Cosa Nostra News

On Tuesday Federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss a perjury case against a Rhode Island mob associate/bookie. Gaythorne (Poochie) Angell Jr., 84, was indicted in 2016 for lying to a grand jury about shakedown money paid to the mob by the Foxy Lady strip club. He is the Angell family’s patriarch — whose friends range from Smith Hill politicians to Federal Hill wiseguys. Poochie has long denied he was anything but a consultant. But a 2009 court document signed by a Foxy Lady lawyer showed that Angell had a previously undisclosed financial interest in the club, raising questions about the city’s oversight of its liquor-licensing laws. He since successfully completed a pretrial diversion program, as prosecutors noted in a filing in U.S. District Court, Providence. If a judge agrees to the dismissal, Angell, of East Greenwich, will not face the perjury charge in federal court. Jim Martin, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said that prosecutors and Angell agreed...

Providence, Rhode Island was once Raymond Loreda Salvatore Patriarca's fiefdom, and now it's where violent confrontations between outlaw motorcycle clubs are on the up. Santo Trafficante Jr., once among the most powerful Mafia bosses in the United States. controlled organized criminal operations in Florida, where the Outlaws, or the American Outlaw Association, is the dominant outlaw motorcycle club. Last year in Newark, New Jersey, a Hells Angels associate was brutally beaten with baseball bats in what law enforcement believed was part of a broader attempt by the Pagans Motorcycle Club to expand its territory into northern New Jersey. Outlaw MC violence was spotlighted this summer in Las Vegas, when an undercover agent who infiltrated a Las Vegas chapter of the Vagos Motorcycle Club for two years offered a glimpse into the underworld of outlaw bikers as he testified during a federal racketeering trial. “If the leadership decides to declare war,” Agostino Bra...

The following is the first in a series about the mob in New Haven, Connecticut… It started off originally as a story about William Grasso — but while researching him, we found ourselves spending more time on Grasso's mentor, and decided an even more worthwhile series would detail his exploits first... Ralph “Whitey” Tropiano. Connecticut had a peculiar relationship with organized crime. Located at about the midpoint between New York and Boston, it never had its own formally designated crime family. However, due to its proximity to New York and Boston, it always attracted attention and several crime families had interests in the state over the decades. The notoriously bad-tempered, yet supremely disciplined  William (The Wild Man) Grasso, who rose to become underboss of the Patriarca crime family under Raymond Junior, once reminisced with an associate about old times and noted how he’d gotten his big break. It arrived in the form of a 10-year prison sentence. “Best t...

Early mugshot of young Raymond Patriarca . Was Federal Hill really safer back when Ray Patriarca ran all of New England from the Coin-o-Matic on Atwells Avenue ? I raise this question following a recent report that ran the following quote: "There is a perception that things were less violent on Federal Hill during the Raymond Patriarca era but I disagree since it is only the nature of the violence that has changed,” explained Former Rhode Island Attorney General Arlene Violet, who oversaw a major crackdown on mob activity during her tenure as Rhode Island Attorney General from 1984-1986.

From the Providence Journal : BOSTON MOB: The Rise and Fall of the New England Mob and Its Most Notorious Killer,” by Marc Songini. St. Martin’s Press. 369 pages. $27.99. This is a colorful, even gleeful, account of murder, mayhem and corruption during the heyday of the New England Mafia. As you can imagine, despite the title, a lot of it is about Rhode Island and Raymond L.S. Patriarca, who ran the “Office,” as it was called , from the Coin-O-Matic office on Atwells Avenue in Providence. Three strains run through the book by Boston-area journalist Marc Songini. The fast-reading narrative begins and ends with the turbulent history of Joseph Barboza, or Joseph Barboza Baron after he changed his name. Of Portuguese descent and from New Bedford, he worked with many of the other figures in the book.

Federal prosecutors yesterday charged three alleged members of the New England Mafia and three associates with extorting money from Rhode Island’s adult entertainment industry since the 1980s, a "business" that generated about $2 million, reports  The Boston Globe . "In a seven-count indictment unsealed in Providence today, federal authorities also indicate that the leadership of the Mafia in New England has shifted back to Boston after being under the control of Providence-based mobsters for the past several years," the article says. Buried within the 22-page document, alleged Mafia capo Edward (Eddie) Lato notes to someone that every time he meets with a wiseguy in Boston, he knows the man is being watched by the law. “Every time I leave, there’s someone looking at me… there’s a guy on the corner every ----  time,’’ the 64-year-old Lato said, according to the indictment. “They’re following him… I mean… not that they’re not suppose (sic) to follow him, he’s...

Articles are popping up everywhere, all over the media, following the big mob bust the other day. Following are some links you may want to check out: