Cosa Nostra News Partying It Up in Vegas

By Ed Scarpo

Posts might be a bit slow while I am in Sin City this week. Tonight, I am going to the Tropicana to visit the mob museum there -- review to follow, probably next week. Internet connection sucks from my room and I am no longer as patient as I used to be, about a lot of things...

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The Real Sopranos: New Book Details Probe Into DeCavalcante Capo Charlie (The Hat) Stango, Others

By Ed Scarpo
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FINAL Just in time for the upcoming debut of the Many Saints of Newark, the theatrical prequel to the Sopranos television series, comes a new book about New Jersey’s only homegrown Mafia family, the DeCavalcantes, which many (including some DeCavalcante wiseguys) believe inspired David Chase’s acclaimed HBO series. Charlie the Hat Stango and son "Whitey." Giovanni’s Ring: My Life Inside the Real Sopranos w as written by Giovanni Rocco (the name is a pseudonym) and Douglas Schofield, a criminal trial lawyer and author. The G-man worked undercover as Giovanni Gatto, a pinky ring-wearing outlaw biker-turned-wannabe wiseguy who cozied up to an assortment of unsavory underworld characters during his three-year infiltration of the New Jersey crime family. During the probe, he made extensive surveillance recordings, including catching on tape a capo ordering the murder of a rival.  By the end of it, 10 mobsters and associates were pinched for multiple crimes in 2015. The key target
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Echoes Of Notorious Mafia Capo/Top-Echelon Informant Reverberate Decades Later

By Ed Scarpo
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Recent news about a purported contract killing reminded us of notorious Colombo capo Greg Scarpa, who was a longtime top-echelon FBI informant as well as a key power in the fight for control of the Colombo family in the early 1990s. Anthony Scarpati, left, and Greg Scarpa. The Colombo family mob war, which left 12 dead on the streets of New York City and many wounded, commenced November 18, 1991, when the first shots were fired. That day Scarpa was pulling out of his driveway while daughter Linda, with her infant son, was behind him in another car also pulling out---when a van and panel truck abruptly blocked them in and several heavily armed men wearing ski masks leaped out and opened fire with automatic weapons. All shots missed their mark (though they did leave a row of holes in Linda's fender). Deeply angered that the gunmen—supporters of acting boss Victor Orena Sr. who were trying to depose imprisoned official boss Carmine Persico—had risked hitting Linda and her son, Scarpa
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Feds Busted “Entire” Colombo Family Administration, Including Heir Apparent Skinny Teddy

By Ed Scarpo
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UPDATED With the arrests on Tuesday (September 14) of 10 members and associates of the Colombo family for various offenses related to an alleged 20-year effort to loot a Queens-based labor union, the Feds completely beheaded the Colombo crime family, imprisoning the family's official boss, underboss, consiglieri, and a bevy of top capos, one of which is Carmine Persico's nephew/handpicked successor. Andy (Mush) Russo  The 19-count indictment unsealed in Brooklyn Federal court charges a total of 14 defendants, including the 10 members and associates of the Colombo family, and one member of the Bonanno family with various offenses, including labor racketeering, extortion, and money laundering conspiracy. ( A few guys had a good thing going for many years — until 2019, when the bosses moved in and fcked it all up -- eventually bringing in the Feds somehow …) The charges relate to multiple schemes in a long-running effort by the family to infiltrate and control a Queens-based labo
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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. 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 Je
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