Gotti biopic ‘coming together’

By Ed Scarpo
Gotti biopic ‘coming together’ - Film-News.co.uk: Financial issues on the John Gotti biopic are “sorted,” says writer and director Barry Levinson.

Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father has suffered from many financial and legal difficulties over the past few months.

However, Barry confirmed that those troubles are in the past and the film is ready to move forward.

John Travolta will still play the mob boss, while Al Pacino, Ben Foster and Kelly Preston will also appear.

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Update On New Connection Gambino-Inzerillo Probe

By Ed Scarpo
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New York wiseguy Thomas Gambino, 47, Sicilian mobster Tomasso Inzerillo, 72, and three other men, all wearing bathing suits, converged on a dinghy in the bay of Palermo, Sicily last summer.




They met to discuss the divvying up of profits from the sale of some Caribbean property formerly owned by then-New York-based Gambino underboss Francesco (Franky Boy) Cali, who wouldn't be alive to experience another summer; he was shot and killed in March on Staten Island in an unrelated shooting (that nearly derailed the probe).

Of course that dinghy had been bugged ahead of time by Italian investigators working with the FBI.

Italian police have since said that the meeting of those five gangsters (the Daily Beast reported the dinghy details) was the first solid lead regarding the criminal connection between the American and Sicilian groups.

The discovery kicked the investigation into high gear, with central command for the Italian and US joint operation scrambling officers to the Dominican Re…
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Furious! Bonanno Boss Mikey Nose Just Broke Down And Shelved Acting Boss Joe C, Three Others

By Ed Scarpo
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EXPANDED ENDING 
In a head-spinning revelation, Gang Land News reports today that Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, 63, who recently finished a 15-year prison term for murder conspiracy, was so  furious with certain members of his crime family that he has made dramatic changes in personnel. 




Mancuso, a killer who came up in the Bonanno family's powerful Bronx crew, was so angered by his acting boss's "musical consiglieris" legal strategy that he broke down (demoted) and kicked the acting boss -- Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano -- plus three of his confidants--out of the mob.

 All four were seasoned ranking members of the Bonanno crime family.

As per Gang Land sources on both sides of the law, when a federal jury acquitted then-acting Bonanno boss Cammarano of racketeering charges last March, "Joe C figured he was golden. The clean win in court, courtesy of a jury of his peers, made him the only mob boss other than John Gotti to beat a racketeering rap."

B…
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FBI, Italian Police Launch Coordinated Raids Against Sicilian Inzerillo, New York Gambino Crime Families

By Ed Scarpo
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FINAL
Sicilian and American wiseguys were busted Wednesday as part of coordinated takedown efforts by Italian police and the FBI, which served 19 arrest warrants in Palermo and in the United States, specifically in Staten Island and Philadelphia.



The operation, dubbed "New Connection," was an attempt to disrupt efforts by a Sicilian Mafia faction (specifically, Inzerillo family members in Sicily and their New York allies in the Gambino crime family) to take over the leadership of organized crime in Italy. The Inzerillo and Gambino crime families, which have historical ties, were in the process of rebuilding their powerbase in Sicily.
Members of slain Gambino crime boss Frank Cali's family were arrested in the takedown Wednesday, as per officials in Anthony DeStefano's Newsday story. Also arrested were Thomas Gambino, 47, of Staten Island; Salvatore Gambino, the mayor of a village outside Palermo; and Tommaso and Francesco Inzerillo, relatives of Salvatore Inzerillo,…
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Late Mob Boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante's Son Gets Two Years, $3.8M Forfeiture For Racketeering Conspiracy

By Ed Scarpo
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The son of late Genovese boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.



Vincent Esposito copped to one count of racketeering  on April 10 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn for conspiring to commit racketeering offenses with members and associates of the Genovese family. The agreed-upon sentencing range was 24 to 30 months in prison.
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero handed down the 24-month sentence yesterday (Friday, July 19) at 9 a.m., imposing a term from the lower end of the range.
Cosa Nostra News has learned that the Fed's handed the judge a letter that highlighted what the FBI seized from the Esposito townhouse when Esposito was nabbed in January 2018: they found brass knuckles, a gun, a knife, and lotsa cash. (More on those "weapons," including a picture below.)
The letter read:
"JUDGMENT IN A CRIMINAL CASE as to Vincent Esposito (1), Pleaded guilty to Coun…
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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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Brief Note For Journalists Researching The Mafia Today

By Ed Scarpo
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We've been doing this for a long time -- almost 10 years (and I hope to figure out what "this" is some day soon).


We occasionally flub it, too, and we always ask people to let us know when we do. So it's truly in the spirit of cooperation that we put this brief item together.

Because we expect to see many, many more stories about the Inzerillos and Frank Cali, etc., we thought we'd offer the following to those who might be interested.

Q.) What do you call the following?

"The ties between the Inzerillo and Gambino families run deep. Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali, reported crime boss for the Gambino organization, was born in Sicily and married into the Inzerillo family.Cali fled Italy after the early 1980s Mafia war with the rival Corleone clan, The New York Post reports. After alleged mob boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina died in prison in 2017 the Inzerillo family has reportedly attempted to make a comeback in the region." -- Philly Voice sto…
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Giannini Crew's Bloody Rise And Fall Under Longtime Bonanno Wiseguy Baldo Amato

By Ed Scarpo
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As noted, Paul Ragusa, 48, an associate of the Bonanno and Gambino families, was recently sentenced to six years--because in 2017, he met with a CW whom he knew through their prior affiliation with the Giannini Crew, which this story profiles at length....

Sicilian-born Bonanno capo Baldassare (Baldo) Amato reminds us of the Mafia version of the cat with nine lives, if such a thing could be contemplated.

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A seemingly Zelig-type figure, Amato either possessed the luck or guile (or both) to survive and thrive when others couldn't (and were eventually found, say, fermenting in a 55-gallon glue drum).

Amato was one of two …
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