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By Ed Scarpo Sunday, May 18, 2014

Cosa Nostra News and Bloodletters & Badmen Productions together bring you:

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Popular Stories

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

By Ed Scarpo Sunday, August 14, 2011

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

Mikie Scars On The Ravenite Transcripts

By Ed Scarpo Thursday, January 12, 2023

"He's asking Frankie, what do we do? Do we just let Sammy run wild and take everything? There's other people here, other captains here... Nobody could eat. Sammy, in John's mind, is out of control and he's having people killed, and John feels like a clown, like he has been led around by the master of ceremonies..." —Mikie Scars on the Ravenite Transcripts We finally had a chance to mosey on over to Patreon to check out the No Excuses podcast featuring Michael (Mikie Scars) DiLeonardo and RJ Rogers, who have been focusing on the transcripts of the FBI recordings of Gambino boss John Gotti holding forth in an apartment above the Ravenite social club. The Ravenite social club was a valuable piece of New York history that should've been preserved. (You don't have to join Patreon, and fork over $9.99 a month, to watch part one of the Gotti Tapes , which was posted on YouTube recently. To access the podcast for free, skip on down to the end of this....) In

Mob Wife Ex-Husband Hector Pagan In Brooklyn Halfway House With April 2021 Release Date

By Ed Scarpo Sunday, December 13, 2020

Back in 2014, after hearing (and ignoring) the heartfelt pleas of a murdered man's daughter, Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson sentenced Hector (Junior) Pagan to 11 years in prison —and offered a thoughtful comment. James Donovan was killed during a botched robbery in July 2010. He said, “We can only hope” that by time Pagan is released “we have prepared him for re-entry into society to mitigate the risk” of what would happen if Pagan returned to a life of crime. How far Judge Gleeson's hope gets us is something we will discover very soon. The former Bonanno associate/Mob Wives bit player is getting out of the can in a few months..... He is currently residing at the Brooklyn RRM (a halfway house where he and other Federal offenders receive "community-based services that will assist with their reentry needs.") Pagan's official reentry date is April 18, 2021. Renee Graziano's ex-husband got a reduced sentence in 2014 because he flipped and testified against tw

Book On Goodfellas Explains Why The Names Of All The Wiseguys Were Changed

By Ed Scarpo Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas by Glenn Kenny, which we finally got around to perusing, includes many fascinating tidbits about the acclaimed 1990 Martin Scorsese film as well as the real-life Luchese wiseguys and associates on whom the film was based. We also learned the answer to something we have long wondered about: Why did Scorsese change the names of the characters? “You got money for that fcking commercial of yours. You don't got my money? You don't got my fckin' money?” According to Made Men, Robert De Niro’s approach to the role of Jimmy Burke —renamed Conway—the Irish-American gangster with ties to the Luchese crime family through his association with Luchese capo Paul Vario , renamed Cicero for the film—included the kind of painstaking, multifaceted preparatory work for which the New Yorker has long been known. De Niro’s copy of the Goodfellas script—which is part of the De Niro archives at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas —includes handwritten

Bikers Bloodied Up At Least Three Bonanno Wiseguys At Long Island Funeral Parlor, Gang Land Reports

By Ed Scarpo Thursday, July 28, 2022

Defense lawyers using the "musical consiglieris" defense in the courtroom apparently wasn't the only reason why Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, boss of the Bonanno family, took the drastic step of expelling (aka shelving) his own acting boss and three others from the crime family back in 2019. Mikey Nose Mancuso. Credit: Noah Goldberg/Daily News . It also had something to do with betrayal: ex-acting boss Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano tried to take control of the crime family while Mikey Nose was still in prison, according to today's Gang Land News , which reports that details of Joe C's maneuvering against Mancuso came to light via testimony at the Bonanno racketeering trial . Gang Land also reported today that tensions between Mikey Nose and Joe C. ramped up significantly last week, to the extent that there was a big brawl at a Long Island funeral parlor during a wake for Cammarano's father-in-law, Vito Grimaldi. "Mikey Nose is a torpedo—a killer." I

Ex-Gambino Associate John Alite Also Photographed With Former President Donald Trump

By Ed Scarpo Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Is there anyone Trump won't take a picture with?, we are beginning to wonder... with no offense to former Gambino associate John Alite, who also was snapped alongside the former president. (Only because Alite's pic was snapped last summer, we believe he beat Skinny Joey to the Trump train). John Alite, center, alongside DJT, who is keeping busy since his failed coup against the United States. Alite confirmed the authenticity of the photograph, which was recently published in the UK's Independent , which reports that Alite these days describes himself as a political independent who supported Trump’s push for criminal justice reform. Alite, who is a veteran podcaster—who we have written about here for years—also told the news site about some of the life changes he has experienced since departing the clink some 10 years back. “ I'm a guy that's does TV, does movies , those talk shows, does talks for kids, works with the FBI, does events and talks with the FBI aga

Waterfront Commission Bans Multiple Individuals Over Mafia Ties, Helps Nab Two Genovese "Brokesters"

By Ed Scarpo Saturday, December 17, 2022

After a seven-month hiatus, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was back in business on December 7, when it formally banned multiple individuals from obtaining "gainful" employment on the docks over alleged ties to Mafia figures. Churchgoer Stephen (Beach) DePiro, reputed Genovese soldier. As per published reports, the rejects had ties to the Lucchese, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and DeCavalcante crime families. The potential recruits included an applicant who is affiliated with Stephen (Beach) DePiro, a Genovese soldier who in 2015 was sentenced to three years and five months in prison after pleading guilty to an extortion scheme that collected kickbacks from dock workers. The Commission also blocked an applicant who did not disclose his association with a “member of the Sicilian faction of the Gambino family.” Another applicant was rejected over his not disclosing multiple family ties to the mob: his father is associated with the Luchese family and a grandfather

Bonanno Family War Chest; So Many Coincidences: Christmas 2022 Update

By Ed Scarpo Friday, December 09, 2022

It is December 2022, the holiday season, and some Bonanno wiseguys are pitching a fit over the mandatory monthly dues demanded by the boss for the family war chest. According to our generally reliable sources, Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, 67, has been taking $200 a month from each and every Bonanno. Nose and his preternaturally bright smile. (Is he contemplating those Christmas envelopes?) Savvy gangland watchers will recall that boss Joe Massino also collected monthly dues from members for inclusion in a legal defense fund. Wiseguy Frank Lino brought this out while on the stand, testifying that he and others each kicked in $100 a month to a family kitty that was to be used to pay legal expenses. Before Massino was arrested for the last time, “everyone paid $100 a month for a war chest—if someone got in trouble, it was there,” one source told us. The Bonanno family’s legal defense fund efforts “stopped for a while, but when Nose came home, he put it back into effect.” Mancuso not on

RIP Tough Tony: Sources Say Elusive Genovese Family Powerhouse Was Official Consiglieri

By Ed Scarpo Wednesday, November 09, 2022

Longtime Genovese family powerhouse Anthony (Tough Tony) Federici, who ran a landmark Queens-based Italian restaurant, died this morning of natural causes, sources tell Cosa Nostra News . Still from YouTube interview with Tough Tony Federici. While the elusive Federici long claimed he was retired from the position of capo in the nation's most powerful Mafia clan, the Genovese crime family, sources say Tough Tony, aka Tony Park Side, was part of the Genovese crime family's formal hierarchy, holding the position of official consiglieri, at the time of his death. Prior, he'd been acting underboss of the crime family. Federici, who remarkably appeared in several YouTube video interviews about six years ago (three of which are posted below), was the longtime owner of Park Side Restaurant, a popular Italian restaurant located in the heart of Corona, Queens that his parents opened in 1960 under a different name. And, despite the incessant denials, Federici was a power in the Genov

Notorious Bonanno Wiseguy Bruno Indelicato Released From Prison

By Ed Scarpo Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Longtime Bonanno wiseguy Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato, 75, who shot his way into the annals of American organized crime, was released from prison on May 20, 2022, as per the BOP inmate locator website. Bruno Indelicato, left, Frank Lino. The son of the brutally murdered Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato, a capo who led a doomed faction of the Bonanno family, Bruno was in his heyday a feared stone killer with a legendary appetite for cocaine. Indelicato was one of three masked gunmen who walked into Joe & Mary’s restaurant in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn one hot July day in 1979 and blasted Carmine Galante at close range while the volcanic, would-be usurper enjoyed a customary, post-prandial cigar. Indelicato’s efforts to protect the family’s boss paid dividends: Indelicato was among a slew of Bonanno soldiers elevated to capo by a grateful Philip (Rusty) Rastelli in the wake of the Galante hits. But Cosa Nostra being Cosa Nostra, it wasn't long—a couple of years—before Bruno&#

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Popular Stories

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

By Ed Scarpo Sunday, August 14, 2011

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

Bikers Bloodied Up At Least Three Bonanno Wiseguys At Long Island Funeral Parlor, Gang Land Reports

By Ed Scarpo Thursday, July 28, 2022

Defense lawyers using the "musical consiglieris" defense in the courtroom apparently wasn't the only reason why Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, boss of the Bonanno family, took the drastic step of expelling (aka shelving) his own acting boss and three others from the crime family back in 2019. Mikey Nose Mancuso. Credit: Noah Goldberg/Daily News . It also had something to do with betrayal: ex-acting boss Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano tried to take control of the crime family while Mikey Nose was still in prison, according to today's Gang Land News , which reports that details of Joe C's maneuvering against Mancuso came to light via testimony at the Bonanno racketeering trial . Gang Land also reported today that tensions between Mikey Nose and Joe C. ramped up significantly last week, to the extent that there was a big brawl at a Long Island funeral parlor during a wake for Cammarano's father-in-law, Vito Grimaldi. "Mikey Nose is a torpedo—a killer." I

Bath Avenue Crew Rose High, Fell Hard

By Ed Scarpo Monday, August 18, 2014

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

Mob Wife Ex-Husband Hector Pagan In Brooklyn Halfway House With April 2021 Release Date

By Ed Scarpo Sunday, December 13, 2020

Back in 2014, after hearing (and ignoring) the heartfelt pleas of a murdered man's daughter, Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson sentenced Hector (Junior) Pagan to 11 years in prison —and offered a thoughtful comment. James Donovan was killed during a botched robbery in July 2010. He said, “We can only hope” that by time Pagan is released “we have prepared him for re-entry into society to mitigate the risk” of what would happen if Pagan returned to a life of crime. How far Judge Gleeson's hope gets us is something we will discover very soon. The former Bonanno associate/Mob Wives bit player is getting out of the can in a few months..... He is currently residing at the Brooklyn RRM (a halfway house where he and other Federal offenders receive "community-based services that will assist with their reentry needs.") Pagan's official reentry date is April 18, 2021. Renee Graziano's ex-husband got a reduced sentence in 2014 because he flipped and testified against tw

Notorious Bonanno Wiseguy Bruno Indelicato Released From Prison

By Ed Scarpo Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Longtime Bonanno wiseguy Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato, 75, who shot his way into the annals of American organized crime, was released from prison on May 20, 2022, as per the BOP inmate locator website. Bruno Indelicato, left, Frank Lino. The son of the brutally murdered Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato, a capo who led a doomed faction of the Bonanno family, Bruno was in his heyday a feared stone killer with a legendary appetite for cocaine. Indelicato was one of three masked gunmen who walked into Joe & Mary’s restaurant in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn one hot July day in 1979 and blasted Carmine Galante at close range while the volcanic, would-be usurper enjoyed a customary, post-prandial cigar. Indelicato’s efforts to protect the family’s boss paid dividends: Indelicato was among a slew of Bonanno soldiers elevated to capo by a grateful Philip (Rusty) Rastelli in the wake of the Galante hits. But Cosa Nostra being Cosa Nostra, it wasn't long—a couple of years—before Bruno&#

RIP Tough Tony: Sources Say Elusive Genovese Family Powerhouse Was Official Consiglieri

By Ed Scarpo Wednesday, November 09, 2022

Longtime Genovese family powerhouse Anthony (Tough Tony) Federici, who ran a landmark Queens-based Italian restaurant, died this morning of natural causes, sources tell Cosa Nostra News . Still from YouTube interview with Tough Tony Federici. While the elusive Federici long claimed he was retired from the position of capo in the nation's most powerful Mafia clan, the Genovese crime family, sources say Tough Tony, aka Tony Park Side, was part of the Genovese crime family's formal hierarchy, holding the position of official consiglieri, at the time of his death. Prior, he'd been acting underboss of the crime family. Federici, who remarkably appeared in several YouTube video interviews about six years ago (three of which are posted below), was the longtime owner of Park Side Restaurant, a popular Italian restaurant located in the heart of Corona, Queens that his parents opened in 1960 under a different name. And, despite the incessant denials, Federici was a power in the Genov

Bonanno Family War Chest; So Many Coincidences: Christmas 2022 Update

By Ed Scarpo Friday, December 09, 2022

It is December 2022, the holiday season, and some Bonanno wiseguys are pitching a fit over the mandatory monthly dues demanded by the boss for the family war chest. According to our generally reliable sources, Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, 67, has been taking $200 a month from each and every Bonanno. Nose and his preternaturally bright smile. (Is he contemplating those Christmas envelopes?) Savvy gangland watchers will recall that boss Joe Massino also collected monthly dues from members for inclusion in a legal defense fund. Wiseguy Frank Lino brought this out while on the stand, testifying that he and others each kicked in $100 a month to a family kitty that was to be used to pay legal expenses. Before Massino was arrested for the last time, “everyone paid $100 a month for a war chest—if someone got in trouble, it was there,” one source told us. The Bonanno family’s legal defense fund efforts “stopped for a while, but when Nose came home, he put it back into effect.” Mancuso not on

Who Really Killed Tommy Two-Guns DeSimone?

By Ed Scarpo Monday, December 28, 2015

It's one of gangland's most high-profile, enigmatic hits -- and the identity of the killer has been debated for decades. Joe Pesci immortalized a vicious killer in Goodfellas. Thomas "Tommy Two-Guns" DeSimone killed a made member of the Mafia -- and for that, among other things, he was killed in what's been described as a classic setup. The truth is, we know very little about this murder, including who pulled the trigger. (Or fired up the chainsaw, depending on who you believe). DeSimone disappeared, meaning there's zero evidence as to how he was killed; in fact, it can't be said with absolute certainty that he was killed. Still, he was killed . Guys like him don't just disappear into thin air. They'd never leave New York because everything they want -- a certain lifestyle, basically -- is in New York and cannot be duplicated anywhere else. At the same time, there's no shortage of answers as to who and the why. Answers sell books an

Waterfront Commission Bans Multiple Individuals Over Mafia Ties, Helps Nab Two Genovese "Brokesters"

By Ed Scarpo Saturday, December 17, 2022

After a seven-month hiatus, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was back in business on December 7, when it formally banned multiple individuals from obtaining "gainful" employment on the docks over alleged ties to Mafia figures. Churchgoer Stephen (Beach) DePiro, reputed Genovese soldier. As per published reports, the rejects had ties to the Lucchese, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and DeCavalcante crime families. The potential recruits included an applicant who is affiliated with Stephen (Beach) DePiro, a Genovese soldier who in 2015 was sentenced to three years and five months in prison after pleading guilty to an extortion scheme that collected kickbacks from dock workers. The Commission also blocked an applicant who did not disclose his association with a “member of the Sicilian faction of the Gambino family.” Another applicant was rejected over his not disclosing multiple family ties to the mob: his father is associated with the Luchese family and a grandfather

Who Fat Andy Loved; John Gotti's Other Side: Anthony Ruggiano Junior, Part FOUR

By Ed Scarpo Saturday, November 16, 2019

In the 1960s and 1970s, Anthony (Fat Andy) Ruggiano had one of the biggest crews in the Gambino family, and he wanted to keep it that way. Fat Andy, Fritzy Giovanelli, sitting Lenny DiMaria, far right in gray Sonny Franzese He had had around 70-75 guys in his crew, and out of all of them, Andy wanted to straighten out only one, Nicky Corozzo. Fat Andy "didn’t want to make anybody his equal at one point," said Anthony Junior. "He had a big crew with him and he liked it that way. He wound up being right." Andy and Anthony (Tony Lee) Guerrieri even got into an argument over Fat Andy's reluctance to make any of his guys. Tony Lee had wanted to put Anthony (Tony Pep) Trentacosta up to be straightened out with Nicky. Fat Andy prevailed, however, and they both decided that only Nicky would get made. Once Andy proposed Nicky, Nicky went out of his way to express his gratitude to Ruggiano. "After my father proposed Nicky, Nicky went to my father&#