Gangland - 9/20/18

[Chucky]

This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

40 Years Later, Mob Turncoat Teams Up With His Bank-Robber Twin Brother Again

The key mob turncoat in the most successful waterfront racketeering case in decades — is a violent Genovese crime family loanshark from New Jersey who is now allegedly terrorizing residents of the Garden State with his twin brother, Gang Land has learned.

Meet Joseph (Joey Waterbed) Caponegro, who helped the feds convict 21 gangsters and corrupt union officials of racketeering on the New Jersey piers. The charges were a featured piece of the FBI roundup of 127 mob-connected gangsters from six states on Mafia Takedown Day of 2011.

Caponegro's previously undisclosed performance as a snitch got him a sweet plea deal, when a federal prosecutor told his sentencing judge that "his cooperation was quite significant." The prosecutor didn't bring up at sentencing that he beat up his wife while working for the feds.

And meet his twin brother Gregory, who teamed up with Joseph in 1978 for a $28,000 armed robbery of a Newark bank when they were 21. Gregory has more than 100 arrests for state and local crimes in New Jersey, including domestic violence, robbery, assault, burglary, terroristic threats, insurance fraud, drug dealing, and structuring, the federal crime of hiding bank deposits of more than $10,000.

Forty years after the bank job — they each got four-to-six years — the brothers allegedly trashed the apartment of Gregory's tenants, stole $25,000 in valuables, and tried to steal two motorcycles worth $35,000. But when cops arrived, they chased the brothers away, without charging either of them with a crime, according to several Mountainside, NJ police reports obtained by Gang Land.

Joseph, who says he isn't bashful about "breaking legs" and "busting fucking heads open," according to court filings, was his brother's helper on January 28, according to police reports and videos of the confrontation between the brothers and Gregory's tenant at the Mountainside home of the tenant, a 57-year-old registered nurse, and his family, which includes a school-age child.

The dispute between Gregory and his former tenant, whose name is being withheld by Gang Land, stems from Gregory's demand for $10,500 when the tenant decided to break month-to-month lease with one-month's rent of $3500, according to the police reports.

According to a report by the former tenant's therapist that was submitted to the Union County Prosecutor's Office earlier this month, Gregory often boasted of "organized crime affiliations with the Genovese crime family," threatened to "cripple" him, and during a drunken rant "admitted to committing a murder."

In her report, therapist Eileen Remmers of Madison, NJ, stated that her patient, "has been badly shaken by his former landlord's criminal behavior" that "included a barrage of verbal and physical threats to kill him and his wife and children; to stab his pregnant wife's belly and to send his organized crime-related henchmen after him." Remmers wrote that his claims are backed up by the 10 hours of police audio and video recordings that she heard and viewed.

In the 2008 arrest that convinced Gregory's brother Joseph to flip on the Genovese crime family, the gangster was tape-recorded choking his victim who was heard "gasping for air" and stating "I cannot breathe" before Joey Waterbed loosened his grip and said, "You got to live in fear now, you hear me," according to a Brooklyn Federal Court filing in his case.

"I'll bust your fucking head open," Joseph told another victim, about a $640 debt. "I'm a grown mother fucking man. I'm an Italian man. I ain't no motherfucking porkchop."

In a follow-up phone call, FBI agents heard Joseph tell a friend of the debtor, "Don't be mad at me. Out of respect for you, I am telling you that I am going to break his legs" and put "him in the hospital." The threat caused agents to warn the debtor that "he was at risk to be assaulted," wrote Brooklyn federal prosecutor Taryn Merkl.

The next day agents heard Joseph call the debtor and up the ante: "I cut all the tires on your fucking car," he said. He then boasted about it to a criminal associate and insisted that if he doesn't get his money, "I will put him in the fucking hospital" and I'll bust his father's fucking head open." This prompted the feds to decide to arrest him before he attacked another victim.

Joseph, who assaulted his wife and threw bleach on her in 2002, was quickly detained as a danger to the community. But two weeks later, prosecutors agreed to release him on bail when he agreed to turn on the mob. His war on his wife continued, however. He promptly beat her up again, while making "thousands of hours of tape-recordings" in the waterfront probe, according to court records.

In pressing for leniency at his sentencing, assistant U.S. attorney Merkl said "Caponegro's cooperation is really the germ that allowed this investigation to flourish," and result in the labor racketeering convictions of Genovese mobster Steven (Beach) Depiro, nine top International Longshoremen's Association officials and 11 other corrupt ILA members and mob associates.

In addition to taking "responsibility" for his crimes and cooperating against nailing some "very dangerous individuals," said Merkl, he also spared Uncle Sam the expense of placing him in the Witness Security Program because he "took responsibility for relocating himself," something that turned out to not be such a good thing for at least a few Garden State residents.

Joey Waterbed was seen on the video taken by the body-worn cameras of several cops who responded to a Mountainside home when his brother Gregory's tenant saw the duo inside his home and called police. Joseph doesn't do much talking, but he is seen and heard calling the family's lawyer to the scene on police video.

Patrolman Andrew Yasinsky, saw brother Gregory leave the victim's garage, and close the door, which could not be opened, the officer wrote, because the "keypad was ripped off the side of the garage, to which Caponegro stated, 'Maybe I can make a phone call and have it magically appear.'"

"The kitchen was ransacked with items sprawled out all over the floor, and an unidentifiable glass item was broken on the floor," wrote Yasinsky.

Inside the garage, the cop saw that two motorcycles were damaged. "The carbon filter cover to the oil filter was ripped off" one of the bikes, the gas tank right handlebar brake of the other bike was damaged, and the key for the tenant's Ducati, which costs about $600, was missing.

According to therapist Remmers, the brothers' tornado of destruction was the latest episode in a five-year long period when the tenant, "lived in fear" while he rented a home from Gregory Caponegro.

And he'd finally had enough from his landlord from Hell. The tenant told cops that he would agree to pay Caponegro $10,500 if he could load all the belongings he could fit into a U-Haul truck he had rented, and never return. Officer Yasinski videotaped a handshake agreement between the men. He then asked Gregory about the missing Ducati key.

"What key?," Gregory cracked. When Yasinski repeated the question, the cop watched him walk along the driveway, "reach his right hand inside his coat, pull out something with an apparent key on it and a white piece of paper as well, and drop it on the ground," he wrote.

"Caponegro then looked at me and said, 'Someone must have dropped something over here. It looks like it is a key to something.' He then retrieved the item and handed it to (the complainant) who confirmed it was in fact the key to his Ducati," Yasinski wrote.

Mountainside police, whose chief and two longtime detectives resigned in July when several cops filed a lawsuit claiming years of sexual misconduct by them, did not respond to a request for comment about the department's decision not to charge the Caponegros with a crime.

Mark Spivey, a spokesman for the Union County Prosecutor's office was asked why the office didn't file any charges in the case originally and if it was reconsidering in light of allegations by therapist Remmers. Spivey declined to answer any of Gang Land's questions.

Joseph Garrubbo, the attorney called by Joseph Caponegro, did not respond to a call from Gang Land.

Stevie Wonder Throws Mob Boss, The Book, At His Trial Judge

Steven CreaIn a dramatic reversal of the usual roles, a mob defendant is literally throwing the book at the judge.

The defendant is longtime Luchese family underboss Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea. And the book is Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D'Arco, The Man Who Brought Down the Mafia, authored in 2013 by yours truly and Tom Robbins. Crea wants the judge to take a close look at an illustration that appears right at the book's beginning.

It is a government exhibit from a long ago trial, a chart depicting the Luchese crime family in 1991. It shows Crea, identified at the time as the family's "acting consigliere," right next to Anthony (Bowat) Baratta, who is labelled "acting underboss."

Crea and his lawyers argue that the exhibit establishes pretty clearly that Seibel more than likely investigated him when she was a mob prosecutor in Manhattan and should therefore bow out of his upcoming trial for racketeering and the 2013 murder of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish.

Stevie Wonder's motion stems from Seibel's disclosure to the defense last month that she was involved in the investigation of Baratta from 1989 to 1991.

The judge stated that while she was "responsible" for the Baratta probe back then, she recalled "almost nothing" about it but "to make sure" it didn't involve any current defendants she "asked the Government ex parte to determine" if any were subjects or targets of her investigation.

Prosecutors wrote they found "FBI intelligence and surveillance reports" mentioning "criminal activity" of three defendants, including Crea, but "no indication" that they "were targets of the Baratta investigation." Seibel ruled that allegations that Crea was a Luchese mobster were known "for decades" and were not a basis for her recusal, but she gave defense lawyers a week "to make an application if they disagree."

On Crea's behalf, attorney Robert Franklin hired California attorney Richard Flamm, a nationally recognized expert on judicial and legal ethics, to determine whether "a reasonable person, knowing all the facts would conclude that the Court's impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

Flamm wrote that the full-page chart featured in Mob Boss established that "in 1991, one of the years in which Judge Seibel was investigating the Luchese Family," the government believed that Crea and Baratta were both "alleged to have had the same level of responsibility within the" Luchese crime family.

Flamm noted that Mob Boss's authors aren't the only ones to allege that Crea "was a high-ranking member" of the Luchese family, citing Seibel's initial ruling on the matter, where she wrote that "allegations that Mr. Crea was a member of the 'Luchese Family' have been made 'for decades.'"

"Given the widespread dissemination of allegations of this nature at the time," Flamm opined, "it is highly likely that the prosecutor who investigated Mr. Baratta would have performed at least some investigation of Mr. Crea; indeed, it would seem to be extremely unlikely that she did not."

In his 38-page affidavit, Flamm, who testified on judicial disqualification before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in 2009, cited numerous other reasons why a reasonable person, not a judge, would believe that Seibel might not be impartial.

"A reasonable person" would expect the judge, who was "only a few years removed from law school" at the time, to remember details about "alleged criminal misconduct by a group of people who were reputed to be members of one of the most notorious crime syndicates in the world," Flamm wrote. "This is not a situation where Judge Seibel, as a junior attorney at a personal injury firm, investigated the details of a 'fender bender.'"

And even if "a reasonable person" concluded that the judge truly forgot she had investigated the Luchese family, that person would have "serious concerns" that it took seven weeks for the Court to inform the defense that she had been "responsible" for the Baratta investigation, and that the judge initially gave lawyers only a week to challenge her decision, wrote Flamm.

A recusal motion "is a serious step that should never be undertaken lightly, nor without a solid basis in fact and law" and "counsel is under an affirmative duty to conduct a reasonable investigation before filing a recusal motion," the lawyer wrote.

Lawyer Franklin was careful not to suggest that the judge had any "actual prejudice" against his client. Even when he asked for more time last month — Seibel gave him two additional weeks to file his papers, which were filed Monday — to investigate whether there were adequate grounds for him to file a recusal motion.

Flamm also wrote that a reasonable person might think her assignment to the case was the result of judge "shopping" by the government.

Flamm noted that even though the Meldish murder was in the Bronx, the case wasn't assigned to Manhattan, which has 44 judges, but to White Plains, which has only four judges, and that while it was originally assigned to Judge Nelson Roman, it was reassigned to Seibel, even though he did not recuse himself, and no public reason has ever been given for the switch.

Flamm also noted that Gang Land — which states categorically that it has no dog in this fight and takes no position on the issue — wrote that the judge switch was "mysterious" on March 30, 2017.

After examing court documents, other records, and evaluating the applicable law, Flamm wrote: "I am of the opinion that a reasonable person, if considering the totality of the circumstances, might question the ability of the judge to be impartial, and that this is not a 'close call.'"

Prosecutors are expected to disagree wholeheartedly with Crea's motion. Meantime, Gang Land is hoping for a few more sales of, ahem, a great and well told mob story.

Partially Blind, Wheelchair-Bound And Wheezing From Emphysema: Junior Persico Is Too Healthy To Get Out Of Prison

Among the birthday missives that Carmine (Junior) Persico received last month was one dated August 8, 2018 — his 85th birthday — from Warden Andrew Mansukhani. He didn't care for it much as it invited him to spend the rest of his birthdays at the federal Bureau of Prisons hospital in Butner, North Carolina.

In the one-page letter, Warden Mansukhani told Persico, who celebrated his 33d consecutive birthday behind bars last month, that a "comprehensive review" by his medical team "confirmed" that he is "able to ambulate independently without difficulties" and that "you are able to perform your activities on daily living."

Persico, who is blind in one eye, has diminished vision in the other, has emphysema, heart and kidney disease and a host of other ailments that afflict octogenarians, probably would have jumped for joy at the news if he didn't also have "major spine damage" that confines him to a wheelchair during his waking hours.

The warden confirmed that Persico does "have chronic medical conditions related to (the) aging process," but told the imprisoned Mafia boss that he does not have any "deteriorating mental or physical health that has substantially diminished your ability to function in a correctional facility."

He did alert Persico, who knows the drill — and whose lawyers have been trying to get him released since he passed 30 years behind bars and was granted a "mandatory parole hearing" that was revoked on a technicality on the day it was scheduled — that he has the right to appeal.

His lawyers, Anthony DiPietro and Mathew Mari, say they will do just that. They are also considering filing papers in Washington D.C to force the U.S. Parole Commission to give him a not so mandatory parole hearing that was initially slated to take place last year.

"This really bothers me," said Mari. "We went through the court system with the law and facts on our side. We proved with FBI documents that he was not a Mafia boss when they said he was; there is no evidence that he's a Mafia boss today, and yet they want this 85-year-old great grandpa to die in prison."

[newera_212]

Thanks for posting, good article this week.

those Caponegro brothers sound like true scumbags

[SILENT PARTNERZ]

PICS: Never seen either of these. Bowat and Steve Beach

baratta-anthony.jpg

depiro-stephen.jpg

[SILENT PARTNERZ]

These guys sound & look like real dicks:

caponegro-brothers.jpg

caponegro-gregory.jpg

caponegro-joseph.jpg

[phatmatress777]

Those brothers for some reason remind me of steve lenehan

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[Ivan]

These guys sound & look like real dicks

those two look like products of incest

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks chucky, SP.

Always appreciated.

1. Fucking ridiculous that the Judge in Crea’s trial is a former prosecutor in one of his cases. How in this planet is that not a conflict of interest.

2. Persico is just an 85yr old great grandpa. Laugh. My. Ass. Off.

[slimshady_007]

Thanks for the post and good gangland

[aleksandrored]

Thanks for posting, Persico should be released, under these conditions what could he do wrong? could let him die in peace out of prison at least

[phatmatress777]

Thanks for posting, Persico should be released, under these conditions what could he do wrong? could let him die in peace out of prison at least

I think if he would have gave up the reigns and avoided the war in 91 they would have let him out. Look at Christy tick didn't really hear anything abt him and really held no power. He was out for the last cpl years of his life.

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[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for posting, Persico should be released, under these conditions what could he do wrong? could let him die in peace out of prison at least

Umm, Order a murder?



Murder's still wrong, right?

[slimshady_007]

Thanks for posting, Persico should be released, under these conditions what could he do wrong? could let him die in peace out of prison at least

From what ive read, while in prison carmine had a part in ordering the 1988 murder of colombo consigliere Vincent Jimmy Angelina and ordering the 1987 mistaken murder of George Aronwald. So why should carmine be released? Wht should he die in peace? Vincent Angelina and George Aronwald didn’t die in peace.

[gohnjotti]

Thanks for posting, Persico should be released, under these conditions what could he do wrong? could let him die in peace out of prison at least

From what ive read, while in prison carmine had a part in ordering the 1988 murder of colombo consigliere Vincent Jimmy Angelina and ordering the 1987 mistaken murder of George Aronwald. So why should carmine be released? Wht should he die in peace? Vincent Angelina and George Aronwald didn’t die in peace.

As well as the attempted murder of Victor Orena in 1991 and, indirectly, most of the murders in the Colombo war from 91-93.

[aleksandrored]

but will it be that at this point in the championship, near death, he will order a murder or something else?

[SonnyBlackstein]

but will it be that at this point in the championship, near death, he will order a murder or something else?

Are you serious?

He’s the reigning boss of the Columbo Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra.

What do you think?