GL 8/2 (sorry guys)

[Cheech]

Busted For Heroin In Mississippi, A Luchese Associate Framed His Dad For A Mob Rubout In The Bronx
Gang Land Exclusive!Frank Pasqua IIIFrank Pasqua III knew he was in trouble when he was stopped by police on Highway 463 in Madison, Mississippi. He had just sold a batch of heroin to a new customer in Jackson, about 15 miles away. He had fresh track marks on his arms, a spoon and syringes in the car, plus he was holding 17 bags of heroin along with two doses of Suboxone, a narcotic often used to treat heroin addicts. And he had $1030 in the glove box.

Even worse, he had a loaded nine millimeter handgun in the driver's side door. And the cops and DEA agents weren't buying his claim that he used the syringes they found in his car for GH (Growth Hormone) injections.

"I am fucked, I am fucked," Pasqua kept telling his trusting girlfriend who had driven him on his appointed rounds the night of March 2, 2015, without having a clue that she was serving as a chauffeur for a drug dealer, according to a Madison court document obtained by Gang Land.

Turns out that Pasqua III was right. The Madison police were on to him and they had him cold. They were told by an informer that Pasqua would be delivering heroin that night, and were waiting for him. Before long, Pasqua was cutting his own deal, offering to trade secrets in exchange for a get-out-of-jail card.

Frank Pasqua Jr.The first story he told the New York FBI and the Manhattan US Attorney's office, however, was a phony. He claimed that his father, Luchese mobster Frank Pasqua Jr., had killed former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish when he was actually nowhere near the crime scene.

What led him to concoct the wild tale? Maybe it had to do with his panicked response to the upclose and personal patdown he experienced after being pulled over on that lonely Mississippi highway.

In his report, arresting officer Cole Terrell recorded Pasqua's response after cops found his cash and the gun. He "repeatedly stated, 'I am fucked,'" wrote Terrell. Pasqua conceded that he'd been a heroin user when the cop found the junkie's tools — a spoon and syringes — in the trunk of the car. And a DEA agent was starting to pat him down.

"At this time," wrote officer Cole Terrell, Pasqua was arrested, handcuffed, placed in the back of the patrol car, was read his rights, driven to the stationhouse, and put in a holding cell for a thorough search because "it was believed that Pasqua was hiding more narcotics in his underwear or his body."

Michael MeldishWhen "Pasqua pulled away rapidly" from the DEA agent and was asked "what he was hiding in his buttocks," Terrell wrote, "he stated, 'Nothing I want you to find.'"

He was right about that of course. Terrell wrote that after he finished "explaining his options" to Pasqua, "he retrieved a brown napkin from his buttocks that contained 17 separate small packs of heroin."

Gang Land was unable to reach Terrell, who's been transferred to the Madison PD's Narcotics Bureau, according to an MPD colleague, and didn't respond to a message we left for him. But it's pretty clear from his report, that Pasqua was already planning his way out of Madison.

In a videotaped confession, Terrell wrote, Pasqua admitted a heroin sale in Jackson, his planned sale in Madison, and "also admitted his affiliation with the Lucchese [sic] Crime Syndicate located in New York,'' which, while is more than 1200 miles away by car, is also only a phone call away.

Christopher LondonioIt's unclear who called whom, but sources say that within a month of his Madison arrest, Pasqua III spoke to the FBI and told agents that his father surprised him by shooting Meldish to death on the night of November 15, 2013 when they went to see him to work out the details of a drug deal.

Before long, sources say by June of 2015, Pasqua III was back in New York, tape recording conversations for the FBI with Luchese mobster Christopher Londonio, who has been behind bars in a state or federal lockup since May of 2015, trying to get him to admit his involvement in the Meldish rubout. A Bronx grand jury indicted Londonio for the murder in June of 2015.

Sources say Pasqua III never got Londonio to implicate himself in the slaying, but he did manage to get the wiseguy to talk about some involvement in drug dealing, one of several other charges in the racketeering indictment.

Some more drug talk by Pasqua III, and actual heroin dealing by him in 2016 caused some grief for the FBI snitch, but not enough, according to court papers, for the feds to cut him loose and send him back to Madison, Mississippi.

Steven D CreaHis grief came when he was busted for smuggling drugs into the Putnam County Jail in March of 2016, where the feds had him housed, according to a May 13, 2016 arrest complaint that FBI agent Christopher Munger filed with White Plains Magistrate Judge Lisa Margaret Smith.

Using a wired up fellow inmate, the feds nailed Pasqua III for smuggling heroin into the prison when the inmate turned over a powdery substance he got from Pasqua III that tested positive for heroin, and when they searched his cell and found more heroin hidden away.

In November of 2016, Pasqua III pleaded guilty to heroin dealing in Madison and in Putnam County in a standard plea deal with sentencing guidelines between 92 and 115 months in prison. He hasn't been sentenced in that case, and several later filings are under seal.

But during a bail hearing for Steven D. (Stevie Junior) Crea — his third — before White Plains Federal Judge Cathy Seibel this past January, prosecutors, referring to Pasqua III but without mentioning him by name, stated they had a credible witness who had pleaded guilty to the murder conspiracy of Meldish who had linked Crea to the murder plot.

Judge Cathy SeibelIn a pending bail motion before Seibel, lawyers for Crea assert that Pasqua's "credibility should be met with great skepticism" because of his false account linking his father to the Meldish murder, and his continued drug abuse and drug dealing since becoming an informer in the case.

The attorneys, Joseph DiBenedetto and Seth Ginsberg, wrote that Pasqua's latest drug dealing arrest, came after he ordered his wife, who is also a drug abuser, to "smuggle heroin, suboxone and other drugs into the facility for his personal use and for sale."

The lawyers wrote that Pasqua III has repeatedly beaten and threatened his wife and gotten her to do his bidding, even while he was behind bars several years earlier, on rape charges leveled against him by his wife.

"Unbelievably," the lawyers wrote, "while in prison for this offense, he convinced his wife to smuggle drugs into the facility for his use and sale to other inmates."

New York Wins! Record For Biggest Bank Haul In U.S. History Belongs To Big Apple!
Michael MazzaraThe final count is in. The total haul that three daring mob associates got during a weekend-long burglary of the Rego Park Branch of the Maspeth Federal Savings Bank in May of 2016 has risen to a cool $30,150,938 — making it the largest bank heist in U.S. history.

Throw in another $400,000 plus in cash and valuables that the daring bank burglars stole a month earlier from the safety deposit boxes and vault of an HSBC Bank branch in Borough Park, the grand total of the loot that Michael Mazzara and his cohorts stole from both banks is a whopping $30,584,875, according to a Manhattan Federal Court filing last month.

Up until now, the largest bank heist on American soil was the $30 million in cash and valuables — most of which was recovered — that a Youngstown, Ohio burglary team took from a United California Bank branch in Laguna Niguel, California in 1972. Nitpickers may cry that those 46-year-old dollars were worth a lot more than the 2016 version, but the federal court filing makes it official: New York has another #1 to its credit.

There are no specific details in the filing about the latest increase – the original $5 million estimate grew to $20 million early this year – and none was forthcoming from lawyers in the criminal case or a pending civil case in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Judge Katherine ForrestBut in prior proceedings, prosecutors Benet Kearney and David Denton have stated that the losses claimed by Maspeth deposit box holders had grown by leaps and bounds since authorities put the haul at $5 million when they announced the arrests of mob associates Michael Mazzara, Charles (Duke) Kerrigan, and Anthony Mascuzzio in July of 2016.

In a three-page filing this past July 12, Judge Katherine Forrest wrote that based on all the information she had received during the case, the total amount of restitution due to the victims of both bank burglaries was $30,584,875. Forrest made the three burglars, and their getaway driver, Duke Kerrigan's younger brother Christopher, jointly and severally responsible for the restitution.

A few days later, Forrest, 54, a workaholic judge who was appointed to the bench in 2011 by President Obama after spending a year as a deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, surprised her judicial colleagues and members of the U.S. Attorney's office in an email in which she stated that she was leaving the bench later this year for undisclosed "personal reasons."

Christopher KerriganForrest, known for meting out stiff prison terms — she's been criticized and reversed for giving harsh sentences and got Gang Land's Grinch Who Stole Christmas Award last year for four mean and nasty Christmas-time rulings — was a partner at the white shoe firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore for more than 12 years before her one year stint in the Justice Department.

Neither Gang Land — nor the New York Law Journal, which broke the story of her upcoming departure — was able to learn the judge's personal reasons. But the Journal, citing "a source with knowledge of the situation," wrote that "a return to Cravath seems like a distinct possibility."

The first inkling that the $5 million price tag on the well-panned bank heists was a decidedly lowball estimate didn't come until 20 months after the arrests of the trio of burglars when prosecutors upped the total to "more than $19 million" at the March sentencing of Christopher Kerrigan.

By time the last defendant, Mascuzzio, was sentenced in May, the losses were up to $20.8 million, but prosecutors asked Forrest to hold off on a final order of restitution because the Maspeth bank was still processing claims.

Anthony MascuzzioWhile the dollar value of the jewelry and other valuables lost by Maspeth bank customers rose by nearly $10 million, the cash that bank customers say they lost in the heist dropped by $12,000 this past month — from $3,370,000 to $3,358,000. The drop came as the number of claimants seeking a share of $588,000 in cash taken from their safety deposit boxes but left behind by the burglars rose from 26 to 27.

One of the original 26 claimants — who have each "agreed to a pro-rata distribution" of the cash that is being held in Brooklyn Federal Court — stated he had mistakenly claimed that he lost $216,000 which was $15,400 more than he had in his box on the day of the heist. The 27th and last claimant — he beat the deadline to file a claim by one day — stated that he lost $3400 in cash.

Last month, Judge Carol Amon stated she would make a final decision on how the $588,000 will be distributed after she receives a final "report and recommendation" from Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo.

Ask Andy: Witness Security Program Fiasco
Andy PetepieceUnlike the Witness Security Program fiasco that Gang Land told you about last week — in which the government cut the funding of a disabled witness 13 years after he entered the program even though he had been a model witness, and has steadfastly refused to restore it for the last four years — most of the time it's the protected witness who's at fault when one of them makes news.

Overall, the Witsec Program, which has relocated and protected more than 860 witnesses since the program was begun under the 1970 Organized Crime Control Act, has been a smashing success in the federal government's fight against Cosa Nostra.

However, most of the witnesses are criminals, and sometimes they do not fully adapt to the straight and narrow and get caught committing a crime.

There are a number of well-known cases of Witsec failures, like Henry Hill, the Lufthansa heist informer, and turncoat Gambino underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano. Hill (probation) fared much better for his 1987 drug arrest in Seattle than Gravano (20 years) did for his in Arizona years after they took the witness stand for the government in New York.

A little known witness, Carmen LaBruna, a mob connected career criminal from Buffalo who flipped about four years before Hill did illustrates the problems the Witsec program often faces with about 14% of its witnesses, which is still far below the recidivism rate of ex-cons.

Carmen LaBrunaWhen LaBruna was convicted in 1976 of the murder of a woman he lured to her execution by a cohort on June 2, 1970, he made a quick decision to roll over. He told the FBI that he could testify about some serious crimes, including the 1972 murder of a federal witness. At separate trials in 1977, he testified at the trials of two Buffalo gangsters, Joseph LaMonte and Robert Brocato, who were both convicted.

In 1988, LaBruna was granted parole, and relocated by Witsec to the Cape Coral area of Florida where it didn't take him very long to get into trouble again.

On October 28, 1989, LaBruna allegedly pulled a gun and fired two shots into a new roommate, David Kohler, in a remote area of Cape Coral. Luckily for Kohler, his would be killer was not only a poor shot but he failed to finish the job. Kohler lived, and agreed to testify against LaBruna.

Prosecutors wasted little time in trying to get the relocated killer off the streets. However, the case ended well for LaBruna, not the people of Florida. His first trial in March of 1990 ended in a hung jury, and in the second trial, in May of 1990, he was acquitted. He was thrown out of the Witness program. But he was free.

Three years later, LaBruna got into an argument with a stranger in a 7-Eleven convenience store in Cape Coral, took out a knife and stabbed him several times. Once again, the violent assault of a local man by a Witsec killer who had been acquitted of shooting another man in 1989, triggered cries for justice. LaBruna pleaded no contest. In 1994, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

A few years after he got out of prison, he was snared in tape recorded conversations during a drug trafficking sting pulled off by the DEA, the FBI and Cape Coral police. This time, prosecutors knew they had him good, and refused to give him a reasonable plea offer. LaBruna went to trial, and in August of 2000, was convicted of four counts of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. To the relief of many, he died behind bars at the age of 70 on January 10, 2017. Needless to say, he is not a poster boy for the Witsec Program.

[slimshady_007]

Great gangland

[DPG]

Thanks for posting.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for the post Cheech.

No comment.

[willychichi]

Thanks for the post Cheech.

No comment.

Jeez Sonny would it kill ya to give Capeci a break once and awhile.

[SILENT PARTNERZ]

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for the post Cheech.

No comment.

Jeez Sonny would it kill ya to give Capeci a break once and awhile.

That was me giving him a break.


I still cannot fathom how Pasqua 3rd would frame himself and his old man for a murder they apparently had nothing to do with. It’s beyond nonsensical.

[Cheech]

I didnt even read it.

[Ivan]

I still cannot fathom how Pasqua 3rd would frame himself and his old man for a murder they apparently had nothing to do with. It’s beyond nonsensical.

If he was high when he spewed that up, it's probably the only explanation you really need.

I know from my own ridiculous experiences that opioids can make you say the loopiest shit imaginable, all the while thinking it's brilliant.

[NJShore4Life]

Pasqua III’s pic looks like a serial killers MySpace profile pic....

[SonnyBlackstein]

I still cannot fathom how Pasqua 3rd would frame himself and his old man for a murder they apparently had nothing to do with. It’s beyond nonsensical.

If he was high when he spewed that up, it's probably the only explanation you really need.

I know from my own ridiculous experiences that opioids can make you say the loopiest shit imaginable, all the while thinking it's brilliant.

I’d agree except he didn’t get into contact with the FBI until months later. You’d assume if he was going to come up with bullshit it would be better than indicating himself and his old man in a murder after a couple of months to come up with something and likely sobered up.

Still makes zero sense to yours

[TJ]

what a jerkoff this kid is...i have a dumb question..what is he doing in mississippi? and how does someone trust him to talk himself into an indictment after he comes back from mississippi...no disrespect to 'mississippians'..but..WHO THE FUCK GOES TO MISSISSIPPI?

[NJShore4Life]

Chris Rock said it best about Mississippi...

https://youtu.be/XAJTb6BiwGQ