Mafia - Blog 2.0 - Gangsters Inc. - www.gangstersinc.org
2024-03-28T23:16:47Z
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/Mafia
The Russian Mafia: From the vory to the oligarchs
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview
2023-02-08T11:40:00.000Z
2023-02-08T11:40:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979261,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979261,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236979261?profile=original" width="600" /></a>Organized Crime has existed in Russia (former Soviet Union) for centuries. Under the communist regime corruption was as normal in Russia as snow falling during the winter. One of the big money makers for the Russian criminals was selling Western products on the black market, a market they controlled in the 1970s and 80s.<br /> <br /> It was also during this time that there was a wave of Russian émigrés who fled to North America. Most of these émigrés were Jewish, however a lot of Russians faked a Jewish passport, among them Russian criminals. Most of the Russians settled in Brighton Beach in New York, which has the largest Russian population outside of Russia.<br /> <br /> When the Soviet Union fell apart, Russian organized crime was unleashed unto the world. Russian organized crime can now be found everywhere, from the US to Israel to Spain and England. The Russians can be considered to be among the most powerful criminals in the world.<br /> <br /> Russian criminals are active in: Fraud, transnational money laundering, extortion, drug trafficking, weapon smuggling, auto theft, white slave trafficking/prostitution, hostage taking, extortion of immigrant celebrities and sport figures, transportation of stolen property for export, insurance and medical fraud, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, and murder.</p>
<div style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-3">PROFILES:</span></strong><br /> <br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/the-billion-dollar-don">The Billion Dollar Don</a><br /> Living in a KavKaz Nation - Profile of <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/living-in-a-kavkaz-nation-profile-of-new-york-crime-boss-roman-ni">New York crime boss Roman Nikoghosyan</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/coast-to-coast-pure-armenian-blood-gang-under-patronage-of-us-bas">Coast-to-Coast “Pure Armenian Blood” gang</a> under patronage of US-based “Vor v Zakone” busted by Feds<br /> Porsches and Yeezys – <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/porsches-and-yeezys-profile-of-new-york-crime-boss-aleksey-tsvetk">Profile of New York crime boss Aleksey Tsvetkov</a> <br /> “For him, I am a god” – Profile of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/for-him-i-am-a-god-profile-of-russian-mafia-boss-and-vor-v-zakone">Russian Mafia boss, and vor v zakone, Razhden Shulaya</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-charged-with-extortion-scheme">Boris Nayfeld</a> (flipped)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-leonid-lebedev">Leonid Lebedev</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-sergei-tsapok">Sergei Tsapok</a> (in prison)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-boss-rakhimov-and-the-sochi-olympics">Gafur Rakhimov</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-tariel-oniani">Tariel Oniani</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-viktor-bout">Victor Bout</a> (from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/viktor-bout-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison">prison</a> to <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/arms-trafficker-victor-bout-is-back-in-moscow-after-prisoner-swap" target="_blank">freedom</a>)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-hitman-aleksandr">Aleksandr Solonik</a> (whacked)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-sergei-mikhailov">Sergei "Mikhas" Mikhailov</a> (in freedom)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-evsei-agron">Evsei "The Little Don" Agron</a> (whacked)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-semion-mogilevich">Semion Mogilevich</a> (in freedom)<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-alimzhan">Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov</a> (in freedom)<br /> <br /> <strong><span class="font-size-3">ARTICLES:</span></strong><br /> <br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/suicide-squad-the-mafia-bosses-hitmen-and-gangsters-fighting-russ">Suicide Squad: The Mafia bosses, hitmen, and gangsters fighting Russia’s war in Ukraine</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/cold-case-amsterdam-the-mystery-behind-a-dismembered-russian-art">Cold Case Amsterdam: The mystery behind a dismembered Russian art smuggler</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/boss-of-brooklyn-s-eastern-european-mob-extradited-to-us-from-swi">Boss of Brooklyn’s Eastern European mob extradited to US from Switzerland to face racketeering charges</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/real-lord-of-war-back-from-the-shadows-as-pawn-in-international-p">Real “Lord of War” back from the shadows as pawn in international prisoner swap between US and Russia</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/brooklyn-pure-armenian-blood-member-admits-racketeering-and-fraud">Brooklyn Pure Armenian Blood member admits racketeering and fraud</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/money-launderer-of-powerful-us-based-russian-mafia-boss-pleads-gu">Money launderer of powerful US-based Russian Mafia boss pleads guilty</a> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/spanish-court-rules-that-investments-of-tambovskaya-malyshevskaya">Spanish court rules investments of Tambovskaya-Malyshevskaya</a> Russian Mafia clan not criminal<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-boss-razhden-shulaya-ran-nationwide-criminal-enterp">Russian Mafia boss Razhden Shulaya</a> ran nationwide criminal enterprise from Brighton Beach to Las Vegas<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/greedy-sharks-the-new-rule-for-banking-in-eastern-europe-makes-fr">Greedy Sharks:</a> The new rule for banking in Eastern Europe that makes fraudulent oligarchs billions<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-russian-oligarchs-turned-the-country-of-latvia-into-their-own">How Russian oligarchs turned Latvia</a> into their money laundering machine<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-crew-in-brighton-beach-busted-by-dea-irs">Russian mob crew in Brighton Beach busted by DEA, IRS</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-extortionist-pleads-guilty-after-mob-boss-flips-and-agree">Russian extortionist pleads guilty after mob boss flips, agrees to testify against him</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russia-arrests-top-officials-charges-them-with-taki">Russia arrests top officials, charges them with taking bribes from mob boss</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-money-laundering-ring-in-spain-busted">Russian Mafia money laundering ring busted in Spain</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-orders-the-internet-to-fuggedabout-him">Russian mob boss Sergei Mikhailov orders the internet to ‘fuggedabout’ him</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fugitive-russian-mobster-caught-in-pattaya-thailand">Fugitive Russian mobster caught in Pattaya, Thailand</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-released-on-bail-in-austria">Russian mob boss released on bail in Austria</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-two-russian-mobsters-got-caught-up-in-the-iraqi-civil-war">How two Russian mobsters got caught up in the Iraqi civil war</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-new-dawn-for-the-russian-mafia">A New Dawn For the Russian Mafia</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fifa-capo-sepp-blatter-boozing-with-russian-mob-boss">FIFA capo Sepp Blatter boozing with Russian mob boss</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-arrested-in-thailand">Russian mob boss arrested in Thailand</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/spain-police-bust-russian-mafia-gang-taganskaya">Spain police bust Russian Mafia gang Taganskaya</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/investigating-the-russian-mafia-on-its-home-turf">Investigating the Russian Mafia on its home turf</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/georgian-crime-clan-of-vors-busted-in-europe">Georgian Crime Clan of Vors Busted in Europe</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/viktor-bout-sentenced-to-25-years-in-prison">Viktor Bout Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-dark-knight-of-mother">The Dark Knight of Mother Russia</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/miami-and-the-russian-mob-by">Russian Mob in Miami</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-russian-mafia-in-spain">The Russian Mafia in Spain: Operation "Troika"</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/an-american-businessman-in">An American Businessman in Moscow: The Story of Paul Tatum</a><br /> <br /> <strong>Puparo's look on Russian O.C.</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-russian-oc">Russia 1990 - 1994</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-russian-oc-1">Russia 1995 - 1999</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/puparo-presents-russian-oc-2">Russia 21st Century<br /> </a> <br />
<div style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236979275,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236979275?profile=original" width="607" /></a></div>
</div></div>
Profile of Colombo family boss Carmine Persico
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/colombo-boss-carmine-persico
2018-11-03T13:30:00.000Z
2018-11-03T13:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977283,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236977283?profile=original" /></p>
<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2001</p>
<p><span style="font-size:12pt;"><strong>Read the obituary and most up-to-date profile of Carmine Persico <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/legendary-new-york-mafia-boss-carmine-persico-was-the-ultimate-su" target="_blank">here</a>.</strong></span> <br /> <br /> Carmine Persico was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Carmine senior, was a soldier in the Genovese Crime Family. To his friends Carmine Persico was known on the streets as 'Junior', to his enemies he was known as 'The Snake'. As a teenager he became the leader of a group of young thugs called 'The Garfield Boys'. When he was 17 he reputedly killed his first victim. Before he could be convicted on the testimony of a state witness known only as "The Blue Angel," his older brother Alphonse confessed to the murder and went to prison for 18 years.<br /> <br /> Carmine Persico was one of the main enforcers for the Colombo Family. When he was a Capo he had a crew that consisted of many heavy hitmen such as: Alphonse "Ally Boy" Persico (Carmine’s brother), Gennaro Langella, Anthony Abbattermarco, Joey Brancatto and associate Hugh "Apples" McIntosh. Eventough Apples couldn't become a made guy, his father was not Italian, he still was a very succesful enforcer for the Family and ultimately became Carmine Persico's bodyguard and was very respected within the underworld. Carmine Persico was a real tough guy. Small in stature, scrawny and ugly in appearance, one hand was twisted from a bullet wound; he had also been shot in the face during the first Gallo Wars. The incident, that went down in mob lore had him and a partner in crime, Alphonse D'Ambrosia, sitting is a car as a group of Gallo hoods drove by shooting at them with a M-1 carbine. Ambrosia was shot in the chest and the Snake got one in the face, but spat the bullet out and then drove them both to hospital.<br /> <br /> Persico became boss for the first time at the end of the second Gallo war, although it has not been proven most people believe that he pulled the strings from prison while Thomas DiBella was appointed acting boss. When Persico got out of prison DiBella stepped down and handed the seat to Persico. His tenure as boss of the Colombos was marked by his troubles with the law. Of his first thirteen years in the seat, he spent ten of them in prison. When he was out of prison, he operated the family out of the Diplomat Social Club, on the corner of 3rd Avenue and Carroll Street in the Van Brunt district of Brooklyn. Here you would find the main players of the Persico faction of the Colombo faction: Carmine, when he was out of prison, his brother Ally Boy, Jerry Langella, Hugh MacIntosh, one of the family’s main enforcers, Carmine Franzese, the brother of Sonny, Greg Scarpa, Anthony, Vincent and Joe, Jr., the sons of Joseph Colombo, anybody who was part of the Persico faction or who had dealings with them.<br /> <br /> <img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236978678,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" style="float:right;" />Throughout the 80’s, the Colombo family was under massive pressure as the FBI and city and state organized crime strike forces attacked them and the other four families on all fronts. In 1986, Anthony, Joseph and Vincent Colombo were convicted for racketeering, conspiracy and narcotic offences and went to prison for varying terms. Carmine and Alphonse Persico and Jerry Langella went down for labor and construction racketeering and extortion for terms of 39, 12, and 65 years respectively. In addition, Carmine and Langella were sentenced to 100 years for crimes under RICO in what became known as "The Commission Trial," effectively removing them from the streets of New York forever. But in removing "the Snake" from his stronghold, the government was helping to set the stage for the third war in the family.<br /> <br /> Incarcerated in Lompoc Penitentiary in California, Persico still held control and strong influence over his family, he made Vic Orena acting boss and in doing so he created the third Family war, after this war which decimated the Colombo Family Carmine’s son <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/colombo-boss-alphonse-persico">Alphonse</a> was put in charge as acting boss. Until he too got nabbed by the feds. If Carmine Persico is a real Family man then he probably is glad to be in prison because the Colombo Family is not doing well and is on the verge of braking down, maybe Carmine prefers his rose garden over his troublesome mob family.<br /></p></div>
The New England Crime Family
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family
2020-12-12T16:02:02.000Z
2020-12-12T16:02:02.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><p><strong>Estimate members</strong>: 30<br /> <strong>First Boss</strong>: Frank “Butsey” Morelli<br /> <strong>Primary activities</strong>: Involved in narcotics trafficking, video poker machines, robbery, extortion, loan sharking, gambling.<br /> <strong>Boss</strong>: Carmen DiNunzio<br /> <strong>Acting Boss</strong>: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mobsters-sentenced-to-prison-for-extortion-scheme">Anthony "Spucky" Spagnolo</a> (in prison)</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-4">ARTICLES:</span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/homicide-at-rough-point-the-billionairess-and-the-mobbed-up-polic">Homicide at Rough Point: The billionairess and the mobbed up police chief</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/former-mob-hitman-crashes-liquor-store-has-drink-and-cigar-then-p">Former mob hitman crashes liquor store, has drink and cigar, then punches cop</a><br /> <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/blog/mobster-robert-gentile-dies-at-85-takes-secrets-about-isabella-st">Mobster Robert Gentile dies at 85</a>, takes secrets about Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft to grave<br /> Never lie to the feds – Profile: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/never-lie-to-the-feds-profile-of-boston-mafia-boss-francis-cadill">Boston Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/patriarca-mafia-family-s-violent-and-medical-secrets-discussed-in">Patriarca Mafia family’s - violent and medical - secrets</a> discussed in Street Corner Soapbox podcast<br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-new-england-mafia-family-capo-gets-66-months-in-prison-for">Former New England mob family capo gets 66 months in prison</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-italian-mafia-irish-gangs-chinese-tongs-bootleggers-gamblers">The Italian Mafia, Irish gangs, Chinese Tongs:</a> Welcome to Gangland Boston<br /> Profile: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-patriarca-mob-family-enforcer-frank-bobo-marrapese-jr">Patriarca mob family enforcer Frank “Bobo” Marrapese Jr.</a><br /> Profile: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mafia-boss-peter-limone-dies-at-age-83">Boston Mafia boss Peter Limone</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-england-mafia-capo-bobby-deluca-admits-conspiracy-in-1992-mur">Bobby DeLuca admits conspiracy in 1992 murder of mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-patriarca-crime-family-capo-anthony-st-laurent-sr">Profile: Capo Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent Sr.</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/camorra-still-possesses-stolen-rembrandt-art-hunters-say-could-bo">Could Boston heist painting have ended up in Italy with Camorra Mafia?</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mob-boss-frank-salemme-faces-hopeless-day-in-court">Boston mob boss Frank Salemme faces hopeless day in court</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-new-england-mob-boss-turned-snitch-francis-cadillac-salemm">Former mob boss Francis Salemme charged with murder of federal witness</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/patriarca-mob-family-capo-turned-snitch-charged-with-lying-about">Bobby DeLuca charged with lying about Boston club owner's murder</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mobsters-sentenced-to-prison-for-extortion-scheme">Boston mobsters sentenced to prison for extortion scheme</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mobster-goes-to-trial-for-hidden-interest-in-million-dolla">Boston mobster goes to trial for hidden interest in multi-million-dollar casino deal</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-england-mobster-sentenced-for-drug-conspiracy">New England mobster sentenced for drug conspiracy</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/boston-mafia-bosses-hit-the-streets-war-looming">Boston Mafia bosses hit the streets – War looming?</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fbi-releases-audio-of-boston-mafia-induction-ceremony">FBI releases audio of Boston Mafia induction ceremony</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-england-mafia-bust-emphasizes-mob-s-decline">New England Mafia bust emphasizes mob’s decline</a><br /> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/joe-barboza-boston-barbarian">Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian</a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>VIDEO:</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/video-mafia-link-to-500-million-art-heist-discussed-in-new-episod" target="_blank">Mafia link to $500 million art heist discussed in Mob Talk</a></p></div>
Sicilian Mafia connection in Philadelphia? New Mob Talk sheds some light
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/sicilian-mafia-connection-in-philadelphia-new-mob-talk-sheds-some
2019-10-09T08:08:02.000Z
2019-10-09T08:08:02.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sicilian-mafia-connection-in-philadelphia-new-mob-talk-sheds-some" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237122872,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237122872?profile=original" /></a>By David Amoruso for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a></p>
<p>Philadelphia mob boss Joseph Merlino has been released from prison and the Sicilian Mafia sets up shop in South Philadelphia. A lot to talk about in this week’s Mob Talk with George Anastasia and Dave Schratwieser.</p>
<p>The mob reporting duo first focus on “Operation New Connection,” the international takedown of 18 alleged <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> figures in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Sicily" target="_blank">Sicily</a> last July. “It’s kind of a throwback to the Pizza Connection of the 1970s, 1980s,” Anastasia explains. Two central figures in the case have ties to Sicily and the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Philadelphia" target="_blank">Philadelphia</a> area.</p>
<p>One of them, Simone Zito, is currently a fugitive and was caught on tape bragging about how he helped get fellow defendant Salvatore Gambino elected as mayor back in Sicily. Zito’s son Calogero was also charged and arrested in Sicily. He was photographed on a boat with influential figures in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambino" target="_blank">Gambino</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Spatola" target="_blank">Spatola</a> and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Inzerillo" target="_blank">Inzerillo</a> Mafia clans.</p>
<p>“Calogero Zito, from what we can see, is an entrepreneurial kind of guy,” Anastasia says. “He talked openly about his businesses, they seemed legitimately and seemed to be functioning quite well.”</p>
<p>Right in Philadelphia. “[He owned] a coffee place, a pizza place and a $300,000 dollar piece of property in the heart of South Philadelphia,” Schratwieser adds.</p>
<p>New York’s Gambino crime family boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-francesco-cali" target="_blank">Frank Cali</a> would probably have been charged in this case as well, had he not been <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-mafia-family-boss-frank-cali-shot-dead-in-front-of-his-st" target="_blank">murdered</a>.</p>
<p>Also, the pair discuss the return of reputed mob boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Merlino" target="_blank">Joey Merlino</a>. Released from federal prison, he returns to the Boca Raton area in Florida. What's next and what his release could mean for the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family" target="_blank">local crime family</a>?</p>
<p><strong>Watch the latest edition of Mob Talk below:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ol0-TgUG_FM?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
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Yakuza bosses held liable for crime committed by underling as Japan gets tough on organized crime
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/yakuza-bosses-held-liable-for-crime-committed-by-underling-as-jap
2019-05-24T15:19:14.000Z
2019-05-24T15:19:14.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/yakuza-bosses-held-liable-for-crime-committed-by-underling-as-jap" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011873,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237011873?profile=original" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>For the first time in history, two <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/yakuza-overview" target="_blank">Yakuza</a> mob bosses were held liable for a crime committed by one of the members of his organization. Isao Seki, the current leader of the Sumiyoshi-kai, Japan’s second largest crime syndicate, and Hareaki Fukuda, his predecessor, were ordered on Thursday to pay over ¥6 million yen ($55,000) to two victims of a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Fraud" target="_blank">fraud</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/yakuza-boss-charged-with-ordering-hit-on-manager-of-car-dealershi">Yakuza boss charged with ordering hit</a> - Victim slashed with katana sword</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>The victims – all elderly women – were called at their homes by people pretending to be their relatives. They were told to wire them money to help them with some issues, reminiscent of various online scams in which rich Nigerian princes or young men and ladies need some funds to help them with their problems.</p>
<p>Two of the women fell for the scam and paid a total of ¥5 million yen. The racket was set up and run by a member of an organization affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai clan. Two other men assisted him. According to the Japanese judge, the scheme benefitted from the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/yakuza-overview" target="_blank">Yakuza</a> link and thus the two mob leaders are held accountable for the crimes of their underlings.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-real-john-wick-separating-fact-from-fiction-in-hollywood-s-vi" target="_blank">The Real John Wick</a>: Separating fact from fiction in Hollywood’s violent gangster vengeance blockbuster</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>It’s the first time this has happened and a result of Japan’s tougher anti-Yakuza laws aimed at weakening the formidable Mafia group.</p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/yakuza-overview">Yakuza section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Salvatore Scoppa, brother of Montreal Mafia leader, shot to death at Sheraton Hotel in Laval, Quebec
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/salvatore-scoppa-brother-of-montreal-mafia-leader-shot-to-death-a
2019-05-06T13:30:00.000Z
2019-05-06T13:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/salvatore-scoppa-brother-of-montreal-mafia-leader-shot-to-death-a" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237122082,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237122082?profile=original" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The Mafia war in the underworld of Montreal, Canada, has claimed another victim. 49-year-old Salvatore Scoppa (photo above) died after being shot Saturday night at the Sheraton Hotel in Laval. He is the brother of a high-ranking member of the Montreal Mafia.</p>
<p>Time finally ran out for Scoppa after having survived multiple dangerous situations. In February of 2017, he was shot at as he exited a restaurant in Terrebonne. For that failed hit, 38-year-old Frédérick Silva, an alleged <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Hitman" target="_blank">hitman</a>, was arrested in February as a suspect in that murder attempt and two other slayings. He was featured on <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Canada" target="_blank">Canada</a>’s most wanted fugitives list.</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237122492,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237122492?profile=original" /></a>“People were trying to kill him for a while”</strong></span></p>
<p>“At the time, police investigators suspected Scoppa had also recently been assaulted after noticing he had a cast on his arm,” the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/man-with-mafia-ties-fatally-shot-saturday-at-laval-hotel" target="_blank">Montreal Gazette</a> reported. “People have been trying to kill him for a while, the police warned him a few times,” retired police officer John Galianos told <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/5241805/salvatore-scoppa-man-linked-to-mafia-gunned-down-at-sheraton-hotel-in-laval/" target="_blank">Global News</a>. Adding that, “He was well connected and some people believe he might have been involved in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">drug trafficking</a>.”</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>No saint</strong></span></p>
<p>Scoppa himself was indeed no saint. According to the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/man-with-mafia-ties-fatally-shot-saturday-at-laval-hotel" target="_blank">Montreal Gazette</a>, “He was being investigated for the disappearance of two men who were reported missing in 2013 and are since presumed dead.”</p>
<p>In the life violence and death are part of doing business. Scoppa knew this all too well, or should have known from his years of experience with such things. He continued on his path and met his demise at a hotel. Shot to death by mob hitmen. Police said two suspects were seen fleeing the scene. As of yet, no arrests have been made.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in-canada-from-the-mafia-to-outlaw-bikers-and-dru">Organized Crime in Canada section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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How a domestic dispute led to the death of one of Canada’s most powerful Mafia bosses
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/how-a-domestic-dispute-led-to-the-death-of-one-of-canada-s-most-p
2018-09-12T12:20:58.000Z
2018-09-12T12:20:58.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-a-domestic-dispute-led-to-the-death-of-one-of-canada-s-most-p" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237114489,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237114489?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>A domestic dispute? It’s not the first thing one thinks of when a reputed Mafia boss is shot dead in his home. Still, that’s what happened to 87-year-old Toronto mob leader Rocco Zito (photo above) on January 29, 2016. His son-in-law, Domenico Scopelliti, was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison for the killing.</p>
<p>During his trial, 54-year-old Scopelliti testified that he had acted in self-defense when he fired several bullets at his elderly father-in-law from close range. The pair had been involved in a heated argument. <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Zito" target="_blank">Zito</a> even threatened to cut his daughter and Scopelliti from his will.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>READ:</strong> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/murder-of-mob-boss-rocco-zito-hit-or-domestic-dispute" target="_blank"><strong>Profile of Canadian ‘Ndrangheta Mafia boss Rocco Zito</strong></a></li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237115097,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237115097?profile=original" width="300" /></a>At one point, Zito, a legendary figure and once one of the most powerful Calabrian <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Ndrangheta" target="_blank">‘Ndrangheta</a> mob bosses in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Canada" target="_blank">Canada</a>, pulled out a gun and told his son-in-law he would “die before him”. Scopelliti armed himself by retrieving a fully loaded, illegal handgun with silencer from elsewhere in the home. Intimately familiar with his father-in-law’s capabilities as a gangster, Scopelliti didn’t hesitate and fired several shots at Zito when he saw him aim his firearm at him.</p>
<p>After the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Murder" target="_blank">murder</a>, Scopelliti (photo right) destroyed the murder weapon and turned himself in to police. At his trial he talked openly about his deadly action that day. “We went from celebrating my daughter’s birthday that day to mourning her grandfather’s death. I can’t say how much I regret it.”</p>
<p>Scopelliti was acquitted of first-degree murder but was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury in June. Factoring in time served, he will spend the next 5 years and 8 months in prison.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in-canada-from-the-mafia-to-outlaw-bikers-and-dru">Organized Crime in Canada section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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Gunman wearing fedora shoots up mob-linked restaurant in Brooklyn
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gunman-wearing-fedora-shoots-up-mob-linked-restaurant-in-brooklyn
2018-03-11T14:46:01.000Z
2018-03-11T14:46:01.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gunman-wearing-fedora-shoots-up-mob-linked-restaurant-in-brooklyn" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237098499,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237098499?profile=original" width="553" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Sometimes, these crime stories write themselves. Take this latest gem in which an Italian restaurant with connections to the Italian Mafia was shot up by a gunman wearing a fedora hat. Goodbye 2018. Hello 1938! A fedora, by the way, is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown, which was very popular among <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Prohibition" target="_blank">Prohibition</a>-era gangsters.</p>
<p>Marco Polo Ristorante is located on Court St. and Union St. in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn and is owned by alleged mobster <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-gambino-crime-family-mobster-joseph-chirico" target="_blank">Joseph Chirico</a>. Authorities claim Chirico, who grew up in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/italian-organized-crime" target="_blank">Italy</a>, is part of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview" target="_blank">Gambino crime family</a> and caught him in 2008, along with several other gangsters, in a big case.</p>
<p>The big case didn’t result in a big sentence as Chirico was sentenced to 6 months of house arrest for money laundering. During his home detention he was allowed to run his restaurant 10 hours each day.</p>
<p>He wasn’t present when the fedora-covered shooter fired a gun at his closed restaurant at 6 a.m. on February 25 of this year. Police caught the fashionista gunman on a surveillance camera and have released a grainy image (below) to the public in hopes of catching him. If you recognize him you can call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237099285,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237099285?profile=original" width="600" /></a></p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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<p><strong>Copyright © Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
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VIDEO: Mafia link to $500 million art heist discussed in new episode of Mob Talk
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/video-mafia-link-to-500-million-art-heist-discussed-in-new-episod
2017-11-08T06:30:00.000Z
2017-11-08T06:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/video-mafia-link-to-500-million-art-heist-discussed-in-new-episod" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237102066,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237102066?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>It was one of the biggest art heists in the world, the largest one in the United States. $500 million worth of paintings were stolen from Boston’s Gardner Art Museum. Investigators soon found that the theft had the Mafia’s fingerprints on it.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/thief-who-sold-two-van-gogh-paintings-to-camorra-mafia-says-he-hi" target="_blank">Thief tells how he sold stolen Van Goghs to Camorra</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>The trail led authorities from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Boston" target="_blank">Boston</a> to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Connecticut" target="_blank">Connecticut</a> and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Florida" target="_blank">Florida</a>. But also to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Philadelphia" target="_blank">Philadelphia</a>. For more on the Philly connection to this crime check out the new episode of Mob Talk in which mob reporters George Anastasia and Dave Schratweiser discuss all the alleged players.</p>
<p><strong>You can watch the episode below:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SjTrfuWAMBI?wmode=opaque" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family">New England Patriarca crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Check out the latest news on organized crime and the Mafia at our <a href="https://gangstersinc.ning.com/blog/list/tag/news">news section</a></strong></li>
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Al Capone’s Beer Wars: Chicago’s Prohibition-era gangland laid bare by mob historian John Binder
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/al-capone-s-beer-wars-chicago-s-prohibition-era-gangland-laid-bar
2017-09-12T08:05:49.000Z
2017-09-12T08:05:49.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/al-capone-s-beer-wars-chicago-s-prohibition-era-gangland-laid-bar" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237092696,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237092696?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The Prohibition era in Chicago has gone down in history as a time of extreme mob violence. A time when hoodlums were mowing down enemies with Thompson machine guns in a battle over the lucrative bootlegging business. When mob boss Al Capone ruled supreme while being on the cover of every newspaper. Author John J. Binder gives readers a complete account of those turbulent times in his new book <em>Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago during Prohibition</em>.</p>
<p>“It’s a book to set the record straight,” John J. Binder tells Gangsters Inc. right off the bat. <em><a href="http://amzn.to/2jljphE" target="_blank">Al Capone’s Beer Wars</a></em> is based on over two decades of exhaustive research by the renowned mob historian and several of his colleagues that covers the entire period from 1920 to 1933.</p>
<p>In it, he paints a detailed picture of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-chicago-outfit-overview" target="_blank">Chicago Outfit</a> from its beginnings under leader “Big Jim” Colosimo to its prolific rise under bosses John Torrio and Al Capone. Using many previously unexplored sources Binder lays out how the organization’s diversified operations in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Prostitution" target="_blank">vice</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambling" target="_blank">gambling</a>, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Drugs" target="_blank">narcotics</a>, and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Union" target="_blank">labor racketeering</a> enabled its expansion and ensured its survival after <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Prohibition" target="_blank">Prohibition</a> ended.</p>
<p>Another reason the Capone gang was so successful was that it welcomed gangsters from other ethnicities into its ranks. “Therefore,” Binder writes in his <a href="http://amzn.to/2jljphE" target="_blank">book</a>, “from the earliest days [they] greatly benefitted from the likes of Jake Guzik and Murray Humphreys and readily embraced other non-Italians such as Sam Hunt and Willie Heeney. Capone was also willing to cooperate with and eventually merge with other gangs as things evolved, as opposed to fighting them and then expelling them from the areas they controlled, even though these other gangs were not heavily Italian in membership.”</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!</strong></span></p>
<p>One should add that all of this reasoning is based on decades of research. Part of the reason for writing this <a href="http://amzn.to/2jljphE" target="_blank">book</a> stems from the large amount of crime fiction that is being presented as fact by many writers. “A lot has been written about this subject, which I’ve been studying for 25 years now,” Binder tells us. “I’ve had the opportunity to dig into a lot of things. And as other books came out I’d sometimes be perplexed.”</p>
<p>Flipping through the pages, Binder found himself asking: “Really? How could you say that? How do you think that happened?” Or, he adds, “When one guy says X and 99 other sources say Y yet the author, without anything else to contribute to this issue, goes with X. Come on! You’re kidding me?!” he exclaims.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/chicago-mob-story-the-man-who-loved-being-a-gangster" target="_blank">A Chicago Mob Story: The man who loved being a gangster</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>There are many reasons for this, he explains. “One problem is that in this day and age sensationalism sells books. I think a lot of authors might be a bit too quick to go with something that they hear or can put together quickly, especially if it is very sensational.” This sensationalism, Binder says, led to the creation of myths and fiction like the claims that Capone was a cocaine addict (he wasn’t) or that Capone had nothing to do with the St. Valentine’s Day massacre (he did).</p>
<p>A bit frustrated by this and realizing he had compiled a ton of factual evidence about the Prohibition era in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Chicago" target="_blank">Chicago</a>, Binder went to work on <a href="http://amzn.to/2jljphE" target="_blank">his latest book</a>. A major focus of his work is how the group led by Al Capone gained a virtual monopoly over organized crime in northern Illinois and beyond even though it was just one of a staggering twelve major bootlegging gangs vying for territory at the start of Prohibition.</p>
<p>When it comes to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/al-capone-s-beer-wars-book-delves-into-prohibition-era-chicago-ga" target="_blank">researching organized crime</a>, Binder has simple advice: Dig deep and dig wide. “Working this subject is so difficult,” he admits. “You’re talking about a field of history where you have minimal source material. You think the Middle Ages are bad? Organized crime history is much worse.”</p>
<p>What helps is cross checking every lead you find, Binder advices. “If you’re not careful of the source material you draw conclusions that might be very different than if you’d dig a little deeper.”</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>TOMMY GUN MASSACRE</strong></span></p>
<p>“The history of Chicago prohibition and most of organized crime has been written about in a very particular way,” he tells us. “Most writers are not looking at the bigger picture, asking: What do these guys do? How do they make their money? Because that’s the sole goal of organized crime.” Instead, Binder says, the media focused on the violence.</p>
<p>“For years everybody was drawing conclusions without looking at what really happened. ‘Oh my God! 729 gangland killings! Oh, they must’ve all been bootleggers! They must’ve all been part of the wars between the bootleggers! It was so incredibly violent they were all using Thompson machine guns,” Binder says with a critical tone.</p>
<p>During his meticulous research Binder partnered with Mars Eghigian and decided to take a look at all of these 729 killings one by one, devoting an entire chapter to the topic in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/al-capone-s-beer-wars-book-delves-into-prohibition-era-chicago-ga" target="_blank">his book</a>. After painstakingly going through reports and historic documents the results were in. Of the 729 killings between 1919 and 1933 only 138 people were members of the major bootlegging gangs.</p>
<p>Binder: “The flashiest incidents [during Prohibition] were, yes, with the Thompson submachine gun, but that doesn’t mean it was used regularly. Let’s go look at all these incidents and see in what percentage a Tommy gun was used.”</p>
<p>In 444 murders between 1926 and 1933 the Thompson machine gun was used a total of only 27 times. “There is a simple reason why they used them infrequently; when fired on full automatic such weapons are difficult to control and the gangsters were extremely wary of accidentally hitting bystanders. To minimize the risk, gunmen tended to shoot their victims at close range, in which case a handgun or shotgun was sufficient.”</p>
<p>Binder: “That chapter more than any other shows what the work was really all about: Let’s get to the facts here. Virtually every conclusion I’ve seen previously drawn about gangland violence in Chicago during Prohibition is pretty much wrong.”</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“AL CAPONE WAS A GREAT BOSS”</strong></span></p>
<p>One man who has gotten a particularly bad rep is <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Capone" target="_blank">crime boss Al Capone</a>. Described frequently as a hothead with little in terms of brain capacity, readers had to ask themselves: how could this guy be boss?!</p>
<p>“In my opinion,” Binder begins, “Al Capone was a great gang leader. He had strong business sense and excellent martial skills. They’re running a multimillion-dollar business empire. Illegal as it is, that is the sole goal. If you can’t earn profits and make money for everyone, you won’t last very long. Guys underneath you are probably going to revolt, because you’re not just damaging how much guys at the top make but also how much everyone makes. I don’t think anyone would last very long as a gang leader if he didn’t have some basic and decent business skills to run the operations.”</p>
<p>Apart from that, Capone could never have lasted, Binder says, if he wasn’t able to keep his aggression under control. Not just because it would cloud his judgement and result in hasty and bad decisions, but also because he would alienate others. “You have to be diplomatic in how you interact with people inside and outside your organization,” he adds.</p>
<p>Of course, he did have his shortcomings. Binder acknowledges that Capone’s public behavior put him in the spotlight and that he should have filed his income tax returns every year and declared income equal to what he thought the authorities could attribute to him.</p>
<p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>LESSONS LEARNED FROM PROHIBITION</strong></span></p>
<p>After extensively researching this fascinating period, what have we learned from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Prohibition" target="_blank">Prohibition</a> with regards to fighting organized crime? Well, you might not like the answer.</p>
<p>“The basic law enforcement approach is someone breaks the law and you punish him,” Binder says. “The next approach is, as you saw in Chicago, authorities would try to hit them in the pocketbook. Shut everything down in a certain area so they lose income and start behaving themselves. Or if it’s really bad, something really major, authorities will shut down organized crime citywide for two weeks. Maybe keep hitting the speakeasies and gambling places and keep them totally closed to really punish the gangster element.”</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/there-goes-the-neighbor-hood-take-a-tour-through-chicago-s-gangla" target="_blank">Take a tour through Chicago's gangland</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>But you hit organized crime the hardest if you take away their livelihood altogether. Binder: “Make their activities legal. If you do that, you put them totally out of business. Legal casinos and legal slot machines have taken illegal gambling largely away from the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-chicago-outfit-overview" target="_blank">Chicago Outfit</a>.”</p>
<p>If we apply that theory to our present-day predicament, it would mean legalizing drugs. “Complete legalization of drugs would take it away from the street gangs who are involved in a lot of the violence on the street corners and from those at the upper ends distributing and trafficking it. I’m not trying to use that as a blanket statement, saying there’s your conclusion, let’s do it. Society would have to weigh the benefits against the costs. People always argue about the cost and that it will create more addicts, more crime, but it would certainly have a positive effect as all that violence would probably disappear. The corruption of public officials with drug money would go away. The government could tax the narcotics trade and make it a revenue baring activity for society,” Binder argues.</p>
<p>“We learned from Prohibition that the racket quickly ended when authorities legalized alcoholic beverages again. The bootlegging gangs tried to go legit, but found they were bad at it. When they’re forced to deal with a legal competitive environment they get their pants kicked off. When alcohol became legal they tried to hold on but it was very clear that they had become ancient history as far as the booze business was concerned.”</p>
<ul>
<li><em><strong><a href="http://amzn.to/2jljphE" target="_blank">Al Capone's Beer Wars</a> is available at <a href="http://amzn.to/2jljphE" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a> and bookstores near you.</strong></em></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>ABOUT THE AUTHOR:</strong></p>
<p>John J. Binder, Ph.D., is the author of two previous books on organized crime and has appeared in interviews on and served as an expert consultant for documentaries on the mob shown on the A & E and AMC cable networks and on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. He has also given numerous interviews on the subject for newspapers, magazines, and radio and television news programs. He lectures frequently on organized crime in Chicago. He is associate professor emeritus of finance in the College of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago.</p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-chicago-outfit-overview">Chicago Outfit section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Profile: Gambino crime family capo Bartolomeo Vernace
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-bartolomeo-vernace-found-guilty
2017-03-08T06:30:00.000Z
2017-03-08T06:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-bartolomeo-vernace-found-guilty"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012093,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012093?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>After more than thirty years, Gambino capo Bartolomeo “Pepe” Vernace finally had to face the music in 2013 when he was found guilty of a 1981 murder and various racketeering charges. His victim was an innocent bar owner who had nothing to do with the mob. Vernace on the other hand rose rapidly through the underworld while dodging murder charges for years.</p>
<p>It may sound corny, but it was just like a scene from the movie Goodfellas. Apparently Henry Hill and Martin Scorsese perfectly captured the mob ethos of that period. On the night of April 11, 1981, wannabe mobster Frank Riccardi was celebrating his 24th birthday at the Shamrock Bar on Jamaica Avenue. He was having a grand time, fooling around and getting drunk, until someone spilled a drink on a woman he was with and ruined her dress.</p>
<p>Be it alcohol, a short temper, or simple disrespect, Riccardi reacted with violence, starting a bar brawl with the other patron which ended when bar owners Richard Godkin and John D’Agnese broke it up and led Riccardi and an associate out the door and onto the street. As the owners went back inside, Riccardi decided he wasn’t done yet.</p>
<p>Within half an hour he was back at the Shamrock Bar with two friends by his side. One of them being Bartolomeo Vernace, who was an associate in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino Crime Family</a> at the time, the other was Ronald “Ronnie the Jew” Barlin, the man who stood by him during the bar brawl. The reason they were there was clear to all present. As they entered the bar with guns drawn, Riccardi shot D’Agnese in the face. Vernace was struggling with Godkin, a Vietnam vet, against an arcade machine. As Vernace got the upper hand, he shot him in the chest and left him to die.</p>
<p>Bartender Joseph Patrick Sullivan witnessed the whole scene. He later testified about what he saw, but he wouldn’t at that moment. Nor a decade later. He was too frightened. According to Sullivan, a few days after the violent murders, Gambino mobster Ronald “Ronnie One Arm” Trucchio summoned him to come see him at his social club. Trucchio was a close associate of Vernace. When Sullivan arrived, no one was there. Still, he got the message: Don’t talk to the cops.</p>
<p>Killing two innocent men over nothing isn’t the mob’s modus operandi. It attracts unwanted heat from police and alienates people in the neighborhood. The three men responsible were in big trouble with their higher ups. And they knew it. They decided to lay low while both police and the Gambinos investigated what exactly had happened.</p>
<p>The situation got complicated when it turned out that one of the victims, John D’Agnese, was the boyfriend of a girl named Linda Gotti, daughter of Peter Gotti and the niece of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti</a>. Two men who just a few years later would lead the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino Family</a>. Both father and uncle sat down with Linda and told her not to cooperate with the police. Omerta, the code of silence, was an important tradition within the Gotti-household and they made that clear to the young woman grieving over her dead boyfriend.</p>
<p>Despite having behaved like a loose cannon and angered the Gottis, Vernace still had enough backing within the Gambino family. According to rumors, Vernace’s uncle had a lot of pull and managed to get him a pass. The other men managed to make amends without getting whacked as well.</p>
<p>With the mafia off their backs, the three men still had to deal with the law. But thanks to their mob connections witnesses were so intimidated that prosecutors failed to make a fist: Charges were dropped against Barlin; Riccardi was acquitted in a state murder trial; and Vernace was acquitted in 1998 in a state trial.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012464,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012464,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012464?profile=original" width="300" /></a>The acquittal meant that Vernace was back on the streets for good. The Gambino Family took notice and a year later, in 1999, made him an official member of the crime family. After the senseless killing of <a href="http://youtu.be/7pQ6fd6iO_c" target="_blank">Billy Batts</a>, Joe Pesci’s character thinks he will become a “made guy” as well, only to find out the mafia has a long memory and decided to use the ceremony as a ruse to murder him. It would have been a fitting end for Vernace. Especially considering he was in on the killing of Linda Gotti’s boyfriend and the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-junior-gotti">Gotti clan</a> still ruled the Gambinos during the years he was made. But eighteen years later any beef that existed had long since been squashed. Besides, Vernace (photo right, Vernace left) was bringing in a lot of money.</p>
<p>Over the next two decades, his power within the mafia grew as he became actively involved in robbery, drug trafficking, loansharking, and gambling, while operating a large and profitable crew from a café on Cooper Avenue in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens. His rank rose as well, going from a soldier to a captain who served on a three-member ruling panel that led the Gambino Family.</p>
<p>His rise was halted on January 20, 2011, when he was arrested in a big <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/will-historic-mob-bust-really">nationwide mob bust</a> that saw over 120 members and associates of La Cosa Nostra in handcuffs, including leaders of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-colombo-crime-family">Colombo Family</a> in New York and the Patriarca Family in New England.</p>
<p>When Vernace heard the charges against him he must have had a moment of déjà vu. Prosecutors topped off Vernace’s indictment with the 1981 double homicide of Richard Godkin and John D’Agnese. And this time witnesses weren’t afraid to testify.</p>
<p>After a five week trial, the jury came back with its verdict. Guilty. As part of the racketeering conspiracy, the jury found that Vernace participated in all racketeering acts alleged in the indictment, including the murders of Richard Godkin and John D’Agnese, heroin trafficking, robbery, loansharking, and illegal gambling.</p>
<p>The 64-year-old mobster now faced life in prison because back in 1981 his friend came to him with the request to come and go out to kill two bar owners for doing their job. Meanwhile, the man who was the source of all this violence remains unknown. That evening over thirty years ago, he spilled a drink on a nice dress that was subsequently “ruined” and left a pretty lady pretty angry, causing her gangster boyfriend to get a buddy and some guns to set things straight and murder two men.</p>
<p>Three years after being found guilty, Vernace passed away behind bars at age 67.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012481,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012481?profile=original" width="520" /></a></p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Philadelphia mob family associate stabbed in chest
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/philadelphia-mob-family-associate-stabbed-in-chest
2017-03-03T04:30:00.000Z
2017-03-03T04:30:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/philadelphia-mob-family-associate-stabbed-in-chest" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237091270,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237091270?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>An associate of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bruno-crime-family" target="_blank">Philadelphia crime family</a> was stabbed in the chest on Wednesday, March 1, FOX26 Philadelphia crime reporter <a href="https://twitter.com/DSchratwieser" target="_blank">Dave Schratweiser posted on Twitter</a> yesterday. Sources told <a href="http://gangsterreport.com/philadelphia-mobster-bones-depena-survives-stabbing-stays-true-to-code-of-the-street/" target="_blank">Gangster Report</a>’s Scott Burnstein the victim is 48-year-old William “Billy Bones” DePena.</p>
<p>DePena was stabbed in the chest on Wednesday night on the intersection of 11th and Oregon in South Philadelphia. When police arrived on the scene, DePena refused to provide them with information regarding who had stabbed him. He was transported to the hospital and looks to recover from his wound.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interview-john-gotti-jr-sits-down-with-gangsters-inc" target="_blank">Ex-Mob boss John Gotti Jr. talks about getting stabbed</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Exactly why DePena was stabbed remains unclear. The knife is an unusual murder weapon for a modern-day Mafia hit, and the location itself seems to point toward an argument gone awry. If the motive behind this stabbing does become clear, we can trust on Dave Schratweiser to post about it on <a href="https://twitter.com/DSchratwieser" target="_blank">his Twitter account</a> so go and give him a follow.</p>
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Anthony Colombo, son of Mafia boss, dead at 71
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/anthony-colombo-son-of-mafia-boss-dead-at-71
2017-01-12T15:00:00.000Z
2017-01-12T15:00:00.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/anthony-colombo-son-of-mafia-boss-dead-at-71"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237080065,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237080065?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By Gangsters Inc. Editors</p>
<p>Retired mobster Anthony Colombo passed away last week, <a href="http://ganglandnews.com/" target="_blank">Gangland News</a> reports. He was 71. Anthony was the eldest son of Mafia boss Joseph Colombo, who founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League and was shot by an assassin at one of his civil rights rallies in 1971. He remained paralyzed and died almost seven years later.</p>
<p>Anthony followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming an official member – or made guy – and then a capo in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-colombo-crime-family">crime family</a> bearing his last name. His mob career earned <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Colombo">Colombo</a> time behind bars when he was busted by authorities leading a crew that ran illegal gambling operations in New York.</p>
<p>After retiring from “the life,” Colombo wrote a book about his father and family history titled <em><a href="http://amzn.to/2jArVEK" target="_blank">Colombo: The Unsolved Murder</a></em> with Don Capria. The book details his father’s rise in the Mafia and the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-colombo/did-the-fbi-kill-my-fathe_b_9190980.html" target="_blank">facts and theories</a> behind his death by the hands of a, supposed, lone assassin. </p>
<p>Colombo died of natural causes in his sleep.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237080865,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237080865?profile=original" width="500" /></a><em><strong>Joseph (left) and Anthony Colombo (right) on the Dick Cavett tv show</strong></em></p>
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Montreal mobster Raynald Desjardins gets 14 years for murder of ex-Bonanno boss Salvatore Montagna
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/montreal-mobster-raynald-desjardins-gets-14-years-for-murder-of-e
2016-12-20T14:35:10.000Z
2016-12-20T14:35:10.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mobster-raynald-desjardins-gets-14-years-for-murder-of-e"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237086086,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237086086?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Longtime Montreal Mafia member <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Desjardins">Raynald Desjardins</a> was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his role in the assassination of former <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family">Bonanno crime family</a> boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-salvatore">Salvatore Montagna</a> in 2011. Subtracting the time Desjardins has already served behind bars, he only has six and a half years left to serve.</p>
<p>The Canadian prison system will not be happy to see Desjardins back. He spent 15 years there after having been convicted of conspiring to smuggle 700 kilograms of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Cocaine">cocaine</a> in the early 1990s and made quite the impression journalist <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/raynald-desjardins-was-major-headache-for-correctional-service-canada-in-past" target="_blank">Paul Cherry</a> writes in the <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/raynald-desjardins-was-major-headache-for-correctional-service-canada-in-past" target="_blank">Montreal Gazette</a>.</p>
<p>“Parole board decisions from Desjardins’s first sentence describe how on the first day he arrived at Leclerc Institution, a former federal penitentiary in Laval, he shook hands with the warden and said, in front of several other inmates, that everything would be OK now that he was there,” <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/raynald-desjardins-was-major-headache-for-correctional-service-canada-in-past" target="_blank">Cherry writes</a>. “Other inmates referred to him as ‘the Millionaire’ and it soon appeared to guards at Leclerc that Desjardins was running the 4AB wing of the penitentiary. Within weeks, inmates who got along with Desjardins were refusing to be transferred out of the wing.”</p>
<p>Montagna’s murder was the result of a struggle for control over the family then led by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-boss-vito-rizzuto-1946-2013">boss Vito Rizzuto</a>, whose influence decreased after he was imprisoned in the United States. Several factions vied to become top dog, but Canadian-American Mafia boss Montagna lacked the strong connections to make it work and perished as a result. <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/six-plead-guilty-in-murder-of-ex-bonanno-family-mob-boss">Six others pleaded guilty</a> to their involvement in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bonanno-boss-murdered-near-montreal">Montagna’s murder</a> in March.</p>
<p>Having gotten rich from illicit drug deals and subsequent investments into legitimate properties, Desjardins is well equipped to spend some years in the can. It will be just like in the old days when he ruled the yard. Of course, this time his notoriety places him and his warden and guards under much more scrutiny, making his stay a lot less pleasurable.</p>
<p>Not to mention the fact that he has made a lot of enemies both in and outside of prison. Last year, former <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/bikers-amp-outlaw-motorcycle">Hells Angels</a> boss Maurice “Mom” Boucher was charged with plotting Desjardins murder. Without his <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-boss-vito-rizzuto-1946-2013">“Godfather” Vito Rizzuto</a> protecting him, Desjardins is slowly finding out that in absence of a strong king there is only chaos and death.</p>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/organized-crime-in-canada-from-the-mafia-to-outlaw-bikers-and-dru">Organized Crime in Canada section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Russian mob crew in Brighton Beach busted by DEA, IRS
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-crew-in-brighton-beach-busted-by-dea-irs
2016-11-10T06:42:09.000Z
2016-11-10T06:42:09.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-crew-in-brighton-beach-busted-by-dea-irs"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237073652,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237073652?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso – posted Nov. 9 / updated Nov 10</p>
<p>Nine alleged members of a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview">Russian Mafia</a> crew were charged with racketeering, extortion, loansharking, drug trafficking and illegal gambling. Eight were arrested late last night and early this morning by agents of the DEA, IRS, and NYPD. One defendant remains at large.</p>
<p>The Mafia crew operated extensively in the Brighton Beach and Coney Island neighborhoods of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Brooklyn">Brooklyn</a> as well as overseas, with mobsters in Brooklyn reporting directly to members of organized crime — known as “thieves in law,” “Thieves” or “<a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Vor">Vory</a>”— based in various former states of the Soviet Union. The Vory would, in turn, help the defendants extort money from individuals living abroad and authorize the use of physical force by the defendants in the United States. </p>
<p>Since as early as March 2016, the group collected outstanding debts, worth in the aggregate millions of dollars, and regularly used threats of violence. The syndicate’s reach was international and included extorting payments in the United States and threatening victims and their family members living abroad. </p>
<p>For example, wiretap recordings reveal that the defendants tracked down the father of an extortion victim in Russia in order to determine where his son was living. After locating the victim — whom defendants claimed owed syndicate members nearly $200,000 — defendant Leoind Gershman said, the “Thieves have found him . . . in Israel,” and “they were at [his] place today.” </p>
<p>Another extortion victim who struggled to repay his debt was ominously reminded that, “the person who is going to work with you [to repay the debt] … is a boxer with cauliflower ears.” The interest rate being charged this particular victim was 100% per year.</p>
<p>The government’s investigation revealed that the gang ran high-stakes illegal poker games in various locations in Brooklyn, where a single game could involve wagers totaling as much as $150,000.</p>
<p>Never easy to satisfy, the gangsters also pushed drugs, the indictment alleges they trafficked over 100 kilos of marijuana.</p>
<p>During the course of the investigation, the mobsters were thoroughly observed by agents, who used court authorized wiretaps, undercover drug buys, confidential sources, and surveillance. While doing so, investigators found that though many of the suspects do not have legitimate employment, thousands of dollars were flowing into their bank accounts as they were driving around New York in high-end luxury automobiles.</p>
<p>The Eastern European mob crew mainly operated in Brighton Beach and Coney Island. Located in Brooklyn, New York, Brighton Beach has been a notorious center of Russian Mafia activity since the 1970s. The area spawned infamous Russian crime bosses such as <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-evsei-agron">Evsei Agron</a>, Vyacheslav Ivankov, and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-charged-with-extortion-scheme">Boris Nayfeld</a>.</p>
<p>The indictment names the following defendants:</p>
<ul>
<li>33-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gershman">Leoind Gershman</a>, also known as “Lenny,” “Lenny G.,” “Lyonchik” and “Lyonya”</li>
<li>38-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Tsvetkov">Aleksey Tsvetkov</a>, also known as “Pelmin,” “Lesha” and “Lyosha”</li>
<li>38-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Yusufov">Renat Yusufov</a>, also known as “Ronnie” and “Ronik”</li>
<li>37-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Krugly">Igor Krugly</a></li>
<li>32-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Malkeyev">Vyacheslav Malkeyev</a>, also known as “Steve Bart”</li>
<li>32-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Aronov">Isok Aronov</a></li>
<li>52-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Pardilov">Yusif Pardilov</a>, also known as “Yosik”</li>
<li>36-year-old <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Rivera">Librado Rivera</a>, also known as “Macho” and “Max”</li>
</ul>
<p>If convicted of all counts, defendants Leonid Gershman, Vyacheslav Malkeyev, and Librado Rivera face mandatory minimum sentences of five years and maximum sentences of 40 years, while defendants Aleksey Tsvetkov, Renat Yusufov, Igor Krugly, and Isok Aronov face maximum sentences of 20 years.</p>
<ul>
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World Series 2016 winners Chicago Cubs, meet your most notorious fan: Mafia boss Alphonse Capone
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/world-series-2016-winners-chicago-cubs-meet-your-most-notorious-f
2016-11-03T10:13:02.000Z
2016-11-03T10:13:02.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GangstersInc
<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/9875466085?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The Chicago Cubs did it! They’ve become World Series champions again after a 108-year drought – the longest in baseball - defeating the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 in Cleveland. One notorious fan would’ve been extremely happy with the win, if he had been alive today that is. Who? Alphonse “Scarface” Capone.</p>
<p>Major League Baseball is a huge sport, attracting millions of television viewers and packing stadiums full with fans. The Chicago Cubs are no different. Despite not having won a World Series since 1908, its loyal supporters still showed up every season.</p>
<p>Even on September 9th 1931, at Comiskey park, when the Cubs played its city rivals, the Chicago White Sox. At that point, the team had been without a World Series win for 23 years. A pretty long time. Still, fans came to see their favorite athletes.</p>
<p>The most infamous figure sitting front row that day, was none other than <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-chicago-outfit-overview">Chicago</a> crime boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Capone">Al Capone</a>. (<strong>See photo above.</strong>) According to the <a href="http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id134.htm" target="_blank">Al Capone Museum</a> website, “It was a game to raise funds for charity. The Cubs won 3-0.”</p>
<p>On the photo, you can see Al Capone with his son Albert Francis Capone getting an autograph from Cubs player Charles Leo “Gabby” Hartnett. This photo caused him quite some trouble after it was published in newspapers throughout the country. Higher-ups instructed him not to have his picture taken with Capone ever again. “Gabby” wasn’t impressed and replied, via telegram, writing: “OK, but if you don't want me to have my picture taken with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Capone">Al Capone</a>, you tell him.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9875475060,RESIZE_400x{{/staticFileLink}}" width="375" alt="9875475060?profile=RESIZE_400x" /></a>Above Capone and son on the right side, you can see his bodyguard Fred Pacelli also known as Frank “Cowboy” Di Giovanni. Another bodyguard-hitman also seated just outside this photo, sitting on the right of Pacelli, was Vincent Gibaldi better known as “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn. Next to Capone’s son is Illinois legislator Roland V. Libonati, a World War I veteran and good friend of Capone.</p>
<p>It’s a photo filled with historic stories about a long-gone gangland era.</p>
<p>After their first win in 108 years, current Chicago Cubs team president Theo Epstein brought up the club’s history, paying respect to everyone involved with the team. “Our fans just deserve it so much, and all the former Cubs, everyone, this is for so many people -- (the late) Ernie Banks, (the late) Ron Santo, Billy Williams. ... We're bringing the trophy home to you guys. It's been a century in the making.”</p>
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Montreal Mafia war claims life of yet another mob boss
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-war-claims-life-of-yet-another-mob-boss
2016-05-27T18:48:14.000Z
2016-05-27T18:48:14.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-war-claims-life-of-yet-another-mob-boss"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237073496,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237073496?profile=original" width="508" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Rocco Sollecito, a reputed leader in the Montreal Mafia, was shot to death in broad daylight as he sat in his white BMW SUV just a few hundred meters away from police headquarters in Laval, a city north of Montreal.</p>
<p>His brazen murder is the latest in a string of underworld killings in and around Montreal. Three months ago, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/another-mob-boss-whacked-in-montreal-mafia-gangland-hit">Lorenzo Giordano</a>, another high-ranking Rizzuto family mobster, was shot to death in a parking lot in Laval. Both Giordano and Sollecito had been released from prison just months before being assassinated.</p>
<p>The deadly violence comes as the local mob tries to recover after losing its <em>boss of bosses</em> <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-boss-vito-rizzuto-1946-2013">Vito Rizzuto</a>, who, unlike many of his colleagues, died of natural causes in 2013. His father Nick, however, was murdered by a sniper as he sat at the kitchen table at his home, another victim in the Montreal Mafia war. </p>
<p>Sollecito was an old friend of Nick Rizzuto, sharing the same birthplace of Cattolica Eraclea in Sicily, and remained a loyal Rizzuto clan member throughout a tumultuous time as was evidenced by police surveillance photos in which he was frequently featured by Vito Rizzuto’s side.</p>
<p>According to authors André Cédilot and André Noël, 67-year-old Sollecito was “often involved in settling disputes with the up-and-coming generation of Mafiosi.” And that, “In the mid-1980s, he had spent a few years in prison for an affair involving illegal immigration.” In 2006, Sollecito was arrested alongside other members of the Rizzuto clan in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-bust-project">Operation Colisée</a> and charged with a variety of crimes.</p>
<p>Sollecito’s son Stefano has followed in his father’s footsteps and is alleged by authorities to be part of a committee in charge of the Rizzuto family. Stefano was <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/leaders-of-montreal-mafia-and-hells-angels-busted-in-raids">arrested</a> himself last year along with <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-boss-vito-rizzuto-1946-2013">Vito Rizzuto</a>’s son Leonardo, who also followed the path of his mob father. Both men were charged with their role in a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/leaders-of-montreal-mafia-and-hells-angels-busted-in-raids">largescale drug trafficking ring</a> involving outlaw bikers and the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mafia-of-montreal-a-short">Mafia</a>.</p>
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A New Dawn For the Russian Mafia
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/a-new-dawn-for-the-russian-mafia
2015-06-29T06:56:29.000Z
2015-06-29T06:56:29.000Z
Gary K. Busch
https://gangstersinc.org/members/GaryKBusch
<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-new-dawn-for-the-russian-mafia"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237031276,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237031276?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By Dr. Gary K. Busch</p>
<p>One of the most interesting aspects of the current Russian problem with sanctions imposed by the West is the rejuvenation of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview">Russian Mafia</a> and its role in Russian commerce. Just as the rise of the post-Yeltsin Chekists into positions of great power in Russian industry, administration, finance and banking as ‘siloviki’ the gradual re-Sovietisation of the Russian economy has led to a marked recrudescence of the Mafia as a concomitant source of economic power.</p>
<p>When Putin has acted to put ever greater portions of the Russian economy, especially the oil, gas, energy, armaments and metals, back into majority state control under the care of his siloviki friends and colleagues he has recreated the worst elements of the status quo ante; that which prevailed before the great wash of privatization which swept into Russia under Yeltsin and his Western reformer consultants. The rearrangement of the power structure has also recreated the need for the Mafia.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237031859,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237031859?profile=original" width="220" /></a>When Putin complains that the end of the Soviet Union was a disaster for Russia there is a great deal of truth in his statement. The dismemberment of the former USSR into its several constituent parts left the warm-water ports of the Baltic largely in the hands of the newly independent states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The warm-water Black Sea ports were largely incorporated into the new Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The capacity of the remaining Russian ports after the breakup of the Soviet Union was about 187 million tons per year or a reduction of about 58% of the USSR's former capacity. This reduction in its port facilities meant that, even at then current volumes of trade, Russian ports could handle only 54% of this trade. The balance of Russian trade (46%) had to travel to and through other countries. These shipments via foreign ports cost Russia dearly as this trade took place in hard currency; at 1992 rates these transfer payments amounted to about $2.3 billion per year and, in terms of a rapidly declining rouble, made up a geometrically-escalating cost for Russian commerce.</p>
<p>The loss of access to Russia of its former ports was qualitative as well as quantitative. The loss of the Baltic ports meant that Russia lost modern transshipment complexes it had built for potassium salt (8.8 million tons per year); petroleum products (39 million tons per year); chemical wet cargoes and compressed gas (1.3 million tons per year); grains and pulses (5 million tons per year); perishable goods (0.5 million tons per year); as well as a key train ferry reloading facility for Germany (5.3 million tons per year). The main grain port and grain silo area in Novo Tallinn, only operational in 1986, with over 370,000 ton grain storage space was lost. The major Soviet oil export terminal at Ventspils was lost as was the modern container port at Riga. In the south, Russia lost port facilities for handling black oil and light petroleum products (1.7 million tons per year); chemical wet cargoes and condensed gas (3.6 million tons per year); urea (1.5 million tons per year; grains (9 million tons per year) as well as six major grain elevators in the port, especially at Odessa, the major grain port. Special port handling complexes for ore and coal reloading were lost (10 million tons per year) and a train ferry for handling cargo to Bulgaria (4.8 million tons per year). The last loss was compounded by the fact that its loss denied Russia direct access to the newly-opened international trade channel of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal.</p>
<p>Western Russia has only shallow depth, highly congested ports with little capital infrastructure to handle the bulk of its trade. With the end of the Soviet Union Russia had only one port grain elevator and one import complex for raw sugar; at Novorossisk. The sugar facility had a capacity of 0.8 million tons a year although Russia urgently required an import of sugar of about 4 million tons a year at current levels of consumption. On the Azov Sea there was only the shallow water port of Taganrog; and on the Caspian Sea only Makhachkala with a maximum of 7.0 million tons per year capacity. Over 60% of Russian ports were shallow depth ports incapable of handling modern vessels. Northern ports are frozen for large periods of the year and are kept open only by expensive nuclear-powered ice-breakers. Western insurance companies couldn’t agree to approve regular trade to these ports like Archangelsk or Murmansk. Also, in many ports like Makhachkala, Poti, Baku and others, there were civil wars and ethnic strife where rail lines had to pass through such troublesome areas as Chechnya, 'Free Georgia', etc. where the security of goods in transit could not be guaranteed.</p>
<p>The Soviet system was faced with the climatic challenges of Siberia as well. One of the most difficult aspects of developing the Siberian region was the skewed pattern of distribution developed over the last seventy years of Moscow rule. The Soviet system was one in which planning played a very important part. This had both positive as well as negative effects. On the positive side, the Soviet system sourced and delivered regular supplies of food, clothing, fuel, hot water and heat to remote areas of the nation. The ability of the Soviet system to keep up the supply of food stuffs, hot water and fuel to even its most remote areas was a remarkable achievement. This achievement enabled factories to continue producing goods for the larger Soviet market and delivered raw materials for this productive base from incredible distances.</p>
<p>This was coupled with a policy of deterring internal mobility through the use of internal passports and closing off whole regions and cities to even internal immigration. The vast military-industrial complex of Russia was largely buried in the center of Siberia; from Tomsk to Khabarovosk and concentrated in major industrial towns like Krasnoyarsk, Bratsk, Novosibirsk, Bernaul and Omsk.</p>
<p>Another aspect of this distribution system was the use of massive state trading companies to make the purchase and sale of goods to and from Russia. A giant trading company like Razno (Raznoimport and Raznoexport) handled the purchase of the total requirements of whole industries; e.g. the aluminum industry and the sale of the products produced by this industry. So, Razno would arrange the import of bauxite from Africa, petroleum coke and other carbon products from Europe; soda ash from the Middle East, etc. and would arrange the sale of the finished aluminum to internal Russian customers as well as overseas. This type of mass buying and selling by giant state enterprises was the rule throughout the whole of the Soviet economy. This was facilitated by the use of a central bank clearance system in which internal accounts were calculated in rouble credit and debits across an industry, a ministry, or a state trading organization. The accounts were all paid into and out of the "center". There they were allocated by the “Gosplan” planning committees as part of a "plan" for the needs of the industries and matched by establishing quotas for production. External payments in hard currencies and hard currency sales were conducted by the central banking system without regard or reward to the importer, exporter or producer. As long as the "center" existed and functioned this planning model creaked on.</p>
<p>The system stressed mutual dependency as much as it stressed efficiency. This system broke down in an effort to establish "perestroika". The first people to lose their jobs were the planners at “Gosplan”. The Yeltsin victory and the introduction of Gaidar's and later Chernomyrdin's reforms sought to decentralize the control of the CIS and later the Russian economy. This was a positive step towards establishing a market economy but a dreadful wrench for the existing manufacturing sector. Because all purchases and sales were made through the "center" there was no aggregation of capital which belonged to any factory or ministry or trading company. There had been no "profits" so there were no accrued earnings. Productive enterprises owed goods to the system and requisitioned materials from the system. There were no real cash transactions among the enterprises nor was there an accounting system which measured who owed whom, for how long or why it owed it. The introduction of reforms made life terribly difficult for state enterprises and trading companies. In Soviet industry there were high levels of production reported but these were a facade (the Russians use the term ‘pokazuka’ for this type of charade).</p>
<p>The introduction of the “shares for cash” privatization provided for the introduction of young men, groomed for their tasks by the KGB and political leaders like Silayev, Kabulatov and Soskavets, to take over many corporations and set themselves up as ‘oligarchs’. These new oligarchs had limited political power and, when <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-dark-knight-of-mother">Putin</a> took office, he instantly moved to control the political powers of the oligarchs by appointing Chekists to their boards and began a program of increasing state ownership of these companies. The oligarchs soon learned that they could keep their money but should not dabble in politics. Most agreed.</p>
<p>During this same period another group of ‘biznizmen’ were forming international ties. In the early years of the Yeltsin government organized crime began to establish itself as an important economic player in Russian business. There is a great deal of misunderstanding in the analyses of the development of organized crime in Russia because the analysts do not differentiate between ordinary crime and international financial manipulation. Every country in the world has organized criminals and has done since time immemorial. The traditional businesses of these criminals are the protection rackets, gambling, labor racketeering, prostitution, stealing, money lending and drugs. These are non-intellectual businesses and require more brawn than brains. The criminals may take over some businesses or control them, but their aim is shaking-down money not achieving the possibilities inherent in the company’s business plan.</p>
<p>These criminals are very rarely political people or political actors. To a large extent they are anti-communist because communist states have generally frowned on criminal activity conducted by non-communists. This is why it was so useful to the Allies to use the deported anti-communist mafia leadership in Italy, Vito Genovese and Charlie Lucky Luciano, to prepare for the Allied invasion of Italy in the Second World War. Mussolini had declared war on the Mafia so the Mafia declared war back by joining the Allies. Organized criminal gangs played an important role in the Cold War as well. The Allies used anti-communist gangsters from the Union Corse (Pierre Ferri-Pisani in particular) and some of the French mafia to attack the communist unions who sought to stop the entrance of Marshall Plan aid to Europe. These same Union Corse leaders were later used against the Viet Cong in Indochina, a process which helped create the initial drug routes from the Shan states in addition to fighting communism.</p>
<p>While most governments are capable of generating and pursuing their own corruption without the necessity of partnering with organized crime, sometimes the governments act in such a way as to foster an immense amount of activity in the criminal world. This was true in both the US and Russia when the state introduced Prohibition. In the US the prohibition of the legal sale of alcohol created a giant smuggling and bootlegging industry that put millions into the coffers of organized crime. In Russia, Gorbachev launched the anti-alcohol campaign in 1985 by closing down most liquor stores and limiting per person vodka consumption to two bottles a month. As in the US the campaign turned out to be a failure, creating huge bootleg liquor industry and pouring money into the “obshak” (mob treasury) of the various criminal organizations.</p>
<p>The financial rewards from the responses to prohibition had a more far-reaching consequence. In both cases organized crime was faced with having to deal with cash mountains from the illegal sale of alcohol. In Russia it was worse. The banning of alcohol took place at the same time as quantities of opium and heroin were arriving in Russia from the failing Afghan War. The Russian organized criminal fraternity had the revenues from bootleg alcohol as well as its substitute, heroin. They were unprepared to deal with such a large cash flow.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s the Russian state collapsed. Many of the former vory had maintained their organizations intact and were doing their usual crimes across Russia. But this sudden opportunity of prohibition and heroin attracted a new group of younger, less traditional criminals into ‘the life’. They were aided by the fact that the traditional vory concerned themselves primarily with crime and didn’t see the opportunity of turning their newly acquired cash into political power. Perhaps the best example of this rise to power was <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-sergei-mikhailov">Sergei Anatoliavic Mikhailov</a> (‘Mihas’). In 1984 Mihas was sent to the Gulag for a short spell. He learned many skills there and made useful contacts. On his return to Moscow he, and some colleagues, set up their own criminal family. He named it after the zone in which he operated and the gang became known as the Solsnetskaya Organization. In the beginning Mihas concentrated on the normal criminal activities: extortion, counterfeiting, drug trafficking and blackmail. The existing criminal organizations fought the Soslsnetsvo gang for turf, but Mihas’ people won and their gang expanded. He could now expand into more lucrative businesses like arms dealing, money laundering and drugs. He walked free from an arrest in 1989 when the witness disappeared. In Russia, as in parts of Latin America, the verb “to disappear” is a transitive verb; it is grammatical to say “I’ll disappear you”.</p>
<p>With the collapse of the Soviet system and the rise of Yeltsin new horizons beckoned for the new group of criminals like Mihas. Crises are opportunities to the criminal fraternities. These young criminal groups took advantage of the confusion and moved to join up allies in the political establishment left without a power base. Using these political connections they soon owned banks, casinos, car dealerships, hotels, restaurants and real estate. Mihas even acquired control of Vnukovo Airport.</p>
<p>Mihas was not alone in setting up a powerful ‘krysha’ which blended criminal activity with political power. Another successful leader was the late Anton “Antoha” Malevsky who was the head of the Izmailovo group until his unfortunate parachute dive in which his chute didn’t open). The most successful entrepreneur was Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich, the Russian equivalent of Meyer Lansky. While vory like Antoha and Mihas headed their own gangs Mogilevich turned his skills to the financial opportunities which were opening. In 1994 he took control of Inkombank; one of Russia’s biggest new banks. He used cash of his own and cash of others to invest in a wide range of legal businesses (especially in the gas industry) and the worldwide spread of criminal enterprises. He was the banker for the Russian mobs. Grigory Luchansky was the Bugsy Siegel of Russia, using his company, Nordex, to open up new frontiers across the globe for Russian criminal activity. The Chekists in the government joined up with the criminal fraternity to smuggle goods, money and financial instruments into the world market, avoiding state activity.</p>
<p>With the beginnings of privatization the increased levels of regional autonomy grew. The governors had their own budgets which were gleaned by imposing local taxes and duties, instituting a wide range of taxes and fees for government services which they often made up on the spot. The police and criminals established a good symbiotic working relationship in which the protection racket thrived and the cash sales of vodka and cigarettes saw a piece of each transaction find its way into the regional and municipal coffers. The government agencies sold licenses and permits and the criminals shook everyone down and sold everything na leva (outside the normal channels). Moscow had no money to pay the regions nor harbored any great intention to do so. Traditionally, Moscow took; it didn’t pay.</p>
<p>The most obvious aspect of the monetarization of blat was the concomitant development of “kryshas” (‘roofs’) which served to provide a parallel economic and legal structure to the post-Soviet system which had suffered a stunted growth. For Russian businessmen there was no security that contracts could be enforced; no way in which supplies or materials could be guaranteed; no security measure that would allow finished goods to reach the customer. There was no guarantee that the cash reserves which were building in the banks could be secured. The police and security services were unreliable and expensive.</p>
<p>One characteristic of the development of kryshas in Russia was the simultaneous development of “Red” kryshas. These Red kryshas were policemen, spetznaz soldiers, and other uniformed guardians of the public peace who the state organizations rented out to businessmen to act as their ‘protectors’. This was a lucrative business but not too remunerative to the people with ’boots on the floor’. The big money for the Red kryshas most often went to their officers and the politicians. Sometimes one Red krysha ended up fighting with another Red krysha. It was not a well-run endeavor. There were several more successful ’security firms’ set up by the Red kryshas. Many were tied in directly with the governor’s or mayor’s office (for example in Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok).</p>
<p>As a result of the privatizations the new Russian companies suddenly found that they had plants and offices across the wide expanse of Russia. While the leadership was primarily Muscovites the facilities were spread all over the country. The new Russian capitalists suddenly had to deal with internal Russian industrial problems. As these budding oligarchs took over factories, refineries and smelters across the ten time zones of Russia they soon realized that they had very little management control of their scattered operations. Taking over the shares and ownership of a company, especially one which was moving from a state-owned structure to a private structure left, at best, a management vacuum at the factory, refinery or smelter. The ownership of these new assets required installing an effective management structure among them to make them work and which could establish a working relationship with the regional and municipal authorities. This would be a management structure that would have to deal with resource allocations, finances, transport and ‘human relations’. None of these new enterprises were ready or staffed for this.</p>
<p>In many areas there was an immediate conflict with the former managers of the plants. Local mayors resisted change; governors fought against the changes in traditional practices; and the labor force was unprepared to face a distant management in Moscow or St. Petersburg whom they didn’t know or trust.</p>
<p>However, there were local organizations who were organized, in place, and who would be of immediate use to these new oligarchs. These were the groups of organized criminals who controlled the on-the-scene structures and who had worked out a symbiotic pact with the local politicians. These smaller gangs, after a flurry of violence and conflict, were quickly incorporated into national criminal enterprises and an initial dividing of the turf took place in key sectors. The Solnestvo Gang led by ‘Mihas’ moved quickly to take over the oil and gas industries. The Ismailovo, under Malefsky, took over the aluminum industry. The Uralmash fought its rivals in a bloody battle for the Urals copper industry. This was mirrored in every region, factory, port and rail center across Russia. There was no way for these oligarchs to manage the vast and uncoordinated sprawl of Russian industry on their own and the Russian government was of no use at all. Despite the active investigations by the Prosecutor’s office and an extensive monitoring plan run through Interpol, the criminal authorities were unable to have much of an effect on policing this.</p>
<p>The takeover of Yukos by Khordokovsky was initially of particular interest to the security agencies. Just as the gas industry was linked to Itera and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-semion-mogilevich">Semyon Mogilevich</a>, Yukos was believed to be closely linked to the Solnestvo Gang. The Prosecutor’s office investigated several ‘leaks’ from their ‘stukachi’ that there was a “special relationship” between Khodorkovsky, his Yukos Oil concern and the Solnestvo Organization of Moscow. One of the attractions was that these new private enterprises provided a giant international money laundry for the criminals. They had reported that <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-boss-sergei-mikhailov">Sergei Mikhailov</a> (‘Mihas’) had invested large sums of his money into Yukos Oil projects. One such project was identified by the source as Mikhailov and the Solnestvo Organization’s financing of the adaptation by Yukos Oil of new drilling technology from Canada. This activity began in early 2000. One of the individuals who was reportedly involved in this activity was Aleksandr Sedov, a.k.a. “Moskovsky,” a central Moscow “brigade leader” of the Solntsevskaya Organization. It was thoroughly in Mikhailov’s interest to be a “partner” in the development of foreign technology such as the Canadian drilling equipment. By investing his and his criminal organization’s funds in the Yukos Oil project, Mikhailov, in effect, “laundered” vast sums of money into the legitimate operations of a major Russian petroleum company. The coordinator of this relationship was said to be Arnold Arnoldovich Tamm.</p>
<p>Equally as important the internal oil refining structure was structured to allow participation by local kryshas. Yukos Oil did not have distributors or “intermediaries.” Instead, it had its own personnel serving as the company’s representatives in marketing its products. Yukos Oil had a rather large structure consisting of between twenty and fifty refineries located throughout the Russian Federation. Petroleum was pumped into each of these refineries or processing facilities, or “MPZs,” and at these refineries the material was turned into residual oil, gasoline and diesel fuel.</p>
<p>In Yukos, as in other big petroleum companies in Russia, each MPZ facility was controlled by a particular criminal group. According to the investigators, the control exercised at the MPZ by the various criminal groups provided discipline out of chaos. The communities surrounding each MPZ saw the facility as a source of money in a country where such resources were otherwise scarce. The criminal organization, therefore, was able to impose a sense of order by prioritizing who could get access to this large source of funding and its products. The controlling criminal group got exclusivity to provide services to each MPZ, including such areas as distribution of products and protection from extortionate demands. In return, the major oil companies, such as Yukos, got “control” over the anarchy, particularly in the more remote areas of the Russian Federation.</p>
<p>At that time, the three largest Yukos MPZ facilities in Russia and their controlling organizations were Kemerovo, Omsk and Uha. Kemerovo and Omsk were controlled by the Kemerovo, a Russian criminal organization, which was headed by an individual identified as “Kostya Schram” (a.k.a “Kostya the Scarface”). “Kostya Schram” was further described as a close associate of Solntsevskaya Organization leader Sergei Anatolyevich Mikhailov. A different branch of the Solntsevskaya group controlled Uha, in Bashkortistan. As part of Yukos’ and other companies’ arrangements with the criminal structure at each MPZ, the organized crime leaders controlling the facility had the option and the right to set up “independent deals” for large-scale clients. The expansion of organized crime into the oil, gas and metals industries was an important element of their stability and the culmination of several years of attempts at symbiotic relationships.</p>
<p>As the years have passed this role of organized criminal enterprises as the middle management providers has been institutionalized across Russia. These criminal enterprises do not interfere with the macro-economic decision making of the company. They maintain order and discipline. They have been institutionalized.</p>
<p>Now, with the imposition of sanctions by the West the criminal enterprises are coming into their own. Just as it used to be the job of the “tolkach” (the company representative who negotiated ‘deals’ for the company) the criminal enterprises are busy arranging for supplies of materials to the plants and their transport to the market. They are managing scarcity. There is nothing in the sanctions which impeded them and their international contacts are growing ever more important in arranging the supply of needed goods to the factories. This has reached its high point in the dealings with the Ukraine. The smuggling of goods and weapons into the Ukraine has been facilitated by the Russian Mafia and their counterparts in the Ukraine. There is a lot of money to be made in scarcity and the Russian government has found the Mafia a valuable partner in its relations with “Novorossiya”.</p>
<p>Indeed this is a new dawn for the Russian and Ukrainian Mafias. It’s just like deja vu all over again.</p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Note</span>: For a more detailed analysis of the development of post-Soviet Russia see “<span style="text-decoration:underline;">Free For All: The Post-Soviet Transition of Russia</span>”. Gary K. Busch, Virtualbookworm Publishing (May 31, 2010)</strong></p>
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Profile: Gambino crime family boss Carlo Gambino
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-carlo-gambino
2015-03-25T07:36:51.000Z
2015-03-25T07:36:51.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2002<br /><br /> Carlo Gambino was born on August 24, 1902 in Palermo, Sicily. He arrived in the US in 1921 and settled in Brooklyn with help of relatives and friends who had already made it their home. He would later help his two brothers when they arrived in the US. In the United States Gambino got involved in crime and in 1930 he was arrested for larcency in the operation of the "handkerchief pill game". By the 1930s he was heavily involved in bootlegging. From the money he made through bootlegging he bought restaurants and other legit fronts. After prohibition in 1939 Carlo Gambino continued the bootlegging and in May 23, 1939 received a 22 month sentence and a $2.500 dollar fine for conspiracy to defraud the United States of liquor taxes. Eight months later the conviction was thrown out and Gambino was a free man again. During the second World War Gambino made millions from ration stamps. The stamps came out of the OPA's offices. First Carlo's boys would steal them. Then, when the government started hiding them in banks, Carlo made contact and the OPA men sold him the stamps. All in all by the wars end Gambino had made millions through the stamps and the bootlegging.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989884,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Gambino also got involved in the narcotics trade. Gambino traveled to Palermo several times to set up the routes and make the deals. Using Sicilian men Gambino imported the narcotics into the United States. By 1957 Carlo Gambino had moved up in the Mangano Crime Family, he had become Underboss of Albert Anastasia. He also had a loving wife Catherine and three children (two sons and a daughter). 1957 was a great year for Gambino, on October 24, 1957 his boss Anastasia got whacked while he was getting a shave in the barber shop of the Park Sheraton Hotel. With Anastasia gone Gambino assumed leadership of the Mangano Family, exactly his plan since it was Gambino who was behind the Anastasia hit. Listed as a labor consultant to the outside world Gambino was leading his Crime Family into better times.<br /> <br /> Gambino was making loads of money by now. In addition to the illegal income Gambino also made loads with his legal businesses. Gambino owned meat markets, bakeries, restaurants, nightclubs, linen supply companies and on and on. Life was great for Gambino. His health wasn't good but with both his blood and crime family doing well and money pooring in he didn't mind. RICO hadn't made it's grand appearance yet and turncoats weren't as common as they would be during the 1990s. The government knew who Gambino was and what he did for a living but to get to him was impossible. Gambino who entered the United States as an illegal alien still hadn't become an American yet and so that's where the government tried to take Gambino down. They tried to get him deported, but failed time after time. In 1971 Gambino's wife Catharine died. His health was detoriating fast after that. His heart problems kept playing up and by 1975 Gambino felt it was time to choose his successor.<br /> <br /> And there he made the only mistake during his reign as boss of the Mangano/Gambino Family. He chose Paul Castellano over his Underboss Neil Dellacroce. This decision cut the Gambino Family in two factions and would create a power struggle a decade later. But in the end Carlo Gambino is considered one of the great bosses of La Cosa Nostra. He died on October 15, 1976 of natural causes in his Massapequa, Long Island home.</p>
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Mobster shot to death at restaurant in Montreal
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/mobster-shot-to-death-at-restaurant-in-montreal
2014-12-02T19:45:19.000Z
2014-12-02T19:45:19.000Z
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<p>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Mobster Tonino Callocchia was shot to death yesterday as he dined at a restaurant in Riviere-des-Prairies, Montreal. He was 53. His murder is the latest to rock the Canadian city as two mafia factions are fighting a vicious war for control of the rackets.</p>
<p>The longtime mobster was enjoying a meal at Bistro XO+ (photo above) around 1:30 p.m. on Monday when, according to police, “one or several suspects went inside and fired shots at the victim inside the bistro. The victim was pronounced dead on the scene by the doctor.”</p>
<p>The assassins, or assassin, wore ski masks to hide their faces, and hit Callocchia while surrounded by patrons and employees. After they shot their target down they fled the restaurant. Another job done, another name scratched off the list.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237012054,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237012054?profile=original" /></a>Callocchia had been the target of an assassination before. On February 1, 2013, he was hit in the torso by several bullets. He survived to live a bit longer, until yesterday to be precise. He’d had a long career in organized crime.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/man-wounded-in-r-d-p-shooting" target="_blank">Montreal Gazette</a>, “His known ties to the Mafia date to the 1980s. In 1994, he was charged, and later convicted, in a money laundering case that linked him to Vincenzo “Jimmy” Di Maulo, the brother of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mobster-di-maulo-14th-victim-of-montreal-mafia-war">Joseph Di Maulo</a>, an influential Mafia boss who was <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mobster-di-maulo-14th-victim-of-montreal-mafia-war">killed</a>, at age 70, in front of his home in Blainville on Nov. 4, 2012. That was a slaying police sources have theorized was a response to the many attacks on the Rizzuto organization in the years preceding it.”</p>
<p>Money and power. That is what it all comes down to. Vito Rizzuto had it. When his crew seemed weak, others tried to take it from him. Di Maulo was one of the men rumored to have taken on “King” Rizzuto’s crew. And for a while the attack on the Rizzutos seemed successful. Patriarch Nick Rizzuto was murdered. Vito’s son was killed as well. The rival faction was on a roll.</p>
<p>Until the King came back home.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237027071,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237027071?profile=original" /></a>After serving a prison sentence for his role in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/aftermath-of-a-hit-the-murder">murder</a> of three Bonanno crime family capos, Rizzuto (right) was back in Montreal. He’d had a lot of time to think while behind bars and when he got out he went straight to work.</p>
<p>One by one his enemies started falling. They were no match for the charismatic boss with connections around the globe and billions in the bank. As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5yOSD0mE8M" target="_blank">Omar said in The Wire</a>, “You come at the King, you best not miss.” The men who had taken on the Rizzutos were beginning to learn that lesson the hard way.</p>
<p>For those that thought the killing would end with the death - by natural causes - of Montreal mob boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/montreal-mafia-boss-vito-rizzuto-1946-2013">Vito Rizzuto</a> this hit serves as a reminder that the mafia is not one person. It is an entity with many heads, each with a long memory. After Rizzuto’s death of natural causes, his friends continued his crusade against traitors and enemies, among them Callocchia, who sided with the rebel faction.</p>
<p>There is no rest for the wicked.</p>
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New England Mafia bust emphasizes mob’s decline
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/new-england-mafia-bust-emphasizes-mob-s-decline
2014-10-03T18:30:00.000Z
2014-10-03T18:30:00.000Z
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<p>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Two New England mobsters stood before a Boston judge, yesterday, and pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges. Both men have links dating back to the good ol’ days of the American Mafia, yet as their charges were read one couldn’t help but think of the dismal state the once powerful crime syndicate is in today.</p>
<p>According to the indictment, both men are charged with “conspiracy to interfere with commerce by extortion.” Fancy words for extorting $50,000 in protection payments from a video poker machine company located in Revere for the past seven years.</p>
<p>That’s 7,142 dollars and 86 cents a year.</p>
<p>I think you can make more begging for change on certain street corners.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237041267,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237041267?profile=original" width="250" /></a>The two alleged masterminds behind this extortion are reputed New England acting boss Anthony “Spucky” Spagnolo (72 - an old photo of him on the right) and made member Pryce “Stretch” Quintina (74). According to the indictment the racket had been going on for decades and both mobsters were only carrying on what must’ve begun to feel like a tradition. The new owner was afraid that if he did not continue to make the protection payments, the Mafia would force him to remove his company’s machines from the bars and social clubs that hosted them and permit other vendors to install their own video poker machines.</p>
<p>So he contacted the feds.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/02/revere-man-identified-alleged-acting-boss-new-england-mafia-federal-indictment/lBXG8fvQqihepC5yeIJr0I/story.html" target="_blank">The Boston Globe</a> writes that both men “reputedly represent the old guard of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family">Patriarca crime family</a>, their service dating back to the Mafia’s glory days, when the late boss Gennaro Angiulo controlled the Boston underworld from the 1960s to the early 1980s.”</p>
<p>Spagnolo was allegedly involved in narcotics and a capo in the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family">New England family</a>, while Quintina’s uncle was also a capo. Furthermore, <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/02/revere-man-identified-alleged-acting-boss-new-england-mafia-federal-indictment/lBXG8fvQqihepC5yeIJr0I/story.html" target="_blank">the Globe writes</a>, “Spagnolo and Quintina have served prison terms themselves. Spagnolo pleaded guilty to numerous racketeering and drug dealing charges in 1991 and was sentenced to nine years. Quintina was sentenced in 1995 to 7½ years. He was charged with setting up Angelo Patrizzi for murder in 1981, though he pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in an agreement with prosecutors.”</p>
<p>As stand up as they come. Especially in Boston.</p>
<p>Irish crime boss and infamous rat <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-making-of-mob-boss-whitey-bulger">James “Whitey” Bulger</a> played a big role in helping the FBI decimate the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-new-england-crime-family">New England La Cosa Nostra family</a>, his biggest rival for control of the city’s rackets, during the 1980s and 1990s. With turncoats like Bulger, news about a stand up gangster in Boston always comes as a surprise.</p>
<p>Spagnolo and Quintina face 20 years in prison if convicted. Two decades in prison for $7,142.86 a year for seven years.</p>
<p>This ain’t <a href="http://amzn.to/1pxsprn" target="_blank">The Godfather</a>. It isn’t even <a href="http://amzn.to/10prKCA" target="_blank">Goodfellas</a>. This resembles the mob family portrayed in <a href="http://amzn.to/1sRVZ1M" target="_blank">Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai</a>. An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rml5ehAl7SM" target="_blank">excellent</a> movie starring Forest Whitaker as a black hit man who works for the Italian Mafia. A Mafia that operates out of the back of a Chinese restaurant where its members are hounded by people left and right because they are late with their rent and face eviction.</p>
<p>Why bring up the movies?, you may ask. Well, because movies are the only thing that is keeping the Mafia’s reputation for violence and untold riches alive. Though there remain several powerful crews and families in New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Jersey, and, perhaps, Philadelphia, in most cities the Mafia is but a shell of its former self.</p>
<p>In most places, the Mafia has become like an old boxing champ. Someone who was once feared and powerful, someone whose name still carries weight because of replays of his old fights. But also someone who is now nothing more than an old, fat, mumbling has-been who no longer resembles the man on the television screen.</p>
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Profile: Gambino crime family mobster Robert Sasso
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-mobster-suspect-in-brazen-murder
2014-09-01T13:19:42.000Z
2014-09-01T13:19:42.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-mobster-suspect-in-brazen-murder"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237033873,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237033873?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Gangbanger or Mafioso? You be the judge. He may not look like it, but Robert Sasso, pictured above, is a Gambino crime family associate whose father and grandfather were in “the life” as well. And while he may not have learned how to dress like a mobster, he is alleged to be very familiar with the Mafia’s violent ways of doing business.</p>
<p>The 33-year-old Gambino wiseguy allegedly shot a 39-year-old man four times on a Whitestone shoreline near Boulevard St. in Queens at 2 a.m. The victim was taken to New York Hospital Queens, where he was listed in critical condition, the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/tattooed-grandson-mob-associate-allegedly-shot-man-queens-police-article-1.1922215" target="_blank">New York Daily News reported</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/08/29/police-search-for-suspect-with-mob-connections-in-malba-queens-shooting/" target="_blank">CBS 2 News New York</a> reports that, “the victim was taken out to a jetty, where he was shot. He was then able to call 911 and identify his shooter.” (<em>Photo above shows crime scene.</em>)</p>
<p>They don’t make them like they used to.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237034289,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237034289?profile=original" width="300" /></a>In the old days, a mob hit man made sure his victim was dead. The victim in turn made sure that if and when he did survive, he would not talk to authorities. Things were a lot simpler back then.</p>
<p>Kidding aside, Sasso (right) won’t get a prize for secrecy anytime soon. With his face tattoos he would fit in better with South American gang MS-13 than with any of the five New York Mafia families. Yet, here he is, a <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino family</a> associate. Allegedly.</p>
<p>His father, also named Robert, is an alleged organized crime figure who did time for gun trafficking. Sasso’s grandfather, named Robert as well, was President of Local 282 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and was also heavily connected to the Gambinos.</p>
<p>According to information provided by former Gambino underboss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-underboss-salvatore">Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano</a> Sasso “gave sweetheart contracts to mob-controlled companies and that he shared in payoffs to mobsters made by contractors for labor peace.”</p>
<p>In short, Gravano said, “[He] was with us.”</p>
<p>Sasso was forced to step down as President and was later convicted of union racketeering. He spent several years in prison until his release in 1997. That same year, his son was also released from prison.</p>
<p>And now, the youngest of these Robert Sassos is wanted for murder.</p>
<p>It’s not the first time police are eyeing Sasso as a murder suspect. Last year, authorities accused him of ordering a hit on a construction supervisor who fired him. He was questioned but managed to dodge the charges. And there are other cases where police suspect Sasso’s involvement, but are unable to take him to trial.</p>
<p>With a face that looks like a bulletin board for prison gangs it won’t be long before Sasso finally finds himself in actual prison again. For how long depends on whether authorities can make the charges stick this time.</p>
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Pure Evil - Profile of Russian mob boss Sergei Tsapok
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-sergei-tsapok
2014-07-09T19:00:00.000Z
2014-07-09T19:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mob-boss-sergei-tsapok"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237022694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237022694?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Pure evil. There is no other way to describe Russian mob boss Sergei Tsapok. He is a prime example of the totalitarian power Russian gangsters have over their respective territories. For a long time he got away with murder. But then he murdered twelve people, among them four children, and Moscow took notice.</p>
<p>The village of Kushchevskaya is located in the Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia. Krasnodar is also home to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-boss-rakhimov-and-the-sochi-olympics">Sochi</a>, which held the 2014 Winter Olympics. It’s a region where agriculture is the main source of income. And where law and order is in the hands of private militias and crime gangs.</p>
<p>Tsapok is the son of one of Krasnodar’s wealthiest landowners. Besides that, he is also the muscle and protector. His influence even reached into regional politics as he was elected deputy in the local government. It’s part of doing business in the new Russia where it’s about knowing all the right people in all the right places.</p>
<p>With the right connections one could get away with just about anything.</p>
<p>When his brother Nikolai was murdered in 2002, Sergei assumed leadership of his family’s militia and, as a result, its (criminal) business empire. Bound by nothing but his own sense of right and wrong, Tsapok continued terrorizing Kushchevskaya.</p>
<p>Olga Bogacheva has experienced that terror up close. Four relatives of her were murdered by Tsapok and his men. In 2003, her son and her husband, a business rival of Tsapok, were shot dead. At that time no one was arrested for the killings. “The gang had total power,” Bogacheva told the BBC. “Prosecutors, police, local officials - they all did what Tsapok told them to. People were too frightened to complain.”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237023088,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237023088,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237023088?profile=original" width="201" /></a>And for those who had no reason to be afraid, Tsapok had other methods, “After my family was murdered,” Bogacheva says, “Tsapok gave the local police chief a gift - a brand new Mercedes. Just imagine: the head of police driving round in Tsapok's Merc. And everyone knew whose car it was. So there was no point running off to the police to complain about Tsapok's gang.”</p>
<p>Without boundaries Tsapok’s lust for blood only grew. As did his boldness.</p>
<p>On November 4, 2010, Tsapok decided he needed to avenge his brother’s murder. He thought that his death had been ordered by a wealthy local farmer named Server Ametov. That day, he sent out his men to kill Ametov.</p>
<p>What happened next is something straight out of a Truman Capote novel. The hit men waited for nightfall in an abandoned house not far from Ametov’s home. Under the cover of darkness they crept up to the house and mercifully knocked the guard dog out with a tranquilizer.</p>
<p>They had no such mercy for their fellow human beings.</p>
<p>Once inside, they first killed Irina Mironenko, Ametov’s wife’s sister, and Yelena Ametova, Ametov's 19-year-old daughter-in-law. According to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11736312" target="_blank">BBC</a>, “The two women had been resting along with Marina's daughters on a sofa out in the hall. Neither of the little girls survived, but it appears that one of them was strangled while the other choked on smoke from fires the killers started before they left. Alerted to the noise, Ametov left his guests at the festive dinner table to see what was happening, and was killed along with Baby Amira, who was in his arms. The murderers then went into the dining-room where they stabbed to death Mr Mironenko, Pavel's mother and Ametov's wife Galina. Lidia and Viktor Ignatenko, the parents of Galina and Marina, were also killed. When Pavel arrived and tried to escape, they shot him with a traumatic pistol, then stabbed him to death too.”</p>
<p>After death had spread throughout the house, Tsapok’s men started fires around the house. Whether it was to draw attention to their gruesome handiwork or as a diversion is unknown.</p>
<p>The house of horrors they left behind, however, was now known and visible to the entire nation. Russia was shocked. Moscow sent detectives to Kushchevskaya to help solve the case. For the first time this farm village had something it hadn’t had since the fall of the Soviet Empire: The Law.</p>
<p>And they went to work with the backing of the country’s most powerful boss, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-dark-knight-of-mother">Vladimir Putin</a>.</p>
<p>Sergei Tsapok was no match for the big boss.</p>
<p>In November of 2013, Tsapok was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. Two of his men were also given life sentences for the murders. Three other gang members were given sentences of 19 and 20 years.</p>
<p>Normally things would end there. Life in prison. For a guy with Tsapok’s power and wealth life behind bars could be very comfortable. But things turned out very differently for the boss and his men.</p>
<p>On the night of July 6, Tsapok died at a detention facility. His cause of death remains a bit of a <a href="http://rapsinews.com/news/20140707/271666754.html" target="_blank">mystery</a> with sources claiming he either died of a stroke or acute heart failure.</p>
<p>This normally wouldn’t be cause for suspicion. However, three members of Tsapok’s gang have recently committed suicide at detention facilities. One of the group’s principal hit men who received a life sentence, Igor Chernykh, hanged himself last Friday.</p>
<p>A coincidence?</p>
<p>Probably not.</p>
<p>In an excellent piece for <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/grigorii-golosov/kushchevskaya-crime-and-punishment-in-russian-village" target="_blank">openDemocracy</a>, Grigorii Golosov <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/grigorii-golosov/kushchevskaya-crime-and-punishment-in-russian-village" target="_blank">wrote</a> “In a public statement Tkachev explicitly called Tsapok a “traitor”. As is well known, a traitor's guilt consists in betraying a key secret. And the secret of Russian politics is that crime is linked to power. Everyone understands this, but any direct confirmation of this fact hits a raw nerve.”</p>
<p>There’s never a happy ending for traitors.</p>
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Yakuza membership hits all-time low
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/yakuza-membership-hits-all-time-low
2014-03-07T22:00:00.000Z
2014-03-07T22:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/yakuza-membership-hits-all-time-low"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237011873,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237011873?profile=original" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>The Yakuza is not doing so great. According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the total membership in Yakuza organized crime groups dropped below 60,000 for the first time since police started keeping records. Last year, all the Yakuza groups combined had 58,600 members, down from about 63,200 in 2012.</p>
<p>Membership has been going down for decades, but things are getting grim for the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/yakuza-overview">Yakuza</a> as it seems that Japanese society as a whole is fed up with the gangs. Add to that the global economic crisis and tougher anti-Yakuza laws and becoming a gangster isn’t as attractive as it once was.</p>
<p>In 1991, Japan’s police created the Law Concerning Prevention of Unjust Acts by Boryokudan Members, also known as the Organized Crime Countermeasures Act. With this law, authorities banned eleven types of criminal activities such as extortionate acts, protection rackets, and loansharking.</p>
<p>In their book <a href="http://amzn.to/1f8jLOP" target="_blank">Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld</a>, authors <a href="http://amzn.to/1cIFHeu" target="_blank">David E. Kaplan</a> and Alec Dubro write that this law caused a big drop in Yakuza membership. “Police trumpeted reports of thousands of yakuza members retiring and scores of gangs disbanding. Newspapers ran stories about doctors removing tattoos and transplanting little toes to replace severed pinkies.”</p>
<p>But they are quick to point out that despite this drop in numbers, things weren’t that simple. “The new law did succeed in driving tens of thousands of mobsters out of their gang headquarters and off official gang rolls. But most did not leave the underworld; they merely shifted into harder-to-track associate and freelance roles. The law did help pare down overall numbers of yakuza by some 10,000, according to police statistics. By 1994, however, gang membership had stabilized at 80,000; nearly half were now designated ‘associates’.”</p>
<p>Yakuza gangs are known to be very visible and easy to find. They are quite unique in that way compared to other crime groups who operate in the shadows. But when under attack they will behave like any other criminal brotherhood and hide beneath the surface. So whether they really lost thousands of members or whether these just went underground has yet to be determined.</p>
<p>Still, though ‘official’ membership has dwindled, don’t be fooled. Yakuza gangs continue to hold enormous power. The Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's biggest crime group, had 25,700 members in 2013. Despite losing 2,000 gangsters, that number makes the entire Italian American Mafia look like a small gathering of Fantasy Football enthusiasts. Even Yamaguchi-gumi rival, the Sumiyoshi-kai, had 9,500 members. Down 1,100 from a year before.</p>
<p>With that many men willing to commit violence and crimes on its behalf, the Yakuza has by no means lost its bite.</p>
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Spain police bust Russian Mafia gang Taganskaya
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/spain-police-bust-russian-mafia-gang-taganskaya
2013-12-12T08:44:12.000Z
2013-12-12T08:44:12.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/spain-police-bust-russian-mafia-gang-taganskaya"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237020466,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237020466?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Spanish police, supported by Europol, arrested eight individuals and carried out seven house searches in Mallorca, Spain, yesterday, as part of an investigation into the money laundering activities of the Russian criminal organization Taganskaya.</p>
<p>Further arrests may follow, the Europol press release stated.</p>
<p>This investigation began more than twenty months ago, when the Intelligence Unit of the Spanish Guardia Civil <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237020880,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237020880?profile=original" /></a>discovered criminal links around the main suspect, who was making significant investments on the island of Mallorca, among them the Mar y Pins Hotel (right).</p>
<p>They established that the man was part of the Taganskaya gang from Moscow and that the group might be laundering money in Spain that was obtained from their criminal activities in Russia. The main suspect, who was arrested, seems to have been the mastermind in the network, supported by different straw men and legal and tax consultants.</p>
<p>Besides the charges of belonging to a criminal organization, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery, the Guardia Civil is investigating other evidence that points to the perpetrators’ involvement in other serious crimes including coercion and corruption.</p>
<p>“Taganskaya is not one of the major groups; it's a lesser, Moscow-based gang which has largely been subsumed within the loose, extensive network known as Solntsevo,” says <a href="http://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/about/" target="_blank">Mark Galeotti</a>, a professor of global affairs at NYU and <a href="http://amzn.to/1cpSNw5" target="_blank">author</a> who also writes about (shady) Russian affairs and organized crime for his blog <a href="http://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">In Moscow's Shadows</a>. “It's main activities are basic crimes such as protection racketeering and some frauds, with the associated money laundering that ensues. They came to Spain like many other Russian gangs - especially Muscovite ones - in the late 1990s and 2000s, when it seemed a pretty comfortable and welcoming location to mix sun and crime.”</p>
<p>Yesterday’s bust is the latest in an impressive offensive by Spanish police to rid their country of the influence of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/russian-mafia-overview">Russian organized crime</a>. Galeotti attributes these successes to an unrelenting pressure by law enforcement. “As Spanish authorities, especially under the legendary Prosecutor Jose Grinda Gonzalez, began cracking down, with a focus on financially-based crimes, each bust and successful prosecution throws up evidence for the next, hence the steady stream of cases,” Galleotti explains to Gangsters Inc.</p>
<p>“That said,” he continues, “there have been successes elsewhere in Europe. The point is that Spain was distinctive in being especially permissive in the past yet turning it around and being much more serious about fighting the Russian gangs now. By contrast, for example, the Italians have always been tough on the Russians, while the Germans have a serious problem but have not been attacking it with the same vigor as the Spaniards.”</p>
<p>The different approaches, Galeotti thinks, reflect a number of variables. “In the case of Italy, the Russians found themselves facing a policing apparatus which has been built to fight powerful domestic crime syndicates and was thus more than ready to deal with them. Most Western European countries, though, didn't really see the Russians as a serious threat: they were coming in flush with cash, buying property and generally boosting the economy. They were not, as had originally been feared, having firefights in the streets or even trying to muscle in on street level criminal operations. Perhaps because so many Russians (and others from the post-Soviet states) had moved there, the Spaniards, though, came to realize the deeper threats from letting Russian dirty money flow into your economy and gangsters embed themselves in your society and thus turned against them. But other countries regard them still as less of a threat, or else have the kind of very enlightened legal system that makes it harder to deal with these networks of flexible criminal entrepreneurs.”</p>
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Profile: Gambino crime family boss John "Junior" Gotti
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-junior-gotti
2013-11-12T12:30:00.000Z
2013-11-12T12:30:00.000Z
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<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975861,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted: March 10, 2007<br /> Updated on: August 12, 2008<br /> <br /> "<span style="font-style:italic;">I know my father loved me, but I got to question how much, to put me with all these wolves. This is the world you put your kid in? So much treachery. ... My father couldn't have loved me, to push me into this life.</span>" – <span style="font-weight:bold;">John “Junior” Gotti</span><br /> <br /> John “Junior” Gotti was born on February 14, 1964. His father, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti Sr</a> would become the most famous mob boss since Al Capone. It has been said many times, John Gotti Sr had charisma. He walked the streets in his expensive suits, and had an air of being untouchable surrounding him. After winning several court cases against him, he got the nickname “The Teflon Don.” John Gotti Sr was at the top of the world, and on the cover of TIME magazine. On top of the Gambino Crime Family after orchestrating the murder of boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-paul-castellano">Paul Castellano</a>. The media attention would be his downfall though. The FBI was obsessed with putting him behind bars. In April 1992 they succeeded, John Gotti Sr was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Gotti Sr put his 28 year old son in charge of the crime family.<br /> <br /> Junior Gotti became a made guy, a Mafia member, on Christmas Eve in 1988. Two years later he was made a captain, and two more years later he was Acting Boss of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Gambino" target="_blank">Gambino Crime Family</a>. A meteoric rise if there ever was one. With the rise came the money. Junior bought a six-bedroom Colonial mansion on three acres of rolling hills in Mill Neck, an exclusive community on the North Shore of Long Island.<br /> <br /> In January of 1998 Junior was arrested and charged with extorting the owners and employees of the Scores nightclub; armed robbery of a drug dealer; telephone calling card fraud; loansharking and gambling. In April 1999 he pleaded guilty in a deal carrying a maximum of seven years and three months in prison, $1.5 million in fines, forfeitures, restitution and court costs to charges that include bribery, labor racketeering, gambling, loansharking, tax evasion and lying on a mortgage application. In October 1999 he began serving his sentence.<br /> <br /> Just a few weeks before being released from prison Junior was indicted again. This time he was charged with racketeering, extortion, securities fraud and loansharking. The biggest charge was the kidnapping and shooting of radio host Curtis Sliwa. Sliwa had been badmouthing Gotti Sr on his radio show. Junior allegedly ordered his men to “teach Sliwa a lesson” for disresprecting his father. The government’s star witness was Gambino capo Michael DiLeonardo, who had been made during the same ceremony as Junior, and was a good friend of him as well.<br /> <br /> Junior Gotti went to trial saying he had quit the mob in 1999. To bolster his claims Gotti’s <a href="https://www.jeffreylichtman.com/" target="_blank">attorney Jeffrey Lichtman</a> had 100 hours of recordings of Gotti's talks with close friends inside the bleak visiting room of a prison in upstate Ray Brook. The FBI had begun taping Junior’s prison conversations on March 13, 2003. The tapes give interesting insights in Junior’s views on mob life during and after his father’s reign.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236976269,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />"My father on the street made you want to be a part of it, because he was that kind of guy." "You had to be part of it. You wanted to feel as close as possible to him. The only way was by being that. You wanted to be in it. When he left, John, the picture changed." "I finally realized that when my father was here, it was a real thing. It meant something. He really, really in his heart, loved and believed it, do you understand?" "I wanted to believe and love like him, but then I - once he went to jail and I seen how some people work - believe me, it was like a thing I wanted to get away from. I wanted to be anywhere else but there. I wanted to raise my children. I wanted to coach football for my kid. I wanted to get away from them, you understand me?" "Now I'm here. Here. Now he's dead. I really realize that it's not real. What he loved and what he believed in doesn't exist. It may have existed at one time, and it certainly existed in his mind, and probably in the fellas' minds and some other people's. But it doesn't exist anymore.” "Any honor and dignity, died with my father."<br /> <br /> In September 2005 Junior Gotti was acquitted of securities fraud, the jury was hung 11-1 for conviction on racketeering charges, which included the kidnapping and assault of Sliwa. His re-trial on the remaining charges also ended in a mistrial. At Junior Gotti’s third trial, his new lawyer Charles Carnesi told the jury: “They don’t have evidence after 1999.” “They know he’s out. They want to recycle this evidence.” It worked again, his third trial ended in a mistrial again! Shortly thereafter the government dropped all charges against Gotti.<br /> <br /> "In the 1990s, I lived an opulent and extraordinary lifestyle. I have very simple needs now." "I'll take my family and I'll go. It's enough now. They got to let go. Let us go, he's [John Gotti Sr] dead." "I want to start from scratch, w<img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236975886,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />herever my wife would be happy. I'm different than my father. My children are my life. You can convert me. My father you could not."<br /> <br /> "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." This could be one of the things Junior Gotti was thinking on the morning of August 5, 2008 when he was arrested by federal agents at his Oyster Bay, Long Island home and charged him with racketeering, murder and cocaine trafficking. The three murders he is charged with are that of Gambino family soldier Louis DiBono in 1990, the 1988 murder of George Grosso, and the 1991 slaying of Bruce Gotterup. All murders occurred under Junior's father John Gotti's watch. Junior Gotti claims he is being framed. If he is found guilty he will face life in prison.</p>
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Profile of Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-bernardo
2013-05-21T19:00:00.000Z
2013-05-21T19:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236982066,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2006 - Updated in 2016</p>
<p><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-of-bosses-bernardo-provenzano-dead-at-83">Cosa Nostra boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano dead at 83</a></strong><br /> <br /> Bernardo Provenzano was born on January 31, 1933 in Corleone, Sicily. After the second World War Provenzano joined the Mafia Family of boss Michele Navarra and became an enforcer for Luciano Leggio in that Family. In a short time Provenzano and another young man named Toto Riina, who would later become known as one of the most vicious Mafia bosses ever, became Leggio's most trusted enforcers. They were feared and had a reputation. Leggio said of Provenzano: "he has the brains of a chicken but shoots like an angel". He also gained the nickname "The Tractor", because "he mows people down". With people like Riina and Provenzano and his own fearsome reputation Leggio grew more powerful and eventuelly became a threat to Navarra. Navarra acknowledged the threat and decided it was time to eliminate Leggio so he could continue his rule. Navarra sent a group of his men to ambush Leggio and whack him, they failed and only wounded him, with the help of Riina he escaped. Now it was Leggio's turn to strike. He put together a group of hitmen, which included Provenzano and Riina, to take out Navarra. And Leggio's group of hitmen succeeded where Navarra's men failed, Leggio's group ambushed Navarra while he was driving back from a meeting. The group of young assassins riddled the car in which Navarra sat with bullets. In the end the car was pumped with 112 bulletholes and Navarra and another person who happened to be along for the ride were dead. With Navarra out of the way Luciano Leggio became the new Godfather.<br /> <br /> Navarra's death made a lot of Mafiosi unhappy and not only because they lost an ally but also because it was a breach of the Mafia code that you didn't whack your boss. These Mafiosi as well as Navarra supporters who wanted to avenge their boss made it very dangerous for Leggio and his two enforcers Provenzano and Riina. In the early 1960s the heat became too much for Provenzano, sensing that he would soon be arrested or whacked he took off and disappeared in the countryside of Sicily. While he was on the run he became the father of his two sons and spent his days looking over his shoulder. The Italian authorities had declared him a missing person and eventually thought he was whacked and his body would soon be found. But they couldn't be further from the truth. While on the run Provenzano had continued his criminal career, a career that came to new heights when his old pal Toto Riina became the new boss. While Riina took care of the violent aspect of mob business and stept into the front, Provenzano was hidden taking care of the money aspect of mob business. Provenzano made sure everybody paid and all the Mafiosi got their share.<br /> <br /> As the drug money came flowing in a powerstruggle started over who was to control it. Riina went on a rampage in a war that would leave 800 Mafiosi dead. And when the government decided that it was enough and started cracking down on the Mafia Riina hit back. Two top prosecutors were killed by bombs. Anyone who opposed was found dead. The <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mafia-state-trial-exposes-italy-s-corrupt-political-system">campaign of terror</a> that was supposed to scare off the people and government had the opposite effect, the government went on even harder and the public was now in their favour. The people had seen the brutal image of the Mafia and were sickened by it. As the hunt for Riina became more intense Provenzano was still hidden from everybody and presumed dead. When in 1992 his wife and children returned from the countryside and back in the open, talk about Provenzano's death flared up. However without a body who could be sure.<br /> <br /> On January 15, 1993 in Palermo, Sicily <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Toto Riina</a> was arrested by Italian police. The arrest of Riina placed Provenzano at the top of a criminal empire under fire by competition and law enforcement, changes needed to be made. Under Provenzano the Sicilian Mafia steered away from it's terror tactics towards the government and went back into the underworld. Out of sight the Mafia restructured, returning to it's roots. Under Provenzano the Sicilian Mafia had once again become the invisible power and had expanded it's interests while keeping clear from law enforcement. Provenzano commanded his troops via cryptic, handwritten notes transported by key members. There were occasional visits and very occasional summits with Mafia leaders, but otherwise Provenzano was a ghost, presumed dead but feared to be running the most powerful Sicilian Mafia in decades. Police believed he spent most of his time in western and central Sicily going from one safe house to the other. In January of 2001 police intercepted several letters by Provenzano to his family. Proof that he was still very alive. The letters were as close as police got to Provenzano he seemed unfindable. While other bosses and Mafiosi had been caught one by one Provenzano had now been on the run for over 40 years.<br /> <br /> Then on April 11, 2006 the unbelievable news broke: Bernardo Provenzano had been captured. Provenzano was arrested while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily. Authorities said their lucky break came when they tracked a package (it turned out to be clean laundry) that had been sent to Provenzano by his wife, who lived in Corleone. Provenzano put up no resistance and acknowledged his identity after first denying it. He appeared surprised to be caught, police said. He was flown to Palermo and taken to the main police station there.<br /> <br /> Provenzano will live the last years of his life in prison. He had been sentenced in absentia to life in prison for more than a dozen murders including the murders of anti Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.<br /> <br /> <strong>Also read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/italian-prison-too-tough-on-mafia-boss-provenzano">Italian Prison Too Tough On Mafia Boss Provenzano?</a></strong></p>
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Italian Prison Too Tough On Mafia Boss Provenzano?
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/italian-prison-too-tough-on-mafia-boss-provenzano
2013-05-21T11:43:40.000Z
2013-05-21T11:43:40.000Z
Gangsters Inc.
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/italian-prison-too-tough-on-mafia-boss-provenzano"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237018883,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237018883?profile=original" width="524" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>Are Italian authorities too harsh on imprisoned Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano? His lawyer and family say yes. In video clips aired by Michele Santoro’s Servizio pubblico, or public affairs program, on television network LA7, viewers see an old and vulnerable Provenzano, who is unable even to use the prison telephone.</p>
<p>Provenzano is credited with bringing the Sicilian Mafia back to power after its power had crumbled under the leadership of Salvatore Riina. He did so while in hiding and spent forty-three years evading authorities and escaping justice until his capture in 2006.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237018673,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237018673,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237018673?profile=original" width="320" /></a>After his arrest in 2006, <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-bernardo">Provenzano</a> began serving life under the 41-bis maximum security regime in a prison in the city of Parma in the north of Italy (right). This prison regime was one of the reasons Provenzano’s predecessor <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Salvatore “Toto” Riina</a> decided to <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mafia-state-trial-exposes-italy-s-corrupt-political-system">wage war</a> on the Italian state.</p>
<p>The video clips, taken from surveillance cameras inside Parma prison, come a month after a request by Provenzano’s lawyer Rosalba Di Gregorio for his immediate release from the harsh regime on health grounds was denied. According to his family the video proves their father and husband is not treated well and is in need of better care.</p>
<p>Provenzano’s frail health has been a recurring topic. A year ago, the imprisoned mob boss tried to commit suicide by placing a plastic bag over his head. Prison authorities claimed the attempt was part of an elaborate plot of the Mafioso to try and make himself look insane. And in December of last year, he needed surgery to reduce bleeding on his brain caused by a fall.</p>
<p>Check out the video below and see how the most powerful mafia boss in the world is faring behind bars:</p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UYhwA6xnK10?wmode=opaque" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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Mafia-State Trial Exposes Italy’s Corrupt Political System
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/mafia-state-trial-exposes-italy-s-corrupt-political-system
2013-05-10T19:00:00.000Z
2013-05-10T19:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mafia-state-trial-exposes-italy-s-corrupt-political-system"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014086,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237014086?profile=original" width="520" /></a>By Angelo Carmelo Gallitto</p>
<p>No one is untouchable. Of course, others are easier to touch than others. In Italy this is being proven each and every day as Mafiosi and corrupt politicians escape justice by abusing one of the many loopholes the law offers them.</p>
<p>One of the men who managed to escape justice, according to many judges, pentiti, wiretaps, policemen, is Giulio Andreotti, who passed away on May 6th at age 94. Andreotti served as Italy’s prime minister seven times and was tried twice on his alleged connections to the Mafia, he was acquitted both times. But despite the acquittals, he could not shake his shady past.</p>
<p>Another man with a shadowy rise to the top of Italian, and European, business and politics is Silvio Berlusconi. On May 8, the former prime minister lost the first appeal of his tax fraud conviction. He was sentenced to four years in prison on these charges in October of last year. He is also currently on trial on charges that he had sex with an underage prostitute. Just like with Andreotti, there are allegations of collusion with the Mafia with Berlusconi as well.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014468,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014468,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237014468?profile=original" /></a>However, proving these, or any, allegations is quite troubling in Italy. And Italians have accepted this truth. While big names like Berlusconi and Andreotti grabbed the headlines this past week, other news was ignored. News that gives insight into the inner workings of a corrupt system.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014691,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237014691,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237014691?profile=original" width="200" /></a>Last week a Palermo judge destroyed wiretaps of conversations between Italy's president Giorgio Napolitano (right) and ex-interior minister Nicola Mancino (left), in which Mancino allegedly asked about the possibility of getting Italy's chief anti-mafia prosecutor to intervene in his case. Mancino is currently being tried with ten other men for their involvement in talks between the Italian state and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sicilian-cosa-nostra-overview">Cosa Nostra</a> during the Mafia’s deadly bombing campaign in 1992 when it waged war on the state.</p>
<p>The other defendants are informant Massimo Ciancimino, Marcello Dell’Utri, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's ally and conservative senator, Cologero Mannino, a former minister and MP, jailed mafia boss of bosses <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Salvatore “Toto” Riina</a> and his brother-in-law <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-leoluca">Leoluca Bagarella</a>, Mafiosi Giovanni Brusca and Antonino Cinà, and three members of the Carabinieri.</p>
<p><strong>(Full list and bios of these defendants at the bottom of this page.)</strong></p>
<p>The destroyed wiretaps may shock readers outside of Italy, but for Italians it is business as usual. Corruption involving politicians and several sectors of the public administration is among the most pressing problems of the country. Yet, Italians have grown accustomed to that, and this is perhaps the reason why only a small percentage of the public follows this trial.</p>
<p>Politicians in general, and especially those at the highest levels, are protected and they usually enjoy immunity from prosecution. In the last few years, the government introduced total immunity for the five highest institutional figures (Prime Minister, President of the Republic, President of the Senate, President of the Chamber of Deputies, President of the Constitutional Court). The Berlusconi government even changed some laws in order to decriminalize specific crimes in which Berlusconi himself was involved and a time limit for trials dealing with crimes other than murder. Why prove you are innocent if you can just stall until the time runs out and you are set free?</p>
<p>Dubbed the Mafia-State trial, this is the first trial in Italian history that involves both Mafiosi, politicians, and policemen in a very prominent way. It's the State that is trying itself and its collusion with the mafia. Palermo prosecutors Antonio Ingroia and Nino Di Matteo were brave enough to take on the case and file the indictments against these very powerful figures.</p>
<p>According to them, it all started with the murder of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/photo/1992-murder-of-salvo-lima?context=album&albumId=6329524%3AAlbum%3A576">Salvo Lima</a> in 1992. Lima was the leader of the Sicilian Democratic Christian (DC) political party and right hand of prime minister Giulio Andreotti. His murder signalled the end of the collusion between Cosa Nostra and the DC party that lasted four decades. After his death, some politicians, including Andreotti and Mannino, feared for their own lives and they decided to help the Mafia in order to solve their problems.</p>
<p>The Mafiosi had gone to war because the famous Maxi-trial ended on January 1992 with harsh sentences for many leading members of Cosa Nostra. The trial even proved the existence of the criminal organization called Cosa Nostra for the first time in Italian history. Before that, the existence of Cosa Nostra as a structured organization was just a theoretical postulate, although there was proof of its existence since at least the late 1800s, that proof was periodically ignored.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980063,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236980063,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236980063?profile=original" width="300" /></a><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">Totò Riina</a> (right) was the supreme leader of Cosa Nostra during this period. From the 1980s up until his arrest in 1993, he had risen to become the boss of the so called “Corleonesi”, a group of Mafiosi that has its origin in the town of Corleone. He would prove to be one of the most violent Mafia bosses in Italian history as he planned and orchestrated the murders of politicians, prosecutors, policemen, and hundreds of Mafiosi.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, after the verdicts of the Maxi-trial, Riina started a bloody strategy. The strategy began in Sicily with the killing of Anti-Mafia prosecutors and politicians, and later continued on the Italian mainland, with bombs in Milan, Florence and Rome, in order to destabilize the credibility of the State. For these attacks to stop he made several demands, so-called “papello”, to the Italian State, which he sent through intermediaries to the highest levels of the Italian government. Among his demands were the abolition of the 41-bis law (maximum security imprisonment for mafia members), the abolition of the witness protection program, and the abolition of property seizures.</p>
<p>Though the governments has not given in to any of these demands, it is believed a truce was called between powerful politicians and the Sicilian Mafia. This trial aims to seek the truth and facts behind this truce and the negotiations that took place between the State and Cosa Nostra.</p>
<p>With the destroyed wiretaps it seems very few people in high positions are interested in knowing the truth.</p>
<p><span class="font-size-5"><strong>The defendants:</strong></span></p>
<p><strong>Salvatore Riina</strong>: Vicious <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-salvatore">boss of bosses</a> of the Sicilian Mafia who initiated the war on the State. Caught in 1993 he is currently serving multiple life sentences.</p>
<p><strong>Antonino Cinà</strong>: Member of Cosa Nostra and inducted in the San Lorenzo (Palermo) crime family, he was the personal doctor of bosses Riina and Provenzano. According to prosecutors he personally wrote the list of demands (the so-called “papello”) to the State.</p>
<p><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015263,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015263,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237015263?profile=original" width="160" /></a>Leoluca Bagarella</strong>: Brother-in-law of Totò Riina, and, for a short period of time, boss of bosses himself. Upon Riina’s arrest in 1993, Cosa Nostra was divided into two large factions: The most violent was run by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-leoluca">Leoluca Bagarella</a> (left) and the other by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/cosa-nostra-boss-bernardo">Bernardo Provenzano</a>. In 1993, through his friend Tullio Cannella, he formed the political party 'Sicilia Libera', a sort of separatist movement that aimed to liberate Sicily from the rest of Italy, but the plan failed because his arrest in 1995.</p>
<p><strong>Giovanni Brusca</strong>: Son of Bernardo Brusca, boss of San Giuseppe Jato. He was his father's successor and he started cooperating with the government in 1996. He was very close to Totò Riina and an important member of the 'Corleonesi' faction. He was among the turncoats who gave information about the pact between the State and the Mafia at the beginning of the 1990s.</p>
<p><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015476,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015476,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237015476?profile=original" width="160" /></a>Marcello Dell’Utri</strong>: Sicilian born from Palermo, he's the former right hand of Silvio Berlusconi. In the 1970s, he moved to Milan where he become a friend of Berlusconi, who was a construction builder at the time. In order to prevent the kidnapping of Berlusconi's sons, Dell’Utri (right) told his friend Vittorio Mangano, a member of Cosa Nostra, to protect Berlusconi and his immediate family. Mangano then moved to Milan officially as a groom and lived near Berlusconi’s home. Dell’Utri also is a former executive of Publitalia, a major publicity's enterprise, and in 1993 he was among the founders of the Forza Italia Party, run by Silvio Berlusconi. In 1999 he was elected to the European Parliamentary and in 2001 he became a Senator of the Republic in the Forza Italia party, later called Party of Freedom (PDL). Prosecutors allege that starting in 1994, Dell’Utri functioned as an intermediary between the Mafia bosses and the newly elected prime minister Berlusconi. Cosa Nostra wanted to reduce the pressure of the government through the new politicians, after the collapse of the old political system, destroyed by inquiries and corruption.</p>
<p><strong>Nicola Mancino</strong>: Born in Montefalcione, he was the head of the Democratic Christian Party in the Senate under the government of De Mita, interior minister from 1992 to 1994, and president of the Senate from 1996 to 2001. In 2012 he was charged in the Stato Mafia trial with perjury. According to prosecutors, in order to stop the trial he called the current President, Giorgio Napolitano, to ask him to put an end to it, but the wiretaps were destroyed at Napolitano’s request.</p>
<p><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015490,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015490,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237015490?profile=original" width="160" /></a>Calogero Mannino</strong>: Sicilian born from Sciacca, he was Minister of the Navy, Transport, and Agriculture in the 1980s, with the Democratic Christian party, under the Goria, De Mita, and Andreotti VI governments. In the 1990s, he was charged, and later acquitted, of mafia collusion. He is the only defendant who asked for the 'short trial', which cuts one third of the sentence if pleading guilty. According to the prosecutors, when he felt his life was in danger in the beginning of 1992, because Cosa Nostra wanted him dead, he met with the head of the Special Department of the Carabinieri (ROS), Antonio Subranni, and the Police Chief, Vincenzo Parisi, in order to open a link with Cosa Nostra and to plan a pact to stop the Mafia's violence. But the Mafiosi didn't want to deal with the old Democratic Christian politicians anymore, and so they continued the massacres, killing prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino.</p>
<p><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015852,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237015852,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237015852?profile=original" width="150" /></a>Massimo Ciancimino</strong> (right): Sicilian born and son of Vito Ciancimino, who was the mayor of Palermo in the 1970s, and friends with the Corleonesi bosses. In 2009, he suddenly started declaring he gave a list of Riina's demands (the so-called 'papello'), which were hidden by his father in a safe, in order to stop the Mafia violence, to the Colonel Mario Mori, who denied receiving anything.</p>
<p><strong>Antonio Subranni</strong>: He was a captain of the Special Department of Carabinieri (ROS) from 1990 to 1993. In 1995 he, together with defendants Mario Mori and Giuseppe De Donno, was charged with abetting the Mafia in order to prevent the arrest of the fugitive boss Bernardo Provenzano.</p>
<p><strong>Mario Mori</strong>: Colonel of the Special Department of Carabinbieri (ROS) and, later, head of the National Secret Services (SISDE). After the killings of the Anti-Mafia prosecutors, he contacted Vito Ciancimino in order to find Riina through him and start talks about a pact. They met Ciancimino for some months, but it's not clear what they exactly said. On 15 January, 1993, he oversaw the arrest of boss Totò Riina. He had previously been a defendant in two other Mafia trials together with Carabinieri captains Antonio Subrannu and Mauro Obinu. In the first trial, he was charged with mafia abetting because, according to prosecutors, he had ordered not to search Riina's home after his arrest. But he was acquitted. In the other trial, he was charged with mafia abetting in 1995 in order to prevent the capture of fugitive Bernardo Provenzano, who became the boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra after the arrest of Riina and Bagarella.</p>
<p><strong>Giuseppe De Donno</strong>: He was a captain of the Special Department of Carabinieri (ROS) and former right hand of the Colonel Mario Mori. He coordinated the arrest of Totò Riina. He is also known as 'Captain Ultimo', the code-name that he used when Riina was nabbed. He is very famous in Italy thanks to many television shows which depict his actions. In the past he was charged with mafia abetting together with Mario Mori, Antonio Subranni, and others, in two important mafia trials. He was accused of preventing the search of Riina’s home in order to avoid finding important documents and helping to prevent the capture of Bernardo Provenzano. The involvement in such trials of a famous anti-mafia hero like him, astonished many people.</p>
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How Not to Shoot the Mafia
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/how-not-to-shoot-the-mafia
2013-01-13T08:06:23.000Z
2013-01-13T08:06:23.000Z
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<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/how-not-to-shoot-the-mafia"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237003659,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237003659?profile=original" width="400" /></a><strong>Mussomeli, Sicily, once home of the legendary godfather Giuseppe Genco Russo</strong></p>
<p>By Carl Russo</p>
<p>After the spectacular capture of Corleone capomafia Bernardo Provenzano by police in 2006, Sicily braced for a blowback. If history is an indicator, observers warned, a Mafia war will break out. And it will take the form of either an internecine turf battle or a vendetta against the state. Both scenarios assured a high body count.</p>
<p>As an outsider, I could sense the dread of those uncertain days—even as the island was in full spring bloom. Yellow daisies covered the hills that drop into Mussomeli, a postcard village worth its roller-coaster approach. I had come to photograph the tomb of the region’s legendary godfather, Giuseppe Genco Russo (no relation, I assure you). When Mussomeli popped into view, I pulled my car to the side of the road to shoot the panorama.</p>
<p>Up ahead a few hundred meters stood a policeman casually talking to a man seated on a parked scooter. The officer took keen notice of me. As I jumped out of my car, he instinctively jerked into a defensive position, knees bent and ready to spring, his fierce eyes betraying fear. Quickly, I waved my camera before he went for his gun. I don’t know which of us was the more scared. I took the stupid picture and left, vowing to avoid Italian cops forevermore.</p>
<p>Twenty-four hours later I managed to piss off a pair of heavily armed agents of the Finance Guard. This is the paramilitary squad that seizes the assets of mafiosi like Provenzano. My crime? Photographing the Guard’s station house in Corleone. I should have known better.</p>
<p>To frame the shot, I planted myself across the street from the station in the shadow of some trees, then snapped a picture. At that instant, a young uniformed agent stepped outside the building and spotted me.</p>
<p>“O! O!” he shouted. That’s Italian for Hey! He swatted the air furiously with his hand which looked like he was waving goodbye but, in the south, means the opposite.</p>
<p>“Come here!” he demanded. I came out of the shadows waving my camera like the white flag of surrender.</p>
<p>“I’m only a tourist,” I yelled back as I crossed to him cautiously. He had the face of a nervous rookie fronting grit. I pictured a dingy jail cell. Interrogators singing fascist favorites. An international incident.</p>
<p>At that point an older, heavyset officer stepped out of the station, attracted by the commotion. He didn’t look scared or even angry when the younger one informed him I’d taken a picture. I noticed the array of antennae and surveillance cams that covered the razor-wired roof.</p>
<p>“I’ll explain myself,” I said, before they asked. I brought up the image on my camera screen— the only one I’d had the chance to take. “I’m an American tourist.”</p>
<p>“Passport,” the older officer requested in the routine manner of an Alitalia ticket agent. I told him it was in my car and pointed to the rental parked down the hill. He took my camera and sent me to fetch the document as he and the rookie had a hushed discussion. In the car, I quickly stashed my folders stuffed with Mafia notes and news clippings under the seat then grabbed my passport. I returned and handed it over, launching into my explanation. It was the honest truth.</p>
<p>“I was at the anti-Mafia museum [in Corleone’s old town] and they told me that Totò Riina’s former villa is now the Finance Guard’s station house.” Riina was Provenzano’s partner when they ruled the Cosa Nostra and the man most responsible for the assassination of dozens of Carabinieri, cops and judges. The Riina name, I knew, was anathema to my inquisitors. The older officer examined my passport.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004084,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004084,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004084?profile=original" width="400" /></a><strong>Photo: Mafia boss Totò Riina's confiscated villa in Corleone, Sicily</strong></p>
<p>“Russo, eh?” he said. “I have relatives named Russo in Naples.”</p>
<p>“There are a lot of Russos in Naples,” I replied in an attempt at levity. The name is the Smith of the region.</p>
<p>“That’s true,” he said, cracking a smile. Then, abruptly, “Let’s erase this picture. Are there more?”</p>
<p>“No, just the one.” I zapped the image into oblivion, relieved to be erasing my crime but sorry to lose the shot.</p>
<p>“Now look there,” he said, pointing down the hill in the direction of my car. “You see that villa? The pink one.” I saw a large, newly built house painted a garish pink. “That’s the former villa of Totò Riina.”</p>
<p>“Ah. So—,” I hesitated, “would it be possible to photograph it?”<br /> “Sure.”</p>
<p>“Without a problem?”</p>
<p>“Without a problem.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’m very sorry about this, signori,” I said, anxious to leave. The older officer handed back my camera. I trod down the hill and started shooting, noticing that the rookie, now standing alone, kept a watchful eye on me. After several exposures, I got in the car and drove back up the hill. I waved to the young officer. He glared. If you go to Corleone today, you can see the former villa of Totò Riina. But don’t photograph it! The house is the now the new headquarters of the Finance Guard.</p>
<p>San Francisco writer Carl Russo blogs at <a href="http://www.MafiaExposed.com" target="_blank">www.MafiaExposed.com</a>. His new book, <em>The Sicilian Mafia: An Illustrated Travel Guide</em> will be published by Strategic Media Books. Russo currently has a crowd-funding <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-sicilian-mafia-an-illustrated-travel-guide">campaign</a> at <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/MafiaGuide" target="_blank">www.indiegogo.com/MafiaGuide</a>.</p>
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