Cosa Nostra News

Some of the bank burglary crew members mentioned here were apparently members of the same crew as Gerard Bellafiore  as well as the trio recently busted ... Lee D’avanzo had a past, but it was, like, no big deal. Besides, he was a changed man, a business owner, as he told his wife, Drita, who believed him, "but boy was she in for a shock!" as Hollywood Life wrote back in June 2011. Credit: Starcasm Drita then told HollywoodLife.com exclusively "that she didn’t know that Lee was a bank robber when she started dating and then later married him!" Lots of reality show blogs seem to have an addiction to exclamation points.

Drita D'Avanzo.... " Mob Wives " star Drita D’Avanzo ’s assault charges were dropped last week, the Daily News reported , "after her victim declared omerta and refused to cooperate with prosecutors, officials said." She declared omerta.... right... As noted , D'Avanzo, 40, was busted for fighting at Mary Bratti's Amboy Road home in Staten Island's Tottenville section at about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 10 in what had all the markings of a classic celebrity-gotcha setup.

Brittany Fogarty In the past year, I've talked to a few mob wives -- by that I mean woman married to made guys. The general consensus about VH1's Mob Wives is that the women are a disgrace and an embarrassment to all Italian-Americans. Some are even "frauds," "rats" and "whores." One source said something that resonated:

Christ, they didn't have the money to take a season six cast photo? I decided to pull the plug on my previously announced "Mob Wives" endeavor. I'm not to going to inflict my readers with anymore of my Mob Wives hysterics.... I know they don't appreciate it. As you'll see, there's far too much Cosa Nostra news piling up that needs covering. Scars called me with an excellent idea.... I need to jump on that quickly.

Big Ang is making drinks at that big bar in the sky.... It was the kind of thing Big Ang wouldn't have condoned.... Mob Wives cast members Brittany Fogarty and Karen Gravano were asked not to attend Angela "Big Ang" Raiola's funeral yesterday. A source with friends who attended the memorial service and funeral have said that a third  Mob Wife, Drita D'Avanzo, who showed up with two bodyguards, was asked to leave one of the memorial services. However she can plainly be seen crying (accompanied by two big burly bodyguards wearing ear pieces) at the funeral.

In the above video, a woman is clearly taunting Lee and Drita D'Avanzo, with Drita apparently screaming in the background. (Note: we don't see what happened prior to the beginning of the filming.) Then, reportedly a few moments after the above was filmed, the fight took place, with a next-door neighbor filming it. (See fight video on jump page, at end of story.) I, for one, have problems with this scenario. These videos were clearly filmed separately, and in one version, not posted here, they were fused together in the sequence I described, with the above video comprising part one. The problem is the second part doesn't seem like it was filmed immediately following the first. Or to put it another way, what proof is there that the one sequence immediately followed or preceded the other? We have two incidents captured on different cameras -- and I have seen nothing definitive that says which one came first. It's possible and quite likely the two sequences were fi...

Drita D'Avanzo UPDATE #2 : Drita D'Avanzo , a cast member of VH1's Mob Wives , was arrested on Tuesday, the NYPD confirmed. Reportedly, she had engaged in a "verbal dispute" with a woman on Staten Island. D'Avanzo "attacked" the woman and punched her repeatedly, then fled, police said. Of course "the woman" -- a former chef on Staten Island -- wants money before she'll even respond to press inquiries....  And it seems she found a buyer! See below for details....how much do they apparently pay, I wonder...

An anonymous source who knows a lot about VH1's Mob Wives cast members recently contacted us. What annoys her (she's a true "Mob Wife") is the idea that some of the women on Mob Wives may actually serve as role models for young women. "First off, understand:  They are not  Mob Wives . None of them ." The "old" cast is new... almost. "They are all liars and everyone on Staten Island has no respect for them. And how they chased her father because of the show!

This year Mob Wives really lived up to its tagline: Trust No One.... This year most of the drama on Mob Wives occurred off screen and after the season ended following a two-part reunion that got heated enough to make Vivica Fox weep. (It almost makes you forget she did a pretty good job kicking ass herself in Kill Bill. See pic--->.) Since episode one, the major dynamic of the entire season was proclaimed loud and clear: this year it's all about the bitch called pay back that ultimately took the form of an implied major confrontation between Natalie Guercio and Natalie DiDonato. But the big fistfight or shootout or whatever we all expected never happened. (Nor did we relish the thought of it. We don't like the idea of two women fighting.... we want women to act, well, womanly, not like dudes...And, yes, we did interview one of the cast members and we will get to her following some prefatory remarks.)

It's difficult keeping up with Mob Wives' season five "rats" subplot. Everyone on the show is a rat and/or is accusing someone else of being a rat. This is all nonsense, of course -- as was most of Mob Wives .   Many friends needed to unburden themselves by telling me: Ed, the show ain't real...   I know it wasn't real. So what? This is a blog.... people don't understand that writing about fake reality shows is a pretense that allows one to slip social commentary inside the story.   The problem is that if you do this too shrewdly, it may fly over readers' heads. (The obverse is true too, however: if you do it clumsily, the same thing might happen anyway.)    Anyway I am reposting this on 12/29/2016 as I update coding on the 1,600-something blog pages. (I am loving every minute of this -- I just may blow my brains out depending on how many more hours of this I have to go. I intend to copy and paste code until I awake facedown on...

Tonight is VH1's  Mob Wives series finale. We finally got a chance to watch last week's episode and came to a realization hypothesis: Renee's baptism plays out, then we cut to a restaurant scene where Natalie DiDonato is providing Drita with proof that supposedly will finish off Natalie Guercio . Kind of like The Godfather's infamous baptism scene in which Michael Corleone is taking part in the ceremony in a Catholic Church, no? The scene is inter-cut with scenes of the enemies of the Corleone family getting whacked one by one, and is probably one of the most famous scenes in film history (if not history, period.)

Natalie is smokin'... From Enstars : The new season of VH1 hit reality show Mob Wives should be called World War III because the woman on the show are at war, literally, and the drama doesn't look like it's dying down anytime soon. Season 5 of the reality series made its debut on Wednesday and by the looks of the show, it's clear that the women may be not be in a jolly mood this holiday season. During the season 5 premiere of 'Trust No One,' viewers quickly learn that cast mates Angela Raiola (Big Ang) and Drita D'avanzo are now opening up to Natalie Guercio (Renee Graziano's sworn enemy) and of course that wasn't going to sit well with Graziano. Luckily for Graziano, she didn't cast all of her trust in one basket, and her BFF Karen Gravano is back and the two are not a force to be reckoned with; Guercio is going to learn this lesson the hard way. In addition to the dynamic duo being the best of friends, their fans have their backs, and a...

"Mob Wives"  season five,  which has commenced filming , apparently has not started off with a bang. Or, filming so far has mostly been limited to second unit-type stuff... Who knows? Some of these women might be guilty of being boring, though we wonder if maybe filming so far has been limited to second unit stuff... Big Ang with her grand babies is the only storyline, so far. God help us...

" Mob Wives " makes news (if you can call it that) between seasons. First, one website we've never heard of writes about Drita D'Avanzo 's response to a stunt pulled by Scout Willis  last week. She walked around New York City with her breasts hanging out. Protest, you see... over something or other. Renee Graziano gave the website (ENSTARZ?) a video interview -- Renee talks to anyone these days, except us. The interview is about her new book . Then RadarOnline rounds up responses from cast members regarding the news that Alicia DiMichele had quit the show . (Hey, at least I don't post this kind of stuff every day!) I thought about Renee while watching the 2013 documentary about Gore Vidal , one of the greatest writers of all time. Visions of her announcing her book popped into my head as Vidal, who died the year before the film's release, said in a whisper: "It was very, very clear.... You don't decide to be a writer. You are one or yo...

Natalie, far right, had the gall to tweet... Mob Wives: New Blood was renewed for a fifth season this morning, following a terminally boring show finale last night. (Yes, we know the Reunion is next week, and Natalie and Renee are going to fight some more.) The question remains, though: Who will be returning/not-returning for the fifth and, we predict, final season... It's hard to write with passion about this show. I have come to a realization: the show, scripted or not, is serving merely as a platform to enrich these women so they'll never have to work again. Is it coincidence that Renee, suddenly in the last episode, has written a novel, and has even found a publisher? (Probably sis acted as the agent and probably hired the ghostwriter, too) And the publisher is even throwing a book debut party--just in time for the season finale. (Of all the curve balls in reality TV, this is the most spectacularly offensive.) Now, I can't recall, was there even one scen...

Last year, the  Miami New Times  obtained from a confidential source hundreds of pages of sealed court documents that reveal information provided to the FBI by former infamous South Beach nightclub king Chris Paciello -- and it seems Paciello dished up a lot more details on goodfellas and their crimes than was originally thought. Lee D'Avanzo "Between December 2000 and May 2001, the FBI met with the fallen club king eight times and conducted 15 hours of interviews. During those meetings, Paciello detailed not only his own criminal history but those of dozens of his Mob colleagues," a New Times article notes. Additionally, many secrets in the documents center on Lee D'Avanzo, one of Paciello's early criminal cohorts. In fact, Paciello is a large part of the reason why Lee went away to prison. [We are not sure if this is the sentence Lee is still serving or if it was an earlier conviction.] It adds: "Most significant, Paciello fingered two mad...

  Mob Wives Chicago was cancelled for a variety of reasons, foremost among them the cast members' lack of credible ties to the mob -- or the Outfit, the name by which the organized crime entity is better known in the Windy City. Carla and soon-to-be-former husband. It could be argued that really only one Chicago mob wife, Nora, had legit ties -- primarily through her deceased former-hit man father. The bottom line: None of the other women were mob wives in that they were not married or otherwise related to bona fide members of the Outfit (which says a lot about the Outfit, and how seriously even its women honor old-world codes). With the case of "Mob Wives" New York, that was seemingly less of an issue among some of the women, many of whom have very real ties to the "honored society" via husbands and/or fathers -- and it seems to have had very real repercussions on a heavyweight mobster who at one time was consiglieri for the Bonanno family, J...

CelebrityNetWorth.com, founded in October 2009 in Los Angeles, claims it has grown into "one of the most popular and influential celebrity finance outlets on the Internet." "Whether you're looking for the latest net worth and salary of your favorite celebrity or you want to stay up to date on all the most expensive products and gizmos in the world, Celebritynetworth has you covered," the site declares. Drita D'Avanzo is up there but Big Ang is the wealthiest of all... All its figures and articles are thoroughly researched, scrutinized and fact checked by writers and financial analysts, the site notes, adding that the figures are acquired from publicly available information, including salaries, real estate holdings, divorces, record sales, royalties and endorsements. The estimated net worths come from a formula that takes out taxes, manager’s fees, agents’ fees, and lifestyle. So, of course, we immediately checked out what the low-down was, ...

Renee, giving props where due, is the most popular. Karen Gravano won the dubious distinction. Ramona Rizzo is not too far behind.  After only three-four appearances on the show, that is quite a remarkable feat. Anyone could vote in this, and all, Cosa Nostra News polls; in this one, readers could vote for one or two wives, and they could change their votes up until the final moments before the poll closed. I am a bit surprised that Renee could be seen as most loved in that the least amount of people "hate" her -- 38 people, or 11% of the voters. I give her kudos for talking about her depression issues on television. Depression is a major problem in the U.S., and the more the "stars" with the bully pulpits address problems such as this one, the better for society, I believe. Drita and Carla fared much, much better than Gravano and Rizzo, running about neck-and-neck with each other, close behind Renee -- with 18% (61 votes) and 17% (60 votes)...

Ramona, right after Drita bloodied her mouth. We certainly don't condone violence against women, but this one had it coming by partaking in a premeditated ambush. Stop. Being. So. Nice!!!! Only Ramona Rizzo would say that about Karen "the Bull" Gravano... and many Cosa Nostra News readers seem to agree. So far, to no one's surprise, Karen is far and away the most hated wife, as per our ongoing poll, with Ramona Rizzo not too far behind; her ties to Karen can't be helping. We know the producers need a story line, even if it is  "reality TV" but if they think pairing Karen and Ramona against Drita is an equal match they are mistaken. Our poll, which 300 readers have partaken in, so far, clearly indicates this story line is a case of good versus bad, with Drita personifying the good. We have to admit surprise that she is more disliked than Renee, the self-pitying manipulator who clearly is the "sweetheart" of the show -- and Renee's nu...