Cosa Nostra News

The following is excerpted from Michael Blutrich's memoir,  Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History . EARLY 1991  Mike Sergio invited me to dinner at his restaurant. I was tickled when I arrived because “Grampa” Al Lewis was dining with us that night, and he’d invited Fred Gwynne, the famous Herman Munster himself, for the meal. Just pleased to be a fly on the wall, I listened with interest to these veteran actors discussing their memories from and their roles in the 50s television hit Car 54 Where Are You?—along with Lewis’s plans for a Munster-esque Halloween reunion bash that would include Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster), but not Yvonne De Carlo (Lily Munster) because her ballooning weight was causing her to avoid public appearances.

Michael Blutrich grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Georgetown in 1974, he opened his own firm on Park Avenue, Blutrich, Falcone & Miller. The current Governor of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, was a partner in the firm (1985-1988). Michael Blutrich was featured on 60 Minutes The news show will revisit the Scores case. In the 1990s, using stolen money, Blutrich started investing in restaurants and nightclubs including the strip club Scores . At some point, he started working in cahoots with Steve Sergio, described by 60 Minutes as a Gambino associate. (See script of the episode, An Unlikely Informant  here.)

Greg DePalma was desperate to regain his standing as a capo when he was released from prison in February 2003 after serving a 70-month sentence for racketeering. He was supposedly all washed up. He'd been caught talking on tape, which led to his conviction as well as that of John A. "Junior" Gotti in the Scores strip-club extortion case. (They copped plea deals, actually, at the last minute.) Testimony in a 1999 case related to the Scores case told a violent tale of murders by Albanian gangsters, as well as the Gambino crime family shaking down the premium strip club. Reputed Albanian mobsters (and brothers) Simon and Victor Dedaj were arrested for the 1996 shooting murders of a bouncer and waiter inside the Upper East Side strip club. The New York Post described it as a case "with enough mobsters, loansharks and topless dancers to fill a Martin Scorcese flick." In opening statements, Assistant District Attorney Dan McGillycuddy told jurors how ...