Little Italy Isn't So Italian These Days

By Ed Scarpo
The big surprise in Little Italy: The latest New York census found that not a single Italian lives in the home of Mafia legend, the U.K.'s Independent reported.

The US Census Bureau reported earlier this year that, "of the 8,600 residents interviewed in the two-dozen-square block area of Lower Manhattan that might still be deemed Little Italy – determining its borders is another area of contention – not one was actually born in Italy," the article noted.

"And descendants of immigrants from Italy (Italian-Americans) made up only 5 percent of the area's population.

"It is a stark demographic evaporation which has been going on for decades. In 2000, the US Census Bureau found 44 Italian-born people in the neighbourhood and a 6 per cent share for Italian-Americans. Back in 1950, there were 10,000 New Yorkers residing in the area and nearly half were considered Italian-Americans."

Also worth noting -- and we posted a story about it months ago -- non-Italian boutique owners are moving to have the San Gennaro festival that crowds Mulberry Street each September curtailed on the grounds that it was hurting businesses.

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Was Bronx Shooting Retaliation for Sally Daz's Dad, a Luchese Associate?

By Ed Scarpo
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UPDATED
The Salvatore (Sally Daz) Zottola shooting may actually be the second attempted gangland hit caught on tape; the first, in March 1993, was the attempted murder of Joey Chang, then-34, early one morning in the coffee shop he owned, the Warfield Breakfast & Luncheon Express, in Philadelphia.
The FBI had mounted a surveillance camera on the telephone pole across from the diner. Chang was shot during the Merlino-Stanfa war. Joey Chang was seriously wounded but he too survived, though partially paralyzed and with nerve damage that caused him to retire from Cosa Nostra.

NYPD officials have labeled the July 11 attempted murder of Salvatore (Sally Daz) Zottola as a botched gangland hit. He was shot around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday morning in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx.
In a surveillance clip, below, a red Nissan can be seen driving past Zottola's vehicle and pulling to a hault. Zottola was on the driver's side of the car, not facing the video, and was either besidethe ca…
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Howard Beach Bonanno Mobster, Newspaper Publisher Sought to Threaten Sex Assault Victim

By Ed Scarpo
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Robert Pisani, an associate in acting capo Ronald Giallanzo's Bonanno crime family crew, was among a group of 10 reputed Bonanno crime family members accused of participating in various crimes over the past two decades ranging from racketeering to loan sharking and attempted murder.




Pisani's rap sheet stretched back to 1992 and included assault, insurance fraud, criminal possession of a weapon and harassment charges.

Leading the March indictment was Howard Beach’s Giallanzo, 46, who allegedly oversaw a criminal enterprise that netted $26 million in earnings since 1998, federal prosecutors said.

Following his March arrest, Pisani and his wife posted a $500,000 bond for his federal racketeering case and he was released. Then in May, just as he was departing the downtown Brooklyn federal courthouse after a hearing related to the racketeering case, Pisani was re-arrested by a plainclothes sex crimes detective.





According to the criminal complaint, Pisani allegedly groped a female…
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How the Mafia Helped the Allies Win WWII

By Ed Scarpo
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REVISED
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American troops advancing to Messina, 1943.

The summer 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily was an unmitigated success, what historians term as one of World War II's major turning points.



After defeating Italy and Germany in the North African Campaign (November 8, 1942-May 13, 1943) of World War II (1939-45), the United States and Great Britain, the two leading Allied powers, decided to liberate Italy, to accomplish the vital goals of removing Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, securing the central Mediterranean, and destroying the Axis bulkhead and driving the remaining Italian and German forces to either surrender or retreat.

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Hoodwinked: Restaurateur on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Was a Mobster

By Ed Scarpo
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The once-promising Bonanno member who appeared after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired, 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.

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Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week 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, reporting:

Today, like the battered and bruised…
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Bonanno Mobster Shot Multiple Times in the Bronx in Attempted Gangland Hit

By Ed Scarpo
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UPDATED, EXPANDED
Someone tried to whack a longtime Bronx-based Bonanno crime family associate early this morning.


Salvatore (Sally Daz) Zottola walked out of his Bronx home and into a hail of bullets at 6:40 a.m. this morning.

The shooter had pulled up in a dark-colored Nissan sedan and opened fire as Sally Daz walked to his car, shooting him multiple times – including once to the head and three times in his torso.




The gunman then leaped back into a waiting vehicle and sped away.

So far there have been no arrests.

Zottola remains heavily sedated at Jacobi Medical Center, but conveyed to law enforcement that he has no plans to help with the investigation.

It’s believed that Zottola knew his attacker however.

After Sally Daz yesterday, the most recent gangland hit was the 2013 Michael Meldish murder, also in the Bronx. That execution, allegedly sanctioned by the Luchese crime family, may have been in response to Meldish's attempted effort to whack a Bonanno mobster. There's pro…
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By Ed Scarpo
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A 32-count indictment was unsealed on July 11 in Brooklyn federal court charging five mobsters from two crime families.


Two members and two associates of the Colombo crime family were charged with racketeering, including predicate acts of extortion, extortionate collection, money laundering and illegal gambling.

 The indictment also charges one member of the Gambino crime family with extortionate collection and a related conspiracy. 
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By Ed Scarpo
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On Thursday ( July 19), in Manhattan Federal Court, alleged Genovese capo Eugene (Rooster) Onofrio, 76, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for loan sharking.



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Onofrio was arrested in 2016, one of the 46 alleged members of the Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, Bonanno, and Philadelphia crime families indicted for operating a so-called "East Coast LCN Enterprise," as the Fed's named it.

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But hey, those threats were all talk, Onofrio’s attorney, Thomas Nooter, argued at the sentencing, noting that his client was merely seeking to boost his street cred. …
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