Cosa Nostra News

"John Gotti (went around in) a suit telling everybody he’s the boss. Our guys (in the Genovese family) had mothball holes in their sweaters, but they had $50 million in cash in their apartment." —Michael Visconti, ex-Genovese family associate "Angelo Prisco's mentor was Mario Gigante. (Prisco) was a very strong guy. He ran the Purple Gang along with Danny Leo in Harlem , and they came up through the ranks together." Michael Visconti enters court in 2006. Credit: RecordOnline . The violent East Harlem-based Purple Gang reportedly boasted more than 100 members in the 1970s and was known for committing crimes ranging from narcotics and firearms trafficking to whacking and dismembering people, many of them informants for law enforcement. Members of the organization, who reportedly spent their youths running errands for local drug dealers, were linked to the Bonanno, Luchese, and Genovese families.  By the 1980s, the Purple Gang started to fade as members were incr...

Former Gambino crime family underboss Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano was seen last month at an Italian restaurant in Arizona. He went in to pick up some takeout, and his son was reportedly with him. Sammy Gravano at Uncle Sal's, a familiar place. (Source: TMZ ) It’s difficult to imagine a more ignoble end for the once-feared former underboss of the Gambino crime family Once upon a time, Gravano owned Uncle Sal's (get the name?), and his wife kept the place running a few years after he was busted for dealing "Molly," Ecstasy pills. Once upon a time, the FBI lauded him as their prize witness, a sterling example of the moral authority of federal law enforcement after he flipped on a man he himself had chosen to follow to the top of a criminal hierarchy. With hindsight, one  can safely assume that Sammy Gravano chose to flip on John Gotti using the same cold-blooded calculating mercenary determination he used to join The Fist, the informal name of w...

VIDEO ADDED Frank Gioia was a Luchese soldier born and raised into the Mafia.He flipped in the 1990s, helped convict around 70 wiseguys, and departed prison in 1999 for the Federal Witness Protection Program. Frank (Gioia Jr.) Capri We now know many previously confidential details. For instance Frank Gioia morphed into Frank Capri, an Arizona businessman, real-estate developer, and restaurateur who ran Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill, a restaurant chain that touted flash-fried pickle chips and whiskey hot wings. The Arizona Republic investigated the former mobster and recently published its findings in a story headlined Mafia in our midst . Back in the 1990s, when he testified in trials, numerous times serving to support allegations made on the stand by superstar witness Al D'Arco, Gioia was described by prosecutors as a devastating turncoat viewed as a sort of successor to Sammy the Bull Gravano. Now the feds must be eating crow again. Turns out Gioia...

I was part of the criminal underworld for... three decades, since my early teens, in Brooklyn, New York. More specifically I was an associate of the Gambino Crime Family with blood ties to Cosa Nostra in Sicily. I’m speaking in the past tense because those days are long behind me. I made a decision to turn my back on the Mafia. I betrayed the unspoken oath I had taken as a teenage criminal on the rough and tumble streets of Brooklyn, to never rat out anyone, not even your enemy... Not many of you, I bet, have experienced a full-cavity strip search. I certainly haven't. Well, "Mr. Fitzgerald," author of The Untold Story of A Top Echelon Informant: What the Government is Hiding and Protecting (a 12-page story available on Amazon Kindle priced at $2.99), excerpted above, writes of strip searches, among other things. He estimates he's gone through full strip and cavity searches "hundreds of times." Mr. Fitzgerald is a pseudonym; the writ...

It's not very often a governor, his cabinet, three federal prosecutors and other government officials go to bat for a former drug addicted mob associate -- but that is exactly what happened yesterday. Murder scene Kevin Bonner, for the past decade, had been serving 24 years of a state sentence at an undisclosed federal prison. And yesterday his sentence was commuted, thanks to the Feds, as well as the state of Florida. Bonner has put away, or on trial, a multitude of Gambino wiseguys. A former Woodhaven resident, he has testified about mob mayhem and murder going back to the early 1980s. Gov. Rick Scott and Cabinet "ended the long prison sentence of a robber-turned-mob informant whose testimony prosecutors say helped break up the Gambino crime family in Florida and New York," according to the Miami Herald. Also lending their support via letters were three federal prosecutors -- Tampa U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley III, New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bhar...

Lewis Kasman, 58 We once spoke with a guy who said he was Kasman's agent. It was weird because, right from the start, we were pretty certain we were talking to Kasman himself...  (We knew what his voice sounded like because we heard him talk on the radio a few times). That was among the most bizarre conversation we've ever had... and that says a lot... NY Daily News : " Lewis Kasman , 58, moved to South Florida after ratting on the mob, but still can't stay out of trouble, getting arrested in January on felony fraud and theft charges. A Mafia snitch who went down on federal racketeering and fraud charges years ago in Brooklyn now faces legal troubles in Florida, where cops say he stole a check from his lawyer and cashed it. Lewis Kasman, better known as John Gotti’s turncoat “adopted son,” was arrested last month in West Palm Beach, Fla., for swiping $5,300 from his very own lawyer.

Forensic analyst/congressional consultant Angela Clemente is holding a ceremony this Saturday to unveil a monument erected to memorialize 47 murder victims of mob hit men/FBI informants Gregory "The Grim Reaper" Scarpa, Frank "Frankie Blue Eyes" Sparaco, and James "Whitey" Bulger. Each victim's name will be engraved on the memorial, which stands about 6 feet tall and states: "Death cancels everything but the truth." In loving memory of all the victims who unnecessarily lost their lives; you will forever be entrenched in our hearts. Dedicated by: Angela Clemente I promise to dedicate my life to make sure that this will never happen again. The unveiling is this Saturday (Feb. 8) at 1:00 p.m. at “The New Beginnings” rehabilitation center. The address is: 12 Platinum Court Medford, New York 11763 Tel. 631-286-6166 http://www.nbli.org

There are A LOT of rats out there -- and they range from associates to made men who held rank. Made men are made until death; guys who flipped are considered to be shelved, according to a mobster's testimony, backed up by sources we've spoken with about this, including former Gambino crime family capo Michael DiLeonardo. Nothing new here -- Gambino rat Sammy Bull, before a later reckoning. Turncoats , my preferred nomenclature, is more accurate , I believe as a tax-paying citizen not affiliated with the Mafia. I also happen to believe in law and order; I write a blog about the Mafia because of personal interest and a journalism background.