Gangland 3/24/2024

[Dr031718]

Federal Assault Trial Finally Set For Jealous Ex-Hubby Of Reality TV Star

It took a forceful federal judge to break the legal logjam after years of delays, but the racketeering and assault case against the owner of a popular New Jersey catering hall who allegedly hired mobsters to assault his ex-wife's then-fiancé: is finally set to go to trial.

The case against defendant Tommy Manzo — operator of the posh catering hall, The Brownstone, in Paterson — is so old that the mobster he's accused of hiring, Luchese soldier John Perna, has already served his 30-month sentence after pleading guilty to his role in the assault of David Cantin.

Another Luchese gangster, James (Jimmy Balls) Mainello, who was allegedly hired by Manzo for a separate home invasion robbery and assault of Cantin and Dina Manzo, has been free on bail since 2021 after serving 26 months in jail after his indictment by the Monmouth County Prosecutors office.

Meanwhile, the original judge in the federal case, the lead prosecutor, and several lawyers for the mob-connected restaurateur, have all left the case.

But on May 20, Manzo is expected to be seated in the dock in Newark Federal Court to face charges of hiring Perna to assault the fiancé of his ex-wife, Dina Manzo, the former star of the reality TV hit, Real Housewives of New Jersey.

In addition to his racketeering trial for ordering Perna's "slapjack" assault of Cantin, who later married the TV star, Manzo also faces trial in state court for stalking Dina and Cantin for years, and for ordering the armed robbery and violent home invasion of the couple's Holmdel, NJ home in 2017.

Except for 10 days Manzo spent behind bars in a county jail before his release on bail in May of 2021, Manzo has been free to run the Brownstone. That's where Perna was provided a free or deeply discounted gala wedding reception for 300 guests in August of 2015 as payment from Manzo for the assault of Cantin a month earlier, according to the indictment.

The two cases have been on hold for three years, as Manzo managed to stall them by hiring and firing several high-priced lawyers who each needed time to familiarize themselves with the cases, until Manzo hired the next attorney, according to court filings in both cases.

Manzo opted "to encourage the delay of his federal trial so he could attempt to resolve his related state charges first," assistant U.S. attorney Kendall Jackson stated in one filing. Jackson didn't know why Manzo thought "resolving his state charges first was to his advantage," she wrote, but "the record shows that he wanted to delay this case for strategic reasons and not because he hoped to resolve it through a plea."

Last week, a Newark grand jury indicted Manzo for a violent crime in aid of racketeering, namely the assault of Cantin in 2015, and for being part of a conspiracy to assault Cantin, and also for falsifying business records in an effort to stymie the FBI investigation into the assault.

On Tuesday, Manzo pleaded not guilty, was released on a $100,000 unsecured bond, and the judge set a trial date of May 20.

Until now, the only real development in either case since Manzo's 2021 arrest in the state assault case, was Mainello's release on bail in July of 2021.

Unlike Perna, who copped a plea deal after he was fingered by a cohort and the wiseguy eyeballed the videotape that caught him assaulting Cantin at a Passaic County strip mall, Mainello has maintained his innocence. He is awaiting trial along with Manzo in Monmouth County Superior Court.

Before that can happen, Manzo has to deal with what federal prosecutor Jackson recently told Judge Wigenton were "extremely serious" assault charges calling for a maximum of 20 years and a guidelines sentence of up to six and a half years behind bars. In her filing, Jackson successfully argued that the charges should be dismissed merely for procedural reasons, without prejudice to prevent them from being re-instated.

"As for the factual background," Jackson wrote, "Manzo was outraged that his former wife became romantically involved with another man (and) rather than accept that, as law-abiding individuals do, Manzo wanted to extract physical revenge." Since he was "unwilling or incapable of doing so directly," she wrote, "he leveraged his catering hall."

"Perna had scheduled an upcoming wedding at that hall" and "Manzo offered Perna a deeply discounted price for that wedding if Perna would violently, physically assault the victim in this case," Jackson wrote.

Manzo wanted Perna to "beat up the ex-wife's new boyfriend" and "demanded that his victim suffer a permanent facial scar," the prosecutor wrote. At trial, she continued, the government's proof will show "that Manzo facilitated the violent assault by providing Perna and his accomplice with personal information about his victim so they could track him down."

"Motivated by Manzo's wedding discount, Perna and his accomplice tracked the victim down" and "in order to inflict the permanent injury Manzo demanded," Jackson wrote, "they didn't simply 'beat' him 'up,' they used a slapjack in an attempt to inflict the permanent injury Manzo insisted upon."

"The Government's evidence and discovery materials provided to Manzo," Jackson added, "include slowed down security camera footage capturing the violent assault."

Since Manzo faces two violent assault trials, and he will have to convince two juries of his innocence in order to avoid incarceration, Gang Land would not be surprised if the restaurant owner figures out a way to cop a reasonable plea deal to resolve both cases.

He's A Pal Of Carmine Pizza But He Doesn't Want To Go To Trial With Him

The feds say he's a bookmaker who should go to trial with mob capo Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito. But Mark Feuer, who is charged only with illegal gambling, says he doesn't belong anywhere near the defense table when his pal faces a slew of racketeering charges including extortion.

If that happens, Feuer says he will be prejudiced since the jury will hear evidence that Polito is a Genovese wiseguy.

Feuer, "a former manager of a lucrative automobile dealership," according to his court filing, has asked Brooklyn Federal Judge Eric Vitaliano for a separate trial. That trial would take "2-3 days at most," his lawyers say, since he is charged only with a "single count" of running an online sports betting website with his friend Polito.

The indictment charges Feuer, 60, and Polito, 64, with supervising a sports betting website — PGWLines.com — that grossed at least $2000 a day from January of 2018 until March of 2020.

Attorneys Gary Farrell and Heather Stepanek point out that Feuer "is not charged with any other criminal conduct" in the seven-count indictment that charges Carmine Pizza and three cohorts with running three other illegal gambling operations, including one in conjunction with the Bonanno family. None of that has anything to do with sports betting or Feuer, the lawyers say.

"Mark's not a bookmaker," Farrell told Gang Land. "He's a bookmaker's dream. He played a lot, lost a lot, always paid."

Farrell and Stepanek argue that "the danger of prejudicial spillover" against their client at a joint trial "is significant" because Feuer isn't charged "with being a member of the criminal enterprise, the Genovese crime family." But in order to convict Polito and the others of racketeering, prosecutors, they say, will be required to prove they are members of the "criminal enterprise."

Feuer, according to his posting on LinkedIn, is a former general manager of Westbury Toyota and has been an expert in the automobile industry for more than 35 years.

"The indictment sets forth the likely evidence the jury will hear" about the allegedly violent "methods and means of the enterprise" members, the lawyers wrote. The methods include a "commitment to murdering persons, particularly members of associates of organized crime families who were perceived as potential witnesses against members or associates of the Enterprise," they wrote.

"The evidence would also likely include references to the purpose of the enterprise," they wrote, namely "to generate money for the Genovese crime family 'through various criminal activities including drug trafficking, robbery, extortion, fraud, illegal gambling and loansharking.'"

"None of this highly prejudicial evidence regarding the Genovese crime family would be admissible if Mark Feuer had his own jury deciding the narrow issue of whether he participated as a manager or supervisor of an illegal sports betting business," Farrell and Stepanek wrote.

Feuer's lawyers argue that prosecutors plan to introduce evidence of serious "money laundering" allegations against Polito and the others. This "could very easily paint the defendant as someone who is guilty by association, notwithstanding any jury instructions to the contrary" even though "Feuer is not implicated in any way in this serious charge," the lawyers wrote.

"The case against (Feuer) will primarily come down to one witness," the lawyers wrote. But "the voluminous wiretap evidence, video surveillance and bank records that will be introduced against the other defendants" at an estimated "joint 2-3-week trial" will "prevent the jury from making a reliable judgment about Mr. Feuer's guilt or innocence in the case," the lawyers argued.

Prosecutors Anna Karamigios and Sean Sherman disagree. They told Vitaliano that the sports betting charge is "integrally related" to an allegation that Polito "attempt(ed) to extort" money from a losing sports bettor. They argued that Feuer cannot "demonstrate that the risk of prejudice from a joint trial would be so 'severe' and 'substantial' as to 'amount to a miscarriage of justice'" to warrant a separate trial.

Feuer's lawyers countered that the online sports gambling charges against Feuer "compose only a small fraction of the acts alleged in the wider indictment." They argued that to include allegations involving "joker-poker type machines and card games" that were operated at three locations, including one shared with the Bonanno family at the Gran Caffe Gelateria in Lynbrook from 2012 to 2022, "poses a serious risk" that their client would not receive a fair trial.

Vitaliano has scheduled oral arguments on the severance motion by Feuer, and all pre-trial motions by Polito and their codefendants for next week.

Introducing The Genovese Family Class Of 2024: A Bookmaker, A Wrestler, A Colombo Reject

With thanks to the feds and Genovese acting capo Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito, Gang Land dutifully reports that a diverse trio of reputed mob associates have passed muster with Mafia boss Liborio (Barney) Bellomo and have been inducted into the powerful crime family often referred to as the Ivy League of organized crime.

The new official wiseguys are Dominick (Black Dom) Dionisio, a former Colombo associate who fell out of favor with his family; James Rossi, a bookmaker who bested Mister District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in a long legal battle over a specious arrest 35 years ago; and Matthew Daddino, a former star high school wrestler from Long Island.

In addition, according to information disclosed in a court filing by prosecutors in the pending racketeering case against Carmine Pizza and four codefendants, Joseph DiChiara, 55, the son of the family's late acting boss, Peter (Petey Red) DiChiara, has taken over his old man's previous slot as a captain in the crime family.

Joseph DiChiara, whose contact info was listed in Polito's burner phone as "J Red," according to the feds, is a former member of the scandal-plagued Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union that represents truck drivers who deliver newspapers in the New York area. He has had no problems with the law since 1997, when he completed a four month sentence for a minor drug charge.

Dionisio, 55, a member of Colombo capo William (Wild Bill) Cutolo's crew in the 1990s, was convicted of several racketeering crimes at the end of that decade and was released from federal prison in 2008, after spending about eight years behind bars.

In 2012, he got a sweet sentence of probation when facing guidelines up to 87 months from a tough sentencing Brooklyn Federal Judge, Dora Irizarry, after the usually hard-nosed prosecutor, Nicole Argentieri, told the judge that she had no information that Black Dom had “rekindled his association with the Colombo family since his release from prison” in 2008.

Dionisio fell out of favor with the Colombos for having introduced acting Colombo boss Alphonse Persico in 1995 to an old buddy from the neighborhood, Chris Paciello. Paciello later flipped and spilled his guts about dealings he had with Persico in the 1990s while they were both in Miami.

Rossi, 64, has no federal convictions. He has at least one state bookmaking rap, but he fought long and hard to overturn one for illegal gambling stemming from a December 3, 1988 arrest as he was walking in a public hallway in a Manhattan office building on the same floor where there was a bookmaking operation — and for which the arresting officer had a search warrant.

The detective hadn't seen Rossi leave the room, but he assumed he had, and brought him into the room and told him to sit down. When Rossi got up, he put on a jacket that had been on the back of the chair, and left with it. That's what was used to convict him of bookmaking. The appellate division okayed it, but in 1992, the state's Court of Appeals reversed it, and dismissed the indictment, ruling that Rossi's arrest in the hallway was unlawful.

Last but not least, is Matthew (Matt) Daddino, whom prosecutors say is "a recently inducted member of the Genovese Crime Family." They wrote that the burly Daddino accompanied wiseguy Anthony (Rom) Romanello to court last fall during his trial that ended with an extortion conviction stemming from his one punch assault of a Manhattan restaurateur.

As a high school senior in 2000, Matt Daddino, now 41, was an undefeated 30-0 as the state's wrestling championships were set to begin in March of 2000, according to Newsday sports writer Gregg Sarra.

Daddino won all his bouts in the state finals and was the state's high school wrestling champ in the 189 pound division in 2000. And he placed sixth in the nation's high school championship wrestling tournament that year by winning five of eight bouts to be officially tabbed as an All American wrestler by the country's High School Coaches Association, Sarra wrote.

Other than his recent induction, and accompanying Romanello at his week-long trial, the feds had no other info about Daddino in their filing. But it turns out that Daddino was a valuable member of the Hofstra University varsity wrestling team in 2002, according to his coach Tom Ryan.

[Dr031718]

[Southshore88]

Thanks for posting. Interesting to see Petey Red's son was bumped up to captain as well as confirming the new Genovese inductees

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting!

[TommyGambino]

Thanks for posting, good GL. DiChiara looks like Leonetti

[Ivan]

Great column this week, thanks for posting.

New Genovese made guy is just 41... You know you're getting old when you are starting to hear about 21st century Italian-American gangsters who are younger than you.

[Gustazul]

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[Gustazul]

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Another one of Matt Daddino (taken in 2011)

[bluehouse]

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This guy has an interesting story usually guys who are heavily into sport dont go into a life of crime.Im guessing after he didnt get into the olympics he knew a guy who gave him a job collecting debts and then he made his way up from there.I dont know how it is now but to be made in the Genevese is huge its not like being made in the bonnanos.

Dom didnt get made with the colombos but got made with the west side.Thats like a guy couldnt get into NYU but was accepted into harvard in that world

[Niagarafalls]

Definitely wouldn’t call Dionisio a “reject”.

[johnny_scootch]

Dom didnt get made with the colombos but got made with the west side.Thats like a guy couldnt get into NYU but was accepted into harvard in that world

Dom would have gotten made 20 years ago if Wild BIll didn't get clipped.

[DonPeppino386]

Thanks for posting!

[aray22]

F8B0010B-5297-4F4F-8F2E-2C180A435459.jpeg

This guy has an interesting story usually guys who are heavily into sport dont go into a life of crime.Im guessing after he didnt get into the olympics he knew a guy who gave him a job collecting debts and then he made his way up from there.I dont know how it is now but to be made in the Genevese is huge its not like being made in the bonnanos.

Dom didnt get made with the colombos but got made with the west side.Thats like a guy couldnt get into NYU but was accepted into harvard in that world

John Perna was a state wrestler in high school. Pretty sure there's YouTube videos out there. Andrew Campos was the quarterback of a Catholic high school in the Bronx. I think a lot of these guys grow up playing sports, they just happen to be from blue collar Italian neighborhoods that don't necessarily think going to college is the most important thing.

[Pmac2]

Isnt the genovese acting boss a highschool football coach and some capo a padleball world champion. The days of growing up in the poor sude of the city are done. But im surw theres still a few.

[Tasker]

Good article. Thank you for posting