Cosa Nostra News

Northern Italy's Emilia-Romagna region is widely known for its medieval cities and seaside resorts. It also has the distinction of being the birthplace of some of the world's premier delicacies, including Prosciutto di Parma , Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and Balsamic Vinegar . And, up until a few years ago, it was one of the few places in Italy  not typically known to have a Mafia presence. Nicola Femia was arrested for running a gambling racket. Historically, Italy's various organized crime groups tended to keep away from Emilia-Romagna, either by chance or by design. That was then.

Excerpted from I Pity the Poor Immigrant: A Novel  by Zachary Lazar (Fiction; April 8, 2014). The Bomb magazine published this first proof. Lazar is the author of three books, most recently the novel Sway , about the Rolling Stones' early days, and the memoir Evening’s Empire: The Story of My Father’s Murder , which may be of interest to regular readers.  When he was just six years old, Zachary Lazar's father, Edward, was shot dead by hit men in a Phoenix, Arizona parking garage. The year was 1975, a time when, according to the Arizona Republic, "land-fraud artists roamed the state in sharp suits, gouging money from buyers and investors." How did his father fit into this world and how could his son ever truly understand the man, his time and place, and his motivations? In Evening's Empire, Zachary Lazar brilliantly attempts to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to his father's murder. Lazar's writing has appeared in t...

Vincenzo Reda of Franklin Square. Authorities busted an online enterprise that used an offshore website for sports betting, the Rockland County District Attorney said this past Thursday. Eight were arrested on charges of gambling and loansharking in a probe named " Operation Rock Bottom ." The arrests follow a search-and-seizure operation in April, when law enforcement hit a dozen properties, seizing gambling records and more than $750,000 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida.

From its inception, the American Mafia included among its plethora of rackets the slot-machine. So popular during the twentieth century's first few decades were these little games of chance, it's difficult today to truly comprehend it. NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was hands-on. Perhaps the most suitable image to remind us is the photograph above of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia sledgehammering a machine (the scene also was captured on film footage). All the historical Mafia bosses, especially the men who served as heads of New York's Five Families—Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Vito Genovese and, most famously of all, Frank Costello, for example—reaped fortunes from slot machine profits.

National Geographic aired a documentar y that purported to take viewers inside the world of underground gambling. Just guys gambling for money.... The hourlong episode focused on Mikey Tatts, who claims to run his own game -- and while trying to eke out a living from his entrepreneurship, constantly sought to upgrade his players' venues, as well as add to his regular roster more and better players. The drag in Mikey's sails: "Cops wanna bust me and gangsters wanna rob me..." He adds, "It's not like the old days," meaning back when cops took payoffs or just looked the other way, considering gambling a harmless vice. But as we see, it's not so harmless when you are a gambling addict and can't win, so you keep borrowing more cash from a loan shark, who usually is a mobster or related to some other crime ring. It's historically been held that the "small" traditional street crimes -- underground gambling, escort se...

Bugsy Siegel, looking dapper; he contributed to the creation of Las Vegas, though was not the solitary visionary he's often portrayed as.  According to an article in the  International Business Times , New York's Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo are seeking the passage of legislation that would allow the building of  a "major gambling center" in a place "like" Aqueduct Racetrack, which is in Queens, as well as other casinos all over the state. New York, which has received worldwide accolades for its reduction in crime since the "Death Wish" days of the 1970s, is already taking into account the possibility that the sticky fingers of organized crime will become attached to these casinos, providing most likely the Italian Mafia over other crime organizations with a potentially massive revenue-generator. Here is the article, in full : Backed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and his administration are continuing plans to buil...