Wiretaps Not Just Used Against the Mob

By Ed Scarpo
Wiretaps were primarily used against mafia crime families -- one notable example is John Gotti's takedown in the early 1990s -- and drug dealers. This crime-fighting tool now has become a staple against Wall Street crooks, reports Advanced Trading in an article titled Inside Traders Probably Don't Plan Their Crimes Over the Phone Anymore.

"The Financial Times points out that U.S. prosecutors have become aggressive in their use of wiretaps to pinpoint insider trading. As part of an insider trading investigation two years ago, federal authorities intercepted the phone calls of more than 100 investment fund clients with the Primary Global Research expert network."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Stories

Sammy Bull, Cited by Former FBI Director James Comey, Replied

By Ed Scarpo
Image
It's been another head-spinning week in Washington, news-wise, whatever your political viewpoints. I personally haven't seen so much mention of the New York Mafia since the 1990s....



In case you haven't been paying attention (or were in jail), former FBI director James Comey has been hawking his recently published political tell-all, A Higher Loyalty, and during all the interviews, he continues to mention the New York Mafia, specifically, John Gotti and Sammy the Bull.





Comey basically has been saying that President Trump reminds him of a Mafia boss.

For months, Trump aggressively sought Comey's loyalty in a stream of meetings and phone calls, Comey writes. The effort included a now notorious White House dinner with Trump and Comey a week after the inauguration during which Trump, Comey writes, told him: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.”

To Comey, the President's "demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony."

Comey made his bon…
Read more

Chin's Son Back Home in Upper East Side Townhouse on $10M Bond

By Ed Scarpo
Image
Vincent (Chin) Gigante's son was released last week on bond, a whopping $9.8 million bond that included $1 million cash and the family's Upper East Side townhouse, the Daily News reported.



Vincent Esposito, 50, also must hire 24-7 security and install surveillance cameras at the front and back doors of the East 77th street townhouse, which is valued at $8.3 million.
Esposito and four other reputed Genovese mobsters were arrested in January and charged with running a longtime racketeering scheme involving extortion and other crimes. He pleaded not guilty.





After three months in MCC, Esposito was "thrilled to be out," his attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told the News.

The man himself didn't have much to say other than, "No comment, no thank you," and "Please don't come back here" when daily news reporters went knocking there yesterday.

Vincent is back where he was when the Fed's nabbed him, in the townhouse with his mother where the antics of…
Read more

Surveillance Images Reveal Suspect in Mob-Linked Restaurant Shooting

By Ed Scarpo
Image
Who fired a gun at the mobbed-up Marco Polo restaurant in Brooklyn early one February morning? The guy wearing the fedora hat and waist-length coat, below, of course....


That's what the NYPD said when they released surveillance footage of the suspect who fired several lead-filled shells into the eatery on Court St. and Union St. in Carroll Gardens at about 6 a.m. on Feb. 25.

He's white, about 6-foot-2 tall and thin, and was wearing a dark jacket and light pants.



A nearby surveillance camera filmed him that morning as he walked toward the restaurant near the time of the shooting, police sources told the Daily News.

Cops weren't alerted to the shooting until three hours after the fact.

As noted at the time, co-owner Marco Chricio told The New York Post that the restaurant "was caught in the crossfire between battling gangs from neighboring Gowanus and Red Hook housing projects."

Not so fast... The cops disputed that assessment, noting that the restaurant itself was …
Read more

In a First, Skinny Joey's Attorneys and Fed's Reach Plea Agreement

By Ed Scarpo
Image
Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino, the alleged Boca Raton-based boss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra, has inked a plea deal weeks after his racketeering trial ended with a hung jury.




In a filing this week, the judge who presided over the case said the government and lawyers for Merlino had reached a plea deal, the Associated Press reported. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.





Merlino’s hearing on the plea is scheduled for April 27.

This case would be the first time Merlino has plead guilty to a crime.

Merlino has made going to trial and refusing plea deals a badge of honor.

Merlino, 55, moved to Boca Raton when he was released from federal prison in 2011 after serving most of a 14-year sentence for racketeering, extortion and illegal gambling.

He's insisted he'd retired from any illegal activity he may have been involved in. He opened a Boca restaurant that bore his name and hung around there chatting up patrons. He was the maitre d' because his criminal record banne…
Read more

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

By Ed Scarpo
Image
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 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.

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 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…
Read more

New York Has Five Families, But New Jersey Had More

By Ed Scarpo
Image
In 2002, South Philadelphia mob associate John "Johnny Gongs" Casasanto wanted to join one of New York's Five Families, the Gambino crime family. He appeared to have  an "in": he'd met the family's acting boss while in prison.


But Johnny Gongs never left Philly's mean streets (probably because he liked the ladies too much, especially married ones; in fact, he reputedly banged one mob wife too many).

Johnny Gongs 2003 murder remains unsolved.

Former Gambino associate John Alite told authorities he had met with Casasanto several times after Casasanto came home from prison in 2002. According to Casasanto, John A. (Junior) Gotti wanted Alite to bring him to New York "to introduce him to a couple of guys . . . to get him straightened out," Alite testified.







But Alite said he didn't go along with the program. "I met with him after that and I said, 'Johnny, you'll get killed in New York. Every corner there's guys, not like i…
Read more

Tommy Karate's "Invisible" Prison Assault

By Ed Scarpo
Image
COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE
On August 11, 1996, the seemingly impossible happened at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.

An inmate was "serious[ly] assaulted," yet an incident report suggests there was little physical evidence in terms of wounds. Some witnesses said they could see no wounds. The inmate himself, who appeared "nervous," denied that he'd been assaulted. Nevertheless, he'd been beaten repeatedly in the face with a metal object that was never found.

Imprisoned Bonanno crime family member Thomas "Tommy Karate" Pitera was sanctioned by prison officials for committing the assault.

Read more