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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If Uncle Joe Retires What Happens in Philadelphia?

By Ed Scarpo
Joseph (Uncle Joe) Ligambi, who recently got out of prison following two mistrials for what primarily amounted to gambling-related charges, says that he is done, finito, with Cosa Nostra. He wants to drop the harness and relax, to summer in Longport and winter in Florida. In 1980, violence on the streets of Philadelphia rose sharply following boss Angelo Bruno's murder. Does Ligambi mean it? If he’s being sincere, then who will step in and take over?  Too many wiseguys, if history is our guide. The volatility for which the Philadelphia crime family was once well-known can return as swiftly as the time it takes to pull a trigger. Two generations historically at odds with each other have been working together (the old Scarfo gang and the Merlino young turks). The ability to rivet these two enclaves together is among the skills "Uncle Joe" is credited for having. But with or without him, shifts in power are inevitable as the family's composition changes (...
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Bonanno Boss's Prison Letters Kick Off Second Dominick Cicale Forum

By Ed Scarpo
"Mikey Nose" (Commenced 11am, Saturday, Jan. 10)... We can thank Michael "Mikey Nose" Mancuso for our starting point.... I don't think any other blog or news organization on the planet has ever gotten such direct insight from the man widely considered to be the official boss of the Bonanno family . The Nose is from the Bronx, where Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, either former acting boss or current official boss, hailed from.
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Alite: "Once Junior Went In, I Couldn't Flip Fast Enough"

By Ed Scarpo
EXCLUSIVE We assume it's in the book, what John "Junior" Gotti revealed today. You may have read the story,  EXCLUSIVE: John (Junior) Gotti brags he lied to feds - NY Daily News : "When the mob scion sat down with federal prosecutors in 2005 to discuss crimes of fellow mobsters, he planned to give them bad information and useless leads, Gotti and his lawyer revealed in an interview with the Daily News. 'No one suffered but me,' he said of the decision." John A. "Junior" Gotti Joe "The German" Watts and Danny Marino might disagree. And some other guys who brawled in a Queens bar one evening in the 1980s may also disagree.
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Kitchen Nightmares Gangster Back In Business (Mob Business, That Is)

By Ed Scarpo
“Nobody is gonna go against them. They’d go head to head with anybody.” Source on Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso and his Administration in the Bonanno crime family. Bonanno mobster Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, a name you are familiar with if you have been watching Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and reading Cosa Nostra News , is back in business—the gambling and shylocking business, though, not the restaurant business. Peter Pasta Pellegrino. (From Facebook.) In fact, Peter Pasta was among the Bonannos who benefitted from Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso 's reorganization of the crime family last Christmas, we've learned. Pellegrino was bumped from acting capo to official capo. He’s now overseeing a Bonanno crew in Florida and one allied with Albanians in Ridgewood, Queens. Also part of the Nose's Christmastime shakeup, Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato , the longtime Bonanno wiseguy who was a direct participant—he was one of the shooters—in the 1979 Carmine Galante murders, w...
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Hoodwinked: Restaurateur on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Was a Mobster

By Ed Scarpo
Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster. Gordon gives a pep talk. Peter is ready for action..... 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  Capec...
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Bath Avenue Crew Rose High, Fell Hard

By Ed Scarpo
This story from 2014 is one of the most popular on this site—and we didn't even know it until very recently (for reasons stemming from the fallibility of generalized analytics data.) Members of the Bath Avenue Crew were as young as 8 years old when they began to align themselves with the biggest, baddest gang in America: Cosa Nostra, specifically the Five Families. Bath Avenue Crew founding members. 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 twenty-dollar bills like they were nothing. The wiseguys patted them on the back, told them they were "good kids," and maybe asked them to watch the cars...
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