Mobsters in the News

Steve Lieberman, slieberm@lohud.com

Reputed organized crime capo Daniel Pagano, 62, of Airmont pleads guilty to a racketeering and faces 27-33 months in prison.

A reputed organized crime capo from Airmont pleaded guilty Thursday to a racketeering gambling conspiracy charge in Manhattan federal court and faces nearly three years in federal prison.

Daniel Pagano, 62, son of late Lower Hudson Valley mob boss Joseph Pagano -- and identified by federal prosecutors as a ranking Genovese crime family member himself -- became a target based upon a gambling investigation initiated by the Rockland County District Attorney's Office.

The indictment alleged that from 2009 until February 2012 Pagano and Michael Palazzolo of Suffern committed extortion, loansharking and ran illegal gambling houses as part of a sports gambling ring with other Genovese crime family members and associates.

Pagano's sentencing was set for July 10 in Manhattan. The charges carried a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail, but defense attorney Murray Richman of The Bronx said Thursday after court that Pagano faces 27 to 33 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.

"We will see what happens," Richman said. "Mr. Pagano is not getting any younger and he's had tragedies in his family."

Palazzolo, 49, remains free on bail. He faces the same racketeering count as Pagano, plus a charge of participating in an extortion conspiracy. Those charges could bring a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

"We are working on plea Mr. Palazzolo might take," his lawyer, David Ascher, said Thursday. "We have not come to a resolution, but I am cautiously optimistic."

Document : Daniel Pagano's plea deal

This is not Pagano's first brush with the law. He was sentenced to nearly nine years in federal prison after being convicted in 1998 of leading a tax scam related to bootleg gasoline sales involving Russian mob figures. He also served New York state prison time from 1990 to 1993 for gambling and loan sharking.

Pagano's father-in-law, Vincent DeVito, was shot dead in 2003 in the backyard of his Airmont house. DeVito had been tied to the robbery of $100,000 and jewelry from a millionaire businessman living in Piermont. Ramapo police and the FBI have not made an arrest in DeVito's killing.

Twitter: @lohudlegal

The campaigner Rita Borsellino said the latest developments suggested something was rotten in the anti-Mafia movement

Michael Day

Fears are mounting that Italy’s anti-Mafia movement is starting to resemble the thing it set out to destroy. For the first time in its 50-year existence, the Italian parliament ’s Anti-Mafia Commission is to investigate the country’s burgeoning anti-Mafia “industry”, which advocates fighting back against organised crime.

The move comes after a series of shock claims about integrity of senior figures of the cause. In January, it emerged that Antonello Montante, president of the Sicilian branch of the employers’ organisation Confindustria, was officially under investigation. Several Mafia turncoats told prosecutors Mr Montante, Confindustria’s national spokesman on legality, and the confidant of ministers and police chiefs, was involved with Sicilian mob bosses. He denies the claims.

Last week came reports that investigators had caught Roberto Helg, Palermo’s chamber of commerce leader and another “anti-Mafia champion”, red-handed as he pocketed €100,000 (£72,100) that he’d extorted from a local businessman, who had tipped off police.

The campaigner Rita Borsellino, whose brother, the anti-mob prosecutor Paolo Borsellino died in a Mafia bomb attack in Palermo 1992, said the latest developments suggested something was rotten in the anti-Mafia movement.

“The movement sprang up spontaneously in Sicily on the wave of emotion after the massacres of 1992,” she said. “There are very many people who have got stuck in, who have sacrificed their time and their work... But unfortunately, even though it’s painful to say so, evidently others have hidden under this banner to pursue their own interests.”

On Friday, Leoluca Orlando, the Mayor of Palermo, said: “The truth is that we have to stop crediting people as representatives in the fight against the Mafia, because they then just distort things.” Or worse.

Mr Orlando no doubt had in mind Toto Cuffaro, the former governor of Sicily, who launched the “Mafia fa schifo” (Mafia sucks) campaign but who is now serving a seven-year prison term for Mafia association; or his successor Raffaele Lombardo who once told The Independent from his office in Palermo that “the fight against the Mafia starts here”. He was also sentenced to seven years for mob links three weeks ago.

Fears that the “anti-Mafia industry” has turned full circle and might now be part of the problem has led Rosy Bindi, the head of the parliamentary commission, to announce an investigation. “To really fight the Mafia you have to have a transparent anti-Mafia,” she said.

But Attilio Bolzoni, one of Italy’s leading anti-Mafia journalists, said this week that the movement has been made submissive due to its eagerness to win large handouts from Rome and the financial incentives meant officials and campaigners were less likely to question and criticise dubious policies or practices by politicians.

He cited the example of Claudio Scajola, an interior minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s second government, who is currently under investigation, as an example of a person who may not have been the ideal official to be overseeing the funding of the anti-mob campaigns.

Corrado De Rosa, another leading writer on the Mafia, agreed: “If the anti-Mafia movement loses its independence, its becomes weaker and less credible,” he said.

The Italian state can certainly point to notable successes in the endless war against the mob. The most notorious leaders of Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and even ’Ndrangheta are now behind bars. And anti-racket groups, such as Addiopizzo in Palermo, have given many businesses the confidence to stop paying protection money to mobsters.

However, like a hydra, new heads sprout up from the body of organised crime to replace the jailed bosses.

“Technically, the Mafia and corruption are two different things, but the border between them is increasingly thin,” said Mr De Rosa. He noted that the tendency for people who were not mobsters to begin adopting their methods was behind the emergence of the “Mafia Capitale”, a gang of corrupt officials and businessmen who have skimmed hundreds of millions of euros from Rome’s civic budget.

By Phillip Messing

An elderly and once-powerful Colombo crime family capo from Queens serving life at a Florida federal prison died Thursday at age 80, sources said.

Pasquale Amato, a one-time co-defendant of acting Colombo boss Vic Orena who was a prisoner of the Coleman Federal penitentiary, a facility outside of Orlando, succumbed to brain cancer, according to a family friend. A Bureau of Prisons spokesman confirmed the death, but declined to provide details.

Amato, originally of Ozone Parrk, was indicted with Orena in a Brooklyn Federal Court racketeering case in April 1992 as part of a probe into an infamous internal feud over the control of the family that had erupted between Orena and mobsters loyal to to imprisoned Colombo boss Carmine Persico, a dispute that led to the murders of a dozen people.

Amato, whose trial was severed from Orena’s, was convicted after a jury trial in January 1992 for loansharking, weapons possession and the Nov. 13, 1989 murder of Colombo member Thomas Ocera, who was garrotted and buried in Forest Park, Queens. His corpse was dug up on Oct. 3, 1991, according to court papers.

BY KEVIN HORRIDGE

Italy’s gradual gambling expansion of the past two decades was supposed to repress organized crime by bringing a once-underground industry back out into the open.

But according to Italian prosecutors, the newly legal landscape is, in fact, presenting the Mafia with more moneymaking opportunities than ever.

The gambling business in Italy is huge, with Italians betting an extraordinary €80 billion ($84.7 billion) a year, almost five percent of the country’s GDP.

About half of this is spent on slot machines, which have proliferated throughout Italy via the nation’s cafés and espresso bars.

There are now twice as many slot machines in Italy, 400,000 nationwide, as there are in Las Vegas.

In 2012, Franceso Valle was sentenced to 24 years in prison, having been found to be head of a Mafia clan that specialized in extortion, loansharking, and money-laundering, as well as operating a perfectly legal gambling business.

The court heard that family moved from Calabria in the south to Milan, the country’s northern financial capital, where it acquired a handful of bars and three or four slot machines. In the space of three or four years, the clan had built a gambling empire of over 1,000 slot machines.

Proliferation of Slots

More slot machines across the country now means that Mafia families from the south, which might traditionally have invested their ill-gotten gains in agriculture or trucking businesses, are migrating to the wealthier north and investing in the more profitable legal gambling industry, as the Valles had done.

“Criminal clans earn a robust profit” from their ‘very diffuse’ investments in legal gambling,” Diana De Martino, a magistrate at the national anti-mafia prosecutors’ office, told Reuters.

According to Italy’s gambling regulations, machines are required to pay back 75 percent of their revenue in winnings, with profits divided equally between the state and the operator. However, according to a CNN report, machines can be rigged and tax documents manipulated.

Tax Evasion Rife

“Organized crime has a huge interest in this gambling sector,” said Major Fillipo di Aldbor of the country’s financial police.

“We’re talking about a lot of money. Financial police have different ways to combat this. Our activity is to control the concession owners licensing papers and their tax payments to make sure they’re working legally. At any moment we can check whether there has been tax evasion on the slot machine as well as any other betting machine.”

However, while the industry has been infiltrated by organized crime, Massimo Passamonti, president Italy’s main gaming lobby, the Confindustria Sistema Gioco Italia, says the alternative to an open and legal gaming market is even worse.

“Prohibition creates a bigger criminal market, not a smaller one,” he said.

Meanwhile, while the Italian economy has struggled in recent years, the gambling industry employs 25,000 in its ranks, and 100,000 more natives work in related activities, Passamonti said.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

(Originally published by the Daily News on Tuesday, March 24, 1970, written by Edward Kirkman and Harry Schlegel.)

Carlo Gambino, the reputed new boss of all Cosa Nostra bosses in the country, was bagged by federal agents in Brooklyn yesterday on charges of masterminding a daring plot to pull off a multimillion-dollar armored car robbery.

And, not content with stakes of $3 million to $5 million from that job, according to government authorities, the suave, 67-year-old Gambino was also making plans to stage a $25 million foray at the offices of the U.S. Trucking Co. at 66 Murray St.

Gambino was fingered by John J. Kelley, 55, described by federal agents as a Boston armored car heist expert, who broke down after his arrest in another case last May and named Gambino as the kingpin in the alleged conspiracy here. Kelley is being held in protective custody in Boston.

At his arraignment late yesterday, before U.S. Commissioner Earl N. Bishopp in the court in Foley Square, Gambino was impassive as special prosecutor Daniel P. Hollman asked for $100,000 bail.

However, the defendant's face brightened into an amused tolerance as Hollman read off the complaint against him. And he broke out into a broad grin at the mention of the $25 million conspiracy, and again when Kelley's name was read off.

Attempts to Calm Him

Gambino listened politely as his lawyer, Edward J. Ennis of 8 W. 49th St., described him as an unfortunate man in ill health, devoted to his family.

But when Bishopp ruled that he be held in $75,000 bail, Gambino flew into a rage. "I'll stay in jail," he fumed. "I am innocent from this accusation. I won't put up five cents for bail."

Gambino's lawyer attempted to calm him. "You're not well enough to stay in jail," he told his client. "I stay in jail," Gambino shouted.

Ennis turned to Bishopp and asked: "Let me talk to his son, your honor."

"Don't talk to my son. I stay in jail," Gambino said.

Then Thomas Gambino, richly dressed, with an aquiline nose like his father's, stepped to the center of the room, embraced his father, and kissed him on the lips.

Agrees to the Bail

The two talked quietly for a few moments, then with Bishopp's permission, withdrew from the courtroom. The defendant returned a half-hour later and announced he had agreed to the bail.

Bishopp commented that "a man should be free if he can make bail." The elder Gambino nodded, smiled, bowed at the waist to the commissioner, and strode out of the courtroom.

The arrest of Gambino, who has one home at 2230 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, and a plush $100,000 waterfront layout at 34 Club Dr., Massapequa, L.I., comes less than a week after The News reported in a series on cargo thefts at Kennedy Airport that he cuts in for 25% of all the take there. Gambino is also fighting deportation proceedings.

This was the way the plot went, according to U.S. officials:

Last year, a group of lesser Mafia members got the idea that there was a good buck to be made in hitting armored cars. But since none of them was particularly knowledgeable about armored car heists, it was decided to bring in Kelley, the authorities said.

A Trip to Brooklyn

A veteran hijacker of armored cars in Massachusetts, Kelley began checking on similar vehicles here and finally decided that the U.S. Trucking Co. rigs met his specifications, it was said.

One company truck that he tailed left the firm's downtown headquarters, headed over the Williamsburg Bridge, and dropped off between $3 million and $5 million in new money at Chase Manhattan Bank branches in Brooklyn.

But a problem arose concerning the shipments. None of the initial conspirators knew how to deposit of the new bills without attracting attention. Thereupon it was decided to bring in Gambino.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ARCHIVES

Charge Robbery Plot

But Gambino, as Cosa Nostra boss and successor to the late Vito Genovese, would have no part of a mere auxiliary role and immediately declared himself a head man, it was charged.

He agreed to provide, "among other things, autos for the robbery and the means to dispose of the money," said one official. And he also ordered Kelley to do the planning.

Kelley did, the authorities said. And what he came up with was what would have turned out to be one of the biggest jobs of all time - a projected $25 million heist of the trucking company, it was charged. The company at times has that much on hand when bills totaling that amount are sent to them from the Federal Reserve Bank downtown, to be split up and distributed to hundreds of banks in the five boroughs.

But it was about that time that Kelley was arrested in Massachusetts in an armored car job. Questioned about the many trips he had made to New York, he broke down, and according to federal agents, confessed to the U.S. Trucking Co. plot - aborting the whole scheme. Authorities said Kelley had been "extremely reliable and accurate in all statements and information" given to them.

Seized in Auto

Officials did not name any of the others involved in the alleged conspiracy, but it was learned that most of them are well known mobsters and Cosa Nostra luminaries. Nationwide alarms were issued for their arrest.

Gambino was driving with his wife, Catherine, when their car was pulled over at 14th Ave. and 48th St., Brooklyn. He was taken into custody by FBI men assigned to the federal strike force headed by Hoffman.

First, he was taken to FBI headquarters at 201 E. 69th St. for questioning. Then, he went to Federal Court for arraignment on a charge of conspiring to violate provisions of a federal statute banning the interstate transportation of stolen goods.

The white-haired, hawk-nosed Gambino came to this country as a stowaway in 1921. Although local, state and federal enforcement agencies have lengthy dossiers on Gambino, his only imprisonment occurred 33 years ago, when he served 22 months for operating an illegal still.

His career as a Mafia overlord began in 1958, when he assumed command of a family that had been headed by Albert Anastasia, who was murdered in a Manhattan hotel barber shop.

Stephanie Clifford, The New York Times

NEW YORK: Not long ago, Thomas DiFiore cut an intimidating figure. He was for a time the highest-ranking member of the Bonanno organized crime family not behind bars, despite a long record of arrests on charges of kidnapping, assault, promoting gambling and extortion. Even at 70, DiFiore did not seem to falter when challenging another aging Bonanno leader in 2013 for more than his share of a loan payment, according to prosecutors' account of a government wiretap.

"'Without me,'" the other leader, Vincent Asaro, recalled DiFiore telling him, "'you wouldn't a got nothing.'" Asaro, whose words were being recorded by the FBI, said DiFiore made a former Bonanno boss "look like St. Anthony."

Yet now, as he faces sentencing for federal unlawful debt-collection conspiracy, DiFiore's swagger has given way to a shuffle, and he is talking about insulin and statins rather than payback.

He is one of the "oldfellas," Mafiosi whose lives of crime seem to have succumbed as much to the ravages of age as to the relentlessness of federal prosecutors. In courtrooms, they can be found displaying catheter bags or discussing the state of their kidneys in hopes that a judge will agree to a short sentence.

Many of these geriatric gangsters have been sentenced in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, which covers the key territory of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island inhabited by New York's five major organized crime families.

DiFiore, 71, who is to be sentenced in Brooklyn on Tuesday, has outlined his drug regimen for the court: Lantus insulin shots every 12 hours; atorvastatin for cholesterol in the morning; amlodipine and lisinopril for blood pressure; and one 325-milligram aspirin a day.

As members of the Mafia seek to avoid lengthy prison terms, informers are becoming more common, said Belle Chen, assistant special agent in charge of organized crime for the FBI's New York field office.

The prospect that these turncoats will face violent retaliation has dwindled, experts say, because of both the protection afforded by the witness-protection program and the increasing likelihood that a participant in any such retaliation could wind up helping the authorities himself. "There are too many potential cooperators these days," Chen said.

This dynamic has allowed investigators to target decades-old crimes and aging Mafia leaders, as has the federal racketeering act, under which old offenses can yield fresh indictments.

As a result, the federal courthouse in Brooklyn has been filled in recent years with tales from an era when the Mafia loomed larger than it does today, when it was linked to conspicuous acts of criminality like the 1978 Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport - a $6 million armed robbery in which Asaro, 80, is scheduled to go on trial this fall.

Just this month, federal agents arrested reputed Mafia members and associates in their 60s and 70s connected to the New Jersey-based crime family long thought to have inspired "The Sopranos," the HBO drama that featured its share of aging mobsters.

Given the age of the some of these defendants, court can occasionally sound less like a legal forum and more like a hospital admissions ward.

Consider Bartolomeo Vernace, who was 65 when he was sentenced last year in the 1981 killings of two owners of a Queens bar in a dispute over a spilled drink. Like DiFiore, Vernace had detailed his prescriptions for the judge: diltiazem, Accupril, Norvasc, Crestor, Zetia, Actos, Plavix and Amaryl.

Prosecutors have grown familiar with such litanies, and have contended that some defendants appear to be exaggerating their medical problems in bids for leniency.

Nicky Rizzo, a Colombo family soldier who was 86 when he was sentenced for racketeering conspiracy in 2013, said his health conditions included bad hearing, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, poor blood circulation in one leg, 20 medications a day and a need to use a pump with a catheter for urination.

"He stands in the bathroom for five-, 10-, 15-minute time period, he attempts to urinate," said his lawyer, Joseph Mure Jr. Rizzo lifted his pant leg to show the catheter and urinary drainage bag to the judge.

Prosecutor Allon Lifshitz responded that Rizzo's "behavior in court today, shuffling in from the back and the purported inability to hear, and the groaning, should get zero weight." He added, "It's a joke."

Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto, citing Rizzo's health and age, sentenced him to six months in prison, compared to the year and a half to two years sought by prosecutors.

Some judges have questioned the aging defendants' conditions. Matsumoto, for instance, sentenced Colombo family member Richard Fusco to just four months in prison for extortion conspiracy after he listed ailments that included kidney failure, hearing loss and early-onset Alzheimer's disease, though reporters observed that his condition seemed to improve dramatically after he left court.

"If Mr. Fusco made a fool out of me, then shame on me," Matsumoto said at a later sentencing.

Thomas Gioeli, a Colombo family member convicted of racketeering conspiracy charges, detailed his health woes at his sentencing last year: back problems, a cardiac episode, diabetes and arthritis. The formerly fearsome mobster was also, literally, toothless.

"I have no teeth," Gioeli told the court during his case. "I can't chew my food. I'm choking more frequently. My back is out, my hips are out, my knee pops out."

Just 61 when he was sentenced, Gioeli was "a very old 61 years," his lawyer, Adam D. Perlmutter, argued.

"These medical conditions are not feigned, they are real," Judge Brian M. Cogan said. Nonetheless, he sentenced Gioeli to almost 19 years in prison, saying that the federal prisons system offered decent medical care.

Whether prisons can in fact adequately handle aged and sick inmates is a question many lawyers and defendants have raised.

Perlmutter, Gioeli's lawyer, complained that the staff at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Gioeli was held, had not refilled his prescriptions.

The lawyer representing Dennis DeLuciaa Colombo family captain sentenced in 2013 to 34 months in prison for racketeering crimes at age 70, pointed out that a year had passed since a dentist at the Metropolitan Detention Center had recommended that DeLucia have a tooth removed.

As DiFiore said while pleading guilty in October, "My health has spiraled downhill, but I'm happy to say I am alive in spite of the stellar medical treatment that I have received at MDC."

Prosecutors have said that the federal prisons do have good medical facilities. Though they concede that DiFiore's health is relevant to the sentence he will receive Tuesday, they are asking for a prison term of roughly two years, as recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

And while DiFiore's age may have contributed to his health problems, prosecutors suggest it worked to his advantage as well, with his many years in crime earning him "formidable" power and profits.

BY LINH TAT

STAFF WRITER |

THE RECORD

NEWARK – Attorneys for Joseph M. Sanzari argued in federal court Wednesday for an order that would bar his opponents in a civil lawsuit from making public any statements that would link the prominent public works contractor to alleged criminal conduct or Mafia-related activities.

Sanzari and two of his companies are accused of dumping 6,000 cubic meters of hazardous waste on a leased property in North Bergen, according to a 2013 lawsuit filed by the landlord, AMA Realty of Allendale. It alleged the waste came from an asphalt-recycling operation next door that the defendants owned.

AMA further alleged that Sanzari had been aided by Pure Earth Inc., a Pennsylvania-based firm that operated the recycling plant under an agreement with company officials. In its complaint, AMA noted that, at the time Pure Earth ran the operation, it was banned from doing work in New York City for concealing its ties to organized crime, according to records from the City of New York Business Integrity Commission.

Sanzari's lawyers have denied any wrongdoing by their client or his companies. The issue they argued Wednesday stems directly from one of the laws under which he is being sued — the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

So-called RICO laws are a key weapon in the arsenal of federal prosecutors in their battle against organized crime. But they may also be used by private parties in civil cases where plaintiffs claim they have been damaged by an ongoing "enterprise" or racket. Successful claimants are allowed to collect triple damages.

On Wednesday, Henry Klingeman, attorney for Sanzari, argued before U.S. District Court Judge Steven C. Mannion that a protective order should be invoked, saying his client is a successful businessman who's "entitled to his good name."

In his brief, Klingeman said that an attorney for AMA had referred to the property as a "crime scene."

"The plaintiff should not be defaming Mr. Sanzari," said Klingeman, who argued that the plaintiff's claims were being repeated by the news media.

Klingeman said protective orders are invoked regularly in patent or financial cases to keep sensitive information out of the public eye.

"I'm not asking for anything we don't do every day," he said.

But attorneys for the plaintiffs saw it differently.

John Daniels, an attorney for the plaintiff, said the defense team was trying to divert focus from the heart of the case.

"This is not a defamation [case]," he said. "This is a racketeering [case]."

Another attorney for the plaintiff, Paul Batista, called the move "unprecedented" and an attempt at "choking off all press commentary."

Batista later characterized the requested protective order as "sweeping" during a private interview after the hearing.

If the order were to be granted, discussions of activities Sanzari is accused of "would most likely be sealed entirely or so heavily redacted that … [no] outside observer would be able to understand what the facts are," he said.

The order sought by Sanzari's lawyers would keep any statements by the plaintiff or its attorneys relating to alleged criminal conduct and racketeering by Sanzari from being "filed in a public pleading or on the public record." The order they seek would prohibit references including but not limited to "Mafia,""organized crime,""La Cosa Nostra,""mob,""mob-related" and "crime scene."

The judge said Wednesday that he would rule on the matter by June 1.

Email: tat@northjersey.com

Tokyo police are looking into a political group with ties to the Japanese mob as it investigates death threats made to against Ambassador Caroline Kennedy.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police are investigating telephoned death threats against U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy. The individual or individuals who made the calls are facing charges over “forcible obstruction of business” and “making threats.”

Authorities told The Daily Beast that the bulk of the calls were made to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo in February. They said the embassy had received similar calls targeting Alfred Magleby, the consul general based on the southern island of Okinawa, home to about half of the 50,000 U.S. troops based in Japan.

The calls to the embassy were made last month by a man who spoke English, but with a possibly Japanese accent. The reports suggested that the threats might have been part of a scheme to blackmail Kennedy or the embassy.

A police officer on background said that among many suspects they were looking at several right-wing groups in Japan backed by the yakuza, Japan’s omnipresent mafia. One group high on the lists of suspects is Daikosha, the political arm of the Inagawa-kai, Japan’s third largest yakuza organization. According to the U.S. Treasury Departement, “under the leadership of Jiro Kiyota (the supreme leader) and Kazuya Uchibori (the chairman of the board), the Inagawa-kai has become increasingly aligned with the (Japan’s largest yakuza organization) the Yamaguchi-gumi.”

Ironically, Daikosha is considered loosely connected to the Abe administration, including Hakubun Shimomura, Japan’s Minister of Education, via its supporters and members. Mr. Shimomura is in trouble for accepting a number of dubious political donations via unofficial political support groups, one of them led by an associate of the Yamaguchi-gumi. Shimomura also allegedly received cash payment from the yakuza associate as well.

Daikosha has recently been protesting and demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Abe and the repeal of the organized crime control ordinances. They have staged protests near the U.S. embassy several times.

According to several issues of the Daikosha 2012 publication, Taiko, the special advisor to the group is Kazuya Uchibori, the chairman of the Inagawa-kai, who was designated an enemy of the U.S. government by the Department of Treasury in January of 2013.

The yakuza are reputedly the world’s largest criminal organization with over 45,000 members, and are involved in transnational criminal activity, including weapons trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, drug trafficking, fraud, and money laundering.

“When a yakuza group or extremists really targets an individual for death, they don’t send multiple warnings first. They just take action.”

On January 23, 2013 The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Jiro Kiyota, the top Inagawa-kai leader, as well as the Inagawa-kai’s second-in-command, Kazuo Uchibori, for acting for or on behalf of the Inagawa-kai.

The sanctions had some effect, according to reports by Bloomberg, “Uchibori, who is 60 or 61 years old, also had his AmEx card canceled, and American Express froze $42,575 associated with his account, including a bill payment of $41,702.”

One of the vice-chairman of Daikosha is also a former Inagawa-kai member who served time for murder. The Yamaguchi-gumi and The Inagawa-kai are connected by a pledge of brotherhood between Uchibori and a senior member of the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodokai, the ruling chapter of the Yamaguchi-gumi.

Police sources refused to reveal why this organization, Daikosha, has aroused particular interest in the Kennedy case, stating, “There are elements of the threats that only the criminal would know and this information will be used to weed out false confessions as the investigation proceeds.”

Daikosha is a registered political organization in Japan with a declared income of roughly $550,000 last year, from advertising revenue in its magazines and donations. Some advertisers appeared to be large hotels that are “Official Hotels Of Tokyo Disneyland"—although the hotels have denied paying money to the group. Since October 2011, paying money to the yakuza or its associates is a crime.

According to police sources, Daikosha’s real estimated income is closer to $6 million a year, some of it coming from extortion, with at least a fifth of it being paid to the Inagawa-kai coffers. Because it is a registered political entity and the number of former yakuza in the organization is relatively low, it is not considered officially a yakuza group and escapes many of the sanctions of “designated violent groups” under Japanese law. Internally, the Japanese police consider it a part of the Inagawa-kai itself. While ostensibly supporting a return to an Emperor based constitution and being extremely nationalist, a large number of its members are Korean-Japanese.

The Inagawa-kai offices are located across from the Ritz Carlton Tokyo and are a few minutes from the U.S. Embassy by car.

It is not the only “anti-social” group being looked at present in the Kennedy case.

The United States Department of State Diplomatic Security Service has special agents assigned to work with the police and protect Ambassador Kennedy but the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department leads all such investigations. U.S. law enforcement officials at the embassy are not allowed to carry firearms, the police say. According to some police sources, this is not the first time that threats have been made to the Ambassador. There was a flurry of them when Ambassador Kennedy tweeted her disapproval of the annual dolphin culling in Taiji.

These kinds of cases aren't unprecedented. In September of 2011, the Tokyo Police arrested a Yamaguchi-gumi-backed right-winger, age 46, for sending a bullet to the Russian embassy with a menacing note and threatening the ambassador and embassy staff. He was angry over Russian refusal to return the northern territories to Japan. However, Japan's right wing has traditionally shown some deference to the U.S.

Japanese police officers were somewhat skeptical of the threat level. “When a yakuza group or extremists really targets an individual for death, they don’t send multiple warnings first. They just take action.”

The threats against Kennedy were made days after Mark Lippert, the U.S. envoy to South Korea, was attacked and injured by a knife-wielding assailant. South Korean police said the attacker had targeted Lippert to protest joint military drills conducted by the U.S. and South Korea.

Ambassador Kennedy is the 57-year-old daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, and took over the Tokyo post in 2013 after being nominated by President Barack Obama.

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

High blood sugar, stress, swelling of kidneys, swelling of skin, lung problems, vision issues: These were some of the medical problems enumerated by lawyers for Thomas DiFiore, a 71-year-old Mafia member, at his sentencing on Tuesday in Brooklyn.

The lawyers were seeking to have Mr. DiFiore sentenced to just the 14 months he has already served in jail since his arrest on a debt collection charge. Judge Allyne R. Ross of Federal District Court instead gave him a 21-month sentence, which means he will be released in seven months.

Judge Ross said that Mr. DiFiore “had experienced some significant health problems, about which we have had numerous conferences and hearings over the past year — I’ve considered those factors.”

“On the other hand,” she added, “I am in agreement with the government that the defendant’s criminal conduct was serious.”

Mr. DiFiore is one of the “oldfellas,” aging Mafia members who have been sentenced in recent years in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. While defendants facing sentencing often focus on a harsh upbringing or good works or family, these men have highlighted their faltering health and advancing age as they seek leniency.

“I want to thank Your Honor for taking such an interest in my medical problems here,” Mr. DiFiore said on Tuesday.

A heavyset man, Mr. DiFiore was dressed in navy prison scrubs and wore his gray hair combed away from his face and glasses. He added that he had missed the previous summer with his grandchildren, and “I really don’t want to miss another summer — I don’t know how many I have left.”

Sally J. M. Butler, one of Mr. DiFiore’s lawyers, argued that the plea agreement allowed Judge Ross to consider Mr. DiFiore’s medical history as she created his sentence. Ms. Butler then detailed Mr. DiFiore’s blood-sugar levels for the judge, explaining that they had “again gone through the roof.”

“It’s just not stabilized, as hard as everyone’s tried,” Ms. Butler said, as Mr. DiFiore shook his head and mouthed “Never.”

Ms. Butler criticized the health care staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the federal jail in Brooklyn where Mr. DiFiore is being held. They were late in giving him his insulin shot on Monday, she said. They have given him compression socks for the swelling, but they have not helped. He was supposed to have regular CT scans, and those were not being performed. He still needed a full work-up on his kidneys, and on his eyes.

That criticism made the end of the proceeding all the stranger. After sentencing Mr. DiFiore, Judge Ross offered to recommend a transfer to a medical facility run by the Bureau of Prisons. His lawyers declined.

“To have him moved to a different facility would be counterproductive because of the stress that that takes,” one of the lawyers, Steve Zissou, said, requesting that Mr. DiFiore be kept at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

The sentence was in the range sought by prosecutors — 21 to 27 months.

“He’s getting these illicit earnings off of other people’s backs,” Alicyn L. Cooley, an assistant United States attorney, said.

The charge, of conspiracy to collect unlawful debt, stemmed from a 2013 dispute over a loan. A man affiliated with the Bonanno crime family, for which Mr. DiFiore was the “street boss,” had lent money to a carwash employee who was affiliated with the Gambino crime family. But the Bonanno affiliate did not have clearance from his higher-ups to make the loan, and the loan was not being repaid.

Bonanno members intervened, including Vincent Asaro, 80, who is scheduled to go on trial this fall in Brooklyn in connection with the 1978 Lufthansa heist, among other offenses. “Stab him today,” Mr. Asaro told a friend about the Bonanno affiliate. “Today!”

The Bonannos resolved it by getting a $30,000 payment. Mr. Asaro figured $10,000 for himself, $10,000 for his son, $6,000 for the friend and $4,000 for Mr. DiFiore, though Mr. Asaro said he had taken Mr. DiFiore’s portion.

That apparently did not sit well with Mr. DiFiore, as Mr. Asaro described in a June 2013 conversation with an informer.

“Did you give, what’s his name, Tommy the money?” the informer asked. “Tommy, the $4,000?”

“I had a big fight with him the other day. We had $30,000 coming, he took $15,000 of it. I want to kill” him, Mr. Asaro responded.

“He’s that type of guy?” the informer asked.

Mr. Asaro described Mr. DiFiore in a term unprintable here, and added that he made a former Bonanno boss “look like St. Anthony.”

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Not long ago, Thomas DiFiore cut an intimidating figure. For a time, he was the highest-ranking member of the Bonanno organized crime family not behind bars, despite a long record of arrests on charges of kidnapping, assault, promoting gambling and extortion. Even at 70, Mr. DiFiore did not seem to falter when challenging another aging Bonanno leader in 2013 for more than his share of a loan payment, according to prosecutors’ account of a government wiretap.

“ ‘Without me,’ ” the other leader, Vincent Asaro, recalled Mr. DiFiore telling him, “ ‘you wouldn’t a got nothing.’ ” Mr. Asaro, whose words were being recorded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Mr. DiFiore made a former Bonanno boss “look like St. Anthony.”

Yet now, as he faces sentencing for federal unlawful debt-collection conspiracy, Mr. DiFiore’s swagger has given way to a shuffle, and he is talking about insulin and statins rather than payback.

He is one of the “oldfellas,” Mafiosi whose lives of crime seem to have succumbed as much to the ravages of age as to the relentlessness of federal prosecutors. In courtrooms, they can be found displaying catheter bags or discussing the state of their kidneys in hopes that a judge will agree to a short sentence.

Many of these geriatric gangsters have been sentenced in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, which covers the key territory of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island inhabited by New York’s five major organized crime families.

Mr. DiFiore, 71, who is to be sentenced in Brooklyn on Tuesday, has outlined his drug regimen for the court: Lantus insulin shots every 12 hours; atorvastatin for cholesterol in the morning; amlodipine and lisinopril for blood pressure; and one 325-milligram aspirin a day.

As members of the Mafia seek to avoid lengthy prison terms, informers are becoming more common, said Belle Chen, assistant special agent in charge of organized crime for the F.B.I.’s New York field office.

The prospect that these turncoats will face violent retaliation has dwindled, experts say, because of both the protection afforded by the witness-protection program and the increasing likelihood that a participant in any such retaliation could wind up helping the authorities himself. “There are too many potential cooperators these days,” Ms. Chen said.

This dynamic has allowed investigators to target decades-old crimes and aging Mafia leaders, as has the federal racketeering act, under which old offenses can yield fresh indictments.

As a result, the federal courthouse in Brooklyn has been filled in recent years with tales from an era when the Mafia loomed larger than it does today, when it was linked to conspicuous acts of criminality like the 1978 Lufthansa heist at Kennedy International Airport — a $6 million armed robbery in which Mr. Asaro, 80, is scheduled to go on trial this fall.

Just this month, federal agents arrested reputed Mafia members and associates in their 60s and 70s connected to the New Jersey-based crime family long thought to have inspired “The Sopranos,” the HBO drama that featured its share of aging mobsters.

Given the age of the some of these defendants, court can occasionally sound less like a legal forum and more like a hospital admissions ward.

Consider Bartolomeo Vernace, who was 65 when he was sentenced last year in the 1981 killings of two owners of a Queens bar in a dispute over a spilled drink. Like Mr. DiFiore, Mr. Vernace had detailed his prescriptions for the judge: diltiazem, Accupril, Norvasc, Crestor, Zetia, Actos, Plavix and Amaryl.

Prosecutors have grown familiar with such litanies, and have contended that some defendants appear to be exaggerating their medical problems in bids for leniency.

“He stands in the bathroom for five-, ten-, 15-minute time period, he attempts to urinate,” said his lawyer, Joseph Mure Jr. Mr. Rizzo lifted his pant leg to show the catheter and urinary drainage bag to the judge.

Prosecutor Allon Lifshitz responded that Mr. Rizzo’s “behavior in court today, shuffling in from the back and the purported inability to hear, and the groaning, should get zero weight.” He added, “It’s a joke.”

Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto, citing Mr. Rizzo’s health and age, sentenced him to six months in prison, compared to the year and a half to two years sought by prosecutors.

Some judges have questioned the aging defendants’ conditions. Judge Matsumoto, for instance, sentenced Colombo family member Richard Fusco to just four months in prison for extortion conspiracy after he listed ailments that included kidney failure, hearing loss and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, though reporters observed that his condition seemed to improve dramatically after he left court.

“If Mr. Fusco made a fool out of me, then shame on me,” Judge Matsumoto said at a later sentencing.

“I have no teeth,” Mr. Gioeli told the court during his case. “I can’t chew my food. I’m choking more frequently. My back is out, my hips are out, my knee pops out.”

Just 61 when he was sentenced, Mr. Gioeli was “a very old 61 years,” his lawyer, Adam D. Perlmutter, argued.

“These medical conditions are not feigned, they are real,” Judge Brian M. Cogan said. Nonetheless, he sentenced Mr. Gioeli to almost 19 years in prison, saying that the federal prisons system offered decent medical care.

Whether prisons can in fact adequately handle aged and sick inmates is a question that many lawyers and defendants have raised.

Mr. Perlmutter, Mr. Gioeli’s lawyer, complained that the staff at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Mr. Gioeli was held, had not refilled his prescriptions.

The lawyer representing Dennis DeLucia, a Colombo family captain sentenced in 2013 to 34 months in prison for racketeering crimes at age 70, pointed out that a year had passed since a dentist at the Metropolitan Detention Center had recommended that Mr. DeLucia have a tooth removed.

As Mr. DiFiore said while pleading guilty in October, “My health has spiraled downhill, but I’m happy to say I am alive in spite of the stellar medical treatment that I have received at M.D.C.”

Prosecutors have said that the federal prisons do have good medical facilities. Though they concede that Mr. DiFiore’s health is relevant to the sentence he will receive on Tuesday, they are asking for a prison term of roughly two years, as recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

And while Mr. DiFiore’s age may have contributed to his health problems, prosecutors suggest it worked to his advantage as well, with his many years in crime earning him “formidable” power and profits.

By Philip Pullella

NAPLES, Italy — Pope Francis urged members of organized crime to turn away from violence and exploitation and stop the “tears of the mothers of Naples” after visiting one of the city’s most-violent and drug-infested neighborhoods on Saturday.

Francis, on a daylong trip, also spoke out against political corruption in an address to a crowd in the notorious Scampia neighborhood, a stronghold of clans of the Camorra, the Naples version of the Sicilian mafia.

He was speaking in the shadow of a dilapidated housing complex known as Le Vele, so dangerous that police sometimes are afraid to enter, residents say. He urged residents of the area, which has often been the battleground of Camorra clans fighting for control of drug-trafficking and extortion rackets, not to let criminals rob them of their hope.

At a Mass in the city center, Francis urged Neapolitans to “react firmly to organizations that exploit and corrupt young people, that exploit the poor and the weak with cynical drug trafficking and other crimes.”

“To the criminals and all their accomplices, I, today, humbly and as a brother, repeat: convert yourselves to love and justice. It is possible to return to honesty. The tears of the mothers of Naples are asking this of you,” he said.

Since his election two years ago, Francis — who renounced the spacious papal apartments used by his predecessors and lives in a small apartment in a Vatican guest house — has made the defense of the poor and weakest members of society a key plank of his papacy.

He has also said members of organized crime excommunicate themselves from the Roman Catholic Church, and that it would welcome them back if they repent.

After the Mass, the pope shared a meal with about 120 inmates in a city jail, among them several transsexuals and AIDS sufferers chosen to represent those sectors of the local prison population, a church official said.

Earlier, in Scampia, where drugs are sold openly and youth unemployment exceeds 40 percent, Francis listened to a Filipino immigrant woman and an unemployed Italian man tell of their difficulties and a magistrate speak of “juvenile delinquency, desperation and death” in Naples.

The pope defended immigrants, saying they could not be considered “second-class human beings."

BY LINH TAT

STAFF WRITER |

THE RECORD

NEWARK - A federal judge has denied a bid by attorneys for Joseph M. Sanzari for an order that would have barred his opponents in a civil lawsuit from making public any statements linking the prominent public works contractor to alleged criminal conduct or Mafia-related activities.

Sanzari's lawyers - who have denied any wrongdoing by their client or his companies - argued that Sanzari was being defamed by references to such terms as "Mafia,""organized crime,""mob" and "crime scene" made by the plaintiff in pursuit of its lawsuit, which is based in part on the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The law, a key weapon for federal prosecutors battling organized crime, may also be used by private parties in civil cases who claim they have been damaged by an ongoing "enterprise" or racket. Successful claimants are allowed to collect triple damages.

Judge Steven C. Mannion wrote, in an opinion dated March 23, that there is usually another means for addressing claims of defamation other than an injunction, also pointing out that he had not been provided sufficient information to determine that Sanzari had indeed been defamed.

The judge then reminded both parties that they are to handle themselves properly during litigation and, citing prior case law, reminded them that the court has the authority to sanction individuals "who fail to meet minimum standards of conduct."

"This litigation is still in its discovery stage and the disputes between the parties and counsel have likely only begun," Mannion wrote. "Each should also be tempered in their conduct and understand that litigation immunity has its limits."

John Daniels, an attorney for AMA, said Thursday that they were pleased with the judge's opinion.

"It enables Plaintiff to prosecute his case in an open manner," Daniels said. "But Plaintiff is also sensitive to Judge Mannion's comments and is guided accordingly."

When reached for a comment Thursday, Henry Klingeman, attorney for Sanzari, said, "We will continue to pursue the case in court."

Email: tat@northjersey.com

Posted on March 26, 2015 | By Michael P. Mayko

STAMFORD-A New York City bookmaker’s involvement in a mob-controlled gambling operation here now faces a year in prison and a loss of $160,988.

Salvatore Ferraioli, 33, of Staten Island, N.Y. pleaded guilty to failing to file a wagering tax return in 2011 during proceedings Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant in the Hartford federal courthouse.

Bryant set sentencing for June 17. At that time, Ferraioli faces not only a year in prison but an order to pay back taxes, penalties and interest.

Court documents disclose that Ferraioli was part of a multi-million dollar gambling operation headed by Dean DePreta of Stamford and Richard Uva formerly of Trumbull.

DePreta has been described as the “titular head” of the Gambino crime family’s operation in southwestern Connecticut. He was sentenced to 71 months in prison for his role in the operation. Uva, DePreta’s long time friend who federal prosecutors described as “the chief operating officer” for the Gambino betting ring was sentenced to 46 months in prison for his role.

The gambling operation involved an internet website in Costa Rica and gambling houses in Stamford and Hamden.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Hal Chen and Peter Jongbloed. The FBI and IRS Criminal Division along with the Bridgeport, Stamford and State police.

An Inagawa-kai member allegedly shot a Yamaguchi-gumi boss in the abdomen near JR Fujisawa Station

KANAGAWA (TR) – Kanagawa Prefectural Police on Sunday announced the arrest of an organized crime member in the shooting of a boss of a rival gang in Fujisawa City the day before, reports TBS News (March 22).

On Saturday at 4:00 p.m., Jun Nakajima, 46, arrived at the Fujisawa Police Station and admitted to shooting Hideaki Mizushima, a 48-year-old upper-level executive of the Yamaguchi-gumi. He was subsequently taken into custody on charges of attempted murder.

At approximately 12:50 a.m. that same day, Nakajima, a member of the rival Inagawa-kai, is alleged to have shot Mizushima in the abdomen with a pistol on a road in a business district near JR Fujisawa Station.

“I shot him but I did not intend to kill him,” said Nakajima in partially admitting to the allegations.

The victim was transported to a nearby hospital. His injuries are expected to require two months to heal.

Police are now investigating whether the two gang members were involved in a dispute.

By David Matthau

Organized crime is alive and well in New Jersey, despite ongoing efforts by law enforcement, in part because there are so many criminal enterprises from all over the world operating in the Garden State.

According to the FBI’s Newark Division, crimes in New Jersey are being committed by organized crime groups that span the globe including: La Cosa Nostra, also known as the Sicilian Mafia, Asian groups, African criminal enterprise groups and the Russian and Eurasian mobs. New Jersey is also seeing crime activity from Balkan organized crime groups, which includes people who emigrated from Albania, Macedonia and Yugoslavia.

In addition, the FBI is also monitoring more organized crime groups coming from the Middle East.

All of these mobs are driven to make money, but they’ll do it in different ways, according to Anthony Zampogna, FBI supervisory special agent in New Jersey and program coordinator for organized crime.

“You see La Cosa Nostra with the traditional gambling, loan sharking, extortion (and) truck hijackings. Those are some of the hallmarks of that group, but a lot of the health care fraud we see or insurance fraud (is) through Russian organized crime, and a lot of the solicitations for fraudulent investments that we see (is) emigrating from groups out of Africa,” Zampogna said.

He pointed out many ethnic mobs in New Jersey become involved in the drug trade, and frequently violence is threatened or used.

“In many cases mobs are not really any different than gangs. They use the same tactics and commit the same kinds of crimes, and we also see overlap where a lot of times they’ll work together,” Zampogna said. ”You’ll see a Russian group or an Italian group working with what is traditionally looked at as a street gang, the Bloods or the Crips.”

Many times these alliances are built in prison, according to Zampogna, where leaders of mobs and gangs will spend time together and continue the relationship once they get out.

He noted when ethnic mobs first came to this country they stuck together because they only trusted people they knew, but now they’re all branching out.

Zampogna said if you count the smaller organized criminal entities that are operating in the state, there are dozens of ethnic mobs in New Jersey.

Capricious \kuh-PRISH-us\ governed or characterized by caprice : impulsive, unpredictable

The noun caprice, which first appeared in English in the mid-17th century, is a synonym of whim. Evidence shows that the adjective capricious debuted about sixty years before caprice; it's likely, however, that both words derived via French from the Italian capriccio, which originally referred not to a sudden desire but to a sudden shudder of fear. Capriccio in turn derives from the Italian capo, meaning "head,"and riccio, the word for "hedgehog." Someone who shuddered in fear, therefore, was said to have a "hedgehog head"—meaning that his or her hair stood on end like the spines of a hedgehog.

By Selim Algar

More than 45 years after he was strangled with a dog chain by an infamous “Goodfellas” mobster, Paul Katz finally had his day in court — in a tiny cremation pouch clutched by his trembling daughter as she confronted the man who tried to hide her dad’s murder.

Struggling to keep her composure, Ilsa Katz brought the cremated remains into a Brooklyn federal courtroom, to tell off Bonanno wiseguy Jerome Asaro before a judge sent him to prison for 7 ¹/₂years.

“He said he had to go meet the guys at the candy store,” she recalled of the day in 1969 that her dad disappeared. “My mother begged him not to go. He never came back.”

Katz was an associate of James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke and Asaro’s father, Vincent Asaro, 79, a Bonanno capo who last year was charged in the $6 million 1978 Lufthansa air cargo heist at JFK airport that was masterminded by Burke and immortalized in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas.”

Burke and Vincent Asaro murdered Katz, the feds say, because the Irish mobster suspected he was cooperating with authorities.

“When they killed him they killed a family,” his daughter tearfully told Judge Allyne Ross. “They killed our future.”

The mobsters buried Katz under Burke’s Ozone Park, Queens home. But in the 1980’s, Jerome Asaro, now 56, on orders from his old man, dug up Katz’s remains and moved them.

The elder Asaro ordered the corpse disinterred after a dirty cop on Burke’s payroll told them officials were looking into Katz’s disappearance.

But Jerome was sloppy and on a tip, the feds in 2013 dug up Burke’s basement and recovered some remnants of Katz’s remains, which his family subsequently had cremated.

Jerome Asaro never said what he did with the remains he dug up.

In court Thursday, Katz’s s son, Lawrence, rejected Asaro’s grumbled expression of regret.

“I heard him apologize,” he said as Asaro looked on stone-faced. “He didn’t apologize to us. He apologized to his family.”

Not knowing if their father was dead or alive for more than 40 years had been torture, he said.

Katz’s loyal wife never remarried, and always held out hope that he would one day walk back through the front door.

“She would never remarry,” he said. “She always thought he would come home.”

Citing Asaro’s lengthy mob resume — which also included the torching of a Queens restaurant — Judge Allyne Ross slapped him with a 90-month term.

Asaro’s own father also doesn’t think much of him. Caught on a wiretap, he was heard saying: “F—–g Jerry is for Jerry. I lost my son when I made him a skipper. F—–g greedy c——-er. Got him a job. $600 a f—–g week. He didn’t do a f—–g thing.”

Domenico Rancadore was given a seven-year term by an Italian court in 1999, for being a member of a criminal organisation.

He had fought extradition since 2013, when he was found living in Uxbridge under the alias

Marc Skinner.

The Italian Embassy said Rancadore's case "expired" last October.

Vincenzo Celeste, from the Italian Embassy, said while Rancadore's conviction for Mafia membership remained intact, Italian law states a sentence is considered expired once a period of more than double the time of the penalty has passed.

Karen Todner, Rancadore's solicitor, said the Italian Court of Appeal had agreed to extinguish the ongoing case on 31 March.

Rancadore had been on Italy's most wanted list since 1994

She said she was awaiting confirmation from the Italian Government that the European Arrest Warrant for him would be dropped.

Analysis by BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman

Domenico Rancadore's legal team have fought a clever and successful battle but they also had a huge slice of luck.

When he was arrested in August 2013, there was just over a year for the authorities to extradite him to Italy. The clock was ticking. Rancadore won the first round by successfully arguing on human rights grounds.

The Italians wanted to appeal against that but the Crown Prosecution Service served their appeal papers late. That error ate up more valuable time.

Without it, Domenico Rancadore's solicitor, Karen Todner, says her client would have been extradited in time.

A British judge finally ordered his extradition in February but by that time the Italian Penal Code's limitation provisions had kicked in and his original seven-year sentence had been extinguished.

Ms Todner said: "There has been a long and unhappy history of these proceedings and I am delighted that Mr Rancadore will now be able to live in peace in England with his wife and family."

Rancadore, who was known as The Professor, 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.

However, his name was placed back on Italy's most wanted list in 1994.

Travel agency boss

Five years later he was convicted, in his absence, of being part of a criminal organisation between 1987 and 1995.

It was not until August 2013 that he was found living in London and running a travel agency. It prompted authorities to rearrest him, triggering an 18-month battle against extradition.

In March 2014, he defeated the bid to extradite him on the grounds prison conditions in Italy would breach his human rights

Days later he was assured he would not face an appeal because the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had missed a deadline to lodge the paperwork, although it denied it had any "significant bearing" on today's outcome.

Rancadore was arrested again in April 2014 after Italian authorities issued a fresh European Arrest Warrant (EAW).

In February of this year, Judge Howard Riddle, sitting at Westminster Magistrates' Court, ruled Rancadore could be extradited and his removal from the UK had been expected to take place in the following weeks.

Following Wednesday's announcement, the CPS said: "It is inaccurate to suggest that a delay due to administrative errors has had a significant bearing on today's outcome.

"Until the EAW was officially withdrawn today, the CPS acted on behalf of the Italian authorities in these extradition proceedings and had received no instructions to the contrary."

By Deborah McAleese – 26 March 2015

A powerful triad gang is at the centre of a lucrative drug trafficking operation from Italy to Northern Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal.

More than £1m worth of dangerous 'skunk' cannabis is believed to have been smuggled into Northern Ireland by the Asian mobsters.

A major international police investigation led by the PSNI and involving the National Crime Agency and Italy's anti-Mafia police has smashed the drug trafficking ring open.

Four men and two women, aged between 26 and 33, have been arrested at addresses across the region by detectives from the PSNI's organised crime branch in relation to drugs smuggling and money laundering.

Eight arrests have also been made in Italy by the anti-Mafia police unit, the Carabiniere.

A seventh person, a 37-year old man, was arrested in Birmingham last night.

Detective Inspector Andy Dunlop from PSNI's Organised Crime Branch said: "It is expected that the 37-year-old man will be brought to Northern Ireland for questioning tomorrow.

"Two women, aged 29 and 26, who were arrested earlier today, have since been released on police bail pending further inquiries.

"Four men, aged 33, 32, 30 and 29, all currently remain in custody assisting police with their inquiries."

A source close to the probe said that the attention of law enforcement agencies is "very much focused on a triad gang".

The PSNI has described those who have been arrested as "significant members of a crime gang".

It is understood that the gang has successfully smuggled large amounts of herbal 'skunk' cannabis in from Italy.

In a major breakthrough for the international policing operation on Tuesday, PSNI officers seized a haul of skunk worth an estimated £800,000, along with an undisclosed sum of cash, during 10 planned searches in Belfast, Greenisland, Bangor, Newtownards and Ballywalter. Italian police also carried out searches in the Prato and Bologna areas of Italy as part of the same operation.

Skunk cannabis can be particularly dangerous as it can significantly increase a user's likelihood of experiencing a psychotic episode.

Mr Dunlop said police "have established the source of a major supply of herbal cannabis trafficked into Northern Ireland".

"This is a substantial multi-agency international investigation which has involved various investigative tactics and methods - resulting in these searches, seizures and arrests," he added.

"We have seized £800,000 of herbal cannabis, but our inquiries lead us to believe that much more has already been sent from Italy to Northern Ireland. In recent months, officers in Organised Crime Branch and local districts have seized £1.2m worth of herbal cannabis as part of this operation."

The investigation is ongoing and the PSNI is maintaining close contact with Italian officers and other law enforcement agencies in the UK and Ireland.

Mr Dunlop said: "Our objective is to ensure we identify and apprehend as many of those allegedly involved in this criminality and bring them before the courts, as well as seize drugs and as many criminal assets as possible."

Policing Board member Jonathan Craig said it was a major success for the PSNI.

"Drugs have for too long been destroying the lives of children, young people and adults across Northern Ireland," he said.

BY OREN YANIV

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

John Palazzolo, 77, a reputed street boss of the Bonanno crime family’s Bronx faction, got locked up Friday after federal law enforcement officials caught him meeting with other mobsters — a violation of his parole terms.

The Bonanno crime family may have lost its youth, but its wiseguys still have plenty of chutzpah.

John Palazzolo, 77, a reputed street boss of the clan’s Bronx faction, got locked up Friday after federal law enforcement officials caught him meeting with other mobsters — a violation of his parole terms.

The feds feared the old gangster was conspiring to take over Bonanno operations in Queens — which could possibly unleash a wave of violence among rival factions.

Citing allegations of “a conspiracy to conduct a war to control the Bonanno crime family,” federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered the ailing oldfella to jail pending a hearing next month.

Palazzolo, who was released in 2012 after doing 10 years for attempted murder, is barred from associating with fellow mobsters.

But in past weeks, he was caught by surveillance having a suspiciously long meeting in the parking lot of a diner in Bayside, Queens with “Fat Anthony” Rabito, a consigliore of the Bonannos.

He also met with a mafioso with ties to reputed mob boss Michael “Mikey Nose” Mancuso, who has three more years left in federal prison for a murder rap and is believed to rule the family from the inside.

Those pow-wows are in violation of Palazzolo’s parole, prosecutors said in court.

“Is there still a leadership of the Bonnano family?” asked a puzzled Garaufis.

“Unfortunately, yes,” said assistant U.S. attorney Nicole Argentieri.

A source said that Palazzolo had recently lost influence in the organization’s power structure and was about to take matters into his own hands.

“He’s pissed,” the law-enforcement official said. “Once we found out, we had to stop it.”

Defense lawyer Flora Edwards argued the run-in with Rabito could have been “a casual meeting” and pointed to her client’s litany of health issues.

A resigned-looking Palazzolo, wearing track pants, a black hoodie and holding a plastic bag from Target, shuffled into the lock-up.

“I thought someone’s who’s 77-years-old and has medical problems will be happy to live a quiet life,” the judge told him.

He added that the power struggle involves another imprisoned mobster, calling it “one nightmare on top of another.”

The Bonanno family has been working to replenish its ranks following dozens of convictions in the past decade, many obtained after its boss and underboss turned into rats and testified.

New recruits and old timers are still engaged in loan sharking, racketeering and other illegal activities, said a source.

“It never ends,” he added.

Rockland mobster pleads guilty to racketeering

Italy's 'anti-Mafia industry' comes under suspicion after shock claims over senior figures in fight against organised crime

Queens mobster serving life in Florida prison dead at 80

Italian Mob Mimics Las Vegas History by Taking a Piece of the Slot Action in Italy’s Legalized Gaming Scene

Cosa Nostra boss Carlo Gambino is bagged for robbery plot in 1970

At Sentencing, the Godfathers Become Sick Old Grandfathers

Sanzari lawyers ask judge in lawsuit to ban references to 'mob'

Is The Yakuza Behind Caroline Kennedy Death Threats?

Aging Ex-Mafia Boss Fails in Bid for Leniency on Jail Time

Before Judges, the Godfathers Become Sick Old Grandfathers

Pope visits Nales, urges mobsters to repent

Judge won't bar 'mob' references in Sanzari suit

Gambino betting ring leads to guilty plea

Kanagawa cops arrest Inagawa-kai member in shooting of rival yakuza boss

Ethnic mobs, now diversified, drive organized crime in NJ, FBI says

The Don

‘Goodfellas’ mobster confronted by victim’s family at sentencing

Mafia boss Domenico Rancadore's sentence 'expired'more than 20 years in London has had his sentence dropped.

14 arrests as anti-Mafia police help PSNI smash triad gang's £1m 'skunk' cannabis smuggling

Bonanno crime family street boss locked up after feds catch him meeting with other mobsters — violating his parole