April 20, 2021 – Intense rumor, speculation and interest regarding arguably the most infamous unsolved murder in American history still persists today almost a half-century after Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa breathed his final breath. The case is stepped in pop-culture mythology and appears to be possibly on the verge of being broken wide open.

A mad scramble of digs for his bones lies on the horizon. The summer of 2021 could become the Summer of Hoffa and Captain Ahab may finally bag his White Whale.

“Solving the Hoffa case is the holy grail for the Department of Justice, they’ll go to any lengths to put it to bed,” said one source being briefed on the status of the case investigation on a regular basis.   

The 2019 Netflix film The Irishman directed by the legendary cinematic auteur Martin Scorsese and starring Hollywood gangster-movie luminaries Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci brought the historic crime back into the consciousness of pop culture. Pacino was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Hoffa, the firebrand labor leader from Detroit who tried to take on the mafia for control of his beloved Teamsters union and lost.

Hoffa, 62, disappeared on his way to a meeting with mobsters at a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant on the afternoon of July 30, 1975. Witnesses saw him get into a new-model Mercury Marquis sedan in the restaurant’s parking lot and drive away.

He was never seen again. His body has never been found.

It’s definitely not for lack of searching or expenditure of resources. People familiar with the ongoing FBI investigation into the case place the price tag at well over $100,000,000 in 46 years of tracking down leads. And the tab continues to run. Tips about the whereabouts of Hoffa’s remains and digs in search of his body have consistently made headlines around the globe for decades, satiating a never-waning wave of public interest in the case.

“I’m not surprised it still sells papers, tickets, clicks what have you, it’s human nature to be fascinated by a murder mystery and this is the ultimate murder mystery,” said retired reporter Jerry Stanecki, once an institution in his own right in the Detroit media, of the undying intrigue surrounding the Hoffa case. “Especially in today’s climate, with the movie still fresh in everybody’s minds and being at a point in time when true-crime is the hottest thing since sliced bread on television. So, naturally the Hoffa case hits the sweet spot in the interest department from a lot of different angles.”

Stanecki conducted the last interview Hoffa ever did the week before he died in July 1975. That December, the interview appeared in Playboy Magazine.

In this current Golden Age of true-crime content, the ante is being raised even higher. According to sources in law enforcement and the entertainment industry, there are three potential digs being planned for this summer, each connected in one way or another to a television or documentary-film project and being backed by law enforcement agencies working the case in real-time.

The feds remain relentless in their efforts to see the investigation to the end.

“I worked the case for 30 years and it was like every guy you bring in to question about anything, it could be a burglary, it could be a murder, it could be a jaywalking violation, the first thing we’d ask him is what did he know about where Hoffa was,” said retired FBI agent Mike Carone from the Detroit office. “That’s always been the ultimate get-out-of-jail free card and it still is today.”

Gateway to the great unknown

The most promising new break in the case comes from acclaimed author and award-winning investigative reporter Dan Moldea, who believes after four and a half decades of tirelessly working to crack the code on the Hoffa mystery, that he has finally pinpointed exactly where Hoffa was laid to rest. Moldea’s journey for the truth, in his mind, has ended in New Jersey, some 650 miles away from where he was last seen alive. Moldea, 70, is as resolute in his convictions that he’s struck gold in his search for the body and that Hoffa’s remains are underneath the Pulaski Skyway. He’s already confirmed half of the tip that led him to the one-time site of a notoriously mobbed trash dump in Jersey City, New Jersey with a ground penetrating radar readout. 

At Moldea’s invitation, Fox News Channel’s streaming service Fox Nation has chronicled his Garden State vision quest for its true-crime investigative series, Riddle – The Search for James Riddle Hoffa, hosted by Eric Shawn. In Part 4 of the series, which dropped in January, Moldea, who has refused payment from Fox Nation, took Fox Nation cameras to the site he says Hoffa is buried at. A series of metal-bar markers just under the surface of the earth at what would have been the northeast corner of the PJP Landfill were detected by Moldea’s radar equipment. Moldea’s source told him a cluster of metal-bar rods were placed on top of Hoffa’s grave as an indicator of burial.

Moldea is considered the world’s leading authority on the Hoffa kidnapping and murder. His work on the case began from Ground Zero in Detroit in the summer of 1975. He went on to publis the seminal book on the labor-union power struggle that resulted in Hoffa’s downfall and death in 1978’s The Hoffa Wars: Rebels, Politicians and the Mob.

“I am Ahab and this is my White Whale,” said Moldea analogizing his quest for Hoffa’s body with the seaman character in the literary classic Moby Dick. “Through the years, I’ve seen promising leads fail to materialize, but I feel this is different. Everything lines up here. The overwhelming detail provided puts it over the edge. I’m putting all of my poker chips into the middle of the table on this one.”

Moldea was initially pointed to the general location of the body, now inside a New Jersey state park and nature preserve, by Genovese crime family soldier Philip (Brother) Moscato. Moldea developed Moscato as a source late in his life and interviewed him multiple times before he died of cancer in 2014.

Moscato had been a top lieutenant in the New Jersey mob crew of Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a Teamsters power broker and friend turned bitter rival of Hoffa’s, and once owned the PJP Landfill. The FBI’s New Jersey office considered Moscato’s the biggest loan shark in Bergen County at the time. Him and Tony Pro were both considered prime suspects in the Hoffa case from Day 1. The volatile Provenzano ran the New Jersey wing of New York’s Genovese crime family in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the most powerful Teamster on the east coast, put into his position in Jersey’s Local 250 by none other than Jimmy Hoffa himself, who he was engaged in a heated feud with regarding Teamster insurance benefits, in the years preceding his disappearance.

Hoffa was no stranger to the hoodlum element.

“Jimmy was one half politician, one half mob guy, that’s why he did so well in that world, the Teamsters are a tough crowd and he had those big, rough truck drivers eating out of the palm of his hand,” said one former Teamster executive and personal friend of Hoffa’s Midas touch in the union. “The man was tiny, but man was he ferocious. His force of will alone made him respect you. The mobsters liked that at first. Then, it became a liability.”

Hoffa rode his ties in Midwest organized crime circles to the presidency of the Teamster union in 1957. The Detroit mafia had cultivated him as an asset dating back 20 years prior to him ascending to the Teamsters throne. In a relatively short matter of time, he built the truckers and cartage workers union into the biggest labor union in the world and he personally became one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

His press clippings got him attention from the FBI and he was busted for bribery, fraud and jury tampering in a case out of Nashville. He was sent to prison in 1967, where he had his nuclear fallout with Provenzano at Lewisburg Correctional Institute in Pennsylvania. Hoff was let out of prison in December 1971, nearly ten years early, via a commutation from the Nixon White House which barred him from running for office again.

Moldea was the first to report that Hoffa was an FBI informant at the time of his death. According to three separate sources familiar with Hoffa’s cooperation, Hoffa had traded a series of grand jury appearances in exchange for the feds getting the ban on his candidacy lifted. Hoffa was confident he’d be able to run for president in 1976 and began brazenly threatening the mob leaders opposing his return to office. 

Hoffa believed he was on his way to a mafia-style sit-down with Provenzano in Metropolitan Detroit to smooth over their differences and clear the way for his to return to the Teamsters presidency when he vanished. Hoffa’s datebook showed a lunch meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant with Provenzano, Detroit mob chief Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and Giacalone’s main labor consultant Leonard (Little Lenny) Schultz, a well-known Jewish mob associate linked to the city’s Prohibition-era Purple Gang. Schultz, always dapper and on-the-make, was the go-between for Giacalone and Hoffa.

The Red Fox was a fine-dining establishment in swanky Bloomfield Township, an affluent suburb seven miles north of the Detroit city limits. Giacalone and Provenzano were related by marriage and Hoffa was told Provenzano had come into town for a wedding taking place later that week.

But when Hoffa showed up at the Red Fox that July afternoon in 1975, Giacalone, Provenzano and Schultz were nowhere to be found. Giacalone and Schultz were up the road at Giacalone’s headquarters, the Schultz family-owned Southfield Athletic Club, all day with airtight alibis. Provenzano was playing cards at his union hall in New Jersey.

Instead, Hoffa ended up being whisked away in a shiny, brand-new, maroon-colored Mercury Marquis owned by Tony Jack’s son, Joey, with three unidentified individuals inside. The car, seized by investigators in the weeks after Hoffa went missing, is the only piece of physical evidence ever recovered in the case. Hoffa’s DNA was discovered in the car’s backseat and trunk.

Investigators don’t believe Giacalone’s son was involved in the conspiracy to kidnap and murder Hoffa, however, they do think his little brother and fellow Detroit mob capo, Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, was. Moldea agrees. Billy Jack was unaccounted for on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 by his normal FBI and Michigan State Police surveillance units, having shook his tails that morning in rush-hour traffic.

Brother Moscato admitted to Moldea in 2013 that Billy Giacalone was part of the hit crew and that they killed Hoffa at a private residence near the Red Fox. According to Moscato, Billy Jack was driving the car that kidnapped Hoffa and Tony Pro’s main enforcer, Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio, was the triggerman in the hit. He told Moldea that Hoffa’s body was stuffed into a 55-gallon drum and shipped to the PJP Landfill, for burial in a Gateway Transportation truck, on Tony Pro’s orders.

Notorious Teamsters leg-breaker Rolland (Big Mac) McMaster, another friend-turned-rival of Hoffa’s, had an ownership interest in Gateway Transportation. The majority shareholder in the business was McMaster’s brother-in-law. The PJP landfill was originally searched by the FBI in 1976 on a tip from Provenzano’s incarcerated driver, but nothing was uncovered.

McMaster’s farm in suburban Detroit, known as the Hidden Dreams Ranch, was searched for a week by federal authorities in 2006 after receiving a tip from an imprisoned drug dealer who was visiting the ranch the night Hoffa vanished and saw suspicious activity on the property. Nothing was unearthed in that dig either.

Moldea believes McMaster’s property was used as a drop-off point by the killers to hand the body over to the disposal team. Moldea suspects Hoffa’s was driven by Billy Giacalone from the Red Fox parking lot to Little Lenny Schultz’s house nearby and murdered there. The body was then transported to the Hidden Dream Ranch to be put onto the Gateway Transportation truck for delivery to Tony Pro’s crew in New Jersey, according to Moldea’s scenario.

Is Little Lenny the missing link?

Rolland McMaster and Lenny Schultz were connected through their mutual work in the Southeastern Michigan organized labor world and association with known organized crime figures in the area. Once Hoffa’s main muscle on the frontlines of the labor movement, McMaster had sided with the mob in its war against his former boss and in the months preceding Hoffa’s disappearance, he spearheaded a campaign of intimidation on behalf of the mafia targeting Hoffa. The intention of the thug tactics being employed by McMaster and his goon posse – beatings, bombing, threats of further violence, etc. – was to force Hoffa out of the 1976 Teamsters election.

“The Giacalone brothers trusted Lenny more than they did most,” retired FBI agent Greg Stejskal said. “Lenny was their eyes and ears in the Teamsters, he had all the gossip. They would use him to shake people down. Lenny would serve up businessmen to them to extort, guys that wanted to hang around the mob.”

Informants told the FBI that the Giacalone brothers had used Schultz’s residence in Franklin Village, Michigan as a kill spot the year before when they decided to get rid of local businessman, Harvey Leach, who’s business, the trendy Joshua Doore furniture store chain, they were in the process of staging a hostile takeover of. Leach went to a meeting with Schultz and the Giacalones at Schultz’s house (a five-minute drive west of the Red Fox) on March 16, 1974 and was discovered gruesomely murdered (shot, mutilated, throat slit,) the next morning inside the trunk of his car in a nearby office building parking lot.

There was the belief by some that Leach had upset Billy Giacalone by romancing one of Billy Jack’s girlfriends while Giacalone was away serving a state prison sentence. Billy Jack had just recently walked from state custody and returned to Detroit that January. The Giacalones and Schultz were observed by FBI surveillance units visiting Hoffa at his cottage in Lake Orion in the days prior to him turning up missing.

Schultz died of natural causes in Florida in 2013 at age 96. One of Schultz’s former drivers came forward last year (without wanting his name divulged) and admitted Schultz confessed to him that Hoffa was murdered in his kitchen and then his body given off to Rolland McMaster for disposal. McMaster died in 2007.

Moldea interviewed Schultz at his home in Franklin Village in the days after Hoffa disappeared.

“I was sitting right there at Lenny Schultz’s house, probably no more than 10-20 feet from where Hoffa was most likely killed in the days before and I had no idea,” Moldea recounts. “Lenny Schultz has always been the missing link. This was a huge break in the case and connects Schultz to McMasters on the day Hoffa was kidnapped and murdered.”

In the name of the father

Moldea could not confirm or deny the Little Lenny Schultz lead with his original source on McMaster’s direct involvement in the disposal of Hoffa’s body because Brother Moscato was dead. Furthermore, although Moscato informed Moldea where Hoffa was taken to be buried and how he got there, he had never pointed him to the exact burial spot on the former PJP Landfill property.

Enter Frank Cappola.

Brother Moscato’s partner in the PJP Landfill was a New Jersey gambler and mob associate, named Paul Cappola. On the heels of Moldea writing about his PJP Landfill tip in 2015 (coinciding with the 40^th anniversary of Hoffa’s disappearance), roughly a year after Moscato had passed away, he was approached by Cappola’s son, Frank, who told him he knew precisely where Hoffa’s body was laid to rest at what was once the PJP Landfill site. His dad revealed the details to him before he died of cancer in 2008. In fact, he said, he was present when the body was delivered to the property in the summer of 1975 and it was his father who was personally tasked with burying it.

In October 2019, Cappola took Moldea to the piece of land he claimed Hoffa was buried beneath. The land, Cappola said, was “marked.” Moldea captured the moment on his iPhone. Moldea’s team eventually used ground penetrating radar to confirm a series of metallic markers Cappola said would be resting on top of the steel drum containing Hoffa’s body.

Cappola was a convicted felon and one-time Genovese crime family mob associate tied to the old Tony Pro crew through Brother Moscato. When he met with Moldea, he was on his last legs health-wise, his lungs on the verge of giving out. Two months later, he did an on-camera interview with Eric Shawn for the Fox Nation investigative series on Hoffa that Moldea was allowing to chronicle his work. Before he died of a respiratory ailment in March 2020, Cappola executed and signed a sworn-affidavit laying out the particulars of what he knew related to the Hoffa case.

The affidavit stated the following:

* Cappola was working a summer job at PJP and on or around the afternoon of July 31, 1975 and witnessed Brother Moscato and his father have a meeting on the property with a group of unidentified men in a limo who had accompanied the Gateway Transportation truck carrying Hoffa’s body to the dump.

*According to what he was told by his father, Brother Moscato instructed his dad to bury the body at a pre-excavated spot in the northeast part of the landfill.

*Without Moscato’s knowledge, Paul Cappola dug a second hole in case anyone had seen the pre-dug hole in the ground and had gotten suspicious (Cappola was worried about the pre-dug hole having already being surveilled by law enforcement).

*Hoffa’s body was placed headfirst into another 55-gallon industrial steel drum and dropped into the second hole by Paul Cappola using a front-loader machine.

*Before filling in the hole, Cappola used the front loader to place 15 to 20 chemical drums on top of the steel drum containing Hoffa and left metal markers on the surface of the grave site.

Brother Moscato’s son, Phillip Moscato, Jr., also engaged in conversations with Moldea about what he knew regarding the whereabouts of Hoffa’s remains. Like Cappola, Moscato, Jr. claimed his dad gave him the specifics on the Hoffa burial, too. Unlike Cappola, Moscato, Jr. refused to take Moldea to where he believed the body was buried. He has also long refused to undergo a polygraph exam.

His information on where Hoffa’s body finally ended up doesn’t comport with Cappola’s version of events. The stories start out in similar fashion, but finish at two completely different locations.

Moscato, Jr. did an on-camera interview with the Fox Nation and suggested to Eric Shawn the body was removed from its original burial site at PJP Landfill and taken to its final resting place near a riverbed in Carlstadt, New Jersey. Continuing to play coy, he wouldn’t show Shawn or the Fox Nation cameras the exact spot where the body was.

In the last year, Moscato, Jr., is alleged to have signed a deal with a prolific Hollywood production house to tell his story and go find Hoffa’s remains with a camera crew in tow. The producers of the show have been in contact with law enforcement in New Jersey and Michigan regarding organizing a dig. Moldea and the producers at Fox Nation have been working their own angles with law enforcement, both on the state and federal level, to arrange for their own dig.

Sources in the Detroit law enforcement community claim federal crime busters in the Motor City are planning on conducting up to three digs and/or searches this summer, running down the two PJP Landfill-related leads and a third, more quietly-kept theory that involves a trip across the Canadian border. Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ontario, Canada, a stone’s throw from downtown Detroit, believe that Hoffa might have been buried in a park that is less than a half-hour’s drive from the tunnel and bridge that separates the two countries, according to sources familiar with the discussions between the Detroit FBI and the RCMP.

Crossing the border

(with a body, a bad cop & the Butterfly)

The tip that is causing a stir in certain circles of Canadian law enforcement comes from an accomplished documentarian who has teamed brought with a retired Detroit newsman for a future docu-series about the search for Hoffa’s body. Sources familiar with the project claim the theory being explored implicates a dirty lawman in Michigan helping Detroit mobster Anthony (Tony Pal) Palazzolo bury Hoffa’s body in Canada. Both the bad cop and Tony Pal have died in recent years.

Ground penetrating radar has confirmed a “disturbing of the earth” at the site in Ontario the retired investigative reporter pointed the documentarian to. The veteran reporter was given the tip by the corrupt cop’s daughter, per sources. The cop had confessed on his death bed, the sources claim, and provided his daughter the location of Hoffa’s body written on the back of a matchbook in his final hours.

At some point in the past decade, the FBI has reached the conclusion that Palazzolo was the triggerman in the Hoffa hit, per sources familiar with the investigation. “Tony Pal,” a colorful and capable Detroit mob figure sometimes called “The Butterfly,” for his elusive nature, died of stomach cancer in the winter of 2019 at age 76. At the time of his death, the FBI and federal prosecutors on the still-active Hoffa task force were circling him as a target, hoping to finally be able to bring charges in the case.

“We called him the Butterfly for a reason, Tony Pal was always really difficult to pin down,” retired FBI agent Greg Stejskal said. “It doesn’t surprise me that the Grim Reaper got him before we did.”

Palazzolo was the reputed consigliere of the Detroit mob when he passed two years ago. He had used his role in the Hoffa murder, per FBI informants, to catapult himself up the ladder of organized crime, going from a mere soldier or “button man,” when he did the deed, to a crew boss in the 1980s, a caporegime assignment in the 1990s and finally a promotion to a mob administration post in the 2010s.

“(Tony) Pal was a mob historian, he felt proud of his place in the history books, even if nobody really knew it outside the Detroit Outfit (mob),” remarked one former member of Palazzolo’s inner circle. “The people who needed to know knew and that’s all that mattered. He got respect wherever he went.”

One of Tony Pal’s rewards for his participation in the Hoffa hit was control of the Detroit’s mafia’s operations in Canada, per federal records. He was busted in 1993 for laundering Canadian mobsters drug proceeds in a joint investigation hatched by the FBI and RCMP. During the investigation, Palazzolo was caught on a wire at his Detroit Sausage Company headquarters bragging of being part of the Hoffa hit. The wire intercepted a conversation where Tony Pal was heard telling an Ontario mafia figure he put Hoffa through his meat auger.

Former U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino was the first person to push hard behind the scenes in the investigation to recognize Palazzolo as a central figure in the Hoffa conspiracy and have Palazzolo tabbed a “person of interest” in the case, according to sources in the Hoffa task force back when he was arrested. Convertino prosecuted Palazzolo in the money laundering case that got him three years in prison. Tony Pal got out of prison in 1997 and never returned.

“I believed it when I heard him say it on the wire back in 1992,” Convertino said. “I knew the man was a killer and opportunistic in the way he did business. He knew all the angles to play. Being involved in something like that would validate him for life, put him on the fast track. That’s what it did.”

Adding to the FBI’s confidence in the Tony Pal as triggerman in the Hoffa hit was the fact that a former high-ranking member of the Detroit mob told agents in his 2012 debriefing that Palazzolo was the man who killed and buried Hoffa. The FBI searched Palazzolo-owned property in Detroit’s Downriver area back in the early stages of the investigation, but didn’t find anything. Downriver was Palazzolo’s territory.

Palazzolo was known to work with the Giacalone brothers and following his role in the Hoffa hit, per FBI records, the Detroit mob hierarchy trusted him enough to use him as a “representario,” sending him to deliver messages to other mafia crime families across the country on behalf of the Motor City dons. The Giacalones were the ones passing on the assignment destinations and specific messages to be ferried around the nation by Palazzolo, according to court documents. Billy Giacalone had previously held the position and groomed Tony Pal to take over the job, informants told investigators.

Retired U.S. Attorney Keith Corbett, an epic mob buster in the annals of the judicial system in Detroit, doesn’t dismiss Palazzolo’s involvement in Hoffa’s kidnapping and murder, but finds it difficult to believe the body would be disposed of in another country.

“Taking a body across an international border, especially the body of such a high-profile person as Jimmy Hoffa was, just doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “The Detroit Mafia is the smartest crime family there is. They’ve always been viewed by the government as the Harvard or Princeton of organized crime. The bosses had college business degrees here. These men were very intelligent gangsters. Taking the body outside of Detroit wouldn’t have been a very smart thing do and that’s why I don’t think they would have handled it that way. This thing was meticulously planned and orchestrated. Leaving Detroit would have been too risky. Even a cop driving the body into Canada has a ton of risk factors to consider.”

Detroit vs. New Jersey

The belief that Hoffa’s body ultimately left the Detroit area doesn’t sit well with a group of more than a half-dozen retired FBI agents and U.S. Attorneys who were all members of the Hoffa case task force and contacted for this story. They don’t buy the theories behind any of the possible upcoming digs. To categorize them as skeptical, may be an understatement.

“Too much moving around in these new theories floating out there right now,” retired FBI agent Mike Carone. “The more movement, the longer the body is above ground or is still in one piece, the more chance you have to get caught with your pants down. This was a Detroit thing from start to finish. That’s not how those guys operate. The New Jersey stuff was just window dressing.”

One common link between the Moldea-Cappola and Moscato, Jr. theories is the thought that Tony Provenzano wanted Hoffa’s body brought to New Jersey after he was killed as a sort of big game-trophy, a head for his wall, so to speak.

“You hear about Tony Pro wanting Hoffa’s body as a trophy and I’m like if you know anything about the Detroit mob and those bosses back then, if that idea was presented to them, they would have laughed him out of the room,” Corbett said. “The trophy was that he was dead and out of the way. The Teamsters was still theirs. These men were strictly business. That’s why they died rich and powerful and as free men in their own beds and Tony Pro died in prison serving life. Don’t believe the movies, don’t believe Martin Scorsese, Tony Pro wasn’t calling any shots in this. Hoffa belonged to Detroit. This was a Detroit Outfit job. They ran this city for 100 years and they’re just going to let another family come in here and fix their problem? Come, on. No body. No perp. No face. No case. This has the Detroit mob’s handprints all over it. This was not a New Jersey or New York-style hit. Provenzano and his boys were peripheral players at best.”

Regional bias issues in this case, or at least the perception of it, isn’t lost on Moldea. The author has Midwest roots, but has lived in Washington D.C. for most of his adult life. He recognizes the stark delineation in how people view the Hoffa murder mystery depending on what part of the country they are from.

“Trying to find consensus on certain specifics of the case that we might never know, has become territorial……it really comes down to competing narratives, Detroit vs. New Jersey,” Moldea acknowledges. “And the two narratives definitely dovetail at certain points. I myself once subscribed to the Detroit narrative, so I obviously see it has merit. The Detroit angle also makes sense, especially if you’re coming from a place of knowing how that crime family did business from a first-hand perspective. But I trust my source. Brother Moscato. He said in no uncertain terms the body is at the old PJP dump site. I’ve got a lot riding on the line for this and frankly, I think the current higher-ups in the FBI and the US Attorneys Office, the DOJ in D.C., they should be throwing a party for all of this. They should be cheering this on. I’m vindicating all of their hard work on the case.”

Corbett, responsible for prosecuting all of the major players in the Hoffa conspiracy on the Detroit side of things for other federal offenses, believes the pair of new New Jersey leads in the case are just two more in a long line of fake stories intentionally put out into the rumor mill by the perpetrators themselves.

“The Giacalone brothers, the other bosses in Detroit, they launched a massive disinformation campaign in the years after Hoffa went missing,” he said. “They filled the air with all these phony tales. The lies grew bigger. Lies were built on top of lies. Before you know it, fiction is becoming viewed as fact. The idea was to muddy the water as much as possible. And objectively speaking, you’d have to say they did a damn good job.”

There are have been four fruitless searches staged in pursuit of Hoffa’s remains in the past decade. The most recent search occurred in 2019 and was conducted by the Michigan State Police on a piece of private property near the Ohio border. The property was once owned by a powerful Detroit mob figure.

Today, almost everybody even possibly involved in the Hoffa murder conspiracy is dead. Two of Tony Provenzano’s men, Gabe Briguglio and Stevie Andretta, -both long implicated as being part of the clean-up crew for the hit –, remain alive. Neither would comment for this story.

Briguglio’s brother, Sally Bugs, who Moldea points to as the triggerman in Hoffa’s murder, was slain gangland style on the front steps of a Manhattan social club in 1978. Moldea was the last person to interview Brigulio before he was shot dead.

Tony Provenzano died of a heart attack in 1988 while serving a life prison sentence for ordering another Teamster union-related slaying. For that hit, he is alleged to have used Sally Bugs as the hit man. Briguglio was killed before he reached trial.

Tony Giacalone died of liver cancer in 2001. Billy Giacalone lasted until 2012, rising to the role of Detroit mob underboss in his latter years. The FBI placed a listening device in Billy Jack’s nursing home residence hoping to catch a Hoffa-case nugget or two in his dementia-ravished ramblings in the final months of his life, according to sources with knowledge of the wire-tapping operation

Carone, responsible for tracking Detroit’s Giacalone brothers for the better part of his three-decade tenure as a G Man, doesn’t’ believe the case will ever be solved.

“This case is one of kind, it never ends……the people who pulled it off are from the old school,” he said. “Nobody who really knows anything is ever going to talk. If someone’s talking, odds are they have no idea what went down. The mythology that’s built around this case is so big it takes up all the energy in the room. The Giacalones, the guys above them, they took this to the grave with them. I don’t think they’ll ever find his remains. And who’s left to arrest? It was the perfect crime.”

The post A Perfect Murder: Hunt For Jimmy Hoffa’s Body Remains In Full-Effect, Feds Planning Three New Searches appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 21, 2021 — U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman has granted former Chicago biker boss Orville (Orvie the Anvil) Cochran a compassionate release due to his contraction of the COVID-19 virus and influence from the First Step Act. Cochran walked free last month and is living back on the South Side of Chicago, per the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. U.S Attorneys in Chicago objected to the ruling and any early release for Cochran, a man they consider dangerous and deadly.

The wild-eyed Cochran, who was on the run from the law for 16 years before being nabbed in a Chicagoland supermarket for shoplifting in 2017, once led The Outlaws Motorcycle Club’s incredibly powerful South Side chapter. The Chicago Outlaws’ South Side chapter is known as the “Mother Ship” because it planted the club’s first flag.

Cochran pleaded guilty to racketeering charges out of Milwaukee back in 2018 and was sentenced to five years in prison. He was slated to be released in the weeks prior to Thanksgiving if Judge Adelman hadn’t have let him out in March.

Federal authorities still consider Cochran a suspect in at least three gangland homicides; the 1994 Michael (Mad Mike) Quale murder, the 1995 Jack (4-by-4) Castle hit and the 1999 Thomas (West Side Tommy) Stimac slaying. Quale and Castle were leaders in the rival Hells Angels MC.

The Outlaws and Hells Angels have been at war with each other since the 1970s. Tensions rose particularly high in the Windy City back in the 1990s. Cochran was originally charged in the Quale and Castle killings, but had the charges dropped when he agreed to plead guilty to a series of racketeering counts.

The FBI visited Cochran in his Minnesota prison cell three years ago to try and squeeze him for information on the 1999 West Side Tommy Stimac hit, which according to sources in Chicago law enforcement, remains an active investigation. Stimac was a legend in Outlaws MC circles and ran the “Mother Ship” in the 1970s and 80s.

Per police records and internal FBI memos, Cochran and Stimac were feuding over a woman and control of the club’s South Side chapter. West Side Tommy was responsible for forging long-lasting ties between the Outlaws and Chicago’s Italian mafia, known locally as, “The Outfit.” Stimac was gunned down on his back porch as he puffed on his nightly after-dinner cigar on the evening of July 27, 1999 in Lemont Township, Illinois.

Quale headed the Hells Angels chapter in Rochester, New York and was stabbed to death in a brawl at a racetrack. Castle was part of a growing presence of Hells Angels in Chicago in the early 1990s, part of a Midwest expansion effort launched by the West Coast-based club at the time. He was shot dead behind the wheel of his truck.

Informants have told investigators that Stimac offered Cochran $10,000 in cash in the spring of 1999 to settle their differences, but Cochran rejected the offer. Weeks after the offer was made and rebuffed, Cochran survived an assassination attempt outside the South Side chapter clubhouse. Orvie the Anvil insisted the attempt on his life came on Stimac’s orders and sought vengeance, per sources in law enforcement.

The post Judge Lets Chitown Outlaws MC Power “Orvie The Anvil” Out Of Prison Early, Feds Keep Eying Him For Role In Three Club-Related Hits appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 22, 2021 – The style, the flair, the bankroll. It was all there.

And in the end, he proved a standup guy, refusing to throw a reputed Detroit mafia boss under the bus in federal court.

Don (Dandy Don) DeSeranno, the Motor City’s biggest gambler of the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, died of natural causes last week at age 75 in retirement in Las Vegas. DeSeranno was known for living large and dressing well. His high-rolling ways brought him into contact with underworld figures.

When called to testify against alleged Detroit mob don Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone at Giacalone’s 2007 racketeering trial, DeSeranno denied feeling threatened by the then-street boss during a meeting to resolve a $350,000 debt DeSeranno accrued to mob bookies for gambling losses. Federal prosecutors in the case believed Dandy Don was also being “taxed” by Giacalone for fixing a series of mafia-backed card games at one of the Giacalone crew’s famous roaming backdoor casinos. Based primarily on DeSeranno telling jurors he wasn’t being extorted, Giacalone was acquitted of all charges in the case.

The 70-year old “Jackie the Kid” Giacalone is a convicted felon and according to the government has being heading the Tocco-Zerilli crime family since the winter of 2014, having served as street boss for the family the previous decade and a half. Giacalone’s dad and uncle, the notorious Giacalone brothers, Vito and Anthony aka “Billy Jack” and “Tony Jack,” ran the Detroit mob’s street affairs for a half-century and were considered the prime suspects in the near-mythical disappearance and murder of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa back in July 1975 at the time of their respective deaths.

According to FBI files, DeSeranno placed millions of dollars of bets through bookmaking operations tied to high-ranking Detroit mafia associate Allen (The General) Hilf, the No. 1 bookie in the Midwest and Jackie Giacalone’s best friend and adviser, and with Hilf’s help, ran travel and gambling junkets from Detroit to Las Vegas. Hilf and Giacalone began pressing DeSeranno to clear his debt in late 2003, per FBI documents related to the case and a “sit down” was called at some point in 2004.

An alleged Detroit gambling figure named Vincent (Vinnie Beans) Fiorlini brokered the meeting between DeSeranno and Giacalone and Hilf. Fiorlini was connected to Hilf, according to FBI informants. One informant told the FBI that the sit down took place in the back room of a strip club off 8 Mile Road. Detroit mobsters were nailed in 1996 for shaking down strip clubs on 8 Mile’s “Raunch Row,” a several-mile corridor of strip joints and go-go bars dotting the city-suburban dividing line, among other things in the landmark Operation Game Tax bust.

Tony Giacalone died of liver failure in 2001 while under indictment in the case. Billy Giacalone (d. 2012) pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and did six years behind bars. Upon Billy Jack’s release from prison in 2004, he became underboss of the Tocco-Zerilli crime family, according to federal records.

Hilf died of kidney cancer in 2014. He ran what was known as the “Capital Street Social Club Crew” in Oak Park, Michigan (just a stone’s throw north of the Detroit city limits), a group made up of gamblers, hustlers, handicappers, thieves and conmen of Jewish and Middle Eastern descent that oversaw casino rackets for the Detroit mob, both of the legal variety in Las Vegas and the illegal variety in the shadows and back alleys of Motown.

DeSeranno came from money. His family owns Cold Heading Co., one of the auto industries leading fastener manufacturers and makers of nuts and bolts for cars and machinery worldwide. DeSeranno’s nephew is Las Vegas casino mogul Derek Stevens, the architect of Vegas’ Downtown resurgence this past decade.

The post Detroit High Roller “Dandy Don” DeSeranno Dies In Vegas, Leaves Rep Of Huge Wagers, Fine Threads & Fierce Loyalty appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 23, 2021 – There is a growing grassroots movement emerging from Washington D.C. right now to free former drug lord Tony Lewis. The movement is being headed by his son, Tony (Slugg) Lewis, Jr., a community activist in the D.C. area and founder of the Sons Of Life foundation.

During the late 1980s, Tony Lewis was the second-in-command to legendary D.C. crime boss Rayful Edmond, the leader of one of the biggest crack cocaine organizations in American history. The two were busted together in a massive April 1989 narcotics trafficking, money laundering and continuing criminal enterprise case and received life prison sentences.

Authorities believe Edmond’s drug empire and its enforcement unit known as “Murder, Inc.” were responsible for upwards of 30 gangland killings, many occurring after Edmond and Lewis were already behind bars. Lewis has never been implicated in acts of violence. Murder Inc. was headed by Edmond lieutenants Rodney (The Great Rasoo) Moore and Kevin (K-Gun) Gray — both doing life in prison on murder convictions.

Edmond, 56, was granted a sentence reduction in February. He has another 30-year sentence he is serving for a drug dealing case he took while imprisoned, but his two and a half decades of cooperation may set him free soon. Lewis, today 58 years old, has never cooperated.

Sons of Life works with the families of those incarcerated in the effort to provide support resources and lobby for criminal justice reform. Earlier this month, Lewis, Jr. organized a “Free Tony Lewis” rally at Black Lives Matter Plaza, just feet away from the White House, that drew close to 800 people. D.C. City Council member Trayon White supports the movement and visited Lewis in prison.

The post In The Name Of The Father: Crack Era D.C. Drug Kingpin Has Fighting Chance To See Freedom Because Of Son’s Efforts appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 24, 2021 – Veteran Boston wiseguy Johnny Cincotti died last week at 81. He was stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease. A staple in Boston’s North End for decades, the well-liked and congenial Cincotti owned and operated out of the acclaimed Bella Napoli Italian restaurant.

Cincotti was living in Wayland, Massachusetts at the time of his death. His last prison sentence came to a close almost 25 years ago (1997). He was busted twice by the feds on illegal gambling and racketeering offenses.

Cincotti’s mentor in the Patriarca crime family was Ralph (Ralphie Chong) Lamattina. He helped Lamattina (d. 2017) run the Nite Lite Cafe and Enrico’s Social Club, a pair of North End gambling hot spots. In the 1970s and 80s, Cincotti oversaw several backroom casinos and dice games operating in the North End on behalf of powerful Boston mob figures Jerry Angiulo (d. 2009) and Larry Zannino (d. 1996). Angiulo was the Patriarca’s underboss. Zannino was the capo both Lamattina and Cincotti reported to.

Cincotti was present behind the bar when Ralphie Chong and Zannino murdered two rogue racketeers (Arthur “Tash” Bratsos and “Tommy D” DePrisco) inside the Nite Lite Cafe on November 15, 1966. Police officers arrived on the scene of the double homicide (the bodies were stuffed in DePrisco’s Cadillac) to find Lamattina and Cincotti on their hands and knees frantically scrubbing the bloodstains off the establishment’s entryway.

The post Johnny On The Spot No More: Boston’s North End Mourns Loss Of Beloved Mid-Level Mafia Figure appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 25, 2021 – The ace up his sleeve has been neutralized by Uncle Sam.

Georgia Gangster Disciples boss Justin (Ace) Adams was sentenced to 14 years in prison last week for drugs and weapons conviction as the No. 1 defendant in the feds’ Operation Ace In The Hole. The sentence was issued by U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker back on Thursday in Statesboro.

The 40-year old Ace Adams headed the GD’s mid-Georgia region affairs. Operation Ace In The Hole was launched in the summer of 2018 and targeted Adams, who ran his crew in Vidalia, Georgia, and his top supply lieutenant Deltinaud (Tino Black) Toussaint. The pair reigned supreme over the Toombs and Montgomery County narcotics scene for most of the 2010s until the Georgia State Police teamed with the DEA, FBI and ATF to bring them down with the ‘Ace In The Hole’ investigation.

The indictment dropped in January 2020 and named 26 co-defendants in a case that included a whopping 61 counts. Toussaint, 44, was providing Adams with cocaine, marijuana, pills and liquid Codeine. Both Adams and Toussaint copped pleas last year.

Only 4 defendants remain on the case, three are waiting to go to trial. The final defendant left to be arraigned is Torey (T-Fool) Washington, a fugitive of justice going on 16 months now.

The Gangster Disciples is based out of Chicago, where the gang was founded by the legendary street politician and hustler Larry Hoover, still in charge of the GDs today from his prison cell in Colorado. Beginning in the 1980s, GD sets began forming outside the Windy City, mainly in Midwest, East Coast and Southeast regions of the United States. Authorities placed GD membership at well over 30,000 in 2020.

The post No Longer Coming Up Aces: GA. Gangster Disciples Shot Caller “Ace” Adams Down For The Count, Will Do 14-Yr. Bid appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 27, 2021 – Oh, boy, this is big news.

Buffalo biker boss John (Tommy O) Ermin is The Outlaws Motorcycle Club’s International President and only one person removed from reputed Buffalo mafia don Joseph (Big Joe) Todaro, Jr., per recent government court filings related to the drug, prostitution and bribery charges his nephew is facing. The Outlaws MC is a Midwest club, historically based out of Chicago and Detroit, and before Tommy O’s reported ascent to the throne, has never had its seat of power reside on the east coast.

The 51-year old “Tommy O” Ermin is the dayshift general manager at Pharoah’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, owned by Todaro Jr.’s nephew, Peter Gerace, Jr., who is under indictment in federal court out of Western New York for narcotics and sex trafficking. Big Joe Todaro Jr., the owner and operator of the widely-popular La Nova pizza and buffalo wing franchise, has always denied any involvement in organized crime.

Prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to block Gerace, Jr. — free on bond — from returning to work, citing the presence of Tommy O and eight other Outlaws MC members on the club’s payroll, while he awaits his day in front of a jury. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge John L. Sinatra ruled Gerace, Jr. can go back to work running his club before he stands trial.

Tommy O has helped Gerace, Jr. oversee daily affairs at Pharaoh’s for most of the last decade. He has a scant police rap sheet, showing only an April 2010 arrest for assault in a barroom brawl that spilled out into the street. Ermin copped a plea to disorderly conduct in the case and received 30 days of community service as punishment.

The Outlaws have traditionally maintained a working relationship with Italian mob factions in their chapters’ respective regions. Big Joe Todaro, Jr., 74, was pushed out of his position in the LIUNA in 1990 for his links to the Magaddino crime family.

Those who know Tommy O say he is college educated, a natural leader and an avid artist when he’s not on his bike riding around Erie County. According to those familiar with Ermin’s family life, he lost part of his left leg in a motorcycle accident that tragically killed his wife.

“Tommy O is a mover and shaker in the biker world these days,” biker gang investigator Steve Cook told The Buffalo News.

Informants have told the FBI and U.S. Prosecutors that Ermin holds Outlaws MC chapter meetings, known as “church” in club circles, Wednesday nights at Pharaoh’s. Ermin survived a battle with COVID-19 last summer where he was hospitalized on a ventilator and in a coma for two weeks. He did an interview with a local podcast discussing his bout fighting the Coronavirus in the fall.

Per ATF documents, Ermin is spearheading a New England expansion of The Outlaws MC brand, targeting Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine for placement of new chapters and absorbing of smaller clubs in “patch-over” ceremonies. Todaro, Jr. is currently the subject of a multi-pronged federal assault involving a number of different state, federal and international criminal investigative bodies, according to multiple sources.

The feds are circling Big Joe Todaro, Jr. say sources in the U.S. Attorneys Office in Western New York, looking to jam up as many of his associates as they can in hopes of squeezing a racketeering case against the Todaro regime out of them. Todaro Jr.’s other nephew, Anthony Gerace, is on his way to prison for drug and weapons convictions and an alleged dirty DEA agent is on his way to trial on bribery and extortion charges.

The post Feds Name Buffalo’s “Tommy O” As Boss Of The Outlaws MC, Placing Him A Single Degree Away From Alleged Mob Don Big Joe Todaro, Jr. appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 28, 2021 – The Outlaws Motorcycle Club has grown eastward from its Midwest roots and today the club’s power center revolves in and around Buffalo. Good ‘ole “Buffalo Wally” would be swelling with pride. He put The Outlaws on the map in Western New York.

Last week, he US Attorneys Office in Western District of New York declared John (Tommy O) Ermin the international president of The Outlaws MC in court filings related to his employer, strip club owner, Peter Gerace, Jr. and Gerace, Jr.’s pending drug and prostitution case. Local crime historians note, however, there would be no rise of Tommy O to speak or write of if not for the rise and fall of Walter (Buffalo Wally) Posnjak, the region’s first celebrity biker boss.

Ermin, 51, is the manager of Gerace, Jr.’s Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, New York, just outside Buffalo. Gerace, Jr. is the nephew of reputed Buffalo mafia don Joseph (Big Joe) Todaro, Jr., the owner of the highly-successful La Nova pizza and buffalo wing restaurant and product chain. The Outlaws and the Italian mafia have had firm ties dating back decades, especially in the muscle and drug departments.

The 74-year old Todaro, Jr. has no criminal record but is allegedly the target of a multi-agency racketeering probe. He was once booted from a labor union post for his reputed mob connections, most notably his father, then-Buffalo mafia boss, Joseph (Lead Pipe Joe) Todaro (d. 2012).

The significance of Ermin’s rise to leadership in The Outlaws and where he resides is stunning to those who track the club for a living. The Outlaws is a Midwest club (founded in Chicago) and has never before had the club’s nerve center not situated in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan or Wisconsin.

The last time this much biker world power emanated from Western New York was back in the fall of 1994 when legendary Outlaws MC boss Harry (Taco) Bowman came to town and headed the funeral procession to bury Buffalo Wally Posnjak, killed in a racetrack brawl a week earlier. Bowman was headquartered in Detroit and utilized Posnjak as one of his main confidants and emissaries in his reign as international president (1984-1999).

Per DEA records, the popular and respected Buffalo Wally ran all Northeast operations for the beloved Bowman and The Outlaws brass in the Midwest. Buffalo Wally was a Midwesterner after all; the cherubic and furry Posnjak was a Russian immigrant and raised in Ohio. He became close to Taco Bowman in the 1970s, and per ATF records, one of the first things Bowman did upon his regime taking form in the early 1980s was tap Posnjak to be his shot caller on the east coast.

Bowman leaned on Buffalo Wally for counsel and muscle in The Outlaws’ ongoing war with the Hells Angels MC. The boiling tensions between the two groups resulted in Posnjak’s untimely demise. According to federal court documents, Bowman sent Posnjak to Chicago in the spring of 1994 to handle details in planning a bombing of the Hells Angels “support chapter” clubhouse.

Things went downhill from there and fast.

Shortly thereafter, Chicago Outlaws boss Pete (Greased Lightning) Rogers, survived a highway shooting assassination attempt and a grenade landed on the bed of Posnjak’s step daughter’s bed in his Buffalo home, exploding after the little girl and her mother fled the premises. Hells Angels Illinois boss LaMont (Merciless Monte) Mathias was shot and beaten to death days later in a Rockford auto garage.

Meanwhile back out east, Buffalo Wally, 44, was living on borrowed time.

Posnjak and his right-hand man, Buffalo Outlaws MC boss David (Diamond Dave) Thornton, were jostling with Rochester Hells Angels boss Michael (Mad Mike) Quale for biker racket supremacy in Western New York, per DEA records. Much of the turf battle was fought over cocaine and marijuana sales. Thornton was indicted for overseeing a narcotics conspiracy in 1992, smuggling drugs from Florida for sale in Buffalo and Rochester.

Quale was originally from Buffalo and him and Posnjak had a lengthy history of bad blood. The Outlaws and Hells Angels clashed at the Lancaster Speedway in Lancaster, New York on September 25, 1994 in a brawl for the ages which took place inside the pits of the track for what was supposed to be a series of bike races staged that day. In the end, blood was shed instead and Buffalo Wally was shot to death in the melee and Mad Mike Quale was stabbed to death.

Bowman was locked up in 1999 and died behind bars of cancer in 2019 at age 69. His funeral had to be held at the Ohio State Fairgrounds outside Dayton to handle the thousands of mourners descending on the area from all around the country to pay their respects to the revered biker chief.

“Tommy O” Ermin is being compared to Bowman in Outlaws MC and law enforcement circles, per sources, in terms of vision and ability to galvanize the masses. Ermin has been the catalyst behind The Outlaws New England expansion campaign the past three years, responsible for the opening of almost a dozen new chapters across multiple New England states.

The post The Ballad Of Buffalo Wally: Western New York Is Now Ground Zero For The Outlaws MC, Bringing Midwest Club East appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 29, 2021 – Accomplished thief and Chicago mob associate Mike (The Bushel Head) Swiatek died this week of a respiratory ailment at age 85. The old school hoodlum dates back decades in Outfit circles and had links to multiple mafia administrations and several caporegimes and crew chiefs .

Swiatek was a burglar and weapons salesman from the Outfit’s Grand Avenue crew on the city’s westside. FBI memos tie him to the Chicago mob’s Cicero regime as well. He did almost a decade in federal prison (1987-1996) for selling guns and explosives to an undercover ATF agent.

According to Chicago Crime Commission reports, Swiatek came up in the Chicago mob robbery game under William (Willie Potatoes) Daddano, the head of all the Outfit’s burglary crews. Daddano died of natural causes in 1975.

When he was a young thief in the 1950s and 60s, Swiatek ran in a stick-up crew with future famous Windy City mafia figures Tony (The Ant) Spilotro and Frank Cullotta. Spilotro went to Las Vegas in the 1970s and took over the Outfit’s west coast crew. Cullotta followed Tony the Ant to the dessert and put together the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang. The pair were portrayed in the 1995 movie Casino by Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent.

Swiatek and Cullotta were busted together in 1967 for robbing an armored bank car making a pick up at a pacemaker factory in Belvedere, Illinois. They got away with $15,000 before they were arrested.

The insubordinate and in-your-face Spilotro died violently, beaten, stomped and strangled to death in a Chicago basement in June 1986. At the time of Tony the Ant’s slaying, Cullotta had turned against his boyhood pal and become a government witness. Cullotta died of COVID-19 last year living back in Las Vegas and hosting Casino movie tours.

Swiatek had been retired from the rackets for years, claim sources. His bout with emphysema forced him to lug around an oxygen tank wherever he traveled in more recent days. FBI records from the 2000s connect him closely to deceased Chicago mob boss John (Johnny No Nose) DiFronzo and reputed current Outfit don Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis.

The post Seasoned Chicago Outfit Burglar, Mafia Affiliate Mike Swiatek Dead At 85, Was One Of Last Of Mohicans From Mob’s Golden Era appeared first on The Gangster Report.

April 30, 2021 – Imprisoned former Chicago mob boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno has received tribute payments from an Elmwood Park sports bookmaking business in recent years, according to federal prosecutors. The allegation hurts Sarno’s attempt to earn a medically-related re-sentencing and/or a compassionate release from his judge.

The feds busted longtime Chicago Outfit bookie Greg Paloian in 2019. Prison phone and wire transfer records link Paloian to Sarno, the Outfit’s acting boss from 2005 until he was sent to prison in December 2010 for firebombing the storefront of a competing video-poker machine company in Berwyn, Illinois.

The ailing Sarno is doing his time behind bars in a federal correctional facility in Missouri, serving 25 years for racketeering and extortion. Sarno’s attorney is currently fighting for a compassionate release for the infirmed don due to severe failing health (the once 350-pound Fat Mike is weighing in at under 200 pounds these days and his confined to a wheelchair).

“Paloian has regularly sent money to Sarno’s prison account since he’s been imprisoned. There is no doubt that money was proceeds from an illegal gambling business,” wrote U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu in a court brief related to Paloian’s case filed Thursday morning.

The 66-year old Paloian, a convicted felon, has ties to reputed Outfit underboss James (Jimmy I) Inendino as well. He pleaded guilty to his most recent gambling pinch back in January and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison earlier this month.

Sarno, 63, and Inendino, 78, both come from the Chicago mob’s historic Cicero crew. Per sources, Sarno’s absence in Cicero the past decade has allowed Jimmy I to rise to skipper and now underboss for the entire crime family.

Ex-Melrose Park police officer John Amabile pleaded guilty to his role in the Paloian gambling racket this week. Amabile, 33, acted as one of Paloian’s biggest “betting agents,” bringing him bets and bettors and splitting the juice from their action with him 50/50.

Amabile’s grandfather was deceased Outfit enforcer Joseph (Joe Shine) Amabile, and his brother, Joe, appeared on the hit ABC tv show The Bachelorette. His dad was a Melrose Park police lieutenant.

The ornery Joe Shine was Chicago mob boss Sam (Teetz) Battaglia’s right-hand man and helped him lord over the west side suburbs. Battaglia died in prison in 1973. Joe Shine passed in 1975.

The FBI began tracking the Paloian bookmaking operation in 2012 and estimated he had approximately 60 different bettors wagering with him on a daily basis. Paloian directed his action through a website he ran with another bookie who was brought down in a separate case.

Following a gambling bust two decades ago, Paloian did five years in the can. In that case, Paloian was instructing his debtors to visit Jimmy I for juice loans as a means of paying their delinquent tabs.

The post Feds: Jailed Chicago Mafia Chieftain,”Fat Mike” Sarno, Got Proceeds From Sports Book While Locked Up For Racketeering appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 5, 2021 – Kansas City mob figure Peter (P.J.) Ribaste died of natural causes earlier this spring. The 66-year old Ribaste was a club owner, reputed bookie and alleged bag man for K.C. mafia payoffs in the final years of the crime family’s heyday. He succumbed to a bout with COVID-19, according to sources connected to Ribaste, and didn’t want an obituary nor a traditional funeral

Despite his reputation as the consummate wiseguy, Ribaste knew how to avoid damaging trouble with the law. The best Uncle Sam could do was nail him for mail fraud and tax evasion and send him to federal prison for less than a year.  

In 1996, FBI informants linked Ribaste to reported Kanas City mob underboss Peter (Las Vegas Pete) Simone, then a captain in the Civella crime family. Both Ribaste and Simone have spent substantial amounts of time in Nevada, specifically, Las Vegas, in the past.

Ribaste owned owned a number of bars, nightclubs and strip clubs in the Kansas City area. When he moved to Las Vegas on a full-time basis for a few years in the 1990s, he owned car dealerships and ran around with the Binion brothers of The Horseshoe Casino empire, among other unsavory folks and known mobsters visiting from different parts of the country, according to federal authorities.

The FBI stated in affidavits filed with the Las Vegas Gaming Control Board that he ran one of the biggest bookmaking operations in Missouri in the 1980s, interacting frequently with Kansas City mob chief Carl (Corky) Civella and his son and future crime family boss Anthony (Tony Ripe) Civella and passing messages to and from gangland figures in prison for skimming Las Vegas casinos in the famous Operation Strawman case. Corky Civella died behind bars in 1994. Tony Ripe dropped dead of a heart attack on the golf course in 2006.

The mafia in Kansas City today is a small clique made up mostly of old-school gambling bosses and shylocks. Per sources in federal law enforcement, the FBI doesn’t consider the crime family much of a priority these days.

Ribaste was placed in Nevada’s Black Book, barring him from entering any of the state’s casinos, in 1999, citing his four felony convictions. Once he was persona non grata in Las Vegas gambling establishments, Ribaste returned him to Kansas City and continued his close contact with Tony Ripe and Pete Simone, per federal informants.

Retired K.C. mob buster Gary Jenkins (who runs the Gangland Wire multi-media platform website) recalls Ribaste being one smooth criminal.

“That son of a bitch was tough to follow, tough to keep tabs on,” said Jenkins with a chuckle. “He drove a BMW. He’d be going 120, 130 miles per hour in that thing and then he’d slow down to a crawl or pull over to the side of the rode and watch us fly by him. We were always looking to tie him into government and police corruption but we never got that done.”

The post Old-Time K.C. Mafia Soldier P.J. Ribaste Cashes In Chips, Loses Battle With Coronavirus Says Sources appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 6, 2021 – Master narcotics trafficker and drug smuggler George (Boston George) Jung, the man practically personally responsible for flooding the United States with cocaine in the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s on behalf of Narcos baron Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel, died of organ failure today at the age of 78. Jung’s rise and fall in the drug game was depicted in the 2001 hit film Blow starring Johnny Depp as Jung and Cliff Curtis as Escobar.

Born and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Boston George began his career as a kingpin shipping bales of marijuana from California to New England for distribution at colleges and universities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island and Maine. Jung was busted in Chicago in 1974 and sent to federal prison. His networking behind bars launched him into the stratosphere.

While he was locked up, Jung was cellmates with the half-Colombian, high-German Carlos Lehder, one of Pablo Escobar’s most trusted lieutenants. Lehder schooled Boston George on the world of powder and when they were both released, Lehder and Jung flew to Colombia together for Lehder to introduce Boston George to Escobar and cement a relationship between the three men. Lehder’s character in the movie Blow was renamed Diego Delgado and played by Spanish actor Jordi Molla (Bad Boys II, Riddick).

Jung and Lehder headed the Medellin Cartel’s transportation unit, using an island Lehder purchased in the Bahamas (Norman’s Kay) as a jumping off point to fly planes filled to the brim with cocaine (usually 300 kilos or so) into the U.S. and distribute it from a base of Los Angeles beauty salons. Authorities estimated that more than 80 percent of the North American cocaine market was being serviced by the union between the hippy-chic Boston George and the powerful, ultra-violent Medellin Cartel. Escobar grew to be the biggest drug kingpin on the planet.

By the beginning of the 1980s though, the maniacal, increasingly unhinged Lehder and Jung had fallen out and Jung left the cartel to go off on his own in the coke business. Jung was indicted for cocaine trafficking in 1985, but worked his way out of his sentence by agreeing to testify against Lehder.

Jung was nailed in a coke case out of Kansas in 1994 and did two decades in prison. He was released in 2014 and returned for a brief stay in 2016 for a parole violation related to an autograph signing he attended without his parole officer’s permission.

Lehder cut a deal for himself following his conviction and helped the U.S Government topple Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who he did business and banking with. The Bureau Of Prisons finally released the 71-year old and self-declared Neo-Nazi Lehder last year and he was immediately deported to Germany. Escobar died in 1993 in a hail of bullets as a result of a shootout with Colombian and American military on a Medellin rooftop.

The post “Boston George” Jung Of ‘Blow’ Fame Dead At 78, Immortalized By Johnny Deep As All-American Drug Don In Cult Classic Movie appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 10, 2021 – Brunswick’s “Wild Bill” has copped a plea.

Incarcerated Gangster Disciples enforcer Wilbert (Wild Bill) Stephens pleaded guilty to witness intimidation charges late last week, admitting culpability to charges that hold a maximum 20-year prison sentence. Stephens brought the fury for the GDs near the Florida-Georgia line.

The 29-year old Wild Bill is already in federal prison serving a dime piece for firearm offenses tied to GD drug affairs he was convicted of in 2018. Federal authorities believe Stephens was go-to muscle for the Southern Georgia faction of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples.

Stephens solicited retaliation against a witness and penned a letter threatening a federal judge while sitting behind bars in a Georgia’s Glynn County Jail following his conviction in the drug case and awaiting a bus trip into the BOP. Stephens’ Southern Georgia GDs are headquartered in Brunswick, located by the Florida-Georgia state line near Jacksonville.

His case stemmed from a speeding ticket. He was pulled over in his vehicle in 2016 by Georgia State Policemen and the state troopers found a pound of marijuana and an AK-47. At the time of the traffic stop, Stephens was already on probation for a felony drug charge. The feds included him in a drug and racketeering indictment later that same year.

The Gangster Disciples were founded in the late 1960s by legendary crime lord Larry Hoover. By the 1980s, the GD began expanding down south and out east. Hoover, 70, has led the organization from his prison cell for the last half-century.

The post Living Life On The Wild Side: GA. Gangster Disciples “Wild Bill” Admits To Trying To Retaliate Against Witness appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 11, 2021 – Under the most hush-hush conditions, iconic rapper Eminem filmed a story arc for Season 1 of the upcoming Starz scripted television series Black Mafia Family last month in his hometown of Detroit, per sources on the set of the shoot. The role he has been cast in for the show is unconfirmed.

Eminem (born Marshall Mathers aka “Slim Shady”) hasn’t acted since he drew rave reviews for his performance in the 2002 semi-autobiographical film, 8 Mile, which made $245,000,000 at the box office and became an instant underdog movie classic. Eminem’s protege in the rap game, 50 Cent, is executive producing the highly-anticipated BMF series, chronicling the real-life rags to riches story of Detroiters Demetrious (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, who rose from humble beginnings in the Motor City to rule the nation’s cocaine trade in the first half of the 2000s.

The BMF series has been in production in Detroit and Atlanta the past two and a half months. Rap legend Snoop Dogg is also on board for the project, playing a fast-talking pastor with questionable motives. The queen of Detroit’s hip-hop scene, Kash Doll, will be making her acting debut as a law office employee engaged in a romantic affair with Big Meech. The Big Meech character is being played by Big Meech’s son, aspiring rapper Demetrius (‘Lil Meech) Flenory, Jr.

The Flenory brothers launched their “Black Mafia Family” in Detroit in 1990 and by the end of the decade had expanded throughout the country. At the time of the Flenorys arrest in 2005, BMF operated franchises in 23 different states, with Big Meech stationed in Atlanta and Southwest T living in L.A. and overseeing affairs in Michigan from afar. Their social strata included celebrities, actors, musicians of all kinds and their entire organization became famous for its lavish partying. Big Meech commissioned billboards put up along I-75, the expressway running from Detroit to Atlanta, advertising BMF as a brand and music label.

Both Flenory brothers copped pleas and received 30-year federal prison terms for heading a drug trafficking conspiracy. Southwest T, 50, walked free last spring from a compassionate release relegating him to serving the remainder of his sentence under home confinement. Big Meech, 52, is serving his time in a Oregon correctional facility and isn’t scheduled for release until October 2031.

One of the true genius lyricists and provocateurs of his era, Eminem rose from near poverty in a trailer park neighborhood lining the North Detroit border to international superstardom in a matter of a year in the late 1990s. He’s sold more than 200,000,000 albums worldwide and counting in his 22-year career, transcending his genre of music and making a name for himself as the only white-colored all-time great in the rap game.

The film 8 Mile, described by critics as Rocky set in the world of hip-hop instead of prize fighting, was helmed by Curtis Hanson and co-starred Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy, Anthony Mackie and Michael Shannon. Eminem played Jimmy “Rabbit” Smith, a down-on-his-luck stamping plant employee

50 Cent found success in the scripted television space on Starz with his first show, Power, about a fictional New York drug lord. Detroiter Randy Huggins is the BMF series showrunner and wrote on Power before accepting the BMF show gig.

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May 12, 2021 – Rapper Lil’ Zane is the latest MC to be cast in the upcoming Black Mafia Family scripted television series, produced by hip hop mogul 50 Cent and slated for a December 2021 premiere date on the Starz basic cable network. The true-crime tale revolving around two brothers from Detroit who go on to dominate the U.S. wholesale cocaine trade in the late 1990s and early 2000s is filled with rappers turned actors, including Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kash Doll, Da’Vinchi and ‘Lil Meech.

Lil’ Zane plays a BMF drug crew member named “Sockie” in the show. He’s already shot seven episodes. His 2000 rap debut, Young World: The Future (Priority Records-Capitol Records) spawned the hit single Callin’ Me featuring the singing group 112. The 35-year old Lil’ Zane spawns from the Atlanta hip hop scene (although born in New York) and has acting credits (Finding Forrester, The Parkers, The Fighting Temptations, Dr. Doolittle 2).

Detroiters Demetrious (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory founded BMF in 1990. They were both indicted in the mid-2000s as the lead defendants in the landmark Operation Motor City Mafia case and convicted of running the biggest domestic drug-dealing outfit in American history. When they were taken into custody in the fall of 2005, BMF had spread to 23 separate states in the U.S. and the Flenory brothers were God-like figures in the dope game.

The BMF series has been in production in Detroit and Atlanta the past two and a half months. Eminem, Detroit’s most famous rapper, shot a short Season 1 story arc last month, per sources. He hasn’t acted since starring in the 2002 smash-hit film 8 Mile, a semi-autobiographical story about an aspiring white rapper in an all-Black city of talented rhyme spitters.

Snoop Dogg is also on board for the project, playing a fast-talking pastor with questionable motives. The queen of Detroit’s hip-hop scene, Kash Doll, will be making her acting debut as a law office employee engaged in a romantic affair with Big Meech. The Big Meech character is being played by Big Meech’s son, up-and-coming rapper Demetrius (‘Lil Meech) Flenory, Jr. Da’Vinchi plays Southwest T in the show.

Both Flenory brothers copped pleas in their case and received 30-year federal prison terms for heading their massive drug trafficking conspiracy. Southwest T, 50, walked free last spring from a compassionate release relegating him to serving the remainder of his sentence under home confinement. Big Meech, 52, is serving his time in a Oregon correctional facility and isn’t scheduled for release until October 2031.

50 Cent, one of the most popular and best-selling MCs of the 2000s, found success in the scripted television space on Starz with his first show, Power, about a fictional New York drug lord. Detroiter Randy Huggins is the BMF series showrunner and wrote on Power before accepting the BMF show gig.

The post BMF Show Crafts Early Reputation As A Rapper’s Delight, Inks Lil’ Zane For Role As Dope Boy In Starz Drama appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 12, 2021 – Chicago Outfit soldier Lawrence (Hungry Larry) Petitt died late last year of natural causes at the age of 90. He passed on November 30, 2020, surrounded by loved ones and with a hardened reputation for being a tried-and-true mobster and a respected, standup guy in his time roaming the Midwest underworld making mega bucks for himself and his bosses.  

Petitt had been retired from Chicago mob activities for the past decade. His older brother and gangland running buddy Joseph (Joe Elks) Petitt, died back in 1999. The Petitt brothers grew up on Taylor Street in Chicago’s Little Italy and ran errands for the remnants of the old “42 Gang” in their youth. Their real sur name was Petitti.

According to Chicago Crime Commission files, the Petitt brothers acted as gofers for 42 Gang member and future West Side capo Fiore (Fifi) Bucceri as teenagers and were “made” into The Outfit’s Cicero crew, worked directly for Bucceri’s protege, future mob don Joe Ferriola (d. 1989).

Prior to becoming acting boss in early 1986, Ferriola was skipper of the Cicero regime. The 42 Gang was a so-called “JV Chicago mob” started from Taylor Street during Prohibition and prominent in the years directly after the Volstead Act was repealed until most of the members were given buttons in the Outfit.

Larry Petitt was a suspect in the February 10, 1985 mob hit of feared Jewish Outfit lieutenant Leonard (Little Lenny) Yaras, gunned down by a two-man hit team in front of his uniform-apparel company less than 24 hours after his mob protector, North Side street boss Joe (Little Caesar) DiVarco, was convicted of racketeering and his bond revoked. DiVarco oversaw Outfit rackets on Rush Street, the Windy City’s main downtown nightlife and entertainment district.

The week before he was wacked, Yaras had engaged in a heated verbal altercation with Petitt at an Elmwood Park social club over Hungry Larry accusing Little Lenny of skimming from the collections he was doing on behalf of Ferriola, informants were eager to tell the FBI and Chicago Police Department in the weeks following the Yaras slaying. Per an FBI internal memo dated August 1986, the Petitt brothers inherited Yaras’ gambling and loan sharking businesses following him being killed.

Cicero crew associate David (Red) O’Malley was indicted and put on trial for Yaras’ murder in 1986 but was found not guilty and acquitted by the jury. Yaras’ dad, David (Davey Boy) Yaras, was a longtime enforcer and hit man for the Chicago mob. “Davey Boy” Yaras (d. 1974) was looking after the Outfit affairs in Miami in his later years and brought his son Little Lenny into the family business, placing him with the North Side “La Kosher Nostra” Jewish contingent out of Rogers Park and its point man on Rush Street for collections, Little Caesar DiVarco.

The post Hunger Pains In Chicago: Outfit Figure “Hungry Larry” Petitt Passed Away In ’20, Remained Suspect In ’85 Hit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 17, 2021 – The King is headed to prison. Chicky is still fighting the law.

Back in December 2019, Western Massachusetts crime boss Michael (King Merlin) Cecchetelli was indicted as the lead defendant in the FBI and DEA’s Operation Throne Down, a dismantling of the Latin Kings street gang organization on the East Coast. Cecchetelli pleaded guilty to racketeering charges last month and faces the possibility of a 20-year prison term when sentenced in three weeks.

The 42-year old King Merlin is in charge of all Latin Kings affairs taking place across the eastern seaboard of the United States, from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania through the entire New England region. The Latin Kings are headquartered out of Chicago

King Merlin lives in Springfield, Massachusetts with his uncle, Italian mob associate David (Chicky) Cecchetelli, a rotund and colorful convicted mafia bookmaker affiliated with New York’s Genovese crime family. On the morning the feds came to arrest King Merlin, they found a gun and ammunition and charged Chicky with being a felon in illegal possession of ammunition, but not possession of the weapon itself. He has pleaded not guilty in the case.

Chicky Cecchetelli, 52, is challenging the charges based on the fact that the particulars of the felon-in-possession law he violated is currently under review via different cases in both the U.S. District Court and at the U.S. Supreme Court level. The caselaw his attorney Daniel Hagen cited with his new motion filed last week distinguishes between “virtuous” and “unvirtuous” people affected by the law, arguing because Cecchetelli is a non-violent offender and “virtuous,” his civil rights are being infringed upon by not allowing him protection under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. MassLive’s Stephanie Barry, the area’s top mob expert, was the first to report on the motion.

In the Operation Throne Down indictment, U.S Attorneys point to a connection between the mainly Hispanic Latin Kings group and the Italian mafia in Western Massachusetts. The Italian King Merlin rose to shot caller status in the gang despite not being of Latino heritage, leveraging Latin Kings contacts he met while he served a previous prison bid to propel him up the ranks of the organization.

The feds believe King Merlin built ties to the Italian mafia on the East Coast through his uncle Chicky Cecchetelli and recorded at least two meetings at Springfield’s Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club, the Genovese clan’s nerve center in Western Massachusetts, with Latin Kings leadership discussing criminal business. Chicky Cecchetelli pleaded guilty to charges of bookmaking on behalf of the Genovese crime family in 2005 and did a little less than a year in federal prison.

Springfield has long been Genovese territory and a hotbed of rackets in the New England underworld. Over the past decade, Chicky has reinvented himself as an on-line personality and says he’s retired from his life of crime.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Chicky Cecchetelli worked in the sports gambling trade for Springfield mob skippers Frank (Frankie Skyball) Scibelli, Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno and Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta. Frankie Skyball died of natural causes in 2000. Bruno was gunned down in the parking lot of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club in November 2003 on orders given by Arillotta and Genovese brass in New York. Arillotta, 51, became a witness against the Genovese bosses responsible for green-lighting his power play in the years that followed.

The post The Tale Of The Two Cecchetellis: W. Mass. Crime Chief King Merlin Going Back To The Can, Uncle Chicky Refusing To Give In appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 18, 2021 — On the heels of the Dateline Detroit investigation television special that ran this week on WDIV Channel 4, the family of Joann Matouk Romain are offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to arrests in her disappearance and death. The Matouk Romain case was the focus of an Unsolved Mysteries episode on Netflix back in the fall of 2020 and Channel 4 won Emmy awards for its coverage of the case last year.

The 55-year old Matouk Romain was a Grosse Pointe Woods housewife who vanished after attending a church service in swanky Grosse Pointe Farms on the night of January 12, 2010 and wasn’t found until almost three months later when Canadian fishermen came across her floating dead body in near pristine condition on the Ontario side of Boblo Island. The “Grosse Pointes” are an affluent cluster of neighborhoods resting on Lake St. Clair, just to the east of the Detroit city limits.

The Matouk family was at war with each other in the years preceding her death over a wine-store and real estate fortune estimated at close to $20,000,000. The cause of death was immediately ruled a suicide by drowning despite the fact that an independent autopsy conducted by pathologists at the University of Michigan ruled that there was no water in her lungs at the time she stopped breathing.

Matouk Romain feuded with her first cousin, Tim, a decorated cop and lead investigator for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, in the weeks leading up to her going missing and told friends and those closest to her that she feared for her life. On January 7, 2010, Matouk Romain had a face-to-face meeting with members of federal law enforcement, per sources. What was discussed at this meeting remains unknown.

Tim Matouk denies any culpability in the disappearance and death of JoAnn Matouk Romian. He did an interview with both Unsolved Mysteries last December and with Dateline Detroit this week offering his side of the story and refuting the allegation that he ever threatened Matouk Romain’s life.

Matouk Romain’s children and brother have accused their cousin of murdering their mother and the Grosse Pointe Police Department of covering it up, allegations dismissed by federal judges in civil litigation seeking damages of $100,000,000. Grosse Pointe was long known as Ground Zero for Detroit’s Italian mafia, with all the dons of the crime family building an enclave known as “The Compound” on Middlesex Road in the 1930s. Local mob shot callers began moving further north and then west in the 1990s and 2000s. One of those questioned in the case was an alleged mob-connected bookmaker tied to a number of members of the Matouk family. The Matouks are of Syrian descent.

Information to claim the $100,000 reward can be sent to infor@ScottLewisPI.com or phoned into 855-411-LEWIS.

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May 19, 2021 – State prosecutors don’t want attorneys for Outlaws Motorcycle Club member and accused killer Jeremy (Barber Shop) Boshears to be able to enter into evidence two forensics experts testimony at his upcoming trial for first-degree murder, that the victim, his girlfriend, Katie Kearns, committed suicide. Boshears personally wants to testify to the theory that a distraught Kearns took her own life and shot herself in the head.

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow’s office filed a motion with the judge in Boshears’ case last week. The 24-year old Kearns had a history of severe depression. She was last seen alive leaving her waitress and bartending job at Woody’s Bar, telling co-workers she was on her way to see Boshears, a frequent customer at the Joliet watering hole. The pair had been dating for a month at the time she was slain.

Boshears, 36, is accused of murdering Kearns inside the Outlaws MC’s clubhouse in Joliet, Illinois, located in the city’s eastside Ingalls Park neighborhood, on November 13, 2017. Woody’s Bar is down the road from the clubhouse and known as a popular Outlaws MC hangout spot. Kearns’ body was found less than a week later an hour’s drive away in Kankakee County in the back seat of her old-model Jeep Grand Cherokee with a bullet wound in the back of her head.

Boshears is a member of the Outlaws’ Joliet chapter. He’s expected to go to trial by the end of the year. Boshears has been in custody at the Will County Jail since November 2017, unable to make his $10,000,000 bail amount.

The Outlaws are the most powerful biker gang in the Midwest. The club’s Southside Chicago chapter is considered the “Mother Club,” being that the Outlaws MC was founded in the Windy City.

More recently, the club has moved eastward, seeking to establish a wider reach and presence in New England, New York and New Jersey. The feds revealed the seat of power in the club today resides in the Buffalo area in court filings related to a Western New York drug, extortion and prostitution investigation surrounding reputed Italian mafia affairs made public last month .

The post Will County (IL.) State Attorney’s Office Looking To Block Outlaws MC’er “Barber Shop” Boshears From Playing Suicide Card In Murder Case appeared first on The Gangster Report.

May 20, 2021 – Disgraced former Youngstown (OH) mob don Lenny Strollo died of natural causes this week at the age of 91, living quietly in the shadows of his old mafia kingdom forced to wear the scarlet letter of a cooperator. Strollo was the final mob boss in Mahoning Valley history. He became a government witness in 1997 after an arrest for racketeering and murder and helped state and federal officials make dozens of convictions, which effectively put an end to the mob rule in the area for good. The cooperation he provided got his prison sentence shaved down to just 13 years and Strollo walked free — and back to Youngstown – in 2010.

Youngstown was dubbed “Crimetown USA” or “Bombtown USA” for its rampant mob violence in the 1960s and 70s. The territory was shared by Cleveland and Pittsburgh crime families and tensions between the two groups ebbed and flowed through the decades. By the time Strollo was taking power, the Cleveland mob’s presence in the Mahoning Valley barely existed, if at all, leaving the whole region ripe for the taking by the Pittsburgh group.

Strollo’s run as boss of the Youngstown mafia began in the late summer of 1991 with the murder of his mob rival in the area, Joseph (Little Joey) Naples. His reign continued the tradition of deeply embedded ties into the local justice and political system and made alliance with the region’s African-American underworld.

Before he became skipper of the Pittsburgh mob crew in Youngstown, Strollo oversaw the cash-cow All-American Club, a massively profitable backdoor casino located in Campbell, Ohio, on behalf of his mentor, Mahoning Valley mafia capo Vincent (Brier Hill Jimmy) Prato. Strollo’s inner-circle was a rogue’s gallery of cartoonish gangland characters from different ethnic backgrounds, including his brother Danny, Larry (Jeep) Garano, Bernard (Bernie the Jew) Altshuler and Jeff Riddle, the self-proclaimed “Black John Gotti.”

Both Strollo and Little Joey Naples were inducted into Pittsburgh’s mob family in a 1987 ceremony, according to court records. Brier Hill Jimmy Prato is alleged to have sponsored them. When Prato retired shortly thereafter, Strollo and Naples began feuding.

Naples was killed by a sniper’s rifle on a piece of property he was building a house on in August 1991. Naples’ brothers were all slain in the Youngstown mob wars of the 1960s.

Strollo ordered the murders of Naples’ right hand man, Ernie Biondillo, mob associate Larry Sisman, defense attorney Gary Van Brocklin (a one-time state prosecutor) and Mahoning County State’s Attorney, Paul Gains, in the years that followed. Van Brocklin and Gains survived their attacks. Biondillo, who was gunning for Strollo’s job as crew boss, and Sisman, an “Ernie B,” loyalist and strip-club owner, weren’t as lucky.

In order to “make his bones,” Strollo lured Youngstown mob figure Charles (Charlie the Crab) Carabbia to his murder in 1980, per FBI informant files. Carabbia and his two brothers were the Cleveland mafia’s Mahoning Valley representatives at the time. Charlie the Crab’s body has never been recovered. Orlando Carabbia just died last month.

The post Final Nail In The Coffin: The Mafia In Mahoning Valley Officially Dead With Passing Of Lenny Strollo, Youngstown’s Last Don appeared first on The Gangster Report.