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Mobster's Grandson Elected Mayor of New York Village

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Sunday, 26 Apr 2015 10:56 PM

By Greg McDonald

Philip Gigante, grandson of Genovese crime-family godfather Vincent "The Chin" Gigante is the new mayor of Airmont, New York, and not all the townsfolk are happy about it, the New York Post reports.
"It’s frightening for not just me but all village residents aware of his background," one businessman told the Post, but said he didn't want his name used, fearing "retribution."
"If you were a resident living a couple of blocks from Village Hall, would you want to be named?" the man told the paper. "I’m not sure what he’s capable of, considering his family’s background."
But Gigante says residents have nothing to fear and that his concerns lie only with the well-being of Airmont. The 41-year-old is a real estate lawyer and also owns a trucking business with his father Salvatore.
The business is legitimate and was built from the ground up by his parents, Gigante said.
"People are free to believe what they wish. My actions and accomplishments should speak for themselves," the Republican mayor said.
In the March 18 election, Gigante beat Planning Board member Thomas Gulla and Trustee Ralph Bracco. Gigante received 904 votes, to Gulla's 689 and Bracco's 261.
The Rockland County Times reported on Gigante's family background just days before the election, noting that Vincent Gigante did not induct his children into the crime family, but set them up in legitimate businesses.
Neither of Gigante's opponents made an issue of his infamous grandfather during the race.
"I wouldn’t do that to another candidate," Gulla said. "Whatever his grandfather did for a living is not a reflection on him."
Bracco concurred, saying, "I didn’t want to get in using negatives."
Vincent Gigante ordered a hit on Gambino crime boss John Gotti in 1986 that failed. After Gotti was sent to prison, Gigante became the most powerful mobster in the United States.
He was also known for his act of pretending to insane. He earned the nickname "The Oddfather" for walking the streets near his mother's apartment in a bathrobe, pajamas and slippers while muttering to himself in an effort to conceal his leadership role in the crime family.

He eventually was convicted of running rackets and conspiring to kill Gotti and anther mobster. He died in federal prison in 2005.

The Wee Book of Irish-American Gangsters: Former FBI Agent Pleads Not Guilty to Perjury

Florist to the mob had offers he couldn't refuse

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By JOHN M. GLIONNA

Selling flowers is too girlie? Think again, says a florist who served tough guys and wiseguys
When John Ferraro was a kid in the South Bronx, he thought arranging flowers was for girlie types.
Boy, was he wrong.
Now 62, Ferraro is a slender man with a "New Yawka" accent who's been in the business for decades — the last 25 years in Las Vegas. He recently opened a shop in this bedroom community after a five-year hiatus from selling roses.
Ferraro works in an area known for its underworld roots, one that promotes its mob museum like Anaheim pitches Disneyland. But he was schooled in the world of organized crime long before he ever arranged a bouquet here.
He learned the trade in New York, where for 15 years he owned Bartel's flower shop in the South Bronx.
One lesson: Flower shops were often the domain of tough guys, or more specifically, wiseguys.
In the 1930s, Ferraro's Uncle Joe owned Marywell Florist, a suspected front for a racketeering operation run by mobster Dutch Schultz.
Over the years, guys got whacked — good customers Ferraro knew personally, such as Richard Costello, a union leader who patronized his shop for years. He and his son Richie were shot execution-style in the longshoreman's office, a crime police assumed was a hit by the Gambino crime family.
Those were the halcyon days in the old neighborhood, where guys in nice suits made deals you couldn't refuse. These days, Ferraro still flinches when he takes a call that begins, "Hey, Johnny, I got something for ya."
In the Bronx, his specialty was funerals. His shop was next door to a mortuary that funneled him clients.
Often, Ferraro didn't want to know any customer's back story. He never asked questions. But often he would read about a mob hit in the New York Daily News, and days later, he'd be fashioning wreaths for the grieving family.
Ferraro was an accidental florist.
One day, when he was 17, a guy in a bar offered him a job delivering roses. He refused: "I don't play with flowers."
Back then, Ferraro lived in tony Westchester County, N.Y., where his carpenter father had moved the family from the South Bronx.
But when it came to John, his father couldn't take the Bronx out of the boy.
"Tough guys seemed to pop up everywhere I went," he said, arranging flowers in his shop, Only Roses. "As a kid, I worked in a stable ripe with wiseguys. And I served coffee to clients of a basement bookie joint my friend's father used to run."
Flat broke, Ferraro took the job delivering flowers for an Italian widow and her daughter, who pressured him to start snipping petals. "I said, 'No. I don't touch flowers. I was hired as a driver.'"
Soon, the shop had a new owner named Victor, who couldn't tell a long-stemmed rose from a lead pipe. Victor, as they said in the neighborhood, was a piece of work, a scam artist looking for an easy score.
He once borrowed $700 from Ferraro for a can't-fail money-laundering scheme out of Switzerland that — you guessed it — failed. Victor had a rough side: Ferraro recalls him arguing at the shop with a brute called Charlie Big Bear, who soon turned up dead, shot seven times in a case that was never solved.
Victor eventually went to prison for tax evasion. Ferraro remembers the sheriff showing up at the shop, saying he had to padlock the place: government orders. The kid later slipped in through a side window and continued selling flowers.
One day, Victor called: "Hey, Johnny, I got something for ya."
He wanted to run a business from the joint, selling flowers to the wives and girlfriends of inmates. But Victor pocketed the money, often without ever even ordering the flowers.
In 1977, Ferraro quit flowers and moved to California.
But his wife, Cindy, got homesick and soon he was back in the Bronx, running Bartel's on Morris Park Avenue, angering his dad, who said he relocated the family for a reason.
Joe Ribustello, who ran the mortuary next door, was suspicious of the "snotty-nosed kid from Westchester," until he learned he was Joe's nephew.
He told Ferraro his Uncle Joe once saved his life from a mistaken mob hit.
The two forged a deal: Ferraro would get all the funeral work he could handle, "no kickback, no nothing," as long as he removed excess flowers and stands after every viewing.
At times, it seemed the wiseguys were everywhere.
Like the old man who passed the shop every day en route to his nearby coin store, which had no coins. His Aunt Mary, who worked in his store, would elbow Ferraro in the ribs.
"He's a big shot," she'd whisper.
Ferraro once saw mobster John Gotti emerge from his Lincoln and go into the mortuary — as surveillance photos were snapped from unmarked police cars across the street. Gotti bought his flowers from somebody else, Ferraro says.
Back then, the South Bronx was scene to so many burglaries that merchants barred their windows. But not Ferraro, who often forgot to lock his door.
But he was never hassled. He had a Godfather, perhaps: Richard Costello.
The union boss came in every holiday to order three $100 arrangements. Eventually, Ferraro had them ready when he walked in. Costello bought a gift for Ferraro's firstborn; he looked out for him.
And then he was dead.
In 1992, Ferraro sold his flower shop and moved to Las Vegas, seduced by the romance of the desert. Still, he misses his old haunts — all those characters and their inevitable funerals. It was good business.
Recently, a customer asked Ferraro whether he did burial flowers.
The florist smiled.

He sure did.

Ex-mobster: Gotti family ordered cyber ‘hit’ on me

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By Gary Buiso

He’s no Facebook friend of ours.
Instead of using brickbats or Berettas, relatives of notorious Mafia boss John Gotti are delivering a beatdown to a former Gambino enforcer the 21st-century way — on the Internet.
“U go to war with one of us u go to war Witt [sic] all of us simple as that,” declared John “Junior” Gotti’s son John Gotti Jr. on Twitter March 25.
The tweet is just one example of an escalating and bizarre online barrage — which includes phony Twitter accounts, altered Wikipedia pages and doctored YouTube videos — targeting John Alite, who says the Gottis have relentlessly bullied him online ever since he was featured in a book titled “Gotti’s Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti, and the Demise of the American Mafia,” which came out Jan. 27.
“They are blatantly attacking me on every front,” says reformed tough guy Alite, 52, who spent 14 years in prison on charges and convictions that included six murders and at least 37 shootings.
In the book and in subsequent interviews, Alite paints John “Junior” Gotti — who inherited the role of Gambino boss when his father, “Teflon Don” John Gotti, was sent to the slammer in 1992 — as an insecure leader reluctant to get his hands dirty and quick to blame others if things got messy.
Junior says he quit the mob in 1999, but Alite contends it’s the former Gambino boss who ordered the cyber-hit.
Dummy accounts such as “@JohnAliteLies” and “@JohnAlettoRatted” have sprung up on Twitter to mock him.
“SOME PPL FIGHT ISIS SOME PPL FIGHT RATS,” @JohnAliteLies tweeted March 28.
“Guy’s walking around like a celebrity and really believes it. Proudest rat Facebook’s ever seen,” the account sniped on April 9.
On YouTube, videos purporting to be from John Alite alter the title of “Gotti’s Rules” to read, “A Story About John Alite and his Lies.” Another video also shows a picture of Alite with red tape over his mouth, with a caption, “FBI Gave Him $55,000 to Fix his Teeth to Look Presentable to the Jury.”
Alite, a free man since 2012, is now a motivational speaker who tackles topics such as bullying and domestic violence.
He says he has received prank phone calls and insulting texts and says his Wikipedia page was altered after the book came out.
“As of 2015, John Alite came out as gay,” reads the alleged Wiki-tweak, which has been removed.
Alite fingered Gotti for the latest sniping.
“He’s been called a ‘baby bully’ since he was a kid,” said Alite. “This is his new tactic of being a cyberbully.”
But Junior Gotti said it’s Alite who is the bully.
“At one time, I admit, I was the wolf. My father was the lion. We’re now the lambs. We’re being preyed on,” he told The Post.
Gotti said he has no doubt his family has lashed out at Alite.
“He accused my ex-brother Carmine of raping two girls. He accused my father of being a swinger. He said I was hanging out with a transvestite,” Gotti said. “So I’m sure my son reacted to it. I am sure my sister, who is fiercely protective of this family, she reacted to it.”
“They shared everything with me, and I’m beside myself with anger. This guy is a demented, sick character. He’s been going on a campaign, looking for a platform. I know his book has been tanking,” he said.
But Gotti said he never orchestrated any attacks.
“I’m not computer literate,” he said.
Gotti said the family cut off Alite in 1991 as a Gambino flag bearer and wants nothing to do with him.
“Believe me, if you were an earner or a capable guy, organized crime doesn’t give you up too easy,” he said.


Cocaine ring based in New York pizzeria broken up, say Italian police and FBI

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At least 16 arrested in Calabria, Italy, and New York in operation that police say shows how ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate has expanded US ties
A major cocaine trafficking ring run out of a New York City pizzeria was dismantled after a transatlantic probe revealed that the Italian ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate has expanded its ties with New York’s traditional mafia crime families, Italian police and US FBI agents said on Thursday.
At least 13 people were arrested in pre-dawn raids in Calabria, the region in southern Italy that is the power base of the ’Ndrangheta , which has increasingly taken advantage of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra’s disarray to consolidate its influence and operations in the US, officials said at a joint Italian-US news conference in Rome.
Three other Calabrians were arrested in New York several weeks ago. All were members of the family that ran the pizzeria in the Corona neighbourhood of Queens, New York’s most populous borough, authorities said.
Study finds crime network made billions of euros from drug trafficking, illegal rubbish disposal and other activities
The restaurant, Cucino a Modo Mio (“I cook it my way”), was the command centre for an international trafficking operation, said Andrea Grassi, who is in charge of an Italian state police special operations unit known as SCO. Authorities said they seized more than 60kg of cocaine in the Netherlands and Spain during the inquiry that began last year.
“In the evening, the family ran a good pizzeria. In other hours they were running the drug trade,” Grassi said.
The pizzeria also served as a weapons cache for drug traffickers, investigators said.
Police said operatives bought the cocaine in Costa Rica with cash brought in specially constructed suitcases. The cocaine was warehoused in Wilmington, Delaware, and Chester, Pennsylvania, until it could be shipped, using a produce company as a cover, to northern Europe and Italy, investigators said.
American agents seized 55kg (121lb) of cocaine hidden in two shipments of fresh cassava from Central America to Philadelphia and Delaware, officials said.
The ’Ndrangheta has operatives in Australia and Canada, but this inquiry, code-named Operation Columbus, convinced investigators that the syndicate has increasingly moved its foot soldiers and bosses to the US , said Renato Cortese, a top Italian police official.
“Because of its blood ties, the ’Ndrangheta is a terrible organisation,” Cortese said. He was referring to the syndicate’s ironclad rule of relying on members who have either family or marriage ties. Family pressures discourage turncoats, a small army of whom helped weaken Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, which largely chose its mobsters based on skills and not blood ties.

The Calabrian family that ran the pizzeria in New York allegedly turned to the US mafia’s Genovese crime clan for financing so they could invest in the cocaine trade, Calabria-based anti-Mafia prosecutors said.

Reputed mob enforcer pleads guilty to threats, violence to collect debts

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By Jason MeisnerChicago Tribunecontact the reporter
Reputed mob associate loses tough-guy demeanor as he pleads guilty in court to extortion.
Reputed Outfit associate Paul Carparelli was caught on undercover recordings ordering a beefy union bodyguard to "crack" a guy who owed a debt, federal authorities say.
He also was captured referring to people who cooperate with law enforcement as "rats" and laughing with glee when he heard his goons had broken the arm of a construction rival in a pipe beating, according to court records.
But on Friday, Carparelli had lost the tough-guy demeanor as he quietly pleaded guilty to three counts of extortion for using threats and violence to collect debts on behalf of two businessmen.
Judge revokes bond for alleged threat on life of witness"Yes, ma'am," Carparelli, 46, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, told U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman when she asked if he understood the charges.
Carparelli, who allegedly has long-standing ties to the Outfit's Cicero crew, faces up to about 12 1/2 years in prison at his sentencing on Sept. 29 under federal guidelines, according to prosecutors. But Carparelli's lawyers said the figure should be much lower — perhaps as little as about five years behind bars.
After Carparelli's arrest in July 2013, agents recovered two guns, $170,500 in cash and nearly $200,000 in jewelry — including a gold bracelet with the name "Paulie" spelled in diamonds — in a safe hidden in the crawl space of his Itasca home, court records show.
In pleading guilty, Carparelli admitted that Mark Dziuban, who owned a suburban printing company, asked him and co-defendant George Brown to travel to New Jersey to look for a Nevada businessman who had failed to pay back several hundred thousand dollars. Carparelli also sent Brown and a co-defendant to Wisconsin to threaten another businessman who owed Dziuban money.
Brown, a union bodyguard described by prosecutors in one filing as a "three-hundred pound muscleman," later began cooperating with authorities and recorded numerous conversations with Carparelli, court records show.
In a February 2013 phone call, Carparelli was recorded telling Brown to go to the home of another victim to collect a $66,000 juice loan debt, according to Carparelli's plea agreement.
"(Expletive) ring the bell and crack that guy," Carparelli was quoted as telling Brown. "Don't even say nothing to him. ... Go over there, give him a (expletive) crack, and we'll get in contact with him."
In another plot, Elio Desantis, owner of a suburban electrical company, enlisted Carparelli and Brown to help collect a $90,000 debt from a construction company operator, identified in court records only as Individual B. Desantis had met Carparelli while performing electrical work at Carparelli's pizza restaurant in Bloomingdale and knew of his "tough guy reputation," court records show.
Desantis was recorded telling Brown he "thought of going the lawyer route" but decided it would be more efficient to have them take care of it.
"All really Paulie has to do," Desantis said of Carparelli, "is pick up a phone and say, 'Hey, (Individual B), I want to meet you,' and he'll probably (expletive) his pants and meet him. You know what I mean?"
After Carparelli and Brown paid Individual B a visit, he began writing checks to Desantis to cover the debt, records show.
Desantis pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the plot and was sentenced in February to a year in prison. Dziuban was found guilty at trial and is awaiting sentencing.
In a ruse devised by the FBI, an undercover agent posing as a New Jersey State Police investigator called a Carparelli associate and asked questions about his travels to the state two years earlier, court records show. The real purpose of the call worked, touching off a flurry of phone calls and meetings between Carparelli and others worried about who may have ratted them out, court filings show.
Prosecutors have alleged in court filings Carparelli took pleasure in arranging beatings on behalf of the Outfit. During the investigation, an undercover informant also recorded Carparelli explaining how he felt about people who cooperate with law enforcement.
"As long as you don't steal from me, (expletive) my wife or rat on me, you're my friend 1,000 percent," Carparelli said to the informant in 2013, according to prosecutors. "You hear that? You hear that? Those three (expletive) things …That's the type of person I am."
While free on bond last month, Carparelli allegedly threatened the life of a witness against him outside a Chicago-area Wal-Mart, pulling up alongside an employee of the witness and saying, "Tell him he is a (expletive) rat. Tell him he knows what happens to rats," according to prosecutors.
jmeisner@tribpub.com
Twitter @jmetr22b

New York mobster held over cocaine smuggling ring with Italian mafia boasted to wife he ATE the heart and kidney of a rival and wanted to dissolve two others in acid, wiretaps reveal

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Mainland Italian Ndrangheta crime syndicate made £44billion in a year - more than fast food chain McDonalds and Deutsche Bank made combined

Alleged broker Gregorio Gigliotti said he want to dissolve people in acid

Gang has an exceedingly violent past - one member was fed to pigs alive

Those on the run from the law known to hide in a network of secret tunnels

By Hannah Roberts In Rome For Mailonline

A savage mafia mobster arrested in New York for his part in a transcontinental cocaine trafficking network boasted to his wife that he ate the heart and kidney of a rival who owed him money, it is alleged.
Gregorio Gigliotti was the alleged U.S. broker between the Ndrangheta - Italy's richest and most brutal organized crime syndicate - the New York mafia families and the South American drug cartels.
The group's turnover is $70 billion (£44billion) a year, according to a study last year, more than Deutsche Bank and McDonald's combined.
Prosecutors allege that he was talking about eating a human being, explaining in the arrest warrant: 'He had literally eaten the organs of the person as gesture of blatant contempt to the victim.'
The mob operative seemingly modeled himself on the brutal gangsters in the film Casino, the wire taps reveal.
In another phone tap Gigliotti threatened to carry out a violent scene from the Martin Scorsese film in which two characters get beaten with baseball bats and buried alive, prosecutors claim.
'Do you remember the movie Casino?' he asked his son in a recorded conversation. 'Do you remember what happened to the two brothers? This is what I have to do to him.'
The gang member even threatened to murder his own colleagues, according to investigators in Italy.
He allegedly claimed he would make two alleged Ndrangheta members Franco and Pino Fazio who crossed him 'disappear' by 'dissolving them in acid.'
Gigliotti was angry with the brothers, who falsely made him believe that a Ndrangheta colleague had not settled a debt for a consignment of drugs purchased, prosecutors allege.
Recorded by a police wiretap in the car, Gigliotti told his wife 'He and his brother are .. the godfather must give me 35,000.
'But listen, they need to disappear.. and it will be both of them together ..one brother will fall the ground .and the other will not understand what is happening .. and then we will see, they will be dissolved in acid. .. I will show them.. they have no shame, they will have nothing. '
The arrest warrant said: 'These words need no further explanation, revealing a disturbing personality that would push for such serious consequences for a debt of a few thousand euro.'
Subsequently, however, the relationship between Gigliotti and the Fazios continued, the investigation showed with the brothers his link to the Ndrangheta clans, it is alleged.
This level of brutality is not unusual in the group, based in Calabria, the 'toe' of Italy in the deep south. In 2013 one Ndranghetista admitted feeding a rival alive to pigs in retaliation for the murder of a godfather.
As part of a feud that had been going on since the 1950s one gangster was heard on the phone remembering: 'It was so satisfying hearing him scream. Mamma mia he could scream.
'I didn't see a f****** thing left. People say sometimes they leave something. In the end there was nothing left. Those pigs could certainly eat.'
Although the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra has found worldwide notoriety as the subject of the Godfather films the Ndrangheta has emerged in recent years as the most ruthless and wealthiest crime syndicate in Italy.
Based on close family ties and blood bonds, its tentacles have spread across the globe through emigration from Italy. It now has established bases in Australia, Spain and the US as well as Canada and Latin America and may have as many as 60,000 members according to a recent study.
The South American link has proved particularly useful - it is also the only one of the three main Italian mafias to do business with the South American cartels even acting as an intermediary for other mafia bosses.
Despite its international network, the roots remain obscure. Informants are rare due to close family ties. The members swear oaths for life in masonic rituals using religious symbolism and codes.
What is known is that the crime syndicate began in the mid nineteenth century as bandits who also developed organized methods of extortion and racketeering.
They later moved into kidnappings on an industrial scale, abducting wealthy businessmen or their children, from northern Italy and holding them for ransom
The group kidnapped around 600 people between the 1960s and 1990s holding many of them in caves on Aspromonte the craggy and inhospitable mountain that runs through the middle of the region. A cross on the mountain was the ransom drop point. Many of them were held for months in terrible conditions and some were never seen again, even if their relatives did pay.
The most famous was the kidnap of John Paul Getty's teenage grandson. His ear was chopped off after his grandfather refused to pay.
Billionaire former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was allegedly forced to employ a stable manager from the Sicilian mafia and pay regular bribes as a guarantee against his kidnap by the Ndrangheta.
Later the syndicate moved into the more profitable area of drugs and are now thought to control some 80 per cent of Europe's cocaine imports.
In 2006, Italy's then interior minister blamed the assassination of a Calabrian  politician on the local Ndrangheta, which he said was 'the most deep-rooted, the most powerful and the most aggressive of [Italy's] criminal organisations'.
They have also been shown to be ruthless, and insensitive even to some of the code of conduct other mafias broadly follow, such as not killing children or attacking priests.
Last year three-year-old Coco Campolongo was murdered by the Ndrangheta because his gangster grandfather was considering turning state witness.
The group go to extreme lengths to stop the police and judicial authorities from acting against them. In 2010 they planted a Yugoslavian bazooka near a courthouse in southern Italy as act of intimidation following a crack down and hundreds of arrests.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3073803/New-York-mobster-held-cocaine-smuggling-ring-Italian-mafia-boasted-wife-ATE-heart-kidney-rival-wanted-dissolve-two-acid-wiretaps-reveal.html#ixzz3Zk9Sn242

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Keeping the yakuza away from the 2020 Olympics

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by Jake Adelstein

The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo should be a cause for celebration but this may depend on who you talk to.
Takajima Publishing released a book by Yoshinari Ichinomiya in June 2014 titled “2020 Black Money and the Tokyo Olympics” that portrays the event as an underworld party.
In a chapter titled “The Yakuza Olympics,” Ichinomiya discusses the alleged ties that Hidetoshi Tanaka, vice president of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC), has had to organized crime in the past. It references a September 1998 photograph of Tanaka with the former head of the Sumiyoshi-kai, the second-largest yakuza group in the country, at Hotel New Otani Tokyo. The Shukan Bunshun was the first to publish the photo in February 2014.
With the author estimating that total spending on the games may reach ¥1 trillion, there’s going to be plenty of money floating around for anyone interested in a cut — including the Yamaguchi-gumi.
The Yamaguchi-gumi isn’t just an organized crime syndicate, it’s an international corporation that has been in business for 100 years. The organization is the largest yakuza syndicate in the country, counting more than 25,000 registered members at the start of 2014, according to the National Police Agency.
The syndicate owns myriad auditing firms, oversees hundreds of front operations and, more recently, even appears to be moving into the IT sector. In 2007, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the head of a Kodo-kai faction took over Yubitoma, the equivalent of Japan’s “classmates.com,” gaining access to the personal data of 3.5 million people.
The syndicate is also politically connected. As I noted in my April column, “Learning valuable lessons from the yakuza?”, the Shukan Bunshun reported that education minister Hakubun Shimomura had received donations from a Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai front company. The magazine also claimed that Masahiro Toyokawa, a longtime associate member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, founded one of Shimomura’s political support groups. Shimomura denied the allegations.
Politicians, however, aren’t the only ones who appear to benefit from the underworld payouts. The Yamaguchi-gumi offers their employees a few perks when they retire in exchange for loyalty. One former senior gangster, Kenji Seiriki, says that a retiring executive could expect to be paid out ¥50 million or more.
While government officials in Japan appear reluctant to confront issues relating to organized crime, the U.S. government is taking a more proactive approach.
The U.S. Treasury Department froze American-owned assets controlled by the Yamaguchi-gumi and the syndicate’s top two leaders in February 2012. On April 21, U.S. officials went one step further and announced similar measures against the Kodo-kai, the same faction linked with Shimomura.
“The Kodo-kai is known to be the most violent faction within the Yamaguchi-gumi and is headquartered in Nagoya, Japan, with about 4,000 members,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions. “Among other criminal activities, the Kodo-kai has conducted extortion and engaged in bribery on behalf of the Yamaguchi-gumi and has gained prominence in part for its financial muscle.”
The financial sanctions also apply to Teruaki Takeuchi, chairman of the Kodo-kai.
“Takeuchi is also linked to the Inagawa-kai syndicate, the third-largest Yakuza syndicate in Japan, through a symbolic brotherhood he shares with Kazuo Uchibori, the second-in-command of the Inagawa-kai,” the Treasury statement said. “Such brotherhoods have the power to signify alliances among yakuza syndicates.”
Takeuchi and Uchibori are both expected to take over their organizations by this time next year, police sources say. The Inagawa-kai (Tokyo) will effectively be under the Yamaguchi-gumi umbrella — just in time for 2020.
It isn’t the first time an administration has attempted to confront the Kodo-kai. In 2009, the National Police Agency declared war on the Nagoya-based syndicate, directing all departments to utilize whatever resources they had at their disposal to arrest gangsters and destroy revenue sources. Shinobu Tsukasa was head of the Kodo-kai at the time; he is now the sixth and current head of the Yamaguchi-gumi.
Tsukasa has already attracted some attention in official circles this year after a photograph mysteriously surfaced that features the Yamaguchi-gumi leader sitting alongside JOC Vice President Tanaka at a club in Nagoya in the mid-2000s. The photo was sent to a number of media outlets by an individual claiming to be an unhappy Nihon University employee. On April 23, Gendai Business reported that a right-wing newspaper had tried to publish the photograph but the publisher’s employees were assaulted after they contacted Nihon University for clarification. According to a report in the Sankei Shimbun, Tanaka claims the photo is a fake.
Ishin no To (Japan Innovation Party) lawmaker Yoshio Maki has recently been looking into possible links between the yakuza and the Olympics.
In education committee meetings in April, he held up several newspaper and magazine articles that included the photo of Tsukasa apparently with Tanaka, and demanded an explanation.
Maki asked Shimomura, the education minister who is also in charge of overseeing preparations for the Tokyo Games, why the government has yet to investigate the olympic committee’s possible ties to organized crime.
Shimomura pledged to investigate the claims personally and, given his alleged connections, just might be the right man for the job.
“Shimomura’s reply is just a formality,” Maki later told me. “Asking the JOC and Nihon University to investigate on their own will only produce an answer that is expected.”
We can only wait and see if Shimomura is able to get some results and keep the yakuza out of the Olympics but perhaps, as they say, “don’t hold your breath.”
Dark Side of the Rising Sun is a monthly column that takes a behind-the-scenes look at news in Japan.


Japanese yakuza fugitive arrested in Bangkok

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Immigration authorities today arrested a fugitive yakuza gangster wanted by Japanese police after hiding for years in Thailand.
Minoru Hirata, 51, was arrested Tuesday at a golf course in Bangkok, officials said.
Hirata, who faces charges in Japan in connection with organised crime, was charged with overstaying his visa.
He has been in Thailand since September 2011.


'Ndrangheta Mafia's 'sacred cattle' under threat as Calabrian authorities order them to be destroyed

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The free-roaming white cows have caused damage, ruined crops and pose a danger to traffic, but animal rights activists have launched a petition to save the animals that mobsters see as a sign of their power and influence

Michael Day 

Animal rights activists have found themselves in a unlikely alliance with ‘ndrangheta mobsters after authorities in Calabria, southern Italy, ordered the free-roaming, “sacred cattle” of the feared crime syndicate to be rounded up and destroyed.
Claudio Sammartino, the prefect of the province of Reggio Calabria, has said that white cows, most of them owned by ‘ndrangheta, should not be allowed to wander around the countryside causing damage and helping themselves to other people’s crops. The animals are also considered a danger to road traffic and railway tracks.
Mr Sammartino has said the animals that are slaughtered should be butchered and used to feed the poor and destitute in charities and soup kitchens. But local animal rights activists have formed a petition on the Firmiamo.it site calling for the slaughter to be avoided and for the animals to be transferred to enclosures where they can live undisturbed.
“Killing is a fast and easy solution in a country that does not know how to govern. Preserving the life of these animals would be the response instead of an intelligent and democratic country,” the petition reads. Local mobsters have responded in a more aggressive way to attempts to curtail the cows’ movements in the plains around the Aspromonte mountains.
Two months ago police arrested two mobsters in the town of Locri, for the suspected murder of a Calabrian doctor, Fortunato La Rosa, who was shot dead in 2005 after he complained several times about the invasion of his property by the white cows.
Fears of such violent response probably explain why an earlier edict by one of Mr Sammartino’s predecessors calling for the wild cattle to be rounded up went mostly unheeded.
Various explanations have been given for the presence of free-roaming, mafia-owned cattle in Calabria. But the newspaper Corriere della Sera said the one relating to the violent feud in 1971 between the Facchineri and Raso clans of ‘ndrangheta is given most credence. The theory says the war between the two powerful families was so all-encompassing that they completely gave up caring and managing their livestock, which from that time on began wandering around the countryside.
Since then, the white cattle, which are now thought to number around 2,000, have been left undisturbed as legends around their links to the mob have grown, with many ‘ndrangheta members seeing the animals as a sign of their power and influence.



Nine-year-old boy under 24-hour guard as 'one of the most bloodthirsty' Mafia bosses in Sicily vows to kill magistrate and 'his spawn'

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The danger was confirmed by wire-tapped conversations where the mobster referred to an attack that was currently in preparation

Michael Day 
A bewildered nine-year-old in Sicily has been given the highest-possible security cover with a 24-hour armed guard and anti-bomb surveillance, after a notorious Cosa Nostra boss decided that the boy’s father – a magistrate who sent him to prison – “and all his spawn” should be obliterated.
The mobster who ordered the family to be killed is considered “one of the most bloodthirsty” in all of Sicily, according to Italian press reports. The prosecuting magistrate earned the mob boss’s wrath by foiling a plan he had to pose as a turncoat in order to avoid jail. In reality the mobster continued to manage his criminal activity and even organise a vicious vendetta against a nephew who he felt had usurped his position in the clan.
Ordering the assassination of the prosecutor, the mob boss is reported to have said: “You have to do it no matter who he’s with, and if his male child is there, all the better. His spawn shouldn’t survive, either.”
The boy’s mother and his 12-year-old sister are also considered to be at “very high risk”, by the interior ministry’s National Committee for Order and Public Security, which has provided a 24-hour armed guard and anti-bomb surveillance in the all the places they visit regularly. The plan to kill the magistrate and his family was revealed by several informers, at least one of whom is considered a reliable source.
The danger was confirmed by wire-tapped conversations between the boss and family members which referred to an attack that was currently in preparation.
Earlier this year, the suspect is said to have returned to an earlier abode to kick out his ex-wife and two children, telling them: “Get lost or I’ll slit your throats like lambs.”
Whatever the “code of honour” mobsters claim they abide by, it certainly doesn’t prevent the killing of children. This was brutally demonstrated by the deliberate (and separate) killings of two toddlers, Nicola Campolongo and Domenico Petruzzelli, in Calabria and Puglia respectively, in the first few months of 2014.
The leading Mafia writer, Corrado De Rosa, said that these killings amounted to the “umpteenth demonstration that a Mafia code of honour does not exist”.
“People often say that bosses don’t touch women or children. It’s not true,” he said.
A statement by ANM, the Italian magistrates association, said that the new danger to the magistrate and his family in Sicily showed “the daily commitment and sacrifice” made by its members.
The association expressed its “condemnation of the vile plan” and its “unconditional solidarity with its colleague and his family”.



The godfather of ganja comes from a legendary Mafia family

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By Toby Rogers


During Prohibition, it was booze. Then gambling, racketeering and cocaine. But today, the New York mob makes big money from an unlikely product — marijuana. And the godfather of ganja is from one of the storied names in Mafia lore: Eboli.
Silvio Eboli, 44, is the grandson of Tommy Eboli, who ruled the Genovese crime family from 1969-72, and grandnephew of Patsy Eboli, a Genovese capo and head of the what the family called the Greenwich Village Crew.
Tommy Eboli was killed, his family believes by Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, a k a the “Oddfather,” who replaced him as boss of the Genovese. Patsy, the family tells me, figured he was next, so he fled to Lagos, Nigeria, then made his way over land and by boat to Sicily, where he lived in exile.
But the Ebolis were already part of the pop-culture mafia before their fall. Actor Al Lettieri — whose sister, Jean, married Patsy — played Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo in “The Godfather.”
Lettieri had to ask Tommy Eboli for permission to take the role, and during filming, the cast and crew came over to Patsy’s house in Fort Lee, NJ, for dinner. Legend has it Al Pacino leaned over into the crib of infant Silvio and kissed the ring finger of the “little Don” as a joke.
It was a bit of foreshadowing. In 2013, during the Feast of San Gennaro, Silvio took over what was left of the Eboli crime family — forging his own enterprise outside the Genovese.
Silvio Eboli has been steadily building his marijuana-delivery empire since the 1980s. He started at the bottom, “muling” bud in from Jamaica strapped to his legs. When Rudy Giuliani cracked down on street dealing in the mid- 1990s, the rise of the marijuana home-delivery market began.
Silvio rode a bike throughout Manhattan delivering bud to customers earning $250 a day. One day Silvio met Chris Farley at a party and he introduced Silvio to others in the “Saturday Night Cast” cast, all of whom became clients of Silvio. Some of them, even the ones who branched out into big film stars, still remain in contact with Silvio and buy weed from him regularly.
Besides celebrities, Silvio delivers regularly to many professional athletes in the tri-state area. Silvio personally handles all his “star” clients orders and over time has developed deep friendships with many of them.
Silvio has recently launched a new business venture where the rich and famous he knows that have either moved out of New York or drop in for business can purchase a whole weekend or two-three day package deal that includes hotel rooms, escort girls, the type of drugs they want and invites to VIP parties. Pictures of escort girls are neatly arranged in a binder for clients to look over and select women like they would a meal off a menu.
Modal TriggerSilvio personally picks the client up at the airport in a limousine, gets them to the hotel, hands them the drugs they requested, picks them up to hit a nightclub or a party and introduces the girls to the clients.
He is really proud of what he has created and looks at himself as successful business man or a CEO, despite the blatant illegality of it all.
How much money he makes is a mystery, but he has several storage closets in Westchester filled with locked trunks of cash.
But Silvio says the best way for a mobster to wash his dirty money is to spend it, which he certainly does a lot of. When we go out to eat, sometimes he orders several dinners at once, eating just a little off each plate. Why? Silvio doesn’t like to make choices. He wants it all.
Why tell me all of it? I have come to conclusion that Silvio Eboli is blinded by pure narcissism. He wants people to know his position in the mob, to know how powerful he is — that’s why he let me follow him around as a reporter (though his brazenness does have limits — he refuses to be photographed). His personal life is the “live today, die tomorrow” mentally, the daily revolving door of escort girls and heavy drug use.
Silvio Eboli has made Eboli a name again in crime; but for how long?
Toby Rogers is the author of “The Ganja Godfather: The Untold Story of NYC’s Weed Kingpin” (Trine Day), out now.


Man accused of plotting to extort or harm real estate mogul

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PHOENIX (AP) — A Scottsdale man has been arrested for allegedly trying to hire undercover police detectives to extort or harm a real estate mogul who won a $1.2 million lawsuit against him, authorities said Friday.
Mikhail Kordonsky, 46, was taken into custody Thursday and was being held on suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
His bond was set at $500,000 at his initial court appearance Friday. He doesn't have an attorney yet.
Court records show Kordonsky wanted to get revenge against the CEO of a large commercial real-estate investment company.
The CEO's name wasn't disclosed in court documents released Friday, but authorities said Kordonsky gave the name to undercover detectives and it was verified.
Police said Kordonsky spoke of plotting to kidnap the man, beat him with a bat and shoot him in the back of the head if he didn't pay $10 million in diamonds because they're untraceable.
Investigators also said Kordonsky claimed connections to the Bonanno crime family and to Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, a member of the Gambino crime family who's serving a federal prison sentence in Arizona.
Kordonsky also reportedly told detectives he was $200,000 in debt, but he did not say to whom, and had recently lost his liquor license.
Court documents show undercover detectives posing as hit men met Tuesday with Kordonsky and told him they could provide silencers and handguns with "clean barrels."
During the meeting, police said Kordonsky allegedly masterminded a plot in which the supposed hit men would conduct surveillance on the real estate mogul's friends and family before demanding the $10 million in diamonds in return for not harming them.


Police: Suspected Jewel Thief Tied to Organized Crime

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By Julie Carey and James Doubek

Northern Virginia Bureau Chief Julie Carey reports on the organized crime connection to a local ring of jewelry thieves. (Published Thursday, May 14, 2015)
Fairfax police arrested a jewelry theft suspect they said may be tied to organized crime.
Jan Parchewski, 39, of the Chicago area, was charged with burglary and grand larceny May 8.
There may be as many as three accomplices who have not been arrested in connection with at least four high-end jewelry burglary thefts in Fairfax County, police said.
The burglars appear to have targeted wealthier homes, police said.
Neighbors aren't surprised that thieves could be attracted to the area.
"You look at the population here, it's diverse, it's huge," said Mike Dimmick, whose neighbor's house in Reston was broken into earlier this month. "There's a lot of wealth and people take advantage of it."
Jewelry worth $8,000 was taken from the Reston home, but a security camera helped identify a suspect.
Search warrants show a detective identified a suspect staying at a Sterling hotel. Documents allege the suspect is tied to an organized crime family in Chicago.
In a separate incident May 6, a McLean woman took her dog to the groomer. When she returned a few minutes later, two people tried to distract her from going into her home. One man asked her for the price of houses in the area, police said. Then a woman approached her and said she lost her dog. When the victim went inside, she found her jewelry missing.
Victims told police the suspects had thick, European accents. The burglaries took place in the daytime and the suspects are sophisticated, using two-way radios, authorities said.
"I'm glad that the person was arrested, and that the neighborhood can feel safer," said Debra Stoffer, another neighbor of a burglary victim.

Fairfax police are asking residents to secure jewelry collections. Police ask anyone with information to call 703-691-2131.

Two men caught in ‘sniper van’ sentenced on weapons charges

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JIM MUSTIAN

Two men caught in Jefferson Parish last year driving a van that appeared to be outfitted for an assassin were sentenced to federal prison Thursday on weapons charges, ending a bizarre case that raised a host of questions and invoked the specter of organized crime.
U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon sentenced Joseph F. Gagliano, a convicted racketeer whose father was the reputed underboss of the Marcello crime family, to 28 months for possessing an unregistered silencer and for being a felon in possession of a .22-caliber rifle the authorities found secreted in the van’s cargo area.
The driver of the so-called “sniper van,” Dominick Gullo, 73, was sentenced to five months on the unregistered silencer charge, a violation of the National Firearms Act.
Gullo, who had no previous criminal history, was credited with about four months he spent behind bars awaiting trial, meaning he has only about one month left to serve, said his attorney, Patrick Hand.
“I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, to a great extent,” Fallon said.
The judge said he took Gullo’s failing health into account in determining his sentence.
After several months of arguing that the federal government had no case, Gullo and Gagliano both pleaded guilty in January rather than stand trial.
If federal authorities ever determined why the men were driving the suspicious van — in which Gagliano, 55, had installed custom windows resembling gun ports — they have not made that information public. Investigators apparently were unable to link the rifle, which had a scope attached to it, to any other crimes.
“The government is of the firm belief that there was something else afoot that night,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Quinlan said.
The Ford E-250 might have gone unnoticed but for an automatic license plate reader, mounted near Orpheum Avenue and Metairie Road in Old Metairie, that flagged the vehicle’s stolen license plate in May 2014. It had been reported stolen from a woman’s car in the parking lot of an unidentified hospital, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The license-plate reader alert prompted a patrolling deputy to stop the van as Gullo pulled into his driveway on East William David Parkway shortly before midnight. Gagliano got out of the van from the passenger side but later claimed he’d never been in the vehicle. Meanwhile, Gullo reached into the glove box, seemingly searching for insurance and registration documents, before admitting to the deputy that he did not have any paperwork for the vehicle, according to court records.
Gullo then told a story about having just bought the van for $300 from a woman he met in a coffee shop on Metairie Road. He claimed he planned to meet the woman the next day to receive the vehicle’s paperwork.
As authorities were preparing to tow the van, they discovered a suspicious setup inside that prompted them to notify the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Agents found the loaded rifle under a folded piece of carpet, an 8-foot length of cannon fuse and the silencer stowed in a side compartment. Sawed-off dining room chairs had been mounted to the van’s interior in front of the apparent gun ports.
“But for the fortuitous stop of this van that night, there was other criminal activity that was afoot,” Quinlan said. “Other violence was averted because of that traffic stop.”
Gullo and Gagliano initially professed ignorance about the contents of the van. But in pleading guilty, they acknowledged Gagliano had ordered custom work on the van weeks before.
Gagliano’s defense attorney, Pat Fanning, disputed Quinlan’s claim that violence had been planned the night the van was pulled over. He said his client apparently had been in possession of the van for several months.
“I’m not sure there was any reason to believe that May 7 was the day something was going to happen, or that anything was ever going to happen,” Fanning said.
Gagliano has well-documented ties to the Marcello organized crime family, which was active in the city for decades before apparently fading into obscurity in the mid-1990s. In 1996, Gagliano pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy involving video poker machines and was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison.
Prosecutors in that case said Gagliano and others — including his late father, known as “Fat Frank,” and Anthony Carollo, the boss of the organization at the time — had used companies that functioned as Mafia fronts in an effort to infiltrate Louisiana’s budding video poker industry. The scheme, which involved a partnership among the Gambino and Genovese crime families of New York and the Marcello family of New Orleans, defrauded Bally Gaming, a supplier of video poker machines.
“The cases against traditional organized crime members that were brought in this district during most of the ’90s involved white-collar crime, as far as I can recall,” said Eddie Jordan, a former U.S. attorney in New Orleans. “Violent, neighborhood-based drug organizations that were allied with rogue elements of the police force posed a far more serious threat to public safety.”


The New England Mafia: Mexican cartel meetings in New England, elsewhere ...

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