Gangland 12/30/2021

[Dr031718]

Enjoy Fellas. Buon Anno

Takedown Of Colombo Family Hierarchy The Top Story Of The Year

Andrew RussoGang Land Exclusive!Ex-IRA member Joe Doherty, attorney F. Lee Bailey, and turncoat wiseguy Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano each disclosed intriguing details this year about the days that mob boss John Gotti spent at the shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. But the Top Mob Story Of 2021 was the arrest of Andrew (Mush) Russo, the Mafia boss who was detained at the federal lockup in Brooklyn along with a gaggle of Colombo mobsters and a Bonanno family soldier.

Russo, his underboss, his consigliere, and seven other gangsters named in a racketeering case that alleges a 20-year-long extortion of a Queens construction workers union were rounded up and jailed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in September after an FBI probe that received some important help from a snitch who used to sing on Broadway and at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Also detained as violent and dangerous mobsters were three Colombo capos, including Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico, the nephew and heir apparent to the late boss Carmine (Junior) Persico, and Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardi, the accused architect of the decades-long extortion of the president of Local 621 of United Construction Trades & Industrial Employees Union.

James McDonaldAfter six weeks in custody, Russo, who is said to suffer dementia and many other ailments, was released on a $7 million bond after the MDC conceded that it was unable to care for the 87-year-old wiseguy. Bonanno soldier John (Bazoo) Ragano was released on home detention two weeks ago when the MDC failed to provide him medication for the Glaucoma he suffers.

But Skinny Teddy Persico, 58, and six other accused gangsters are still cooling their heels at the MDC. Ricciardo, 76, is still behind bars in North Carolina, where he was nabbed on September 14 when the feds unsealed a 19-count indictment that includes charges of extortion, labor racketeering, drug trafficking, gambling, loansharking, fraud and money laundering.

The case, which includes a total of 14 defendants and has a very tentative trial date in November of 2022, also triggered a handful of other Gang Land Awards for 2021, including Prosecutors Of The Year.

Devon LashThey are the Brooklyn-based assistant U.S. Attorneys James McDonald and Devon Lash. The duo were able to obtain the monster indictment after a relatively short investigation that began in mid-2020 and made use of hundreds of hours of tape-recorded conversations, according to court filings in the case.

McDonald, a Duke Law School graduate who toiled for six years at the Justice Department in Washington, has been with the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office since 2017. Lash, a Fordham Law grad who worked at the New York office of the O'Melveny & Myers law firm after passing the New York bar in 2016, joined the office in October of 2019.

Andrew KosloskySources say the duo crafted the cooperation agreement for Andrew Koslosky, a renowned singer who has had roles in many Broadway and off-Broadway musicals for more than 30 years and who pleaded guilty to labor racketeering, fraud and other charges in August and is the Mob Turncoat of The Year.

Sources say Koslosky, who moved out of his three-bedroom home in Westbury in August, a month before the indictment against Russo and his cohorts was unsealed, is a longtime Ricciardo pal whom he often drove back and forth to a hideaway he has owned in North Carolina for many years.

The sources say Koslosky has implicated Vinny Unions, and his cousin, Dominick Ricciardo, in a shakedown of Local 621 president Andrew Talamo that began in 2001. Koslosky, 63, has also fingered Ragano in training school scams he ran in Queens and in Franklin Square, L.I. selling Occupational Safety & Health Administration cards. The OSHA cards are needed by workers on construction jobsites in the New York area.

Theodore Persico Jr. Dominick Ricciardo, a burly 350-pounder with several health ailments, gets the Jackie Gleason Poor Soul Award. Poor Domenick could be home, but he is still at the MDC because he can't find a single person, other than his cousin Vinny's daughter, willing to co-sign a $150,000 personal recognizance bond to guarantee that he won't run away if granted bail.

"There must be someone out there who isn't a Colombo who this defendant knows who is willing to cosign a bond," Judge Allyne Ross told the Poor Soul's lawyer back in October when she rejected Vinny's daughter as a suretor for her uncle Dominick. "I just cannot imagine there can be no one in his life who can do that," said Ross.

Frank SmooklerSo far, Ross, who gets the Dion (And The Belmonts) DiMucci I Want To Go Home Where I Belong Award for cashing out of the case two weeks ago, is wrong about that, but who knows what the New Year will bring.

Skinny Teddy Persico gets a Knucklehead Award for meeting Russo and other Colombos on his Do Not Associate With list in obvious violation of his post prison supervised release restrictions. Skinny Teddy's meetings will likely mean a return to prison for a couple of years even if he beats all the charges against him in the racketeering indictment.

In a somewhat related vein, lawyer David Schoen gets the Jimmy Cagney You Dirty Rat Award for falsely asserting in a court filing that the imprisoned-for-life Mafia boss Junior Persico, who died while serving prison terms totaling 139 years, was a rat. Schoen, a veteran appeals lawyer who knew better, made the scurrilous claim in a compassionate release motion for Persico rival Victor (Little Vic) Orena, by pointing to a 50-year-old FBI document that made no such claim.

Former union president Vincent Fyfe, the grandson of the late Vincent (Chin) Gigante who flipped and helped the feds put Gigante's son Vincent Esposito behind bars for two years, gets the Bootlegger's Award for getting approval to work in the liquor industry after selling out the 1600 members of his union and being allowed by the feds to "earn" a $300,000 annual union salary for six years while he was actually working for his Uncle Sam.

Former securities broker Frank Smookler gets the Powerball Award for flipping on his cohorts in the $100 million Lottery Winners ripoff and then living large in the U.S. Virgin Island condo he owned with codefendant Frangesco (Frank) Russo. And while Russo cooled his heels at the MDC, Smookler made sure to let his old pal know he was doing just fine. In May, Smookler boated a 39.5 pound mahi-mahi and was front page news as the Top Angler at the Virgin Islands Game Fishing Club's Annual Dolphin Derby Day. For this big catch, Gang Land adds a bonus Big Fish Award.

Appeals Court Judge Richard Sullivan Is Judge Of The Year

Judge Richard SullivanGang Land's Judge Of The Year for 2021 is a Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge who still "maintains a sizeable docket of cases" in Manhattan Federal Court. The top judge also almost pulled off a Gang Land perfecta since he was the leading candidate — make that the only candidate — for Prosecutor Of The Year until the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office arrested and jailed the hierarchy of the Colombo crime family in September.

Richard Sullivan is Judge Of The Year for being the only person in New York's federal criminal justice system to take a government witness to task for associating with convicted felons in violation of the supervised release (VOSR) aspect of the "time served" prison term he got as a reward for his cooperation with his Uncle Sam — this year, last year, or the five years before that.

And no matter what matter is before him, and no matter who the participants are, or whom they represent, no one gets a free pass when Judge Sullivan is on the bench. That goes as well when he's handling one of his own cases, as an unnamed U.S. State Department official learned last month, or when he's sitting with two other judges hearing oral arguments on a case before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

John PennisiLast year, federal prosecutors and probation officials ignored a blatant VOSR by FBI snitch John (J.R.) Rubeo when he went on a podcast with ex-con John Alite. It's what both federal agencies did when cooperating witnesses Frank Pasqua III, Gene Borrello, and John Pennisi — he gets a Call From The Grave Award for the house-shaking sign to flip he says he got from his deceased grandparents — did the same thing in violation of their supervised release provisions.

At Rubeo's sentencing in January, Sullivan castigated the gangster for being "devious and manipulative" and for giving "a black eye to this court and the administration of justice" by going on Alite's show. The judge also chided the government officials who downplayed Rubeo's "serious violation of trust" as a minor misstep that deserved no additional punishment.

Several things came through loudly and clearly at that sentencing — and at every proceeding that the veteran jurist handled in the 46-defendant case that Rubeo helped the feds make during an investigation that was based out of Pasquale's Rigoletto, the landmark Arthur Avenue eatery.

Judge Dora IrizarrySullivan, an assistant U.S. attorney from 1994 to 2005, was appointed to the federal bench in 2007. He was elevated to the appeals court in 2018. This no-nonsense judge tends to know more about most cases before him than the opposing lawyers. Sullivan is never Asleep At The Switch, which is the award that Brooklyn Federal Judge Dora Irizarry gets for not deciding two compassionate release motions before her for 16 months, and still counting.

"I take it seriously," Sullivan steamed as he flayed Rubeo for his violations. "That's why I started this thing rolling," the judge told him. "It wasn't the government. It wasn't the FBI. And it sure as hell wasn't you. You want to make a monkey out of the FBI, or a monkey out of the government, that's fine. But you're not going to make a monkey out of me, or this court."

"You covered your ass a bit," Sullivan continued. "You reached out to the FBI, and after the fact you did a minimal disclosure because you knew you needed to see probation, so you could say, 'Well. I told you, or I tried to tell you. I told somebody.' But the fact is that this is a premediated calculated violation. It was a manipulation."

John Rubeo"Everybody's telling me that you're a good guy, that you got the message, that you haven't committed any crimes," Sullivan continued. "Yeah? So what? That's what's expected of you. Especially after you got a break at sentencing the first time. I'm not going to congratulate you and pat you on the back. I expect absolutely no less."

As a federal prosecutor who was scheduled to argue an appeal of a case that a fellow prosecutor had tried, blurted out during a chance meeting with Gang Land a few months ago, "I'm going over this case with a fine toothed comb because Sullivan is one of the judges on the panel. He always asks tough questions."

That goes for all participants in any proceeding before the judge.

A State Department bureaucrat learned that last month in a seemingly petty case when the agency, which had found the missing passport of Philadelphia mob boss Joseph (Skinny Joey) Merlino in September and promised to return it in 30 days, hadn't done so two months later and had ignored "multiple calls and emails" about the matter from prosecutors.

Michael SpataroSullivan ordered the official to travel from the nation's capital to Manhattan and appear in court at 9AM on Thanksgiving Eve and "show cause why the representative and/or the Department should not be held in contempt of court" for the failure of the agency's 11,000 employees to get Merlino's passport back to him, as they had promised in September.

An amazing thing happened when Sullivan threatened contempt of court. It took only one day for Skinny Joey to receive his passport via UPS's next day air service.

Judge LaShann Dearcy HallIn the case of mob associate Michael (Mikey Spat) Spataro, Second Circuit Judges Pierre Leval, Guido Calabresi, and Rosemary Pooler get the Three Blind Mice Award for stating there were no "adverse consequences" of a prosecutor's wrong legal decision keeping a defense witness off the stand even though Spataro was convicted and has served 17 years of a 24-year sentence behind bars.

The Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office gets the Pinball Wizard Award for being "Deaf, dumb and blind" — like the hero in the Who's 1969 rock classic — to the documentary evidence it got from former U.S. Marshal Michael Pizzi. As Gang Land has written several times, it proves that Mikey Spat was in Bay Ridge when the feds say he was driving a hit man to Bensonhurst to meet the driver of the van that the duo used hours later in a rubout attempt in Coney Island.

Brooklyn Federal Judge LaShann Dearcy Hall also gets an Asleep At The Switch Award for sitting for 18 months on Spataro's motion to throw out a controversial gun conviction and the 10 years it added to his prison term and re-sentence him to time served based on a Supreme Court ruling that questions the application of the gun count in his case, or at least grant him bail.

James Froccaro Is Defense Attorney Of The Year

James FroccaroJames Froccaro earns Defense Lawyer Of The Year kudos for getting a sentence of probation for Joseph Amato Jr., the son of the lovesick Colombo capo whose decision to place a GPS device on his wayward girlfriend's car led to their arrests as well as those of 18 others in a racketeering case, and for his defense work in the 2018 murder of Luchese loanshark Vincent Zito.

In the Amato case, Froccaro worked from the outset to rehabilitate his 26-year-old client by setting him apart from his mobster dad. He exhorted Amato Jr., who was charged with violent activity on behalf of his father, to return to college, earn his degree, and go back to being the good son he was before his old man got out of prison and came home when Amato Jr. was 16.

To be sure, Amato Jr. did what he was told, and cleaned up his act. But in court filings his mom made clear that it was Froccaro who had guided her son away from his dad and back toward his prior existence. The transformation was so vivid that the prosecutor joined Froccaro's request for probation, even though Amato Jr.'s sentencing guidelines were 21-to-27 months.

Joeph Amato Jr.In the murder of Zito, which is slated for trial in the Spring, Froccaro will be able to introduce evidence from a medical examiner and from a medical legal investigator that the murder took place hours after his client, Gambino associate Anthony Pandrella, was seen leaving the house where Zito was later found shot to death on the living room floor.

The feds still have plenty of evidence against Pandrella, and his defense will be an uphill battle. But findings by the government and defense forensic experts that there are DNA traces on the murder weapon of an unknown third person in addition to the DNA of Zito and Pandrella have turned what seemed like an open and shut case three years ago into a whodunnit.

As he does every year, the Grim Reaper called out several leading courtroom giants who helped decide the fates of organized crime figures over the years. The equal opportunity killer also took out some of the major New York based wiseguys who won some major battles in the city's two federal courts but who lost others that doomed them to die behind bars.

Judge Jack WeinsteinBrooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, the maverick jurist who died at the age of 99 a year after he retired following 53 years of dedicated and often brilliant work was a giant among all the men and women who have ever worked in the court system.

He sentenced Vic Orena to life in prison for his 1992 murder conviction and meted out a 12-year prison term to Chin Gigante for his 1997 labor racketeering conviction. In 2008, Weinstein presided over a 62-defendant Gambino family case that he was able to resolve in one year.

The Grim Reaper took three of the participants in two Manhattan Federal Court trials — in 1985-86 and 1988-89 — of a federal murder case with 25 victims, the most murders ever charged in a single indictment.

Joel WinogradHero FBI agent Arthur Ruffels was 86 when he died in January; key government witness Dominick Montiglio was 73 when he passed away in July; defense lawyer Joel Winograd was 81 when he died a few weeks later.

Former Gambino boss Peter Gotti was 81 and serving a 25 year sentence when he died in February. Onetime consigliere Frank (Frankie Loc) Locascio was serving a life sentence for a murder that Sammy Bull Gravano insisted Frankie Loc had nothing to do with, the 1990 murder of Gambino mobster Louis DiBono. But Locascio died before he could get a hearing that was ordered by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Former Gambino capo and International Longshoreman's Association President Anthony Scotto, who never looked back after completing a five year sentence for labor racketeering in 1984, died peacefully at home in August. He was 87.

And Dominick (Donnie Shacks) Montemarano, a colorful Colombo wiseguy and former sandlot football player who palled around with everyone from mob boss Carmine Persico to Hollywood starlet Liz Hurley, was one of 266 persons who died of the COVID-19 virus in his new hometown of Los Angeles on January 9. He was 82.

Dear Reader: No matter where you hang your hat, or where your current station in life is located these days, Gang Land wishes you a peaceful, prosperous, healthy and Happy New Year!

[TommyGambino]

Russo worth a fortune and still fully active at that age, mental. Last of a dying breed

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

[TommyNoto]

A lot of OSHA training scams out there.


https://www.theobserver.com/2021/12/nut ... rney-says/

[joeycigars]

John Pennisi — he gets a Call From The Grave Award for the house-shaking sign to flip,

Jerry couldnt leave it alone LMFAO

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for the post.

Jerry's 'Awards' are cringyer than Steve Carrell giving out Dunder Miflin awards.

[outfit guy]

This guy has nothing to write about. It happens when your sole activity to report was awaiting a call from an FBI source or stopping by the courthouse to sit in on some testimony.

[Rocco]

This guy has nothing to write about. It happens when your sole activity to report was awaiting a call from an FBI source or stopping by the courthouse to sit in on some testimony.

Jerrys days with inside knowledge are long gone.

[Pmac2]

i'll still read. thank you for posting