Pagan’s Motorcycle Club boss Steve (Gorilla) Mondevergine survived an assassination attempt 20 years ago this summer when a beef between Mondevergine’s Philadelphia Pagan’s and the 10th and O Gang, an independent mob ring that has long operated in South Philly, erupted into a brief shooting war. Mondevergine was shot eight times at close range in the early morning hours of August 29, 1999 as he walked from a South Philly bar to his mother’s row house nearby. The 10th & O Gang got its name from the street corner that intersects 10th Street and Oregon Avenue in Philadelphia.

Just this past week, Gorilla Mondevergine, 65, was back in the news when the newest episode of Mob Talk on YouTube reported that the burly former cop-turned-crime lord, had recently been reinstalled as president of Philly’s branch of the Pagan’s after more than a decade on the shelf. Mondevergine was the most powerful biker boss on the east coast during his first stint as president of the Pagan’s chapter in Philadelphia in the 1990s and 2000s – he was forced from his initial tenure in the presidency as a result of a chapter insurgence led by Timothy (Casual Tim) Flood.

While Mondevergine was sent to prison for trying to kill Flood at a chapter meeting in January 2008, Flood wound up flipping on the club, becoming a witness for the government following a 2009 drug and gambling bust out of West Virginia. Mondevergine came out of prison in 2013 and sat on the sidelines until he was recently tapped to lead the Philly Pagan’s by national president Keith (Conan the Barbarian) Richter out of New York, according to Mob Talk.

In the late 1990s, the Pagan’s in Philly had strong ties to the city’s Italian mafia, the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, but was feuding with the 10th & O crew over drug and loan sharking turf. According to state police reports, Gorilla Mondevergine’s pal, mob don Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino tried to broker a peace treaty between the two sides of the conflict and hosted a sit down in the spring of 1999 which Mondevergine and 10th & O Gang boss John (Johnny the Hat) Hendri both attended. However, little was accomplished and the ill will persisted through the summer reaching a crescendo with the attempted murder of Mondevergine on August 29.

Staying true to the code of the street, Mondevergine refused to identify his attacker to the police, instead choosing to take matters into his own hands. On November 3, 2000, Mondevergine opened fire on Hendri as he exited the Oregon Diner. Hendri, 66 today and reportedly retired from the rackets, wasn’t struck in the attack. Mondevergine was arrested that same day for gun possession near the scene of the shooting. He was locked up two months later for racketeering in January 2001 and did three years in prison. Following his assault on Casual Tim Flood in 2008, he did another three years behind bars.

The 10th & O crew operates drug, gambling and loan sharking rackets out of a series of taverns, restaurants and social clubs. Besides the Oregon Diner, located directly at the corner of 10th & O, other frequented hangouts for the crew have been Cookie’s Tavern and the Deptford Tavern.

The post The Pagan’s Vs. 10th & O: “Gorilla” Mondevergine Took Philly Biker Club To The Mattress In ’99 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 17, 2019 — Philadelphia mob figure Joseph (Joey Electric) Servidio pleaded guilty to narcotics trafficking charges in federal court this week. The 59-year old Servidio was popped in the spring of 2018 for pushing pills, cocaine, marijuana, heroin and crystal meth. Because of a prior 2006 drug conviction, Joey Electric, a contractor in the construction trade and a soldier in the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s North Jersey wing, faces 12 and a half years in prison when he is sentenced later this year.

The March 2018 indictment out of U.S. District Court in Camden, New Jersey included hours of damning audio surveillance featuring Servidio making a series of incriminating statements where he speaks freely about a past murder he committed when he was 19, trying to carry out a hit on a rival in 2017 and “kicking up” a percentage of his rackets to his superiors in the mafia. And he wasn’t done. He also spoke about how he hides his illegal cash through his construction company and how he had recently attempted a takeover of rackets in Atlantic City before he was instructed to stop by his bosses in Philly. The feds had a bug on Servidio’s phone and both a wired-up informant and an undercover FBI agent recording Servidio’s free-wheeling ramblings on life as a mobster.

Joey Electric was blunt in discussing what he actually does for a living.

“I’m a criminal, everything I do is criminal,” he said. “Ninety percent of my remodeling work is for free, for friends and family…..I need 250k cash in my pocket every year just to break even. I got to put the cash somewhere, I have to be able to show (legitimate) income….Last year, I robbed an armored car just to get even. There’s nothing better than making money (illegally), I do it every day. Who wants to do this other shit (legitimate work)?”

Servidio told the informant why he dealt narcotics.

“Drugs is the business I can make the most money in…..I like to spend a lot of money,” he bragged.

He spoke of his intentions to tax independent bookies and dope peddlers in Atlantic City, plans that were squashed before they really ever got off the ground.

“I said (to my bosses), ‘Look, we’re not looking to take over the whole town, people don’t even need to know who the fuck we are,” Servidio recalled to the informant. “The only time they’ll know who we are is if they give us a hard time. Then we tell ‘em, we puff out our chest and play our trump card.”

His assessment of the damage that results from being caught on government recordings is spot on and proved prophetic.

“Tapes kill you….almost all the eyewitnesses get the wrong person, you can beat that, you know what you can’t beat? Tapes. Tapes with you saying it right there staring back at you.”

Servidio allegedly reports to old school Bruno-Scarfo Family capo Joseph (Joe Scoops) Licata. Authorities think Licata runs the Philly mob’s North Jersey crew. The informant Joey Electric was doing business was family soldier Anthony Persiano.

The post The Light Of Day: Philly Mobster “Joey Electric” Cops A Plea In Drug Case appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 19, 2019 — Two men in Clarksville, Tennessee were gunned down in the parking lot of a Longhorn Steakhouse location earlier this month after getting into a verbal altercation with members of the local Outlaws Motorcycle Club chapter inside the restaurant that was reportedly witnessed by the city’s sitting mayor.

Tennessee Outlaw Michael (Mike the Hulk) Craft was arrested and charged with the June 5 murders of Clarksville residents, James Ramsey and John Allgood, last week. Mayor Joe Pitts was dining at the city’s Longhorn Steakhouse establishment the evening Ramsey and Allgood were killed and was present when the bad blood began to boil.

The 36-year old Craft was in possession of the alleged murder weapon when he was pulled over on his bike five miles away from the scene of the crime the night of the slayings. Craft can be seen on video surveillance leaving the Tilted Kilt bar and heading towards the Longhorn Steakhouse nearby less than 15 minutes before the double homicide occurred. Witnesses inside the restaurant told police they saw Ramsey and Allgood arguing with a group of Outlaws in the moments prior to things spilling over into the parking lot and getting violent.

Joe Pitts, 60, was elected Mayor last November, following 11 years of service as a Democratic Rep. in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Clarksville is the fifth largest city in the state of Tennessee and close to the Kentucky border.

The Outlaws, the premier biker gang in the country’s Midwest and Southern regions, have had a presence in Clarksville dating back decades. Craft has pleaded not guilty in the double murder case. He previously had a 2010 domestic assault charge against him dismissed.

The post The Last Train To Clarksville: Mayor Watches Outlaws MC Rev Up To Murder Mode In Tenn. Steakhouse appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Chicago mob soldier Robert (Bobby Pinocchio) Panozzo pleaded guilty to a single count of federal extortion this week out of U.S. District Court in Rockford, Illinois. Panozzo, a member of the Outfit’s Grand Avenue crew, is already serving an 18-year sentence in state prison for racketeering and faces up to a 14-year term, most likely to run concurrent with his state case, when he’s sentenced in federal court later this year by the Honorable Philip Reinhard.

Before his arrest in 2014 in a headline-grabbing sting where he was nabbed walking out of a drug house carrying a safe, Panozzo’s was the right-hand man to Grand Avenue crew capo and Outfit street boss Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, both the most feared and most wanted man in Chicago right now. Panozzo’s state case centered around a home-invasion and armed robbery ring targeting drug dealers.

The feds pinched him for beating up a debtor over $100,000 in interest owed on a $40,000 juice loan. Panozzo, 60, loaned a McHenry County businessman $40k in 2005. Before he left to serve two years behind bars for another robbery bust, Bobby Pinocchio and associate Joe Abbott paid the businessman a visit at his office in October 2006 and attacked him, throwing his head against a wall multiple times. Upon his release from prison in 2008, Panozzo paid Abbott $1,000 in cash to torch the victim’s car and an additional $5,000 to blow up the garage attached to his house. Abbott has pleaded guilty to extortion in the case as well.

The post The Chicago Outfit’s Bobby Panozzo Pleads Guilty To Extortion, Mobster Doing Double Duty For State & Feds appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to sources, when Chicago mobster Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena was promoted to Outfit street boss four years ago, he was allowed to staff his own cabinet. These sources say James (Jimmy I) Inendino has acted in the capacity as Vena’s underboss and Joe (The Builder) Andriacchi has served as his consigliere, with the actual position titles being “loose.”

The 70-year old Vena has been the target of a multi-agency racketeering and murder probe since early 2014, per sources in Illinois law enforcement. He has run the Outfit’s Grand Avenue crew for over a decade. Inendino has been in charge of the Chicago mafia’s Cicero crew since coming out of prison in 2008. Elder statesman Joe the Builder, 86, has held a variety of Outfit administrative posts over the past 30 years.

In his younger days, the diminutive and volatile Vena, dubbed by some in the media the most dangerous man in Chicago, reported to Andriacchi in the now-shuttered Northside crew. Vena and Andriacchi are considered suspects in the 2006 slaying of Outfit underboss Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo. Vena beat a murder rap at trial in the 1990s. Inendino, 76, has never been charged in any homicides, however was reportedly a member of the Cicero crew’s so-called Wild Bunch hit squad in the 1970s and early 1980s. He was busted in 2001 in a racketeering and political corruption scandal involving the Mayor of Cicero, a town notoriously mobbed up dating back to the days of Al Capone during Prohibition.

Andriacchi hasn’t had any run-ins with the law since he finished a stint behind bars for burglary in 1971. Sometimes called “The Sledgehammer” for his not-so-subtle way of safe cracking during his time as a cat burglar in his youth, Andriacchi has long headquartered his affairs on Rush Street in Chicago’s main downtown entertainment district. Little Tony Zizzo, 71, was en route to meet Andriacchi on Rush Street so Andriacchi could mediate a dispute between Zizzo and the Outfit’s then acting boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno over video poker machines routes when he disappeared on August 31, 2006.

Zizzo has been declared legally dead. Sarno, 61, is currently in prison doing a 25-year bid for federal extortion tied to the bombing of a Berwyn, Illinois bar.

The overall boss of the Chicago mob today is allegedly cagey 80-year old Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis, said to be in semi-retirement living most of the year in Wisconsin. Elmwood Park crew power Marco (The Mover) D’Amico had been listed as Outfit consigliere. Cicero crew heavy Salvatore (Sammy Cards) Cataudella served as Sarno’s underboss.

The post The Falcon’s Crest: Chicago Mafia Leader Albie Vena Has Surrounded Himself With Old-School Advisors, Per Sources appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Detroit mobster John (Johnny Bananas) Sciarrotta was recently busted in a federal drug sting and is facing a maximum 20 years in prison as punishment due to his checkered rap sheet. The 63-year old wiseguy and three others were arrested in Canton, Michigan back in March for trying to purchase $300,000 worth of cocaine from an undercover FBI agent.

Johnny Bananas has two previous narcotics convictions on his record and was nailed in the historic Operation Game Tax case in the late 1990s, which ensnared virtually the entire leadership structure of the Detroit mafia. The feds had been watching Sciarrotta and his alleged partner David Miranda for several months before the March, 11, 2019 sting was executed. The transaction went down in a Holiday Inn Express parking lot and the men were apprehended at a nearby gas station.

Sciarrotta and Miranda’s alleged connection was 47-year old Chris Tallarico out of Pittsburgh. Tallarico negotiated the coke buy with the undercover agent at a diner in Wayne, Michigan hours prior to the bust. An FBI surveillance unit watched Sciarrotta and Miranda circle the block in a SUV while Tallarico negotiated the deal at the diner and then hours later as he made the purchase in the hotel parking lot.

When federal authorities searched Sciarrotta’s residence in Dearborn, Michigan they found a number of firearms and packages of cocaine. Johnny Bananas has taken pinches for grand larceny, carrying a concealed weapon, obstruction, resisting arrest, coke possession, heroin dealing and extortion in the past.

The extortion charge stems from the Operation Game Tax investigation. Along with fellow mob soldiers Nove Tocco and Paulie Corrado, Sciarrotta kidnapped and threatened a local Detroit bookie named George Sophia in an attempt to get him to pay street tax to the Tocco-Zerilli crime family.

At the time, Sciarrotta was a member of the family’s Corrado crew headed by Anthony (Tony the Bull) Corrado, Paulie Corrado’s uncle. Tony the Bull died behind bars in 2002 serving time from the Game Tax case. Tony Sciarrotta, Johnny Bananas’ dad and a longtime area bookie, died of natural causes last year.

The post Motown Mafia Figure Johnny Sciarrotta Scooped Up In Coke Sting, Looking At 20 Piece appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 23, 2019 — The Michigan State Police searched a property in Hillsdale County, Michigan for the remains of iconic slain labor leader Jimmy Hoffa last week. The search is the latest in a long line of digs and property surveys hoping to unearth the bones of the former Teamsters union boss and mob associate, missing for almost 45 years, and finally crack what has been called America’s most famous unsolved mystery ever.

What MSP did or didn’t find when they let cadaver dogs loose on a piece of property located in southern Michigan once owned by a member of the Detroit mafia Thursday or if they will be reappearing for more probing of the property in the future, is unknown at this time. The identity of the member of the Tocco-Zerilli crime family linked to the property has yet to be divulged by authorities. Hillsdale County is a two-hour drive from Detroit.

Hoffa disappeared from a Bloomfield Township restaurant parking lot on July 30, 1975 on his way to a mafia-style “sit down” with Detroit mob Chief Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey mob capo Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano. Once allies and close friends, Hoffa and Provenzano were feuding over Teamster insurance benefits Hoffa received during a prison stay not afforded to Provenzano while behind bars at the same Lewisburg, Pennsylvania federal correctional facility in the late 1960s.

The fiery, brash and outspoken Hoffa gave up the Teamsters presidency as a means of getting sprung early from his 10-year sentence for fraud, bribery and jury tampering via a commutation from U.S. President Richard Nixon. Upon his release from prison in 1971, Hoffa became intent on reclaiming his post atop the union despite the same mob benefactors responsible for installing him in the job in the first place now opposed to his return to power.

With the Teamster election looming on the horizon in 1976, Hoffa knew he had to squash his beef with Tony Pro if he was going to be successful in his re-election bid. Provenzano, a high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family, controlled the union’s entire voting block of delegates on the east coast. Tony Giacalone, Hoffa’s contact in the Detroit mafia dating back to the 1950s, was allegedly in charge of arranging the details of the Hoffa hit. Related to Tony Pro by way of marriage, Tony Jack brokered the fake sit down at the Machus Red Fox restaurant just outside of Detroit as a means of getting the cautious and sly Hoffa out in the open and able to kill.

Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982 and nobody has ever been arrested in the case. Provenzano died of cancer in 1988 serving time in prison on an unrelated racketeering and murder conviction. Giacalone passed away from liver failure in 2001 under federal indictment and awaiting trial.

Very few, if any, people with first hand knowledge of Hoffa’s kidnapping and execution remain alive today. Retired New Jersey mob soldier Stevie Andretta, who reported to Tony Provenzano in the Genovese crime family and investigators believe could have played a role in the “clean up” portion of the hit is still around. So is Hoffa’s surrogate son and former Detroit mob crony Chuckie O’Brien, who some claim was the man driving the car that took Hoffa to his slaughter. The car itself, a 1975 maroon-colored Mercury Marquis owned by Tony Jack’s son “Joey Jack,” is the lone piece of physical evidence the FBI has collected in what is still described as an open and ongoing investigation. The younger Giacalone is a reputed capo in the modern day Detroit mob.

In just a few months, acclaimed movie director Martin Scorsese will release a film titled The Irishman about Hoffa’s murder told from the prospective of a Delaware Teamsters boss and Pennsylvania mob hit man named Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran. The highly-anticipated mega-budget Netflix feature stars Robert DeNiro as Sheeran and Al Pacino as Hoffa and is scheduled to drop in October.

Sheeran told author Charlie Brandt that he was the shooter in the Hoffa hit during the final months of his life in 2003. Investigators view Sheeran’s confession with extreme skepticism. Brandt wrote the best-selling 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses based on Sheeran’s life and relationship with Hoffa which Scorsese adapted into a film.

The post A Summer Rite Of Passage: Another Search For Jimmy Hoffa’s Body is Off & Running appeared first on The Gangster Report.

June 27, 2019 — Jimmy Hoffa doesn’t appear to have been laid to rest in Hillsdale, Michigan. A search for the remains of the slain Teamsters boss by the Michigan State Police last week at a parcel of property in southern Michigan once owned by a family member of a known mob capo came up empty, according to MSP officials.

Hoffa famously disappeared on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 on his way to meet Detroit mafia street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and high-ranking New Jersey monster Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, 175 miles away from Hillsdale County where the search took place last week using mainly a pack of cadaver dogs.

One source says the property searched belonged to descendants of the Badalamenti family. Emmanuel (Bad Manny) Badalamenti was the Detroit mafia’s capo in southern Michigan for many years, stationing his activities out of the Monroe area. His brothers Caesar and Joe were respected mobsters in Detroit’s Tocco-Zerilli crime family and leading members of its “Zip” faction with bloodlines traced to Sicilian mafia royalty. Bad Manny Badalamenti died in 1970, Caesar and Joe lasted until the 1980s.

At the time of his murder, Hoffa was trying to reclaim the Teamster presidency against the wishes of his one-time benefactors in the mafia. He relinquished the post he had ridden to epic heights of power in the 1960s when he was serving time in prison for bribery, fraud and jury tampering.

Giacalone was Hoffa’s longtime contact in the mob. Provenzano, the most powerful Teamster on the east coast in his heyday, was a friend-turned-enemy of Hoffa’s whose support Hoffa desperately needed to procure in order to win a 1976 election. Neither Tony Jack, nor Tony Pro showed up for the meeting that fateful afternoon 44 years ago and Hoffa was last seen getting into the backseat of Giacalone’s son’s car and being driven out of the restaurant’s parking lot.

Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982. The FBI and Michigan State Police have combined to conduct a seemingly endless line of heavily-publicized searches and digs in a quest to unearth Hoffa’s body over the past four and a half decades to no avail. No charges have ever been filed in the case and the investigation into Hoffa’s kidnapping and killing remains open and active to this very day, as evidenced by this recent search.

Tony Giacalone died of kidney failure in 2001. Tony Provenzano dropped dead of a heart attack in prison in 1988.

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese will release a film this fall on Netflix about Hoffa’s murder starring Robert DeNiro as Pennsylvania mob hit man Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran and Al Pacino as Hoffa. The movie is based on a 2004 book written by Delaware lawyer Charlie Brandt about his client Sheeran, who claimed to have been the shooter in the Hoffa hit. Sheeran died in the months before the book was released.

The post Same Old Song & Dance: No Dice For Michigan State Police In Most Recent Search For Jimmy Hoffa appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The sexy and seductive Harlem gun moll Beverly (Shamecca) Ash was at the center of a romantic feud that pitted legendary New York crime lord Nicky Barnes versus his protege in the drug game Guy Fisher. The fallout from the bad blood crashed Barnes’ Black mob ruling body known as “The Council” which operated in Harlem from the mid 1970s into the early 1980s and controlled a giant piece of the city’s heroin trade. Barnes wound up flipping and testifying against Fisher and his fellow Council members and by doing so decimating the very organization he had constructed his legacy upon — it was recently reported that he died of cancer in the Witness Protection Program back in 2012. Fisher is serving life in prison. Ash was slain in the culmination of the beef in 1982.

Flashy and industrious, Barnes used ties in New York’s Italian mafia, specifically connections in the Luchese and Colombo crime families, to grow his drug empire and his reputation to meteoric heights. By the late 1970s, Barnes was the richest and most recognizable African-American crime figure in the country and graced the cover of New York Times Magazine underneath a headline that proclaimed him “Mr. Untouchable.” He consolidated much of the city’s drug business by founding The Council, a mafia-inspired board of directors made up of powerful Black drug bosses from different parts of town designed to share resources and maximize profit and stability.

Guy Fisher was mentored by Barnes, starting off as his driver and then jointing him as a leading member of The Council. In 1977, Fisher purchased Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theatre. Upon Barnes’ conviction and imprisonment the following year, Fisher became the top dog in the New York drug game.

Fisher angered Barnes when he began an affair with Barnes’ side piece Shamecca Ash, a beautiful and bubbly temptress with a penchant for dating big time drug bosses. From behind bars, Barnes had been using Ash and her brother Steve in his business dealings on the outside. Through an introduction via Barnes, Steve Ash began buying heroin on consignment from Gambino crime family associate Mark Reiter, a tough, slick-talking Jewish wiseguy and confidant of soon-to-be Dapper Don, John Gotti. Reiter was supplying an organization ran by Barnes’ nephew, Eugene (Mikey) Romero as well.

Shamecca Brown wasn’t beyond helping out her lover’s friends and relatives with hit work. She helped set up Harlem drug dealer and racketeer Ronald (Black Ronnie) Burroughs to be murdered inside a disco called Reflections in the summer of 1981. Burroughs and his bodyguard Raymond (Big Ray Ray) Brown were shot to death on the dance floor shaking a tail feather alongside Ash who was used to lower their guard.

By the fall of 1982, Steve Ash and Reiter were barely on speaking terms, having fallen out over a $150,000 debt Ash owed Reiter. That October, word had leaked to the street that Nicky Barnes was so mad at Fisher for starting a romance with Shamecca and for The Council for allowing it, he went to work for the U.S. Government in exchange for protection and a shortened stay in prison.

Seething with anger when he heard the news, Reiter ordered Shamecca, her brother Steve Ash and Ash’s bodyguard Barry (Bones) Wilson executed in retaliation for Barnes’ betrayal. He gave the murder contracts to Barnes’ nephew Mikey Romero.

Shamecca Ash was shot to death inside Manhattan’s Monarch Bar in December 13, 1982 by Romero’s main enforcer Raymond (Romar) Clark. Soon thereafter, Romero killed Bones Wilson by slitting his throat and then tossed his body into the Hutchinson River. Wilson was finally found floating in April 1983. Three months later in July, Romero lured Ash to an apartment and Clark shot him in the back of the head, eventually dumping him in Pier 42 near the corner of Norton and West. Reiter and Romero were both sentenced to life in prison for drugs, racketeering and murder after a 1988 conviction — Romero died of natural causes in 2005 at 50 years old.

Fisher, 72, was convicted in 1984 under the federal RICO act. From his prison cell, he earned a PHD in sociology. Barnes walked from federal custody in 1998 after serving 20 years of a life sentence and spent the rest of his life living under an assumed identity.

The post The Love Triangle That Killed “The Council”: How Romance & Betrayal Buried Historic Harlem Kingpin Consortium appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Philadelphia mob captain Santo (Chester Sam) Idone had his tenure as a mob administrator derailed by a dispute with New York’s Gambino Crime Family over a video poker machine, snippets of which were caught on tape by the FBI for posterity. Idone, who led a Philly mafia crew out of Delaware County, Pennsylvania for two decades, was indicted 30 years ago on federal racketeering charges and sent away to prison, effectively bringing an end to his career as a power in the mob.

“Chester Sam” ran his crew out of Chester, Pennsylvania, the oldest city in the history-steeped state. He was tapped as a capo by Philly mob don Angelo Bruno in the early 1970s. Upon Bruno’s assassination in 1980, Idone remained in the post under Bruno’s successors, Phil (The Chicken Man) Testa and Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo.

The beef with the Gambinos occurred in 1986 when a vending machine business in Chester placed a pair of video poker machines in a mob-controlled lounge and club called The Gold Room. The machines came from Action and Automatic Vending — companies owned by the Sanbe family, father, Alphonse, son Ronnie and grandfather Nick — and replaced machines owned by Danny Eufrasio, the son of Idone’s right hand man Mario (Murph) Eufrasio.

The Sanbes believed their actions were protected by Freddy Lupi, a Gambino associate about to be released from prison and a silent partner in their business, and they made the owner of The Gold Room a better deal on the machines than the younger Eufrasio had been giving him.

In March 1986, Idone stepped into the situation and threw his weight around. He instructed Danny Eufrasio to move the Sanbes machines out of The Gold Room and reinstall the Idone-crew backed ones. Nick Sanbe filed a police report and was phoned by Murph Eufrasio and told him no uncertain terms to drop the complaint immediately.

The auto body shop the Idone crew hung out at and talked shop every day was wired for sound throughout all of 1986.

“You’re fooling around with the wrong people, this ain’t worth getting hurt over,” Eufrasio was recorded admonishing the young Sanbe. “Look, if you don’t drop this thing, somebody’s going to get hurt and it’s probably going to be you.”

The threat didn’t deter Nick Sanbe though. That fall, he went into The Gold Room and other Idone crew-controlled bars and taverns and vandalized several video poker machines.

Idone called for a sit down with Lupi and at the meeting held inside a Chester townhouse Lupi demanded his machines be returned to The Gold Room and Idone threatened to kill him if he didn’t back off. Idone informed then Philly mob boss Little Nicky Scarfo of the situation and Scarfo had a sit down with Gambino Don John Gotti about the matter. Scarfo got a ruling in Idone’s favor.

“If they want to start a fight, we’ll crack their heads…smash their poker machines,” Idone was caught telling Murph Eufrasio in an intercepted conversion from December 1986. “It’s possible we’ll work things out. But if we don’t, we will just have to use other methods, that’s all. Then, we’ll beat the guys up, take it to the streets.”

Gotti’s intervention on behalf of Scarfo and Idone worked. The Sanbes moved their machines out of Chester in January 1987 and no violence resulted from the feud.

Scarfo was arrested two months later in March 1987 and charged with multiple murder and racketeering counts he would go on to be convicted of. Idone and Eufrasio were indicted on bookmaking and extortion stemming from The Gold Room dispute, in 1989.

Idone was found guilty at a 1990 trial and served eight years in federal prison, forced to relinquish his capo spot and Delaware County territory. The well-liked veteran wiseguy lived out his final years in retirement in Florida, dying in 2005 at 84 of prostate cancer.

The post The Gold Standard: Video Poker Beef With Gambino Mob Brought Down Philly Mafia Figure “Chester Sam” appeared first on The Gangster Report.

July 3, 2019 – Former Philadelphia mob captain Salvatore (Shotsie) Sparacio died in prison recently the owner of a dubious honor. The 96-year old Sparacio passed away late last year as the oldest inmate residing in the Federal Department of Corrections. He was convicted of racketeering in November 1995 at age 72 and lived out of the remainder of his life behind bars.

Sparacio ran a crew out of New Jersey’s Medford Village Resort & Country Club, And was known throughout his gangland tenure as a gentlemen of a Goodfella and an expert bookmaker and handicapper. Inducted into the Bruno-Scarfo crime family by boss Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo at an April 1981 ceremony, he was bumped to a capo post in 1986, according to Pennsylvania Crime Commission records. Shortly after he was “made,” Shotsie was blacklisted from all casinos in Atlantic City for his ties to organized crime.

Sparacio’s career in the mob came to a screeching halt in March 1994 when he was indicted alongside Scarfo’s successor John Stanfa in a sweeping racketeering and murder case. Stanfa, an out-of-touch Sicilian don backed by the Gambino Family in New York but who found little respect on the home front, spent virtually his entire reign as Godfather in the early 1990s at war with an upstart bunch of young aspiring mob powers led by Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino.

With Stanfa out of the picture — he was convicted at trial with Sparacio, underboss Francis (Spanish Frank) Martines And consigliere Anthony (Tony Buck) Piccolo, Skinny Joey took control of the crime family and molded it in his glitzy image. Merlino, 57, reportedly still heads the mob in Philly today and is in the middle of serving a two-year federal prison sentence for a gambling offense.

The post Shot In The Dark: Philly Mafia OG “Shotsie” Sparacio Passed In Prison At 96 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

July 5, 2019 — His drug dealing days appear to be behind him. Sketchy real estate deals, those might be another story.

Back in the 1980s, Sylvester (Seal) Murray was one of the biggest drug world figures in Detroit, Michigan, a high-ranking lieutenant in Young Boys, Incorporated (“YBI”), the most impactful and infamous of the city’s many corporate-styled narcotics rings during the freewheeling, neon-spangled Reagan era. This week, Murray, a reverend, found himself the focus of an investigative report broadcast on the local Detroit Fox television affiliate (Fox2’s Problem Solvers), questioning the ethics of land purchases made by his Come Back Home Ministries, one of which resulted in a man’s house being placed on the market without him knowing it. When the man, who has a deed demonstrating rightful ownership of the property, contacted Murray’s business associates, he was asked for $15,000 to make the problem go away.

The one-time drug boss and the Come Back Home Ministries he heads are in the controversial “bulk portfolio” real estate industry, where property buys are done in bundles, usually including lots of land in shady neighborhoods and properties in disrepair. Some researchers find the bulk real estate trend damaging to the community and an example of vulture capitalism at its worst.

Murray, 65, hasn’t been in trouble with the law since he was released from his last prison term 16 years ago. In December 1982, he was indicted as part of a colossal round up of nearly 50 leaders, workers and associates of YBI, an organization founded on Detroit’s Westside in the late 1970s and instrumental in changing the way drugs were sold, transported and marketed in the Midwest dope game.

At the peak of its power, YBI was clearing a million bucks per week in profits and dominated virtually the entire Motown heroin trade. Known for being suave and shrewd, Murray was YBI’s supply boss and a top advisor to YBI founders Milton (Butch) Jones, Raymond (Baby Ray) Peoples and Dwayne (Wonderful Wayne) Davis.

YBI pushed heroin on elementary school play grounds using kids as young as 8 and 9 years old as their core dealer base on the street. The organization transported most of their drugs and money in taxi cabs. Members were known to wear Adidas gear and footwear, fur-lined Max Julien jackets and campaign hats referred to as “Boaters” or “John Dillinger caps.”

In the months preceding the 1982 bust, Jones allegedly had Davis murdered after Davis tried to break-off from the group and start his own gang. Following the bust, Jones and Peoples had an ugly falling out, with Peoples orchestrating a robbery of Jones’ suburban home and Jones in turn ordering the executions of Peoples and his co-conspirators.

Baby Ray Peoples was slain behind the wheel of his car in the summer of 1985. Jones is currently serving a life sentence in state prison for unrelated murders he ordered in the 1990s as the head of another gang called The Dawg Pound.

Former YBI crew chief Darryl (Stoney Roney) Terrell was indicted on drug trafficking charges out of Detroit in 2017. Terrell was a frequent companion of both Butch Jones and Seal Murray in YBI’s heyday of the early 1980s.

The post Ex-YBI Drug Chief “Seal” Murray Making Some Waves In Detroit’s “Bulk” Real Estate Market appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Detroit mob luminary Antonino (Tony Cigars) Ruggirello died this week of natural causes. The 85-year old Ruggirello was a crew boss in the Tocco-Zerilli crime family for decades and had been acting in an advisory capacity to mafia administrators in the Motor City during his final years, per sources. His father, “Big Toto” Ruggirello fought in the Crosstown Mob War of the early 1930s before dying of a heart attack when Tony and his three brothers were infants.

Tony and his brother Luigi (Louie the Bulldog) Ruggirello had their names come up in the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, a well-known associate and ally of the Detroit mafia, who mysteriously vanished from a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant the afternoon of July 30, 1975 on his way to meet Tocco-Zerilli Family power Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone for lunch. Giacalone and Tony Ruggirello were partners in a pest extermination business. Both Ruggirellos had their mug shots included in a photo lineup of potential suspects attached to the famous Hoffex memo, an internal briefing for law enforcement compiled in the months after the stubborn labor leader was rubbed out.

The Ruggirello brothers were raised by their uncles and cousins, eventually becoming “made” members of the Tocco-Zerilli clan and given responsibility of overseeing territory in Washtenaw and Genesee Counties. Tony and Louie were co-capos of the Ruggirello crew, which headquartered from the ritzy Timberland Game Ranch in Dexter, Michigan, an upscale club and hunting lodge just outside Ann Arbor, the Washtenaw County seat.

Tony Ruggirello was considered the top suspect in his first wife Judy’s disappearance in August 1968. The day prior to going missing, she had told him she was filing for divorce. Judy Ruggirello’s body has never been found. He had to serve prison time in the 1970s for trying to kill a rival numbers runner in Flint, Michigan with a car bomb.

On June 11, 1979, the Ruggirello brothers hosted a top-secret ceremony at the Timberland Game Ranch, where stately Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco was elected don of the Detroit mob in a vote of all the crime family’s capos. Due to a tipoff from Tocco’s driver and crafty police work by federal law enforcement, the FBI was on hand snapping photos as Tocco officially took the reins of the criminal empire and gangland aristocracy founded in the wake of the Crosstown Mob War nearly a half-century before.

Tocco and Tony Giacalone were prime suspects in the planning of the Hoffa hit, soon to be dramatized in the Martin Scorsese-helmed $200,000,000 price-tagged Netflix blockbuster The Irishman, starring Al Pacino as Hoffa. The Ruggirellos were staunch Tocco loyalists, but also close to the blue-collar Giacalone camp and the FBI theorized Tocco and Giacalone could have had Hoffa’s body buried on the expansive property housing the Timberland Game Ranch, hundreds of acres of forestry and brushy marshland owned by the Ruggirello family. Despite the plausibility of the hunch, it was never enough for a search warrant to gain access to the property so they could check it out.

“Tony was a very respected, capable and feared figure in Detroit La Cosa Nostra (Mafia), he was always on our radar and that game ranch was a place that we knew they felt safe at,” said retired FBI agent Greg Stejskal, the agent who captured Tocco’s Timberland Game Ranch coronation with his camera lens. “We learned he was more jovial, a little more extroverted than his brother Logie, but he wasn’t anybody you could cross and think you’d live to tell about it either. TG meant business. He used to give out business cards that said Tony Ruggirello, Externinator, across them. That was his idea of a joke.”

Louie Ruggirello died of cancer in 1987. Giacalone and Tocco passed peacefully in 2001 and 2014, respectively.

It’s been a rough year so far for the “vintage” wing of the Tocco-Zerilli crime family. Ruggirello is the third elder statesman from the Borgata’s ranks to check out so far in 2019. Another Hoffa suspect, Anthony (Tony Pal) Palazzolo, the Detroit mob’s consigliere, died of cancer back in the winter. Palazzolo, 76, once bragged to an undercover agent that he disposed of Hoffa’s remains in the sausage auger of his Detroit Sausage Company headquarters in historic Eastern Market, and was named as one of the hit men in Hoffa’s actual slaying by a high-level FBI informant.

Former Tocco underboss Joseph (Joe Hooks) Mirabile died in the spring. Mirabile was the Detroit mob’s porn king.

The post One Of The Last Possible Links To Hoffa Case, Detroit Mafia Power Tony Ruggirello Dies At 85 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Black Mafia Family Timeline (1985–2018)

1985–1988 – As a teenager, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory starts selling $50 packages of cocaine and soon has a small network of pushers scattered throughout Detroit’s Southwest side and a cluster of factory-town suburbs like River Rouge, Ecorse and Willow Run.

1989 – Big Meech leaves the Motor City and relocates to Atlanta. Word on the street at the time was that Flenory had bolted from town after butting heads with Southwest Detroit drug boss Layton (The Beast) Simon.

1990 – Big Meech begins building what eventually becomes BMF, cultivating valuable contacts in multiple major cities and creating the early-stages of the organization’s groundbreaking infrastructure.

1995 – Big Meech hooks up with Wayne (The Wayniac) Joyner, who has a supply connection with a Mexican cartel he was introduced through intermediaries in California and starts expanding.

1996 – Big Meech’s baby brother, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, who had been running the shop in Detroit, relocates to Los Angeles. Benjamin (Blank) Johnson, a childhood friend of the Flenorys, is left in charge of the BMF “mother chapter” in Motown.

October 31, 1997 – Drug boss-turned-informant Dennis Kingsley-Walker is gunned down behind the wheel of his Nissan Maxima as he drove onto the exit ramp of a downtown Atlanta expressway near trendy Buckhead, just hours after being released from a three-year prison term and stopping for drinks at Atlanta’s Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel to celebrate.

*Kingsley-Walker was the first Detroiter to plant a flag in the “Hotlanta” dope game in the early 1980s. To a reduce a prison sentence from a 1994 federal drug case, he testified against his partner Tony Valentine, who was a close friend of Big Meech’s. Per an unsubstantiated claim by a federal informant, Big Meech was the shooter in the Kingsley-Walker hit. Nobody has ever been arrested for the Kingsley-Walker homicide.

Spring 2001 – The DEA in Detroit and Atlanta begin receiving rush of tips on the ever-expanding BMF organization and its charismatic leader Big Meech Flenory.

November 5, 2001 – Shirley Franklin is elected Mayor of Atlanta. Franklin’s son in law was BMF affiliate Tremayne (Kiki) Graham.

Winter 2003 – Big Meech launches the BMF music label, placing a series of Scarface-themed billboards up along the I-75 interstate running from his hometown of Detroit to his adopted hometown of Atlanta, declaring “The world is BMF’s.” The label has one, uninspiring artist in rapper Barima (Bleu DaVinci) McKnight, but maintains a cozy affiliation with rising rap superstar Young Jeezy.

June 22, 2003 – Hip-hop mogul Sean (Puffy) Combs throws Big Meech a lavish 36th birthday bash at Justin’s, his upscale soul-food eatery in Buckhead named in honor of his son. DEA agents were on hand snapping photos at an after party at Big Meech’s suburban Lithonia residence, known in BMF circles as the “White House” that lasted into the early morning hours of the next day and was attended by all BMF brass and a boatload of celebrities from the music and entertainment world. More than one DEA informant claims Combs got some of the start-up cash for his 1990s hit-factory Bad Boy Records label from the BMF crew.

September 7, 2003 – BMF Chief Financial Officer William (Doc) Marshall kills an assailant in a home invasion of his pricey townhouse located in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood. Marshall kept the books for BMF and owned a luxury car dealership. He was the only member of BMF that did business on behalf of both Big Meech and Southwest T.

October 28, 2003 – The DEA officially starts an investigation into BMF and dubs it Operation Motor City Mafia. A file on Big Meech had first been opened by the agency in 1990.

November 11, 2003 – After an altercation with the BMF entourage inside the Atlanta club Chaos, Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy are killed in a shootout with Big Meech in the parking lot. Wolf Jones was Puffy Combs’ personal bodyguard. Big Meech is wounded in the exchange of gunfire and avoids getting charged with Jones and Girdy’s murders on the grounds of self-defense.

November 17, 2003 – Securing a search warrant in the aftermath of the Chaos shootout, the DEA raids the White House and finds a machine gun, a money counter, ledgers and paperwork for custom-designed vehicles made with secret compartments for couriering drugs cross country. Agents reported seeing framed posters of slain rap icons Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., actor Al Pacino in his signature Michael Corleone (The Godfather) and Tony Montana (Scarface) characters and New York mob don John Gotti hanging on the walls of Big Meech’s master suite. November 20, 2003 – Motown crime lords Reginald (The Dude) Dancy and Damonne (Slim) Brantley, BMF affiliates and the leaders of Detroit’s PA Boys gang, are indicted on federal drug-trafficking and money laundering charges. Dancy ran Detroit’s flagship PA set on the city’s westside, while Brantley handled affairs down south in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina for the crew. April 5, 2004 – Detroit BMF soldiers Calvin (Playboy) Sparks and Chris (Pig) Triplett are pulled over in St. Louis by Missouri State Police driving an SUV with nine kilos of cocaine inside.

April 11, 2004 – BMF courier Jabari Hayes is pulled over in Phelps County, Missouri by highway patrolmen driving a motor home containing 100 kilos of cocaine and more than a pound of marijuana.

July 25, 2004 – Atlanta resident Rashannibal (Prince) Drummond is killed by BMF’s pint-sized and trigger-happy third-in-command, Fleming (ILL) Daniels, in the parking lot of The Velvet Room club in Atlanta when the two got into an argument after Daniels almost hit Drummond backing out of a parking spot in his Porsche SUV. Drummond was beaten down by several BMF members for slapping his palms on Daniel’s vehicle in anger and then Daniels exited the car and shot a felled Drummond at point-blank range.

September 5, 2004 – BMF courier Ulysses (Hatchet Man) Hackett and his girlfriend Misty Carter are executed as they sleep in Carter’s Atlanta apartment over the belief that Hackett was about to flip and give up Kiki Graham’s BMF-supplied satellite outpost in Greenville, South Carolina.

November 5, 2004 – BMF courier Jeff Leahr is pulled over in his car by police in Atlanta where they discover a duffle bag with 10 kilos of cocaine. Leahr worked for BMF lieutenant Omari (O-Dawg) McCree.

November 23, 2004 – DEA agents raid a BMF stash spot known as “Space Mountain,” an ultra-modern mansion in a posh Northwest Atlanta neighborhood and find a machine gun, electric money counters, triple-beam scales and drug residue, but no actual packages of drugs.

November 28, 2004 – Big Meech leaves Atlanta and relocates to Miami. He rents a mansion on South Beach and starting in

January 2005, he begins hosting a weekly “BMF Night” at a club called Crobar in Miami Beach.

*By the end of 2004, Big Meech and Southwest T are no longer on speaking terms, having fallen out over Terry’s belief that his big bro Demetrius’ showy behavior and antics wee bringing too much heat on them.

May 10, 2005 – Rapper Henry (Pookie Loc) Clark is killed when he tries robbing rival rap star Gucci Mane inside a house in Decatur, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. Clark was best friends with “trap rap” maven and BMF affiliate Young Jeezy, who was feuding with Gucci Mane at the time of the robbery-gone-wrong ending in Gucci Mane shooting Pookie Loc to death in self-defense. Prosecutors stated in future court briefs the attack on Gucci Mane had been ordered by BMF.

May 11, 2005 – A shootout erupts during the arrest of St. Louis BMF crew chief Deron (Wonnie) Gatling on charges out of Missouri at Gatling’s fiancé s house in suburban Atlanta. With Gatling hiding in the attic and DEA agents and U.S. Marshals storming the pricy, neatly-manicured residence, seven gun shots aimed at law enforcement rang out, ripping through the front yard as agents and marshals ushered Gatling’s fiancé and associates out of the house. The agents returned fire and quiet Chamblee, Georgia was turned into a makeshift war zone for a few minutes on a Wednesday morning in the spring. Cell phone records show Gatling called Sin City Mafia boss Jerry (J-Rock) Davis from the attic and authorities believe Davis dispatched a team of goons to go shoot it out with the feds.

The Sin City Mafia was an offshoot of BMF. May 23, 2005 – R&B luminary Bobby Brown’s nephews Shane and Kelsey are stabbed in an altercation with a BMF entourage at Justin’s in Atlanta, the same restaurant that hosted Big Meech’s star-studded 36th birthday bash two years before. BMF soldier Marque (Baby Bleu) Dixson is arrested for the attack three months later. Dixson, the little brother of Bleu DaVinci, is shot to death by a girlfriend after an argument at a club in March 2006.

May 26, 2005 – Big Meech leaves Miami for Dallas, renting a mansion in Frisco, Texas.

June 8, 2005 – BMF lieutenant Omari (O-Dawg) McCree signs a cooperation agreement becoming the first ranking member of the BMF empire to jump ship to the government.

July 11, 2005 – Southwest T and his driver and right-hand man Eric (Slim) Bivens are pulled over in eastern Illinois with $5,000,000 of jewelry (22 pieces) on their way back from a Young Jeezy video shoot in St. Louis. Flenory gets music producer Damon Thomas, once married to Kim Kardashian, and jeweler to the stars, Jacob (The Jeweler) Arabo to falsify a trail of ownership to the purchases.

August 9, 2005 – O-Dawg McCree pleads guilty to federal drug charges in Atlanta, marking the first of many convictions of BMF members.

October 19, 2005 – Louisville BMF boss Toree (Pink Suit) Sims is indicted on federal drug and money laundering charges out of Kentucky. Sims reported to Southwest T’s regime in L.A.

October 21, 2005 – Big Meech is taken into custody in Texas, arrested without incident at the mansion he was renting outside Dallas. The DEA seized Flenory’s Bentley, $700,000 in cash, a pound of weed, a cabinet-full of ecstasy pills and three guns.

October 27, 2005 – The DEA raids BMF St. Louis boss Danny (Dog Man) Jones’ house and arrests Southwest T, Slim Bivens, Benjamin (Blank) Johnson, Derrick (Chipped Tooth D) Pegeuse, Marlon (Lil’ Dog) Welch. Johnson ran BMF’s Detroit branch, Pegeuse was Southwest T’s man on the ground in Atlanta, Bivens his chief of staff and Welch was his step son. Agents confiscate $600,000 in cash.

October 28, 2005 – Operation Motor City Mafia is filed out of Detroit, Michigan. The indictment is 11 counts, names 41 people and boasts 500 kilos of cocaine and $7,000,000 million in cash seized. Authorities placed the net worth of the organization at $300,000,000.

November 14, 2005 – BMF Detroit underboss Arnold (A.R.) Boyd flips. Boyd is Blank Johnson’s brother and becomes the first of the Flenorys inner circle to join Team America. Johnson and Slim Bivens soon follow Boyd over to the cozy confines of government protection.

March 7, 2006 – BMF CFO Doc Marshall flips and gives the U.S. Attorney’s Office, DEA and IRS access to all of BMF’s books and financial records.

June 15, 2006 – The DEA raids Jacob the Jeweler’s Manhattan flagship store Jacob & Co off Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.

July 21, 2006 – A Operation Motor City Mafia superseding indictment drops, nailing BMF underboss Chad (J-Bo) Brown and supply chief Wayne (The Wayniac) Joyner.

January 22, 2007 – BMF’s No. 3 man ILL Daniels is charged with Prince Drummond’s murder from 2004 in the parking lot of the Velvet Room, along with drug and weapons offenses.

February 5, 2007 – Out on bond, J-Bo Brown is pulled over in his native St. Louis with loaded 9 millimeter pistol, $5,000 and a pound of marijuana. J-Bo is taken into custody and his bail is revoked.

April 3, 2007 – J-Bo Brown pleads guilty.

May 4, 2007 – Jerry (J-Rock) Davis and his Sin City Mafia BMF branch are indicted.

November 7, 2007 – Operation Crimson Vex is filed in L.A. and takes down Big Meech’s right-hand man Martez (Tito) Byrth and Big Meech’s bodyguard Ameen (Bull) Hight.

November 12, 2007 – Lawyers for Big Meech and Southwest T arrange for their client to have a summit in back of courthouse to iron out their differences in lieu of a joint plea deal. The sit-down goes bad right off the bat and quickly evolves into a shouting match. Nonetheless, both Flenorys agree to a plea over the next few days.

November 13, 2007 – Southwest T Flenory pleads guilty in Detroit.

November 19, 2007 – Big Meech pleads guilty in Detroit. June 16, 2008 – ILL Daniels is convicted in his drug case. At his trial, BMF turncoat Ralphie Simms implicated Young Jeezy in BMF’s drug-trafficking activities.

September 12, 2008 – Big Meech and Southwest T are sentenced to 30 years in prison apiece by U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohen.

August 9, 2009 – Detroit resident Robert Alexander is killed in a fight with a BMF entourage led by “junior BMF’ers,” Darnell (C-Bird) Cooley, Eiland (Golden Child) Johnson and Deandre (Boo Dollar) Woolfolk at a suburban nightclub called Arturo’s in Southfield, Michigan.

*The only witness willing to testify, Alexander’s best friend, Anthony Alls was shot gunned to death outside the barber shop he worked at in the hours before he was scheduled to take the stand in a grand jury proceeding. Cooley, Johnson and Woolfolk all pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges and did five years of prison time.

August 18, 2014 – Detroit BMF soldier Pig Triplett is pulled over in Ohio with two pounds of heroin in the air filter of his car. Triplett was convicted in Operation Motor City Mafia in the 2000s.

July 31, 2015 – Detroit BMF lieutenant Chauncey (C-Bear) Johnson is released from prison from the Motor City Mafia bust and declares that BMF intends to rebrand and become a community and youth empowerment organization and eventually a luxury lifestyle brand.

December 20, 2016 – Detroit BMF soldier Ricky (Slick) McFarlin, who was convicted in the Motor City Mafia case, is killed along with ex-NFL defensive end Robert Eddins in drug deal gone wrong on Detroit’s westside.

May 4, 2018 – J-Bo Brown is released from prison.

August 7, 2018 – Wayne Joyner is released from prison.

The post Fade To Black: The Ultimate Big Meech & Black Mafia Family Timeline appeared first on The Gangster Report.

When Bonanno crime family don Carmine “The Cigar” Galante declared himself the so-called “capo di tutti i capis,” or “boss of bosses” of the New York underworld, the mafia’s ruling body declared him a dead man walking.

On the sweltering-hot afternoon of July 12, 1979, the 69-year old Galante and two of his men were killed in a hail of bullets on the patio of Joe & Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant in Brooklyn. It was a gangland assassination for the ages that sent the Bonanno clan careening off the rails for the next several years.

Photos of the gruesome triple mob murder, featuring a slain Galante, with his trademark stogie clenched between his teeth, splashed across newspaper front pages around the globe. The image of a bloodied, lifeless Galante sprawled on the ground of the restaurant’s patio went on to become iconic, capturing the sheer brutality of the American mafia.

Galante was born and raised in East Harlem and became a protégé of both Vito Genovese and Joe Bonanno, two of the more widely known dons of New York’s Five Families at the height of the mob’s power and prestige in the 20th Century. Genovese taught Galante how to kill (he once did a hit at Genovese’s behest on behalf of Mussolini). Bonanno taught him how to lead. He was Bonanno’s driver and eventually his underboss. In the 1950s, Bonanno sent Galante to Canada to set up a satellite office for the family and establish a heroin pipeline between Montreal and New York.

Canada booted Galante back to the United States in 1957 for extortion offenses and two years later he took the first of two successive drug pinches, landing him behind bars in 1962. In the coming years, Bonanno would try consolidating the entire Commission under his thumb, however without Galante by his side as his top henchman, his plans backfired, the family broke out in war and Bonanno ended up being forced into exile in Arizona.

Paroled in 1974, Galante returned to New York and immediately made his intentions of taking over the city clear – the day he walked free from federal lock-up in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, he ordered the tombstone of one-time New York mob chief, Frank Costello blown to pieces by a hunk of dynamite. The Commission tapped Phillip “Rusty” Rastelli as the boss of the Bonannos, but Galante ignored Rastelli’s appointment and named himself the new don upon hitting the streets again.

When Rastelli went to prison, Galante seized complete control of the family. He surrounded himself with a crew of young, eager-to-please imported Sicilians drug pushers for protection and access to their connections in the foreign narcotics market and began touting himself as the city’s Boss of Bosses.

The Commission took exception. Just like when Bonanno aspired to do the same thing a decade prior, Galante was in over his head, blinded by hubris and greed, and his days were numbered.

From behind bars, Rusty Rastelli plotted with the Gambino and Genovese families to bump off Galante in spectacular fashion. His murder was to be a statement: the Commission’s word is the word of God, no questions asked.

Rastelli had his two top capos, Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato and Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, coordinate the details of the hit. First, they made a back-channel deal with Galante’s inner-circle, the so-called “Zips” from Knickerbocker Avenue, led by his personal bodyguards Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato, offering them promotion and a bigger piece of the family’s drug rackets if they got on board with the gangland coup de ta in the works.

Bonventre and Amato didn’t blink in selling their boss out. They even served him up for the kill. Around 1:00 p.m. on July 12, 1979, Bonventre and Amato accompanied Galante to a lunch at Galante’s cousin, Joe Turano’s Joe & Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant on Knickerbocker Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Turano was a soldier in the Bonanno family and he hosted a spread on the restaurant’s patio for Galante, the two handsome, trendily dressed Sicilians bodyguards he always had by his side and a Bonanno capo named Leonard Coppola, a longtime staunch Galante ally in the family.

At 2:45, in the moments after they finished their meal and as Galante was lighting up his famous cigar for a post-feast smoke, three masked gunmen burst in the restaurant and headed straight for the patio.

Once they reached the Godfather’s table, Turano stood up and exclaimed “Get out of here….What are you guys doing?”

The hit team answered him with bullets. With Bonventre and Amato moving out of the way, the table was sprayed with gunfire from shotguns and pistols. Galante, Turano and Coppola were killed instantly.

FBI informants claim the hit team was made up of Sonny Black Napolitano, Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato, who was Sonny Red’s son and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera, who was Sonny Red’s beefy confidant and muscle. Bruno Indelicato was photographed by a FBI surveillance unit being congratulated outside a Manhattan social club ran by powerful Gambino underboss Neil Dellacroce in the hours following the assassination.

The younger Indelicato, Trinchera and Cesare Bonventre were all rewarded with promotions to crew boss posts for their participation in the triple murder. Galante’s slaying didn’t stabilize the Bonanno family though.

Far from it. Turmoil in the aftermath of Galante’s rubout split the family into rival factions, with Sonny Black heading one and Sonny Red heading the other, and soon the rising tensions erupted with the 1981 “Three Captains Murders” depicted in the 1997 Al Pacino-Johnny Depp movie Donnie Brasco where Sonny Red, Trinchera and fellow capo Phil “Lucky” Giaccone were slain inside a Brooklyn social club. Sonny Black was killed shortly thereafter when it was discovered he allowed an undercover FBI agent to infiltrate his crew. Bonventre was knocked off gangland style in 1984.

Of the principle conspirators in the headline grabbing mafia assassination of Galante, only Bruno Indelicato would be brought to justice. He was convicted of the murder at the “Commission Trial” in 1986 and did 13 years in prison. Today, he’s 72 and back in prison for his role another Bonanno family hit from the 2000s. Baldo Amato, 67, is serving life in prison for an unrelated double-murder tied to the Bonanno syndicate as well.

The post The Cigar’s Last Stand: NY Mafia Godfather Carmine Galante Was Murdered 40 Years Ago This Week appeared first on The Gangster Report.

July 11, 2019 — Ricky Rich is known around the Circle City for his luck, having a knack for avoiding death from his enemies on the street and long sentences behind bars from his foes in law enforcement. You might call him the American heartland’s own modern day Teflon Don.

Indianapolis drug kingpin Richard (Ricky Rich) Grundy saw his federal trial for narcotics-trafficking end before it ever really started this week when a mistrial was declared for violation of a court order related to information on jurors. The trial for Grundy and his four co-defendants had opening arguments and testimony begin Tuesday before a motion by the prosecution for a mistrial was granted by U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson Wednesday.

Cherubic and husky, the 30-year old Grundy has been in custody for two years awaiting trial – he’s alleged to have standing contracts on the heads of anybody who talks to the police and has been accused of witness intimidation in the past. In the years before he was locked up, he was living a movie script, averting assassination attempts on the regular, one during a funeral procession, and according to charges that never materialized into convictions, growing his drug empire to gargantuan proportions by gunning down almost a dozen rivals on his way to the top of the Midwest dope game. Every time the government looked like it had Ricky Rich cornered (i.e. the handful of cases he’s taken the last decade or so charging everything from wide-scale drug distribution to murder, money laundering and weapons violations), he dodged the sledgehammer, slipping away from any real harm at the last moment.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office estimates over a three-year period in the early 2010s, Grundy’s organization netted $16,000,000. His plug was in Arizona and prosecutors’ allege he shipped more than 4,000 pounds of high-grade hydroponic marijuana west from Phoenix to Indianapolis using private parcel delivery services in that three-year span (2010-2012).

Grundy and 21 alleged lieutenants and associates of his Indy “Mob Family” gang were indicted for selling marijuana, meth, heroin and cocaine in 2017, the same year Grundy skated on murder charges in state court and pleaded guilty to pushing weed out of Marion County. Grundy’s Mob Family crew is the most notorious African-American criminal group in Indiana history.

The name Ricky Rich reverberates and strikes fear across the Hoosier State, his boastful, showy, (and often seemingly incriminating) social media posts and rap videos appearances garnering hundreds of thousands of views and a countless line of potential witnesses against him refusing to testify out of concern for their personal safety. He’s spoken about desiring to eventually transition from the dope game to the rap game — his Mob Family Entertainment independent music label supported Indy rappers Eric (Lil’ E) Butler and Mack (Lil’ Mack) Taylor, who was slain in September 2016. If convicted in his current case, Ricky Rich faces anywhere between 10 years to life in prison.

Also on trial alongside Grundy are his reputed right-hand man Ezell (Bo) Neville and lieutenants James (Jake the Snake) Beasley and Derek (Shorty D) Atwater. The trial is expected to be rescheduled for the fall.

John (Little Johnny) Means, Grundy’s top enforcer, is doing time for gun possession after beating a pair of double murder beefs tied to Mob Family affairs. Means, small in stature but muscular and broad shouldered in physique, has the words Mob Family tattooed across his upper chest and lower neck.

The post Mistrial For Hoosier State Drug Don “Ricky Rich” Grundy In Long Winding Legal Saga’s Latest Chapter appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Indianapolis underworld was shaken to its core by the emergence of Richard (Ricky Rich) Grundy and his Circle City “Mob Family” this past decade. Taking Hoosierland by storm in the early 2010s, the Grundy crew left a trail of bodies in its wake on the way to cementing a place for itself on the Mount Rushmore of organized crime in Indiana. The drug game in the heartland has never been the same since.

Ricky Rich’s federal drug trial ended in a mistrial this week due to the violation of a court order related to juror confidentiality. Despite the rampant allegations regarding his and his Mob Family’s penchant for violence, neither Ricky Rich nor any of his lieutenants have ever been convicted of any murder counts.

Let’s recap the bloodshed and bodycount:

May 1, 2011 – Michael (Little Mikey) Lacey is shot to death in the parking lot of the Phoenix Apartments on the city’s Northeast side after getting into an argument with members of Grundy’s Mob Family crew.

*Adrian (A.D.) Bullock, Ricky Rich’s cousin, is charged in Lacey’s homicide, but following a hung jury at trial, has the case against him dismissed.

Aug 31, 2013 – Indy drug boss Ricky Rich Grundy is ambushed outside his home and shot five times.

*According to DEA informants, Grundy had six enemies he held responsible for the attempt on his life slain in subsequent months.

October 21, 2013 – Kendrid (Ken-Ken 2G) Mintze is found face down in the street on the eastside, shot in the back of the head. Ricky Rich and the Mob Family crew reportedly believed Mintze had robbed them of a shipment of marijuana.

January 28, 2014 – Tyrece (Touchdown) Dorsey and William (Jo Jo) Davis are gunned down at a Citgo gas station convenient store. Dorsey and Davis were allegedly caught stealing drugs from the Mob Family. They were the first two bodies to drop in a bloody purge of Ricky Rich rivals that lasted throughout the winter and into the spring of 2014.

February 1, 2014 – Carlos (Little Scoot) Jefferson and Julius (Ju Ju) Douglas are found shot to death inside a white-colored Dodge pickup truck on the city’s near northside after stealing from Grundy’s Mob Family, per informants.

Feb 20, 2014 – Lorenzo (Scooter) Clark and Michael Whitfield are killed in a shooting on the city’s northeast side. Clark had snitched on A.D. Bullock in the Little Mikey Lacey slaying.

April 4, 2014 – Stick-up kids Terry Hunter and Romello Carney are found shot to death inside a red-colored Chevy Lumina after robbing members of the Mob Family.

September 14, 2016 – Mob Family members Mack (Lil’ Mack) Taylor and Alex (Alert) Brown are shot to death in a robbery gone wrong. Lil’ Mack Taylor was a popular local rap artist.

May 5, 2017 – Drug boss Terrell (Big Doo Wop) Scott is gunned down in the parking lot of the Quail Run Apartments in Zionsville. Scott was the man who had killed Taylor and Brown seven months earlier in self defense.

July 9, 2017 – Jasmine (Pumpkin) Moore, Ricky Rich’s cousin, is shot to death outside Sunset Strip Gentleman’s Club, collateral damage in another failed assassination attempt.

July 20, 2017 – Ricky Rich survives another attempt on his life when he is wounded in a drive-by shooting during the funeral procession for his cousin Pumpkin Moore going from Friendship Missionary Baptist Church to Sutherland Park Cemetery.

The post Get Rich Or Die Trying: The Indianapolis Grundy “Mob Family” Murder Timeline appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Historians trace the birth of the entire crazy “Cocaine Cowboys Era” in South Florida to a single event: the headline-grabbing Dadeland Mall Massacre on July 11, 1979 where two Miami drug world figures were slain in a Wild-West style shootout in the upscale mall’s liquor store. The audacious gangland hit foreshadowed a coming decade marked by further bold acts of violence, droves of flashy Colombian and Cuban drug lords landing on the shores of Miami and swashbuckling their way to tremendous levels of wealth and power riding the wave of the Great American Coke Boom of the 1980s and the transformation of the area from a dusty, quiet retirement community to a polished, trendy, pastel-painted paradise famous for hedonism, celebrity vacationers and life in the fast lane.

No arrests have ever been made in the Dadeland Mall Massacre, but police have a pretty good idea of who and what was behind the murders of 37-year old Colombian drug kingpin German Jimenez Panesso and his 22-year old bodyguard Juan Carlos Hernandez, a double homicide that took place 40 years this week and shook South Florida to its core. One thing is known for certain — who gave the order.

They called her “The Godmother.”

The seeds of the bloody shopping mall assassination plot were planted in the spring of 1978 when Panesso began feuding with Miami crime boss Carlos Panello Ramirez. Panesso and Ramirez both worked with Colombian drug baron Griselda (The Godmother) Blanco of the mammoth Medellin Cartel, maybe the most ruthless, feared and notorious female criminal of all-time. It’s believed since Blanco owed Panesso a substantial amount of money and didn’t want to have to pay it back, she sided with Ramirez in the dispute and dispatched a hit team to do away with Panesso.

Blanco would soon move to the U.S. full time, however, in 1979, she was still living in Colombia and assigned the Panesso contract to her man on the ground in Miami, her brother-in-law, Miguel (Paco) Sepulveda, according to Dade County Sheriff’s Department documents. Sepulveda in turn brought in Jorge (El Loco) Ayala Riverito, Blanco’s favorite hit man. Riverito was a suspect in a number of signature “Cocaine Cowboy” slayings of the 1980s and eventually became a witness against Blanco in court.

In the early afternoon hours of July 11, 1979, Riverito and Paco Sepulveda, went into the Crown Liquors store at the Dadeland Mall with uzis and unloaded a barrage of gunfire into Panesso and Hernandez, who were at the counter purchasing bottles of Chivas Regal. They were both killed instantly. Two Crown Liquors store employees were wounded in the attack as well.

Panesso’s white colored Mercedes was parked on the curb by the store’s entrance. The hit team arrived in a white van with the words Happy Time Complete Party Supply on the side.

Convicted of narcotics trafficking out of New York in 1986 and then additional charges once behind bars thanks to Riverito’s cooperation (he connected her to over two dozen gangland slayings), Griselda Blanco did 19 years in federal prison before being deported back to Colombia in 2004. She was assassinated outside a Medellin butcher shop on September 3, 2012.

The post The Hit That Started It All: ’79 Dadeland Mall Massacre Had South Fla. Drug Scene Moving In Scary Direction appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Drugs, guns, money and a robust black market economy proved an explosive combination in Miami of the 1980s. Narco czars representing different South American cartels made South Florida both their lavish playground and body-splattered battle field. 

Last week was the 40-year anniversary of the infamous Dadeland Mall Massacre, a brazen double homicide carried out in broad daylight with automatic weapons inside the mall’s Crown Liquors store. The murders kicked off the so-called Cocaine Cowboys Era in South Florida with Miami serving as the epicenter of the booming blow culture in America during the Reagan White House years.

Let’s take a look back at some of the most lurid moments of the era with a trip down memory lane, Tony Montana Scarface style.

THE COCAINE COWBOYS MURDER TIMELINE

April 23, 1978 – South Florida gangland figure Jamie Suescun is killed for engineering a burglary of a rival drug dealer’s house the week prior and strangulation of his maid (four others die in an ensuing shootout as the hit team goes to dump Suescun’s hogtied body, including Ruben Echeverria, Julio Gaona, Jorge Luis de Campo and Osear Penagos Rios). Suescun robbed the feared Panesso family of cash and kilos of cocaine on April 17. He worked for Miami drug kingpin Carlos Panello Ramirez.

July 11, 1979 – The Dadeland Mall Massacre – Colombian drug kingpin German Jimenez Panesso and his bodyguard and driver Juan Hernandez are killed in mall’s Crown Liquor Store in the fallout from the Suescun situation.

*Panesso and Panello Ramirez’s feud was mediated by their mutual business associate, “The Godmother,” Colombian crime lord Griselda Blanco. Since Blanco was in debt to Panesso, she sided with Ramirez and sent a team of assassins to kill Panesso and his bodyguard.

September 18, 1979 – Armando Gonzales, Angel Acosta & Raemundo Martinez are killed in a house in West Miami after getting into a beef with Cuban drug boss Rafeal Rodriguez.

May 7, 1980 – Drug dealer Carlos Murcia Fajardo is gunned down in front of Miami International Airport by a man on a motorbike.

July 14,1980 – Drug runner-turned-ATF informant Larry Nash is butchered to death with a chainsaw in a South Florida motel on orders of local narco boss Orlando Cicillias, inspiring the iconic chainsaw scene in the 1983 film Scarface.

Summer 1981 – Drug kingpin Octavio (The Mattress) Mejia is murdered inside the Pan American Mall in South Florida after his son Luis (Papo) Mejia starts an offshoot drug network in New York against Griselda Blanco’s wishes and she has his entire 11-member crew killed.

February 6, 1982 – Cocaine Cowboy Jesus (Chucho) Castro’s 2-year old son Johnny is accidentally killed in attempt on his own life in a drive-by shooting.

May 26, 1982 – Drug-dealing married couple Alfredo & Griselda Lorenzo are murdered in their home on orders of Griselda Blanco over a drug debt.

July 24, 1982 – Miami drug world lieutenant Domingo Hernandez is slain for failing to foot the bill for a lavish party thrown for a visiting narco don from South America.

August 17, 1982 – Female drug lord Leonela Arias, a one-time partner of Griselda Blanco, is machine-gunned to death in Colombia behind the wheel of her car on her way to the funeral of a mutual friend.

September 15, 1982 – Aspiring drug lord Luis (Papo) Meija is stabbed by Blanco hitmen 10 times with a bayonet as he leaves the Miami International Airport, but miraculously survives.

October 18, 1982 – Griselda Blanco’s brother-in-law Diego Sepulveda is found shot to death in a motel in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea

*Griselda’s third husband Dario Sepulveda is killed in Colombia the following year after a feud over his romantic dalliances with other women leads him to flee the U.S. with Griselda’s youngest son. Blanco had her first and second husbands murdered, too (Albert Bravos was shot to death and Carlos Trujillo was poisoned to death). Griselda “The Godmother” Blanco in the 1990s.

December 20, 1982 – Miami drug dealer Ricardo (The Monkey Man) Morales is killed in Cherries bar and lounge in Key Biscayne, Florida.

March 18, 1983 – Miami drug dealer Rodriguez Seferino is fished out of Biscayne Bay, bound, gagged, shot in the back the head.

February 2, 1984 – Marta Ochoa, of the notorious Ochoa drug network in Colombia, is tortured and killed when her business relationship with Griselda Blanco goes south over a 1.8 million dollar debt Blanco owes her.

July 6, 1984 – Drug chief Rodrigo Arturo Atehortua is found slain in hiding in California on orders of Griselda Blanco over a debt and refusal to give up whereabouts of another enemy of hers in hiding.

July 7, 1984 – John Garcia, Atehortua’s 16-year old nephew is killed, to eliminate the only eye-witness to the Atehortua hit the day before.

December 1, 1984 – There are seven drug-related killings in one night in a single Miami neighborhood.

February 19, 1986 – Barry Seal. a major U.S. based operative for the Colombian Medellin cartel, master drug smuggler, money launderer and double-agent working for the DEA, is killed by assassins in Louisiana as he did court-ordered community service on a Baton Rouge Salvation Army facility.

February 3, 1987 – Powerboating icon, racer and designer Don Aronow is assassinated in Miami, gunned down behind the wheel of his car as he left a meeting at his 188th Street office on orders of a spurned business associate. The speedboat race circuit was a “whose who” of the drug smuggling trade in South Florida in the 1980s.

February 17, 1987 – Oscar Piedrahita, the former export lieutenant for Griselda Blanco’s organization, is executed while in hiding after extorting Griselda for one million bucks in a kidnapping of her son. Piedrahita is machine gunned to death at his infant son’s wake.

September 19, 1989 – Juan Acosta, a former attorney for ‘Los Muchachos’ (the original Cocaine Cowboy poster boys Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta) is killed on the eve of testifying at a grand jury investigating Falcon and Magluta’s drug empire.

The post South Florida White Out: The Cocaine Cowboys Miami Murder Timeline appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The brazen robbery of drug kingpin German Jimenez Panesso’s Miami home in the spring of 1978 set off a chain of events eventually resulting in the infamous Dadeland Mall Massacre in nearby Kendall, Florida over a year later. Panesso, 37, and his bodyguard Juan Carlos Hernandez, 22, were gunned down at Dadeland Mall’s Crown Liquors 40 years ago this week on July 11, 1979.

The slayings shocked the public conscience and proved a tipping point in South Florida drug culture, leading to what has been called the Cocaine Cowboys Era of the 1980s known for neon-lit nightlife, excessive partying and even more bloodshed in and around the beaches of Miami, Coral Gables and Coconut Grove. The decision of local drug world heavy Jamie Suescun to burglarize Panesso’s residence in April 1978 put the whole bloody mess into motion.

Suescun was partners with Miami drug don Carlos Panello Ramirez. Panesso and Ramirez were both being supplied their cocaine by Colombia’s Medellin cartel and its female crew boss Griselda (The Godmother) Blanco, a top lieutenant of narco-terrorist and global villain Pablo Escoba.

Suescun and his crew hit up Panesso’s pad on April 17 for $500,000 and 10 kilos of cocaine while tying up and blindfolding Panesso, his wife and children and strangling his maid, Ester Rios, to death in the course of the home invasion. An incensed Panesso vowed swift vengeance.

On April 23, 1978, Suescun was lured to a Miami Beach townhouse under the pretense of selling the 10 keys of blow he lifted from Panesso’s place. In reality, it was a setup. Suescun was marked for death. Panesso and his men beat and tortured Suescun to death. They hogtied his body in a way where he ended up strangling himself.

While dumping the body that night, Panesso’s men got into a shootout with Suescun’s soldiers, who had followed their boss to the sham coke deal. When police arrived, they found Suescun’s body in the trunk of a black-colored Audi and four of Panesso’s men (Ruben Echeverria, Julio Gaona, Jorge Luiis de Campo and Osear Penagos Rios) dead in the same parking lot.

Even after Suescun’s execution, Panesso’s thirst for revenge wasn’t quenched. He wanted Suescun’s partner Carlos Panello Ramirez to pay for the break-in as well. Ramirez went to Griselda Blanco for help. Blanco owed Panesso over a million bucks and saw Suescun’s beef with Ramirez as a way of sliding out of her debt. She ordered a squad of her most reliable assassins to murder Panesso as a favor to Ramirez.

Blanco’s brother-in-law Miguel (Paco) Sepulveda and her most trusted hit man Jorge (Rivi) Ayala blasted Panesso and Panesso’s muscle, Juan Carlos Hernandez, away with uzi sub machine guns in broad daylight at the swanky Dadeland Mall on the afternoon of July 11, 1979. Panesso and Hernandez were at the front counter of Crown Liquors buying bottles of Chivas Regal when they were slain. The cashier and a stockboy were also wounded in the attack.

Blanco was indicted on federal narcotics and racketeering charges in 1985 out of New York, convicted and sentenced to 10 years. She was indicted again in the early 1990s while behind bars after Rivi Ayala flipped and tied her to more than 20 gangland slayings in New York and Florida. The pair were the focus of the cult classic 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys helmed by Billy Corben.

Deported to Colombia upon finishing her prison time in America in 2004, Blanco was killed in a drive-by shooting in front of a Medellin butcher shop in the fall of 2012. Escobar died a fugitive of the law in a hail of gunfire in 1993 as he shot it out with Colombian military and DEA agents refusing to be taken alive.

The post Dadeland Mall Massacre Was Rooted In Drug Beef Over Burglary Year Before appeared first on The Gangster Report.