Gangland August 3rd 2022

[Dr031718]

Mikey Nose Eyes Allegations That Could Send Him Back Behind Bars, Not Retaliating Against His Ex-Acting Boss And His Biker Buddies

Embattled Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso may be forced to have his revenge served cold.

In one of the most bizarre beatdowns in Gang Land history, a gaggle of Mancuso's mobsters suffered a bloody defeat at the hands of crime family rivals and their biker buddies after the boss's crew tried to disrupt the wake last month of the father-in-law of a former Bonanno chief. And while Mikey Nose is likely itching to retaliate, sources and court filings say he is more interested in not disrupting his hopes for a sweet resolution of violation of supervised release (VOSR) charges he is currently facing.

A hearing scheduled for today was put off on Monday to enable his lawyers and the feds to iron out a plea deal for Mancuso who is accused of violating his supervised release by having a series of meetings with Colombo mobsters in 2020 and 2021, according to a court filing. But that filing makes no mention of the dustup that Mikey Nose's loyalists sparked with former acting boss Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano at the Glen Cove, LI wake of mobster Vito Grimaldi that Gang Land told you about last week.

In the filing, Mancuso attorney Stacey Richman stated that she and the government prosecutors "are working on a resolution" of the VOSR and "anticipate" that they will be able to resolve the case without a hearing in two months. She and the government requested an adjournment until early October. His VOSR guidelines call for up to 11 months in prison for the Bonanno boss.

Mikey Nose has to hope that by that time memories of the embarrassing beating that sources say his wiseguys suffered in the July 19 battle royale they had with Cammarano, his brother Dino, and their biker allies will have faded — providing no new outbreak of hostilities occurs.

Meantime, Mikey Nose got some encouraging news concerning his pending VOSR case on Tuesday.

Bonanno capo Jerome (Jerry) Asaro, who faced up to 12 months for his VOSR for meeting the same Colombo mobsters his boss had met — capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo and soldier Michael Uvino — was ordered back to prison for only four months. Mancuso is also charged with having meetings with Bonanno soldier John (Bazoo) Ragano.

Mancuso, who got out of prison in 2019, and Asaro, who was released in 2020, were each snared meeting with Colombo mobsters who were charged last year with being part of a 20-year-long extortion of a labor union along with their Mafia boss Andrew (Mush) Russo. But on their face, the specifics of Asaro's charges are more numerous and at least as serious as Mikey Nose's.

Mancuso, who served 15 years for the rubout of a mob associate in 2004, and Asaro, who had gotten 90 months for racketeering charges that included arson, were both serving three years of supervised release.

Asaro, a family capo, is a second generation Bonanno. His dad, veteran wiseguy Vincent Asaro, scored a big win in 2015 when he won a surprising acquittal of the storied Lufthansa Airlines robbery and the murder of an informer 53 years ago. Jerry Asaro had pleaded guilty to digging up and reburying the informer's remains in 1981. The feds had charged Vinny Asaro with killing the informer, Paul Katz, in 1969, along with James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, the mastermind of the Lufthansa heist.

The younger Asaro, who is 64, was picked up by the feds on 14 tape recorded talks with Ricciardo, the architect of the family's long-running extortion of a Queens-based construction workers union. The Bonanno skipper "met repeatedly in person" numerous times with Vinny Unions, often at his Long Island home, between September of 2020 and April 2 of last year, according to the government's charges.

In late-September, Jerry Asaro enlisted Vinny Unions and Uvino to use numerous "intermediaries" to arrange a meeting with a wiseguy whose identity the feds weren't able to ascertain.

Mancuso and Asaro are both accused, according to a sentencing memo that prosecutors filed with Brooklyn Federal Judge Alynne Ross, of conducting Bonanno crime family business while they were on supervised release. Mancuso is not accused of committing any crimes, but a Mafia boss conducting mob business while on supervised release is usually frowned upon by federal judges.

One of the meetings took place on October 22, 2020, at Ricciardo's home, according to assistant U.S. attorney James McDonald, who wrote that the FBI learned that Vinny Unions had passed "a message from Bonanno boss Mancuso to Asaro" after the duo had "arranged to meet at Ricciardo's home."

In May of last year, McDonald wrote, Vinny Unions and Mikey Nose were involved in a meeting that was attended by the key turncoat witness in the Colombo family case, Andrew Koslosky, a longtime Ricciardo associate who flipped in the middle of the investigation and was wired-up by the FBI in April of last year.

Koslosky "was present for a meeting between Ricciardo and Mancuso, part of which was recorded," the prosecutor wrote. After Vinny Unions spoke with Mikey Nose, he wrote, "Ricciardo placed a telephone call to Asaro" and in a "coded conversation" told him what his Mafia boss wanted him to know.

And in June of last year, in a taped talk with Koslosky, the prosecutor wrote, "Ricciardo described how he had brought his vehicle to Sonny's Collision," an Ozone Park auto body shop where Asaro began working in 2020. Instead of new snazzy detailing, he said he wanted "to have Jerry look for a tracking device" since he feared the FBI was investigating him. The helpful Bonanno capo had accommodated him, according to the feds.

In a tape recorded conversation with Koslosky a few days later, the prosecutor wrote, "Ricciardo relayed that Asaro had placed Ricciardo's vehicle on a lift and observed 'clips' and 'duct tape,' which Ricciardo indicated was consistent with a law enforcement placed tracking device" on the car.

Judge Ross rejected a pitch by Asaro's lawyer Lawrence Fisher, who sought a sentence of six months of home detention and six months of supervised release because Asaro was the caretaker of his ailing mom and because his health problems were exacerbated by the failure of his federal jailers to deal with them while he was behind bars.

McDonald argued that Asaro's lifelong commitment to Cosa Nostra was a violation of the court's trust and a term behind bars was warranted. Ross ordered the wiseguy to spend two more years of supervised release after he completes his four month sentence.

But the judge did permit Asaro to remain free on $1 million bond for the next ten weeks and keep his job at Sonny's Collision, where he works 11 and 12 hours days, "in the front office, where his responsibilities include insurance claims, customer service and walk-ins without scheduled appointments," according to attorney Fisher.

Come October 13, however, Asaro's boss, James Aurora, who described Jerry as a "reliable and dependable" employee and "the best person on my staff" and who wrote that he "doesn't know how the company would function properly and efficiently if Jerry were not here," will have to figure out a way to make do without him until February of 2023, Judge Ross ruled.

As for the brouhaha at Vito Grimaldi's wake two weeks ago, it's unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime since none were reported to police, and law enforcement officials expect cooler heads to prevail among the feuding Bonannos.

And for readers who missed an update to last week's column shortly after it was published, Bonanno capo Ernest (Ernie) Aiello still insists that he had nothing to do with the fisticuffs at the Dodge-Taylor Funeral Home at Grimaldi's wake.

Before He Hired Thugs To Kill His Mob-Tied Dad, He Had Them Beat Up His Tenants

The feds say they have lots of texts linking Anthony Zottola to an 11-month-long murder-for-hire plot to kill his dad that began in November of 2017. But the close bond between Zottola and the accused Bloods leader whose gangsters killed his mob-linked father in 2018 began in August of 2017 when Zottola allegedly agreed to pay him to "beat up one of his tenants," Gang Land has learned.

In a court filing, prosecutors say they intend to introduce evidence that shortly after Bushawn (Shelz) Shelton met Zottola, "Shelton began texting other co-conspirators about a 'Mafia' or 'Italian' connect" he had met. In a message to an underling on August 8, 2017, who has since pleaded guilty, Shelton texted: "He usually gives me a stack when I beat up his tenants."

Three days later Shelton again texted his gangsta pal, one of three underlings he texted that month about the new source of money that he had found. This text contained the name and address of a tenant who "owed back rent to the Zottolas." It was supposed to be just the start of a lucrative relationship. "Remember I said he got some other big shit lined up for us but I want to knock this out first," Shelton stressed, according to the government filing.

Prosecutors cited several other text messages that Shelton exchanged with his underlings as well as with Zottola regarding deadbeat tenants who needed to be "violated," as Shelton put it. But on August 25, 2017, the texts between Zottola and Shelton took a new turn, indicating that they were now discussing assaulting Zottola's mob-connected dad, Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola.

On that day, the prosecutors wrote, Shelton sent himself a text of "Sylvester Zottola's nickname and home address" and texted co-defendant Branden Peterson that he "need somebody grand father beat up in the Bronx." The granddad was "70 and just need a good ass whooping," Shelton wrote. Their reward was a $1,500 payday.

Peterson staged the first violent attack against Sally Daz two weeks later, on September 8, 2017. The attack, near Daz's Bronx home, "was captured on video surveillance," prosecutors Kayla Bensing, Devon Lash, Emily Dean and Andrew Roddin told Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie in two court filings last month.

Peterson, who copped a plea deal to murder-for-hire charges that cover another plot to kill Sally Daz's son Salvatore in July of 2018, faces up to 20 years in prison. Peterson approached Sally Daz on the pretense of seeking a job, "but then punched Zottola in the face and body repeatedly before fleeing," the prosecutors wrote.

But before he moved on Sally Daz, they wrote, Peterson informed Shelton "about a police presence" near the Zottola home to make sure he should proceed, and he carried out the assault only after Shelton exchanged texts with Anthony Zottola and gave Peterson the okay.

The proscutors say the text evidence that "Zottola offered Shelton money" to assault one of his tenants and his father "is necessary to complete the narrative about the criminal relationship" between the duo and to explain to the jury how "the trust between the two defendants" later "evolved into their conspiracy to commit murders."

After "Shelton accepted the offer" to assault "one of Zottola's tenants" in exchange for money, the prosecutors wrote, Zottola was able to "recruit Shelton to assault his father" and this "pav(ed) the way for Zottola to approach Shelton regarding Zottola's ultimate goal of killing his father."

And the motive, they wrote, was pure greed.

The prosecutors have informed Dearie they plan to introduce evidence that "Zottola, motivated by a desire to run the family business without interference from his father and brother, recruited Shelton to murder (them, and then) used his position within the Zottola family business for his own personal financial gain."

The prosecutors wrote that a month before the July 2018 drive-by shooting of his brother Salvatore, and four months before his father was killed, "Zottola formed the ASZ Maintenance Corp., registered in his name and using his own initials." After his father was killed on October 4, 2018, they wrote, "Zottola began using ASZ Maintenance rather than A&S Maintenance for maintenance services on the family's properties."

The prosecutors also plan to use statements "of surprise and anger" that Sally Daz told "close family members and friends" when he "found out that his son Anthony had moved away from (the) Locust Point (section of the Bronx) unbeknownst to him" as well as what the elder Zattola told them about his plans "to sell Zottola family properties" to prove that greed was what drove the son to kill his father.

Lawyers for Zottola, Shelton, and two other defendants still slated for trial on August 24, Himen (Ace) Ross and Alfred (Aloe) Lopez, have asked Dearie to block the government from telling the jury about any allegations of violence except for the July 11, 2018 shooting of Salvatore Zattola and the October 4, 2018 murder of Sally Daz.

New Jersey Stymies The Hated Waterfront Commission Despite A SCOTUS Ruling Stating It Can't

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has adopted an age-old tactic to get rid of his waterfront watchdog: Do nothing.

Since the state's last commissioner on the bi-state Waterfront Commission, businessman Joseph Sanzari, abruptly resigned on May 16, Murphy has failed to appoint a new commissioner.

In social studies class in grammar school, we learned that's called a pocket veto. By doing nothing until the congressional session ended, we learned, the President can block a bill from becoming law.

Which is roughly what the Jersey governor is doing.

Murphy's decision to not replace Sanzari, a longtime buddy of International Longshoremen's Association president Harold Daggett, has hamstrung the Commission which requires the approval of the Commissioner of each state for almost all of its decisions designed to keep the mob off the piers and loading docks of both states.

Since May the Commission has not been able to remove or suspend any present workers for unsavory or criminal actions. The panel has also been stymied from restoring the privileges to any dockworkers who've applied to have their suspensions lifted, for that matter.

The Commission, which hasn't conducted a public meeting since May 9, is also unable to hire much needed cops, detectives, attorneys and other staffers to fill the slots of employees who have retired or resigned since the Covid-19 pandemic arrived two years ago.

Murphy's non-action appears to violate the March 24 order by the Supreme Court that enjoined New Jersey from "taking action to unilaterally withdraw from the Compact or terminate the Commission pending " a final decision by the Court on the lawsuit that New York filed to block New Jersey's move.

When Gang Land contacted the Governor's office, and asked whether Murphy, who stated when Sanzari resigned in May that he would "be nominating his successor shortly," was violating the March 24 Supreme Court ruling by failing to appoint a new commissioner, his press secretary Alyana Alfaro Post, told Gang Land:

"Governor Murphy made clear in May that he will be nominating a successor to Mr. Sanzari to serve on the Waterfront Commission while New Jersey remains part of it, and intends to make that nomination soon."

Any day now.

[chin_gigante]

As for the brouhaha at Vito Grimaldi's wake two weeks ago, it's unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime since none were reported to police, and law enforcement officials expect cooler heads to prevail among the feuding Bonannos.

20220804_114744.jpg

"Cooler heads prevailed!"

[Dapper_Don]

thanks for posting

[Southshore88]

Thanks for posting

[jmack]

As for the brouhaha at Vito Grimaldi's wake two weeks ago, it's unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime since none were reported to police, and law enforcement officials expect cooler heads to prevail among the feuding Bonannos.

20220804_114744.jpg

"Cooler heads prevailed!"

Take that piece of shit and get off my stoop!

[JohnnyS]

Thanks!

[mike68]

As for the brouhaha at Vito Grimaldi's wake two weeks ago, it's unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime since none were reported to police, and law enforcement officials expect cooler heads to prevail among the feuding Bonannos.

20220804_114744.jpg

"Cooler heads prevailed!"

Take that piece of shit and get off my stoop!

Uncle Philly my ass!

[Waingro]

Thanks for posting.

[Makaveli]

Thanks good read !

[Ivan]

Pretty sure that there was some weird family shit going on between Zottola and his dad, and the money was actually a kind of bonus that he got in addition to the real motive. We'll find out eventually I guess.

[B.]

Sounds like Jerry Asaro is in line with Mancuso, who in turn probably has recognition from the Colombos based on these interactions.

Funny because Massino said three of his preferred candidates to run the Family in the mid-2000s were Mancuso, Cammarano Jr., and Jerry Asaro. Now here they are involved in high-level Family politics in the 2010s-2020s.

[chin_gigante]

It's interesting to look at who lined up behind who in the 2017 split.

Cammarano Faction:

- Joseph Cammarano, Jr. (Acting Boss/ Underboss)
- John Zancocchio (Consigliere) "position"
- Alphonse DiPilato (Captain)
- Joseph Grimaldi (Captain)
- Vito Grimaldi (Captain)
- Joseph Sabella (Captain)

Mancuso Faction:

- Michael Mancuso (Boss) incarcerated
- Anthony Rabito (Consigliere) "title"
- Vincent Badalamenti (former Consigliere)
- John Palazzolo (Captain/ former Acting Boss)
- John Sciremammano (Captain)

Unknown:

- Jerome Asaro (Captain) incarcerated
- John Contello (Captain)
- Joseph DeSimone (Captain) incarcerated
- Anthony Fasitta (Captain)
- Anthony Pipitone (Captain) incarcerated

[Chucky]

It's interesting to look at who lined up behind who in the 2017 split.

Cammarano Faction:

- Joseph Cammarano, Jr. (Acting Boss/ Underboss)
- John Zancocchio (Consigliere) "position"
- Alphonse DiPilato (Captain)
- Joseph Grimaldi (Captain)
- Vito Grimaldi (Captain)
- Joseph Sabella (Captain)

Mancuso Faction:

- Michael Mancuso (Boss) incarcerated
- Anthony Rabito (Consigliere) "title"
- Vincent Badalamenti (former Consigliere)
- John Palazzolo (Captain/ former Acting Boss)
- John Sciremammano (Captain)

Unknown:

- Jerome Asaro (Captain) incarcerated
- John Contello (Captain)
- Joseph DeSimone (Captain) incarcerated
- Anthony Fasitta (Captain)
- Anthony Pipitone (Captain) incarcerated

Was Santora dead by then? If I remember right he had been aligned with Mancuso in the past.