Cosa Nostra News

When not creating content for this blog, I am working my butt off doing freelance work and sending out resumes. I need a full-time job, and it seems impossible to get one. I have been dodging this financial crisis since it started, and in my view it hasn't ended. So I have resorted to this: impugning on my blog readership. If anyone out there is looking to fill any writing/editing positions, please contact me; I can show you my professional portfolio, which has nothing to do with the mob (I operate this blog under a pseudonym). I am primarily a writer/editor of business and human interest stories, and have strong experience. I am very open to venturing outside of journalism and into marketing communications or public relations. Please contact me at evlieb83@verizon.net if you have any leads for me. I'd truly appreciate it.

Still no word on who the other new Mob Wife is... Toni Marie Ricci was the number-one contender for the slot, I thought, but I have begun to suspect that maybe she's been a red herring, and that Jennifer Graziano is going to wow us with someone totally out of left field... Then I saw a bizarre mention on the Mob Wives Wikipedia page under the subhead Supporting Cast: "Victoria Gotti - Vanessa's older cousin, also daughter of the notorious mobster John Gotti, who visits Vanessa from time to time and gives her advice and a shoulder to lean on." This seems to imply that Vanessa Gotti is the other new Mob Wife, and that Victoria will be on the show. However, there is no previous mention of Vanessa on the page -- it seems she should have been mentioned in a first reference. Perhaps the Wikipedia author identified the new cast member, but was  later told to take the name out, which the author did -- but maybe forgetting to delete the subsequent reference to Vanessa????...

From Tampa Bay Times : As an FBI agent who specialized in surveillance, Cyrus Falls worked in a lot of different places. He dressed up to eavesdrop on bid rigging activity in a tony Washington, D.C., restaurant. His 16 years in the FBI's Newark, N.J., office monitoring organized crime once took him into abandoned buildings, one wrong move away from a possible gunfight; and to other states as he tailed bad guys on the highway. In Tampa, where he finished a 36-year career, he dressed like a tourist to watch communist bloc spies exchanging information at SeaWorld, witnessed drug transactions and shadowed remnants of the Trafficante crime family. For long stretches of time in between, he drank coffee — and waited. In 21 years as an agent, he drew his weapon just once. Mr. Falls, whose church activity and kindly demeanor earned him the nickname "Reverend" by his fellow FBI agents, died Nov. 20, of congestive heart failure. He was 79. ... Read complete article

Philly boss 'Uncle Joe.' From the Big Trial : A federal prosecutor urged jurors on Thursday to rely on dozens of secretly recorded conversations in finding mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi and six co-defendants guilty of racketeering conspiracy charges. "Their words define them," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Han told the jury during a three and one-half hour closing argument that marked the start of the final phase of the ten-week old trial. Han asked the jury to consider "the words that came out of the mouths" of Ligambi and most of the other defendants who he said had been "caught in the act of being themselves." The secretly recorded conversations, from body wires worn by cooperating witnesses and from wiretapped conversations, were gathered during an investigation that began in 1999 and concluded with the indictment of Ligambi and the other defendants in May 2011. The defendants are charged with gambling, loansharking a...