Gangland News - 7/8/21

[Chucky]

This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

Longshoreman Loses 430K Gig For Hanging Out With An Old Sammy Bull Pal

Robert Larsen, a longshoreman who's worked on the waterfront for 30 years, has been bounced from his $430,000 a year job as a crane mechanic for associating with a bodyguard-chauffeur for former Gambino underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and with two active Bonanno crime family members, Gang Land has learned.

The Waterfront Commission kicked Larsen off the docks for hanging around with Louis Saccenti, the Bull's ex-bodyguard, and for numerous contacts he had with Bonanno wiseguys Vito Balsamo and Vincent (Vinny Green) Faraci. All three are publicly known organized crime figures who are tagged as persona non grata for dock workers by the Waterfront Commission Act (WCA.)

The bi-state waterfront watchdog acted after Administrative Law Judge Cataldo Fazio ruled that Larsen, an International Longshoremen's Association member since 1986, "must have" known "that Balsamo, Faraci, and Saccenti had criminal ties," and decided not to disclose associations with the three "career offenders" that go back to at least 2012.

The ALJ wrote that dozens of prosecutions and news articles about the trio from 1996 to 2014 were "credible evidence" that Larsen "was well aware of the organized crime ties, allegations, and criminal history of Balsamo, Faraci, and Saccenti." Fazio invoked a "willful blindness doctrine" cited in several federal court decisions, and ruled that Larsen "committed fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation during his sworn interview" with the Waterfront Commission.

"(Larsen) is associating with three La Cosa Nostra figures" who "know how to contact the Applicant if they need anything from him," Fazio wrote in recommending that Larsen be permanently banned from working on the docks.

"The existence of an association with organized crime members, as exists here," Fazio wrote, "creates an unacceptable risk or perception of corruption, compromises the integrity of the waterfront, and is exacerbated by the Applicant's untruthfulness about such associations."

"Moreover," the judge declared in his 41-page ruling, "I find that any attempt at willful blindness or conscious avoidance of the truth on the part of the Applicant does not constitute a defense to a charge of fraud."

Larsen, 64, has been a card-carrying ILA member of Local 1804-1 since 1986. But he had to re-apply for his job with APM Terminals in Elizabeth, NJ in 2016 when the "job category" for crane mechanic changed from "special craft" longshoreman to "maintenance man" at the request of the industry for financial and flexibility reasons.

Larsen held a high-paying job as a crane mechanic on the New Jersey piers, aside from a seven year stretch between 1992 and 1999 when he moved his family to Florida where he opened a pizzeria and Italian ices store called Slice & Ice.

In 2019, Larsen earned $350,000. In January of 2020, the judge wrote, he owned five cars. By the following January his fleet had grown to seven cars, including "a Porsche that he described as a backup vehicle parked at the lot of APM Terminals," Fazio wrote. "During the hearing," the judge wrote, Larson "testified that he now has a different backup vehicle that he parks all day and night at APM Terminals."

Until he lost his job on June 22, Larsen continued to "work" at APM, so to speak, as a crane mechanic under a temporary registration. But since, as judge Fazio noted, Larsen's job "offers him the flexibility to be away from the pier for significant periods of time," much of his "work" consisted of delivering meals to his co-workers in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

From about 2006 until 2013, according to testimony and other evidence at the hearing, Larsen opened and closed several restaurants and other businesses in Highlands, New Jersey, including a real estate business and one that produced mozzarella cheese that he sold to pizzerias in New Jersey.

It was during that decade of multiple failed business ventures that Larsen renewed his contacts with Bonanno family members he knew as a youth, and initiated contact with Saccenti, according to evidence at two virtual hearing sessions. Larsen was charged in March of 2020. After several postponemnts due to the COVID pandemic, virtual sessions were held last November 30 and January 21.

Because Larsen is responsible for keeping cranes mechanically sound so that other longshoremen can move "cargo containers onto and off ships," the judge wrote, he is an "important consideration in the operation of a marine terminal for container operations" and cannot be "compromised by organized crime" ties.

Larsen's continued "presence at the piers or other waterfront terminals in the Port of New York" poses a "danger to the public peace or safety," the judge wrote. "He poses such a danger because each and every act of association and fraud creates an unacceptable risk or perception of corruption and compromises the integrity of the waterfront."

Larsen's undoing began in 2018, after Joseph Graziano, a grandson of the late Genovese underboss Michael (Mickey Dimino) Generoso applied for a longshoreman's job. During a background check investigators learned that Graziano had been with fellow Staten Islanders Saccenti and Larsen at BB King's jazz club in Manhattan a few times, and the Commission began a full bore investigation into Larsen's mob ties.

In 2012, Judge Fazio write, the waterfront investigators learned, Larsen "attended the opening" night of a Sunset Park, Brooklyn strip club, Jaguars, that Vinny Green Faraci ran for several years. They also learned that Larsen was with Saccenti at B.B. King's club "three or four times" from 2014 to 2018, and that Larsen had attended a Golden Gloves boxing tournament in Staten Island with Saccenti.

And the investigators learned that in 2017 or 2018 Larsen "resumed" his association with Balsamo when he ran into his "old friend" from his junior high school days, Fazio wrote. Since then, Larsen has been "texting and talking to (Balsamo) by phone every year," the judge wrote.

Fazio wrote that Larsen had dinner in January of last year with Saccenti, a permanently barred former ILA official who was convicted of perjury in 2005. The meeting with Saccenti took place, a week before Larsen was scheduled to be questioned by Waterfront investigators about his alleged mob ties.

At the January 2020 dinner, the judge wrote, they discussed personal family matters as well as politics and Teddy Atlas, the Staten Island-based ESPN boxing commentator and former trainer of heavyweight champ Mike Tyson, whom Larsen had met through Saccenti at Golden Gloves bouts that they had attended.

"The public nature of (Larsen's) association with Saccenti especially creates a perception of corruption" the judge wrote, noting that Larsen "socialized with Saccenti in public" at B.B. King's, at the Golden Gloves, and he also attended Saccenti's 75th birthday party. And his "wife's Facebook page includes a photograph of (Larsen) with Saccenti, thus broadcasting to anyone viewing that page (Larsen's) relationship with Saccenti," Fazio wrote.

And it is not good, the judge wrote, that Larsen admitted at the hearing that "the frequency" of his meetings with Saccenti, both in public and in private, have increased. During his testimony, the ALJ wrote, Larsen stated: "So in the last three or four months, I would say I have been by his house more than probably ever before."

"(Larsen) repeatedly does favors for Saccenti," the judge continued. "He gave Saccenti a check for $800" to buy tickets for a charity affair run by Teddy Atlas and "distributed banners and brochures" to promote the event for the Theodore Atlas Foundation.

"As argued by the Waterfront Commission," Fazio wrote, "the concerns are what (Larsen) may expect in return and what favors Saccenti will next seek."

In a statement, attorney Edmund DeNoia said Larsen was not "accused of committing any crimes" but "was accused and found liable for violations of the Waterfront Act regarding 'association' with other individuals previously accused of crimes."

The Waterfront Commission's "association" statutes do not "require a finding of a nefarious purpose for the alleged association," the lawyer stated. "Importantly," DeNoia added, Larsen was "not permanently banned" from working on the docks; "he can petition the Commission for reinstatement of his registration" in December.

Editor's Note: Gang Land is taking a Summer Slide next week, but will be back with more real stuff about organized crime in two weeks, on July 22, 2021.

The Bonanno & Colombo Families Make The Big Time — Books By Andy

Gang Land's mob historian emeritus Andy Petepiece hasn't been sitting on his hands since he stopped writing his monthly Ask Andy feature back in December of 2019. He's written not one, but two books that belong on the shelf next to The Mafia Commission book that he penned in 2018.

His latest tome, aptly titled, The Bonanno Family, is a 349-page takeout on the borghata named for the legendary Mafia boss. It contains special insight about Joe Bonanno and Carmine (Lilo) Galante, who set up the crime family's Montreal outpost in the 1950s but was killed in Brooklyn when he tried to bully his way to the top and anoint himself as family boss in 1979.

In "Bonannos in the Wastelands," one of five chapters about the family patriarch, Petepiece makes no bones about his "bias" against Bonanno and son Salvatore, (Bill) "for unsuccessfully trying to rewrite mob history" in their books after they were banished from all Cosa Nostra activity by the Mafia Commission in 1968 and "forever exiled in disgrace" to Arizona.

In that same chapter, Petepiece fesses up to sending Gang Land on a wild goose chase in Tucson two decades ago when he sent us to the Bonanno home on Elm Street that had been bombed back in 1968. The home was no longer there having been razed by the city in 1973 — not for anything related to the bombing — but for what Petepiece described as "road widening."

In four chapters about the "Montreal Timeline," Petepiece details how Galante used his "powerful personality and the aura of the Mafia" to bring both Sicilian and Calabrian gangsters into the Bonanno family, and the riches from the international drug trade into the family coffers.

And in "Rastelli vs. Galante," the author details how the decade-long battle between Lilo Galante and the officially anointed family boss, Philip (Rusty) Rastelli, led to the 1979 execution of Galante on the backyard patio of Joe And Mary Italian-American Restaurant on Knickerbocker Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

There are profiles on brothers Gerald and Joseph Chilli, who ran rackets in New York and Florida, on Anthony Spero, the Bath Beach Brooklyn mobster who rose to family consigliere and served as acting boss, and on Joseph (Bayonne Joe) Zicarelli, whose apartment was bugged by FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover after scores of mobsters were rousted at an Apalachin, NY conclave in 1957.

In The Colombo Family, which was published last year, Petepiece has sections on all the well-known wiseguys in the family's violent history, including Joe Profaci, Joe Colombo, and Crazy Joe Gallo, and the so-called Yuppie Don who made millions of dollars in the bootleg gasoline scam before turning informer, Michael Franzese.

But the author spends a good part of his book — as he should — on the more than 40-year-long reign as family boss of Carmine (Junior) Persico. He took over in the mid-1970s and ruled with an iron hand until his death behind bars in 2019 — even though he was behind bars for the last 34 years of his reign.

Andy takes two chapters for profiles of the 14 mobsters who served as an acting boss for Persico while he was in prison. The lengthy list includes Persico's son Alphonse, and the aging wiseguy whom most authorities say is once again the family's acting boss, 86-year-old Andrew (Mush) Russo, whose last prison stint ended in 2013.

"The future belongs elsewhere," Petepiece wrote. As Gang Land has written, Petepiece notes that a possible heir to the throne is Persico's nephew, Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico, who was released from prison last year, and served on a panel that ran the family for his uncle in 2008.

Turncoat Podcaster Recalls Trial Testimony About A Fellow Rat — Just A Bit Differently

Turncoat Luchese mobster turned podcaster John Pennisi joked last week with the co-host of his MBA and the Button Man podcast as he recalled learning from mobster Frank (Big Frankie) Pasqua that his son, Frank Pasqua III, was a rat.

It happened when Pasqua, who reminded Pennisi of the fictional TV mob boss Tony Soprano, walked up to him outside the Cigar Lounge in Staten Island as Pennisi was about to report in to his skipper, capo John (Big John) Castellucci at his headquarters.

Pennisi recollection of the incident is a bit different from the version he presented during his testimony at the trial of four Luchese members for the murder of Michael Meldish.

At the time, Pennisi told his giggling co-host Tom LeVecchia, who said he was drinking a 2016 Barolo he liked, that Big Frankie knew that Pennisi "was close with" the family's new acting boss, Michael (Big Mike) DeSantis. Pasqua, he said, pulled him over to the side because he wanted to give Pennisi an important message he wanted delivered to DeSantis.

"He had his head down," Pennisi said. "He says, 'You know, my son's wearing a wire. My son went bad.' And he went on to explain to me," Pennisi continued, that "he even taped Frankie, his father," and that he also taped "his own son." Pasqua said he had even heard his son telling Big Frankie's grandson that he could pick any new name he wanted in the Witness Protection Program.

The part of the story that even Pennisi thought was funny, and got him as well as LeVecchia laughing out loud, was that right after he commiserated with Big Frankie, "Big John came over" and says, "You're not going to believe this." Pennisi then listened to his skipper tell the same sad story he had just heard from Big Frankie.

On the witness stand, Pennisi had Big Frankie telling him the bad news about his son "about 20 minutes" after Big John had broken the news to him, not a few minutes before hand, as he stated on his podcast. Gang Land doesn't think that Pennisi changed the scenario to get a laugh out of LaVecchia.

But it is interesting that not long after Big John learned that Frank Pasqua III was a rat — the feds told Big John's attorney and the lawyers for all 17 defendants about that in August of 2017 — he allegedly accused Pennisi of being a rat, according to Pennisi's trial testimony and what he told Gang Land last year.

That's what caused him, Pennisi says, to hide out in Georgia for a few months, and then fight off several attacks by Bloods who were looking to kill him for the Lucheses when he came back to New York, before he got an earth-shattering, glass-shaking message from his deceased grandparents to cooperate with the FBI in October of 2018, as Gang Land reported last month.

It's too bad though, that none of the defense lawyers in the Meldish trial thought to ask Pennisi a single question about the sad news that Big Frankie gave him about his turncoat son, who cooperated with the feds, and was a potential witness at the trial, since the government had brought the subject up during his direct testimony.

[Ivan]

Chucky I think I told you this before but I appreciate how you always post up Gangland without the text all smashed together. For some reason I have trouble reading it when it's like that, lol. Thanks a lot!

[Tonyd621]

I don't understand how the waterfront commission works. So you can lose your job just by talking to a guy with "known" ties to Cosa Nostra, any OC? Or what how does it work? And the person in that job-do they have to have some type of previous conviction of some sort or none at all?

[Tonyd621]

I think it's intrusive to dig that much into your personal life that if your sighed going out to dinner and a music show with someone it can cost you your job. But I mean if thats what you sign up for and you know that going in thats on you.

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

[joeycigars]

Jerry aint leaving Pennisi alone ...a Bone of contention

[desertdog]

430 grand a year? Holy shit.

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

[Pmac2]

Snooze...

[Southshore88]

Thanks for posting!

[Mustangsally]

430 grand a year? Holy shit.

I thought the same thing. That's more than the president makes. A fucking crane operator?

[Pogo The Clown]

You got to love unionized labor. It is a lincense to steal from people. Literally.


Pogo

[Tonyd621]

You got to love unionized labor. It is a lincense to steal from people. Literally.


Pogo

I'm in unionized labor and let me tell it's not like that everywhere. I would give my left nut to have even half his payscale.

[Hired_Goonz]

Thanks for posting. Man, Capeci is becoming really petty in his feud with the MBA and the Button Man to the point that it's not a good look on him. And this is coming from someone who is pretty much predisposed to take his side. He's trying to make it out like Pennisi perjured himself over this little anecdote or what? Who gives a shit whether Big John told him before or after the father did?

[Tonyd621]

Thanks for posting. Man, Capeci is becoming really petty in his feud with the MBA and the Button Man to the point that it's not a good look on him. And this is coming from someone who is pretty much predisposed to take his side. He's trying to make it out like Pennisi perjured himself over this little anecdote or what? Who gives a shit whether Big John told him before or after the father did?

Pennisi should be OK with it. He's all about that independent let your voice be heard journalism. He did call out Capeci first which we think that Capeci was in the wrong based on Pennisis account. It is a little vindictive, but what Pennisi creates a blog out of nowhere (which I like by the way) and calls out Capeci for this perceived slight. Capecis articles have not been what they once were, but the guy put out quality work for decades. If your this amateur (which he admitted to not really knowing how to write) and call him immediately, I mean you kind of get what's coming, No?