Saturday, May 30, 2009

Mob-made: Retired FBI agent shares story for Hollywood


NEWTOWN -- Not many people get to meet a mobster in a friendly situation, let alone hear a ranking member of New York City's Gambino crime family, with the title "made man," describe his daily tasks.

But that was one of the surprise perks members of the Newtown Citizen Police Academy got this year.

Standing 6-feet-4 inches tall and weighting almost 400 pounds, 56-year-old Joaquin "Jack" Garcia certainly fits the stereotype of an Italian gangster, which is one of the many reasons he was the undercover agent the FBI chose to infiltrate the family.

Over the 26 years Garcia was an agent, he had more than 100 different identities, but his most intense stint was the three years he spent as Jack Falcone, a third-generation Sicilian, whose parents were buried in Florida.

Starting in 2002, Garcia was able to infiltrate the Gambino family -- one of the top five crime families in New York City. He was made to look like an investor in a strip club that the Gambinos, and Greg DePalma, a family capo, provided security for.

To play the part, he needed a fancy car, Rolex watch, a 3-carat diamond pinky ring, a cross necklace and a few Italian suits.To gain trust, he used watches and other items that had been confiscated by police during drug arrests, telling members of the family he would give them a good price for them. Or he would buy a TV and offer it, claiming it fell off a truck, to gain the respect of the group.

If something's hot, they'd rather get that -- to know they got away with it," he said.

He continued to gain the trust of the higher-ups, and was invited to join La Cosa Nostra and named a "made-man," someone who has mobsters working directly for him.

He maintained this persona, using wiretaps and helping organize video surveillance, until he aroused suspicion by not participating in a gang beating in a Bloomingdale's store.

The FBI pulled him from the job before he was found out. But despite his urgent removal, the agency was able to put 32 members of the Gambino family behind bars on charges of racketeering, extortion and violence.

Now retired, Garcia wrote a book, "Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family," which became a New York Times bestseller soon after it was released in October 2008.

Garcia subsequently appeared on "60 Minutes" and other news broadcasts, as well as many news publications.

What was the scariest part of being an undercover mobster? That is the most common question he gets


He said he hoped if he was found out he "could be made (out as) an agent, because the fate of an informant is a death sentence."

Mobsters know better than to kill an FBI agent, he said.

Garcia explained that in his experience mob families were run exactly as they are portrayed in "The Godfather" movie.

"With the mob you eat 24-7. It's like you're on a cruise ship with the mob," he joked. He gained 80 of his 390 pounds in his three years as a gangster.

But he did not have to kill anyone, or do anything illegal to harm someone.

"(They) used to have people whack someone, to get their hands dirty so they couldn't turn and be a rat, (but) the mob has changed ... You could be called upon to whack someone, but it wasn't a prerequisite.

He said as long as he was making the money for the family, they were happy to have him on board.

Garcia recently sold the rights to his story to a movie producer, and is hopeful someday soon someone impersonating him will tell his story.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

mob Busted Suitcase



Tony "Toothless Tony" Sposado started his non -stellar crime career as a whipping boy for a browbeating old-school mobster named Mike Marquese. Mike had Tony lugging coca-cola cases and vending machines off of vending trucks..Nothing criminal about that, if the trucks had belonged to Mike
Marquese but they didn't..

Sposado made crumbs from the capers ---while Marquese made a pretty penny using the stolen swag to stock-up his own vending business. Sposado's downfall came when he met up with a punch-drunk stew bum named Ronnie Rome.

Rome had been in the vending business with Boston's Angiulo mob, but he became a fence jumper when he flaked out on a mob hit.The two flat-tires became fast friends by putting in many nights of booze riddled banter in mob owned barrooms. Rome filled Tony's head with full-of-shit-stories and empty promises that Sposado sucked up like Monica Lewinsky

. Tony then quit on Mike Marquese for what he thought would be a big time vending venture with Ronnie Rome--but it went bust when Ronnie fleeced him like a turnpike sucker at a carnival.Tony started dealing drugs and he got busted and did a long stretch in the can. He came out a broke and useless, toothless, busted suitcase.

Another true Hollywood Story

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Mad Crazy Joey Gallo


Joe Gallo catapulted to mob fame while sitting before a panel of U.S. senators and their charismatic general counsel, Robert Kennedy.
An Italian-American dressed in black and sunglasses, Gallo gleamed as a rebel for the TV-watching public in 1959.
He made wisecracks, dropped an ash tray and generally played to the cameras, which broadcast Gallo's testimony, or lack thereof, on the lucrative mob stronghold of jukebox vending.
"Gangsters were fascinating stuff ... and they were really being bad boys," writer Tom Folsom said of Gallo and his brothers, Lawrence and Albert, who also testified. "That kind of national attention was really kind of their breakthrough moment."
But that's just what took place in front of the cameras.
Behind the lens, Gallo painted, killed people, studied philosophy and launched a revolution against the Profacis, the New York crime family that employed him.
The character-driven saga is fit for the 1960s and perfect for Folsom's brand of made-for-Hollywood storytelling, complete with a true "to the mattresses" scene later adopted by "The Godfather" author Mario Puzo.
"It's really this kind of world that they've created. That's the kind of thing you see in the movies," Folsom said of Gallo and his brothers. "They definitely blurred fantasy and fiction."
Folsom, a University of Georgia graduate and New York resident, chronicles the Gallo story in his latest book, "The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld," which Weinstein Books published and optioned for movie and television.
He learned quite a bit about Gallo, nicknamed "Crazy Joe," during lengthy interviews with Leroy "Nicky" Barnes.
Barnes was a high-powered heroin dealer in Harlem, N.Y., who led his own Mafia-like operation during the 1960s and 1970s. He later testified as a federal witness and entered protective custody.
Folsom co-wrote Barnes' story, "Mr. Untouchable: My Crimes and Punishments," with him in 2007, learning all about Barnes' prison time with Gallo, who plotted their takeover of New York's drug underworld.
"Joe predicted one day the Mafia would have to start aligning with the black heroin dealers," Folsom said. "He wanted to take over the Mafia. He thought that Nicky Barnes would be a really strong ally of that. ... They were preparing for the revolution."
The time and place is as much a part of the Gallo story as the man himself. He and his brothers grew up in the rough Red Hook neighborhood on Brooklyn's industrial waterfront, learning quickly it's better to take as a mobster than be taken by one.
But they did not settle for their otherwise small-time scores.
Inspired by the spirit of the 1960s and its countercultures, Gallo portrayed himself as an outsider, mixed with various members of high and low society and even mingled among Greenwich Village's intellectuals and artists. (After Gallo's death, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan wrote a romantic tribute to "Joey.")
"This guy had this real thirst for knowledge. He wanted to learn," Folsom said of Gallo. Yet, he also killed. "These were the two forces that were pulling him apart. ... They essentially destroyed him."
True mobsters shunned attention of any kind, Folsom explained. But the Gallos, led by Joe, invited it.
Folsom said even during their war with the Profacis, FBI agents tasked with surveillance were granted unusual access.
"This is like the boys in the mailroom taking over IBM. They're completely in over their heads. They get 20 mattresses, right on the Red Hook waterfront in their grandmother's tenement," Folsom said, describing the mobsters at war.
During their years-long camp-outs together, they enjoyed family gatherings and even invited the FBI to share meals. Since the agents could neither arrest nor evict them, the lawmen accepted.
"(Their attitude was) if we're both going to be here, we might as well enjoy our jobs. When the Gallos' father would cook these big pots of spaghetti, the cops would hang out, and they'd all have dinner together," Folsom said. "It's one of the more unique aspects of the story that you don't get from a lot of other cops-and-robbers tales."
As a result, the FBI sensed what the gang was like behind the scenes and recorded a lot of what transpired in detailed reports Folsom researched for his book.
Additionally, the writer interviewed former FBI agents and Barnes. He also scoured news accounts highlighting Gallo's actions, right up until his shooting death weeks after the release of "The Godfather" in 1972, a movie that incorporated several aspects of Gallo's story.
"Rather than duck for cover, he flaunted himself out in the public. Some people actually think - I think - he was courting death. ... Joey thought he could fight the system," Folsom said. "The moral of the book is, you can't fight the system. It doesn't mean you can't fight against the system, but the paradox is the system will always win

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Mafia Book by Brooklyn's Rackets Chief


Mafia Book by Brooklyn’s Rackets Chief Hits Shelves
JAY STREET – A local prosecutor’s outspoken account of investigating organized crime, and how Brooklyn federal prosecutors tried to steal credit from local authorities, hit bookstore shelves Tuesday. Assistant District Attorney Michael Vecchione, chief of the rackets division at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, co-wrote Friends of the Family: The Inside Story of the Mafia Cops Case

The book is a tell-all account of the infamous police corruption case that led to life sentences for former NYPD officers Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two cops who were on the payroll of Luchese family boss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso.
The book openly names and criticizes federal prosecutors who Vecchione says took credit for investigations that they didn’t deserve. It was co-written with retired Det. Tommy Dades and writer David Fisher.
A more detailed review of Michael Vecchione’s ”Friends of the Family” and the allegations it makes against federal prosecutors will be featured in an upcoming edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.





Monday, May 11, 2009

Clevland Crime Family, Threesome mobs Code's 'Irishman'


Ray Stevenson, Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer will play the leads in "The Irishman," a crime story that Jonathan Hensleigh will direct.Code Entertainment is producing the action movie, which is based on the real story of mobster Danny Greene (Stevenson). Hensleigh and Jeremy Walters ("Dali") wrote the script, inspired by the book "To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia" by Rick Porrello.Greene was a violent Irish-American gangster who competed with the Italian mob in 1970s Cleveland and ended up provoking a countrywide turf war that crippled the mafia. Walken will play the loan shark and nightclub owner Shondor Birns, and Kilmer is a Cleveland police detective who befriends Greene.Code's Al Corley, Bart Rosenblatt and Eugene Musso are producing, along with Dundee Entertainment's Tommy Reid and Tara Reid, who brought the property to Code. Jonathan Dana, Peter Miller and Porrello are exec producers, with George Perez serving as co-producer.The production has also hired cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub, production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and editor Douglas Crise. Principal photography begins May 19 in Detroit.Lightning Entertainment will shop the project to international buyers at Cannes, while ICM and Dana handle domestic sales. The ICM-repped Hensleigh co-wrote and directed "The Punisher." The writer or co-writer of "Die Hard With a Vengeance" and "Jumanji" has the crime story "Nine Lives" in development with Jerry Bruckheimer Films.Walken and Kilmer are repped by ICM and Affirmative Entertainment. Stevenson is repped by Endeavor.Code last produced "You Kill Me" and "Spring Breakdown."

Monday, May 4, 2009

Colombo Mobster Chris Paciello aka Saint of small time snitches



Chris Paciello owned two of Miami's hottest clubs and hung out with Ingrid Casares, Jennifer Lopez, and Madonna. A murder charge scattered his A-list pals ==Chris Paciello (born Christian Ludwigsen,September 7, 1971, Brooklyn, New York) is a Cosa Nostra associate and government informant who was convicted of murder in New York City













Christian Ludwigsen, aka Chris Paciello.


Mob rat, Chris Paciello, was a former muff diver of Madonna's ,who recently surfaced in Malibu. Paciello snitched off a couple of Colombo Crime Family wiseguy's to get out of a murder rap. He had been the low-level-scumbag driver on a house invasion A decent married woman was shot to death during the despicable crime.
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