Luchese-Bloods Alliance Peddled Prison Contraband, Snitch Said

Reputed Luchese mobster Christopher Londonio, in a bid to delay his trial next week for the 2013 slaying of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish, filed court papers in White Plains that make allegations linking a now-deceased attorney to a drug ring and an escape plot, and that also suggest an ongoing alliance between Luchese wiseguys and members of the Bloods street gang.

Bloods

The jailhouse snitch said attorney Charlie Carnesi, a well-respected mob lawyer, provided reputed Luchese wiseguy Londonio with confirmation about certain commissary account deposits and tracking numbers for Western Union payments that were tied to the sales of synthetic marijuana and cigarettes at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), according to the legal papers filed by Londonio.

The informant also alleged that Londonio, who was Carnesi’s client at the time, confessed to peddling the contraband with members of the Bloods gang while they were locked up in the MDC, according to the White Plains federal court filing, which outlines activities that allegedly occurred in 2017 at the MDC in Brooklyn.





The snitch making the allegations is twice-convicted bank robber David Evangelista, who is referred to in court filings as CW-3. At this writing, Evangelista, 44, was awaiting sentencing for robbing two banks in November 2016 days following his escape from a Bronx halfway house. When he escaped the halfway house, Evangelista had been finishing up a stint of more than 12 years for robbing two Manhattan banks in October 2005.

Londonio’s co-defendants are former acting boss Matthew (Matty) Madonna, underboss Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea Sr., and associate Terence Caldwell. All four have been charged with the 2013 Meldish murder in the Bronx, plus various other crimes, including attempted murder, loansharking, extortion, drug dealing, labor racketeering, and illegal gambling, and are slated to go to trial on October 2. 

Steven (Stevie Junior) Crea also was implicated in the murder but copped a plea to various other charges that call for a 13-year sentence. Crea refused a deal that would’ve sent him away for 10 years because it required him to cop to the Meldish homicide.

Carnesi, who died of pancreatic cancer on February 27 at age 69, represented John (Junior) Gotti in three successive trials, each of which ended in hung juries, including the last one in 2009, after which federal prosecutors threw in the towel against the Mafia scion.

Numerous law enforcement and courthouse sources have dismissed the allegations against Carnesi as pure nonsense. Little to nothing has been said regarding the veracity of Evangelista 's other claims, about the Bloods-Luchese ring.

Londonio previously noted in court papers that Evangelista, the informant, “has a long, documented history of mental health and medical issues” that includes “purposely ingest(ing) both a razor and a metal screw.” Evangelista also was put on suicide watch around the time he posed the allegations about Carnesi in August 2017 after attempting suicide.

Chris Londonio
Chris Londonio, alleged wheelman in Meldish homicide.

The Luchese family has a history of working with the Bloods.

In January 2016, Garden State law enforcement authorities announced multi-year prison sentences for a slew of Luchese wiseguys, including Madonna and other top members of the Luchese family.

Arrested and charged in 2007, they pleaded guilty in 2015 to racketeering charges related to Operation Heat, which centered on a New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice probe into a $2.5 billion international criminal gambling racket.

The Operation Heat investigation also uncovered a scheme involving a former New Jersey corrections officer and a high-ranking member of the Nine Trey Gangsters, a street gang affiliated with the Bloods street gang. The two had entered into an alliance with the Luchese crime family to smuggle drugs and pre-paid cell phones into East Jersey State Prison.

The ring involved former corrections officer Michael T. Bruinton; Edwin Spears, a "five-star general" in the Nine Trey Gangsters; and Joseph Perna and another Luchese crime family defendant, now deceased.

The alliance allegedly extended beyond smuggling, authorities charged.

In one instance, Joseph Perna sought assistance from Spears to stop an individual associated with the Bloods from extorting money from a man with ties to the Luchese family, authorities stated.

It's not just the Luchese family. Federal prosecutors in June alleged that Anthony Zottola, Sr., plotted with Bloods gang members to kill his father, a longtime Bonanno associate, as part of a long-simmering effort to assume control of the family business.


According to New Jersey's former head of the gang unit in the United States attorney’s office, such agreements between gangsters and gangstas are confounding as cultural differences between the two groups would appear to preclude them.

Mafia crews shun the spotlight, while gangs like the Bloods and Crips are proud to show their gang affiliations, taunting law enforcement and the public with raw displays of power and wealth.

“No self-respecting mobster would want anything to do with the Bloods or Crips because those gangs are the antithesis of the Mafia,” he said. “The mob is concerned with making money over the long haul, trying to appear respectable. But the Bloods are concerned with projecting their status, so they’re all, ‘I’m going to shoot up the block and wear a red bandanna.’”

Yet Marc Agnifilo, the former head of the gang unit, added that while prosecuting organized crime and street gang cases between 1998 and 2003, "he frequently heard members of the Bloods speak of Mafia members and customs with admiration."

“The Blood guys love mobsters because they’re the old-school gangsters,” he said.

 “A lot of my Mafia informants in prison would complain that they couldn’t get away from the Bloods’ always following them and fawning over them.”




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