Cosa Nostra News

  Uncle Joe and George Borgese.... Philadelphia is seeing a "resurgence of the local crime family," George Anastasia noted on BigTrial. Which may be why there's been talk about known members of New York's Gambino crime family showing up in Philly very recently. As we know from the dear departed Nicholas "Nicky Skins" Stefanelli , the Gambino crime family was known to break bread with the Philly guys. A soldier who flipped and was wired for sound by the FBI for two years, Stefanelli was 69 when he whacked himself in March 2012. Stefanelli — who operated in New Jersey but reported to jailed New York capo Nicholas "Little Nicky" Corozzo — secretly taped countless cronies after he and his son were nabbed in a drug-dealing operation. Nicky Skins decided to cooperate to get his kid off the hook. He made lots of tapes, however, and the recordings live on. (He even caught Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino in a conversation, thou...

Cammarano Junior's "modest" house on Long Island's Glen Cove section. Joseph Cammarano Jr. is "the top banana on the street for the beleaguered Bonanno crime family — or what’s left of it," as the Daily News reported . (A source pointed out the odd timing of the new Bonanno boss story, arriving about a month or so following this blog's own story about New York having only three operational Mafia families, the Bonannos not being one of them. "... It seems that the families able to ... show power on the street ... are helmed by powerful and accessible bosses -- meaning they are out of prison," as we noted.) Cammarano, meanwhile, is around to hold the top slot because of his ability to diplomatically get out of an order from Vinny Basciano to whack a Genovese associate, Cosa Nostra News learned. Cammarano did this by reminding Vinny B of another more-pressing hit the Bonanno boss had wanted done at the time. At an arraignment h...

All happy Mafia crime families are alike; each unhappy crime family is unhappy in its own way.* While I don't know whether that saying holds true, I can say that it certainly seems that, whatever else they have in common, crime families develop their own personalities over time . Bonanno members at recent holiday gathering at Staten Island restaurant Here's an overly simplistic analysis: The Gambinos were the high-profile guys, the mobsters with flash and dash and lots of drug cash. The Genoveses (aka The West Side) are viewed as the silent but deadly ones who live far off the radar screen while accruing vast fortunes. The Luchese family is somewhat difficult to characterize. I think of junkyards and auto repair shops (aka "chop shops"), though under Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso they were basically killers of rats (and anyone unlucky enough to be viewed by Casso with disfavor). The Colombos, thrice in "declared" wars, killed their own ; and...

In January 2014, Bajram Lajqi was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court to six years in prison; he'd plead guilty on June 27, 2013, to drug trafficking and firearm use. Bajram Lajqi under arrest in 2013. Lajqi was a "member" of an Albanian organized crime group that operated in the United States, Canada, and Europe. On June 4, 2011, Lajqi attempted to murder another member of the gang. “...  Lajqi, in particular,  exemplifies the violence tied to large-scale narcotics trafficking, as his drug-fueled quest for revenge led him to gun down a rival outside a Bronx restaurant,” the U.S. Attorney said in a  press release .  Now the U.S. Attorney is doing an injustice to Lajqi right there, by making him sound, at the very least, like a competent hitman. The truth is, he's not. We love how the gothamist wrote this one up: "What with all the massive busts and small-time stabbings, the mob just ain't what it used to be. Nowadays nobody takes any ...