Gangland August 1st 2024

[Dr031718]

Big Time Singer Once Sang In Cathedrals, Now He'll Sing At Bazoo Trial

The feds plan to use a second cooperating witness to convict Bonanno wiseguy John (Bazoo) Ragano of loansharking charges. He's a mob associate who didn't have to take off all his clothes to tape record Ragano to hear him declare that he was a "gangster" who would level threats and use violence against folks who crossed him, Gang Land has learned.

He's Andrew Koslosky, a renowned singer for more than three decades who was a featured soloist at many U.S. churches, including St. Patrick's Cathedral. Koslosky was involved in drug dealing and other crimes with Bazoo and arrested three years ago. He then wore a wire for the FBI and helped the feds take down the hierarchy of the Colombo crime family on racketeering charges.

Koslosky taped talks with Ragano and the Colombos that helped the feds send Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso back behind bars last year for meeting wiseguys too soon after his release from prison for a 2004 mob rubout. He will join Ragano's alleged loanshark victim, Vincent Martino, as a government witness against Bazoo, the feds stated last week.

Koslosky's tape recordings of Ragano took place in 2021. But in a court filing, prosecutors say the tapes back up Ragano's "willingness to commit acts of violence as a means to resolve business and personal disputes." One clear demonstration came when he was tape recorded threatening "to fucking slap the shit out of" the buck naked Martino on July 5 of last year.

That's the day that Ragano correctly feared that Martino was cooperating with the feds. He ordered him to undress and then called Martino a "fucking scumbag" and allegedly threatened to retaliate against him if he didn't pay off the $150,000 loan when he showed up at the salvage yard where Ragano worked without any money for the mobster.

"I'll see you when I get out tough guy," Ragano, 62, told Martino, 45, adding: "Don't forget I know where you're at now."

Koslosky, who is identified as "Individual-1" in the filing with Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez, was a key player in the 20-year-long shakedown of a Queens construction workers union president that was the linchpin of the blockbuster indictment of 14 Colombo mobsters and associates, includng then-boss Andrew (Mush) Russo, the crime family's heir apparant leader, capo Theodore (Skinny) Persico, and consigliere Ralph (Big Ralph) DeMatteo.

Court records show that Koslosky, a longtime associate and close pal of capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo, the architect of the union extortion scheme, was also involved in a drug trafficking caper and a lucrative fraud scheme with Ragano. Prosecutors say Bazoo made "tens of thousands of dollars a month" selling fraudulently obtained safety certificates to hundreds of unqualified workers for up to $500 that enabled them to work on New York job sites.

Prosecutors Devon Lash and Andrew Reich wrote that both sets of taped talks they plan to play at Ragano's trial stem from two major developments involving Ragano and Martino that took place in February of 2021, a year after Martino met the Bonanno soldier at a "social event" he attended with Ricciardo.

That's when Martino took out a $150,000 "juice" loan from Bazoo and agreed to pay him $1800 a week interest for the money, the prosecutors wrote. And at around the same time, they wrote, the duo and Koslosky came up with "a scheme to traffic large quantities of marijuana from New York to Florida by vehicle."

That's why seven months later, when Colombo family leaders and Ricciardo were arrested and charged with shaking down a union president for 20 years, Martino was both a loanshark victim of the Bonanno soldier as well as a codefendant of Bazoo and Vinny Unions and charged with drug trafficking.

But Koslosky, who was at the "social event" with Martino and Ragano, wasn't indicted along with them. He had flipped when FBI agents arrested him on April 7, 2021 for dealing in illegal weapons with Ricciardo. Within days, he was wired up by the FBI and prosecutors used his tapes to indict the trio, and 11 other Colombo family members and associates on September 14, 2021.

The prosecutors told Gonzalez that Martino and Koslosky would testify that "during their discussions about the plan to distribute marijuana," Ragano told them that he was an "inducted, member of the Bonanno crime family" and spoke of "his willingness to break the law and use violence" to get his way.

They cited several taped talks Koslosky made during that time frame that they intended to play when he testifies at Ragano's trial.

The mobster, who pleaded guilty to loansharking in November of 2022, is charged with continuing to use extortionate means in an effort to collect the $150,000 loan he gave Martino for eight months after he pleaded guilty, up until July 5, 2023. Five days later, Bazoo began a 57-month sentence that covers all the crimes he was charged with in the Colombo family case.

The tapes captured a series of threats by Bazoo, according to the feds. On April 19, 2021, the prosecutors wrote that Ragano stated that he retaliated against a woman by throwing a garbage can at her car and "slashing the tires of several vehicles." He stated, "If I gotta go back to jail, I'll go back to jail." In a later reference "to the woman and her property," they wrote, Bazoo stated: "I'm going to burn everything, and there ain't no camera."

On April 27, 2021, they wrote, Ragano stated, "I know my life, I live in the street, I can go to jail any day. If I go to jail now and I'm with her, I'm done. Listen to what I'm telling you, if I go to jail five years from now, my friends will be there until the day I die. And I never know when I'm gonna go to jail."

In a June 1, 2021 discussion about their ongoing plans to distribute California-grown marijuana in New York, Ragano recalled having told Martino "that he could betray" him and their cohorts in the marijuana scheme by not sharing proceeds with them or getting his pals to rob Martino and the others.

Bazoo stated he could "send two guys in to rob them," they wrote. "I mean this is not something new to me," Ragano continued. "What do you guys think I was born yesterday? Are you fucking kidding me? I got guys that could go rob the farmer if I wanted to. I hang out with gangsters in fucking jail, guys that did time, 25 years, that are hung up for money and would do anything."

And on June 2, 2021, they wrote, frustrated by the slow progress of the pot distribution scheme, Bazoo stated, "What am I a fucking jerk off? I'm in the street all day hustling my ass off. I'm the only fucking gangster around here that'll go to jail. Stop jerking me off man, you gave me the shit for 600, I can go sell it for 1,000, I'll be in the street a gangster, like a n****, you're giving it to me for the same price the n**** are paying, you ain't doing nothing for me!"

The tapes will dovetail with expected testimony by Martino and Koslosky that "based on statements Ragano made to them and their own observations, Ragano was quick to anger and spoke often about his willingness to use violence against others to accomplish his goals," the prosecutors wrote.

The prosecutors also asked Gonzalez to okay testimony by the two witnesses that "they knew Ragano by his nickname 'Maniac,' and that they understood this nickname to be a reference to Ragano's willingness to use violence and his tendency to lose his temper."

The prosecutors wrote that following his arrest, "Ragano stated that he had been in a holding cell many times before, did not fear going to prison and had used violence against inmates who challenged him. He also said that "he never waited in line to use the prison's communal microwave" and "instructed those sitting on the cell's bench to move and lay on the bench and took a nap."

The prosecutors redacted language explaining how the government plans to introduce that testimony in the public filing, but they asked Gonzalez to okay it because it shows that "even when in custody" in a holding cell, Ragano "used his reputation for (violence) for even the most mundane requests, such as sitting on a bench."

"Ragano's statements following his arrest, including that he had used violence as a means to get what he wanted," they argued, "demonstrate Ragano's intent to cause fear, and his knowledge and promotion of his reputation as a person ready to resort to violence when he believed necessary, including in the collection of" the loanshark debt of Vincent Martino.

Spanky Cutaia Spanked By Feds After A Wild Six Month Ride From New York To Indiana

Six months after winning his freedom following 14 years in prison for a slew of violent crimes, Luchese associate Joseph (Spanky) Cutaia is behind bars again, and has been since June 4, Gang Land has learned. And like many of the folks whose paths he crossed from New York to Indiana, he is lucky to be alive.

During his seventh and last encounter with the law, after he was arrested for "erratic driving" in Northeast Indiana and brought to a local jail to be detained on a fugitive warrant, a prison staffer "had to use the Heimlich maneuver to clear his airway and allow him to breathe" when Cutaia, 45, tried to swallow a plastic bag of heroin that he had concealed in his rectum.

During that arrest, and five other interactions he had with police in three states, Spanky didn't give cops his real name, authorities say. He told the La Porte County Sheriff's Department that his name was John Baudanza, who happens to be a Luchese wiseguy who is also related to the Cutaia clan through marriage, according to a court filing.

Since his incarceration at various local facilities before his transfer to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Spanky has destroyed property, threatened violence to prison officials and to relatives in phone calls, and "attempted self harm," according to a government filing seeking his detention as a flight risk and as a danger to the community.

"For instance," assistant U.S. attorney Devon Lash stated in a July 12 detention memo, "Cutaia used a plastic chair to break through a glass door in the medical wing" of the facility where he was confined on June 11."Later in June, he swallowed a spoon in an attempt to leave the facility," she wrote.

Since his release from prison last year — Cutaia began three years of supervised release on December 1 — Spanky, who Lash noted, "has significant ties" to the Luchese family, has maintained his mob ties and "contacted several previously convicted members and associates of organized crime," according to "toll records and monitored prison calls."

"On some of the monitored prison calls," the prosecutor wrote, "Cutaia is (heard) advising members of organized crime that he (Cutaia) believes law enforcement officers have interviewed or served with grand jury subpoenas in connection with his arrest."

Cutaia, who was arrested twice for domestic abuse by police in Colts Neck, NJ where he lived, and whose relatives who live there have a restraining order against him, told one relative in a taped call from prison: "If you hang up on me one more time, the minute I come home, I am going to lay your hands on a cutting board and chop your fucking fingers off, I promise you."

In another phone call cited in the detention memo, Spanky warned the relative: "I'm not stuck in here bitch, I'm not stuck, I'm not stuck, now get it through your mother fucking head."

Since Cutaia's release from prison — the third generation Luchese family gangster's original sentence of 20 years for home invasions and other violent crimes was reduced to 15 years at a re-sentencing — Spanky has been consumed by drug abuse and been involved in numerous traffic accidents while driving impaired without a license, according to his VOSR.

On February 8, after testing positive for fentanyl, morphine, oxymorphone, oxycodone, and cocaine in three drug tests the previous month, Cutaia agreed to substance abuse treatment and additional drug testing. He then tested positive for cocaine and morphine three weeks later and was recommended for intensive outpatient treatment, that he rejected.

Two days later, on February 29, Spanky was charged with misdemeanor drug and driving without a license charges after a cop spotted a switchblade knife and a straw with cocaine residue on the front passenger seat of a car that he was driving in Staten Island. He was released on his own recognizance.

Between then and his June 4 "erratic driving" arrest that led to his incarceration, Cutaia had five other interactions with police, including the two domestic abuse incidents at his Colts Neck, NJ home. Twice he was involved in traffic accidents. In one crash, he was driving a motorcycle in Aberdeen, NJ.

In the other traffic accident, described in the court filing as "a significant car accident" during the "morning commuting hours" in Colts Neck, "Cutaia swerved into another driver" and identified himself as Salvatore Cutaia. That happens to be the name of his dad, as well as a brother, who were both convicted, and received lesser prison terms in the same 2010 case as Spanky.

Cutaia didn't have a license, and gave the cop "a fake birth date and claimed he did not know his home address," the prosecutor wrote. He also "denied having identification" but managed to avoid an arrest when his wife arrived "and also insisted Cutaia's name was Salvatore."

On June 2, Spanky knew his goose was cooked when an Aberdeen police officer asked him who Joseph Cutaia was after he had given the cop a phony name. But he managed to remain an unbridled loose cannon for two more days, until he was pulled over by officers with the Lo Porte County Sheriff's Department in Indiana.

He told the cop that Joseph was his brother. And when the Aberdeen cop returned to his car to check the name and birth date he'd been given, "Cutaia sped away from the scene in his car and led police on a high-speed chase," the prosecutor wrote.

Cutaia was ordered detained for a September 6 hearing before Brooklyn Federal Judge Eric Vitaliano. He faces a slew of misdemeanor charges in New York, New Jersey and Indiana. But Spanky's main concern now is the maximum two years behind bars he faces for the VOSR.

Ragano Plea: You Can Call Me John; You Can Call me Bazoo; Please Don't Call Me 'Maniac'

John (Bazoo) Ragano still has time to cop a plea deal to being a loanshark of a debtor who took off all his clothes and still was able to tape record him discussing the unpaid debt. But if he goes to trial, the Bonanno soldier will surely object to testimony and taped talks that another turncoat made about things that happened three years before he was accused of the crime.

Ragano's lawyers, who learned last week about the government's plans to use Andrew Koslosky, the onetime singer who has appeared in plays on and off Broadway, as a witness, will likely argue in their reply that allowing taped three-year-old talks and testimony that Bazoo was nicknamed "Maniac" would also be prejudicial and should not be introduced into evidence.

In their filing, Ragano's lawyers asked the judge to preclude alleged loanshark victim Vincent Martino from testifying that two salvage yard workers showed up at a key moment during the tape-recorded confrontation between the men where Bazoo worked on July 5, 2023 — when the suspicious wiseguy ordered Martino to undress and he took off all his clothing.

"At that point," prosecutors stated in a June filing, "two men at Ragano's workplace walked up behind Ragano, one man was holding a tire iron and the other a crowbar. Ragano then told (Martino) that (he) better pay the money Ragano believed he was owed."

In last week's filing, prosecutors seemed to soften the implication that the workers were there to threaten or intimidate Martino. They stated that one of the men behind Bazoo "was holding metal tools" and that "Ragano then told (Martino) that (he) should pay the money Ragano believed he was owed."

The testimony about Ragano's fellow employees is "unsubstantiated," lawyers Joel Stein and Ken Womble wrote. They noted that they have given photos "of the auto salvage yard where the July 5 confrontation occurred" to the feds and that they depict "numerous video surveillance cameras," but they did not offer up any videos that may have captured the event.

But even if the government claim were true, the lawyers argued, "the obvious and only reasonable inference is that the two other employees were reacting instinctively to protect their fellow employee who was in a heated discussion with a stranger" whose only purpose was "to provoke the defendant."

To the workers, they wrote, it may have appeared as "a sudden, volatile situation created by the vocal provocations of a stranger in their midst." And since the government's tape recorder, wherever it was, did not pick up any "verbal threats" by the workers or the defendant, any testimony about the workers was "irrelevant" and should be precluded, they wrote.

The lawyers also asked Judge Hector Gonzalez to prevent the government from getting around that preclusion by barring any FBI agents from testifying that Martino told them that he "was so distressed" by the two workers that his remarks were an "excited utterance" exception to rules of evidence that preclude so-called hearsay testimony by the agents.

"It would be hypocritical and ironic" for the feds to "artificially bootstrap" Martino's claim that he "was so distressed" by the appearance of the "two other men" when he told the agents about it after he got dressed, left the yard, and met up with the agents later and told them that he "was still under the stress of excitement caused by the event at the time of the statement."

The lawyers also asked the judge to block Martino from testifying that on November 15, 2022, Ragano told Martino while they were in a crowd of defendants and lawyers in front of the judge's courtroom waiting for a status conference in the Colombo family case to begin that a friend would be calling him "to begin collecting payments on the loan on Ragano's behalf."

The encounter, like the one involving the two salvage yard workers, was "unsubstantiated," the attorneys wrote, noting that despite the presence of video cameras in front of the courtroom, the government has stated that "it is not in possession of any videos from that date."

"This alleged encounter," the lawyers wrote, was also "irrelevant" because it does not include any evidence "of violence or a threat" and is not "evidence of an extortionate collection" of a loan. "It is merely confirmation of the loan's existence, and it is not relevant to what is charged in this indictment" since nothing about the message "can be interpreted as extortionate," they wrote.

Ragano, whose trial is scheduled to begin on October 7, has until September 9 to reach an agreement with the feds on a plea deal.

[furiofromnaples]

when Cutaia, 45, tried to swallow a plastic bag of heroin that he had concealed in his rectum.

The average mobster in 2024,guys. Damn look like a Soprano scene.

[Tonyd621]

On some of the monitored prison calls," the prosecutor wrote, "Cutaia is (heard) advising members of organized crime that he (Cutaia) believes law enforcement officers have interviewed or served with grand jury subpoenas in connection with his arrest."

It does not sound like he was advising anyone. It sounds like he was just talking to freind(s) about his case imo. His friends happen to be members of OC.

[Tonyd621]

Thank for posting

[CornerBoy]

i wonder how that ass to mouth balloon tasted. fucking animal

[Pmac2]

cool read . ty

[johnny_scootch]

The average mobster in 2024,guys.

He’ll never get straightened out, ever. While on this rampage he was telling people he was proposed (this info got back to me and I posted about it) but he was just using that lie to shake people down, it got back to the powers that be and any hope he ever had for that is gone forever.

[MoLarryCurly]

The average mobster in 2024,guys.

He’ll never get straightened out, ever. While on this rampage he was telling people he was proposed (this info got back to me and I posted about it) but he was just using that lie to shake people down, it got back to the powers that be and any hope he ever had for that is gone forever.

I’m sure being a crackhead women abuser didn’t help either

[NorthBuffalo]

i wonder how that ass to mouth balloon tasted. fucking animal

Spit my coffee out reading this Animal is right.

[furiofromnaples]

The average mobster in 2024,guys.

He’ll never get straightened out, ever. While on this rampage he was telling people he was proposed (this info got back to me and I posted about it) but he was just using that lie to shake people down, it got back to the powers that be and any hope he ever had for that is gone forever.

Yes for sure. I wrote mobster and not made man because only risking suffocation trying to swallow a bag he had in his ass, he demonstrated how useless is,like all the junkies.

[johnny_scootch]

I’m sure being a crackhead women abuser didn’t help either

It definitely didn't help but probably wouldn't hurt as much as you would assume. His father was a user at one time as was his grandfather and smacking your wife around is considered personal business.

[Ivan]

Oh man I was eating while reading this. Should have been a trigger warning before the balloon thing.

Anyway thanks for posting as always, I guess.

[Tonyd621]

The average mobster in 2024,guys.

He’ll never get straightened out, ever. While on this rampage he was telling people he was proposed (this info got back to me and I posted about it) but he was just using that lie to shake people down, it got back to the powers that be and any hope he ever had for that is gone forever.

I’m sure being a crackhead women abuser didn’t help either

How does one shake people down from saying they were being proposed? If you don't you don't give me 10 bags of H for 80 type of thing?

[Pmac2]

the guy had 150k to be loaning people hmmm. not bad. 1percent a week into. I' think I read 1800. crazy thing the victim probaly never repaid even 50k on borrowing 150k and he walks away with the guys cash. now that had to come from a bigger loanshark I'm guessing someone in the bonannos administration rite??

[johnny_scootch]

now that had to come from a bigger loanshark I'm guessing someone in the bonannos administration rite??

We will never know but it could have come from the family itself. Remember Joe C wanted to lend soldiers family money to put on the street and not charge them any interest they would only have to pay back the principal.