It will not be a particularly merry holiday season in certain wings of the mob in Illinois. The noose appears to be tightening around the neck of Chicago mafia captain and Outfit street boss Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena. For the last three years, Vena and his Grand Avenue crew have been the focus of an ongoing multi-agency probe into mob affairs on the Windy City’s Westside.

A number of Vena’s key lieutenants have gone down, most recently this week when Vena’s brother-in-law and high-ranking Grand Avenue crew member Charles (Chuckie the Electrician) Russell, was arrested on firearm violations for trying to purchase a cache of illegal weapons from an undercover ATF agent. More charges will probably follow in the near future – he’s suspected of heading a sadistic burglary gang and is being looked at by organized crime investigators in the Chicago Police Department for a murder committed last month. Unfounded rumors of an indictment featuring Vena as the headlining defendant circulated in 2015.

“Albie knows we’re chipping away, eliminating the layers of insulation between him and his men to ultimately take him down,” one local law enforcement source said. “Chuckie Russell now and Bobby Panozzo, Paulie Koroluk and the kid Hollingshead a couple years ago, those guys are as close as you get to him, there aren’t many guys that had better access. Them being gone, off the street, hurts Albie’s bottom line. He’s scrambling and we know it. Everybody knows it.”

Outfit soldier Robert (Bobby Pinocchio) Panozzo, categorized by some as Vena’s “chief of staff” in the early 2010s, was nailed in 2014 for allegedly running a vicious burglary, home invasion and racketeering ring with his buddy and mob associate Paul (Big Paulie) Koroluk, a revered professional thief in Windy City underworld circles who pled guilty to the charges earlier this year and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Panozzo’s driver and bodyguard Jeff Hollingshead flipped in December 2013 imprisoned on kidnapping and home invasion charges of his own. Panozzo is awaiting trial.

Russell was recorded bragging to the undercover fed introduced to him by a criminal associate of his turned informant in the weeks before Thanksgiving of this year of leading a violent band of burglars that he claimed pulled hundreds of jobs the past half-decade, his intention of robbing a suburban Chicago attorney thought to have a safe with three quarters of a million dollars in cash sitting in it, proudly intent on using a blow torch as his primary enforcement tool, and killing an African-American man in November by riddling his car with automatic weapon fire, offering a photo and the victim’s driver’s license of the piece of work as proof. The Chicago PD confirms a homicide matching that description taking place last month.

With the tape rolling, Russell described to the ATF agent the intense excitement he got from armed robberies.

“Nothing gets my juices flowing like putting a gun to someone’s head, taking their stuff and making it mine,” he told the wired-up fed. “The fun for me is the score. That’s how I get my adrenaline. You know how long it takes to come down from a job? One night, (I was so charged up) I sat at my kitchen table counting money until my hands were filthy (and you could see the sun).”

The 67-year old Russell was busted back on Wednesday at a deli in the South Loop, where he thought he was picking up an order of high-performance weapons (Uzi sub machine guns, AK-47s) and left in handcuffs instead. On Thursday, he was ordered held without bail until a January evidentiary hearing.

According to an indictment unsealed Thursday, Russell met and talked business with the undercover ATF agent on at least three occasions this month: once at a coffee shop on Taylor Street in Little Italy, once at a trendy bar called the Boundary Tavern in artsy Wicker Park and finally once just this week at the Gale Street Inn restaurant in Jefferson Park, a mainly-Polish neighborhood on the city’s Northwest side. Police in Jefferson Park started investigating a home-invasion ring in the area back in the fall with suspected ties to Russell, a convicted felon and sex offender released from a near 20-year prison sentence for aggravated sexual criminal assault in the spring of 2011.

Chuckie Russell

Russell’s current set of charges bring 10-year terms behind bars, but could wind up harsher for him considering his status as a repeat offender. The FBI is said to be preparing a future racketeering case centered around the activities of the Russell-led burglary crew and the Chicago PD are actively working the November murder Russell spoke of and took credit for to the undercover ATF agent.

Per mob sources and Chicago Crime Commission documents, Russell learned how to steal and how to kill from legendary Outfit enforcer and hit man Francis (Frank the German) Schweihs, the bodyguard, collector and all-around right-hand to longtime Grand Avenue capo and eventual consigliere Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo. Schweihs and Lombardo were indicted together in 2005 in the epic Operation Family Secrets case. Joey the Clown was convicted at trial in 2007 and is serving life in prison, while Frank the German was felled by cancer before he made it front of a jury.

“In the 1970s and 80s, if you saw Chuckie or the German lurking around your neighborhood you knew you were in trouble,” recalled one source. “They liked their work….. I told my daughter and wife, you see these two characters driving by the place, you go inside, lock the door and call the cops right away.”

Upon Lombardo and Schweihs getting taken out of action in 2005 by Family Secrets – both went on the run and were caught within the year – according to CCC records, Albie Vena, 68, assumed acting capo duties on Chicago’s Westside, which included all the territory on the Northside too where Vena had cut his teeth on the local gangland scene. The CCC records point to Outfit elder statesman Joseph (Joe Kong) Cullotta as Lombardo’s official replacement, however note he was filling the role of a more titular figure head and advisor to Vena until Vena got his feet wet in the post.

Vena, per the records, took over as official captain of the Grand Avenue crew in around mid-2008 or early 2009. His elevation to the Outfit’s overall street boss came in the last two years, according to sources. A convicted felon, he hasn’t faced criminal charges since the 1990s when he beat a murder rap in court, acquitted in the first-degree murder of Chicago mob bit player and drug dealer Sam Taglia in a 1995 trial.

Besides Vena, other yet-to-be-touched “big-fish” targets of the Westside federal inquiry reportedly include his reputed second-in-command Christopher (Christy the Nose) Spina, former consigliere John (Pudgy) Matassa, Jr. and one-time acting boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno. Spina is alleged to be Vena’s go-between to the street and for pending matters, specifically Chuckie Russell and his prolific burglary ring, per sources. Matassa, according to these sources, middles for Vena with the city’s labor unions. Sarno, serving 25 years in federal prison for extortion and from the crime family’s Cicero crew, has been named a prime suspect along with Vena in the 2006 disappearance and murder of Outfit underboss Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo.

Russell, per sources, is the Grand Avenue crew’s connection to Chicago’s African-American and Hispanic street gangs. The nickname “The Electrician” spawns from the fact that in his early days as an Outfit up-and-comer, learning the tricks of the mob muscle trade from Frank the German, he used to tell people he was an electrician when asked by everyday civilians what he did for a living.

The post ATF Turns Off Lights For Chicago Outfit’s ‘Electrician,’ Street Boss Brother-In-Law’s Inner Circle Keeps Getting Smaller appeared first on The Gangster Report.

For the fifth year in a row, incarcerated former Detroit teenage drug dealer and illegally-used underage federal informant Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe organized his annual holiday food drive to aid the needy in his old far eastside neighborhood. From behind bars, the 47-year old Wershe, the longest serving non-violent juvenile offender in the state’s prison system going on three decades as a guest of the government because of cocaine found at a routine traffic when he was 17, raised over $3,000 worth of turkeys, hams, potatoes, pies and canned fruit and vegetables and had them delivered on the day before Christmas Eve to his childhood church, Christ Our Savior, located near the intersection of Harper and Dickerson where he grew up.

“I’ll try to do everything I can to give back to the community I was raised in no matter where I am,” said Wershe in a phone interview from prison. “I want people to see, hey if this guy can do this from where he is, maybe we can do a little something too. If doing this makes it a little easier for other people to do something, you know, pay it forward, then we’ve done our job.”

Wershe’s painfully tragic story has been in the national headlines the past two years, the result of a 2014 on-line E-book penned by New York journalist Evan Hughes that caused a feeding frenzy in Hollywood over the desire to adapt Wershe’s life as an FBI-sponsored mole from the ages of 14 to 16 for the big screen. Three separate major film projects got off the ground in the subsequent months, with one of them, a star-studded production at Sony Pictures-imprint Studio 8, intending to start shooting in March with Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey leading the cast.

Shockingly, Wershe introduction to the narcotics industry came as a paid FBI informant, recruited at just 14 in the summer of 1984, fresh out of junior high school, and instructed to infiltrate some of the Motor City’s most powerful and dangerous urban drug gangs. The controversial relationship between the savvy teenager and the ethically-compromised government task force he was employed by finally came to an end in late 1986 after close to $50,000 handed over to their prized pupil and enough intelligence gathered to bring a string of ensuing high-profile busts.

Wershe was arrested in the late afternoon hours of May 22, 1987 when a rental car he was a passenger in was pulled over in front of his grandmother’s house for a rolling stop at a stop sign and after a search of the neighborhood police found 8 kilos of cocaine buried underneath a porch two blocks away from the vehicle, charging the 17-year old with no prior convictions on his record under the now-defunct “650 lifer law,” which brought automatic life prison sentences without the possibility if convicted of possession with intent to sell 650 grams or more of a controlled substance. In January 1988, Wershe was found guilty at a three-ring circus of a trial and hasn’t tasted freedom since. He went back to work with the FBI in prison and helped the government build the largest corrupt cop case in Detroit history (1993’s Operation Backbone) as well as take down the murderous Best Friends Gang, but it hasn’t made a difference.

The 650 lifer law got tossed off the books in 1998, opening the door for parole eligibility – his three times in front of the Michigan Parole Board have all been unsuccessful. Earlier this month, the parole board scheduled Wershe for a February interview, the first step in the parole process. He last saw the board in 2012.

The post In Quest For Freedom, ‘White Boy Rick’ Wershe Doesn’t Forget About Less Fortunate In Former Eastside Detroit Stomping Grounds appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Entering 2017, Detroit’s Public Enemy No. 1 is reputed Motor City drug lord Dwayne (Weezy) Taylor. The 40-year old shot caller is currently at large from the law and allegedly running his cocaine, heroin and marijuana empire underground “bunker style.”

A former top lieutenant of the area’s notorious Powell Brothers drug gang, the biggest wholesale narcotics organization in the region from the mid-2000s until the spring of 2014 when a series of federal convictions temporarily decimated the multi-million dollar crime syndicate’s core and forced the gang to regroup, Weezy Taylor, according to the DEA and U.S. Marshal’s Office, was the man tapped with heading the rebuild effort. Kingpins Carlos (Big 50) Powell, 42, and his younger brother Eric (Little 50) Powell, 38, are serving life prison sentences. At the time of their arrests, the DEA and IRS confiscated 22 million bucks from the gang, some of it discovered in safes stashed across Metro Detroit and other parts of the country and the rest in Powell or Powell-connected bank accounts.

Prior to ascending to the boss’ chair upon the Powell brothers jailing more than two years ago, Taylor was the Powells’ distribution chief, tasked with overseeing the trucks full of drugs shipping the gang’s product up to Michigan from Mexico, using Phoenix as a waystation. He was indicted with the Powells in 2012. The DEA believes that Carlos and Eric Powell are still “partners” with Taylor even though they are incarcerated in federal correction facilities in Pennsylvania and Virginia, respectively.

Both Powells are affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple, a sect of the Muslim religion founded in New Jersey in the early 20th Century, and bolted on the morning of their jury verdict in May 2014. The following month, Carlos Powell was apprehended in St. Louis and Eric Powell in Atlanta. The Powell Brothers Gang filled the void in the Detroit drug scene left in 2005 with the sweeping takedown of the infamous and iconic Black Mafia Family (“BMF”) in the landmark Operation Motor City Mafia case. They laundered portions of their drug money through car dealerships they owned in Michigan and Arizona and maintained friends in high places – one of their co-defendants (Ken Daniels) was a former state representative in Lansing..

The post Detroit Drug Chief ‘Weezy’ Taylor Is A Wanted Man, Anchored Powell Bros. Gang Resurgence Past Two Years appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Black Mafia Family Detroit lieutenant Ricky (Slick) McFarlin was murdered execution style last week at a Westside residence in the Motor City, alongside former NFL player Robert Eddins, less than three months following his release from federal prison. McFarlin, 36, and Eddins, 28, were found shot to death, face down on the floor with multiple entry wounds in the back of their heads, December 21 in the basement of Eddins’ grandmother’s home on the 7900^th block of Pierson Street. Sources tell Gangster Report, the slayings are drug related.

“BMF” is the largest and most iconic urban narcotics gang in American history. The highly-structured organization sprouted up in the Southwest section of Detroit in the early 1990s and by the start of the New Millennium had spread across the entire country, maintaining administrative and distribution hubs in Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, California and New York. Rapper and actor Curtis (50 Cent) Jackson is currently developing the story of BMF into a television series.

Eddins attended Detroit Crockett High School and played in college for Ball State University in Indiana where he earned All-Mid-American Conference honors as a defensive end. He played briefly in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills during the 2011 season.

After Eddins’ grandmother passed away in 2015, Eddins moved into her house, located between Tireman Road and Rouge Park. Responding police last Tuesday evening discovered the home ransacked and the stove turned on to its highest setting in an apparent attempt to set the residence ablaze.

“Slick” McFarlin was convicted in the historic Operation Motor City Mafia bust, a series of federal drug and racketeering indictments spanning 2005 through 2007 that spelled the end of the line for BMF founder and boss Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, currently in the midst of serving a 30-year prison sentence, and much of the syndicate’s original core. McFarlin did almost 10 years behind bars and was set free on October 6.

The post Just Ten Weeks Out Of Prison, BMF Member ‘Slick’ McFarlin Murdered In West Detroit With Ex-NFL’er appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Noted former Oakland, California drug kingpin Darryl (Little D) Reed was released from a federal prison in Oregon this week after 26 years of incarceration via a presidential pardon from Barak Obama, one of more than 600 prisoners convicted of non-violent narcotics offenses already freed by the outgoing, two-term U.S. President in the past year. The diminutive and charming 48-year old Reed ran Oakland’s turbulent crack cocaine scene in the late-1980s, continuing on the legacy of his uncle-by-marriage, Felix (The Cat) Mitchell, the Bay Area’s historic slain drug boss and his so-called “69 Mob,” named after the block Mitchell was raised and constructed his empire on (more specifically, 69th Avenue’s housing projects, the San Antonio Villas and the Acorn Apartments).

Flashy, ambitious and beloved, Felix the Cat revolutionized the heroin business in Oakland and San Francisco and gained folk-hero status on the streets by beating drug and murder indictments before finally falling in a massive narcotics, murder conspiracy and tax evasion case in the mid 1980s. Reed brought the 69 Mob into the crack era. Through both periods, the gang was clearing millions of dollars a year in revenue. Obama pardoned Reed in August.

Barely 20 years old at the time of his arrest in late 1988 – days removed from an opulent black-tie birthday party he threw for himself at a ritzy ocean-side country club -, Reed was sentenced to three and a half decades behind bars by a federal judge in 1990 for racketeering and drug offenses. He had been arrested in December 1988 in a DEA sting in the process of cooking his drugs. Authorities confiscated a then-record 44 pounds of rock cocaine. While in prison, Reed penned a book (“Weight”) and took frequent visits from a who’s who of Oakland hip-hop luminaries such as Too Short, Mac Dre, E-40 and MC Hammer to name a few.

Felix Mitchell’s feared 69 Mob ruled the streets of Oakland in the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s. Little D came up in the drug game as a runner for Mitchell in his elementary and junior high school age years. By the time he was 16, he was a shot caller in the organization, being groomed to succeed his uncle.

Beginning in the summer of 1980, Mitchell went to war with a pair of upstart drug gangs attempting to grab territory belonging to the 69 Mob. One gang was called “The Family” and was led by soul-singer-turned-drug-don Milton (Mickey Mo) Moore, the other was known as “Funktown USA” and headed by Harvey (Big Wiz) Whisenton. From the time he got his start in the underworld in the 1970s, Mitchell aligned himself with the Black Panther Party, the militant political group founded in Oakland the previous decade, according to his police file, even paying a street tax to Panther leader Huey Newton. Whisenton’s Funktown USA had ties to the Black Guerilla Family prison gang.

Felix Mitchell was imprisoned in 1985 and killed inside his cell at Leavenworth Penitentiary the following year at only 32, leaving the door open for Little D Reed and his second-in-command Timothy (Timmy Black) Bluitt to take over the 69 Mob and expand into the nation’s burgeoning cocaine trade – they rebranded themselves “LDI” (Little D Inc.) and were being supplied by Rudy Henderson, a former bodybuilder and Bay Area wholesaler who lived in a castle and maintained a fleet of 50 mint-condition classic automobiles.

Moore and Whisenton were locked up in 1985 too. Henderson made it to 1987. Bluitt didn’t go down until 1991, his gang (the former 69 Mob) under siege by a breakaway faction of the organization led by the notoriously-lethal Anthony (The Ant) Flowers. Newton was slain in 1989 by a Black Guerilla Family and Funktown USA affiliate. Released from prison in 2002, Henderson was murdered four years later sitting in his car outside a popular eastside Oakland restaurant. Moore has turned to god and makes his living as a preacher these days.

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The post A Bay Area Street Legend Returns: Obama Pardon Sends One-Time Oakland Drug Lord ‘Little D’ Reed Home In Time For New Year appeared first on The Gangster Report.

On Dec 11, 1978, a crew of Lucchese crime family mobsters in New York at the direction of the legendarily lethal James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke pulled off the daring Lufthansa Heist, the armed robbery of the Lufthansa Airlines cargo terminal at Idlewild-JFK Airport in Queens which yielded a cool six million dollars in cash and valuables. Burke headquartered his crew’s activities out of Robert’s Lounge, near the airport where he made his reputation as an expert truck hijacker. Instead of sharing in the riches brought in by the headline-grabbing boost with the men tasked with stealing it, Burke, an Irishman and one of the most powerful Italian mafia associates of all-time, decided to kill them instead – both as a means of hoarding most of the loot himself and cutting all links between him and actually job. Burke died in prison in 1996, serving time on unrelated charges.

The Oscar-nominated film Goodfellas famously depicts the Lufthansa Heist and its bloody aftermath. Robert DeNiro played Burke in the movie and Joe Pesce portrayed his young trigger-happy disciple, “Tommy D,” in an Academy Award-winning performance.

The Lufthansa Heist Hit List

December 18, 1978 – Burke crew member and aspiring African-American blues musician Parnell (Stacks) Edwards is killed in his apartment a week following the Lufthansa heist after botching his role in the job and not properly disposing of the getaway vehicle. Edwards, an expert in credit card fraud, got the Hollywood treatment in Goodfellas and was played by Samuel L. Jackson.

December 30, 1978 –  Burke crew member and Jimmy the Gent protégé Thomas (Two Gun Tommy) DeSimone disappears on his way to what he thought was a mafia induction ceremony but is murdered instead. DeSimone had been one of the stick up men in the heist. He had angered mob powers in the Gambino crime family with the unsanctioned murders of William (Billy Bats) Bentvena and Ron (Foxy) Jerothe years earlier. The hit on “Billy Bats” was depicted in Goodfellas, with Joe Pesce playing Two Gun Tommy and character actor Frank Vincent portraying Bentvena.

January 6, 1979 – Burke crew member, male wig shop-hair salon proprietor and Jewish mob associate Marty (The Rug) Krugman is killed after being too demanding for his cut of the proceeds from the heist. It was the loud and brash Krugman’s tip about the lax security and his inside access at JFK’s Lufthansa cargo terminal. Krugman was played by actor Chuck Low in Goodfellas and the movie showed him being murdered.

Jan 17, 1979 – Burke crew associate and con man Richie Eaton is slain and left hanging on a hook in a meat locker after trying to scam Jimmy the Gent out of $250,000 of the heist proceeds Burke had trusted him with laundering in Florida. Eaton’s murder itself wasn’t shown in Goodfellas, but his discovery in the meat locker was.

Feb 10, 1979 – Tommy DeSimone’s girlfriend Theresa Ferrara, who worked with Richie Eaton in Ft. Lauderdale and suspected of both being an FBI informant and helping Eaton skim off the top of the laundered heist cash, is murdered. Her body is never found.

March 8, 1979 – Burke crew member and Jimmy the Gent’s former cellmate in prison Louis (Louie Roast Beef) Cafora and his wife Joanna disappear and are murdered for Louie Roast Beef’s careless behavior in the direct aftermath of the heist. Cafora was one of the stick up men in the job. Like you saw in Goodfellas, days following boosting the Lufthansa terminal, Louie Roast Beef (called “Johnny Roast Beef” in the film) bought a brand new pink-colored Cadillac Fleetwood and was going around town showing it off, raising eyebrows from law enforcement and drawing Burke’s ire.

March 22, 1979 – Burke associate and Florida bar owner Tommy Monteleone is killed for being suspected of being in on the plan by Richie Eaton and Theresa Ferrara to steal money given to them by Jimmy the Gent, specifically earmarked to be washed through his Player’s Lounge nightclub in Ft. Lauderdale as well as a bogus drug deal the team of grifters came up with in an unsuccessful attempt to throw Burke off the scent of their intention to rip him off.

May 16, 1979 – Burke crew members and JFK Airport “inside men” Joseph (Joe Buddha) Manri & Robert (Frenchy) McMahon are murdered side-by-side execution style in a car found in a New York parking garage. Both Manri and McMahon worked at the airport in the Air France terminal.

June 13, 1979 – Gambino crime family Lufthansa Airport lieutenant Paolo LiCastri is slain, set on fire and thrown in a trash dump in a further attempt by Burke to eliminate any links between him and the heist.

July 18, 1984 – Burke crew member Angelo Sepe & his girlfriend Joanna Lombardo are killed in Sepe’s apartment after Sepe angered Lucchese crime family administrators by his brazen robbery of mob-backed drug dealers. Sepe was one of the stick up men in the heist and had been on the frontlines of Burke’s wipeout of his co-conspirators in the Lufthansa job.

The post The ‘Goodfellas’ Murders: Jimmy the Gent’s Lufthansa Terminal Heist Hit List appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Actor and rap-music legend L.L. Cool J portrayed notorious Boston drug lord Darryl (God) Whiting in the 1999 film In Too Deep. In the movie, Whiting’s character’s name was changed to Dwayne Giddens.

On top of the Beantown narcotics game from the late 1980s into the early 1990s, the New York-born Whiting became the first person in Massachusetts history to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a drug crime in 1992. Recently-enacted legislation provided the 62-year old Whiting a chance to go in front of a federal judge in 2016 to get his sentence reviewed and possibly altered (potentially allowing him to gain his freedom after almost three decades behind bars), but his plea for mercy was rejected, largely because of a self-published book where he threatened to harm at least two specific people who had testified against him at his trial if ever released.

Fleeing trouble in his hometown of Queens, New York, “God” Whiting arrived in Boston in 1986 and quickly took control of the crack trade in the Orchard Park Housing Projects, located in the hardscrabble urban center of Roxbury, by force. Importing a crew of over 100 loyal foot soldiers from the Empire State, he fought and won wars for territory against both the Intervale Street Posse (ISP) and the so-called OPT (Orchard Park Trailblazers) and then firmly established an intricate network of distribution routes, communication codes and money washing methods that were, at least for a short time, difficult for the feds to combat. His gang was called the “New York Boys.”

At their peak, Whiting and his New York Boys gang were pumping out millions of dollars per year in cash profits and flooding Roxbury and its surrounding area with cheap rock cocaine at epic rates. In November 1987, Whiting opened up the Crown Social Hall in the heart of the Orchard Park projects. For all intents and purposes, the “Crown” became a drug emporium masquerading as a community center, and Whiting made it his headquarters. His second-in-charge was Edwin (Freedom) Carmichael and his main enforcer was Kenny (Cheyenne) Bartlett who went on to become one of the most feared hit men in Boston gangland history. They got 20-year and 30-year sentences, respectively.

Per court documents and testimony by federal agents at his sentencing hearing, Whiting ordered at least two murders in his reign in Orchard Park – a 1990 killing of a rival drug dealer and a 1988 slaying of a one-time close friend and lieutenant in his organization in what was described by the government as an “internal housecleaning measure.”

The real Darryl “God” Whiting circa 1990

The New York Boys’ Boston crack kingdom came crumbling down to the ground in December 1990 with the dropping of a titanic federal racketeering and drug indictment that ensnared the entire organization. The case was mainly made by the undercover work of a pair of DEA agents, Jeff Coy and Maurice Hawkins, and became so encompassing it had to be broken up into three separate trials. The onslaught of forthcoming convictions, tipping off at Whiting’s July 1991 trial, hinged on the testimony of Coy and Hawkins.

Coy infiltrated Whiting’s inner-circle through one of his lieutenants, Raymond (L.A. Ray) Ward, who ran a video rental store owned by Whiting and used as one of his fronts. Hawkins got in tight with Whiting gang crew leader Steve (Mad Muhammad) Wadlington. Coy began buying and selling guns with Ward and soon gained an introduction to Whiting. With the DEA watching and snapping photos, Coy purchased 2 ounces of pure Colombian cocaine from Whiting and Whiting’s bodyguard David (Divine D) Waight. Days later, a wired-for-sound Coy recorded Whiting making a deal to purchase eight automatic weapons in a meeting in Whiting’s office located in the back of a barber shop he owned.

Sadly, Coy struggled to acclimate to life after “lifting out” of his undercover persona, reportedly battling drug addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder, finally committing suicide in 1994. The week following his work on the God Whiting case concluded, he was hospitalized in a mental institution for more than a month. Prior to his death, Coy taped an emotional confessional for the DEA to show to all undercover-officer trainees and warn them of the unique side effects of the heavily stressful and extremely dangerous job of going “deep cover.”

After Coy’s suicide, the video-taped confessional made its way into the hands of a Hollywood producer and became the basis for the movie In Too Deep. Actor Omar Epps played Coy (switched to Jeff Cole in the script), with the setting changed from Boston to Cincinnati, Ohio. Jeff Cole was Coy’s alias in his undercover work.

Epps’ Cole, who went by the alias “J-Reid,” tells L.L. Cool J’s God character in the film that he was from Akron, Ohio, while in real-life Coy’s “J-Cole” told Whiting he was from nearby Providence, Rhode Island. Like shown in the film, early on in the covert op, Coy is jumped by a pair of Whiting gang thugs in an attempted robbery he was forced to shoot his way out of.

The post REAL-TO-REEL: In God We Trust – L.L. Cool J Played Boston Drug Baron ‘God’ Whiting In The 1999 Movie In Too Deep appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to exclusive Gangster Report sources, former Black Mafia Family leaders are denouncing the recent slaying of Detroit BMF member Ricky (Slick) McFarlin, saying the murder had nothing to do with BMF business. McFarlin, 36, was killed execution style, found shot to death inside a Westside Detroit home back on December 20, 2016. He had been released from federal prison in October after serving nearly 10 years behind bars on drug conspiracy charges. Rumors of a BMF resurgence in syndicate hotbeds like Detroit and Atlanta have abounded for the last few years.

“This wasn’t connected to BMF, ” one source said. “This was cowboy shit, someone trying to make a name for themselves on the street. Nobody called this in, it wasn’t an arranged job.”

Slick McFarlin went down in the epic Operation Motor City Mafia bust of the mid-2000s, a string of indictments and convictions which crippled the historic narcotics organization and locked up the entirety of the group’s command structure, including Detroiter, BMF founder and boss Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, who by that time had relocated to Atlanta and was deeply embedded in hip hop culture and the rap game as well as reveling in his status as the nation’s preeminent drug kingpin. The landmark legal assault snared close to 200 people. There were no murders charged in any of the cases though.

BMF is one of the lesser-violent high-profile drug gangs in American underworld lore. McFarlin is the first known member of BMF to be killed.

Police in Detroit found McFarlin and one-time pro football player Robert Eddins side by side lying face down in the basement of Eddins’ residence on Pierson Street each shot in the back of the head. Eddins was on the Buffalo Bills roster in 2011 after starring in college at Ball State University where he played defensive end. Sources in law enforcement say the grisly double homicide is being considered drug related.

Started in Southwest Detroit’s Delray neighborhood in 1990, BMF went on to spawn “franchises” all across the country, making hundreds of millions of dollars and going on to dominate the American wholesale cocaine market at the beginning of the New Millennium.The magnetic 48-year old Big Meech Flenory pled guilty in 2007 and was hit with a 30-year prison sentence. His scheduled release date is in December 2031 when he’ll be 61.

In addition to McFarlin’s death, BMF lost one of its most beloved female affiliates in late 2016 with the sudden passing of Renita (Mama Juice) Clay. A confidant and legitimate business partner of Big Meech’s, Clay succumbed to complications resulting from in a seizure she experienced in September. Mama Juice and Big Meech co-owned Juice Magazine, a rap music publication of the early 2000s. At its peak, BMF maintained its own music label.

BMF luminary Chauncey (C-Bear) Johnson got out of prison from the Motor City Mafia bust in the summer of 2015 and has publically vowed to take the BMF name in a different direction, away from its links to the street and illegal behavior. Johnson, 46, owns the BMF licensing trademark and is reportedly acting as Big Meech’s main advisor and representative in dealing with Hollywood’s increasing interest in developing the BMF story for both a movie and a television show. Rapper-turned-actor 50 Cent is working on a TV adaption for the Starz Network (where his hit show Power airs) and hip-hopper-turned-Oscar-nominated-actress Queen Latifah is trying to take the tale of BMF to the big screen as an executive producer.

The post Last Month’s Murder Of BMF Lieutenant ‘Slick’ McFarlin Not Tied To BMF Affairs, Sources Claim appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The rumblings of a Black Mafia Family resurgence gained steam last month with the December 20, 2016 execution-style murder of BMF lieutenant Ricky (Slick) McFarlin in Detroit. McFarlin, 36, was released from federal prison in the fall. He was convicted in the DEA’s famous Operation Motor City Mafia case of the mid-2000s which led to the toppling of practically the entire organization’s rank-and-file and sent BMF founder and Godfather Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory to prison for 30 years.

Flenory, 48, started BMF in his Southwest Detroit neighborhood in 1990 and in a matter of a decade, grew it into the biggest and most iconic American urban crime syndicate of all-time, seeing BMF flags planted all across the country in strategically-placed locales such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Memphis and Dallas. The Motor City Mafia indictment charged close to 200 BMF figures for trafficking an estimated 3,000 kilos of cocaine per month nationally and confiscated almost 300 million dollars in cash and from BMF-connected bank accounts.

“We’re aware of the continued existence of the Black Mafia Family,” said one DEA source. “Although their existence is marginal compared to where they once were, they’re functioning with a reassembled pecking order and in multiple states.”

The first rumors of a BMF “reboot” surfaced in 2009 with a fatal nightclub brawl in a Detroit suburb involving a reputed “second-generation” BMF crew. They gained traction in the summer of 2014 after first-generation BMF lieutenant Christopher (Pig) Triplett, just two years removed from his release from prison on charges stemming from Operation Motor City Mafia, was busted again for drug dealing.

The 45-year old Triplett was arrested for possession with intent to distribute over $125,000 worth of a controlled substance in Ohio. His car was pulled over driving southbound on I-75 in the early morning hours of August 18, 2014 and uncovered two pounds of heroin in the vehicle’s air filter. He was sentenced to four years in prison in May and is scheduled for a 2018 out date.

If the past has showed us anything in relation to Pig Triplett, it’s that he’s a standup guy, someone willing to do time instead of turnover on his co-conspirators in court. He was one of the first to fall in the initial 2005 BMF case. Triplett and his then-partner in crime on the street, another Detroit BMF soldier named Calvin (Playboy) Sparks were pulled over in St. Louis in April 2004 with nine bricks of cocaine concealed in the SUV they were driving in.

In conversations intercepted by court-authorized wiretaps, Big Meech’s baby brother and second-in-command, Terry (Southwest T) Flenory, stationed in L.A, was heard trying ease concerns from members of Sparks’ family that Triplett was about to turn witness and give up Playboy and the Flenorys to the government in exchange for his freedom. Southwest T, responsible for looking after BMF activity in Michigan even though he resided on the west coast, proved accurate in his assessment of the situation and Pig Triplett stood strong, refusing to fold.

The younger Flenory’s point men in Motown were step brothers Benjamin (Blank) Johnson and Eric (Slim) Bivens. Their main muscle was BMF enforcer Arnold (A.R.) Boyd. Johnson, Bivens and Boyd all flipped after being indicted in Operation Motor City Mafia. Terry Flenory himself accepted the same plea deal Big Meech did in 2007 and will do more than two dozen years behind bars for his role as a leader in the colossal drug conspiracy.

Talk of a BMF comeback began circulating in August 2009 when reputed BMF crew chief Darnell (C-Bird) Cooley and two of his bodyguards beat a fellow patron of a Southfield, Michigan jazz club to death after an altercation in the club’s VIP section. The only witness to the incident was killed, shot-gunned to death outside the barber shop he worked at less than a month later on the eve of testifying in front a grand jury investigating the fatal jazz club beating. Cooley, 41, and his bodyguards were categorized as “second generation” BMF by authorities in the wake of the case hitting the local media, copped to manslaughter charges and each did five years in prison.

For the most part, despite its gargantuan size and formidable reputation in the underworld, BMF has not been a particularly violent group. Slick McFarlin’s murder last month was the first known member of the organization to be slain. That being said, there have been rumors tying BMF brass and specifically Big Meech, to multiple homicides. While building his nationwide narcotics empire, romancing Hollywood starlets (see reported flings with actresses Meagan Good and Vivica Fox) and crafting an everlasting image as a gangland legend of legend’s, Big Meech is suspected of carrying out at least two murders in his reign

Federal informants tag Meech as the shooter in the October 1997 slaying of turncoat Dennis Walker, a Detroit drug dealer who had testified against BMF associate Tony Valentine, and Flenory was charged but never put on trial for the November 2003 double-homicide of Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy which took place outside an Atlanta nightclub.

Walker was gunned down with automatic weapon fire from a passing vehicle while he was in his own car driving onto an Atlanta expressway off-ramp after leaving a party at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel celebrating his release from a three-year prison stint earlier in the day. Close friends of hip-hop and pop culture impresario Sean (Puffy) Combs, Wolf Jones and Riz Girdy, tussled with Big Meech and his bodyguard inside Chaos nightclub and minutes later were shot dead in the parking lot. Jones often served as Combs’ bodyguard. Big Meech’s rise and fall is currently being adapted into both a movie and television show.

The McFarlin hit occurred in the basement of a Westside Detroit residence. Earlier this week, sources told Gangster Report initial word on the street is that McFarlin’s murder is unconnected to BMF activity. The Detroit Police are handling the investigation into McFarlin’s death as drug related. He was killed alongside former NFL defensive end Robert Eddins.

The post Is BMF Bouncing Back? Recent Slaying In Gang’s Hometown Of Detroit Has Street Talking Of Syndicate’s Renewed Presence appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Notorious former Windy City mob cop and famously-convicted felon William “Bill” Hanhardt, one of the most decorated and controversial Chicago policeman in the history of law enforcement in Illinois, died of heart disease last week in a suburban Highland Park hospital. Hanhardt was 88. He retired from the Chicago Police Department in 1986 having served as the longtime chief of detectives and deputy superintendent of the force and dove headfirst into a life of crime. A favorite of Hollywood film director and television producer Michael Mann, a native Chicagoan, who often hired him as an technical consultant on his projects (the 1981 James Caan movie Thief, the mid-to-late 1980s TV series Crime Story and the 1995 Robert DeNiro-Al Pacino crime-caper classic Heat), Hanhardt leaves a complex legacy behind.

In 2001, Hanhardt pled guilty to masterminding a near fifteen-year, multi-state burglary ring targeting primarily traveling jewelry salesmen which cleared tens of millions of dollars in merchandise and was backed by the Chicago mafia. He did 11 years in prison, becoming the highest-ranking CPD official to ever be convicted of a felony, and was released from an Indiana federal correctional facility in July 2011.

Joining the police force in 1953, FBI records describe Hanhardt as “belonging” to the Chicago Outfit’s Westside or Grand Avenue crew. His robbery ring paid a street tax to Grand Avenue Godfather and Westside crew chief Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, eventually promoted to the crime family’s consigliere post. Lombardo, 88, was incarcerated via the Operation Family Secrets case in January 2006, found guilty of the 1974 gangland execution of his former close friend and business partner-turned-FBI informant Danny Seifert, at a highly-publicized trial a year later.

During the Family Secrets trial in the summer of 2007, Hanhardt’s name arose in testimony, alleged by a witness to have shaken down former far-southside Outfit crew leader Angelo (Little Angie) Volpe back in the 1960s for monthly protection payments and cars from the automobile dealerships Volpe held interests in. FBI informants speculated to his possible involvement in more than one mob murder conspiracy, per sources in the government – the macabre ten-body fallout from the brazen January 1978 break-in at Outfit don Anthony (The Big Tuna) Accardo’s ritzy River Forest residence and the November 1988 slaying of Chicago oil-company executive Charles Merriam at the front door of his tony suburban estate – Merriam had reportedly gotten wise to a mob-run gas scam being conducted by the Outfit’s Northside crew.

Chicago Crime Commission documents cite clandestine meetings through the years between Hanhardt and Lombardo, as well as between Hanhardt and current Outfit powers Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, often referred to on the street as simply “The Little Guy” for his diminutive size, and Rudy (The Chin) Fratto, nicknamed for his lack there of the aforementioned facial feature. Both Vena and Fratto are suspects in mob murders. Vena beat first-degree homicide charges at trial in 1995 and is considered a “person of interest” in the Merriam hit, not to mention a bunch of others. Today, he runs the Westside and is the Outfit’s reputed street boss. Fratto is back in good standing in Elmwood Park, per sources, and is one of the Chicago mob lieutenants running that area.

The heist team Hanhardt pled guilty to leading throughout most of the 1980s, all of the 1990s and into the first several months of the New Millennium under the auspice of Joey Lombardo. Joey the Clown’s driver James (Jimmy Legs) D’Antonio, an accomplished thief and wheelman, had handed Hanhardt the reins to his Grand Ave. robbery crew in 1984 – two years prior to Hanhardt hanging up his badge and service revolver – due to D’Antonio being forced into a more day-to-day leadership role on the Westside with Lombardo getting locked up on federal racketeering and bribery charges. Hanhardt’s newly-acquired band of burglars included Grand Ave. crew mob affiliates Paul (Paulie the Indian) Schiro, Joseph (Skinny Joe) Basinski, William (Cherry Nose Billy) Brown, Gaetano (Guy) Altobello, Salvatore (Little Sammy) DeStefano and Robert (Bobby Pigeons) Paul.

Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo after an arrest in 1980

Schiro was one of the Outfit’s representatives on the west coast and spent most of the year in Phoenix. He was convicted alongside Joey the Clown in the Family Secrets trial. Basinski was Hanhardt’s “man on the ground,” and Brown served as his top messenger. DeStefano was the nephew of slain Chicago mob wildman “Mad Sam” DeStefano.

The crew pulled its first job in October 1984 in Glendale, Wisconsin, where over $300,000 of high-end watches were stolen from a Mercedes-Benz in a parking lot hotel. They snatched a half-million dollars worth of solid-gold Rolex wrist wear in Monterey, California in the fall of 1986.

And it wasn’t just watches they liked – the crew boosted hotel safes. In 1992, they scored $1.5 million in cash from a safety deposit box located in the master safe at the Columbus, Ohio Hyatt Regency. In 1995, they grabbed almost a million-dollars worth of uncut diamonds out of a jewelry company rep’s Milwaukee hotel room safe. Jobs were orchestrated in Michigan, Arizona, Minnesota and Texas too.

By the end of the decade, the government was hot on their tail. FBI agents snapped photos of Hanhardt and his crew of bandits as they ripped off $60,000 worth of watches, necklaces and bracelets from an independent jewelry salesman’s car trunk in a Northwest Indiana restaurant parking lot in 1998. The final nail in Hanhardt’s coffin came after “Jimmy Legs” D’Antonio’s nephew came forward the following year and turned over to authorities 27 box loads of his uncle’s files on the Hanhardt crew. D’Antonio died in a car accident in 1993. The Hanhardt crew was finally indicted and dismantled in October 2000.

The post Chicago ‘Mafia Cop’ Bill Hanhardt Succumbs To Age, Health Issues, Leaves Legacy With Questions Attached appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Dreaded Chicago mob associate and reputed Outfit robbery crew leader Charles (Chuckie the Electrician) Russell was with his driver and suspected partner-in-crime David Perez when he was arrested by the ATF in front of a delicatessen in the South Loop last month on weapons charges. Perez wasn’t detained when agents swept in to handcuff his boss at the downtown deli.

The 67-year old Russell, brother-in-law to alleged Outfit Grand Avenue capo and street boss Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, was bound over for trial in federal court last week after being recorded trying to buy Uzis and AK-47s from an undercover ATF agent in December. He’s being held without bail and per sources, almost certainly has a subsequent larger, more serious racketeering indictment coming his way in the near future.

Vena and his entire Westside regime has been under assault by the government in recent years, the reported focus of a high-priority, multi-agency investigation. Russell is the fourth prominent member of Vena’s inner-circle to be arrested on felony charges in less than four years.

Russell and Perez met in prison – the “Electrician” was serving nearly 20 years for a vicious sexual assault, while Perez was there doing a 30-year bid for a murder he committed as a teenager. Perez, 54, got out first, in 2008 and Russell followed in 2011. They were both acquitted at trial of breaking and entering charges two years ago in state court.

According to sources on the street and in Illinois law enforcement, the pair heads a gang of burglars known as the Bishop Boys. Chicago Police are eying the gang for a string of break-ins in the Jefferson Park neighborhood back in the summer and fall as well as many others.

With the tape rolling, Russell boasted to the undercover ATF agent of murdering an African-American drug dealer in a drive-by shooting in the fall, that his burglary ring had pulled hundreds of jobs around the city and his intent of possibly using a blow torch to torture an elderly attorney in the suburbs into opening up his home safe which Russell heard had $750,000 stashed in it. Chicago Crime Commission files paint Russell as a longtime top enforcer for the Outfit’s Grand Ave. crew located on the far Westside of the Windy City, groomed in the job by legendary Midwest mob goon Francis (Frank the German) Schweihs.

The Grand Ave. mafia contingent in Chicago has always been known as a hotbed for burglars, thieves and thugs like Russell Perez and the German, who died in 2008. Chuckie the Electrician’s brother-in-law Albie Vena, a man some call the most feared figure in the whole Outfit, took over the Grand Ave. crew on an official basis in around 2009, but had been acting crew chief since 2006. Upon Grand Ave.’s liaison to the local narcotics and street-gang world Robert (Bobby Pinocchio) Panozzo being jailed two and a half years ago, for what else? – leading an armed robbery and home invasion ring targeting gang-affiliated drug dealers – the 68-year old Vena allegedly tapped Russell to take his place, per sources with knowledge of the ATF probe. Panozzo, 57, is currently awaiting trial.

The Bishop Boys began as a Hispanic street gang. Another gang Russell and Perez oversee, according to these sources, is the C-Notes, a de-facto farm club for the Outfit dating back decades and a group of young hoodlums Vena himself was said to once belong to.

Perez’s homicide conviction arose from gang activity during his youth. He killed rival gang banger Wilfredo Dones on the night of August 5, 1978 near the intersection of Kenmore and Belmont, shooting both him and his girlfriend Bernice Pagan at close range. Dones, 17, died on the spot. The 16-year old Pagan survived.

The post Windy City Wiseguys And Fellow ‘Bishop Boys’ Big Shots Russell & Perez Were Together When Russell Was Brought Into Custody In ’16 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Reputed high-ranking Philadelphia mobster Phil Narducci is opening up a restaurant this year named after his dad, a once-powerful Goodfella in the City of Brotherly Love killed gangland-style back in 1982. According to an article posted this week on Philly.com, “Chick’s” will be putting out its shingle in 2017 in a sprawling, state-of-the-art designed space located at 1807 Washington Avenue in the heart of South Philly. Narducci himself touted the article, featuring a photo of the sharp-looking new eatery, on his social media accounts Thursday.

Narducci’s father, former Philadelphia mafia captain Frank (Chickie) Narducci, was slain on the evening of January 7, 1982 returning home from his federal racketeering trial, shot to death in cold blood as he exited his car by mob prince Salvatore Testa for taking part in the assassination of Testa’s don dad, Philip (The Chicken Man) Testa, less than a year earlier. “Chicken Man” Testa was blown to bits via a porch bomb planted under the front steps of his home in March 1981, a brutal murder eloquently immortalized in music lore by being referenced in the opening line of the song Atlantic City penned and performed by rock-and-roll legend Bruce Springstein (ironically nicknamed “The Boss” by his legions of fans). The young Testa was killed in a similar manner himself in 1984.

The dapper, 54-year old Narducci allegedly heads one of the numerous factions that make up the modern-day Bruno-Scarfo crime family. He did 25 years in prison on murder and racketeering charges, eventually having his conviction in the Frank (Frankie Flowers) D’Alfonso homicide tossed. D’Alfonso, a longtime bookie in South Philly, had been feuding with Philly’s then-maniacal Godfather Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo over street tax. Per FBI informants, Narducci was rewarded for his role as a shooter in the Frankie Flowers hit, as well as his involvement in the prior murder of wiseguy Sammy Tamburrino and the shooting of the father of a testifying witness by receiving induction into the mafia in a 1986 ceremony.

After his release in 2012, Narducci has kept a low profile, while reportedly successfully securing territory in the area’s crowded mob landscape and recruiting a loyal base of supporters, mostly younger, independent hoodlums impressed by his credentials. His older brother, Frank (Frankie Windows) Narducci, Jr. is also a made man in the Bruno-Scarfo clan. “Windows” Narducci was alleged to be the getaway driver in the Frankie Flowers hit.

Following their father’s murder, the Narduccis were summoned to a meeting with Little Nicky Scarfo, Philip Testa’s best friend, consigliere and successor as boss, and told their dad’s misdeeds would not be held against them. Scarfo, 88, is doing life behind bars.

The post Philly Mafia Figure Plants Flag In Local Restaurant Scene, Shares Press Clipping With Social Media Followers appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Gregarious and imposing Chicago mob associate Herbert (Fat Herbie) Blitzstein was killed 20 years ago this week in his Las Vegas home in a poorly-executed attempted takeover of his set of independent rackets hatched in tandem by the Los Angles and Buffalo mafia crime families. The loud-dressing, behemoth-sized Blitzstein, 62, was shot to death on January 6, 1997, more than a decade removed from his gangster heyday in the desert as the bodyguard and driver for Tony (The Ant) Spilotro, the Chicago Outfit’s man on the Strip, and an integral member of his infamous Hole in The Wall Gang.

Spilotro and Blitzstein were running buddies as up-and-coming hoods in the Windy City underworld of the 1950s and 60s. FBI surveillance logs of the day tag them as frequent visitors to the Tradewinds Bar in “The Patch” owned by future Outfit boss Felix (Milwaukee Phil) Alderesio, a mentor of Spilotro’s. Both Spilotro and Blitzstein were prime suspects in the 1967 slaying of Chicago racketeer Arthur (Boodie) Cowan and following Cowan’s murder and the jailing of Cowan’s partner, Jewish Outfit associate Henry Kushner, shortly thereafter, assumed control of the duo’s loansharking and sports gambling business.

The Ant and his sidekick Fat Herbie arrived in Las Vegas in the early 1970s. Blitzstein owned the Spilotro crew headquarters, a jewelry store called the Gold Rush on West Sahara Avenue, which acted as an enormous fencing waystation for stolen goods emanating from all across the west coast. Spilotro, diminutive, yet ferocious, was a person of interest for law enforcement in Nevada and Illinois in literally dozens of gangland slayings through the years. The hot-tempered Tony the Ant was beaten and strangled to death in a suburban Chicago basement June 1986 for getting drunk on power in Las Vegas.

The following year, Blitzstein was convicted of credit-card fraud, receiving stolen property and tax evasion. He did five years in federal prison and was released in the summer of 1992. Returning to Nevada, he went back to his old ways. Using his Any Auto Repair Shop on Fremont Avenue as his base of operations, a noticeably slimmed-down Fat Herbie began bookmaking, loansharking and running a female-escort service and insurance scams without paying protection to any of the mob factions represented in the area.

In the fall of 1996, the mafia families in L.A. and Buffalo joined forces for a hostile takeover of Blitzstein’s rackets. L.A. mob underboss Carmen (Flipper) Milano was stationed in Las Vegas at that time, running a crew out of the Sea Breeze Social Club. The Buffalo mob’s interests in Sin City during the late 1990s were looked after by Magaddino clan captain Robert (Bobby Snowball) Panaro. Buffalo-born L.A. mob soldier Stephen (Stevie the Whale) Cino acted as liaison between the pair of crime syndicates.

According to court files and FBI records, “Flipper” Milano farmed out the task of the Blitzstein job to L.A. mob associate Peter (Cookie) Caruso, another New York transplant to the “left coast,” who hired a hit team for $10,000. Whether Milano knew of Caruso’s plan to murder Blitzstein for his rackets remains up for debate. Recruiting the co-owner of Fat Herbie’s auto shop, Joe DeLuca, who knew the pass codes for Blitzstein’s home-security system, the conspirators, a hodgepodge of California and Buffalo wiseguys numbering a half-dozen, met on several occasions at restaurants and coffee shops around Las Vegas over the next few months to discuss their plans to assume control of Blitzstein’s vast portfolio of rackets for themselves.

Blitzstein returned from a vacation to Mexico on January 3, 1997. He’d be dead three days later.

On the afternoon of January 6, with Fat Herbie away at work, using the access codes provided by DeLuca, “Cookie” Caruso and another L.A. mob associate Anthony Delulio broke into Blitzstein’s house, robbed it of all its valuables – including, dozens of uncut diamonds, a box full of Rolex and Cartier watches, bricks of gold bullion and more than, $100,000 in cash – and departed leaving the side door open for the two assassins he had hired, Antonio Davi and Richie Friedman.

When Blitzstein arrived home at around 6:00 pm, he was shot dead by Davi and Friedman, left sitting lifeless in his white-leather recliner with two bullet wounds to the back of the head and one to the face. Before Friedman pumped a kill shot into his victim’s head, Fat Herbie sheepishly asked “Why me?”

He never got an answer.

The Fat Herbie hit was doomed from the start for the perpetrators. Flipper Milano’s crew already had two undercover FBI agents installed in it and Milano’s driver and bodyguard, Johnny Branco, was a confidential federal informant wearing a wire. Branco had been promised by Milano induction into the L.A. mafia at the crime family’s next making ceremony.

What had begun as Operation Thin Crust, a racketeering probe into L.A.’s Las Vegas branch, morphed into Operation Button Down, a murder and racketeering investigation aimed at solving the Blitzstein homicide. There were mixed results.

Joe DeLuca was the first to flip. In July 1997, he pled guilty to murder conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The rest of the brood was indicted in 1998. Milano agreed to cooperate initially and then backed out of his deal. He ended up doing just under five years behind bars after pleading guilty to racketeering counts and died of natural causes in 2006 at 76.

Cookie Caruso died of a heart attack at 59 years old in January 1999, having pled not guilty and awaiting trial. Caruso’s captain in the L.A. Family, Louis (Little Louie C) Caruso – no relation – and Delulio pled guilty to the burglary of Blitzstein’s residence, Friedman copped to being paid to kill Fat Herbie and Buffalo mobster Al Mauriello pled guilty to being the middle man in the murder conspiracy, delivering the 10k and instructions from Cookie Caruso to Davi and Friedman. Bobby Panaro and Stevie Cino were acquitted of murder at an April 1999 trial, but found guilty of racketeering in their attempt to extort Fat Herbie.

“Herbie was one-of-a-kind, intimidating and go-lucky at the same time,” remembers retired FBI agent Herm Groman, one of the undercover agents inside the Milano camp in the 1990s. “He assumed that his reputation and standing in the Spilotro days still meant something after he got out of prison. It got him up and running out of jail, but couldn’t sustain him. The second he was murdered it was all hands on deck from the Bureau’s perspective. Our entire focus shifted to solving the Blitzstein homicide,”

Blitzstein received the Hollywood treatment in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 mob-film epic Casino, detailing Tony Spilotro’s increasingly-unstable reign as Don of the Desert in the glitzy Vegas era of the 1970s and early 80s. Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci played Spilotro. The Fat Herbie character in the movie was a composite of Blitzstein and fellow Spilotro crew member Frank (Frankie Blue) Bluestein, who as shown on screen, was shot dead in his driveway after policemen mistook his submarine sandwich for a weapon.

The post The Weight Met His Fate Two Decades Ago, Outfit’s ‘Fat Herbie’ Felled In Failed Takeover Bid By L.A. & Buffalo Mobs appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The devil called a favorite son of his home over the weekend. After spending the last 30 years behind bars for murder and racketeering, former Philadelphia mafia boss Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, one of the most bloodthirsty and maniacal American organized crime figures of all-time, died of natural causes in a North Carolina federal prison hospital late Friday evening. He was less than two months shy of his 88^th birthday.

The small, but explosive Little Nicky reigned from 1981 through the end of the decade and was responsible for an estimated two dozen gangland slayings. He was incarcerated in 1987. Even from within prison walls, Scarfo tried to pull strings on the street, first in the immediate aftermath of his January 1987 arrest, using his uncle Anthony (Tony Buck) Piccolo as his acting boss and then in the late 2000s through his son and longtime proxy, Nicky Scarfo, Jr., a made-man in New York’s Lucchese crime family who was eventually imprisoned for defrauding a bank of money his father had reportedly intended on buying his way back into power in South Philly with. The younger Scarfo is currently serving a 30-year prison term.

Scarfo’s rise to the top of the east coast underworld was equal parts due to good fortune, relentless ambition and sly politicking with administrators in New York’s so-called Five Families. Following stabbing a longshoreman to death in a dispute over a seat at a local South Philly diner in 1963, Little Nicky was for all intents and purposes booted out of Pennsylvania by sitting Godfather Angelo Bruno and stashed in then-dying resort town Atlantic City, New Jersey to look after Philadelphia mob affairs on the Boardwalk. As Atlantic City returned to prominence in the 1970s with the legalization of gambling and the forthcoming casino boom, Scarfo saw his star on the rise.

When Bruno is killed in a failed palace coup and Scarfo confidant Phil (The Chicken Man) Testa becomes boss in the spring of 1980, Little Nicky is promoted to Testa’s consigliere. Following Testa’s murder almost exactly a year later – in another unsuccessful internal coup effort –, Scarfo, supported by loyalists in New York, ascended to the throne and embarked on a treacherous tenure at the helm of the Philly mafia, fast to order the murder of friend and foe alike. A once stable, low-profile organization under Bruno, morphed into a violence-fueled gang of misfits careening out of control from almost the moment Little Nicky assumed command.

“His motto was ‘you kill and you keep killing,’ that’s how he viewed leadership in the mob,” one former associate said. “He’d threaten to bring hit men in from New York and wipeout the whole Family, just start over from scratch and not even bat an eye while saying it…….He wanted things done cowboy style, out in the open for everyone to see. The more bodies that littered the streets the better. In his twisted mind, it enhanced his brand.”

Scarfo’s kingdom crumbled upon the defection of several key lieutenants to the government and into the witness protection program, beginning with captains Thomas (Tommy Del) DelGiorno and Nicholas (Nicky Crow) Caramandi in 1986 and followed by his nephew, surrogate son, protégé and underboss Philip (Crazy Phil) Leonetti later in the decade. The handsome, baby-faced and business-savvy Leonetti, only 35 years old when he entered the “program,” wrote a book in 2012 entitled Mafia Prince (purchase a copy here.) Caramandi contributed to NY Times Best-Selling author George Anastasia’s classic Blood and Honor, published in 1991.

The post ‘Little Nicky’ Scarfo Dead At 87, Fmr. Philadelphia Mob King Remembered For His Sheer Ruthlessness appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The notoriously-lethal Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, boss of the Philadelphia mafia in the 1980s, died of natural causes this past weekend, departing this earth with a legacy of unbridled bloodlust. In less than a five year span at the height of his reign, Scarfo ordered well over a dozen murders, sending the Philly Italian crime family into a downward spiral some claim it’s yet to recover from.

Little Nicky clipped his enemies and his friends, eliminating anyone he felt, whether imagined or not, didn’t fit his twisted mold of loyalty. A portion of the body count during the Scarfo Era can be attributed to the Riccobene War, an internal feud between Little Nicky and veteran crime family faction leader Harry (The Hunchback) Riccobene, which took place throughout 1983. Riccobene survived a point-blank assassination attempt before being imprisoned on racketeering charges. Scarfo was arrested in 1987 and never saw the light of day again.

The Scarfo Era Hit List

May 26, 1981 –Philly Greek mob elder statesman Harry Peetros is found in the trunk of his Cadillac, shot multiple times in the back of the head in a hostile takeover of the underworld business interests belonging to the area’s Greek crime syndicate.

May 27, 1981 – Philly Greek mob chief Chelsais (Stevie the Greek) Bouras and his girlfriend Jannette Curro are gunned down while eating dinner at the Meletis Greek Restaurant in South Philly as part of the aforementioned hostile takeover. Scarfo lieutenant Raymond (Long John) Martarano was present at Bouras’ ‘Last Supper” and per FBI informants, is believed to have coordinated the hit with his son George (Cowboy) Martarano and his bodyguard Frank (The Suit) Vadino.

October 6, 1981 – Local loanshark and drug dealer John Calabrese is killed leaving popular South Philly restaurant Cous’ Little Italy, shot to death by Scarfo hit men Thomas (Tommy Del) DelGiorno and Francis (Faffy) Iannarella for refusing to cough up street tax on his rackets.

January 7, 1982 – Philly mafia captain Frank (Chickie) Narducci is gunned down as he exists his car in front of his house, punishment for taking part in the assassination of Scarfo’s predecessor and friend Phil (The Chicken Man) Testa in the spring of 1981. Testa’s son Salvatore (Salvie) Testa pulled the trigger.

February 22, 1982 – Philly mafia soldier and longtime Little Nicky rival, Dominick (Mickey Diamond) DeVito is found in the trunk of his car, hogtied and shot three times in the back of the head.

March 15, 1982 – Young Philly wiseguy and pizza parlor owner, Rocco Marinucci, the driver for Phil Testa’s underboss Pete Casella and the man that placed and activated the nail bomb that killed the Chicken Man, is shot to death in a South Philly parking lot by Salvie Testa, who leaves his victim’s mouth stuffed with firecrackers as a message.

January 27, 1983 – Local mob associate and narcotics trafficker Robert Hornickle is killed by the Scarfo syndciate’s Ciancaglini crew – headed by Joseph (Chickie) Ciancaglini – in a beef over a botched drug deal.

April 29, 1983 – Philly mafia soldier Pasquale (Pat the Cat) Spirito is killed behind the wheel of his car, shot in the back of the head by Scarfo hit man Charles (Charlie White) Iannece for dragging his feet on murder contracts he had been assigned to carry out.

November 3, 1983 – Harry Riccobene loyalist Sammy Tamburrino is shot to death while inside his South Philly convenience store by Scarfo hit men Phil Narducci and Nicholas (Nicky Whip) Milano in front of Tamburrino’s screaming mother.

December 6, 1983 – Harry Riccobene’s half-brother and top lieutenant Bobby Riccobene is shotgunned to death in front of his house by Scarfo hit man Faffy Iannarella and like the Tamburrino hit a month earlier, in front of his mom, who Iannarella knocked unconscious with a blow to the face by the butt of his shotgun.

December 14, 1983 – Harry Riccobene’s nephew Enrico Riccobene, the son of Harry the Hunchback’s other brother and main lieutenant Mario (Sonny) Riccobene, commits suicide by shooting himself in the head in his jewelry store walk-in safe when he hears Scarfo hit men were mulling around in the vicinity.

September 14, 1984 – Philly mafia captain and Scarfo’s de-fact sergeant-at-arms, Salvatore (Salvie) Testa, the mob prince son of slain Godfather “Chicken Man” Testa, is killed on Scarfo’s orders because Little Nicky’s growing jealousy of the younger Testa’s popularity. Testa is set-up by his own crew and shot to death by Scarfo hit man Salvatore (John Wayne) Grande inside a South Philly candy store.

February 8, 1985 – South Philly numbers lottery king Frank (J.R.) Forlini is killed in an effort by Scarfo to gain control of his policy business. Forlini’s body is found shot to death behind the wheel of his truck in the parking lot of a Delaware County K-Mart store.

July 23, 1985 – Seasoned South Philly racketeer and Scarfo rival, Frank (Frankie Flowers) D’Alfonso, is gunned down by Scarfo hit men, Phil Narducci and Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi. Narducci and Ligambi were convicted of the murder that earned them their mob buttons, but the convictions were eventually tossed off the books.

*The list of Scarfo Era hits doesn’t include the many murders Little Nicky participated in carrying out or helping plan in the years prior to him becoming boss of the Philadelphia mafia such as the 1963 stabbing of a longshoreman in a fight at a local diner, the 1978 slaying of municipal court judge Edwin Helfant or the 1979 killing of mob associate Vince Falcone, where after the deed was done Scarfo proclaimed that he wished he could bring Falcone back to life so he could kill him again.

The post The Evil Dead: Murder Timeline For The Philadelphia Mob’s Scarfo Era (1981-1987) appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Current Philadelphia mob boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino began angling to take control of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family around the same time recently-deceased don Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo found himself locked up and convicted of racketeering and murder in the late 1980s. Scarfo died of natural causes late last week at 88. Merlino would take the Family by force in the mid-1990s with the help of Ralph Natale, a former labor-union lieutenant of the ‘Docile Don’ Angelo Bruno’s who used his connections in New York’s Five Families to maneuver him and Merlino into the driver’s seat at the forefront of Philly’s Italian mafia.

The spirited, sixty-something Natale was the young handsome, thirtysomething Merlino’s front boss until going to prison in 1998 and eventually entering the Federal Witness Protection Program. The war Merlino and Natale fought against Scarfo’s immediate successor John Stanfa, a Sicilian-born Godfather who was part of the conspiracy to assassinate syndicate patriarch Bruno in March 1980, accounted for almost have the gangland slayings on the today 54-year old Skinny Joey’s proverbial watch as a mob administrator.

The Skinny Joey Era hit list

May 24, 1990 – Philly mobster Louis (Louie Irish) DeLuca is shot to death getting into his car outside his after-hours club. DeLuca reportedly refused to get on board with Merlino’s plan to take over the city and was allegedly murdered by Merlino lieutenants Michael (Mikey Chang) Ciancaglini and Salvatore (Tommy Horsehead) Scafidi as Merlino served time in prison for an armored car heist.

January 29, 1992 – Philly mob soldier and John Stanfa loyalist Felix (Little Felix) Bocchino is shot death getting out of his car outside his home. Bocchino was reportedly in line to be named Stanfa’s underboss and had been acting as his top emissary in the early portion of his reign. “Little Felix,” like Stanfa, was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Angelo Bruno in 1980. According to FBI informants, Mikey Ciancaglini and reputed current underboss Steven (Handsome Stevie) Mazzone carried out the Bocchino hit, with Mazzone, Louie Irish DeLuca’s former driver, acting as the triggerman as a means of “making his bones.”

May 20, 1992 –Philly mob associate James (Jimmy Brooms) DiAddorio is shot to death inside a phone booth at his health club after refusing to pay a street tax on his bookmaking and drug operations and openly bad-mouthing Merlino and his inner circle. The FBI considers Tommy Horsehead Scafidi and Merlino’s former acting underboss Marty Angelina suspects in the murder.

November 29, 1992 – Philly mob associate and Stanfa loyalist Francesco DiGiacomo is killed, shot to death behind the wheel of his car in New Jersey.

January 7, 1993 – Philly mob associate and Stanfa loyalist Rod Colombo is killed, shot to death behind the wheel of his car in New Jersey.

January 28, 1993 – Philly mobster and federal informant Mario (Sonny) Riccobene, older half brother of incarcerated Bruno-Scarfo crime family crew leader Harry (The Hunchback) Riccobene, is shot to death behind the wheel of his car idling in the parking lot of Brooklawn Diner after leaving the witness protection program and attempting a return to the South Philly underworld.

August 5, 1993 – Philly mob soldier and Skinny Joey’s best friend and co faction leader Michael (Mikey Chang) Ciancaglini is gunned down while leaving a clubhouse mob hangout with Merlino.

September 17, 1993 – Philly mobster and Skinny Joey loyalist Frank (Frankie Bronze) Baldino is shot to death exiting the Melrose Diner.

May 8, 1994 – New Jersey wiseguy William (Crazy Willie) Ganz, the highly-feared driver and bodyguard for Bruno-Scarfo crime family North Jersey captain Joseph (Joe the Nodder) Sodano, is killed for his rogue behavior.

December 6, 1994 – Philly mob associate Michael (Mikey Ice) Brennan is shot to death, wrapped in a floor carpet and dumped in the woods after an alleged falling out with the Merlino camp.

February 24, 1995 – Philly mob associate and drug dealer Ralphie Mazzuca is shot to death and then set on fire following his robbing of fellow mob associate Roger Vella’s parents’ house. Vella often acted as Skinny Joey’s driver and has since joined the witness protection program.

April 4, 1996 – Philly mobster and notorious ladies man Michael (Dutchie) Avicoli is killed for allegedly having an affair with the wife of Stevie Mazzone. Avicoli’s remains have never been found but FBI informants say Mazzone, Merlino and others killed him and disposed of his body on farm property in New Jersey.

October 4, 1996 – Philly mob associate Billy Veasey, the brother of mafia turncoat John (John-John) Veasey, is shot to death the morning “John John” is scheduled to testify at Stanfa’s trial. In a twisted tale of coldblooded mafia vengeance, FBI informants say reputed current Philly mob capo John (Johnny Chang) Ciancaglini was the triggerman in the Billy Veasey hit in an eerie “brother-for-a-brother” exchange – John John Veasey was the man who killed Johnny Chang’s baby brother Mikey Chang three years earlier.

1997 – North Jersey crew associates and drug dealers Billy Shear & Bobby Matonis are killed by North Jersey crew hit man Philip (Philly Fay) Casale.

December 7, 1996 – Philly mob captain and North Jersey crew chief, Joseph (Joe the Nodder) Sodano, is shot to death behind the wheel of his car in the parking lot of a local retirement home. Sodano was killed by Philly Fay Casale and Peter (Pete the Crumb) Caprio, Sodano’s second-in-charge and replacement as capo of the North Jersey crew.

March 18, 1998 – Independent South Philly racketeer Anthony Turra is killed for his sanctioning of an assassination of Skinny Joey Merlino after Merlino feuded with Turra’s son and protégé Rocco. The elder Turra was shot death outside of his home en route to his racketeering trial in federal court.

April 10, 1999 – South Philly drug dealer Gino Marconi is gunned down leaving his apartment by a high-powered rifle after allegedly refusing to pay street tax. Merlino’s now-defunct Boston crew were suspects in the slaying.

October 26, 1999 – One-time Bruno-Scarfo crime family consigliere Ronnie Turchi is found in the trunk of his wife’s car, hogtied and shot in the back of the head. Turchi had been close to Ralph Natale, who had just become a witness for the government weeks earlier.

January 17, 2002 – Old-school Philly mafia soldier Raymond (Long John) Martarano is shot to death as he drove to an early-morning doctor’s appointment, less than a year after his release from a lengthy term behind bars. He would languish on life support for two weeks before finally succumbing to his injuries.

November 22, 2003 –Philly mobster and notorious renegade John (Johnny Gongs) Cassasanto is shot to death inside his house after a series of infractions starting with his allegiance to John Stanfa during the war a decade prior and ending with his rumored romantic affair with Joey Merlino’s wife while “The Skinny One” served a 12-year prison sentence. Cassasanto was considered a suspect in the Long John Martarano hit.

June 10, 2010 – Independent South Philly loan shark and bookie Rocco Maniscalco is killed after allegedly rebuking mob shakedown efforts.

December 12, 2012 – Philly mob associate and alleged informant Gino DiPietro is gunned down getting into his truck outside his condo. Merlino’s protégé and former bodyguard Anthony Nicodemo pled guilty to conspiracy in the hit and is doing 25 years in prison – authorities believe he drove the getaway car, which was seen fleeing from the scene and where the murder weapon was uncovered within minutes. Alleged up-and-coming Philly button man Dominic (Baby Dom) Grande, 37, has been identified as a suspect in the case as well. DiPietro reportedly got into a heated argument with Nicodemo that fall over an unpaid debt from a backdoor poker game Nicodemo ran. Nicodemo, 46, is a suspect in the Johnny Gongs Cassasanto slaying.

The post Post-Scarfo Chaos In South Philly Mob: The ‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino Era Murder Timeline appeared first on The Gangster Report.

One-time New England mob consigliere Rocco (Shaky) Argenti helped former Patriarca crime family underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca plan the 1992 murder of Irish enforcer and hit man Kevin Hanrahan, according to court documents filed this week in connection with DeLuca’s plea to conspiracy charges related to the Hanrahan homicide. Shaky Argenti died of cancer in 2002 at 51. Those who knew Argenti describe him as equally liked and feared, traditionally a rare combination in gangland circles.

“He could have been boss, he was on a fast track up the chain of command before he got sick,” said one former FBI agent familiar with Argenti’s career in the mafia.

Pulled out of the Federal Witness Protection Program last summer, DeLuca, 71, pled no contest to conspiracy in the Hanrahan slaying Wednesday. He’s also copped to his role in the conspiracy to murder mob business front and suspected FBI informant Stevie DiSarro in May 1993, admitting to burying DiSarro’s body.

Hanrahan was shot to death in Providence, Rhode Island’s Federal Hill neighborhood leaving a dinner with several mob associates at the since-closed Arch restaurant and steakhouse on the evening of September 18, 1992. He had allegedly angered the Italian mob powers he worked for by attempting to shakedown a bookmaker who “belonged” to New England mafia captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent in the weeks before his murder. St. Laurent died of natural causes late last year at 75, shortly after his release from a decade-long term behind bars.

Per DeLuca’s debriefing with federal authorities in July, he and Shaky Argenti were tasked with organizing and coordinating the Hanrahan homicide, however, weren’t the triggermen in the hit. Hanrahan was gunned down by a pair of masked assailants on his way to collect proceeds from what he thought was a “big score,” but in actuality was just a ruse to get him out in the open so he could be killed. He was invited to the dinner at the Arch by DeLuca’s right-hand man Ronnie Coppola, who was hosting the dinner and who would be killed himself less than two years later.

Coppola was observed meeting with Bobby DeLuca and fellow Patriarca clan Providence heavy Edward (Little Eddie) Lato at nearby Jimmy Burchfield’s Classic Restaurant and Bar an hour after Hanrahan was banged out down the street. Deluca served as then-New England Godfather Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme’s second-in-command until the pair were indicted and jailed together in a 1995 racketeering case.

Salemme, 83, was based out of Boston. He was yanked out of the witness protection program this past summer too and has been charged with murdering DiSarro, his business partner in a South Boston nightclub, go-go bar and music venue called The Channel. Two FBI informants say Salemme was contacted by phone and told of Hanrahan’s unsanctioned extortion effort in the days prior to Hanrahan’s slaying.

Like DeLuca, Lato and Argenti, the 39-year old Hanrahan centered his criminal affairs in Rhode Island. Little Eddie Lato and Shaky Argenti rose through the ranks of the Patriarca family under infamous Providence enforcer Rudolph (Captain Rudy) Sciarra, per state police records. Sciarra died of natural causes in 2012. Today, Lato is a reputed capo and in prison for racketeering.

According to FBI surveillance logs from the 1980s and 1990s, Argenti was known to frequent Dean Auto Repairs and Monticello’s men’s clothier, both popular mob hangouts in the Providence area. Convicted of extortion tied to his shaking down of a precious metals business, Argenti did two years of prison in the late 1980s and emerged on the street to start the new decade as a sleeper in the New England mafia’s Rhode Island wing.

Through his mentor Rudy Sciarra, Argenti became closely aligned with highly-respected Providence mobster Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio. Baby Shacks took over as boss in the mid-1990s and tapped Argenti as his consigliere in 1998 even though Argenti was only in his forties at the time. In 2000, Argenti and Manocchio mediated a feud in Boston between currently-incarcerated former acting boss, Anthony (Spucky) Spagnolo and then-soldiers Frederick (Freddy the Neighbor) Simone and Vincent (Dee Dee) Gioacchini, per federal court files. Simone and Gioacchini had been trying to extort a bookmaker already paying protection to Spagnolo, who was their captain at that time and was threatening to kill them and their families.

The post Deceased Providence Mafia Power ‘Shaky’ Argenti & Turncoat Bobby DeLuca Handled Details Of Notorious Hanrahan Hit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Retired Detroit mob associate Alan (Gunner) Lindbloom was recently released from a 13-year state prison term, has put his criminal ways behind him and is embarking on a writing career. Lindbloom is related to the infamous Tocco family through his mother and will put out his first piece of fiction with the March release of his first book entitled To Be A King (pre-order a copy now). Below is a blog entry he wrote for Nationalcrimesyndicate.com (you can see the site here).

Before I begin, I first must preface this by stating for the record that I am no longer the person I once was. I have no involvement in any criminal activities. Nor do I associate with anyone who is involved in criminal activity. Today I’m a humble Christian who lives a simple life with my wife, far out in the country, five hours north of Detroit.

For obvious reasons, I will be changing names to protect identities.

As a young child, I have several distinct memories of things that were… well, not normal. For example, I remember my uncles talking with my grandfather about how the FBI were outside surveillancing my grandparents’ home, the home I grew up in. But at the time I had no idea why the FBI would be watching my grandparents’ home. I was just too young to understand.

My first real memory of illicit activity was when I was around 14. My uncle Pete, who was only 12 years my senior and would later be more like an older brother than my uncle, arranged a “sinecure job” for me at a local restaurant.  For those who don’t know what a sinecure job is, it’s a “no-show” job where you are employed on paper but don’t actually do any work.

Apparently, the guy who managed the place, a fat old gambling degenerate named Harry, was deep into my uncle’s loan-sharking books, to the tune of $20k, which was a lot of money back in 1987. So the guy came up with an idea—skim from the restaurant he worked at as a way to payoff my uncle.

The place was a real high-end, with a 4-star menu. Best prime rib in town. I’d later learn that the guy only got a job working there because he was friends with its owner, a bigtime coke dealer who brought huge shipments of coke up from Miami (this is late 1980s, mind you) to Detroit for other members of the Family. But that’s a story for another day. I’d later become well acquainted with him and his partner.

So my title at the restaurant was “baker,” which was funny since I was only 14 and didn’t know a damn thing about cooking, let alone baking. I never did an ounce of work there. Nothing. All I did was walk in once a week and collect my paycheck, which was usually around $500. I’d then bring it to my uncle, who would give me a $50 and send me on my way.

This arrangement went on for about a year, and from what I gathered from my uncle the guy was only getting deeper and deeper into my uncle’s pocket with his gambling and borrowing. I thought the guy was a real moron. I mean, I was only 15 and could walk in there like I owned the place. Free food and drinks for me and my boys. We’d rack up huge tabs and just walk out without paying.

The place had these cakes. They were the best freakin’ cakes you’d ever tasted! Just amazing. I remember just walking in the back cooler and taking like five of them, walking straight out the back door. Of course nobody said anything. They knew who I was. Or rather, who my uncle was.

But here is where the story gets pretty funny. I went in to collect my check one day and saw Harry had just received a huge shipment of frozen perch fillets. The place was famous for its perch. I remember looking at the boxes of fillet, thinking: “Those look like silver bass fillets.”

Silver bass are a sort of trash fish that are super abundant in Lake Saint Clair where I grew up fishing. We could sometimes catch hundreds of them in a single day. No joke, we almost sank a boat with them once. Must have had a 1,000 or more of them in my cousin Johnny’s little 14” aluminum boat.

Anyway, I came up with an idea—my first real hustle. I caught some silver bass and brought the fillets to “my boss” Harry. I told him I thought he could sell them as perch fillets and nobody would ever know the difference. To test this theory, he fried some up and sent them out to customers. Like I figured, nobody knew the difference.

Since he was paying $2.00 a pound for perch, I told him I’d sell him my silver bass fillets for only $1 a pound. He could skim the other $1. He loved the idea. Next thing I know, me and my boys are going out fishing everyday, making about a $100 each off of having fun catching silver bass. It was a great little racket for a 15-year-old kid. My uncle didn’t even ask for a cut. He thought it was funny.

The guy ended up getting busted about a year later. And for all things, buying walleye fillets from an unlicensed commercial seller. Basically, he took our little arrangement and expanded on it so he could skim even more from the restaurant. But he stood his ground in court and never brought us up.

My uncle actually sent me to the guy’s court hearing, just so he would see me there watching, and so we could confirm that he made no mention of us and our little arrangement. Ahhh, the life. It started off so simple and “innocent.” At the time, there was no way of knowing it would eventually land me in prison for 13 years.

My mother, Grace Tocco, was 100% Sicilian and the oldest of 5 siblings. Her parents, Old World Sicilians, expected her to grow up and marry a nice Italian man, preferably one from the “Family.” But it didn’t work out that way. My mother was a smart woman, a school teacher, and she’d seen how the men involved in the “Family business” often ended up in prison or… worse. So instead, she married my father, a lab technician that she met at a local skating rink. My family didn’t like him from the beginning. My uncles Salvetore and Pete especially didn’t like him. My father actually got drunk at my parents’ wedding, and my uncles had to be restrained to keep from beating his ass.

My father ended being physically and verbally abusive to my mother, but my mother hid this from the Family because she knew what would happen. My uncles would go to pay him a visit. I actually just spoke to my father a few days ago, and he admitted that he was lucky my mother never told the Family how he treated her, because he may have “disappeared.” My father was exactly like Connie Corleone’s husband, Carlo Rizzi, in The Godfather.

Because my mother defected from the Family and married someone from outside the Borgata, she ended up being ostracized by much of the Family. So when her marriage took a turn for the worse and my parents divorced, she was pretty much left to fend for herself. My mother ended up getting us a crappy little shack of a house in Detroit, only a few miles from my grandparents’ home in beautiful Grosse Pointe, one of the most affluent suburbs in Michigan. Moral of the story: We were broke and poor as dirt, while most of the Family was living high off the hog just a few miles away. Naturally, I began hustling to help out.

Around age 15 I began smoking pot. I had a little plug with my paisan Jimmy’s cousin. When my mother got sick and ended up in a mental hospital, we didn’t even tell my Family. My sister, who was 17, and I did our best to live on our own at our crappy little house. But when our electric got shut off and our food ran out, I knew I had to do something. So I asked my weed dealer to front me a little weed. He hooked me up with a quarter pound, which I sold in one day and made about $500. I used most of the money to keep the electricity on and buy some groceries.

From that day on, I hustled hard, selling bags of pot to all the crack dealers in the ghettos near my house. My cousin Johnny and I would deliver bags on our mopeds, which could be dangerous as hell in some of those ghettos. But my cousin Johnny was one crazy SOB, who always carried a big .44 revolver he “borrowed” from his dad.

The blacks in the neighborhood called him “John Wayne,” because he’d carry that big hand-cannon right out in the open like he was a cowboy. He made everyone nervous as hell with the thing, including me. Later on in life, he’d end up serving a couple of life sentences in prison for multiple homicides.

Within a month of diving into the pot-selling racket, I had our house looking ghetto fabulous. New dishwasher. New washer and dryer. I bought my sister a new wardrobe. Fridge packed top-to-bottom with food. I purchased all new black velour furniture, black-and-brass lamps and end-tables. I wanted it to look like Scarface’s house. Yeah, I know, funny.

Now here is where it starts to get interesting. I still went to my grandparents’ house every Sunday for dinner. And one Sunday after dinner, my Uncle Pete, who I mentioned before would later become my boss and more like a brother than uncle, asked me to have a word with him in the basement. Right away I knew something was wrong. I could see it in his eyes. He was a big, tough, intimidating guy who had already kicked my ass on several occasions for smarting off to him. In the basement, when we were all alone, he turned to me and grinned.

“What’s this?” he said, holding out his hand.

In his hand was a bag of weed. My bag of weed. I’d left it in the pocket of my leather bomber jacket but forgotten to zip up the pocket before hanging it on the back of a chair in the kitchen.

“Uh, it’s a bag of weed,” I replied dumbly, not knowing what else to say.

I figured my ass was cooked, that he was about to give me a few smacks and then go tell my grandpa, who had always been more like my father than grandfather. But instead he pulled some weed out of the bag and sniffed it.

“This is bullshit pot,” he said, examining it with a trained eye.

“I got some better stuff in the garage. Think you can move some for me?”

For a moment I just stood there, shell-shocked, not sure if he was being serious or just messing with me. But then he beckoned me to follow him outside to the garage, where hidden in a bunch of old banana boxes were 10 pounds of premium pot, which he claimed was grown by associates in Florida. It was by far the most pot I’d ever seen! I mean, I was only 15.

From that day on, I began working with my Uncle Pete. Just selling pot in the beginning, but later on I’d work with him on many other “endeavors.” By the time I turned 16 a few months later, I had a new car, a Ninja motorcycle, a new wardrobe, and more gold jewelry than I could wear. Life was good and about to get even better. At around age 16 I started lifting weights and found that there was a huge market for steroids. And of course my uncle had a plug for that too. But I’ll save that story for next time.

The post Essay: Former Detroit Mob Associate Reflects On Some Early Memories Of Growing Up In The Mafia appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former Young Boys, Incorporated (YBI) drug gang lieutenant, Herbert (Fat Herbie) Daniels, got out of Michigan state prison in recent weeks on a narcotics case. The 59-year old Fat Herbie did six years behind bars for heroin found at a traffic stop in Detroit in December 2008.

Ruling the Motor City drug trade in the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s, YBI is the Great Lakes region’s most iconic urban crime syndicate ever, revolutionizing the heroin industry in the Midwest rustbelt. Daniels went down in the first of three YBI busts and did three years in prison, getting out in 1985. His father, Herbert (Heavy Herbie) Daniels, was a highly-respected numbers boss on Detroit’s Westside.

YBI, known for rocking Adidas sportswear and shoes, fur-collared jackets and John Dillinger-style derby hats, was founded around 1978 by Milton (Butch) Jones, Mark (Block) Marshall, Raymond (Baby Ray) Peoples and Dewayne (Wonderful Wayne) Davis. Eventually, the bullish, but business-minded Jones maneuvered his way to the top of the gang’s leadership structure, allegedly ordering the murders of both Davis and Peoples in 1982 and 1985, respectively. Marshall left town before the series of busts that spelled the end of the YBI regime began to drop. Fat Herbie Daniels, sometimes referred to as “Lovebug,” was a key lieutenant under Jones’ wing of the organization.

The self-proclaimed “Henry Ford of Heroin,” Jones did seven years in prison for heading YBI, came out in the 1990s and promptly staged a takeover of an already-established drug gang known as the Dawg Pound. By the end of the decade, he’d be convicted of murder, narcotics trafficking and racketeering and sent back to prison for the rest of his life.

Before he was killed in the fall of 1982, Wonderful Wayne Davis had branched off on his own and started what he was dubbing the H20 Crew, reportedly importing foot soldiers from Boston and Seattle, – cities the flashy and entrepreneurial “W.W.” had gone and planted flags in -, and refusing to cut Jones and the rest of the YBI hierarchy in on the action. In the months prior to his slaying almost three years later, Baby Ray Peoples engineered a botched robbery of Jones’ suburban Troy, Michigan home while Jones was away in prison.

The post Old School YBI Member Back On The Streets In Detroit After Half-Dozen Years As Property Of The State appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Retired Detroit mob associate Alan (Gunner) Lindbloom was recently released from a 13-year state prison term, has put his criminal ways behind him and is embarking on a writing career. Lindbloom is related to the infamous Tocco family through his mother and will put out his first piece of fiction with the March release of his first book entitled To Be A King (pre-order a copy now). Below is a blog entry he wrote for Nationalcrimesyndicate.com (you can see the site here).

My mother stayed in a mental hospital for several months, which really allowed me to hustle hard from my house. But my neighbors soon caught on to what I was doing. Naturally, I had traffic coming and going all day. So when several neighbors told our landlord that my sister and I were living alone in the house, and that they suspected I was selling drugs, he told my grandfather, who of course he was afraid of. Everyone knew my grandfather, and they all knew about our Family. Our Famiglia.

My grandfather was not happy. He never mentioned the drugs, but he didn’t think we should be living on our own. So he gave us a choice: Move in with him and my grandmother or go live with our dad. My sister and I adored our grandparents, but we were smart enough to know that we would have a lot more freedom living with our father, who worked by day and was an alcoholic by night. I especially knew I would do better at my dad’s house, since living with him would make it easier to continue my hustle.

My dad lived in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, a middle class suburb only a few miles north of Detroit, where there was a large Italian community. I figured it would be the perfect place to expand my weed operation. But right away I felt like I didn’t fit in. For starters, I dressed differently. I wore Troop and Fila, while most of the kids wore Polo, Izod, and Girbaud. I wore gaudy gold chains and nugget rings. I drove a tinted Mustang with a HUGE kicker in it.

People looked at me like I was a punk, and I soon developed a bit of a complex. Which quickly grew into a chip on my shoulder. I’d always been an intrinsic fighter. I had a black-out temper and was naturally good with my fists. Within a week of moving to my dad’s I got in a fight with the second toughest kid in my school. I won the fight and my reputation grew exponentially as more fights followed. Soon I was one of the toughest kids in the neighborhood. Even guys several years older than me began to show me a lot of respect, whereas just a few months previously they looked down at me like was just a little drug dealing punk.

But I was still barely 150 lbs. And I hated that I was constantly having to fight in order to prove myself. I knew if I were bigger, I wouldn’t have to fight so much. There was a guy from the neighborhood named Gino. A big, handsome Italian kid, who I’m still very close with today. His cousin eventually became the driver and bodyguard of the Family’s recently deceased Underboss, Tony Zerilli. But that’s another story.

Back then, Gino WAS the toughest kid in the neighborhood. And he looked it. Stocky and all muscle, nobody messed with him. Girls flocked to him. I wanted to be like him. But our friendship got off to a rocky start—I almost shot him with a Mac-10 sub machine gun one night at a party when I was drunk and he thought he could bully me. It was the last day anyone tried to bully me.  After that day, he and everyone else walked on eggshells around me.

Thinking back, I don’t even remember how Gino and I became friends. We just sort of started hanging out a little. When I told him I wanted to start lifting weights so I could add some muscle, I was assimilated into his workout crew. There were about five of us and we began lifting weights at this little local gym called “Muscles,” which is no longer around. It was a real small place. Just a dump by modern gym standards. But I had no idea at the time that it was one of the most steroid infested gyms in America. And I’m not just saying that arbitrarily.

The largest steroid bust in American history (at the time) would be centered around that gym in 1991. I would be one of the ones involved in the bust.

Working out in a gym full of giants was very intimidating. Or perhaps emasculating is a better way of putting it. No joke, I was literally the smallest guy in the gym. Granted, I was only 16, but walking in there at a scrawny 140 lbs only fueled my self-esteem issues. So I approached my Uncle Pete, who seemed to have a connect for everything, and asked him if he could get me some steroids.

“Yeah, I know a guy,” my uncle shrugged. “How much you looking to spend?”

Well, his guy happened to be one of the guys I saw regularly at the gym, a huge Italian named Joe. The funny thing was, I already suspected the guy was selling steroids. He worked out with a big crew of giants. None of them seemed to have jobs, yet all of them drove nice cars. I’d hear them in the gym talking about their girls, their boats, their nights out at the clubs.

But Joe was the one guy who always seemed all business. He had these eyes… greyish blue, like those of an Alaskan Malamute. They were very intimidating and I always tried to avoid eye contact with him. Which is probably why I had no idea that he had been paying close attention to me also.

Using “Juiceman Joe” as his supplier, my uncle began selling me steroids. I never did a whole lot myself, because I had good genetics and grew quickly, but I began selling a lot of them to my boys, some of whom hit the stuff hard. And of course this progressed into them selling ‘roids for me to support their own “cycles.”

The steroid racket took off fast. There were huge profits to be made selling them. Within a few months we had every high school football team in the area strung out on ‘roids. It was great supplemental income. I would easily make $500—$600 a week on top of my weed profits, which were at least double that. I was making money so fast I didn’t even know how to spend it. I mean, a guy can only wear so many gold rings and chains. I just started buying stuff for my boys—leather coats, jewelry, clothes, whatever. I bought my grandparents a $10,000, all-inclusive trip to Hawaii. I even bought my cousin Anthony a motorcycle. Well, I actually gave him my old Ninja and bought myself a new one.

I was doing great until my uncle ended up going to jail for a short stint. I can’t even remember why he went to jail, but he was going to be gone for about a year. Just a county jail bid. I think it was for busting up a bar owner who didn’t want to pay a protection tribute, which was a regular thing for us back then. Before he turned himself in (he’d been out on bond) to start his sentence, he was supposed to have introduced me to “Juiceman Joe,” so I could continue my steroid hustle while he was away. But he didn’t.

With my uncle locked up, I had no steroid plug and my orders quickly began backing up. With thousands of dollars at stake, I did something radical. I broke all operational protocol and approached Juiceman Joe myself. Normally this was extremely frowned upon, because there was a strict operational hierarchy that we were expected to adhere to. But I really had no choice. It was very awkward and scary for me. I mean, here was this huge older wiseguy—with these scary freakin’ eyes—who I thought didn’t even know I existed. And there I was, this little 17-year-old kid who even at that point only weighed about a 155 lbs. I’ll never forget it. He was warming up by the squat rack when I walked over and asked him if I could have a private word with him in the locker room.

“What’s up, kid?” he asked when we were alone the locker room.

Right away I used my uncle’s name to let him know who I was.

I then went on to explain how I’d been going through my uncle to buy steroids from him.

He nodded and said, “Yeah, I know. I figured you and your crew were the ones buying his stuff.”  He then wrote his address and phone number on a business card. “Call me later. Say you want to come over and use my tanning bed.”

That was the code I’d end up using every time I needed to pick up a load of ‘roids. He turned out to be a really cool guy. And a MUCH bigger dealer than I realized. This freakin’ guy was moving SERIOUS steroids, with distribution points all across America and Canada. But he liked me and always introduced me to his buddies. Called me “Little Al,” which I eventually learned from an FBI agent (after the bust went down) was because Juiceman Joe also dealt with a guy named “Big Al.”

The interesting thing about Joe was that he owned a jewelry store. And before “the bust,” he began selling me some nice pieces of jewelry. He also taught me how to value diamonds, high-end watches, and gold. Which led me into my next major racket… fencing stolen goods and pawnshop swaps. But I’ll save that for next time. Make sure to stay tuned. It’s a good one!

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