Cosa Nostra News

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.

By Nick Christophers , from the May issue of Saint Red Magazine . People look at him and think 'there goes a good looking man with style'. But when they learn about his checkered past, fear sets in. It is a normal reaction and comes with the territory for someone like him. John Alite was John Gotti Jr.'s bodyguard and did what he was told within the world of the mafia. But those days are over as he begins to build a new life. Coming from an Albanian family the world of crime was not so foreign to him. Albania itself has been pegged as a breeding ground for criminality. Yet not all Albanians follow that lifestyle. John himself attempted to lead a law-abiding life but somehow was side-tracked. He was raised in Jamaica, Queens in the 1970's were it was a strong-hold for the mob.

Suspects were never in short supply regarding the Michael Meldish murder . The former Purple Gang boss was offed in November 2013 in what's described as a classic gangland hit tableau. Michael Meldish, former Purple Gang leader, may have died for pissing off a high-ranking Luchese Mafioso. His body, expensively attired, ensconced in a camel-colored leather jacket, was slumped over in the driver's seat, his head back, his mouth agape. “Michael was a stone-cold killer,” Joseph Coffey, former commanding officer of the NYPD’s organized crime homicide task force, told the New York Daily News.

UPDATED; ADDITIONAL INFO I have not previously covered the 1%er motorcycle clubs (though I have been considering launching a new blog dedicated to that volatile world). However in the recent Waco, Texas, case, I have some inside information   from a knowledgeable source  that seems to jibe with recently published reports.

COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE   After reading  Michael "Mikie Scars" DiLeonardo's testimony , we wanted to know more about him. Mikie Scars, recently taken. Michael DiLeonardo knows Cosa Nostra, and we spent a week asking him questions. We thank Michael for generously spending his time answering them. Michael DiLeonardo's story certainly warrants a full-length book. When we asked Michael if he was working on getting his life story onto the page, he told us only that he's received many requests. "Mikie Scars" beat the Feds when he was tried in Georgia for extorting some $70 million from Georgia's Gold Club and $100,000 from the Manhattan-based high-end Scores strip club.

We had to delete the pic because of Adsense violations... Initially, we included in our Cosa Nostra News logo the iconic 1979 photograph of Carmine Galante taken by the enterprising news photographer positioned atop a roof that overlooked the outside patio of Joe and Mary's Italian American Restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (The restaurant went out of business following the murder on a dreadfully hot New York summer day.) The well-known image. But one image we happened across today gave us lengthy pause. We immediately knew we'd never seen the black-and-white photo before. Yet a familiarity was indeed there, likely due to the barber chair beside which the lifeless, blood-spattered gangster had collapsed after his infamous lunge at the mirror. A fatally shot mob boss, his dying brain's synapses misfiring, had mistakenly perceived his assassins to be standing in front of him. He'd been deceived by a reflection. We knew we were looking at a photograph we'...

The following is based on Gambino crime family boss  Carlo Gambino 's FBI files. The Apalachin Meeting marked a major turning point in FBI history. America’s premiere law enforcement agency could no longer bury its head in the sand about organized crime. With the raid in upstate New York, it was clear that a national crime syndicate operated inside the United States. Carlo Gambino, around the time of his coup into power. J. Edgar Hoover realized that the Mafia not only existed but posed a national security threat of inconceivable proportions. This was due largely to its ability to corrupt America’s duly elected officials. Immediately, the FBI sought to gain intelligence on who exactly made up this criminal entity. Luckily, they had state and city crime files to examine. Additionally, the FBN, the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics, had been investigating the Mafia for decades. The Feds coopted the FBN’s files as well. A top target was Carlo Gambino, bo...

Vito Genovese in the mid 1940s. The Mafia has always recruited from the streets. Both Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino in the 1950s enlisted soldiers in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn from a Brooklyn street gang called the Jackson Gents. Interestingly these street gangs are still around today, while groups like the Purple Gang and the Bath Avenue Crew, Italian mob-affiliated gangs that more closely resemble the Mafia and were considered farm teams, seem to have died out. Overall, however, the street gangs today are working as partners with the Mafia, which is more strict about recruitment, having the mindset that blood trumps everything else. The Colombo family, in particular, was ahead of the curve in that they have long relied on blood-family relations for members more than anything else. But it wasn't always that way. Used to be the Mafia recruited from street gangs -- teenagers running around in leather jackets, their hair greased back into a duck's a...

Joseph Charles Massino (born January 10, 1943) was boss of the Bonanno crime family after the death of his mentor, Phil “Rusty” Rastelli. Massino is considered to be among the last of the clever, old-school dons, hence the "last Godfather" rubric. This only added to the shock that whirled through organized crime upon the revelation of Massino’s transition to government informer after losing a massive RICO trial in July 2004. He had been convicted of racketeering, seven murders, arson, extortion, loansharking, illegal gambling, conspiracy and money laundering and was told he would be a candidate for the death realty, which likely fueled his decision to become, in mafia parlance, a rat.

William  Cutolo dances  with daughter BJ.  ( CNNews ; Cutolos) Cosa Nostra News Exclusive Thanks to the American public's ongoing obsession with La Cosa Nostra – duly noted by the constant airing of shows like Mob Wives, I Married a Mobster, Mobsters, Bill Kurtis, Biography and even National Geographic (as well as the increasingly competitive blog landscape) – those formerly connected to “the life” but now out can still find ways to earn off the mob, lending their insight and perspective to the aforementioned television shows, as well as consulting with filmmakers (lot of money there). The types of people who make money off mob involvement, and their reasons for doing so, are as varied as the people doing it. As the great French filmmaker Jean Renoir famously said: "Everybody has their reasons" -- and those in the audience can react however they like, spanning the full range of emotion, from incredulity to apathy.

Wild Bill and Christina. [Property of Cutolo family/ Cosa Nostra News] William"Wild Bill" Cutolo (June 6, 1949 – May 26, 1999), a Brooklyn-born mafioso in the Colombo crime family, left prison in 1994, escaping a lifetime sentence primarily linked to crimes committed during the early-1990s Colombo family war. Bill had been certain he'd never get out from behind bars, but thanks to some irregularities in his trial due to Greg Scarpa's having afforded assistance to the FBI throughout the war years, Bill was breathing fresh air again. He was a new man, with a new attitude toward life that included a deeper devotion to his faith in God. He became more religious, attending mass regularly, and engaged in charity fundraising, among other things.