Goodbye Beantown. Hello, City of Brotherly Love. Boston mobster Pryce (Stretch) Quintina appears ready to relocate.
The 77-year old veteran Patriarca crime family soldier was released from an 18-month federal prison term for extortion to a Philadelphia halfway house this week. He’ll walk free for good on May 29. His reason for moving to Philly is unknown at this time as is his personal links to any local Goodfellas.
Quintina worked directly on behalf of former New England mafia acting boss Anthony (Spucky) Spagnolo. He was the nephew of deceased Patriarca crime family consigliere Charles (Q-Ball) Quintina. Stretch Quintina and his uncle “Q-Ball” went down together in a 1995 racketeering bust and both were present at the ill-fated fall 1989 induction ceremony bugged by the FBI.
In a subsequent federal audio surveillance from 1992, the younger Quintina is heard asking a mob superior permission to “bounce this guy off the wall,” in reference to an indebted gambler. According to court records and FBI documents, he’s thought to have played a role in the Angelo Patrizzi murder from the spring of 1981, but was never charged. The man Quintina was requesting the go-ahead from to bounce his debtor off the wall, Alexander (Sonny Boy) Rizzo, on the other hand, would go on to be convicted in the Patrizzi hit. Patrizzi drew the ire of the Patriarca clan by vowing to avenge the killing of his half-brother years before and allegedly putting contracts on the heads of mob administrators he held responsible.
In December 2015, Spucky Spagnolo and Stretch Quintina pled guilty to shaking down the Constitution Vending Co. for more than $50,000 over an eight-year period and muscling the Revere Moose Lodge into remaining loyal to Constitution and not leaving for a better financial deal elsewhere for fear of reprisals. Spagnolo, 75, is slated for release later this year in December.
Prior connections between the Boston underworld and Philadelphia mafia have the decision by Quintina to come to Philly under the microscope with mob watchers. Current Bruno-Scarfo crime family boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino maintained a crew in Boston in the1990s and assigned his then-consigliere George (Georgie Boy) Borgesi as liaison to the New England wing. Per FBI informant files, Skinny Joey Merlino inducted four soldiers from New England into the Philly mob in the early summer of 1998.
The FBI thinks at least a portion of the masterworks stolen from Boston’s exclusive Isabella Stewart Gardner in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990 made its way from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania at some point in the late 1990s or early 2000s via Merlino’s New England satellite for an attempted sale that may or may not have transpired. The half-billion dollar pilfering of paintings by Rembrandt, Manet and Vermeer was allegedly pulled off by a pair of Boston wiseguys and to this day has never been solved.
Merlino, 55, and both his Boston and Philly crews were nailed for racketeering activities in 1999. Convicted at a circus-like 2001 trial, he did a dozen years in the clink, getting released in early 2011 and transferring his base of operations from South Philly to South Florida. He was indicted on more racketeering charges last summer and is free on bond.
Borgesi, 53, came out of prison in 2014 and despite only being a captain in rank has soundly reasserted himself in the mix in the South Philly streets, emerging in recent years as the leader of a prominent faction in the modern-day Bruno-Scarfo syndicate, per sources. These same sources say Borgesi is in the midst of successfully leveraging a series of out-of-state mob contacts he made behind bars to add to his growing powerbase, including a specific focus on reinvigorating a Philly mafia presence in New England.
At least two of these sources claim Borgesi has taken meetings with either Patriarca crime family underboss Matthew (Good-Looking Matty) Guglielmetti himself or those representing his interests and former Boston satellite crew member Shawn Vetere since the beginning of the year. The 67-year old Guglielmetti got out of the can in 2014 after a near-decade on an extortion and drug case spawning out of his home state of Rhode Island. Vetere, 49, was sprung in July 2006 following a seven-year bid.
The post The Pryce Is Right In Philadelphia: Patriarca Wiseguy Makes Move From Massachusetts To Pennsylvania appeared first on The Gangster Report.