John “Junior” Gotti's Mob trial

Talk about a get-out-of-jail-free card.
A defense witness for John “Junior” Gotti testified yesterday that an FBI agent offered to help spring him from the slammer in exchange for evidence against the mob scion.
Joseph O’Kane said Special Agent Ted Otto appeared unexpectedly last year at the Canaan federal pen in Waymart, Pa., where O’Kane is serving life plus 15 years for racketeering charges including murder.
O’Kane, 42, said the fed told him: “I understand you’re doing a life sentence and we want to give you a number,” meaning a reduced-sentence offer.
The admitted killer and drug dealer said, “I’d probably be home with my wife and family right now” if he’d coughed up information on the Gambino boss.
But O’Kane insisted he didn’t have any dirt, and never learned the details of Otto’s offer because “I told him to go ‘eff’ himself

Jeffrey Castardi,Guilty plea in Gin Rummy club illegal gambling case

Jeffrey Castardi

A man who ran a high-stakes poker business in Denver catering to Denver media figures and sports personalities and allegedly had ties to the New York mob, has pleaded guilty to violating Colorado's Organized Crime Control Act, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced today.

The man, Jeffrey Castardi, 48, who ran the Gin Rummy Club, 2380 South Broadway, faces up to 24 years in prison when sentenced on Dec. 14 in Jefferson County district court

According to an indictment returned by the state grand jury, Castardi was the ringleader of an organization that involved gambling, bookmaking and loan sharking - all of which Castardi learned during his youth and early adult years when he lived in the New York City area

Investigators said that Castardi told people who engaged in Castardi's high stakes poker and sports-betting or bookmaking activities that the Gin Rummy Club was a Mafia or mob-affiliated establishment.

Castardi's use of this tactic was designed to strengthen the intimidating influence of Gin Rummy Club and also to further the success of the club's illicit business methods, according to investigators.

Among the people who frequented the club were former Broncos fullback Reggie Rivers; former Broncos running back Rod Bernstine; Francois Safieddine, president of the Monarck nightclub in Denver; and John Sacha, a pain medicine doctor who teaches poker strategy on a "Dr. Poker" instructional video.
In announcing Castardi's guilty plea, Suthers said that Castardi's operation allegedly collected significant amounts of money between May 2003 and late 2008 through a "complex, persistent and intimidating system of individual debt collectors, front businesses and various bank accounts."

Castardi and his associates were suspected of violating numerous laws including running an illegal professional gambling and bookmaking business, loan-sharking, money laundering, tax evasion, theft and unlawful debt collection.

A key to the enterprise, said the grand jury, was a system established at the Gin Rummy Club where poker players and those betting on sports played on credit.
The system was referred to as playing on the "book."

The existence of the book often led players to accrue significant financial debt to the Gin Rummy Club and Castardi. Some players and others then felt it was necessary to take out "street loans" that were usually orchestrated and financed by Castardi.
Ralph Gagliardi , an agent with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, said the club would take in as much as $750,000 in a single year.

In 1988, Castardi was arrested on Long Island for promoting gambling. Also involved in the gambling operation was Richard Giordonello, a member of Gambino captain Nicholas "Little Nicky" Corozzo's crew

Sammy Gravano may testify for Junior Gotti in racketeering, murder trial

His testimony put former Gambino boss John "Dapper Don" Gotti behind bars for the rest of his life, but Sammy "Bull" Gravano could emerge as the star witness in the defense of John "Junior" Gotti.
The former mob turncoat testified for the feds against Gotti in 1991 -- finally sinking the Teflon Don, who was sentenced to life behind bars where he died in 2002.
In an ironic twist, Junior's defense team, led by lawyer Charles Carnesi, said today that it is looking to use Gravano to the younger Gotti's advantage.
Carnesi said he plans to interview Gravano about the murder of soldier Louis DiBono -- a gangland slaying the feds claim Junior was involved in -- and how he has testified at past trial about it without ever mentioning the younger Gotti's involvement. "I'll interview him and I'll see what we do," said Carnesi.
The move was revealed by the judge during the course of Gotti's trial.
Gravano, who testified during the John Gotti trial that he was involved in 19 murders, is currently in Arizona state prison after opting out of the federal Witness Protection Program in 1995. Since 2002, Gravano, now 64, has been serving a 19-year sentence for his role in a drug-trafficking ring.
Gravano has testified in the past that his last murder was the whacking of DiBono in October 1990.
The feds claim Junior helped put together the hit while working as a captain for the Gambinos.
Gotti is on trial for a fourth time in Manhattan federal court on racketeering charges and for his involvement in five murders. The other three ended in either a mistrial or hung jury

Reputed mob boss D'Elia seeks reduced sentence

SCRANTON - The reputed boss of a northeastern Pennsylvania crime family is asking a federal judge to cut his nine-year sentence by four years, citing ailing health and his cooperation with prosecutors William D'Elia, 63, pleaded guilty last year to witness tampering and conspiracy to launder drug money. He has been in prison since 2006 and could be released as early as next year if the request is granted. Federal prosecutors are already seeking a 21-month reduction in the sentence of D'Elia, citing his help in the prosecutions of former casino owner Louis DeNaples and businessman Robert Kulick.
D'Elia's attorney said in yesterday's motion that his client's health has been poor since hernia surgery this year and he now must use a cane.
Prosecutors this year dropped perjury charges against DeNaples in an agreement that required him to turn over the business to his daughter. Kulick was sentenced last month to 37 months on a weapons charge.

Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli:Prison is hazardous to my health

Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli, alleged acting head of the Colombo crime family, is unhappy with jail and wants out. He says the food is bad and his mattress is uncomfortable.

To hear Tommy Shots tell it, jail is for the birds.No toenail clippers. Too many potatoes. And those mattresses are so hard.

Read The Full Story.

Joseph "Mousie" Massimino

Joseph "Mousie" Massimino, the reputed underboss of the Philadelphia mob, is coming home after serving more than five years of a 10-year sentence on a New Jersey racketeering charge.

Judge Anthony Pugliese reduced Massimino's sentence to time served during a sentence reconsideration hearing today in Camden County Superior Court.

In issuing what amounted to a get out of jail card to the 57-year-old mob leader, Pugliese accepted the arguments of Massimino's lawyer who said "he's done more than enough time considering the nature of the crime." Read The Full Story Read The Full Story

Mob turncoat 'cheated on wife every day'

Former Gambino associate John Alite may have been a member of a mob family -- but he was no family man.

The star witness in the John "Junior" Gotti trial said today he repeatedly cheated on his wife and "wasn't a good guy" as he helped the Gambinos sell drugs and kill people.

The mob turncoat said in Manhattan federal court that he has two kids -- one with his wife and a second with a girlfriend -- and that he only pays them $137.50 each a week in child support payments.

Alite, 46, said his marriage to a woman identified only as Carol fell apart because he "cheated on her every day." That was it," he added.

He said he keeps both families in different houses in New Jersey and that his ex-wife and girlfriend, a woman he later married named Claudia DiPippa, are aware of -- and hate -- each other.

DiPippa is the sister of a Gambino associate.

With Gotti staring straight at him, Alite said he made $1million a year from 1984 to 1994 trafficking drugs for the mob. He said he made another $1 million a year over roughly the same period as a result of 30 home invasions he had committed.

A cool and composed Alite, who avoided eye-contact with Gotti and mostly faced the jury, also said he gave money to his family -- but not always.

Alite said he "very rarely" gave his father any of the illicit cash.

"He was a degenerate gambler," said Alite.

'Junior' Gotti ordered hit on dealer, says mobster

Mob turncoat John Alite testified Wednesday that he shot a Queens cocaine dealer in the head in 1988 on orders from John "Junior" Gotti because the man was bragging about his Gotti family connections, and he was told to make no effort to hide the body because the Gottis wanted to "send a message."
Alite, appearing at Gotti's murder-racketeering trial in federal court in Manhattan, said Gotti was particularly incensed at coke dealer George Grosso not only because the drug business is supposed to be off-limits for the mob, but because Grosso touted a link to "John Gotti" - making people think that Gotti's father, Gambino capo and future boss John J. Gotti, was involved.
"John Gotti Jr. threatened him, told him to stop using his father's name," Alite, a top Gotti lieutenant and friend of his family during the 1980s, said of a meeting he attended with Gotti and Grosso. "He told him if he does it again, he's not going to warn him again."
Gotti, 45, of Oyster Bay, was tried three times in 2005 and 2006 on racketeering charges, with each case ending in a hung jury after Gotti's lawyers claimed that he withdrew from the mob in the 1990s, before the five-year statute of limitations on racketeering.
Alite's testimony could mark a critical departure from the earlier cases, because the former confidante did not begin cooperating with the government until last year, and the slaying to which he tied Gotti is not subject to a statute of limitations or the withdrawal defense. Gotti has been separately charged with the murders of Grosso and a second man, Bruce Gotterup, in 1991.
Testifying for nearly six hours on his 47th birthday as Gotti and Gotti's mother, sisters and two nephews watched, Alite said that while he administered plenty of beatings as part of Gotti's crew and for his own drug business, he never killed anyone before Grosso. But Gotti, he testified, ratcheted up the pressure in the fall of 1988.
"He pushed the issue. John Gotti Jr. kept saying, 'You didn't kill this kid yet,' trying to say I didn't have enough -- to do it," said Alite, who pleaded guilty to racketeering last year in Florida and is hoping for leniency on his sentence.
"He's telling me it's got to get done. 'I'm telling you to do it now, if you're going to be around.' " he said. "Otherwise, I go if I don't execute his orders."
Alite said he recruited a four-man team to help with the hit, lured Grosso to a bar in late December 1988 and then into a car by feigning friendship - a trick he said he learned from the Gotti family. He pumped "two or three bullets" into Grosso's head, he said, and dumped the body beside the Grand Central Parkway.
The means of disposal was specified by Gotti, Alite testified: "Don't bury him, don't hide him. Put him out on the street so people know what you did. Send a message: Don't use our names."
Alite said the team that helped him included Nicholas Tobia, who became a Suffolk County police officer in 1995. He said Tobia was not in the car where Grosso was shot, but in a trailing car. Tobia, of Wantagh, whose name first surfaced when Alite testified at the trial of mobster Charles Carneglia earlier this year, is on leave from the Suffolk force. Yesterday his lawyer, William Petrillo of Rockville Centre, again denied wrongdoing.
In other testimony Wednesday, Alite gave more details about two deaths that he linked to Gotti. He said Gotti frequently took credit for fatally stabbing a Queens man named Danny Silva in a 1983 bar fight, and said that his father had gotten bodyguard Mark Caputo to take the fall for him. Caputo was charged by police, but the case was dismissed.
He said that Gotti also told him that John Cennamo, a Queens man who fingered Gotti for the Silva stabbing and was found hanged behind a Laundromat in 1984, had been killed by a Gambino family team on the elder Gotti's orders. The death was ruled a suicide at the time, and family and friends said Cennamo had been depressed about losing a job and a girlfriend.