Gangland 9/15/2022

[Dr031718]

The Life Was A One-Way-Street For Sally Daz

For more than 45 years, including the terror-filled last year of his life, Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola paid "tribute" — as it's called by wiseguys — to the mob. As a mob associate himself, Zottola was expected to make such payments. Among other things, the money was supposed to buy protection against anyone trying to muscle him or his vending machine business. But when the 71-year-old veteran of the tough streets of the Bronx was being confronted by gunmen, assaulted, and stabbed, the Bonanno and Luchese families he had paid for years ignored his plight, Gang Land has learned.

The only gesture of sympathy for Zottola's dilemma came from ex-acting Bonanno boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano who is serving a life sentence. In taped talks from prison that Basciano had with Sally Daz and his son Salvatore, he told the Zotollas he would "make some calls" to "friends" on the street for them. But help never arrived. Basciano's Bronx-based successor, current Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, ignored the desperate longtime associate of his crime family.

in late 2017 and early 2018, Sally Daz had survived three attacks, including a multiple stabbing assault. In June of 2018, a gunman showed up in front of his Bronx home. Sally Daz fired a shot at the gunman, who fled. In desperation, his son Salvatore hired a private security firm to protect his dad. This week, the would-be assassin, Ron Cabey, testified about his role in that assault at the trial of Zottola's other son, Anthony, who is charged with plottting to kill his dad to take over his $45 million real estate empire.

On the witness stand, Salvatore Zottola acknowledged that his father had long paid tribute to his would-be Mafia protectors. "Your father was paying protection to people associated with organized crime for about 30 years" and you didn't ask them "for protection?" Anthony Zottola’s attorney Henry Mazurek asked in a slightly raised voice to empasize the irony of the testimony.

"You would rather pay out of your pocket" to a private detective rather than ask "the people you were paying for 30 some years to provide you and your father protection?" the lawyer added. "They weren't doing anything for us," Salvatore replied. "I hired him to have an extra set of eyes on my dad," he continued.

There was no testimony about how much "protection" money Sally Daz paid during the four plus decades since 1975 when he began placing vending machines in bars, restaurants and other locations in the Bronx. Salvatore testified that his father's company, DAZ Amusement, claimed about $125,000 a year in taxable income. In Gang Land, it's a safe bet that DAZ made twice as much as he reported. If so, a good "ballpark estimate," is that Sally Daz paid between 10% and 25% of his firm's earnings to the mob, or roughly $25,000-to-$60,000 a year.

"That's a good number," agreed a knowledgeable source wise to mob business practices. A second source noted that the mob "rule of thumb" is to get "as much as you can" and that so-called "friendly extortion" between "guys from the neighborhood" who know each other, like Sally Daz and Vinny Gorgeous, would be around 10%. That figure might easily more than double to the 25% range under Basciano's less friendly successor, Mikey Nose Mancuso.

While Basciano was commiserating with the Zottolas and calling his friends on their behalf, Mancuso, who was released from prison and placed in a Bronx halfway house a few months before Daz was killed in October of 2018, did nothing to help Sally Daz. (Mikey Nose copped a 15-year-plea deal to the same 2004 mob rubout that Vinny Gorgeous unsuccessfully contested, resulting in his life sentence.)

Despite his father's years of tribute, the Bonanno boss sparked fear in Salvatore when they ran into each other in The Bronx after his father was killed. He told FBI agents he was worried about his "safety" for speaking to them, according to court documents in the ongoing murder-for-hire trial of Anthony Zottola and codefendants Himen (Ace) Ross and Alfred (Aloe) Lopez.

Using a report of a discussion Salvatore had with FBI agents, Mazurek asked Salvatore whether he had been "concerned" for his "safety" after meeting Mancuso because he was "cooperating with the FBI" in its investigation into his father's murder.

When Salvatore stated, "No," the lawyer pressed: "Well, isn't that what you told the FBI when you had bumped into Mike the Nose?"

"I don't recall what happened four years ago in a conversation," Salvatore replied.

Mazurek pressed him for specifics of what Mancuso told him and what Salvatore told the FBI about his meeting with Mikey Nose. But Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez intervened. He agreed with a government objection and allowed the lawyer to ascertain only whether Salvatore met Mancuso, not what he told him, or what Salvatore told the FBI about their conversation.

"I did run into him, yes," said Salvatore.

In addition to the Bonanno crime family, Sally Daz also paid protection money in 2017 and 2018 to longtime Luchese wiseguy Richard (The Arm) DeLuca, who died in 2020 at the age of 86.

Salvatore testified under a grant of immunity that assured him he wouldn't be prosecuted for his role in the illegal aspects of his father's vending machine business, but he seemed reluctant to finger his late father, and the deceased DeLuca in any illegal activity.

My father just gave him so much money every month," he stated when asked whether his dad had paid protection money to DeLuca for the DAZ vending machines that were in establishments controlled by Richie The Arm.

But when ordered by Judge Gonzalez to answer Mazurek's follow-up question, whether his "father gave this guy Mr. DeLuca money each month as protection money," he replied, "Yes."

Salvatore acknowledged that his father and Vinny Gorgeous were "partners" in some vending machine "spots." But he never caved under Mazurek's tough questioning to say that his dad was paying "protection" money to Basciano. While being quizzed about the very frustrating taped talks he and his father had with Vinny Gorgeous about the numerous attempts on his father's life in 2017 and 2018, he blurted out that he "love(d) the guy" and wanted "to speak to him today."

"You love the guy because he has muscle in the streets, right," said Mazurek. Salvatore angrily replied, "You didn't know him. I knew him my whole life." He described how his brother Anthony, sister Deborah and their "father knew him. He came by the house and he hung out with us."

"You people don't bother anybody," Basciano is heard saying in one taped call that prosecutor Kayla Bensing played for the jury. "Nobody should be doing this bullshit. Your father's a good person; the salt of the earth. He helped out everybody. I don't know who's got this fucking problem against him. Or why they got such a fucking hard-on for him. They wanted to kill him last time."

"It's somebody that he knows. It's somebody that knows his routine," said Sal. "I just don't know who it is."

"This is what I think Vinny," Salvatore is heard telling Basciano in a second call played by the government. "I think these people think my father's got a lot of money."

"I was walking to the house," a weary Sally Daz is heard telling Basciano in a call he made after the bungled June 12, 2018 murder attempt by Cabey. "This is going on for months," Salvatore chimed in. "I can't think about it no more. I've been going to the precinct at least once a week to figure out what's going on here. I got nothing."

Basciano made his fourth and last taped call that the jury heard on October 5, 2018, the day after Sally Daz was shot to death in a McDonald's drive thru.

After stating that he was "sick" and "devastated" by the news, and telling Salvatore to voice his regrets to his brother and sister about their father's murder, Basciano asked a burning question that had obviously been troubling him about the murder of Sally Daz, one that is likely on the minds of jurors in the murder-for-hire trial of his son, Anthony Zottola.

VB: "Did they reconcile Sally? Did Anthony reconcile with your father?"
SZ: "They spoke. They're on speaking terms. But Anthony is doing his own thing."
VB: "What happened with their relationship. What HAPPENED."
SZ: "Vinny I don't know. He left. He did an overnight thing."
VB: "Why. What HAPPENED?"
SZ: "I don't know. I don't know. That's the god's honest truth. I don't know. When I ask him about it and I talk to him about it, he would just shut down."

Thomas Petrizzo, An 'Unsung Hero' In The Building Of The World Trade Center, Dead At 89

His trucking and building supply companies helped create some of New York City’s most iconic structures, including the World Trade Center, the Jacob Javits Convention Center and Battery Park City. He was also a captain in the Colombo crime family.

Thomas Petrizzo died Saturday at the age of 89, the day before the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that destroyed the Twin Towers that he had helped to erect in the early 1970s. Some 40 years later, however, in true wiseguy fashion, Petrizzo also was part of a kickback scheme involving the hauling of hundreds of loads of rubble and debris from the fallen towers.

Petrizzo, who was charged with playing an active role in the 1991-1993 Colombo family war as a member of the rebel faction headed by acting boss Victor (Little Vic) Orena, was acquitted of those charges in 1995. But in 2012, Petrizzo pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in the 9/11 cleanup scheme.

The longtime mobster, whose rap sheet goes back to 1964, has friends and enemies — with long memories — in both factions of the Colombo crime family.

In one of his biggest construction coups, Petrizzo has been credited by officials with fabricating steel scrap from the destruction of the old West Side Highway into rebar, used for reinforced concrete.

Top turncoat mobsters Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and Alfonso (Little Al) D'Arco each told authorities that "Tommy Petrizzo was a legend in the construction industry" in the 1970s and 1980s, recalled one former federal law enforcement official.

"The three of them were involved in numerous sitdowns over beefs when the four families (Gambino, Luchese, Colombo, Genovese) were involved in all the major building projects in Manhattan," the ex-mob buster told Gang Land.

Petrizzo , who dropped out of high school in the 9th grade, made so much money "removing the steel and block from the West Side Highway" with a Manhattan-based contractor who was "on record" with the Luchese family, D'Arco told the FBI, that Petrizzo paid $800,000 to Luchese leaders Vittorio (Vic) Amuso and Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso to appease them.

D'Arco stated that the contractor and "Petrizzo made a large sum of money from the scrap steel" that they removed and either sold or kept for their own uses, and that as part of the deal Petrizzo also kept "all the cobblestone from the highway's removal," which had "significant value as well," according to an October 1991 FBI report.

Petrizzo was snared along with Colombo boss Carmine (Junior) Persico's businessman son Michael and the mob boss's wiseguy nephew Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico in the World Trade Center kickback scheme and charged in a 2012 labor racketeering indictment after he hooked up with a mob connected trucking company that was operated by the Persico cousins.

Petrizzo, whose daughter Joanne was married to Michael Persico for several years, was hit with extortion and wire fraud after he horned into the scam when he learned about it and demanded a $25-a-load kickback for the hundreds of loads of debris that the Persico-linked company was receiving while the FBI was watching and listening to their every move.

At the time, Petrizzo, who had founded a trucking company, A.J. Ross Logistics in 1975 that grew into a multi-faceted company that fabricated and delivered steel frames used in the construction of many prominent buildings, including the South Street Seaport and the Manhattan Federal Courthouse, ran a consulting company for firms in the massive Ground Zero cleanup.

His trucking company went belly-up during the 18 months he was jailed without bail on murder conspiracy and racketeering charges following his December 1993 arrest along with William (Wild Bill) Cutolo and five other Orena faction members. He was released in June of 1995 when they were all acquitted.

His 2012 case plea agreement called for a prison term up to 16 months, but Petrizzo received a month behind bars, was fined $10,000 and had to make restitution of $34,000. Even though Michael Persico agreed to Petrizzo's extortion demand, his ex-father-in law never received any payoffs, and prosecutors recommended a lowball two-to-eight months, according to court filings.

At his sentencing, Petrizzo was lauded in a letter to the Court as "the unsung hero of the building of the World Trade Center," by builder Karl Koch III, whose company built the Twin Towers. "Tommy was a man of his word" who "was straight and honest and was extremely reliable," Koch told sentencing Judge Sandra Townes.

The builder recalled that Petrizzo saved the day — and Koch's then-going-bankrupt company — when a tugboat strike in 1970 prevented him from delivering huge concrete floor panels to the Trade Center's building site from his waterside plant in New Jersey.

"I called Tommy to commiserate," he wrote, but instead of allowing Koch to feel sorry for himself, Petrizzo shocked him by stating "What's all the fuss? I can truck 'em."

And he did. "Tom and his men hauled 600 panels in 22 nights," Koch wrote, adding that his "unbelievable trucking accomplishment" gave Koch's company a boost in the eyes of the Port Authority which advanced it $20 million "so we could finish the erection of the Twin Towers."

An obituary prepared by his family, praised Petrizzo, of Garden City, as "the most inventive construction engineer & entrepreneur of his time," who "supplied rebar and steel for skyscrapers across Manhattan" and was also the loving patriarch of a large family he leaves behind.

In addition to his daughter Joanne, Petrizzo is survived by his longtime partner, Elsa Cerrone, his sister Justine, daughters Christine, Linda, and Denise, seven grandchildren, Gina, Michael Jr, Christina, Carmen, Thomas, Danielle, and Dominique, and six great-grandchildren, Kylie, Michael III, Robert, Lucas, Leo, and Ava.

He was laid to rest Tuesday at the Cemetery Of The Holy Rood in Westbury, following a funeral mass at St. Joseph R.C. Church, in Garden City, and a one evening wake Monday at the Park Funeral Chapel in Garden City Park.

He Struck Out As A Killer, But He Made Team America As A Snitch

He never knew their names. They were "the son" and "the dad" to him. But he had pictures of them, and agreed to kill each one for $10,000. He failed six times. After his last try, when Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola said, "Don't come any closer," and pegged a shot at him, his gun jammed. He wanted to point it at Bloods leader Bushawn (Shelz) Shelton and pull the trigger, he said, so Shelton could feel the frustration he felt while trying to kill "the dad."

Ron Cabey failed to whack Sally Daz back on June 12, 2018. And he failed to get the chance to point the "faulty" gun he had gotten from Shelton at him because in making their escape the getaway driver crashed, Cabey tossed the gun, and worse, for him, and for Shelton too, the cops arrested him later that day.

But Cabey, 44, is a screaming success in the eyes of the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. He flipped in September of 2018, gave the feds the info they needed to obtain search warrants for Shelton's phone and pick up the information they needed to nail Anthony Zottola for the October 4, 2018 murder of his father.

During his testimony, the government placed into evidence the pictures of Sally Daz, whom Cabey identified as "the dad" he planned to kill, and one of Salvatore Zottola, whom he stated was "the son" that Shelton or his street gang buddy, Herman (Taliban) Blanco, had texted Cabey when he agreed to kill them. Shelton and Blanco have both pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Under gentle questioning by assistant U.S. attorney Emily Dean, Cabey recalled that his last day as a free man, the day that defendant Himen (Ace) Ross drove him to the Bronx street where "the dad" lived and Ross pointed him out, "I get out and start trailing him."

But when Sally Daz saw him get out of the car, "his antenna's up," and "he's like extremely leery" and "he stops and lets me go past him," said Cabey. "Once he stop and let me go past him," he continued, "I kind of keep going so I don't throw him off."

"My initial plan was for me to push him into his apartment as he's going in and kill him there," said Cabey, but instead of going "to his apartment, he keeps going straight" so Cabey kept walking ahead of him "and keep going like I was headed somewhere else to try to throw him off."

When Cabey got back to their car and Ace Ross asked him why he didn't shoot him, "So I'm like, 'Because I didn't have my mask on.' Like I had the ski mask, like a skelly, and I wasn't comfortable doing it in broad daylight," he explained.

But when Ross "suggested" that he get out of the car and get the job done, "I proceeded to go and do it. And as I'm approaching, I brandished the firearm. The dad said to me like a warning. He says, 'Don't come any closer.' I see a glare," he continued, "and once I see the glare and I hear the shot, I jump behind the van" and began "pulling the trigger and the trigger was just not firing."

"As soon as I got in the car, Ace asked me, 'Yo, what happened?' I see you pulled the trigger," Cabey said. He told Ross to call Shelton, then he got on the pjhone and told Shelz he would fill him in when he saw him, he testified. "I didn't want to talk over the phone because I was a little agitated, so we decided to meet up."

Q. Why were you agitated?
A. One, because he shot at me. Two, the gun wasn't working.
Q. When you pointed the gun at the dad and pulled the trigger, do you remember how many times you pulled the trigger?
A. No.
Q. Was it more than once?
A. Yes.
Q. Were you trying to shoot and kill the dad?
A. Yes.

As they drove away, Cabey testified, the only answer he gave Ross when he asked what happened was to "call Shelz" and make arrangements to meet up with him.

Q. Why did you want to meet up with Shelz?
A. So I can show him that he gave me a faulty gun.
Q. What do you mean show him?
A. My intentions was to put the gun to him and pull the trigger.
Q. Why?
A. So he can see he gave me a faulty gun and he can feel exactly how I was feeling at that moment.