The Mafia Princer next door

My name is Philip Leonetti, or I should I say that was my name.

For the last twenty years I have lived under a different name since my defection from the mob, or as we called it, La Cosa Nostra, which means this thing of ours in Italian.

My decision in 1989 to become the highest ranking member of La Cosa Nostra to break the sacred vow of omerta, the mafia's code of silence, has made me a marked man for the rest of my life.

As I write this, there is a reported $500,000 bounty on my head to anyone who can find me and kill me.

Today I am 59 years old and living far away from the Atlantic City Boardwalk I once controlled with my uncle, a man named Nicodemo Scarfo.

Back then they called us "Little Nicky" and "Crazy Phil."

Murder, loan-sharking, extortion, beatings, illegal gambling, you name it, we did it all.

We were the real Boardwalk Empire. Movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale and Casino and television shows like The Sopranos have offered dramatic interpretations of our life, but my life wasn't a movie, or a TV show; it was the real thing.


One time, my uncle used me as a decoy to help him following a murder that he had just committed.

As we were driving in the pick-up truck that had just been used to transport the dead man's body to a freshly dug hole in the woods where he was buried, my uncle told me what he had done and why he had done it. read more    http://.com/philip-leonetti/mafia-prince-next-door_b_2280929.htmlwww.huffingtonpost

Elderly Mob Associate Charged Again

Nicole Melia, a reputed associate of the Gambino crime family, faces 20 years in prison on a loan-sharking charge

The mob life could land a 78-year-old man in prison for the second time.

Prosecutors in Bridgeport say Nicola Melia, a reputed associate of the Gambino crime family, made high-interest "street loans" in Fairfield County and threatened violence if the debts were not paid.

His arraignment is scheduled for Friday.

In 2005, Melia was sentenced to 33 months in prison for what was considered a minor role in a loan shark operation. He and 18 other mob members and associates were accused of racketeering, extortion and illegal gambling.

Michael Franzese ;mafia talk in utica

UTICA —
Former Mafia boss Michael Franzese knows he probably should be dead by now.

He knew too much about the inner workings of organized crime, and his decision to walk away from the Colombo mob family did not sit too well with those who put loyalty above all else, Franzese explained Friday.

So when faced with threats on his life while in prison during the late 1980s and pressured to snitch on other mobsters, the son of Colombo family underboss John “Sonny” Franzese chose to leave behind a lifestyle that made him one of the richest Mafia bosses since Al Capone.

“Anybody in that life has to realize that the life is destructive to families and to the people that you love … it’s just not what it’s cracked up to be” said Franzese, now 58.

Prompted in the late-1980s by his love for a born-again Christian who would become his wife, Camille Garcia, Franzese took steps to set himself on a path to redemption. Now, Franzese tours the country to encourage people to make the same positive changes in their lives.

This weekend, Franzese will return to Utica to speak at the Redeemer Church at 931 Herkimer Road about a life that brought him prestige and wealth, as well as many haunting regrets. The nondenominational church is headed by Pastor Michael Servello Jr.

As Franzese will tell those who gather to hear him speak, he became an official “made” member of the Colombia Mafia family Halloween night in 1975 at age 24. While Franzese said he initially jumped into organized crime in an attempt to get his father, “Sonny” Franzese, out of prison on trumped-up charges, he soon found himself rising in the ranks to a Mafia “capo,” or captain.

“Once I get into something, I’m going to be the best possible soldier, and that’s what happened,” Franzese said “Quite honestly, the life took hold of me. If you’re not into it with your heart, mind and soul, then you won’t survive.”

As Colombo soldier Joseph “Joe-Joe” Vitacco mentored Franzese into the underworld, Franzese said he would accompany Vitacco to Utica for business during the 1970s. It was here that Vitacco had ties with brothers Salvatore and Joseph Falcone, who reportedly ran organized crime rackets in the Utica area.

Franzese also heard of Dominic Bretti over the years, a Utica man who would join forces with Donato “Danny” Nappi and John Anthony D’Amico to kill Dawn Grillo in 1979. Like Franzese, Bretti claimed to be a born-again Christian, but Bretti later admitted that his phony conversion was only a scam to build a Utica-based crime empire.

While Franzese wouldn’t get into the details of his most serious regrets, he does admit that the lifestyle required him to turn a blind eye to many things.

“Yes, there were things I did that were distasteful and that bothered me,” Franzese said. “But I did it anyway, and that’s what you have to do in that life in order to survive.”

But once Franzese decided to step back from all that tragic unpleasantness, he knew that he could find himself in serious trouble if he made any wrong steps. So Franzese never snitched on anyone, he never “sold anybody short,” and he outlived all the people who might have wanted to harm him.

“Did I live in fear? No, because you pretty much know what fear is all about in that life,” Franzese said. “But I was never 100 percent confident that I would survive all of this.”

Despite the repeated death threats, Franzese did survive, and that is the message he tries to share with everyone else.

“For me, the bottom-line in all of this is that God had a different purpose for me in my life, and if He didn’t I don’t think I would have succeeded in anything,” Franzese said. “It’s pretty hard to deny that God didn’t have a hand in this.”

Gambino-organized-crime-family chared with teenage sex trafficing

The Mafia is alive and kicking – and pimping out teenage girls for sex on Craigslist

Authorities on Tuesday charged seven reputed members of the Gambino Crime Family with running an interstate sex-trafficking ring – calling it a “new low” for the mob.

Another seven wiseguys – including the family’s current boss, Daniel Marino - were also busted for a litany of crimes, some dating back to the era when John Gotti was in charge.

Authorities said the prostitution service was a first for an organized crime crew.

“No crime seems too depraved to be exploited if it was a money-maker, including the sexual exploitation of a 15-year-old,” said FBI Special Agent-in-Charge George Venizelos.

Aleged Gambino soldier Thomas Orefice is accused of hatching the scheme to recruit young women from various strip clubs to work as prostitutes.

Prosecutors say Orefice advertised the girls, ranging in age from 15 to 19, on Craigslist with ads that included the phone number of Gambino madam Suzanne Porcelli

Porcelli set up the appointments, and Orefice’s crew members drove the women to their bookings, waited for them and took half the cash, prosecutors say.

As a sideline, Orefice made these same women available to gamblers who played poker at his illegal high-stakes games, prosecutors charge.

The indictment also includes charges of murder, narcotics trafficking, loansharking, extortion and an aborted jury tampering scheme for Gotti’s 1992 trial.

“Rumors of the Mafia’s demise are greatly exaggerated,”Manhatten US Atorrney Preet Bharara said.

Michael Franzese:Colombo,Mafia boss to meet with Calgary's top cop

Michael Franzese (born May 27, 1951), is a former New York mobster with the Colombo crime family who was heavily involved in the gasoline tax rackets


Anyone who’d want to come after me is either dead or in prison.”

Maybe so, but when former Mafia boss Michael Franzese sits down in a restaurant, he still has a reputation for choosing a seat where he can keep his eye on the door.

You can’t blame him. Once named the world’s 18th richest gangster and notorious enough to be featured as a character in the mob movie Goodfellas, Franzese did the one thing no made man ever does — he quit the Mafia.

“I certainly had my share of contracts and death threats on me, and that went on for years. For a long time, I was looking over my shoulder everywhere I went,” said Franzese.

“But I know the life, and I also know what people would do to come after me and what they wouldn’t.”

Franzese’s strategy for staying alive after stepping down as heir-apparent underboss to New York’s Colombo crime family apparently works.

Two decades after Franzese pulled the plug, no one has pulled the trigger.

The 53-year-old New Yorker remains the highest-ranking Mafia boss to ever leave a crime family without resorting to protective police custody.

It’s all the more remarkable given the high-profile life of a man once said to be the biggest Mafia money-earner since Al Capone, earning five to eight million dollars a week on an illegal gasoline racket.

“I make a little less than that now,” laughs Franzese.

His racket now is trying to steer kids and petty criminals away from organized crime, while offering advice to police forces on how deal with the mob.

Franzese arrives in Calgary late next month, on a tour promoted by After-Care Ministries.

His four-day itinerary includes an anticipated meeting with Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson, as well as speeches at four prisons, two churches and a high school.

Hanging out with high-ranking cops and voluntary visits to jail is hardly the life Franzese anticipated, on the day in 1975 when a Mafia boss sliced his thumb, sealing his blood oath as a newly made man.

Franzese’s father is notorious mob enforcer John (Sonny) Franzese, the 93-year-old Colombo underboss who reportedly bragged, “I killed a lot of guys ... you’re not talking about four, five, six, ten.”

The family connection resulted in Michael being brought into the family business — exactly how closely he followed in dad’s footsteps remains lost in a murk of rumour and innuendo.

What is clear is Franzese’s acumen with shady financial business, and he is credited as the mastermind behind a multitude of lucrative scams, involving gas taxes, car dealerships, and sports.

Prosecutor and future New York mayor Rudy Giuliani once went after Franzese, vowing to jail him for a century, but failing miserably, as did the next four indictments.

Franzese was a powerful captain with a bright future — but then the mob boss had a change of heart, literally, falling in love with a Mexican dancer he met on a film set.

Camille Garcia convinced her besotted Mafia suitor to embrace God, while giving up his life of crime.

Franzese copped a plea, announced he was quitting the Mafia, and then he cut a deal which saw him give evidence against two non-mob crime contacts, earning an early release.

Now, he tours the U.S., writing books and giving lectures on organized crime and his faith.

Franzese says his planned meeting with Calgary’s police chief is more than a handshake — he believes Chief Hanson and his officers can learn plenty from his Mafia past.

“Organized crime is organized crime, and I know you have issues up there in Calgary,” said Franzese.

“I can give the chief and his detectives insight into how the mob operates — they’re not exactly the same, but if you know one organized crime group, you know them all.”

Just as important, says Franzese, will be his talks at places like the Calgary Remand Centre and James Fowler high school, where his reputation earns him respect — and open ears.

“Credibility is everything, and I have that,” said Franzese.

“You don’t realize it when you’re in the life, the fascination people have with it — but people want to hear the mob guy, and I use that respect to get my message across.

“Hopefully, it’s helping people make the right choices

Dimitar Berbatov: The Godfather

FOR a man who models himself on a big screen Mafia Don, today's showdown with Chelsea is 'nothing personal, it's purely business'.

Dimitar Berbatov has had a life that could make a film.

And there have already been offers for the Bulgarian to move from the glamourous world of football to another in cinema.

For now, he is happy being at Manchester United.

But off the pitch you could be forgiven for mistaking him for Andy Garcia in The Godfather: Part III... or so he thinks.

Berbatov, 29, said: "Lots of people tell me that I look like him.

"He has actually influenced my choice of hairstyle and I have even studied the way he smokes so I can hold my cigarette in the same way."

Berbatov learnt English from watching The Godfather trilogy as he made his way from the dark mean streets of Communist Bulgaria to the bright lights of the Premier League.

The young Don Corleone himself was brought up on the streets of Little Italy in New York.

For Dimitar, life was tougher in the bleak mining town of Blagoevgrad and as a kid and he was reduced to kicking an old dusty basketball to hone his talents as there was no money for a proper football.

This came after he queued for bread for anything up to eight hours.

He said: "We would get in line at six in the morning and, if you lost your place, you had to go to the back.

"I don't know many footballers who will have experienced what it was like being a child in a communist country."

As a rising star, the mob KIDNAPPED him after training with CSKA Sofia.

Gangland chief Georgi Iliev wanted him to play for his club Levski Kjustendil.

Berbatov managed to make a call to his dad Ivan, who was also a professional footballer, who did a deal to free his son.

Understandably, it is not a subject Berbatov talks about at length.

He said: "It was an horrific ordeal but a long time ago now."

Then, in November last year, he had to evacuate his wife Elena and daughter Dea from Bulgaria when his mother Margarita was warned of a kidnap plot against them.

Berba is understood to have struck an agreement to keep all his family safe.

All this is perhaps why the striker is different and something of a loner at Old Trafford.

While others indulge in usual football banter he can often be seen standing alone in his own thoughts at airports on United's travels.

He has never forgotten his roots and gives money to five children's care homes and has his own football foundation.

Even when he was starting out as a player in 2001, he saved the life of a sick Bulgarian girl by paying for her liver transplant operation.

For him, the streets of Blagoevgrad have not been eclipsed by the leafy lanes of Cheshire.

He once admitted: "I miss it in some ways. I had my friends, and the conditions united and strengthened you. My personality has been shaped by my upbringing. I know what a crisis is."

His mother Margarita says her son finds strength from his faith in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

She once said: "When he left for England, he carried a Bible I gave him. I pray for him before every game."

Those prayers will be offered as Berba faces Chelsea today.

And all eyes will be on him for the next couple of weeks with Wayne Rooney sidelined.

The time for talking about style over substance is over - the Ј30.75million man must deliver.

He needs to be more prolific than the 12 goals in 36 appearances he has contributed in his second season at Old Trafford.

As a kid, he wanted to be Marco van Basten, as a teen he idolised Alan Shearer and would go to bed in a Newcastle shirt.

He once painted a mural of his favourite players from Pele to Michael Owen, now his own team-mate.

While Berbatov is adored at home, his recent performances for his country have been criticised after Bulgaria failed to qualify for the World Cup finals.

His response to that on his blog was Cantona-esque: "I have this to say to all who envy, I am too high up to see you. And even if I fell, I would not fall so low.

"I am the dog you love to hate because I am a big success.

"In Bulgaria, everyone is an expert on football even though most of them have probably never kicked a football. But this is my blog and I can say anything I like."

If he can now also play like Eric Cantona until the end of the season there will be no criticism.

inside the Mafia: Saint,’ family face extortion charges

PROVIDENCE — Jailed mobster Anthony M. “The Saint” St. Laurent Sr., his wife and son were charged Friday in U.S. District Court with conspiring to commit extortion involving several bookmakers in the Taunton, Mass., area.

The family is charged with extorting “protection” payments from 1988 through Feb. 3, 2009, with St. Laurent Sr. functioning “as the overall leader of this conspiracy,” according to an FBI affidavit, based on bookmakers turned federal witnesses.

Dorothy St. Laurent, 73, was described in the affidavit as the “primary collection agent of the cash extortion payments.” Her son, Anthony St. Laurent Jr., 44, sometimes by verbal threat, sometimes by force, made sure bookmakers stayed in the business and kept payments coming, authorities say.

St. Laurent Sr. is serving a five-year sentence at Federal Medical Center Devens, Mass., for a 2006 conviction on a separate extortion case. He is charged in a pending federal case with trying to hire someone to kill a mob rival, Robert P. DeLuca. St. Laurent Sr. has pleaded not guilty to the murder-for-hire charge.

A short time after they were arrested, Dorothy St. Laurent and her son were brought before federal Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond. He set $10,000 surety bail for St. Laurent Jr., of Cranston, and ordered him to surrender his passport. St. Laurent Jr., who has a previous extortion conviction, was also ordered by Almond to be electronically monitored on home confinement and to not leave the state.

Dorothy St. Laurent was released and cannot leave the state without permission.

An arraignment date for St. Laurent Sr. has not been set.

One of the bookmakers-turned-federal-witness said, according to the FBI affidavit, that he first met St. Laurent Sr. in the 1970s and made payments to, and later, collected payments for St. Laurent Sr. The witness said St. Laurent Sr. once warned that if the bookmaker did not continue payments and was caught taking bets, St. Laurent Sr. would “cut his hands off.”

The bookmaker said that in the 1990s, when the Twin River slot parlor in Lincoln was called Lincoln Park, St. Laurent Sr., banned from there because he was on the Nevada Gaming Commission’s “Black Book” of people barred from Vegas casinos, would sit in the car while his wife did business. He said she would wait inside Lincoln Park for bookmakers who handed her the payments that bought protection for their illegal activities, according to the affidavit. Sometimes, with her husband in prison, she collected payments in a Johnston Stop & Shop parking lot and more recently traveled to Rehoboth to make collections, according to the affidavit.

Typically, the affidavit says, one bookmaker was an intermediary collecting payments from other bookmakers to deliver to St. Laurent Sr.

A second bookmaker turned witness recounted that in the late 1980s he told an intermediary that he was going to stop bookmaking and ended payments to St. Laurent Sr. for about three weeks. St. Laurent Jr. and an unknown male came to the bookmaker’s Taunton business, waited for a customer to leave, and allegedly began hitting the bookmaker with various items on the head and body, the affidavit says.

By September 2008, according to the court document, one of the bookmakers was collecting and paying $4,100 in cash to Dorothy St. Laurent every two weeks in what authorities say was routine practice after St. Laurent Sr. was imprisoned in 2006. In the fall of 2008, the witness agreed to wear a recording device for interactions with Dorothy St. Laurent and St. Laurent Jr. The FBI says it recorded and conducted surveillance of 12 meetings and numerous phone calls between the witness and the mother and son.

On Nov. 25, 2008, the bookmaker, as directed by authorities, told Dorothy St. Laurent in a Rehoboth Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot that other Taunton bookmakers wanted to shut down. Dorothy St. Laurent expressed concern that her husband would “get something going” to see that payment continued and, in doing so, risk “getting in … trouble while he’s in jail,” according to the court document.

The next day, under surveillance, the bookmaker and St. Laurent Jr. met at the Raynham Dog Track near Taunton, and the witness provided names of four bookmakers who the witness said wanted to stop paying protection money. St. Laurent Jr. asked him to get their phone numbers, to “let them know I want to see them” and set up a meeting so “they know I’m visible.”

Nikolay Marinov :Lawyer Advises Wanted Bulgarian Crime Boss to Surrender

Lyudmil Rangelov, lawyer of alleged crime boss Nikolay Marinov who is wanted over the murder of journalist Bobi Tsankov, has called on his client to turn himself in to the police.
The police have been after Marinov, aka the Little Marguin, as his brother Krasimir Marinov is already arrested and charged with ordering the murder of Bobi Tsankov.
Speaking on Nova TV Thursday, Rangelov said he did not think his client was hiding from the police. Yet, the lawyer stated he had not seen his client since a court hearing in December.
He made it clear he was going to advise Nikolay Marinov to surrender because he had no reason to be worried as he had nothing to do with the latest gangland murder in Sofia.

Gotti IV Mistrial the Top Mob Story of 2009

With spectacular Mafia assassinations pretty much a thing of the past – it’s been 24 years since John Gotti & Company whacked Big Paul Castellano in front of Sparks Steak House – the biggest mob stories of recent years were usually blockbuster indictments or convictions.

read full story

Chicago outfit Rudy Fratto Jr

Rudy Fratto Jr. Courtesy the Chicago Sun Times.

December 2, 2009 (CHICAGO) BY: Chuck Goudie and Barb Markoff (WLS) — An admitted tax cheat and reputed boss of the Outfit’s feared Elmwood Park crew won’t have quite as much time as he thought to pack for his upcoming stay in the Crossbar Hotel.
The attorney for Rudolph C. “Rudy” Fratto of Darien had filed a motion to put off his Fratto’s sentencing until February read full story

Italian news agency says Naples killer has been identified

(CNN) -- Police have identified the man whose shooting of another man outside a store in Naples, Italy, was captured by a surveillance camera, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Saturday.
The announcement came two days after police released the video of the brazen daylight shooting in hopes it would lead someone to come forward. Police did not release the man's name.
The video, shot May 11, shows a man wearing jeans, a dark jersey and a baseball cap, walking into the store and looking around, turning and walking back out.
Passersby appear unfazed. One woman tries to lift up the victim's head in an apparent attempt to see if she knew him; a man steps over the body.
Police said they had been without any clues before the release of the video. A source who was not identified publicly said the killer was a man in his 30s from Naples' northern Sanita district who had recently left the city.
A third man seen in the video was thought to have been an accomplice, but he told Il Mattino newspaper that he had nothing to do with the killing.
"I am the man of the film, but I have never been a lookout, and now I am afraid," the 39-year-old man said. "I was taking a breath of air, waiting for my daughter to go shopping."
The man said he had been living "in terror" since acquaintances called him from Germany to tell him they had seen him on the video.
Police said they knew of no motive for the killing, which took place in the poor neighborhood of Rione Sanita, where Camorra, the name for organized crime in Naples, is strong.
The victim was a bank robber, the spokesman said.
A police spokesman said Camorra has been blamed for about 60 killings this year in Naples and its surrounding

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.

Junior Gotti's ex-best friend John Alite says Gotti helped in three slays, spoke of four others

John A. (Junior) Gotti once stood up as best man for John Alite, but Tuesday Alite stood against him, tearing down the ex-mob boss as a merciless killer behind seven murders. "John Gotti Jr. was my boss," the turncoat mobster said flatly to open his damning Manhattan Federal Court testimony.

The veteran Gambino family associate, the feds' star witness, testified Gotti collaborated with him on three killings and told him about four others.

The second-generation gangster was one of the drivers when the Gambino family whacked informant Wilfred (Willie Boy) Johnson in August 1988 for ratting on his dad, "Teflon Don" John, Alite testified.

Gotti and ex-brother-in-law Carmine Agnello killed another man and crushed him in a car chopper at Agnello's Queens junkyard, he testified.

And as Gotti stared him down, Alite also told jurors that Junior admitted to him that he killed Daniel Silva in a 1983 barroom brawl and an eyewitness later found hanging from a tree. A pair of drug dealers and another mob murder brought Gotti's total to seven bodies, he said

.
The gruesome testimony was greeted angrily by the Gotti contingent in the courtroom. Alite was once Junior's best friend and asked Gotti to serve as best man at his wedding.

Prosecutors showed photos of the pair at the wedding of Junior's sister Victoria, along with a shot of Gotti holding Alite's 18-month-old son.

Since flipping in 2007, Alite has implicated his buddy and claimed that he had an affair with Victoria Gotti. She, along with sister Angel and mother Victoria, glared at Alite as he recounted a decade of running with Junior - pricey cars, $500 shoes, Rolex watches.

Alite recalled a wild trip in the 1980s to Las Vegas, where he and Junior Gotti lost $30,000 at the craps and blackjack tables and had to play the "nickel slot machines."

"All lies," said a subdued Gotti's mother, her eyes red from crying, outside the courtroom. "Mom, don't even bother," said daughter Victoria, who last year passed a lie-detector test after denying Alite's claim.

Alite, in a gray sweatshirt that bared a neck tattoo, said he had shot about 35 men - mostly on orders from Junior.

Before Alite testified, another prosecution witness took the stand to describe Alite as a heartless hit man who once cursed and spit on the still-warm corpse of one victim.

"Motherf-----," a remorseless Alite snapped after the December 1988 slaying of George Grosso. Corrupt ex-NYPD Detective Philip Baroni, 57, recounted Alite's point-blank execution of the Queens drug dealer. Gotti became a made man four days later.

Grosso was hit for running his mouth about Gotti's drug dealing, the feds charge.Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/09/30/2009-09-30_junior_exbest_friend_says_gotti_helped_in_3_slays.html#ixzz0Sf6L6pPC

Cops: Witness fingered Junior Gotti and wound up dead

The NYPD didn't question John A. (Junior) Gotti in a barroom slaying despite an identification from a witness who was soon found hanging from a tree, two cops testified Thursday.Within hours of the March 1983 slaying in the Silver Fox, witness John Cennamo was in Jamaica Hospital shouting at police that Gotti fatally stabbed Daniel Silva, retired Detective James McKinley testified. Read More Read The Full Storyhttp://cftaf1234.wordpress.com/prime-time-ratfellas/