Decades of Mob Violence Behind Waterfront Case
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| The guy who owned the “Godfather’s Garden.” |
But the Genovese family's control of the New Jersey waterfront goes back decades and includes many storied mobsters of the past who killed and were killed for control of the lucrative waterfront rackets of the Garden State. The Genovese family even ran its own hit squad, which focused on murdering FBI informants, among others.
The bloodless indictment by comparison likely will end with three men serving three-year prison sentences.
The key count in the indictment is conspiracy to extort members of the International Longshoremen’s Association for Christmastime tribute payments, according to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman and Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch.
Genovese soldier Stephen "Beach" Depiro, 59, along with two family associates -- former president of ILA Local 1235 Albert Cernadas, 79, and former vp of ILA Local 1478 Nunzio LaGrasso, 64 -- pleaded guilty in Newark federal court.before U.S. District Judge Claire C. Cecchi.
Depiro admitted to predicate acts involving conspiracy to commit extortion and bookmaking. Cernadas and LaGrasso admitted to predicate acts involving conspiracy to commit extortion and multiple extortions.
Since at least 2005, Depiro has managed the Genovese family’s control over the New Jersey waterfront – including the nearly three-decades-long extortion of port workers in ILA Local 1, ILA Local 1235 and ILA Local 1478. Members of the Genovese family, including Depiro, are charged with conspiring to collect tribute payments from New Jersey port workers at Christmas Time each year through their corrupt influence over union officials, including the last three presidents of Local 1235 and vice president of ILA Local 1478. Depiro also controlled a sports betting package that was managed by several others, through the use of an overseas sports betting operation.
During their guilty plea proceedings, Depiro, Cernadas and LaGrasso admitted their involvement in the Genovese family, including conspiring to compel tribute payments from ILA union members, who made the payments based on actual and threatened force, violence and fear. Cernadas and LaGrasso admitted to carrying out multiple extortions of dockworkers. The timing of the extortions typically coincided with the receipt by certain ILA members of “Container Royalty Fund” checks, a form of year-end compensation.
The racketeering charge to which Depiro, Cernadas and LaGrasso pleaded guilty carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison, though according to GangLand News sources, plea agreements carry recommended prison terms of about three years.
In a story posted last Thursday Santa's Made A List, Checked It Twice; No Christmas Gifts On The Waterfront, Jerry Capeci noted: "The trio are the last remaining defendants in the only still pending case stemming from the arrests of 127 mob-connected defendants on Mafia Takedown Day nearly four years ago.
"The case was a throwback to the bad old days of On the Waterfront-style schemes in which mobsters and their designated union stooges preyed on hard-working laborers. The indictment alleges that the Genovese family employed a "systemic use of actual and threatened force, violence and fear" to extort about $3 million in "Christmas tributes" from longshoremen beginning in 1982. Actually, the feds say the scheme began years earlier, but the indictment only goes back to when Cernadas got involved after he took over as president of Local 1235."
Depiro was a long-time soldier under the family's powerful waterfront capo Tino Fiumara, who was supposedly part of a three-man panel running the family at the time of his death in 2010.
Fiumara controlled Newark/Elizabeth Seaport-based unions and engaged in loansharking, extortion, gambling, and union and labor racketeering throughout the New Jersey counties of Union, Essex and Bergen.
The Feds attribute a around a dozen murders to Fiumara, who once belonged to a Genovese family hit squad. Several of Tino's alleged victims were FBI informants.
Fiumara designated Depiro as his acting capo to run operations on the New Jersey piers and docks after Genovese soldier Lawrence Ricci was found with two bullets in his head in the trunk of a car parked behind a North Jersey diner in 2005. Fiumara himself likely gave the order.
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| Tino Fiumara |
Fiumara designated Depiro as his acting capo to run operations on the New Jersey piers and docks after Genovese soldier Lawrence Ricci was found with two bullets in his head in the trunk of a car parked behind a North Jersey diner in 2005. Fiumara himself likely gave the order.
Tino came up in the mob alongside Michael "Mikey Cigars" Coppola. In fact both were together in the late 1960s when they worked for New Jersey capo Ruggiero "Richie The Boot" Boiardo, who lived in Livingston, New Jersey, in a lurid mansion that supposedly was the model for the home in which HBO's Tony Soprano lived with his family in the award-winning HBO series.
Tino was "an imposing figure who kept fit in his later years and favored cashmere sports jackets and turtleneck sweaters," according to a New York Times report.
He once traveled in the trunk of a car to defeat surveillance, according to an account provided to investigators by an informer. He also routinely drove the wrong way down one-way streets, traveled up highway off-ramps, regularly switched cars and even rode a bicycle — sometimes traveling through parks into which cars could not follow — to lose his F.B.I. pursuers, according to court papers.
He never used his home phone to discuss mob business and eschewed cellphones, communicating only with pagers and pay phones, and maintaining a list of some 20 locations at any given time where he knew he could be neither watched nor overheard, according to court papers.
Indeed, Paul J. McCarthy, a veteran F.B.I. agent who spent at least four years investigating Mr. Fiumara in the 1990s, said in a 1998 affidavit that the man had used “more extensive countersurveillance techniques than I have ever seen in all my years in law enforcement.” The application was for a roving wiretap so agents could listen in on his pay phone calls.
Fiumara was so low key, it is not widely known that his brother was married to an aunt of New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie. (Christie also can be pretty discreet about some things. He visited Fiumara in prison in 1991, but did not disclose this when his office announced a plea bargain in that case.)
Fiumara’s reputation for cunning was so powerful, when he died in September 2010, law enforcement officials didn't believe he was dead. One F.B.I. supervisor sent two agents to confirm Fiumara’s demise. They visited the Long Island funeral home that buried him; the proprietor assured them that Fiumara, who had moved to South Huntington, New York, after his 2005 release from prison, was indeed dead. But that didn't stop the FBI, who then visited the hospital where Fiumara had been undergoing cancer treatment when he died. There, they were finally satisfied: Fiumara, head of the Genovese family’s waterfront rackets, was indeed dead.
Court papers filed in the case of another Genovese crime family figure revealed that, according to a government informer in the late 1970s, Fiumara belonged to a Genovese family hit team known as “The Fist.”
Four murders linked to Fiumara and "The Fist" involved men who talked or were planning to talk to the authorities; the fatal topic of discussion in all cases was John DiGilio, Fiumara’s mob superior.
The New York Daily News also reported about "The Fist" hit squad in an article about "Mikey Cigars" Coppola, who was busted in 2007 after a decade on the lam. Tino's longtime partner in crime, Mikey Cigars also was a member of the ruthless group of Mafia murderers,once based in Newark, New Jersey.
During the hit, a wounded Johnny Coca Cola, noticing that Coppola's gun had jammed, famously barked: “What are you gonna do now, tough guy?” Coppola allegedly then pulled a second gun and fired four more bullets into his target.
Lardiere was serving a contempt sentence at the time, but was granted a two-day prison furlough. Law enforcement officials remarked that the Genovese crime family had ordered the hit because, while in prison, Johnny Coca Cola had gotten into a fight with a high-ranking mobster held in the same jail.
Coppola was formally initiated into the Genovese family following the hit, authorities said.
The plot against John Gotti arose in a Sept. 21 in a conversation among Manna, Casella and another man. The plan was to attack Gotti near a club he frequented in Ozone Park, Queens. ''Wear a disguise,'' Manna said. ''It's an open place.''
The FBI subsequently notified Gotti of the plot. According to an Oct. 9 transcript, the Genovese mobsters learned of the warning -- but wanted the two Gottis dead so badly, they continued plotting.
"Hey, John Gotti knows,'' Casella said on Oct. 9.
An unidentified man responded, ''John Gotti knows we. . . .''
''That we ordered it?'' another man said.
The plotting continued. On Jan. 10, Manna referenced ''a big hit, John Gotti,'' and then apparently discussed the selection of gunman.
Two days later, in a conversation between Manna and James Napoli, Manna said: ''Gene Gotti's dead.''
''When are you gonna hit him?'' Napoli asked.
''Gene Gotti's dead,'' Manna repeated.
''We're gonna be paying for this, you know, for the rest of our lives,'' Napoli said.
John Gotti was doing some plotting of his own. His plan was to murder the Chin and put Genovese capo and longtime friend Alfonso "Allie Shades" Malangone in the big seat. This is based on an FBI summary of tape recorded remarks made by Genovese capo Alan "Baldie" Long during a three-year investigation of the Genovese family.
"John Gotti was taking over. (Be)cause our friend (Malangone) grew up with him, we could make a deal. He (Chin) was dead," Longo said, adding that the scheme collapsed when Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso declined to take part. "If Gaspipe could have been talked into killing our friend, you know who would have been our boss, Alley Shades … He was always up John's ass," said Longo, who was Malangone's bodyguard and chauffeur in 1988, when the plotting and counter-plotting was in full swing.
His skull was crushed. His spine was broken. The ribs on the right side of his body were caved in. Nine ribs on the left side were fractured, as was his right leg. For good measure, Harris was shot once in the chest. He was in a kneeling position, with his ankles tied to the back of his head with wire. He had disappeared three months earlier.
Even before his body was found, police suspected that Harris... had been killed in a turf dispute with rival gangsters. When his remains were recovered, however, evidence that Harris had been tortured stumped them.
Federal prosecutors in Newark told a federal judge that Fiumara was responsible.
“We received information from confidential informants that Tino had done it and had driven the trussed up body around to make sure everyone knew that the [Genovese] family was very serious about its control of all the bookmaking business in New Jersey,” said one law enforcement source.
“You gotta do what you gotta do and sometimes you do it with tears in your eyes.”
Tino was "an imposing figure who kept fit in his later years and favored cashmere sports jackets and turtleneck sweaters," according to a New York Times report.
Fiumara was known by both law enforcement and his criminal cohorts for being as canny as he was ruthless.
He never used his home phone to discuss mob business and eschewed cellphones, communicating only with pagers and pay phones, and maintaining a list of some 20 locations at any given time where he knew he could be neither watched nor overheard, according to court papers.
Indeed, Paul J. McCarthy, a veteran F.B.I. agent who spent at least four years investigating Mr. Fiumara in the 1990s, said in a 1998 affidavit that the man had used “more extensive countersurveillance techniques than I have ever seen in all my years in law enforcement.” The application was for a roving wiretap so agents could listen in on his pay phone calls.
Fiumara was so low key, it is not widely known that his brother was married to an aunt of New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie. (Christie also can be pretty discreet about some things. He visited Fiumara in prison in 1991, but did not disclose this when his office announced a plea bargain in that case.)
Fiumara’s reputation for cunning was so powerful, when he died in September 2010, law enforcement officials didn't believe he was dead. One F.B.I. supervisor sent two agents to confirm Fiumara’s demise. They visited the Long Island funeral home that buried him; the proprietor assured them that Fiumara, who had moved to South Huntington, New York, after his 2005 release from prison, was indeed dead. But that didn't stop the FBI, who then visited the hospital where Fiumara had been undergoing cancer treatment when he died. There, they were finally satisfied: Fiumara, head of the Genovese family’s waterfront rackets, was indeed dead.
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| Angelo Prisco |
Four murders linked to Fiumara and "The Fist" involved men who talked or were planning to talk to the authorities; the fatal topic of discussion in all cases was John DiGilio, Fiumara’s mob superior.
The New York Daily News also reported about "The Fist" hit squad in an article about "Mikey Cigars" Coppola, who was busted in 2007 after a decade on the lam. Tino's longtime partner in crime, Mikey Cigars also was a member of the ruthless group of Mafia murderers,once based in Newark, New Jersey.
On December 18, 2009 Coppola was sentenced to 16 years in prison. His projected release date is March 4, 2024. Though convicted of racketeering, Coppola was acquitted of the 1977 execution of New Jersey gangster John "Johnny Coca Cola" Lardiere.
Coppola didn't want to kill mob associate “Johnny Coca Cola," former Luchese hit man Thomas Ricciardi revealed in testimony at Mikey Cigars' trial.
“You gotta do what you gotta do and sometimes you do it with tears in your eyes,” Coppola allegedly told Ricciardi in 1983.
During the hit, a wounded Johnny Coca Cola, noticing that Coppola's gun had jammed, famously barked: “What are you gonna do now, tough guy?” Coppola allegedly then pulled a second gun and fired four more bullets into his target.
Lardiere was serving a contempt sentence at the time, but was granted a two-day prison furlough. Law enforcement officials remarked that the Genovese crime family had ordered the hit because, while in prison, Johnny Coca Cola had gotten into a fight with a high-ranking mobster held in the same jail.
Coppola was formally initiated into the Genovese family following the hit, authorities said.
Ricciardi, who admitted to participating in 11 murder conspiracies, also said Fiumara played a role in organizing the hit, though Fiumara was not charged.
[The term "The Fist" was used again in the mid-1980s. It referred to John Gotti and four other primary plotters against then-Gambino boss Paul Castellano; they collectively referred to themselves as "the fist." Gotti and his "fist" plotted for more nearly nine months to kill Castellano before they finally whacked him during Christmas week 1985. Whether the resurrection of the name was a coincidence or on purpose, we can't say.]
[The term "The Fist" was used again in the mid-1980s. It referred to John Gotti and four other primary plotters against then-Gambino boss Paul Castellano; they collectively referred to themselves as "the fist." Gotti and his "fist" plotted for more nearly nine months to kill Castellano before they finally whacked him during Christmas week 1985. Whether the resurrection of the name was a coincidence or on purpose, we can't say.]
In May 1988 DiGilio himself was murdered. His body was found inside a mortician's bag in the Hackensack River. DiGilio had disappeared three weeks prior. Genovese capo Angelo Prisco, the Bronx-based wiseguy who took over the slain gangster’s crew in the early 1990s, was found guilty of committing the murder, ordered by Vincent "the Chin" Gigante. DiGilio was killed two weeks after he was acquitted of racketeering on the Bayonne, N.J. waterfront. He had dramatically represented himself during trial but obviously was no fool -- making this one hell of an achievement. Nevertheless, according to court papers, Gigante ordered his murder after the former boxer/labor racketeer fell out of favor with Louis "Bobby" Manna, who was also based in New Jersey.
WATERFRONT GANGSTER PLOTTED JOHN GOTTI HIT
Manna’s New Jersey headquarters was based in an office in Casella’s Restaurant in Hoboken. From there, he managed gambling, loansharking, labor racketeering, corruption and pier thefts in the region. Based on investigative findings, Manna controlled portions of Hudson County once believed to be under DiGilio's purview.
Manna was jailed for three years in the 1970s for refusing to answer questions about organized crime, but his goose was cooked in June, 1989, when he was convicted of ordering the murder of New York businessman Irwin Schiff and of plotting the murder of then-Gambino boss John Gotti, as well as Gotti’s brother, Gene.
Manna had been indicted along with Martin Casella and Richard "Bocci" DeSciscio. Authorities said the plot to kill the Gottis surfaced in 1987 during a joint FBI-New Jersey State Police investigation into Manna's Mafia activities. Dozens of secretly recorded conversations were obtained after the FBI placed a listening device in Casella's Restaurant. The taped conversations occurred between August 1987 and January 1988.
In one conversation, Casella and two unidentified men discussed the impending slaying of Schiff, who Federal officials said had links to both the Genovese and Gambino crime families and was thought to have been skimming money owed the Genovese family. Schiff was a New York City construction consultant with suspected mob ties. Tipping the scale at around 350 pounds, he was called "the Fat Man" and was gunned down in 1987 in "classic gangland style" while eating dinner in a posh Manhattan restaurant.
WATERFRONT GANGSTER PLOTTED JOHN GOTTI HIT
Manna’s New Jersey headquarters was based in an office in Casella’s Restaurant in Hoboken. From there, he managed gambling, loansharking, labor racketeering, corruption and pier thefts in the region. Based on investigative findings, Manna controlled portions of Hudson County once believed to be under DiGilio's purview.
Manna was jailed for three years in the 1970s for refusing to answer questions about organized crime, but his goose was cooked in June, 1989, when he was convicted of ordering the murder of New York businessman Irwin Schiff and of plotting the murder of then-Gambino boss John Gotti, as well as Gotti’s brother, Gene.
Manna had been indicted along with Martin Casella and Richard "Bocci" DeSciscio. Authorities said the plot to kill the Gottis surfaced in 1987 during a joint FBI-New Jersey State Police investigation into Manna's Mafia activities. Dozens of secretly recorded conversations were obtained after the FBI placed a listening device in Casella's Restaurant. The taped conversations occurred between August 1987 and January 1988.
In one conversation, Casella and two unidentified men discussed the impending slaying of Schiff, who Federal officials said had links to both the Genovese and Gambino crime families and was thought to have been skimming money owed the Genovese family. Schiff was a New York City construction consultant with suspected mob ties. Tipping the scale at around 350 pounds, he was called "the Fat Man" and was gunned down in 1987 in "classic gangland style" while eating dinner in a posh Manhattan restaurant.
The plot against John Gotti arose in a Sept. 21 in a conversation among Manna, Casella and another man. The plan was to attack Gotti near a club he frequented in Ozone Park, Queens. ''Wear a disguise,'' Manna said. ''It's an open place.''
The FBI subsequently notified Gotti of the plot. According to an Oct. 9 transcript, the Genovese mobsters learned of the warning -- but wanted the two Gottis dead so badly, they continued plotting.
"Hey, John Gotti knows,'' Casella said on Oct. 9.
An unidentified man responded, ''John Gotti knows we. . . .''
''That we ordered it?'' another man said.
The plotting continued. On Jan. 10, Manna referenced ''a big hit, John Gotti,'' and then apparently discussed the selection of gunman.
Two days later, in a conversation between Manna and James Napoli, Manna said: ''Gene Gotti's dead.''
''When are you gonna hit him?'' Napoli asked.
''Gene Gotti's dead,'' Manna repeated.
''We're gonna be paying for this, you know, for the rest of our lives,'' Napoli said.
"John Gotti was taking over. (Be)cause our friend (Malangone) grew up with him, we could make a deal. He (Chin) was dead," Longo said, adding that the scheme collapsed when Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso declined to take part. "If Gaspipe could have been talked into killing our friend, you know who would have been our boss, Alley Shades … He was always up John's ass," said Longo, who was Malangone's bodyguard and chauffeur in 1988, when the plotting and counter-plotting was in full swing.
GRISLY MURDER CREDITED TO FIUMARA
Fiumara is believed to be responsible for the grisly death of a big bookmaker in New Jersey, who was found in a snow-covered dump. As GangLand News reported, on March 29, 1969, "the savagely beaten body of Robert "Bobby" Harris Jr., a well-heeled, 49-year-old black civic leader and politically connected nightclub owner in Paterson" was found.His skull was crushed. His spine was broken. The ribs on the right side of his body were caved in. Nine ribs on the left side were fractured, as was his right leg. For good measure, Harris was shot once in the chest. He was in a kneeling position, with his ankles tied to the back of his head with wire. He had disappeared three months earlier.
Even before his body was found, police suspected that Harris... had been killed in a turf dispute with rival gangsters. When his remains were recovered, however, evidence that Harris had been tortured stumped them.
Federal prosecutors in Newark told a federal judge that Fiumara was responsible.
“We received information from confidential informants that Tino had done it and had driven the trussed up body around to make sure everyone knew that the [Genovese] family was very serious about its control of all the bookmaking business in New Jersey,” said one law enforcement source.