Cosa Nostra News

The judge will let Tommy Shots know "shortly" if he can get out of prison early because of COVID-19. Nick Christophers  listened in on the conference call and wrote the following, including a detailed transcript of the call Monday to get Tommy Shots sprung.... Maureen, wife of Gioeli, outside Brooklyn court after his 2012 acquittal for murder. Nick is the author of several books , including Prison Rules , Destinies , and Godfathers of the Night,  which is the story of the Greek Mafia... By Nick Christophers During a hearing Monday (May 18), Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli’s mouthpiece took a shot at getting him sprung from prison four years early based on his fears of contracting COVID-19; the judge said he would decide shortly whether he would grant the former Colombo acting boss's request. In a telephone conference call Monday, his attorney, Federal prosecutors, and Judge Brian Cogan discussed what should happen next regarding Goieli's delicate health condi...

COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE Former Colombo street boss Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli , 67, is seeking to get out of prison about four years early because of the COVID-19 public health emergency, according to an email sent by the Victim-Witness Coordinator for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York, a copy of which was forwarded to Cosa Nostra News today. Tommy Shots arrested. Gioeli was sentenced to 18 years for a 2012 conviction for several racketeering and murder conspiracy charges, and is currently housed at Danbury FCI. His BOP-designated release date is May 2, 2024. (Gioeli had faced 20 years at sentencing, but the judge gave him a break that baffled many law enforcement officials.) The following email is from Lisa Foster, the Victim-Witness Coordinator for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York. We're publishing the full contents of the letter (because why not?) We deleted the phone number and access code. Anyone who wants t...

Tommy Shots Gioeli, a one-time street boss of the Colombo crime family, recently hit the jackpot, winning a $250,000 settlement for an August 2013 accident that "knee-capped" him while playing ping-pong behind bars. Tommy Shots nabbed in 2008. But the Feds have other ideas -- they want that money to help cover the $360,000 court-ordered restitution Gioeli owes to a bank and a fur store.  So now Tommy Shots -- about five years away from his release date -- is battling it out with Federal prosecutors, as  Larry McShane reports for The Daily News . Gioeli, acting as his own attorney, filed an 83-page court document from his Connecticut prison cell arguing that the money is his. He wants the restitution order amended based on his limited “level of contribution” to the two heists. Gioeli, citing case law, argued it was “both noteworthy and relevant” that a 2012 ruling found the federal courts lacked the “inherent power” to impose payback as part of...

UPDATED Thomas (Tommy Shots) Gioeli was once an acting boss in the Colombo crime family. For many years he supervised a violent crew of killers. These days, well, you probably couldn't imagine.... Tommy Shots during his arrest for a whole lotta heavy gangland crimes..... During the 1991-93 Colombo war , Gioeli, a staunch ally of of Carmine Persico, alleged imprisoned boss, t hough Junior denies this , and his shooters played a key role in the street battles against the larger Vittorio "Little Vic" Orena faction . After the war, Gioeli rose steadily in the ranks, in large measure due to his ability to serve as a steady link between the Colombo family's two once-warring factions. He was trusted by mobsters who belonged to both the Perisco loyalists and the Orena rebels. His acting capo was Paul “Paulie Guns” Bevacqua , onetime Orena loyalist. Another former member of the rebel faction was  Joel “Joe Waverly” Cacace , who paid Gioeli an historical ...

A vicious capo in the Colombo crime family who was one of two hit men responsible for killing an off-duty cop got something he probably never gave: mercy. Dino Calabro Dino (Big Dino) Calabro, 59, was sentenced to 11 years on Friday when he appeared in Brooklyn's Federal district court "shrunken and remorseful... begging a judge for mercy," as The New York Times reported. His pleas were answered when the judge, noting the importance of Calabro's assistance as a witness, sentenced him to 11 years rather than life. Not everyone would agree with the judge's proclamation about Big Dino, whose testimony never brought to justice the Colombo mobsters allegedly responsible for the cold-blooded slaying of an off-duty NYPD officer. Calabro was arrested in 2008 so he still has two more years to serve before disappearing into the witness protection program . (And if it's less than two years due to "good behavior," does it really matter?) ...

A mob turncoat who flipped on a multitude of Colombo gangsters, including Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli, and whose cooperation was described as "historic" was sentenced last Friday to no jail time. Thomas McLaughlin, the turncoat, was himself involved in three gangland hits, two of which were tied to the 1990s Colombo civil war. He also was a member of the Bay Parkway Boys, a farm team for the mob. In McLaughlin's case, it gave him entry into the Colombo crime family, one of the youngest and most violent of New York's Five Families. Tommy McLaughlin has a secret "I just want to apologize for my past and look forward to the future," McLaughlin, 46, told Judge Brian Cogan last week in Brooklyn Federal Court. One year after he'd finished serving a long prison term for a drug conviction, McLaughlin voluntarily began informing in 2009, and secretly recorded thousands of hours of conversations with mobsters.

High-ranking mobster Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli lived on Long Island until his 2012 conviction in Brooklyn federal court. He is probably one of the most powerful mobsters to have lived full-time on Long Island. (Powerful meaning his role as the Colombo crime family's muscle.) A young Dino Calabro, left, with Tommy Shots. He and his wife Maureen raised a family in a modest house in Farmingdale. Tommy Shots' one-time right-hand man, Dino Calabro, moved next door with his family as well. The former Colombo capo later testified against Tommy Shots, who taught him how to kill while also dazzling him with the "glamour" of the Mafia lifestyle, as "Big Dino" said on the stand. "I wanted what (Gioeli) had,” Calabro told Assistant U.S. Attorney James Gatta. “He had the power to get me in the family.” “Tommy Shots” Gioeli was a staunch Persico ally during the 1991–93 war. He ran a crew of shooters who played a key role in the str...

Called When Mobsters Refuse to Retire , George Anastasia's story,  which I read in the AARP magazine (don't ask how I got a copy), is online, I noticed . Amusingly enough, the publication placed it in the Work Life Balance section.  Here's a teaser to whet your appetite if you haven't already read it.... From AARP's online page They shared a long lunch of filet mignon, yellowfin tuna, and chicken with broccoli rabe, washing it down with four bottles of expensive Tuscan red. Ten wiseguys sat at an Italian restaurant in New Jersey, laughing and joking and talking. It could have been a scene from TV's The Sopranos . The men, from New York, Philadelphia and Newark, dressed the part — open-collared shirts, pinkie rings and Rolexes. Outside on that May afternoon in 2010, the FBI had set up surveillance cameras. Inside, at the table, a federal informant wore a body wire.

In 1974, mob shooters accidentally killed an innocent bystander while in the process of gunning down a father and son suspected of stealing some of the Colombo family's proceeds from the ticket sales related to the classic porn flick Deep Throat. In time this incident would be dubbed one of the New York underworld's more depraved acts. Peraino Sr. survived the hit,  but was paralyzed. Former jailhouse snitch Salvatore "Big Sal" Miciotta, who was so discredited in the courtroom, he could never testify again, talked about the infamous hit for a documentary. William "Wild Bill" Cutolo, a powerful, charismatic Colombo capo later named underboss (only to be murdered in 1999) and five Colombo gangsters were freed because of Miciotta's false testimony, which also destroyed an honest man's career in the NYPD, among other things. Colombo shooters lured a father and son into a trap to kill them. Their crime was skimming from the proceeds g...