Federal authorities in New Jersey broke up a mobbed-backed drug crew tied to the Philadelphia mafia last week, indicting “made members” Joseph (Joey Electric) Servidio and Sam Piccolo of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s North Jersey wing in separate cases. The indictments are littered with references to hundreds of hours of audio surveillance compiled by an unidentified Philly mobster over the past two and a half years and alleges trafficking in heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana, pills and stolen cigarettes.
The 58-year old Joey Electric was arrested last Wednesday and the 66-year old Piccolo got scooped up earlier this week after getting caught selling crystal meth to undercover FBI agents. They are both currently in federal custody in the Garden State. Award-winning Philadelphia television investigative reporter and Bruno-Scarfo clan expert Dave Schratwieser broke the news of Piccolo’s arrest on his Twitter account Monday.
Servidio pled guilty to cocaine dealing charges back in 2006 and owns a contracting company. Piccolo is the nephew of Anthony (Tony Buck) Piccolo, the deceased one-time acting boss of the Philly mob in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the former brother-in-law of turncoat Philly mob hit man Salvatore (Wayne) Grande. He also has a cocaine-distributing conviction on his criminal record courtesy of Grande’s cooperation.
Two mob associates of Servidio and Piccolo’s, Michael Gallicchio, 48, and Carl Chianese, 79, were nailed in last week’s bust too. Servidio is heard waxing poetic on several of the recordings included in the indictment. On one of them made in 2017, he plans to carry out the shooting of another mob-connected drug trafficker for badmouthing him and openly discussing his illegal business affairs.
Besides admitting to “making his bones” in the mob at the age of 19, Servidio tells the wired-up informant that he’s been told by his bosses in the Bruno-Scarfo crime family to stay out of Atlantic City. After he lets the informant know, he’s cleared his drug dealing activity with his direct superior in the mafia (his “captain” or “capo”), he says “They don’t even want us having dinner together (without checking in),” referencing his capo’s fear that his soldiers are making money in endeavors under the table and not sharing with him.
According to sources, the current capo for the Bruno-Scarfo crime family’s Jersey faction is Joseph (Joe Scoops) Licata. The colorful and chatty Licata beat racketeering charges earlier in the decade out of Philadelphia. Other sources say Servidio was moved out of the Jersey crew following his last run-in with the law and is now reporting to a capo of another crew, either out of South Jersey or Philadelphia.
Listed in the complaint are a number of meetings between Servidio and unnamed higher-ranking Philly mob figures, two of the powwows taking place in posh Margate, New Jersey in April and June of 2017, respectively. Margate is a popular Jersey Shore vacation spot for mafia leaders from the City of Brotherly Love.
Ironically, Servidio was intercepted having a conversation where he spoke of the dangers of getting caught talking of criminal behavior on a wire.
“Tapes kill you…. Eighty percent of the eyewitnesses got the wrong person, you can beat that, you know what you can’t beat? Tapes. Tapes with you saying it,” he said.
He was quite candid talking about his chosen profession as well.
“I’m a criminal. Everything I do is criminal,” he said.
The post Listening In On The Mob: Philly Mafia’s Jersey Satellite Office Caught Up In Drug Case, New Tapes, ‘Made’ Informant Abound appeared first on The Gangster Report.