Gangland March 13th 2025

[Dr031718]

Genovese Gangster Who 'Hates Rats' Jailed Without Bail On Federal Weapons Charges

Anthony Costa, a violence prone Genovese gangster who boasts, "I HATE FUCKIN RATS" in a tattoo on his back, was arrested last week on federal weapons charges after FBI agents found a loaded handgun and two baseball bats in his car, Gang Land has learned. Costa was jailed without bail after prosecutors accused him of numerous crimes including the shooting of a victim two years ago.

Sources say Costa, who savagely pummeled a cooperating witness in 2003 when he saw him in a Manhattan restaurant years after the witness had testified against him in a fraud case, is a target of a long-running investigation by the FBI and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office into gambling and loansharking by the Genovese crime family.

In a court filing, prosecutors say they have evidence that since 2018, Costa, 58, has been involved in several "extortionate schemes." Since "the summer of 2021," they wrote, he's been tape recorded speaking to loanshark victims. In June of 2023, Costa was recorded threatening one, and in August of 2023, he shot another victim "in the vicinity of Costa's home."

Costa was arrested on March 6, 10 days after his mob supervisor, Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito began a 30 month stretch for racketeering. According to the arrest complaint, FBI agents armed with a search warrant, stopped Costa when he drove his Ford Explorer into the parking lot of a Tottenville gym for an early morning workout at about 8AM.

Agents recovered a Jennings J-22 .22 caliber pistol loaded with six rounds of ammunition in a Ziploc bag. The handgun was inside a plastic grocery bag in the footwell behind the driver's seat. Costa was charged with the illegal possession of a firearm.

During a bail hearing on Monday, prosecutors cited the gun, the baseball bats, a folding knife that was taken from Costa, and a slew of other evidence to persuade U.S. Magistrate Judge Marcia Henry to remand Costa as a danger to the community. The evidence included loanshark records the FBI agents found in his car, as well as tape recordings, text messages and cell phone data that agents have accumulated in recent years.

Judge Henry rejected a proposal by lawyer Gerard Marrone for Costa's release on a $1.5 million bond signed by six suretors, and secured by property. Marrone told Henry that the shooting victim has stated that Costa did not shoot him. The lawyer also argued that the gun found behind the driver's seat could have been placed in the car by a snitch who then told the FBI that it was there.

"For the reasons stated in the government's detention letter and on the record at the detention hearing," Judge Henry ruled that assistant U.S. attorneys Irisa Chen and Vincent Chiappini had established by "clear and convincing evidence" that there were "no combinations of conditions of release that would assure the safety of the community."

In the detention memo, Chen and Chiappini wrote that in a June 7, 2023 phone call, Costa had called one victim a "fucking scumbag" and stated that he hoped "the brakes don't work on your car and you crash into a fucking pole." Before he hung up, the prosecutors wrote, Costa added: "Do me a favor, don't get killed or die 'til you pay me you fucking scumbag."

Based on cell phone records and other evidence obtained by the FBI, the prosecutors wrote, "the defendant was involved in an August 1, 2023 shooting" of another victim who arrived at the North Campus of Staten Island University Hospital at 12:41 PM that afternoon "seeking care for a gunshot wound to the right knee."

The prosecutors wrote that "text message communications show that the defendant and Individual-3 (the shooting victim) had coordinated a meeting at Costa's home earlier that day (after) exchanging approximately 16 text messages between 11:46 AM to 12:01 PM" when "Costa texted Individual-3 repeatedly about needing to see him," the prosecutors wrote.

The shooting victim's cell phone records show that during that 15-minute time frame — at one point, he texted, "Ok coming now" — he was driving from his "residence to the vicinity of Costa's home" until 12:02 when he arrived there and texted, "Here," the prosecutors wrote.

That’s where the victim and his cell phone "remained from approximately 12:02 PM until 12:15 PM," the prosecutors wrote. "During that same time period," they wrote, "Costa's phone was also in the vicinity of (his) residence."

Less than a half hour later, the prosecutors wrote, "location information for (the victim's cell) phone shows that it traveled from the vicinity of Costa's residence towards Staten Island University Hospital, where Individual-3 arrived at or around 12:41 PM."

Sources say that Costa, who has allegedly racked up more than $800,000 from thefts and scams he pulled off in a criminal career that began in 1990, has been under investigation by the feds since early last year, That's when FBI agents spotted him meeting several times in a Long Island City coffee shop with Polito while the mobster was supposed to be working as a union cement mason.

In addition to having numerous meetings with Carmine Pizza regarding Genovese crime family business Costa has "remained in communication with made members of all five families," ostensibly to discuss joint rackets, "as recently as 2024," the prosecutors told Judge Henry.

They did not name any of them, but law enforcement sources told Gang Land last year that before Costa hooked up with Polito, he was "with" New Jersey based Genovese wiseguy Robert Reino and had dealings with former Gambino family consigliere Michael (Mickey Boy) Paradiso and with Luchese soldier Salvatore Cutaia.

Costa has spent more than 10 years behind bars since the early 1990s, records show. But his convictions and prison terms have "had little deterrent effect on the defendant," the prosecutors wrote. And the 2023 shooting and his involvement in "various forms of extortion" show that he is more violent now than he was years ago and is another reason why he should be detained, the prosecutors wrote.

Unless Costa is indicted before next Thursday, a preliminary hearing, which is like a mini-trial, is scheduled then. At the hearing, prosecutors will present evidence to establish there is probable cause to charge him with the crime. Defendants usually waive such hearings, since it's not a heavy lift to establish probable cause, but Marrone told Gang Land he's "not waiving anything."

"The case against him is very weak," the lawyer said, noting that the arrest wasn't based on a "traffic stop" but on the word of "an informant who told the FBI there's a gun in a Ziploc bag in Anthony Costa's truck. Then they go and find the gun in the car. The whole case is a set up. You can't trust informants."

"And he's a perfect patsy for an informer," Marrone continued, "because he has such a bad past. So some informant wants to get credit; he plants the gun and tells them there's a gun in Costa's truck. I think it's going to be very hard for them to prove that was his gun, beyond a reasonable doubt."

"The FBI was watching the car 24 hours a day? I don't think so," Marrone said, noting there were many ways for someone to place a gun in Costa's car, without him knowing it.

"So your defense," Gang Land stated, "is that between the last two times he used the car, someone snuck in and planted a gun?"

"Absolutely," he said. "That's my position. Whoever told the FBI that there was a gun in Costa's car is probably responsible for planting the gun in my client's car."

As for the August 2023 shooting: "It's 100 percent, it wasn't him," said Marrone. "The victim says it's not him."

'Boo Hoo Bazoo' Isn't Done Yet: Wants One Year Behind Bars — Not The Six And A Half Years That The Feds Want Him To Have

John (Boo Hoo Bazoo) Ragano (Yes, we've tweaked his nickname because his lawyers again claim he's a victim) has lost his argument that jurors would have acquitted him of all four counts – not just three of them – in the Naked City Loansharking case if they had known that the key government witness had planned to get him "heated" so that he'd threaten the witness during a tape-recorded session. But the Bonanno soldier has another argument for the judge.

Ragano's lawyers argue that their inability to inform the jury that the key witness against him planned to accuse Bazoo of being a snitch so he would blow his stack and threaten the witness is a mitigating factor that should mean a year behind bars for him — not the six and a half years that the feds want him to receive at his sentencing next week.

"The fact that the government chose to call Ragano a snitch" through its witness, mob associate Vincent Martino, at the beginning of their tape-recorded conversation on July 5, 2023, "should significantly mitigate the culpability of Ragano's words that day," attorneys Joel Stein and Ken Womble wrote in their sentencing memo to Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez.

"The most reasoned understanding of the (guilty) verdict," his lawyers argue, is that Bazoo's statement, "You still owe me my money, let's see how you do when I get out" of prison to the buck naked Martino, who'd been ordered by their client to take off all his clothes, is what convinced the jury "to convict Ragano of extortionate collection of credit."

The lawyers conceded that "Ragano deserves additional punishment" for his conviction. But they asked Gonzalez to reject the request by prosecutors to more than double the prison term he received for his 2022 conviction for loansharking and fraud and not sentence him to between 63 and 78 months for wrongly trying to collect the $150,000 loan he gave to Martino a year earlier.

In April of 2023, Ragano received a 57-month sentence for pleading guilty to loansharking that involved the same $150,000 loan, as well a $500,000 fraud in a plea bargain deal that also covered a drug trafficking charge that accused both Ragano and Martino with conspiring to smuggle large quantities of marijuana from California to New York.

"This was never a loansharking mobster holding a bat over the knees of his hapless victim," the lawyers wrote. It was a loan to Martino, an associate of the Colombo crime family who was also a Ragano codefendant charged with being partners in a drug smuggling conspiracy "to move thousands of pounds of marijuana during the pendency of the loan."

"Ragano clearly wanted Martino to pay back the principle of the loan," the lawyers wrote. But a few days after their angry words at the salvage yard where their client was working, Bazoo began serving his prison term without contacting Martino, the lawyers wrote, while "Martino walked out of Ragano's workplace on July 5, 2023, untouched and over $100,000 richer."

The attorneys asked Gonzalez "to sentence Ragano to an additional year in prison." They argud that "such a sentence would have likely fallen within the range of additional time the Court would have deemed appropriate" for Bazoo if prosecutors had told the judge that Ragano was wrongly seeking payment of the $150,000 loan from Martino on his sentencing day three months before their tape-recorded confrontation.

"Such a sentence also considers the manufactured and toothless statements made by Ragano on July 5, 2023," the lawyers wrote. It also "refuses to reward" the government for "wast(ing) so many government resources over so little" and obtaining an indictment of their client instead of simply telling the Court about his wrongheaded actions on his sentencing day in April of 2023.

"John Ragano's foolish decision to attempt to recover the loan from his codefendant does not erase the demand of individualized justice," they wrote. "The punishment should fit the crime and in this case, that punishment must be based upon a realistic assessment of the players in and the facts of this case."

Nassau County Cop Goes Down for the Count: Lying To The FBI About Bonanno And Genovese Crime Family Doings

Former Nassau County detective Hector Rosario dodged one bullet: He was acquitted of obstruction justice, a charge carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars. But the fired detective was a big loser last week when a jury found him guilty of lying to the FBI five years ago when he denied knowing turncoat Bonanno wiseguy Damiano (Danny) Zummo.

The guilty verdict permanently tars the fired gumshoe as a corrupt detective who sold his shield to the Bonanno crime family more than a decade ago for about $8000. It also virtually assures him that he'll be sentenced to prison when he faces the music for his crime, for which he faces a maximum of five years behind bars.

It took the jury two days to decide that Rosario lied back on January 27, 2020 when he told FBI agent Orlando Tactuk that he did not know Zummo, and had never been to an illegal gambling parlor at Sal's Shoe Repair in Merrick, which was run by a Genovese crime family associate named Salvatore (Sal the Shoemaker) Rubino.

The lie was exposed by a tape-recorded conversation that Rosario had when he visited his old friend, mob associate Salvatore Russo back on December 6, 2017, a month after Russo and Zummo had been charged with selling a kilo of cocaine to an undercover operative on November 9, 2017.

The feds had announced the duo's arrest on the same day they disclosed what then Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde had declared was "an extraordinary achievement for law enforcement," namely the November 15, 2015 induction of an informant into the Bonanno family during a videotaped ceremony in Canada that was conducted by Zummo, then an acting capo.

But Rosario hadn't heard about the extraordinary law enforcement achievement, nor had he heard that his old friend Sal Russo and his cousin Danny had been arrested and had "made the news," according to the conversation that Russo had with Rosario that was played for the jury.

"I thought you knew and you didn't want to talk about it over the phone," Russo told Rosario after the detective showed up at Russo's home.
"How did you make the news," Rosario asked. "I didn't see that shit."
"Remember my cousin Danny, the guy with the cement? The cement guy on Jamaica Avenue; Liberty Avenue? Russo said.
"Oh, yeah that guy," Rosario replied.
"Remember the guy when I sent you to the shoemaker. That time to get in, and fucking, ha, all that shit?" said Russo.
"Mmmhmm," Rosario grunted.

As Russo explained the specifics of the crime that he and Zummo were charged with, Rosario voiced his sorrow about his friend's predicament, unaware of course, that Russo had been cooperating with the FBI and was tape recording his conversation.

To eliminate any doubt that Rosario had lied to the FBI, prosecutors called Zummo to testify that Rosario had personally alerted him that he was under investigation, and they had Rubino testify that Rosario had raided his gambling parlor in 2012 and that he had later seen the detective and Russo together at a bar.

Defense attorney Kestin Thiele, who had argued in her closing argument that Rosario did not know that a grand jury was investigating the Bonannos and was innocent of the obstruction charge, told Gang Land that she and Rosario were happy the jury "correctly" decided that issue but were "disappointed" the jury convicted him of lying to the FBI.

She and co-counsel Louis Freeman are preparing a so-called Rule 29 motion seeking a directed verdict of acquittal from Brooklyn Federal Judge Eric Vitaliano.

[7digits]

Seems you have violence occurring daily in the mob including sometimes shootings makes sense since the FBI has really took its foot off the gas pedal for the most part in New York especially with the bosses…

[OcSleeper]

Thanks for posting

[Tonyd621]

I'm not saying the pistol was planted, but any gangster worth their salt who carries would not be holding a Jennings. A Jennings is probably one of the worst made pistols you can find. They are known for that.
A guy who actually displays he hates rats and is not ratting. That has to be one of the first(s).