Gangland News 11/19/20

[mafiastudent]

Prolific Mob Killer Files Longshot Motion For Compassionate Release

Gang Land Exclusive!Anthony CassoAnthony (Gaspipe) Casso, the former Luchese crime family underboss who bragged of holding a shovel in the mouth of a wounded young drug smuggler as he buried him alive in the Florida Everglades, is seeking a compassionate release from prison.

Casso, who is 78 years old, received a life sentence in 1998 for 14 of the three-dozen mob murders he has admitted to committing in a long string of brutality that shocked many hard-nosed fellow wiseguys from New York and New Jersey.

In a decidedly longshot motion, Gaspipe is seeking his freedom under the First Step Act of 2018 that allows aging and ailing inmates serving life sentences to win their release for "extraordinary and compelling reasons."

Casso's lawyers made the request last week, labelling it an "Emergency Motion For Compassionate Release." In the filing, the attorneys asked Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block to reduce Casso's prison term to "time served" and enable him to live out the rest of his life "under home confinement."

So far, the motion has not made much headway. Block ignored a request by attorneys James Arden and Qais Ghafary to schedule an expedited hearing last Friday. Instead, Block ordered prosecutors to respond by November 24, noting that he does not expect to conduct a hearing but to make a decision on the court filings.

The reason for the "emergency motion" is unclear because the attorneys filed their reasons under seal. They did not respond to calls or emails from Gang Land. The U.S. Attorney's Office was also mum about the case. But since assigned federal prosecutor Keith Edelman has objected to a compassionate release for 87-year-old Gambino wiseguy Frank (Frankie Loc) Locascio, who was convicted of one mob murder, the government is sure to oppose any compassion for Casso.

Casso's own account of his long and grisly career makes him a tough candidate for any kind of compassion.

The most prolific mob killer to ever receive a cooperation agreement from the feds, Gaspipe's own boastful accounts of his bloody deeds prompted federal prosecutors back in 1994 to decide that they would never put him on a witness stand him as a government witness — years before the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office decided to breach his agreement for a host of lies, crimes and other misdeeds.

Frank Locascio"It gets to a point where somebody is just too evil to put on the stand," said former assistant U.S. attorney Gregory O'Connell, who along with fellow prosecutor Charles Rose and FBI agents interviewed Casso after he agreed to cooperate a year after he was arrested at the New Jersey home of a longtime girlfriend after 30 months on the lam.

The prosecutors were debriefing Casso in the so-called "Valachi Suite" in the same federal prison in La Tuna, Texas, near the Mexican border, where the first mafia defector had been housed, O'Connell told Tom Robbins and yours truly in an interview for our 2013 book, Mob Boss, The Life of Little Al D'Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia.

As the prosecutors listened to the Luchese family underboss recount with glee how he had killed a young man who had worked on a boat in Gaspipe's marijuana smuggling business, they each knew they would never use him as a trial witness,

"I shoot him and he falls back against my car" and "there's blood all over my car," Casso told them, laughing as he continued: "It's a fucking mess. I don't have a towel so I take off my shirt and put it in the water to wash off the car."

After pausing, Casso looked up and said: "Then, Greg, you won't believe what happens next. We dumped him in a grave we dug. And then he sits up!"

"What did you do then, Anthony?" asked O'Connell, who watched Gaspipe's face contort as he said, "I took a shovel with some dirt, I stuck it in his mouth, and held him down while we buried him."

It was the kind of story, O'Connell told us, that "would probably not go over too well with a jury." The prosecutors flew back to New York convinced that it didn't matter how well versed their new witness was in mob secrets; they would never use Casso as a government witness.

But they didn't tell him so. Over the next three years, the feds kept Gaspipe on the fence as a possible witness as they mined him for information on many topics. High on the list of things he disclosed were the murders of three John Gotti pals who were killed in a Genovese-Luchese family plot in retaliation for the Gotti-orchestrated, unsanctioned 1985 assassination of Mafia boss Paul (Big Paul) Castellano.

Casso said he was in on the planning and on the scene when Gotti's first underboss, Frank DeCicco, was blown up as he got into a car outside a Bensonhurst, Brooklyn social club in April 1986. Mob associate Herbert (Blue Eyes) Pate, a former U.S. Army munitions expert who placed a remote-controlled bomb under the car and detonated it when DeCicco sat down, Casso said.

DeCicco bombed carAnd in the same plot, Gaspipe said, Luchese capo Frank (Big Frank) Lastorino killed Gotti pal Bartholomew (Bobby) Borriello in front of his Brooklyn home, and Casso's rogue Mafia Cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, shot and killed mobster Edward Lino after they pulled him over on the Belt Parkway.

He also detailed how Eppolito and Caracappa fed him info about FBI informers — many whom Gaspipe and then-family boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso had killed.

And then there was the horrific story of what Gaspipe did to a young wannabe gangster named Jimmy Hydell. According to an FBI report obtained by Gang Land, Casso detailed his killing in Mill Basin of the young Brooklyn hood whom he had arranged to be kidnapped by the two corrupt NYPD detectives,

He said that on October 16, 1986, "the cops" grabbed Hydell, who had been part of a botched, "off the books" Gambino family murder plot in which Casso suffered only a superficial wound a month earlier.

The detectives stuffed Hydell, still alive and kicking, into the trunk of a green Plymouth that Casso had supplied and drove to the parking lot of Toys R Us in Mill Basin, Brooklyn. Waiting there for them in his own car was Burton Kaplan, a drug dealing crony who had introduced Casso to the cops and who relayed money and orders to them from the Luchese chieftain. Also parked nearby were Gaspipe and Amuso, according to an April 5, 1994 report by former FBI agents James Brennan and Richard Rudolph.

Kaplan gave Casso "the keys to the Plymouth and advised (them) to be careful because Hydell was in the trunk of the car and was kicking the trunk hood," the agents wrote. As the detectives, "one big and the other small and thin," got into Kaplan's car and it pulled out, they wrote, Casso drove "the green Plymouth with Hydell in the trunk" out of the parking lot followed by Amuso.

The mobsters met up at the nearby home of a wiseguy pal whose family was away. They brought Hydell, who "was tied up and handcuffed in the back" and "had a handkerchief in his mouth covered with duct tape," into the basement. They then "removed the handkerchief and handcuffs" and Gaspipe questioned Hydell about "the attempt on his life" a month earlier," the agents wrote.

The next morning, after Hydell gave up the names of his cohorts, and said that Gambino mobster Michael (Mickey Boy) Paradiso "gave them the order to kill" Gaspipe, Amuso brought Gambino mobsters Joseph (Joe Butch) Corrao and John (Handsome Jack) Giordano "to (the) basement" and Hydell repeated what he had told the Lucheses the night before, the agents wrote.

Before the Gambino mobsters left, the agents wrote, "they told (Casso) they were satisfied with Hydell's response and they would inform John Gotti" that Hydell had fingered Paradiso. Casso "advised that he believed that Corrao and Giordano understood Hydell would be killed when (Casso) was finished with him," the agents wrote.

As soon as the Gambinos left, "Amuso and (Casso) re-entered the basement" and Casso "took a .22 automatic pistol with a silencer and repeatedly shot Hydell, killing him," Brennan and Rudolph wrote.

Amuso and Casso put Hydell's body and the murder weapon in the trunk of the green Plymouth, and Gaspipe parked it a few blocks away, and "gave the keys" to mobster Joseph Testa, the agents wrote. Lastorino later told Casso that Testa "disposed of Hydell's body and the gun" in an undisclosed parking lot in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, the agents wrote.

The feds were unable to use Casso's information to arrest the Mafia Cops — they were brought down in 2005 by Kaplan and have both died behind bars. Prosecutors were able to indict and get guilty pleas from numerous mobsters on Gaspipe's say so over the next three years but Casso fell out of favor — and then some — while housed in prison units for cooperating witnesses.

He sold drugs, bribed guards to supply him with steaks, sushi, turkeys, vodka, wine and other contraband. He destroyed an exercise treadmill, assaulted several inmates in two special units for government witnesses, almost always lying about his misdeeds. He attacked Salvatore (Fat Sal) Miciotta as he was being escorted, naked and handcuffed, from a shower to his cell, kicking him as he lay on the ground. In an earlier assault, with his hands free, Fat Sal had pummeled Gaspipe.

The last straw was in the summer of 1997, after the feds convicted Mafia boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante without calling Casso as a witness, and he wrote letters accusing superstar witnesses Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and Alfonso (Little Al) D'Arco of lying at the trial.

Prosecutors moved to breach his cooperation agreement and not recommend leniency at his sentencing before Judge Block.

Casso argued that other mobsters cooperating with the feds had bribed guards and committed other crimes but still received letters recommending leniency and that the feds were using that and other charges as a pretext to cancel a deal they never intended to keep.

But in an 18-page ruling, Block ruled that the government's actions were justified. "Simply put," he wrote, "criminal behavior by cooperators should be condemned, not condoned, and repudiation of the government's obligations under a cooperation agreement is an effective means of delivering such an important message."

Now that same judge must ask himself if the 78-year-old gangster who was considered too evil to even testify as a government witness deserves a break.

Feds Drop The Insurance Fraud Charges, But Joe Fish Gets Flushed Again

He hung tough for a year, and finally got the feds to drop a silly, hard-to-believe insurance fraud charge for calling a mob connected plumber to fix an overflowing toilet bowl in a Brooklyn home that he owns. But the final solution for Colombo associate Joseph (Joe Fish) Marra wasn't a great one.

Marra, who lost his union truck driver's job last year when he was charged with The Great Toilet Bowl Fraud , pleaded guilty to conducting a family loansharking business from 2017 until last year. The plea deal comes with a recommended prison term between 30 and 37 months.

According to his plea agreement with the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office, Joe Fish also agreed to forfeit the $43,500 in loansharking profits that the FBI seized from his residence on October 3 of last year. That's when they charged him with insurance fraud for the minimal bill — about $650 — he had submitted to his insurance company for the plumbing repairs.

Joe Fish's troubles with the law began when he was heard talking to Colombo mobsters Daniel (The Wig) Capaldo and Thomas (The Plumber) Scorcia about the insurance claim he put in for his costs to the Mountain Valley Indemnity Company, which has offices in Cleveland Ohio and Winston-Salem North Carolina.

He lost his truck driving job after his employer learned from the Business Integrity Commission (BIC), the city agency that licenses the hauling of construction and demolition debris, that keeping the indicted longtime mob associate on the company's payroll just might cause BIC to reconsider and revoke the company's rights to haul debris in New York.

And things didn't get better as the feds kept investigating and came up with enough evidence to charge Joe Fish with making more than enough usurious loans in recent years – a total of six – to allege that the loans were part of an ongoing Colombo crime family racketeering enterprise headed by Staten Island-based capo Joseph Amato.

Marra did not mention the amounts of the loans or the rates of interest he charged when he pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon on Tuesday. He only admitted that he charged more than the legal rate of interest to six different loan customers from February of 2017 through September of last year.

In addition to dropping the insurance fraud charge, the government also gave Marra coverage for any loansharking activity he may have committed going back to 2013, when he was last released from prison.

"Joe hopes to put this all behind him," said attorney Joseph Mure, insisting that his client committed no violence and that none was alleged. "That's why he agreed to enter a plea of guilty. He's got a wife now, he's got a new job, and he's looking to move on with his life, and make this part of his past."

Joe Fish cut 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, and who held court at the Wimpy Boys Social Club in Bensonhurst. After Scarpa died of AIDS from tainted blood he received from a crew member before he underwent surgery, Marra was convicted of racketeering charges in a case with Greg Scarpa Jr., who took over his father's crew.

He's scheduled to be sentenced by Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan in February.

Former Gambino Associate Finds Trouble In The City Of Brotherly Love

For years, Antonio (Anthony Mortgage) Ambrosio avoided serious trouble with the law. This sometimes took some doing since he was a bodyguard-chauffeur for Salvatore Romano, the stock swindler who made millions of dollars for the Gambino family before he flipped in 2004. Alas, since hooking up with wiseguys from Philadelphia though, Ambrosio hasn't been quite so lucky.

Back in the day, while Romano was raking in $20 million in classic "pump and dump" stock scams with Gambino wiseguys, including two who became cooperating witnesses like he did — Michael (Mikey Scars) DiLeonardo and Joseph (Little Joe) D'Angelo — things were pretty good for Anthony Mortgage.

Last week, a Philadelphia Federal Judge sentenced Ambrosio, 41, of Staten Island, to 17 months behind bars and ordered him to pay $291,000 in restitution for a $300,000 mortgage swindle he pulled off with Philadelphia wiseguys linked to family underboss George Borgesi.

But it could have been much worse.

Philadelphia federal prosecutor Michael Donovan introduced FBI surveillance photos of Ambrosio with Borgesi to prove his mob bona fides. He them went on to paint Anthony Mortgage as a heartless thug who caused his victim and "his family to live as transients, first in a hotel and later in multiple rental properties" and lose their "dream house" they thought they had purchased in the Poconos.

During a three-hour long sentencing proceeding in the City of Brotherly Love, Donovan argued that Ambrosio was guilty of "outrageous criminal conduct" and deserved a prison term of up to 30 months, as recommended by the plea agreement he signed with the government, and not a non-jail term sought by his attorney.

The prosecutor urged Judge John Padova to reject the claim in the sentencing memo by lawyer John Meringolo that Ambrosio had "been a law-abiding citizen and only fell into the charged conduct by foolish haste" and deserved a non-jail sentence. "He must live with his criminal history just as any other defendant would," the prosecutor stated.

In a written victim impact statement the prosecutor submitted, and in another that was delivered through a Zoom hookup, one home buyer ensnared by Ambrosio told Judge Padova that his dealings with Anthony Mortgage was an "American nightmare. " He said he suffered a heart attack, lost $126,000 and was forced to live with his family in hotels and rented apartments and homes for three years.

Meringolo was able to undercut the impact of his testimony by getting the home buyer to concede under his questioning that he had $3 million dollars in assets, and had received $180,000 a year in rental income. He asked Padova to impose "the lowest sentence that seems just to the Court."

The judge permitted Ambrosio to self-surrender and begin his prison term on January 15. He will have to serve three years of strict post-prison supervised release when he completes his sentence.

As always, Gang Land wishes a healthy and Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers, no matter where you'll be spending the holiday, which we will be taking off. Our next columm will be December 3. We extend a special thank you to those who've supported us since we became a paid subscription site in June of 2008. We wouldn't be here without you! Thanks much!

[chin_gigante]

Interesting, Capeci identifying George Borgesi as the Philly underboss

[gmadotty313]

thanks

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

[Rocco]

thanks for posting. I cant believe they wasting 80% of the article on old Casso bullshit.! Fuckers.

[Chucky]

Interesting, Capeci identifying George Borgesi as the Philly underboss

Yeah that got my attention too, don't think he'd just throw that in there. Ambrosio was the guy who got popped with Sharkey, right?

[chin_gigante]

Yeah, Ambrosio and Sharkey

[SonnyBlackstein]

Interesting, Capeci identifying George Borgesi as the Philly underboss

Anyone know if Schwratwiser and the other guy have done anything recent on Philly?
I’d be hesitant to take this as 100% as Capeci has a habit of referring to people using their past positions. I don’t think he is doing so here, but considering it’s Philly (what does Capeci know about Philly) and his history of ambiguity in terminology I don’t think we can take this as gospel yet.

Thanks to MS for the post.

[Frank]

Interesting, Capeci identifying George Borgesi as the Philly underboss

Anyone know if Schwratwiser and the other guy have done anything recent on Philly?
I’d be hesitant to take this as 100% as Capeci has a habit of referring to people using their past positions. I don’t think he is doing so here, but considering it’s Philly (what does Capeci know about Philly) and his history of ambiguity in terminology I don’t think we can take this as gospel yet.

Thanks to MS for the post.

Yes, but I dont think Borgesi was a past underboss.

[Chucky]

Interesting, Capeci identifying George Borgesi as the Philly underboss

Anyone know if Schwratwiser and the other guy have done anything recent on Philly?
I’d be hesitant to take this as 100% as Capeci has a habit of referring to people using their past positions. I don’t think he is doing so here, but considering it’s Philly (what does Capeci know about Philly) and his history of ambiguity in terminology I don’t think we can take this as gospel yet.

Thanks to MS for the post.

GA & Schratwieser said he was the street boss recently, I could be wrong.

[Frank]

Interesting, Capeci identifying George Borgesi as the Philly underboss

Anyone know if Schwratwiser and the other guy have done anything recent on Philly?
I’d be hesitant to take this as 100% as Capeci has a habit of referring to people using their past positions. I don’t think he is doing so here, but considering it’s Philly (what does Capeci know about Philly) and his history of ambiguity in terminology I don’t think we can take this as gospel yet.

Thanks to MS for the post.

GA & Schratwieser said he was the street boss recently, I could be wrong.

Was it gangster report, I think he was called acting boss.

[JohnnyS]

GA/DS said a few months ago that it looked like Borgesi was the one running things.

[Frank]

GA/DS said a few months ago that it looked like Borgesi was the one running things.

Ligambi was Underboss and Acting Boss. So that might explain why Borgesi is described as both.

[chin_gigante]

Schratwieser has recently written articles for the Mob Talk Sitdown website describing Borgesi as a captain. Then in one of their recent videos they said it looked like Borgesi was the one running the street, though they didn't use any titles and made sure to disclaim that was just how things 'looked', rather than anything definitive. They also reiterated what they've been saying for the past few years that Borgesi claims to be 'off the totem pole' and not involved in anything illegal.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Schratwieser has recently written articles for the Mob Talk Sitdown website describing Borgesi as a captain. Then in one of their recent videos they said it looked like Borgesi was the one running the street, though they didn't use any titles and made sure to disclaim that was just how things 'looked', rather than anything definitive. They also reiterated what they've been saying for the past few years that Borgesi claims to be 'off the totem pole' and not involved in anything illegal.

Talk about a mixed message. He’s the one running things but doesn’t do anything illegal. How does that make any sense?