Buffalo/Ontario Mob Acitivity

[Cheech]

^^^^
In my mind, Newyorkempire will always be Rooster from Gangster BB.

To me, Cheech is always Cheech.

oh sorry, thanks! read it wrong

[SonnyBlackstein]

oh sorry, thanks! read it wrong

Learn to read ya mooch.

Anti with the homer. NYE = the chicken. You get a serious researcher of the calibre of AM who sees it, no other conclusion than it's screamingly obvious.

Except to cheech, the fuckin mooch.

[Newyorkempire]

SonnyBlackstein = ultra racist demogogue who rides posters' dicks

[Cheech]

oh sorry, thanks! read it wrong

Learn to read ya mooch.

Anti with the homer. NYE = the chicken. You get a serious researcher of the calibre of AM who sees it, no other conclusion than it's screamingly obvious.

Except to cheech, the fuckin mooch.

Think solai will let me change my handle to mooch?

[SonnyBlackstein]

Think solai will let me change my handle to mooch?

BWAHAHAHHAHA. My man.

[NickleCity]

TOP STORY
Who is Joe Todaro and why do the feds say this pizzeria owner runs the Buffalo mob?

By Lou Michael and Dan Herbeck

See: https://buffalonews.com/news/local/crim ... 6c34c.html

[Newyorkempire]

TOP STORY
Who is Joe Todaro and why do the feds say this pizzeria owner runs the Buffalo mob?

By Lou Michael and Dan Herbeck

See: https://buffalonews.com/news/local/crim ... 6c34c.html

So he is and he isn't and he is and he isn't.

[UTC]

Awesome article

[NickleCity]

Joseph A. Todaro, the Buffalo mob and WNY newspapers
Video of newspaper headlines.

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/jose ... faf47.html

[Newyorkempire]

Joseph A. Todaro, the Buffalo mob and WNY newspapers
Video of newspaper headlines.

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/jose ... faf47.html

So whats the verdict after the article Nickle?

[NickleCity]

Joseph A. Todaro, the Buffalo mob and WNY newspapers
Video of newspaper headlines.

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/jose ... faf47.html

So whats the verdict after the article Nickle?

I think Dan and Lou are doing a good job. They are in a tough situation. Todaro has nave been convicted so they have to be very careful what they write - hence the considerable # of words about Todaro’s legitimate business, hating drugs and distancing himself from his nephews.

I like the fact that Dan and Lou have been tasked to investigate write most of these articles together. This keeps both of them from falling into the spin of prosecutors or the spin that Todaro’s charismatic personality levies in his favor. He is a charmer and can make you feel like his best friend.

IMHO Dan, Lou, and especially their boss McAndrews are aware that their previous articles (think March 2017) may have advanced a narrative the defense will seize upon and are being much more careful.

Personally, I trust this team to do what is right, but I can’t say that about Coppola for reasons I have elaborates on before. One has to be very careful about the media in WNY. I don’t trust Parlato-again see my previous posts. To make matters worse I have heard from someone I trust that Parlato’s former boss the now deceased Mike Hudson was a Todaro, Sr. associate. And let’s not forget about Richiazzi and the Buffalo Chronicle… a large part of their advertising comes from La Nova and The Reservation. Even more I have a screenshot of a social media post where he offers his services at the “paper” to Gerace if he thinks it would be helpful.

[NickleCity]

^^*
I should say that Lou, Dan, and Mike McAndrews are much more aware that they could be used to advance the narrative of not just the defense but even prosecutors. It’s just more obvious the defense is using the March 2017 narrative. Again this is just my humble opinion.

[Tonyd621]

It has a pay wall for some of us.

[NickleCity]

It has a pay wall for some of us.

Who is Joe Todaro and why do the feds say this pizzeria owner runs the Buffalo mob?
Lou Michel , Dan Herbeck Dec 16, 2022 



Standing over a boiling pot of pasta in the kitchen of his popular La Nova restaurant on Buffalo’s West Side, Joseph A. Todaro dipped his manicured hand into the water and fished out a piece of pasta. After squeezing the ziti to check on its progress, he shook the heat from his fingers.


Joseph A. Todaro at work in the family pizza and wings business that he and his family built. Todaro holds a pizza box at La Nova Pizza on West Ferry and Hampshire streets in Buffalo on Monday June 28, 2021.
Buffalo News file photo

For 65 years, Todaro and his father before him have run La Nova. Ten years ago, the restaurant’s website said it employed 150 employees, brought in $30 million a year and had more than 500 distributors nationwide. Since then, La Nova has continued to expand. It has become an official sponsor for the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres and sells its pizza at their home games.

A trade publication calls La Nova an industry leader. But federal prosecutors say Joe Todaro is really something else: head of the Buffalo mob.

Prosecutors have asserted in documents or in court at least four times in the past three years that Todaro is the head of the Mafia in Buffalo.


Anthony Gerace and his brother, Peter G. Gerace Jr., in a family photo. The Geraces are the nephews of Joseph A. Todaro Jr., who federal law enforcement authorities have identified as the leader of the Buffalo Mafia. 
Contributed photo

One of his nephews is behind bars, convicted of possessing guns while dealing drugs. A second, Peter Gerace Jr., is awaiting trial in connection with an ongoing federal “Italian Organized Crime” investigation, accused of paying bribes to a DEA agent to avoid arrest for drug dealing.

Joseph Todaro, Gerace’s uncle, "is the current boss of the Buffalo LCN family,” Homeland Security Investigations Agent Curtis Ryan wrote, using the abbreviation for La Cosa Nostra, in a 2019 report on the interrogation of the former DEA agent. 



Todaro, 77, calls the accusations “nonsense.” He says he has no links to organized crime, despises illegal drugs for the ruin they cause and has disavowed his nephews. He describes himself as a hard worker who started in the pizza business when he was a boy working with his father, Joseph E. Todaro, who died in 2012.

Attorney Robert L. Boreanaz – who has known the Todaro family since he was a boy when his late father represented Joseph A. Todaro – says Todaro has been unfairly persecuted because of his Italian ancestry.

“Throughout the '70s and '80s, the government had round-the-clock surveillance, wiretaps, full-time embedded informants, a specialized task force, all supervised by some very skilled and tenacious prosecutors,” said Boreanaz, who now represents Todaro.


A ticket to the 1967 stag party for Joseph A. Todaro that was raided by Buffalo police, the FBI and New York State Police. Police arrested 36 people at the party, but the charges of consorting with criminals were dismissed against all of them within a day. 
Provided photo

“Since then and for the last 50 years, it’s been nothing but rumors, reports and stories fueled by an ugly stereotype of Italian Americans,” the attorney said.

Todaro has never been convicted of a crime.


Joseph A. Todaro left, and his father, Joseph E. Todaro, founder of La Nova Pizzeria. The elder Todaro died in 2012. Federal law enforcement authorities have alleged that both Todaros ran the Buffalo Mafia in recent decades. 
Buffalo News file photo

So who is Joe Todaro and why do the feds claim he runs the Buffalo Mafia?

A wedding right out of the movies
The FBI has claimed in court documents that Todaro’s father and, later, Todaro took control of the local Mafia at some point after longtime mob boss Stefano Magaddino, a Lewiston resident, died in 1974.

But for more than half a century, law enforcement has wielded its considerable power against Todaro and his father and failed. There were charges of conspiracy involving the misuse of union funds, cheating on taxes and consorting with known criminals. Town of Tonawanda police publicly called Todaro's father "a person of interest" in a murder investigation and a government witness linked Todaro to an attempted murder scene, but neither were ever charged.

The closest the government ever came to success against Todaro occurred in the 1990s when he gave up his union field representative post with Laborers Local 210. After federal agents began investigating suspected ties between union members and organized crime, the Laborers International Union of North America brought disciplinary charges against Todaro and other union members. Todaro resigned from the Local, rather than fight the charges.

The organized crime accusations against the Todaros go back decades, even before Magaddino’s death.

In May 1967, just days before Joseph A. Todaro was to marry the former Carol A. Panaro, law enforcement officers raided his stag party and arrested him, his father and 34 other men. Authorities described it as “Little Apalachin,” a reference to when Mafia chieftains met in 1957 in the upstate community, confirming there was a national organized crime network.

Those attending the West Side stag were charged with “consorting with known criminals." All counts were dismissed in Buffalo City Court later that day.


The front page of the Buffalo Evening News on May 9, 1967, had a story about 36 people being arrested when Buffalo police, the FBI and state police raided a stag party for Joseph A. Todaro.   


The Buffalo Evening News' later editions on May 9, 1967, noted that charges of consorting with known criminals were dropped against 36 people arrested at Joseph A. Todaro's stag party. 

In 1970, Todaro and his father were among five people charged with running illegal gambling junkets to Las Vegas on jets they rented. The FBI dubbed the operation “Flying Fleece,” accusing the five of running mid-air dice and card games. But the aerial gambling case ended in no convictions.

In 1976, Faust A. Novino shot his way out of an attempt to kill him in a Connecticut Street building. The shooting wounded John Sacco, an underworld figure who famously told police arriving at the scene, “Nobody shot me,” as he lay bleeding from bullet wounds. Breaking years of silence, Novino testified at a 1993 federal perjury trial that a man who "looked like Joe Todaro Jr." was present at the ambush.

Then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony M. Bruce won a perjury conviction against one of the accused ambushers. But while Bruce managed to introduce the possibility that Todaro may have been present at the attempted murder, Todaro was not charged. His lawyer, the late Harold J. Boreanaz, said Todaro had nothing to do with the ambush.

In 1982, father and son Todaro were charged with income tax evasion. The case ended in their acquittals. But Bruce, who prosecuted the case, said the investigation revealed interesting details of how Todaro and other business partners hoped to position themselves as Florida considered legalizing gambling in the 1970s.

Bruce said Todaro, his father and four others bought the Golden Strand hotel in North Miami Beach for less than $3 million, but the investment soured when the push to legalize gambling languished. Then around 1980, Bruce said, they sold the beachfront hotel to German investors for $9 million.

“I know Joe Sr. pocketed a million dollars and Joe Jr. pocketed close to $600,000 or $700,000,” Bruce asserted. “They had all this money in their pocket, and the theory was, why did they need to go out and break heads? The mob is all about making money, and they had their money.”


Former prosecutor Anthony Bruce in his Clarence office on Thursday, July 29, 2021.
Buffalo News file photo

The last time prosecutors charged Todaro with anything was 1983 – 39 years ago. Todaro and other officials at Laborers Local 210 were charged with conspiracy and embezzlement, accused of using union funds to pay for a winter trip to Florida. The defendants said they were attending the winter meeting of Laborers International, according to Bruce, who prosecuted that case, as well. Boreanaz, whose father was one of the defense lawyers in the case, said U.S. District Judge John T. Elfvin dismissed the charges after the prosecution presented its case.

A walk in the ocean
The most colorful story about Todaro never made it to court.

On a YouTube video in February 2021, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, a notorious mob hitman, talked about a 1985 trip to Florida to meet with the Todaros. 

After becoming a government witness in 1991, Gravano admitted to participating in 19 murders.  
This is Gravano’s account: After the 1985 murder of Paul Castellano – who had been the head of the five Mafia families in New York City – John Gotti requested that Gravano meet with Todaro’s father. Gotti had heard Todaro's father planned to kill Gotti in revenge for the killing of Castellano. Gravano said that after he met with Joseph E. Todaro and discussed their differences, the father asked Gravano to also meet with his son.

But there was a catch. The younger Todaro insisted they drive to the ocean and wade into the water before talking, according to Gravano, who speculated that Todaro feared their conversation might be recorded.

“I had good shoes, Italian made shoes, a good pair of slacks and an Italian knit shirt,” Gravano said in the YouTube podcast, adding that Todaro was dressed in a shirt, Bermuda shorts and sandals.

“By this time we’re in the water, up to my ankles. I’m saying to myself this guy is … nuts. We’re walking in the ocean now. He’s worried about a bug? My shoes are on, my socks are on, my pants are … soaking wet, everything is wet and we’re still walking,” Gravano said.
Gravano said he repeated a pointed message he had already delivered to Todaro’s father: Gotti wasn’t worried about a newspaper report that Todaro was planning to kill him over the Castellano murder. Gotti had enough soldiers to kill anyone he viewed as a threat.

“I brought it to his attention too, we have 100 shooters. His face, his lips puckered up a little. He nodded. He seemed to be a little impressed with that number,” Gravano said.

When the water was nearly up to his chest, the diminutive Gravano said he became concerned he might drown.

“I couldn’t help myself. I said Joe, ‘I’m soaking … wet.’ My wallet, my money was in my pocket. ‘How … far out are we going to walk? This don’t even make sense, bro. I’m a little guy. I’m … five-foot nothing. We keep going, I’m going to drown. I wonder what John Gotti is gonna say about that?’

“ ‘Oh, you’ll be alright Sammy. We’ll get everything tailored and fixed for you. Don’t worry about it.’ I’m not worried about it, really. I just think it’s strange. We talked a little while longer and came back out. I never experienced anything like that in my life,” Gravano said.
Todaro told The News he never met with Gravano.

The Buffalo News made several attempts to reach Gravano for a comment on Todaro’s claim, but he did not respond.

‘People would go to jail for him’
Given their failure over the decades to convict Todaro – and the fact that he hasn’t been charged with anything in 39 years – why do federal prosecutors assert Todaro heads the Buffalo’s Mafia?

The U.S. Attorney’s Office repeatedly refused to discuss its ongoing Buffalo organized crime investigation, and the court filings that name Todaro don’t provide the answer. 

Just five years ago, an FBI leader had pronounced organized crime in Buffalo as all but dead. In 2017, Adam S. Cohen, then the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo office, said that while former Mafia figures were still around, “… their organized crime activities don’t exist anymore.”
Current federal prosecutors and agents have a different take.

The ongoing federal investigation into organized crime has already resulted in prison terms for Todaro’s nephew Anthony Gerace for possessing weapons while dealing drugs and for Buffalo high school teacher Michael Masecchia, whom authorities called a Mafia associate, for selling more than a ton of marijuana and possessing weapons. Still awaiting sentencing is Joseph Bella, a business owner identified by prosecutors as an organized crime associate, who has pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine and a firearm. Awaiting trial are Todaro’s other nephew, Peter Gerace Jr., and former DEA Agent Joseph Bongiovanni, who is accused of accepting $250,000 in bribes from Masecchia, Peter Gerace and others who prosecutors say he believed were associated with Italian organized crime. 



Across the border
At about the same time Cohen declared the local Mafia all but deceased, mob investigators in Canada took a different position.
In 2017, Canadian authorities said a Hamilton drug trafficker named Domenico Violi was appointed by Todaro as the “underboss” of the Buffalo mob family.

Todaro has denied that claim, but retired Canadian mob investigator Stephen Metelsky told The News the report is “authentic.”
Metelsky, who retired in 2017 as an investigator for the Halton Regional Police, outside Toronto, was part of a task force that investigated ties between Canadian mob organizations and crime families in New York City and Buffalo.

Metelsky said Violi boasted of his appointment to the Buffalo post to a New York City mobster who was a paid, confidential agent for police.
Metelsky said Todaro and other suspected mobsters in Buffalo are extremely careful and have been in “turtle mode” for many years.

Is the mob back? Feds probe Buffalo Mafia after calling it all but dead

Federal prosecutors are looking for organized crime activities in a widespread investigation, just four years after the special agent in charge of the Buffalo FBI office said, “Some of the individuals who were leaders of the Mafia are still around. But their organized crime activities don’t exist anymore."

Is it too late?
Some veterans of the late 20th century investigations into Buffalo organized crime think it is too late to go after claims of mob leadership.
“I’m not putting fellow agents down, and this is my personal opinion,” said Andrew “Andy” Goralski, a retired FBI agent who investigated organized crime in the 1990s. “At the time, the FBI missed a chance to go after the upper level, and why is a reasonable question to ask.”

Goralski said he and a fellow agent would stop by the West Side La Nova monthly for “a slice” and to let Todaro know he was on their radar.
“Joe Jr. was always very, very cautious of what was going on at the business because he was concerned about forfeiture,” Goralski said, referring to the prosecutors’ practice of seizing assets. “We never saw a member in there, except one day, there was a street boss. They were right in the dining area, and Joe Jr.’s jaw just dropped. They were talking but we couldn’t hear.”

Bruce, the prosecutor, said the government worked hard to try to prove the Todaros were involved in organized crime.
“It wasn’t from any lack of due diligence from any law enforcement agencies, but nothing was coming up on these guys,” Bruce said.
Peter Ahearn, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo office after suspected mob-connected people left Local 210, said the bureau continued to take meaningful actions.

“We were targeting members of the group under the Todaros to see if we could go up the chain. We prosecuted several underlings of the family,” Ahearn said, but added that they could not come up with evidence to make a broader racketeering case that showed suspected leaders were directing criminal activity.

Ronald M. Fino, who was an informant against the Buffalo mob in the 1990s, said he doesn’t believe the current investigation will produce charges against Todaro.


Ronald Fino, who was an FBI informant against the Buffalo Mafia in the 1990s and is shown in a Sept. 7, 2012, file photo, said he doesn’t believe the current organized investigation will produce charges against Joseph Todaro. 
Derek Gee/Buffalo News

“They are shielded by others,” said Fino, who had Todaro as a groomsman at his 1970 wedding. “They have a long line. You have to go after their shields and have them cooperate, and that is expensive.”

Said Fino: “There are people who would go to jail for him.”

La Nova Pizza and Wings, 371 W. Ferry St., has been run by the Todaro family since 1957. 
Buffalo News file photo

Todaro’s pizza empire
Whatever Todaro may be, his restaurant appears to be a success. Todaro says that his father gave up work as a carpenter in 1957 to open the first La Nova pizzeria at Seymour and Niagara streets in the City of Tonawanda. When urban renewal decimated Tonawanda’s downtown in the 1960s, the restaurant moved to Buffalo, settling at the corner of West Ferry and Hampshire streets, where it remains.

At 12 years old, the son started working at the restaurant. Over the years, La Nova opened a second restaurant in Amherst. It became the official pizza sold at Buffalo Bisons, Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres games, according to its website. La Nova Wings, based in Cheektowaga, started selling chicken wings and wing sauces to restaurants around the country, and La Nova started shipping pizza and wings to its out-of-state customers, according to Todaro and information on the company’s website.

“When we moved from Tonawanda, we were selling maybe 10 or 11 pizzas a day,” Todaro said as he took a News reporter on a tour of the West Side restaurant. Prosperity, he said, came when “we introduced the white pizza and barbecued chicken wings.”

By the fall of 1998, the Todaros were featured on the front page of Pizza Marketing Quarterly, a trade magazine, with a headline stating: “America’s Busiest Pizzeria: How they do $100,000 per week.”

Todaro and Robert Boreanaz wouldn’t provide current sales or employment figures.


When then-Food Network celebrity chef Alton Brown and his wife, Elizabeth Ingram-Brown, stopped at La Nova Pizzeria on West Ferry Street in Buffalo on April 4, 2022, owner Joseph A. Todaro checked to make sure Brown was happy with the chicken wings. After tasting wings at a handful of Buffalo spots, Brown declared La Nova's medium wing his favorite. 
Buffalo News file photo

Walking through La Nova, Todaro stopped and asked workers how long they have worked there. Many said 10, 15 and 20 years. A few workers approached him and asked if they could borrow $20 until payday. He handed them the cash and accepted IOUs written on scraps of paper.
A practicing Catholic, Todaro says that for 45 years he has hosted a St. Joseph's table on the saint's feast day during Lent that is free and open to anyone.

After the May racist shootings that took the lives of 10 Black people at the Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue, La Nova provided more than 100 sheet pizzas to the affected community, according to Todaro’s attorney.

Todaro lives in a 4,100-square-foot Amherst home with four bedrooms, five bathrooms and two fireplaces. Situated on nearly an acre of land with a pool and pool house, the house is assessed by Amherst town records at $595,000.

Friends in high places
Former Buffalo Mayor Anthony M. Masiello says he has known Todaro about 40 years and has nothing but respect and admiration for him.
“He never forgot where he came from, his West Side roots. He invested in the old neighborhood when nobody wanted a part of it,” Masiello said.
He added: “He is an innovative genius when it comes to food. Look what he pioneered, different flavored chicken wings and pizzas that had different kinds of crust and toppings. He’s done very well, and he shares his largess with community organizations and he hires a lot of people from the neighborhood who, without La Nova, wouldn’t have jobs.”

Of the government’s claims that Todaro heads local organized crime, Masiello said, “I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t believe it." 
Like many businesspeople, Todaro donates to political campaigns. La Nova Pizzeria and La Nova Wings have donated $3,300 to Mayor Byron W. Brown’s campaigns. Brown spokesman Michael J. DeGeorge declined to comment.

One of those donations to Brown, a $500 contribution made in 2017, was made the same year federal prosecutors in New York City issued a press release that mentioned the “Todaro organized crime family” in connection with drug-trafficking mobsters downstate and in Canada.
Buffalo developer Carl P. Paladino, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress this year, is a longtime friend of the Todaros. He is vocal about his friend.
“There’s no mob in Buffalo, and I know everybody. It’s all a fantasy,” Paladino said. “Joe Todaro makes a great pizza. He’s a wonderful friend and he is well-respected in the community because of his charitable works.”

[Tonyd621]

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