Cosa Nostra News

Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D'Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia includes an anecdote about the "testify down" strategy used in mob trials. In two recent cases in Brooklyn, the government used cooperating witnesses who were"big fish"—meaning they had admitted to more serious crimes than the charges faced by the people they were testifying against. D'Arco in only surveillance photograph. This is, generally speaking, the opposite of how cooperating witnesses are supposed work. Usually, legal experts said, the goal is to get those witnesses to admit to wrongdoing, cooperate with the government and to walk the investigation up the ladder, obtaining evidence against leaders or those potentially engaged in more serious crimes. In exchange, on the recommendation of prosecutors, cooperators typically end up serving reduced or no prison time. "If you can only punish big or small fish you obviously want to go after the big fish, th...

Carla Facciolo appeared on the Joy Behar show and identified her father for the audience, stating that he was not a mobster. Louis "Bagels" Daidone murdered the uncle of Mob Wife Carla Facciolo, then stuffed a canary in his mouth. The family thought Facciolo was a rat -- but he wasn't. Carla identified her uncle as Bruno Facciolo and her father is Louis Facciolo. To wit, according to the Behar transcript, which another blogger found, we read the following:

Louis "Louie Bagels" Daidone (born February 23, 1946) is a New York mobster and former acting boss of the Luchese crime family. Louie Daidone His reign was relatively short. In the end, while in his early 50s, he was sentenced to three life terms and two 20-year terms, all running concurrently (well, thank god for that!) I always remembered him for doing a favor for a friend that involved beating the crap out of a landlord for not stopping someone for playing their music too loud. In court documents, the prosecutors said that as a favor to ''a person close to Daidone,'' emissaries from the crime family went to a Brooklyn landlord, warned him that music was being played too loudly in his building, and told him he would be hurt if the noise continued. When the music continued in the early part of 2002, according to the prosecutors, an associate of the crime family returned to the landlord, and ''assaulted him, striking him repeatedly in...

Micali's back tattoo was captured for posterity after his arrest. Federal Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. seemingly took a 39-year-old Gambino associate under his wing, for a moment, anyway. The judge warned Gambino associate John Micali that if he didn't stick to the straight and narrow from now on, he'd find himself six feet underground. ( Mobsters die, though these days, it's usually via natural causes .) Classified as a repeat offender, Micali was then sentenced to one year in federal prison for violating federal probation, and two additional two years for stealing Blackberry Storm and Apple iPhones at JFK Airport. The devices, which ranged in price from $100 to $300, were bound for Asia. Micali, called "dumbfella" in some reports, was pinched for swiping a shipment of smartphones and replacing the cargo with diapers. The Feds built a case against Micali by tapping his own smartphone. The total score could have allowed the young gangste...