Cosa Nostra News

Almost 45 years later, and the tips apparently still keep a-coming. Hoffa with his chief lieutenant Frank Sheeran. Michigan law enforcement yesterday morning used cadaver dogs to search for the remains of James Riddle Hoffa , the (very) appropriately named one-time Teamsters boss who abruptly disappeared off the face of the earth in 1975. Detectives with the Michigan State Police, forensic anthropologists, and a K-9 handler with dogs trained in alerting to the presence of cadavers searched a parcel of land in Hillsdale Township. They didn't find him. The source of the tip was an unidentified woman who inherited the land when her father passed away. She claims to have family ties to the American Mafia. Hoffa, who had been president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disappeared from a Bloomfield Township restaurant on July 30, 1975. He was declared legally dead in 1982. The case went cold, with sporadic tips sending investigators on multiple...

EXPANDED By now, we thought we would've watched (and rewatched) Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman , the gangster flick we've been hearing, reading, and writing about since 2011, when Robert De Niro accepted the role . Triumvirate: De Niro, Scorsese, Pesci Netflix nabbed the rights to the long-gestating epic in 2017. The film, the acclaimed director's ninth outing with DeNiro, also stars Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Bobby Cannavale (who gave a stellar turn as Boardwalk Empire's villainous Gyp Rosetti .) Based on I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, the film tells the story of union strong-arm/Jimmy Hoffa confidant Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran. The film will debut this fall. (Sebastian Maniscalco reportedly confirmed this on the Joe Rogan podcast , saying it'll be out this October.) The Irishman was expected to be a smash at this year's Cannes film festival, but then Scorsese decided to use the same laborious VFX technology used in Th...

Felix (Skinny Razor) DiTullio  played a crucial role in the lives of many young Philadelphia wiseguys. Friendly Lounge was Skinny Razor's joint... DiTullio 's lounge was a veritable mob college, the place where Wiseguy 101 was taught by the consummate professional. (An awful lot of gangland hits allegedly occurred there, too.) The Friendly Lounge's most famous graduate likely was mob boss Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, who surprisingly wasn't portrayed in The Irishman, and the second, mob boss Ralph Natale. Skinny Razor also is considered one of the Mafia's foremost assassins. And now, the new Martin Scorsese film The Irishman, which debuted on Netflix nationwide last week, has given Skinny Razor a much higher profile than he ever had (or would've wanted). The film is based on the book  I Heard You Paint Houses , which purports to tell the story of Philadelphia union heavy Frank Sheeran, who claimed to have killed both James R. Hoff...

"Nevada owes a debt of gratitude to Frank Schreck," a Las Vegas Sun editorial recently noted . Schreck was named this year's International Association of Gaming Advisors honoree and in recognition gave quite a speech. It included a head-turning revelation about a major Mafia figure notorious for his stint working in the  Stardust hotel and casino  (among other places), which once occupied a prime slot on the fabled Las Vegas strip. Geri, on Lefty's left, looks like Sharon Stone.   Schreck, considered a premier gaming attorney in Nevada and elsewhere, recounted his personal take on Las Vegas history, including the enduring legacy of oddball billionaire Howard Hughes . Schreck's rise commenced in 1971 when then-governor Mike O’Callaghan’s appointed the then-27-year-old lawyer to the Nevada Gaming Commission, setting a record. Schreck remains the youngest commissioner ever appointed to that regulatory body, which was charged with policing whether someone could...

Click image The film “The Wannabe” is "centered around the 1992 John Gotti trial in New York City" but has more to do with the short-lived lukewarm HBO series Boardwalk Empire than any mob boss. The producers don't seem to realize they are remaking a film released only last year called Rob the Mob . Or they found out too late so they added a "twist" to even further distance their cinematic effort from the true account of the married couple who robbed mob social clubs for a few months in the early 1990s. Ultimately the two were brutally murdered in broad daylight by Mafia shooters.

The film The Wannabe, which is available now on Amazon Prime, has a very specific setting: the 1992 John Gotti trial in New York City. Still, despite this leverage of the Gotti name, The Wannabe is much more reminiscent of the former HBO series Boardwalk Empire . Click image Did the filmmakers really not realize they were essentially remaking a film released only last year called Rob the Mob ? We strongly suspect that they found this out too late so they added a "twist" to try to distance the film from the previous year's cinematic account of a married couple who robbed Mafia social clubs for a few months in the early 1990s. Ultimately the two were brutally murdered in broad daylight. "The Wannabe" drew so much of its talent from Boardwalk Empire, it's distracting. (The villainous Gyp Rosetti was our favorite Boardwalk character) Martin Scorsese's name is attached to The Wannabe, but as a producer, which doesn't neces...

Former KCPD detective Gary Jenkins It is not too late to sign up for the interactive webinar entitled: Gangland Wire  in which you can meet the man who helped take down the mob:  Kansas City Police Department Detective  Gary Jenkins . The webinar is November 13, 2014 from 7:00 to 8:00 P.M. In 1977, Kansas City Police Department Detective Jenkins joined the FBI organized crime task force to implement Operation Strawman .Formed to investigate Kansas City mob activities, the OCTF gathered information that convicted Mafia leaders in Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland and Milwaukee. It's the story behind the story of Martin Scorsese's film Casino. Jenkins also runs the blog Gangland Wire , where he posts stories as well as actual wiretap recordings .

As we wrote about in an earlier post, Secret 'Mafia' Safe Found in Tahoe Casino May Be Opened on Oprah Show , that mysterious safe hidden behind a wall inside Bill's Casino finally has been opened -- and the adventure was indeed filmed by Oprah's people for a TV special. So no one knows what's inside, still, accept for Oprah and her minions. "There was a slight possibility that the safe was Mafia-connected—as the suspected owner of the safe (and previous owner of the casino) was killed in a car explosion, dripping with Martin Scorcese plot lines," reports Gizmodo . "However, police were on site as the safe was opened and concluded that there wasn't anything inside worth launching an investigation about." R ead the article: That Mysterious, Possibly Mafia-Connected Safe Has Been Opened But Only Oprah Knows What's Inside .