Slain Chicago mob associate and insurance magnate Allen Dorfman will be portrayed by Jake Hoffman in the highly-anticipated upcoming Martin Scorsese flick,The Irishman, about the relationship between Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa and east coast mafia hit man Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran. Jake Hoffman is the son of Oscar-winning actor Dustin Hoffman. The movie has been shooting in New York, New Jersey and Delaware since last summer.

Allen Dorfman was gunned down eight years after the high-profile, hard-headed Hoffa disappeared. Dorfman was just days away from being sentenced in a racketeering and bribery case he had been convicted of. He and Hoffa were indicted together for jury tampering in 1963 out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Hoffa was found guilty, Dorfman was acquitted at trial.

On July 30, 1975, Hoffa vanished from a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant parking lot in the midst of an increasingly-volatile feud with his benefactors in the mafia over control of the Teamsters, the biggest truckers union in the world. The kidnapping and murder has never been solved and Hoffa’s body has never been unearthed

Scorsese’s The Irishman boasts a ballooning budget 150,000,000 and will be released by Netflix in late 2018 or early 2019 featuring a who’s who of mob movie luminaries, including Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. Pacino is set to play Hoffa. DeNiro is cast as Sheeran, the Delaware Teamster goon who dubiously confessed to shooting Hoffa to death in a Northwest Detroit home in the final months of his life. The Irishman is based on the 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses penned by Sheeran attorney and biographer Charlie Brandt. Sheeran died of natural causes in December 2003.

While Dustin Hoffman has never worked with iconic auteur Scorsese, the younger Hoffman had a supporting role in his 2013 Academy Award-nominated film The Wolf of Wall Street. He’s also known for his work on the hit Showtime television series Ray Donovan. In The Wolf of Wall Street, he played real-life shoe impresario Steve Madden.

Jake Hoffman (L) & Dustin Hoffman (R)

The 60-year old Dorfman was in charge of the Teamsters robust Central States Pension Fund, known for providing mobsters and mob-affiliated businesses millions of dollars in loans, a number of which were used to build and purchase Las Vegas casinos. At the time of his slaying, Dorfman had recently been convicted with one of Hoffa’s successors, Teamsters president Roy Williams, and Chicago mob captain Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo of bribing U.S. Senator Howard Cannon.

Dorfman’s dad was trash-haulers union boss Paul (Red) Dorfman, a Detroit Jewish Purple Gang bootlegger during Prohibition turned Chicago underworld powerbroker. His father introduced him to Hoffa in the 1940s. Through his newfound connections, the insurance company he and his wife owned gained the contract rights to insure the entire Central States Pension Fund. In 1970, Dorfman, a former decorated Marine, was busted for embezzling pension fund monies and did a year in federal prison.

Like Hoffa’s murder, Dorfman’s murder remains unsolved. Dorfman was shot to death on January 23, 1983 as he left a lunch at the Lincolnwood Hyatt Hotel in suburban Chicago. Joey Lombardo’s crew is suspected of carrying out Dorfman’s hit.

Lombardo, 89, is currently behind bars serving life in prison for murdering a suspect in a pension-fund fraud case both he and Dorfman were facing in 1974. He was finally convicted of the slaying in a heavily-covered 2007 trial.

A character based on Dorfman in the 1995 Scorsese film Casino is played by comedian and actor Alan King. Dorfman’s murder is shown in the DeNiro-Pesci-starring vehicle, too. Casino was about the mob’s dominance over the Las Vegas hotel and casino industry in the 1970s and early 1980s. There was a character based on Red Dorfman in the 1992 movie Hoffa (starring Jack Nicholson as the beloved firebrand labor union chief).

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More New York mob dons are slated to get the Hollywood treatment in Martin Scorsese’s heavily-hyped upcoming movie, The Irishman, the story of the friendship between historic organized labor leader Jimmy Hoffa and east coast mafia muscle Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran. A laundry list of legendary actors like Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel are starring in the flick.

Albert (The Mad Hatter) Anastasia and Carmine (The Snake) Persico will have characters bearing their names and likenesses appear in The Irishman, tracking towards a 2019 release date and currently in production in New York, New Jersey and Delaware. Pacino is playing Hoffa and DeNiro has taken on the Sheeran role. While Anastasia, who led what is now the Gambino crime family in the 1950s, has been dead for 60 years, Persico remains one of the bosses of New York’s Five Families today.

Sheeran claimed to have killed Hoffa in the book The Irishman is based on, I Heard You Paint Houses (2004), authored by Sheeran biographer and personal attorney Charlie Brandt. Teamsters boss Hoffa disappeared in the summer of 1975 following butting heads with the mob — his remains have never been found and nobody has ever been arrested for his kidnapping or murder. Before he died of natural causes in 2003, Sheeran was a Delaware Teamsters official and hit man for mob powers in New York and Pennsylvania.

Carmine Persico

Anastasia, famously assassinated in his barber chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan in the fall of 1957, is being played by Garry Pastore. Persico, incarcerated for most of the past five decades, will be portrayed by Craig DiFrancia.

Pastore just portrayed deceased Genovese syndicate heavyweight Matthew (Matty the Horse) Ianniello on the HBO series The Deuce about the seedy side of Times Square, Ianniello lorded over in the 1970s. DiFrancia co-stars in the Amazon original show The Life, scheduled to premiere this year.

Last year, it was announced that character actor Domenick Lombardozzi will play former Genovese crime family Godfather Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and DeNiro-film regular John Polce is cast as Joe Colombo. Persico has run the Colombo crime family from behind bars since the mid-1980s. He’s serving what amounts to a life sentence for a 1986 racketeering conviction.

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Three drug world figures have been indicted for the murders of Black Mafia Family lieutenant Ricky (Slick) McFarlin and one-time pro football player Robert Eddins in Detroit two years ago. Michael Griffin, Dennis Epps and Mariano Garcia were charged in the double homicide last week. Griffin, 34, lives in Alabama, Epps, 30, is from Mississippi and Garcia, 47, resides in Arizona.

According to sources in law enforcement, the three co-defendants were in the narcotics business with the victims and the murders were part of a drug rip-off. The 32-year old McFarlin and Eddins, 28, were found slain execution style in the basement of a westside Detroit home on December 21, 2016. Authorities say the hits weren’t connected to BMF.

McFarlin, a mid-level lieutenant in BMF’s Midwest regime during the early 2000s, had just gotten out of prison. He was released from federal lockup in October 2016 after a decade behind bars on drug and racketeering charges spawning from the DEA’s massive 2005 Operation Motor City Mafia indictment which dealt a crippling blow to America’s biggest narcotics conglomerate at the time. More than 150 members of BMF got convicted in the case.

Eddins grew up in Detroit and played in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills during the 2011 campaign. The house he and McFarlin were killed in belonged to Eddins’ grandmother. Griffin tried to throw police off his scent in the immediate aftermath of the murders by posting comments on his social media accounts expressing surprise and mourning.

Founded by the legendary Flenory brothers, BMF started on the southwest side of Detroit in the early 1990s and quickly began spreading across the United States. Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, 50, was the face of the group and controlled the organization’s affairs down south, headquartering out of Atlanta and trying to position himself as an aspiring hip-hop mogul. His lower-profile baby brother, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 47, looked after BMF activity on the west coast and in the siblings’ hometown of Detroit. Other BMF hubs around the country included New York, Texas, Memphis and St. Louis. When the Operation Motor City Mafia bust hit in the mid-2000s, the BMF crew was clearing hundreds of millions of dollars per year in a transcontinental cocaine trafficking conspiracy of epic proportions.

The Flenorys both pled guilty in the case on the eve of trial and are serving respective 30-year prison terms. Rapper and actor Curtis (50) Jackson is currently developing a television series around the story of the rise and fall of BMF for Starz. Reports of a BMF resurgence in Detroit and Atlanta have surfaced in recent years.

Robert Eddins (L) & Michael Griffin (R)

The post Arrests Made In Murders Of BMF Soldier ‘Slick’ McFarlin & Ex-NFL’er Robert Eddins, Out-Of-Staters Came To MI For Hits appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former Best Friends gang lieutenant Stacey (The Machine) Culbert was released from federal prison this week following 24 years of incarceration on two homicide charges. The Best Friends was Detroit’s most murderous drug crew of the late 1980s and early 1990s, responsible for approximately 100 gangland slayings in less than a decade of existence.

The 48-year old Culbert was one of the Best Friends top enforcers. Suspected in taking part in over a dozen gangland slayings, he pled guilty to the murders of Motor City drug world figures Mike (M&M) Mitchell and Frank (Mad Max) Maxwell on the eve of his trial in 1995. Mitchell was gunned down in a drive-by on a Detroit expressway minutes after leaving a court hearing.

Busted along with virtually the entire Best Friends organization in 1992, Culbert was a fugitive from justice for two years before being apprehended hiding out in Pittsburgh. A number of Culbert’s co-defendants rolled the dice with a jury and got convicted and slapped with life sentences. As an inmate, Culbert penned a novel called Gutta Boys, loosely based on his experience in the Best Friends.

Founded in 1985 on the far eastside of Detroit by the Brown brothers, the Best Friends started out as a murder-for-hire squad employed by area crime lords. Within a couple of years, the gang had become major players itself in the burgeoning local drug game, pushing powder in the city, out in the suburbs and eventually expanding into Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Authorities suspect Culbert of being involved in the murder of Best Friends boss Terrance (Boogaloo) Brown while on the run from the law with him. He was charged in Brown’s death in his original indictment. Brown was found dead in an Atlanta hotel parking lot in the spring of 1993 during the Freaknik Music Festival. It’s believed Culbert and a fellow Best Friends member thought Boogaloo was planning on killing them, so they acted first.

Reggie (Rocking Reg) Brown is the only one of the four Brown brothers still alive today. He’s doing life behind bars for being the triggerman in several murders at the height of the Best Friends’ bloody reign.

A notorious loose cannon, Rocking Reg once opened fire with an Uzi in a busy indoor shopping mall at Christmas time and killed a Best Friends lieutenant-turned-cooperator named Alfred (Chip) Austin, just minutes after bonding out of state custody on another homicide charge, by spraying a crowded house porch with an automatic weapon. Austin’s four cousins, one a three-year old girl, were felled as collateral damage in Austin’s murder. Culbert was named as a co-conspirator in the quadruple homicide, but never convicted.

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New England mobster Ralph (Skippy) Byrnes died of natural causes recently in Rhode Island. He was in the mainly non-Italian Patriarca crime family crew ran by Gerard (The Frenchman) Ouimette, who passed away behind bars three years go. The 72-year old Irish wiseguy served over a decade in prison for his role in the notorious Bonded Vault Heist, which brazenly took place in Providence in the 1970s. Byrnes died of dementia in February.

The story of the well-documented Bonded Vault Heist is going to the big screen with a big name attached to shepherd the project in Hollywood. New York Times Best-Selling novelist Don Winslow has teamed with The Story Factory production company to option The Last Good Heist, a 2016 book chronicling the largest bank robbery in American history, for a movie (you can purchase a copy of the book here).

The heist, pulled off by a Patriarca robbery unit led by Gerard Ouimette’s younger brother, John, snared $30,000,000 worth of cash and valuables from a private bank storing mobsters’ safety-deposit boxes located inside a furrier. Raymond Patriarca, the New England mafia’s longtime Godfather, reportedly signed off on, encouraged and greatly profited from the infamous crime. Patriarca dropped dead of a heart attack in 1984. John Ouimette died of natural causes last year.

On the morning of August 14, 1975, Ouimette and seven of his men held up the Bonded Vault Company inside the Hudson Fur Storage building in the West End of Providence on Cranston Street. Their $30,000,000 score would equate to close to $150,000,000 today. Besides Ouimette, his son Walter and Skippy Byrnes, the robbery crew consisted of Bobby (The Deuce) Dussault, Joe (The Dancer) Danese, Chuckie Flynn, Gerry Tillinghast and Jake Tarzian.

Dussault and Danese gave them all up to the feds. The pair were the star witnesses at the flashbulb-crazed 1976 trial, the longest jury trial in Rhode Island history. Byrnes, Flynn and John Ouimette were convicted, while Walter Ouimette, Tarzian and Tillinghast were acquitted. It was Dussault who implicated Patriarca in blessing and helping formulate the caper.

Although the perpetually-snarling Patriarca was never charged in the case, Dussault told authorities the elderly don resented his troops for the way they treated him and his family during a stint of his as a guest of the federal government and prodded the Ouimette crew to plan the boosting of the Bonded Vault Company so he could essentially steal from his own men. Dussault died of a heart attack in a North Dakota federal halfway house in 1992. He claimed the men that actually carried out the heist received very little compensation compared to Patriarca and the elder Ouimette.

The post Providence Gangster ‘Skippy’ Byrnes, Part Of Old Ouimette Mob Crew & Bonded Vault Booster, Gone At 72 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Tom Hardy will play an aging Al Capone in an upcoming film entitled Fonzo which begins shooting this spring in New Orleans. Josh Trank (Chronicle, Fantastic Four) will direct the movie focusing on Capone’s final years when he was living in retirement in Florida and his mind was being ravished by a bout with syphilis. “Fonzo” was a nickname Capone’s family had for him, short for Alphonse, his birth name.

Capone died in January 1947 at age 48, almost two decades removed from running the organized crime landscape in Chicago. He was America’s most recognized mob figure during Prohibition, becoming the country’s first celebrity gangster in the modern media age, courting the press while killing many of his enemies in high-profile fashion.

Hardy is best known for roles in the films Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises and The Revenant and television shows Peaky Blinders and Band of Brothers. His performance in The Revenant (2015) opposite Leonardo DiCaprio earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Hollywood insiders speculate that the British leading man will be in the running to take over the James Bond franchise from Daniel Craig after Craig shoots one more movie as the iconic 007.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Capone relocated to Chicago early in Prohibition and went to work in the rackets. By 1925, he had taken over the city’s Southside Italian mafia. Convicted of tax evasion in 1931, he served eight years in prison. Released in late 1939, he moved to Florida where he had an opulent vacation home on Palm Island in Miami.

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The gangland slaying of Chicago mob attorney and racetrack mogul Edward (Easy Eddie) O’Hare was the last murder ordered by storied Windy City mafia boss Al (Scarface) Capone. Years earlier, O’Hare had been one of the star witnesses at Capone’s media-circus of a 1931 trial for tax evasion in which he was convicted and incarcerated.

East Eddie O’ Hare was shot to death behind the wheel of his brand new Lincoln automobile on the afternoon of March 8, 1939, less than a week before Capone walked free from federal prison after serving eight years behind bars. O’Hare’s shiny new black-colored Lincoln-Zephyr was riddled with shotgun fire at the corner of Ogden and Rockwell on the westside of Chicago. He was driving home from his office at Sportsman’s Park in Cicero, Illinois, a key Capone crew outpost in the west suburbs.

A new film depicting Capone’s retirement years in Florida while dealing with the loss of his mind from syphilis, begins production this spring in New Orleans. The movie, titled Fonzo, stars Tom Hardy as Capone and is being directed by native Chicagoan Josh Trank (Chronicle, Fantastic Four).

Part of the reason O’Hare decided to cooperate with the government and testify against Capone in open court, was the promise that his son Edward (Butch) O’Hare, would be admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy. The younger O’Hare went on to become a historic American war hero, receiving the first-ever presidential Medal of Honor for his combat duty flying fighter planes in World War II in the South Pacific. Killed in the line of duty over the Gilbert Islands in the fall of 1943, Chicago’s named it’s biggest airport after him in recognition of his bravery and service to the country.

Butch O’Hare shaking U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s hand the day he was awarded the Medal of Honor at the White House in 1942.

The elder O’Hare got both his start in both the legal world and the racetrack business in St. Louis. By expanding his interests in the greyhound racing industry to Chicago, Boston and Miami and helping inventor Owen Smith bring his mechanical running rabbit innovation to market, he became rich. Moving to Chicago in 1927, O’Hare met Capone due to their mutual interest in the growing field of aviation and represented him in some small matters with the law. Capone introduced him to his second wife, the sister of an associate and the pair began making business investments together.

Using a newspaper reporter from St. Louis as a go-between, O’Hare reached out to the FBI and IRS in 1930 and offered his assistance in building a case against Capone from the inside. His cooperation allowed IRS agents to break Capone’s bookkeeping-ledger codes and flip one of Capone’s main accountants, resulting in a 1931 indictment. As Capone’s trial for tax evasion began, he tipped off the government that the jury had been bought off, leading to the judge ordering a re-selection from the jury pool.

The post Easy Come, Easy Go: ‘Scarface’ Capone Gave Order For Final Hit Came In Final Days Behind Bars appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The arrest of Michigan attorney and mob scion Angelo Polizzi for running a money laundering scheme 25 years ago this week laid the final roots for the historic Operation Game Tax bust three years later which brought down virtually the entire leadership of the Detroit mafia in one fell swoop.

Polizzi and 13 others were indicted on March 12, 1993 for washing more than $1,000,000 in cash of what they thought was dirty money for a pair of New York wiseguys. In fact, the wiseguys were actually undercover IRS agents. Within months, Polizzi, who was a medical malpractice lawyer, began cooperating with the government and the Zerilli-Tocco crime family administration was firmly on the ropes ready to fall.

Polizzi, 60, is the son of Michael (Big Mike) Polizzi, the Detroit mafia’s consigliere and de-facto CFO during most of the last quarter of the 20th Century. Big Mike Polizzi had an accounting degree from Syracuse University and was longtime Detroit mob don Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco’s top advisor. The polished yet unassuming Tocco baptized the younger Polizzi and was the No. 1 target of the FBI and IRS offices in Detroit for decades.

Even though Angelo wasn’t a “made” man, the government was well aware of how much he knew about mafia activity in the Motor City, which was a lot. The feds used Polizzi and his knowledge of the inner workings of his father’s business as a way to nail Tocco. Around this same time, Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli, Tocco’s first cousin and underboss, found himself in the government’s crosshairs upon his nephew, a low-level mob soldier doing his bidding on the street, having his car bugged.

“Flipping Angelo pushed the Game Tax investigation over the hump, we went from having one major crew in our grasp, to two major crews….we found cracks in the inner circles of both boss and underboss and we exploited them,” recalled one retired FBI agent. “By the 1990s, Jack and Tony were doing basically no business together, like they had been in their younger days, so we needed to attack them from two different angles, on two separate fronts. The IRS did us a huge favor by getting those undercovers in with Big Mike’s kid. We took that favor and slammed home our case.”

Tocco and Zerilli assumed power in the crime family in the 1970s from their dads, the Detroit mafia’s “founding fathers,” Vito (Black Bill) Tocco and Joseph (Joe Uno) Zerilli. Angelo Polizzi’s grandfather was Tocco and Zerilli’s valued consigliere Giovanni (Papa John) Priziola, one of the biggest mafia dope men in the country.

Using intelligence gleaned from Polizzi and the recordings generated from a wire in Zerilli’s nephew’s automobile, Tocco and Zerilli were the headlining defendants in the March 1996 Operation Game Tax case. Big Mike Polizzi wasn’t indicted in the case and in exchange for a light sentence, Angelo went on to be the star witness at Tocco’s 1998 trial where Black Jack was found guilty and hit with his first prison term. Zerilli was found guilty at trial in 2002.

Due to Angelo Polizzi’s decision to testify against him, Tocco demoted and shelved his dad from local mob affairs, ordering him to leave the state of Michigan as further punishment for his son’s transgressions. The elder Polizzi died at age 73 of natural causes in 1997 living in Pennsylvania.

Angelo Polizzi’s main co-conspirator in the 1993 case, mob soldier, Dominic (Fat Nick) Vivio, didn’t turn state’s evidence but was booted out of state by Tocco nonetheless. Vivio also moved to Pennsylvania. He died of lung cancer in 2000.

Vivio had been the driver and bodyguard for esteemed Detroit mob captain Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone (died of dementia in 2012, also ensnared in Operation Game Tax). In the spring of 1988, he introduced the undercover federal agents to Polizzi. The agents purported to be New York Mafiosi looking to wash drug, gambling and prostitution proceeds. They squired Vivio and Polizzi around Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood to prove their merit in the underworld and soon gained Vivio and Polizzi’s trust.

Starting in 1989, Vivio and Polizzi began accepting $100,000 shipments packed in burlap duffle bags from the agents and washing it for them through a string of Metro Detroit businesses and bars. At one March 1990 exchange taking place in a Marriott hotel parking lot in Warren, Michigan, suburban cops on routine patrol one afternoon thought they were witnessing a drug buy in process and confiscated the cash.

The 1993 indictment accounted for 1.3 million dollars washed in two years of transactions. Vivio and Polizzi collected roughly 100,000 for their work.

Big Mike Polizzi was caught on an FBI wire in the investigation, however, not indicted. He had recently gotten out of prison on a bookmaking conviction. Angelo brought the two IRS agents to a dinner with his father at DeEduardo’s, a posh dining spot for Detroiters in that day, and they heard Big Mike speak candidly about his history in the rackets. Black Jack Tocco passed away from heart failure in the summer of 2014 after nearly 40 years on the throne.

The post Detroit Mafia Consigliere’s Son Sunk The Zerilli-Tocco Crime Family In 1990s, His Pops Lost Stripes As Result appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Michigan mob figure Joseph (Joe White) Giacalone died of natural causes recently. Giacalone, 78, hailed from the Detroit mafia satellite wing in Flint, a perennially economically-depleted factory town approximately 60 miles north of the Motor City. He was a cousin of the infamous Giacalone family in Detroit, the face of the Zerilli-Tocco crime family dating back to the early 1960s. The Ruggirello family oversaw crime family affairs in the Flint region for the last quarter of the 20th Century and into the 2000s.

In 2009, Giacalone pled no contest to fleecing the city of Flint for 1.2 million dollars in loans to build a vinyl manufacturing company that never got constructed. Ordered to repay the funds by a Genesee County Circuit Court in October of that year, he filed for bankruptcy. Giacalone’s co-defendant in the case, 67-year old Dan Robin was busted for running a prostitution ring in the Detroit area.

Before his arrest for defrauding cash-strapped Flint, which has experienced a highly-publicized tainted water crisis in the last few years, Giacalone had felony convictions for robbery and bookmaking. As a young-buck Goodfella in 1967, he was nailed in an attempted murder conspiracy for the shooting of Charles Thomas in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Thomas had been a member of a Giacalone-led bookmaking ring and began cooperating with the FBI.

Today, the Detroit mafia is allegedly led by 68-year old Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone. His father Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone and his uncle Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone — both deceased — were longtime street bosses for the crime family. Tony Giacalone’s father-in-law, Giacomo (Big Jack) Provenzano, ran the Zerilli-Tocco’s Tri-City crew (Saginaw, Midland, Bay City), located near Flint, from Prohibition through his death of natural causes in the early 1970s.

The post Flint, MI. Wiseguy & Giacalone Family Member Dies In Years After Taking Factory Town For Over A Million Bucks In Scam appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The mob subunit in Flint, Michigan led by Joseph (Joe White) Giacalone, kin to the notorious Giacalone mafia clan down in Detroit, attempted to kill a fellow crew member and a Genesee County prosecutor back in the 1960s. Giacalone and his co-conspirators were almost successful in offing one of their own, but didn’t make nearly as much headway in their plan to eliminate the man tasked with putting them behind bars.

Giacalone, 78, died of natural causes earlier this year. At the time of his death, he owed the city of Flint, a frequently financially-hamstrung community an hour north of Motown, 1.3 million dollars for loans he accepted from the municipality towards the building of a factory that went into his pockets instead of into any form of construction.

When he was in his 20s, Giacalone was running gambling and heist rackets out of a Flint area bar called Nino’s, surrounded by a group of hoodlums, thieves and bookies. One of Giacalone’s underlings was Charles Thomas, who got jammed up with local police in a drug deal and agreed to cooperate in building a case against the boys at Nino’s. Within a few months, Giacalone was tipped off that Thomas was a rat.

According to court files and police reports, Giacalone marked Thomas and Genesee County Prosecutor Robert Leonard for death. The contract on Leonard never got much traction. Thomas, on the other hand, was lucky to have come out of the whole incident alive.

Per the court records, Giacalone decided to lure Thomas to Pennsylvania with the promise of a counterfeit money score. Giacalone and two of his henchmen, Charles Kinsman and Loren Jolly traveled to Pittsburgh in late August 1967 and met up with Erie, Pennsylvania mob figure Caesar (Chuck the Cannon) Montevechio at the Sheraton Hotel.

Montevechio was associated with both the mafia syndicates in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and helped Giacalone organize the hit. The plan was to clip Thomas at the Avon Motel in nearby Avon, Pennsylvania. Kinsman eventually left back for Michigan before the attempt on Thomas’ life was made.

Flint’s Joe Giacalone

On August 31, 1967, Jolly shot Thomas twice in the back of the head inside a room at the motel. Thomas survived and identified the shooter to authorities as Jolly. Less than three months later, Giacalone and several others were indicted for the two attempted murders and bookmaking and armed robbery linked to their affairs in Flint. Jolly, Kinsman and Thomas all testified against Giacalone at his trial.

It was Jolly and Kinsman who clued the FBI in on the conspiracy to knock off Leonard. Law enforcement surveillance details reported seeing Kinsman visit Leonard in his office in the Genesee County Circuit Court.

Giacalone was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison of which he did 20. He walked free in November 1987. Montevechio would go on to be found guilty in the high-profile Erie gangland execution of bookmaker Frank (Bolo) Dovishaw in 1983. He had acted as a fence for stolen property coming from  mobsters in Michigan, including Giacalone’s Flint contingent. Leonard, tied by FBI documents to Detroit Mafioso James (Jimmy Eyes) Tamer, got booted from the prosecutor’s office in 1980 for embezzling Genesee County funds and did three years of prison time.

The post Jack Of All Trades: Flint’s Giacalone Tried To Rubout Informant & Prosecuting Atty. In 1960s Mob Double Dip appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New Line Cinema has purchased the rights to a film prequel for the groundbreaking television series The Sopranos. As could have been expected, fans are in a fervor of anticipation and longing for any nuggets of information regarding this development.

Last week, the show’s creator David Chase sold New Line his screenplay for a movie called The Many Saints of Newark, set in the same fictional New Jersey underworld occupied by mob don Tony Soprano and his DiMeo crime family, but instead of the action taking place during the dawning of the New Millennium in the 2000s, it’s the summer of 1967 and the area is engulfed in a raging race riot. The show’s first-season touched on the time period in flashbacks. The Sopranos ran on HBO from 1999 until 2007, lauded by critics and loved by viewers far and wide.

According to sources close to the negotiation of the sale of Chase’s newly-penned screenplay, many characters from original show’s canon, both prominent and more peripheral, will be shown on screen in the upcoming film. Below are a list of fictional New Jersey mafia figures characters either seen or referenced in the iconic premium-cable series, which was the first of its kind and the spawned the age of the anti-hero on TV, that may appear in The Many Saints of Newark.

Giovanni (Johnny Boy) Soprano — DiMeo crime family captain and Tony Soprano’s dad

Corrado (Junior) Soprano — DiMeo crime family soldier and Johnny Boy’s brother and right-hand man

Domenico (Eckley) DiMeo — The Godfather of the DiMeo crime family

Joe (Beppy) Sasso — DiMeo crime family soldier and Junior Soprano’s driver

Dickie Moltisanti — DiMeo crime family soldier and Johnny Boy’s gangland mentor

Mich’ele (Feech) LaManna — DiMeo crime family captain

Patrizio (Uncle Pat) Blundetto — DiMeo crime family soldier

Robert (Bobby Baccala) Baccalieri, Sr. — DiMeo crime family enforcer

Herman (Hesh) Rabkin — Jewish bookmaker, loanshark and businessman close to the Soprano brothers

Paul (Paulie Walnuts) Gualtieri — Soprano crew member and Johnny Boy’s driver and bodyguard

Salvatore (Big Pussy) Bompenserio — Soprano crew member

Raymond (Buffalo Ray) Curto — DiMeo crime family soldier

Lorenzo (Larry Boy) Barese — DiMeo crime family soldier

Richard (Itchy Richie) Aprile — DiMeo crime family soldier and enforcer

Augusto (Little Augie) Aprile  — DiMeo crime family soldier

Gerard (Fat Jerry) Anastasia — DiMeo crime family captain

Anthony (Little Pussy) Malanga — DiMeo crime family soldier

Carmine Lupertazzi — New York mafia boss

John (Johnny Sack) Saccramoni — New York mob soldier

Phil Leotardo — New York mob soldier

The post What’s Old Is New Again: Old-School Sopranos’ Wiseguys Will See Screen Time In Historic Show’s Prequel appeared first on The Gangster Report.

There will be two movies depicting the infamous 1970s Bonded Vault Heist in Providence for audiences to enjoy in the near future. The first one, the lesser high-profile of the flicks, entitled Vault, begins shooting in Rhode Island this week. The second one, based on the book The Last Good Heist by Rhode Island television investigative reporter Tim White, Randall Richard and William Worcester, which was optioned by acclaimed New York Times Best-Selling author Don Winslow last summer, is still in pre-production.

Winslow sold the project to The Story Factory. He’s considered the most in-demand crime novelist today, having penned instant classics like The Force and The Cartel. White is the resident mob expert and historian in the Providence area.

Vault will star Oscar-nominee Chazz Palminteri (A Bronx Tale, The Usual Suspects, Bullets Over Broadway) as storied New England mafia don Raymond Patriarca, the man who allegedly sanctioned and set the lucrative armed robbery in motion. The film is being directed by Rhode Islander Tom DeNucci, who co-wrote the original screenplay, and executive produced by Verdi Productions.

Patriarca lorded over gangland affairs in Massachusetts and Rhode Island for three decades. He made his residence in Providence and held a seat on the American mafia’s “Commission”, a board of directors for mob activity in the United States during that time period.

One of the producers on the Verdi Productions project is Martin Scorsese collaborator Emma Tillinger Koskoff (The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street). Verdi Productions, helmed by Rhode Islanders Chad and Michelle Verdi, recently put out Bleed For This, the 2016 pro boxing biopic centering on former lightweight champion Vinnie (The Pazmanian Devil) Pazienza, starring Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart.

The Bonded Vault Heist, pulled off by a Patriarca crime family robbery crew, came away with $30,000,000 in cash and valuables from a private bank storing mobsters’ safety-deposit boxes located inside a Providence furrier. Raymond Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984 at 76 years old while under indictment on murder charges.

On the morning of August 14, 1975, eight men held up the Bonded Vault Company inside the Hudson Fur Storage building in the West End of Providence on Cranston Street. Their $30,000,000 score would equate to close to $150,000,000 today. The intensely-covered 1976 trial of six of the perpetrators was the longest in Rhode Island judicial history. Three of the robbers were convicted, three were acquitted and two were the star witnesses at the trial.

The notoriously icy Patriarca was never charged in the case, but word filtered through the streets and to law enforcement that he okayed, handsomely profited and actually encouraged the heist as a way to steal from his own men. According to local underworld lore, the aging Godfather felt betrayed by members of his crime family when he was away serving time in prison throughout most of the 1970s.

The post Race To The Vault: First Of Two Films About Boosting Of The Bonded Vault Slated To Shoot In Spring ’18 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Federal authorities in New Jersey broke up a mobbed-backed drug crew tied to the Philadelphia mafia last week, indicting “made members” Joseph (Joey Electric) Servidio and Sam Piccolo of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s North Jersey wing in separate cases. The indictments are littered with references to hundreds of hours of audio surveillance compiled by an unidentified Philly mobster over the past two and a half years and alleges trafficking in heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana, pills and stolen cigarettes.

The 58-year old Joey Electric was arrested last Wednesday and the 66-year old Piccolo got scooped up earlier this week after getting caught selling crystal meth to undercover FBI agents. They are both currently in federal custody in the Garden State. Award-winning Philadelphia television investigative reporter and Bruno-Scarfo clan expert Dave Schratwieser broke the news of Piccolo’s arrest on his Twitter account Monday.

Servidio pled guilty to cocaine dealing charges back in 2006 and owns a contracting company. Piccolo is the nephew of Anthony (Tony Buck) Piccolo, the deceased one-time acting boss of the Philly mob in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the former brother-in-law of turncoat Philly mob hit man Salvatore (Wayne) Grande. He also has a cocaine-distributing conviction on his criminal record courtesy of Grande’s cooperation.

Two mob associates of Servidio and Piccolo’s, Michael Gallicchio, 48, and Carl Chianese, 79, were nailed in last week’s bust too. Servidio is heard waxing poetic on several of the recordings included in the indictment. On one of them made in 2017, he plans to carry out the shooting of another mob-connected drug trafficker for badmouthing him and openly discussing his illegal business affairs.

Besides admitting to “making his bones” in the mob at the age of 19, Servidio tells the wired-up informant that he’s been told by his bosses in the Bruno-Scarfo crime family to stay out of Atlantic City. After he lets the informant know, he’s cleared his drug dealing activity with his direct superior in the mafia (his “captain” or “capo”), he says “They don’t even want us having dinner together (without checking in),” referencing his capo’s fear that his soldiers are making money in endeavors under the table and not sharing with him.

According to sources, the current capo for the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s Jersey faction is Joseph (Joe Scoops) Licata. The colorful and chatty Licata beat racketeering charges earlier in the decade out of Philadelphia. Other sources say Servidio was moved out of the Jersey crew following his last run-in with the law and is now reporting to a capo of another crew, either out of South Jersey or Philadelphia.

Listed in the complaint are a number of meetings between Servidio and unnamed higher-ranking Philly mob figures, two of the powwows taking place in posh Margate, New Jersey in April and June of 2017, respectively. Margate is a popular Jersey Shore vacation spot for mafia leaders from the City of Brotherly Love.

Ironically, Servidio was intercepted having a conversation where he spoke of the dangers of getting caught talking of criminal behavior on a wire.

“Tapes kill you…. Eighty percent of the eyewitnesses got the wrong person, you can beat that, you know what you can’t beat? Tapes. Tapes with you saying it,” he said.

He was quite candid talking about his chosen profession as well.

“I’m a criminal. Everything I do is criminal,” he said.

The post Listening In On The Mob: Philly Mafia’s Jersey Satellite Office Caught Up In Drug Case, New Tapes, ‘Made’ Informant Abound appeared first on The Gangster Report.

East coast wiseguy Sammy Piccolo took his major first drug arrest almost three decades ago courtesy of his brother-in-law becoming an FBI informant and betraying his blood oath to the mafia. Former Philadelphia mob figure Salvatore (Wayne) Grande got caught in a narcotics conspiracy from behind federal prison walls in the summer of 1991 and turned on Piccolo, setting him up for an FBI sting.

Piccolo, 66, was arrested earlier this week on drug charges out of New Jersey after making a pair of hand-to-hand sales of crystal meth to an undercover FBI agent. He pled guilty to narcotics-trafficking and a firearm offense in November 1991 after getting nabbed by the feds in a downtown Philadelphia hotel room trying to pay $70,000 in cash for a shipment of 10 kilos of cocaine. At the time of the arrest, Piccolo had a gun in his waistband.

Grande had been serving a 30-to-40 year prison sentence for racketeering and murder when he got caught up with two fellow mob-connected inmates in a doomed-from-the-start plan to push coke from Leavenworth Penitentiary and decided to begin cooperating with authorities in exchange for an early release. Nicknamed “Wayne,” short for “John Wayne,” for his wild, cowboy-like demeanor on the street as an enforcer in the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, Grande was quickly divorced from Piccolo’s sister and disavowed from his entire family.

Grande’s dad and younger brother, John (Coo Coo) Grande and Joseph (Joe G) Grande, were members of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, too. Coo Coo Grande is dead, Joe Grande, who was nailed in the same 1987 indictment that brought down his older brother along with the entire sycophantic Nicodemo (Little Nick) Scarfo mob regime, got sprung from prison in 2011 and currently resides in New Jersey. Piccolo is a nephew of Scarfo’s uncles and gangland mentors, Anthony (Tony Buck) Piccolo and Nicolo (Nicky Buck) Piccolo, his acting boss and consigliere, respectively, at the end of his reign.

Little Nicky Scarfo died of natural causes at 87 in a North Carolina prison last year serving a life sentence. Per an FBI informant, Scarfo placed murder contracts on the Grande brothers’ heads in the late 1980s for getting his cousin Sammy Piccolo involved in their drug business. Per sources, Piccolo was ushered into his official mafia initiation by Scarfo’s son, Nicky Jr., inducted into the Lucchese crime family in New York — which Nicky Jr. is a member of — and then absorbed by the Philly Borgata upon Nicky Jr. being imprisoned in 2011.

Wayne Grande, today 65 years old and living under an assumed name in the Witness Protection Program, decided to team up with New York mobsters, Oreste (Ernie Boy) Abbamonte and Victor (Rocky) Soto while they were incarcerated together at Leavenworth and sell cocaine on the outside. Abbamonte is a member of the Gambino crime family and known mob drug lieutenant. The associate of theirs in Leavenworth they were using to arrange a purchase of the product happened to be working with the FBI and introduced them to a wholesaler in South Philly who unbeknownst to them was an undercover agent.

Faced with telephone wire transcripts showing him negotiating the price of a deal to buy 20 kilos of blow, Grande flipped. On August 15, 1991, he sent Piccolo to meet with the undercover fed in a swanky Philly hotel and deliver a $70,000 payment in exchange for what was to be the first of two 10 kilo installments. Piccolo left in handcuffs that day and did more than a decade in the can. Ernie Boy Abbamonte returned to prison in 2014 for extorting a Massachusetts construction company.

In Piccolo’s most recent indictment the U.S. Attorneys Office divulged that an unidentified made member of the Bruno-Scarfo clan has been cooperating and recording conversations with mob figures in both the syndicate’s Philly and Jersey wings since 2015. Besides Piccolo, Bruno-Scarfo soldier Joseph (Joey Electric) Servidio, was indicted on narcotics charges this month, a case that also spawns from the work of the FBI’s newly-cultivated mole and the tapes he has made. There’s speculation that one of the people frequently referred to, but unnamed, in the tapes is Piccolo’s nephew and Wayne Grande’s son, reputed rising Philly mafia star Domenic (Baby Dom) Grande, allegedly recently bumped to an acting capo post.

Authorities believe the younger Grande, 38, was the triggerman in the December 2012 murder of mob associate and former drug offender Gino DiPietro, but he’s never faced charges in the case which sent his best friend, Bruno-Scarfo button man Anthony (Tony Nicks) Nicodemo, to state prison. Sources tell Gangster Report that Sammy Piccolo reports to Grande in the Philly mob hierarchy. Piccolo took another pinch in 2015 and was on probation at the time of his arrest this week.

The post Philly-NJ Mob Drug Links Date Back Decades, Bruno-Scarfo Goodfella Got In Hot Water With Grande Gang In 90s appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Reputed New York mafia captain Salvatore (Jersey Sal) Profaci, the son of original Five Family don, Joe (The Olive Oil King) Profaci, died recently of natural causes. Profaci, who allegedly ran a Colombo syndicate crew out of New Jersey and spent a good deal of time in Florida, was 81. His death was kept hush-hush by family members and he was buried in a private ceremony in Pennsylvania back in February. He was famous in mob circles around the country for a comment intercepted on an FBI wire over two decades ago.

For years, Profaci’s base of operations was Roma Food Enterprises in Piscataway, New Jersey. His father founded Mama Mia Importing Co., the biggest importers of olive oil in the United States. Author Mario Puzo crafted his Don Vito Corleone character in The Godfather after the elder Profaci. In the book and the subsequent films, the Corleone family owned fictional Genco Olive Oil. Joe Profaci died of cancer in June 1962 while his crime family was engulfed in an internal street war. Today, the Profaci crime family is known as the Colombo crime family.

Jersey Sal Profaci served a federal prison term for mail fraud in the 1980s. A few years after getting out from behind bars, he was tasked by Colombo higher-ups to mediate a business dispute raging between Genovese crime family capo Carmine (Papa Smurf) Franco and attorney Salvatore Avena, an associate in the Philadelphia mob. Franco and Avena, the son of slain Prohibition era Philadelphia mob boss John Avena, were feuding in the early 1990s over money Avena accused Franco of skimming without his knowledge from a trash-hauling company they co-owned out of Philly. Avena had filed a civil lawsuit against Franco that angered east coast mafia brass.

Salvatore Profaci

Since Profaci’s son was married to Avena’s daughter, the Colombo clan offered to have Jersey Sal interject on behalf of the Genovese administration and try to find a way to solve the problem before it reached trial…..or worse, a hit. Unknown to either Profaci or Avena, the law practice Avena owned in New Jersey was bugged due to the fact that Avena allowed the then-sitting Philadelphia mob hierarchy to hold court in his office and conference room. At the time, Philadelphia’s Bruno-Scarfo crime family was embroiled in a violent internal power struggle.

“I’m supposed to let this guy (Franco) steal money from me and its okay just because he’s a Goodfella?” Avena is heard asking Profaci in 1992. “This thief can get away with it and that’s it?”

The response by Profaci has often been repeated, discussed and laughed about in American wiseguy culture ever since.

“Sal, it’s bad for business. The Genovese family is too big, we’re all gonna get hurt from this…..Goodfellas don’t sue Goodfellas. Goodfellas kill Goodfellas.”

Avena and Franco settled the lawsuit out of court. Franco got slapped with a short prison term in 2014 for overseeing mob-controlled sanitation work in New York and New Jersey.

Per sources, later in his life, Profaci, who reportedly retired from the rackets in the last decade or so, tried to act as a mediator for a mob beef in Detroit, where his two brother-in-laws Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli and Anthony (Tony T) Tocco, were prominent underworld figures. Tocco and Zerilli died of health ailments in 2012 and 2015, respectively, having never mended their differences tied to a falling out between Zerilli and Tocco’s older brother, Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco, the longtime Godfather of the Motor City. The elder Tocco died of natural causes in the summer of 2014. Tony Tocco was his consigliere. Tony Zerilli, Black Jack’s first cousin, was his underboss until the early 2000s.

The post Colombo Mob Capo ‘Jersey Sal’ Profaci Cashes In Chips, Legendary NY Mafia Boss’ Son Passes At 81 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former Iraqi mob boss Lou Akrawi is staging another hunger strike from behind bars to protest the deportation of Iraqi Christians to Baghdad, per the new hardline immigration measures enacted by the White House in the last year. The barrel-chested 70-year old Akrawi, who led a Detroit-based crime family in the 1980s and early 1990s, is currently being held by immigration officials in Battle Creek, Michigan and fighting being deported back to a region where he was at the forefront of a political coup 50 years ago.

Akrawi served two decades in state prison for a 1996 manslaughter conviction. He was released in 2016, but detained by the federal authorities last spring, part of roundup of illegal immigrants with criminal rap sheets targeted for deportation, some of which with only minor scrapes with the law and who have been living in the country crime free via temporary visas for years. For the 16 months he was free, he lived quietly with his sister and reconnected with his five sons, staying clear of legal trouble.

A well-known firebrand, Akrawi is one of roughly 300 Iraqi Christians slated to be sent back to Baghdad, despite the fact that non-Muslims are being persecuted and killed in Iraq by ISIS for their religious beliefs. A federal judge will rule on the constitutionality of forcing men and women to relocate to a region where they are likely to be harmed later this year. Akrawi went on a hunger strike late last year, too. He has an immigration proceeding next week scheduled in downtown Detroit.

As a young man in the spring of 1968, Akrawi was involved in an unsuccessful coup attempted by the Iraqi Socialist Party to remove the newly-minted Baath Party administration, including a narrowly-averted assassination of Saddam Hussein. In the days after the coup failed, Akrawi fled to Turkey and then landed in Detroit. According to INS sources, he was stalked by Hussein operatives for the better part of the next three decades in an attempt to take vengeance. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Akrawi was a fervent activist in trying to persuade the United States to breakoff its relationship with Hussein and the Baathists, which it eventually did leading up to the first US-Iraqi War in 1991.

“It’s not right, the whole way they are treating us, the conditions they have us waiting in (for possible death sentences if we are sent back)…..this is my only way of speaking out,” Akrawi told Gangster Report. “Somebody has to do something, somebody has to make a statement and tell the rest of the country this is wrong.”

The post Refusing To Eat, One-Time Iraqi ‘Godfather’ Demonstrates Against Deportation Proceedings, Fights Return To Scene Of Past Coup appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to sources on the street and in law enforcement, Philadelphia mafia figure Domenic (Baby Dom) Grande was upped to “acting” captain status some time in the last two years. The 38-year old Grande is considered a fierce up-and-comer in South Philly mob circles and is serving as caretaker of Michael (Mikey Lance) Lancellotti’s crew, while Lancellotti is helping with the day-to-day maintenance of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family as a whole, per these sources. Gangster Report was the first to detail Lancellotti’s increased administrative role in the local mafia two years ago.

There’s rampant speculation that Baby Dom Grande is one of the unnamed capos referenced in the wiretapped conversations recently unveiled as part of a pair of federal indictments out of New Jersey charging two made members of the Philly mob with narcotics offenses. One of those indicted was Sammy Piccolo, Grande’s uncle.

Mikey Lance (2nd from left) & Baby Dom (2nd from right)

Baby Dom comes from a rich gangland pedigree and has a number of veteran Bruno-Scarfo button men vouching for him on the street. His dad is Salvatore (Wayne) Grande, a 1980s era mob hit man currently residing in the Witness Protection Program. His grandfather was longtime Philly underworld figure John (Coo Coo) Grande. His ascent in the Bruno-Scarfo family has been overseen by the syndicate’s reputed underboss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone, who refers to Grande as his “nephew,” even though he’s just Grande’s aunt’s brother-in-law.

Back in 2015, Grande accompanied Lancellotti and Philly mafia don Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino to a Christmas party in New York hosted by the Genovese crime family, demonstrating that his star was definitely on the rise. In 2011, an FBI informant was wearing a wire at a lunch meeting between Philly mob leaders and Gambino crime family members where Philly’s then-acting boss Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi spoke of Grande’s popularity amongst the rank-and-file, saying “they love that kid,” when talking about his getting inducted into the mafia at such a young age.

Authorities suspect Grande of being the triggerman in the December 2012 gangland slaying of Gino DiPietro, a Philadelphia mob associate and convicted drug pusher. DiPietro had cooperated with the government in a prior narcotics case that ensnared his own cousin and had gotten into a verbal spat with Grande’s best friend, Philly mafia soldier Anthony Nicodemo, in the months before his murder. Nicodemo pled guilty to participating in Nicodemo’s murder conspiracy and is in state prison.  Despite his suspected involvement, Grande has never faced any charges connected to the homicide.

Grande and Mikey Lancellotti were indicted together in a bookmaking case out of Atlantic City in 2007. While Lancellotti had the case against him dropped, Grande pled guilty. Lancellotti was alleged to be running a large sports book inside The Borgata Hotel & Casino using Grande and Nicodemo as his point men.

The post ‘Baby Dom’ Grande Has Been An Acting Capo In Philly’s Bruno-Scarfo Crime Family Since ’16, Per Sources appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New federal court filings fill in some critical gaps in the first-degree murder case against former New England mafia don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, who will stand trial next month for the 1993 gangland slaying of Boston nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro. The 84-year old Salemme led the Patriarca crime family for the first half of the 1990s and was pulled out of the Witness Protection Program in August 2016, charged with ordering DiSarro’s murder in the months after DiSarro’s remains were exhumed from underneath a converted mill in Rhode Island.

DiSarro, 43, was partners with Salemme in a South Boston music venue and rock-and-roll bar called The Channel and believed to be skimming profits and cooperating with the government in building a vcase against the violence-plagued Salemme regime. He disappeared in the spring of 1993.

Per a number of briefs filed by prosecutors in recent weeks, a frantic DiSarro left a note for his son telling him they wouldn’t be seeing each other for a while in the moments before leaving for a meeting with Salemme he would never return from. Prosecutors allege DiSarro was strangled to death by Salemme’s son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and Frankie Boy’s best friend, Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick at the Salemme family home in swanky Boston suburb of Sharon, Massachusetts on the afternoon of May 10, 1993 as Cadillac Frank and his brother Jackie (Action Jack) Salemme, watched on.

Salemme, Jr. and Weadick worked at DiSarro’s club, as a manager and bouncer, respectively. Weadick, 62, will stand trial alongside Salemme next month. He is currently part of the Gemini Social Club crew in Boston’s North End ran by modern-day New England mafia bosses the DiNunzio brothers (Carmen “Big Cheese” DiNunzio and Anthony “Little Cheese” DiNunzio). Both Weadick and the elder Salemme have pled not guilty. Jack Salemme, Cadillac Frank’s acting boss prior to flipping in the late 1990s, has not been charged in the case.

Salemme, Jr. died of complications resulting from the AIDS virus in 1995, shortly after him and his dad were indicted in a major mob racketeering case. At the time of DiSarro’s murder, Salemme, Jr. was under indictment for a labor racketeering case tied to Teamster payoffs trying to secure Hollywood movie contracts and was confined by the courts to the Sharon residence until his trial.

DiSarro and his brother-in-law Roland Wheeler purchased The Channel, located on the “Southie” waterfront in 1991. By March of 1993, the FBI approached DiSarro and let him know he was on the verge of being arrested for money laundering and bank fraud in relation to his ownership in the club, according to prosecutors briefs. Wheeler testified in front of a federal grand jury about the club and its links to Salemme in April. After hearing of Wheeler’s testimony, Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr, expressed concern to his father that DiSarro was cooperating with the FBI and IRS.

In his initial debriefing with authorities in 1999, Cadillac Frank denied involvement in DiSarro’s disappearance, claiming the hit was called in from behind bars by his predecessor to the Patriarca throne, Nicky Bianco, who had died years earlier in prison. Also divulged in the new court filings is the fact that former Patriarca soldier Joe DeLuca got inducted into the crime family for burying DiSarro’s body.

DeLuca is the younger brother of one-time Salemme underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, set to be the star witness at next month’s trial and the man responsible for the Providence wing of the Patriarca clan during the Salemme regime. The elder DeLuca, 71, admits to being tasked with overseeing burial duties in the DiSarro homicide. He agreed to testify against Salemme in exchange for charges not being levied against his baby bro.

Joe DeLuca has told prosecutors he volunteered to physically bury DiSarro’s body to protect his older sibling from exposure, due to the fact that Bobby the Cigar had a wife and kids. He further admitted to rendezvousing with Salemme at a Providence pharmacy on the evening of May 10, 1993 and taking possession of DiSarro’s corpse, which had been wrapped in a blue-colored tarp and driven across state lines in the back of Salemme’s Ford Explorer SUV.

The post Court Filings: More Information Released In New England Mob’s DiSarro Murder, Victim Left Ominous Note appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Detroit drug gang chief Dwayne (Weezy) Taylor was apprehended this week by authorities in Troy, Michigan after six years on the run from the law. The 42-year old Taylor had been overseeing the Powell Brothers narcotics organization in the wake of both the siblings getting convicted in federal court in 2014 and being sent to prison. Carlos (Big 50) Powell, 44, and his baby brother Eric (Little 50) Powell, 40, were the biggest drug kingpins in Detroit in the mid-to-late 2000s and early part of this decade, dealing in cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

Before ascending to the top of the food chain following the Powells incarceration, Taylor acted as the gang’s “head of distribution,” manning the day-to-day affairs of the group’s wholesale operation on the street. The Powell brothers are both serving life prison sentences. The DEA made Taylor “Public Enemy No. 1” in 2016. He headed the Detroit DEA’s Most Wanted List for over two years.

The government seized $22,000,000 from the gang over the course of investigating it, some of the cash discovered in safes stashed across Metro Detroit and other parts of the country and the rest in bank accounts and safety deposit boxes in the brothers’ names or names of their affiliates. Taylor was busted with the Powells in their 2012 indictment, but avoided arrest.

The Powell brothers are members of the Moorish Science Temple, a sect of the Muslim religion founded in New Jersey in the early 20th Century. They bolted on the morning of their jury verdict in May 2014. Less than a month later, Carlos Powell was apprehended in St. Louis and Eric Powell in Atlanta. They laundered portions of their drug money through car dealerships they owned in Michigan and Arizona and maintained friends in high places – one of their co-defendants (Ken Daniels) was a former state representative in Lansing.

While on the street, the Powell brothers lived in suburban Macomb County. Taylor was caught in Troy, Michigan, which is in Oakland County, roughly 10 miles north of the Detroit border.

The post Powell Brothers Gang Leader ‘Weezy’ Taylor Finally Caught, Detroit Drug Boss Lands Behind Bars After Half-Dozen Years As Fugitive appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Frail and cancer-stricken, Chicago mobster Charles (Chuckie the Electrician) Russell pled guilty to a single illegal firearm possession charge in federal court this week related to an ATF sting 18 months ago. Russell is a hardened felon, prolific burglar and reputed Outfit hit man. He’s considered a top member of the Outfit’s Grand Avenue crew and is a brother-in-law to crew leader and alleged Chicago mafia street boss Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, a man some call the most feared man currently walking the streets of the Windy City.

In December 2016, Russell was arrested by an undercover ATF agent when he showed up at a downtown Chicago deli in the South Loop to purchase a bundle of eight weapons, including a sub machine gun and an AK-47 assault rifle. The agent infiltrated Russell’s inner circle in the months preceding the bust and recorded the convicted murderer and sex offender bragging of killing a local African-American gangbanger, pulling off 2,000 burglaries and his intention of using a blow torch to get a potential future robbery victim to open his safe.

“Nothing gets my juices flowing like putting a gun to someone’s head, taking their stuff and making it mine,” he bragged to the undercover agent at a Wicker Park restaurant and tavern.

Back in January, Russell was granted bond to await trial at his girlfriend’s suburban Chicago home due to medical issues, specifically his battle with late-stage prostate cancer. At a court hearing on Thursday, he admitted to possessing a 38-caliber pistol when he was apprehended. The mandatory minimum sentence for a convicted felon possessing a firearm is 15 years. His sentencing is scheduled for August.

Attorneys for the 68-year old Russell speculate their client won’t live past this summer. Russell’s girlfriend is a niece of slain Chicago mob figure Tony (The Ant) Spilotro, the Outfit’s representative in Las Vegas in the 1970s and first-half of the 1980s until he was murdered for repeated insubordination in June 1986. Spilotro was portrayed by Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci in the 1995 Martin Scorsese movie Casino.

Chuckie Russell

Albie Vena, dubbed by some the Outfit’s New Millennium version of Spilotro for his diminutive appearance and aptitude for violence, is married to another one of Tony the Ant’s nieces. Spilotro spawned from the same Westside mob regime Russell belongs to and  Vena now heads. Vena has been the target of a multi-agency racketeering and murder probe for the last four years.

According to sources, Vena assumed command of the Grand Avenue crew in the mid-to-late 2000s, following his predecessor and former Spilotro captain Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo’s imprisonment from the famed Operation Family Secrets case, which finally solved Spilotro’s murder. Russell was groomed in Outfit affairs by Lombardo and Lombardo’s dreaded right-hand man Francis (Frank the German) Schweihs, a notorious enforcer with dozens of alleged hits under his belt. Schweihs was indicted with Lombardo in the Family Secrets case, but died of cancer in 2008 before he reached trial.

Russell was convicted of a murder in 1973 and served two decades in prison for a gruesome sexual assault – in 1992, he raped a woman and threw her out of a second-story window. He was paroled from his rape case in 2011.

The post Sickly Windy City Wiseguy Cops Plea In Fed Case, Might Not Make It To Sentencing Hearing appeared first on The Gangster Report.