Cosa Nostra News

EXPANDED Okay, can someone tell us something we've been wondering about? What the hell happened to the mob? (We're being facetious; we know what happened: this guy, basically .) Mush was set to put the Colombos back together. Still, consider: Longtime Luchese associate Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola .... At 71 years old, he should've been slowing down. Instead, he was terrorized for a year -- clubbed, assaulted, and stabbed in the throat; his house had been robbed and his son targeted, nearly shot dead this past summer. Sally Daz supposedly was in good standing with the Luchese, and he was close to the Bonannos. (One source was baffled by what happened, telling us: "I don't get it. I just don't get it.") And let's not forget recent history. There's evidence of wiseguys hiring members of the Bloods and Crips street gangs to do hits for cash. (God help them if they ever ally with Mara Salvatrucha, aka MS-13.) Genovese associate  F...

Andy Russo during an earlier arrest. He was among those arrested in January 2011. The FBI said it has arrested the "entire" current Colombo crime family administration, as the last of 38 guilty pleas was entered into at Brooklyn federal court by family associate Angelo Spata. The Colombo hierarchy case launched in January 2011, so-called Mafia Takedown Day, with a series of FBI raids that set a record as the single largest one-day operation against the Italian-American Mafia. "Those who have pleaded guilty include the members of the entire administration of the Colombo organized crime family..., as well as numerous leaders, members and associates of the Colombo family," the US Attorney's Office said in a statement. All of them face 20 years in prison, the maximum based on sentencing guidelines. They also will surrender $5.6 million of their illicit proceeds.

From an article on the Queens Chronicle website by Michael Cusenza, Editor: FBI agents, assisted by the Police Department and state law enforcement agencies, last week executed the largest coordinated organized crime takedown in FBI history, cuffing more than 100 of 127 indicted individuals in the city, New Jersey and Rhode Island. But an academic expert in criminology and criminal organizations noted that while the dramatic pre-dawn raids undoubtedly have struck an economic blow to La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia in New York has always regrouped and regenerated. “They will adjust,” said Howard Abadinsky, professor of criminal justice at St. John’s University in Jamaica. “Whether [the arrests] will have a lasting effect on the structure of the groups — that, I doubt.” Abadinsky also called the simultaneous arrests of so many reputed members of the mob “extraordinary,” because they’re not all tied to the same crime, and said he sensed “a little bit of a suspicion that maybe ther...

Acting Colombo crime boss Andrew (Mush) Russo, 77, made it through fifty years of mob life without getting shot. But, thanks to that "earthquake" that struck the Northeast last week, he took more than five bullets in the back. Thankfully for Mush, they were rubber bullets, so he is not hovering near death's door -- but getting hit with a rubber bullet is supposedly more painful than taking a lead slug. He was shot by corrections officer in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Andy is living these days. Ironically, he was on the phone, checking if his lived ones were okay, when the officers let loose; they also lobbed a tear gas canister at him, which smashed his leg, in addition to spewing its vile contents into his eyes, nose and mouth. I could tell you the whole story, but all I am doing is setting you up for the latest blog post from former mobster-turned-published author Sonny Girard, courtesy of his blog,  Sonny's Mob Cafe : Reputed mob bos...

July 2018: Robert Donofrio is the current boss of the  Colombo family, we hear ... The Colombo’s are the youngest of the Five Families. Formerly known as the Profaci crime family, for its original boss, it only became the Colombo family in the 1960s when family member Joseph Colombo went to the Commission to spill the beans on plans made by Profaci's short-term sucessor in cahoots with Joseph Bonanno of the Bonanno crime family. Carmine Persico was named "The Snake" by the Gallo brothers. Boss Profaci was involved in the crime family's first war, against the upstart Gallo brothers who felt the upper-echelon bosses were taking more than their fair share from the soldiers.

And you thought getting up this morning for work was tough...just imagine if your alarm clock was beaten by a few hours by the pounding fists of cops and FBI agents ready to pounce on you and drag you out of your life and into jail? In a pre-dawn sweep this morning, more than 100 mobsters and associates were rounded up -- crusty eyed, probably wearing their PJs and itching for a caffeine fix, though the adrenaline rush from all the flashing badges and guns may have sufficed. All they got were a pair of bracelets and a shove into a backseat. (Boy, those mob lawyers must have been pirouetting through their plush offices in utter glee.) Charged with such crimes as murder, racketeering and extortion, based on 16 unrelated indictments handed up in federal courts in four jurisdictions, the targets included small-time bookmakers, associates and six "reputed" senior mob figures from three crime families, including the entire leadership of the Colombo crime family. But also ta...