess their risk for engaging in violence, and identify intervention strategies to mitigate that risk.
The Secret Service created the National Threat Assessment Center in 1998 to focus on research, training and threat assessments related to various forms of targeted violence. Following the tragedy at Columbine High School in April 1999, the Secret Service partnered with the Department of Education to study 37 incidents of targeted violence that occurred at elementary and secondary schools. The goal of that study, the Safe School Initiative (SSI), was to gather and analyze accurate and useful information about the thinking and behavior of students who commit acts of violence. The findings of the SSI led to the establishment of threat assessment programs in schools – something the Secret Service remains fervently committed to.
“The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting tragedy served as the impetus to go beyond our past work and go in depth regarding the how - how do we solve this epidemic?” said Secret Service Director R. D. “Tex” Alles. “The report truly is an operational guide and I am confident that if embraced and followed by our Nation’s communities and schools, that we will together reduce the occurrence of violence and the tragic loss of life.”
To ensure no school goes overlooked, the new guide is available to the public and for download at DHS.gov/school-safety-and-security and www.SecretService.gov. The Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center will also be printing and distributing copies to schools across the country.
This report is not the end of the Secret Service’s work to prevent school shootings and targeted violence. Work is currently underway to release an updated comprehensive study with an anticipated completion date in the spring of 2019.
Monday, July 16, 2018
5 Reputed Members of Colombo Crime Family Indicted for Racketeering, Extortion, and Related Charges
A 32-count indictment was unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charging two inducted members and two associates of the Colombo organized crime family (the “Colombo family”) with racketeering, including predicate acts of extortion, extortionate collection, money laundering and illegal gambling. The indictment also charges one inducted member of the Gambino organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra (the “Gambino family”) with extortionate collection and a related conspiracy. The indictment relates to the defendants’ alleged criminal activities in Brooklyn, Staten Island and elsewhere between December 2010 and June 2018.
The defendants—Jerry Ciauri, also known as “Fat Jerry,” a member of the Colombo family, Vito Difalco, also known as “Victor” and “The Mask,” a member of the Colombo family, Salvatore Disano, also known as “Sal Heaven,” an associate of the Colombo family, Anthony Licata, also known as “Anthony Suits,” a member of the Gambino family, and Joseph Maratea, an associate of the Colombo family—were arrested arraigned before Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr.
Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), and James P. O’Neill, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD), announced the charges.
“This investigation shows that members of La Cosa Nostra continue to prey on members of our community, enriching themselves and their criminal network by making extortionate loans and using threats of violence to collect,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “Rooting out traditional organized crime’s dangerous and corrupting influence continues to be a high priority for this Office and our law enforcement partners.”
“As alleged in the indictment, these defendants instilled fear in the hearts of their victims through threats of violence,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney. “These extortionate threats are the trademark of the mafia’s power, but in the end all it does is expose their weakness. While criminal organizations such as La Costa Nostra continue to work hard to imbed fear and danger within our communities, the FBI New York Joint Organized Crime Task Force is working even harder to ensure the public’s safety and security.”
“The mob is certainly diminished, but it is not dead,” stated NYPD Police Commissioner O’Neill. “These groups require our constant vigilance. By working in close collaboration with our law enforcement partners in the FBI and the Eastern District, the NYPD will continue to ensure public safety through aggressive investigation and the dismantling of these types of organized-crime organizations.”
As alleged in the indictment and court filings, Ciauri is charged with making extortionate loans and with using extortionate means to collect debts from six victims, as well as laundering the proceeds of his loansharking business in order to conceal his involvement.
Disano is charged with using extortionate means to collect debts from three victims and with assisting Ciauri in laundering the proceeds. On one occasion, Ciauri threatened to shoot a loansharking partner who had fallen behind making payments to Ciauri. He subsequently recruited another associate to stalk that partner. On another occasion, Ciauri enlisted an associate to slash a victim’s tires in the middle of the night.
Difalco is charged with making extortionate loans and with using extortionate means to collect debts from eight victims. In one conversation, Difalco threatened a loansharking victim by telling him that he had a past history of setting on fire the cars of those who failed to make timely payments; Difalco told the victim, “Good things happen to me when I stay calm see like I was by your house the other day…. Four years ago, I would have put the Benz on fire.”
Maratea is charged with using extortionate means to collect debts from five victims. To ensure that Maratea and Difalco could find their debtors, Difalco and Maratea required debtors to provide a copy of their driver’s licenses and contact information.
Each of the defendants faces a maximum of 20 years’ imprisonment on the racketeering, money laundering and extortionate collection offenses. The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s Organized Crime & Gangs Section. Assistant United States Attorneys Elizabeth A. Geddes and Mathew S. Miller are in charge of the prosecution.
The Defendants:
The defendants—Jerry Ciauri, also known as “Fat Jerry,” a member of the Colombo family, Vito Difalco, also known as “Victor” and “The Mask,” a member of the Colombo family, Salvatore Disano, also known as “Sal Heaven,” an associate of the Colombo family, Anthony Licata, also known as “Anthony Suits,” a member of the Gambino family, and Joseph Maratea, an associate of the Colombo family—were arrested arraigned before Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr.
Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), and James P. O’Neill, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD), announced the charges.
“This investigation shows that members of La Cosa Nostra continue to prey on members of our community, enriching themselves and their criminal network by making extortionate loans and using threats of violence to collect,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “Rooting out traditional organized crime’s dangerous and corrupting influence continues to be a high priority for this Office and our law enforcement partners.”
“As alleged in the indictment, these defendants instilled fear in the hearts of their victims through threats of violence,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney. “These extortionate threats are the trademark of the mafia’s power, but in the end all it does is expose their weakness. While criminal organizations such as La Costa Nostra continue to work hard to imbed fear and danger within our communities, the FBI New York Joint Organized Crime Task Force is working even harder to ensure the public’s safety and security.”
“The mob is certainly diminished, but it is not dead,” stated NYPD Police Commissioner O’Neill. “These groups require our constant vigilance. By working in close collaboration with our law enforcement partners in the FBI and the Eastern District, the NYPD will continue to ensure public safety through aggressive investigation and the dismantling of these types of organized-crime organizations.”
As alleged in the indictment and court filings, Ciauri is charged with making extortionate loans and with using extortionate means to collect debts from six victims, as well as laundering the proceeds of his loansharking business in order to conceal his involvement.
Disano is charged with using extortionate means to collect debts from three victims and with assisting Ciauri in laundering the proceeds. On one occasion, Ciauri threatened to shoot a loansharking partner who had fallen behind making payments to Ciauri. He subsequently recruited another associate to stalk that partner. On another occasion, Ciauri enlisted an associate to slash a victim’s tires in the middle of the night.
Difalco is charged with making extortionate loans and with using extortionate means to collect debts from eight victims. In one conversation, Difalco threatened a loansharking victim by telling him that he had a past history of setting on fire the cars of those who failed to make timely payments; Difalco told the victim, “Good things happen to me when I stay calm see like I was by your house the other day…. Four years ago, I would have put the Benz on fire.”
Maratea is charged with using extortionate means to collect debts from five victims. To ensure that Maratea and Difalco could find their debtors, Difalco and Maratea required debtors to provide a copy of their driver’s licenses and contact information.
Each of the defendants faces a maximum of 20 years’ imprisonment on the racketeering, money laundering and extortionate collection offenses. The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The government’s case is being handled by the Office’s Organized Crime & Gangs Section. Assistant United States Attorneys Elizabeth A. Geddes and Mathew S. Miller are in charge of the prosecution.
The Defendants:
- JERRY CIAURI (also known as “Fat Jerry”) Age: 59 Brooklyn, New York
- VITO DIFALCO (also known as “Victor” and “The Mask”) Age: 63 Brooklyn, New York
- SALVATORE DISANO (also known as “Sal Heaven”) Age: 48 Brooklyn, New York
- ANTHONY LICATA (also known as “Anthony Suits”) Age: 49 Brooklyn, New York
- JOSEPH MARATEA Age: 42 Brooklyn, New York
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
The Good Mothers: The Story of the Three Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia #Ndrangheta
The electrifying, untold story of the women born into the most deadly and obscenely wealthy of the Italian mafias – and how they risked everything to bring it down
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The Calabrian Mafia—known as the ’Ndrangheta—is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls seventy percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals—supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists—and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union.
The ’Ndrangheta’s power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence—omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the ’Ndrangheta’s reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings—and worse—are routine.
In 2009, after one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s sexism might be its greatest flaw—and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children.
A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers: The Story of the Three Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia, is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.
.The Calabrian Mafia—known as the ’Ndrangheta—is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls seventy percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals—supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists—and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union.
The ’Ndrangheta’s power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence—omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the ’Ndrangheta’s reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings—and worse—are routine.
In 2009, after one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s sexism might be its greatest flaw—and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children.
A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers: The Story of the Three Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia, is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.
Monday, July 09, 2018
Where the Mob Bodies, Bootleggers and Blackmailers are Buried in the Lurid History of Chicago’s Prohibition Gangsters
In 1981, an FBI team visited Donald Trump to discuss his plans for a casino in Atlantic City. Trump admitted to having ‘read in the press’ and ‘heard from acquaintances’ that the Mob ran Atlantic City. At the time, Trump’s acquaintances included his lawyer Roy Cohn, whose other clients included those charming New York businessmen Antony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno and Paul ‘Big Paul’ Castellano.
‘I’ve known some tough cookies over the years,’ Trump boasted in 2016. ‘I’ve known the people that make the politicians you and I deal with every day look like little babies.’ No one minded too much. Organised crime is a tapeworm in the gut of American commerce, lodged since Prohibition. The Volstead Act of January 1920 raised the cost of a barrel of beer from $3.50 to $55. By 1927, the profits from organised crime were $500 million in Chicago alone. The production, distribution and retailing of alcohol was worth $200 million. Gambling brought in $167 million. Another $133 million came from labour racketeering, extortion and brothel-keeping.
In 1920
, Chicago’s underworld was divided between a South Side gang, led by the Italian immigrant ‘Big Jim’ Colosino, and the Irish and Jewish gangs on the North Side. Like many hands-on managers, Big Jim had trouble delegating, even when it came to minor tasks such as beating up nosy journalists. When the North Side gang moved into bootlegging, Colesino’s nephew John Torrio suggested that the South Side gang compete for a share of the profits. Colesino, fearing a turf war, refused. So Torrio murdered his uncle and started bootlegging.
Torrio was a multi-ethnic employer. Americans consider this a virtue, even among murderers. The Italian ‘Roxy’ Vanilli and the Irishman ‘Chicken Harry’ Cullet rubbed along just fine with ‘Jew Kid’ Grabiner and Mike ‘The Greek’ Potson — until someone said hello to someone’s else’s little friend.
Torrio persuaded the North Side leader Dean O’Banion to agree to a ‘master plan’ for dividing Chicago. The peace held for four years. While Torrio opened an Italian restaurant featuring an operatic trio, ‘refined cabaret’ and ‘1,000,000 yards of spaghetti’, O’Banion bought some Thompson submachine guns. A racketeering cartel could not be run like a railroad cartel. There was no transparency among tax-dodgers, no trust between thieves, and no ‘enforcement device’ other than enforcement.
In May 1924, O’Banion framed Torrio for a murder and set him up for a brewery raid. In November 1924, Torrio’s gunmen killed O’Banion as he was clipping chrysanthemums in his flower shop. Two months later, the North Side gang ambushed Torrio outside his apartment and clipped him five times at close range.
Torrio survived, but he took the hint and retreated to Italy. His protégé Alphonse ‘Scarface’ Capone took over the Chicago Outfit. The euphemists of Silicon Valley would call Al Capone a serial disrupter who liked breaking things. By the end of Prohibition in 1933, there had been more than 700 Mob killings in Chicago alone.
On St Valentine’s Day 1929, Capone’s men machine-gunned seven North Siders in a parking garage. This negotiation established the Chicago Outfit’s supremacy in Chicago, and cleared the way for another Torrio scheme. In May 1929, Torrio invited the top Italian, Jewish and Irish gangsters to a hotel in Atlantic City and suggested they form a national ‘Syndicate’. The rest is violence.
Is crime just another American business, a career move for entrepreneurial immigrants in a hurry? John J. Binder teaches business at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and has a sideline in the Mob history racket. He knows where the bodies are buried, and by whom. We need no longer err by confusing North Side lieutenant Earl ‘Hymie’ Weiss, who shot his own brother in the chest, with the North Side ‘mad hatter’ Louis ‘Diamond Jack’ Allerie, who was shot in the back by his own brother; or with the bootlegger George Druggan who, shot in the back, told the police that it was a self-inflicted wound. Anyone who still mixes them up deserves a punishment beating from the American Historical Association.
Binder does his own spadework, too. Digging into Chicago’s police archives, folklore, and concrete foundations, he establishes that Chicago’s mobsters pioneered the drive-by shooting. As the unfortunate Willie Dickman discovered on 3 September 1925, they were also the first to use a Thompson submachine gun for a ‘gangland hit’. Yet the Scarface image of the Thompson-touting mobster was a fiction. Bootleggers preferred the shotgun and assassins the pistol. Thompsons were used ‘sparingly’, like a niblick in golf.
Al Capone’s Beer Wars is a well-researched source book. Readers who never learnt to read nothing because they was schooled on the mean streets will appreciate Binder’s data graphs and mugshots. Not too shabby for a wise guy.
Thanks to Dominic Green.
‘I’ve known some tough cookies over the years,’ Trump boasted in 2016. ‘I’ve known the people that make the politicians you and I deal with every day look like little babies.’ No one minded too much. Organised crime is a tapeworm in the gut of American commerce, lodged since Prohibition. The Volstead Act of January 1920 raised the cost of a barrel of beer from $3.50 to $55. By 1927, the profits from organised crime were $500 million in Chicago alone. The production, distribution and retailing of alcohol was worth $200 million. Gambling brought in $167 million. Another $133 million came from labour racketeering, extortion and brothel-keeping.
In 1920
, Chicago’s underworld was divided between a South Side gang, led by the Italian immigrant ‘Big Jim’ Colosino, and the Irish and Jewish gangs on the North Side. Like many hands-on managers, Big Jim had trouble delegating, even when it came to minor tasks such as beating up nosy journalists. When the North Side gang moved into bootlegging, Colesino’s nephew John Torrio suggested that the South Side gang compete for a share of the profits. Colesino, fearing a turf war, refused. So Torrio murdered his uncle and started bootlegging.Torrio was a multi-ethnic employer. Americans consider this a virtue, even among murderers. The Italian ‘Roxy’ Vanilli and the Irishman ‘Chicken Harry’ Cullet rubbed along just fine with ‘Jew Kid’ Grabiner and Mike ‘The Greek’ Potson — until someone said hello to someone’s else’s little friend.
Torrio persuaded the North Side leader Dean O’Banion to agree to a ‘master plan’ for dividing Chicago. The peace held for four years. While Torrio opened an Italian restaurant featuring an operatic trio, ‘refined cabaret’ and ‘1,000,000 yards of spaghetti’, O’Banion bought some Thompson submachine guns. A racketeering cartel could not be run like a railroad cartel. There was no transparency among tax-dodgers, no trust between thieves, and no ‘enforcement device’ other than enforcement.
In May 1924, O’Banion framed Torrio for a murder and set him up for a brewery raid. In November 1924, Torrio’s gunmen killed O’Banion as he was clipping chrysanthemums in his flower shop. Two months later, the North Side gang ambushed Torrio outside his apartment and clipped him five times at close range.
Torrio survived, but he took the hint and retreated to Italy. His protégé Alphonse ‘Scarface’ Capone took over the Chicago Outfit. The euphemists of Silicon Valley would call Al Capone a serial disrupter who liked breaking things. By the end of Prohibition in 1933, there had been more than 700 Mob killings in Chicago alone.
On St Valentine’s Day 1929, Capone’s men machine-gunned seven North Siders in a parking garage. This negotiation established the Chicago Outfit’s supremacy in Chicago, and cleared the way for another Torrio scheme. In May 1929, Torrio invited the top Italian, Jewish and Irish gangsters to a hotel in Atlantic City and suggested they form a national ‘Syndicate’. The rest is violence.
Is crime just another American business, a career move for entrepreneurial immigrants in a hurry? John J. Binder teaches business at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and has a sideline in the Mob history racket. He knows where the bodies are buried, and by whom. We need no longer err by confusing North Side lieutenant Earl ‘Hymie’ Weiss, who shot his own brother in the chest, with the North Side ‘mad hatter’ Louis ‘Diamond Jack’ Allerie, who was shot in the back by his own brother; or with the bootlegger George Druggan who, shot in the back, told the police that it was a self-inflicted wound. Anyone who still mixes them up deserves a punishment beating from the American Historical Association.
Binder does his own spadework, too. Digging into Chicago’s police archives, folklore, and concrete foundations, he establishes that Chicago’s mobsters pioneered the drive-by shooting. As the unfortunate Willie Dickman discovered on 3 September 1925, they were also the first to use a Thompson submachine gun for a ‘gangland hit’. Yet the Scarface image of the Thompson-touting mobster was a fiction. Bootleggers preferred the shotgun and assassins the pistol. Thompsons were used ‘sparingly’, like a niblick in golf.
Al Capone’s Beer Wars is a well-researched source book. Readers who never learnt to read nothing because they was schooled on the mean streets will appreciate Binder’s data graphs and mugshots. Not too shabby for a wise guy.
Thanks to Dominic Green.
Thursday, July 05, 2018
7 Members #Crips Street Gang Indicted for Drug Trafficking
A seventh defendant, Tysheim Warren, was arrested in connection with a nine-count indictment filed in federal court in Brooklyn, also charging Javier Blackett, John Paul Balcazar, David Maldonado, Hassan McClean, Kevin Raphael and Andrew Rose with crimes stemming from their participation in a drug-trafficking organization that distributed more than 400 grams of crack cocaine in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens/Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The indictment was returned by a grand jury on May 10, 2018. Blackett, Maldonado, Raphael and Rose were arrested on May 15, 2018. Balcazar was arrested on May 18, 2018, and McClean was arrested on May 22, 2018. They were arraigned and ordered detained pending trial. Warren was arraigned this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Steven M. Gold and ordered detained.
Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), and James P. O’Neill, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD), announced the charges.
According to the indictment and court filings, the defendants’ drug-selling operations centered around several residential buildings approximately three blocks southeast of the Prospect Park ice skating rink. Since March 2017, members of law enforcement made numerous controlled purchases totaling more than 400 grams of crack cocaine from the defendants’ organization and intercepted, pursuant to court order, communications discussing their distribution of significantly more narcotics. Blackett, a member of the Eight Trey set of the Crips street gang, was the leader of the organization; Raphael was one of his principal suppliers; and Balcazar, Maldonado, McClean, Rose and Warren were workers.
“The residents of Brooklyn are entitled to streets that are free of the dangerous drugs the defendants were allegedly selling,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “This Office, together with our law enforcement partners, will continue to work tirelessly to put drug dealers out of business and hold them accountable for their crimes.”
“These dealers are alleged to have operated very close to a place where families go, where children play and where people find sanctuary in the city,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney. “When doing business with gang members and drug dealers, violence inevitably follows and innocent people could have been caught up in it. The FBI Metro Safe Streets Task Force works every day to protect the community from these dangerous gang members and preventing them from proliferating their deadly drugs.”
“The NYPD’s efforts to eradicate drug trafficking are greatly strengthened by our close partnerships with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District,” stated NYPD Commissioner O’Neill. “I commend everyone involved in this case, particularly the investigators who put themselves directly in harm’s way. Those who illegally deal in narcotics should be prepared for the full weight of our nation’s best law enforcement professionals to bear down upon them.”
If convicted of the conspiracy charge, the defendants face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment and up to life in prison. The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinvigorated PSN in 2017 as part of the Department’s renewed focus on targeting violent criminals, directing all U.S. Attorney’s Offices to work in partnership with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement and the local community to develop effective, locally based strategies to reduce violent crime.
Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), and James P. O’Neill, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD), announced the charges.
According to the indictment and court filings, the defendants’ drug-selling operations centered around several residential buildings approximately three blocks southeast of the Prospect Park ice skating rink. Since March 2017, members of law enforcement made numerous controlled purchases totaling more than 400 grams of crack cocaine from the defendants’ organization and intercepted, pursuant to court order, communications discussing their distribution of significantly more narcotics. Blackett, a member of the Eight Trey set of the Crips street gang, was the leader of the organization; Raphael was one of his principal suppliers; and Balcazar, Maldonado, McClean, Rose and Warren were workers.
“The residents of Brooklyn are entitled to streets that are free of the dangerous drugs the defendants were allegedly selling,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “This Office, together with our law enforcement partners, will continue to work tirelessly to put drug dealers out of business and hold them accountable for their crimes.”
“These dealers are alleged to have operated very close to a place where families go, where children play and where people find sanctuary in the city,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney. “When doing business with gang members and drug dealers, violence inevitably follows and innocent people could have been caught up in it. The FBI Metro Safe Streets Task Force works every day to protect the community from these dangerous gang members and preventing them from proliferating their deadly drugs.”
“The NYPD’s efforts to eradicate drug trafficking are greatly strengthened by our close partnerships with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District,” stated NYPD Commissioner O’Neill. “I commend everyone involved in this case, particularly the investigators who put themselves directly in harm’s way. Those who illegally deal in narcotics should be prepared for the full weight of our nation’s best law enforcement professionals to bear down upon them.”
If convicted of the conspiracy charge, the defendants face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment and up to life in prison. The charges in the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinvigorated PSN in 2017 as part of the Department’s renewed focus on targeting violent criminals, directing all U.S. Attorney’s Offices to work in partnership with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement and the local community to develop effective, locally based strategies to reduce violent crime.
Prequel to #TheSopranos - The Many Saints of Newark - Hires Thor Director Alan Taylor
Alan Taylor of Thor: The Dark World and Terminator Genisys will be taking the helm of a feature film set prior to hit early 2000s TV crime drama series The Sopranos. Broadcast between 1999 and 2007, HBO’s The Sopranos won 21 Emmy Awards and five Golden Globes over the course of its impactful nine-year run.
James Gandolfini, who played conflicted crime family patriarch Tony Soprano, passed away in 2013, but The Sopranos creator David Chase and co-writer Lawrence Konner have found a way to continue the series’ legacy, through a prequel film directed by Thor: The Dark World’s Alan Taylor.
According to The Wrap, The Many Saints of Newark will be set in the 1960s in New Jersey, north-eastern US, during a time of extreme tension between Newark city’s Italian and African-American communities. Other than that, New Line Cinema is keeping tight-lipped about plot details, leaving fans to wonder which characters from the series will be found within the movie treatment.
Taylor’s own background was in TV, working his way through a slew of episodic dramas — Homicide: Life on the Street, The West Wing, Sex and the City, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and more.
In fact, he has previous experience with The Sopranos, having directed nine of its episodes, including one of its final episodes, the Emmy-winning season six Kennedy and Heidi.
James Gandolfini, who played conflicted crime family patriarch Tony Soprano, passed away in 2013, but The Sopranos creator David Chase and co-writer Lawrence Konner have found a way to continue the series’ legacy, through a prequel film directed by Thor: The Dark World’s Alan Taylor.
According to The Wrap, The Many Saints of Newark will be set in the 1960s in New Jersey, north-eastern US, during a time of extreme tension between Newark city’s Italian and African-American communities. Other than that, New Line Cinema is keeping tight-lipped about plot details, leaving fans to wonder which characters from the series will be found within the movie treatment.
Taylor’s own background was in TV, working his way through a slew of episodic dramas — Homicide: Life on the Street, The West Wing, Sex and the City, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and more.
In fact, he has previous experience with The Sopranos, having directed nine of its episodes, including one of its final episodes, the Emmy-winning season six Kennedy and Heidi.
Monday, June 25, 2018
Organized Crime is Global, and Flourishing: the Mafia Makes Massive Profit from Migrant Crisis
In the spring of 2015, I flew to Sicily to report a story about the European migration crisis. Then, as now, hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East were crowding into small fishing boats and flimsy rubber dinghies in Libya, Egypt and Turkey and setting out across the Mediterranean for Europe. In 15 years, 22,000 had drowned en route. But if the humanitarian crisis was well known and comprehensively reported, I had been tipped off that a central explanation for this catastrophe had received less attention. Anti-mafia prosecutors in Palermo were claiming to have evidence suggesting that one answer to why so many refugees and migrants were heading to Sicily was because the Italian Mafia wanted them to.
In Sicily, I interviewed the prosecutors and reviewed their evidence, and talked to Carabinieri, anti-mafia activists, refugees and social workers. Where the world had seen an unprecedented emergency, Italy’s gangsters had perceived an unrivaled opportunity. North African and Middle Eastern gangs handled the trafficking across the Mediterranean. But once the migrants arrived, mafiosi were making millions from them, sometimes putting them to work on farms for as little as €3 a day, sometimes taking a cut from Nigerian prostitution rackets, but mainly by infiltrating and corrupting Italy’s immigration system. The mafia’s men inside these authorities ensured that mafia businesses were awarded contracts for the construction and management of refugee reception centers. Each migrant earned the mafia €28 per head per day. A three-year contract to run Europe’s biggest migrant center at Mineo in eastern Sicily was worth €97 million. A Carabinieri surveillance team in Rome recorded one mobster, convicted murderer Salvatore Buzzi, boasting in a phone call to an associate: "Do you have any idea how much I make from immigrants? Even drugs aren’t as profitable!"
The story was a startling correction to the idea of the Italian Mafia as historic. It also repudiated any notions of mafia glamor. Here was a vast present-day criminal conspiracy making tens of millions from the excruciating suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and 3,000 to 4,000 deaths every year. This was not the stylish menace of "The Godfather" or "Goodfellas" or even Elena Ferrante. This was sordid, venal and deadly.
My last two interviews were in Rome. Through friends, I contacted a journalist in the capital who specialized in mafia stories, Laura Aprati, and asked her to set up two interviews, one with a Carabinieri chief, another with a senior anti-mafia magistrate, both of whom she knew. Laura’s price was €250, plus my mandatory attendance at a showing of a play she had co-written with another journalist and two anti-mafia activists at a school in a run-down, mafia-heavy area on the outskirts of Rome. "You will come," commanded Laura.
The play turned out to be a one-woman show, accompanied by the mournful bow of a single cellist, set against a plain, blood-red backdrop. At the time, I spoke no Italian and understood very little of the drama, but one thing I did manage to catch was the name of the play’s protagonist, Maria Concetta Cacciola. That single name turned out to be the key that unlocked another hidden world. Concetta, as I later read in several thousand pages of judicial documents, had been born into a family that worked for one of the ruling clans in the Calabrian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, in the toe of Italy. In May, June and July 2011, she had testified against her family in return for entry to Italy’s witness protection program. By doing so, she was following the example of two other ’Ndrangheta women, her friend Giuseppina Pesce, who came from Concetta’s home town of Rosarno on Calabria’s west coast, and Lea Garofalo, who was from Pagliarelle, a mountain village above Calabria’s east coast. Concetta, Giuseppina and Lea all shared the same motivations for giving evidence. They wanted their children to have a different life, away from the blood and killing of the mafia; and they had all been accused of having an affair.
The three women’s testimony blew the secret world of the ’Ndrangheta wide open. Like Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Camorra in Naples, the ’Ndrangheta (pronounced un-drung-get-a and derived from the Greek andrangheteia, meaning "society of men of honor and valor") had been founded in the tumultuous years around the unification of the Italian peninsula in 1861. Like the other two mafias, too, the ’Ndrangheta covered its criminality with a veneer of righteous revolution: their infiltration and corruption of the economy and the state was part, so the mafioso narrative went, of an honorable, southern subversion of the new northern-dominated Italian state. But at the time, little else was known about the organization. For most of its existence, the ’Ndrangheta had been considered a poor cousin to Cosa Nostra and the Camorra, country bumpkins in dusty suits who might extract protection from the local trattoria but never strayed far from their groves of oranges, lemons and olives.
Thanks in part to the three women’s testimony, that caricature was revealed as woefully out of date. In their statements to police and in court, which ran to thousands of pages, the women described a global monster. Eventually, Calabria’s prosecutors would conclude that the ’Ndrangheta had a presence in 120 of the world’s 200 countries and a global income of $50-100 billion at its upper end, around $10 billion more than Microsoft’s annual revenue. They ran heroin, marijuana and 70 percent of the cocaine in Europe. They extorted Calabria’s businesses for billions of euros every year and, further afield, embezzled and rigged contracts from the Italian government and the European Union worth billions more, even cornering the market in the disposal of nuclear waste, which they dumped in the Red Sea off Somalia. Their empire linked a mob war in Toronto to a cocaine-delivering pizzeria in Queens, New York, called Cucino a Modo Mio (I Cook My Own Way) to the reported ownership of an entire Brussels neighborhood to mining in Togo.
Their gun-running business directly affected the destiny of nations: Franco Roberti, head of Italy’s anti-mafia directorate, told me the ’Ndrangheta was selling weapons to several sides in Syria’s civil war. But it was laundering their riches and those of other crime groups from around the world, which the Calabrians did for a fee, that made the ’Ndrangheta a global power. Millions of people worked in their companies, shopped in their stores, ate in their restaurants, lived in their buildings and elected politicians they funded. Giuseppe Lombardo, a Calabrian prosecutor specializing in the ’Ndrangheta’s finances, told me that by buying up the government debt of two Asian countries, Thailand and Indonesia, then threatening to dump it, the ’Ndrangheta had blackmailed entire nations into letting it operate on their territory. Their money, said Lombardo, had elevated the group to a position of invulnerability. They now occupied a "fundamental and indispensable position in the global market," he said, one that was "more or less essential for the smooth functioning of the global economic system."
That almost no one knew any of this until the last decade or so is no coincidence. The secret of the ’Ndrangheta’s success was secrecy or, as they called it, omertà. As I describe in "The Good Mothers," their great flaw turned out to be the claustrophobic family loyalty and murderous misogyny with which they enforced it. The women of the ’Ndrangheta had lives as restricted as women living under conservative Islam. To persuade them to talk, all the prosecutors had to do was offer them and their children an alternative.
The investigations built on Concetta’s, Giuseppina’s and Lea’s evidence brought down several large crime families and shook the ’Ndrangheta to its core. What unnerves me, still, is that such a giant, global enterprise could function for so long without anyone knowing. That revelation sits alongside two other disturbing modern truths: that globalization assists illicit business as much as it does legitimate commerce; and that the era of global, mass connectivity has, paradoxically, decreased how what we know about the world as the conversation narrows to a few common narratives (Trump, terrorism, #Metoo) and the truth is subsumed by noise.
What I discovered about the ’Ndrangheta has made me curious about other, equally unfamiliar organized crime groups. Years of research lie ahead. But I can already say with some confidence that the great hidden truth of our era is that terrorism is a spectacular distraction from the real threat: the rise of global organized crime. From drugs to guns, cyber-attacks to the dark web, political financing to narco-states, people trafficking to child abuse, tax havens to smuggled wine, counterfeit watches to fake news, nail bars to hand car washes and money laundering through property and financial markets from London to New York to Hong Kong to Johannesburg, organized crime is all around us. The most remarkable thing about that? Almost nobody seems to have noticed.
Thanks to Alex Perry.
In Sicily, I interviewed the prosecutors and reviewed their evidence, and talked to Carabinieri, anti-mafia activists, refugees and social workers. Where the world had seen an unprecedented emergency, Italy’s gangsters had perceived an unrivaled opportunity. North African and Middle Eastern gangs handled the trafficking across the Mediterranean. But once the migrants arrived, mafiosi were making millions from them, sometimes putting them to work on farms for as little as €3 a day, sometimes taking a cut from Nigerian prostitution rackets, but mainly by infiltrating and corrupting Italy’s immigration system. The mafia’s men inside these authorities ensured that mafia businesses were awarded contracts for the construction and management of refugee reception centers. Each migrant earned the mafia €28 per head per day. A three-year contract to run Europe’s biggest migrant center at Mineo in eastern Sicily was worth €97 million. A Carabinieri surveillance team in Rome recorded one mobster, convicted murderer Salvatore Buzzi, boasting in a phone call to an associate: "Do you have any idea how much I make from immigrants? Even drugs aren’t as profitable!"
The story was a startling correction to the idea of the Italian Mafia as historic. It also repudiated any notions of mafia glamor. Here was a vast present-day criminal conspiracy making tens of millions from the excruciating suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and 3,000 to 4,000 deaths every year. This was not the stylish menace of "The Godfather" or "Goodfellas" or even Elena Ferrante. This was sordid, venal and deadly.
My last two interviews were in Rome. Through friends, I contacted a journalist in the capital who specialized in mafia stories, Laura Aprati, and asked her to set up two interviews, one with a Carabinieri chief, another with a senior anti-mafia magistrate, both of whom she knew. Laura’s price was €250, plus my mandatory attendance at a showing of a play she had co-written with another journalist and two anti-mafia activists at a school in a run-down, mafia-heavy area on the outskirts of Rome. "You will come," commanded Laura.
The play turned out to be a one-woman show, accompanied by the mournful bow of a single cellist, set against a plain, blood-red backdrop. At the time, I spoke no Italian and understood very little of the drama, but one thing I did manage to catch was the name of the play’s protagonist, Maria Concetta Cacciola. That single name turned out to be the key that unlocked another hidden world. Concetta, as I later read in several thousand pages of judicial documents, had been born into a family that worked for one of the ruling clans in the Calabrian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, in the toe of Italy. In May, June and July 2011, she had testified against her family in return for entry to Italy’s witness protection program. By doing so, she was following the example of two other ’Ndrangheta women, her friend Giuseppina Pesce, who came from Concetta’s home town of Rosarno on Calabria’s west coast, and Lea Garofalo, who was from Pagliarelle, a mountain village above Calabria’s east coast. Concetta, Giuseppina and Lea all shared the same motivations for giving evidence. They wanted their children to have a different life, away from the blood and killing of the mafia; and they had all been accused of having an affair.
The three women’s testimony blew the secret world of the ’Ndrangheta wide open. Like Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and the Camorra in Naples, the ’Ndrangheta (pronounced un-drung-get-a and derived from the Greek andrangheteia, meaning "society of men of honor and valor") had been founded in the tumultuous years around the unification of the Italian peninsula in 1861. Like the other two mafias, too, the ’Ndrangheta covered its criminality with a veneer of righteous revolution: their infiltration and corruption of the economy and the state was part, so the mafioso narrative went, of an honorable, southern subversion of the new northern-dominated Italian state. But at the time, little else was known about the organization. For most of its existence, the ’Ndrangheta had been considered a poor cousin to Cosa Nostra and the Camorra, country bumpkins in dusty suits who might extract protection from the local trattoria but never strayed far from their groves of oranges, lemons and olives.
Thanks in part to the three women’s testimony, that caricature was revealed as woefully out of date. In their statements to police and in court, which ran to thousands of pages, the women described a global monster. Eventually, Calabria’s prosecutors would conclude that the ’Ndrangheta had a presence in 120 of the world’s 200 countries and a global income of $50-100 billion at its upper end, around $10 billion more than Microsoft’s annual revenue. They ran heroin, marijuana and 70 percent of the cocaine in Europe. They extorted Calabria’s businesses for billions of euros every year and, further afield, embezzled and rigged contracts from the Italian government and the European Union worth billions more, even cornering the market in the disposal of nuclear waste, which they dumped in the Red Sea off Somalia. Their empire linked a mob war in Toronto to a cocaine-delivering pizzeria in Queens, New York, called Cucino a Modo Mio (I Cook My Own Way) to the reported ownership of an entire Brussels neighborhood to mining in Togo.
Their gun-running business directly affected the destiny of nations: Franco Roberti, head of Italy’s anti-mafia directorate, told me the ’Ndrangheta was selling weapons to several sides in Syria’s civil war. But it was laundering their riches and those of other crime groups from around the world, which the Calabrians did for a fee, that made the ’Ndrangheta a global power. Millions of people worked in their companies, shopped in their stores, ate in their restaurants, lived in their buildings and elected politicians they funded. Giuseppe Lombardo, a Calabrian prosecutor specializing in the ’Ndrangheta’s finances, told me that by buying up the government debt of two Asian countries, Thailand and Indonesia, then threatening to dump it, the ’Ndrangheta had blackmailed entire nations into letting it operate on their territory. Their money, said Lombardo, had elevated the group to a position of invulnerability. They now occupied a "fundamental and indispensable position in the global market," he said, one that was "more or less essential for the smooth functioning of the global economic system."
That almost no one knew any of this until the last decade or so is no coincidence. The secret of the ’Ndrangheta’s success was secrecy or, as they called it, omertà. As I describe in "The Good Mothers," their great flaw turned out to be the claustrophobic family loyalty and murderous misogyny with which they enforced it. The women of the ’Ndrangheta had lives as restricted as women living under conservative Islam. To persuade them to talk, all the prosecutors had to do was offer them and their children an alternative.
The investigations built on Concetta’s, Giuseppina’s and Lea’s evidence brought down several large crime families and shook the ’Ndrangheta to its core. What unnerves me, still, is that such a giant, global enterprise could function for so long without anyone knowing. That revelation sits alongside two other disturbing modern truths: that globalization assists illicit business as much as it does legitimate commerce; and that the era of global, mass connectivity has, paradoxically, decreased how what we know about the world as the conversation narrows to a few common narratives (Trump, terrorism, #Metoo) and the truth is subsumed by noise.
What I discovered about the ’Ndrangheta has made me curious about other, equally unfamiliar organized crime groups. Years of research lie ahead. But I can already say with some confidence that the great hidden truth of our era is that terrorism is a spectacular distraction from the real threat: the rise of global organized crime. From drugs to guns, cyber-attacks to the dark web, political financing to narco-states, people trafficking to child abuse, tax havens to smuggled wine, counterfeit watches to fake news, nail bars to hand car washes and money laundering through property and financial markets from London to New York to Hong Kong to Johannesburg, organized crime is all around us. The most remarkable thing about that? Almost nobody seems to have noticed.
Thanks to Alex Perry.
Friday, June 22, 2018
Cook County Circuit Judge William Hooks Frees Accused Cop Killer Jackie Wilson from Prison
After more than 36 years in custody, an accused cop killer who alleges notorious ex-Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge tortured him into confessing was ordered freed Friday while awaiting his third trial on the charges.
Jackie Wilson, 57, was granted a recognizance bond by Cook County Circuit Judge William Hooks, who last week tossed out Wilson’s murder conviction after finding that Burge and detectives under his command had physically coerced his confession to the 1982 slaying of two Chicago officers.
The judge said special prosecutors “utterly failed” in their arguments to keep Wilson in prison, adding that they appeared to want him to view the case “through the lens of a court sitting in 1982 or 1988 without considering the revelations that have come to light over the last three decades.”
Wilson is likely to walk out of Cook County Jail as soon as later Friday.
The ruling to free Wilson comes as special prosecutors filed paperwork earlier this week indicating they will ask an appeals court to reverse Hooks’ decision to toss the conviction and order a retrial.
Wilson has twice been convicted of teaming up with his now-dead brother, Andrew, who prosecutors say fatally shot Officers Richard O’Brien and William Fahey during a traffic stop in 1982. His first conviction was tossed out after an appeals court ruled that he should not have been tried simultaneously with his brother. At the retrial in 1989, a jury acquitted him of Fahey’s murder but convicted him of O’Brien’s. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Hooks held a lengthy hearing Thursday at which a team of special prosecutors laid out their case for keeping Wilson in custody pending a third trial. Prosecutors summarized the expected testimony of several witnesses, including eyewitnesses who implicated Wilson as well as correctional officers who allegedly heard him take credit for the slayings while in custody.
Thanks to Megan Crepeau.
Jackie Wilson, 57, was granted a recognizance bond by Cook County Circuit Judge William Hooks, who last week tossed out Wilson’s murder conviction after finding that Burge and detectives under his command had physically coerced his confession to the 1982 slaying of two Chicago officers.
The judge said special prosecutors “utterly failed” in their arguments to keep Wilson in prison, adding that they appeared to want him to view the case “through the lens of a court sitting in 1982 or 1988 without considering the revelations that have come to light over the last three decades.”
Wilson is likely to walk out of Cook County Jail as soon as later Friday.
The ruling to free Wilson comes as special prosecutors filed paperwork earlier this week indicating they will ask an appeals court to reverse Hooks’ decision to toss the conviction and order a retrial.
Wilson has twice been convicted of teaming up with his now-dead brother, Andrew, who prosecutors say fatally shot Officers Richard O’Brien and William Fahey during a traffic stop in 1982. His first conviction was tossed out after an appeals court ruled that he should not have been tried simultaneously with his brother. At the retrial in 1989, a jury acquitted him of Fahey’s murder but convicted him of O’Brien’s. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Hooks held a lengthy hearing Thursday at which a team of special prosecutors laid out their case for keeping Wilson in custody pending a third trial. Prosecutors summarized the expected testimony of several witnesses, including eyewitnesses who implicated Wilson as well as correctional officers who allegedly heard him take credit for the slayings while in custody.
Thanks to Megan Crepeau.
"Cadillac Frank" Francis Salemme and Paul Weadick Found Guilty in Mob Murder Trial
Former New England Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme was found guilty Friday, along with an associate, of killing a South Boston nightclub owner 25 years ago to prevent him from cooperating with investigators targeting Salemme and his son.
The verdict signified long-awaited justice for the family of Steven DiSarro, a 43-year-old father of five who disappeared in 1993, his whereabouts a mystery until the FBI found his remains two years ago, buried behind an old mill in Providence.
Salemme, 84, who became a government witness himself six years after killing DiSarro and was in federal witness protection until his 2016 arrest, will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.
Following a five-week trial in US District Court in Boston and four days of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted Salemme and Paul Weadick, 63, of Burlington, of murdering DiSarro to prevent him from becoming a federal witness. The men face a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Salemme and his late son were business partners with DiSarro in the Channel nightclub, which was located on Necco Street and was demolished years ago.
Judge Allison Burroughs set sentencing for Sept. 13.
DiSarro’s daughter, Colby, cried as the verdict came down around 3 p.m. Friday, and his son, Michael, wiped tears from his eyes.
Salemme, meanwhile, let out a huge sigh when the verdict came down and appeared stunned as he remained standing for a long time in a gray suit and blue tie, taking his seat only after his lawyer told him to.
The once-feared gangster, who had smiled at his attorney when he came into the courtroom to hear the verdict, left court with his head down without glancing at the spectators’ gallery. Weadick shook hands with his attorney before he was escorted out as well. Both men have been in custody since they were arrested in 2016.
Weadick’s lawyer declined to comment outside court Friday.
An attorney for Salemme, Steven Boozang, told reporters that his client, who turns 85 next month, “feels worse for Paul Weadick than he does for himself. He’s just not a self-absorbed guy.”
Boozang also took aim at the government’s star witness, another aging gangster named Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, who’s serving life in prison for 10 murders and who testified that he witnessed Salemme’s son choking DiSarro while Weadick held his legs up and Salemme looked on. Salemme’s son died in 1995.
After the verdict, Boozang called Flemmi an “absolute liar” and said the defense was confronted with “a tough set of facts” but “thought we had overcome them.”
Asked about Salemme’s relatively stoic demeanor in court, Boozang said, “He’s done a lot of time. He was in the gangland wars, so I don’t think much phases him or shocks him. He was hopeful and optimistic” for an acquittal. Boozang said he expects his client to be placed in the general prison population and added that “nobody will bother him. . . . Inside, he’s a pretty decent human being and warm, aside from what he was years ago.”
DiSarro’s family had no immediate comment after the verdict but released a statement on Tuesday as the jury began deliberating.
Thanks to Shelley Murphy and Travis Anderson.
The verdict signified long-awaited justice for the family of Steven DiSarro, a 43-year-old father of five who disappeared in 1993, his whereabouts a mystery until the FBI found his remains two years ago, buried behind an old mill in Providence.
Salemme, 84, who became a government witness himself six years after killing DiSarro and was in federal witness protection until his 2016 arrest, will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.
Following a five-week trial in US District Court in Boston and four days of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted Salemme and Paul Weadick, 63, of Burlington, of murdering DiSarro to prevent him from becoming a federal witness. The men face a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Salemme and his late son were business partners with DiSarro in the Channel nightclub, which was located on Necco Street and was demolished years ago.
Judge Allison Burroughs set sentencing for Sept. 13.
DiSarro’s daughter, Colby, cried as the verdict came down around 3 p.m. Friday, and his son, Michael, wiped tears from his eyes.
Salemme, meanwhile, let out a huge sigh when the verdict came down and appeared stunned as he remained standing for a long time in a gray suit and blue tie, taking his seat only after his lawyer told him to.
The once-feared gangster, who had smiled at his attorney when he came into the courtroom to hear the verdict, left court with his head down without glancing at the spectators’ gallery. Weadick shook hands with his attorney before he was escorted out as well. Both men have been in custody since they were arrested in 2016.
Weadick’s lawyer declined to comment outside court Friday.
An attorney for Salemme, Steven Boozang, told reporters that his client, who turns 85 next month, “feels worse for Paul Weadick than he does for himself. He’s just not a self-absorbed guy.”
Boozang also took aim at the government’s star witness, another aging gangster named Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, who’s serving life in prison for 10 murders and who testified that he witnessed Salemme’s son choking DiSarro while Weadick held his legs up and Salemme looked on. Salemme’s son died in 1995.
After the verdict, Boozang called Flemmi an “absolute liar” and said the defense was confronted with “a tough set of facts” but “thought we had overcome them.”
Asked about Salemme’s relatively stoic demeanor in court, Boozang said, “He’s done a lot of time. He was in the gangland wars, so I don’t think much phases him or shocks him. He was hopeful and optimistic” for an acquittal. Boozang said he expects his client to be placed in the general prison population and added that “nobody will bother him. . . . Inside, he’s a pretty decent human being and warm, aside from what he was years ago.”
DiSarro’s family had no immediate comment after the verdict but released a statement on Tuesday as the jury began deliberating.
“The last 25 years have been heartbreaking for us due to the sudden loss of a loved one, coupled with the fact that we were left without any answers as to what happened,” the DiSarro family had said Tuesday.
“Nothing about the circumstances of our father, brother, uncle and husband’s disappearance have been typical. We have been living for years with the idea that a man who was deeply loved by his family, never returned home to those he loved and we never knew why.
“The answers were hidden deep inside a dark, and often violent underworld that we thankfully have never had access to. Of course there have been rumors, speculations, and opinions over the years, but what became forgotten amongst it all is the man that existed and the family and life that he built.”
Thanks to Shelley Murphy and Travis Anderson.
James "Whitey" Bulger, Notorious Boston Mobster, is Arrested #OnThisDay in 2011
On this day in 2011, after 16 years on the run from law enforcement, James “Whitey” Bulger, a violent Boston mob boss wanted for 19 murders, is arrested in Santa Monica, California. The 81-year-old Bulger, one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” fugitives, was arrested with his longtime companion, 60-year-old Catherine Greig, who fled Massachusetts with the gangster in late 1994, shortly before he was to be indicted on federal criminal charges. At the time of his 2011 arrest, there was a $2 million reward for information leading to Bulger’s capture, the largest amount ever offered by the agency for a domestic fugitive.
Born in Massachusetts in 1929 and raised in a South Boston housing project, Bulger, who earned his nickname as a child for his light blond hair, served time in federal prison in the 1950s and early 1960s for bank robbery. Afterward, he returned to Boston, where he eventually built an organized-crime empire with partner Stephen Flemmi. At the time the two men were involved with drug trafficking, extortion, murder and other illegal activities, they were serving, since the mid-1970s, as FBI informants, providing information about rival mobsters in return from protection from prosecution.
After a rogue FBI agent tipped off Bulger that he would soon be arrested on racketeering charges, Bulger disappeared in December 1994. (John Connolly, the agent who tipped off Bulger, was later convicted on charges of racketeering, obstruction of justice and second-degree murder.) Despite an international manhunt, Bulger eluded authorities for over a decade and a half. Then, on June 20, 2011, the FBI employed a new tactic by airing a public service announcement focused on Greig, Bulger’s companion. The ad, which aired in cities across the U.S. where the mobster was thought to have once lived or have contacts, was aimed at female viewers who might have seen Greig, who underwent a variety of cosmetic surgeries, at a beauty parlor or doctor’s office. Based on one of the tips they received, FBI agents staked out Bulger and Greig, then going by the names Charles and Carol Gasko, and arrested them without incident at the modest, two-bedroom Southern California apartment building they had long called home.
Law enforcement officials found weapons, fake identification and more than $800,000 stashed in Bulger’s apartment. He later revealed to them that during his years on the lam he had traveled frequently to such places as Boston, Mexico and Las Vegas, armed and sometimes in disguise.
After their arrest, Bulger and Greig were returned to Boston. In June 2012, as part of a plea agreement, Greig was sentenced to eight years in prison for helping Bulger remain in hiding. The following summer, Bulger went on trial, and on August 12, 2013, he was convicted in a federal court in Boston of 31 of the 32 counts against him, including participating in 11 murders and other criminal acts.
On November 14, 2013, a federal judge sentenced Bulger to two life terms in prison plus five years.
Born in Massachusetts in 1929 and raised in a South Boston housing project, Bulger, who earned his nickname as a child for his light blond hair, served time in federal prison in the 1950s and early 1960s for bank robbery. Afterward, he returned to Boston, where he eventually built an organized-crime empire with partner Stephen Flemmi. At the time the two men were involved with drug trafficking, extortion, murder and other illegal activities, they were serving, since the mid-1970s, as FBI informants, providing information about rival mobsters in return from protection from prosecution.
After a rogue FBI agent tipped off Bulger that he would soon be arrested on racketeering charges, Bulger disappeared in December 1994. (John Connolly, the agent who tipped off Bulger, was later convicted on charges of racketeering, obstruction of justice and second-degree murder.) Despite an international manhunt, Bulger eluded authorities for over a decade and a half. Then, on June 20, 2011, the FBI employed a new tactic by airing a public service announcement focused on Greig, Bulger’s companion. The ad, which aired in cities across the U.S. where the mobster was thought to have once lived or have contacts, was aimed at female viewers who might have seen Greig, who underwent a variety of cosmetic surgeries, at a beauty parlor or doctor’s office. Based on one of the tips they received, FBI agents staked out Bulger and Greig, then going by the names Charles and Carol Gasko, and arrested them without incident at the modest, two-bedroom Southern California apartment building they had long called home.
Law enforcement officials found weapons, fake identification and more than $800,000 stashed in Bulger’s apartment. He later revealed to them that during his years on the lam he had traveled frequently to such places as Boston, Mexico and Las Vegas, armed and sometimes in disguise.
After their arrest, Bulger and Greig were returned to Boston. In June 2012, as part of a plea agreement, Greig was sentenced to eight years in prison for helping Bulger remain in hiding. The following summer, Bulger went on trial, and on August 12, 2013, he was convicted in a federal court in Boston of 31 of the 32 counts against him, including participating in 11 murders and other criminal acts.
On November 14, 2013, a federal judge sentenced Bulger to two life terms in prison plus five years.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Bugsy Siegel Gunned Down in 1947 #OnThisDay
A drive-by shooter unloads nine rounds through the front window of a Beverly Hills home, instantly killing notorious gangster Bugsy Siegel. A founder of the small but promising Las Vegas casino scene, the pal of movie stars and moguls, and head of the Mafia's west coast syndicate, is dead at 41.
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American mobster. Siegel was known as one of the most "infamous and feared gangsters of his day". Described as handsome and charismatic, he became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters. He was also a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was not only influential within the Jewish mob but, like his friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, he also held significant influence within the American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate.
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American mobster. Siegel was known as one of the most "infamous and feared gangsters of his day". Described as handsome and charismatic, he became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters. He was also a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was not only influential within the Jewish mob but, like his friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, he also held significant influence within the American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate.
Is the Gotti Movie the Worst Mob Movie of All Time or are Critics Trolls Hiding Behind a Keyboard?
As of late Tuesday evening, “Gotti” had achieved something truly remarkable.
The movie
, a biopic tracing the life of crime lord John Gotti that stars John Travolta and Kelly Preston, joined the ranks of “Look Who’s Talking Now!,” “Highlander II: The Quickening” and “Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol” by earning a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
That means not one single critic recommended the movie.
Watch the Gotti Movie Trailer.
As reviews continue to roll in, that number might be subject to change. But the harshness of these reviews won’t:
Rather than dispute the reviews, the marketing team behind “Gotti” has leaned into them with a new ad — and blasted film critics with insults along the way.
The movie tweeted the ad from its official account, with the caption “Audiences loved Gotti but critics don’t want you to see it … The question is why??? Trust the people and see it for yourself!”
The ad itself mixes scenes from the movie along with a voice-over that says, “We’ve never been under this kind of scrutiny” and “You fight until you can’t fight no more. Never back off. Ever.”
Then a crowd chants: “Gotti! Gotti! Gotti!”
Subtle, no?
Meanwhile, “AUDIENCES LOVED GOTTI,” flashes across the screen in giant block letters, followed by, “CRITICS PUT OUT THE HIT. WHO WOULD YOU TRUST MORE? YOU OR A TROLL BEHIND A KEYBOARD.”
First things first: Evidence highly suggests that audiences do not “love” or even like “Gotti.” To begin with, it made a mere $1.9 million in its first weekend. Compare that to “Tag,” which opened the same weekend and garnered $14.9 million or the “Incredibles 2,” which earned $182.7 million.
Secondly, it has a dismal 5.1/10 rating on IMDb, about the same as the aforementioned “Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.”
The only evidence to suggest the movie is any good is the Rotten Tomatoes user-generated audience score, which sits at 71 percent as of Tuesday evening. That’s shockingly high, considering the other ratings. Also high is the number of users who reviewed it: 6,974. That’s only about 700 fewer people than reviewed “Incredibles 2,” even though the Pixar cartoon earned almost 20,000 percent more at the box office.
This led Mashable to wonder if the movie is getting fake reviews, sort of the inverse of when hundreds of thousands of Internet trolls from Reddit and 4 Chan gave negative ratings to the female reboot of “Ghostbusters.” (Rotten Tomatoes told Mashable that the reviews are by “real users,” as opposed to bots.)
For what it’s worth, Gotti’s son John Gotti, Jr., who is portrayed in the film by Spencer Lofranco, seemed to enjoy it. He told the New York Post that he would give it a seven out of 10, even thought Travolta “doesn’t have my father’s natural swagger.” He also wishes it was longer, making him (probably) the only person to feel this way.
So, let’s assume the movie isn’t very good. Whether there was anything to suggest this might be the outcome depends on how rose-tinted your glasses are.
The movie was directed by Kevin Connolly, who you likely know not as a film director but as E, the most mature character in HBO’s “Entourage,” a celebration of bro-culture centered on four womanizing man-children in Hollywood.
Connolly hasn’t done much directing before. He helmed two episodes of his show, including one titled “Porn Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” He’s also directed a few indie films. The most prominent two are 2007’s “Gardener of Eden” and 2016’s “Dear Eleanor.” Neither received enough professional reviews to earn a Rotten Tomatoes score, but they both earned about a six out of 10 from users on IMDb.
Regardless of the film’s quality, it had an estimated $10 million budget, meaning it’s a box office disaster, which isn’t good for MoviePass — as strange as that might sound. The service’s finance arm, MoviePass Ventures, recently took an equity stake in the movie. It has only been financially involved with one other film: “American Animals.” That movie has an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
So perhaps there’s a bunch of trolls wanting to take down the film. Or maybe it just isn’t very good.
Thanks to Travis M. Andrews.
The movie
, a biopic tracing the life of crime lord John Gotti that stars John Travolta and Kelly Preston, joined the ranks of “Look Who’s Talking Now!,” “Highlander II: The Quickening” and “Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol” by earning a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.That means not one single critic recommended the movie.
Watch the Gotti Movie Trailer.
As reviews continue to roll in, that number might be subject to change. But the harshness of these reviews won’t:
- “I’d rather wake up next to a severed horse head than ever watch ‘Gotti’ again,” Johnny Oleksinski wrote in the New York Post, calling it “the worst mob movie of all time.”
- “He may have been a murderer, but even Gotti deserved better than this,” Brian Tallerico wrote for RoberEbert.com.
Rather than dispute the reviews, the marketing team behind “Gotti” has leaned into them with a new ad — and blasted film critics with insults along the way.
The movie tweeted the ad from its official account, with the caption “Audiences loved Gotti but critics don’t want you to see it … The question is why??? Trust the people and see it for yourself!”
The ad itself mixes scenes from the movie along with a voice-over that says, “We’ve never been under this kind of scrutiny” and “You fight until you can’t fight no more. Never back off. Ever.”
Then a crowd chants: “Gotti! Gotti! Gotti!”
Subtle, no?
Meanwhile, “AUDIENCES LOVED GOTTI,” flashes across the screen in giant block letters, followed by, “CRITICS PUT OUT THE HIT. WHO WOULD YOU TRUST MORE? YOU OR A TROLL BEHIND A KEYBOARD.”
First things first: Evidence highly suggests that audiences do not “love” or even like “Gotti.” To begin with, it made a mere $1.9 million in its first weekend. Compare that to “Tag,” which opened the same weekend and garnered $14.9 million or the “Incredibles 2,” which earned $182.7 million.
Secondly, it has a dismal 5.1/10 rating on IMDb, about the same as the aforementioned “Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.”
The only evidence to suggest the movie is any good is the Rotten Tomatoes user-generated audience score, which sits at 71 percent as of Tuesday evening. That’s shockingly high, considering the other ratings. Also high is the number of users who reviewed it: 6,974. That’s only about 700 fewer people than reviewed “Incredibles 2,” even though the Pixar cartoon earned almost 20,000 percent more at the box office.
This led Mashable to wonder if the movie is getting fake reviews, sort of the inverse of when hundreds of thousands of Internet trolls from Reddit and 4 Chan gave negative ratings to the female reboot of “Ghostbusters.” (Rotten Tomatoes told Mashable that the reviews are by “real users,” as opposed to bots.)
For what it’s worth, Gotti’s son John Gotti, Jr., who is portrayed in the film by Spencer Lofranco, seemed to enjoy it. He told the New York Post that he would give it a seven out of 10, even thought Travolta “doesn’t have my father’s natural swagger.” He also wishes it was longer, making him (probably) the only person to feel this way.
So, let’s assume the movie isn’t very good. Whether there was anything to suggest this might be the outcome depends on how rose-tinted your glasses are.
The movie was directed by Kevin Connolly, who you likely know not as a film director but as E, the most mature character in HBO’s “Entourage,” a celebration of bro-culture centered on four womanizing man-children in Hollywood.
Connolly hasn’t done much directing before. He helmed two episodes of his show, including one titled “Porn Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” He’s also directed a few indie films. The most prominent two are 2007’s “Gardener of Eden” and 2016’s “Dear Eleanor.” Neither received enough professional reviews to earn a Rotten Tomatoes score, but they both earned about a six out of 10 from users on IMDb.
Regardless of the film’s quality, it had an estimated $10 million budget, meaning it’s a box office disaster, which isn’t good for MoviePass — as strange as that might sound. The service’s finance arm, MoviePass Ventures, recently took an equity stake in the movie. It has only been financially involved with one other film: “American Animals.” That movie has an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
So perhaps there’s a bunch of trolls wanting to take down the film. Or maybe it just isn’t very good.
Thanks to Travis M. Andrews.
Official Trailer for Gotti Movie which Earned 0% @RottenTomatoes Score from Critics
Official Trailer for Gotti Movie which Earned 0% @RottenTomatoes Score from Critics
Monday, June 18, 2018
Gotti Movie with John Travolta Gets Whacked by Critics and Public; Worst Movie of the Year?
After an extremely bumpy road into theaters, the John Travolta crime biopic “Gotti” has gotten kneecapped at the box office, earning just $1.67 million from 503 screens.
While almost all of Travolta’s films in the last 30 years have been either in extremely limited release or with screen counts of 2,500 or more, this counts as the worst opening for the actor since the 1991 film “Shout,” which opened to $1.61 million on 968 screens and was considered one of the star’s biggest pre-“Pulp Fiction” flops. But “Gotti” hasn’t been able to find similar success this weekend, posting a per-screen average of just $3,320. Analysts told TheWrap prior to this weekend that “Gotti” needed to make around $3 million — or a $6,000 PSA — to be considered a successful launch.
The Vertical Entertainment and MoviePass Ventures release, starring Travolta as the late Mafia boss John Gotti, had trouble long before is snagged a rare zero percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
With 28 executive producers credited, “Gotti” bounced in and out of the hands of three directors before “Entourage” actor Kevin Connolly seized the project. When Lionsgate wanted to give the film a day-and-date theatrical/digital release, production studio Emmett Furla Oasis Films bought the film back, with Vertical and MoviePass picking up the rights.
MoviePass, the bargain movie ticket subscription service, has a stake in this film as it is trying to prove that it can successfully draw its subscribers to smaller films by marketing to them through their service’s app. MoviePass got off to a good start on this venture with this month’s release of The Orchard’s “American Animals,” which has grossed $760,000 with a maximum screen count of 72.
By comparison, “American Animals” had a third weekend per screen average of $2,871, while the critically acclaimed documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” posted a PSA of $10,253 in its second weekend, earning just under $1 million from 96 screens.
The film over-indexed in New York and Los Angeles, where the distributor focused most of its modest marketing budget and where MoviePass has a large number of subscribers.
Aside from its launch at the Cannes Film Festival, critics had few opportunities to see the film. 23 reviews have been logged on Rotten Tomatoes, all of them negative. While the film’s audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes sits at 79 percent, that big critical goose egg is still on the site’s front page, serving as a potential repellent for moviegoers. And the reviews themselves are pretty ugly too.
While almost all of Travolta’s films in the last 30 years have been either in extremely limited release or with screen counts of 2,500 or more, this counts as the worst opening for the actor since the 1991 film “Shout,” which opened to $1.61 million on 968 screens and was considered one of the star’s biggest pre-“Pulp Fiction” flops. But “Gotti” hasn’t been able to find similar success this weekend, posting a per-screen average of just $3,320. Analysts told TheWrap prior to this weekend that “Gotti” needed to make around $3 million — or a $6,000 PSA — to be considered a successful launch.
The Vertical Entertainment and MoviePass Ventures release, starring Travolta as the late Mafia boss John Gotti, had trouble long before is snagged a rare zero percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
With 28 executive producers credited, “Gotti” bounced in and out of the hands of three directors before “Entourage” actor Kevin Connolly seized the project. When Lionsgate wanted to give the film a day-and-date theatrical/digital release, production studio Emmett Furla Oasis Films bought the film back, with Vertical and MoviePass picking up the rights.
MoviePass, the bargain movie ticket subscription service, has a stake in this film as it is trying to prove that it can successfully draw its subscribers to smaller films by marketing to them through their service’s app. MoviePass got off to a good start on this venture with this month’s release of The Orchard’s “American Animals,” which has grossed $760,000 with a maximum screen count of 72.
By comparison, “American Animals” had a third weekend per screen average of $2,871, while the critically acclaimed documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” posted a PSA of $10,253 in its second weekend, earning just under $1 million from 96 screens.
The film over-indexed in New York and Los Angeles, where the distributor focused most of its modest marketing budget and where MoviePass has a large number of subscribers.
Aside from its launch at the Cannes Film Festival, critics had few opportunities to see the film. 23 reviews have been logged on Rotten Tomatoes, all of them negative. While the film’s audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes sits at 79 percent, that big critical goose egg is still on the site’s front page, serving as a potential repellent for moviegoers. And the reviews themselves are pretty ugly too.
“Starring in this mobster biopic that deserves to get whacked is an offer Travolta should have refused,” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers said in a particularly acidic review. “Insane testimonials from Gotti supporters at the end are as close as this s—show will ever get to good reviews.”
Reviewing the pic for The New York Times, critic Glenn Kenny writes, “That the long-gestating crime drama Gotti is a dismal mess comes as no surprise. What does shock is just how multifaceted a dismal mess it is.”
Jordan Mintzer’s assessment for The Hollywood Reporter cautions, “The film is pretty terrible: poorly written, devoid of tension, ridiculous in spots and just plain dull in others.”
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Who is the Boss of the Chicago Outfit in 2018?
Now that John "No Nose" DiFronzo is no longer running the Chicago Outfit, who will fill the void left by his death is an open question.
As the ABC7 I-Team first reported, DiFronzo died from complications of Alzheimer's. He was 89.
"This is obviously an organization that promotes from within" said Chicago mob expert John Binder. "They don't take ads in the Wall Street Journal announcing a job search."
Although illicit businesses such as the Outfit don't have open meetings or put out annual reports, there are internal rules and succession plans in place to deal with the death of the boss-whether it occurs naturally or at the end of a gun barrel as was the case with Sam "Momo" Giancana in 1975.
DiFronzo's declining health the past few years may have allowed the mob to restructure its upper crust in anticipation of his death. The top two spots in the Outfit are now thought to be occupied by one infamous gangland name and one less recognized.
Salvatore "Solly D" DeLaurentis is the best known, un-incarcerated Chicago mob figure today-and considered "consigliere" to the Outfit.
DeLaurentis, 79, was released from federal prison in 2006 after serving a long sentence for racketeering, extortion and tax fraud. The north suburban resident is notorious for using the phrase "trunk music." That is the gurgling sound made by a decomposing corpse in a car trunk.
These days ex-con DeLaurentis claims he has gone clean--literally.
"I'm in the carpet cleaning business," DeLaurentis told the I-Team. He laughed off those who said he was the boss or involved in mob rackets at all and said the FBI should know that because the bureau monitors his activities.
DeLaurentis has long been a mob-denier. "The Outfit is like a group that comes in here to paint the walls" he told investigative reporter Chuck Goudie during a 1993 interview. "It's the painting outfit."
During that television interview conducted at the federal lock-up in Chicago, DeLaurentis said he was "a bricklayer by trade" and a part-time gambler. "We gamble" he said "but as far as Mafia, I don't know what that is."
The new head of the FBI in Chicago disagrees with statement's that there is no mob-or that it is washed up.
"Are they out there leaving people dead in the streets?" asks FBI special agent in charge Jeffrey Sallet. "No. But just because people aren't killing somebody doesn't mean that they don't represent a threat" Sallet said. "Mob guys or Outfit guys-whatever you want to call them-are resilient. Where there is an opportunity to make money, they will engage. The reason they don't kill people the same way they did 25 years ago is because it's bad for business."
The second in command of the Chicago Outfit, according to some mobwatchers, is convicted enforcer Albert "Albie the Falcon" Vena, 69. The squat Vena did beat a murder charge in 1992 after the killing of a syndicate-connected drug dealer. He is thought to oversee day-to-day operations of the Outfit.
Vena is a protégé of notorious West Side mob boss Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, who is imprisoned for life following conviction in the 2007 Family Secrets mob murder case.
Regardless of what some see as an evolving line-up atop the Chicago mob, defense attorney Joe Lopez, who has represented numerous top hoodlums, says the Outfit is a thing of the past.
"I don't think anybody is ruling the roost. I think the roost was closed" Lopez told the I-Team.
He disputes that DeLaurentis has succeeded John DiFronzo. "He's old too" said Lopez, who proudly carries his own nickname "The Shark." Lopez said that Chicago mob leaders "became obsolete" and were put out of business by the "digital revolution has changed the entire world." Other mob experts differ.
"The outfit is a criminal enterprise, it's still functioning" said John Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit" book. Binder maintains that the mob has a working relationship with Chicago street gangs. He says the Outfit is "involved in the wholesaling and to some extent importation" of cocaine and heroin that gangs sell on city streets. "Just because it's not the Outfit guys standing on the West Side or South Side selling it doesn't mean they aren't actively involved in making a lot of money off of narcotics themselves."
Thanks to Chuck Goudie, Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner.
As the ABC7 I-Team first reported, DiFronzo died from complications of Alzheimer's. He was 89.
"This is obviously an organization that promotes from within" said Chicago mob expert John Binder. "They don't take ads in the Wall Street Journal announcing a job search."
Although illicit businesses such as the Outfit don't have open meetings or put out annual reports, there are internal rules and succession plans in place to deal with the death of the boss-whether it occurs naturally or at the end of a gun barrel as was the case with Sam "Momo" Giancana in 1975.
DiFronzo's declining health the past few years may have allowed the mob to restructure its upper crust in anticipation of his death. The top two spots in the Outfit are now thought to be occupied by one infamous gangland name and one less recognized.
Salvatore "Solly D" DeLaurentis is the best known, un-incarcerated Chicago mob figure today-and considered "consigliere" to the Outfit.
DeLaurentis, 79, was released from federal prison in 2006 after serving a long sentence for racketeering, extortion and tax fraud. The north suburban resident is notorious for using the phrase "trunk music." That is the gurgling sound made by a decomposing corpse in a car trunk.
These days ex-con DeLaurentis claims he has gone clean--literally.
"I'm in the carpet cleaning business," DeLaurentis told the I-Team. He laughed off those who said he was the boss or involved in mob rackets at all and said the FBI should know that because the bureau monitors his activities.
DeLaurentis has long been a mob-denier. "The Outfit is like a group that comes in here to paint the walls" he told investigative reporter Chuck Goudie during a 1993 interview. "It's the painting outfit."
During that television interview conducted at the federal lock-up in Chicago, DeLaurentis said he was "a bricklayer by trade" and a part-time gambler. "We gamble" he said "but as far as Mafia, I don't know what that is."
GOUDIE: "So you contend that if there is a Chicago Outfit it's an outfit of gamblers?"
DELAURENTIS: "Yea. Right. An outfit of guys who gamble. If they were any other kind of businessmen they'd be in the chamber of commerce."
The new head of the FBI in Chicago disagrees with statement's that there is no mob-or that it is washed up.
"Are they out there leaving people dead in the streets?" asks FBI special agent in charge Jeffrey Sallet. "No. But just because people aren't killing somebody doesn't mean that they don't represent a threat" Sallet said. "Mob guys or Outfit guys-whatever you want to call them-are resilient. Where there is an opportunity to make money, they will engage. The reason they don't kill people the same way they did 25 years ago is because it's bad for business."
The second in command of the Chicago Outfit, according to some mobwatchers, is convicted enforcer Albert "Albie the Falcon" Vena, 69. The squat Vena did beat a murder charge in 1992 after the killing of a syndicate-connected drug dealer. He is thought to oversee day-to-day operations of the Outfit.
Vena is a protégé of notorious West Side mob boss Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, who is imprisoned for life following conviction in the 2007 Family Secrets mob murder case.
Regardless of what some see as an evolving line-up atop the Chicago mob, defense attorney Joe Lopez, who has represented numerous top hoodlums, says the Outfit is a thing of the past.
"I don't think anybody is ruling the roost. I think the roost was closed" Lopez told the I-Team.
He disputes that DeLaurentis has succeeded John DiFronzo. "He's old too" said Lopez, who proudly carries his own nickname "The Shark." Lopez said that Chicago mob leaders "became obsolete" and were put out of business by the "digital revolution has changed the entire world." Other mob experts differ.
"The outfit is a criminal enterprise, it's still functioning" said John Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit" book. Binder maintains that the mob has a working relationship with Chicago street gangs. He says the Outfit is "involved in the wholesaling and to some extent importation" of cocaine and heroin that gangs sell on city streets. "Just because it's not the Outfit guys standing on the West Side or South Side selling it doesn't mean they aren't actively involved in making a lot of money off of narcotics themselves."
Thanks to Chuck Goudie, Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago during Prohibition
Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago during Prohibition.
Although much has been written about Al Capone, there has not been--until now--a complete history of organized crime in Chicago during Prohibition. This exhaustively researched book covers the entire period from 1920 to 1933. Author John J. Binder, a recognized authority on the history of organized crime in Chicago, discusses all the important bootlegging gangs in the city and the suburbs and also examines the other major rackets, such as prostitution, gambling, labor and business racketeering, and narcotics.
A major focus is how the Capone gang -- one of twelve major bootlegging mobs in Chicago at the start of Prohibition--gained a virtual monopoly over organized crime in northern Illinois and beyond. Binder also describes the fight by federal and local authorities, as well as citizens' groups, against organized crime. In the process, he refutes numerous myths and misconceptions related to the Capone gang, other criminal groups, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and gangland killings.
What emerges is a big picture of how Chicago's underworld evolved during this period. This broad perspective goes well beyond Capone and specific acts of violence and brings to light what was happening elsewhere in Chicagoland and after Capone went to jail.
Based on 25 years of research and using many previously unexplored sources, this fascinating account of a bloody and colorful era in Chicago history will become the definitive work on the subject.
Although much has been written about Al Capone
, there has not been--until now--a complete history of organized crime in Chicago during Prohibition. This exhaustively researched book covers the entire period from 1920 to 1933. Author John J. Binder, a recognized authority on the history of organized crime in Chicago, discusses all the important bootlegging gangs in the city and the suburbs and also examines the other major rackets, such as prostitution, gambling, labor and business racketeering, and narcotics.A major focus is how the Capone gang -- one of twelve major bootlegging mobs in Chicago at the start of Prohibition--gained a virtual monopoly over organized crime in northern Illinois and beyond. Binder also describes the fight by federal and local authorities, as well as citizens' groups, against organized crime. In the process, he refutes numerous myths and misconceptions related to the Capone gang, other criminal groups, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and gangland killings.
What emerges is a big picture of how Chicago's underworld evolved during this period. This broad perspective goes well beyond Capone and specific acts of violence and brings to light what was happening elsewhere in Chicagoland and after Capone went to jail.
Based on 25 years of research and using many previously unexplored sources, this fascinating account of a bloody and colorful era in Chicago history will become the definitive work on the subject.
Chicago: The Real Story - The Story of #Chicago the Media Won't Tell
What makes Chicago one of the best cities in the world for some, but one of the most violent in the world for others? Colion Noir goes to Chicago—walks the streets the politicians avoid, and talks to the people the media will never feature—to get the real story. Media perceptions and influences. Politics. Identity. Pop-culture. Instagram. Backgrounds. The glorification of gangs. Economics. Modern segregation. History. Jobs. Education. These are the chapters that make up Chicago: The Real Story. And Colion Noir reads them without fear, finding truth through interviews with Karim Shakir, owner of Hyde Park Barber Studio; Dave Jeff of PHLI, Inc.; Leonard "GLC" Harris, Hip-Hop artist and community organizer; and Chip Eberhart, Master Instructor of Top Shot Academy.
Monday, June 11, 2018
Gangland Hit Attempt and Ensuing Gun Battle Results in 7 shot in Chicago Area Kids Birthday Party
A gang-related shootout at a kid’s birthday party in the suburbs of Chicago early Sunday left seven wounded, one critically, authorities said.
Investigators said the shooters arrived on bikes and on foot, fired multiple shots, then fled north on Grand Avenue in Aurora, Illinois, WGN reported.
“The only suspect information we were able to gather is that the shots were fired by several males dressed in dark hooded sweatshirts,” police told The Aurora Patch on Sunday. “It also appears that someone at the party returned fire.”
Police arrived at the scene shortly after midnight to find six wounded; the seventh victim had been driven to the hospital by a relative.
According to The Chicago Sun-Times, the victims were five men, ages 21, two 22-year-olds, a 25-year-old and a 28-year-old. Two woman ages 27 and 30 also were shot. The 21-year-old man is in critical condition.
On Facebook, the Aurora Police Department requested anyone with information about the shooting to call Aurora Police at 630-256-5500 or Aurora Area Crime Stoppers at 630-892-1000.
Investigators said the shooters arrived on bikes and on foot, fired multiple shots, then fled north on Grand Avenue in Aurora, Illinois, WGN reported.
“The only suspect information we were able to gather is that the shots were fired by several males dressed in dark hooded sweatshirts,” police told The Aurora Patch on Sunday. “It also appears that someone at the party returned fire.”
Police arrived at the scene shortly after midnight to find six wounded; the seventh victim had been driven to the hospital by a relative.
According to The Chicago Sun-Times, the victims were five men, ages 21, two 22-year-olds, a 25-year-old and a 28-year-old. Two woman ages 27 and 30 also were shot. The 21-year-old man is in critical condition.
On Facebook, the Aurora Police Department requested anyone with information about the shooting to call Aurora Police at 630-256-5500 or Aurora Area Crime Stoppers at 630-892-1000.
Wednesday, June 06, 2018
The Explosive Life and Death of Gangster Danny Greene
In the 1970s, Cleveland, Ohio was at war – rival factions fought for control of the city’s organized crime rackets, with deadly results. In 1976, Cleveland was the bombing capital of the United States.
High-profile crime figures were wiped out left and right with car bombs, leaving Cleveland residents shaken. In the center of all the mayhem and bloodshed was an Irish-American crime boss named Danny Greene who went to war with Cleveland’s long-established Italian criminal empire.
Danny Greene was born in Cleveland in 1933 and grew up in the city’s Collinwood neighborhood. As a teenager, he fought frequently with Italian-American kids and developed a dislike for Italians that he carried with him for his entire life. Greene joined the Marines, boxed in the Corps, and became an expert marksman. After his military duty, Greene returned to Cleveland and started working on the waterfront as a longshoreman. In 1962, before he had reached the age of 30, Danny Greene was elected President of the local dock workers’ union.
Greene caused controversy in Cleveland when he organized work stoppages and strikes. In 1964, Greene lost his union job when it came to light that he was allowing corruption to flourish, including kickbacks and having dock workers sign over their paychecks to him.
As he made headlines with the dock workers’ union, Greene caught the eye of a Jewish gangster named Shondor Birns, who had been active since the days of Prohibition. After Greene’s ouster from the union, Birns hired him on as an enforcer. While working for Birns, Greene also branched out on his own, building a criminal empire that included loansharking and gambling operations.
Despite his personal dislike for Italians, Greene also teamed up with a Teamster named John Nardi to expand his criminal activities. There has been speculation that Danny Greene may have been an FBI informant, which might help explain why he was able to avoid scrutiny from law enforcement for so many years.
Greene was a formidable figure, tough and not afraid to stand up for what he believed in. He was also fiercely proud of his Irish heritage, favored the color green, and wore a green crucifix around his neck.
He enjoyed notoriety in his home neighborhood of Collinwood, with many of the residents seeing him as a kind of Robin Hood figure because Greene gave money to the needy and was quick to help out his neighbors.
Greene took a job with the Cleveland Solid Waste Trade Guild, where he was seen as a skilled negotiator and peacekeeper. But when a trash hauler named “Big Mike” Frato pulled out of the guild, the two immediately went to war with each other. One of Greene’s men, 31-year-old Arthur Sneperger, was killed in 1971 when a bomb he was carrying to plant in Frato’s car exploded. Less than a month later, Greene shot and killed Frato after “Big Mike” tried to shoot him from a passing car. Greene was later acquitted on grounds of self-defense.
Danny Greene ran Shondor Burns’ numbers rackets while the old gangster served time in prison in the early 1970s. This only served to strengthen Greene’s reputation and cemented his power in Cleveland’s underworld. After Birns was released from prison, the relationship between him and Greene took a nosedive. Birns took out a $20,000 contract on Greene’s life, which severed the partnership completely. On March 29, 1975, Shondor Birns was killed by a car bomb, the weapon that would come to define the Cleveland gang war over the next couple years. Danny Greene’s house was bombed in May 1975, shortly after Birns’ assassination.
Greene and his army of men were now at war with other criminal elements in Cleveland, most notably the Italian mafia. Gangsters detonated an incredible 37 bombs in the Cleveland area in 1976. Attempts on Danny Greene’s life were made, but all failed – it seemed that the Irishman couldn’t be taken down. Then, Greene’s associate John Nardi was killed by a bomb in May 1977 outside the Teamsters office. After years of avoiding death, the Irishman’s luck was about to run out.
On October 6, 1977, Greene approach his Lincoln Continental after a visit to his dentist. Like many of Cleveland’s gangsters before him, Greene had reached the end of the road. That day, with newly clean teeth, the 43-year-old Greene was obliterated by a car bomb.
A mob hitman named Ray Ferritto was picked up for Greene’s murder, and he quickly turned informant, agreeing to spill everything he knew about Mafia operations across the United States in exchange for leniency. In the end, the death of Danny Greene and the testimony offered by Ray Ferritto brought down what was left of the Cleveland mob.
Thanks to Matt Gilligan.
High-profile crime figures were wiped out left and right with car bombs, leaving Cleveland residents shaken. In the center of all the mayhem and bloodshed was an Irish-American crime boss named Danny Greene who went to war with Cleveland’s long-established Italian criminal empire.
Danny Greene was born in Cleveland in 1933 and grew up in the city’s Collinwood neighborhood. As a teenager, he fought frequently with Italian-American kids and developed a dislike for Italians that he carried with him for his entire life. Greene joined the Marines, boxed in the Corps, and became an expert marksman. After his military duty, Greene returned to Cleveland and started working on the waterfront as a longshoreman. In 1962, before he had reached the age of 30, Danny Greene was elected President of the local dock workers’ union.
Greene caused controversy in Cleveland when he organized work stoppages and strikes. In 1964, Greene lost his union job when it came to light that he was allowing corruption to flourish, including kickbacks and having dock workers sign over their paychecks to him.
As he made headlines with the dock workers’ union, Greene caught the eye of a Jewish gangster named Shondor Birns, who had been active since the days of Prohibition. After Greene’s ouster from the union, Birns hired him on as an enforcer. While working for Birns, Greene also branched out on his own, building a criminal empire that included loansharking and gambling operations.
Despite his personal dislike for Italians, Greene also teamed up with a Teamster named John Nardi to expand his criminal activities. There has been speculation that Danny Greene may have been an FBI informant, which might help explain why he was able to avoid scrutiny from law enforcement for so many years.
Greene was a formidable figure, tough and not afraid to stand up for what he believed in. He was also fiercely proud of his Irish heritage, favored the color green, and wore a green crucifix around his neck.
He enjoyed notoriety in his home neighborhood of Collinwood, with many of the residents seeing him as a kind of Robin Hood figure because Greene gave money to the needy and was quick to help out his neighbors.
Greene took a job with the Cleveland Solid Waste Trade Guild, where he was seen as a skilled negotiator and peacekeeper. But when a trash hauler named “Big Mike” Frato pulled out of the guild, the two immediately went to war with each other. One of Greene’s men, 31-year-old Arthur Sneperger, was killed in 1971 when a bomb he was carrying to plant in Frato’s car exploded. Less than a month later, Greene shot and killed Frato after “Big Mike” tried to shoot him from a passing car. Greene was later acquitted on grounds of self-defense.
Danny Greene ran Shondor Burns’ numbers rackets while the old gangster served time in prison in the early 1970s. This only served to strengthen Greene’s reputation and cemented his power in Cleveland’s underworld. After Birns was released from prison, the relationship between him and Greene took a nosedive. Birns took out a $20,000 contract on Greene’s life, which severed the partnership completely. On March 29, 1975, Shondor Birns was killed by a car bomb, the weapon that would come to define the Cleveland gang war over the next couple years. Danny Greene’s house was bombed in May 1975, shortly after Birns’ assassination.
Greene and his army of men were now at war with other criminal elements in Cleveland, most notably the Italian mafia. Gangsters detonated an incredible 37 bombs in the Cleveland area in 1976. Attempts on Danny Greene’s life were made, but all failed – it seemed that the Irishman couldn’t be taken down. Then, Greene’s associate John Nardi was killed by a bomb in May 1977 outside the Teamsters office. After years of avoiding death, the Irishman’s luck was about to run out.
On October 6, 1977, Greene approach his Lincoln Continental after a visit to his dentist. Like many of Cleveland’s gangsters before him, Greene had reached the end of the road. That day, with newly clean teeth, the 43-year-old Greene was obliterated by a car bomb.
A mob hitman named Ray Ferritto was picked up for Greene’s murder, and he quickly turned informant, agreeing to spill everything he knew about Mafia operations across the United States in exchange for leniency. In the end, the death of Danny Greene and the testimony offered by Ray Ferritto brought down what was left of the Cleveland mob.
Thanks to Matt Gilligan.
La Mara Salvatrucha Gang Banger Pleads Guilty To Conspiring To Participate in A Violent Racketeering Enterprise #MS13
Jeffry Rodriguez, a/k/a “Hyper,” age 22, of Capitol Heights, Maryland pleaded guilty to his participation in a racketeering enterprise in furtherance of the activities of the gang known as La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, including his participation in a drug robbery intended to support the gang.
United States Attorney Robert K. Hur for the District of Maryland; Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Acting Special Agent in Charge Cardell T. Morant of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Baltimore Field Office; Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBI Washington Field Office; Acting Special Agent in Charge Scott W. Hoernke of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Washington Field Office; Chief Henry P. Stawinski III of the Prince George’s County Police Department; Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks; Chief Douglas Holland of the Hyattsville Police Department; Chief J. Thomas Manger of the Montgomery County Police Department; and Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy made the announcement.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty before the Honorable Paula Xinis, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, to conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise.
“The Department of Justice is focused on dismantling transnational criminal organizations like MS-13, which is one of the most dangerous gangs in America,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Cronan. “I want to thank our dedicated federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement officers with Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA, and the FBI, as well as our state and local partners in Prince George’s County and Montgomery County for all of their hard work on this case. Today’s guilty plea is our next step toward taking the despicable MS-13 off our streets for good.”
United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur noted “MS-13 is one of the most violent and ruthless gangs on the streets today. Using the tools of our Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, we are determined to dismantle this organization to make our communities in Maryland safer.”
According to the plea agreement, MS-13 is a national and international gang composed primarily of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from El Salvador. Branches or “cliques” of MS-13, one of the largest street gangs in the United States, operate throughout Prince George’s County and Montgomery County, Maryland. MS-13 members are required to commit acts of violence within the gang and against rival gangs. One of the principal rules of MS-13 is that its members must attack and kill rivals, known as “chavalas,” whenever possible.
Pursuant to his plea agreement, Rodriguez admitted that from at least August 2016, he was a member and associate of the Sailors clique of MS-13. Rodriguez admitted that on August 9, 2016, he and other MS-13 members conspired to rob two individuals of a pound of marijuana, the sale of which would be used to benefit the Sailors clique.
Specifically, on Aug. 9, 2016, Rodriguez and an MS-13 co-conspirator entered a vehicle occupied by the two victims under the guise that they were going to purchase a pound of marijuana from the victims. Rodriguez and his co-conspirator were armed with a firearm and a knife. Upon attempting to rob the victims and displaying the firearm, Rodriguez and his co-conspirator became engaged in a violent struggle with the victims. During the struggle, the victims sustained serious bodily injuries, including gunshot and stab wounds. In addition, both Rodriguez and his co-conspirator sustained gunshot wounds. After being shot, Rodriguez and his co-conspirator ran from the victims’ vehicle, entered another vehicle in which another MS-13 member was waiting, and traveled to a local hospital, where Rodriguez was admitted for treatment.
Eleven of Rodriguez’s co-defendants remain charged in the sixth superseding indictment with various racketeering violations, drug trafficking conspiracy, and extortion conspiracy. The trial of the 11 remaining defendants is scheduled to commence on March 12, 2019.
Judge Paula Xinis has scheduled sentencing on August 29, 2018.
United States Attorney Robert K. Hur for the District of Maryland; Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Acting Special Agent in Charge Cardell T. Morant of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Baltimore Field Office; Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBI Washington Field Office; Acting Special Agent in Charge Scott W. Hoernke of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Washington Field Office; Chief Henry P. Stawinski III of the Prince George’s County Police Department; Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks; Chief Douglas Holland of the Hyattsville Police Department; Chief J. Thomas Manger of the Montgomery County Police Department; and Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy made the announcement.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty before the Honorable Paula Xinis, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, to conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise.
“The Department of Justice is focused on dismantling transnational criminal organizations like MS-13, which is one of the most dangerous gangs in America,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Cronan. “I want to thank our dedicated federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement officers with Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA, and the FBI, as well as our state and local partners in Prince George’s County and Montgomery County for all of their hard work on this case. Today’s guilty plea is our next step toward taking the despicable MS-13 off our streets for good.”
United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur noted “MS-13 is one of the most violent and ruthless gangs on the streets today. Using the tools of our Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, we are determined to dismantle this organization to make our communities in Maryland safer.”
According to the plea agreement, MS-13 is a national and international gang composed primarily of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from El Salvador. Branches or “cliques” of MS-13, one of the largest street gangs in the United States, operate throughout Prince George’s County and Montgomery County, Maryland. MS-13 members are required to commit acts of violence within the gang and against rival gangs. One of the principal rules of MS-13 is that its members must attack and kill rivals, known as “chavalas,” whenever possible.
Pursuant to his plea agreement, Rodriguez admitted that from at least August 2016, he was a member and associate of the Sailors clique of MS-13. Rodriguez admitted that on August 9, 2016, he and other MS-13 members conspired to rob two individuals of a pound of marijuana, the sale of which would be used to benefit the Sailors clique.
Specifically, on Aug. 9, 2016, Rodriguez and an MS-13 co-conspirator entered a vehicle occupied by the two victims under the guise that they were going to purchase a pound of marijuana from the victims. Rodriguez and his co-conspirator were armed with a firearm and a knife. Upon attempting to rob the victims and displaying the firearm, Rodriguez and his co-conspirator became engaged in a violent struggle with the victims. During the struggle, the victims sustained serious bodily injuries, including gunshot and stab wounds. In addition, both Rodriguez and his co-conspirator sustained gunshot wounds. After being shot, Rodriguez and his co-conspirator ran from the victims’ vehicle, entered another vehicle in which another MS-13 member was waiting, and traveled to a local hospital, where Rodriguez was admitted for treatment.
Eleven of Rodriguez’s co-defendants remain charged in the sixth superseding indictment with various racketeering violations, drug trafficking conspiracy, and extortion conspiracy. The trial of the 11 remaining defendants is scheduled to commence on March 12, 2019.
Judge Paula Xinis has scheduled sentencing on August 29, 2018.
Tuesday, June 05, 2018
In the Largest Increase in Decades, Attorney General Jeff Sessions of @TheJusticeDept, Selects District of Columbia to Receive Additional Resources to Combat Violent Crime and Fraud
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has selected the District of Columbia to receive three additional Assistant U.S. Attorneys to focus on violent crime and civil enforcement matters, part of a nationwide influx of federal resources to communities.
In the largest increase in decades, Attorney General Sessions announced on June 4, 2018 that the Department of Justice is allocating 311 new Assistant U.S. Attorneys to assist in priority areas. Those allocations are as follows: 190 violent crime prosecutors, 86 civil enforcement attorneys, and 35 additional immigration prosecutors. Nationwide, much of the civil enforcement work will support the newly created Prescription Interdiction & Litigation Task Force, which targets the opioid crisis at every level of the distribution system.
“Under President Trump's strong leadership, the Department of Justice is going on offense against violent crime, illegal immigration, and the opioid crisis—and today we are sending in reinforcements,” said Attorney General Sessions. “We have a saying in my office that a new federal prosecutor is ‘the coin of the realm.’ When we can eliminate wasteful spending, one of my first questions to my staff is if we can deploy more prosecutors to where they are needed. I have personally worked to re-purpose existing funds to support this critical mission, and as a former federal prosecutor myself, my expectations could not be higher. These exceptional and talented prosecutors are key leaders in our crime fighting partnership. This addition of new Assistant U.S. Attorney positions represents the largest increase in decades.”
“My office is grateful for the extra support being provided by the Justice Department to make our community safer,” said U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu. “We will put our new attorneys to work as quickly as possible on complex cases involving violent crime, drug trafficking, health care fraud, and other serious offenses that harm the citizens of the District of Columbia.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office already is working with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and other law enforcement partners on a Justice Department initiative called Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) that is generating additional cases focusing on violent crime. Under Project Safe Neighborhoods, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is committed to a coordinated law enforcement approach and identifying and addressing the most violent locations in the District of Columbia and the offenders.
In the District of Columbia, two of the three new Assistant U.S. Attorneys will focus on violent crime and one will focus on civil enforcement. The new attorneys are in addition to an Assistant U.S. Attorney provided to the District of Columbia in an earlier initiative created by Attorney General Sessions to target cases involving violent crime.
On the violent crime front, the two new prosecutors will take on responsibilities including work on multi-agency investigations focusing on neighborhood crews and gangs in the Sixth and Seventh Police Districts. Much of the upcoming work will include coordinating federal and local law enforcement resources to combat the recent uptick in violent crime in these areas. The additional Assistant U.S. Attorneys will supplement and increase efforts in executing the Office’s ongoing Project Safe Neighborhoods initiatives and MPD’s Summer Crime Initiatives.
On the civil enforcement side, the new attorney will join five current Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the Office’s Civil Division in sharing responsibility for handling a large docket of complex fraud cases. The District of Columbia ranks fourth in the nation in the number of whistleblower cases filed under the False Claims Act since 1987, and the number of new cases in this district in which the United States is the plaintiff increased on average by 76% during the period from 2013 - 2017. Those cases primarily involve procurement fraud and health care fraud schemes that require substantial resources to investigate and prosecute.
In the largest increase in decades, Attorney General Sessions announced on June 4, 2018 that the Department of Justice is allocating 311 new Assistant U.S. Attorneys to assist in priority areas. Those allocations are as follows: 190 violent crime prosecutors, 86 civil enforcement attorneys, and 35 additional immigration prosecutors. Nationwide, much of the civil enforcement work will support the newly created Prescription Interdiction & Litigation Task Force, which targets the opioid crisis at every level of the distribution system.
“Under President Trump's strong leadership, the Department of Justice is going on offense against violent crime, illegal immigration, and the opioid crisis—and today we are sending in reinforcements,” said Attorney General Sessions. “We have a saying in my office that a new federal prosecutor is ‘the coin of the realm.’ When we can eliminate wasteful spending, one of my first questions to my staff is if we can deploy more prosecutors to where they are needed. I have personally worked to re-purpose existing funds to support this critical mission, and as a former federal prosecutor myself, my expectations could not be higher. These exceptional and talented prosecutors are key leaders in our crime fighting partnership. This addition of new Assistant U.S. Attorney positions represents the largest increase in decades.”
“My office is grateful for the extra support being provided by the Justice Department to make our community safer,” said U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu. “We will put our new attorneys to work as quickly as possible on complex cases involving violent crime, drug trafficking, health care fraud, and other serious offenses that harm the citizens of the District of Columbia.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office already is working with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and other law enforcement partners on a Justice Department initiative called Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) that is generating additional cases focusing on violent crime. Under Project Safe Neighborhoods, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is committed to a coordinated law enforcement approach and identifying and addressing the most violent locations in the District of Columbia and the offenders.
In the District of Columbia, two of the three new Assistant U.S. Attorneys will focus on violent crime and one will focus on civil enforcement. The new attorneys are in addition to an Assistant U.S. Attorney provided to the District of Columbia in an earlier initiative created by Attorney General Sessions to target cases involving violent crime.
On the violent crime front, the two new prosecutors will take on responsibilities including work on multi-agency investigations focusing on neighborhood crews and gangs in the Sixth and Seventh Police Districts. Much of the upcoming work will include coordinating federal and local law enforcement resources to combat the recent uptick in violent crime in these areas. The additional Assistant U.S. Attorneys will supplement and increase efforts in executing the Office’s ongoing Project Safe Neighborhoods initiatives and MPD’s Summer Crime Initiatives.
On the civil enforcement side, the new attorney will join five current Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the Office’s Civil Division in sharing responsibility for handling a large docket of complex fraud cases. The District of Columbia ranks fourth in the nation in the number of whistleblower cases filed under the False Claims Act since 1987, and the number of new cases in this district in which the United States is the plaintiff increased on average by 76% during the period from 2013 - 2017. Those cases primarily involve procurement fraud and health care fraud schemes that require substantial resources to investigate and prosecute.
Friday, June 01, 2018
Six Gangsters Sentenced to Life in Prison in Black Souls RICO Trial
Six defendants convicted in December 2017 of racketeering and drug conspiracy after a three-month trial were sentenced today to life in prison. Cornell Dawson, the leader of the Black Souls, a violent street gang operating on the west side of Chicago, was sentenced, along with Teron Odum, Antwan Davis, Ulysses Polk, Clifton Lemon, and Duavon Spears, who were managers and enforcers for the Black Souls. Judge Michael B. McHale sentenced each defendant to life in prison on the racketeering conspiracy charge and a forty-year consecutive term for narcotics conspiracy. Fourteen other members of the Black Souls pled guilty to racketeering and drug charges prior to trial and have previously been sentenced.
Evidence at trial showed that for at least 15 years, the Black Souls controlled heroin and cocaine sales in the areas near Monroe St. and Pulaski Rd. in the West Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago and protected their territory through numerous acts of murder and kidnapping, beatings, and witness intimidation. Members of the Black Souls committed at least four murders to protect their drug operation and as retaliation for shootings by rival gangs. As part of the sentence he imposed for the racketeering conspiracy count, Judge McHale also imposed the following concurrent life sentences for a series of unlawful deaths that the jury found were reasonably foreseeable to each defendant:
Among the murders proven at trial was the October 20, 2012 execution-style murder of Claude Snulligan. Months prior to Snulligan’s murder, Odum had been arrested and charged with aggravated battery after beating Snulligan for calling the police to complain about the Black Souls selling drugs in front of his house. While Odum was in custody, Snulligan refused to accept a bribe from Dawson and Davis in exchange for not cooperating with law enforcement in the case against Odum. Two months after Snulligan’s refusal, Spears shot him in the back of the head in broad daylight in the neighborhood controlled by the Black Souls, as other members of the Black Souls stood nearby.
“The sentences imposed by the Court hold the defendants accountable for their roles as leaders of the violent Black Souls street gang and for their participation in murders, attempted murders, shootings, kidnappings, beatings and drug trafficking,” said Kimberly M. Foxx, Cook County State’s Attorney. “The severity of these sentences will not only protect the community from these defendants, but also send a strong message to the leaders of other violent gangs that they will be held accountable. I want to thank our law enforcement partners on this case, the Chicago Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, who tirelessly worked to bring the leaders of the Black Souls to justice,” continued Foxx. Foxx added, “My office is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to bring additional prosecutions like this one that strategically target violent offenders preying on communities already ravaged by violent crime and drugs.”
This case was the first to be tried in Cook County under the Illinois RICO law passed in 2012. In 2017, at the urging of the State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois legislature extended the RICO law for another five-year term.
Evidence at trial showed that for at least 15 years, the Black Souls controlled heroin and cocaine sales in the areas near Monroe St. and Pulaski Rd. in the West Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago and protected their territory through numerous acts of murder and kidnapping, beatings, and witness intimidation. Members of the Black Souls committed at least four murders to protect their drug operation and as retaliation for shootings by rival gangs. As part of the sentence he imposed for the racketeering conspiracy count, Judge McHale also imposed the following concurrent life sentences for a series of unlawful deaths that the jury found were reasonably foreseeable to each defendant:
- January 9, 2013 murder of Johnny Taylor: Dawson, Davis
- October 20, 2012 murder of Claude Snulligan: Dawson, Odum, Davis, Polk, Spears
- July 21, 2003 murder of Ernest Keys: Dawson, Odum
- June 24, 2002 murder of Charles Watson: Dawson, Odum, Polk, Lemon
Among the murders proven at trial was the October 20, 2012 execution-style murder of Claude Snulligan. Months prior to Snulligan’s murder, Odum had been arrested and charged with aggravated battery after beating Snulligan for calling the police to complain about the Black Souls selling drugs in front of his house. While Odum was in custody, Snulligan refused to accept a bribe from Dawson and Davis in exchange for not cooperating with law enforcement in the case against Odum. Two months after Snulligan’s refusal, Spears shot him in the back of the head in broad daylight in the neighborhood controlled by the Black Souls, as other members of the Black Souls stood nearby.
“The sentences imposed by the Court hold the defendants accountable for their roles as leaders of the violent Black Souls street gang and for their participation in murders, attempted murders, shootings, kidnappings, beatings and drug trafficking,” said Kimberly M. Foxx, Cook County State’s Attorney. “The severity of these sentences will not only protect the community from these defendants, but also send a strong message to the leaders of other violent gangs that they will be held accountable. I want to thank our law enforcement partners on this case, the Chicago Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, who tirelessly worked to bring the leaders of the Black Souls to justice,” continued Foxx. Foxx added, “My office is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to bring additional prosecutions like this one that strategically target violent offenders preying on communities already ravaged by violent crime and drugs.”
This case was the first to be tried in Cook County under the Illinois RICO law passed in 2012. In 2017, at the urging of the State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois legislature extended the RICO law for another five-year term.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Bobby DeLuca Faces Blistering Cross-Examination at "Cadillac Frank" Salemme Mob Trial
Defense attorneys hacked away at the credibility of Rhode Island mobster Robert "Bobby" DeLuca during blistering cross-examination at federal court in Boston on Wednesday.
DeLuca, 72, told jurors on day one of his testimony that in 1993 then-mob boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme told him he needed to dispose of the body of Steven DiSarro, a Boston nightclub owner who investigators say was strangled in Salemme’s Sharon, Massachusetts, home.
DeLuca said he and his brother Joseph DeLuca (who would later be inducted into the crime family by Salemme) followed through on mafia don's order, or they risked grave consequences. “We didn’t want to get killed,” DeLuca said.
One of Salemme’s lawyers, Elliot Weinstein, pressed DeLuca on his lying to federal investigators in 2011 about what he knew of the DiSarro murder. DeLuca has pleaded guilty to perjury and making false statements in that case and will be sentenced later this year.
“You lie to people and they didn’t know you were lying, correct?" Weinstein asked. “That’s correct,” DeLuca said.
After cooperating in a 2011 case that brought down nine members and associates of the New England crime family, DeLuca moved to Florida with his wife and kids. DeLuca said he got out of Rhode Island for his safety and that of his family. But he said he refused the government's offer to be entered into the federal witness protection program.
Weinstein asked DeLuca if he received nearly $64,000 in payments from the federal government in relocation expenses for several years starting in 2011 to fund the move. DeLuca said he didn’t know how much, but did admit he gambled while living in Florida.
Weinstein asked if he gambled with government funds. "I don’t know what pocket the government’s money was in, and what pocket my money was in,” DeLuca said.
DeLuca said he is now locked up in a secure federal facility for his protection - as he awaits sentencing - and refused to say where when Weinstein asked the location. But he did say it was a better facility than the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts, where he was placed when he was arrested in 2016. “Anything is better than Plymouth,” he said.
DeLuca said he hasn’t made up his mind if he will go into the witness protection program after he is sentenced in the DiSarro case and for pleading guilty to conspiracy in the 1992 murder of mob enforceer Kevin Hanrahan.
Asked if he expects the government to ask a judge for leniency for cooperating when he is sentenced, Deluca said, “I’m hoping they do."
At the end of the day, DeLuca became frustrated with defense attorney Mark Shea – who represents Paul Weadick – over the meaning of wording in transcripts from grand jury testimony.
Shea waived the paperwork in front of DeLuca and told him to read the testimony. “I’m not going to read nothing,” DeLuca snapped. “I know what I’m talking about.”
U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs decided to recess for the day after the heated exchange. DeLuca is expected back on the stand today.
Salemme, 84, and Weadick, 62, are each charged with murder of witness for the DiSarro killing. Prosecutors have said Salemme - and his late son Frank Salemme, Jr. - feared Disarro was going to cooperate with the FBI. Salemme and Weadick have pleaded not guilty. Salemme Jr. died in 1995 of lymphoma.
Thanks to Tim White.
DeLuca, 72, told jurors on day one of his testimony that in 1993 then-mob boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme told him he needed to dispose of the body of Steven DiSarro, a Boston nightclub owner who investigators say was strangled in Salemme’s Sharon, Massachusetts, home.
DeLuca said he and his brother Joseph DeLuca (who would later be inducted into the crime family by Salemme) followed through on mafia don's order, or they risked grave consequences. “We didn’t want to get killed,” DeLuca said.
One of Salemme’s lawyers, Elliot Weinstein, pressed DeLuca on his lying to federal investigators in 2011 about what he knew of the DiSarro murder. DeLuca has pleaded guilty to perjury and making false statements in that case and will be sentenced later this year.
“You lie to people and they didn’t know you were lying, correct?" Weinstein asked. “That’s correct,” DeLuca said.
After cooperating in a 2011 case that brought down nine members and associates of the New England crime family, DeLuca moved to Florida with his wife and kids. DeLuca said he got out of Rhode Island for his safety and that of his family. But he said he refused the government's offer to be entered into the federal witness protection program.
Weinstein asked DeLuca if he received nearly $64,000 in payments from the federal government in relocation expenses for several years starting in 2011 to fund the move. DeLuca said he didn’t know how much, but did admit he gambled while living in Florida.
Weinstein asked if he gambled with government funds. "I don’t know what pocket the government’s money was in, and what pocket my money was in,” DeLuca said.
DeLuca said he is now locked up in a secure federal facility for his protection - as he awaits sentencing - and refused to say where when Weinstein asked the location. But he did say it was a better facility than the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts, where he was placed when he was arrested in 2016. “Anything is better than Plymouth,” he said.
DeLuca said he hasn’t made up his mind if he will go into the witness protection program after he is sentenced in the DiSarro case and for pleading guilty to conspiracy in the 1992 murder of mob enforceer Kevin Hanrahan.
Asked if he expects the government to ask a judge for leniency for cooperating when he is sentenced, Deluca said, “I’m hoping they do."
At the end of the day, DeLuca became frustrated with defense attorney Mark Shea – who represents Paul Weadick – over the meaning of wording in transcripts from grand jury testimony.
Shea waived the paperwork in front of DeLuca and told him to read the testimony. “I’m not going to read nothing,” DeLuca snapped. “I know what I’m talking about.”
U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs decided to recess for the day after the heated exchange. DeLuca is expected back on the stand today.
Salemme, 84, and Weadick, 62, are each charged with murder of witness for the DiSarro killing. Prosecutors have said Salemme - and his late son Frank Salemme, Jr. - feared Disarro was going to cooperate with the FBI. Salemme and Weadick have pleaded not guilty. Salemme Jr. died in 1995 of lymphoma.
Thanks to Tim White.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
John DiFronzo, Leader of The Chicago Outfit, is Dead
The leader of the Outfit for more than a decade, notorious for his nickname and his cagey demeanor, died on Sunday-the ABC7 I-Team has learned.
John "No Nose" DiFronzo was 89 years old. He had Alzheimer's disease, according to noted Chicago attorney Joe "the Shark" Lopez who counts mob leaders as clients. "I knew that he was extremely ill and I thought that the ending was going to come and it finally did" Lopez told the I-Team during an interview on Tuesday.
DiFronzo was awarded the mob moniker "No Nose" early in his career when part of his schnoz was sliced off as he jumped through the plate glass window of a Michigan Ave. clothing store window to escape after a burglary. That incident in 1949 happened in the middle of a gun battle with police and left DiFronzo with a mangled snout.
Eventually plastic surgery restored the mobster's nose, but the nickname stuck. Sometimes he was also called "Johnny Bananas" by associates.
"John DiFronzo was at the top during a much different era than other times in history" said Chicago mob expert John Binder
. "I mean they were still killing quite a few guys pre-years during the 1960's. Starting in the 1990's that really slows down and by the late 1990's there's very few certifiable or agreed-on outfit hits" said Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit."
DiFronzo had been a longtime resident of River Grove. He would meet weekly with Outfit underlings at a local restaurant near the apartment he shared with his wife.
The I-Team put his regular midday meetings under surveillance in 2009 and conducted a rare interview with the mob boss as he was leaving one of the luncheons. "Lunch with No Nose" as it was coined, was a rare glimpse into Outfit operations and perhaps the last time DiFronzo was seen on television.
The crime syndicate boss, who began as an enforcer, did serve prison sentences for burglary in 1950 and in 1993 for racketeering-and was a suspect in about three dozen Outfit crimes and some murder cases. But he was convicted only a few times and managed to escape the legal fate of many of his mob colleagues.
As the upper echelon of the Chicago Outfit went to prison for life in the 2007 Operation: Family Secrets case, DiFronzo was always thought to have been atop the list of those who would fall in the second round of federal indictments.
"I think about (mob hitman) Nick Calabrese saying that DiFronzo was there when they killed the Spilotro brothers" recalled Lopez. Anthony "Ant" Spilotro and his brother Michael Spilotro were murdered by Outfit hitmen according to federal investigators and buried in an Indiana cornfield. The 1986 double murder was the subject of a Hollywood movie and has never been officially solved.
There never was a Family Secrets II and DiFronzo managed to hold the reins of power into his 80's.
After Lunch with No Nose, the octogenarian Outfit boss told the I-Team that he was "not concerned at all" about being prosecuted. As it turned out, he was correct. He met the fate of old age and a debilitating disease on Sunday morning, passing away less violently then some of those who crossed paths with the Outfit over the years.
"I would say John DiFronzo was no Tony Accardo" said Binder, referring to Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo the long-time Chicago consiglieri who died in 1992. "Now of course they (Outfit bosses) are working during different time periods. It's one thing to be leading an organization when its growing and it's at its peak. It's another thing to be leading an organization when it is clearly declining" Binder said.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Barb Markoff.
John "No Nose" DiFronzo was 89 years old. He had Alzheimer's disease, according to noted Chicago attorney Joe "the Shark" Lopez who counts mob leaders as clients. "I knew that he was extremely ill and I thought that the ending was going to come and it finally did" Lopez told the I-Team during an interview on Tuesday.
DiFronzo was awarded the mob moniker "No Nose" early in his career when part of his schnoz was sliced off as he jumped through the plate glass window of a Michigan Ave. clothing store window to escape after a burglary. That incident in 1949 happened in the middle of a gun battle with police and left DiFronzo with a mangled snout.
Eventually plastic surgery restored the mobster's nose, but the nickname stuck. Sometimes he was also called "Johnny Bananas" by associates.
"John DiFronzo was at the top during a much different era than other times in history" said Chicago mob expert John Binder
. "I mean they were still killing quite a few guys pre-years during the 1960's. Starting in the 1990's that really slows down and by the late 1990's there's very few certifiable or agreed-on outfit hits" said Binder, author of "The Chicago Outfit."DiFronzo had been a longtime resident of River Grove. He would meet weekly with Outfit underlings at a local restaurant near the apartment he shared with his wife.
The I-Team put his regular midday meetings under surveillance in 2009 and conducted a rare interview with the mob boss as he was leaving one of the luncheons. "Lunch with No Nose" as it was coined, was a rare glimpse into Outfit operations and perhaps the last time DiFronzo was seen on television.
The crime syndicate boss, who began as an enforcer, did serve prison sentences for burglary in 1950 and in 1993 for racketeering-and was a suspect in about three dozen Outfit crimes and some murder cases. But he was convicted only a few times and managed to escape the legal fate of many of his mob colleagues.
As the upper echelon of the Chicago Outfit went to prison for life in the 2007 Operation: Family Secrets case, DiFronzo was always thought to have been atop the list of those who would fall in the second round of federal indictments.
"I think about (mob hitman) Nick Calabrese saying that DiFronzo was there when they killed the Spilotro brothers" recalled Lopez. Anthony "Ant" Spilotro and his brother Michael Spilotro were murdered by Outfit hitmen according to federal investigators and buried in an Indiana cornfield. The 1986 double murder was the subject of a Hollywood movie and has never been officially solved.
There never was a Family Secrets II and DiFronzo managed to hold the reins of power into his 80's.
After Lunch with No Nose, the octogenarian Outfit boss told the I-Team that he was "not concerned at all" about being prosecuted. As it turned out, he was correct. He met the fate of old age and a debilitating disease on Sunday morning, passing away less violently then some of those who crossed paths with the Outfit over the years.
"I would say John DiFronzo was no Tony Accardo" said Binder, referring to Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo the long-time Chicago consiglieri who died in 1992. "Now of course they (Outfit bosses) are working during different time periods. It's one thing to be leading an organization when its growing and it's at its peak. It's another thing to be leading an organization when it is clearly declining" Binder said.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie and Barb Markoff.
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