Gangland:5/28/15

[Dellacroce]

By Jerry Capeci

Rival Mob Leaders Glad About Rubout Of Purple Gang Leader Michael Meldish

One longtime hoodlum is already charged with the murder of Michael Meldish, the notorious former leader of the Purple Gang who died classic gangland-style with a bullet to the head while seated in his own car. And law enforcement officials say a second suspect will soon be indicted for the crime by a Bronx grand jury. But there is no shortage of potential suspects in the slaying. They even include a pair of top mobsters, Gang Land has learned.

In the months before Meldish was whacked, powerful high-ranked wiseguys from two rival crime families — Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso and Matthew (Matty) Madonna — each voiced their fury about the murderous Bronx-based drug dealer who was murdered in 2013, according to court papers and knowledgeable Gang Land sources.

There is no evidence either of the veteran mobsters had anything to do with it. As former NYPD detective Joe Coffey said right after the murder, Meldish "was a stone-cold killer" with many enemies "in the mob" who were happy that he was dead. But sources say imprisoned Bonanno boss Mancuso, as well as reputed Luchese underboss Madonna, both vented their anger at Meldish and his ways in the 15 months before he was shot to death in front of his home in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx on November 15, 2013 at the age of 62.

Meldish, who headed a loosely connected gang of drug dealers from East Harlem and the Bronx that included gangsters who would later hook up with three crime families, was suspected of about a dozen murders in the 1970s and '80s, but never charged.

Mikey Nose's ire spurred him to order a Bonanno mobster to "physically assault" Meldish "for what Mancuso considered disrespectful acts toward Mancuso on Meldish's part," according to a court filing by Manhattan prosecutors against nine Bonanno family mobsters and associates hit with state racketeering charges in July of 2013.

In the court papers, assistant district attorneys Gary Galperin and David Stuart wrote that an unidentified "person with knowledge" of the attack informed them that Meldish was assaulted by acting capo Ernest Aiello — whom one law enforcement official said is "a rising star in the Bronx faction" of the Bonanno family — in August of 2012 "on an upper Manhattan street."

Sources say the "assault" took place right outside Rao's — the well-known East Harlem eatery where you might see Tony Bennett dining across from you as he belts out a favored tune on the juke box — during the annual Pleasant Avenue Festival in honor of Saint Anthony Giglio.

"Dozens of people saw the whole thing happen," said one source.

Aiello, 35, is not charged with assaulting Meldish, whom the ADAs describe as a Luchese crime family associate. And Aiello is definitely not a suspect in Meldish's murder, since the Bonanno wiseguy has been detained without bail at Riker's Island since his arrest in July of 2013, several months before the Meldish hit.

Prosecutors asked Supreme Court Justice Melissa Jackson to permit trial testimony that Aiello assaulted Meldish, but the judge indicated that she was inclined to rule it out as prejudicial since no defendants are accused of committing any violent acts. The ADAs did not say how the 59-year-old Mancuso, who has been behind bars for 11 years, got Aiello to assault Meldish. But the feds said last month that Mikey Nose used a newly minted mobster named Frank (Frankie Boy) Salerno to deliver messages from his digs at the federal prison in Danbury.

Sources say that the alleged invectives against Meldish by Matty Madonna, 79, began about six to eight months before the murderous Purple Gang leader, who had evaded the law for decades, got his just-due come-uppance with a single shot to the head as he sat in the front seat of his car.

"Matty was badmouthing Meldish for months," said one knowledgeable Gang Land source. "It was common knowledge that he was with Matty, doing some collecting and other stuff for him, (and that) he did something that pissed Matty off," said the source.

"It doesn't mean Matty did him in," the source added. "There were a lot of people who were happy to see him get it."

But there are other factors that tag Madonna, and the Luchese crime family, as more likely "persons of interest" in the murder of Meldish than Mancuso and his Bonanno family cohorts.

For starters, crime families are still very territorial when it comes to whacking their own wiseguys or associates whose activities have marked them for death. "It's one thing for Mikey Nose to get someone to slap Meldish around, it's quite another for him to get someone to whack him," said one law enforcement official not involved in the case.

In addition, sources tell Gang Land that Christopher Londonio, who is a target of a grand jury probe headed by Bronx ADA Christine Scaccia and is expected to be indicted soon, is a Luchese mobster. Like Meldish, sources say Londonio, 41, has been aligned with Madonna for several years now — even though he was arrested on gun charges last year along with Bonanno soldier Pasquale (Patty Boy) Maiorino.

Madonna, 79, pleaded guilty in Manhattan earlier this year to an unrelated 2009 gambling case in a plea deal calling for him to receive one-to-three years when he is sentenced later this year.

Londonio, who was arrested along with Maiorino on federal gun charges on May 11 on a complaint by Theodore Otto, an FBI agent who investigates the Gambino and Luchese families, was detained without bail following his arrest. The federal case stems from their arrest in November by Bronx cops who found two stolen handguns in a car in which they were sitting "in an area known for criminal activity," wrote Otto.

Robert Blossner, who represents both Madonna and Londonio, declined to comment, as did Bronx ADA Scaccia, as well as the federal prosecutors in the federal case against Londonio and Maiorino, assistant U.S. attorneys Scott Hartman and Benjamin Alee. Larry Sheehan, the lawyer for Terrence Caldwell, the only person officially charged with Meldish's murder, did not respond to repeated calls for comment.

Sources say Maiorino, 55, is not a suspect in the Meldish murder. Last Friday, AUSAs Hartman and Allee agreed to a $500,000 bond package secured by $100,000 in cash and properties that were proposed by his attorney Edward Hammock. But as of yesterday, Maorino was still behind bars as his attorney sought to satisfy the requirements set down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox, which include electronic monitoring and four co-signers of Maiorino's bond.

Whew! Good Thing Smuggling Cocaine From Italy To Guyana Is Not A Crime

It's a good thing that the officials who worked up the Pre-Sentence Report for mob-connected drug dealer Franco Lupoi didn't send a copy of the PSR they prepared for him directly to him, rather than his lawyer. The 45-year-old Gambino associate already fired his first two lawyers for not meeting his high standards. And he was none too happy with what the third lawyer came up with — a plea deal calling for ten years behind bars. So there's no question that the drug-dealing kingpin would have been climbing the walls of his cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where Lupoi has been residing for the past 13 months if he'd seen it.

That's because the report, prepared for Brooklyn Federal Judge Sterling Johnson, a former drug prosecutor not averse to meting out long prison terms for drug dealers, had a little mistake in the math: It stated that under federal guidelines Lupoi should do 365 months in the slammer, a 30-year plus term instead of the agreed-upon decade.

Whoops.

Lupoi's lawyer, William Timmons did not respond to a Gang Land query about what — if anything — he told his client about the screw-up. Not that he had anything to worry about. In a court filing, government attorneys confirmed that the deal Timmons had worked out was still in place, and that the Probation Department's computation about the recommended sentence for him was dead wrong.

Prosecutors Kristin Mace and Kevin Trowel stated that the mistake occurred when the PSR erroneously counted a 500 kilogram load of coke that Lupoi conspired to transport from Guyana to Italy in its calculation, instead of the measly $12,000 that Lupoi sent from the U.S. to Guyana as part of the plot.

It's not that Lupoi didn't agree to the coke deal. It's that shipping 500 kilos of coke from Guyana to Italy is not a U.S. crime, the prosecutors wrote. But sending $12,000 there as part of the deal was the crime of money laundering that he was charged with, and to which he pleaded guilty.

And all told, the prosecutors wrote, Lupoi's plea deal is based on the two kilograms of heroin and a quantity of marijuana that he did sell, or agree to sell to the undercover FBI agent who snared him and six others here in the U.S. and 17 others in Italy during a two-year-long sting operation.

His sentencing, which had been scheduled for this month, was put off until July.

Earlier this month, Judge Johnson imposed the first two sentences in the case.

He sentenced Dominic Ali, an appraiser with contacts in the real estate industry, to 30 months for helping Lupoi launder $220,000 in funds that evolved out of deals for drugs and weapons. Ali, 44, also forfeited $31,000 and was given three years of post-prison supervised release.

Raffaele Valente, a reputed 'Ndranghta member who sold a silencer-equipped gun to the undercover FBI agent, was given 37 months behind bars, and ordered to make $10,000 in restitution in a plea deal. Valente, 43, also received three years of post-prison supervised release, but he will be spending that in Italy, where he faces 10 years for related drug and extortion charges that are pending against him there.

'Glorified Gambling Case' Has Bonannos Boxed In Behind Bars

State prosecutors in Manhattan are playing hardball with aging and ailing Bonanno capo Nicholas (Nicky Mouth) Santora and three mob underlings who were arrested on a state racketeering indictment nearly two years ago and have been detained ever since as they await trial on charges that carry maximum prison stints up to 25 years behind bars.

Sources say prosecutors are refusing to consider any plea deals that do not carry double-digit prison terms for Santora, or his three mobster codefendants who are charged in the monstrous enterprise corruption case with 299 different, specific crimes that are described as Pattern Acts in the 158 page indictment. The charges include loansharking, extortion, and drug dealing, but there is no alleged violence in the case which includes more than 230 gambling charges.

The prosecutors' hard-nosed tactics got a big boost last week when Supreme Court Justice Melissa Jackson ruled that the ADAs will be allowed to introduce evidence about a slew of uncharged crimes during the trial against the 72-year-old Santora and men whom prosecutors say are his key aides in a huge money-making scheme. Jackson is expected to set a trial date in July, at the next scheduled court session.

Jackson ruled that prosecutors could introduce extortion conspiracy charges that Santora pleaded guilty to a decade ago in Brooklyn Federal Court, as well as extraneous gambling evidence against Nicky Mouth and his trio of unholy aides — acting capos Vito Badamo and Ernest Aiello, who each took over for Nicky Mouth on occasion, and mobster Anthony (Skinny) Santoro.

The judge wrote that the testimony about those and other uncharged crimes was "highly probative in establishing background, narrative, the relationship between the defendants and their shared intent to conduct a criminal enterprise as a crew of the Bonanno crime family," as the indictment alleges.

Jackson didn't give prosecutors total carte blanche, however. She refused to let them introduce evidence that Skinny Santoro pleaded guilty to gambling charges in Connecticut or to play taped talks allegedly linking Santoro to the illegal sale of Xanax, an anti-anxiety prescription drug.

Santoro's attorney Timothy Parlatore grudgingly acknowledged, however, that those were tiny pre-trial victories. "The terribly unfair thing about this case," said Parlatore, "is that prosecutors have been working so very hard for nearly two years to turn a non-violent, glorified gambling case into something that is much bigger than that.

"The only violence they have is talk," the lawyer continued. "My client is heard on the phone saying that he would like to do something bad to someone else. He never communicates that threat to that person, or attempts to carry it out. It's like me telling you that I'd like to throw Mayor de Blasio out a window, and never doing anything about it."

More than one attorney echoed Parlatore's remarks but declined to comment "on the record" for fear of antagonizing the prosecutors, or the Judge.

Several attorneys said the probation department seemed to throw a monkey wrench into the prosecution's hard-nosed tactics against Nicky Mouth Santora recently when it recommended a split sentence of six months at home and six months behind bars for the aging wiseguy, who has a myriad of ailments "and looked terrible the last time he came to court," if he were to plead guilty.

Prosecutors Galperin and Stuart declined to comment about that development, and Gang Land was unable to reach Santora's lawyer.

[Camo]

Thanks for posting Dellacroce. Very interesting.

[Pogo The Clown]

Interesting about Madonna being listed as the UnderBoss. In a previous column Capeci identified him as the Street Boss. So he may be serving both roles or he may have stepped down as Street Boss and has settled in as UnderBoss. If it is the former I wonder where this leaves Steve Crea?

Madonna, 79, pleaded guilty in Manhattan earlier this year to an unrelated 2009 gambling case in a plea deal calling for him to receive one-to-three years when he is sentenced later this year.

This could provide the explanation. Since he will be going to prison in a bit he has stepped own.


Pogo

[TommyGambino]

Is Ernest Aiello related to Anthony 'Ace' Aiello?

[B.]

Is Ernest Aiello related to Anthony 'Ace' Aiello?

This gets asked a lot and it doesn't appear there is any connection between Ernie Aiello, who is from the Bronx, and the other Bonanno Aiellos, who are from Middle Village.

[Wiseguy]

Good article this week.

[B.]

Good article this week.

Yeah, any potential mob-related murder is interesting these days.

Capeci brings up Mancuso's leadership of the Bonannos very frequently I've noticed.

[Cheech]

Interesting about Madonna being listed as the UnderBoss. In a previous column Capeci identified him as the Street Boss. So he may be serving both roles or he may have stepped down as Street Boss and has settled in as UnderBoss. If it is the former I wonder where this leaves Steve Crea?

Madonna, 79, pleaded guilty in Manhattan earlier this year to an unrelated 2009 gambling case in a plea deal calling for him to receive one-to-three years when he is sentenced later this year.

This could provide the explanation. Since he will be going to prison in a bit he has stepped own.


Pogo

If Vic is boss and Matty is under what is Stevie? Sig?

[TommyGambino]

Interesting about Madonna being listed as the UnderBoss. In a previous column Capeci identified him as the Street Boss. So he may be serving both roles or he may have stepped down as Street Boss and has settled in as UnderBoss. If it is the former I wonder where this leaves Steve Crea?

Madonna, 79, pleaded guilty in Manhattan earlier this year to an unrelated 2009 gambling case in a plea deal calling for him to receive one-to-three years when he is sentenced later this year.

This could provide the explanation. Since he will be going to prison in a bit he has stepped own.


Pogo

If Vic is boss and Matty is under what is Stevie? Sig?

I'm confused with all this, I think Jerry is too. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure he said Matty was Crea's right hand man a few months back. Street boss, UB, fuck knows.

Crea has been UB since 93, not sure why that would change, If anything Crea boss, Madonna UB, Joey G Consig, just guesswork,

[johnny_scootch]

Crea is and has been the boss or acting boss if you still believe amuso is official boss. Matty is steves right hand man and his underboss / street boss to insulate steve.
in this scenario underboss = street boss. There has been no change in the lucchese hierarchy for quite some time now.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Is Crea close with Madonna? Crea is Bronx, what crew/area is Madonna?

Heard Joey G is close with Crea.

With Migliore retired and DiNapoli under house the above in some form prob constitutes the admin.

Amuso is Uncle Jnr. Apologies to Wiseguy

[TommyGambino]

Is Crea close with Madonna? Crea is Bronx, what crew/area is Madonna?

Heard Joey G is close with Crea.

With Migliore retired and DiNapoli under house the above in some form prob constitutes the admin.

Amuso is Uncle Jnr. Apologies to Wideguy

Madonna is a Bronx guy, Joey G is very close to Crea, Joey Dee is 100% retired.

Amuso is Uncle Jr agreed.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Is Crea close with Madonna? Crea is Bronx, what crew/area is Madonna?

Madonna is a Bronx guy,

Cheers Tommy

[Pogo The Clown]

Crea is and has been the boss or acting boss if you still believe amuso is official boss. Matty is steves right hand man and his underboss / street boss to insulate steve.
in this scenario underboss = street boss. There has been no change in the lucchese hierarchy for quite some time now.

I don't know how you can be so sure since you recently wen't 0-4 with your DeCavalcante info.


The only official info we have received lately about the Lucchese leadership is that Amuso is Official Boss, Madonna was Amuso's Street Boss and now that Madonna is UnderBoss. Beyond that is pure speculation. Now Crea can very well be the Acting Boss with Madonna as UnderBoss. It can also be Madonna serving both roles or Madonna could have been the Acting Boss with Crea as UnderBoss. We just don't know until further info becomes available.


Pogo

[Wiseguy]

Crea is and has been the boss or acting boss if you still believe amuso is official boss. Matty is steves right hand man and his underboss / street boss to insulate steve.
in this scenario underboss = street boss. There has been no change in the lucchese hierarchy for quite some time now.

I don't know how you can be so sure since you recently wen't 0-4 with your DeCavalcante info.


The only official info we have received lately about the Lucchese leadership is that Amuso is Official Boss, Madonna was Amuso's Street Boss and now that Madonna is UnderBoss. Beyond that is pure speculation. Now Crea can very well be the Acting Boss with Madonna as UnderBoss. It can also be Madonna serving both roles or Madonna could have been the Acting Boss with Crea as UnderBoss. We just don't know until further info becomes available.


Pogo

Pogo summed it up perfectly. If Capeci was convinced enough to publically reverse himself and confirm Amuso is still the boss, that's good enough for me and should be good enough for everyone else. In the nearly 9 years I've been on these forums the posters who either claim to have inside info or simply rely on their own speculation have been wrong at least 90% of the time. And a good chunk of the stuff they happened to get right was just blind luck. You throw enough darts and one will hit the bullseye eventually. Why people can't trust those who know more than anyone outside the mob - Capeci, the FBI, etc., including waiting for credible info to come forth, rather than rush into the guessing game or buy what the latest forum BS artist is selling, I'll never understand.