Gangland News 10/1/20

[mafiastudent]

Joe Fish Gets Flushed

Gang Land Exclusive!Joseph MarraAfter cutting his gangster teeth 40 years ago under Greg Scarpa Sr., the deadly Brooklyn-based mobster who doubled as a top-echelon informer for the FBI, Joseph (Joe Fish) Marra spent a lot of time behind bars for a lot of crimes — up until 2013. For the next six years though he worked as a truck driver and steered clear of the law. He got his come-uppance on those two issues last year due to what Gang Land will euphemistically describe as a toilet bowl malfunction.

It happened in May of last year, according to a court filing in Brooklyn Federal Court. Sources say Marra, 59, handled the problem, a running, overflowing toilet bowl that flooded a downstairs apartment in a Brooklyn building he owns, as you might expect. He called a plumber, one who was referred to him by an old pal he phoned, saying: "I need a plumber. I got a flood in the house."

As things developed, the flooding bowl's high waters flushed the Fish right along with it. Within the year, Joe Fish found himself charged with an insurance fraud that netted him no money in the racketeering case against Colombo capo Joseph Amato and 15 others. He also lost his truck driver's job after a three-way gang up by the feds, the Business Integrity Commission (BIC), the city agency that licenses the hauling of construction and demolition debris, and Teamsters Union investigator Joseph diGenova, who often appears on Fox TV as a legal expert.

Gregory ScarpaStill, the sources say things might even get worse for Joe Fish, who technically faces up to 20 years for conspiracy to commit wire fraud in May of 2019. The sources say federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are looking to upgrade the charges in a new superseding indictment that adds a couple of loansharking counts against Marra.

Joe Fish's troubles with the law over the toilet bowl malfunction began last October 3 when he was arrested and charged along with Colombo mobsters Daniel (The Wig) Capaldo and Thomas (The Plumber) Scorcia with wire fraud involving the Mountain Valley Indemnity Company, which has offices in Cleveland Ohio and Winston-Salem North Carolina.

The fraud, according to the indictment, involved an undisclosed number of phone calls from New York, apparently by Marra, to the company's offices in Ohio and North Carolina.

There are no specifics about the alleged fraud in the indictment, or any publicly filed court papers, but sources say it stems from Marra's decision to file an official estimate of about $650 to fix the problem, that Scorcia, who owns ABR Plumbing in Brooklyn, gave to Joe Fish and which he submitted to his insurance company.

Daniel CapaldoThe company never reimbursed Marra for the repair work — sources say he never submitted a bill asking for payment — but sources say the government's view of the entire episode is that all the defendants committed a fraud "by using false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain property" even though no one received any money from the insurance company.

The government contends that Scorcia took part in the fraud by giving Marra an estimate for the repair and then never submitting a bill for the job, an indication that he did it on the sneak, or that Marra did it himself, after submitting an estimate to his insurance company indicating that ABR was going to do the work. Capaldo, who was involved in a stolen car case with Marra in 1990, allegedly took part in the fraud by telling Joe Fish to call Scorcia, said one source.

This is not to say that Joe Fish Marra, who began his first prison term, an 18-to-54 month sentence for armed robbery back in 1980 when he was 18, has been an upstanding citizen all his life.

Thomas ScorciaMarra had good luck for the next several years. Beginning in August of 1984, a few months after his release from state prison, until February of 1990, while hanging out at Scarpa's Wimpy Boys Social Club in Bensonhurst, he was arrested twice for drug sales and once for stealing a car. But Joe Fish avoided a return stretch behind bars, winning a conditional discharge on the stolen car rap and paying fines in plea deals for the drug cases, for selling barbiturates and marijuana.

His luck ran out in 1995. Following his arrest for racketeering and drug dealing as a member of a murderous Colombo crew then headed Scarpa's son, Greg Jr., Marra was convicted and given 19 years in prison. While completing his term in a halfway house in 2011, he was hit with extortion, for getting two Colombo mobsters to collect $8000, the balance of an old debt and give it to his daughter while he was behind bars. That cost him a two year bid that ended in May of 2013.

Prosecutors and lawyers for the two mobsters were mum about the recent charges. Contacted by Gang Land, Marra's attorney, Joseph Mure, declined to discuss the case, but in a statement, he said that his client "did not commit any fraud."

"Joe called the insurance company," the lawyer stated. "He made a report and the government says it was somehow fraudulent. We are talking to the U.S. attorney's office to figure out how to resolve this case. Joe changed his life around. He got married, he got a good job, and he lost it as a result of this arrest."

Joseph MureMarra's troubles with his employer, the Highway Safety Protection Corp. (HSP) of College Point Queens, began a week before he was indicted, according to a report by diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney in the nation's capital who is an Independent Investigations Officer for the Teamsters Union that was obtained by Gang Land.

In a report to Teamsters Local 282, diGenova wrote that on September 26, 2019, BIC, which sources say was notified by the feds of Marra's upcoming case, wrote HSP stating that since Joe Fish was "an associate of organized crime," his "continued employment" by HSP "would have a detrimental effect on any future license applications."

In his December 9 report to the Teamsters Union, diGenova cited numerous FBI reports stating Marra's mob ties, including some of the details Gang Land mentioned above, and recommended that he be bounced from Local 282 for bringing "reproach" onto the scandal plagued local. He noted in his report that Joe Fish, who had joined Local 282 in 2014 when he began working for HSP, was still employed by the company.

Joe diGenovaSources say the company, which has been licensed to haul construction and demolition debris from city job sites since 2011, "considered Marra a good employee it didn't want to lose" and ignored BIC's warning until the agency sent off another warning letter to the company after diGenova filed his report.

"A week later," said one source, "HSP sent BIC a letter stating that Marra had been fired."

Two months later, Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser gave Joe Fish permission to travel to Lyndhurst, New Jersey to visit a noted labor lawyer in what turned out to be a failed effort to get his job back.

"The gentleman I represented got up and went to work every day for six years," said attorney Christopher Errante. "He had an absolutely clean record. It's a shame what they did to him. It's unfortunate there was a rush to judgment after that arrest and they didn't wait to see the outcome of the federal case."

Judge To Gambino Capo: 'If the case is weak, let's go to trial in October, so you can be acquitted, and go free.'
Judge Frederick BlockThe judge was in Greece, on a telephone hookup from his hotel room where he was enjoying the last few days of his vacation. The defendant was in his spacious Westchester home, asking that his bail restrictions be relaxed to allow him to expand his house arrest to include the county's 450-square miles.

Such is justice in the COVID-19 era, where courtroom confrontations are few, debate takes place in cyberspace and actual trials are still on hold.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederick Block, who has a well-deserved reputation as a reasonable jurist about bail, took time out from his holiday on September 9, to hear the plea of Gambino capo Andrew Campos to ease his house arrest as he awaits his racketeering trial. The judge suggested that the best way for Campos to earn that right, was to go to trial and be acquitted.

Block began the proceeding regarding the gangster's most recent request to relax his bail conditions by letting Campos and his attorney Henry Mazurek know right away that he was not inclined to permit the wiseguy to walk free among the county's 950,000 residents with no restrictions as he awaits trial for heading a multi-million dollar construction industry scheme.

In the first place, said Block, he couldn't fathom why Campos "wants to venture" far from his lovely Scarsdale home during the COVID-19 pandemic. "My thinking," the judge said, is that "Campos has a nice home and he's being well taken care of and he's basically safe from the virus. I'm happy that like everybody else he's cautious and careful and not running around town."

Andrew CamposIn addition, Block opined, "if I give him the release that he wants, which is really unusual," he would have to do the same for Gambino soldiers Richard Martino and Vincent Fiore, for whom Block, over the government's objections, also approved bail under house arrest conditions.

"I'm not going to let him out. It would be foolish on my part," said Block, his voice clear on the international telephone line.

Mazurek countered that his client's restrictions were "not like everyone else's."

Block rejected the claim that Campos was worse off than others. Under questioning by the judge, pre-trial service official Celine Ferguson said Campos was "treated the same as (others) on home detention." She said he was required "to submit" a request to his assigned officer to leave his home for a personal or family reason, including a visit to a grandmother or to take his daughter to the doctor.

Henry MazurekMazurek argued that in the nine months since Campos was charged with heading a huge bid-rigging scheme by bribing officials of five major construction companies, it had become clear to him that there was "a lack of evidence" of the most serious labor racketeering charges against Campos — extortion and obstruction — and his bail restrictions should be relaxed

On that issue, Block opined that "the best remedy for Mr. Campos is to get acquitted as quickly as possible" and "to get this thing done and over (with) so he has total freedom." Since it was in "his interest to get a speedy trial," the judge said, "I'll accommodate that."

"Do you want to go to trial?" asked Block. "Maybe we can work out a trial date, when we start trials again in October. I doubt it, but is your client prepared to go to trial? I can arrange one. We may be able to tee up trials at the end of October; it would be interesting to do that."

"As an initial matter," Mazurek replied, "we would have pretrial motions to file. But once that's taken care of, then obviously, we would be set to go forward for trial."

Kayla Bensing"You're not ready to go to trial," said Block. "It's academic. I don't have any motions here from you. Do you want to make them, you can make them. I'm not preventing you from doing that. Why don't we just prepare for trial? It seems that's the logical thing to do. I can ask the government. The government is always ready."

Prosecutor Kayla Bensing suggested that Block schedule pre-trial motions "and a trial date" at a status conference of all 12 defendants that is scheduled for today.

"You would be well advised to make your pretrial motions," Block told Mazurek. "You can make them today and I'll certainly resolve it as soon as I can. And come October 1st," the judge said, "we'll set a trial date. I think by that time, I think I'll be able to do that. Maybe it can be in November even."

That seems doubtful, since Mazurek — and lawyers for his 11 codefendants — haven't filed their pretrial motions yet. Meanwhile, Judge Block had plenty of time to finish his vacation, and he'll decide today how soon Campos will have the chance to earn an acquittal and leave the comforts of his home without having to call his pre-trial service officer.

Vinny Linen And Six Others Cop Plea Deals In The Toilet Bowl Malfunction Case
Vincent ScuraVincent (Vinny Linen) Scura, a 59-year-old Colombo family mobster who has managed to avoid any convictions during a long organized crime career, has copped a plea deal to dispose of loansharking and other charges stemming from the same racketeering case that snared Joe Fish Marra on wire fraud charges and also cost him his job as a truck driver.

He's got plenty of company acknowledging their own dirty linen: Six co-defendants joined Scura in pleading guilty in separate proceedings before Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon.

Scura, who operates a lucrative loansharking business out of a Cranford, N.J. pizzeria, according to court filings in the case, pleaded guilty this week only to referring a customer to the mobster who actually gave out the loan, Thomas Scorcia, the Colombo family Plumber who was also charged with insurance fraud in the toilet bowl malfunction case with Marra.

Elizabeth GeddesVinny Linen admitted referring the customer to Scorcia last year, knowing that he'd be charging a "higher than lawful rate of interest." He also told the judge that "the type of language that was used during" phone calls to the loanshark customer "were implicit threats" about what might happen in the event that payments were not made.

During the mobster's bail hearing last year, assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes alleged that Scura "operates a loansharking business" out of Scatturo's Pizzeria & Café in Cranford. But talk is one thing; proof is something the prosecutor didn't have. The only loansharking venture Scura was charged with involved the loan that he referred to Scorcia.

According to the plea agreement worked out by Scura lawyer Vincent Martinelli and prosecutors Megan Farrell, James McDonald, and Geddes, Vinny Linen had a "minor role" in the loansharking caper with Scorcia and faces a reduced recommended prison term between 15 and 21 months.

In addition to Scura, mob associates John Dunn, 31, Primo Cassarino, 32, Dominick (The Lion) Ricigliano, 51, Krenar Suka, 27, Albert Masterjoseph, 58, and Philip Lombardo, 62, have all pleaded guilty in deals calling for about two years behind bars in separate proceedings that were spread out over three days. Later this month, three other mob associates are slated to resolve their charges via plea agreements.

Joseph AmatoPlea agreements, which detail the specific sentencing guidelines for defendants who plead guilty, and other details about the plea deal, are public information. The feds usually provide them to the news media, as they are required to, when they are asked for them, but this week the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office went oddly silent when Gang Land requested copies of the records.

In addition to Marra, lawyers for capo Joseph Amato, mobsters Capaldo and Scorcia, and mob associates Joseph Amato Jr. and Anthony (Bugz) Silvestro, who are all charged with racketeering, are involved in plea negotiations with the government.

In a related case, Joseph Bosco, his son Nicholas Bosco, and his nephew Anthony Bosco, who were all victims of a Colombo family power play that prevented Nicholas Bosco from getting back $10,000 he loaned to a friend, all received lenient prison terms from Brooklyn Federal Judge Carol Amon. Nicholas received six months; Joseph and Anthony got four months.

[sdeitche]

So the feds arrested and got a guy fired over $650 supposed fraud? Wow, I cant imagine anyone, even the most strident law enforcement supporter thinking that is anything but vindictive and an obscene abuse of power.

[Ryan98366]

Gangland is really hard up for stories the last couple years. Now that he Lucchese trial is over...its back to stories about associates and labor racketeering. Yawn.

[TallGuy19]

Gangland is really hard up for stories the last couple years. Now that he Lucchese trial is over...its back to stories about associates and labor racketeering. Yawn.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a story that didn't have anything to do with the Luccheses, the Campos crew, or Vincent Fyfe. I had pretty much given up reading Gangland because they basically rewrite the same story every week.

[SonnyBlackstein]

So the feds arrested and got a guy fired over $650 supposed fraud? Wow, I cant imagine anyone, even the most strident law enforcement supporter thinking that is anything but vindictive and an obscene abuse of power.

Yeah, it’s disgusting. The guy was clearly on the straight and narrow and effectively lost everything.
Genuinely feel for the guy.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for the post.

Could someone post the pics

[SonnyBlackstein]

Gangland is really hard up for stories the last couple years. Now that he Lucchese trial is over...its back to stories about associates and labor racketeering. Yawn.

This is original content covering mob associates, made guys and captains not covered anywhere else.
What the fuck do you want?

[ng]

I agree that Capeci has been off his game for a few years now but reading the gangland posts is one of the things that brought me here a few years ago. Thanks to all of you guys who pay the subscription and post it here for freeloaders like myself!

[JohnnyS]

News in the Mob world is kinda slow these days. He can only write on what he has.

[Super]

Capeci is one of the best ever. How many decades has he been writing for? I don't think any real mob buff would disrespect him. This is not the 80s 90s there's scraps on the mob now in comparison. His one of the best ny mob encyclopaedias in the world.

[mafiastudent]

Capeci is one of the best ever. How many decades has he been writing for? I don't think any real mob buff would disrespect him. This is not the 80s 90s there's scraps on the mob now in comparison. His one of the best ny mob encyclopaedias in the world.

There's a great NY Times article on him. If I find it, I'll post it. I think he started off during the Gotti era.

[mafiastudent]

Here it is:

Writing About Gangsters, as Far Back as He Can Remember

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/nyre ... ember.html

By Clyde Haberman
Dec. 15, 2013

Jerry Capeci was trying to get his mitts around an international tale written in blood, a case that put together a Mafia boss in Montreal and murders in Brooklyn and Acapulco, Mexico.

Mr. Capeci hoped to get to the bottom of it. He has been chronicling the Mafia for nearly four decades, first for two New York tabloids and now for his own website, ganglandnews.com. He has also produced half a dozen gangster-themed books, including a new one about a big-time informer — “Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D’Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia” — written with the estimable columnist Tom Robbins.

But his pursuit of the three-nation affair had hit some hurdles, and Mr. Capeci let frustration show during a recent lunch at an Italian restaurant in Corona, Queens.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s me,” he said, “but it seems that prosecutors and agents and cops, more and more, have the Rudy Giuliani attitude.”


Meaning what? It did not sound like praise.

“Meaning ‘I’m not going to tell you anything,’ ” he said. “The government seems to make you go through hoops to gather what normally is public information. It seems to be a trend that began, in my view, when Rudy was U.S. attorney in the Southern District.” That was in the 1980s, before Mr. Giuliani was elected mayor.

Pre-Rudy, Mr. Capeci said, “there was less of an us-versus-them attitude when you dealt with law enforcement.” What too many officials ignore, he said, is that they are, at best, temporary custodians of public information, not its proprietors.

We invited Mr. Capeci (pronounced kuh-PEA-see) to a meal out of curiosity. How does one go about tracking the five Mafia families of New York? The public’s fascination with the subject seems endless. At the very least, the mob never falls out of the news for long.

Of late, an imprisoned consigliere to the Colombo family faced new charges that he ordered the 1997 killing of a police officer who had the temerity to marry the mobster’s former wife. A federal jury found him not guilty last month. Then John A. Gotti — Junior Gotti in tabloid-speak — re-emerged. He had been stabbed, not fatally, in the stomach. Mr. Gotti, son of the dead Gambino family boss, explained that he was trying to break up a fight between two strangers in a parking lot.

Hmm, Mr. Capeci said, or words to that effect. He had no idea what happened, he said, but he doubted that Mr. Gotti’s wound resulted from any altruistic impulse.

Mr. Capeci, 69, suggested lunch at Park Side restaurant, on Corona Avenue. He likes the veal there, he said. Was this a hangout for mobsters? He answered elliptically: “You never know who you’re going to run into.”

At the table, he sat facing the doorway. This was happenstance. The photographer put him there because the light was favorable. It was not a nod to some mob rule on how to position oneself in a public place.

The conversation began over a Bloody Mary for Mr. Capeci and a glass of Chianti for the interviewer. They moved on to shared appetizers of baked clams and a seafood platter. For his main course, Mr. Capeci chose veal Milanese and a salad while his companion settled on veal piccata with a side of spaghetti in garlic and olive oil. Both finished with espresso and a gift of biscotti from the restaurant. Mr. Capeci “corrected” his coffee, as they say in Italy, with a splash of Sambuca.

(Maybe a disclosure is in order. Mr. Capeci and the interviewer’s careers overlapped at The New York Post. That was long ago, in the 1970s. This lunch was strictly business, not personal.)

Inevitably, table talk turned to the nature of the American Mafia, which Mr. Capeci found to be decidedly diminished from decades ago yet still a force to be reckoned with. But the focus of the conversation was still on how he goes about his business.

Not to be too blunt, but does he ever have second thoughts about a career built on keeping tabs on sociopaths, no matter how quirky they may seem when they have middle names wrapped in parentheses?

“I never really analyzed it that way,” Mr. Capeci said with a laugh. “But I guess I have. I have covered quite a few sociopaths.”

Have his writings ever led to run-ins with Italian-American groups? Some have long protested what they regard as negative ethnic stereotyping in print and on the screen, be it in acclaimed works like “Goodfellas” and “The Sopranos” or less-than-artful offerings like “Mob Wives” and “Growing Up Gotti.” For Mr. Capeci, those last two are “like Italian-American versions of ‘Amos and Andy.’ ”

Indeed, he has taken heat from the organizations, but “I’ve made peace with most of them,” he said. “I write about crime. That’s what I told them. It just so happens that the subject matter that I write about, because I was assigned to it in the beginning, was Italian-American criminals.”

It is not as if he himself has been immune to stereotyping, he said. He recalled a situation in 1976. He was sent by editors at The Post to cover the funeral of the Mafia boss Carlo Gambino, dead of a heart attack at age 74. With reportorial guile that had everything to do with his quick wits and nothing to do with his Italian roots, Mr. Capeci worked his way into a front-row pew at the church.

Later, fellow reporters and law-enforcement officials pestered him about how he had managed it. Whom did he know? Was he connected? “It got to the point,” he said, “where I had arguments: ‘Listen, you’re trying to tell me that just because my name ends in a vowel, I got in? Because I have a gangster in my family?’ It was a bone of contention.”

There are no mobsters in his family, said Mr. Capeci, who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Nor does he hang out with Mafiosi. “I’ve only had two honest-to-goodness mobsters — guys that were inducted into a crime family — who have been sources of mine,” he said. “One of them is no longer with us.”

How about threats from the mob? Is that a concern?

“Not really,” Mr. Capeci said as the food arrived. “The Gotti crew in court — I’m talking about the ’80s now — they used to look at you, talk about you, definitely try to intimidate you. But I’ve never really gotten a threat. Thankfully, the Mafia in the United States has a code, unlike their brethren in Italy, that prohibits them from going after reporters or law enforcement officials. They have adhered to that, with some exceptions. It’s not for any benevolent reason, but because it would cause more heat, more problems for them.”

Besides, he said, ever the proud chronicler, if anything were to happen to him, “who would they get their news from?”

[Super]

Nice mafia student been looking at your site and info on both forums very interesting. Any ideas on some of capecis sources ?

[mafiastudent]

Nice mafia student been looking at your site and info on both forums very interesting. Any ideas on some of capecis sources ?

A journalist never gives up his or her sources...are you kidding??? Lol. Maybe on his deathbed, but even then I doubt it.

[Super]

We know he had a few cops prosecutors mob associates.