Paul Volpe

[antimafia]

^^^^
I think the authors could have been aware of Leonetti’s being interviewed because of the following 2 sentences at the top of p. 85:

It wasn’t until the Scarfo mob began to implode in the mid- to late 1980s that a clearer, more complete picture of Volpe’s Atlantic City manipulations began to emerge. Five insiders from the Scarfo group became government witnesses and helped explain how power shifts in the Philadelphia and Buffalo families had made Volpe’s murder possible.

The 5 insiders from the above excerpt match your screenshot/image from the 1992 correspondence of the Ottawa-based legal attaché to the Director. The book was first published in June 1993. We know that Edwards and Nicaso read 4 books just to get the Philadelphia angle right — I’ll list the books in my next post.

Their book reiterates what Dubro had previously written about Volpe’s “moralism” and outsider status. Volpe eschewed drug trafficking, prostitution, and porn — he considered these businesses dirty and beneath him.

[chin_gigante]

Struck that Fino claimed that Chicago had operations in “part of Canada”. Chicago had links to the Giuseppe Cotroni in the ‘50s, but I’m not aware of Chicago itself having any direct interests in Canada. Did Fino give any further detail there?

The full quote is as follows:

Since becoming the business manager of Local 210, and as one of the trustees for the Laborers International Union Training Fund, I came to know many a mobster and union leader in the Windy City. The mob in Chicago possessed a widespread reach in the geographical area covering parts of California (open territory, any family could operate provided it was not stepping on the toes of another family), Nevada, Colorado, Texas, part of Canada and so on. The Laborers' Union, as well as the Teamsters, Painters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, and Maritime Trades Department of the AFL-CIO were the unions that were almost totally mob dominated.

Some of the Chicago guys Fino mentions meeting at different parts of the book include Aiuppa, Accardo, Solano, Sam Carlisi, and John Serpico. His meetings with Accardo, Solano, and Serpico were about the LIUNA, though he singles Serpico out as being very talkative about the Chicago family's history (though unfortunately he doesn't include any of those stories). Associate Nick DiMaggio (nephew of the Carlisis) was with Buffalo until legal trouble in the mid-1980s prompted him to move back to Chicago to be around Sam Carlisi.

The Buffalo members he describes as being the most open with him in discussions about cosa nostra were obviously his father, Salvatore Pieri (who once wanted to straighten him out), and Todaro Sr (who got on well with Ronald Fino despite not getting on with his father). His father once told him for instance that Roy Carlisi was the "youngest member of the Al Capone outfit" before moving to western New York.

In 1977, Fino also by sheer fluke obtained an FBI report from a homeless man who stole it and was looking to trade it for a union job. He tipped off the FBI to come and get it but saw the report listed his father and Steve Cannarozzo as informants. He wasn't surprised that his father was there due to his disilusionment with cosa nostra, but was surprised to see Cannarozzo listed.

[NickleCity]

@B. and everyone else:

If you can get your hands on a digital copy of Deadly silence: Canadian mafia murders, please read pp. 75–86 from the chapter "Fox Hunt," which I've just re-read in the hard copy. (NB: There is no digital copy on archive.org or openlibrary.org.)

If someone somehow got their hands on the book in digital form and is willing to screenshot and share those pages here, that would be great. I think that NickleCity is familiar with the content of those pages.

I’m not familiar with this book, but you’ve definitely piqued my curiosity.

[NickleCity]

Anyone know anything about a Enzo Volpe, Jr in Buffalo? He purchased a large amount of cocaine in Florida and was one of the first arrests in Operation Snowflake. Later a Vincent Ciffa was arrested as a street level level dealer. There was also a Didio who was aressted. The OCTF indicated there were known apparent ties to the mafia, but later the Buffalo News indicated Vincent Ciffa Jr and Sr went to Vegas to run the telemarketing/debt collections rackets. Recently a Joe Ciffa has been tied to mafia debt collection companies.

[CornerBoy]

In two recent threads I've referenced an article about Paul Volpe's murder. Below is the link to my Evernote item:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s229/sh/ ... c0396f2f95

The story by Adrian Humphreys was published on November 14, 2003.

Depending on what device you use to read the item, you may have to scroll right to see any text that can't immediately be seen in the right margin.

Thanks Antimafia-is there a good book about Bufffalo LCN? I had the misfortune of going there once. Is there a book about all this shit w Volpe and his connnections to usa? thanks a million

[NickleCity]

Not to derail this thread, but here are a couple of articles on the Enzo Volpe I mentioned:


I said it was Ciffa Sr. who was arrested in Operation Snowflake that went to Vegas... That was a mistake... It was his son. Here is an article on Ciffa and telemarketing: https://buffalonews.com/news/ex-buffalo ... 305b4.html

[PolackTony]

Struck that Fino claimed that Chicago had operations in “part of Canada”. Chicago had links to the Giuseppe Cotroni in the ‘50s, but I’m not aware of Chicago itself having any direct interests in Canada. Did Fino give any further detail there?

The full quote is as follows:

Since becoming the business manager of Local 210, and as one of the trustees for the Laborers International Union Training Fund, I came to know many a mobster and union leader in the Windy City. The mob in Chicago possessed a widespread reach in the geographical area covering parts of California (open territory, any family could operate provided it was not stepping on the toes of another family), Nevada, Colorado, Texas, part of Canada and so on. The Laborers' Union, as well as the Teamsters, Painters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, and Maritime Trades Department of the AFL-CIO were the unions that were almost totally mob dominated.

Some of the Chicago guys Fino mentions meeting at different parts of the book include Aiuppa, Accardo, Solano, Sam Carlisi, and John Serpico. His meetings with Accardo, Solano, and Serpico were about the LIUNA, though he singles Serpico out as being very talkative about the Chicago family's history (though unfortunately he doesn't include any of those stories). Associate Nick DiMaggio (nephew of the Carlisis) was with Buffalo until legal trouble in the mid-1980s prompted him to move back to Chicago to be around Sam Carlisi.

The Buffalo members he describes as being the most open with him in discussions about cosa nostra were obviously his father, Salvatore Pieri (who once wanted to straighten him out), and Todaro Sr (who got on well with Ronald Fino despite not getting on with his father). His father once told him for instance that Roy Carlisi was the "youngest member of the Al Capone outfit" before moving to western New York.

In 1977, Fino also by sheer fluke obtained an FBI report from a homeless man who stole it and was looking to trade it for a union job. He tipped off the FBI to come and get it but saw the report listed his father and Steve Cannarozzo as informants. He wasn't surprised that his father was there due to his disilusionment with cosa nostra, but was surprised to see Cannarozzo listed.

I need to check out the Fino book myself.

Tangential, but interesting that Serpico was apparently so knowledgeable. While Serpico was notoriously corrupt and mobbed up, nothing has ever come out to suggest that he was a member (though perhaps him being so talkative was because he wasn’t made). His family, however, was from Acerra, Napoli, an important town in the history of the Chicago Family, so who knows what he heard. I remember that for about 20 years, when one entered the city via the Chicago Skyway from Indiana and passed the Port of Chicago on Lake Calumet, there was a huge billboard proclaiming that John Serpico ran the port. For many, this billboard would have been their first introduction to Chicago. He was Chairman of the International Port District until he got pinched for fraud and money laundering in 1999 with his “comare” and fellow union official Maria Busillo (an immigrant from Salerno), at which point they took his name off the sign.

[NickleCity]

1965 report where the Volpes are said to be the "ruling force" in Toronto under the "direct control" of Buffalo. Also says their stature is equivalent to Randaccio though he was the Family underboss so it's an imperfect comparison in terms of rank. A wiretap revealed that Buffalo capodecina Natarelli reprimanded the Volpes "harshly" for the way they were "running Toronto", referring to their critics as "we".



A subsequent section, possibly from the same wiretap, talks about how Natarelli and the Volpes were attempting to extort $100k from a mining company involved with a casino in the Bahamas. That makes for at least four times where Natarelli was directly supervising/directing/involved in underworld activity with the Volpes in the 1960s.

This source indicates that Natarelli was in charge of Toronto for Buffalo at one point.

[NickleCity]

Thanks for clearing up Sacco's DOD.

Based on what you shared, Falzone was suspected in both the Sciolino murder and Novino attempt mentioned by the witness. If he was also part of the D'Angelo murder that makes him the most likely candidate the source linked to the Volpe hit. Be very interesting if Falzone helped kill Volpe.

So I've always been of the opinion that Todaro ordered the hit on Volpe because Volpe was aligned with the Pieri faction. Todaro reportedly had been battling Joe Pieri for control of the family according to the information from the Palma Boys Club bug. I wrote about the Volpe hit on GBB in 2018 while trying make sense of Otremens and the Papalia hit: http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbth ... ype=thread

As Todaro's "Enforcer" it makes perfect sense that Falzone would have played a role in the Volpe homicide. It fits one the theories that Schneider wrote about and which I highlighted on that GBB thread:

In 1981, Sam Pieri, one of Paul Volpe’s last remaining supporters in the Magaddino Family, died. Volpe was now even more isolated and dangerously unprotected from his enemies while his standing within the family was rapidly deteriorating. For a number of years he refused to pay tribute, and his foray into Atlantic City only confirmed his maverick status. Joe Todaro, who was now in control of the Buffalo family, wanted nothing to do with Volpe. Other American mafiosi, especially Nicky Scarfo, began treating Volpe as a pariah. Todaro’s ascension to the leadership of the Buffalo mob also bolstered his biggest Canadian supporter, John Papalia, who never hid his desire to get rid of his rival.

Below you will find 4 pages of documents in the Todaro FBI files I posted a couple of years ago. These documents mention Toronto, Volpe, Todaro, Natarelli, Pieri, and Longo. My questions are this: Am I way off for thinking that although redacted p. 4 seems to indicate Todaro had a strained relationship with Volpe and perhaps did not like him. Also, I wonder if they show Volpe was closer to Pieri? Or am I just reading too much into this given the amount of redactions in these documents?

[B.]

Excellent work. The earlier circumstantial evidence certainly pointed to Natarelli being the superior of the Volpes in the first half of the 1960s so the report you posted has basis and shows his name was still relevant to Toronto under the Frangiamore/Todaro regime. It also has an explicit reference to Volpe and Papalia as Buffalo members.

The Longo reference makes sense as it was the Longos who Magaddino discussed in relation to the Ontario 'ndrangheta and how their internal matters pertained (or rather didn't directly pertain) to Magaddino. That discussion made reference to Longo in California.

[antimafia]

^^^^
I think the authors could have been aware of Leonetti’s being interviewed because of the following 2 sentences at the top of p. 85:

It wasn’t until the Scarfo mob began to implode in the mid- to late 1980s that a clearer, more complete picture of Volpe’s Atlantic City manipulations began to emerge. Five insiders from the Scarfo group became government witnesses and helped explain how power shifts in the Philadelphia and Buffalo families had made Volpe’s murder possible.

The 5 insiders from the above excerpt match your screenshot/image from the 1992 correspondence of the Ottawa-based legal attaché to the Director. The book was first published in June 1993. We know that Edwards and Nicaso read 4 books just to get the Philadelphia angle right — I’ll list the books in my next post.

Their book reiterates what Dubro had previously written about Volpe’s “moralism” and outsider status. Volpe eschewed drug trafficking, prostitution, and porn — he considered these businesses dirty and beneath him.

As promised:

Mafia Wipeout: How the Feds Put Away an Entire Mob Family by Donald W. Cox; The Boardwalk Jungle by Ovid Demaris (Ovide E. Desmarais); The Plumber: The True Story of How One Good Man Helped Destroy the Entire Philadelphia Mafia by Joseph Salerno, Stephen J. Rivele; Breaking the Mob by Frank Friel, John Guinther.

[Jack Dempsey]

Is there anywhere online where i can watch the "Connections" docu

https://youtu.be/kU6lqJW_PKc

[aleksandrored]

Is there anywhere online where i can watch the "Connections" docu

https://youtu.be/kU6lqJW_PKc

Unfortunately no, this documentary is lost media.

[Jack Dempsey]

Is there anywhere online where i can watch the "Connections" docu

https://youtu.be/kU6lqJW_PKc

Unfortunately no, this documentary is lost media.

Unlabelled on a archive site perhaps