Gangland March 7th 2024

[Dr031718]

He Was A Cooperating Witness For The Feds, But That Didn't Stop Cookie D'Urso From Giving $50K To An Old Mob Pal Facing The Death House

The astounding undercover career of turncoat Genovese gangster Michael (Cookie) D'Urso ended years ago — but amazing details about his time working for the feds keep popping up.

Most head-spinning was the revelation, detailed in an upcoming book by one of D'Urso's FBI handlers, and confirmed by D'Urso to Gang Land, was that while he was tape recording thousands of conversations as a cooperating witness for the feds against the mob two decades ago, he was coerced into an alleged sexual affair with a female agent.

That stunning tale has been denied by an attorney for former FBI agent Joy Adam. But unlike the alleged sexual hijinks that D'Urso said he was forced to engage in with Adam, the ex-gangster was all too willing to give $50,000 of his own money to aid the legal defense for a mob associate who was charged with five murders and the possibility of the death penalty.

The recipient of D'Urso's generosity was Vito Guzzo, an old pal who had been indicted in 1997 and charged with five mob rubouts as well as the attempted murder in 1992 of Colombo capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo.

D'Urso, who flipped in June 1998, right after he was arrested as the wheelman in a 1996 murder by Guzzo, maintained a soft spot in his heart for the Colombo associate. Sources tell Gang Land that Cookie gave Guzzo $50,000 to help pay his lawyers while he was tape recording talks with dozens of mobsters and helping the feds make cases against the current and former boss of the powerful Genovese crime family.

Asked about the generous donation to someone the feds were looking to convict at the same time that he was helping the government make cases against mobsters, D'Urso, who became a witness four years after he was almost killed by Genovese gangsters, reluctantly acknowledged the gift — and why he made it.

"Vito was the first person out of my circle to check on me when I was in the hospital and he sent $2000 to my wife just in case she needed it," he told Gang Land. "That's why I gave him money for a capital punishment attorney." D'Urso declined to offer other details but did not dispute the fat figure of $50 large ones to his friend's legal kitty.

The donation was not a secret to the feds. On June 18, 1998, in the first of thousands of conversations that D'Urso tape recorded, he talked about the money he was going to give to Guzzo, according to FBI documents obtained by Gang Land. The discussion was with a Guzzo cousin named Maria, who had beeped D'Urso three times a day earlier, according to an FBI report about the taped talk.

During the conversation, according to the report by agents Thomas Krall, Michael Campi, and Michael Sharkey, D'Urso and Maria discussed D'Urso's "ability" to provide "money for legal fees" for her cousin to fight the murder indictment for which Guzzo faced the possibility of the death penalty.

The specifics of Cookie's talk with Maria weren't transcribed in the FBI report. Sources say that after several more discussions with Maria, and with several lawyers, and with Guzzo's older brother Anthony, a Colombo associate who was subsequently inducted into the family, D'Urso gave Anthony $50,000 of his own money to help offset Vito's legal bills.

The roots of D'urso's loyalty to his friend stem from the mid-1990s, sources say, while D'Urso and Guzzo both ran with a Ridgewood Queens-based gang of dozens of young toughs who were loosely aligned with three of the five crime families, known as the Giannini Crew. The duo grew close and formed a pact in which they agreed to work together to kill their hated rivals.

"Their pact was a simple one," said one source. "It was between them. No one else." Guzzo would help D'Urso try and kill the two Genovese gangsters — Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito and Mario (The Baker) Fortunato — who allegedly set him and his cousin Tino Lombardi up to be killed at a card game at the San Giuseppe Social Cub in Williamsburg, in November, 1994. In turn, D'Urso agreed to help Guzzo kill Ricciardo, who allegedly killed Guzzo's dad, in 1987.

Polito and Fortunato were found guilty of the murder of Lombardi and the attempted murder of D'Urso at their 2003 trial in Brooklyn Federal Court. But the convictions were overturned, and the duo was also exonerated of the killing and attempted murder after trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

D'Urso himself made a somewhat cryptic reference to his efforts to loyally work the other side of the street while he was also laboring as an undercover operative for the feds. In an open letter he wrote four years ago to the Genovese family after learning of threats against him by gangsters still furious about his work for the feds, D'Urso alluded to his close bond with Guzzo without mentioning his name.

In the letter, D’urso stated that while he was cooperating he paid for the "capital punishment attorney" for the "one person" who tried to help him "get revenge" when D'Urso was shot in the head and his cousin was killed, noting that his good friend "got 38 years in prison."

D'Urso's friendship with Guzzo was confirmed by another mob turncoat, ex-Gambino associate John Alite. "Back in the day, when we were trying to kill each other," recalled Alite, "Vito and Cookie were an Odd Couple. Vito was a tough guy with a gun, who liked to shoot people; Cookie was tough with his hands," he continued. "He would try to outsmart you, and then beat the shit out of you if he couldn't."

Alite, who flipped in 2007, nine years after D'Urso, told Gang Land that Vito "didn't have too much common sense" but he was "smart enough to know that Cookie had brains and knew how to make money" and "he would do anything for Cookie. They were really close."

Despite D’Urso's long-ago generosity to his old pal, Alite said it would be unwise for D'Urso to contact Guzzo whenever he gets released from prison. "Over my dead body, he should," he said. "Cookie has a soft heart for this guy. But I warn him all the time: 'He was your friend back then. He hates you for what you did, and who you are today.'"

Contacted by Gang Land, D'Urso ducked most questions about his relationship to Guzzo, but confirmed that he had referred to Guzzo in his open letter in 2020.

Sources say that up until Guzzo was arrested in April of 1987, he and D'Urso had often stalked Polito, Fortunato and Ricciardo in efforts to kill each of them, without success. In fact, D'Urso admitted conspiring with Guzzo to murder Ricciardo in 1995 and 1996.

A few months after D'Urso flipped, when prosecutors opted not to seek the death penalty against Guzzo in September, 1998, Guzzo copped his 38-year-plea deal to five murders, including the killing of a Colombo associate who was with Vinny Unions at 7:10 PM on November 2, 1992 when Guzzo tried to kill him to avenge the murder of his father, Vito Sr.

Prosecutors in the racketeering case for which Ricciardo was sentenced last week, (below) say Guzzo shot and wounded Vinny Unions in an ambush attack as he and two mob associates "were driving to a wake of a Colombo captain," Dennis (Little Dennis) Guzzardo, as "retaliation for the murder of Guzzo's father."

Sources say Little Dennis, who had told Guzzo that Vinny Unions had killed his father but got him to promise not to retaliate while he was alive, had died the day before. The sources say Guzzo and a cohort who were wearing Halloween masks and in a stolen van that rammed Ricciardo's car and shot it up with shotguns and pistols, escaped. And that Guzzo made it to Guzzardo's wake that night.

And three years ago, on April 11, 2001, Ricciardo opined to Andrew Koslosky, a longtime underling who had flipped a few days earlier, that Guzzo's plea deal to five murders "for 33 years" (he undersold it by five years) was actually a "cop out to get off the street 'cause you know I would've killed him. 'Cause he thinks I killed his father."

He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but if the Bureau of Prisons decides to designate him to the federal prison in Danbury which is Guzzo's home these days, Vinny Unions might be better served to ask the BOP to find a different place for him to serve his sentence.

Vinny Unions Gets 51 Months For 20-Yearlong Union Shakedown

He was still able to walk when he was arrested in September of 2021 for extorting $624,000 from a construction workers union and jailed as a danger to the community. But Colombo capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo will need a wheelchair to get around while he serves the rest of the 51-month prison term he received for the shakedown last week, Gang Land has learned.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez rejected out of hand Ricciardo's request for a time served sentence of the two and a half years that the ailing 78-year-old mobster has already served for the 20-yearlong shakedown of the union's president. "Nothing" in his body was working anymore, he told the judge. His plan was to leave the Life and retire to North Carolina.

That argument didn't fly, however. But while Gonzalez turned down Ricciardo's get-out-of-jail plea, the judge did impose a prison term more than two years below the 78-month high end of the sentencing guidelines that the feds had sought. So the outcome wasn't as bad as it could have been for the recidivist racketeer who'd managed to commit crimes for decades, even while suffering from heart disease and other ailments.

The feds had the audio tape to prove it. In one tape recorded conversation with a longtime cohort, Vinny Unions cited his heart disease as one reason why he was "not afraid to go to jail." The mobster also claimed he was willing to shoot his suddenly reluctant extortion victim "right in front of his house" if he stopped paying Ricciardo what he often described as his "union pension."

"Let me tell you something," he told turncoat mob associate Andrew Koslosky in June of 2021, a few months before his arrest. "I would fucking shoot him right in front of his wife and kids; call the police, fuck it, let me go, how long you think I'm gonna last anyway?"

Gonzalez said it was "troubling" that in his plea for leniency, Ricciardo did not apologize to the union president he began extorting $2600 a month from in 2001 and whom he continued shaking down while serving three years for another labor racketeering crime. The judge also noted that Ricciardo had voiced no remorse for his decades as a member of organized crime.

"None of that mattered to him" the judge told the gangster's lawyers, Elizabeth Macedonio and Karloff Commissiong, who'd argued that a timed served sentence plus home detention would assure the safety of the community and be just punishment for Ricciardo. "He knew he was sick and he knew that if he got caught this is where he'd end up."

Gonzalez also ordered Vinny Unions to forfeit $350,000, and pay restitution of $280,000 to Andrew Talamo, the president of Local 621 of the United Construction Trades & Industrial Employees Union and serve three years of supervised release when he is released, most likely, according to Bureau of Prisons protocol, in a year or so.

And after his release, Ricciardo was ordered to have no dealings with any unions for 13 years, when he'll be 92.

In court filings, his attorneys stressed that their client suffered "a myriad of conditions for more than 20 years," noting he was "unhealthy" when he was sentenced to 42 months in 2005, and "was unhealthy when he was arrested" in 2021. But since then, they argued, Ricciardo had become "a shell of that man" and had "experienced an alarming decline" due to poor medical care he's gotten at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny.

In court, Macedonio told Gonzalez that when "Ricciardo was arrested in 2021, he put his shoes on and he walked out of the house" with the FBI agents who nabbed him at his wife's home in Waxhaw North Carolina. "He's no longer able to do that," she stated, adding that her client now needs a chair in the shower because it’s too painful for him to stand up, according to the Daily News.

"Judge, I'm done," Ricciardo told the judge, wrote News reporter John Annese. "Nothing in my body is working,' the wiseguy continued. "I'm not going to last that long. My body can't take it anymore. My mind can’t take it. I just want to retire to North Carolina with family."

Though Ricciardo has complained for years that the medical care he received at the New Jersey state facility was substandard, it's definitely not viewed as the worst possible place to be while waiting for the BOP to decide where Vinny Unions should serve the balance of his sentence.

His lawyers asked Gonzalez to defer docketing the sentencing to enable them and the BOP time to figure out a way for Ricciardo to remain at Hudson rather than be transferred to Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, which is viewed as the worst prison in the New York area, to await his designation to federal prison.

The judge ordered the government and defense to let him know by tomorrow whether the BOP will allow Ricciardo to remain at Hudson until he is formally designated to a federal facility.

Where's The loot? Wiseguy Who Couldn't Afford To Hire A Lawyer Gets 10 Years For $1.6M Jewelry Store Robberies

Genovese mobster Frank (Skip) DiPietro, the accused leader of a quintet of ex-cons who stole $1.6 million in jewelry in two daring, early morning armed robberies of Manhattan jewelry stores last year was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week and ordered to pay $1.6 million in restitution.

But it's not likely that DiPietro, or his codefendants who have all pleaded guilty, for that matter, are likely to make any restitution for the jewelry they have admitted stealing. That's because all of them insisted they lacked enough money on hand — or anywhere that the government could find — to hire lawyers to represent them in the case.

Prosecutors described DiPietro as a shrewd and experienced gem thief. He was "a central participant and ringleader in the preparations for and execution" of the robberies, they stated, the man who "physically entered the robbery locations and took the stolen goods at gunpoint."

If so, DiPietro has yet to cash out. Or else he came up emptier than alleged. Either way, he insisted he lacked the dough to hire his own lawyer. As result, he was represented by a court appointed, and paid for, attorney under the Criminal Justice Act.

The four other codefendants, who include Michael Sellick, the son-in-law of Genovese wiseguy Anthony (Rom) Romanello, also came up with empty pockets, opting to use the CJA which guarantees an attorney for any defendant charge with a felony who cannot afford his own lawyer.

Where the jewelry that the Genovese wiseguy and his four cohorts stole, or the money that it was worth, ended up, is a mystery. The subject was barely addressed in any court filings, and neither the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office, nor any of the defense lawyers in the case could, or would talk about it with Gang Land. They either declined to comment or ignored our queries on the subject.

The only exception, according to a court filing by prosecutors Justin Horton and Alexandra Messiter, were the "three loose diamonds (that) were subsequently recovered during a search of DiPietro's residence in Red Bank," NJ a few months after the robberies, when DiPietro and the others were arrested.

But according to the prosecutors, the quintet got away with bags of valuable gems in the January 3 robbery of Banco Jewels on Madison Avenue and the May 20 robbery of a Chinatown jewelry store on Elizabeth Street.

On January 3, they stole "a platinum necklace containing approximately 277 diamonds, with a total combined weight of approximately 72.59 carats; a platinum ring containing 11 diamonds, with a total combined weight of approximately 6.63 carats; and a pair of platinum pendant earrings containing 74 diamonds, with a total combined weight of approximately 16.59 carats," the prosecutors wrote. The value, they noted, was $1.2 million.

DiPietro, Sellick, 68, Vincent Spagnuolo, 66, Vincent Cerchio, 70, and Samuel Sorce, 26, didn't do as well on May 20. But they did manage to get away with "multiple pieces of jewelry and diamonds, with a total value of approximately $416,384," the prosecutors wrote. The "three loose diamonds" recovered at DiPietro's home, came from the Chinatown robbery.

In seeking a prison term of up to 151 months behind bars for DiPietro, the prosecutors wrote that the Genovese mobster, had "brandished a firearm (and) pointed it directly at" an employe in the January 3 robbery and that he had accompanied the gunman. Sellick, in the $416,000 May 20 robbery, and scooped up the jewelry they fled with as Sellick kept the employees at bay.

In addition, they told Manhattan Federal Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, "DiPietro played a key role in spearheading the planning and preparation for the robberies" and in the days preceding the $1.2 million heist had made more than 250 phone calls to Sellick, Cerchio, and Spagnuolo to fine tune their plans for their "brazen high-dollar robberies (that were) committed in broad daylight."

Sellick, who was armed with a handgun during the May 20 robbery and whom prosecutors labelled as "most culpable" along with DiPietro, faces up to 135 months at sentencing later this month. The sentencing guidelines for Sorce, who took part only in the May 20 robbery and is also slated to face the music from this month, are 70-to-87 months.

Cerchio, whose guidelines were 87 to 108 months was sentenced to 69 months, and Spagnuolo, whose numbers were 78-to-97 months received 66 months.

[KCMOb]

Didn't some news outlet make a cryptic reference to Kansas City in regards to the jewelry heist crew? Did anymore come of that? I couldn't really find any connections to KC with any of the names in the story.

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

[OcSleeper]

Thanks for posting. Looks like everyone from that robbery crew is getting off a lot easier than we thought.

Didn't some news outlet make a cryptic reference to Kansas City in regards to the jewelry heist crew? Did anymore come of that? I couldn't really find any connections to KC with any of the names in the story.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/nyre ... roid-share

We talked about it here
viewtopic.php?p=262924&hilit=Kansas+Heist#p262924