Gangland Sept 22 2022

[Dr031718]

He Didn't Want To Use His White Nissan Altima For The Salvatore Zottola Hit So He Borrowed A Red Nissan Altima For The Job

The June 2018 rubout attempt on the life of Bonanno crime family associate Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola in front of his Bronx home was a total flop. The getaway driver crashed the car, the gun of the would-be triggerman jammed, and he got himself arrested.

A month later, as the story unfolded in Brooklyn Federal Court, the new hit team was ready to set out to kill Sally Daz's son, Salvatore. For this they needed a new set of wheels, though, and the newly assigned driver, Arthur (Scary) Codner, did not want to use his white Nissan Altima for the job.

In the wee hours of July 11, 2018, with the driver who had crashed the car in the failed Sally Daz hit ready to serve as the gunman in the rubout of his son Salvatore, Codner found what he thought was a perfect substitute for his own car, a red Nissan Altima, Gang Land has learned.

It didn't take long. Codner called a buddy, who called a woman friend, and in less than two hours, and for a measly $100 rental fee, he had another Nissan Altima that they could use for the job, according to testimony at the murder-for-hire trial of Anthony Zottola, one of the sons of the late Sally Daz.

The arrangement gave Codner plenty of time to drive from West Palisades Avenue in Englewood, NJ to Tierney Place in the Bronx so Bloods member Himen (Ace) Ross could blow away Salvatore Zottola when he got there.

The owner of the red Nissan used in the shooting of Salvatore Zottola explained last week how she came to trade cars with Codner at about 4AM that morning, and earn $100 for herself. But before she did that, the government used the very reluctant, wild and wooly testimony of her friend, Geleel Brown, to set up her appearance on the witness stand.

Codner has pleaded guilty, but Ross is accused by prosecutors as the gunman in the October 4, 2018 fatal shooting of Sally Daz. They say he was also the shooter who tried to kill Salvatore Zottola at 6:33 AM in front of his Bronx home three months earlier. Alfred (Aloe) Lopez, the alleged driver in the murder of Sally Daz, is the third defendant in the third week of their murder-for-hire trial.

On the stand, Brown, who is 31 years old, admitted to his steady and frequent use of illicit drugs. He'd been abusing drugs "every day since I was about 14," he said. In fact, he had ingested cocaine, crack cocaine, Percocet pain killers, ecstasy and marijuana on the morning of the same day that he testified. But he insisted that despite the drugs he had taken, he was "clear-headed" and "capable" of understanding and answering questions he was asked.

Brown, who was arrested as a "material witness," admitted on cross-examination that he was "high." But he said he was nowhere near as smashed as he was in 2018 when he told a grand jury about the ruse he used to get his friend Naima Reid to drive from her Teaneck home to Englewood after his friend Codner had told him he wanted to use her car for something.

Before Brown took the witness stand, Judge Hector Gonzalez agreed to a request by assistant U.S. attorney Devon Lash to declare him an "adverse" or hostile witness. This enabled the prosecutor to read his grand jury testimony into the record several times. Each time Lash did that, he said he didn't recall the testimony, but if he said it, it was true, since he told the truth in the grand jury.

Lash got Brown to testify, often by citing the grand jury testimony he had given that drug-addled day, that he had called Reid and told her he needed to use her car. But when she got to his home, Brown testified, he had her drive him to Englewood, and he left her there to speak to Codner. He used Uber to get back home about 4:25 AM.

On cross-examination Zottola's lawyer, Henry Mazurek, had a lot of material to work with. Mazurek asked Brown to detail the specific drugs he'd taken that morning. Brown's list included "coke, crack, molly (ecstasy), percs, weed." He was "high" right then, he said, and had been high when he testified before the grand jury four years ago. He said he didn't know when Mazurek asked him how much of each of drug he had taken.

Q. Why can't you tell me?
A. Because I don't measure the doses, I just, you know. . .
Q. How did you take those drugs?
A. Smoke it, sniff it, pop it.
Q. So, for two hours you were taking — you took pills of molly?
A. Yup.
Q. What is molly?
A. It's powder. It wasn't even a pill.
Q. What is it?
A. I couldn't tell you. A concoction of different drugs.

After testifying that he had smoked one pipe of crack cocaine, had snorted some powder cocaine, had smoked a quarter ounce of marijuana (14 to 21 "joints," according to online weed experts,) and that he knew what it meant to swear to tell the truth, Mazurek asked Brown if he felt "capable of telling the truth in your current state?
A. To the best of my ability.
Q. What ability is that, sir?
A. I'm here. I have to answer these questions.
Q. Do you understand what is being asked of you?
A Yes.
Q. Do you remember giving that grand jury testimony?
A. No.
Q. Do you believe you were more high or less high than you are right now when you gave that grand jury testimony?
A. More. I just got discharged from the hospital that morning.

Q . The morning of your grand jury testimony, you got discharged from the hospital?
A. Yes.
Q. For what?
A. I was fighting, but I was under the influence. So, they had to, like, put me to sleep, and then I woke up in the hospital handcuffed. I had an altercation with somebody and they called the police. And when the police came, I was hard to deal with. So, they called the ambulance and they gave me this shot that puts you to sleep. And then when I woke up, I was in the hospital handcuffed.
Q. What happened next that you remember?
A. I got released and I had to show up for the grand jury.

Before he sat down, Mazurek got Brown to admit that on the same day he got out of the hospital in a drugged state in October of 2018, he had smoked pot and taken several Percocet pain killers before he appeared before the grand jury, that he could not remember how long before testifying he had gotten high, and that he doesn't recall what he told the grand jury.

In her own testimony, Reid stated that Codner didn't tell her why he wanted to borrow her car, despite her persistent questioning about it. But she got a good clue a few days later, she said, when "FBI agents and police" arrived at her home "at three in the morning and asked to take my car."

Even before Reid took the stand though, and told the jury about her 4AM trade of cars with Codner who returned her car and took his back later that morning, prosecutor Lash tried — and may have succeeded — in convincing the jury that while Brown is a life-long drug abuser, his account about the early morning hours of July 11, 2018 rang true.

Despite a chorus of defense objections, Judge Gonzalez instructed Brown to answer her two final questions.
Q. Mr. Brown, if the judge told you to report back on Monday and you were you not allowed to take any drugs over the weekend, would any of the answers that you gave today to my questions change?
A. I don't remember the instance you're talking about, so being sober that day wouldn't change anything.
Q So, you're saying if I asked you these very same questions on Monday morning, would your answers be the same.
A. Yes.

This week, Lash played a 6:08 AM video that an MTA bus picked up of Naima Reid's red Nissan Altima as it parked on Giegerich Place to allow the bus to pass on the narrow street a block away from Tierney Place where 25 minutes later a gunman jumped out of that same car and shot Salvatore Zottola three times in front of his Bronx home.

In the MTA bus video, and others that picked up the red Nissan on its journey from Englewood to The Bronx, the license plate and the open rear window that the back seat occupant was unable to close clearly established that Reid's car was the one used in the shooting of Salvatore Zottola as he got home after picking up cash from one of his dad's vending machine locations.

Using a borrowed car instead of stealing one for a gangland-style slaying is not conducive to escaping prosecution, but the alleged use by Codner and Ross of Reid's red Nissan was not as dumb as a Colombo family rubout attempt in 2001.

On July 16, 2001, mob associate Giovanni (John the Barber) Floridia used his own green van in the ambush shooting of mobster Joseph (Joe Camp) Campanella as he left the beach in Coney Island, and was quickly tabbed as the wheelman after a witness described the van and its license plate.

After being convicted, Floridia fingered a mob associate, Michael (Mikey Spat) Spataro, who was miles away from the shooting, and got him convicted, wrongly Gang Land believes, but that's another story we've reported many times.

Prosecutors Turn A Screw-up By Deputy U.S. Marshals To Their Advantage At The Murder-For-Hire Trial

Prosecutors made good use of a surprising blunder by deputy U.S. Marshals in the murder-for-hire trial of Anthony Zottola last week when they placed cooperating witness Ron Cabey in the same room as defendants Himen (Ace) Ross and Alfred (Aloe) Lopez, the alleged hit team that killed mob associate Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola, Gang Land has learned.

The screw-up, which took place on Tuesday, September 13 following a morning session break in the trial, could've turned out much worse if things had turned violent, which they thankfully didn't. But three former federal prosecutors told Gang Land such a goof had never happened in the years they toiled in Brooklyn, and was not an event that had ever occurred as far as they knew.

The foul-up occurred when Cabey was brought back to court to continue his testimony during which he fingered Ross as the getaway driver who crashed their car in June of 2018 after Cabey failed to shoot and kill Sally Daz, the intended victim whom Cabey knew only as "the father," according to assistant U.S. attorney Emily Dean.

In a colloquy before the jury had returned to court, Dean told Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez about the incident after Cabey told her during the lunch break that Ross "called him a rat and said that they know where he's housed (and) they can get to him where he's housed."

Cabey responded in kind and stated "that he was going to beat them up," said Dean, who argued that she wanted to be able to have Cabey testify in open court that Ross threatened him when they were placed in the same cellblock by the deputy marshals who had brought him to court.

Lawyer Elizabeth Macedonio told Gonzalez that she had gotten a "wildly different story" from Ross. He told her that Cabey was the aggressor who precipitated some very nasty back and forth by the duo about what they would do to each other's mother and daughter. Macedonio and the other defense attorneys argued against any testimony about the verbal confrontation.

But prosecutors saw their advantage and went for it.

This is a direct threat made on a cooperating witness who is currently testifying," said lead prosecutor Kayla Bensing, noting that Cabey's testimony would be "fair game for cross-examination" but that the rules of evidence prohibited defense attorneys from bringing out what Cabey or their clients stated. They would have to call a witness to testify about that, she argued.

Gonzalez agreed, and instructed Dean to have Cabey refrain from stating that the confrontation occurred "in the cell block or in the holding area."

Under leading questions from Dean, Cabey testified that Ross, whom he knew as Ace, called him a rat, stated he knew where to find him, and that he was "afraid of retaliation" from Ross, and that "he told me to suck his dick."

In response, Cabey told Ross, he testified, "Suck my dick. When I get out, I'm going to fuck your baby mother, and I told him his daughter could suck my dick, too."

Q. Why did you say those things back to Ace?
A. To get under his skin like he did mines.
Q. How did he get under your skin?
A. By calling me a rat.

U.S. Marshal Vincent DeMarco, a former Suffolk County Sheriff who was appointed by President Trump as the 33d U.S. Marshal in the Eastern District of New York in 2020, did not respond to several phone messages seeking an explanation about what one former Brooklyn federal prosecutor called "a major mistake."

In Gang Land's third call, the deputy marshal who answered the phone stated that the office "does not respond to requests from the media" and told us to call the PIO of the U.S. Marshals Service in Washington. They did not respond either.

Name That Wiseguy! Surprise End-Of-Summer Contest

Just for fun, Gang Land announces a surprise contest with prizes for the first three readers who can name the five Luchese crime family mobsters in the photo below. The picture was snapped by an FBI photographer who spotted the wiseguy quintet meeting outdoors during the height of the COVID pandemic. The photo surfaced last week when mobster Anthony Villani was charged by the feds with running an illegal gambling ring for his crime family.

Villani is the bald guy in the center standing with his hands in his pockets in the middle of a New York City park on May 7, 2020. Seven months after the get-together in the park, the FBI seized $460,000 from the 57-year-old mobster in a probe that ended with him and four underlings hit with racketeering charges for being part of a lucrative 15-year-long bookmaking operation.

Villani headed a "large-scale" operation known as "Rhino Sports" that employed "dozens of bookmakers" in the New York area and made "millions of dollars in profits" for the Luchese family and allegedly earned more than $1 million a year for himself, according to Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

Most of their customers, between 400 and 1300 a week, said Peace, were based in the New York metropolitan area, and like all major mob bookies these days, Rhino Sports was hosted online using secure servers in Costa Rica.

This is the first time Villani's mug has appeared in Gang Land but photos of four of the five mobsters seen talking with him have appeared in these pages before. And prosecutors James McDonald and Antoinette Rangel dropped a helpful clue in their letter asking that Villani and his cohorts be released on bail only "under substantial restrictions and with secured financial packages." They note that the photo includes "members of the (Luchese) Administration."

Okay, we can almost hear a bunch of you already complaining "no fair" — rather loudly too — since you can't eyeball the face of the wiseguy with his back turned toward the camera. That does make it a bit more difficult to figure out who he is, but not impossible. Put your thinking caps on. He's well known in the neighborhood where the group is meeting, and while he hasn't been mentioned recently, his picture has appeared in several Gang Land columns over the years.

Our top prize is a collector's item hard copy of Mob Boss: The Story of Little Al D'arco, The Man Who Brought Down The Mafia, the book by yours truly and Tom Robbins about the late acting Luchese boss. That goes to the first person to name all five mobsters chatting with Villani two years ago.

We hope you weren't expecting big cash prizes. We said at the top this was "just for fun." But the hard cover edition is truly a "collector's item." The only hard covers you can buy now are "used" or "previously owned" books since the publisher has printed only paperbacks since 2015, after selling all 1 million hard cover books — in our dreams at least — that it had printed.

Mob Boss, The Book By Capeci & RobbinsThe second prize — for the person who's the second one to name all five of course — is a Tantor and Blackstone Media audio book by which you can hear Michael Prichard read every word of the book to you. Third prize is a paper back copy of Mob Boss, which, like the hard copy, will be autographed by both authors, unless the winner would rather not have our John Hancocks crease the pages of the book.

This is a quickie one-week contest that ends next Wednesday, September 28, at midnight. One entry per person, please, via email to column02@ganglandnews.com with 2022 Contest in the subject line. Duplicate entries will be discarded. Simply print the names of the five wiseguys from left to right who are with Villani.

We'll announce the winning entries the following week, on October 6. If no one names all five wiseguys, we'll award the top prize to the first person to correctly name four wiseguys, etc., etc., etc. Entries from members, relatives and known associates of the Luchese family, as well as members and relatives of FBI agents and employees of the U.S. Attorney's office will not be considered for any prizes.

Meanwhile, Villani was released under strict house arrest restrictions on a $3 million bond cosigned by five friends and relatives and secured by property. His co-defendants, James (Quick) Coumoutsos, 59, of the Bronx, Dennis Filizzola, 58, of Cortlandt Manor, Michael (Platinum) Praino, 44, of the Bronx, and Louis (Tooch) Tucci, 59, of Tuckahoe, were released on lesser bonds and not confined to their homes while they await trial. The quintet is due back in court October 13.

[Little_Al1991]

Thanks for posting

[Amershire_Ed]

Thanks for posting

[OcSleeper]

Thanks for posting. Could someone post the pictures too?

[Sittite]

7.5 grams split into 21 joints??? Who’s rolling those???

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thank for posting.

I wish Jerry'd pick one spelling of Lucchese and stick with it.
Every week he mixes it up.

Good to hear who's in the pic. DiSimone, DeSantis, Villani, Georgie Neck, Dellorusso sitting. No idea on old guy back turned (Davi? LoDuca? Santorelli?)

[JohnnyS]

Thanks!

[Snakes]

Thank for posting.

I wish Jerry'd pick one spelling of Lucchese and stick with it.
Every week he mixes it up.

Good to hear who's in the pic. DiSimone, DeSantis, Villani, Georgie Neck, Dellorusso sitting. No idea on old guy back turned (Davi? LoDuca? Santorelli?)

I'm sure Johnny1and1 knows

[chin_gigante]

Might be someone we don't have any recent photographs of like Anthony Baratta

[Waingro]

Thanks for posting.

[SonnyBlackstein]

I'm sure Johnny1and1 knows

Maybe he's no 5?

Might be someone we don't have any recent photographs of like Anthony Baratta

Not a bad guess. Getting the band back together. Georgie, Bowat....

[Ryan98366]

I'm sure Johnny1and1 knows

Maybe he's no 5?

Might be someone we don't have any recent photographs of like Anthony Baratta

Not a bad guess. Getting the band back together. Georgie, Bowat....

Sonny, we are sorry for the loss of your leader, Queen Elizabeth. I have changed my avatar image to one of your leaders, Prince Harry. Sorry for your loss.

American finds the British Royal Family to be strange and inbred. I know you have to bow to them and worship them. Sorry for your loss.

[Tonyd621]

$3millon dollar bond on gambling charge? Am I reading that right? Jesus...that's not right. Look at the guy in the front page of the past who raped multiple ppl post release. It's because he's Italian. Tell me I'm wrong.

[OcSleeper]

You're wrong

[Johnny1and1]

Thank for posting.

I wish Jerry'd pick one spelling of Lucchese and stick with it.
Every week he mixes it up.

Good to hear who's in the pic. DiSimone, DeSantis, Villani, Georgie Neck, Dellorusso sitting. No idea on old guy back turned (Davi? LoDuca? Santorelli?)

I'm sure Johnny1and1 knows

lol