by 7digits » Sun Mar 02, 2025 4:18 pm
A daring undercover cop who penetrated the mob’s top echelon at the Javits Convention Center is telling his story for the first time providing an explosive look at how crime and corruption fills every corner of the glass palace on the Hudson.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily News, Detective James Mullan Jr., a decorated 15-year veteran of the police force who spent three years on this secret operation, said the Javits Center “was where all the big money was being made.
”
The mob, he said, “was running scams on everything.
”
He described:
How mob-tied union officials put membership in the union up for sale.
To earn the privilege of working in Local 829 of the Exposition Employes, the allegedly mobbed-up union that controls 500 high-paying jobs at the center, a worker would have to purchase a “membership book” at rates ranging from $13,000 to $22,000 from top officials of Local 829.
Once in the union, they could make up to $100,000 a year working at the center.
How union bosses placed ghost employes on the payroll forcing exhibition companies to pay up to 20 workers who don’t show up for the job.
The massive featherbedding of Javits work rosters orchestrated by Expo union officials adds up to more than $1 million annually and ends in the pockets of union leaders and Genovese crime family bosses.
And it helps make Javits the most expensive exhibition hall in the nation, driving business from the city.
How Javits employes devised bogus slip-and-fall cases, using corrupt lawyers to sue the center.
How mob associates who directed corrupt operations at the center also sold guns and drugs, including Uzis and 9-mm. weapons, at West Side bars. And how they ran loan-sharking operations that preyed on Javits employes.
The Javits Center is under fire from every direction. Gov. Pataki has demanded that the board of directors step down, the state Senate tomorrow will begin hearings on corruption, and the center’s unions are being probed by federal and local authorities.
Mullan’s undercover exploits are expected to result in up to 40 indictments by the Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office.
Now 38, Mullan was a veteran of mob undercover operations when he began his mission in November 1991.
His original target was the New Westies, the remnants of a murderous gang believed to have been crippled by convictions of virtually all its leaders in the 1980s.
Calling himself “J.C
and posing as a drug-using hustler, Mullan used his Queens-Irish accent, boyish looks and knowledge of underworld scams to charm the crooks who fell into his path.
“I walked into a bar in Hell’s Kitchen looking to buy grass. I scored a nickel bag off a little guy, he introduced me to someone else, and it kept going,” Mullan said.
“The big break came when I met James McCann Jr.,” he said. McCann, along with his father, James Sr., had risen to the top of the New Westies, according to Mullan, and ran loansharking out of another West Side bar.
When Mullan expressed an interest in buying guns, the McCanns helped him find sellers. Among them was Jimmy McElroy Jr., the son of a former Westies enforcer serving 60 years for racketeering, murder and kidnaping.
“Jimmy was a main source for guns,” Mullan said.
“I bought tons of guns. Nine millimeters, Uzis .
38s.
”
Starting in 1993, McCann Sr. asked Mullan to serve as his driver a coveted mob position.
It was then that McCann first told Mullan about the Javits Center scams that union officials tied to the Westies and the Genovese crime family routinely salted payrolls of center exhibitors with phantom workers.
Membership in the Expos union is so prized that mobsters put a price on it. Although the cost can range up to $22,000 per union “book,” Mullan was allowed to buy one for a bargain $13,000.
“James McCann Sr. brought me to the Javits Center and introduced me to [Expos shop steward Steven] (Beansie) Dellacava,” Mullan said. “He said, ‘Put this guy to work.
Everybody at Javits thought I was a big shot because I was chauffeuring McCann around,” Mullan said.
Mullan also got special treatment on the job because of his association with the hoods who ran the daily shape when workers are given assignments according to seniority. Mullan was allowed to leap over others with far more seniority.
Besides the featherbedding, he said, Dellacava and union official Paul Coscia took bonuses from exhibition companies and a cut from Christmas and vacation checks.
Mullan said the two union officials regularly placed up to half-dozen no-show names on the payroll of small jobs, and up to 20 for big exhibitions such as auto or boat shows.
“It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Paulie [Coscia] was good for about $150,000 a year, Beansie got double that,” Mullan said. But the biggest portion of every deal was raked off for the mob bosses in the Westies and the Genovese crime family.
According to Mullan, Coscia served as the liaison to Genovese “street boss” Liborio (Barney) Bellomo. “Beansie was out on parole, so he couldn’t risk being seen talking to anyone, so Paulie does the communicating,” said Mullan.
Javits also offered ripe pickings for mob thieves.
“An Expo worker named Ned, a relative of McCann’s, was in charge of security, said Mullan. “The exhibitors’ merchandise is all supposed to be locked up, but the same guys had access to it.
”
Mullan said that when a well-connected worker was once caught stealing motorboat engines a boat show, he was kicked out of the center only to be sneaked back in under another worker’s name.
Mullan encountered another scam when he injured his hand in a nonwork-related incident. McCann directed him to Coscia, who told him to see an Expo workers foreman named Frank on the loading dock.
“Frank set up a piece of lumber on the stairs and got some people around as witnesses. Everybody was laughing, including a Javits security guard,” Mullan said.
He was then instructed to seek out a corrupt Brooklyn lawyer. “They told me about a bunch of cases they had done, all phonies,” Mullan said.
A lawsuit seeking $1 million damages was filed. But the mobsters hoped for a $100,000 settlement, Mullan said. “They said the money would go one third to Beansie, one third to Paulie and one third to me,” Mullan said.
Mullan later was forced to drop the suit because the DA’s office didn’t want him to perjure himself, he said. “They started getting suspicious of me then,” the detective said.
Their suspicions were further aroused, Mullan said, when the DA’s insisted he target a corrupt cop seeking to buy guns. Finally, Mullan said, he ran into friends while hanging with gangster pals. Inadvertently, the friends gave him up, Mullan said. He was pulled from the operation.
Originally Published: March 15, 1995 at 12:00 AM EST
A daring undercover cop who penetrated the mob’s top echelon at the Javits Convention Center is telling his story for the first time providing an explosive look at how crime and corruption fills every corner of the glass palace on the Hudson.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily News, Detective James Mullan Jr., a decorated 15-year veteran of the police force who spent three years on this secret operation, said the Javits Center “was where all the big money was being made.
”
The mob, he said, “was running scams on everything.
”
He described:
How mob-tied union officials put membership in the union up for sale.
To earn the privilege of working in Local 829 of the Exposition Employes, the allegedly mobbed-up union that controls 500 high-paying jobs at the center, a worker would have to purchase a “membership book” at rates ranging from $13,000 to $22,000 from top officials of Local 829.
Once in the union, they could make up to $100,000 a year working at the center.
How union bosses placed ghost employes on the payroll forcing exhibition companies to pay up to 20 workers who don’t show up for the job.
The massive featherbedding of Javits work rosters orchestrated by Expo union officials adds up to more than $1 million annually and ends in the pockets of union leaders and Genovese crime family bosses.
And it helps make Javits the most expensive exhibition hall in the nation, driving business from the city.
How Javits employes devised bogus slip-and-fall cases, using corrupt lawyers to sue the center.
How mob associates who directed corrupt operations at the center also sold guns and drugs, including Uzis and 9-mm. weapons, at West Side bars. And how they ran loan-sharking operations that preyed on Javits employes.
The Javits Center is under fire from every direction. Gov. Pataki has demanded that the board of directors step down, the state Senate tomorrow will begin hearings on corruption, and the center’s unions are being probed by federal and local authorities.
Mullan’s undercover exploits are expected to result in up to 40 indictments by the Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office.
Now 38, Mullan was a veteran of mob undercover operations when he began his mission in November 1991.
His original target was the New Westies, the remnants of a murderous gang believed to have been crippled by convictions of virtually all its leaders in the 1980s.
Calling himself “J.C
and posing as a drug-using hustler, Mullan used his Queens-Irish accent, boyish looks and knowledge of underworld scams to charm the crooks who fell into his path.
“I walked into a bar in Hell’s Kitchen looking to buy grass. I scored a nickel bag off a little guy, he introduced me to someone else, and it kept going,” Mullan said.
“The big break came when I met James McCann Jr.,” he said. McCann, along with his father, James Sr., had risen to the top of the New Westies, according to Mullan, and ran loansharking out of another West Side bar.
When Mullan expressed an interest in buying guns, the McCanns helped him find sellers. Among them was Jimmy McElroy Jr., the son of a former Westies enforcer serving 60 years for racketeering, murder and kidnaping.
“Jimmy was a main source for guns,” Mullan said.
“I bought tons of guns. Nine millimeters, Uzis .
38s.
”
Starting in 1993, McCann Sr. asked Mullan to serve as his driver a coveted mob position.
It was then that McCann first told Mullan about the Javits Center scams that union officials tied to the Westies and the Genovese crime family routinely salted payrolls of center exhibitors with phantom workers.
Membership in the Expos union is so prized that mobsters put a price on it. Although the cost can range up to $22,000 per union “book,” Mullan was allowed to buy one for a bargain $13,000.
“James McCann Sr. brought me to the Javits Center and introduced me to [Expos shop steward Steven] (Beansie) Dellacava,” Mullan said. “He said, ‘Put this guy to work.
Everybody at Javits thought I was a big shot because I was chauffeuring McCann around,” Mullan said.
Mullan also got special treatment on the job because of his association with the hoods who ran the daily shape when workers are given assignments according to seniority. Mullan was allowed to leap over others with far more seniority.
Besides the featherbedding, he said, Dellacava and union official Paul Coscia took bonuses from exhibition companies and a cut from Christmas and vacation checks.
Mullan said the two union officials regularly placed up to half-dozen no-show names on the payroll of small jobs, and up to 20 for big exhibitions such as auto or boat shows.
“It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Paulie [Coscia] was good for about $150,000 a year, Beansie got double that,” Mullan said. But the biggest portion of every deal was raked off for the mob bosses in the Westies and the Genovese crime family.
According to Mullan, Coscia served as the liaison to Genovese “street boss” Liborio (Barney) Bellomo. “Beansie was out on parole, so he couldn’t risk being seen talking to anyone, so Paulie does the communicating,” said Mullan.
Javits also offered ripe pickings for mob thieves.
“An Expo worker named Ned, a relative of McCann’s, was in charge of security, said Mullan. “The exhibitors’ merchandise is all supposed to be locked up, but the same guys had access to it.
”
Mullan said that when a well-connected worker was once caught stealing motorboat engines a boat show, he was kicked out of the center only to be sneaked back in under another worker’s name.
Mullan encountered another scam when he injured his hand in a nonwork-related incident. McCann directed him to Coscia, who told him to see an Expo workers foreman named Frank on the loading dock.
“Frank set up a piece of lumber on the stairs and got some people around as witnesses. Everybody was laughing, including a Javits security guard,” Mullan said.
He was then instructed to seek out a corrupt Brooklyn lawyer. “They told me about a bunch of cases they had done, all phonies,” Mullan said.
A lawsuit seeking $1 million damages was filed. But the mobsters hoped for a $100,000 settlement, Mullan said. “They said the money would go one third to Beansie, one third to Paulie and one third to me,” Mullan said.
Mullan later was forced to drop the suit because the DA’s office didn’t want him to perjure himself, he said. “They started getting suspicious of me then,” the detective said.
Their suspicions were further aroused, Mullan said, when the DA’s insisted he target a corrupt cop seeking to buy guns. Finally, Mullan said, he ran into friends while hanging with gangster pals. Inadvertently, the friends gave him up, Mullan said. He was pulled from the operation.
Originally Published: March 15, 1995 at 12:00 AM EST