Cosa Nostra News

Carmine J. Persico Jr., the legendary boss of the Colombo crime family who clung to power for decades from prison, including during a years-long mob war launched to oust him, was a top echelon FBI informant all along—if we are to believe a recent Daily News report that lifts the allegation from a decades old government document that was included in a recent compassionate release filing for Persico's chief rival during the Colombo war. Junior Persico died in prison in 2019. The document, from November 1971, mentions the FBI's Top Echelon Informant Program and lists four turncoat members of the Colombo crime family. One of the four is longtime Colombo boss Carmine Persico, according to  Daily News reporting by Larry McShane and Stephen Rex Brown . “The official boss of the Colombo family, on whose side (Greg) Scarpa (the Colombo capo/FBI informant) and (Roy Lindley) DeVecchio (Scarpa's FBI handler) were working, Carmine Persico, was himself, since decades earlier, in the gove...

In 1995, when their paths crossed inside Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), and after trading insults, Greg Scarpa Junior nearly beat Luchese boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso to death. The NYPD linked Greg Scarpa Junior to 24 gangland hits. Former Assistant US Attorney John Kroger highlights the violent encounter in his memoir  Convictions: A Prosecutor's Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves . Aside from passing reference to the incident on Gang Land News, it seems the Feds successfully downplayed what happened, with  Jerry Capeci reporting that in September 1998 that, "Scarpa (Jr.) has been kept away from other mobsters ever since he punched out Lucchese boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso three years ago. Amuso had made some disparaging remarks about his father's FBI informer status." (We’re referring to references found via Google Search regarding the assault. Someone in a comment says the assault was widely covered, presumably in 1995 wh...

UPDATED Flipping on the street is supposed to be the end of a gangster's story, but for Whitey Bulger, it was only the start.... Bulger denied who he was until the end He ratted out rivals -- he murdered, he extorted, and he double-crossed, time and again. He (and partner Stephen Flemmi) killed women -- at least two. When a tipoff told him it was time to face the music, he ran and hid and stole 16 more years, as a pretend human being. He'd certainly had lots of success pretending to be a gangster. And in the end, even after he was caught, Bulger strenuously denied ever being a federal informant. Those who followed his exploits back in South Boston were not surprised at how this story ended. “Anyone in criminal activity with him feels grossly betrayed that he was informing on them while he was supposedly their comrade and friend,” Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor from Boston who also once represented the family of one of Mr. Bulger’s murder vic...

Many, many wiseguys were born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn -- or resided there or conducted business there (or where murdered there), especially along Bath Avenue, just south of 86th Street’s bustling shopping district, where the social clubs once stood one beside the other. The list includes mobsters such as OG Carlo Gambino (he was Sicilian born, but lived in Bensonhurst in his later New York years); former Luchese underboss Anthony Casso; Gambino boss Paul Castellano, who was Carlo Gambino's brother-in-law); former Gambino capo under John Gotti Michael (Mike Scars) DiLeonardo; notorious Gambino capo/Roy DeMeo mentor Anthony Gaggi; Jimmy Moran, aka Sammy "The Bull" Gravano; capo/snitch Gregory Scarpa; and Colombo turncoat Carmine Sessa. While the Bensonhurst wiseguys are all gone today, dead or in prison or in Witness Protection, once in a great while, something happens that conjures up specters of the past. There was the Cafe Caserta thing (the place sold more...

Turncoat mobsters committed hits, while taxpayers footed the bill. We're talking about a lot of money here -- six-figure sums. Killers snitching to the feds "got away with murder when FBI agents looked the other way, a shocking report to Congress claims," according to an exclusive report. Angela Clemente has been probing the FBI’s handling of informants. A forensic investigator for the House Government Reform Committee in 2002, she has been helping on mob cases ever since. In 2006, Clemente, 47, was choked and left for dead after an assailant lured her to a meeting at a mall in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, with the promise of a tip.