Cosa Nostra News

UPDATED " To be honest with you, we just barely let the Gambino family in ...." Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso, referring to the stunningly profitable gasoline tax scam in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee In May 1996, for the first and only time, Luchese underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso testified—before the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which was examining the emergence of Russian immigrant crime groups and their ties to New York's Five Families, among other crime groups. Underboss to underboss: Sammy the Bull and Gaspipe Casso walk-talk. He spoke during the brief period that was the length of his cooperation . Gaspipe, who flipped in March 1994, was booted from the program in July 1998, when Judge Frederic Block of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn found that he had breached his cooperation deal with prosecutors. Block authorized the Government to rescind the plea agreement on the grounds that Casso had bribed prison guards to smuggle co...

In September 1964, illegal bugs planted in the meeting places of high-level Mafiosi across the nation by covert teams of FBI agents started to pick up bits of related news regarding the fate of a sitting member of the Mafia Commission. Bonanno consented to an interview with 60 Minutes. It was a mistake. The FBI black bag operation commenced as part of J. Edgar Hoover's post-Apalachin strategic intelligence gathering efforts, and in September 1964, it captured in real-time word of a Commission ruling as it hurtled like a brushfire from New York City to the nation's 24 crime families. Frank DeSimone, the Los Angeles Cosa Nostra boss, was heard in San Francisco telling a boss there that Joseph Bonanno was out. Thomas (Tommy Ryan) Eboli, acting boss of the Genovese Family, and underboss Gerry Catena together had traveled to the Providence, Rhode Island, headquarters of Raymond Patriarca, boss of the New England Family, to explain that Bonanno was out. Catena also was he...

Frank Capri, 52, of Scottsdale, Arizona--whose real name is Frank Gioia Jr., a Luchese soldier from New York who flipped in the 1990s and moved to Arizona in the early 2000s— was arrested February 5 with his mother . Frank Gioia, undated photo Capri -- or Gioia -- made a name for himself as a big-shit real estate and restaurant developer in Arizona. Do all these ex-wiseguys move to frigging  Arizona ? He and his mom appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michelle H. Burns following their arrest. On January 28, 2020, a federal grand jury returned a 16-count indictment charging Capri, Debbie Corvo, and another individual with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the operation of various branded restaurant locations in Arizona and across the United States. The trial is scheduled for April 7, 2020, before United States District Judge John J. Tuchi. Capri was reportedly behind the collapse of a restaurant chain named after ...

After a six-week jury trial, Matthew Madonna, Steven L. Crea, Christopher Londonio, and Terence Caldwell were convicted Friday of murder, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and other felonies. Fifteen other defendants previously pled guilty to related charges. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “The violent and disturbing acts of these four organized crime figures included the brutal murder of associate Michael Meldish . Fittingly, all four defendants have been found guilty of their heinous acts of fraud, extortion, and murder on the six-year anniversary of Meldish’s death. Thanks to the outstanding investigative work of the FBI and NYPD, we will continue our commitment to making organized crime a thing of a bygone era.” According to the evidence presented at trial, and other court documents : Until his arrest in this case, Madonna was the Acting Boss of the Luchese Family of La Cosa Nostra , one of the “Five Families” that constitute the Mafia in the New York City a...

A career criminal with ties to New York-based organized crime was arrested yesterday (Friday, May 3) at his New Jersey home for a violent 2017 home invasion that involved a baseball bat and a foxy reality television star. Dina Manzo, RHNJ star. The Holmdel and Bayonne Police Departments, with the U.S. Marshals Service, yesterday morning arrested  James (Jimmy Balls) Mainello, 51,  without incident (PDF of criminal complaint) , naming him as one of two suspects being sought for committing the violent home invasion robbery of David Cantin and fiance Claudine “Dina” Manzo, an actress on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The robbery happened on a May night in 2017. Two home invaders -- one was described as "an Italian guy with a North Jersey accent" -- broke into and hid inside the then-engaged couple's North Jersey townhouse (with a baseball bat) and waited. Manzo, then 46, and Cantin, then 37, walked in and the thugs brutally set on them, beating, restraining...

A Luchese crime family soldier and an associate copped to charges of  conspiring to illegally distribute oxycodone. On Thursday, April 5, at Brooklyn Federal courthouse, Anthony Grado, the Luchese soldier, and Lawrence (Fat Larry) Tranese, the Luchese associate, copped to conspiracy to distribute oxycodone before United States Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara. The case was reported that day by Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI); and James P. O’Neill, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD). “Luchese family member Grado imperiled our community, threatening a doctor to force him to write prescriptions for oxycodone and then trafficking in the addictive drugs,” stated Donoghue. “Violent threats to a doctor by Mafia defendants, combined with their trafficking of oxycodone pills, posed an e...

Ten members of the Luchese crime family in the Bronx and Westchester County were arrested by the New York Attorney General's Office tonight (March 27) on charges stemming from a gambling-loan sharking operation that had nearly 50 "clients." Clients dropped off cash at McKiernan’s Lawton Street Tavern in New Rochelle, N.Y. The investigation was dubbed "Operation The Vig Is Up." Loanshark victims were required to make weekly, high interest “vig” payments, either by directly paying individual defendants, or by dropping off cash payments at two businesses: McKiernan's Lawton Street Tavern or smoke shop The Glass Room. Both storefronts are located in New Rochelle, New York. Dominick Capelli, a "made member" of the Luchese family, allegedly ran the loan-sharking operation. Investigators used wiretaps, search warrants, undercover police officers, and hidden cameras to build up enough evidence and identify more than 47 distinct loan...