April 7, 2020 – Montreal hit man Jean-Claude (The Fly) Gauthier has been transferred to a less-restrictive halfway house in Quebec after spending the last year in a high-security re-entry facility. He was locked up in 1992 and has five months left to serve out on his sentence.

The man they called The Fly is serving his remaining prison time on a 22-year old homicide conviction on day parole. His recent move is reportedly linked to the COVID-19 virus outbreak and an order from the Canadian government to trim the country’s prison population in an effort to stem exposure and contagion rates.

The 68-year old Gauthier was found guilty of a gangland murder at trial back in 1997 and pleaded guilty to a manslaughter count in 1993. He admitted to killing 42 men in a police interview.  

Gauthier was connected to Montreal’s Irish mob, known locally as the West End Gang, and worked directly for West End Gang narcotics boss Ray Desfosses. On April 12, 1987, Gauthier shot drug dealer James Hainey to death inside Hainey’s car. Before fleeing the scene, Gauthier killed Hainey’s dog. Inside Gauthier’s vehicle, police found a piece of paper with the words, “The Fly” written on it next to Gauthier’s phone and pager numbers.

In October 1992, Gauthier killed a debtor when he went to collect West End Gang loansharking money at an apartment in the Montreal suburb of Laval. The following year, he took a plea that dropped the charge down to second-degree murder. Gauthier backed out of a cooperation deal with authorities two years later where he would have copped to carrying out 34 contract hits and killing 8 others for personal reasons.

The post Fly Away Home: Irish Mob Enforcer In Canada One Step Closer To Freedom appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 8, 2020 – Rivals of retired New York mafia don John (Junior) Gotti had informants plant false tips with the FBI and the feds are aware of the intelligence gleaned regarding accusations of Gotti middling relations between the Italian mob and the Latin Kings being compromised, per GR sources.

Last week, both Gangland News and the New York Daily News reported the FBI was investigating Gotti’s possible role in arranging two Latin Kings meetings in 2019 held at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club in Springfield, Massachusetts, long known as home base for the Genovese crime family’s Western Mass. wing. GR sources in law enforcement say no charges against Gotti are expected to be filed.

Gangland News scribe Jerry Capeci, the undisputed Dean of American mob journalism, broke the story of the freshly-baked federal Gotti probe. The Latin Kings are an Hispanic organized crime group. Gotti, 56, led the Gambino crime family in the 1990s, taking over from his imprisoned father, the legendary John (The Dapper Don) Gotti. He is friendly with the uncle of a Latin Kings shot caller.

Since Gotti left the mob behind in the 2000s after beating four consecutive racketeering trials, he’s been in an open beef with a former crew member of his named John Alite, who once helped the Gambinos run their affairs in Florida. The Albanian Alite has published two books on his life in the Gambino Italian mob and bragged of romancing Gotti’s sister, Reality TV queen Victoria Gotti Agnello.

Alite, 57, turned government informant in 2007 and testified against Gotti, admitting to committing murders on behalf of the Gambino regime with Gotti and being involved in a plan to kill Gotti when Gotti had a falling out with his uncles over Gambino business. Gotti’s dad, the Dapper Don, died behind bars of cancer in 2002, a genuine underworld icon of the highest degree.

In recent years, Alite and other anti-Gotti agitators have waged war against Junior Gotti on the internet and via social media. Gotti and his brothers and sisters have fought back, lobbing their own on-line assault of barbs and allegations and doing media interviews attacking Alite. It’s unknown if it was Alite and his loyalists that were “tickling the wire” with the FBI, but GR sources claim the FBI knows the information coming to them was an attempt to twist the narrative related to Gotti’s links to the Latin Kings.

Gotti is friends with Genovese mob associate David (Fat Chicky) Cecchetelli, a convicted bookmaker from Springfield. For the last three years, Cecchetelli has worked as a social media promoter for Gotti’s son, MMA fighter John Gotti III.

Fat Chicky’s nephew, Michael (King Merlin) Cecchetelli, is the boss of the Latin Kings on the east coast. King Merlin, 40, reports directly to Latin Kings national leadership in Chicago and was indicted along with 60 Latin Kings and Latin Kings associates for racketeering back in December. Fat Chicky is facing an unrelated gun charge. Numerous photos of the Cecchetellis posing with Gotti and Gotti’s son can be found on social media platforms.

As part of the Latin Kings December 2019 indictment, U.S. Attorneys in Boston revealed recordings of a pair of meetings King Merlin held of east coast Latin Kings brass at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club. The 52-year old Fat Chicky has belonged to the club going on 30 years.

Gotti wasn’t at either of the Latin Kings gatherings hosted at the club, however, the feds were provided tip-offs by informants that he helped broker the get-togethers. Per sources, Gotti has never stepped foot in the club, and has never been involved in any illegal activity with the Cecchetellis, the east coast Latin Kings nor the Genovese crime family’s Springfield operations. The Gambinos interests in the area have always fallen under the organization’s Connecticut branch.

The Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club is the headquarters of reputed Springfield mob crew chief Albert (The Animal) Calvanese, a one-time collector for Fat Chicky’s sports book before going to prison for a loansharking conviction in 2006. Calvanese, 57, assumed control of the Springfield crew in the 2010s following his release from federal prison.

While locked up and awaiting trial in the early 2000s, Gotti made an alliance with the New York Latin Kings, according to FBI records and court filings. The Cecchetellis have both pleaded not guilty to their respective pending charges and await their day in court.

The post FBI Knows Motives Of Info Given On Junior Gotti, No Charges Expected In His Connection To Latin Kings appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 9, 2020 — New England mob figure Billy (The Angel) Angelesco recently pleaded guilty to extortion in U.S. District Court out of Boston. Angelesco, 49, is a reputed member of the Patriarca crime family.

Along with two associates, he beat up and robbed a drug dealer in Abington, Massachusetts in September 2018. They pummeled a marijuana pusher and black-market sneaker broker and took $1,000 cash, 4 pounds of weed and several boxes of stolen Air Force Ones after their victim stopped paying shake down money months earlier. The Feds traced Angelesco blood and a rental car in his name to the crime scene. Angelesco yelled at his victim, “Where’s my cash motherfucker” as him and his associates reigned down blows.

Angelesco faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced this summer. FBI documents and court records link Angelesco to current New England mafia boss Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio and deceased don Peter (The Crazy Horse) Limone. In the 2000s, Angelesco ran a sports book for DiNunzio and did his collections. Around this same time, he was acting as a driver and bodyguard for Limone, fresh off three decades behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit.

Limone died of natural causes at 83 years old in June 2017. DiNunzio succeeded him as Godfather of New England. FBI surveillance units followed Angelesco as he delivered messages from Limone to DiNunzio in Boston’s North End and the directives from DiNunzio to the organization’s Providence faction.

Angelesco was found guilty of extortion in state court in 2008 and did four years in prison. He beat a murder rap in 2005, acquitted at trial for killing Pete DeVito, a nightclub manager who had assaulted him and thrown him out of a strip club.

The post Angelesco Cops To Extortion Beef In Boston, Mob Soldier Staring Down Two Decades In The Can appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 12, 2020 — The much-hyped BMF television show was green-lit by the Starz network last week, officially giving hip hop mogul 50 Cent the okay to begin shooting his new show about the Flenory brothers and their colossal Black Mafia Family drug organization which reigned supreme in the 1990s and first half of the 2000s. Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory is the most iconic African-American crime lord in recent memory, holding a ubiquitous status of reverence in rap and pop-culture circles even a decade and a half after his imprisonment.

50 Cent helped create the hit show Power for Starz in 2014. Power tells the story of fictional drug kingpin James “Ghost” St. Patrick played by Omari Hardwick. Producer Randall Emmett and writer Randy Huggins, who worked with 50 Cent on Power, will join him in the BMF project. Huggins is a native Detroiter and has been hired as the showrunner. 50 Cent frequently posts “teasers” regarding a future BMF show on his social media accounts.

Big Meech Flenory, 51, and his younger brother Terry (Southwest T) Flenory started BMF in their hometown of Detroit in 1990. By the 2000s, BMF had satellite franchisee set up all around the country and controlled large swaths of the wholesale American narcotics markets from coast to coast.

The DEA’s Operation Motor City Mafia bust brought Big Meech and his whole BMF kingdom tumbling down in October 2005. Both Flenorys pleaded guilty to the charges on the morning their trial was supposed to start in 2007, each agreeing to do 30 years behind bars for their crimes.

The post Lights, Camera, Action: Starz Gives 50 Cent Go-Ahead For Black Mafia Family Project appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 14, 2020 — The Outlaws Motorcycle Club’s European boss Stuart (Dink) Dawson is running a free-food campaign out of his Chicago 1935 American Diner in North Wales to help in the world’s fight against the COVID-19 virus. Dawson, 56, is giving away meals every day but Sunday, between 11:30 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The Chicago 1935 American Diner, located in Colwyn Bay, provides pasta, soup and sandwiches to anyone in need. Last weekend, Dawson ran an Easter toy drive. In 2010, Dawson was convicted of heading a narcotics trafficking conspiracy and served five years in prison.

The Outlaws MC was founded in Chicago in 1935. Authorities in the United States consider the Outlaws the most powerful biker crime group in the nation’s Midwest and Southeast regions and one of the most omnipresent in the entire world. The club has chapters all around the globe (25 different countries), maintaining 30 chapters in Great Britain alone.

The post Good Guys Wear Black: Biker Big Shot In Europe Doing His Best To Combat The Coronavirus appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 15, 2020 — Legendary Chicago gangland leader Larry Hoover is hoping that the First Step Act, championed by Windy City rap god Kanye West and signed into law by President Donald Trump a year ago, opens up the prison gates for him. A pair of his top lieutenants were set free in recent months due to the act of legislation allowing inmates to seek sentence reductions.

The 69-year old Hoover is the boss of the Gangster Disciples, one of the biggest organized crime groups in America. He’s been behind bars for almost five decades and currently resides in the Federal Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, a prison reserved for the nation’s most high-profile and dangerous felons. Lawyers for Hoover filed motions in U.S. District Court in Illinois for consideration regarding a sentence reduction under the First Step Act. Hoover isn’t scheduled for release until April 2064.

Back in November, former GD “junior boss” Johnny (Crusher) Jackson was released from federal custody when U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenberger lifted his life sentence. Former Southside Chicago GD shot-caller William (Too Short) Edwards got out of his 100-year term late last summer courtesy of a Leinenberger ruling.

Both Jackson, 47, and Edwards, 49, went down with Hoover in 1995’s Operation Headache bust, where the feds nailed Hoover for running GD street activity through the two eager upstarts and his second-in-charge Greg (Shorty G) Shell. Hoover was doing a life sentence for the February 1973 slaying of William (Pooky) Young and had publicly re-branded himself a community activist in order to get placed in a low-security prison unit.

Shell, Jackson and Edwards visited Hoover frequently in the Vienna Correctional Center in Johnson County, Illinois, where the FBI succeeded in recording their conversations related to GD business in the visiting room by outfitting visitor badges with tiny hidden microphones. Edwards discovered his visitor’s badge was wired for sound on a trip to the bathroom in December 1993 on a visit with Hoover. He and Jackson went on the lamb and avoided capture for several years.

According to the Operation Headache indictment, Hoover’s orders would relay from Shell at his June’s Shrimp headquarters to Edwards and then from Edwards to Jackson on the ground at the old Robert Taylor Homes projects. Edwards controlled all GD drug-dealing turf on the city’s Southside and Jackson was tasked with overseeing the teenage street dealers at the towering Taylor projects’ near three dozen residential buildings on a day-to-day basis.

Beginning in 1992, Hoover, through Edwards and Jackson, installed what he called his “one day” policy, telling GDs and independent pushers in the area that they were required to pay one day a week’s worth of drug sales to him on the inside for protection. Those extortion payments totaled $300,000 per week and was always promptly delivered by Edwards to Hoover’s girlfriend. The Operation Headache case dropped on August 31, 1995.

The 62-year old Shell is seeking a release under the First Step Act as well. If Hoover gets sprung via the act, he’ll still have to seek an additional sentence reduction from the state court for his conviction in the Pooky Young murder case.

The post Gangster’s Paradise: GD Boss Larry Hoover Looking For Help From Federal Judge In Seeing Free World Again appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 17, 2020 — Retired Cleveland mafia boss Joseph (Joe Loose) Iacobacci passed away this week at the age of 70, more than a decade removed from hanging up his mob spurs. The Cleveland mob today is a shadow of the organization Iacobacci joined over 35 years ago.

Iacobacci led the Cleveland crime family from 1993 to the mid-2010s, bringing the borgata back from a series of crushing federal indictments by forging strong ties to the Chicago Outfit and reestablishing the family’s connection to the Detroit mob. These days, the Cleveland crime family is a small group of old-timers, bookies and loansharks.

As a young Goodfella in the 1970s, Joe Loose fought on the front lines of the Ohio Italian mafia’s war against Irish mob boss Danny Greene and his Celtic Club crew. He was convicted of defrauding three New Jersey banks of $3,000,000 in 1996 and did two years in prison.

The post Ohio Mourns Loss Of Don, Midwest Mob Chief “Joe Loose” Dies In Cleveland appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 20, 2020 — The mystery surrounding the 1999 death of Cleveland mobster Alfred (Allie Con) Calabrese is an intriguing part of Joseph (Joe Loose) Iacobacci’s legacy as mafia don of Ohio. Iacobacci, 70, died of natural causes in retirement last Thursday. He headed the Cleveland mafia from the early 1990s until he voluntarily walked away from the underworld and his role as boss at the end of 2005, per FBI records.

Joe Loose and Calabrese were longtime close friends. They were both known for their tenacity as gangsters and willingness to get their hands dirty. As a tandem, they brought the crime family in Cleveland back from the brink of extinction three decades ago and then went down together in a multi-million dollar bank scam, which reportedly fractured their tight relationship and led to lingering bad feelings.

It might have also led to Calabrese’s murder behind bars. Or maybe it wasn’t a murder at all. Nobody knows for sure.

In the 1970s, Iacobacci and Calabrese were part of a prolific burglary and mob enforcement crew operating out of the Collinwood neighborhood on Cleveland’s southeast side. Iacobacci, mustachioed and built like a bull with a barrel chest and meat-clever hands, was a bodyguard for Cleveland mafia don James (Jack White) Licavoli. Calabrese, smaller, slimmer and darker-skinned, ran gambling and loansharking rackets for capo Tommy (The Chinaman) Sinito. Along with Sinito, they were suspects in a spate of murder conspiracy investigations during Licavoli’s reign tied to a war Licavoli fought against the city’s Irish mob that raged for a chunk of the “Me” decade and brought the Cleveland crime family to its knees.

By the late 1980s, Joe Loose and Calabrese were both in federal prison for narcotics trafficking, serving their time together in a correctional facility in Milan, Michigan, near the Ohio border. Calabrese got nailed for selling five kilos of cocaine to an undercover FBI agent in 1984. Iacobacci was busted in a separate cocaine-trafficking conspiracy case three years later.

While in Milan, Joe Loose, Calabrese and Calabrese’s pal Paul Weisenbach, a white-collar criminal with a talent for stock rip-offs, began planning a restructuring of the Cleveland mob for when they got out, per court documents. Weisenbach was locked up for defrauding the Society National Bank by putting up phony stock options as collateral for three loans totaling almost a quarter million bucks. He had grown up in Collinwood, but moved to New York, got his stockbroker’s license and went on to fleece Wall Street for years before getting jammed up in the Society National Bank securities fraud case.

Using Weisenbach’s huckster skill-set as a base, Iacobacci and Calabrese decided to focus their regime around boardroom racketeering and non-violent con artistry, more than traditional street crimes and gangland thuggery of their youth. When they were all finally on the outside together in the early 1990s, Iacobacci officially took power in the Cleveland mafia and named Calabrese his underboss. Weisenbach was their unofficial “finance consigliere.”

Jack White Licavoli had died of a heart attack in a Wisconsin federal prison in 1985. The Chinaman, Tommy Sinito dropped dead of a bad ticker in the yard at an Ohio correctional facility in 1997. The mob in Cleveland was Iacobacci’s and Calabrese’s to do with what they pleased.

They decided to follow Weisenbach down a road filled with stacks of money and a return to gangland prominence that eventually winded into a forest of peril, sending them both back to the can and severing their friendship forever. The cash proved too blinding.

Doing an interview with Cleveland Scene magazine in 2004, Weisenbach laid out the bank scam the buried the Ohio mafia.

Weisenbach introduced Joe Loose and Calabrese to a scam he called the “California Swing,” where they opened east coast bank accounts and deposited millions of dollars of bad checks with California routing numbers that couldn’t be voided for ten days. During the lag time, Weisenbach would move the money to offshore accounts, then to Swiss accounts days and then finally back to the U.S. through a pair of Chicago banks before the financial institutions in New Jersey knew what was going on.

Iacobacci and Calabrese brought mobsters from Chi-Town and Jersey in on the California Swing score and things were flush once again in the Cleveland mafia. Weisenbach would often work his magic from the islands, personally making sure the money flowed uninterrupted from overseas to the mob back in the States. Over a period of less than two years, they stole upwards of $5,000,000. The good times were short-lived though.

Calabrese had to attend a sit down in Newark, New Jersey with Lucchese crime family capo Mike (Mad Dog) Taccetta in January 1992 in order to settle a beef with the Jersey wing of the California Swing score over past Weisenbach indiscretions related to the Taccetta crew. Taccetta and his relatives run the Lucchese’s Jersey rackets.

As part of the deal made at the sitdown, Taccetta was supposed to receive an extra cut of the California Swing to make up for the some $200,000 Weisenbach had stolen from a Jersey mob button back in the 1980s. Iacobacci felt the money should come out of Weisenbach’s cut, but Weisenbach thought Joe Loose should foot the bill because the whole score was Weisenbach’s brainchild. Tension between the pair began to rise with Calabrese playing mediator.

In July 1992, the FBI pinched Weisenbach for a parole violation and convinced him to cooperate. Weisenbach claims the feds played a wiretapped conversation of Iacobacci discussing killing him. Per court filings, he taped 200 meetings with associates discussing California Swing scam business. He admitted to allowing the FBI to bug his car and avoided indictment in the case.

Weisenbach’s cooperation drew the ire of Joe Loose. Calabrese had to run interference on Weisenbach’s behalf again and the issue drove a wedge between the two wiseguys. Calabrese, according to FBI sources, wanted to give Weisenbach a “pass.” Joe Loose, per those sources, desired a more traditional method of deterrent and demanded his pound of flesh.

On November 20, 1994, Weisenbach was shot in the wrist in an attack outside a bar in The Flats, Cleveland’s main nightlife district at the time, that killed his friend, 26-year old Mike Roman. Weisenbach thinks it was a mob hit gone wrong aimed at taking him out but felling Roman instead.

After a night of drinking at the Flat Iron Inn, Roman and Weisenbach headed for the parking lot when they were approached by a local drug dealer named Sam Bulgin. Roman and Bulgin had verbally sparred minutes earlier and Roman took a swing at him. Bulgin took out a .38 revolver and pumped three bullets into Roman’s chest. He turned to shoot Weisenbach, but Weisenbach grabbed the gun as it went off and was able to flee with just a surface wound.

In the months before Sam Bulgin was found guilty at a 1998 trial for the Roman murder, his brother Pete was found shot to death inside his apartment on Cleveland’s eastside. Sam Bulgin denies that he was the triggerman in Roman’s slaying. Weisenbach told Cleveland Scene that the Pete Bulgin hit was punishment for Sam botching the first job and to scare him into keeping quiet.

Joe Loose and Allie Calabrese were indicted in 1995 in the California Swing scam. Weisenbach wasn’t arrested in the case. Iacobacci pleaded guilty and served two years in prison. He walked free in April 1998. Calabrese had more time to do because his arrest in the California Swing case violated his parole from his coke conviction.

This is where things get even more hazy. On August 10, 1999, Calabrese died in prison at 56 under a shroud of speculation, whispers and innuendo. Some say he was beaten to death with a pipe on a murder contract placed on his head from the outside via Joe Loose. Some say he suffered a stroke. Others, that he died after accidentally slipping and hitting his head on a sink.

No charges were ever brought in Calabrese’s death. The Cleveland mob in 2020 is a modest band of old-school bookies, gamblers, thieves and minor drug pushers.

The post How Cleveland Mafioso Allie Calabrese Died In ’99 Might Have Gone To The Grave With Joe Loose appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 21, 2020 – Detroit mafia associate Mitchell (Steady Eddie) Karam died of COVID-19 this week at 87.

Karam recently did federal prison time for fixing college football and basketball games at the University of Toledo and horse races in Florida. He was released in September 2017.

Along with mob associate Gary (The Cigarette) Manni, he was busted in the spring of 2009 for shaving $500,000 worth of games involving the Toledo Rockets football and basketball teams, using more than a half-dozen Rockets athletes to manipulate point spreads from 2003 to 2006. The players were paid between $2,500 and $10,000 per fixed game and wined and dined at a downtown Detroit casino.

Both Karam and Manni, 63, pleaded guilty in the case in 2013 and received 6-year sentences. Karam was already doing a bid for bank fraud and fixing the ponies at Tampa Downs and Manni was in prison for weapons offenses and a food-stamp scam when they copped their pleas. Manni walked out of custody last May.

Karam came up in the Detroit mob of the 1950s in a gambling crew ran by Salvatore (Sammy Lou) Lucido. The pair opened the Wolverine Golf Club on land developed in the far northern suburbs of Macomb County. Karam is half Iraqi Christian and half Lebanese.

The post Steadying Influence: Motown Mob’s Fix-It Man, “Steady Eddie” Karam, Succumbs To Coronavirus appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 23, 2020 — Genovese crime family captain Eugene (Rooster) Onofrio was released from prison this week after serving two years on a racketeering conviction stemming from the 2016 “East Coast LCN” enterprise case.

The 77-year old Onofrio in charge of Genovese affairs in Springfield, Massachusetts, a longtime outpost for the New York borgata, and in Little Italy in Manhattan. He was let out two weeks early due to concerns over the Coronavirus. Back in 2018, he pleaded guilty to the charges, which included brokering a $30,000 loan to Springfield mob figures at a pizza parlor.

Onofrio resides in Connecticut. An undercover FBI agent infiltrated his inner circle back in the 2010s, rising to the role of Onofrio’s driver. A 2014 FBI wire caught him boasting of being the “skipper” of Springfield and planning on putting fourth a group of Western Massachusetts wiseguys for induction into the Genovese family.

The post Rooster Flies The Coup: Genovese Capo, Springfield (MA) Mob Overseer, Gets Out Of The Can appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 24, 2020 — Chicago mafia elder statesman Marco (The Mover) D’Amico died this week at the age of 84. D’Amico served as a top advisor and official consigliere to longtime Outfit don John (Johnny No Nose) DiFronzo, who passed two years ago of a dementia-related illness.

DiFronzo took power in the Chicago mafia in the early 1990s. D’Amico and Johnny No Nose both hailed from the Outfit’s Elmwood Park crew and were known as seasoned old-school gangsters of the first order, in addition to being shrewd businessman in the white-collar world and making millions of dollars legitimately. While DiFronzo was low-key and more deliberate in his demeanor, D’Amico was a partier and famous in Windy City mob circles for being a man about town on Rush Street in his swinging heyday. His reputation for a fast-living lifestyle gave way to D’Amico’s nickname, the Mover, as in “mover and shaker.”

D’Amico was indicted in November 1994 in U.S. District Court on a slew of racketeering counts. The feds hit him with the full Monty so to speak: bookmaking, loansharking and extortion dating all the way back to the late 1970s.

Per the indictment, D’Amico ran “executive card games,” (high-stakes poker for high-rollers), and sponsored crews that robbed competing games, including one that planned to knock-off a purported “million-dollar game” in the resort town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He pleaded guilty in the case and did ten years in prison. D’Amico was released in the summer of 2005.

Spending the final years of his life in the Chicago suburb of Westchester, D’Amico gave counsel to Johnny DiFronzo and his brother “Greedy Petey,” and often delivered messages to the capos across the city. FBI surveillance squads followed D’Amico to meetings with higher-ups in the Grand Avenue, Cicero and Elmwood Park crews throughout the 2010s, according to an U.S. Attorneys Office memo distributed in 2017. The memo mentions D’Amico briefly being sidelined from his consigliere duties when the Outfit went through a regime change from DiFronzo to the organization’s reputed current boss, Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis.

The post Windy City Mob Says Goodbye To Marco D’Amico, Elmwood Park Power Dead At 84 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 25, 2020 — Colombian drug lord Fabio (Fabito) Ochoa Vasquez is trying to get out of a federal prison in the United States five years earlier because of COVID-19 virus concerns. The 62-year old in the final stretch of a three-decade term for narcotics-trafficking and is the youngest son of “Don Fabio” Ochoa Restrepo, the historic horse-breeding cocaine baron who was one of the founding members of the Medellin cartel.

Fabito Ochoa Vasquez and his two brothers, Jorge and Juan, ran the South Florida wing of the cartel and lived in Miami throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. He was convicted in a federal drug conspiracy case in 2003 after leaving back for Colombia in the 1990s and being extradited to Miami for trial in 2001. Don Fabio died of natural causes the months following his son’s extradition.

The post Cocaine Kingpin Fabito Ochoa Looking For Early Out-Date From Federal Judge appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 27, 2020 — Springfield (MA.) mob enforcer Richie (The Postman) Valentini is appealing his 2017 federal extortion conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. Valentini, 55, got out of prison late last year after serving 20 months for shaking down a Western Massachusetts tow-truck company owner for $20,000. Attorneys for the tall, thick-necked Valentini claim he never received a dime from the Springfield mob crew’s 2013 extortion of Craig (C.J.) Morel, owner of C.J.’s Towing Unlimited, and therefore should get his guilty verdict from three years ago thrown off the books.

Seth Kretzer, an appellate attorney from Texas, filed a brief seeking consideration for Valentino’s case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. earlier this month, according to MassLive crime reporter Stephanie Barry’s article Saturday on Valentini’s most recent legal battle. The court will meet about the case on May 15, per the docket. He was convicted at a December 2017 trial. The jury took less than three hours to return with a guilty verdict.

C.J. Morel, 55, recorded 16 conversations with Springfield mobsters for the FBI, but only one featured Valentini’s voice. On that recording made in October 2013, Valentini is heard offering to bring Morel Cristal champagne if he agrees to pay the mob for its help in keeping a municipal contract. Springfield mafia figure Ralphie Santaniello slapped Morel at the meeting held on Morel’s property and threatened to “bury him,” if he didn’t fork over what Santaniello decided was $50,000 in back street tax.

The 52-year old Santaniello pleaded guilty in the case and is slated for release next month after almost four years behind bars. Morel owed slain Springfield mob boss Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno 50 large in tribute cash when Bruno was assassinated on November 24, 2003 leaving a Sunday night card game. Morel was greasing Bruno with envelopes of cash through much of the late 1990s and early 2000s in exchange for political protection and first crack at sweetheart contracts from the city. He never paid the outstanding tab to Big Al’s successors and Santaniello decided to try to collect a decade later. Santaniello eventually recovered $20,000 in cash provided to Morel by the FBI.

Valentini once worked for the U.S. Post Office and has been tied to the Springfield mob crew for years, usually listed on charts as a collector for gambling and juice-loan rackets. The Springfield mob is a satellite branch of New York’s Genovese crime family.

The post The Postman Always Rings Twice: Springfield Mobster Trying To Get In Front Of Supreme Court appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 29, 2020 — Former Detroit drug kingpin Felix (The Cat) Walls walked out of prison over the weekend, tasting freedom for the first time in 26 years. He’d been serving his time in a federal correctional facility in Arkansas and is expected to live with family members in Milwaukee to finish off his parole.

The 78-year old Walls was granted relief from his life sentence via the Trump administration’s First Step Act legislation allowing resentencing opportunities for non-violent offenders. He left federal custody last Friday.

For decades, Walls was known on the streets of Motown as a business-savvy boss who was more than capable with his hands. Towards the end of his reign, “youngfellas” and old heads alike respected him for the fact that he had finessed his way through multiple bloody decades of the city’s drug trade by being smart, personable and the definition of an underworld statesman.

When Felix the Cat came on the scene in the 1970s, it was all about heroin, but by the 1980s, everything changed to cocaine. It didn’t matter, Walls simply adapted, displaying a knack for networking with other criminals and criminal factions and expanding his list of contacts and rackets. He also diversified and invested heavily in real estate.

Despite intense, widespread violence during both storied eras of the Motor City dope world he operated in, the streets never got Felix the Cat. On the other hand, the feds eventually did.

In August 1994, Walls was convicted at trial in federal court for his role in leading a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy. He had the conviction tossed on appeal and was found guilty at a retrial where he went “pro per,” deciding to represent himself as his own attorney.

Walls’ partner in the coke game was Feodies (Yellow Man) Shipp, the Motor City’s so-called “Gangster of Love,” famous for talking loud, romancing powerful women and running a collection of open-air flea markets catering to a mix of legitimate trinket salesmen and drug pushers peddling their wares in exchange for a house fee. Shipp wound up dead – his throat cut – in the summer of 1992, while in federal protection inside a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan.

According to federal records, Shipp and Walls were receiving financing in their drug ring from an associate of the Detroit mafia connected to the notorious Giacalone crew. FBI surveillance logs note meetings between Walls and mob capo Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone.

Members of the Detroit mafia, including Billy Jack and his brother, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone, the longtime Tocco-Zerilli crime family street boss, were attending a party at the Ritz-Carlton the night Shipp was killed in July 1992. The Giacalone brothers died of natural causes (Tony in ’01, Billy in ’12), the top two suspects in the iconic disappearance and murder of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa back in 1975.

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April 30, 2020 — Toronto mob don Jimmy DeMaria was released on parole from a Kingston, Ontario prison and picked up by Canadian Border Service Agents for deportation to Italy the same day. The 66-year old DeMaria was locked up in 2014 on a parole violation for attending a pair of weddings where there were known organized crime figures present. He’s been behind bars ever since. On Tuesday, he was taken into custody by the CBSA.

Although born in Italy, DeMaria has spent most of his life living in Canada, though, he never became nationalized. Authorities in Ontario claim he runs the city’s N’drangheta mafia family and he remains on lifetime parole for the April 1981 gangland murder of Vince Figliomeni. DeMaria shot Figliomeni in the back and then bludgeoned him to death with the butt of a 22-caliber revolver for failing to payback a $2,000 street loan. The murder took place in the alley behind the grocery store Figliomeni worked at. He did a decade in the can for the Figliomeni hit and walked free in 1992.

The Federal Court of Canada has ordered DeMaria deported in the past, first in 1984 and then again in 2018, only for the sly crime lord to slip out of getting booted from the country on both occasions because of successful appeals. The CBSA will be assessing DeMaria’s situation again in the coming weeks and months. He was granted day parole on April 23.

DeMaria long headquartered out of Angel’s Bakery on Toronto’s Westside and a financial company he owned called Invicta. He financed his son’s Cash House franchise of payday loan and currency exchange centers that maintained 20 locations throughout Ontario.

After DeMaria’s most-recent parole violation pinch in November 2013, Royal Mounted Canadian Police traced $250,000,000 running through bank accounts tied to him in some fashion dating back seven years. Months before he was arrested, RMCP detectives warned DeMaria of a murder contract placed on his head by Montreal mafia boss Vito Rizzuto. The Rizzuto mob empire has been under siege for more than a decade, a war that started in Quebec in the 2000s and by the 2010s reached Ontario’s Toronto and Hamilton mafia factions.

The Canadian mob war still rages today. Rizzuto himself died of cancer in December 2013 at the age of 63.

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May 1, 2020 — Jennifer Lopez’s “Godmother” project is finally getting off the ground. The superstar actress-singer announced her plans to make a movie based on the life of Colombian queenpin Griselda (The Godmother) Blanco in 2016, but since her well-received roles in the 2019 film, Hustlers, and 2018’s Second Act and her lauded performance at halftime of February’s Super Bowl shot her back into the spotlight, Lopez’s career his hot again.

Griselda Blanco was the most powerful female crime lord in America in the 1970s and 80s, running the Medellin drug cartel operations in the United States. She was at the forefront of the cocaine avalanche that washed over the country in the Miami Vice era. Working mainly out of the South Florida area, she had satellite crews in New York and Los Angeles. The DEA suspects she ordered thousands of murders, including a number of her husbands and lovers, and romanced both men and women.

This week, it was reported in the Hollywood trades that STXfilms and Lopez have come together to produce the Blanco project and Reed Moreno, the directorial force behind Hulu’s hit The Handmaid’s Tale, is the process of negotiating a contract to direct. Lopes originally set up the project at HBO four years, however development lagged.

Last fall, Lopez headlined, Hustlers, a film adapted from a New York Magazine’s story about strippers at Scores who scam Wall Street brokers and corporate CEO’s by drugging them and stealing their credit card numbers. Produced by Annapurna Pictures and Gloria Sanchez Productions, Hustlers was distributed by STXfilms and made $158,000,000 against $20,000,000 budget.

Catherine Zeta-Jones played Griselda Blanco in the 2017 Lifetime original movie titled Cocaine Godmother. Salma Hayek portrayed a character loosely-inspired by Blanco in Oliver Stone’s Savages back in 2012. Just two months after Savages hit theaters in July, Blanco was slain in Colombia in a drive-by shooting. She was 69 and an estimated net-worth in the billions.

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May 2, 2020 – United States District Court Judge Federico Moreno out of Miami denied Colombian drug kingpin Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela’s petition for a compassionate release this week. The 81-year old founder of the Cali Cartel filed a brief with Moreno last month seeking relief from a 30-year prison sentence on the grounds of bad health amid the Cornavirus crisis. Rodriguez-Orejeula has battled stomach and colon cancer in recent years

In the 1990s, Rodriguez-Orejeula led the Cali Cartel and was responsible for pumping hundreds of thousands kilos of blow into North America. Authorities estimated the Cali Cartel was responsible for supplying 80 percent of the U.S. coke market in 1994. His rise and fall are depicted in the first season of the hit Netflix show Narcos where he was portrayed by actor Damian Alcazar.

The Cali Cartel rocketed to prominence in the aftermath of rival Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993. Escobar, one of the globe’s most iconic criminals of all-time, headed the Medellin cartel and died on the run from the law in a hail of bullets on a Colombian rooftop shootout with authorities. The Rodriguez-Orejeula brothers were considerably more diplomatic in their affairs then Escobar — although still violent in their own right — and their organization was more sophisticated in its structure.

Rodriguez-Orejuela founded his Cali Cartel in the 1970s as a marijuana distribution network, before moving into cocaine trafficking the following decade. He began his climb in the Colombian underworld during the 1960s in the kidnap racket. Colombian officials arrested him in June 1995 and he was sent to prison in his home country for 15 years. DEA records predicted Rodriguez-Orejeula was worth 2 billion dollars at the time of his arrest.

After accidentally being released for five months in 2002, Rodriguez-Orejuelas was taken back into custody in March 2003 and then was extradited to the United States in December 2004. Two years later, he pleaded guilty in federal court in Florida to money laundering and received a 30-year bid. He’s been serving his time in a North Carolina prison medical unit.

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May 4, 2020 – Black Mafia Family co-founder Terry (Southwest T) Flenory was released early from prison Monday morning. The gangster gods shined brightly on Southwest T last week when he was granted sentence-relief and ordered to be let loose 6 years earlier than expected.

The 50-year old Flenory and his more well-known older brother, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, were convicted in 2007 of leading the “BMF,” the biggest urban cocaine empire in American history, making hundreds of millions of dollars and establishing franchise crews all-across the country. They both pleaded guilty and received 30-year prison sentences from U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn in their hometown of Detroit, Michigan.

Less than two years ago, Cohn granted Southwest T an official sentence reduction, moving up his out-date from 2032 all the way to August 2026. He’s expected to return to Detroit Wednesday to live with family.

Big Meech, 51, is currently locked up in a federal prison in Oregon and isn’t scheduled for release until October 2031. He is name-checked often in hip-hop tracks and a staple reference in the drug-dealer inspired Trap Rap genre.

The Flenory brothers started BMF in Detroit in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, Big Meech was living in Atlanta and Southwest T was located in Los Angeles. Together, they oversaw 23 strategically placed satellite crews in different city centers coast-to-coast and took over more than half of the nation’s coke market. The feds finally brought the Flenorys and their whole highly-structured drug kingdom down in October 2005 with the historic Operation Motor City bust.

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May 5, 2020 — Michael Jordan paid a gambling debt to a drug dealer in North Carolina and then lied about it to authorities back in the 1990s at the peak of his NBA stardom and standing as the best basketball player in the world. Jordan, a North Carolina native, wrote infamous Charlotte narcotics trafficker, gambler and golf hustler James (Slim) Bouler a check for $57,000 in 1991 for bets lost on the links. When he was approached by investigators to inquire about the money, MJ misled them by saying it was a loan.

In the weeks before the 1992-1993 NBA campaign tipped off, his Airness was called to testify at Slim Bouler’s federal trial in Charlotte. He admitted he owed Bouler money from a weekend golf-course gambling spree, wrote him the check to square the debt and lied about it when originally asked to explain the situation in order to avoid embarrassment and scrutiny due to Bouler’s reputation.

Bouler’s trial lasted for two weeks in October 1992 and Bouler was convicted of five counts of money laundering and one count of illegal gun possession, but he was acquitted of cocaine distribution. His career rap sheet included three busts for drug-related offenses.

Air Jordan and the two-time NBA world champion Chicago Bulls opened the season on November 6, 1992 with a 101-96 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Jordan recorded a game-high 29 points in the victory. The Bulls “3-peated” that season and Jordan left professional basketball for 18 months amid rampant speculation of a gambling problem and grieving the murder of his dad.

According to FBI documents, Slim Bouler ran gambling and drug rackets out of the Golf Tech Pro Shop in Monroe, North Carolina. Bouler hustled on the driving range and the golf course at Monroe Country Club and maintained a coke and numbers lottery business with Charlotte drug world figures, James (Neddie) Johnson and Herman (Pee Wee) Givens. Per court filings, Bouler traveled the country in the 1980s and early 1990s, staging pro-am tournaments and golf charity events where he would hustle high rollers out of their money on the course.

Jordan met Bouler at the Monroe Country Club. On the witness stand on October 19, 1992, Jordan told the jury he played golf with Bouler on approximately 10 separate occasions. One of those occasions was in October 1991 at a high-stakes tournament in Hilton Head, South Carolina. That’s where Jordan dropped the 57- large to him.

Months later Neddie Johnson flipped and gave up Slim Bouler, telling the FBI that he and Pee Wee Givens bought drugs from him and used him to launder cocaine and numbers lottery proceeds.

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May 5, 2020 – The United States Attorneys Office in Detroit is objecting to the early release of revered drug baron Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory from his 30-year prison term. Flenory, 51 years old and ubiquitous in hip-hop culture, is seeking a compassionate release because of the COVID-19 health crisis like his little brother and co-defendant, Terry, was granted last week. The Flenorys controlled large swaths of the American wholesale cocaine market in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s.

Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, 50, walked out of a federal correctional facility in Kentucky Tuesday morning and will serve out the remainder of his sentence on home confinement. Big Meech’s attempt to do the same has received push back from the feds. U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Matthew Schneider, filed a response brief to Flenory’s bid for compassionate release last Friday with U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson, arguing, in part, that Big Meech has a “pending murder charge,” out of Atlanta.

Lawson will rule on Flenory’s release on May 17. He took over the case from retired U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn, who presided over the 50-person Operation Motor City Mafia indictment from when it dropped in the fall of 2005 until he stepped down from the bench back in December. Flenory is locked up in Oregon and his scheduled release date is in October 2031 .

The high-profile Big Meech and the low-key Southwest T were convicted in 2007 of leading the Black Mafia Family, the biggest urban cocaine empire in American history. During their nearly-unfathomable 15-year run atop the dope game, they made hundreds of millions of dollars and established franchises all around the country, embedding themselves in hip-hop culture and underworld lore alike for defining what a New Millennium drug kingpin is.

Both Flenorys pleaded guilty in the landmark Operation Motor City Mafia case. Big Meech is name-checked in hip-hop lyrics from a variety of chart-topping MCs and was the inspiration for the birth of “trap rap.” The genre’s pioneer Young Jeezy was close to Big Meech at the height of his power.

The ambitious, well-connected Flenory brothers started BMF in Detroit in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, Big Meech was living in Atlanta and Southwest T was located in Los Angeles. Together, they oversaw 23 strategically-placed satellite crews in different city centers coast-to-coast and took over a sizable chunk of the nation’s coke market with diplomacy and acumen instead of brute force.

In 2003, Big Meech was charged with the murder of Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy outside an Atlanta nightclub, but had the charges dropped after claiming self-defense. Presumably, the Jones-Girdy homicide is what the U.S. Attorney’s Office is referencing in its response brief relating to Flenory’s compassionate release request. Wolf Jones was Puff Daddy’s bodyguard.

The Flenory brothers were a picture in contrast: Big Meech was the charming and decadent face of the organization, hobnobbing with celebrities, rappers and pro athletes, leaning into the role of new-era drug don, in contrast to his baby bro Southwest T who was more understated and deliberate in his movements on the west coast. Southwest T ran the BMF homebase in Detroit remotely from his mansion in California through a cadre of “capos” and childhood friends back in Motown.

The feds finally brought the Flenorys and their highly-structured drug kingdom down in October 2005, charging 50 BMF leaders and associates with running a continual criminal enterprise the likes and scope of which the DEA had never seen before. Everyone from the landmark case, besides Big Meech and his third-in-command Fleming (ILL) Daniels, have been released. Daniels, 47, is serving time for a separate murder case in a Georgia state prison.

Rapper and actor 50 Cent is producing a television series on the rise and fall of BMF for Starz, where 50 Cent was behind the hit show Power for the last five years. Power scribe Randy Huggins, a native Detroiter, will be the showrunner for the upcoming BMF show.

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