Cosa Nostra News

Carlo Gambino's takeover of the crime family rechristened in his name was contested primarily by Aniello Dellacroce and Armand Rava, staunch Anastasia supporters. They had potential allies in men like Anthony “Tough Tony” Anastasio, the dead boss’s brother, a powerful mobster running Brooklyn’s docks, and Vincent James Squillante, a waste management kingpin, drug trafficker and experienced gunsel. Carlo, when he rose to power at the top of what was once called the Mangano crime family. If an attempt were made on Carlo’s life, the order would've originated from, and perhaps also carried out, by those very men. Yet no attempt was ever made. Gambino ascended to the top of the crime family not without firing a shot, but by firing far fewer shots than "Mafia logic" would seem to precipitate. Carlo Gambino was one of the most effective Mafia bosses in the American Cosa Nostra. The FBI routinely referred to Gambino in various documents as the ...

Anthony Scotto, left, lawyer James LaRossa. The son of TV news anchor ­Rosanna Scotto made news last week when he was arrested on charges of swiping an expensive designer purse. What garnered our interest was a note at the end of the New York Post Page Six story : [Rosanna] Scotto, 58, is co-anchor of WNYW/Channel 5’s “Good Day New York” ... [and] is co-owner of her family’s restaurant, Fresco by Scotto, on East 52nd Street. She is also the daughter of Anthony Scotto, a former boss in the Gambino crime family.... Scotto, while never the boss of the crime family, was a powerful figure in his own right. His story heralds an earlier era of America's Cosa Nostra, when mobsters were able to discreetly rise high in big business. Scotto is considered to have been the most powerful labor racketeer in the entire country in his heyday in the 1960s-70s. He earned two additional distinctions nearly unbelievable today: He once lectured at Harvard and was considered by...