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Italian complaint against Spanish restaurant La Mafia thrown out

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Italian government demands restaurant change its name or close
By Imogen Calderwood

AN Italian appeal to have Spanish crime-inspired restaurant chain Mafia change its name has been thrown out.
The Italian government lodged the request for the restaurant to either be forced to change its name or be closed down.
But Spanish authorities insist that the word ‘mafia’ is so common now that it doesn’t specifically relate to the Italian mob.
The firm’s public relations manager Pablo Martinez said: “The word mafia is a brand that is immediately recognised, it’s a call to attention and everyone remembers it.
“We apologise to those Italians who feel offended but that’s not our intention”




Mafia man admits violence and murder

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By: Lloyd Sowers, FOX 13 News

The University of Tampa has changed a lot.
"This dorm wasn't here. This is unbelievable," says John Alite, who came here from New York 35 years ago to play baseball for UT.
But when an injury ended his baseball dreams, his bat became part of his arsenal as a Mafia enforcer.
"I admitted to dozens of shootings, multiple, multiple murders," he tells me. "I would go do shootings myself. I wouldn't even bring guys. I would shoot three, four guys at a clip."
He was an enforcer with the Gambino crime family, headed by John Gotti, Jr. and before that, his father, the "Dapper Don", John Gotti.

OPPORTUNITY IN TAMPA
Alite says he made lots of money as a mobster in New York, but saw opportunity in Tampa, the sunny and growing city he first visited as a teenager.
"Tampa was an open city," he says. “I moved money down here and I knew that I could push my way around a little bit. For years the Trafficantes were down here making big money, and now the Trafficante family is gone, I moved here and made a ton of money."
His businesses included valet parking and nightclubs -- cash businesses. His Club Mirage at Hillsborough Avenue and Dale Mabry was a hotspot.
"I had lines around the corner. I used to have 1,500, 2,000 people a night," he says.

ON THE RUN
But the FBI was on his trail. He fled the country and spent time in places like Paris, Colombia, and Rio de Janeiro. Finally, he was caught and put in prison in Brazil.
He was extradited to Tampa where he would admit to a shocking list of crimes.
"I believe I was involved in about 45 shootings," he says.
Alite says he doesn't know exactly how many people died in the shootings, maybe as few as eight or ten, he says.
"But at least I could be honest and say it could be up to 15 murders and 45 shootings."

RISKY BUSINESS
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Alite was released in 2013 following a deal with prosecutors to testify against other mobsters.
I ask, "Will they come after you?"
He only pauses for a second.
"The risk I take of someone coming after me, that's fine. I've dealt with my whole life that way."
But, he said he's had enough of the mob.
"I've been beaten all over the street. I've been stabbed, I've been baseball batted. I've been hit with cars. I've been in solitary confinement for years at a time," he says.
His life is chronicled in a new book by George Anastasia called "Gotti's Rules." In the book, he goes after his old bosses, the Gottis. He says Gotti Junior was an informant and his father was a thug with a made for TV image.
"He was a monster. He wasn't a good guy," Alite said.

"I CAN'T TAKE IT BACK"
Alite says he would like to be a consultant for movies and TV shows depicting organized crime. He says there's no honor in the Mafia.
"They swear loyalty to you, and when the time comes, they get the order, that friend is the one who'll shoot you in the back of the head."
Alite says he wants to convince young people not to turn to crime.
"What I did in the past, I'm ashamed of," he says. "I can't take it back. I told my children, I'm your dad, I love you, but I made terrible mistakes." If baseball had worked out for him 35 years ago in Tampa, life might have been much different.



Mafia man Domenico Rancadore to be extradited to Italy

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A convicted Mafia boss who lived in London for more than 20 years must be extradited to Italy, a judge has ruled.
Domenico Rancadore was arrested in August 2013 after he was found living in Uxbridge, west London, under the alias of Marc Skinner.
He was convicted in his absence in 1999 of being a member of a criminal organisation and sentenced to seven years in jail.
The 65-year-old had launched an 18-month battle against his extradition.
At Westminster Magistrates' Court, Judge Howard Riddle ruled there was no abuse of process and that Rancadore's Article 3 rights, regarding inhuman and degrading treatment, would not be breached by extradition to Italy.
Rancadore, who is known as The Professor, can now appeal to the High Court.
BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman, who was in court, said: "His extradition was sought under the European Arrest Warrant scheme and the grounds for opposing extradition under that scheme are very limited, and we are waiting to hear from his lawyers as to whether they intend to make this last ditch appeal.
"At the moment his extradition has been ordered here at court today and in the normal run of things that would mean him being returned under the extradition to Italy in the next 10 days."
Following the ruling, a spokesman from the Italian Embassy said: "We are pleased that a British judge has recognised that there is no longer a problem with the Italian prison system which prevents extradition to Italy in general."
Rancadore moved to London from his native Sicily in 1993 with his wife and two children after he was acquitted at the end of a three-year court case over Mafia allegations.
But in a second trial in 1999, the former teacher was convicted in his absence of being part of a criminal organisation between 1987 and 1995.
While in Britain, he had run a travel agency.
Since his arrest in 2013, he has fought a legal battle to prevent his extradition.
In March 2014 he defeated a bid to extradite him on grounds that prison conditions in Italy would breach his human rights.
Days later he was told he would not face an appeal because the Crown Prosecution Service had missed a deadline to lodge the appeal.

But he was rearrested in April after a fresh European Arrest Warrant was received from the Italian authorities.

Cocaine sales in downturn turn Italy mafia into powerhouse: report

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BY STEVE SCHERER

 (Reuters) - The Calabrian mafia's role as one of Europe's biggest importers of South American cocaine has made it the most powerful economic force in its poor home region in southern Italy, a report released on Tuesday said.
Direct ties to Mexican and Colombian cocaine cartels, with which it has built trust over the years, have made the 'Ndrangheta a financial powerhouse, said Italy's national anti-mafia prosecutors' office in its annual report.
Both within Italy and in countries like Germany and Holland, "the 'Ndrangheta has no rivals and, for this reason ... because of its hegemony in drugs trafficking, it has become, against a depressed economic backdrop, the only financially significant player in Calabria and beyond," the report said.
Though the network has a well-earned reputation for brutality and violence, the 'Ndrangheta's real power is economic, said the report, based on mafia investigations and trials conducted between mid-2013 and mid-2014.
During the current economic slump, which began halfway through 2011, the Calabrian mafia has spread its influence north to cities including Rome, Milan and Bologna, often using its wealth to buy political influence.
"The 'Ndrangheta has not only been able to penetrate the north's construction sector ... but it has become one of the most important operators in the whole sector," the report said.
Companies "capitalized by the 'Ndrangheta" over time became "front runners in the different sectors where they operate", which include legal gambling, trucking, and the restaurant and hotel trade.
The 'Ndrangheta, Sicily's Cosa Nostra and the Camorra around Naples have long plagued Italy's south, but recent investigations have shown their influence spreading, which is terrible news for the economy, the euro zone's third biggest.
Calabria, in the southern toe of Italy, is one of Europe's poorest regions, with an unemployment rate of more than 20 percent, and the oppressive presence of organized crime is one of the reasons for its decrepit state.
A 2012 Bank of Italy study shows that the economies of two southern regions, Puglia and Basilicata, where there was virtually no organized crime until about four decades ago, were crippled when mafia groups moved in.
The mob's growing presence hacked an estimated 16 percentage points off per capita GDP in those regions over three decades, the study said.



RECIPES WE WOULD DIE FOR: Warm Potato and Haricot Vert Salad

RECIPES WE WOULD DIE FOR: Smoked Porchetta Pork Loin Sandwich

Sicilian Mafia now outgunned by Calabria's cocaine-trading mobsters 'Ndrangheta

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The shadowy Calabrian crime syndicate ’Ndrangheta has beaten the Sicilian Mafia for control of organised crime in northern Italy, the country’s most senior anti-Mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti has said.
 The Calabrian Mafia, which has risen to prominence through its control of Europe’s cocaine trade, is now laundering its millions and integrating successfully into northern Italy’s economy. It is aided by the country’s ambiguous attitude to corruption, Mr Roberti said at the launch of the annual report of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate.
He said the dominance of the ’Ndrangheta in Milan and Lombardy, Italy’s richest city and region respectively, had “come at the expense of Cosa Nostra”. He added that ’Ndrangheta members living in the north for many generations had gradually acquired a full knowledge of the area by “cementing relations with local communities and prioritising contacts with local politicians and institutions”. Victims of ’Ndrangheta rackets in northern Italy were often too afraid to talk to police or magistrates.
But Milan, Italy’s finance capital, is not the only northern city to be heavily infiltrated by the Calabrian mob. Mr Roberti noted that in Bologna ’Ndrangheta had established “a criminal power network whose expansion has exceeded the worst predictions”.
Last month, more than 100 people were arrested in the region of Emilia Romagna, of which Bologna is the capital, including six suspected ’Ndrangheta bosses, serving police officers, a prominent local politician and several businessmen. ’Ndrangheta had spent decades infiltrating Emilia Romagna, Bologna’s chief prosecutor Roberto Alfonso told reporters.
Italian organised crime is also spreading abroad. In November last year, Paola Severino, the former Justice Minister, said mob clans originally from Sicily, Naples and Calabria were infiltrating the north of Italy and other EU economies – as ’Ndrangheta already had in Germany. Figures detailing Mafia activity around Europe, presented to the European Commission last year by the Italian government, showed that ’Ndrangheta was also active in France and Spain.
  But the UK is not immune. The figures suggested that outside Italy, only Spain and Holland had experienced more activity by the Camorra, the Naples-based Mafia. There were up to 20 Camorra-related incidents in Britain cited by Italian police between 2000 and 2011. But Mr Roberti said one of the keys to ’Ndrangheta’s power and wealth remained its “all-encompassing control” of the port of Gioia Tauro, which had become “the true gateway for cocaine in Italy”.
The prosecutor also warned that Cosa Nostra had not been mortally wounded despite a series of high-profile arrests. He said the crime organisation was making strenuous efforts to rebuild its central command in Palermo.
A lax attitude to financial crime is helping them. “Corruption, including tax evasion, has never been fought effectively, it was tacitly accepted and was not considered a serious crime,” Mr Roberti said.
Rosy Bindi, the head of the parliamentary anti-Mafia commission, agreed.
“The fight against corruption is also the fight against the Mafia and we’re paying the price for a system that’s too relaxed,” she said.
Experts say Mafia groups were helped in 2002 by Silvio Berlusconi’s move to partially decriminalise false accounting. Matteo Renzi’s government is seeking to overturn the Berlusconi legislation.



Cherry king tycoon killed himself after cops found his secret drug lab 'because the mob would have assassinated him anyway'

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Arthur Mondella, 57, shot himself dead in the bathroom of Dell's Maraschino Cherries factory in Brooklyn, New York
Investigators looking into environmental offenses smelled marijuana coming from the walls
Mondella went into his private bathroom and shot himself in the head
Investigators had entered the premises on environmental warrants but suspected factory was being used as front for a grow lab 
Officials discovered hundreds of thousands of dollars, 80 to 100lbs of pot and a fleet of vintage cars, including a Rolls Royce and Porsche


By Snejana Farberov

Investigators are now looking into a possible link between a maraschino cherry factory and organized crime after the owner of the New York-based business committed suicide on Tuesday.
Arthur Mondella, 57, president of Dell's Maraschino Cherries factory in Brooklyn, shot himself in the head as police broke into a drug lab hidden behind a wall.
Mondella had cooperated with investigators for five hours over allegations the 67-year-old family business had been dumping hazardous waste.
A pot operation was found to be operating behind the walls of the family business during a separate investigation into hazardous waste
But a law enforcement source tells New York Post that the Breaking Bad-style drug operation at the cherry plant may have been been just the tip of the iceberg.
'He knew the mob would kill him,' the unnamed source told the paper. 'That’s why he shot himself.
‘Why else would you shoot yourself over 100 pounds of weed? It was the multi-million operation he lost.’
Investigators reportedly came across suspicious shelving in a storage unit - then behind a door found a false wall with the smell of weed seeping through.
The entrance to a dug-out basement was then found, with three bags of marijuana inside.  
According to the NY Post, generators were found inside the factory along with a high-tech security outfit of dozens of cameras, barbed wire and motion-detector lights.
Mondella then excused himself to go to his private bathroom, locked the door and shot himself at 1.30pm, a law enforcement source told Daily Mail Online.
Before committing suicide, the third-generation cherry tycoon told his sister who was present, Joanne Capece, 'Take care of my kids'.
Those present heard a single gunshot, according to CBS New York.  Mondella later died at a local hospital from the .357 magnum gunshot wound.
 The paper reported Wednesday that the cherry tycoon was hiding a .357 handgun strapped to his ankle. He had another gun in his office safe.
The DA's office and environmental regulators discovered 80-100lbs of pot in three large black bags and hundreds of thousands of dollars concealed in the secret room.
Shelves operated by magnets had been used to conceal the 50-by-50 feet drug lab, which has been described as an 'extremely professional' and very expensive operation. 
A row of luxury vintage vehicles, including a Porsche, Rolls-Royce, a Harley-Davidson and a Mercedes, were also found covered in tarp in a back lot of the factory in the industrial area of Red Hook.
Calls to the business went unanswered Wednesday.
Investigators had been looking into the company over allegations it was dumping hazardous material into the sewage system and waterways - but had suspected that the facility was also being used as a grow lab.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars along with 80lbs of marijuana were reportedly discovered in the secret room behind the factory walls in Brooklyn, New York
One official told the New York Daily News: 'It appears there was another activity going on, that's for sure. I don't think you kill yourself over a bag of weed. There has to be more to it.'
Brooklyn District Attorney's office had received a tip-off about the marijuana operation in 2013, the New York Post reported.
Despite watching comings and goings at the factory for six months, the DA's office was unable to work out if there was a marijuana business operating inside. 
An anonymous source told the paper that the environmental offense warrants were simply used to get into the building.
The DA's office said 'no further information about this tragedy is available at this time'.
Officers consult paper work during the investigation of the cherry factory on Tuesday. The Brooklyn district attorney's office had a tip-off in 2013 that the firm was fronting a marijuana operation 
Dell's Maraschino Cherries, which has been in business for 76 years, supplies to Red Lobster, Buffalo Wild Wings, Chick-fil-A and TGI Fridays for use in cocktails and desserts.
Arthur Mondella's grandfather, Arthur Mondella Sr, started the business as a Brooklyn storefront in 1948.
The Brooklyn factory now turns out 400,000 bottles of cherries each week - and 19 million pounds of cherries a year.
The company recently underwent a $5million overhaul and redesigned their bottles with a retro label last year after the company suffered following the financial crash in 2008.
At the time Mr Mondella told The Wall Street Journal: 'At this point, the maraschino cherry is just another commodity. We’re trying to change that.'
Some 25 investigators arrived at the facility at 8am on Tuesday with search warrants to inspect its operations.

Mondella is survived by his ex-wife Yevgeniya and their five-year-old daughter Antoinette. 

Secret Marijuana Farm Beneath Brooklyn Cherry Factory Leaves Many Mysteries

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By VIVIAN YEE

Arthur Mondella’s alternate life was buried behind a roll-down gate, behind a fleet of fancy cars, behind a pair of closet doors, behind a set of button-controlled steel shelves, behind a fake wall and down a ladder in a hole in a bare concrete floor.
Here, in a weathered basement below the Red Hook, Brooklyn, maraschino cherry factory he had inherited from his father and his grandfather, he nurtured a marijuana farm that could hold as many as 1,200 plants at a time. Here, below the office where he served as chief of Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company, he kept a small, dusty library and a corkboard pinned with notes. Most of the books dealt with plant propagation methods. One did not: the “World Encyclopedia of Organized Crime.”
Much about the hidden operations of Mr. Mondella, 57, who shot and killed himself on Tuesday as investigators found his marijuana plants, remains frustratingly out of reach for his family and friends. Investigators do not know how he distributed the marijuana, how long he had grown it or who helped him. Most baffling of all are Mr. Mondella’s reasons for hiding his operation under a business that was, by all accounts, healthy and growing — and for taking his life so suddenly when he was caught.
On Thursday, the day of Mr. Mondella’s private wake, the company said the cherry business would go on. Major restaurant chains that bought Dell’s cherries, including Red Lobster and T.G.I. Friday’s, said their menus would be unaffected. But at the offices of the Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, the focus was on untangling what part of the business was cherries, and what part was marijuana, at the red-brick factory on Dikeman Street.
“We’re looking at the actual connections between marijuana and the factory and whether or not some portion of the cherry business there really was an effort to mask the marijuana operation,” said a law enforcement official close to the investigation, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is continuing.
Given the thick scent of cherry processing and the large amount of electricity the factory would naturally consume, the official said, “it’s a very convenient place to be” to mask both the odor and the power needed to cultivate the marijuana plants.
Yet because the basement labyrinth was so well concealed, it seemed plausible that the cherry factory’s regular employees were unaware of their boss’s secret. Mr. Mondella may have been the only person with access to the garage where he kept several luxury vehicles and the entrance to the basement, the official said.
Still, the scope of the operation made it unlikely that Mr. Mondella was the only person involved. Spanning about 2,500 square feet, the underground complex included an office, a large grow room, a storage area, a freezer for the harvested plants and an elevator. A network of 120 high-end growing lamps shined on the plants with intensities that varied depending on each plant’s size; an irrigation system watered them. Investigators recovered about 60 types of marijuana seeds.
The investigators had never seen a larger operation in New York City, the official said.
“The way you have to set that up, there’s got to be plumbers and electricians working off the books who are very sophisticated,” he said, “and it wasn’t Arthur Mondella, as far as we know, that had that kind of skills.”
Investigators first received a tip about Mr. Mondella and illegal drugs about five years ago, he said, but nothing came of it then.
As part of a separate investigation into allegations that Dell’s was polluting Red Hook’s water supply, the district attorney and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection decided to search the factory for files on environmental infractions. It was during that search on Tuesday that they stumbled on the marijuana operation. (The pollution investigation is still active.)
The drug inquiry is still in its early stages. But the official said investigators were looking closely at whether the operation had ties to organized crime. Mr. Mondella would have required help to maintain the farm and distribute his product, the thinking goes, and an organized crime syndicate could have provided it.
To Mr. Mondella’s family and friends, the revelations about his hidden operations have been “aberrant and shocking,” Michael Farkas, the lawyer representing the Mondella family and the management of Dell’s, said in an interview.
The company was considered among the largest producers of the cherries in the country. Although many cherry suppliers were disappearing around the time that Mr. Mondella took over the business in 1983, the market appears stable now, thanks in part to maraschino cherries’ popularity abroad, said Robert McGorrin, the chairman of the food science department at Oregon State University, where the current method of processing the cherries in brine, rather than alcohol, was developed in the 1920s.
Law enforcement officials are just as perplexed about Mr. Mondella’s motives. Though investigators are sorting through a substantial bounty of evidence, they have no hope of gaining access to the data on Mr. Mondella’s iPhone 6, which, like other new-model iPhones, is encrypted with a user-created code that even Apple says it cannot unlock.

“No one seems to have had any clue that this was going on, and there certainly didn’t seem to be any strange or traumatic circumstances that would’ve explained this,” Mr. Farkas said. “The business was not doing poorly; the business was doing very well. We were unaware of any major problems in Arthur’s life. Somebody knows — but we’re all waiting for answers here.”

Family Secrets

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BY EDITOR
 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Transcript
GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
Now then, we know everything we need to know about ostracism, about exclusion. We learned it from childhood, right? But for our first guest, when she was a little girl, for some reason that sense, it wasn't really directed at her. But instead, it followed her father, and the problem was no one would tell her why.
RITA GIGANTE: My sister pretty much sat me down on my bed 'cause I was asking her questions. She was saying that he was sick and that this is what he had. He had paranoid schizophrenia, and I said, you know, what does that mean? She said it was a mental illness.
ANNA SUSSMAN, BYLINE: Rita's dad lived the life of a shut-in. He kept the blinds closed all day long. She remembers him pretty much sitting around his apartment in his underwear, eating cereal.
GIGANTE: Yeah, he used to wear these white boxer shorts and a white T-shirt, white socks. Everything was white except for his slippers. They were black. He wasn't very, very talkative, you know, and he would always speak very softly.
SUSSMAN: But he did have business associates. He wouldn't go to any office or telephone into meetings, but these guys would come to him in his dark apartment.
GIGANTE: And he never spoke on the phone. That was the other thing I realized. Never spoke on the phone. As a matter of fact, most of the time, the phone was off the hook. The other piece that was strange to me was that when these men used to come - you know, his people that were in this business with him - when they used to come and sit around my grandmother's dining room table, the radio would be on. The TV would be on. Nobody would be really speaking. There would be more of a whisper, and then people would be, you know, writing notes back and forth to my dad. And he would answer by writing.
SUSSMAN: There were a lot of things that didn't add up for Rita when she was a kid. Like if the family did go out to eat, they never had to wait in line at the neighborhood restaurants, and they would get taken in the back door. There were some kids that weren't allowed to come to her house to play, and she didn't know why.
GIGANTE: It was this feeling of not knowing truth, you know, like I knew something was not right, knew something wasn't the truth. There was a girl in high school that she was spreading a rumor about my family and about my dad and about me, calling me a Mafia princess. This went on for a while before I had had my full of her. And there were only a few times in my life where I raised my hands. I just said, you know, who the eff do you think you are? I wrap my hand around the back of her head. And I just took her head, and I hit her head against the sink in the bathroom, which created all this blood to come out of her nose and her lip.
And she fell on the floor her, and I just - I hit her again. And I says, don't you ever come here and talk about me or my family ever again. And I walked out. There was so many things that ran through me, and then all of a sudden, the adrenaline kicked in like, oh, my God. Could this be true? There was something inside of me that day that had to know at that point, you know, what this was, what was going on, what all the secrets, the lies, you know, the whispering, the - everything that was happening my whole life up until that time. I was 16 at that time. I got home. I took my bicycle, and I went to a good friend of the family. And I begged them to help me. I had blood on my hands from the girl when I hit her. I was hysterical, and she said to me sit down. And she said, you know who your father is, right? And I said no, but I want you to tell me exactly who he is and what's happening. What's going on? She said your father is the boss of the Genovese crime family. And I took a deep breath, and she said and that's not it. She said he's also the head of the Five Families. The Lucchese, the Genovese, the Bonanno, the Colombo and John Gotti was from Gambino. Nobody could make a move without asking my dad permission for anything. Meaning - say they wanted to do - let's just give an example - if they wanted to put a hit on somebody.
Nobody can do that unless they ask my dad permission. At some point, my ears shut down because I couldn't hear another word that she was saying because at that moment, all the pieces of the puzzle for my past that I didn't understand, all of those pieces of the puzzle snapped into place for me. I was really baffled at my dad being this powerful because when I saw him, he was in a robe, a pair of slippers and, you know, this was - this was my experience of him. I didn't see him wielding all this power. I said to her, well, what's this whole thing about, you know, my dad having paranoid schizophrenia? And she goes, no, that's just a ruse so that the government thinks that he's sick and that he couldn't possibly be running that family, running the Genovese crime family.
And I said, oh, OK. I go home, I'm numb. I'm really numb. You know, my mother knows something's wrong, and I just said I'm going to my room. And I don't even know how many hours I slept just from being depleted from the whole day. And then she realized that I knew. And, you know, she sat me down, but it was more of a sit me down and just reiterate - you can't tell anybody anything. If anybody asks, your father's sick. There was no kind of explanation 'cause mom didn't really have an explanation 'cause mom only knew so much.
SUSSMAN: Her dad was Vincent Gigante. A man The New York Times said ruled the Genovese crime family with impenetrable secrecy. The Genovese soldiers and associates were forbidden to utter his name or his nickname in conversations or even in phone calls.
GIGANTE: It's kind of a known thing in that dynamic, you don't talk about the business or anything having to do with the business. This was not something we sat at the dinner table and talked about. I don't think anybody thinks of their father as actually committing a crime or actually telling somebody to commit a crime. So yeah, I was definitely having an issue with - was struggling with the fact that he could do that and yet be this loving father at the same time. Once I knew about it and kind of digested it a bit, I kind of became part of the role-playing. And so I became one of the actors in this grand scheme. My dad would say to me come on, let's walk. I'd say OK. Tussle the hair, put the hood up, the robe was on, and underneath that he has his pajamas and he wore the slippers. And he says come on, walk me.
And so I would be like, oh, my God, like, devastated that I had to go out into the world, you know, with this. So I would be holding his arm, he'd whisper to me, you know, hold me up, like, make like you're holding me up kind of thing. And he'd walk disheveled. He would stop and he would mumble under his breath. I'd have my head down rolling my eyes like, oh, God, please can we get this over with kind of thing. But there was also the protection that he was my father and, you know, I wanted to protect him from others who either made fun or whatever. So many emotions going on in that moment. It was not an easy task.
SUSSMAN: In the neighborhood, Vincent Gigante was called "The Oddfather" or "The Enigma." And as his playacting became an almost 24-hour gig, the lines between performance and reality blurred.
GIGANTE: When you've played that role so many times, there is a definitely, you know, a piece of paranoia that has to come with that. Not schizophrenia, but there is definitely a piece of paranoia that has to come with that where you go yeah, he's looking over his shoulder for his whole life. When he felt like the government was getting too close, he would check himself into a mental hospital and he'd stay for about three weeks. We'd have to go and visit, to have to walk into one of those places and go to the third floor, which is where, you know, the real sickly people were. These were the people who had paranoid schizophrenia. I was enraged about that piece because I - you know, you walk up in this place and you have people groping at you and saying things and you see the struggle.
I'd think to myself, you don't have any of this. How could you, you know - how could you make a mockery of this? This is not right. This is not, you know - not right. There was a definite pull on both ends. You know, it's like that little devil on one shoulder and the little angel on the other telling you two separate things. And deep down, I knew what was right, but also knew that I loved my father. It was like, how could you put your kids through this? How dare you ask us to perform in this way of life. And yet, this became the normal way of life for all of us and for him.
SUSSMAN: There were certain benefits, some privileges that Rita enjoyed being the daughter of a mob boss.
GIGANTE: I think what I enjoyed was I felt safe in the respect that nobody could hurt us, but then there was this feeling of, well, yeah, somebody can hurt us because the government could come at any time.
SUSSMAN: And they did come. After years of extensive surveillance by the FBI, Vincent Gigante was arrested.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVAL RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: These charges represent the government's continuing effort to dismantle the Genovese crime family from top to bottom, and to rid this city...
GIGANTE: When I was in my 30's, my dad was brought to court for a multitude of things between racketeering and money laundering and attempted murder. Even when dad was in court, he was still trying to kind of keep up the act of being mentally ill. He came in with a robe and slippers, and we were all sitting together. All his children were sitting together in the seats behind him in the courtroom. And when they wheeled him around, he looked at all of us and he smiled at us as if to say, you know, I see you. I love you. I'm OK, kind of thing. It was heartbreaking in a way. He broke character at that moment 'cause he smiled and, you know, it was like he was lucid and he knew.
And you could tell, which was, in a way, nice to see because you saw that human side of him again. I don't remember my dad ever feeling free, feeling like, ah, like he could take a deep breath. I think that's what made me sad for him the most. All I could do was hope that he would want to free himself by speaking his own truth for his whole family.
SUSSMAN: Gigante was convicted and sentenced in his trial.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS REPORT)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: The extended biological family of Vincent Gigante brushed past reporters.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Excuse me.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Barbara, I'll talk to you soon just not right now.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: In the Brooklyn federal courthouse, minutes earlier, 69-year-old Vincent Gigante in a dark jacket and shirt, white stubble on his cheeks seemed confused. Judge Jack Weinstein sentenced him to 12 years in prison and fined him more than a million dollars for labor extortion and conspiring to kill John Gotti and another mobster.
SUSSMAN: Even after Vincent Gigante was behind bars, federal prosecutors weren't satisfied. They wanted him to admit that the whole mental illness thing was a ruse. So they played hardball and they went after his family.
GIGANTE: And so the only way they knew he would come clean is if he thought that, you know, they were coming after us.
SUSSMAN: Gigante's choice was laid out before him - confess or your family is charged too.
GIGANTE: The threat was they would come after us with obstruction of justice on the grounds that we aided and abetted in his little scheme. So he finally came clean. Dad finally came clean realizing that he didn't want the family to be antagonized in any way. He finally knew it was time for him to speak the truth, which was huge.
SUSSMAN: When he was 75 years old, Vincent Gigante pled guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting that he had run a con on the legal system for years.
GIGANTE: That's not something Dad would've ever, ever done in a million years. Based on that code of ethics, you just go to your grave with this kind of stuff. He didn't have to, but he did. It was like 10,000 pounds was lifted off of me. This was like an albatross that was hanging around everybody's neck. Dad was tired. He was tired. I really feel like he even willed himself to pass because he knew this was done. Once he admitted it, it was like, OK, I can rest now.
SUSSMAN: Only a year and a half after his confession, Vincent Gigante died in prison.
GIGANTE: If you think about it, my dad even though he wasn't in jail for 30-some-odd years, he was really in jail. He didn't have a life. It was like living in jail within himself without having the bars in front of him. Seventy-seven years, I mean, enough is enough, right? I don't know how he did it that long. I really don't know how he did it that long.
WASHINGTON: Big thanks to Rita Gigante for sharing her story with SNAP. We'll have more information at snapjudgment.org. That piece, it was produced by Anna Sussman with sound design by Renzo Gorrio.


Mob bust hits family that inspired 'The Sopranos'

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sopranos-tv-mob-family-hbo
The DeCavalcante crime family has been said to be the real-life inspiration for characters in "The Sopranos.” Pictured are cast members of the hit TV drama from HBO. (Abbot Genser | AP)
Thomas Zambito
NEWARK — The criminal complaint reads more like a script rejected by the writers of "The Sopranos."
A 71-year-old capo in a New Jersey crime family nurses a simmering grudge with a rival and plots to kill him by enlisting the help of outlaw bikers, the complaint says.
When not plotting murder, the aging capo counsels his 33-year-old son on the ins and outs of running a prostitution business, including some wisdom about the evils of greed, it adds.
"The bulls and the bears, Anthony, they survive," the father tells the son according to the complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court. "The pigs they get slaughtered. Ok? Always go for a bologna sandwich. Ok? You know?....If you got five bologna sandwiches, you're eating pretty good."
New Jersey federal prosecutors say it's no "Sopranos" script but the real-life inner workings of the DeCavalcante crime family, captured by an undercover law enforcement agent who recorded his conversations.
Ten members and associates of the DeCavalcante family were arrested yesterday on federal charges that include plots to kill a New Jersey man, distribute drugs and run a prostitution business.
Several of the defendants appeared in U.S. District Court yesterday and were ordered held until at least Tuesday when U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Falk will hold bail hearings for each.
Federal prosecutors say the arrests are a signal that organized crime lives on in New Jersey.
"Though its ranks have been thinned by countless convictions and its own internal bloodletting, traditional organized crime remains a real problem," New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said.
"The FBI is confident this is a severe blow to the La Cosa Nostra family," added Richard Frankel, the head of the FBI's Newark office.
The DeCavalcante crime family has been said to be the real-life inspiration for characters in "The Sopranos."
The case against the ten men was made by an unidentified undercover law enforcement agent who prosecutors say managed to infiltrate the organized crime family in September 2012 by gaining the confidence of Charles Stango, the alleged 71-year-old capo or captain, in the crime family, who lives in Nevada.
It's a tactic the FBI has used successfully in the past, most notably through Special Agent Joseph Pistone's infiltration of the Bonanno crime family, which inspired the movie "Donnie Brasco."
Over the course of several months, the agent recorded conversations with several members of the DeCavalcante family - men with nicknames like "Beeps,""Knuckles" and "Johnny Balls," the complaint says.
In an October 2014 conversation, Stango revealed that the DeCavalcantes - who organized crime family boss John Gotti is said to have referred to as "our farm team" - was now under control of the Gambino crime family, according to the complaint.
"And now we run under the (expletive) Gambinos," Stango told the agent, according to the complaint.
"I didn't know that," the agent says.
Later, the agent uses a reference that seems to escape Stango when discussing how upper-level members of the crime family settle disputes, the complaint notes.
"If there's a problem they act like Switzerland? Right?," the agent says.
"You have to be smart, very smart, you can't just do something that everyone else is doing. Ok?"
"Switzerland?," Stango responds.
"You know like neutral, like a neutral party," the agent replies.
And, over the course of several months, Stango lays out his desire to kill an unnamed rival in conversations, according to the complaint.
The dispute with the rival centered on a decision by another DeCavalcante capo to make the man a made member of the family, the complaint says.
On Dec. 15, 2014, Stango expresses his desire to have the man killed, the complaint says.
"During that meeting, which was recorded, Stango against insisted that (the victim) be killed or maimed by the (agent) or by someone on his behalf," the complaints says.
Stango suggested the agent use a crew from outside the Elizabeth area to avoid detection, the complaint says.
The FBI also intercepted cell phone calls Stango allegedly had with other members of the crime family, the complaint adds.
During a Feb. 1, 2015, meeting between the agent and Stango in Las Vegas they discuss a plan to hire two bikers to kill the rival, the complaint adds.
"Stango agreed and suggested that they pay each of the two men $25,000 to allow them to stay in the Elizabeth, N.J. area for a period of time to be able to scout the area where the killing would occur," according to the complaint filed by prosecutors.
On Monday, the agent and Stango discussed the shooting plot again, the complaint says.
"The (agent) then told Stango that he was looking for one more thing with the 'wheel' (referring to a revolver-type handgun) because they wanted two. One each," the complaint says.
The agent told Stango that once he had the additional weapons "they'll be ready," the complaint says.
"Alright," Stango said, according to the complaint.
Prosecutors say Stango also conspired with his son, Anthony, 33, to set up a high-end escort service that would target white-collar businessmen and professionals in the Toms River area.
On Feb. 14, 2015, father and son discussed the business venture, with Stango offering his advice, according to the complaint. The conversation was recorded by law enforcement.
"You need to protect yourself with what you're doing now," Charles Stango told his son, according to the court records. "You have to be smart, very smart, you can't just do something that everyone else is doing. Ok?."
Also arrested today were the family's alleged counsel Frank Nigro, 72, and Paul Colella, 68, both of Toms River. They are charged along with Charles Stango in the alleged plot to kill a rival.
Anthony Stango is accused of plotting to distribute cocaine and run a prostitution business.

Thomas Zambito may be reached at tzambito@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomZambito. Find NJ.com on Facebook.


Rockland Man Admits Role as Capo in Genovese Crime Family

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Danny Pagano pleaded guilty to racketeering today in federal court.
By Lanning Taliaferro (Patch Staff) March 12, 2015 at 12:28pm

Rockland County resident Daniel Pagano pleaded guilty today to participating in a racketeering conspiracy.
“Danny Pagano, a capo in the Genovese Crime family, has now admitted to being a leader in a racketeering conspiracy that spanned nearly five years,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “Today’s plea demonstrates that La Cosa Nostra is not a thing of the past or a relic of movie myth. Our efforts with our law enforcement partners are aimed at making it so.”
Pagano and fellow Rockland County resident Michael Palazzolo, whom federal officials termed an associate of the Genovese Crime Family, were charged in August 2014 with participating in a racketeering conspiracy by, among other crimes, committing extortion and loan sharking and operating an illegal gambling business.
At the time, Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said: “While this case was initiated in Rockland County though our Regional Investigative Resource Center, Organized Crime Unit, it quickly became apparent that the activity of these individuals impacted the metropolitan area. This is another example of how inter agency cooperation is instrumental to success and an analysis of the facts made it clear that these charges are best suited for Federal prosecution. With the arrests of Mr. Pagano and Mr. Palazzolo, both long time county residents with a long, documented history of organized criminal activity, law enforcement has dealt a significant blow to the Genovese Crime Family.”
Here’s today’s full statement:
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today the guilty plea of DANIEL PAGANO, a Captain of the Genovese Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra (the “Genovese Crime Family”).
PAGANO pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams to participating in a racketeering conspiracy. As part of his plea, PAGANO admitted to being a leader of the criminal enterprise. PAGANO is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Abrams on July 10, 2015.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Danny Pagano, a capo in the Genovese Crime family, has now admitted to being a leader in a racketeering conspiracy that spanned nearly five years. Today’s plea demonstrates that La Cosa Nostra is not a thing of the past or a relic of movie myth. Our efforts with our law enforcement partners are aimed at making it so.”
According to the Indictment, the plea agreement, and statements made during the plea proceeding:
The Genovese Crime Family is part of a nationwide criminal organization known by various names, including the “Mafia” and “La Cosa Nostra” (“LCN”), which operates through entities known as “Families.” The Genovese Crime Family operates through groups of individuals known as “crews” and “regimes,” most of which are based in New York City. Each “crew” has as its leader a person known as a “Caporegime,” “Capo,” “Captain,” or “Skipper,” who is responsible for supervising the criminal activities of his crew and providing “Soldiers” and associates with support and protection. In return, the Capo typically receives a share of the illegal earnings of each of his crew’s Soldiers and associates, which is sometimes referred to as ?tribute.? DANIEL PAGANO is a Caporegime or Captain in the Genovese Crime Family.
Each crew consists of “made” members, sometimes known as “Soldiers,” “wiseguys,” “friends of ours,” and “good fellows.” Soldiers are aided in their criminal endeavors by other trusted individuals, known as “associates,” who sometimes are referred to as “connected” or identified as “with” a Soldier or other member of the Family. Associates participate in the various activities of the crew and its members. In order for an associate to become a made member of the Family, the associate must first be of Italian descent and typically needed to demonstrate the ability to generate income for the Family and/or the willingness to commit acts of violence.
From 2009 through August 2014, PAGANO, along with other members and associates of the Genovese Crime Family, committed a wide array of crimes including operating an illegal gambling business. PAGANO, a Captain, exercised a leadership role within the Family by, among other things, settling disputes between and among associates of the Family.
*PAGANO, 61, of Rockland County, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The maximum potential sentence in this case is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge.
Mr. Bharara thanked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), and the New York State Police.
This investigation was a result of the Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force Program, and it combined the resources and expertise of its member federal agencies in cooperation with local law enforcement. The investigation was conducted by the FBI-NYPD Joint Organized Crime Task Force.The prosecution is being handled by the Office’s Violent and Organized Crime Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Jennifer Burns, Abigail Kurland, and Rahul Mukhi are in charge of the prosecution.




No Extra Time For Rapist Who Fled; State Tightens Up GPS-Monitoring Protocol

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MILFORD — Dardian Celaj, the Albanian national and six-time convicted felon who skipped out on sentencing last August for a 2012 rape at a Derby nightclub, did not pick up any additional prison time Thursday when he was sentenced in Superior Court for failing to appear at the sentencing.
Judge Frank A. Iannotti on Thursday handed down a four-year prison sentence to Celaj to run concurrently with the 14-year sentence Celaj received in September for the sexual assault of an employee at his nightclub, Club Europa, after it closed for the night on March 2, 2012.
Under a plea deal worked out last year, Celaj, 38, had faced up to eight years in prison, but he fled, despite court-ordered, round-the-clock GPS monitoring. Iannotti warned Celaj when he took the plea last April that the deal would be withdrawn if he skipped the Aug. 1 sentencing. Celaj also failed to show up in court in August for an unrelated arrest in Seymour, prompting a nearly month-long search for him.
State officials investigated how they lost track of Celaj, and the probe resulted in changes in how violations of GPS monitoring are reported by the state's GPS 24-hour monitoring service.
"We had a good process in place before this, but it wasn't followed to the T, so we made some modifications to try and tighten it up," said Gary Roberge, director of adult probation and bail services in the court support services division.
Roberge said probation officers are now notified by the 24-hour monitoring center about all — not just the most serious — GPS violations via text. If a text is not responded to by a primary officer, the center will then notify a secondary officer. If the secondary officer does not respond, then a supervisor is notified.
State officials also are now doing monthly reviews of how officers responded to notifications about GPS violations, Roberge said.
Officers are also now working with victim advocates in the state to notify victims about GPS monitoring violations, he said.
Federal authorities found Celaj hiding out in Naugatuck on Aug. 28, 2014, nearly a month after he failed to show up at sentencing. Celaj was supposed to be monitored with a GPS ankle bracelet until being sentenced, but he managed to remove the device.
State prosecutors were so concerned about Celaj's criminal record — federal prosecutors charged that he took part years ago in violent home invasions that they said were tied to New York's Genovese crime family — that they pushed multiple times in 2012 and again this past April for deportation proceedings for him.
Celaj took a plea deal shortly after the case went to trial. The victim testified at trial that Celaj pulled her by her hair and sexually assaulted her while she begged him to stop. The victim escaped after Celaj, who was drunk, passed out.
Celaj pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree sexual assault in the middle of the victim's testimony. He entered the plea under the Alford doctrine, meaning that he did not admit guilt but conceded that there was probably enough evidence to convict him at trial.
Stephan E. Seeger, Celaj's attorney, said Thursday that Celaj plans to appeal.
Celaj was sentenced in federal court in 2011 to time served after pleading guilty to robbery and firearms charges. A grand jury indictment handed up in the Southern District of New York charged Celaj with committing armed home invasions in Orange County, N.Y., and Morris County, N.J.
According to the 2007 federal indictment, Celaj and other men were hired by the Genovese family to break into the homes of wealthy residents and steal money and valuables.
In the New Jersey home invasion, the men broke into the victim's home and tied up the victim, the victim's wife and the victim's housekeeper. The victim was pistol-whipped before the men escaped with "several hundred thousand dollars" worth of cash, collectible coins, jewelry and guns, according to a Sept. 17, 2008, press release from federal prosecutors in New York.
A portion of the proceeds was given to Genovese family captain, or "capo," Angelo Prisco as a "tribute," the press release said.


FBI announces 10 New Jersey mafia arrests

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Associated Press 1:49 p.m. EDT March 12, 2015

The FBI says it has arrested 10 members and associates of an organized crime family
NEWARK — Federal prosecutors have announced the arrest of 10 members and associates of the DeCavalcante organized crime family in New Jersey.
They're listed with nicknames like "Knuckles" and "Whitey" and they're accused of plotting to commit murder, distribute drugs and promote prostitution.
The suspects include reputed captain 71-year-old Charles Stango, of Henderson, Nevada, and 72-year-old Frank Nigro, of Toms River, a reputed consigliere, or adviser. The criminal complaint alleges the DeCavalcante family operates under the direction of New York's Gambino crime family. The DeCavalcantes have long been thought to be the real-life inspiration for HBO's "Sopranos."
Prosecutors allege Stango sought and obtained permission from Nigro to kill a family member in New Jersey. Authorities say Stango discussed his plans with an undercover agent, telling him that the man had insulted an acting boss of the family and was "out of control."
The intended victim "had to meet death or you gotta maim him or you just gotta put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life," Stango allegedly told the agent.
Prosecutors claim Stango and his son, Anthony, also planned to operate a high-end escort service in the Toms River area.
Some suspects are due in federal court Thursday afternoon in Newark. Stango is due to appear in a Las Vegas courtroom.



Rome restaurants accused of funding mob closed in anti-mafia swoop

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By: Angus Mackinnon, Agence France-Presse
March 13, 2015 3:41 AM

InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
ROME - Thousands of visitors to Rome have been unwittingly pouring cash into the pockets of a ruthless mafia organization by dining at two of the city's best-known tourist restaurants, Italian police said Thursday.
Authorities on Thursday closed down the two eateries near the Pantheon in the heart of Rome's historic center, saying they were run by the 'Ndrangheta, a notorious criminal syndicate that controls much of Europe's cocaine trade.
The national anti-mafia unit said the two restaurants, La Rotonda and Er Faciolaro, were controlled by alleged mobster Salvatore Lania and used to launder millions of euros generated by what is now Italy's most powerful criminal organization.
Separately, financial police in Calabria, 'Ndrangheta's homeland, issued warrants for the arrest of 11 people and revealed that one of the biggest shopping centers in southern Italy had been built and run by the mafia group.
A 210-million euro real estate development linked to the Annunziata center in the southern port of Gioia Tauro was sequestered.
In a statement, police said Alfonso Annunziata, the developer who built the center, had acted for nearly three decades as a front man for the Piromalli, a powerful "family" or clan of the 'Ndrangheta based in the port.
Annunziata was among those arrested on charges of criminal association, along with his wife and five children.
Police said he been caught out by wiretaps of him regaling his accountant with the story of his unlikely rise from travelling salesman who had to pay extortion money to being a wealthy businessman who extorted cash from others in connivance with his mafia masters.
Friendly and funny
Lania was charged with fraudulently registering the Rome restaurants and a nearby souvenir shop as belonging to other people when he was, in fact, the beneficial owner.
A recent study by Coldiretti, the body which represents Italian farmers, estimated that at least 5,000 restaurants, bars and other eating places across Italy are in the hands of organized crime.
Anyone eating at either of the two Rome restaurants would have had no idea that they were run by the mob.
Both offer typically Roman dishes and wood-fired pizzas. A recent review of La Rotonda on Tripadvisor notes: "Service was excellent and staff very friendly and funny."
The anti-mafia unit said evidence of Lania's involvement with 'Ndrangheta had emerged as a result of their investigation into the so-called Alvaro clan's activities in Rome.
They suspect he was involved in the gang's smuggling of counterfeit goods made in China into Europe through Gioia Tauro with the support of the Piromalli family.
'Ndrangheta has emerged as the most powerful of Italy's mafia groups, earning billions from importing cocaine produced in Latin America into Europe via north Africa and southern Italy.
Mafia entrepreneurs
Recent arrests have confirmed the secretive group's expansion beyond Calabria to both Rome and northern Italy, but it has also suffered setbacks.
In January, Italian authorities ordered the arrest of 160 alleged members and claimed to have dismantled several of its "mafia entrepreneur" networks in northern cities.
That followed the arrest of dozens of alleged mobsters linked to the group in Milan in November - an operation which uncovered secretly-filmed footage of 'Ndrangheta's initiation rites.
The quasi-religious ceremony involves would-be members swearing allegiance to their "wise brothers" before taking an "oath of poison" which requires them to kill themselves should they ever betray fellow clan members.
The 'Ndrangheta is not the only problem Rome faces with organized crime.

More than 100 people, including former mayor Gianni Alemanno and prominent business figures, are currently under investigation in a probe into a criminal network suspected of skimming millions from city funds for years.

Mafia thrives on Italy's legalized gambling addiction

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BY STEVE SCHERER
 (Reuters) - Legalizing gambling in Italy was supposed to help curb the mafia. Unfortunately, prosecutors say, it has only created new opportunities for the mob.
Cash-strapped Italian governments desperate for revenue have relaxed the rules on betting over the past two decades, to the point that Italians now wager $80 billion euros ($86 billion) a year - nearly equal to 5 percent of gross domestic product.
About half of that is poured into 400,000 video slot machines, twice as many as in U.S. gambling capital Nevada, which have become ubiquitous in the espresso bars where Italians stop several times a day for coffee, sandwiches and cocktails.
One of the arguments in favor of legalization was that it would help fight organized crime by bringing a mafia-run underground industry into the open. But crime fighters say it has instead provided the perfect cash-only business for mobsters, always on the lookout for legal ways to earn and launder money.
"Criminal clans earn a robust profit" from their "very diffuse" investments in legal gambling, says Diana De Martino, a magistrate at the national anti-mafia prosecutors' office.
Prosecutors say crime groups that used to invest and hide their drug or racketeering profits in agriculture or trucking are now turning to more profitable legalized gambling.
The national reach of slot machines also helps the mafia spread from traditional strongholds in Italy's poor south to the richer north, causing wider damage to an economy that has been stagnant for 15 years and is now in recession.
In one high-profile case in Milan, Italy's northern financial capital, a court convicted 13 people of extortion, loansharking, money laundering and being members of a mafia clan. Family patriarch Francesco Valle, who had relocated to Milan from Calabria in the south, and his son Fortunato were given the longest sentences of 24 years.
The court found that the Valles had run a traditional loansharking ring, threatening and beating businessmen who had borrowed money and fallen behind on payments, often taking over their debtors' real estate holdings and businesses.
Among the millions of euros in assets the group had accumulated in Milan was a legal gambling business, which included more than 1,000 slot machines.
"They started out with a few (slot) machines in three or four bars. In the space of three or four years they had created an empire," De Martino said.
The defendants have admitted some of the crimes, including usury, although they deny being members of an organized crime ring and are appealing the conviction.
"The defense argument has always been that we are not a mafia association," Amedeo Rizza, lawyer for Francesco Valle, told Reuters.
EXCESSIVE SUPPLY
Proponents of the industry say that even if the mob has infiltrated it, keeping gambling legal still reduces opportunities for criminals.
"Prohibition creates a bigger criminal market, not a smaller one," said Massimo Passamonti, president of Italy's main gambling lobby.
Legalization has also created jobs: some 25,000 people are directly employed in gambling, with another 100,000 in related activities, Passamonti said. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that rapid growth had made the industry harder to defend.
"We realized the excessive supply (of slot machines) was having a negative impact on society and could turn everyone against us," Passamonti said.
The swift proliferation of slot machines has brought a backlash from opponents, who argue that betting inflicts social costs, mainly on the poor.
Simone Feder, a psychologist, helped found an anti-gambling movement called the "No Slot Movement". He says that of Italy's 15 million regular gamblers, 800,000 are addicts. Many have lost their life savings, homes and families.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government is weighing new restrictions which it says will reduce the number of slot machines by around a quarter.
According to a draft of new rules, slot machines would be banned in small coffee bars, while venues with a large number of machines would have to put them in a separate room.
"I have met many in the industry who are aware of the fact that in Italy there are too many opportunities to gamble and so there is a widespread need to rein it in order to safeguard public health," said Paolo Baretta, the government undersecretary in charge of drafting a new law.
Regulated slot machines are required to pay out 75 percent of their revenue over time in winnings. Of the remaining 25 percent, the state claims slightly more than half in taxes, leaving operators with the rest to cover costs and profit.
According to Filippo D'Albore, a major in Italy's financial police, slot machines can be rigged: they can be disconnected from the central server that monitors them, and fixed to pay out less than they should or hide revenue from taxes.
De Martino, the prosecutor, said those found guilty of misreporting slot machine transactions are usually fined rather than jailed, reducing the risk.
Although there are no official estimates for tax evasion in the gambling industry, a pressure group called the National Anti-usury Council calculates that slot machine operators evaded as much tax as the entire gambling industry paid in 2012.
(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Alessandra Galloni and Peter Graff)


Sicilian Mafia now outgunned by Calabria's cocaine-trading mobsters 'Ndrangheta

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Italian organised crime is also spreading abroad with ’Ndrangheta now active in Germany, France and Spain

Michael Day  
The shadowy Calabrian crime syndicate ’Ndrangheta has beaten the Sicilian Mafia for control of organised crime in northern Italy, the country’s most senior anti-Mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti has said.
The Calabrian Mafia, which has risen to prominence through its control of Europe’s cocaine trade, is now laundering its millions and integrating successfully into northern Italy’s economy. It is aided by the country’s ambiguous attitude to corruption, Mr Roberti said at the launch of the annual report of the National Anti-Mafia Directorate.
He said the dominance of the ’Ndrangheta in Milan and Lombardy, Italy’s richest city and region respectively, had “come at the expense of Cosa Nostra”. He added that ’Ndrangheta members living in the north for many generations had gradually acquired a full knowledge of the area by “cementing relations with local communities and prioritising contacts with local politicians and institutions”. Victims of ’Ndrangheta rackets in northern Italy were often too afraid to talk to police or magistrates.
But Milan, Italy’s finance capital, is not the only northern city to be heavily infiltrated by the Calabrian mob. Mr Roberti noted that in Bologna ’Ndrangheta had established “a criminal power network whose expansion has exceeded the worst predictions”.
Last month, more than 100 people were arrested in the region of Emilia Romagna, of which Bologna is the capital, including six suspected ’Ndrangheta bosses, serving police officers, a prominent local politician and several businessmen. ’Ndrangheta had spent decades infiltrating Emilia Romagna, Bologna’s chief prosecutor Roberto Alfonso told reporters.
Italian organised crime is also spreading abroad. In November last year, Paola Severino, the former Justice Minister, said mob clans originally from Sicily, Naples and Calabria were infiltrating the north of Italy and other EU economies – as ’Ndrangheta already had in Germany. Figures detailing Mafia activity around Europe, presented to the European Commission last year by the Italian government, showed that ’Ndrangheta was also active in France and Spain.
 But the UK is not immune. The figures suggested that outside Italy, only Spain and Holland had experienced more activity by the Camorra, the Naples-based Mafia. There were up to 20 Camorra-related incidents in Britain cited by Italian police between 2000 and 2011. But Mr Roberti said one of the keys to ’Ndrangheta’s power and wealth remained its “all-encompassing control” of the port of Gioia Tauro, which had become “the true gateway for cocaine in Italy”.
The prosecutor also warned that Cosa Nostra had not been mortally wounded despite a series of high-profile arrests. He said the crime organisation was making strenuous efforts to rebuild its central command in Palermo.
A lax attitude to financial crime is helping them. “Corruption, including tax evasion, has never been fought effectively, it was tacitly accepted and was not considered a serious crime,” Mr Roberti said.
Rosy Bindi, the head of the parliamentary anti-Mafia commission, agreed.
“The fight against corruption is also the fight against the Mafia and we’re paying the price for a system that’s too relaxed,” she said.
Experts say Mafia groups were helped in 2002 by Silvio Berlusconi’s move to partially decriminalise false accounting. Matteo Renzi’s government is seeking to overturn the Berlusconi legislation.



Bodega BAMZ – Billy Bats

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by Mark Ward 1w ago

As Bodega Bamz prepares for the April 14th release of his Street Exec project, plus the release of the short film The Streets Owe Me, the Tanboy drops off a new banger produced by V’Don.
William ‘Billy Batts’ Devino was a made member of the Gambino Family. After spending six years in prison he was killed by Tommy DeSimone and Jimmy Burke in 1970.
Little is known about his early life. He was born William Paul DeVino in Brooklyn, New York and was described as a long time friend of John Gotti. In 1959 he became an associate of the Gambino crime family and became a made member in 1961. Batts met Jimmy Burke in 1962 and was on friendly terms with him. In 1964, he went to Connecticut to complete a drug deal but upon arrival he was arrested by undercover police for possession and exchange of narcotics and was sentenced to 6 years in State Prison.
On June 9, 1970, he was released from prison and two days later, while celebrating his release at a club called The Suite in Queens. There Batts ran into Tommy DeSimone. He had not seen him since he was in his early teens. Batts remembered that Tommy used to shine shoes, and made a remark to that effect, which Tommy took as an insult. Tommy held his anger in check. He was at the lounge with his sister Dolores.
Despite the common belief, perpetuated by the movie Goodfellas, that Batts was murdered for insulting DeSimone by making fun of Tommy’s former job as a shoe-shine boy, culminating with the famous line “Now go home and get your fuckin’ shine box,” the real reason was that during Batts’ six years in prison, Burke had taken over his money-lending business and so Burke needed to have him out of the way. According to Hill, Batts was ‘squawking’ to Joseph Gallo, consigliere of the Gambinos, about getting his enterprises back off Burke. Henry said he would whine ‘I own this’. Hill also said that Batts pushed it in Hill’s bar because he was around un-made men from another family and he wanted to push his authority into people’s faces. He was too drunk to be able to fend off anybody on the night they whacked him out (or at least thought that they did).
Two weeks later Batts was drinking at Henry Hill’s bar, The Suite (popular hangout for Gambino and Lucchese members), in Queens New York. Henry thought Batts might leave, because it was getting late, when Tommy walked in. However, Henry didn’t want a murder in his own bar, but he knew he couldn’t control a sociopath like Tommy DeSimone. Tommy saw Batts, who was so drunk that Hill said he couldn’t have fended off an old lady. Burke placed his hand loosely around Batts’ neck, suddenly Batts saw Tommy and Burke proceeded to put Batts in a headlock. Tommy then began beating Billy with a .38 revolver. Hill ushered out Alex Corcione, a member of Burke’s crew, so that he was not mixed up in the murder. Hill was scared that Corcione might tell Paul Vario or the Gambinos. They then laid him onto a mattress cover Tommy had brought in and pulled around Hill’s car. They loaded Batts into the mattress cover, which in turn they loaded into the trunk and Tommy drove off.
Once they had set off, Tommy hit a van on the Van Wyck Expressway and Burke yelled at him, because if the police had stopped the car and found Batts in the trunk they would all have been in serious trouble. As Burke was yelling and screaming at Tommy they heard a thudding, they realised Batts was alive.
They decided that it was best to stop off at a nearby location to collect a knife, some lime and a shovel. So they stopped at DeSimone’s mother’s house. She made them drink coffee, chat and have some breakfast while they had a semi-dead body in the trunk of Hill’s car. Once at Ralph Atlas’, a friend of Burke’s, property in Connecticut they warily opened up the trunk of the car. Hill said how Tommy was absolutely enraged, Hill stood on one side of the trunk, Burke on the other and DeSimone opened it up. Tommy began by beating the plastic mattress cover and Burke beat it with a shovel. They finally buried him in a makeshift dog kennel on Ralph Atlas’ property.
Six months later, bookmaker Ralph Atlas was joking around with Burke and he revealed that he was going to be rich from some development of his land. Burke came up to Hill in The Suite and made him and Tommy go and put Batts in Hill’s brand new, yellow Pontiac Catalina. They then put Batts’ half-decomposed corpse in the trunk and took it to a junkyard in New Jersey, enough time had passed for no-one to realise it was Billy.
Unfortunately, Henry Hill has told various versions of the night Batts was killed, including burial in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, but most recently he’s said Batts was buried in Connecticut and in Wiseguy he said the body was crushed at a junkyard. Yet during his period as an informant he led the FBI to believe Batts was buried in the original place because they dug up the area in search of Billy.
It is believed that Tommy DeSimone was murdered on January 14, 1979, partly as revenge for his part in Batts’ murder – Batts was a made man, and therefore “untouchable.”


Mafia underboss serving life will continue fight for shorter sentence

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NJ Advance Media for NJ.com By  Seth Augenstein

A  Lucchese Crime Family underboss who lost his appeal in a federal court last week plans to appeal again to the same judges -- and could even take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said his attorney.
Martin Taccetta, 63, will seek another hearing in front of the same Third Circuit judges who upheld his life sentence last week, said John Vincent Saykanic, his attorney.
The legal turn is the latest in a decades-long back-and-forth between the Lucchese underboss and prosecutors. Taccetta was convicted in 1993 of racketeering.
The case against him was spurred by the golf club beating death of Ocean County businessman Vincent "Jimmy Sinatra" Craparotta in 1984. Taccetta denying having any part of the murder, and was found not guilty.
Taccetta was let out of state prison in 2005, based on his arguments that his lawyer gave him bad advice about how long a racketeering sentence could be. The New Jersey Supreme Court disagreed in 2009, and put Taccetta back in New Jersey State Prison.
Taccetta's next move was to try to plead guilty to the homicide, which would have likely brought with it a shorter prison stay than the first-degree racketeering conviction.
The state Supreme Court, however, found that Taccetta made an offhand remark about being innocent in court in 2005, said Saykanic, the defense attorney. In so doing, Taccetta could not plead guilty to the original charges, Saykanic said.
"That's the whole case -- because he said that," said Saykanic, in an interview today.
The gist of the appeal is contending that New Jersey courts are depriving inmates of the ability to plead guilty, if they said they were innocent in court, and were going to perjure themselves.
"They're saying once you say you're innocent, you can't go back," said Saykanic in an interview today. "There's a very important policy at work here -- it affects the whole system of plea bargaining."
Taccetta, of East Hanover, was part of the longest trial in American history, according to reports of the time. The subject became a 1995 book called "The Boys from New Jersey," by former Star-Ledger reporter Robert Rudolph.
Seth Augenstein can be reached at saugenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SethAugenstein. Find NJ.com on Facebook.


Meanwhile, in Japan................

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Tokyo yakuza trial reveals the dark life of musician Aska
By Amy Takahashi on March 10, 2015
Last summer, Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested Masayoshi Yagyu, 64, and Takahiko Yasunari, 47, a member of the Sumiyoshi-kai organized crime group, for violating the Narcotics Control Law by selling 100 tablets of MDMA (also known as Ecstasy) to troubled musician Asaka for 500,000 yen.
The fourth hearing for Yasunari was held last Friday at the Tokyo District Court. Most interesting to evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai (March 10) was the cross-examination of Yagyu, who paints a very dark existence for the 57-year-old performer.
According to a deposition from Yagyu, who in a previous trial was handed a three-year prison term, Yasunari served as the “underground manager” for the illicit activities of Aska, with whom the gang member has been acquainted for 18 years.
“When Aska engaged in an affair with a woman, (Yasunari) served as the dummy check-in, check-out boy at the hotel,” says a reporter covering the trial. “In addition, he used the female manager of a fuzoku joint to broker deals for women for Aska.”
The defendant also served as his drug dealer.
“Aska got him to buy drugs from foreign dealers,” continues the reporter. “He was compensated between 300,000 and 500,000 yen each time.”
In September, the Tokyo District Court handed the singer, one half of the duo Chage and Aska, a suspended three-year prison sentence for possession and use of stimulant drugs.
Thus far, Yasunari has repeatedly denied the charges against him.
Nikkan Gendai believes that Aska, whose real name is Shigeaki Miyazaki, may appear as a witness in court for Yasunari’s fifth hearing, which is scheduled for March 19.
Over the course of the court proceedings for Aska, who was first arrested last May, he has not had much to say. That may change at the next hearing.
“With Yagyu having already testified that Yasunari got drugs for Aska from foreign dealers, he will not be able to evade (such an inquiry),” continues the reporter. ” It is a difficult situation.” (A.T.)
Source: “Furin kosaku ni fuzoku assen mo bakuro deguchi ga mienai ‘asuka saiban’ no yami,” Nikkan Gendai (March 10)

NPA: Fraud surpasses theft in yakuza crime cases for first time
By Tokyo Reporter

TOKYO (TR) – In what is being viewed as evidence of a change in tactics by organized crime groups, the number of arrests of gang members on charges of fraud surpassed that for theft for the first time last year, the National Police Agency announced on Thursday, reports the Mainichi Shimbun (March 12).
According to the NPA, 10.4 percent of the 22,495 arrests of gang members nationwide in 2014 were on charges of fraud. That percentage slightly exceeded the figure for theft (10.2 percent) for the first time since record-keeping began in 1946.
The number-one charge was related to violations of the Narcotics Control Law regarding use and possession of stimulant drugs (26.5 percent).
Of particular interest to the NPA is the increased participation by organized crime in what is referred to as “special fraud,” in which victims are conned in fake investment schemes. Arrests for special fraud totaled 689, an increase of 38 percent over 2013.
“With severe crackdowns on crime ongoing, there is a possibility that a shift is under way toward special fraud as a source of funds,” a representative of the NPA said.
The NPA also said that last year the total number of organized crime members decreased by 5,100 to 53,500, which represents the fifth consecutive year-on-year decline. The membership total is the lowest since the enactment of the Anti-Organized Crime Law in 1991.



Tokyo cops arrest ex-yakuza boss in assault of underling who fled gang
By Tokyo Reporter

TOKYO (TR) – For one now defunct organized crime group in Tokyo, breaking up was very hard to do — and it ended in multiple arrests.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Tuesday apprehended a former gang boss for beating and blackmailing an underling who had departed from the gang without proper consent, reports TBS News (March 11).
Police accused Akio Fujisaku, a 59-year-old former head of a gang affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, and six other male and female former members and associates of repeatedly assaulting the ex-gangster, 37, over a four-hour period on May 6 of last year.
Eight days later, the suspects are also alleged to have blackmailed the victim, who works in the real estate industry, out of five million yen.
Prior to the assault incident, the victim had left the gang without following its established rules. After the suspects set out to locate him, he was discovered at a hospital in Shinjuku Ward and subsequently transported by car back to the gang’s office in Taito Ward, where the alleged crimes took place.
The injuries of the victim required one week to heal.
All seven suspects have reportedly denied the allegations.
The group, which was not named, ceased operations in November, according to Jiji Press (March 10).



Tokyo cops arrest yakuza in Ebisu gang shooting
By Tokyo Reporter

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Thursday arrested three suspects, including one organized crime member, for involvement in a shooting incident in Shibuya Ward over one year ago, reports TBS News (March 5).
In December of 2013, police allege that Jun Kadomoto, a 51-year-old member of the Kyokuto-kai, part-time worker Atsuo Fujita, 52, and one other suspect destroyed the door at the entrance of a seventh-floor apartment in the Ebisu district by firing four rounds of ammunition from a pistol.
The suspects, who have been charged with violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law, have refused to comment on the allegations.
According to public broadcaster NHK (March 5), a resident of the apartment is 67-year-old former member of the Kyokuto-kai. Police believe that a dispute within the gang lead to the incident.
The suspects were identified following the examination of security camera footage taken from an area near the scene of the crime.


Tokyo cops arrest Yamaguchi-gumi member for 2012 shooting of rival gangster
By Tokyo Reporter

TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Tuesday arrested a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi organized crime group and three others for participation in the shooting of a rival gang member last year, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Jan. 29).
Officers from the anti-organized crime division took Keisuke Noguchi, 44, Norio Komatsutsuka, a 44-year-old former upper member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, and two others into custody on attempted murder charges for the shooting of a 30-year-old member of the Sumiyoshi-kai criminal syndicate in Kokubunji City, Tokyo.
On March 27, 2012, the Sumiyoshi-kai member received serious wounds in his leg and abdomen from two rounds fired from a pistol-wielding assailant on a road near JR Kokubunji Station.
Noguchi and one other suspect have reportedly denied the allegations, while Komatsutsuka and the fourth suspect have admitted involvement.
Officers are now investigating whether a dispute between the gangs led to the incident.

Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai offices raided over Tokyo shooting incidents
By Tokyo Reporter

TOKYO (TR) – Following three recent shooting incidents suspected to involve the Yamaguchi-gumi and Sumiyoshi-kai organized crime groups, Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Friday raided multiple offices of both gangs, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Dec. 28).
Officers from the anti-organized crime division searched 10 locations of the both yakuza groups, including premises in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward and Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, where the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters is located, on suspicion of violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law.
At around 5:50 a.m. on December 19, police received a phone call from regarding a shooting incident at an office of the Sumiyoshi-kai yakuza group in the Kichijoji area of Musashino City. Three bullet holes were later discovered at the building’s entrance and in the windshield of a car in a parking lot.
About six hours later, an officer from the Shinjuku Police Station found two bullet holes in the door of the second-floor entryway of an office used by affiliates of the Yamaguchi-gumi organized crime syndicate in the Kabukicho red-light district.
According to police, the events are related and go back to a dispute between members of the gangs in Kabukicho on December 10.
Investigators also believe that the shooting on December 17 of an 86-year-old male outside an office of the Sumiyoshi-kai in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture is also connected to the dispute. The victim suffered serious injuries to his hand and stomach. A bullet cartridge was found in the nearby area.

Gang infighting results in second yakuza shooting in Tokyo
By Kenji Nakano

On the evening of August 30, officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested Michio Yamamura, a 65-year-old member of the Sumiyoshi-kai organized crime group, for possessing a handgun and ammunition in Taito Ward’s Asakusa district.
Five hours before, an assailant had fired one shot into an office of the same gang that struck and wounded a 48-year-old boss in the left part of his chest.
Officers patrolling the area after the shooting spotted Yamamura walking in the street. During questioning, the weapon and ammunition were discovered. The suspect is also alleged to have bit the thigh of one officer.
This is the second shooting incident in Tokyo involving yakuza members within the last 10 days, and, reports Shukan Asahi Geino (Sept. 18), the motive appears to be bad blood within the gang.
“This particular Sumiyoshi-kai office was founded by the brother of film star Masaki Hamamoto,” says a journalist who covers organinzed crime. “It is well-known for being a traditional organization within the Sumiyoshi-kai.”
The magazine says that since the shooting took place inside the building neighbors remained unaware that anything had happened.
“All of a sudden, the front door swung open and there was a shot,” said the gang boss, whose injuries are not considered life threatening. “I don’t know who did it.”
A reporter for a local newspaper tells Shukan Asahi Geino that Yamamura is the prime suspect in the case.
“He is an executive who supports the chairman (of that Sumiyoshi-kai office),” says the reporter. “So he shot his boss, his own ‘flesh and blood.'”
An investigator says that the motive was a dispute over the gang’s organizational structure.
“At the beginning of the year, the chairman in place at the time passed away,” says the investigator. “He was replaced by the current chairman, who Yamamura might have thought was beneath him (in the rankings). So he thought he got leapfrogged.”
The incident followed a shooting involving gang members nine days before. On the morning of August 21, a quarrel erupted inside a coffee shop in the Nishi Koiwa district of Edogawa Ward among five customers, all of whom were believed to be members of the Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi. During the dispute, two gunshots were heard by employees of the shop.
Police arriving at the scene afterward discovered two shell casings and three bloodstains. Thus far, investigators do not believe there is a connection between the two incidents.
But the aforementioned investigator tells the magazine that precautions are being taken in Asakusa.
“We are exercising vigilance in preventing an internal battle,” the source says. (K.N.)
Source: “Sumiyoshi-kai kei jimusho de kumi-cho wo utta no ha soko kanbu datta!” Shukan Asahi Geino (Sept. 18, page 181)
Note: Brief extracts from Japanese vernacular media in the public domain that appear here were translated and summarized under the principle of “fair use.” Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy of the translations. However, we are not responsible for the veracity of their contents. The activities of individuals described herein should not be construed as “typical” behavior of Japanese people nor reflect the intention to portray the country in a negative manner. Our sole aim is to provide examples of various types of reading matter enjoyed by Japanese.



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