Gangland 5/11/2023

[Dr031718]

Serbian-American Gangster & Ex-Union Leader Tied Together Forever By A Wired-Up 'Plumbing Contractor' From Long Island

Mileta (Michael Michael) Miljanic, the leader of a Serbian-American gang who allegedly partnered on construction schemes with the Gambino crime family has pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion charges that could cost him $800,000 and three years behind bars, Gang Land has learned.

The guilty plea by Miljanic, the chieftain of an organized crime outfit known as Grupo Amerika, comes almost two and half years after federal prosecutors publicly named Michael Michael as a partner of the Gambino crime family in a New York construction industry racket.

The plea deal does not prevent the feds from charging Miljanic with additional crimes linked to allegations that his business was a "shell company" used by the Gambinos to wash millions of dollars. But Michael Michael seems to be betting that those allegations — and words in a 2020 taped talk in which ex-union leader James Cahill called him a partner-in-crime of Gambino capo Louis (Bo) Filippelli — are just empty words without any hard evidence to back them up.

Sources say the Manhattan U.S Attorney's office is still looking into allegedly corrupt dealings Miljanic had with Filippelli, and other Gambinos. They include Andrew (Sonny) Campo, another capo who has brought millions of dollars into the family's coffers through construction industry rackets; Daniel Fama, a wiseguy it indicted on a bogus murder charge 10 years ago and then dropped, as well as the crime family's consigliere, Lorenzo Mannino, court filings state.

The sources tell Gang Land that the government witness who taped-recorded Cahill stating that he had introduced Miljanic to Filippelli, and that they had quickly become "partners in the construction business," who were "happy as pigs in shit," also taped talks he had with several other Gambino mobsters and a Genovese wiseguy during the two-year-long sting operation.

The busy cooperating witness, who is identified as Employer 1 in court filings, tape-recorded Cahill and nine other ex-officials of Local 638 of the United Association of Steamfitters (UA) as well as a business agent of Local 200 of the United Association of Plumbers, a sister UA local, as they accepted bribes from him, according to court filings.

Sources say that unlike most cooperating witnesses, the Long Island-based informer, who is a "plumbing contractor," according to a sentencing memo filed Monday by Cahill's lawyer, was not jammed up by an indictment, or even worried about an ongoing investigation when he agreed five years ago to wear a wire and tape record conversations with the union officials he snared.

Instead, the motive was personal:

Sources say Employer 1 decided to flip against union officials "he had done business with" for many years when he believed that Arthur Gipson, the business agent of Local 200, was "trying to introduce his (Employer 1's) 17-year-old son into the gangster aspects of the construction business" that he had backed away from years earlier.

"He was furious with Gipson," said one source. "They knew each other for years; his kids called him Uncle Arty and he knew that (Employer 1) didn't want his kid to follow in his footsteps."

Sources say Employer 1 told officials with the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office that he knew union officials who would take graft. That was the genesis of the state and federal agency partnership between the Suffolk DA's office and the Manhattan U.S Attorney's office.

Gipson, 62, "had a long preexisting relationship dating back to the early-2000s" with Employer 1, and accepted a $5000 cash bribe from his old friend on September 20, 2018, and took another $1000 cash bribe four months later, according to a government sentencing memo that asked Judge Colleen McMahon to impose a guidelines sentence between eight and 14 months.

Gipson was sentenced last week to 60 days behind bars, three years of post-prison supervised release, fined $4000, and ordered to pay $6000 in restitution to the government, which fronted the bribe money that he accepted. He was ordered to begin serving his two-month stretch in June.

Sources say that during the probe, the plumbing contractor tape recorded talks he had with two pals of the late John Gotti with whom he had dealings over the years, Gambino wiseguys Caesar Gurino and Thomas (Tommy Sneakers) Cacciopoli. He also taped Genovese mobster Christopher Chierchio, who like Gurino and the government witness, ran a plumbing business.

The informer "discussed possible joint ventures" at an Italian restaurant in Roslyn Heights with Gurino, 69, a co-owner of Arc Plumbing and Heating, where Gotti held a no-show job while he was moving up in the crime family's ranks in the early 1980s, and with Cacciopoli, 73, whom the Dapper Don inducted into his borghata when he was riding high in 1989, the sources said.

The wired-up contractor never had any dealings during the probe with either Miljanic or Filippelli, according to the sources. But they say he also fingered Chierchio, "an old friend" in the plumbing business who was involved in illegal activity and "tape recorded a session with him," according to a reliable source.

The Genovese wiseguy was arrested in 2020 in a $100 million ripoff of three Lottery winners and is slated to be sentenced to five years behind bars for that in June. And in January he was charged with bid-rigging in one of two major construction industry takedowns by the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

Gurino, a capo who was released from prison in 1994, and Cacciopoli, whose last stretch behind bars ended in 2011, have had no trouble with the law in recent years.

It's unclear whether the enterprising cooperator was able to obtain any evidence of current or prior crimes by the mob trio that the feds could use in their ongoing probe. The U.S. Attorney's office declined to discuss that, or the sentencing next week of Cahill.

Cahill's plea agreement with the feds calls for a recommended prison term of 33 to 41 months. But the 74-year-old ex-union boss and former president of the NY State Building & Construction Trades Council is looking at a longer stretch behind bars than he bargained for when he faces the music before Judge McMahon.

In a letter to the defendant and the government, the judge stated that she was "intimately familiar with the facts" of the "eleven-defendant union corruption case" that she has been presiding for over for two years. McMahon, known for her blunt talk, called Cahill "the source of the rot" of the case, and stated that she was "considering an above-guidelines sentence."

"I am aware that corruption permeated the leadership of the two union locals involved, and that the union and its members continue to suffer the impact of these illegal activities," McMahon wrote. "And I am aware that Cahill was the source of the rot," she continued, "not only by taking bribes himself, but by introducing other union leaders to engage in similar criminal activity, which has led to their own guilty pleas and sentence of incarceration."

The guidelines "severely underestimates the extent of Cahill's admitted bribe taking," McMahon wrote, noting that a footnote "reveals that Mr. Cahill has agreed not to dispute the fact that he has taken $100,000 or more in additional bribes over the course of the years." This shows, she wrote, that the agreement "understates the extent of his criminal conduct over the years."

The guidelines calculation "may not be adequate to reflect the harm Cahill did to his locals and to the members of his leadership team, who are convicted felons today because he, their leader, introduced them to a criminal opportunity and encouraged them to play along with the corruption of two union locals," the judge wrote.

"Finally," she stated, "I view general deterrence as a particularly important feature in Cahill's case, and I am concerned that it may not be adequately addressed by a guidelines sentence."

In a detailed 76-page sentencing memo, Cahill's attorney Sanford Talkin sought to refute Judge McMahon's assertion, citing scads of government evidence that he said proved otherwise. The lawyer argued that Cahill deserved less than the 33-month minimum in his plea agreement. He said that while his client, along with his codefendants, enriched themselves by taking bribes, and are guilty of a serious crime, the government has misled her, the public, and the members of both locals that they sold them out.

Cahill is slated to learn his fate next week, after the government makes its case for a guidelines sentence, most likely without arguing too long and hard against one greater than 41 months.

In October, the 62-year-old Miljanic, whose plea agreement also calls for a recommended prison term of 33-to-41 months, will surely note that by then he will have served 32 months behind bars and like Cahill, seek a sentence below his sentencing guidelines when he faces the music before White Plains Federal Judge Philip Halperin.

By then, Michael Michael most likely will also have learned if he has won his bet that the feds had no real evidence linking him to a racketeering scheme with members of the Gambino family.

Turncoat Wiseguy To Testify At Just One Colombo Trial

Turncoat Colombo capo Richard Ferrara will have to testify at a single trial against five former wiseguy "friends" of his and three co-defendants charged with helping the mobster quintet plan to launder money they were planning to steal from a Queens-based construction union they had been shaking down for 20 years, Gang Land has learned.

That's because Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Hector Gonzalez refused to sever the trial of two financial consultants and the girlfriend of a Colombo mobster from the trial of five made men, including two who are accused of threatening violence against a union boss they had been extorting for 20 years.

In the same ruling, Gonzalez also rejected the motion by capo Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico to sever his trial from the other four mobsters on the grounds that he would be prejudiced sitting alongside the same duo, capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo and Michael Uvino, since he is not charged with violence or even threatening violence.

Ferrara, who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in December, is not mentioned in the 11-page ruling. But as Gang Land disclosed in our April 20 column, the capo has broken his vow of omerta and is the first Colombo mobster to have done so in more than a decade. Sources say he has tape-recorded at least one conversation for the government this year.

Ferrara's lawyer, former assistant U.S. attorney David Kirby, who either didn't know that his client had flipped or overtly misstated his client's status in the case when he spoke to Gang Land last month, did not respond to a Gang Land call yesterday.

In his ruling, Gonzalez agreed with the government contention that defendants Albert Alimena, Joseph Bellantoni, and Erin Thompkins, were a "critical part of the central scheme" by the mobsters to extort benefit funds from Local 621 of the United Construction Trades International Union because they were allegedly "the source of the expected profit" from the accounts.

The judge noted that even though the trio was not charged with racketeering, "they have been charged with multiple conspiracies related" to the scheme to steal and launder the funds and that it would be a waste of judicial resources to have testimony about that repeated at a second trial, instead of keeping them joined at trial with the wiseguys.

Albert Alimena, a longtime Genovese family associate who owns a Garden City firm that provides numerous services to various clients in the health care industry, was allegedly brought into the scheme by Vinny Unions to take over as the "third-party administrator" of the benefit fund, a post that would make him responsible for awarding vendor contracts to service providers.

"In exchange for agreeing to become third-party administrator," the government's evidence showed, Gonzalez wrote, that Alimena's company "would allegedly earn $1.1 million so long as he ensured that the Health Fund paid a $10,000 monthly kickback to the Colombo crime family."

In addition, the judge wrote, Thompkins was Ricciardo’s girlfriend, and allegedly worked as Alimena's administrative assistant in the planned but failed scheme. Bellantoni allegedly "pre-selected vendors" who would take over benefit fund contracts in return for kickbacks.

"Finally," Gonzalez wrote, "the Court accepts the government’s representation that the evidence at trial will focus mainly on the scheme to defraud the Health Fund and Labor Union."

According to the indictment, from November of 2020 to September 2021, Alimena, Bellantoni, and Thompkins assisted Ricciardo, Uvino, Persico, family underboss Benjamin (The Claw) Castellazzo, and consigliere Ralph (Big Ralph) DeMatteo as they schemed to "launder" $10,000 a month funds they hoped to extort or embezzle from Local 621's health and benefit funds.

Whatever Ex-Union Big James Cahill Did, He Didn't Hurt His Members

That's the message to Manhattan Federal Court Judge Colleen McMahon from the lawyer for the former president of the NY State Building & Trades Council as he prepares to face the music for his conviction in a construction industry bribery scheme.

According to attorney Sanford Talkin, the feds have "peddled" a false narrative about the case ever since they announced the filing of bribery charges against Cahill. The government, says Talkin, has pushed a "misconception" that Cahill and other union officials had "requested" and taken bribes from a non-union employer to mislead the Court, the public, and their dues paying members to believe that they had been sold out.

"This is important," wrote Talkin, "because it publishes an inaccurate narrative" about the case that causes "the rank and file of the union" to wrongly believe they have suffered as a result when, "no contract or other tangible benefit was ever offered to Employer 1 and no jobs were lost as a result of the conduct" by his client or his codefendants.

While his client admits committing an "indisputably serious" crime, and had a "prominent role" in the case, Talkin wrote that "the evidence shows that while Cahill and his codefendants were willing to enrich themselves, they were resolute in their unwillingness to directly harm the union members" and that "Cahill refused to do anything that would cost union manhours."

In his filing with Judge McMahon, Talkin noted that government "has conceded" that its snitch "never received a single contract or other tangible benefit from Local 638 (or any other union)," and that prosecutors "cannot point to any evidence" that he received or was offered a benefit.

"Yet, despite knowing that the conspiracy did not result in job loss, the government cites victim impact letters decrying the jobs and opportunities that were lost because of the defendants" in 37 letters it received from the 10,000 members of both unions it had solicited to submit "victim impact statements," Talkin wrote.

Talkin submitted excepts from several letters as examples of how the government's "inaccurate" and "uniformed narrative" has wrongly painted Cahill as having sold out their members.

"I have seen families already lose homes," said one misinformed letter writer. "I have seen other homes go into foreclosure. I have seen cars repossessed. I have seen marriage break up due to the financial strain. Sadly, many members have even lost health insurance for themselves and their families."

Talkin wrote that prosecutors Jason Swergold, Danielle Sassoon, Jun Xiang, Frank Balsamello, Marguerite Colson, and Laura de Oliveira, cited "inaccurate facts" in court filings and "conceded serious factual misstatements in two" sentencing memos. In one, he wrote, the defendant was accused of making a "favorable" phone call for "Employer 1 when he had made the call himself."

The attorney told McMahon that prosecutors had "successfully" and wrongly "lobbied Probation to exclude" from the Pre-sentence Report it submitted to the judge "any of the tens of quotes in the transcripts" from conversations that were "in the PSR, in which Cahill and others attempted to persuade Employer1 to sign with the union."

"The government has deemed the inclusion of these facts" was "inappropriate . . . defense advocacy" even though it was "relevant evidence," Talkin wrote. They wanted it excluded, the lawyer argued, "based on the government's theory that the many instances of Cahill attempting to convince Employer 1 to sign must have been 'performative,' despite the fact that several such instances are in one-on-conversations between Cahill and Employer 1."

"The inclusion of facts accurately depicting the events at issue, and in the process undercutting the government's misdirection, is both necessary and appropriate in the PSR," Talkin argued, strongly disagreeing with the government's position that "the purpose of the PSR" does not include what it calls, "defense advocacy."

"The true purpose of the PSR," the lawyer asserted, "is to accurately convey the whole story to the Court, not to provide a tool for the government to convey only its narrative by taking quotes out of context."

To emphasize his claim that the government had wrongly and unfairly swayed McMahon about the case, and most importantly, the degree of culpability of his client, Talkin cited what he called "objectionable assertions by the Court" at several prior sentencings in the case.

In one, McMahon stated that one defendant deserved probation because he "spent a considerable amount of time after taking his one and only bribe trying to talk the person who gave him the bribe into signing a union contract." Talkin stated that "all of the defendants, including Cahill, attempted to convince Employer 1 to sign with the union."

In another one, McMahon stated: "Cahill lined up everybody. We're going to talk about that when we get to Mr. Cahill, believe me. I've got all the things I'm going to talk about when we get to Mr. Cahill. We may be here for a very, very long time."

"Factually," Talkin wrote, "the Court is mistaken. Cahill had no involvement in the introduction of Employer-1 to, at least" five of the defendants, including Arthur Gipson, the Local 200 business agent who triggered the sting operation. While his client "did introduce Employer 1 to several other defendants in this matter," Talkin wrote, "he did so almost entirely at Employer-1’s request."

"Cahill accepts responsibility for these actions but objects to the notion that he brought all the defendants to the conspiracy," he wrote.

Talkin cited the age and health of his client and his wife of 50 years, Marie, the "invaluable work he has done in both his professional and personal life, the numerous "mitigating facts" he cited in his filing, and the long "home detention which was onerous and much more restrictive than the release conditions of any of his codefendants" in seeking a prison term less than 33 months.

"Marie has serious health problems and is very much reliant on her husband," he wrote, and while Cahill has "no serious ailments, (his) health and stamina have declined in recent years" and he is "noticeably slowing down."

His client's crime was "undisputedly serious," he wrote, but it "does not merit that Cahill be separated from Marie for their final years. A sentence within or above the Guidelines range may very well amount to a life sentence for either or both Cahill and his wife."

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

I wonder who Ferrara has caught on tape.

[AntComello]

Thanks for posting.

[Blunts]

Thanks for posting.

[TommyGambino]

People were calling bullshit on Capeci’s claim that Ferrara is a rat not long ago on here lol

[Tonyd621]

Thank you kindly sir. Richard Ferrara flipping is interesting to me. How long has you been a member for? He is giving intel regarding this one indictment and then walks away a free man? You think hes giving up other information too?

[Tonyd621]

People were calling bullshit on Capeci’s claim that Ferrara is a rat not long ago on here lol

I am one of the ones that called bullshit on that. Obviously I was wrong. But he's been a part of the Colombos for a while and only has to testify at this one trial? Must have terminal cancer or some shit.

[Tonyd621]

A rat is a rat but the scope of him informing is far smaller then you would think when you hear the word "informant."

[TommyGambino]

People were calling bullshit on Capeci’s claim that Ferrara is a rat not long ago on here lol

I am one of the ones that called bullshit on that. Obviously I was wrong. But he's been a part of the Colombos for a while and only has to testify at this one trial? Must have terminal cancer or some shit.

It’s a weird one but just because we can’t make sense of it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Who knows, probably saw a way out and thought fuck it

[outfit guy]

How much time was he looking at? 48 to 60 months? I mean, how weak! It's such a joke at this point. He'll go right back to his neighborhood without fear. At best, he'd be asked to leave a restaurant.

[JohnnyS]

People were calling bullshit on Capeci’s claim that Ferrara is a rat not long ago on here lol

I am one of the ones that called bullshit on that. Obviously I was wrong. But he's been a part of the Colombos for a while and only has to testify at this one trial? Must have terminal cancer or some shit.

Capeci has described him before as an ailing capo. He must have serious health problems.

[jmack]

How much time was he looking at? 48 to 60 months? I mean, how weak! It's such a joke at this point. He'll go right back to his neighborhood without fear. At best, he'd be asked to leave a restaurant.

I’m slightly surprised myself as he’s only 60. If he was 75 with no money stashed away, and in poor health, it may make more sense. He could have been involved in the administration when he got out. Interesting decision.

[OcSleeper]

A previous article has said Ferrara has heart disease and has had a heart attack before in the past.

[outfit guy]

Even better, you you get sentenced to a Medical Facility where you're allowed outside to garden and enjoy the sun.

[Tonyd621]

People were calling bullshit on Capeci’s claim that Ferrara is a rat not long ago on here lol

I am one of the ones that called bullshit on that. Obviously I was wrong. But he's been a part of the Colombos for a while and only has to testify at this one trial? Must have terminal cancer or some shit.

It’s a weird one but just because we can’t make sense of it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Who knows, probably saw a way out and thought fuck it

Yeah, Capeci was right. I was wrong. No if, ands, or buts, about it.