Cosa Nostra News

UPDATED Nicholas (Nicky Cigars) Santora spent decades of his life in the Mob and had the criminal record to show for it, having been arrested roughly two-dozen times, with a rap sheet dating back to 1966. A prosecutor once noted how Santora had an "extensive, serious, substantial criminal record.” He was a mobster to his core, a second-generation wiseguy. (His father, Modesto, was allegedly a Colombo soldier.) Made in the 1970s, he gained unwanted recognition in the early 1980s when he was caught up in the Donnie Brasco fiasco. For a time he was a force to be reckoned with, rising to underboss under Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano. Still, Santora had mixed luck. Joseph Massino wasn't a fan. After the Last Don flipped, he recorded himself calling Santora a brokester while in a rigged conversation with Basciano. He "ain't got any money," Massino griped. Santora would "borrow from people" but he "forgets to pay." That argumen...

So how do you crack open the Mafia and penetrate it in a deep-undercover investigation? In the words of an ace undercover operator (and former FBI agent), "You need to know your source.” Joseph D. Pistone, formerly Donnie Brasco of the Bonanno crime family, gave the keynote address before a gathering of senior case management and investigation professionals at Polonious World 2017, some kind of trade show held recently in Australia.  Johnny Depp with Al Pacino in the Donnie Brasco film.  "You have to know the organization that you’re trying to infiltrate. You have to know your enemy. Because if you don’t know your enemy, you aren’t going to defeat them. By knowing your enemy, it will help you infiltrate and help you stay alive,” Pistone said.

In 1986, at the age of 71, Santo Trafficante faced the most formidable indictment of his life. The reason was Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano , a onetime Bonanno capo Sonny Black leads Santo Trafficante out of a motel room. The Feds wanted Santo Trafficante on a platter. Operation Coldwater ran from 1979 to 1981 and was the FBI's attempt to infiltrate the Mafia then infesting Florida's Gulf Coast. However, from its inception, the op's true goal was much more targeted in nature. Santo Trafficante was considered nothing less than The Godfather of most of Florida, who'd deemed it "open territory" for the Northern-based Mafia families, with provisos, of course. He first had to give his approval, then, of course, he got a piece of their action. Or at least so said the Feds. (Mafia cases are generally easy to "build" -- as there's never a lack of motive with which prosecutors can enchant the jury...) After all attempts to flip some of h...

REVISED 6/9: I was fully intending to continue working on my stories about Canada and the Combination (no connection) when something else grabbed my attention enough to warrant a change in plan. I started to write that -- and something else got in the way! This is why I'm always behind! The website  FedScoop  posted the above video, which includes Joe Pistone and another former undercover FBI agent who worked in Cleveland (David Drab). Joseph Dominick Pistone, alias Donnie Brasco , (born September 17, 1939), is the former FBI agent who worked undercover for six years infiltrating the Bonanno crime family. He was an FBI agent for 27 years and seems to hold to the adage "never turn down an opportunity to be on television." The evidence collected by Pistone led to over 200 indictments and over 100 convictions of Mafia members and nearly destroyed the Bonanno family. (I am not sure what those numbers include -- whether they specifically resulted from Operation Br...

Frank Lino now calls the Mafia a sick world. Funny how he didn't realize it until after he was arrested for six mob hits. Frank Lino is off the hook. The former Bonanno capo, 76, was sentenced to time served for participating in six mob murders, along with racketeering crimes. He had already served eight years in prison after his 2003 arrest and was out on a million-dollar bail when he appeared today for sentencing. "Looking tanned, and wearing black-framed eyeglasses and a double-breasted suit, Lino sheepishly raised his hand when Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis glanced around the courtroom looking for him," The New York Daily News reported. “Oh, in the business suit,” Garaufis observed. Lino’s cooperation was described as being “extraordinary” in that he'd helped to bring down around two dozen Bonannos, including former family boss Joseph Massino who also has since joined Team America. Lino also revealed the burial locations of three slain gangsters, as pr...

Joseph Charles Massino (born January 10, 1943) was boss of the Bonanno crime family after the death of his mentor, Phil “Rusty” Rastelli. Massino is considered to be among the last of the clever, old-school dons, hence the "last Godfather" rubric. This only added to the shock that whirled through organized crime upon the revelation of Massino’s transition to government informer after losing a massive RICO trial in July 2004. He had been convicted of racketeering, seven murders, arson, extortion, loansharking, illegal gambling, conspiracy and money laundering and was told he would be a candidate for the death realty, which likely fueled his decision to become, in mafia parlance, a rat.

The photo of a dead Carmine Galante, who sought to take control of the Bonanno family after emerging from prison in the 1970s, is so iconic for me, I'd never think of even using another picture in this blog's logo.... Lilo wasn't around for coffee... FBI agent Joe Pistone, posing as Donny Brasco, was just infiltrating the family as a street-level soldier under Sonny "Black" Napolitano. He thought he had the players identified -- but his intel, as time proved, was not precisely on the money. Joseph Wendling, 65, now a private investigator, was a detective in an elite unit of the New York City Police Department focused on the five Mafia families that ruled the city’s underworld, called The Pizza Squad.

Will, page one When Joe Balistrieri, elder son of Milwaukee mob figure Frank Balistrieri, died last year he left it all to his brother--and gave his two sisters the proverbial shaft. "Even in death, Joe Balistrieri played favorites. [He] ... left his entire estate to his brother, John J. Balistrieri, when he died last October at 70. And not one penny to his two sisters," according to an article on Milwaukee Magazine's News Buzz website . After his brother, the only other named beneficiaries were three women, none of which were sisters. The article continues: according to the provisions of the will, “I request that my sole beneficiary, John Balistrieri, give and/or dispense to (them), in his sole discretion, such items or monies as he deems just and equitable being guided by his personal knowledge of the love and esteem in which I held such persons in life … I ask him to exercise not only discretion but also commensurate generosity.”