GL 6/7

[Cheech]

This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

Clock Runs Out On Christy Tick
Christopher FurnariGang Land Exclusive!It was the case that was supposed to have broken the Mafia, the prosecution that helped make Rudy Giuliani's reputation. Known as the Historic Commission Case because it targeted the men who allegedly ran the mob, the mostly aging defendants were sent to prison for 100 years, never expected to walk the streets again.

Indeed, five of those who were convicted died in prison. Mafia boss Carmine (Junior) Persico, who is still there, appears destined for the same fate.

But Christopher (Christy Tick) Furnari, the Luchese wiseguy, overcame those huge odds. After spending nearly 28 years behind bars, he won parole in 2014. That decision gave the former Luchese consigliere nearly four years to breathe free fresh air until he stopped breathing altogether at his Staten Island home last week. He was 94.

Like the others, Christy Tick was found guilty of bid-rigging in a scheme in which the mob received 2% of concrete contracts greater than $2 million in return for "labor peace" from the construction industry unions they controlled. And like them, his labor racketeering conviction was cut and dried. But he attacked his 100 year sentence as unfair and unbefitting the crime in the courts until the U.S. Parole Commission granted him parole on September 19, 2014.

Carmine PersicoNo details about why the Commission ordered his release from a prison hospital in Rochester, Minnesota were ever disclosed. But as a trusty Gang Land source told us then, and repeated this week, "he was a tough old bird" and got out through perseverance, not cooperation.

That's something that Gerald Shur, who is credited with establishing the federal witness program in 1970 learned firsthand in the early 1960s, long before Furnari was rigging bids on public works projects in the 1970s and early 1980s by controlling painters and iron workers' unions as an up and coming Luchese wiseguy.

And even before the late 1960s, when Christy Tick was running a bookmaking and loansharking operation on the Brooklyn docks from The 19th Hole, a bar on the corner of 86th Street and 14th Avenue across the street from the Dyker Beach Golf Course that was his base of operations until he was arrested in the Commission case in February of 1985.

Gerald ShurIn the early 1960s, when Shur was a young organized crime prosecutor, he learned that Christy Tick, who was then on parole from an earlier conviction, had met with Colombo mobsters under Joseph Magliocco, who took over the crime family in 1962. Shur, looking to make a name for himself, decided to try and flip him, he wrote in his 2002 book, Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program.

Shur tipped off state parole officials, who agreed to bring Shur along when they busted Furnari, so he could make his pitch. But "the fear of being sent back to prison was simply not enough to make Furnari crack," said Shur, who wrote that the gangster merely pelted him with profanities.

Undeterred, Shur confronted him with pictures of "several Gallo gang members" that authorities had found in his home, and quizzed him about them, assuming that "Furnari had been given the pictures because Magliocco wanted the men murdered." At the time, family loyalists were at war with the rebel faction headed by Crazy Joe Gallo.

"I sell life insurance, and my boss gave them pictures to me," Furnari replied sarcastically, Shur wrote. "He told me to avoid selling insurance policies to these guys. They might not be living too much longer."

Palma Boys Social ClubThere's little, if any doubt, that Furnari, like the other defendants, was guilty of sharing the spoils of the "concrete club" that the mob had in the 1980s. Christy Tick was overheard talking about Commission business with Genovese wiseguy Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno on a bug that the FBI placed in the Palma Boys Social Club in East Harlem that served as Fat Tony's headquarters.

Another bug placed by creative state organized crime investigators in 1982, in the luxury car that Luchese capo Salvatore (The Golfer) Avellino used to chauffeur family boss Antonio (Tony Ducks) Corallo around also recorded Furnari acknowledging his role.

Known as the "Jaguar bug,"it picked Furnari up saying, "Yeah, that's right," Tony Ducks and underboss Salvatore (Tom Mix) Santoro talked about silencing potential witnesses.

When the tape was played at trial, Furnari muttered, "One fucking ride in that fucking car, and I'm sitting here, fucked."

Over the years, at hearings before the U.S. Parole Commission — his first was in December of 1996 and he had at least six, according to court records — and in federal court appeals, Furnari argued that his enhanced 100 year sentence for bid rigging was unfair and unconstitutional since there was no evidence that he had committed any murders, the linchpin of his heavy sentence.

There's no doubt that since he wasn't promoted to consigliere until the 1980s, he had nothing to do with the 1979 murder of Bonanno mobster Carmine (Lilo) Galante, one that prosecutors and Judge Richard Owen used to mete out the unprecedented 100 year prison terms — even if the Commission did vote to whack Galante, information that has been discounted in recent years.

Salvatore AvellinoBut until he was quietly paroled in 2014, the U.S. Parole Commission, which uses information about inmates that it receives from law enforcement officials to decide who gets out and who doesn't, always found him to be a dangerous "level eight" inmate who didn't warrant parole.

Furnari, who made about a dozen $100 payments toward his $240,000 fine following his release from prison, "passed away peacefully" at home, according to an obituary released by family members who described him as a "loving husband, father and grandfather, and friend to many."

Following a two day wake at the Scarpaci Funeral Home in Staten Island, Furnari was laid to rest Friday at St. Johns Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, following a funeral mass at St. Patrick's Church in Staten Island.

He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Tomasina; his children, Salvatore, Debra, and Christopher Jr.; his daughter-in-law Jennifer, and grandchildren, Christa, Isabella, Christopher, Talia and Nicholas.

Judge Richard Owen"Hopefully his final years with his family were peaceful," said Gil Childers, a Commission case prosecutor. "Maybe he will have better luck with his new jury than he did with the last one," said Childers, who, when pressed by Gang Land, added: "Maybe St. Peter, or whosever guarding the gate these days will consider the entirety of his life, and not just the commission case."

Meanwhile, after spending 33 years behind bars, Carmine Persico's lawyers are preparing what may be Junior's last hopes to breathe free air outside prison walls following the Bureau of Prison's decision last year to postpone a scheduled so-called "mandatory 30-year parole hearing" on the day it was slated to occur, until 2051, when Persico would be 118 years old.

Lawyers Anthony DiPietro and Mathew Mari say they will soon seek a "compassionate release" from the BOP, something it hasn't given to an organized crime figure since the early 1990s. They also plan to ask a federal judge in Washington D.C. to order the Parole Commission — which still has sway over about 700 federal inmates convicted before 1987 — to give Persico the 30 year hearing they scheduled for last August 2, instead of in 2051.

Judge Votes For Ike, And The Waterfront Watchdog
Presdient Dwight D. EisenhowerA federal judge in Newark sided with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Malcolm Johnson last Friday by blocking the state of New Jersey from ousting the bi-state waterfront watchdog they helped create 65 years ago to combat the mob's stranglehold on the New York and New Jersey docks, as portrayed in the movie classic, On The Waterfront.

In a 23-page ruling, Judge Susan Wigenton enjoined the Garden State from enacting a law that would have stopped the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor from policing the piers of both states as President Eisenhower decreed it should in 1953 following a series of 24 articles by Johnson in the old New York Sun that exposed rampant corruption and violence on the docks.

Noting that the Commission has "undertaken scores of investigations that have led to the conviction of hundreds of individuals who were conducting illicit activities in the Port, including, but not limited to, drug trafficking, theft, racketeering, illegal gambling, loansharking, and murder," Wigenton wrote that "it is in the public interest for the Commission to continue its investigatory and regulatory work."

The judge's ruling came in a lawsuit the Waterfront Commission filed in January in response to a bill that ex-Governor Christie signed into law on his last day in office — the same one that he vetoed as unconstitutional in 2015. The legislation would have transferred the Waterfront Commission's "powers, rights, assets, and duties" to police the piers to New Jersey state and local police.

Chris ChristieThe legislature acted after both employers, organized as the New York Shipping Association, as well as the union, the International Longshoremen's Association, argued that the mob had "been driven out of the Port" and the Waterfront Commission was no longer needed. The commission's continued oversight rules and regulations were stifling "economic growth," the Commission's opponents also argued.

But in her decision, Wigenton noted that, as recently as 2014, Thomas (The Hook) Leonardis, a $256,000 a year ex-president of ILA Local 1235 pleaded guilty, "along with numerous other ILA union officials, shop stewards and foreman," to taking part in an "extortion conspiracy of their own union members on behalf of the Genovese Organized Crime Family."

The judge pointed out that less than four months before his arrest, Leonardis had personally testified before New Jersey's legislature that the Commission was "archaic." That information, Wigenton wrote, was convincing evidence to reject the contention by New Jersey officials that "there would be 'no risk of corruption, extortion, and racketeering' once the Commission is dissolved."

In what was a complete victory for Commission lawyer Michael Cardozo, the judge rejected all the opposing arguments by attorneys for current governor Philip Murphy, writing that the Commission was "likely to succeed on the merits" for a permanent block of the New Jersey law and was "likely to suffer irreparable harm" if the law went into effect.

Thomas LeonardisIn ruling against Murphy and legislative leaders Stephen Sweeney and Craig Coughlin, the Judge wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled several times that no state can "withdraw from its obligations" of an "agreement solemnly entered into between States" without the consent of the other, noting that both "New York and Congress have remained silent in the instant action."

"Allowing one state to dictate the manner and terms of the Commission's dissolution," Wigenton wrote, "runs counter to the requirement that any change" must be agreed to by both states.

"In addition to investigating criminal activity," the judge wrote, "the Commission has also worked to expose the continued corrupt and discriminatory hiring practices on the waterfront and to implement measures to address them," which the New Jersey law would eliminate.

Calling the decision "a significant victory," Waterfront Commission executive director Walter Arsenault said it would enable the Commission "to continue its critical mission of combatting corruption and ensuring fair hiring practices in the Port of New York-New Jersey."

Johnny Boy Does The Right Thing, For His Number 1 Girl
John AmbrosioGambino family wiseguy John (Johnny Boy) Ambrosio may be aging and ailing but he is still Johnny Boy to his pals. And on the street, Johnny Boy still looks out for his favorite girl, in this case his daughter.

Last week, Ambrosio, 75, pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in an unusual plea deal, one in which the government agreed to give a pass to his 42-year-old daughter Nancy, who allegedly used her old man to collect a debt that she was owed back in 2016.

A longtime pal of the late John Gotti, Ambrosio is an acting capo who the feds say is also a close associate of imprisoned Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso. But in spite of those mob ties, Johnny Boy, who was detained as a danger to the community following his arrest in December, was ordered released on bail following his guilty plea over the objections of the government.

That wraps up the case for Ambrosio who was the main — and last remaining — defendant in a 13-count racketeering conspiracy indictment that included Mancuso's nephew, Bonanno soldier Frank (Frankie Boy) Salerno, and five Gambino associates. The unlucky septet was charged with loansharking, gambling, extortion and drug dealing in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island from 2013 through last year. The other defendants had already pleaded guilty.

Frank SalernoIn Johnny Boy's case, he pled guilty to loansharking conspiracies in Florida and on Long Island from January of 2015 through last December, as well as to running a lucrative gambling business from 2014 to 2017, in addition to an extortion conspiracy in October of 2016 — the same one that his daughter was allegedly involved in.

The plea agreement calls for a recommended prison term between 41 and 51 months. His release on bail also stems from an issue involving daughter Nancy, according to court filings by Johnny Boy's lawyer, Michael Alber.

In a request for bail pending Ambrosio's sentencing, Alber wrote that "Nancy is struggling with stage four ovarian cancer," and asked that Johnny Boy be released so she can have "her father by her side" during the coming months. "Her life expectancy as predicted by doctors is no more than one and a half years or less," he wrote.

Alber wrote that Ambrosio's own failing health includes heart disease and a "history of kidney failure." Those ailments, coupled with "the deteriorating health conditions" of his daughter, were circumstances that made it unlikely that his client was a flight risk or would "pose a danger" to the community at large, the lawyer stated.

Anthony SaladinoIn opposing bail, prosecutor Artie McConnell told Magistrate Judge Gary Brown that Johnny Boy was tape-recorded ordering several underlings to use threats and violence to get their ways and doubted that "the defendant could help himself" from giving up his criminal tendencies if he weren't behind bars.

But Brown disagreed. After Ambrosio's son and daughter posted a $3.5 million bond secured by $2 million in property in addition to $100,000 in cash that was posted by his son-in-law, the judge ordered him released under house arrest conditions that include electronic monitoring.

Central Islip Federal Judge Sandra Feuerstein upheld Brown's decision and scheduled sentencing for October 10.

Frankie Boy Salerno, who was caught delivering messages from his imprisoned uncle Mikey Nose to other Bonanno wiseguys three years ago, and longtime Gambino associate Anthony Saladino, each pleaded guilty to coke trafficking charges calling for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison earlier this year.

Salerno, 44, and Saladino, 68, were each tape recorded by an undercover law enforcement official who bought several ounces of high-quality cocaine from the duo in 2015 and 2016, according to court documents. They each face up to 20 years in prison but their plea deals indicate that they will likely receive sentences between five and six years.

[slimshady_007]

Good gangland this week. Wonder who is now delivers messages for mikey nose now that frankie salerno is behind bars.

[Stroccos]

Thanks for posting

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks Cheech.

[Ivan]

"I sell life insurance, and my boss gave them pictures to me. He told me to avoid selling insurance policies to these guys. They might not be living too much longer."

What a badass quote. Thanks for posting the column.

[JeremyTheJew]

"I sell life insurance, and my boss gave them pictures to me. He told me to avoid selling insurance policies to these guys. They might not be living too much longer."

What a badass quote. Thanks for posting the column.

that and also the court quote is great.

"One fucking ride in that fucking car, and I'm sitting here, fucked."
id be so mad at myself if that really happened.

as for Mancuso, he's almost out also! that should be interesting

[newera_212]

gotta say I was pleased to read that in this case, the Judge wasn't a complete ghoul, and granted Ambrosino bail. looks like his family is dealing with a lot.

not sure how the prosecutor can say with a straight face that some tape recorded calls of a 70 year old man suggesting to someone ELSE that they use THREATS of violence to collect a debt , equates him being such a danger to society that he should remain behind bars until he's tried and sentenced . thats ridiculous

[B.]

Anyone know if Frank Salerno is the same Frank Salerno described by Al D'Arco as murdered Lucchese captain Michael Salerno's nephew who worked at a waste removal site for the Lucchese family? I believe they are/were all Bronx-based. If that's the case, curious if Mancuso was related himself to Michael Salerno or if the Frank Salerno relation is less direct, i.e. through marriage.

[newera_212]

Anyone know if Frank Salerno is the same Frank Salerno described by Al D'Arco as murdered Lucchese captain Michael Salerno's nephew who worked at a waste removal site for the Lucchese family? I believe they are/were all Bronx-based. If that's the case, curious if Mancuso was related himself to Michael Salerno or if the Frank Salerno relation is less direct, i.e. through marriage.

could be possible, but i highly doubt it. the ages and timelines dont match up.

if that was the case, the Frank Salerno we know to be Mancuso's nephew would have been working at the PA landfill when he was like a freshman or sophmore in high school

[B.]

Anyone know if Frank Salerno is the same Frank Salerno described by Al D'Arco as murdered Lucchese captain Michael Salerno's nephew who worked at a waste removal site for the Lucchese family? I believe they are/were all Bronx-based. If that's the case, curious if Mancuso was related himself to Michael Salerno or if the Frank Salerno relation is less direct, i.e. through marriage.

could be possible, but i highly doubt it. the ages and timelines dont match up.

if that was the case, the Frank Salerno we know to be Mancuso's nephew would have been working at the PA landfill when he was like a freshman or sophmore in high school

Good point -- didn't realize he was that young.

[Vknicks]

Not the same Salerno they are related though

[TommyGambino]

Good article this week. Anybody know who ambrosio is acting for?