About The Sitdown With Jeff Nadu Podcast (Which Sammy The Bull LOVES)
Jeff Nadu recently contacted us about this story, and we're working on a follow-up.
The following is about podcasting feuds between former members of organized crime and how these feuds sometimes create unlikely alliances because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
We received emails from a couple of sources alerting us to the existence of Jeff Nadu last year.
Who is Jeff Nadu?
He launched The Sitdown with Jeff Nadu podcast a couple of years ago. Another guy doing another mob podcast. There's a million of them, and many of them are done by former wiseguys and associates. Nadu is neither but seems to be holding his own. His podcasts are generating tens of thousands of hits, with some getting views in the hundreds of thousands.
Jeff Nadu is an American Mafia and organized crime researcher, podcaster and content creator. He has worked at Barstool Sports and was hired personally by Dave Portnoy. His podcast "The Sitdown" with Jeff Nadu has put out hundreds of biographies on various mobsters, gangsters and criminals. He's also personally interviewed mobsters like Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Junior Pagan, Anthony Ruggiano Jr, Gene Borrello and others as well as US Prosecutor John Gleeson and FBI Agents Joaquin "Jack" Garcia and Michael Campi. He has been personally endorsed by former Gambino mob captain Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, esteemed author RJ Roger, and former Colombo Crime Family captain Michael Franzese.
Nadu recently did an all-guns-blazing frontal assault on Dom Cicale, former Bonanno capo. Called "The Downfall of Dom Cicale," Nadu attempts to paint a psychological portrait of Dom, calling out his alleged inability to maintain relationships ("he killed people close to him," Nadu says without even a hint of irony). He calls out Cicale's venture into the risky cryptocurrency domain and an encounter between Cicale and Michael (Mikie Scars) DeLeonardo, among other things.
"What exactly has happened to Dominic Cicale?" he asks.
At least initially, Nadu seemed to be responding to an injunction he said Dom had attempted to file in Seminole County Court over a beef Dom had gotten into with someone (not Nadu) over some kind of cryptocurrency deal. Nadu says this injunction was thrown out of court, then swiftly transitions to discussing his own background in mob punditry.
While Nadu regularly targets certain people, it was the viciousness of his attack on Cicale that piqued our interest --- and inspired us to take another look. While we didn't exactly do a deep dive into Nadu (not yet anyway), we did find some interesting low-hanging fruit regarding this gentleman, who popped up out of seemingly nowhere a couple of years ago.
Not long after Nadu's podcast on Dom dropped, Sammy the Bull dropped a podcast titled From Made Man to Done Man (Jeff Nadu Was Right).
And we knew what Nadu was right about, in Sammy's head anyway. He was right about attacking Dom. (And we knew we had something we wanted to write about.)
In the podcast, Sammy is awestruck by Nadu's cunning journalistic abilities, though to us, it seemed more a case of Nadu simply utilizing Google search to find an article from 2008 about a Cicale family feud: "A Pelham Bay woman whose grandson and former-daughter in law allegedly took out a mortgage loan in her name by forging her signature says she is nearing bankruptcy and close to being kicked out of her home because of a faulty loan."
Nadu is attacking Cicale with a 20-year-old newspaper report, and Sammy loves Nadu now. Or hates Cicale more.
Sammy's newfound love, however, comes on the heels of a beef. Gravano and Nadu themselves had gotten into a feud not that long ago. But it was over something minor, Sammy says, dismissing it and confessing he can't even recall exactly what it was about (because it was so minor!).
"I would like you to come down and see me because I'm gonna bust your fcking mouth wide open," Sammy says, speaking to Nadu, who had attacked some of the people who worked on Gravano's podcast.
"I'm gonna put you on your fcking knees and I'm gonna make you suck my dick," Sammy continues.
"Shut your fcking mouth. Be a fcking man... Come and fck with me (not the kids who work for me)... Fcking bum...You wanna do something, come down... I'm sick of this fcking bum."
(S)ources — both New York and Philadelphia-based — say that Skinny Joey has been officially put "on a shelf" by the (Philadelphia) crime family. He's lost all his rights and responsibilities as a wiseguy and now has essentially a persona non grata relationship with wiseguys in Philadelphia and everywhere else. It's the first time that's happened to an East Coast Mafia boss who did not break his vow of omerta.
The New York Post even covered Nadu's departure from Barstool: “Another Barstool Sports personality is out, but founder Dave Portnoy doesn’t appear to be shedding any tears this time around. The issue arose due to what the podcaster/personality felt he deserved during the optional second year of his contract.
"Nadu was going to come to Vendetta to start the Mafia show he does now. All of the things Nadu complained about with Barstool about not having enough support, we were going to provide him. The Sit Down show didn’t exist yet and we were going to help build it from scratch. Nadu didn’t need us given the following he has but we thought that we had built a friendly relationship that he could move forward with and trust. We interviewed him twice in the past and felt that this thing had the potential to be huge under our platform.
Thumbnails were made. Audio producers and video editors were set aside specifically for him. I thought the Mafia stuff would have been a perfect fit at Vendetta and we were going to give him all the help he ever could have wanted. Again, all the things that Nadu complained about Barstool not providing him enough help, we were taking care of that part. At the last moment, Nadu backed out and begged to go back to Barstool.
And that is about all we have to say on this topic, at least for now, though we'll add: We get great tips from folks who email us. Please continue to contact us with news leads, story ideas, and anything else on your mind by way of cosanostranews@gmail.com.
We received emails from a couple of sources alerting us to the existence of Jeff Nadu last year.
Who is Jeff Nadu?
 |
| Jeff Nadu, host of The Sitdown with Jeff Nadu. (Source: Vendetta Sports Media.) |
He launched The Sitdown with Jeff Nadu podcast a couple of years ago. Another guy doing another mob podcast. There's a million of them, and many of them are done by former wiseguys and associates. Nadu is neither but seems to be holding his own. His podcasts are generating tens of thousands of hits, with some getting views in the hundreds of thousands.
We've listened to a handful and liked them, and we emailed Jeff and told him so.
His "about" section offers the following:
His "about" section offers the following:
Jeff Nadu is an American Mafia and organized crime researcher, podcaster and content creator. He has worked at Barstool Sports and was hired personally by Dave Portnoy. His podcast "The Sitdown" with Jeff Nadu has put out hundreds of biographies on various mobsters, gangsters and criminals. He's also personally interviewed mobsters like Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, Junior Pagan, Anthony Ruggiano Jr, Gene Borrello and others as well as US Prosecutor John Gleeson and FBI Agents Joaquin "Jack" Garcia and Michael Campi. He has been personally endorsed by former Gambino mob captain Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, esteemed author RJ Roger, and former Colombo Crime Family captain Michael Franzese.
Nadu recently did an all-guns-blazing frontal assault on Dom Cicale, former Bonanno capo. Called "The Downfall of Dom Cicale," Nadu attempts to paint a psychological portrait of Dom, calling out his alleged inability to maintain relationships ("he killed people close to him," Nadu says without even a hint of irony). He calls out Cicale's venture into the risky cryptocurrency domain and an encounter between Cicale and Michael (Mikie Scars) DeLeonardo, among other things.
"What exactly has happened to Dominic Cicale?" he asks.
At least initially, Nadu seemed to be responding to an injunction he said Dom had attempted to file in Seminole County Court over a beef Dom had gotten into with someone (not Nadu) over some kind of cryptocurrency deal. Nadu says this injunction was thrown out of court, then swiftly transitions to discussing his own background in mob punditry.
While Nadu regularly targets certain people, it was the viciousness of his attack on Cicale that piqued our interest --- and inspired us to take another look. While we didn't exactly do a deep dive into Nadu (not yet anyway), we did find some interesting low-hanging fruit regarding this gentleman, who popped up out of seemingly nowhere a couple of years ago.
A disclosure: Some of our longtime readers will remember that, around a decade ago, we wrote a small ebook with Dom Cicale called Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire (because we believed, and still believe, that former boss Joe Massino was indeed running the last great Mafia empire). We are proud of that book, which topped the Amazon best seller list (for true crime). It sold a lot of copies for a small, self-published effort. (Jerry Capeci at least twice zinged it in his column without naming it, highlighting the fact that it's only 50-something pages, as if length itself is a kind of virtue. Hey, Mr. Capeci, sir, with all due respect, the book had a price of about five bucks and was VOLUME ONE of an intended series. Short ebooks, and ebook series, were pretty new at the time.)
We haven't been in regular contact with Dom since working on that ebook, which we have not promoted, or profited from, in years, though we've occasionally written about Dom. He's always got numerous projects at various stages of completion in the works, one of which is his podcast, which Dom himself hasn't hesitated to use to go after others. He's started "feuds" with many people, including Sammy the Bull and Skinny Joey Merlino, among others. (Feuds among mob podcasters spring up every three seconds, but can last for an eternity. Gene Borrello and Skinny Joey have been tearing each other apart for years, though it feels more like decades.)
We haven't been in regular contact with Dom since working on that ebook, which we have not promoted, or profited from, in years, though we've occasionally written about Dom. He's always got numerous projects at various stages of completion in the works, one of which is his podcast, which Dom himself hasn't hesitated to use to go after others. He's started "feuds" with many people, including Sammy the Bull and Skinny Joey Merlino, among others. (Feuds among mob podcasters spring up every three seconds, but can last for an eternity. Gene Borrello and Skinny Joey have been tearing each other apart for years, though it feels more like decades.)
Not long after Nadu's podcast on Dom dropped, Sammy the Bull dropped a podcast titled From Made Man to Done Man (Jeff Nadu Was Right).
And we knew what Nadu was right about, in Sammy's head anyway. He was right about attacking Dom. (And we knew we had something we wanted to write about.)
In the podcast, Sammy is awestruck by Nadu's cunning journalistic abilities, though to us, it seemed more a case of Nadu simply utilizing Google search to find an article from 2008 about a Cicale family feud: "A Pelham Bay woman whose grandson and former-daughter in law allegedly took out a mortgage loan in her name by forging her signature says she is nearing bankruptcy and close to being kicked out of her home because of a faulty loan."
Nadu is attacking Cicale with a 20-year-old newspaper report, and Sammy loves Nadu now. Or hates Cicale more.
Sammy's newfound love, however, comes on the heels of a beef. Gravano and Nadu themselves had gotten into a feud not that long ago. But it was over something minor, Sammy says, dismissing it and confessing he can't even recall exactly what it was about (because it was so minor!).
We know what it was about. And it wasn't that minor, considering what Sammy said at the time.
Hear Sammy's fury here via a recording presented in May 2024:
"I would like you to come down and see me because I'm gonna bust your fcking mouth wide open," Sammy says, speaking to Nadu, who had attacked some of the people who worked on Gravano's podcast.
"I'm gonna put you on your fcking knees and I'm gonna make you suck my dick," Sammy continues.
"Shut your fcking mouth. Be a fcking man... Come and fck with me (not the kids who work for me)... Fcking bum...You wanna do something, come down... I'm sick of this fcking bum."
In another podcast, Scott Burnstein's TABLOID Fantasies on Joey Merlino, he focuses on the mob journalist, the Feast of San Gennaro, and Skinny Joey Merlino, who was allegedly at the street fair selling his cheesesteaks. And Nadu was there, he tells us. He talks about certain people and events as though he were an eyewitness who learned the information firsthand, which is most certainly not the case.
Nadu also questions Burnstein's reporting about the shelving of Merlino, apparently not knowing that it was Jerry Capeci, not Scott Burnstein, who broke that news in 2024, reporting:
Why was Skinny Joey shelved? Because he's doing a podcast, of course.
The sources say that both the Gambino and Genovese families "have expressed concerns" to (George) Borgesi (who took over the reigns of the Philadelphia crime family) about Merlino's current role on "The SKINNY with Joey Melino," which features Skinny Joey as prognosticator extraordinaire about sporting events, as well as a frequent critic of mob "rats," reporters and other podcasters he says have wronged him.
The sources say that both the Gambino and Genovese families "have expressed concerns" to (George) Borgesi (who took over the reigns of the Philadelphia crime family) about Merlino's current role on "The SKINNY with Joey Melino," which features Skinny Joey as prognosticator extraordinaire about sporting events, as well as a frequent critic of mob "rats," reporters and other podcasters he says have wronged him.
But what takes the cake is what Nadu said during the Cicale takedown podcast:
"To be really successful in the mob genre, to get to where a Michael Franzese is, you need someone like me."Who does Nadu think he is? Dave Portnoy?
Dave Portnoy founded and owns the sports/pop culture digital media company Barstool Sports, which he expanded from a free, Boston-area sports paper that debuted in the early 2000s into a national, mega brand that is today extremely influential and successful primarily via its podcasts and social media footprint.
As for Nadu's history with Barstool, which he isn't shy about touting, Portnoy actually didn't have much that was good to say about Nadu; in fact, had called him an "ungrateful, selfish pig" whose podcast for Barstool didn't make the company money. "If I saw him get hit by a car, laying on the street, I would not stop to call an ambulance, or help him up," Portnoy continued. "Not because I hate him, because there's nobody who's just more for himself. And dumb."
Portnoy called him “the biggest narcissist in the world” and added that Nadu is dead to Barstool “forever.”
Nadu was employed at Barstool twice and seemed to be doing well. His annual salary was around $75,000 to $100,000, not chicken scratch by any stretch. But he up and left the company, for the second time, when they didn't pay him the $200,000 annual salary he was demanding.
As per a published report:
"Long story short, this is crazy. Nadu quit (Barstool) in 2021 due to a number of ugly reasons... However, he basically begged to come back in 2022, and his wish was granted. As Portnoy put it in the video, he was signed to a one-year deal with an option for a second. They were ready to trigger the second-year option and a raise of $10,000. However, Nadu was disappointed and reportedly wanted as much as $200,000 for the second year, which Portnoy described as a “100 percent raise.”
"That basically forced Portnoy’s hand to null the contract and release Nadu. They even discussed how he did not show up to the Barstool office and that his podcast was not making them any money. It’s not pretty to air out dirty laundry, but sometimes it’s the only way.
"While Dave claims he doesn’t have any ill will towards Nadu, he did use some pretty strong language on the video (see below this). He was already on pretty bad terms with other employees, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back."
"That basically forced Portnoy’s hand to null the contract and release Nadu. They even discussed how he did not show up to the Barstool office and that his podcast was not making them any money. It’s not pretty to air out dirty laundry, but sometimes it’s the only way.
"While Dave claims he doesn’t have any ill will towards Nadu, he did use some pretty strong language on the video (see below this). He was already on pretty bad terms with other employees, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back."
Portnoy said Barstool gave him a $10,000 raise and that Nadu responded by saying he was expecting a more significant increase in pay.
“I think he wanted $200,000 a year,” Portnoy said.
“I’m like, ‘You signed a contract. You fulfill your contract, and at the end of your contract, we’ll discuss what you want,’” the Barstool founder told a stunned Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Kevin “KFC” Clancy. “This is crazy. You’re going to do this like everyb-oy else. You know what Nadu, I’m so f–king sick of you if you want to take your s–t and leave we’ll let you out of your contact."
(Nadu has Reddit pages devoted to hating him. You probably have at least some issues if you can generate Reddit pages opposing your existence.)
“I think he wanted $200,000 a year,” Portnoy said.
“I’m like, ‘You signed a contract. You fulfill your contract, and at the end of your contract, we’ll discuss what you want,’” the Barstool founder told a stunned Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Kevin “KFC” Clancy. “This is crazy. You’re going to do this like everyb-oy else. You know what Nadu, I’m so f–king sick of you if you want to take your s–t and leave we’ll let you out of your contact."
(Nadu has Reddit pages devoted to hating him. You probably have at least some issues if you can generate Reddit pages opposing your existence.)
Nadu apparently was supposed to launch his mob podcast with Vendetta Sports Media, which, unlike Barstool (according to Nadu), was going to "support him," though he ultimately went his own way.
As per the website:
Thumbnails were made. Audio producers and video editors were set aside specifically for him. I thought the Mafia stuff would have been a perfect fit at Vendetta and we were going to give him all the help he ever could have wanted. Again, all the things that Nadu complained about Barstool not providing him enough help, we were taking care of that part. At the last moment, Nadu backed out and begged to go back to Barstool.
And that is about all we have to say on this topic, at least for now, though we'll add: We get great tips from folks who email us. Please continue to contact us with news leads, story ideas, and anything else on your mind by way of cosanostranews@gmail.com.
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