PolackTony wrote: ↑Sat Jan 09, 2021 4:34 pm
Hey Fab -- you've written about the links between Ricord and Tommaso Buscetta. Another figure that I understand was linked with Buscetta in cigarette and narcotics trafficking (I belive earlier in Buscetta's career) was Corsican Pascal Molinelli. I also understand that Molinelli was supplying Cinisi boss (and former Chicago mafioso) Cesare Manzella when the "First Mafia War" kicked off in the early 60s (the dispute apparently having started over one of Molinelli's shipments that was subsequently routed by the Mafia to NYC).
Any further info about Molinelli?
Unfortunately no, all I know about him is that he handled the heroin load for Calcedonio Di Pisa which triggered the First Mafia War, as you mention but other than that I don't know anything.
As this is the main historical fact about him, there is nothing in my books except this. I couldn't tell you who he worked for. But I don't think he was a boss, otherwise I would know more ...
BTW, I didn't kow Manzella was a Chicago mafioso before, thank you for that ^^
At the end of the war, France and the police are in the process of restructuring, and a wave of robbery shakes the country. Taking advantage of the weak means of the authorities, these gentlemen armed with the weapons of the WWII, robbed everything at the wheel of their Citröen Tractions-Avant. Former collaborators and resistance fighters are joining forces to set up teams and crisscross the country to rob banks, jewelry stores or post offices. This will be the case of Pierre Loutrel's gang (a former mobster who worked for the Gestapo), called after the famous car, the "Gang of Traction-Avant". Loutrel, nicknamed "Pierrot Le Fou" (= crazy because totally uncontrollable and alcoholic, he did not hesitate to kill police officers in cold blood), will finally shoot himself by accident after having robbed a jewelry in 1946. The rest of the gang will be then dissolved arrested or condemned. One of Loutrel's lieutenant, Jo Attia will become one of the great lords of the French underworld and will be briefly involved in drug trafficking.
Others, like François Spirito, Joseph Orsini, Antoine D'Agostino or Auguste Ricord, like Loutrel wanted for active participation in the Gestapo, are less adventurous than Pierrot Le Fou, and take the direction of the Americas to set up drug trafficking networks
The French authorities are too busy with robberies or the smuggling of cigarettes, they are downright lax towards drug traffickers, because the consumption of narcotics is practically non-existent. In addition, prison sentences imposed on traffickers are a maximum of 5 years, unlike pimping and robbery, which range from 10 to 20 years.
In short, almost all of the underworld is going to get started, and the American authorities will have the French traffickers in the sights.
The 50s to 1964
Even if the French Police have the reputation of not doing much, they have information and with the help of the Bureau of Narcotics identifies 4 main groups.
-The Charles Antoine Marignani group
Marignani aka "Lolo le Corse" is a Corsican born in 1906 in Ajaccio and a close friend of the Guerini brothers. In October 1960, Mauricio Rosal, the Ambassador of Guatamela in Mexico was arrested in NY with heroin hidden in diplomatic bags. It led to the arrest of several of his accomplices including Gilbert Coscia, Félix Barnier, Robert Lecotat and Etienne Tarditi all connected to Marignani (note that it is following this case and Tarditi's testimony that the 4 groups are identified).
The Margniani team will also be famous in 1962, for having inspired a famous film by William Friedkin. In January 1962, TV presenter Jacques Angelvin was arrested along with several accomplices, including François "L'Exéctueur" Scaglia, a Corso-Parisian gangsters connected to Gaetan Zampa's "Bande Des Trois Canards". Angelvin & Scaglia attempted to introduce 52 kilos of heroin hidden in a Buick. The shipment was intended for a member of the Lucchese Crime Family Angelo Tuminaro with two of his nephews, Pasquale & Anthony Fuca as intermediary. The organization was managed by Marignani, Jean Jehan & Marius Martin, two Corsicans also active in Montreal with the Cotroni brothers.
The Marignani network was undoubtedly in fact headed by the Guerini brothers. The 1960 case with the diplomat would have strained the relationship between Marignani & Antoine Guerini and Lolo would have asked Barthélémy to intervene to calm the things down. If the Guerinis were never formally involved in drug trafficking, the police nevertheless linked Barthélémy to the case and sentenced him in 1964 for "association or conspiracy to commit an offense" to 3 years in prison with a suspended sentence and a fine of 36,000 francs.
-The François Spirito-Joseph Orsini-Antoine D'Agostino group.
All three former Gestapists on the run to escape convictions for war crimes, Spirito was the co-boss of Italian origin of the famous Corsican boss Paul Carbone in Marseille, Orsini was a Corsican boss in Paris and D'Agostino a former pimp of Neapolitan origin in Paris.
Established in NY and Montreal, the group, thanks to Spirito's trips to the USA made in the 1930s on behalf of Carbone, was able to benefit from the links established and to set up a network with the 5 families of NY in particular the Genovese crime family this which is confirmed by the heirs of the network which had benefited from Orsini's contacts, but I will come back to this later.
Following several arrests such as those of Jean David or Rogert Coudert in 1951, the group will be the first major network to fall. Orsini & Spirito are sentenced and tried and Spirito will take 3 years in prison. At the same time, one of their laboratories led by Marius Ansaldi is dismantled in Marseille in 1952 and 9 kilos of pure heroin are seized.
On his release from prison, Spirito is extradited to France to be tried for his crimes but the charges will be mysteriously dropped. He moved to Toulon, officially retired from business. Unofficially he continues to send drug in the USA with the blessing of the Guerini brothers and died in 1967. Orsini, who was still active until the mid-1960s, moved to Spain, where he died some time later.
D'Agostino, after being arrested in Montreal in 1948, went on a run to Mexico and set up a new network with Albert Bistoni, Jean-Baptiste Croce & Paul Mondoloni, but I have already talked about it before.
-The Aranci brothers group (Marius, George & Joseph)
Led by the elder Marius, they are old-timers drug trafficking, already active at the time of Paul Carbone. Marius has a criminal record dating back to 1929 when he was arrested in possession of 5 kilos of opium. He moved up a gear in 1934 when he was arrested with two other Corsicans in a villa near Marseille with 3 tons of opium ...
An important trafficker in the group is Antoine Cordoliani, whose name was connected to the John Papalia and Agueci brothers case, or Giuseppe Bono & Giuseppe Caruana in the 1960s.
They were also connected to the Gambino Crime Family through soldier Salvatore Mancuso.
The group ended up falling in 1960, with the arrest of the prostitute working for them who delivered 5 kilos of heroin to smugglers on a boat outgoing for the USA. The 3 brothers were sentenced to 5 years.
-The Joseph Patrizzi group
The Patrizzi group is in fact the Marseillaise branch of the Bistoni-Croce-Mondoloni network, also connected to the Venturis brothers located in Marseille & Montreal. Before his murder in 1958 in connection with the robbery of the Begum jewelry (see my previous text about Mondoloni), the boss of the Marseillaise branch was Dominique Nicoli, Paul Mondoloni's uncle.
From 1964 to 1972
Always fighting against the French administration to seriously fight the trafficking of heroin, the Bureau Of Narcotics draws up a list of 4 main bosses, responsible according to thel to be the main suppliers of the French Connection. If they are right about their involvement in drug trafficking, these groups are in fact inactive in trafficking at the time. According to them here are the 4 main "Families" involved:
-The Guerini brothers
-Marcel Francisci
-Dominique Venturi
-Joseph Orsini
If Nick Venturi was still involved in the French Connection, it seems very fanciful that the other 3 are still involved. The Guerini brothers had been retired since the early 1960s and were being decimated by the competition, Francisci invested the money earned by drugs in the gambling business and Orsini bequeathed his network of contacts to younger generation.
Besides Venturi and the Croce-Mondoloni group, more active than ever, two other groups are very important at this time.
-The Fiocconi-Kella group
While they are still robbers, Laurent Fiocconi & Jean-Claude Kella, spend vacations in Spain where they meet Joseph Orsini. Orsini, who knows Fiocconi's family well (the Guidicelli clan in Toulon) and who is seeking to retire, bequeaths his contacts to the 2 young mobsters.
From the end of the 60's they organize several shipments thanks to the boat "Le Caprice Des Temps", a fishing boat bound for Florida, most often for Louis Cirillo.
Associated with several other mobsters like Jo Signoli or Francis "Le Belge" Vanverberghe they organized a shipment of 425 kilos in 1972. Bad luck, the customs who found it strange that a fishing boat did not fish anything, watched the boat. It was the biggest seizure ever made at the time. The law on drug convictions having also changed (20 years instead of 5 before), the captain of the boat is sentenced to 20 years and has several million in fines. Fiocconi & Kella gets 25 years in the USA and Vanverberghe 11.
-The Auguste Ricord group
Like these former Gestapist friends, Ricord fled to America, but he to the South, in Argentina, from 1947 (he had stayed in Spain before). Some rumors say that he would have started his drug business thanks to the money he would have stolen during the war. What seems very fanciful to me because he was only officially active in the traffic in the mid-1960s. What is not impossible however, is that he brought back a jackpot to organize his escape. Anyway, he began his career in Argentina and set up several nightclubs, and also took care of French gangsters on the run, who took the road to South America to escape extradition treaties.
He settled permanently in Paraguay in 1958, set up a motel-restaurant, the Paris-Niza, and established links with the Paraguayan dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner and Sicilian mafiosis.
Among his lieutenants (almost all wanted criminals) we find his nephew Charles Bonsignoure, Claude Patsou, Nonce Luccarotti (robber), Christian David (assassin in 1966 in Paris of Commissioner Galibert), André Condemine (who notably participated in a bloody armed robbery in Mulhouse in 1958), François Chiappe (pimp who shot dead a competitor in Paris in 1964), Lucien Sarti (assassin of a Belgian policeman in 1966), and is also in contact with gangsters in Marseille like Michel Nicoli, Achille Cecchini or Jean-Jé Colonna.
Dropped by the dictator under pressure from the US State Department and arrested along with Chiappe, Paraguay agreed to extradite him to the United States on September 3, 1972.
Sarti is shot dead by police while trying to force a roadblock. Condemine back in France is shot by the Zemour brothers and David is extradited and sentenced for the murder for which he was accused
Ricord was sentenced in January 1973 by a New York court to twenty years in prison, convicted of having introduced onto United States soil, via South America, more than 6 tons of heroin between 1967 and 1972 The amount of this traffic was estimated at the time at some 3 billion dollars. Suffering from paralysis and aphasia, he was released on March 9, 1983. He returned to Paraguay where he died in 1985.
PolackTony wrote: ↑Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:02 am
The scale of Ricord's operation was very impressive, to say the least. Who were his links in American LCN exactly?
Unfortunately I don't know at all. I know that Ricord had as an associate the brothers Carmine & Michel Russo, Italo-Argentines of Neapolitan origin, who were indirectly connected to a New York trafficker Giovanni Coppola (affiliation unknow to me).
He was also connected to the Neapolitan trafficker Carlo Zippo who himself was connected with Tommaso Buscetta. Buscetta had an associate from NY, Giuseppe Tramontana, but I never really knew his affiliation or if he was really a NY guy or a Zip.
I know it's a bit confusing as an explanation, but unraveling all these networks is so complicated ... From my point of view Ricord mainly dealt with the Sicilians expatriated in South America or with the local traffickers who were traveling to the USA (but maybe I'm wrong)
Speaking of Ricord, the guy almost created a diplomatic incident between the French and American governments as their efforts against the F.C. began to pay off ...
In 1971, a former agent of the SDECE (the French intelligence services at the time), Roger Delouette, was arrested with his van filled with 40kg of drugs in Port-Elizabeth New Jersey. The guy made an excuse that he was in fact on duty and that he was selling drugs to finance an operation and bluntly accused his supervisor of being in the know. We can easily imagine the telephone conversations between the French and American diplomats ...
Finally they realized that he had not been part of the SDECE for a few months and in 1973 Claude Patsou admitted that the cargo was for him
Another great read Fab and thanks. As Polack already said, the scale of those operations was quite impressive.
Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God - Corinthians 6:9-10
