Cosa Nostra News

FINAL Sicilian and American wiseguys were busted Wednesday as part of coordinated takedown efforts by Italian police and the FBI, which served 19 arrest warrants in Palermo and in the United States, specifically in Staten Island and Philadelphia. The operation, dubbed "New Connection," was an attempt to disrupt efforts by a Sicilian Mafia faction (specifically, Inzerillo family members in Sicily and their New York allies in the Gambino crime family) to take over the leadership of organized crime in Italy. The Inzerillo and Gambino crime families, which have historical ties, were in the process of rebuilding their powerbase in Sicily. Members of slain Gambino crime boss Frank Cali's family were arrested in the takedown Wednesday, as per officials in Anthony DeStefano's Newsday story . Also arrested were Thomas Gambino, 47, of Staten Island; Salvatore Gambino, the mayor of a village outside Palermo; and Tommaso and Francesco Inzerillo, relatives of Salvator...

Ne wspapers  overseas  report that John Gotti, the former Gambino boss who rose to power following the midtown Manhattan execution of his predecessor in December 1985, played a role in the brutal bombing murders of two Sicilian judges. A Sicilian turncoat pointed the finger at Gotti for ordering a made member of the Gambino crime family -- who was an explosives expert -- to train Sicilian mobsters to use the bombs that killed anti-mafia crusaders Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. The turncoat -- Maurizio Avola, 56, a convicted murderer who flipped in 1994 -- told prosecutors in Caltanissetta, Sicily, that John Gotti had sent the American mobster/explosives expert, who Avola described as “about 40 years old" with brown hair and dark eyes, about six feet tall, with a strong build, and he "dressed very elegantly." Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo, and three police officers/bodyguards were killed in Palermo in May 1992 with a bomb comprised of ...

" It is absolutely out of the question that a Sicilian man of honor could become a made member of the American Cosa Nostra  ..."  --Tommaso Buscetta, aka the "boss of two worlds" Tall Pete Inzerillo and Frank Cali Frank Cali, the reputed leader of the Gambino crime family who was shot to death outside his house in Staten Island, allegedly was made acting boss in 2015. Strong factors leading to his ascension were his strong ties to both the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian Ndrangheta. His rise also was part of an attempt by the Gambinos to lower the crime family’s profile after John Gotti shot his way to the top in December 1985, according to law enforcement officials. The Brooklyn-born Cali was related by blood to, and married into, Palermo's Inzerillo family and had cultivated close ties with members of the Ndrangheta's Siderno Group, a global drug trafficking network based in the southern Italian town of Siderno in Calabria. In the 1950s, ...

"When I was in New York for a mission, I got to know, personally, John and Joseph Gambino, both of them as initiates of the American Cosa Nostra. So, I came to know their secret joints, their way of thinking and the slang communication of the Sicilian Mafia. Usually, they communicate with just a look, something that is the norm for us in Palermo who grew up with the warning of “muto devi stare”–you need to shut up. In fact, using this system of communication we could hold a meeting even in silence–using just a look and body language passed down by our ancestors. This preferred way of communication by mafiosi, made it possible for me to figure out their messages ahead of time on occasion, some even intercepted from New York." -- Pippo Giordano, A Policeman’s Reflections on Mafia Organizations That Rule in Southern Italy John Gambino flew to Sicily and met Toto Riina face to face in 1983. After John Gotti became the boss of the Gambino crime family in 1986 after the m...

UPDATED:  "Everything is a message, everything is full of meaning in the world of Cosa Nostra, no detail is too small to be overlooked.” --Giovanni Falcone Luciano Leggio, Corleonesi leader who took control of the Commission. One of the Sicilian Mafia’s most prolific killers was Giuseppe "Pino" Greco (January 4, 1952 – September 1985), aka The Shoe. Born in Ciaculli, an outlying town in Palermo province, he joined the Sicilian Mafia and by the 1980s, sat on the Commission when it was ruled by his uncle, Michele Greco, the Ciaculli boss. Greco’s Ciaculli family, to use the common American term, was closely allied with Salvatore (Shorty) Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, leaders of the Corleonesi, first as Luciano Leggio's direct underlings, then on their own following Leggio's 1974 arrest. Pino was Riina’s favorite hit man. In fact, Riina manipulated Greco and some of his blood relations in the Mafia to knock out Palermo rivals of the Corleones...

Family members of former Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore (Toto) Riina, who died in a prison hospital on November 17, 2017, and who was allegedly responsible for ordering more than hundreds of murders, received something nobody probably ever saw coming. An apology. Toto Riina died in a prison hospital earlier this month. Trouble began when the social media giant removed messages of condolences posted upon Riina's death.  The posts, on Riina's son-in-law's Facebook feed, "were removed in error, after users complained that they violated Facebook's standards." After a review, Facebook "restored the posts and apologized," an anonymous Facebook spokesperson said recently. The spokesperson didn't elaborate, but Facebook's terms of use prohibit content expressing support for groups involved in violent or criminal behavior, terrorist activity or organized crime. "Supporting or praising leaders of those same organizations, o...

Andreotti died having been cleansed of Mafia-related crimes. “Riina changed Cosa Nostra from having a democratic, federal organisation to an authoritarian management style – and that’s a euphemism given that he would murder colleagues for making the wrong hand gesture at meetings.”  Toto Riina, the jailed 'boss of bosses' of the Sicilian Mafia, for the first time, claimed he met with seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti. This revelation is released mere days before the Venice premier of La Trattativa, an Italian documentary about secret talks allegedly held between Cosa Nostra and the Italian government in the 1990s. According to the Telegraph Riina has long been accused of meeting the former Christian Democrat leader.