Gangland October 17th 2024

[Dr031718]

Bonanno Soldier John Ragano Guilty In The Naked City Loansharking Case

Colombo associate Vincent Martino knew he could pull it off — although he probably didn't figure that he'd have to be buck naked to do it. But the mob-tied contractor was right when he told the FBI he'd be able to get mobster John (Bazoo) Ragano so riled up that they could tape record the volatile Bonanno soldier threatening Martino, Gang Land has learned. And that it would be enough to convince a jury to convict him of federal loansharking charges.

That's exactly what Martino did at an auto junk yard on July 5 of 2023. And on Friday, a Brooklyn Federal Court jury found Ragano guilty of using extortionate means to attempt to collect a $150,000 loan he had given Martino in February of 2021, which Martino had stopped paying off in September of 2021.

Martino's pants and underwear were down by his ankles and his shirt was pulled up over his head. But the recorder that was hidden in his clothes picked up Ragano's demand of Martino to "give me my fucking money." Those fateful words came after Martino got Bazoo worked up by falsely accusing him of being a snitch.

Even though Ragano, 62, also called Martino a "fucking scumbag" and threatened to "slap the shit out of" him that day, the feds were able to convict Bazoo of only one count of the four count indictment, that is, of using "extortionate means," or threats, to try to collect the debt.

The jury's decision on the first count of the indictment, "Not guilty" of being part of a conspiracy to use extortion to collect the loan, stung the government and gave a false hope to Ragano. That was quicky dashed when the panel found him guilty of Count 2, the extortion count. He was also acquitted of two counts of obstruction of justice for harassing and intimidating Martino from November of 2022 up to and through their July 5, 2023 taped talk.

Even so, Ragano, now serving a 57 month stretch for a 2022 conviction for the same loan, faces up to 20 years for the conviction, and a likely prison term of several more years behind bars at his sentencing.

The jurors didn't know that Martino had texted his FBI handlers that he "could get this fucking guy heated" up a month earlier, or that they had joked a week before the July 5, 2023 face off that Martino hoped the agents had "some muscles" on them because "when this 350 pound gorilla jumps on me I'm gonna need someone to pull (him) off. Lol."

Judge Hector Gonzalez ruled that the texts between Martino and the FBI agents who wired him up and prepped him for his confrontation with Ragano at the Ridgewood Queens salvage yard where he worked were "irrelevant" out-of-court hearsay conversations and refused to let the wiseguy's lawyers introduce them into evidence at the trial.

Gonzalez ruled that Ragano — not the government — was on trial, and that the investigative techniques that the FBI used to obtain its evidence against the defendant were not something that the jurors should consider during their deliberations.

Martino had many good reasons to tell the FBI that he could get Ragano to blow his stack and help the feds convict him.

He owns a financially troubled construction company that owes more than $150,000 in legal judgments. Plus, he testified that he borrowed $430,000 from Ragano and three other mob loansharks in the past five years. Presumably, he now hopes that he won't have to pay any of it back.

In court filings, Ragano's lawyers cited "numerous text messages" between Martino and FBI case agents Joseph Costello and Jarryd Butler before his confrontation with Ragano at the A & G Auto Dissemblers. In some messages they "refer to themselves as the 'Wolfpack,' and notably include an image of four individuals, which is followed by 'LOL and 'Ha, ha.'"

"Tell me if I'm wrong," Martino stated in a June 7, 2023 text to the agents regarding a Ragano pal named Simone Barca to whom Martino had made three $1000 payments last year. "What I'm thinking is we meet this guy again" so I can "get him to a point in conversation to throw some type of threat out there," he wrote, noting, "Let me know your thoughts tomorrow."

"Will do," the agent replied.

"I can potentially even get him to get John (Ragano) on a FaceTime and maybe have a conversation with him with frustration expressed to him. Just a thought," Martino responded.

Lawyers Joel Stein and Ken Womble argued that a June 20, 2023 text message between Martino and the agents, "provides further evidence of (Martino's) plan to intentionally attempt to get the defendant angry." That made his words "an exception to the hearsay rule" that bars out-of-court statements and admissible because they were "the declarant’s then-existing state of mind," wrote the attorneys, citing this excerpt.

Martino: I think we should call him.
Agent: Hold for now in meeting.
Martino: Liked "Hold for now in meeting." Let me get this fucking guy heated.

The lawyers wrote that nine days later, on June 29 and 30, 2023 — a week before the government witness would confront Ragano at his work place — Martino and the agents called themselves the "Wolfpack," and they exchanged these tests:

Martino: I hope (agent) has some muscle because when this 350 pound gorilla jumps on me I’m gonna need someone to pull them off. Lol.
Agent: Hahah. He’s built like Lou Ferrigno.
Agent 2: Hey (Vincent) I'm short but scrappy. We’ll take care of him haha.
Martino: Laughed at "Hey (Vincent) I'm short but scrappy. We’ll take care . . ."
Martino: I don't think I can do this today. I did five push-ups I hit the heavy bag for 30 seconds. Tried a push up but to(o) shot. Have no energy left to fight John lol
Agent: We believe in you. I'll see you at 10:30.
Martino: Lol thanks buddy.

Martino didn't waste any time getting Ragano worked up. With the Manford Mann version of Bruce Springsteen's Blinded By The Light, playing in the background, Martino, in words slightly above a whisper is heard saying: "I gotta end this thing because you fucking snitched on me bro; you gave me up on the weed case bro."

It took Ragano just a few seconds to drown out the Blinded By The Light words, "revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night," as he exploded at Martino: "Get the fuck out of here! Are you losing your fucking mind? You trying to get stupid on me bro? Is that what you’re trying to do? I snitched on you on the weed case? Are you losing your fucking mind? I'm going to jail for 57 months."

"Are you losing your mind? Get the fuck out of here," Ragano repeated a few times, as Martino kept repeating that he's going to jail too because Bazoo gave the feds info on him.

"I don't want to get involved, 'cause I'm going to jail," Ragano continued, getting louder and louder as he got angrier and angrier as Martino continued to protest that he'd heard that Bazoo, a true-blue mobster if there ever was one who would never flip, had snitched on him.

"You don't really know me; I'm not trying to be tough. I'm gonna be honest with you. You do whatever you want," he continued. "But when I get out, you put a fucking wire on me, I'm gonna come out and show you what kind of guy I am. Take off your fucking shit right now. Take off your fucking pants right now. Lemme see."

"You owe me my fucking money, let's see how you do when I get out," Ragano kept bellowing. "You wanna duck me now? When I get out . . . . if I fucking slap the shit out of you, you gonna tell on me? Give me my fucking money. . . . Where you going? Get back here you fucking scumbag," Ragano shouted as Martino ran, pulling his pants up as he fled, he told the jury last week.

As Martino ran out of the scrap yard, Ragano could still be heard, but not as loud. "I'll see you when I get out," he said. "I'll see you when I get out," he repeated. "I know where you're at now," were Ragano's last words that were picked up by the FBI tape recorder.

About a minute later, Martino called an agent who was waiting in a nearby school yard and told him he had fled "when (Ragano's) guys started coming at me — two guys in the yard with a fucking tire iron. So I ran out of there."

Martino, 47, who pleaded guilty to being part of a drug trafficking conspiracy with Ragano for which his sentencing guidelines are 37-to-46 months in prison, is hoping for a non-custodial sentence when he faces the music for his crimes, most likely sometime next year.

Big Frank Coppa Made A Big Splash When He Flipped In 2002; He Has Died Quietly, At 82.

Today is the one-year anniversary of his death. It came quietly two decades after the Bonanno family marked capo Frank (Big Frank) Coppa for death when he became its first member to publicly break his vow of omerta, and began a virtual avalanche of turncoat Bonanno mobsters that included his close pal, and frequent traveling companion, Mafia boss Joseph Massino.

Coppa, a beefy wiseguy who along with the rotund Massino posed for a photo in Monte Carlo with a tiny Fiat that neither one of them could fit into that was placed into evidence at Massino's 2004 trial, died of natural causes at his home in Sarasota, Florida, according to a death certificate obtained by The New York Times. He was 82.

Coppa's decision to flip in November of 2002 has long been regarded as a seminal moment in the successes that the FBI and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office had in convicting and jailing dozens of Bonanno family mobsters including Massino, who was the first New York Mafia boss to cooperate, and his brother-in-law, family underboss Salvatore Vitale, who also cooperated.

"His decision to join Team America was huge," one law enforcement official told Gang Land when Coppa, who had been released on bail in 2004, officially received a "time served" sentence in 2014. "After 40 years of zeroes," the official said, "we soon had seven made guys playing for the good guys, including the underboss and a capo, and the results were staggering."

Big Frank testified only once, at the 2004 racketeering trial of Massino, who was found guilty of seven murders, including one that Coppa helped carry out. Coppa told the jury how he had led capo Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano to his execution murder in 1981 for being taken in by FBI agent Joe Pistone during the five years he worked undercover posing as jewel thief Donnie Brasco.

Sources say Coppa's mobster son Frank Coppa Jr. was a large earner who ran dozens of NYC parking lots and was involved in school bus rackets with his father. But the son remained loyal to the crime family when his father flipped. The sources say Frank Jr. was "shelved" by the crime family, but he showed up in court when his dad took the stand against Massino to intimidate him in an effort to remain in good graces with the Bonannos. Some say he was successful, others are not so sure. But in any event, Frank Coppa Jr., now 56, has had no problems with the law.

His father's cooperation was groundbreaking. The elder Coppa, who admitted involvement in two mob murders, gave the feds information about 14 then-unsolved gangland-style-slayings, including the 1983 killing of NYC Marine and Aviation Department official Enrico Mazzeo, and the 1992 slaying of New York Post circulation supervisor Robert Perrino.

At his sentencing, Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis stated he had planned to use the "analogy of dominos falling" to explain the importance of his decision to cooperate. But the judge said it was "more like being in a redwood forest and having one tree fall on another tree and another tree. With Mr. Coppa's cooperation the redwoods started to fall and many of them fell in this courtroom."

Shortly after he was inducted into the crime family, on September 6, 1978, Big Frank survived a well-planned, but poorly executed, bombing murder attempt by Genovese wiseguy Gerard Pappa that took place in the parking lot of a Staten Island Bagel Nosh after Coppa had breakfast there, according to an FBI report about the bombing.

When Coppa opened his car door, he saw a Waldbaum's shopping bag on the driver's seat and opened it. It exploded, causing him serious injuries that kept him hospitalized more than two months, until shortly before Thanksgiving. His life was spared, the report said, because only one of two planted bombs had exploded. "One blew up and the other was blown out of the bag and did not detonate."

Big Frank wrongly suspected that a neighbor who Coppa had fleeced in a stock swindle had done it. He voiced his suspicions to his fellow wiseguys, who took it upon themselves to retaliate. They shot and seriously wounded a neighbor, as Gang Land reported in 2020. He later learned that Pappa had taken it upon himself to whack him because he feared the recently "made" Coppa would retaliate against him for killing a friend, the FBI report said.

The neighbor told his own story. In Eleven Shots, a self-published book, Anthony Coglitore, the son of an Italian immigrant coal miner who was raised in Brooklyn, wrote that as his garage door was rising after he drove home from a birthday party at his girlfriend's house on December 28, 1978, he saw "two men walk along the side of my car," and fire 11 shots, hitting him six times. This knocked his foot off the brake, and onto the gas pedal, and propelled the car crashing into the back wall of the garage.

Hit in the face, arm, stomach, rear end, neck and hip, Coglitore wrote that he somehow managed to crawl out of the passenger side of the car and onto his driveway before blacking out right after hearing someone say, "Hold on, the ambulance is coming."

Coglitore wrote that after spending more than three months in Staten Island Hospital, he told cops he had no evidence but suspected that his Copley Street neighbor, Big Frank Coppa, was behind the shooting. Coppa had suffered shrapnel wounds and was badly burned 15 weeks earlier when a bomb exploded as he sat in his car, and he wrongly suspected him.

Coppa must have suspected him, he told police, because a month before the bombing, Coglitore wrote that he had "confronted him" about $4,000 that Big Frank had stolen from him two and a half years earlier in a Ponzi scheme, and the two men "had a fistfight" that ended up with them "rolling in the street."

"He was living a great life with our money," he wrote. "His wife had a maid and drove a Mercedes. They had parties with Joe Massino and then went to Europe on vacation with him, that he paid for with our money. So on that one night, I saw him walking, and I approached him and said, 'Where is my money?' I demanded it back."

The only wiseguy charged in the Coglitore shooting, capo John (Johnny Skyway) Palazzolo, was a backup shooter who copped a plea deal in 2006, and was sentenced to 10 years.

Gang Land first heard about Coppa's death months ago but was unable to confirm that with any current or former law enforcers. Finally, last month, The New York Times did, as Gang Land noted above.

In addition to his son Frank Jr., sources say Coppa is also survived by a son Michael.

Seven Years For Ex-Hubby In Real-Life Case Of The Sopranos Meets The Real Housewives Of New Jersey

Mob-tied restaurant owner Thomas Manzo began serving a seven-year prison term Tuesday for hiring a Luchese soldier for a brutal assault of the current husband of his ex-wife Dina Manzo, the former star of the reality TV show, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, nine years ago.

Manzo was convicted of giving John Perna a free wedding party for 330 guests at The Brownstone, the Paterson NJ banquet hall he owned in return for the mobster's bloody July 2015 assault of David Cantin. Manzo had been free on bail since June, when a Newark Federal Court jury found him guilty of racketeering and assault.

The jury convicted Manzo, 59, of Franklin Lakes, after hearing detailed testimony about a meeting between Manzo, Perna and his henchman, Lorenzo Tripodi, that took place in the parking lot of The Brownstone. There, Manzo instructed them to assault Cantin on a day that Manzo and Dina would be at The Brownstone at a gala wedding party for their niece.

Their niece, in this real life version of The Sopranos meets The Real Housewives of New Jersey, is the daughter of Tommy Manzo's brother Albert, a co-owner of The Brownstone, and Dina's sister Catherine, also a former co-star of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

A few days before the assault, Manzo was frustrated that the gangsters had not gotten the job done yet, Tripodi testified. He said the restaurateur "walked extremely fast towards me and he said, 'You don't — you don't understand what I want. I want you to cut his fucking face like this,'" Tripodi said, thrusting his arm forward.

"I am saying it calmly," Tripodi testified, "but that's not how he was saying it to me," he said. "He almost put the hand on my face to mark (the spot) that he wanted his face cut," he testified. He said Manzo told the pair: "I want him, every time he looks in the mirror, I want him to think of me."

The jury also heard testimony from Dina, who recalled that she had just sat down at her niece's wedding celebration when she got a "screaming" phone call from Cantin that he had been assaulted at a strip mall, less than an hour after he had dropped her off at The Brownstone.

The jurors also saw a surveillance video that captured Perna hitting Cantin over the head about 15 times with a "slapjack." And they heard testimony that even though doctors needed 11 staples to close the gash in Cantin's head, Manzo later complained to his hired assailants that "he didn't get hurt enough" to suit him.

At his sentencing, which lasted two hours and 50 minutes, the judge rejected a defense request that Manzo remail free on bail pending appeal. Prosecutors sought a 10-year sentence; Manzo's lawyers asked for two years, six months less than what Perna got for doing their client's dirty work. Manzo was also fined $50,000, and will have to spend three years of post-prison supervised release when he completes his sentence.

[SonnyBlackstein]

The only person who should be charged in the first story is Martino. For theft. 430k.

"Coppa told the jury how he had led capo Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano to his execution murder in 1981 for being taken in by FBI agent Joe Pistone during the five years he worked undercover posing as jewel thief Donnie Brasco"
Hope this puts the 'he was clipped for making a move to take over the family' garbage to bed.

"The only wiseguy charged in the Coglitore shooting, capo John (Johnny Skyway) Palazzolo, was a backup shooter who copped a plea deal in 2006, and was sentenced to 10 years"

Jerry has Palazzolo as Capo

[johnny_scootch]

Hope this puts the 'he was clipped for making a move to take over the family' garbage to bed.

Didn't that angle for the killing come from Massino himself?

[OcSleeper]

Hope this puts the 'he was clipped for making a move to take over the family' garbage to bed.

Didn't that angle for the killing come from Massino himself?

Massino said it but IIRC Pistone also reported that Napolitano was angling for a position, possibly consigliere or something. It's been discussed before quite a bit but Napolitano was probably killed for several reasons as many are.

[johnny_scootch]

Massino said it but IIRC Pistone also reported that Napolitano was angling for a position, possibly consigliere or something. It's been discussed before quite a bit but Napolitano was probably killed for several reasons as many are.

Most likely Massino and Napolitano were each looking to get rid of the other and the Donnie Brasco fiasco gave Massino all the reason he needed with the rest of the family to punch Sonny's ticket.

[Uncle Pete]

I just don’t see how the text messages between this rat and the feds about how he is going to antagonize and instigate a response aren’t relevant to the jurors. If I’m a juror, I would have liked to know that information. Wonder if that will be considered at his sentencing?

[Blunts]

I just don’t see how the text messages between this rat and the feds about how he is going to antagonize and instigate a response aren’t relevant to the jurors. If I’m a juror, I would have liked to know that information. Wonder if that will be considered at his sentencing?

That part seems fucked.It provides context to the situation and the fact the whole situation was manufactured to play out like it did. Basically entrapment. To accuse someone of being a rat in that world is always going to invoke a violent response. The government got what they wanted and used dirty tactics the judge knows it and won't let the jury see it. Surely this can be appealed.

[moneyman]

James Proctor has Ragano wiretap recordings on his YouTube page.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Massino said it but IIRC Pistone also reported that Napolitano was angling for a position, possibly consigliere or something. It's been discussed before quite a bit but Napolitano was probably killed for several reasons as many are.

Most likely Massino and Napolitano were each looking to get rid of the other and the Donnie Brasco fiasco gave Massino all the reason he needed with the rest of the family to punch Sonny's ticket.

Vitale testified that Massino told him SB had to go because of Pistone, plus a HUGE other raft of circumstantial evidence, plus this vs Massino stating differently with a vested interest. Its not a hard equation.

Im sure Lefty and Mirra were also angling for admin spots.

[Tonyd621]

Imo informants usually have some humility and try and repent. The defense would have a good case if they can use Martinos words. Plus, this guy is obviously not seemingly scared of him. So, he wasn't scared of any "mob violence."
What a deadbeat...

[Pmac2]

massino testified that sonny black wasn't killed because he brought in pistone. he was killed because he was trying to take over the family. against rusty. who gave massino the order to kill sonny black. I'm sure this all started from massino resentment that sonny black might have been street boss or a higher capo

[Luca]

Did Gerry Pappa really bomb Frank Coppa? I never heard this before.