ID: 'So Successful … It’s Criminal'

By Ed Scarpo
Investigation Discovery launches eight new true-crime series and renews 23 for the 2011-12 season, including "Nothing Personal," about murders caused by hitmen. Detail available here, on TV by the Numbers.

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Former Luchese Wiseguy John Pennisi Tells Us What Really Happened

By Ed Scarpo
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COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE The Feds know lots of wiseguys out there on the street—some of them very well. But there also are wiseguys the Feds don't know at all. Guys who are not on the "radar" at the present moment. John Pennisi was one of those guys....
Recent pic of John Pennisi.

The Feds weren't building a single case against John Pennisi when he first went to them to talk in 2017, and it took a while for them to fully comprehend what had happened, that a guy who knew a hell of a lot about current goings-on inside the Luchese family had just fallen into their lap.

Pennisi -- who flipped and testified in detail about certain events related to the Luchese family (plus the other families that comprise the New York Mafia) (and if you are wondering, yes, wiseguys are still out there hustling) -- was following in the footsteps of another former member of the Luchese family: Onetime acting boss Alphonse (Little Al) D'Arco, who flipped and testified in the early 1990s a…
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Pennisi Part Two: Meeting Dom Truscello; Further Luchese Doings from 2017

By Ed Scarpo
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COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE  In May 2017, the Feds nabbed a slew of Luchese members and associates, most of whom were out on bail when John Pennisi started getting chilly vibes from his amico nostra later that same year.




The bust was part of the government’s ongoing and endless effort to crack the mob, charging 19 individuals with ties to the Luchese family with an array of crimes (from 2000 to 2017), including murder, attempted murder, racketeering, gambling, witness tampering and narcotics trafficking. The indictment charged four captains, plus the Feds hit the trifecta in that they had nabbed the triumvirate of Luchese street bosses—underboss Steven Crea, acting boss Matthew Madonna, and consiglieri Joseph DiNapoli. (Of the three, Crea had been the longtime street representative for imprisoned for life boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso.)

We left off with John Pennisi being asked by Anthony (Spanky) Castelle outside the Cigar Vault on Staten Island to take a ride to the home of longtime wiseguy…
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Hoodwinked: Restaurateur on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Was a Mobster

By Ed Scarpo
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Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster.


The once-promising Bonanno crime family member who appeared in Kitchen Nightmares now calls himself a brokester. And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him.

So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself.

But before all that he appeared on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in which he acted very much like the mobster he allegedly was trying to become around the time of filming. (See Peter's Italian Restaurant menu here.)






Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week from bookmaking.

At the time, he also owned two boats that he'd park in a pricey nearby Babylon harbor called Great South Bay.

Gang Land News's Jerry Capeci broke the news about Peter Pasta's mob status, reporting:

Today, like the…
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Bath Avenue Crew Rose High, Fell Hard

By Ed Scarpo
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Members of the Bath Avenue Crew were as young as 8 years old and probably weren't even aware of what they were doing -- aligning themselves with the biggest, baddest gang in America: Cosa Nostra, specifically the Five Families.
Anthony Spero, former Bonanno consiglieri, was the man for whom they would one day carry out orders that cost some their lives, others, their freedom and all, their souls. At least that's what they said in testimony; it was powerful testimony, however, and it helped put Spero away in an unbelievably circumstantial trial.

At the same time they saw the wiseguys on the street, pulling up to the curbs in their big shiny Cadillacs, loafing around social clubs wearing pricey suits and sporting hundred-dollar haircuts and manicured fingernails.


But the guys presented more than just a cold, distant image to watch; Mafia members interacted with the kids, joked around with them and showed them there were other ways to make it through life. The wiseguys doled out …
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