Gangland August 3rd 2023

[Dr031718]

Mikey Nose 'Owns The Bronx,' But He'll Soon Be Away From His Home Base For 11 Months

Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso was pronounced guilty last week of violating his supervised release following a 15-year bid for a mob rubout, and was told that he'll soon be back behind bars for 11 more months. But Mancuso was a happy Mafia boss and all smiles as he and his girlfriend left Brooklyn Federal Court after getting the news from Judge Nicholas Garaufis.

He could easily have gotten two years. At a full-blown hearing, Garaufis heard conclusive evidence that Mancuso had many meetings on Long Island with a gaggle of gangsters, including his underboss, John (Johnny Joe) Spirito — a clear violation of his supervised release.

The hearing came after Garaufis threw a courtroom fit at the feds for what seemed like an attempt to downplay the mobster's get-togethers by allowing Mancuso to admit meeting with ex-cons rather than wiseguys.

But Garaufis, despite noting that the mob boss wasn't in the dock for "jumping a turnstile" but for "being in touch with individuals or members who are associated with organized crime," didn't hit Mikey Nose as hard as he could have, nor as hard as the government wanted.

The judge rejected a government request for a two-year sentence for Mikey Nose, who began his prison term for a 2004 murder as an acting Bonanno family boss and emerged in March of 2019 as the family's official boss. Garaufis opted to mete out a prison term within Mancuso's recommended sentencing guidelines.

Assistant U.S. attorney Michael Gibaldi emphasized that Mancuso's contacts with Spirito and the others were repeated and intentional and were a "flagrant" violation of his supervised release. He argued that Mikey Nose deserved the statutory maximum prison term of two years that he faced.

The prosecutor asserted that taped talks the judge heard — including phone calls between Mikey Nose and a Colombo capo, and three conversations between the same capo and a wired-up FBI snitch — proved that Mancuso was engaging in Mafia business during many of the clandestine meetings he had in 2020 and 2021.

Gibaldi conceded that Mancuso hadn't been convicted — let alone accused — of committing any crimes while meeting with Johnny Joe and members of the Bonanno and Colombo crime family. But he argued that pictures of Mancuso secretly meeting eight other gangsters at dinners, and at RealEyes Optical, his girlfriend Laura Keller's business, showed they were planned get-togethers with persons he was prohibited from seeing — not chance meetings, as he had reported.

In court, and in court filings, the prosecutor noted that unlike Mancuso's written filings and statements to Probation officials that he only met with Spirito and other mobsters when he would "bump into them in the neighborhood," Mancuso "deliberately and repeatedly associated with members" of two crime families in violation of his supervised release.

Mancuso, 68, had been hit with a VOSR containing a special provision against meeting with organized crime members in March of 2022, two days before his supervised release was to end.

In two sessions at which prosecutors told the judge they had agreed to accept a plea deal to a lesser charge, that is, merely meeting with ex-cons, a standard supervised release provision, Garaufis blew his stack at the feds, walked off the bench, and refused to accept the plea deal.

"Put some meat on this bone here for me," Garaufis told Gibaldi and defense lawyer Stacey Richman the first time, in November, when he stated that Mancuso's proposed allocution was merely a "conceptual statement of guilt," not an admission that he had done anything wrong.

"Are you playing me?" Garaufis asked Gibaldi and a probation officer in February when they told him that Mancuso would admit meeting with persons "convicted of a felony" and not with persons who were "involved with organized crime," as the judge had ordered. "I don't like it, and I'm not going to accept it," he said.

In an apparent effort to placate the judge, and convince him they weren't asleep at the switch involving a murderous mob boss, the feds placed 81 exhibits into evidence at Mancuso's hearing in May. In their all-out effort, they included six tape-recorded telephone talks, 11 surveillance photos, eight gangster head shots of ex-cons Mikey Nose met with, and one video walk-talk he had with Johnny Joe Spirito.

In his filing, Gibaldi argued that Mancuso had obviously "misinformed" his probation officer that he had met Johnny Joe "in the neighborhood" 36 times from March of 2020 to February of 2022. "It defies common sense to believe that all of these meetings between the boss and underboss of the Bonanno family were mere chance encounters," Gibaldi wrote, "when Mancuso lived with his girlfriend in Long Island, while Spirito lived in the Bronx."

In addition to Spirito, Gibaldi noted that Mancuso met with another high-ranked underling, capo Ernest (Ernie) Aiello, as well as Colombo capo Vincent (Vinnie Unions) Ricciardo, who told a cooperating witness in a taped talk the day after he met with Mikey Nose and a few of his "skippers," that Mancuso "owns the Bronx."

In her oral arguments to Garaufis, and in her filing, lawyer Richman noted that Mancuso had met Ricciardo and Michael Uvino, the two Colombo mobsters at the heart of his VOSR when they were under investigation by the FBI through a longtime friendship that his girlfriend had with Uvino. She stressed that while the duo were indicted, her client was not charged with a crime.

The attorney argued that from the outset, Mancuso had wanted to "take responsibility" for his actions. She said he was unable to do so, since he was wrongly accused of meeting with mobster John (Bazoo) Ragano. That mistake was made clear at the hearing by Richman's questioning of FBI agent Jarryd Butler about the matter.

Richman also noted that the feds had wrongly asserted that "Mr. Mancuso was involved in bid rigging on a scaffolding project" involving Vinny Unions and another Bonanno soldier. But, again, during "the hearing," she stated, "it was revealed that there was no nefarious attempt to rig any bid."

The attorney downplayed the notion that Mancuso was involved in numerous clandestine meetings to discuss alleged crime family business by noting that many of the meetings her client had with ex-cons were social events that were attended by their girlfriends, wives, and other family members and were unlikely to have included any illegal activity.

Richman asked Garaufis to impose a non-custodial sentence of supervised release. Her fallback position, she told the judge, if he believed that incarceration was necessary, was to impose a prison term at the low end of the 5-to-11 months sentencing guidelines for the VOSR.

In the end, Garaufis came up with a compromise solution in the 17-month-old VOSR. He imposed the high-end number of the sentencing guidelines, which is the prison term that the Probation Department recommended in its Pre-Sentence Report to the judge. Mancuso will have three more years of post-prison supervised release when he gets out, and the judge ruled that his girlfriend's optometry business in Great Neck is off-limits during his next term of supervised release.

Mikey Nose was ordered to self-surrender to begin his sentence on September 6.

"In between now and then," the judge said, "there are no dinners."

Mancuso is the highest ranked wiseguy to be charged with violating post-prison release rules in the episode. His Number 2, underboss Johnny Joe Spirito, who completed a 20-year sentence for the 1999 murder of Gerlando (George) Sciascia on September 1, 2020, is a good bet to be the second highest, sometime before his three-year term of supervised release ends on September 1.

Spirito, 64, had four monthly meetings with Mancuso from August of 2021 to November of 2021 at several locations on Long Island, according to agent Butler's testimony at Mancuso's hearing.

Colombo Family Snitch Snares Two Alleged Russian Gangsters

The FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn got their money's worth — and then some — when they got turncoat capo Richard Ferrara to agree to cooperate against his fellow wiseguys and their codefendants in the blockbuster racketeering case against the hierarchy of the Colombo crime family, Gang land has learned.

Ferrara was the first of the 14 surviving defendants — the family's official boss Andrew (Mush) Russo passed in April of 2022 — to break the ice and publicly plead guilty to racketeering charges in December of last year, a move that was copied by five co-defendants seeking a so-called "global plea" deal.

But Ferrara did more than just cop a plea.

Sources say that while his publicly filed plea agreement called for a recommended prison term of 46-to-57 months, Ferrara, 61, had already agreed to wear a wire, and he was helping the FBI and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office make cases against several so-called Russian gangsters by tape-recording conversations against them.

In recent weeks, two of those defendants each copped guilty pleas surrounding an FBI investigation into the death of Ildar Gazizouline, a 39-year-old Russian immigrant. Gazazouline was killed in a Sheepshead Bay bar known as the Fusion Night Club in June of 2009 and his body was buried in a wooded area in Sullivan County.

His skeletal remains were recovered a year later, and identified in 2012. But the investigation int his death went nowhere, until Ferrara began cooperating.

The first to plead guilty in that case was Dimitri Bediner, a longtime criminal associate of Ferrara's, who was charged with obstructing a federal grand jury investigation into the matter back in April.

Bediner, 58, copped a plea deal two weeks ago to making false statements to FBI agent Joseph Costello, who is also the case agent in the Colombo family case, about the death of Gazizouline, whose body was buried near a home Bediner owned.

Sources say that Ferrara, who had been a partner with Bediner in a car service business as well as in rackets that included gambling, loansharking, and extortion. The secret cooperator renewed acquaintances with Bediner last year and tape-recorded several conversations with him in December and in January of this year in which he discussed the death and burial of Gazizouline's body in 2009.

The sources say that during his tape recorded talks, Bediner, whose plea agreement calls for a prison term between 10 and 16 months, told Ferrara that the Russian businessman had been killed at Fusion and that he had helped transport his body and bury it near his upstate home.

This week, a second alleged Russian gangster, Dmitri Prus, a former bouncer at the Fusion Night Club, and a martial arts expert, also copped a plea deal to making false statements to the FBI about the events leading to the death and burial of Gazizouline. Like Bediner, his sentencing guidelines are 10-to-16 months.

Prus, 45, a native of Ukraine and an Israeli citizen, originally charged with unlawfully obtaining his U.S. citizenship on March 1, 2013 by lying on a citizenship application. The application was filed "just ten days after (he killed) Gazizouline and hid his body" in 2009, according to a detention memo that assistant U.S. attorney James McDonald filed in February.

On Tuesday, Prus pleaded guilty to lying to an FBI agent on February 8 when he stated he had no knowledge about the disappearance of Gazizouline from the Fusion Night Club in 2009. In fact, he admitted, he had assaulted Gazizouline, and had later "transported Gazizouline's body to a location in Sullivan County, NY and helped bury the body in a wooded area."

The charge that Prus had unlawfully obtained his citizenship by lying about crimes that he had committed, which included the death and burial Gazizouline, was dismissed. But his plea agreement does not preclude the possible loss of his citizenship.

"Immigration consequences are the subject of separate proceedings," the signed agreement states, "and the defendant understands that no one, including the defendant's attorney or the District Court, can predict with certainty the effect of the defendant's conviction on the defendant's immigration status."

That's not something that Ferrara, or any of his Colombo crime family case co-defendants have to worry about when they are sentenced.

Ferrara, whose sentencing had been scheduled for July 19, the same day his old friend Dimitri Bediner pleaded guilty, is now slated to face the music for his crimes — and be rewarded for his cooperation — by Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez on October 18.

Feds Agree To Drop Witness Retaliation Charge Against Jailed Gambino Loanshark

Tough talking Gambino associate Chris Bantis crafted a sly defense to federal charges against him: He'd plead guilty to being a loanshark — a bold move that he hoped would make it harder for the feds to convict him of threatening to harm four members of a Brooklyn family years after two brothers had fingered him for being a loanshark.

The plan seems to have worked, Gang Land has learned.

Last week, the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office agreed to defer the prosecution of witness retaliation charges against Bantis. The government also promised to dismiss it outright as long as the longtime mob associate remains on the straight and narrow for three years after he is released from prison for his guilty plea to loansharking charges last year.

If that sounds complicated, it's because it is.

Bantis, 56, has been behind bars since he was arrested on September 9, 2021 after being charged with threatening the sister and nephew of the two brothers numerous times.

Bantis allegedly began making the threats not long after he was released from prison during visits to a store the woman operated near his home in the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn. They allegedly continued from 2018 to September 2021.

In 2013, Bantis was caught on a government tape boasting to one of the brothers he threatened about his longtime ties to Gambino mobsters Michael (Mickey Boy) Paradiso and Thomas (Huck) Carbonaro. Bantis was heard saying, "I will fuckin' shoot (you) non-stop," Bantis stated, according to the government.

He copped a plea deal to loansharking in that case, but denied threatening the sister and nephew of his loanshark victims, and insisted on contesting that allegation at trial. If convicted of the witness retaliation charge, Bantis faced up to 20 years behind bars.

The linchpin of the government's case was the allegation that on September 8, 2021, Bantis "shouted" at the woman and her nephew outside the store, yelling that the family members of the brothers were "rats," and daring the nephew to "come outside and fight," according to an arrest complaint. "Bantis also placed his hand over his waistband and stated to (the nephew) in sum and substance," the complaint said, "I have a gun and I will kill you."

Last year, on the eve of his trial, Bantis pleaded guilty to a single count of loansharking in 2020 and 2021 to eliminate the fact that he was still a loanshark from the case. That would enable jurors to focus on surveillance videotapes that showed that Bantis was across the street from the store on September 8, and that he never approached the store as the woman and her nephew had contended in phone calls to the police and to the FBI agents who arrested him.

The gambit wasn't a complete success, but it worked well enough.

After a week-long trial, Brooklyn Federal Judge Eric Vitaliano declared a mistrial when jurors reported several times that they were hopelessly deadlocked at 6-6, according to a court filing by prosecutors Lindsey Oken and Tara McGrath.

Vitaliano rejected a defense motion to dismiss the case, and for months, prosecutors stated they intended to try Bantis again. But last week, the parties signed a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) that will ultimately end the witness retaliation case against Bantis.

But that's still a few years away.

Bantis still has to complete his prison term for loansharking, for which he awaits a sentence of up to 41 months. It could be less, but three years after he completes it, the government will dismiss the case, with prejudice.

For those three years, Bantis will also have to avoid any arrests, and all contact "whether in-person or through mail, electronic mail, telephone or social media," with all members of the family that he was accused of threatening in 2021, according to the terms of the DPA that prosecutor Oken read into the record last week.

[Dr031718]

Michael Mancuso

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

[AntComello]

Thanks for posting…if Spirito is also on Supervised release why isn’t he in trouble for meeting with wiseguys?

[NYNighthawk]

Thanks for posting…if Spirito is also on Supervised release why isn’t he in trouble for meeting with wiseguys?

excellent observation!

[Pmac2]

The article says he will be violated before his probation ends Sept 1

[SonnyBlackstein]

Amazing that Spirito and Mancuso would think the Feds wouldn't try and VOSR the Boss and Underboss of a family on probation.
These two muppets walk and talk 36 times.

Thanks for the post

[TommyGambino]

So they both get another 3 years supervised release and jail time, they will probably violate it again

[DonPeppino386]

Thanks for posting!

[johnny_scootch]

Amazing that Spirito and Mancuso would think the Feds wouldn't try and VOSR the Boss and Underboss of a family on probation.
These two muppets walk and talk 36 times.

Thanks for the post

They're stupid, they don't give a fuck about jail! That's their business, it's what they do.

[Dante]

Mancuso always looks like an insane person in every picture.

He grins like the Joker.

[PolackTony]

Clearly Mancuso and Spirito just happened to have encountered each other while walking over the Throgs Neck Bridge, 36 times.

[Little_Al1991]

Thanks for posting…if Spirito is also on Supervised release why isn’t he in trouble for meeting with wiseguys?

They charged Mancuso 2 days before his supervised release ended
They’ll get Spirito soon. Not sure as to why they’re waiting

[Little_Al1991]

“The feds placed 81 exhibits into evidence at Mancuso's hearing in May. In their all-out effort, they included six tape-recorded telephone talks, 11 surveillance photos, eight gangster head shots of ex-cons Mikey Nose met with, and one video walk-talk he had with Johnny Joe Spirito.”

We’ve seen a couple of surveillance pictures but would like to see all of the above

[SonnyBlackstein]

Biding his time in the shadows, Joe C knew his time to strike had come!