June 17, 2021 – Springfield (MA) mob associate David (Fat Chicky) Cecchetelli came out swinging with what appears to be a very strong legal argument to get a gun and ammunition-possession charge thrown out of court.
Fat Chicky Cecchetelli, a convicted mafia-sponsored bookmaker, was arrested in December 2019 for having a loaded pistol and ammo when the feds raided his residence to take his nephew into custody. His attorney argues they shouldn’t have been looking where they found the incriminating evidence in the first place
Fat Chicky’s nephew and roommate, Michael (King Merlin) Cecchetelli, is the No. 1 defendant in Operation Throne Down, a large-scale takedown of the east coast branch of the Latin Kings gang. The 42-year old King Merlin pleaded guilty to racketeering charges back in the spring.
New York’s Genovese crime family. On the morning the feds came to arrest King Merlin, they found a gun and ammunition and charged Chicky with being a felon in illegal possession of ammunition, but not possession of the weapon itself. He has pleaded not guilty in the case.
In the Operation Throne Down indictment, U.S Attorneys point to a connection between the mainly Hispanic Latin Kings group and the Italian mafia in Western Massachusetts. The Italian King Merlin rose to shot caller status in the gang despite not being of Latino heritage, leveraging Latin Kings contacts he met while he served a previous prison bid to propel him up the ranks of the organization.
The feds believe King Merlin built ties to the Italian mafia on the East Coast through his uncle Fat Chicky and recorded at least two meetings at Springfield’s Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club, the Genovese clan’s nerve center in Western Massachusetts, with Latin Kings leadership discussing criminal business. Fat Chicky pleaded guilty to charges of bookmaking on behalf of the Genovese crime family in 2005 and did a little less than a year in federal prison.
Springfield has long been Genovese territory and a hotbed of rackets in the New England underworld. Over the past decade, Chicky has reinvented himself as an on-line personality and says he’s retired from his life of crime.
During the 1990s and 2000s, Chicky Cecchetelli worked in the sports gambling trade for Springfield mob skippers Frank (Frankie Skyball) Scibelli, Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno and Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta. Frankie Skyball died of natural causes in 2000. Bruno was gunned down in the parking lot of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Society Social Club in November 2003 on orders given by Arillotta and Genovese brass in New York. Arillotta, 51, became a witness against the Genovese bosses responsible for green-lighting his power play in the years that followed.
The post “Fat Chicky’s” Lawyer Questions Whether Feds Even Had The Right To Be Where They Discovered Gun, Ammo In ’19 Western Massachusetts Raid appeared first on The Gangster Report.