The New Orleans Mafia is really dead ?

[furiofromnaples]

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/ne ... de-to-kill

The two dining room chairs, sawed off at the legs and mounted inside the cargo area of the van, might have passed for mere oddity at first glance. But a far more sinister picture emerged as Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies scoured the 1998 Ford E-250 after a traffic stop one night in early May in Old Metairie.

Inside the vehicle, authorities found a loaded .22-caliber rifle with a scope stashed under a carpet. An unregistered silencer had been stowed in a side compartment, and deputies discovered an 8-foot cannon fuse — a wire capable of detonating an explosive device — tucked under a sandbag behind the driver’s seat.

The van, which bore a stolen license plate, had even been retrofitted with custom sliding windows in the rear and side panels, offering concealed vantage points for a possible gunman.

Authorities were left with an inescapable conclusion: This vehicle had been outfitted to kill.

“It’s a concern for us that there was a target just because of the nature and the setup of the vehicle,” said Kevin Moran, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said Jefferson Parish officials “definitely stopped something potentially horrific from occurring.”

Federal authorities are investigating whether the van and the rifle found in it can be linked to any shootings.

But their probe also has raised troubling questions about the two men seated in the front of the vehicle when officials pulled it over: Dominick Gullo, 72, and Joseph F. Gagliano, 55, who were both indicted last month on federal weapons charges.

The two suspects, who are being held without bail, have disavowed knowledge of the van’s contents. But at least one has ties to the Marcello organized crime family that was active in the city for decades before ostensibly fizzling out in the mid-1990s.

Gagliano, who served time in federal prison for racketeering, is the son of Frank Gagliano Sr., who was the reputed “underboss” of the organization before his 2006 death.

Gullo is not a convicted felon, however, and in fact this was his first known run-in with law enforcement.

It’s not clear whether the sniper van bears the fingerprints of old-fashioned organized crime or was simply the freelance creation of men with unknown motives. And while law enforcement officials say there are still vestiges of the Mafia, they say its influence in New Orleans has been reduced through attrition and tectonic shifts in the criminal landscape.

“To say that Italian organized crime is making a comeback here in New Orleans is a quantum leap,” said Jim Bernazzani, a former FBI agent who was head of the bureau’s New Orleans field office for three years, until 2008. “I think we have a couple of guys who may have been affiliated — associates, not ‘made members.’ ”

“The whole van thing, if in fact it was organized crime and not individual retaliation, is an anomaly,” Bernazzani added. “It’s something we haven’t seen in a long, long time.”

Mafia ties
New Orleans has a colorful history of reputed mob activity, dating back to 1890 and the assassination of the city’s police chief, David C. Hennessy. But those enterprises have diminished greatly in recent decades, giving way to drug-peddling street gangs and the likes of Central City crime lord Telly Hankton, perhaps the most notorious criminal of his generation.

“It’s no longer the overriding, omnipresent, powerful, tightly organized criminal operation that it was 50 years ago,” Rafael Goyeneche, president of the watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission, said of local crime families. “But there are some remnants of it, and this (van) may be a manifestation of the remnants.”

John Selleck, a local FBI agent, said the bureau still receives “allegations about La Cosa Nostra here in the Greater New Orleans area” from time to time, referring to the American Mafia organization. “We don’t dismiss that information,” he said, “and we look at it thoroughly against what our other threat priorities are.”

Moran said he believes the Mafia still has a local presence. “It may have gone underground a little bit,” he said, “and I think, in today’s culture, there are a lot more different criminal elements out there.”

Joseph Gagliano’s ties to organized crime are well documented. In 1995, Joseph Gagliano, his father, who was known as “Fat Frank,” and several others — including Anthony Carollo, considered the boss of the organization at the time — pleaded guilty to racketeering in a conspiracy that defrauded Bally Gaming, a supplier of video poker machines, using companies federal prosecutors said were Mafia fronts.

Joseph Gagliano, who was 36 at the time, was sentenced to 3½ years in federal prison for his role in the scheme, which involved a partnership among the Gambino and Genovese crime families of New York and the Marcello family of New Orleans to infiltrate Louisiana’s then-nascent video poker industry.
That sentence ran concurrently with a 2½-year prison term Joseph Gagliano received for his role in a card-marking scandal that swindled more than half a million dollars from a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Joseph Gagliano and his associates had been on the radar of federal prosecutors even before they were charged in the video poker case, having been the targets of an federal inquiry into illegal gambling in 1989. In the sprawling video poker prosecution, more than two dozen people were convicted in a scheme to distribute poker machines and skim profits from Bally Gaming, the supplier.

Operation Hardcrust
In building their case, federal agents bugged Frank’s Restaurant in the French Quarter — a deli owned at the time by Joseph Gagliano’s father and now run by his brother, Frank Gagliano Jr. — in a probe that came to be known as Operation Hardcrust after investigators complained about the staleness of the French bread at the eatery. Through hidden cameras and tapped phones, authorities enjoyed what then-federal prosecutor Jim Letten described as a “window into the internal resurgence of a previously dormant organized-crime family.”

The video poker racket marked a renaissance of sorts for the Marcello family, whose influence had increasingly come into question in the years after Carlos Marcello, the reputed New Orleans mob boss, went to prison in an earlier racketeering case. Marcello, who was eventually released after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his conviction, died in 1993 at the age of 83.

Bernazzani, who said much of the New Orleans Mafia had been eliminated before his tenure, noted the lasting impact of sweeping racketeering cases, which he said served to decimate the ranks of Italian crime families around the country.

“Through attrition, we kept picking off the upper echelon, and everybody who came in to take their place had lesser and lesser sophistication and made more and more mistakes,” he said. “A lot of these offspring saw their uncles and fathers and grandfathers die in prison, and they decided to open restaurants.”

Even as its power has faded, the legacy of the Marcello crime family has endured. As recently as 2012, the Louisiana Gaming Control Board denied an application for a video gaming license for Frank’s Restaurant, calling the business “the site of illegal gaming activity” and referring to co-owner Frank Gagliano Jr.’s 1997 conviction in an illegal bookmaking scheme. “Mr. Gagliano’s brother and father, Frank Gagliano Sr., were reportedly members of New Orleans organized crime,” the board’s order said.

Outstanding debt
When Joseph Gagliano left federal prison in 1999, he did so with substantial debt. As part of his plea agreement, he had been ordered to pay $250,000 in restitution to Bally Gaming, the company he and his co-conspirators defrauded.

It’s unclear what type of work he’s been engaged in since his release. Neither his wife, Hetty Gagliano, nor his brother, Frank Gagliano Jr., responded to requests for comment.

Public records list Joseph Gagliano as the director or registered agent of several companies, most of which appear to be related to grocery distribution and gaming. He has paid back $4,000 of his debt, and in 2013, prosecutors attempted to garnish the wages of his wife from her job as an instructor at Delgado Community College.

According to court records, Hetty Gagliano was being paid slightly less than $1,300 on a biweekly basis, after the deduction of taxes.

Hetty Gagliano owns the house where the couple live in the 1000 block of Sena Drive in Metairie, according to the Jefferson Parish Assessor’s Office. The imposing, multistory brick residence has a neatly trimmed yard, a two-car garage and an assessed value of $495,000.

A neighbor described the couple as quiet but said news of Joseph Gagliano’s recent arrest, first reported this month by WVUE-TV, had rippled through the block. “They pretty much stuck to themselves,” said the neighbor, who declined to give his name. “I guess maybe they had a reason.”

About 1½ miles away, in the 200 block of East William David Parkway, a man who lived near Gullo said he’d seen him only a handful of times. “He always seemed like a nice guy,” said the man, who also would not give his name. “At least until we heard that he was trying to kill people.”
It’s unclear exactly how long Gullo, who previously lived in Las Vegas and Chicago, had lived at the home, though the neighbor estimated about two years. Patricia Guggenheimer, who owns the house but apparently lives in St. Tammany Parish, declined to answer questions about how she knew Gullo. “I’m not going to talk about that,” she said before hanging up.

Arousing suspicion
Authorities were alerted to the retrofitted van’s stolen license plate on May 7 by an automatic license-plate reader. A Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy followed the vehicle down East William David Parkway and turned on his flashing lights about 11 p.m. Gullo, who was driving the vehicle, pulled into his driveway.

After running a search of the van’s vehicle identification number, Deputy Lamar Hooks learned it was registered to South Coast Gas Co., a business based in Raceland. Michael St. Romain, the company’s vice president, said the van had been traded in to Terrebonne Ford about two years ago, adding that the company previously used the van as a service vehicle.

The license plate affixed to the van had been swiped Feb. 4 from a woman’s car in the parking lot of an unidentified hospital, according to a Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office report.

It wasn’t until the deputy prepared the vehicle to be towed from Gullo’s home, however, that he discovered its startling contents, including the rifle, silencer and cannon fuse.

Gullo claimed he had purchased the van earlier in the day at CC’s Coffee Shop in the 800 block of Metairie Road, according to the report. He said a woman had entered the business inquiring whether anyone wanted to buy the vehicle for $300. Gullo told Hooks he took the woman up on the deal, adding that the woman promised to meet him the next day to provide more documents.

Gullo and Gagliano denied having any knowledge of the van’s contents, according to the report, but investigators remain skeptical.

“The sophistication and the preparation that goes into preparing a vehicle like this would lead a logical person to the conclusion that there’s maybe more to this than they just happened to be driving around in a van,” said Selleck, the FBI agent, alluding to the custom windows and mounted dining room chairs.

Deputies arrested Gullo on one count of possession of stolen property and booked him into the Jefferson Parish Correctional Facility, where he later posted bail. Gagliano was not detained at that time.

A month later, a federal grand jury indicted both men. Gagliano was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and also with possession of the unregistered silencer. Under federal firearm regulations, silencers are “treated the same as a fully automatic machine gun, a sawed-off shotgun, a short-barreled rifle and other destructive devices,” said Moran, the ATF spokesman.

Gullo was charged only with possession of the silencer, though law enforcement officials said their investigation continues.

“This isn’t just a trip back from buying some ammunition or running to the grocery store,” said Goyeneche, of the Metropolitan Crime Commission. “This is something very, very ominous and sinister.”

Follow Dan Lawton on Twitter, @Dlawton and Jim Mustian @JimMustian.

Editor’s note: This story was changed on Aug. 8 to correct the length of the cannon fuse authorities found inside the van.

[Wiseguy]

Yes, it's dead and has been for a long time. There hasn't been a significant case involving the mob there in over 20 years. And even then - the video gambling case back in the early/mid 1990's, the family was said to largely be finished with remnants working with the Gambino and Genovese families. The whole "assassin van" thing was an interesting story but proves nothing as far as a formally structured, viable family still existing there.

[Pete]

New Orleans is still one of the strongest families after ny, chi, ne, philly, nj, and detroit. I would compare it in strength to Kansas city or St. Louis

[TommyGambino]

How many times are you going to ask about these defunct families Furio? You've literally made a hundred threads about them, I know you'd like them to be viable, but they're not, get over it.

[dixiemafia]

I go to NOLA a lot and while there is still plenty of criminal elements going around there is NO FAMILY there. NONE.

I could even drive you to Gagliano's house as I've worked that area for the power company many times, but he is nothing more than a crook running around with a few dudes. Anyone thinking there is a family there is doing nothing but kidding themselves.

[Pete]

How many times are you going to ask about these defunct families Furio? You've literally made a hundred threads about them, I know you'd like them to be viable, but they're not, get over it.

This viable thing is a wiseguy talking point and whether something is viable is subject to opinion. By wise guys definition tampa was never a family because they didn't have what he considers is the required "structure" it's really just bullshit. But I do get your point about certain people wanting to believe a family is more powerful than it really is for whatever reason. The fact is any family besides the 10 I originally named are remnants and even a few of those 10 aren't particularly strong

[Rocco]

I believe Gagliano is in someway connected to the owner of the cigar bar in Boca where Joey Merlino hangs out with the owner. I don't believe that there is a formal family there in NO. BUT...I would never count out someone from NO being an associate of a LCN family from the northeast or Chicago especially if they have done Federal time together. That has been the case with the remenents of the Tampa family associates under the Gambinos.... Families plant flags with associates and rackets in different cities this way.

[Pogo The Clown]

By wise guys definition tampa was never a family because they didn't have what he considers is the required "structure" it's really just bullshit.

Actually Tampa did have a structure. And more important than the actual ranks was that they operated as an organisation with its members acting as part of that organization. Both of which no longer exist in New Orleans. In fact Joseph Gagliano is likely the only made member still alive at this point. There is a reason the Feds no longer recognize a family in NO.


Pogo

[Pete]

By wise guys definition tampa was never a family because they didn't have what he considers is the required "structure" it's really just bullshit.

Actually Tampa did have a structure. And more important than the actual ranks was that they operated as an organisation with its members acting as part of that organization. Both of which no longer exist in New Orleans. In fact Joseph Gagliano is likely the only made member still alive at this point. There is a reason the Feds no longer recognize a family in NO.


Pogo

They had the same structure as some current families that wiseguy says lack structure that's my point

[Pogo The Clown]

And what families are those?


Pogo

[rayray]

An army of one

[Pogo The Clown]

This army of one thing, what happens when each army of one decides fuck it, I'm not goin' over the top of the foxhole, or, why don't we just blow the lieutenant's head off? Because they've been told, you know, "you're an army of one".


Pogo

[furiofromnaples]

How many times are you going to ask about these defunct families Furio? You've literally made a hundred threads about them, I know you'd like them to be viable, but they're not, get over it.

http://mafiamembershipcharts.blogspot.i ... %20Orleans

Carolla-Joseph 56y
Gagliano-Joseph 55y
Gullo-Dominic* 72y
Marcello-Joseph Jnr. aka Little Joe
Marcello-Salvatore*
Nastasi-Jacob*
Tufaro-Joseph Jnr.
Tufaro-Michael

you tommy, you're right, but there are things that leave me thinking, for example, since however in New Orleans than that in Chicago or Kansas City, there is a good percentage of Italians because the family is extinct? certainly not saying that there is still something like NY but at least the old soldiers, I found a list in queso blog, for sure will have some thug who pass the reins, and I speak of loan sharking, gambling etc. all stuff where don't have to be a genius.
And then the meeting of Tufaro in 2006 with the colombos?
Maybe they are just conspiracy theories or maybe there is no family but many independent gangs.

[furiofromnaples]

http://aboutthemafia.com/tag/new-orleans-mafia-2014

New Orleans mafia shows signs of life ?

New Orleans mafia is said by many to have been defunct for years now but suburban New Orleans police got much more than they were expecting when they pulled over high-ranking New Orleans mafia member, Joe Gagliano and his suspected mobster-associate pal, Dominick Gullo, for having stolen license tabs on the van they were driving in.

On the side of the road bordering Gullo’s house in Metairie, Louisiana, the posh suburb directly north of New Orleans, Jefferson Parish Sherriff’s Department officers came across a somewhat spooky and shocking discovery: a vehicle equipped to kill. The white-colored Chrysler van was outfitted with gun turrets and a scope-fastened sniper’s rifle with an accompanying silencer and 80 feet of cannon fuse, used to light explosive devices.



Dominick Gullo and Joseph Gagliano

“Dominick Gullo, 72 (left), and Joseph Gagliano, 55 “



Gagliano, 55, was the passenger in the van, which was being driven by Gullo, 75 and the owner of a business that stages poker tournaments around the country. Gullo claimed that he bought the van for $300 in the hours prior to getting stopped from a woman at a nearby coffee shop and that he was unware of the fire arm and fuse wire inside and shooting portals built into the side of the van.

The FBI entered the picture last month and charged the pair with a series of federal firearm offenses and Gullo with possession of stolen property. Acting on a tip, police officers pulled up behind the van as Gullo came to a stop in front of his residence on Old Metairie Road, leading Gagliano to departing the vehicle and walking onto Gullo’s porch.

Both are being held without bond.

The question most gangland experts and mob-watchers across the country are asking themselves is what does this arrest mean about the state of La Cosa Nostra in the Big Easy, a region long thought to be absent any significant mafia activity?

One thing known for sure is that Gagliano, 55, is a well-versed racketeer in the area, a “made” member of the New Orleans mafia and someone who hails from a lineage rich with Louisiana underworld ties.

His father is deceased New Orleans mob underboss, Francis (Muffaletta Frank) Gagliano (d. 2006). Two decades ago, in 1994 the father and son gangster team, along with New Orleans’ then-don, Anthony Corrollo and New York mafia figure, Joseph (Jo Jo) Corrozzo, currently the consigliere of the Gambino Crime Family, were indicted and subsequently convicted on federal racketeering charges related to their bilking of a Louisiana poker-machine manufacturer connected to the Bally’s casino franchise out of nearly 20 million dollars.

The younger Gagliano, according to FBI records, inducted into the mafia in a 1990 ceremony, was caught talking for hours on wiretaps related to the investigation that were placed in his father’s restaurant, Frank’s Deli, in the city’s world-famous French Quarter. The year after getting busted with his father, Gagliano was collared by the Feds for overseeing a mob crew that stole more than a half-million dollars from a Mississippi casino, utilizing paid-off pit bosses and illegal card-manipulating.

Serving close to a total of six years in prison for both busts, he was released in 1999. As of last year, Gagliano still owed a large portion of the $250,000 restitution fee levied in his first sentence. Common sentiment following the convictions in the 1990s was that they proved a deathblow to the New Orleans mob, considered by historians the first-ever American Italian mafia family, setting up shop in the Big Easy in the late 19th Century.

At the peak of the mafia’s power and prestige in the United States during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the New Orleans crime family was extremely formidable, headed by boss Carlos Marcello, one of the most revered mob dons in American history.

Marcello died of natural causes in 1993. Although the Family has gone on in some form or another since the universally respected Godfather – said to have bragged of helping arrange the JFK assassination in 1963 – , passed away, it has never been the same.

When Anthony Corollo (d. 2007) and Muffaletta Frank Gagliano took over the syndicate after Marcello died they were so desperate for an infusion of goomba street talent that they reached out to Jo Jo Corrozzo and the Gambinos in New York for help.

The city of New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission categorizes the local LCN family “active, but significantly marginalized.”

New Orleans FBI agent John Selleck and Louisiana ATF agent Kevin Moran each acknowledge the mob’s current presence, although at a lesser state of functionality than in the past, in and around the Big Easy.

“We still get tips about the mob here……….we take them seriously,” Selleck said. “Those guys aren’t being ignored.”

Moran points to the region’s changing gangland landscape in the New Millennium as a reason you don’t hear as much about the New Orleans mafia and why they aren’t as influential as they once were.

“The mafia still exists here, in some form,” he said. “As a group, they’ve had to go underground a bit more and don’t have the clout they used to because there are a lot more criminal elements to deal with compared to their heyday.”

Although neither named a boss of the current organization (probably more like a loose-knit clique of Italian mobsters, scamsters and racketeers with blood ties to the original Marcello and then-Corrollo regimes), they acknowledge that Gagliano has been called a “leader” of the group.

Up until his May arrest, Gullo, a longtime friend of Gagliano’s, didn’t have a criminal record. Gullo has been the recipient of a gambling license in both Louisiana and Nevada.

Louisiana state records show Gagliano’s employment to be as a grocer and gaming entrepreneur. His brother Frank Jr, runs Frank’s Deli, famous for Muffaletta sandwiches, a regional delicacy and the origin of Frank Sr.’s nickname. Frank Gagliano, Jr. was denied a gambling license to put poker machines inside the eatery due to his family’s LCN affiliations.



Article courtesy of Scott M. Burnstein Author of Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit (Images of America) and other great mafia titles.

[TommyGambino]

Do the Tufaro brothers even exist?