Gangland 4/20/2023

[Dr031718]

Sources Say Colombo Capo Is A Snitch; His Lawyer Says No Way

The feds have their first turncoat Colombo wiseguy in more than a decade, Gang Land has learned. Sources say he's a 61-year-old capo named Richard Ferrara, and that he decided to start working for his Uncle Sam following his indictment in the blockbuster racketeering case that charges him, late Mafia boss Andrew (Mush) Russo and the hierarchy of the crime family with a 20-year-long shakedown of a Queens-based construction workers union.

Ferrara, who was released on a $10 million bond 15 months ago, copped a plea deal to racketeering charges in December. At the time of the plea deal there was no indication that the veteran mobster had agreed to cooperate. Defense lawyer David Kirby, who has represented Ferrara, denied the assertion that Ferrara is cooperating with the feds.

In emails and a telephone discussion, Kirby insisted that Gang Land's assertion that Ferrara was cooperating was wrong. He said Ferrara's bail restrictions were modified on several occasions to enable him to leave his Brooklyn home and travel to Florida for "doctor's appointments" with heart specialists and "to rebuild his home" that had been dalamged in Hurricane Ian, as he stated in court filings.

"You have to be very careful about that," said Kirby, noting that "people's lives are in jeopardy if (the assertion that Ferrara is cooperating) is true, or even if it's not true."

It's unclear when Ferrara, who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges that include the extortion of Local 621 of the United Construction Trades International Union in December in a plea deal calling for a recommended prison term between 51 and 63 months, broke his vow of omerta and began cooperating.

But the sources say the feds' newest wiseguy recruit has already been productive: He allegedly helped federal prosecutors in Brooklyn arrest a longtime mob associate last month. The associate has been charged with lying to the FBI about the June of 2009 cold case killing of an inebriated Russian immigrant by a bouncer at a Russian nightclub in Sheepshead Bay.

The mobster's longtime pal, Dimitri Bediner, 58, was also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly stymieing a federal grand jury investigation of the 14-year-old killing of 39-year-old Ilder Gazizouline at the now-defunct Fusion Night Club, allegedly by one of the club's bouncers, according to court filings in the case.

In the early morning hours of Sunday June 21, 2009, according to the court filings, Bediner and others transported the dead man's corpse to a wooded area in Sullivan County and buried it near property that he owned.

The former bouncer, Dmitri Prus, a who had a background in "mixed martial arts," had knocked Gazizouline out and used a choke hold to drag him "to the rear of the nightclub," and left him on a bench "unconscious or dead," where he was later found dead, according to the filings.

Sources say that Bediner's indictment stems from tape recorded admissions that he made to a wired-up Ferrara about Gazizouline's death and its aftermath two months ago. The sources say Ferrara quizzed Bediner about the killing several days before Bediner allegedly lied about his knowledge of the Fusion club killing, as well as his role in burying the body, to FBI agent Joseph Costello.

The sources say that armed with the information that Ferrara had obtained from Bediner about the cold case killing, Costello, who is also the FBI case agent in the Colombo family indictment, visited Bediner at a car service he operates in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn and questioned him. The agent's interview of Bediner took place on February 8, according to the indictment.

lineIt is Bediner's first arrest since 1983, when he was charged and convicted of rape and robbery and ended up serving seven years of a 7-to-21year sentence.

Prus, who was arrested on February 8, the same day Debiner was questioned and allegedly lied to the FBI, was detained for three weeks, but ordered released on a $200,000 bond secured by property, on March 3. Debiner, who was arrested on March 23, was detained for six days, then released on a $100,000 bond, which was also secured by property.

Prus, 44, a native of Ukraine and an Israeli citizen, is charged only with unlawfully obtaining his U.S. citizenship on March 1, 2013 by lying on his application for citizenship. Prus filed the application "just ten days after killing Gazizouline and hiding his body" in 2009, according to a detention memo by assistant U.S. attorney James McDonald.

Prosecutors moved more quickly to indict Prus than Dubiner, because the ten-year statute of limitations for unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship was due to expire on March 1. The indictment came on February 7, and Prus was arrested a day later, according to the docket sheet.

McDonald, who is also the lead prosecutor in the Colombo family case, argued that Prus had good reason to flee the country rather than risk having to serve time behind bars before losing his citizenship following a conviction for getting it illegally. The prosecutor also argued that the ex-bouncer's "unprovoked" and "vicious assault" on the intoxicated bar patron back in 2009 showed him to be a danger to the community who should be locked up while awaiting trial.

Bediner allegedly made false statements when he denied burying the body of a patron who was killed at the Fusion club in 2009. They were false, the indictment states, because Bediner "knew and believed (he) had transported the body of Ildar Gazizouline, who had been killed at Fusion Night Club in June 2009, to a location in Sullivan County, New York, near where Bediner maintained a residential property and thereafter buried that body in a wooded area."

Ferrara's so-called "global" plea agreement makes no mention of cooperation. The signed plea deal bars him from appealing any prison term of 97 months or less as excessive, but the turncoat capo surely expects a lot less time than that when the time comes for him to face the music for his crimes. As it stands, the global aspect of the plea cannot be enforced because only six of the 14 remaining defendants pleaded guilty.

Ferrara's sentencing, which had been scheduled for May 1, has been adjourned without date, according to defense attorney Kirby. The lawyer told Gang Land about the adjournment when we inquired why he hadn't filed a sentencing memo for his client this past Monday, when it was due.

Ferrara, who was detained following his arrest in September of 2021, was released from the Metropolitan Detention Center and confined to his home under GPS monitoring in January of 2022, on the grounds that the MDC was unable to care for the mobster, who has heart disease.

In January and February of this year, when sources say Ferrara met with Bediner in Brooklyn, his bail restrictions were modified to permit him to leave his home so he could visit his cardiologist in Naples, Florida and serve as a general contractor to rebuild his home there, which was damaged by Hurricane Ian, according to a filing by Kirby.

The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment, and Adam Bolotin, the attorney for Debiner, did not respond to emails and repeated phone messages.

Lawyer Barry Levin, who replaced Bolotin late yesterday, told Gang Land that he "look(s) forward to cross examining Mr. Ferrera at trial. He is no different than most informants who prevaricate facts to save themselves after a life of crime. It is obvious to me that Mr. Ferrara is embellishing stories about my client to save his own skin."

The investigation into Gazizoiline's 2009 murder has had many stops and starts since police found his car parked near the Fusion Club after his friends told cops that they had been out with him on Saturday night, June 20, but had left him at the club and never saw him again.

It was revived on April 6, 2011, when the NYC Medical Examiner's Office determined that the skeletal remains that were found by hikers in a wooded area of Sullivan County in May 2010 were Gazizouline's remains.

"After the human remains were identified as belonging to Gazizouline," prosecutor McDonald wrote, Prus was interviewed again by investigators but "lied about his actions on the night of the disappearance and told Sullivan County investigators that he was not familiar with the missing patron from Fusion and did not have any interactions with him."

Sources say the grand jury is still investigating the allegations that Prus was responsible for the death of Ilder Gazizouline.

Wiseguy Who Said, 'I Ain't Afraid To Go To jail,' Thanks Judge For Not Giving Him The Max

He was caught on tape boasting to pals about having no fear of going to jail. But last week, Bonanno family soldier John (Bazoo) Ragano stood in court and thanked the judge for not sentencing him to the seven-plus years in prison that the government was demanding.

Instead, thanks to his early decision to admit his crimes, his failing eyesight, and the traumatic impact of seeing his dad dead on the sidewalk from police bullets when he was only 16, Bazoo will do 57 months in the Big House — despite the best efforts of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office.

Ragano, 61, didn't get the pie-in-the-sky three-month sentence of "time served" that his attorney had sought. But he still did just fine. Judge Hector Gonzalez gave him less than five years in exchange for his guilty plea to loansharking and a $500,000 fraud, and for a drug trafficking charge that was covered by his plea bargain.

The once boastful Bazoo had good reason to thank the judge. And he did at the end of his sentencing. Twice.

The prison term was two and a half years less than the high end of the recommended sentence in Ragano's plea agreement – 87 months – that assistant U.S. Attorney David Reich had asked for. Judge Gonzalez also agreed to push back the mobster's surrender date four weeks, until July 10, to allow Bazoo to attend a late June wedding of a relative.

The sentence will also allow Ragano to complete his latest prison stretch by age 65, as he predicted he would back in April of 2021 during the FBI investigation that would snare him and 14 Colombo mobsters and associates for a slew of racketeering crimes five months later in September of 2021.

The tape-recorded conversation Bazoo had with several cohorts occurred on April 29, 2021, a day after Ragano had slashed the tires of his former paramour's car. The taped talk was a major bone of contention by defense lawyer Joel Stein and assistant U.S. attorney David Reich during the sentencing.

The often-jailed Bazoo said he wasn't worried that his angry ex-girlfriend, would "call the cops" and finger him for the lucrative fraud he'd orchestrated. "I'll just tell them, 'Hey, okay, put me in jail,'" Ragano said. "I ain't afraid to go to jail for this, it's non-violent; I'll get 35 months, 40 months," he continued, clapping his hands for emphasis, "and I’ll be home at 65."

Stein stated that his client was "just a blowhard" who often "says things off the cuff." He argued that Ragano never had any intention of acting on anything he said during his rant about what the lawyer stated was then an ongoing "tit for tat" dispute during which "she slashed his tires" and "he slashed her tires (and) threw garbage" in her car.

Prosecutor Reich countered that "when this defendant makes remarks about violence and makes threats about violence, it's not just bravado, it's not just puffing." Reich noted that Bazoo had "fired shots at police officers" in his long criminal career, and had prior convictions for armed robbery and kidnapping, and stated: "These are real threats."

The prosecutor told the judge that in the same conversation about his ex-girlfriend, Ragano also stated: "I'm not gonna let a girl put me in jail if I can prevent it. I want to go to jail for killing somebody or robbing an armored car. I don't want to go to jail for slapping a woman, that's for damn sure. But if it comes down to it, I have no choice."

Later in the same conversation, Ragano said, "She knows if she gets out of the car, I'll bash her fucking head . . . against the wall," Reich told Gonzalez. "These are real threats. This is not just bravado, it's time and time again. Violent threats. Specific violent threats."

Stein conceded that "Ragano has a criminal history" that is "bad," and that his words "look bad." But the lawyer insisted there was "no proof" that any of his client's boasts of violent actions "actually occurred" and argued that Bazoo was "just blowing off steam. He's a big man, he's been in the streets a long time, and I think he just has a tendency to blow off steam."

Judge Gonzalez noted that Ragano's "very colorful quote" regarding "how much time he could do standing on his head" was "an interesting statement" by a defendant "in real time" about what he "views as a manageable sentence for his conduct." The boast also showed that Bazoo had a keen "understanding of the sentencing guidelines" for the fraud charges he faced in the case, the judge said.

"I do want to get some response from you" about that, Gonzalez told Stein, because "for just that (fraud) offense," Ragano's assessment that he faced 35-to-40 months in prison "probably would have been in that neighborhood."

"Mr. Ragano has been around the block," was the explanation that Stein came up with.

In explaining his sentence, Gonzalez told Ragano that "it may have seemed" he was "making light" of the wiseguy's "colorful" words back in April of 2021. But he wanted the defendant to know that he had taken them into account, in a "rare case" where a defendant is "tape recorded talking about the kind of a sentence that he can in effect do without breaking a sweat."

On the plus side, Gonzalez noted that Ragano was "the first to plead guilty in a large multi-defendant case" with an "expectation" of "some additional credit" at sentencing. He said Bazoo also made a "very strong" and "real effort" to behave himself when he was released from prison 15 months ago due to awful medical care for his serious eye ailemnts. And he endured a "traumatic family history," including "the death of your father in a violent way while you were very young," the judge said.

The specifics did not come up at the sentencing, but as Gang Land wrote two weeks ago, Ragano was 16 years old in September of 1978 when he saw his father lying dead on the street after he was shot and killed by police after a traffic accident in Ozone Park Queens, where his dad worked as a welder.

"That is certainly something that weighs heavily on me," said Gonzalez, stating that he also considered what the judge described as "very heartfelt and legitimate letters" of support that were submitted by Ragano's friends and family members.

"On the other side of the scale," Gonzalez stated were "aggravating factors" that included his "extensive history of association with organized crime," as well as his "history and willingness" to "engage in violence or to threaten violence," and his "tape-recorded" words that indicate a continuing "willingness to engage in acts of violence."

"The fact that you began to engage in (criminal) conduct while on supervised release" also "weighs heavily on me because," said Gonzalez, it indicates "a complete lack of respect for the Court" and the 51-month sentence he received for his 2014 racketeering conviction.

"I'm hoping it won't happen here," said Gonzalez, who ordered Ragano to serve three years of post-prison supervised release when he concludes his prison term in 2027, at age 65.

SCOTUS To Waterfront Commission: RIP

Wiseguys all around the town are smiling as broadly as Tony Soprano is in the Bramhall's World cartoon in the wake of yesterday's expected Supreme Court decision that signaled the demise of the 70-year-old waterfront watchdog that has been rooting out the mob violence and corruption on the piers that was vividly portrayed in the movie classic, On The Waterfront.

"The ruling is more than the mob had any right to expect," said longtime mob buster Ronald Goldstock, who was New York's commissioner on the bi-state agency for 11 years and helped revive the moribund agency when the inspector generals of both states found "serious problems" at the Waterfront Commission including "incompetence, waste and other abuses."

"It means that the mob has successfully used New Jersey and its elected officials to protect the last industry that it dominates," said Goldstock, who was the Empire State's Commissioner from 2008 until 2018.

"The ruling means," Goldstock continued, "that the mob will be able to once again enforce the granting of highly paid low-show/no-show jobs to their favored sons and 'friends,' and that after all the Commission's efforts to diversify the port, it will return to the good old days."

In its unanimous ruling, the high court did not discuss why Congress established the Commission back in 1953. The issue was a question of "contract law," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh opined: "The question presented is straightforward: Does the Waterfront Commission Compact allow New Jersey to unilaterally withdraw from the Compact notwithstanding New York's opposition? The answer is yes."

While some compacts expressly "prohibit, or limit unilateral withdrawal," Kvanaugh wrote that because the compact that Congress created in 1953 "does not prohibit withdrawal," a look at the "background principles of contract law" indicates "that New Jersey may unilaterally withdraw from the Waterfront Commission Compact."

The decision gave no indication on how soon New Jersey will be able to "withdraw" from the Commission. Officials of the now moribund agency weren't answering their phones or responding to emails from Gang Land. But perhaps some info will be forthcoming next week, at the scheduled meeting of the Commission on Wednesday.

But the stated reactions to the ruling were very predictable.

New Jersey Governor Murphy and the powerful International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and the employers who hire the ILA's union workers, the Shipping Association of New York and New Jersey (SANYNJ) that have been pressing the Garden State officials to withdraw from the Commission for a dozen years, were decidedly ecstatic by the SCOTUS ruling.

Murphy said he was "thrilled" by the ruling, stating that the New Jersey State Police was "more capable of taking on the Commission's law enforcement and regulatory responsibilities."

In a prepared statement, ILA president Harold Daggett said the ILA was "extremely happy" with the ruling, and ripped the Commission as a thorn in the side of his workers, according to the Journal of Commerce, a maritime industry news organization.

"The Waterfront Commission long ago abandoned its original purpose, and instead took advantage of the fact that it had no oversight by the New Jersey state government," Daggett stated. "Worst of all, the Commission has made a habit of harassing and retaliating against the honest hardworking women and men of the ILA."

It its statement to the Journal of Commerce, the SANYNJ said it "looks forward to assisting the New Jersey State Police in the transition from the Waterfront Commission and whichever entity New York selects to oversee their ports."

New York was "disappointed" by the ruling, said Governor Hochul."For decades," she said, the Commission was "a vital law enforcement agency, protecting essential industries at the port and cracking down on organized crime. We will continue to do everything in our power to combat corruption and crime, protect the health of our economy, and ensure the safety of New Yorkers.”

[sisterray]

It seems that one of the reasons the Persicos let only their kin have any kind of position in the family is that everyone else is a snitch.

[Tonyd621]

Is he a snitch? It seems like Capeci is stating it as a matter of facts, but he's hearing it second hand. Capecis hearing and his articles these days reflect he is not exactly a spry man these days. If it is true its always the guy that says some sort of thing like "I don't give a fuck about going to jail"

[MoLarryCurly]

Why would he cop out to a deal if he were co operating? Wouldn’t be the first time Capeci labeled a Colombo a snitch and was wrong. Wouldn’t believe this till there’s 100% proof

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

[Uforeality]

Labeling someone a rat is a big deal. I sure hope Capeci doesnt fumble this time around.

[Little_Al1991]

Capeci said Dennis DeLucia was a rat but then backtracked on that.
Ferrara wasn’t exactly facing a substantial amount of time, I don’t see why he’d cooperate
Thanks for posting

[AntComello]

He did say Ferrara has heart disease so many that’s a contributing factor to him ratting.

[Tonyd621]

He did say Ferrara has heart disease so many that’s a contributing factor to him ratting.

Yeah but why go out like that? I would think the opposite

[MoLarryCurly]

Richie talked that life 24/7. I can’t see him flipping over a couple years especially the way he acted/spoke. Gentlemen he was. But much tougher guys have flipped. Shame if it is true. And if it isn’t true, Capeci should pack it in spreading false info for the second time on someone’s situation. It’s not the 1950s no more but false rumors still can have repercussions. Need 100% proof befor putting that label on someone.

[AntComello]

He did say Ferrara has heart disease so many that’s a contributing factor to him ratting.

Yeah but why go out like that? I would think the opposite

True especially only over a few years. I follow Ferrara’s kid on Instagram and he hangs with all the Colombo guys sons so if he is a rat that’s gotta be awkward lol

[Pmac2]

He related to the BF guy. Also there's the lawyer barry Levin whose a persico guy is saying he's a rat and can't wait to cross him. I mean he's obviously the guy telling capeci

[Wiseguy]

Labeling someone a rat is a big deal. I sure hope Capeci doesnt fumble this time around.

Twice would be humiliating. I imagine he did his due diligence this time around before reporting it.

In a prepared statement, ILA president Harold Daggett said the ILA was "extremely happy" with the ruling

I'm sure he is.

[Gustazul]

Thank you for post the articles of the week. Quite interesting about Richard Ferrara, if true, it could be a hard blow for the Colombo family.

[Wally17]

Whats the son's name on Instagram