OMERTA
Mafia's Law of Omerta
Omerta is the Code of silence when dealing with the government. It literally means "manhood" and refers to the idea of a man dealing with his own problems without the help of an law-body, but the term has a also become synonymous with Mafia's code of silence. Omerta is a very popular attitude in places of Southern Italy like Sicily, where the Mafia is strong.
It all began in Sicily around the 16th Century A.D. as a way of opposing Spanish rule. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and as such influence many countries to invade and conquer it and then make immense riches from it. The local people were often enslaved by the conquering party and were often treated very inhumanely by the foreign overlords. The Mafia was born is such circumstances and provided the oppressed Sicilian people with protection, stability and a kind of "pride". The Mafia's "Vendetta" became Sicily's justice system and no one approached the ruling body for any help.
The continuous invasions left the Sicilians with feeling of helplessness, mistrust and rage at the government. They believed that the government was there not to help them out, but to make things even more difficult. As a result, the Mafia's golden rule of Omerta was born. It became an unwritten law to keep the government out of their private affairs. Crimes began to be considered personal and justice was received through personal vengeance and vendetta, not by the decision of the government.
If the Code of Omerta were to be put into words, it would say something like this:-
"Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of himself without police protection is both. It is cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though his offenses be against yourself, as it is not to avenge an injury by violence. It is dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers, he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A wounded man shall say to his assailant: If I live, I will kill you - If I die you are forgiven."
The accusation of being an informant was the worst possible stain on the manhood. Each individual was obliged to prove his manliness by not appealing to legally constituted authority for redress of personal grievances. A victimized person is expected to avenge the wrong-doing himself or find some patron who will do it for him. It is shameful to even betray one's deadliest and worst enemies to the authorities. Breaking the code of Omerta in serious cases specially if Mafia is concerned can lead to the assassination of the informant by the Mafia.
GANGLAND
MOB SCENE 20 - ATLANTIC CITY CONFIDENTIAL
AMERICAN MAFIA
A discussion area for topics relating to the history of the Mafia in the United States.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
DELCO NOSTRA
MIDDLETOWN — If an alleged Philadelphia mob informant known as “Frankie the Fixer” is under watch in the Witness Protection Program, the authorities certainly weren’t going to rat him out Wednesday afternoon.
But “The Fixer,” whose real name is Frank DiGiacomo, was among three witnesses a prosecutor for the state Attorney General’s Organized Crime section was prepared to call to testify had alleged Philly mob enforcer Louis “Bent Finger Louie” Monacello gone forward with a preliminary hearing.
Instead, 42-year-old Monacello, of South 18th Street in Philadelphia, waived on all charges involving his alleged part in a bookmaking ring dubbed “Delco Nostra.”
“It was in everybody’s best interest to waive the hearing at this time,” Joseph Santaguida, Monacello’s defense attorney, said following the brief appearance before Magisterial District Judge Walter Strohl.
Santaguida declined further comment.
Monacello, smartly attired in a pin-striped suit and accompanied by a small entourage of supporters, also declined comment.
Authorities allege Monacello collected a regular sum of money every month as a “tax” on an illegal casino in Ridley Township, run by Nicholas “Nicky the Hat” Cimino of Nether Providence. Monacello is also accused of being used by Cimino — the alleged leader of the bookmaking ring — to collect gambling debts and payments on high-interest loans.
One of 16 people arrested after a five-year Pennsylvania State Police probe into the lucrative organization that operated in southeastern Pennsylvania, Monacello was charged with the following: Corrupt organizations, pool selling and bookmaking, gambling devices, criminal conspiracy, criminal use of a communication facility, dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities, intimidation of witnesses or victims, perjury and obstructing administration of law or other governmental function.
Monacello will be formally arraigned on the criminal charges Dec. 11 in Media.
Additionally, Monacello is awaiting a preliminary hearing in Philadelphia on a criminal solicitation aggravated assault offense, according to online court records. That hearing is scheduled Jan. 29, 2009.
According to the criminal complaint involving “Delco Nostra,” Monacello engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity” between 2002 and February 2008 within Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, and elsewhere.
The probe began when an individual arrested for bookmaking in Montgomery County became a confidential informant for the state police and the FBI. During the five-year investigation, authorities used wiretaps of Cimino and his associates’ phones, video surveillance and the statewide investigative grand jury to gather evidence.
A state grand jury linked Cimino with the Philadelphia mob, citing his association with Monacello. Authorities said Cimino operated an illegal casino in the rear of a building in the 400 block of MacDade Boulevard in Ridley Township. The building also houses a physician’s office.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Erik L. Olsen of the A.G.’s Organized Crime Section is prosecuting the case. He said he was fully prepared for Monacello’s preliminary hearing.
Trooper Glenn D. Hopey, who was among those involved in the investigation that began in February 2002, said he was prepared to take the stand.
DiGiacomo and a third prosecution witness authorities declined to identify, did not appear in the courtroom.
When questioned after the waiver about DiGiacomo’s whereabouts, specifically the federal Witness Protection Program, neither Hopey nor state police Cpl. Gregg Kravitski would specify.
Kravitski would only say DiGiacomo was “being looked after.”
Meanwhile, Monacello’s co-defendants, including Cimino, are scheduled for a status conference Nov. 24 in Common Pleas Court, according to Olsen.
Those defendants — Robert “Bobby” Beck of Morton; Victor “Vic” Novelli of Clifton Heights; Daniel Jude Diedrick of Clifton Heights; Cimino’s girlfriend Gayle Hudson of Thornbury; Gregory “King” Triantafillou of Norristown; David “Fat Dave” Stroj of California; Gregory Quigley; Spiro “Bart” Barbalios and Ralph “Ralphie Head” Abbruzzi, waived their preliminary hearing in late September.
Five other defendants who were caught up in the state police probe and charged with offenses unrelated to the Cimino organization also waived their hearings in September.
They were: Carmen Della Polla of Ridley Township; and Vincent Manzo, Frank Pierantozzi, Gary Battaglini and Andre Sims, all of Philadelphia.
All 16 defendants are free on bail.MIDDLETOWN — If an alleged Philadelphia mob informant known as “Frankie the Fixer” is under watch in the Witness Protection Program, the authorities certainly weren’t going to rat him out Wednesday afternoon.
But “The Fixer,” whose real name is Frank DiGiacomo, was among three witnesses a prosecutor for the state Attorney General’s Organized Crime section was prepared to call to testify had alleged Philly mob enforcer Louis “Bent Finger Louie” Monacello gone forward with a preliminary hearing.
Instead, 42-year-old Monacello, of South 18th Street in Philadelphia, waived on all charges involving his alleged part in a bookmaking ring dubbed “Delco Nostra.”
“It was in everybody’s best interest to waive the hearing at this time,” Joseph Santaguida, Monacello’s defense attorney, said following the brief appearance before Magisterial District Judge Walter Strohl.
Santaguida declined further comment.
Monacello, smartly attired in a pin-striped suit and accompanied by a small entourage of supporters, also declined comment.
Authorities allege Monacello collected a regular sum of money every month as a “tax” on an illegal casino in Ridley Township, run by Nicholas “Nicky the Hat” Cimino of Nether Providence. Monacello is also accused of being used by Cimino — the alleged leader of the bookmaking ring — to collect gambling debts and payments on high-interest loans.
One of 16 people arrested after a five-year Pennsylvania State Police probe into the lucrative organization that operated in southeastern Pennsylvania, Monacello was charged with the following: Corrupt organizations, pool selling and bookmaking, gambling devices, criminal conspiracy, criminal use of a communication facility, dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities, intimidation of witnesses or victims, perjury and obstructing administration of law or other governmental function.
Monacello will be formally arraigned on the criminal charges Dec. 11 in Media.
Additionally, Monacello is awaiting a preliminary hearing in Philadelphia on a criminal solicitation aggravated assault offense, according to online court records. That hearing is scheduled Jan. 29, 2009.
According to the criminal complaint involving “Delco Nostra,” Monacello engaged in a “pattern of racketeering activity” between 2002 and February 2008 within Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, and elsewhere.
The probe began when an individual arrested for bookmaking in Montgomery County became a confidential informant for the state police and the FBI. During the five-year investigation, authorities used wiretaps of Cimino and his associates’ phones, video surveillance and the statewide investigative grand jury to gather evidence.
A state grand jury linked Cimino with the Philadelphia mob, citing his association with Monacello. Authorities said Cimino operated an illegal casino in the rear of a building in the 400 block of MacDade Boulevard in Ridley Township. The building also houses a physician’s office.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Erik L. Olsen of the A.G.’s Organized Crime Section is prosecuting the case. He said he was fully prepared for Monacello’s preliminary hearing.
Trooper Glenn D. Hopey, who was among those involved in the investigation that began in February 2002, said he was prepared to take the stand.
DiGiacomo and a third prosecution witness authorities declined to identify, did not appear in the courtroom.
When questioned after the waiver about DiGiacomo’s whereabouts, specifically the federal Witness Protection Program, neither Hopey nor state police Cpl. Gregg Kravitski would specify.
Kravitski would only say DiGiacomo was “being looked after.”
Meanwhile, Monacello’s co-defendants, including Cimino, are scheduled for a status conference Nov. 24 in Common Pleas Court, according to Olsen.
Those defendants — Robert “Bobby” Beck of Morton; Victor “Vic” Novelli of Clifton Heights; Daniel Jude Diedrick of Clifton Heights; Cimino’s girlfriend Gayle Hudson of Thornbury; Gregory “King” Triantafillou of Norristown; David “Fat Dave” Stroj of California; Gregory Quigley; Spiro “Bart” Barbalios and Ralph “Ralphie Head” Abbruzzi, waived their preliminary hearing in late September.
Five other defendants who were caught up in the state police probe and charged with offenses unrelated to the Cimino organization also waived their hearings in September.
They were: Carmen Della Polla of Ridley Township; and Vincent Manzo, Frank Pierantozzi, Gary Battaglini and Andre Sims, all of Philadelphia.
All 16 defendants are free on bail.
CASINOS HAVE SKELETONS IN CLOSETS
In a universe of sixth-degree connectivity, all of us eventually can be tied to something sleazy. And so it is with Pennsylvania's embryonic gambling venture.
One of the groups that wants to run a casino in the state was, a few degrees and decades ago, linked to a bizarre car-bomb murder and convicted of racketeering. Another once had financial dealings with an Ohio mob boss. A third was alleged long ago to have ties to organized crime and once pleaded no contest in a conspiracy to defraud the government.
Old sins can cast long shadows, and the state regulators who award racing and casino licenses must confront them deftly. Their charge is to treat companies fairly while fending off the specter of organized crime, given the gambling industry's long history of mob affiliations.
So, would it be fair to deny a license to Delaware North, the company that wants to run the casino at Seven Springs Mountain Resort, for the mob associations of previous owners? Some were implicated but never charged in the 1976 car-bomb murder of Arizona journalist Don Bolles. Before dying of his injuries, Mr. Bolles implicated Emprise Co., the predecessor to Sportservice, which is now owned by Delaware North.
Should Louis DeNaples, the businessman who wants to turn an old Poconos lodge into a casino, be docked points because he pleaded no contest in 1978 to conspiracy charges in connection with a plan to defraud the U.S. government during the cleanup after Tropical Storm Agnes? And what about Mr. DeNaples' cameo appearance in a 1980s Pennsylvania Crime Commission report, which tenuously linked him to organized crime? Should Carmen Shick, who hopes to build a harness track and casino in Lawrence County, be punished for his late grandfather's courtroom tangle with convicted mob boss Lenine Strollo over a land deal in Puerto Rico? The state's Harness Racing Commission has already given the answer to that last one: Yes.
Lawrence County
In November 2005, the Harness Racing Commission rejected a proposal from Mr. Shick's Ambrosia Enterprises to build a mile-long racetrack -- and later a slots parlor.Commissioners said they were concerned about a 1999 lawsuit that Ambrosia filed against Mr. Strollo and another suspected Ohio mobster.
Mr. Shick claimed that Mr. Strollo had taken advantage of his grandfather when he was a sick old man and convinced him to finance the land deal. Mr. Strollo says he was a business partner of Mr. Schick's late grandfather, Carmen Ambrosia.
Mr. Shick wonders if the fate that befell his application for Lawrence County awaits the proposals for the Poconos and Seven Springs.
"Are the same standards going to apply, or is it going to be applied arbitrarily?" he asked.
Mr. Shick said he wouldn't comment further until his appeal of the Harness Racing Commission ruling is decided by the state Commonwealth Court, but his attorney, Victor B. Stabile, elaborated.
Part of what the harness commission and the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board must decide, he said, is whether there is "clear and convincing evidence of the applicant's good character, honesty and integrity," among other impalpable criteria.
But does that mean applicants merely have to meet the letter of the 2004 gaming law by not having any felony convictions within the past 15 years? Or must they carry not even a taint of criminal association? In April, Mr. Stabile said, Commonwealth Court Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter touched on that very issue, asking him whether the ancestral connection to a mobster had the "appearance of impropriety."
Mr. Stabile responded: "What is it you're looking to protect people from?" He suggested that it not should be just appearances, but actual threats to the viability and reputation of Pennsylvania's new gambling enterprise.
Seven Springs
Delaware North's history has scuttled some of its plans, too, fairly or not.
In 2003, the company wanted to finance a deal with Rosecroft Raceway in Maryland. But its would-be partner, Centaur Inc. of Indiana, backed out, citing Delaware North's 30-year-old organized crime conviction as a primary reason.
The association with Delaware North "could be fatal to our business," Centaur attorney Jackie Bennett, Jr., said in July 2003. In September of that year, the partnership was formally dissolved, over Delaware North's legal objections.
Centaur officials -- who now want to build a harness racing track and casino in Beaver County -- said they were concerned that a 1972 racketeering conviction involving Emprise Corp., a Delaware North predecessor, might have caused regulatory or licensing problems for the racetrack. Emprise had been convicted of conspiring to hide its ownership interest, and the interest of two mobsters, in the Frontier Casino in Las Vegas.
A few years later, in 1976, Mr. Bolles' last words after his car was bombed were: "They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise." Mr. Bolles had been writing about Emprise, but three men with no ties to the company were later charged with his murder.
In its lawsuit against Centaur, Delaware North said Centaur backed out of the Maryland deal only because it was looking for better terms from other companies and not because of concerns about Delaware North's corporate history.
A previous deal had fallen through on similar grounds, however. In 1984, Delaware North withdrew a racing license application after the Vermont Racing Commission ruled that its past made it a poor candidate.
Delaware North points to the fact that it does business with the federal government, operating concessions at national parks and the U.S. Mint, as evidence that its criminal history is old news. Over the years, said the president of the company's gaming division, it has shed all employees and contracts that might have had links to organized crime.
"You're talking about things that happened at about the time man landed on the moon," said Ron Sultemeier. "It's been brought up by competitors. In a regulatory environment, it rarely comes up." He said the company has never had a racing or gaming license revoked.
The Poconos
One crime does not a criminal enterprise make, but if regulators choose to err on the side of caution, Mr. DeNaples' proposal could be in trouble.
Back in 1978, he pleaded no contest to the conspiracy charges related to the cleanup after Tropical Storm Agnes. But the defunct Pennsylvania Crime Commission, a state agency that investigated the criminal underworld, also linked Mr. DeNaples to organized crime a few years later. And in 2001, a federal affidavit made the same connection, claiming that Mr. DeNaples had contacts with the Buffalino crime family.
A spokesman for Mr. DeNaples, Kevin Feeley, said such statements about his client have no basis in fact but are difficult to counter.
"We get whacked, and you're defending against a ghost. People can make an issue of it, but ultimately it's up to the gaming board" to dig up the truth, he said.
The gaming board, and the army of investigators working for it, will do just that, said David Kwait, director of the board's bureau of investigation and enforcement. Without commenting on specific applications or infractions, he said old crimes, even those older than 15 years, "definitely will come into play" when proposals are being vetted.
"The totality of the circumstances of the background would be taken into consideration at that point," Mr. Kwait said. "The denial [of an application] could be based on those old convictions."
At the same time, "we have to think of due process issues. People have to be treated fairly," and red flags don't necessarily mean an application will be tossed, he said.
Mr. DeNaples and Mr. Shick are both in competitive situations. Mr. DeNaples is among six applicants for two stand-alone casino licenses. Mr. Shick would have to beat out Centaur's Beaver County proposal to win a single remaining harness racing license and the casino rights that probably would come with it. (At the moment, the Centaur proposal is stalled, as well, rejected by the harness commission for facility deficiencies.)
Delaware North's partnership with Seven Springs, however, is unopposed -- there are only two applicants for the two casino licenses being reserved for Pennsylvania resorts.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
FRANK DiGIACOMO
Philadelphia mob informant to testify
Frank "Frankie the Fixer" DiGiacomo is scheduled to make his public debut as a government witness today at a preliminary hearing for Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello, a reputed South Philadelphia mob associate.Onetime partners in crime, according to investigators, DiGiacomo, 44, and Monacello, 41, now find themselves on opposite sides of a criminal case that is based in Delaware County but that includes an intriguing Philadelphia chapter.
Today's hearing focuses on allegations that Monacello offered to pay $1,500 to have mobster Marty Angelina "beaten so badly he would have to be hospitalized."
Angry that Angelina was trying to horn in on his gambling business, Monacello tapped DiGiacomo to find someone willing to carry out the task, according to a grand jury presentment handed up last year. Monacello was unaware that DiGiacomo was cooperating with the Pennsylvania State Police at the time.
In a grand jury presentment made public in July, authorities allege that DiGiacomo met twice with Monacello to discuss the alleged beating.
DiGiacomo was wearing a body wire and recorded both conversations, authorities say. The meetings outside Monacello's home in the 3100 block of South 18th Street were observed by a State Police surveillance team.
Chief Deputy Attorney General Erik Olsen is expected to play portions of the tapes and call DiGiacomo as a witness during today's hearing, which is to determine whether there is enough evidence to support the charges.
Monacello already was the target of a gambling, loan-sharking and obstruction-of-justice investigation when the alleged plot against Angelina unfolded.
He and 16 others were arrested in July in what authorities called "Operation Delco Nostra." All the charges, except those involving the plan to assault Angelina, are pending in Delaware County.
DiGiacomo, known as "the fixer" because he worked as a plumber, disappeared from his South Philly haunts at the time of the arrests. Currently living in protective custody, he has been described as a collector for Monacello, who authorities say was the mob's point man in Delaware County gambling circles.
It is unclear why DiGiacomo agreed to cooperate, but documents indicate he recorded conversations for at least six months during the investigation.
Monacello's animosity toward Angelina stemmed from a dispute over the collection of gambling debts, according to investigative sources.
Authorities say DiGiacomo told them on June 12 that Monacello was considering killing Angelina and had "two hot pieces [guns] ordered" for the hit.
DiGiacomo said Monacello wanted to wait until August or September, however, because reputed mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi was aware of the bad blood between Monacello and Angelina.
"Monacello indicated that he had just had a big argument with Joe [Ligambi] and that Joe would know that it had been Monacello that had killed Angelina," State Police Trooper Glenn Hopey told the grand jury while testifying about the Angelina plot.
DiGiacomo wore a body wire to two subsequent meetings with Monacello in which, Hopey testified, "Monacello indicated that, instead, he wanted Angelina beaten so badly that he would have to be hospitalized."
Angelina, a longtime mob soldier and top associate of jailed mob boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, was described as a "nobody" by Monacello, who told DiGiacomo he would pay between $1,000 and $1,500 to have him beaten.
During a second meeting, Monacello said that other members of organized crime "hated" Angelina and that he was not concerned about Ligambi linking him to the assault.
Monacello said he would simply deny any involvement, telling Ligambi: "If it was me, I would have just . . . killed him, okay?"
Monacello has been described by investigators as a close associate of jailed mobster George Borgesi. Borgesi is Ligambi's nephew. After he was jailed on racketeering charges in 2000, authorities allege, Borgesi tapped Monacello to oversee mob-controlled gambling and loan-sharking in Delaware County.
Monacello at one time owned Gavone's, a bar-restaurant in South Philadelphia that is now closed. He also has interests in at least two schools that train personal trainers.
In another taped conversation in the case, Monacello told an associate that the State Police were trying to get others in the gambling ring to testify against him and BorgesHARRY RICCOBENE
Harry Riccobene
| Harry Riccobene | |
 Mugshot of Harry Ricobenne | |
| Born | July 27, 1909 Enna, Sicily, Italy |
|---|---|
| Died | 2000 |
Harry Riccobene (July 27, 1909 - 2000) was a high-ranking member of the Philadelphia crime family who became a major figure in the short, but violent, gang war that followed the 1980 death of boss Angelo Bruno.
Born in Enna, Sicily, Riccobene was 5'1" tall with brown hair and eyes and had a hunchback from a birth defect that earned him the monicker "Harry the Hump." He spoke in a high pitched voice and as he grew older he donned a long white beard. One prospective juror for one of his criminal trials described him as looking like "a little Santa Claus." His legitimate businesses includes television tube companies in Philadelphia, Yonkers, New York and Richmond, Virginia. His arrest record included carrying a concealed weapon, larceny, and possession of narcotics. At one point, Riccobene spent time in prison on a narcotics conviction.
A longtime underworld figure in Philadelphia, Harry became a made man under Prohibition mob boss Salvatore Sabella in 1927. Riccobene witnessed the rash of violence that started with the unsanctioned murder of Bruno and his replacement by Philip "Chicken Man" Testa. After running the family for one year, Testa was killed by a nail bomb at his home. Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo now became family boss. Riccobene led a faction against Scafo for control of family operations in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Scarfo caporegime Frank Monte informed his crew that he was going to kill Riccobene and take over his loansharking and illegal gambling operations. Monte approached Mario "Sonny" Riccobene, Riccobene's half-brother, and demanded that Mario set up Riccobene to be killed. However, Mario betrayed Monte by telling Riccobene about the plot. Infuriated, Riccobene ordered Mario and hitmen Joseph Pedulla and Victor DeLuca to instead kill Monte, to "... get them before they get us."
Mario, Pedulla, and DeLuca camped out in van near Monte's parked Cadillac, waiting for him to come outside. Several hours later, Monte emerged and starting getting into his car. Pedulla fired on Monte three times, killing him. Later on, the men unsuccessfully attempted to murder Salvatore Testa, Phil Testa's son, but this time they were arrested by police. Detectives soon connected the three men to the Monte murder and persuaded them to testify against Harry. Riccobene was indicted on charges of first degree murder. During the trial, Riccobene denied any involvement in organized crime and said that he tried to prevent the three men from committing violence amid "unfounded rumors" of death threats made against them by Scarfo. In spite of this, Harry was convicted of murder and sent to prison. In 2000, Harry Riccobene died in prison from natural causes.
After Riccobene's conviction, Mario told the press that he testified against Harry in hopes of escaping from organized crime and "... to get back at the people who did what they did to my family." Mario entered the witness protection program, but left it in a vain hope to rejoin the Philadelphia crime family. Mario Riccobene was murdered soon after his return to Philadelphia.
[edit] References
- Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8160-5694-1
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2005. ISBN 978-0-8160-4040-7
- Blood and Honor: Inside the Scarfo Mob - The Mafia's Most Violent Family by George Anastasia, 2004, ISBN 0-9410159-86-4
- Bureau of Narcotics, U.S. Treasury Department, "Mafia: the Government's Secret File on Organized Crime, HarperCollins Publishers 2007 ISBN 0-06-136385-5
JOSEPH LIGAMBI
Joseph Ligambi
| Joseph Ligambi | |
 | |
| Born | August 9, 1939 South Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
|---|---|
Joseph Anthony Ligambi (born August 9, 1939) is a made member and current reputed boss of the Philadelphia crime family.[1] Ligambi is known among law enforcement circles to have a more "old school" approach, in sharp contrast to the former boss, Joseph Merlino's, flamboyant, high-profile style. Ligambi is credited by the Philadelphia Police Department's Criminal Intelligence Unit to be "quietly bringing stability back to the troubled Philadelphia-South Jersey branch of La Cosa Nostra". The New York Mafia families have been pleased with Ligambi and his approach, as well as his ability to turn the Philadelphia crime family from near extinction to a quietly powerful group that may now consist of 50-60 made men.[2] He is also the uncle of former Philadelphia consigliere George Borgesi.[3]
Childhood
Ligambi was born in the South Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 9, 1939 to strict "old world" parents. His father was a cab driver. He attended South Philadelphia High School before dropping out his junior year to join the United States Air Force, where he eventually earned his high school diploma.[4] He stands at 5'8" and weighs 185 pounds with black-gray hair and brown eyes.
Criminal career
Unlike many other gangsters who started their careers in crime as teenagers or young adults, Ligambi didn't have a criminal record before age 32 when he was arrested for cigarette smuggling. In late 1970s he started to associate himself with mobsters, namely Merlino brothers. During that time Ligambi gained a reputation as an expert in sports capping , especially football.
Ligambi became a made man in the Philadelphia crime family in 1986, at the age of 47, after participating in the murder of a wealthy gambler Frank D'Alfonso. At the time, the Philadelphia crime family was being run by the powerful but violent mobster Nicodemo Scarfo, who seized control after the death of longtime Don Angelo Bruno and a series of other deaths, including that of Scarfo's longtime friend Phil Testa, Bruno's underboss. At the time, Ligambi was an associate of the Merlino brothers, two close friends of boss Scarfo.
On April 5, 1989, Ligambi was convicted alongside Nicodemo Scarfo, the current boss at the time, and several others, for the 1985 murder of Frank D'Alfonso. After serving 10 years the conviction was overturned, and in 1997 Ligambi returned to South Philadelphia. Upon his return, Ligambi was viewed as one of the few soldiers left from the Scarfo era, an era which saw the Philly family gain enormous power and wealth despite its violent tendencies.
After the conviction of Joseph Merlino in 1999, Ligambi was chosen by his peers in the crime family and the heads of the New York families to take over as boss of the family. Merlino was sentenced to 14 years, and was still facing a murder indictment as well, and as such was no longer looked to as the boss of the family. Ligambi has remained in the shadows, rarely being mentioned in the media, while taking a much less "trigger-happy" approach to running a Mafia family.
Still, Ligambi is believed to be responsible for having ordered the murder of longtime Philadelphia mobster Raymond "Long John" Martorano. Martorano was an infamous drug lord and mafia soldier who was made by Scarfo in 1981 after having been a top associate of former boss Angelo Bruno. Like Ligambi, Martorano was released after having served many years on a murder charge that was later overturned. Upon being released in the early 2000's, Martorano sent word through the underworld that he was ready to take the family from Ligambi. Martorano was murdered shortly thereafter. Another murder that may have been ordered by Joe Ligambi is that of former family consigliere Ronald Turchi. Turchi, who was involved in the family's numbers operation, apparently offended the new administration and was found murdered early on under Ligambi's leadership.
Ligambi has done so well that the New York families have taken notice, and it appears unlikely that Joey Merlino will resume the title of boss when he is released on September 7, 2011.
[edit] References
- ^ Volk, Steve (August 18, 2004). "A Wiser Guy". Philadelphia Weekly (Philadelphia). http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=7857.
- ^ Anastasia, George (December 2, 2007). "A 'Family Man' Who's Content In Shadows". Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia). http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_stories/12030412.html.
- ^ Barry, Jim (August 2001). "The Boys of Summer". Philadelphia City Paper (Philadelphia). http://www.citypaper.net/articles/080901/news.mob.shtml.
- ^ Porello, Rick (December 17, 2001). "Meet The New Boss". AmericanMafia.com (Internet). http://www.americanmafia.com/Mob_Report/12-17-01_Mob_Report.html.
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THE HOUSEWIVES
'Real Housewives of New Jersey' family has ties to rubbed out 'Tiny' Manzo
Pictured: (l-r) Jacqueline Laurita, Teresa Giudice, Danielle Staub, Dina Manzo, Caroline Manzo.
They live in a land of made men and unmade beds.
"The Real Housewives of New Jersey" are coming next month, with the latest installment of the hit reality show introducing a quintet of Garden State gals - including two with a mob pedigree.
Sisters Dina and Caroline Manzo - they married a pair of Jersey brothers - provide a real-life link to "The Sopranos" for the Bergen County-based program.
Their father-in-law, Albert (Tiny) Manzo, was executed mob-style in August 1983, after he and Gambino family soldier Peter A. Campisi were suspected of skimming from a mob casino on Staten Island.
"A couple of weeks later, they found Tiny Manzo in the trunk of his car," recalled Robert Buccino, a New Jersey organized crime expert.
The 350-pound mobster took four slugs to his torso. His naked body - the arms and legs bound in plastic - was discovered in the trunk of his parked Lincoln-Continental outside a supermarket in Hillside, N.J.
The killing was never solved.
Campisi, a made man and Tiny's partner in the casino, suffered a similar fate, Buccino recalled.
The colorful Manzo, who ran for mayor of Paterson in 1974, also owned the Brownstone Restaurant - one of the main backdrops for action in "Housewives."
His two wealthy sons, Albert and Tommy, still operate the venerable Paterson catering facility. Blond Dina and red-headed sibling Caroline are the first pair of sisters featured on the hit show.
They all live in pricey Franklin Lakes, an exclusive enclave that's home to a pair of New York sports legends - Phil Simms and Willie Randolph - and disgraced ex-NYPD boss Bernie Kerik.
Despite their lavish lifestyles, huge bankrolls and pricey McMansions, household chores remain an issue for these capo di cutie capis.
A preview show caught Dina Manzo and daughter Lexi feuding over the mess in the 12-year-old's bedroom. Regular episodes begin airing May 12 on Bravo.
Nowhere in the preview, which introduced the five titular housewives, is there mention of Tiny, his murder or his mob ties.
Dina and her sister stress their Italian heritage and devotion to family.
The other housewives are their brother's wife, Jacqueline Laurita, and local women Teresa Giudice and Danielle Staub.
Look for Staub to cause the most in-season fireworks: She's feuding with Dina Manzo, enjoying phone sex with a guy known only as "Guccimodel" and carrying a cell phone with nude pictures of herself.
"You either love me or you love to hate me, there is no in-between," she announces. Her bio brags about a "history of celebrity hook-ups" that will no doubt emerge in future episodes.
The Jersey girls, in their debut, pinball between vapid and vain as they live the high life. They work on their tans, spend outrageously, flash endless cleavage and visit the beauty parlor.
Carmela Soprano, eat your heart out.
Which is not to say the show wouldn't benefit if Tiny was still around. When Albert Manzo made his mayoral run, he was a law-and-order candidate advocating public hangings.
"He was a real character," Buccino said. "A huge guy. He was well-known."
INFUSION OF OLD BLOOD
Jersey mob soon to get infusion of old blood
Lawmen are wary as jail terms end
BY ROBERT RUDOLPH AND GUY STERLING
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
"Richie the Boot" Boiardo, Anthony "Little Pussy" Russo, "Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante and the other legendary Mafia bosses who once ruled organized crime in New Jersey with the power of feudal warlords have long since gone to their final rewards.
Many of their replacements, such as Genovese family underboss "Bobby" Manna - who once planned a daring but unsuccessful hit on Gambino don John Gotti - have been sentenced to jail terms expected to keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives.
As a result, the mob - which once controlled entire cities and boasted, "We own New Jersey" - has been crippled. Its influence in labor unions has waned, and its stranglehold on the docks has been loosened. Other groups have moved in to dominate the drug trade and even have made inroads in the gambling and loan-sharking businesses. Inevitably, however, some of those who went in must come out. Within the next 18 months, nearly a dozen reputed organized crime figures - convicted and jailed during the big Mafia crackdowns of the 1980s and early '90s - are due to step back onto the streets.
How these men handle their newfound freedom could shape the Mafia in New Jersey for years to come, organized crime experts say. State and federal officials will be watching closely to see which ones get back in the game and which ones have learned their lesson.
"A guy who was a big-time shooter when he went in has some choices to make," said Brian Taylor, a former FBI agent who for years headed the bureau's New York City organized crime section. "He could retire, just fade away, or he could take a run for the position he had. It all depends on the individual."
One mob boss due for release is Tino Fiumara, the powerful Genovese family chieftain so feared by colleagues that he was rarely referred to by name - only as "T" or "the good-looking guy."
In his prime, Fiumara controlled much of the Newark waterfront for the Genovese family. Stories of his quick temper and refusal ever to be outdone are still told by guys on the outside.
He was linked by law enforcement authorities to numerous murders, including the piano-wire strangulation of an associate and the shooting of a childhood friend, when he was convicted of racketeering in the early 1980s. He was released on parole in 1999, but federal agents succeeded in sending him back to jail for associating with known felons, a violation of his parole terms.
Fiumara is slated for release again in June, and both law enforcement and organized crime are bracing for his return.
"He is one of the smartest and most ruthless mob figures New Jersey has ever produced," said one mob expert. "He is the kind of guy who could pick up right where he left off."
In the months to come, Fiumara will be finding himself among increasingly familiar company.
One of his friends, Michael "Tona" Borelli of Fort Lee, avoided jail after promising a state court judge to stay away from crime.
Giacomo "Jackie" DiNorscio, best remembered for engineering a series of scams while serving time in state prison by running an unauthorized phone line into his cell, is scheduled to be released from federal custody by September 2003.
Gerald "Jerry the Jew" Cohen, who once was a close associate of DiNorscio, will taste freedom in January.
Nicholas Mitarotonda, 64, who authorities say is likely to take over the Gambino operations in New Jersey, is slated to walk out of prison shortly after Christmas, and five reputed members of Gotti's North Jersey Gambino operation are already back on the streets after serving time for a variety of crimes.
And in the next several years others will be given their walking papers from prison.
For example, Raymond Tango Jr., another old-time Fiumara associate who was sentenced to 20 years to life for gunning down William Earl Mann in a fusillade of more than 20 bullets in the parking lot of the Sheraton Inn in Elizabeth, will be eligible for release in three years.
The releases, say law enforcement sources, are not coordinated; they are merely a coincidence bound to happen given the large number of organized crime figures jailed over the last two decades.
Many of them are no more than midlevel soldiers, but Fiumara is different. He was a rising star when he went to prison, law enforcement officials say, and he could be again.
Robert Buccino, a former State Police intelligence officer who became the state's top mob expert, says Fiumara is one of the few New Jersey mobsters who has the talent and ability to wrest control an organized crime family and run it successfully.
"He did his time, he's highly respected, and he's got the leadership qualities," Buccino said.
Fiumara was originally sentenced to 25 years as a result of federal convictions in New Jersey and New York for extortion and racketeering. Until his conviction, authorities had pegged Fiumara as next in line to head the Genovese family, the dominant mob organization in New Jersey and New York.
But it is not certain whether even Fiumara's fearsome reputation can ensure his return to power.
STRANGE NEW WORLD
Robert Carroll, the former chief of the state Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau, says criminals who have been incarcerated for a long time must cope with a whole new battery of sophisticated law enforcement surveillance tactics, ranging from DNA testing to satellite tracking. And the very nature of organized crime has been shifting as well, moving away from the Prohibition-era legacy of tommy gun slaughters to a more subtle and lucrative style that favors corruption and payoffs over strong-arming.
"It's a strange new world out there," said veteran defense attorney Cathy Waldor, past president of the state Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. Organized crime "is a lot more sophisticated; it's driven more by corporate crime or drugs."
"I don't know that after all that time in prison, some people will be able to adapt," Waldor added.
Still, Buccino says the odds of a mob figure gracefully slipping into a quiet old age are slim.
"The rules of organized crime are that you don't quit or retire," he said. "You're born into the family; that's part of the whole ritual."
Kevin McCarthy, chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in the U.S. Attorney's Office, said: "Usually, older people are less likely to commit crimes when they are released from prison - except for mob guys. They commit crimes no matter how old they are, and they tend to move up in the hierarchy the older they get."
One figure who sources say is "a guy to watch" is Thomas Petrizzo, a Middlesex County contractor who authorities maintain lived a double life as a successful businessman and a capo in the Colombo family.
Petrizzo admitted in 1996 he defrauded the company selected to build the Newark International Airport monorail out of $1.2 million. One source said, "He is one of the sharpest guys in the business," a man who represented a "critical link" between the underworld and legitimate business. Petrizzo denied the allegation that he has mob ties. He is scheduled for release in January.
Some groups remain decimated after a wave of prosecutions eviscerated their New Jersey operations during the past decade.
John Riggi, head of the DeCavalcante family for years, had been slated for release this year, only to be kept in jail by charges linking him to a series of decades-old murders. Some of those charges are based in part on information from his own son-in-law, who turned informant.
The boss, underboss and consigliere of the Lucchese family in New Jersey, Michael Taccetta, Michael Perna and Martin Taccetta, are doing terms that could keep them in jail until 2016.
The ranking Gambino boss, Robert "Cabert" Bisaccia of Belleville, remains behind bars on a murder charge stemming from testimony provided by notorious Gotti turncoat Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, and Gotti is himself reported on his death bed.
Despite their losses, Edwin Stier, a former state director of criminal justice, warned, "Organized crime is still a problem in New Jersey."
"Unless we continue fighting it, it's going to become a serious problem again," Stier said.
ORDERING A HIT
Jersey Mafia boss admits ordering hit
An ill Riggi confesses to doing Gotti a favor
BY ROBERT RUDOLPH
Star-Ledger Staff
John Riggi just gave up.
Riggi, the hospitalized czar of the once-powerful New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family, admitted yesterday to doing a fatal favor for John Gotti that will ensure that the New Jersey Mafia boss spends the rest of his life in prison.
"I think he's tired and he just gave up," said defense attorney Cathy Waldor, who had represented Riggi for years. "He's given up the fight."
Riggi, now 78, and suffering from a variety of ailments ranging from prostate cancer to high blood pressure, confessed yesterday that he gave the okay for a hit on Frederick Weiss, a former city editor of the Staten Island Advance, in 1989.
"We agreed he should be murdered. Pursuant to the agreement, he was murdered," Riggi said in televised broadcast from a federal prison hospital in Butner, N.C., to a federal courtroom in New York.
U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey asked Riggi over the video link if he was aware that approving the killing amounted to a death sentence for Weiss.
"Yes, your honor," Riggi replied.
Riggi told the judge that he had given his assent to the murder meeting with other mob associates.
In a previous court proceeding, a former acting boss of the crime family - who later turned informant - acknowledged he had been the person who actually carried out the hit. Vincent "Vinnie Ocean" Palermo, a one-time fishmonger who took over the mob family after Riggi was jailed in the early 1990s, had shown no emotion as he testified in court earlier this year that he had personally committed four murders, including the killing of Weiss.
"I shot him twice in the head," Palermo said, adding that the killing proved a good career move for himself. "Being I shot Weiss, they made me a captain."
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Burns said prosecutors had evidence to prove that the murder was carried out as a favor to Gotti, the so-called "Dapper Don" who headed the powerful Gambino crime family. Convicted of racketeering in 1992, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison and died there last year.
During yesterday's court session, the judge offered Rigge ray of sunlight: because he pleaded guilty to the murder charge, he was facing only 10 years in jail instead of the 30 years he would have faced if he had not negotiated a plea deal.
Authorities had long maintained that despite his own imprisonment, Riggi continued to exercise control over the family from behind bars, issuing orders for more than a dozen mob executions.
In addition to reaping proceeds from gambling and loansharking operations, the indictment charges that the family dabbled in stock fraud schemes while using its power over labor unions to demand payments and arrange no-show jobs for its members from contractors through threats of violence and work stoppages.
Known as the "Eagle," Riggi has always maintained a proper air of decorum, insisting he be allowed to dress in a suit even as he was being arrested.
"I think he was the last of an era of distinguished (Mafia) gentlemen," Waldor said.
But in recent years, a series of prosecutions decimated the crime family, named after the late family patriarch, Simone Rizzo (Sam the Plumber) DeCavalcante.
Court testimony has since shown that the family has further been weakened by in-fighting among the survivors, as well as the defection of large numbers of members who elected to become government informers, including Riggi's own son-in-law.
In fact, tape recordings of behind-the-scenes gossip among mobsters have caught them comparing themselves not to the tradition-bound "Godfather" families, but to the beer-bellied street goons of "The Sopranos."
Testimony also showed them engaging in a virtual rampage of violence, killing off their own bosses for reasons ranging from greed, to embarrassment that one of their acting bosses turned out to be gay - a revelation headlined in one newspaper as "fairy Godfather."
The scope of murder was the broadest mob bloodletting since Lucchese crime family boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso grew so frustrated with the antics of the New Jersey branch of his family that he issued a blanket order to "kill 'em all." The orders were never carried out, and Casso, charged with a later murder, was found hiding out in the home of a former high school classmate in Budd Lake. He later turned informant.
OVER/UNDER COFFINS
Mafia turncoat tells of 'over/under' coffins
Authorities are intrigued by tale that bodies were tucked below ones already in caskets
BY ROBERT RUDOLPH
Star-Ledger Staff
The mob has long been known for its innovative as well as gruesome ways of concealing bodies. Murder victims have been cut up and stuffed in barrels, fed into wood chippers, buried under construction sites - even boiled, to prevent their identification.
But none of these techniques matches the one described by a Mafia turncoat, who said he heard stories that, decades ago, a New Jersey mob family created the concept of the "double-decker" burial, in which the body of a murder victim was placed in the same coffin as its legitimate occupant.
The informant said it was rumored that the technique was devised by a Union County funeral home operator during the days of Prohibition, when there were so many murders that the corpses began to pile up.
The allegation has sparked the interest of authorities in New Jersey, who said they plan to investigate.
"It's something that we will certainly look into," said Robert Buccino, chief of detectives for the Union County Prosecutor's Office and a former top mob buster for the state organized crime unit. He added, "I don't care if (the killings) were 20, 30 or 40 years ago, we're talking about murder."
The stories of double-decker coffins arose during testimony in federal court by Anthony Rotondo, a one-time capo in the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family who has been steadily informing on his former friends and associates.
Rotondo related the tale during the trial of Girolamo "Jimmy" Palermo, 65, of Ortley Beach, which is under way in federal court in New York.
Palermo became acting boss of the DeCavalcante crime family in 1997 after the arrest of longtime boss John Riggi. He is accused of plotting the murder of the brother of John "Johnny Boy" D'Amato, who was killed because the mob was embarrassed that their boss turned out to be gay. Palermo allegedly feared that the brother would retaliate.
It was under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McGovern that Rotondo related how old-timers in the mob had regaled him with tales of the grisly burial rites.
Rotondo, who said the scheme was hatched in the 1920s and '30s, said mobsters would simply place the body of the murder victim under the body of the person being legitimately buried, "thus disappearing forever."
The only hint, he said, came when the pallbearers began to lift a coffin that was supposed to be "carrying someone's 80-pound grandmother."
In seeking the conviction of Palermo, McGovern reminded jurors, "These were the men whose only contribution to American society was the invention of the double-decker coffin" - leaving a murder victim's loved ones never knowing the victim's resting place.
"It's total nonsense," said one of the operators of the funeral home mentioned by Rotondo. "It's too much," he added. "It's sickening."
TRIO PULLED OFF 20-YEAR OLD HIT
3 charged in case of dead man in a drum
Feds: Trio pulled off 20-year-old mob hit
BY ROBERT RUDOLPH
Star-Ledger Staff
It's a mob mystery that has taken two decades to solve.
On April 17, 1984, FBI agents searching a Garfield office building for evidence in a stolen goods operation made a grisly discovery: a collection of bloody, dismembered body parts stuffed into three unmarked 55-gallon drums.
Now, after a massive roundup of reputed members of the New York-based Bonanno crime family and others, authorities say they know who was responsible for the mutilation-killing, one of the goriest in Mafia history.
Authorities have charged Louis "Louie Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 59, of Toms River, who they said was later promoted to acting underboss of the Bonanno family. Also charged were Attanasio's brother, Robert "Bobby Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 57, and Peter "Peter Rabbit" Calabrese, 55, both of Staten Island.
All three, authorities say, participated in the murder of Cesare Bonventre, a 33-year-old Brooklyn loanshark who had once served as a bodyguard to Bonanno crime family boss Carmine Galante.
Galante himself was gunned down on July 12, 1979, while having lunch at Joe & Mary's, a local mom-and-pop restaurant in Brooklyn. Authorities believed Bonventre, who was guarding him, had quietly stepped aside to accommodate the killers.
The question of who killed Bonventre had remained an open one for almost 20 years, despite suspicions of investigators that had pointed to several different mob figures -- including a Caldwell man who was gunned down in October 1984 in the parking lot of a Clifton restaurant.
It was only now, following the indictments of dozens of reputed Bonanno family members, that authorities publicly named those they say participated in the Bonventre killing.
The indictments, handed up on Tuesday, stemmed from a four-year investigation in which one ranking Bonanno crime family member agreed to wear a wire to high-level family meetings. Authorities did not disclose the specific evidence they say linked the three suspects to the Bonventre killing, but said family members have been secretly cooperating with authorities and giving up closely held Mafia secrets.
"The code of omerta (silence) has been abandoned," said Pasquale D'Amuro, assistant director of the FBI's New York office.
Investigators said Bonventre's body was found during an FBI search of the fourth-floor offices of the T&J trading Co. in Garfield, which was suspected of being a front for a stolen goods operation.
It was clear from the evidence, however, that Bonventre had been killed elsewhere, and the body delivered to Garfield for storage. The obvious clue was that the body parts were coated with glue.
That fact led investigators to a now-crumbling glue factory in Wallington, which was later designated as one of the nation's worst Superfund sites.
At the bottom of a large glue-mixing vat inside the Industrial Latex Co. plant, authorities found traces of Bonventre's blood and hair, as well as some money and a shoe.
New Jersey attorney Cathy Fleming, who was a federal prosecutor at the time, said Bonventre vanished after appearing in court for arraignment in the infamous "Pizza Connection" case that traced a $1.65 billion narcotics pipeline from the Italian and Sicilian Mafia to the organization's counterparts in the U.S.
"When they found the body, they knew why" he had disappeared, Fleming said.
Months later, federal authorities said they believed they had a suspect: Cosmo "Gus" Aiello, 52, of Caldwell, who had been charged in a separate scheme to manufacture bogus Lacoste shirts. The counterfeit clothing scheme, authorities said, had been financed by the late Joseph "Joe Bayonne" Zicarelli.
Aiello, however, never got a chance to tell what he knew.
In October 1984, Aiello was found murdered in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson restaurant on Route 3 in Clifton.
"They shot him on a Sunday," Fleming said. "I remember when I got the call, the Giants had just kicked off ."
Coincidentally, Fleming said, despite pressure from the government, Aiello had reached a plea deal to admit to the counterfeit clothing charges. However, he had rejected efforts to get him to cooperate.
Investigators now believe Aiello, who held the key to the Bonventre murder, was silenced because the mob was fearful he would turn informant. He had allegedly arranged a meeting with an underworld figure to show him the agreement and prove he was not cooperating.
But despite the wording on the document --which specified that he was not cooperating -- one official said, "he wasn't going to walk away from that meeting."
"They found my plea agreement on him," Fleming said. "He had been shot at point-blank range. He clearly knew his killer."
But if Bonventre's murder was one of the more sensational mob hits in New Jersey, it wasn't the last for the Bonanno family.
In the months that followed, two other mobsters authorities had linked to the Bonventre killing were themselves murdered, establishing a pattern of bloody Bonanno family warfare that has now taken the lives of 20 Mafia members.
Police said that in addition to the three charged in the Bonventre case, those indicted this week were responsible for seven previously unsolved homicides in recent decades.
ON BORROWED TIME
ON BORROWED TIME
At 12:30 p.m. on March 8, 2004, Michael Guibilo walked out of his Belleville home and climbed into his green Lincoln Continental.
Twenty-two minutes later, as FBI agents watched, the car cruised into Millburn. Guibilo circled the same route three times, parked, then drove away, only to return at 1:30 p.m. to a lot along Essex Street.
He pulled his linebacker-sized frame from the car and crossed the street, according to FBI surveillance logs. Dressed in gray sweat pants and a dark hooded jacket, he carried a green and black gym bag in his left hand.
Guibilo lumbered halfway down a side street toward Millburn Avenue, agents would later report, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a dark knit cap, which he fitted over his head. Then he cinched his hood around his face.
Guibilo was about 50 paces from the Bank of New York when two agents and a police officer tackled him. On his right hip, they said, was a .45-caliber gun. In his bag, agents said, they found what looked like a bomb.
It was over.
For almost 40 years, Guibilo had danced boldly on both sides of the law. He robbed banks, brandished guns, mingled with wiseguys, drug dealers and terrorists. He had nearly a dozen felony convictions and 27 arrests.
He also had been an unforgettable informant, hailed by some investigators as the most prolific they ever saw. Over the decades, Gui bilo earned hundreds of thousands of dollars secretly working for the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and police and prosecutors in New York City, and Essex, Bergen, Passaic and Ocean counties.
Guibilo posed as an arms dealer and a hit man, wore wires inside prison walls and testified against drug kingpins and mobsters. Prosecutors said he gathered terrorism intelligence and helped foil murder plots against an assistant U.S. at torney, a federal judge, cops, a crime family boss and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
More than once, judges overlooked his record and quietly freed Guibilo from prison so he could work the streets.
Now, at age 59, he was broken.
He had spent nearly one-third of his life behind bars, and congestive heart failure seemed destined to take what was left. The imposing frame he spent years sculpting as a bodybuilder had withered; his hair was thin and gray.
For four years, Guibilo had lived in his family home in Belleville. In November 2003, agents later contended, old urges took over. Since then, they believed, he had made off with $60,000 in three bank heists.
Once, Guibilo robbed out of anger or entitlement. Now, a tip ster told the FBI, he was robbing to pay his medical bills.
In a series of jailhouse conversations over recent months, his first public interviews, Guibilo denied the charges. He contends he was set up by the FBI, an act of payback in a roller-coaster relationship that he said soured over money, betrayal and his own secret tape recordings of agents.
When his trial on federal robbery charges opens Jan. 17 in Newark, the defense Guibilo plans is his life story: the tale of a North Jersey native whose skills made him a spectacular informant but one who says he knew too much and whose penchant for trouble became an embarrassment for law enforcement.
Prosecutors have sought to limit references at trial to Guibilo's informant work, contending it is irrelevant. They hope to cast his retaliation claims as a final grandiose delusion from a career con artist.
Compiled from interviews, court records and transcripts of once-sealed hearings, Guibilo's story offers an unusually detailed window into the critical but sometimes controversial relationship between law enforcement agencies and the informants who help them.
If convicted, Guibilo expects to die behind bars. He has endured two heart attacks since 2003 and now spends his days in a medical wing at Passaic County Jail. Like others, he believes he should have been dead long ago.
"I'm just on borrowed time, that's it," he said.
'IMPORTANCE TO SOCIETY . . .'
On Halloween in 1985, a man wearing a rubber mask and sporting a gun walked into Valley National Bank in Nutley.
"Don't anybody move," he announced, witnesses told police. "Don't pull any alarms or I'll kill."
The robber fled with several thousand dollars. Witnesses said the suspect was a bear of a man.
By then, Guibilo had been ar rested so often many agents knew his name. He stood 6-foot-4 and once competed among world-class weightlifters. Mask or not, it was hard for him to hide.
Hours later, the FBI dispatched an agent to Guibilo's home. Guibilo handed over the gun and the cash, and was arrested. "They screwed me out of money and yeah, I did it," he said.
The explanation would become a recurring one: Guibilo said agents and local prosecutors never paid him for his help on several cases, including one that led to the arrest of suspects in a 1982 shootout in Essex County.
He spent 20 months in prison - mostly in solitary confinement - before pleading guilty and arriving for sentencing in 1987 before U.S. District Judge Joseph Rodriguez in Camden. At the attorneys' request, the judge sealed the courtroom.
What happened next, according to the transcript, was a scene that occurred regularly during Guibilo's career.
FBI special agent George Connell told the judge Guibilo was a valuable informant who had been helping investigators get proof of a large-scale fencing operation in New York City. Connell said Gui bilo also tipped off authorities to a plot by mobsters to kill a prosecutor, later identified as Giuliani.
Dennis Lynch, a Secret Service agent, testified he had used Guibilo to crack a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting ring.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McCarthy passed the judge a letter from an FBI supervisor who said Guibilo also provided "specific and helpful" information regarding terrorism threats.
Guibilo had a criminal record that normally would warrant years behind bars. Instead, Rodriguez imposed a 15-year suspended term with unsupervised probation. In es sence, he handed Guibilo back to the agents.
"What I sense from this presentation (is) the importance, and the importance to society, of continued cooperation by this defendant," Rodriguez said.
Guibilo's attorney, Richard Roberts, thanked the judge. "I sincerely believe that nothing but good is going to come out of this," he said.
FROM BAND TO BANDIT
Born in Newark in 1945, Guibilo spent three years in an orphanage before being adopted by Marjorie and Michael "Mickey" Guibilo, who ran a Belleville liquor store.
When Guibilo was in public school No. 5 in Belleville, his mother bought him an electric gui tar and he launched a band, The Vibrations, with friends. The group played at local dances and once competed on "Ted Mack's Amateur Hour," a popular television program.
Guibilo threw himself into music, practicing daily, sometimes hours at a time, his friends recalled. "He was amazing," said Joseph DelGuercio, who played bass and now lives in Caldwell.
Rich Ciricillo, another band member, said Guibilo was lean, smart and driven. "Anything he put his mind to, he did it - to the 10th degree," Ciricillo said.
Except school. Guibilo dropped out of Belleville High School. He said he hoped to pursue a music career, but the band fizzled in favor of another hobby: weightlifting.
At the time, North Jersey was home to some world-class bodybuilders.
At his peak, Guibilo said he could bench press more than 600 pounds, and that his biceps measured 22 inches. "Big Mike" was a nickname that would stick for years. Some said he looked like a caricature, with an oversized frame that made his head look small and pointy. But his size helped Guibilo land a job as a nightclub bouncer.
He drove a black Corvette - another gift from his mother - and nicknamed it The Bounty Hunter. He grew fond of guns.
He was raised by a Sicilian family in an Italian neighborhood at a time when Mafia influence was peaking. Before long, Guibilo was running with a wiseguy crowd, spending his nights at re puted mob hangouts, and offering his services as hired muscle.
On June 28, 1968, Guibilo played a role in what was then the largest cash robbery in New Jersey. That night, five gun-tot ing masked men stormed the Fairmount Hotel in Lakewood. They rounded up the workers and locked the guests in closets. Police later found the 83-year-old owner, Louis Kelman, uncon scious but alive. Gone was his safe, $415,000 in cash and $60,000 in jewels.
The case broke two years later when hotel owner Herbert Gross confessed to helping plan the heist. Guibilo and seven others were indicted in 1971. Gross was a key witness, but investigators needed someone inside the job to make the charges stick: They found Guibilo.
"It took me about 35 minutes to open the safe using a hammer and chisel to peel off the corner," he testified on Dec. 20, 1971, clip pings show.
Guibilo got full immunity for his cooperation, launching his career as an informant. He says he merely switched loyalties.
"I don't use the word 'informant' because that's some punk who gives somebody information and then goes and hides," he said.
BUILDING A R�SUM�
In 1974, federal prosecutors charged William Bartell, an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, with threatening a business partner and conspiring to set up a suspect on weapons charges. He had enlisted Guibilo as his private enforcer.
Guibilo said he was following orders and wasn't prosecuted. But he said that's when he resolved to begin secretly taping agents. "I figured if there's going to be any more business done, I'm going to have it documented," he said.
In April 1975, he was arrested for robbing a pharmacist near Paterson. He contends he was again working undercover, but pleaded guilty to robbery. A judge sen tenced him to 19 years in prison with no parole for 15 years.
Barely one-third of the way into the term, in 1982, Guibilo was again freed to work for law enforcement.
Dennis Lynch, the Secret Service agent who later testified for Guibilo, said the informant had agreed to introduce two undercover agents to a Queens-based mob crew that dealt cocaine and trafficked in counterfeit $50 bills.
Lynch said Guibilo had reason to cooperate: He owed money to one of the targets.
"He wanted to score some money from us," Lynch said, "and he also figured if we locked up the people he owed the money to, he wouldn't have to pay off."
Agents later charged Guibilo with conspiracy after discovering he had tipped off one of the sus pects, Lynch recalled. But he said Guibilo still easily ranked as the most productive - and memorable - informant he ever encountered.
"He makes the typical informant look like a piker," Lynch said.
Lynch recalled riding with another agent down Second Avenue in Manhattan one night when a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce pulled alongside them. Drinking champagne in the back was Gui bilo.
When the agents stopped the limo, Guibilo explained he was posing as a major drug financier for an FBI case. He said he was supposed to return the car after each meeting.
"I never return it," Lynch recalled him saying, in the throaty Jersey accent agents grew accustomed to hearing. "I keep it out for the night."
Depending on the agency, Guibilo could earn a decent living. A big federal case might net him several thousand dollars, agents said. Local police might pay a few hundred a week.
But it was rarely enough. Investigators said Guibilo favored custom-made suits and was ob sessed with guns, which he al ways carried. Though he had a steady girlfriend, he enjoyed strip clubs and partying. He admitted a cocaine problem that spanned decades.
Harold Pegg, a former investigator for the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office, recalled once jailing Guibilo - at the informant's request - so he could recover from a cocaine binge.
"He would see these people coming at him when he was on these trips," said Pegg, who worked with Guibilo for about five years.
But Pegg said few agencies could resist using him. In 1991, Guibilo taped an inmate plotting to kill a Paterson housing officer.
"If they could take that brain of his and put it to good use, they could cure cancer," Pegg said.
Agents, prosecutors and lawyers point to four traits to explain Guibilo's success. He had extensive criminal and prison experience; was a chatty and convincing liar, and his size deterred people from challenging him. They also said Guibilo truly enjoyed his work.
"He took pride in what he did - and he did it very well," said Ronald Fava, Passaic County prosecutor from 1988 to 2001.
Richard Barbato, a former investigator for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, once told a judge: "I wanted to work with him because I could pick up stuff from him. I mean, the guy is so good - the best I ever worked with."
TROUBLE IN FLORIDA
Slowly, Guibilo's penchant for committing crimes started to outweigh his value in solving them.
In the late 1980s, while working for the FBI, Guibilo wore a wire and infiltrated a mob-connected network of jewelry thieves.
During the probe, Guibilo was arrested in 1989 for kidnapping a prostitute in New York City. Gui bilo said he was trying to recover a bracelet that the FBI had given him for use in the case. Some sus pected that he had used the evi dence to pay for the woman's services. The charges were dropped.
The following spring, prosecutors charged 16 suspects in the fencing ring. Agents quietly sent Gui bilo down south with orders to keep out of sight and out of trouble.
He did neither.
As he met his FBI contact in Florida, the agent saw a gun in Guibilo's pants and arrested him.
Guibilo insisted his New York FBI handlers had sanctioned the weapon, because there was a mob contract on his life. At a hearing after the arrest, lawyers struggled to explain the situation.
"The best way to describe this matter is that the defendant is an individual who cooperates and provides accurate, truthful and very helpful cooperation," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Levinson told a magistrate judge. "But he also gets in trouble along the way."
The judge dismissed the weapons charge, but Guibilo wasn't content to survive another close call. Angry over what he said was the FBI's failure to pay him $50,000 for "relocation" he donned a mask, brandished a gun and a fake bomb, and robbed two Florida banks.
Witness descriptions matched the ones from Nutley five years earlier. Guibilo was immediately jailed, but prosecutors waited nearly a year to indict him, until after he could testify against the defendants in the New York trial.
Lawrence Carra, a defense at torney in that case, called Guibilo "a rat talking about rats," but said he was effective. "While he wasn't overly convincing, he had enough damaging testimony," Carra said.
Sent back to Florida to await trial on the bank heists, Guibilo resumed doing what he did best, turning banter into get-out-of-jail free cards. In a matter of weeks, he was luring targets to his cell, where the FBI had installed a recording device.
A letter written by supervisory special agent Michael Smith said Guibilo helped foil five criminal conspiracies in Florida.
One involved a plan by three IRA members who enlisted Guibilo to help smuggle a stinger missile to Ireland. The others included murder plots against U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger, organized crime boss Sal Gambino, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Petras.
"All the conspiracies were exposed and their goals thwarted," Smith wrote.
In the Petras matter, Guibilo posed as a hit man and taped James Monaco, a convicted drug trafficker, plotting to kill the prosecutor. After hearing the tapes, a judge added 20 years to Monaco's prison term.
But like many of his cases, there was an embarrassing wrinkle. The FBI agent who posed as Guibilo's girlfriend and visited him in prison was accused of improper contact when guards saw her kissing him.
Monaco's attorney, Alan Weinstein, grilled both the agent and Guibilo in court. He called the so-called assassination plot "utter nonsense" from a snitch who stirred up the talk to save himself.
Guibilo "was the biggest con man ever to hit the federal system," Weinstein said last month.
In 1993, Guibilo pleaded guilty to the bank robberies and faced Judge Roettger, whom he had purportedly saved, at sentencing.
Roettger gave him another light penalty � time served � which amounted to about two years, and ordered him to answer New Jersey charges he violated probation.
Guibilo again found himself standing before Rodriguez, the judge who freed him six years earlier.
McCarthy, the prosecutor, was less supportive this time. He credited Guibilo for "extraordinary" accomplishments, but said few people had violated the court's trust more.
Guibilo's public defender, Richard Coughlin, said agents and prosecutors shared the blame. "The way for Mike Guibilo to stay out of trouble is probably to stop cooperating, quite frankly," Coughlin said.
Guibilo pleaded for leniency.
"No, your honor, I am not a saint," he said. He detailed his work for the government. "I am proud of it," he said. "It's the only job I know. It's what I know how to do."
Rodriguez sentenced him to six years in prison. The judge also banned Guibilo from working with law enforcement.
Less than two years later, he was back working the streets.
A LOOSE CANNON
In July 1996, Guibilo hit another car and led Nutley police on a chase. When they finally caught him in Passaic County, they found a small packet of cocaine and a gun on him. Guibilo said he was working with the FBI and was released.
It took almost a year for federal probation officials to get Guibilo back in court.
The hearing in Newark began as so many others over the years -with investigators from Essex, Bergen and Passaic counties testi fying about his stellar performance as an informant. FBI special agent Robert DeBellis acknowledged he had again enlisted Guibilo on cases without approval.
Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O'Malley called Guibilo "a loose cannon who has completely been uncontrolled and badly supervised" by agents. "Every time Mr. Guibilo gets in a sticky situation, so to speak, there's a plot to kill a witness, agent, plot to kill witnesses and another to kill judges," the prosecutor told U.S. District Judge John Bissell.
Bissell sentenced Guibilo to 22 months, two short of the maximum term, with credit for time served. He also repeated what others had previously declared: No more work as an informant.
Guibilo was released late the following year and returned to the modest brick home in Belleville where he was raised. In the ensuing years, he said, he lived off savings, investments and the inheritance from his deceased parents.
Court records show creditors had won more than $13,000 in judgments against him by the fall of 2003, when agents say he allegedly began his robbery spree by holding up the Bank of New York in Millburn. They say he also twice robbed the same Fleet Bank branch in West Caldwell.
Guibilo contends the FBI concocted the robbery accusations to keep him from releasing damaging tapes he made of agents over the years.
He was unable to provide the tapes or transcripts to The Star-Ledger. Attorney Richard Roberts, who has defended Guibilo in some cases, said he had heard portions of the tapes but wouldn't say if they were incriminating.
Guibilo's trial on the robberies begins with jury selection on Jan. 17. The prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew Kogan and Mar garet Mahoney, have asked U.S. District Judge Jose Linares to preclude Guibilo from introducing his previous work as an informant or "wild accusations of a government conspiracy" without proof. The judge may rule this week.
Frank Arleo, Guibilo's court-appointed attorney, said he planned a vigorous defense, but declined to offer specifics. "There are going to be some surprises," Arleo said. "It's not going to be as cut and dried as people think."
Guibilo hopes to testify and to call agents and prosecutors to the stand. He tries to justify his record by pointing out that no one was hurt in his crimes - and that he stole from government-insured banks, not people.
"Am I a hero? Am I a criminal? I guess a little bit of both," he said last week. "But don't ask me. Ask Barbara Petras, who said she would've been dead if it weren't for me, or Judge Roettger, or the cop in Paterson . . ."
"I am what I am," he said.
THE WISEGUY AND THE WIRE
Correction: This story incorrectly said reputed mobster Angelo Prisco was arrested last month days before his parole expired. He was under federal probation supervision, not state parole, at the time.
The wiseguy and the wire: A capo, in his own words
After a decade in and out of prison, Angelo Prisco, once one of the most powerful mobsters in New Jersey, started to consider his twilight years.
He had some money stashed, Prisco told his driver one day in November 2004, and more cash was still trickling in.
Prisco said he collected about $2,500 every two months from a New York electrician who paid the mob for the contract to light Little Italy's famed San Gennaro street festival.
But as the 65-year-old Genovese crime family captain returned to the Jersey streets he once controlled, he found his friends out of power, his influence wilted and his potential limited.
"Anything I got, I earned, I got through my self. The family don't give you nothing," he said wistfully to his driver that day, unaware FBI agents were listening. "Outside of you being the boss, this life sucks. And it's like a Catch-22. If you're the boss, you go to jail. This life . . . it ain't what it's cracked up to be."
After hearing the tapes, a federal judge in Newark on Thursday ordered Prisco detained while he awaits trial on extortion conspiracy charges. Prosecutors offered the recordings as proof that Prisco remains active in the mob and is a threat to the community. Copies of the recordings were obtained by The Star-Ledger.
Barely 15 minutes long, the recordings also give an unusual glimpse of the many faces of an old- guard wiseguy: scheming, contemplative, violent and resigned.
In them, Prisco discusses how actor Steven Seagal sought his help as a media tor in a mob shakedown, how the San Gennaro contract worked, his view of mob killings, and his own uncertain future in an organization that over time had left him jaded.
"Honor: that's all a crock," Prisco told his driver, a man identi fied on the tapes only as Jeff. "They wait on line to rat. They take a ticket like in the bakery."
Jeff laughed, and with good reason. He was wearing an FBI wire.
"The feds don't need the rats no more," Jeff replied. "We got too many. Sorry."
LIGHTING LITTLE ITALY
Prisco, who has bounced between homes in the Bronx and Toms River, is a silver-haired man whose girth is a testament to his reputed penchant for fine dining. He developed his name as an enforcer in New York in the 1980s, but emerged as the brutish but understated leader of the crime family's New Jersey faction after local boss John DiGilio was murdered and dumped in the Hackensack River in 1988.
By the late 1990s, Prisco was back in prison, sentenced to a dozen years for racketeering. His release by the State Parole Board in 2002 - barely one-third of the way through his term - prompted a political firestorm and sparked two corruption investigations. Neither led to charges.
The FBI picked him up again last month, days before Prisco's pa role was set to expire, on allega tions that he and an associate conspired with the electrician, John Cappelli, to threaten a businessman who outbid Cappelli on a Brooklyn job. Prisco's attorneys, Robert Gallucio and Miles Fein stein, had asked U.S. District Judge Joseph Greenaway to re lease him under a bail package that would let Prisco stay at home with electronic monitoring. They argued he wasn't a threat or a risk to flee.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven D'Aguanno countered that agents had proof Prisco remained active in the mob and was capable of violence. That's when he played tapes of conversations between Prisco and the FBI cooperating witness.
In the first, recorded Nov. 4, 2004, Prisco tells his driver that Cappelli paid him $2,500 every two months for, among other things, the contract to light Little Italy's renowned street fair every September.
For more than a decade, San Gennaro organizers have battled allegations of mob influence, to little avail. Prisco said Cappelli padded the bill by $25,000 and passed the difference to the mobsters overseeing the festival.
"We got him the San Gennaro feast," Prisco said. "I get like $15,000 a year off of it." Still, he said, Cappelli was complaining. "He's a (expletive) crybaby," Prisco said.
Cappelli has not been accused of any crime related to his San Gennaro contract. His attorney, Edward McDonald, declined to comment about the tapes. Prisco's attorneys did not return calls for comment.
'YOU KILL THE COCK-A-ROACH'
Prosecutors pointed to the second recording as proof of Prisco's penchant for violence. In it, he re counted his now well-known role as a prospective mediator between actor Steven Seagal and members of the Gambino family who were later convicted of shaking down the actor.Seagal, whose cousin was a former New York police officer turned Hollywood producer, came to visit Prisco at East Jersey State Prison. He said he wanted to discuss a movie project, but really the conversation was about the Gambino extortion.
"I said, 'Steven, I can't help you. Maybe when I come out I can,'" Prisco told his driver.
"He's a Jewish actor. He's not a (expletive) tough guy." Prisco went on. "They (Gambinos) sent word back to me - 'We'll do whatever we want with him. He's our piece of cheese and we'll cut 'im up any way."
Prisco said he didn't like the Gambinos, but could work with them. On one of the tapes, he re counted a prison visit from an at torney representing Anthony "Sonny" Ciccone, a mobster later convicted for extorting Seagal. Prisco said the attorney wanted him to convince Seagal to stop cooperating with the government, but that the attorney initially re fused to say who sent him.
"I grabbed him by the throat and I twisted his tie. He was turning purple," Prisco told the driver, his voice rising. "You can't tell me, you (expletive-expletive)?"
At another point on the same tape, he lamented the lack of discretion among today's wiseguys, especially when it comes to killing.
"The old timers tell you, when somebody's gotta go, they become a cock-a-roach. What do you do with a cock-a-roach? You kill the cock-a-roach, you step on the cock-a-roach, you go about your business," Prisco explained. "You don't go calling people up and say, 'Eh, I stepped on a cock-a-roach last night.' Just make it done. Hey, I didn't make it that way, but that's the way it is."
LOOKING AHEAD - AND BEHIND
Finally, prosecutors used the tapes to dispute Prisco's conten tion that, since his release, he and his wife were living off a $600-per-month Social Security check. D'Aguanno said Prisco was paying $1,800 a month for a Bronx apartment. On the tapes, the re puted capo said the family passed him as much as $1,500 a month since his release from jail.
Still, he worried about the future.
"I had a few things going here and there, ya know," he told Jeff. "But they die, ya know. When you're not there, it's like a flower. If you don't put water on it, they're gonna die."
"But the respect still gotta be there, Ang," the driver said, almost as a question.
"Oh yeah, that's not the problem," Prisco replied. "Respect is not the problem. It's like, ya know, when I went away a lot of things were different, ya know? Guys that were in power were my guys. But now, ya know . . . I'm an albatross."
Prisco sounded just as introspective, even nervous, six weeks later, as Jeff drove him to meet with other family members on Christmas Eve 2004. Prisco ad mitted he wasn't sure why he was being summoned. He speculated they wanted to give him money, maybe a lump sum tribute he had coming to him after so long in prison.
"What else could it be on Christmas Eve, that couldn't wait, ya know?" he asked. ". . . I didn't do nothing wrong. I'm no (expletive) rat, ya know? I did my time, I got my 12 years when I was 58 years old, ya know? I'm a man."
The driver told Prisco he was ordered to stay with him at all times, just in case. "We can't let nothing happen to you, so . . .," Jeff said.
"Nah," Prisco cut in. "I don't think it's going to be anything like that."
Then, in a moment of self-doubt, he added: "Hey, if that's my life, that's my life.
"There's nothing I can do about it."
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THE MAFIA
Introduction to the Mafia
Today the word "Mafia" is used to refer to almost all groups or gangs involved in organized crime. Originally, Mafia meant an organized criminal organization of Italian, predominantly Sicilian, heritage. In fact, the word "Mafia" is a literary creation. The real name is believed to be "Cosa Nostra" meaning "our thing".
The Mafia has controlled everything from street corners to the highest levels of the governments to huge estates and mansions. It has been glorified by books and movies. The Mafia's main objective may have been of earning tremendous wealth, but there were also secret rituals, complicated rules. family loyalty and honour.
In the Mafia, there is a hierarchy, with the top-ranking members making decisions whcih the lower-ranking members performed. The Mafia was not a single group or gang - It is made up of a number of "Families". These Families weren't always at peace with each other. There have often been gang wars. These wars were very bloody and bitter and chaos reigned in the streets. Sometimes, they have co-operated in the interest of greater profits. Most of the time, they simply stayed out of each other's way.
Due to the Italian roots, most of the Mafiaso (Mafia Members) were Catholic. However, before being accepted into a Mafia family, he has to take an oath that his Mafia Family will come before his birth family and God.
The Mafia is a kind of organized crime which is active not only in many illegal fields, but also exercised administrative functions – normally belonging to government authorities – over a specific territory where the Mafia Family resided.
In the beginning and even till the 1950s, many people regarded the Mafia not as law-breaking criminals but as role-models and protectors of the weak and the poor, as the state offered no protection to the lower classes.
Once, Mafia had been more like an attitude of pride, honor, social responsibility and had commanded great respect and love; rather than a criminal organization interested only in monetary benefits. Sadly, Mafia didnt stay like this for long.
DIVISIONS OF THE MAFIA
Divisions of the Mafia
The Mafia is not an actual organization. It has no individual head. Instead, the term "Mafia" refers to the various Families or groups of gangsters involved in organized crime. Most of these Mafia Families can trace their heritage back to Italy, predominantly Sicily.
The Mafia is broadly divided into 5 groups based on the region where they operate or where they originated from. All the major Mafia gangs are involved in criminal enterprises all over the world and have bases in many nations.
The five major groups are :-
1. The Sicilian Mafia - Originated from Sicily.
2. The Cammora Mafia - Originated from Naples.
3. The Calabrian Mafia - Originated from Italy's Calabrian province.
4. Sacra Corona Unita Mafia - Relatively recent group operating in the Puglia region of Italy.
5. La Cosa Nostra - The American Mafia. They have their roots in Sicily and Italy.
There isn't a clear naming conception when it comes to naming Mafia Families. Families were generally names after the town or province from where they arrived. However, the name sometimes changed to the name of their Don, specially if he was there since a long time and had tremendous power and influence. Some Families were even named for the city in which they operated.
Sicily had nearly 200 Mafia Families. Some of the most prominent are :- Greco Mafia family, Motisi Mafia family and Corleonesi Many emigrated to other regions, specially to the United States.
The United States have many families too. Some of the most prominent are ;-Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Buffalo crime family, Scarfo crime family, Los Angeles crime family ,etc.
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- Concert Productions International (familiarly, CPI). Major promoter of rock concerts and tours in North America. It was established in Toronto in 1973 as a subsidiary of WBC Productions Ltd by Michael Cohl, William (Bill) Ballard, and Mediagenics Entertainment. CPI-Mediagenics extended its sphere of influence across Canada. CPI=Mediagenics organized many national tours by major rock and pop acts and produced more than 250 concerts and events each year in addition to sporting and theatrical events. With its focus on concert tours, CPI promoted successful tours for the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Pink Floyd. In 1989 it began to acquire international touring rights for groups such as the Rolling Stones, whose 115-concert Steel Wheels tour 1989-90 in Canada, the USA, Europe, and Japan generated gross revenues reaching an unprecedented $300 million. It also presented artists in several smaller Toronto venues and promoted concerts in other Ontario cities. In 1990 Canadian concerts accounted for about half of some 1000 CPI presentations worldwide.