Cosa Nostra News

As noted in a previous story, as per recently released records, Felix Sater, a former associate of President Donald Trump, played a key role in helping the Feds pressure Frank Coppa, the first member of the Bonanno family to flip. Not Before and After: Frank Coppa, left, Joe Massino when still Bonannos. Others, including Richard Cantarella and Sal Vitale, brother-in-law to then-Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, quickly followed. Massino, ever since getting out of prison in 1992, had taken measures to buffer the Bonanno family and himself from law enforcement. He closed social clubs, organized crews into separate cells, and focused on anti-surveillance efforts (including taking vacations outside the US with top aids and their wives to have discussions), among other things. Despite Massino's extensive efforts to fortify the Massino family the Bonanno family, the defection of Coppa, a longtime member of Massino's inner circle, was as serious as heart failure: Coppa was ...

Felix Sater, a former associate of President Donald Trump, was instrumental in helping the Feds bring down capo Frank Coppa, the first member of the Bonanno crime family to flip and testify, ever, Cosa Nostra News has learned. Felix Sater was a longtime Trump associate. This was among the revelations that came to light in a 2009 sentencing transcript that was among a trove of documents unsealed on Monday for The Intercept on the order of U.S. District Judge Leo Glasser. Coppa's decision to flip in 2002 after he was named in his third racketeering indictment in two years is historically regarded as a seminal moment in the Federal government's ongoing war against the Bonanno family and the New York Mafia. Coppa's turnaround alone led to the arrests of dozens of wiseguys and induced many others in the Bonanno family to follow him, which helped the Feds to eventually take down Joseph Massino, then the Bonanno family's powerful boss, who would also flip and t...