Detroit biker boss “Mad Anthony” Clark is back in Motown. The 59-year old one-time Highwaymen Motorcycle Club national president was recently released to a halfway house in the Motor City after a decade in prison. He’ll be free for good on May 16. According to court records and DEA documents, he’s a suspect in an unsolved murder from almost 20 years ago.

Clark was one of the featured defendants in a giant 2007 federal racketeering and drug indictment levied against Detroit’s only homegrown biker gang and convicted at a 2010 trial – he had his original sentence reduced on appeal. The Highwaymen’s national president from 2002-2005, Mad Anthony was busted in a previous racketeering case surrounding club activity in Michigan in the 1980s.

Even though Clark was the club’s national president for three years in the 2000s, he deferred to co-defendant and Highwaymen Godfather Leonard (Big Daddy) Moore for all major decisions. Moore, 69, always used a series of front bosses in an attempt to insulate himself from law enforcement scrutiny. After Clark’s presidency concluded, Mad Anthony stayed on as Moore’s top advisor.

One witness at the summer 2010 trial testified Moore told him, “I don’t need the title (presidency), I don’t need the heat, I have the power and that’s all that matters.” Big Daddy Moore isn’t scheduled for release from prison for another 11 years.

Clark and Moore were both implicated, but never charged with the 1999 murder of an unnamed club member, as part of the federal inquiry that landed them behind bars for racketeering and narcotics trafficking a decade ago. In his November 2007 debriefing with the feds, Clark’s protégé in the club and former vice president, Danny (Rocket) Sanchez, admitted that he, Clark and Moore killed another Highwaymen inside the Highwaymen’s Detroit clubhouse and then set the clubhouse ablaze in an arson to eliminate the evidence.

Rocket Sanchez and his brother and fellow turncoat-Highwaymen Nat (Bolo) Sanchez each testified against Clark and Moore at their trial. The murdered man’s mother disrupted the trial in the middle of Rocket Sanchez’s testimony by standing up in the back of the courtroom, pointing to Sanchez and screaming, “He killed my son, he killed my son.”

Clark and the Sanchez brothers ran a cocaine-distribution ring together. Per the 2007 indictment, Clark was involved in an attempted murder conspiracy in 2004 related to the Highwaymen’s rivalry with another local biker gang called the Black Pistons.

The state’s largest motorcycle club, the Highwaymen were founded in Detroit by Elburn (Big Max) Burns in 1954. The club maintains chapters in Indiana, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, New York and New Jersey. There are eight chapters in Michigan – Downtown Detroit, Eastside Detroit, Westside Detroit, Northwest Detroit, Downriver, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Monroe).

The Highwaymen are known to do business with other major organized crime groups in the area like the Italian mafia and local Mexican street gangs such as the Latin Counts. According to court filings in the 2007 case, the Highwaymen’s liaison to the Detroit mob was Gary (Junior) Ball and the club’s contact with the Latin Counts was its then-national president Joseph (Little Joe) Whiting. Ball, the club’s unofficial narcotics boss, and Whiting, Big Daddy Moore’s right-hand man, were both convicted and are currently guests of the federal corrections system.

Little Joe Whiting got nailed for operating a stolen motorcycle ring, transporting boosted bikes from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina up to Michigan to be sold on the black market or out of club-owned cycle shops. During a 2006 raid of Junior Ball’s headquarters, Pal’s Auto Parts & Repair, FBI agents discovered stolen bikes and forged Department of Transportation documents. Whiting was caught on a wire discussing murdering a Highwaymen he believed was an informant with Latin Counts leader and Southwest Detroit crime lord Anthony (Scarface Tony) Viramontez.

The post Return Of The Motor City Madman: Highwaymen MC Power ‘Mad Anthony’ Back In The D After Dime Piece In Prison appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A wide slate of racketeering convictions earned by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Michigan against the leadership of Detroit’s infamous Highwaymen Motorcycle Club seven years ago could be possibly in jeopardy of falling apart amid recent allegations of subterfuge within the biker gang’s own defense team. The Detroit Free Press’ Paul Egan penned a story on the developing situation over the weekend (read here).

Almost 100 Highwaymen and Highwaymen associates were indicted in 2007 for racketeering, narcotics and murder-for-hire schemes and club luminaries like Leonard (Big Daddy) Moore, Joseph (Little Joe) Whiting, Anthony (Mad Anthony) Clark, Gary (Junior) Ball and Aref (Scarface Steve) Nagi were all found guilty at a two-month long trial in 2010, hit with lengthy prison sentences as punishment. Clark was the first to walk free last month. As of right now, the rest of them all have at least another seven years of time to complete before they’ll taste freedom again, some much longer.

That is, unless Junior Ball, the club’s incarcerated 51-year old former drug lieutenant and one-time representative to the Detroit mafia, has his way later this month and convinces U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds that one of his co-defendants and fellow Highwaymen hierarchy member might have been feeding federal law enforcement inside information on defense-team strategy sessions. That co-defendant would be college-educated Scarface Steve Nagi, the chameleon crime lord, part rugged big-shot biker boss and part suave, sophisticated businessman, who once served as the club’s national vice president and sergeant-at-arms and won’t be eligible for parole until 2024. Ball has 18 years left to do in the can.

Through his own research behind bars, Junior Ball uncovered the fact that Nagi, 53, has been a local police and federal informant dating as far back as the early 1990s. In court papers filed on his behalf in late March, Ball claims that if he had known of Nagi’s status as a snitch, he would have never agreed to tap Nagi’s attorney James Thomas the defense team’s spokesman in the courtroom and main strategist. Ball will see Edmunds on May 17. His co-defendants, Big Daddy Moore, the Highwaymen’s reputed Godfather and Little Joe Whiting, Moore’s right-hand man and the club’s former national president have filed similar briefs requesting hearings before Edmunds.

Ball also raises questions about his own counsel at the trial, Larry Shulman, who without his knowledge was handling plea negotiations for a co-defendant of his. Alabama attorney David Schoen is repping Ball in his current appeal. Thomas denies that Nagi was an informant and there was any wrongdoing on his part as defense team leader in the Highwaymen case in an affidavit he signed last fall.

Through a FOIA request to see Troy, Michigan Police records, Ball found out that Nagi set up a drug deal for Troy cops and the DEA in a Troy shopping mall parking lot in 1992. Despite Thomas’ rebuke of the assertion that Nagi ever worked for the government, the U.S. Attorney’s Office admits Nagi was an informant for federal and local law enforcement in the past, but says it played no role in the 2010 trial or overall prosecution of the case.

In 2006 DEA and ATF raid of Nagi’s suburban Sterling Heights, Michigan residence, agents found a cache over 30 firearms. Wiretaps of his cellular and home phones displayed his hair-trigger temper and penchant for violence. On one call with another Highwaymen, Nagi bragged of stabbing and physically assaulting an employee of his at a Mexican restaurant he owned that he had caught stealing, finally leaving the man badly beaten and bleeding in a trash bin in the alley. Scarface Steve is of Yemen descent and can be seen in a 1990s era mug shot in this article’s cover photo.

The Highwaymen are the state of Michigan’s largest biker gang, founded in Detroit in 1954 by Elburn (Big Max) Burns. The club maintains chapters in Indiana, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, New York and New Jersey. There are eight chapters in Michigan alone – Downtown Detroit, Eastside Detroit, Westside Detroit, Northwest Detroit, Downriver, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Monroe.

The post Convictions Of Highwaymen MC Leaders In Detroit Being Challenged By Revelations Of Possible Mole In Defense Camp appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Even on bond restriction, Philadelphia mob boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino grabs headlines. Merlino, 55, ended April in the news twice in the month’s final week, first for reportedly rejecting a plea deal in his current federal racketeering case out of New York that would call for a relatively-easy two-year prison term and getting permission from the judge in his case to attend the South Florida wedding of Philadelphia attorney Michael Caudo over the weekend.

Notoriously media-friendly Skinny Joey relocated from South Philly to South Florida in 2011 after his release from 12 years in prison stemming from a 2001 racketeering conviction. The FBI is of the opinion that Merlino runs his criminal empire in Pennsylvania from afar these days, ensconced in a posh Boca Raton condo.

According to multiple reports in the press, Merlino has told prosecutors he’ll go to trial, rather than accept a light plea and prison sentence following it being announced earlier in the spring that FBI case agents responsible for the star witness in the case may have mishandled the documenting of intelligence retrieved in his one-on-one debriefings and audio recording Skinny Joey and his mafia cohorts. Then, last Thursday, a federal judge in New York City ruled that Merlino could go to Caudo’s wedding Sunday night at the ritzy Boca Raton Golf & Country Club and serve as his best man, but had to leave before the reception so he wouldn’t be in contact with co-defendant and fellow wedding invitee Anthony (Wall Street Tony) Cirillo, a reputed New York mob associate indicted alongside Merlino in August 2016 also allowed by the judge to celebrate Caudo’s nuptials with him, just not the actual ‘I dos.”

The judge even let Merlino give the ceremonial best man’s toast at the rehearsal dinner Saturday night, pushing back his court-mandated curfew three hours. Skinny Joey lives a stone’s throw from the Boca Raton Golf & Country Club and is known to hit the links there often. As recently as a few weeks ago, Merlino posted a photo on his social media accounts of him golfing at the club with his longtime buddy and Philly right-hand man Ray Wagner.

The 51-year old Tony Cirillo splits his time between New Jersey and Boca Raton and is alleged to be a mid-level sports gambling manager on behalf of both the Gambino and Genovese crime families in New York. He was barred from attending Caudo’s wedding ceremony to avoid seeing Merlino, a close friend of his. Prior to his being arrested last summer, Cirillo controlled business affairs at Wall Street trading firm Princeton Securities through a trust and according to sources in federal law enforcement, is connected to mob crews in the Garden State belonging to Genovese capo Ludwig (Ninny) Bruschi and Gambino capo Alphonse (Funzi) Sisca.

Cirillo’s name popped up in a criminal investigation earlier in the decade probing Genovese syndicate gambling activity in New Jersey. In 2015, Genovese bookie Gary (Baldy) Latawiec was indicted for running one of the biggest sports books in the country out of the Tribeca Spa of Tranquility in Manhattan. Per court documents tied to the Polish 78-year old Latawiec’s case, Latawiec’s gambling business delivered proceeds in tribute envelopes of cash to Genovese mob administrators using Cirullo as an intermediary.

The post A Week In The Life Of Philly Don Skinny Joey: Shunning Pleas, Wedding Bliss & Who Is Anthony Cirillo? appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Several members of the Highwaymen Motorcycle Club trashed the Wheat and Rye gastropub in suburban Detroit in December 2005 when the gang attacked a patron who it had tussled with earlier in the evening at another local establishment. And in the middle of the fracas was then-Highwaymen national vice-president Aref (Scarface Steve) Nagi, currently at the center of recent explosive allegations that may compromise a series of crushing federal racketeering convictions won against club higher-ups seven years ago.

Scarface Steve Nagi, 53, is in prison serving time under the aforementioned racketeering bust, but his co-defendants and fellow incarcerated Highwaymen leaders are alleging he’s been an informant for law enforcement since the 1990s and claiming that his status as a double agent interfered with their chance at a fair defense. Nagi was heavily feared on the streets and once acted as the club’s sergeant-at-arms and warlord. He’s also smart and was known as a sharp legitimate businessman in the area’s white collar world.

According to court records, Nagi’s bodyguard and right-hand man Erick (Poke-A-Dot) Manners got into a fist fight with Alan Kirchoff at the Trolley Stop Lounge in Taylor, Michigan around 10:30 p.m. on the evening of December 22, 2005. Kirchoff dated an ex-girlfriend of Manners’ Highwaymen pal Leonard (Bo) Moore, Jr. After the altercation at the Trolley Stop Lounge, Kirchoff left and went to the Wheat and Rye in the nearby city of Allen Park. The Highwaymen followed him there and a ruckus broke out the moment Manners and his biker crew walked in the door.

Highwaymen member John (Jack Daniels Johnny) Jarrell called Nagi’s tapped phone and told him to come to the Wheat and Rye because there was “about to be trouble.” The wire intercepted Nagi telling Jarrell, “Don’t worry, I’ve got six motherfuckers with me and we’re on our way.”

At around 11:30 p.m., Kirchoff was sitting with a group of friends at a table inside the Wheat and Rye when Manners, with a host of Highwaymen in tow, arrived ready for action. Per court testimony, Manners, flanked by Nagi and others, immediately approached Kirchoff, grabbed him by the shirt, through him to the ground and started pummeling him with fists, feet, beer bottles, tables and chairs.

“Do you remember me, motherfucker?” Manners is alleged to have asked Kirchoff while physically lifting him up from his seat and throwing him into a circle of at least 10 frothing Highwaymen waiting to pounce.

Kirchoff eventually squirted free from his assailants and was able to flee through restaurant’s kitchen. Manners pulled a gun and fired two shots in the air, sending customers and bikers alike scurrying for the exits.

As a fleet of Allen Park police cruisers sped into the parking lot, they saw Nagi’s black-colored Ford F1-pick-up truck speeding away from the scene. With a cop car in pursuit, Nagi stopped his vehicle in the middle of the street and him, Highwaymen Mike (Cocoa) Cicchetti and their girlfriends took off on foot, ditching a Glock-9 revolver in a snowbank.

Days later, Kirchoff met Bo Moore at another local bar and complained about the beating. Moore reportedly told him to be quiet about it or he would become a target for retribution by the Highwaymen. Moore’s father, Leonard (Big Daddy) Moore, is the club’s overall boss.

Both Moores were convicted with Nagi in 2010. Bo Moore, 46, has eight more years to do on his sentence. The 69-year old Big Daddy Moore won’t be eligible for release until 2028.

Nagi was caught on federal audio surveillance discussing the incident at the Wheat and Rye with more than one Highwaymen in the days that followed.

“Poke-A-Dot busted off a couple shots last night,” Nagi told Louis (Dirty Lou) Fitzner, a future star witness against the club at trial.

One conversation picked up between Nagi and Bo Moore shows how excited acts of violence get club members.

“Man, I would have loved to have been there when Poka-A-Dot busted those caps,” Moore said.

Nagi described the scene inside the bar.

“He was just messing with him at first , then he motherfucked him and motherfuckers were coming out from everywhere, they all got around him and tuned him up pretty good,” Nagi told Moore.

In another phone call with Dennis (Knothead) Vanhulle, he criticized the Allen Park police.

“Shit, man, we had a thing last night at the Wheat and Rye, they fucked up though, the cops, they didn’t find my gun in the back of the pickup….those dumb motherfuckers,” said Scarface Steve with a laugh.

Nagi is scheduled to come home from prison in 2024. Knothead Vanhulle was killed awaiting trial in the 2000s Highwaymen racketeering case, shot in the head on his front porch by a rival biker in the Liberty Riders.

The Highwaymen are the state of Michigan’s oldest and largest biker gang, founded in Detroit in 1954 by Elburn (Big Max) Burns. The club maintains chapters in Indiana, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, New York and New Jersey. There are eight chapters in Michigan alone – Downtown Detroit, Eastside Detroit, Westside Detroit, Northwest Detroit, Downriver, Ann Arbor, Lansing and Monroe.

The post Rumble At The Wheat & Rye: Highwaymen MC In Detroit Broke Up Bar, Beat Down Patron In 2005 Assault appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A motorcycle rally in Florida erupted into violence last weekend when leaders of the Outlaws and the Kingsmen biker gangs shot it out at a gas station. The Outlaws Osceola, Florida chapter boss Marc (Not Quite) Knotts and the Kingsmen Lake County, Florida chapter vice president David (Gutter) Donovan were both shot three times in the gunfight late Saturday night at a Circle K refill depot down the road from the tail-end of the annual Leesburg, Florida Bikerfest and were admitted to a local hospital for treatment.

The Outlaws are based out of the Midwest, but has long maintained a stronghold along the Florida panhandle. The Kingsmen were founded in New York and are a recent addition to the underworld biker landscape. The club took a major federal racketeering and murder bust last spring out of Buffalo. Kingsmen national president David (Big Dave) Pirk resides in Florida and is the indictment’s headlining defendant.

The 48 year old Knotts, originally from West Virginia, is sometimes called “Knothead” or “NQ” and was wounded in the groin during the shootout. Gutter Donovan, 40, was struck in the back. The Leesburg Bikerfest drew over 200,000 people this year.

Just last month, Florida Outlaw Christopher (Louie the Lip) Keating was stabbed to death in a bar brawl in Daytona Beach. Keating had been fighting with a member of the Pagan’s, a biker gang headquartered out of Pennsylvania.

The post Shootout At The Circle K: Florida Outlaws & Kingsmen Exchange Gunfire During Leesburg Bikerfest appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Detroit Highwaymen Motorcycle Club luminaries Anthony (Mad Anthony) Clark and Leonard (Big Daddy) Moore are forces to be reckoned with in the outlaw biker world. One just got out of prison. The other has more than a decade of time behind bars to serve, but might be on the verge of finagling himself a successful appeal. They’re both prime suspects in the unsolved gangland slaying of Juan Butler, which allegedly took place inside the Highwaymen’s “mothership” clubhouse in Southwest Detroit 18 years ago.

The 19-year old Butler was stabbed and beaten to the death on March 5, 1999, his body tossed in the Detroit River. That same week, the Highwaymen headquarters on Michigan Avenue got set ablaze in what was believed to be an arson fire. Butler’s body washed ashore on April 26. He had been stabbed close to 40 times and experienced massive blunt-force trauma to the head.

Mad Anthony Clark, the Highwaymen’s one-time national president, was released from a ten-year stint in prison last month. Big Daddy Moore is the club’s most powerful member and overall Godfather. He’s currently locked away in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Clark, 59, and Moore, 69 were convicted of widespread racketeering at a 2010 federal trial. One of the trial’s star witnesses Danny (Rocket) Sanchez, Clark’s former national vice president and right-hand man, fingered Clark and Moore for participating in the Juan Butler murder.

In March, court records were filed on behalf of at least three of those found guilty back in the 2010 trial, questioning co-defendant and Highwaymen leader Aref (Scarface Steve) Nagi and his attorney’s allegiances in the light of new revelations that Nagi was a longtime government informant. Nagi, who replaced Sanchez as Highwaymen national VP, isn’t eligible for release from federal lockup until 2024. Another incarcerated Highwaymen co-defendant, Gary (Junior) Ball, will be the first to see U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds regarding the matter later this month at a court hearing scheduled for May 17.

Juan Butler grew up in Southwest Detroit, a mostly-Hispanic community in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, separating the United States and Canada, the same community that Highwaymen were first founded in the 1950s. As a 14-year old boy, Butler was arrested for throwing a firebomb into a neighborhood storefront as an induction ritual for a local notorious street and drug gang known as the Cash Flow Posse and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Saline, Michigan, a city near Ann Arbor, roughly a half-hour’s drive west of Detroit.

Released from the Saline facility in the summer of 1998, according to police records, Butler began gravitating towards the Latin Counts, another high-profile Southwest Detroit crime syndicate. The Highwaymen and the Latin Counts have had ties since the early 1990s when the Latin Counts came to Motown from Chicago.

Rocket Sanchez has admitted to luring Butler into the Highwaymen’s original clubhouse on Michigan Avenue where Butler was killed by him, Mad Anthony Clark and Big Daddy Moore in March 1999. Sanchez told authorities in his fall 2007 debriefing that after murdering Butler, the three of them dumped his corpse in the nearby Detroit River and then came back to the clubhouse and torched it to dispose of any evidence linking the club to the execution.

During Sanchez’s appearance on the witness stand at the Highwaymen trial in 2010, Butler’s mother disrupted his testimony, rising from the back of the courtroom, pointing at him and screaming “They killed my son, that man killed my son.” Sanchez, 41, is living in an undisclosed location in another part of the country under an assumed identity in the Witness Protection Program. The Butler homicide remains an open investigation with both federal and local law enforcement and Clark and Moore are the top two “persons of interest” in the dormant cold-case probe

The Highwaymen are the state of Michigan’s oldest and largest biker gang, started in Detroit in 1954 by Elburn (Big Max) Burns. The club also has chapters in Indiana, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, New York and New Jersey. There are eight chapters in Michigan alone. Big Max Burns died of natural causes in 1980.

The post The Highwaymen Clubhouse Murder: Man Killed, Detroit Highwaymen HQ Burned To Ground In ’99 Homicide-Arson appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Highwaymen Motorcycle Club in Michigan practically made hunting informants a full-time job in the second half of the 2000s. While under federal indictment for a variety of racketeering offenses, leading members of the club’s Detroit wing got their hands on a top-secret list of government informants readying to testify against them at their upcoming trial. Several Highwaymen administrators were convicted of racketeering and drug charges in 2010 and smacked with heavy prison terms. There were almost 100 Highwaymen and Highwaymen associates indicted in the three years prior.

News broke earlier this week that the recent unmasking of co-defendant and former club vice president Aref (Scarface Steve) Nagi’s as an informant himself may provide fresh appeal grounds for imprisoned Highwaymen higher-ups (Nagi’s attorney was voted the defense team’s spokesperson at trial). Ironically, Nagi was at the forefront of efforts by the club to identify, locate and harm turncoat informants during the late 2000s.

According to court filings, the Detroit Highwaymen had murder contracts on the heads of former club brothers Philip (Jocko) McDonald and Doug (Doc) Burnett as well as a local man named Gerald Deese well before they even received the leaked list of future witnesses. Once the list leaked in 2009, former club national president Gerald (Bird Dog) Peters was visited at his home and threatened.

The Highwaymen is the biggest biker gang in Michigan and the state’s only traditional home-grown club, founded in Southwest Detroit the early 1950s. The club keeps chapters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, New York and New Jersey.

Jocko McDonald served as the Highwaymen’s Downriver Detroit chapter president in the 2000s. Burnett helped jumpstart the entire investigation when he approached the FBI in 2004 just four months into being a full-patch club member and voluntarily offered his cooperation. In late 2005, two years prior to the indictment dropping, then-Downtown Detroit chapter president Ron (The Mad Hatter) Hatmaker issued the contracts on Burnett, McDonald and Deese, per court records. Confronting club member Christopher (Lil’ Dog) Miller, who he suspected of snitching, Hatmaker warned him he’d “end up in a trash bin” if he cooperating with authorities – Miller cooperated anyway.

Hatmaker and then-Highwaymen national president Joseph (Little Joe) Whiting offered a cash bonus and vacation time as a bounty in the attempt to find and kill Burnett. The FBI found a photo of Burnett made into a gun-range target and the word “RAT” scrawled across it in a raid of the Highwaymen’s clubhouse in Southwest Detroit.

Whiting was caught on a federal wiretap discussing finding Burnett so he could be murdered and sanctioning Latin Counts street gang chief Anthony (Scarface Tony) Viramontez to kill Burnett if Viramontez and his Latin Counts crew found him first. Burnett aided the DEA in building a case against Viramontez and his gang too.

Deese was beaten unconscious by Highwaymen Westside Detroit chapter president Robert (Bad News Bobby) Burton after robbing chapter members of personal property. Burton, a well-known club drug boss, jumped ship following his arrest and became one of the government’s star witnesses at the two-month long 2010 trial.

As the trial approached and the list of over a half-dozen Highwaymen who had cut deals to testify somehow slipped into the biker gang’s unholy grasp, one of Little Joe Whiting’s predecessors as national president, Bird Dog Peters, inched into the club’s crosshairs. His estranged wife tipped Highwaymen brass to Peters intentions on testifying and subsequently his name appeared at the very top of the leaked list of names.

In the fall of 2009, Peters was cornered on his front porch by a trio of brooding Highwaymen, Michael (Cocoa) Cicchetti, Erick (Poke-A-Dot) Manners and Robert (Busy Bob) Whitehouse, all three of them co-defendants of his. They told him in no uncertain terms to “hide his family” if he intended on taking the witness stand. Within days, Cicchetti, Manners and Whitehouse had their bonds revoked.

At the time, Cocoa Cicchetti was the Downtown Detroit chapter president. Poke-A-Dot Manners acted as Scarface Steve Nagi’s bodyguard, driver and right-hand man out of the club’s Westside Detroit chapter. Peters wasn’t deterred by the intimidation tactics and spent almost two whole days in the witness box unfurling club secrets for the jury, prior to disappearing into the witness protection program.

Cicchetti got out of prison in 2015. Whitehouse was sprung in 2012. Nagi, Manners and Whiting remain guests of the federal correctional system. Manners has three years left on his sentence, Nagi will be eligible for release in seven years from this September. Whiting won’t be sprung from the pen until 2040 when he will be 87

The post Rats On A Sinking Ship: Motown’s Highwaymen MC Preoccupied With Snitches As RICO Trial Loomed In 2000s appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Southwest Detroit drug lord Anthony (Scarface Tony) Viramontez, the Motor City’s most notorious Hispanic crime boss of the past three decades, worked in tandem pushing narcotics and trying to kill people with the infamous Highwaymen Motorcycle Club. Viramontez, 47, was convicted for racketeering and drugs in 2008 and sentenced to 15 years behind bars. He’s in a federal correctional institute in McKean, Pennsylvania and won’t be eligible for release until 2021.

According to court documents, Viramontez and his Latin Counts street gang were closely connected to former Highwaymen leaders Joseph (Little Joe) Whiting and Philip (Jocko) McDonald and Viramontez and Whiting conspired to murder another biker who they suspected correctly had been feeding information to the federal government. The 63-year old Little Joe Whiting used to be the Highwaymen’s national president and per news reports from just last week, is currently trying to mount an appeal from his prison cell, where he is serving a 30-year sentence for racketeering himself. Today, Jocko McDonald, the one-time Highwaymen Downriver Detroit chapter president and the club’s liaison to the Latin Counts, lives under as assumed identity in the Witness Protection Program.

Located in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge and on the shores of the American-Canadian border, Southwest Detroit is a primarily Hispanic neighborhood, but it’s also home to the mothership chapter of the Highwaymen and where the club was founded in 1954. Scarface Tony Viramontez, nicknamed for a gash on the right side of his face sustained when he got shot in the chin at the age of 15 while living in Chicago, is sometimes also referred to as “Big Chocolate.” In 1988, upon turning 18, Viramontez, already a veteran of the Windy City street gang circuit, moved to Motown and started a Detroit faction of the Latin Counts, absorbing the Bagley Boys Gang and its turf.

Within a very short period of time, Viramontez became well-known in law enforcement, community activist and media circles for all the wrong reasons. He did a prison stint in the 1990s for weapons violations and beating a rival with a brick. On December 23, 1990, his little brother Octavius (aka “Bootis”) was murdered in a drive-by shooting.

Faced with a mountain of negative news clippings, Scarface Tony Viramontez did an Interview with The Detroit Free Press, admitting he was “banned from Chicago,” for his reputation, but wanting to let the public know that he loved his new home of Detroit and that street-gang activity was strictly in his past.

“I don’t want to be known as a so-called gang leader and I would appreciate if the police, press, prosecutors, lawyers and community leaders would stop using my name for their own needs (and agendas),” he told Free Press scribe Jack Kresnak.

Viramontez’s Latin Counts drug empire got dismantled as a result of a federal criminal inquiry into the Highwaymen jumpstarted in 2004 with the flipping of local biker politician William (Billy Wadd) Smith and recent-Highwaymen inductee Doug (Doc) Burnett. Both volunteered their cooperation prior to any arrest. Smith, the Westside Detroit chapter boss of the Devil’s Diciples, owned The Copa Lounge, a de-facto “no man’s land,” and frequent hangout for a number of area bike gangs which he let the feds wire for sound. Burnett worked directly for Jocko McDonald and ran interference on his behalf with the Latin Counts, middling drug transactions.

When Burnett, only weeks from being “patched-in” to the Highwaymen, approached the FBI and offered up his help to bring down his new brothers in the club, he mentioned his role as a club conduit to Viramontez and the Latin Counts in his debriefing. Per federal records and court filings, the government enticed Burnett with the promise of a $25,000 bonus if he aided authorities in building cases against both the Highwaymen and Scarface Tony.

By late in the summer of 2006, Viramontez knew Burnett was an informant. He didn’t know his co-defendant Jocko McDonald was too though. Conversations discussing locating and killing Burnett between Viramontez and McDonald and Viramontez and Little Joe Whiting were intercepted on a wire in August 2006.

“He has to go, he can’t make it to my trial,” Scarface Tony told McDonald. “I’d do it right now, but I don’t want to start a war (between the Latin Counts and the Highwaymen)…..ask Joe (Whiting) what he wants to do about this.”

Whiting’s answer was decisive.

“Whoever finds him, he needs to go,” he said.

His only instruction if Scarface Tony and his crew got to him first: make sure he isn’t wearing his Highwaymen colors, as to avoid bad blood between the two groups.

Neither succeeded. Burnett testified against both Viramontez and the Highwaymen. Like his former mentor in the club Jocko McDonald, Burnett resides in the Witness Protection Program today.

The post Feds Finally Nailed Detroit Latino Kingpin ‘Scarface Tony’ Viramontez Through His Dealings With Highwaymen MC appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Current New England mafia captain Edward (Little Eddie) Lato and former New England mafia boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and their alleged involvement in a gangland murder in Rhode Island 25 years ago are the subjects of a federal grand jury impaneled in Providence this spring, per sources with intimidate knowledge of the proceedings. Authorities believe Salemme ordered and Lato participated in the September 18, 1992 slaying of renegade mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan in Providence’s historic Federal Hill neighborhood.

Both Lato and Salemme are in prison. Lato, a 70-year old capo out of Providence, is nearing the end of a ten-year term for racketeering and extortion (he can be seen in this article’s featured image). The 84-year old Salemme, who is from Boston and served as the New England region’s Godfather in the first half of the 1990s before getting busted and entering the Witness Protection Program later in the decade, was yanked out of the program last summer and arrested for his role in the May 1993 murder of Beantown nightclub impresario and mob associate Stevie DiSarro. He’s pled not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Investigators have been chipping away at cracking the cold-case Hanrahan hit for the last several years. It was discovered in 2010 that the notoriously fearless and hardheaded Hanrahan was trying to shakedown bookmakers in Southeastern Massachusetts already paying protection to Providence mafia figures. Informants have told the FBI that Salemme was alerted of the indiscretion and days later after a lump-sum tribute payment was delivered to a Salemme lieutenant, Hanrahan was shot to death leaving a dinner with a group of mob associates at a Federal Hill steakhouse. Because the 39-year old Hanrahan was Irish, he could never be initiated into the Italian mafia in New England.

The DiSarro case got brought due to a cooperation deal struck with local Providence drug dealer and mob associate Billy Ricci in early 2016. Ricci pointed the feds to DiSarro’s remains buried on his property, dumped there 23 years before by Salemme’s underboss and representative in Rhode Island, Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca and his brother Joe, who each cut their own respective deals with the government.

DeLuca, 72, had already been in the Witness Protection Program for five years living in Florida. DiSarro, 43, was partners with Salemme in a South Boston bar and music venue and was cooperating with the FBI and IRS in their probing Salemme’s business affairs.

Bobby the Cigar also clued the feds in on details from the Hanrahan homicide. Whether that will be enough for prosecutors to bring charges in the case remains to be seen. Per sources, DeLuca has told investigators that Salemme set the hit in motion, assigning him responsibility for coordinating the specifics, which he did with the help of Little Eddie Lato and deceased Providence wiseguys Ronald (Rum-Shot Ronnie) Coppola and Rocco (Shaky) Argenti. Coppola was DeLuca’s best friend and right-hand man, while Argenti was being fast tracked to mafia administration status in the area.

Kevin Hanrahan

On the night he was killed, Hanrahan dined with Coppola and a group of friends at The Arch restaurant on Atwells Avenue in the heart of Federal Hill, Rhode Island’s Little Italy and a longtime hotbed of mob activity. He left the meal at around 11:30 p.m., telling his tablemates he was on his way to collect on a “big score.”

The purported purpose of the meal was for Coppola to ask Hanrahan if Hanrahan would christen his child and used in hopes of getting him to lower his guard, liquored up and “lulled to sleep,” according to sources. Reputed drug dealer and mob associate Paul Calenda was at the dinner that evening and is allegedly one of those subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury.

Hanrahan arranged to hook back up with Coppola at Jimmy Burchfield’s Classic Restaurant down the street after midnight for a late-night drink. He never raised a glass, nor even stepped in the door.

Coppola also pretended to be the middleman in arranging for Hanrahan to cash in on his “big score,” telling him to go see Lato outside The Arch, two sources claim – in return for helping set Hanrahan up for the kill, Coppola was promised a button, induction into the Patriarca crime family, per these sources. Lato walked Hanrahan to his slaughte and Argenti, with DeLuca by his side, gunned down Hanrahan at point-blank range with multiple shots to the head, face and neck less than a block away from the restaurant, DeLuca has told prosecutors.

Hanrahan was pronounced dead at the hospital. Lato, Coppola and DeLuca were observed huddling together in a booth at Jimmy Burchfield’s in the minutes after Hanrahan got banged out, as ambulance-sirens blared and police combed the area searching for evidence.

Coppola was killed the following spring inside his own social club in Cranston, Rhode Island, shot to death over a a beef at a card game before he could ever get straightened out himself as reward for the Hanrahan job. Argenti rose to be the Patriarca clan’s consigliere prior to succumbing to cancer in 2002.

Cadillac Frank Salemme in a mug shot from the 1970s

The post To Kill The Irishman: Grand Jury Testimony Underway Out East In Probe Of Patriarca Clan’s ’92 Hanrahan Hit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Opting against a new identity and the cozy confines of the Witness Protection Program, former Springfield, Massachusetts mafia crew leader Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta came back home earlier this month after completing an eight-year prison sentence in a federal security wing and testifying in multiple mob trials against gangland superiors and underlings alike. The news of Arillotta’s return to Western Massachusetts was broke Monday morning by acclaimed local mob scribe Stephanie Barry of MassLive.com (read here).

A little balder, a little fatter, good ole Bingy has had a difficult time keeping a low profile. According to Barry’s story, there have been numerous sightings of him around town in his first week back.

The 48-year old Arillotta ran the Springfield mafia, a wing of the Genovese crime family out of New York City, from 2003 through 2009, killing his way to the top area’s mob kingdom and grabbing ahold of the region’s rackets with vicious and coldblooded calculation. Arillotta admitted to orchestrating the November 23, 2003 assassination of his predecessor and underworld mentor, Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno, outside Bruno’s Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club in Springfield’s South End. His testimony brought down Genovese syndicate acting boss Arthur (Little Artie) Nigro, his best friends and top henchmen, the Geas brothers (Ty and Freddy), among a cast of others.

Nigro sanctioned the Bruno hit and tapped the young and ruthless Arillotta his replacement as capo of the Genovese’s Massachusetts satellite. The Geas helped Arillotta bludgeon and shoot his brother-in-law Gary Westerman, a convicted drug dealer and mob associate, to death the week before Bruno was slain. Bruno, 57 at the time of his murder, was gunned down by hired assassin Frankie Roche getting into his Chevy Suburban SUV leaving a card game.

Westerman had been a police informant and angered Arillotta’s family by seducing and marrying his sister, who was 30 years younger than him. Colorful, gregarious and a longtime fixture of the Western Massachusetts mob scene, Big Al Bruno simply stood in the way of Arillotta’s self-appointed destiny to ascend to the boss’ seat in Springfield before his 40th birthday – Arillotta created and circulated a false narrative that Bruno was an FBI snitch, waving around a court document recounting a casual conversation between Big Al and an FBI agent in a public setting as his proof.

Roche became a witness for the government too. The Geas didn’t and are both serving life prison sentences. Nigro is locked up for the rest of his life as well.

Just like Arillotta, former Springfield mob heavy Felix Tranghese joined Team USA and testified against his fellow mafia contemporaries but refused admittance into the Witness Protection Program. Tranghese, 64, left prison in 2014 and is resettled in the Springfield community living life on the straight and narrow these days.

The post Binge Watching: One-Time Springfield (MA) Mob Chief, Turncoat ‘Bingy’ Arillotta Turns Back On WITSEC & Returns Home appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A number of notable gangland figures from the ferocious, flashy and cocaine-fueled 1980s Detroit drug scene will be getting the Hollywood movie treatment next year in the highly-anticipated Hollywood film White Boy Rick about former illegal underage FBI informant Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe, Jr.,the longest-serving non-violent juvenile offender in the history of the Michigan Department of Corrections. Starring Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey as Wershe’s street-hustler dad and fellow federal informant and newcomer Richie Merritt as Wershe, White Boy Rick is currently shooting in Cleveland and slated for a January 2018 release to theatres nationwide.

At only 14 years old and just weeks out of the eighth grade, Wershe was recruited by a federal narcotics task force made up of the FBI, DEA and Detroit Police Department to act as a paid mole in the local drug world. The working relationship between the savvy, slick-talking teen and the unscrupulous task force lasted for two years, garnering the feds mountains of elite intelligence, Wershe tens of thousands of dollars from a government stipend and before the unholy union was broken off in the early fall of 1986.

Only months after Wershe went on his own and began dealing drugs without federal sanctioning and financing, the 17-year old former government pawn was arrested at a traffic stop in front of his grandmother’s house where police found a box containing under a nearby neighbor’s porch. Wershe’s been behind bars since January 1988. He’s 47 today and has his next parole hearing on June 8 in Jackson, Michigan.

After an 18-month search that literally spanned the globe, Merritt, an unknown, 15-year old non-actor from Baltimore was cast as Wershe in the movie. McConaughey will portray Richard Wershe, Sr., his son’s entre into a pay-for-play relationship with the feds who spent a few years in the clink himself for selling silencers in the wake of his son’s high-profile conviction at a winter 1988 trial held amid a full-blown media frenzy.

Jonathan Majors, the star of this year’s ABC television miniseries When We Rise, is playing legendary eastside Detroit drug lord Johnny (Lil’ Man) Curry, the younger Wershe’s mentor in the crack game. Curry controlled large sections of narcotics-trafficking turf on the eastside from the 1970s all the way into the late 1980s and was deeply connected into the Detroit political machine through his marriage to Mayor Coleman A. Young’s niece, Cathy Volsan, a notorious “dope diva,” of the era. Volsan will be played by former L.A. Laker Girl Taylour Paige (VHI’s Hit The Floor).

Popular LA.-based rapper YG has been cast as Curry’s twin brother and co-crime boss Leo (Big Man) Curry. The Curry brothers were indicted and jailed in March of 1987. They pled guilty to federal drug charges and both did 12 years in prison. When the Currys went away, Wershe, still shy of his 18^th birthday, began romancing the then-24-year old Volsan.

Wershe’s right-hand man and best friend Stephen (Freaky Steve) Roussell will also be depicted by a rapper. Well-regarded Milwaukee wordsmith Ish Darr recently got the nod. Roussell, 20, was killed in the early-morning hours of September 12, 1987, gunned down as he slept on his living room couch by street rival Reginald (Rocking Reggie) Brown, one of the sociopathic, bloodthirsty leaders of the Best Friends Gang. Brown, doing life in prison for the murder, and Roussell had been feuding for months over a girl.

Studio 8, a relatively-new boutique outfit located on the Sony Pictures lot, is footing the 40-million dollar bill and putting out the White Boy Rick film. The movie was written by Logan and Nolan Miller (Sweetwater), Andy Weiss (Middle Men), Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter) and Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys, the Harry Potter series). Producers on the picture include Oscar-winner Jon Lesher (Birdman, Black Mass) and Oscar-nominees Darren Aronofsky and Scott Franklin (The Wrestler, Black Swan).

The post Real-To-Reel: Colorful Characters From Detroit Drug Game’s Past Going To Big Screen In ‘White Boy Rick’ Movie appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The founding members of the Motor City’s infamous Cash Flow Posse were brought to justice in an historic bust 20 years ago this summer, concluding a decade-long run atop the diverse and tumultuous Southwest Detroit underworld. More than a half-dozen Cash Flow Posse leaders were indicted in July 1997 on a laundry list of racketeering, drug and murder charges. It was the first time federal prosecutors in Motown nailed a street gang under the RICO act.

By the following year, five of those indicted had pled guilty, one pled no contest to the charges and another was convicted at trial. There were a total of five murders and seven shootings and assaults included in the case, highlighted by the 1994 homicides of Evan Ison, Jimmy Goings and innocent bystander Annie Johnson.

Southwest Detroit is mainly Hispanic in population, but a hodgepodge of gangland activity, home to both Latino and African-American criminal groups as well as the notorious Highwaymen Motorcycle Club. Started by then-teenagers Jerry (Quick) Waucaush and his baby brother Robert (Brutus) Waucaush, the Cash Flow Posse, sometimes shortened to just “CFP,” sprouted up around 1989 in response to a raging turf war between the neighborhood’s Latin Counts and Spanish Cobras street gangs – each recent arrivals from Chicago.

The Waucaush brothers aligned themselves with the Latin Counts and commissioned a graffiti campaign to announce their presence. Neighborhood buildings, bridges and walls were soon tagged with Cash Flow Posse shout-outs and territory markings.

Another founding father of the gang, Cash Flow Posse’s top enforcer Efraim (12-Gauge) Garcia was the shooter in all five murders charged. On July 17, 1994, Garcia gunned down CFP rival Jimmy Goings, killing his 15-year old niece Annie Johnson in the process. Four months later, on November 26, 1994, he clipped Evan Ison, another rival of the CFP clique.

Garcia shot both Goings and Ison at point-blank range. Ison was a Spanish Cobra. Goings, 34, was alleged to be affiliated with the Folks Nation gang. His niece just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shirley Johnson, Goings’ sister, was wounded in the attack and survived.

According to court and police records, Goings and Quick Waucaush had been in a beef for weeks over a girl and that on the afternoon of Goings’ murder, him and Waucaush had gotten into a fist fight at a local park. Pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Waucaush admitted that Garcia told him of the double homicide hours after it happened.

Cash Flow Posse lieutenant Greg (Shortstop) Ballestero pled guilty to second-degree murder in the case too, admitting he was with Garcia when the hits occurred and personally took part in the shooting. Garcia ran up on Goings on his sister’s front porch, unloaded his weapon into him before pointing his gun into the family-room window and opening fire, striking Goings’ niece dead and severely wounding his sister.

“Gauge don’t leave no witnesses,” one informant told the feds as to why Garcia fired into the house after successfully hitting his target on the porch.

Shortstop Ballestero helped found the Cash Flow Posse in the 1980s, but had joined the U.S. Marine Corps and was on summer leave in July 1994 when Goings and Johnson was murdered. Found guilty by a jury at a 1998 trial, the 48-year old 12-Gauge Garcia is doing natural life in the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Brutus Waucaush, 44, put in a plea of no contendre and got slapped with a 30-year prison term. He will be eligible for parole in the fall of 2018.

As a result of their respective plea deals, Ballestero, 43, and Quick Waucaush, 46, received 12-year sentences apiece. They were both released in 2010.

Former Cash Flow Posse initiate and Latin Counts and Highwaymen MC associate Juan Butler was murdered – most likely inside the Highwaymen’s Southwest Detroit clubhouse – in March 1999 in a homicide that remains unsolved. Two suspects in Butler’s murder, Highwaymen leaders Leonard (Big Daddy) Moore and Anthony (Mad Anthony) Clark, have had their names bandied about in the local news lately. Clark, 59, just walked free from a 10-year prison sentence for racketeering earlier this month. The 69-year old Moore has 11 years left on his own racketeering conviction, but per recent court filings revealing a co-defendant’s secret relationship with government agencies might now provide him grounds for a formidable appeal.

Butler had served five years in a juvenile detention center for an early-1990s arson as a means of earning induction into CFP. The 19-year old returned home to Southwest Detroit in the summer of 1998. His body was discovered floating in the Detroit River in April 1999. He had been stabbed 40 times.

Detroit-based rap group the Insane Clown Posse often name-checks CFP in their songs. Some two decades later, the term Cash Flow Posse still carries pop-culture weight in the area and has become synonymous with 90s-era criminal activity in Southwest Detroit.

The post Hustle And Flow: Waucaush Brothers & Their Cash Flow Posse Came To Power In The 1990s In SW Detroit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Two Detroit drug peddlers plying their trade and doing dirt down in the Dirty South are headed to prison. Rudolph (Rudy Pooty) Coles and James (Jimmy the Shoe) Cheatham were both hit with recent prison sentences by federal judges in North Carolina and West Virginia, respectively, for pushing heroin brought south from Motown.

The 60-year old Coles was one of the top leaders of the Detroit Boys Gang, a group of Michigan dope dealers that left the Motor City narcotics scene in the 1990s and set up drug-trafficking franchises in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Huntington, West Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee. He was indicted in late 2013, along with over a dozen co-conspirators and family members, and found guilty at trial last month. Coles’ conviction calls for a prison-sentence of 18-to-24 years.

Cheatham pled guilty back in January to selling $2,000 worth of heroin to an undercover DEA agent in West Virginia in the summer of 2015 that he admitting to scoring back home in Detroit . The 24-year old Jimmy the Shoe was hit with a two-year prison term.

He’s a small fish though compared to Rudy Coles (seen in a 2013 mug shot in this article’s cover photo).

The probe into the Detroit Boys Gang began in 2012 via an informant’s tip. Coles himself landed in the government’s crosshairs when a cell-phone conversation between a pair of Detroit Boys discussing the gang’s supply of heroin running low was intercepted on a wire. One of those on the wire was Rudy’s younger brother Terrance, the gang’s co-founder.

“Pooty is planning a trip up north (to Detroit) for the re-up,” Terrance Coles, 57, was heard telling his Detroit Boy lieutenant.

Learning from informants that “Pooty” was Rudy Coles, the DEA attached a tracking device to Coles’ beige-colored Ford Explorer SUV and followed it to Michigan and back to Winston-Salem. A search of the vehicle on Coles’ return to North Carolina on October 28, 2013 revealed 12 ounces of heroin in a secret compartment in the Explorer’s ceiling. The next day, the DEA in Detroit raided a house in Southfield, Michigan which Coles had visited for his “re-up” on his “trip up north,” and seized three pounds of uncut heroin and $35,000 in cash.

The post From The D To The Dirty South: Pair Of Detroit Drug Dealers Dealt Prison Stints For Southern Charm In Dope Game appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The New Jersey-based sports-betting ring ran by retired NHL All-Star forward Rick Tocchet wrote its final chapter 10 years ago this month when Tocchet pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and promoting gambling in May 2007. The 53-year old was spared federal prison time in an FBI investigation dubbed Operation Slap Shot and did two years of probation instead. Serving a brief suspension levied by the NHL, within a year of Tocchet’s plea deal being signed, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman reinstated the popular former right-winger.

Following his retirement and entrance into the league’s coaching ranks, Tocchet began booking bets on football for a clientele consisting of mostly pro hockey personnel. According to sources, Tocchet’s sports book had ties to the mafia in Philadelphia and New Jersey and paid a street tax to a Bruno-Scarfo crime family crew belonging to one-time underboss Joe (Mousie) Massimino, also using the Massimino crew as a layoff bank for heavy action.

The Bruno-Scarfo syndicate controls mob affairs in the greater Philadelphia area and parts of New Jersey. Links between Tocchet’s bookmaking and the mafia were never confirmed.

“Ricky the Rocket” Tocchet played 18 seasons in the NHL, 11 of them spent with the Philadelphia Flyers, and won a Stanley Cup in 1992 as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Over his near-two decades in the league, he was selected to four NHL All-Star Games (1989, 1990, 1991, 1993). He hung up his skates in 2002 and took an assistant coaching job with the Colorado Avalanche. When he was arrested in 2006, he was an assistant for the Phoenix Coyotes. Currently, he’s on the bench as an assistant with the Penguins.

Tocchet partnered with a New Jersey State Police officer named Jim Harney in his sports book operation. Harney cooperated with authorities against Tocchet, who at first vehemently denied the allegations, filing defamation law suits to refute the charges. In the weeks surrounding the 2006 Super Bowl alone, Tocchet and Harney took almost $2,000,000 in wagers.

Rick Tocchet is in his playing days with the Flyers

Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all-time and Tocchet’s boss when he was arrested in 2006 – Gretzky was the Coyotes head coach, general manager and part owner – was heard on an FBI wiretap talking about his wife’s gambling debts and how he could keep her name out of the looming inquiry into Tocchet’s bookmaking activities. Gretzky is married to 1980s-era actress Janet Jones.

Per the investigation, Jones had placed roughly $500,000 worth of bets with Tocchet. Retired NHL players Jeremy Roenick and Travis Green were also implicated as frequent clients of Tocchet’s sports book. Roenick was a nine-time NHL All-Star and one of the best American-born players in pro hockey history. Green, a journeyman in the league throughout the 1990s and 2000s and a well-known poker ace, is the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks today.

The mob figure Tocchet and Harney’s book was allegedly paying protection to, Mousie Massimino, is a formidable presence in east coast mob circles. Massimino, 67, is in the middle of serving a 15-year prison sentence for a federal racketeering conviction from 2013.

A grizzled, mustachioed and wisecracking wiseguy with deep connections in both South Philly and North Jersey gangland circles and a rap sheet that includes dozens of arrests and run-ins with the law, Massimino rose to the No. 2 spot in the whole crime family under acting boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi. Mousie’s son and 46-year old namesake, Joe Massimino, Jr., was recently arrested on a variety of narcotics offenses.

“Mousie” Massimino

The post Operation Slap Shot: ‘Rocket’ Tocchet Walked On The Wild Side With Wiseguys In 2000s NHL Betting Scandal Says Sources appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Shelved Chicago mobster Michael (Mikey Mags) Magnafichi barely escaped with his life in the 2000s, as he landed on the losing end of a deadly feud that raged in the Outfit through the first half of the New Millennium’s first decade and he lost the support of his Goodfella benefactors because of personal debt, exclusive Gangster Report sources reveal. Mikey Mags, sometimes referred to “Good Looking Mike,” did an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times last week as part of the paper’s “Faces of Faith” podcast series focusing on his relationship with Catholicism (read here).

Per Chicago Crime Commission records, the 55-year old Magnafichi, once described as a rising star in Windy City mob circles, was groomed in the Outfit by former underboss John (Jackie the Lackey) Cerone and during his mafia heyday, maintained a close relationship with local underworld powers like Joseph (Joe the Builder) Andriacchi, Marco (The Mover) D’Amico, Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis and the DiFronzo brothers. His father is deceased Outfit soldier Lee Magnafichi.

The elder Magnafichi was a one-time confidant of longtime Chicago mob overlord Tony Accardo and died of natural causes in December 1989. Cerone died of heart and liver failure in the summer of 1996.

Good Looking Mike was known as a numbers whiz and sports-gambling specialist and by his late twenties was looking after bookmaking affairs for the entire Elmwood Park crew, acting as a de-facto street boss for D’Amico and the DiFronzos, according to CCC memos. He attended Northern Illinois University on a golf scholarship. Not viewed as a tough guy in the mob world, he did have his name appear on a list compiled by the FBI in 2002 of those made members of the Chicago mafia they viewed as a threat to notorious Southside crew hit man-turned star informant Nick (Nicky Slim) Calabrese.

Mike Magnafichi

The start of Magnafichi’s problems in the Outfit can be traced back to a beef between Cicero crew leaders Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno and Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo in the early 2000s sources say. Sarno was the Chicago mob acting boss from 2005 until his imprisonment in late 2010. Zizzo was the Outfit’s acting underboss from 2003 until his disappearance in August 2006.

The bad blood between Sarno and Zizzo began with a fight over video poker distribution routes. Zizzo’s main muscle, Anthony (Tony the Hatchet) Chiaramonti, was gunned down in the vestibule of a suburban Chicago fast-food fried chicken joint on November 22, 2001.

Chiaramonti and Magnafichi were in a number of Outfit-backed businesses together, say sources, and Tony the Hatchet’s siphoning of funds from these businesses landed in Mikey Mags’ lap when Tony the Hatchet ended up dead on an early Thanksgiving evening 16 years ago. Magnafichi was said to have stood behind Zizzo in Little Tony’s square-off with Fat Mike Sarno.

Zizzo vanished en route to a Rush Street sit down with Sarno, set to be mediated by current Outfit elder statesman Joe Andriacchi, on the afternoon of August 31, 2006 – Joe the Builder headquarters his activities out of several posh Rush Street restaurants and bars. At that same time, Magnafichi’s personal finances were in a bit of a mess and he had taken out a series of street loans, per sources, that he increasingly irritated Andriacchi and the DiFronzo brothers by failing to make good on.

“That whole situation almost got out of hand, h pissed a lot of people off….Sarno didn’t like him and then he isolated himself from his Rabbis (Andriacchi & the DiFronzos),” said one retired law enforcement source with knowledge of wiretaps discussing Mikey Mags’ thin standing in certain Windy City street factions. “He fell from grace fast in that orbit. Within a few years, he went from a player to on the sidelines.”

John (Johnny No Nose) DiFronzo replaced Tony Accardo as the Outfit’s ultimate shot-caller when Accardo died of natural causes in 1992. Peter (Greedy Petey) DiFronzo is a veteran Elmwood Park captain and reportedly held Outfit acting boss duties for a couple years earlier this decade buffering the reigns of Sarno and Solly DeLaurentis. Andriacchi and Marco D’Amico are alleged to be Solly D and the aging DiFronzo’s top advisors, per CCC memos.

According to sources, at some point in the late 2000s, Magnafichi was “voluntarily” put on the shelf “in fear for his life.” He still lives in the greater Chicagoland area and has mostly been able to stay off the radar sans a 2013 arrest for the illegal discharge of a firearm by a felon.

*Magnafichi opened up about his thoughts on his Outfit days with blogger and Chicago mob expert Joe Fosco in 2011 (read here).

The post Former Chicago Mafia Figure ‘Mikey Mags’ Almost Met His Maker, Per Sources, Spoke Recently About Man Upstairs appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Detroit rapper Edward (YNS Cheeks) Tavorn was indicted in a federal racketeering, drugs, murder and weapons case out of Michigan this past week, bringing another run-in with the law for a Motor City-based Glo Gang affiliate. The Glo Gang is the hip-hop music label owned and operated by 21-year old Chicago rap star and Kanye West-protégé Chief Keef.

Tavorn, 30, is considered one of the founders and leaders of the Young & Scandalous Gang, an alleged crime syndicate and street gang that rules over the notoriously-tough Brightmoor neighborhood on the far Northwest side of Detroit. He was one of five high-ranking Young & Scandalous members nailed in the case last week.

YNS Cheeks, part of a hardcore hip-hop act called YNS Da Mob put out by independent Detroit label, Skantless Records, isn’t named in any of the case’s murder counts. Back on Friday, he appeared in court to plead not guilty from a wheelchair, recovering from reportedly being shot three times. Just two years ago, Motown rap prodigy and Glo Gang affiliate Cordell (Yae Yae Jordan) Jones, then only 18, was convicted of a murder connected to a strip club shooting and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

Per Detroit Police Department records, Tavorn started the Young & Scandalous organization with co-defendant Corey (B-Mo C) Toney in the mid-2000s. On October 20, 2006, YNC Cheeks was pulled over in his Lincoln Navigator SUV and the cops found an unregistered gun. In May 2010, he was caught in a raid of a private residence near the corner of Fenkel and Westbrook with weapons, ecstasy pills and cocaine base. Then in July 2016 in another raid of a house he was present in on Riverview, the DPD and DEA found drugs and ammunition. According to last week’s indictment, he authorized the spring 2016 robbery of a rival’s drug house on Beaverland.

Young & Scandalous Gang enforcer Andre (Big Man) Chatham is alleged to have taken part in two of the three murders charged in the case – one the result of a summer 2013 gas-station armed robbery and the other stemming from a spring 2016 drive-by shooting. Chatham, 27, faces life behind bars if convicted. YNS Cheeks is looking at up to 25 years if convicted of the charges against him.

Chief Keef (L) & Kanye West (R)

The post Chief Keef-Backed Rapper YNS Cheeks Charged In RICO, Named A Leader Of Detroit’s Young & Scandalous Gang appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Southern biker boss George (Wild Bill) Bunn, the Outlaws Motorcycle Club’s regional president in Tennessee, died last month. The 63-year old club luminary oversaw activity for the Outlaws’ chapters in both Nashville and Clarksville and was under indictment in a narcotics case. The state of Tennessee is home to a total of six Outlaws MC chapters (Nashville, Knoxville, Clarksville, Chattanooga, Memphis and Paris).

Back in the 1980s, Wild Bill Bunn was busted for robbing a bank in Crossville,Tennessee. On May 31, 1985, Bunn and fellow Outlaws member Dean Lucas, were arrested for a morning hold-up of Crossville’s First National Bank branch. Authorities suspected the pair in a series of bank stickups around the state, with jobs pulled in Manchester, Cookeville, Cumberland County and Dickson County.

During the 1985 arrest, police discovered $17,500 in cash, $17,300 of it stolen from the First National Branch in Crossville. Bunn and Lucas used stolen Harley Davidson motorcycles as their getaway vehicles in the robbery, eventually ditching the heisted hogs for a van. Using witness identifications of thee assailants, the van they used to flee the Crossville area was stopped on an interstate highway 50 miles away and they were apprehended.

Wild Bill wound up doing three years in prison. Lucas did four years behind bars and today publishes an online motorcycle newsletter in Sparta, Tennessee. In 2016, Bunn was snared in Operation Pop Smoke, a federal law enforcement crackdown on the crystal meth industry in the middle part of the state that wound up with more than 90 people in handcuffs.

The post A Death In Dixieland: Tennessee Outlaws MC Leader Cashes In Chips, Dead At 63 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Aging Chicago mafia lieutenant Robert (Bobby the Boxer) Salerno is set to taste freedom for the first time in over 20 years in the coming days. The 82-year old Salerno, a former prize fighter, trainer and promoter, as well as an infamous Outfit enforcer, will be released from a low-security federal prison in Arkansas this weekend after serving more two decades of a life prison sentence for racketeering and murder.

Salerno was part of Operation Good Ship Lollipop, targeting Outfit underboss Ernest (Rocky) Infelise’s Cicero crew. Rocky Infelise and Bobby Salerno were found guilty of murdering independent suburban Chicago bookmaker Hal Smith on February 7, 1985.

The Infelise mob crew, headquartered in Cicero, but lording over large swaths of racket territory in Lake and McHenry Counties too, was jokingly referred to amongst Infelise’s inner-circle as the Good Ship Lollipop, an ironical nod to the 1930s Shirley Temple song from the film Bright Eyes. Infelise died of natural causes ten years later in a Massachusetts prison hospital in 2005.

Smith had repeatedly refused to pay the Infelise crew what it deemed an acceptable street tax on his giant sports book and had gotten into a loud public verbal spat with Infelise’s second-in-command, Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis where the pair reportedly threw wads of cash at each other and exchanged ethnic slurs and death threats in an Arlington Heights, Illinois restaurant. Smith’s dead body was found battered, beaten and sliced up, stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac in the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel in Arlington Heights.

The government’s star witness in Operation Good Ship Lollipop was William (B.J.) Jahoda, an Infelice crew member, DeLaurentis’ longtime driver and the owner of the Long Grove, Illinois home where Smith was executed. Jahoda wired up for the feds and admitted to delivering Smith to his slaughter at Infelise’s behest and watching as a hit team dressed in all-black clothing consisting of Infelise, Salerno, Robert (Bobby the Gabeet) Bellavia and Louis (Louie Tomatoes) Marino converged on and began throttling Smith on the floor of his kitchen.

B.J. Jahoda recorded a cautious Salerno discussing the investigation into Smith’s murder in the late fall of 1989.

Jahoda: “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Louie (Marino), Rocky (Infelise) and myself got subpoenas.”

Salerno: “Subpoenas?”

Jahoda: “We got to see a grand jury a week from today …”

Salerno: “Let me see this (grabbing the subpoena, placing his eyeglasses on to read it for himself), wait …, let me look at this”

Jahoda: “And we know what it is, I mean, what its about, don’t we.”

Salerno: “Yeah.”

Jahoda: “And we’re not worried about it? But I don’t think you know this, so I want you to, I want you to know what it involves. Rocky made a very serious mistake that night. He called me from the outside. He told me that Louie had left something there (his cigar) …”

Salerno: “Yeah, don’t even talk about it. I don’t even want to talk about it.”

Jahoda: “No, I understand that. So, but, but it was picked up on a tape. So that’s why the three of us …”

Salerno: “Don’t even, don’t even, don’t even tell me about it. They ain’t got shit. Don’t talk about it no more.”

Jahoda: “I know that, but I wanted you to know.”

In 1988, an FBI informant implicated Bobby Salerno as a participant in the felony murder of small-time Chicago gangland figure Mike Oliver a decade earlier. Oliver, a Salerno associate who owned an adult book shop in suburban Elk Grove and ran a sports book, was accidentally killed as Salerno and others staged a late-night vandalism of his store in November 1979, his body buried in a mafia graveyard in Darien, Illinois. The vandalism was an extortion attempt, prompted by the shop sharing a street with another mobbed-up adult bookstore.

Salerno went on trial twice in the Good Ship Lollipop case, once with Infelise and the rest of his inner circle in 1992, concluding in a hung jury for him and guilty verdicts for his co-defendants and then again in 1995 when he was finally convicted. At both trials, Bobby the Boxer was represented his son, attorney Alex Salerno.

The elder Salerno trained and promoted fights for heavyweight pro boxers Ernie Terrell and Ernie Shavers. Terrell, the WBA World Heavyweight Champion from 1965-1977, testified as a character witness at Salerno’s second trial.

Of all the main members of the Infelise crew, DeLaurentis, 78, was the first to get out of prison, flying the coup in 2006 – today, he’s considered by authorities the Outfit’s acting boss. Bobby Bellavia, 77, walked free last spring. Louie Marino was sprung in 2014 and died of natural causes back in the winter at the age of 85.

The post Last Of G.S. Lollipop Crew To Leave Lockup, Chicago Outfit Soldier Bobby Salerno Due Out Of Prison This Week appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Chicago mob strong arm Robert (Bobby the Boxer) Salerno couldn’t save his buddy Mike Oliver in the late 1970s when Oliver butted heads with legendary Outfit enforcer William (Butch) Petrocelli over Windy City porno turf. Oliver, 29, was killed in an extortion and robbery of his adult bookstore in suburban Elk Grove, Illinois.

The highly-respected and heavily-feared 82-year old Salerno is scheduled to be released this week from a multi-decade stint behind bars as a guest of the federal government. He was convicted in 1995 of racketeering and the murder of bookie Hal Smith. Nobody’s ever been arrested for the Oliver homicide.

Oliver was a low-level mob crony who paid Salerno for protection and was known to sometimes socialize with him, per Elk Grove Police records. Trained as a machinist by legitimate trade, he ran a small sports book out of his porn shop in the suburbs.

In the summer of 1979, according to the police records, Oliver was instructed by another Chicago mobster, William (Butch) Petrocelli to either shut down or move his adult bookstore out of Elk Grove, which was coming into competition with another adult bookstore owned by another mob associate named Vito Caliendo, but refused. Since Petrocelli outranked Salerno in the Outfit pecking order at that time, Oliver had nobody to run to for help.

Both Petrocelli and Salerno belonged to the crime family’s Cicero crew. Years later, Caliendo would go on to get busted for operating a large-scale prostitution ring and did five years in prison.

On November 14, 1979, Salerno, accompanied by fellow Cicero mob crew members Gerry Scarpelli, Joseph (Jerry the Hand) Scalise, Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno and Salvatore (Sally Cards) Cataudella burst into Oliver’s store at around 2:00 a.m., wearing ski masks and armed with guns and baseball bats, according to FBI informant documents. They placed Oliver, the store’s two employees and three patrons in a set of peep-show booths in the back of the store and began trashing the showroom, tearing merchandise off the wall and breaking windows and display cases with their bats.

Per the federal files, as Scalise pulled his van up to the front of the store and the Cicero wiseguys began loading cash and merchandise into it, Oliver broke loose from his captors, started making a commotion and was shot dead – it’s unclear whether his shooting was impromptu, intentional or accidental. Placing Oliver’s body in the back of the work van, Scalise drove them to a mafia graveyard in DuPage County where they buried him near a residence Scalise shared with his girlfriend.

Scalise, Scarpelli and Petrocelli were part of the notorious “Wild Bunch”, an enforcement subunit of the Cicero crew assigned the syndicate’s toughest muscle job and murder assignments. Shortly after the Oliver murder, Scalise, 79, was arrested for a headline-grabbing jewel heist in London and spent most of the 1980s in prison on Great Britain’s Isle of Man. He was indicted for racketeering in 2010, pled guilty and has two years left on his current prison bid.

Butch Petrocelli was killed in 1981 for skimming his bosses’ racket proceeds and pocketing money earmarked for the families of imprisoned mobsters. Scarpelli died mysteriously in federal custody in 1989, following his arrest on robbery charges and divulging the details of three gangland hits, including the Oliver homicide, the execution of a federal informant and his wife and the shotgun slaying of a Greek nightclub owner on Chicago’s Northside.

Utilizing intelligence gleaned from Scarpelli and James (Duke) Basile, another turncoat Outfit soldier, the FBI searched the DuPage County burial ground – off Route 83 on Bluff Road in Darien, Illinois – and unearthed the remains of Mike Oliver and New York mafia associate Robert (Broadway Bobby) Hatridge, missing since disappearing en route to a meeting about a potential narcotics deal with Scalise in the time around Oliver’s murder.

Bobby Salerno, a former prize fighter, boxing trainer and promoter, was busted alongside Fat Mike Sarno in 1990’s Operation Good Ship Lollilop. Fat Mike would be free by the end of the decade. Sarno and his best friend and right-hand man Sally Cataudella, both young up-and-comers in Outfit circles back when Oliver was killed, oversaw day-to-day affairs in the Chicago mob in tandem from 2005-2010.

The 59-year old Sarno is currently in federal prison for extortion and racketeering and won’t be eligible for parole until 2032. Cataudella, 64, went down with Vito Caliendo in 1987 in Operation Safe Bet targeting mafia-connected prostitution rings in the Windy City suburbs, remains the Outfit’s acting underboss today.

The post The Porn Shop Murder: 1970s Chicago Mob Associate Killed In Robbery, Vandalism Of His Adult Bookstore appeared first on The Gangster Report.

In February 1990, a wing of the Chicago mafia’s historic Cicero crew headed by Outfit underboss Ernest (Rocky) Infelise, was indicted in a huge racketeering and murder investigation dubbed Operation Good Ship Lollipop. Infelise and his notorious mob crew called themselves the Good Ship Lollipop, an ironic reference to the 1934 Shirley Temple song, and they were all convicted in the case in the coming years.

The federal probe into Infelise and his inner circle began with the cooperation of crew member William (B.J.) Jahoda, a high-ranking Outfit associate, valued gambling lieutenant and driver for Infelise then second-in-charge, Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis, the man most experts point to as the Chicago mafia’s acting boss today in 2017. Jahoda wore a wire for the feds and recorded DeLaurentis and his gangland running buddy Louis (Louie Tomatoes) Marino, who at the time oversaw Outfit affairs in Lake County and parts of McHenry County.

Solly D did 14 years in prison and got out in 2006. Marino did almost a decade more in the can, was released in 2014 and died of natural causes back in the winter. Infelise, a former paratrooper in the U.S. military, died behind bars in 2005.

Below are some transcriptions of conversations taped by the feds and used in the case against the future don.

Solly D talking to Jahoda about what will happen to the Infelise crew when the Operation Good Ship Lollipop indictment finally drops:

DeLaurentis: What the fuck?… I’m going to try and keep this thing going. Let’s say they scoop [arrest] us. I’m putting guys in right now to keep this fucking thing going. One thing is going to jail, but if you still got everything going on the street, and you know that everything is being looked after, like we have in the past, you’ll be okay.

Jahoda: Oh yeah, for sure.

DeLaurentis: It’s another thing to go away and we’re all closed up for business, you know what I’m saying. So I’ll try to get a couple of guys in line now for when none of us are home. But we don’t know whose going away, it gonna be either me or Rocky [Infelise] or Louie [Marino], one of us, two of us or all of us. Things will be a lot better…a lot easier if one of us is  still out on the street.

Jahoda: True.

DeLaurentis: If we’re all gone, then the guys behind us have to step up. We might lose a little money, somebody might steal a little along the way, ’cause we can’t trust those guys like we can trust our own guys, but we still got something going out here so our families can eat.

Another FBI informant taped this interaction between DeLaurentis and Marino and a debtor at a local restaurant:

Marino: He got any money today?

DeLaurentis: He ain’t got nothin’, nothin’. He ain’t got shit.

Marino: Nothin’? … You motherfucker! I wish we weren’t here (in public). You lucky motherfucker. I should give it to ya’ right here,  ya’ dirty mother, come on, I should stick you right here on the spot [at this point in the conversation, Marino picked a knife up off the table and placed it in Hospodar’s chest]. What do you got, motherfucker? What do you got right now, right here? You got any jewelry, anything’, any cash, the pink slip to your car? What do you got, I want everything you got mothefucker …

Debtor: Here ….. This is all I got with me now. It’s a bond, it’s a hundred dollar bond.

DeLaurentis: What the fuck is this?

Debtor: That’s how a guy made payment to me

Marino: Hold this (passing the bond to DeLaurentis and grabbing the debtor by the collar again).

Debtor: That’s all I got, what the hell?….stop it….. I don’t …

Marino: Where the fuck is my money comin’ from motherfucker?

Debtor: Lou, I ain’t got it. I ain’t got nothin’. I got nothin’ at all, I swear, I ain’t lying to ya, I swear.

Marino: Hey, you’re taking a shot at me by not paying me what you owe, you understand motherfucker? This is my profession. You’re taking a piss on my leg. What do I look like, an asshole nitwit?

Debtor: No, no, no, no, of course not, Lou. I told the guy I got a buyer for the lot. Let me try and sell the goddam lot and I’ll get you your money back, I promise.

Marino: So, now you’re telling me I’m gonna have to wait until you sell the fuckin’ lot? What the fuck do I look like to you?

Debtor: Well …

Marino: I want my money motherfucker, I don’t give a fuck where you find it, rob a 7/11, I don’t care. I want this motherfuckin’ money. I want my money tonight! You hear what I’m tellin’ you. I want the money tonight, you motherfucking cocksucker! Do you understand. No more waiting. I want it tonight. You got nowhere to hide motherfucker, we know where you live, we know where you work, I

Debtor: I never hide from anybody, Lou. I pay my debts. I just don’t have anything to give you right now.

Marino: I don’t want to here it.  I’ll be goin’ to sleep with you at night and I’m gonna be getting you up in the morning until you bring me my fuckin’ money. I want it now. Bring it to me tonight! You hear what the fuck I’m telling you? No more excuses. Give me my motherfucking money or you’re gonna get seriously hurt. I don’t have to tell you how serious this is. We’re getting to the end of the line here.

Debtor: I hear ya, Lou.

Marino: `Cause I’m gonna be in your house, on your doorstep, I’ll tear every motherfuckin’ thing down in there. I’ll tear apart the whole place. And don’t think I ain’t fucking capable. Ask anybody.

DeLaurentis talking to a wired-up porno shop operator regarding what he gets in exchange for paying protection to the Cicero mob troop:

DeLaurentis: I got you hooked up with the cops. They got your phone number now. If anything comes down, you’ll get a call and someone will say, “Your uncle’s on the way.”

Porno shop owner: Alright.

DeLaurentis: When they say that, be on alert. There could be a raid coming, there could be undercovers on their way. Go and clean up the place a little bit. Like if the girls see a stranger coming in, don’t let them even work on him. Let them know the cops could be coming, get them the message anyway you fucking can – no blow jobs, no nothing until we call you and tell you its alright, it’s all clear. I mean it ain’t rocket science. You know your regular customers and you know who is a stranger you’ve never seen before.

Jahoda and DeLaurentis discussing a bookie under Marino’s protection

Jahoda: Jimmy the Greek (the bookie) wants a bigger piece of the pie.

DeLaurentis: Well, Jimmy’s got hot nuts, you know. He’s all hot to trot…

Jahoda: Yeah, he’s dead wrong though. He’s so out of line. I can’t even talk to him anymore.

DeLaurentis: He thinks he’s going to set the world on fire now, that he’s got an OK, you know what I’m saying? It’ll come undone. It’ll fall apart in the long run.

Jahoda: Well, one thing that would look dumb down the road, is that we got the same dealers at the same game, but there ain’t nobody else that I know of, so I mean, I don’t mind, I don’t mind that at all.

DeLaurentis: See, I can’t interfere with that too much, because he’s Louie’s guy, you know what I mean?

Jahoda: I know. I know.

DeLaurentis: Like Louie can’t fuck with you. You know it’s the same thing.

Solly D talking with an associate about a run-in with another loan shark operating in Lake County:

DeLaurentis: Hey, ya know, the “Bull Dog,” Mike [Pascucci]? Looks like he could bite a hole in concrete wall, looks like a fucking tank.

Associate: Yeah.

DeLaurentis: Joe tells me he said he gave it [juice money] to him for him to put out. So, Joe says I got it from Mike. It’s Mike? Who’s the fuck told Mike to do anything in Lake County?. He says well, he’s with someone. I said I don’t give a fuck if he’s with Jesus Christ. So the kid, he called me and I says “listen you bulldog motherfucker, you” See he’s a real tough guy. and that’s how you gotta talk to those types right off the bat. You can’t let them get that first edge on you.

Associate: Right, absolutely.

DeLaurentis: I says “you bulldog mother fucker, you, if I ever catch you in fuckin’ Lake County again I’ll knock your mother fuckin’ head off. He says `well what about my money?’ I says it’s in my pocket. You wanna come and get it? He says well it ain’t my money, it’s Louie Marino’s. You want me to tell Louie that. I say you tell anybody the fuck you want. Okay. So now he’s figuring me and Louie will get in a beef, right? So, ah, he calls B.J. [Jahoda] for help. So B.J. says, fuck I can’t help you with Solly. What the fuck can I do with Solly. He say well I got to talk to somebody, so he says I’ll have somebody else call you. So Rocky called already he says Mikey, I’m going to tell you for the last time, when Solly says shit, you fucking squat `cause if I turn him loose, he will knock your fucking block off. I’m the only reason he hasn’t cracked your head in already. He says he wanted to put a fucking turban on your head. You know what that is don’t ya?

Associate: No, what is it?

DeLaurentis: You break a guy’s head, they have to wrap it in fucking gauze

Associate: (laughs)

DeLaurentis: Rocky tells him if it was up to Solly, you’d have been wearing a fucking turban already. He says now I am telling you, you fucking get out of line again, he’s got the “Go” sign now. He says if you take a shit in Lake fucking County and you don’t tell him about it first, he will put a fucking turban on your head. So he’s pissing himself.

Associate: What about Louie?

DeLaurentis: No, Louie didn’t know nothing about it.

Associate: He was bullshitting?

DeLaurentis: Yeah. I mean Louie gives out some cash, like here like let’s say I give you $5,000 to put out, I don’t know who you are giving it to to put on the street on your behalf. And you don’t want to know.

Associate: Right. That’s never good..

DeLaurentis: Yeah. Louie don’t give a fuck. The guy owes Louie the money now. But Louie and me are the same people. You know what I mean? Like this guy thinks Louie is going to go against me? Forget about it, you’re out of your fucking mind.

The post The Operation Good Ship Lollipop Tapes: Famous Chicago Mob Duo DeLaurentis & Marino Caught On FBI Wire In The 1980s appeared first on The Gangster Report.