Vincent Fiore and Connecticut

[Bklyn21]

Feds: Goshen resident is Gambino member
By John Doherty,and Oliver Mackson
Posted Jun 5, 2005 at 2:00 AM
Updated Dec 17, 2010 at 8:51 AM

Vinny Fiore says he just builds homes

Goshen — Vinny Fiore builds houses.

At least, that’s what he told a federal judge. He runs a construction and remodeling company with his wife, Desiree, and they live with their three kids in sleepy little Goshen.

His lawyer said in court that Fiore made $25,000 to $35,000 last year. If that isn’t exactly setting the world on fire in the hot Orange County real estate market, at least it’s an honest living.

Which is a far cry from what the U.S. Attorney’s Office says about Vinny Fiore.

The feds say Fiore’s a gangster, a “made man” in the Gambino crime family. On June 28, they’ll ask a judge to put him in prison for smacking around a club owner during a shakedown attempt.

Prosecutors say Fiore, 42, is an enforcer for a crew of wiseguys out of Bridgeport, Conn., and New York City. His bosses are the heirs to John Gotti’s throne, and Fiore is a soldier in the family, prosecutors say.

On April 4, Fiore pleaded guilty to his role in a federal racketeering case that netted 18 wiseguys in three states involved in cocaine dealing, gambling, extortion and punishment beatings.

He’s been held without bail in a Rhode Island prison since his arrest last September, deemed too dangerous to be released before trial.

Before his arrest, no one around here had ever heard of him. According to his lawyer, Fiore moved from the Bronx to 78 Maple Ave. in Goshen in 1998.

It’s in a sedate neighborhood off Route 17M, on a 66-acre parcel. Fiore’s development company recently won approval to subdivide that land into 17 lots.

Neither town nor village police have had any dealings with Fiore.

“I don’t know anything about him — never heard the name,” said Honey Bernstein, the plugged-in town supervisor.

Unlike other gangsters who’ve made their homes here, Fiore has kept a low profile.

Since his arrival here, Fiore’s Venice Land Development Co. has put up small subdivisions, like the six-unit Meadows of Goshen on School House Road, and two homes on Carboy Road in Mount Hope, down the street from the federal prison in Otisville.

State records list Fiore as the manager of Venice Land Development LLC.

HERE’S WHAT THE FBI says Fiore’s other job is like:

On Aug. 5, 2003, Fiore went looking to collect protection money — $30,000 just to start with, and then a straight $200 a week — from a Connecticut nightclub owner, according to FBI reports in court papers. Fiore beat up the man when he protested. Sent the guy’s 73-year-old dad to the hospital, too.

A month before the beating, the FBI says, Fiore met with other wiseguys at an unknown location. He pricked his trigger finger, held a burning card with the image of a saint in his cupped hands and swore he’d kill to protect La Cosa Nostra. He was then accepted as a soldier in the Gambino family of the American Mafia, the outfit made infamous by the late John Gotti.

Vincent Fiore, the house builder from Goshen’s Maple Avenue, was now a made guy.

“The government’s talking all about organized crime and the like, but I can tell you that my client has been gainfully and lawfully employed his entire life,” his lawyer, Thomas Lee, told a federal judge last September.

Lee didn’t return phone calls for this story. Earlier this year, Lee said he never discusses pending cases with reporters.

Fiore even has a college education: a bachelor’s degree in finance from Mercy College in Westchester County. He has spent the last 14 years in the New York construction scene, Lee told a judge.

But Fiore also picked up an arrest sheet. He was convicted of a weapons charge in New York City in the early 1990s.

His roots in organized crime aren’t spelled out in government filings for the federal racketeering case. Mafia members routinely spend years as “associates,” proving their value and loyalty to a crime family before being “made.”

In court documents, Lee says Fiore moved to Goshen in 1998, the same time many Bronx residents were discovering Orange County’s appeal.

BY THAT TIME, a Connecticut faction of the Gambino family was picking up the pieces of the organization shattered by Gotti’s imprisonment. Gotti died in prison in 2002.

Anthony Megale, a caporegime, or captain, in the Gambino family, was known to his peers as “The Genius.” As the new No. 2 man in the family, Megale controlled all the bookmaking, extortion, protection, drugs and other Gambino rackets in Connecticut, according to the FBI. New York gangsters referred to Megale as “Tony Connecticut.”

One of the crews working for Megale was headed by Victor Riccitelli, now 72. Riccitelli was involved in cocaine dealing, illegal gambling and the Mafia’s age-old money-maker, protection, according to federal court documents. Riccitelli used Fiore as muscle, prosecutors say.

But Tony Connecticut’s reign was brief.

In September 2004, Megale, Riccitelli, Fiore and 15 others were indicted on racketeering charges in Connecticut.

Riccitelli was then convicted in a separate federal cocaine case. Megale was charged in a second racketeering case out of New York, along with his Gambino boss, Arnold “Zeke” Squitieri.

By April, the new Gambino leaders were all in prison, and Goshen’s made guy, Fiore, had pleaded guilty to the single shakedown charge.

It’s not the only recent violent act prosecutors attribute to Fiore.

In phone conversations recorded by the FBI, Riccitelli berated another Mafia crew chief for using Fiore to handle a dispute with an unnamed Connecticut contractor over some construction equipment.

Nic Melia, a 72-year-old Mafioso known as “The Old Man” and “The Greaseball,” had two men assault the contractor in the parking lot of an Off-Track Betting parlor in Bridgeport last July, according to court documents.

Prosecutors told a judge the phone conversations make clear that Fiore was one of the two assailants. But the contractor said he could not make a positive identification.

“Perhaps that’s because his jaw was broken in the assault,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gustafson said in court last year.

FIORE’S PLEA AGREEMENT doesn’t require him to admit membership in the Mafia, which was once a traditional — and humiliating — part of mob plea deals.

Nor does it ask for any forfeiture of ill-gotten assets. Fiore is expected to get a prison sentence of 27 to 33 months. With time already served, he could return to his four-bedroom, three-bathroom, double-lot home on Maple Avenue by early 2007.

The home is valued at $595,000, and the land it’s on is approved for those 17 new house lots.

Not bad for a guy who cleared $35,000 last year

[Bklyn21]

Didn't Vincent Fiore come up in the Connecticut regime under Anthony Megale ? And , I know there was a recent thread titled Connecticut but whats going on with Conn. Today and who's in charge after the sudden death of Megale ? And is there still a full fledged Gambino regime in the state ? I figure the recent Murder of Napoleon Andrade was sanctioned , Or maybe not of the Home invasion of Nicola Melia . Whos running the show in Conn. Today and what is they're strength since Vincent Fiore went to Campos and a few others were told to report to others

[Bklyn21]

Mob bust targets 18 in region
BRIDGEPORT — Eighteen people, including the alleged No. 2 man in the Gambino crime family, were indicted Wednesday in what investigators said was the most significant assault on the area’s Italian Mafia in more than a decade.
Associated Press Published 12:00 am EDT, Thursday, September 30, 2004





Anthony "The Genius" Megale, a Stamford man believed to be the highest ranking Mafia member in Connecticut, was arraigned on a 46-count federal indictment charging him with racketeering, extortion and illegal gambling.

Fifteen of the 18 people were arrested Wednesday. Investigators were searching for three others, including Igazio Alogna, an alleged Mafia captain, and Vincent Fiore, an allegedly "made" Gambino soldier from Goshen, N.Y.

Megale, a stocky man with glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, rolled his eyes and offered a slight smirk when prosecutors told him he was facing more than 20 years in prison on nearly every count.


"As underboss, Megale reports to the boss of the Gambino family, helps decide disciplinary issues involving the family, and assists in resolution of internal family disputes," the indictment said.

The indictment describes a traditional Mafia organization being run out of Fairfield County, with members shaking down business owners for monthly payoffs in exchange for protection.

Prosecutors say Megale demanded $2,000 a month from an area nightclub owner, plus a little extra every year as a "Christmas bonus." A vending machine owner was allegedly forced to pay Megale’s crew $200 a month.

The indictment also accuses Megale of lending money at exorbitant interest rates. A $2,500 debt allegedly accrued interest at the rate of $100 a week, a $7,000 debt at $280 a week.

Other allegations are less creative: When a Fairfield County social club owner refused to pay $30,000, Fiore allegedly assaulted him.

FBI agents and members of a regional strike force fanned out through southern Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island, arresting people around dawn. Many of the men looked bedraggled during their court appearance, some wearing baggy T-shirts, others sweat pants or jeans.

The Gambino family, one of the five New York families, has traditionally made Fairfield County its Connecticut turf. The Hartford area has been dominated by Genovese family interests, while eastern Connecticut has been run primarily by the New England, or Patriarca family.

Four of those indicted — Megale, Fiore, Alogna and Victor Riccitelli — are allegedly "made" members of the Gambino family.

"This is the most significant investigation of La Cosa Nostra in the state of Connecticut in 15 years," said Michael Wolf, Connecticut’s top FBI agent.

The indictment crowns a nearly two-year investigation — dubbed in recent weeks "Operation Megastrip" — into the Gambino family. The case also caps an exceptionally bad year for the Connecticut mob.

In November, Genovese leader and Connecticut overseer Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno was killed in Massachusetts.

Days later, Massachusetts prosecutors indicted several Genovese associates on gambling charges.

Federal prosecutors spent part of this year sweeping up many of the last remnants of the Patriarca bookmaking organization in New Haven.

In Wednesday’s indictment, prosecutors don’t name the Gambino boss Megale allegedly answered to. Mob observers say that’s because the leadership structure is fractured, with nobody clearly in charge.

"There’s no one guy who’s running the show," said Joseph Coffey, a former New York police officer and mob expert.

Two spinoff indictments also unsealed Wednesday charge seven men with dealing cocaine. Prosecutors said the cases overlap with the Mafia case.

One of the two cocaine indictments alleges that John Chetta, a New Canaan man who runs a food service company, sold more than 500 grams of cocaine on the Norwalk Community College campus, where he delivered food.

All 15 men presented in court Wednesday were ordered held while they await bail hearings within a week. None entered a plea.

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[Bklyn21]

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Former Gambino family boss dies in Stamford
John Nickerson|July 22, 2015
Anthony Megale
Photo: Alan Raia, Newsday
IMAGE 2 OF 5
Anthony Megale
STAMFORD — City resident Anthony “The Genius” Megale, who rose to be the underboss of the Gambino crime family during the reign of John Gotti, died at Stamford Hospital Tuesday night.

An employee at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Farmington said Wednesday that Megale’s body had not yet been examined, and therefore a cause of death was not known.

A local law enforcement source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Megale died of a heart attack at 9:30 p.m. on his 62nd birthday. Megale was released from a Pennsylvania federal prison in December after being indicted on 38 extortion charges in 2004.

Megale’s Stamford attorney, Stephan Seeger, confirmed the cause of death was an apparent heart attack.

Megale was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison in September 2006 for his part in a tri-state racketeering enterprise centered in New York state.


Seeger said that in the 15 years he had known and represented Megale, he was always a gentleman.

“This whole mafia folklore is what the public wants to believe, but it detracts from some of his more noteworthy qualities,” Seeger said. “He was a kind man who took care of his wife and kids and he contributed greatly to Stamford and surrounding area communities.”

Seeger said he had spoken to Megale’s family and they they were taking the news hard. He requested privacy to allow them to grieve.

“There has always been a lot more to Tony than any alleged mafia folklore,” he insisted.

Although Megale denied membership in the Gambinos, he was accused by federal prosecutors and police of becoming the second-in-command of the crime family in the early 2000s. The Gambinos, one of the five alleged New York mafia families, has traditionally made Fairfield County, especially Bridgeport, its Connecticut turf. In 1989, Megale admitted to being Gotti’s top man in Connecticut, a confession Seeger said he never meant to make.

Megale was handed a 135-month sentence for extorting thousands of dollars from the owner of a Greenwich restaurant named Valbella, a New Jersey trucking company and a Westchester County, N.Y.-based construction company.

He was among 32 members and associates of the Gambino crime family who were arrested by the FBI in 2005 during a New York crime sweep that involved a decade-long racketeering scheme of violent assault, extortion, loansharking, union embezzlement, illegal gambling, trafficking in stolen property and mail fraud.

Authorities said the crimes were exposed during a three-year investigation, in which an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the Gambinos and made hundreds of secret tape recordings of high-ranking members at sites throughout the Bronx, N.Y., and Westchester County, including the United Hebrew Geriatrics Home in New Rochelle, N.Y.

Former Connecticut Post and Stamford Advocate reporter Frank Fedeli, who wrote dozens of articles about Megale while covering the organized crime beat, said Megale was given his mob moniker in a back-handed way.

Fedeli said Megale was dubbed “The Genius” on a federal wiretap by an upset and angry Gotti, who apparently thought Megale was anything but a genius.

Fedeli, now Stamford’s customer service supervisor, said in the late 70s and early 80s Megale ran Tony’s Italian Restaurant on the corner of State and Atlantic streets. While it wasn’t known for its ambiance, the place had a well-respected fra diavolo sauce and was a favorite place for the Gambinos to catch up with their New York brothers. Federal officials and Stamford police knew about the arrangement and kept close tabs on the eatery.

Fedeli said Megale had great help rising through the mafia’s ranks through his uncle, Cosmos Sandalo, who was a very well-liked and low-profile gentleman mobster. Megale, who was a street soldier and known to be a good mob earner, was also helped by a pitched mob war from 1978 to 1981 that rubbed out many of the older established mafia bosses.

“The vacuum was created and he walked into it,” Fedeli said.

Megale’s health declined in the months surrounding his sentencing on federal charges in Connecticut in early 2006. He suffered two heart attacks and underwent two heart surgeries in the spring of that year

[Bklyn21]

MY WRITERS SITE

An Informal History of Organized Crime in Connecticut:Iggy Step’s Out of Line

THE NUTMEG MAFIA.
An Informal History of Organized Crime in Connecticut
A 25 part series.
By
John William Tuohy
Part 23
Iggy Step’s Out of Line

Ignazio Alogna AKA Iggy had been a bodyguard to John Gotti boss of the Gambino family. In 2002, a Stamford businessman Harry Farrington came to Alogna attention. Farrington ran two successful and honest strip clubs in Stamford, Beamers on Richmond Hill Avenue and Harry O's Café.
In early 2002, Alogna, who was 72 at the time, came into one of Farrington’s clubs with enforcers Joseph "Joey Mash" Mascia, occasionally of Arizona and his brother John "Johnny Mash" Mascia Jr., and two associates of the Patriarca family, Alfred "Chip" Scivola Jr. and Henry "Hank" Fellela Jr.
Fellela, of Johnson Rhode Island, was an interesting guy. In 2014 he was sentenced today to 48 months in federal prison for making nearly $83,000 in purchases with the use of stolen credit cards belonging to 17 individuals and fraudulently collecting more than $58,000 in Supplemental Security Income benefits by falsely claiming that he had no permanent home address while living with his wife and children in their Johnston residence. His wife was State Representative Deborah Fellela.
Alogna sat Harry Farrington AKA “Oil Can” down and said, "We're taking over the whole East Coast now," and demanded $4,000 a month in protection payments from Farrington. "You've had a free ride for years," Alogna told him and boasted about extorting 50 other New England strip clubs. "Come on, you know the routine, you gotta start paying."
Alogna told him to put the extortion money in an envelope marked "grocery money" at the start of each month. If not, Algona said “someone will come in and wreck the place, and you could get real hurt.”
Farrington went straight to the FBI.
The FBI wired him and rigged his club for sound and film and then directed Farrington to call Connecticut mob boss Anthony Megale for help in dealing with the Alogna demands. Farrington had known Megale for at least 3o years.
Anthony Megale, the so-called Tony Soprano of Connecticut, was a ranking member of the Gambino crime family in New York. Megale was a new generation who hood who held his meetings in Starbuck’s, Home Depot, and McDonald’s or anywhere else he felt free from FBI bugs. Megale went to Beamers, a strip club in Stamford to meet one-on-one with Farrington. During the conversation, and caught on the wiretaps Farrington was wearing, Megale bragged
"They made me the acting underboss of this family. So I'm over everybody."
Farrington asked if he could join the Gambino family.
"What about me bein' a soldier?" Farrington asked.
"Your father Italian?" replied Megale.
"No, Indian," Farrington said.
"You're probably better than 90 percent of the guys. But if you were Italian..."
Regarding the extortion payments, Megale was outraged that Alogna, who lived in eastern Pennsylvania, was trying to extort a business in Stamford, Megale's territory.
"I just don't want to be embarrassed," said Megale. "You gonna let a guy from out of town take a guy you know all your life?" and then added "I'm going to make this fucking asshole bleed, though," said Megale about Alogna.
Megale explained on tape that Alogna’s demand for money had not been approved – a particularly offensive affront because Alogna used muscle from Providence. “Everything you do, you’re supposed to put on record, especially when you do things with other families,” Megale told Farrington. Megale then told Farrington he should ignore Alogna and make monthly protection payments to him.
Megale is then heard telling Farrington on the tapes that Fairfield County's bookies are paying "$500 a week" to be allowed to work. "So for two joints, $500 a week ain't bad," Megale told Farrington "I figure maybe we can do a couple thousand a month for both joints and like $5,000 [at] Christmas."
At one meeting Megale told Farrington about a nearby upscale, extremely pricey Northern Italian restaurant in Old Greenwich called Valbella, known in the 1990s for its celebrity clientele. Megale said that one night he sent a crew of Albanian gangster, known for their violence, to slap around Valbella’s owner, the five foot five Dave Ghatan, until he agreed to make extortion payments. Ghatan, an Iranian immigrant, was an American success story. He arrived in the United States with almost no money and eventually opened two very successful restaurants before opening Valbella in 1991.
Megale laughed when explained to Farrington “Yeah, they went over to Valbella’s two months ago. Thirty of ’em. With Uzis. They got $5,000 a month. The guy was in a fuckin’ panic, Dave. a fuckin’ panic.” The Albanians, he said beat up Ghatan and hung him from the ceiling until he agreed to pay out. “The, the guy stayed home three days,” said Megale, laughing. “Fuck, he hadda go to the dentist cuz he was grinding his teeth. That’s how nervous he was.”
Farrington replied, “That’s a fancy place over there. That place fucking does some business.”
Megale replied that he and his crew had been “eating for free at Valbella’s ever since.”
The story that Megale told Farrington was missing some key facts. The reality of that happened was that the extortion began in 1998. The boss over Western Connecticut then was Gambino Capo Gregory DePalma, (Who also had rackets in the Bronx) Tony Megale was on DePalma’s Connecticut crew and took over temporarily after DePalma went to prison on an extortion charge.
When he was released six years later, in 2003, DePalma “went ballistic” when he learned that Megale had allowed Valbella’s to be shaken (He loved the place) and, worse yet, that Megale had brought in Albanians to do and that Megale handed most of the $5,000 payment to the Albanian hoods. Worse yet, DePalma couldn’t even get in on the free food since his parole restrictions prohibited him from leaving the state of New York and traveling to Connecticut to chow down.
The restaurant's chef, an Albanian immigrant named Joe Vuli, went on to open his own restaurants, Vuli at the Stamford Marriott and Gusto in Danbury. In a few years later he was found dead, cut up into pieces placed in plastic bags, on a roadside in Bedford, N. Y. The crime remains unsolved. The FBI assumes he either refused to make extortion payments or, more likely, he was into loan sharks for more money than he could ever pay back.
In a phone call to Alogna, Megale said "Iggy, what's Iggy doing down there? That's why I'm here. I wanna know why. What is he doing in Stamford when I'm there? Ain't he supposed to come check with me?"
At another recorded meeting, Megale explained to Farrington that he had clearance from New York to deal with Alogna and that he had sent one of his crew, Angelo Ricco, to deliver a message to Alogna and the others at a roadside diner: "Stay out of Stamford. I've got a message, it's coming from the boss--stay out of Connecticut." Megale also used his power as underboss to demote Alogna from a captain to soldier.
Chippy Scivola, one of the goons who showed up with Alogna at the first extortion meeting, was made member of the Providence mob. Megale claimed “ownership” of Farrington and his businesses but to keep the peace, he paid Scivola a “settlement fee” to give to Luigi Manocchio acting boss in Rhode Island to have the Patriarca’s to back-off of any further shakedowns.
On July 26, 2005, Alogna pleaded guilty to attempted extortion. Alogna, who faced up to 20 years in jail, was spared prison time and was sentenced to six months home confinement and three years-probation because the judge bought his story that he was a down-on-his-luck retiree and his family's only caregiver in Pocono Lake, Pa. and was the sole caregiver for a 12-year-old grandson, whose parents have narcotics addictions.
Scivola pleaded guilty on February 15, 2005, to two attempted extortion charges and was sent to prison for two years. He was indicted and jailed in 2011 along with Luigi Manocchio and Anthony DiNunzio for extorting Rhode Island strip clubs for approximately a million dollars. He pled guilty and admitted the existence of the Mafia and was sentenced to three years behind bars. He was released on parole and placed on house arrest before finishing out his sentence in January of 2015 and then died in 2017.
John "Johnny Mash," Mascia, was sentenced to a year and a day in jail.
Remarkably, the Government has dismissed all charges against Fellela.
Megale died of cancer in the summer of 2015. Megale’s health declined in the months surrounding his sentencing 2006. He suffered two heart attacks and underwent two heart surgeries in the spring of that year. He e died of a heart attack at 9:30 p.m. on his 62nd birthday on July 21, 2015
Farrington had to sell his bars and move out of Fairfield County under FBI protection.
As for DePalma, the real reason he may have been so upset over the Valbella extortion was that Valbella’s attracted an A list group of actors and television people who lived in the area and DePalma was a food for celebrities. In the 1970s he opened the Westchester Premiere Theatre in Tarrytown, New York and he was soon close friends with Liza Minnelli and Dean Martin, Willie Mays, and Frank Sinatra. It was at DePalma’s Westchester Premiere Theatre in 1976 that Sinatra arrogantly took a group photo with DePalma (of course) Gambino boss Carlo Gambino, future boss Paul Castellano, and slew of other powerful hoods. A year later, in 1977, DePalma was made man in the Gambino crime family. On June 6, 1978, DePalma was indicted for basically robbing his own theater blind and causing its financial collapse. He eventually pleaded guilty bankruptcy fraud and one of the pieces of evidence used against him was the group photo with Sinatra.
In the 1990s, DePalma was named a caporegime which is when he was given control over the Gambino’s Connecticut operations. But in 1999, he and his son DePalma and son were convicted, in a sensational case, for taking over and then extorting Scores, a strip club in Manhattan. He was jailed for 70 months in that case. (His son was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison. In 2002, while still in prison, he botched a suicide attempt to hang himself and was left in a persistent vegetative state. Mercifully, he died in December 2010.
In 2003, DePalma unknowingly allowed an undercover FBI agent named Joaquin Garcia, to infiltrate the highest levels of the Gambino operations. Agent Garcia, using the name Jack Falcone got close to DePalma and stayed close to him by flooding him gifts of high quality stolen good. DePalma was taken with Garcia that he considered nominating him for induction into the Gambino family. For two solid years, Garcia wore a recording device and caught hundreds of high-level conversation on tape. Several of those tapes proved DePalma’s obsession with the stars never ended. He told Agent Garcia that he threatened actor Armand Assante shortly before Assante portrayed mob boss John Gotti in an HBO movie, that he dined regularly with singer Mariah Carey and her then-husband Tommy Mottola and that he had forced Liza Minelli’s longtime manager to pay for a Las Vegas vacation and shopping spree for some Gambino bigshots and their wives.
Garcia was also there on February 21, 2005, when DePalma met with Gambino mobster Robert Vaccaro were meeting another mobster, Peter "Petey Chops" Vicini in the Housewares section of a Bloomingdale's department store in Westchester County. When Vicini failed to show them proper respect, Vaccaro grabbed a solid crystal candleholder and began beating him on the head until Garcia convinced him to stop. On March 9, 2005, Garcia and other FBI agents arrested DePalma and 32 other Gambino mobsters on racketeering charges. DePalma would die in prison in 2009.
It wasn’t DePalma that made Megale into the Gambino’s. Instead, Megale was made in to the mob when he was part of a crew run by Tommy Gambino, the oldest son of Carlo Gambino. Tommy Gambino actually graduated from Manhattan College in the Bronx before following his father into crime, although by then, the Gambino family was rich beyond reason. In 1962, he married Frances Lucchese, the daughter of Gaetano "Tommy Brown" Lucchese, the boss of the Lucchese crime family. Gambino’s personnel fortune was, in 1992, estimated to be near $100,000,000 although many finical experts called the figure low. He owned three homes; one in Florida, another in Lido Beach, New York, and a third on Manhattan's exclusive Upper East Side. He contributed millions to the Gambino Medical and Science Foundation.
Low profile and well hidden behind his front as an honest, successful and well educated business man, few people realized that Gambino ran his own very large Mafia crew. In early 1985, Gambino boss Paul Castellano gave western Connecticut’s gambling rackets to Gambino. Shortly afterwards, Castellano and his driver Tommy Bilotti were murdered in front of Spark’s Steak House on December 16, 1985, Gambino, who was supposed to meet with Castellano, arrived at the scene moments after the killing.
In 1989, Gambino was indicted for obstruction of justice by lying to a grand jury about Gambino racketeering activities. He was acquitted but indicted again the following year on charges of extorting the garment industry. He accepted a plea deal to avoid prison (A guilty admission, a $12 million restitution payment, and a promise to leave the garment trucking business.)
In 1991, Gambino, Gotti, Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano and other Gambino mobsters were indicted on charges of racketeering, loansharking, extortion, illegal gambling and 11 counts of murder. He was convicted of two counts of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. He was sent to prison for five years in 1996.
In about 1986, Gambino, who liked Megale, gave almost free reign in the Gambino’s Connecticut rackets, to replace the murdered Frank Piccolo. An interim boss in Connecticut was Mobster John “Jackie Nose” D'Amico, who would later head up the Gambino family. In 1999, D’Amico was charged with pumping money from illegal gambling in western Connecticut to John Gotti Jr. He did 20 months in the can for the charge.
FBI recordings prove that Megale was wired into Tommy DeBrizzi and Frank Piccolo and John Gotti when it came to making decisions in Connecticut. An FBI surveillance on November 14, 1985 captured Thomas DeBrizzi meeting with Megale and Phil “Skinny” Loscalzo in Stamford. Loscalzo, a Gambino man, was the Family’s point man to the Albanian Mafia. Loscalzo’s protegee Nardino Colotti, would continue in that capacity after Loscalzo died.
Megale inherited a Gambino associate from Norwalk named Joe Fusaro AKA Davy Crockett, who was primally a gambler. In March of 1996, the FBI, in a joint raid with the IRS, Connecticut State Police, Bridgeport and Stamford police, struck out hard against the Gambino’s loansharking and sports gambling in lower Fairfield County. The Gambino ring was pulling in at least $10,000 a week in illegal wagers, probably far more than that. On the same day, at the same time, the Fed’s also conducted a crack-down of a Detroit Mob gambling ring as well.
The primary target of the Fairfield County raids was Joseph "Davey Crockett" Fusaro and his partner William DiPastina, from Stamford. They two had run most of their gambling out of two Stamford businesses, Val's Variety Store and Victory Autobody.
When the fed cracked down on Davy Crockett Fusaro’s gambling ring in Fairfield County, Fusaro was in jail in Valhalla, N.Y., awaiting sentencing on a cocaine trafficking charge in which he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. He faced another possible 45 years if convicted on the racketeering and gambling charges in Connecticut.
In 1996, Fusaro was sentenced to twenty years in prison on the drug charge. Fusaro said that after a discussion with his fellow prisoner John Gotti Jr. in the prison barbershop. Fusaro said he wanted to talk to Gotti about collecting a $180,000 in loan-sharking money that he had out on the street, but Gotti turned him down “He was done with that," Fusaro testified. "He said, 'If you have any brains, and I think you do ... do your sentence because this is over."
So Fusaro became a government informant and wrote out a statement that he collected tribute, which he paid to Gotti, from a Connecticut gambling ring. Not that Fusaro’s crossing over to the light surprised anyway. Mobster Michael DiLeonardo later testified that “there was a little suspect that he may have been a cooperator. We had seen some material in a 302 that might have alluded to him”
The shocked asked “You saw a 302? You saw FBI reports. Do you know how you got those?” To which DiLeonardo said “They usually are passed out from lawyers to -- to, you know, on the street”
(Just after his testimony about meeting Gotti in the prison barber shop Judge Kevin Castel asked the bald Fusaro "You use a barber shop frequently?".
"No, not me," replied Fusaro, who turned to take a look at the judge's pate. "Don't think you do, either,"
"Quite right, sir," said Castel.
"I know the feeling," said Fusaro.
Megale also developed a brief working relationship with long time Gambino boss Angelo Mascia AKA Cockeyed Angie. Mascia and his brothers John and Joseph ran a much feared operation out of East Harlem for decades. After he earned his millions, the brothers moved out of Yonkers and up to Hartsdale New York, about 15 minutes from the Connecticut line. Angelo Mascia died in 1986, just after Megale became active in Connecticut and his crew went to Locascio. However, when Megale was busted in 2005, John and Joe Mascia were indicted with him.
Megale, who was born in Italy and attended Waterbury’s Post College for two years with a concentration on recreation sports, would be a different kind of boss. He bought a home 105 Northwind Drive in leafy North Stamford. He held his meetings….walk and talks…. in the aisles of a Home Depot in Port Chester, N.Y. or at the Starbucks in Stamford. He set up sub-crews in Bridgeport, Stamford and Norwalk and concentrated on extortion of individuals and businesses, loansharking, union embezzlement, illegal gambling, trafficking in stolen property and counterfeit goods and mail fraud.
On March 22, 1989, an FBI agent followed Megale from Stamford to the Cafe Cappuccino on Morris Avenue in the Bronx where Phil Loscalzo "did most of his business . . . almost on a daily basis" and then to the Dynamic Delivery Corporation warehouse on West 24th Street in Manhattan. Tommy Gambino had a controlling interest in the Dynamic Delivery Corporation. He repeated the trip and met with the same people on March 22, 1898. The bureau assumed Megale was dropping his weekly $1,600 payment to the bosses. On one trip Megale took to West 35th Street from Cos Cobb on May 3, 1989, agents stopped him just before he reached New York City and searched his car. Another Special Agent followed Tommy DeBrizzi to the Cafe Cappuccino on January 22, 1986, where DeBrizzi he met with Giuseppe Gambino, his brother Thomas Gambino and Phil Loscalzo.
Megale’s telephone records for the years 1985-1990 also should that the bulk of his calls went to Giuseppe Gambino home, to and from the Romeo Cafe in the Bronx where Giuseppe Gambino conducted business, to the residence of Phil Loscalzo; to and from the Cafe Cappuccino in the Bronx where Loscalzo was frequently found; to Consolidated Carriers on West 35th Street in Manhattan. A series of calls also went to a grocery store three doors removed from the Ravenite Social Club, John Gotti’s club where Megale was spotted “on many occasions” where, when he made a phone call, he made them from his cousin's restaurant located a few blocks from the Ravenite Club.
There was speculation that Tommy Gambino also handed control of Capo Tony Carminati Northern New Jersey crew over to Megale as well Carminati went back decades in the mob and had been close to Carlo Gambino, Tommy’s father. However, after Gambino died young Turks inside the Northern New Jersey branch wanted Carminati, a heavy drinker and mean drunk, especially after he unwittingly allowed an undercover police officer to infiltrate a family loanshark operation. However, Megale wasn’t given the crew which instead went to Hillsdale, New Jersey, caporegime John D'Amico.
Three years later, in 1989 Megale, and 21 others was indicted on charges of racketeering. He pled guilty although Tommy Gambino was paying his legal defense. It was then that John Gotti “went through the roof” over Megale’s plea deal.
“We found out.” Sal Gravano testified in court “John Gotti and myself were sitting there. I believe Frank Locascio came in, who was our acting consigliere, with the newspaper, put it on the table. John read it, handed it over to me. I read it and shortly after that, Tommy Gambino came in and told us that he read the article. We gave him the article. He said he read it. He said if it was so, which he didn't believe it to be so, he would make him withdraw the plea.”
Prosecutor: That Thomas Gambino would make Tony Megale withdraw the plea?
Gravano: . Yes.
Prosecutor: What happened next?
Gravano: He tried to withdraw the plea. (Tony Megale had moved to withdraw his plea on April 25 and his motion was denied on April 30)
Megale was sentenced to six years.
When Megale was pushed out of power and into prison, his boss in the Gambino operation was Arnold “Zeke” Squitieri. Squitieri and Megale were both indicted on 53 counts including extortion, loan sharking, illegal gambling and other crimes including threatening and actually beating the owner of Valbella’s Northern Italian Restaurant. A great deal of the evidence gathered, in that case, was collected by undercover FBI agent Garcia.
Those charges in the indictment were separate from the charges Megale faced in Connecticut for extorting Gas Can Harry Farrington.
After Megale was indicted on the New York charges, Louis “Bo” Filippelli took over supervising Megale rackets and filling in as underboss. In the 2005 indictment, Squitieri was sentenced to just over seven years in federal prison. He was released on December 7, 2012.
Squitieri had labored away in the belly of the Gambino family and slowly made his way to the top, largely due matriculation of everyone else above him. Boss John Gotti died in prison in June 2002. Gotti’s brother Peter, who took over as acting boss, was convicted in two trials and sent to jail as was John Gotti’s son and heir apparent, John Jr.
Squitieri, who was from Englewood Cliffs, N.J., had been made into Gambino’s by John Gotti in 1985 and eventually made a Capo. Before that he had been a knock around guy who was arrested on August 18, 1970, for shooting a troublesome garment cutter named Desiderio Caban at First Avenue and 117th Street. Squitieri plowed five bullets into Caban, killing him. The gunplay was heard by a passing patrol car which chased Squitieri for six blocks until finally cutting him of.
Squitieri got out of his car and told the cops, who were from the 25th Precinct, “Don't worry about it, he's only shot in the arm. Let me go; the boys will take care of you.” And they did. A week later mobster Alphonse “Funzi” Sisca met with one of the cops and paid him $5,000 to remove Squitieri's name from the crime report for the Caban killing. (Sisca would eventually go on to become the head of the Gambino operations in New Jersey)
When word got out about the bribe, the cops were indicted (And acquitted — but dismissed from the force after a departmental hearing) and Squitieri, who had two prior convictions and several felony arrests and Alphonse Sisca fled and became fugitive from justice. The New York City Police department, furious over the bribery charged assigned 45 to find the two hoods while federal agents search a 13 state radius for them. At the time, Squitieri was known to police as "an extensive dealer in heroin in East Harlem" and a man who was "utterly without roots in the' community."
They stayed underground until January of 1972, and then surrendered to the police. The prosecutor emphasized that Squitieri and Sisca had surrendered "only when I told (Gino) Gallina (their defense attorney) that there was likely to be a gunfight" if they remained fugitives.
A year later, in 1973, Squitieri, who was known as "Animal" on the streets, and his wife Marie were charged with failing to file U.S. federal income tax returns for three years, concealing at least $200,000 in income. That would cost him four years in federal prison. Shortly afterwards, he pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter in Caban murder and was sentenced to eight years in state prison.
Squitieri was released on the Caban murder in May 1981 and within months became the New Jersey drug connection for the Gotti’s. In 1982 Squitieri would meet Gambino lieutenants at a hot-dog stand in Queens to buy heroin for distribution in New Jersey. He sold a kilo of heroin supplied by Gene Gotti outside the Red Oak Diner in Fort Lee for $180,000.
While Squitieri sold Asian heroin in Harlem, he lived in a comfortable white-brick house on a leafy street in Englewood Cliffs and sent his children to Catholic schools. He became a star of the Knapp Commission which was looking into police corruption. In 1986 he was among several mobsters charged in a drug-conspiracy case by the then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani. Squitieri was acquitted.
Then, in 1988, Squitieri and his old sidekick Al Sisca were convicted on federal charges in New Jersey of conspiring with the Gambino’s to distribute enormous amounts of heroin into Northern new Jersey. At the same time, in 1988, Squitieri and Sisca learned that the owner of a New Jersey pest-control company was bragging about being connected to John Gotti. They checked with Gotti, who didn’t know the man, and took over his company and extorted him for tens of thousands of dollars. Squitieri was arrested for the extortion in 1992 and got five years in the can which ran concurrently with his drug sentence.
Sisca did 11 years in prison on the drug case. When Squitieri was released on the drug rap in the spring of 1999, he was elevated to capo and then acting underboss. "He did 11 years for heroin trafficking and didn't buckle',' so they made him a capo when he got out," a law enforcement source explained "He was a gambling and drinking buddy of Gotti's, and he's a tough guy, That's why John liked him. He's a stone-cold killer," "He's done a lot of bad things for these guys. He's done murders for John Gotti."
According to court records, Squitieri killed Gambino soldier Liborio Milito. (Squitieri was present in a bar owned by Lou Vallario when Milito was killed. Vallario had taken over Sal Gravano’s crew when Gravano was promoted to be John Gotti’s Consigliere in 1986. Milito felt that crew should have gone to him instead of Vallario and made no secret of his unhappiness. On March 8, 1988, Milito was called to a meeting at Vallerio’s bar. Not only was Squitieri present, so was Gene Gotti, Johnny Carneglia, Vallario of course, and Sal Gravano. Gotti, Squitieri and Gravano were playing a card game at the table and John Carneglia was sitting on a couch watching television and Vallario was behind the bar. When Milito stepped up to the bar to drink a coffee he had asked for, Carneglia got up from the couch and shot him through the head with a .380 caliber handgun armed with a silencer, killing him. His body had never been found.)
Elevating a convicted drug dealer to the exalted position of Boss indicated to law enforcement how low the once might Gambino’s had fallen. "He has a very checkered background," one federal lawman said when he found out Squitieri was being considered for boss. "Only 15 years ago you couldn't even get made in the Gambino family if you were involved in heroin. He only got made after John became boss. Before that he could never get made."
Megale (Who was actually known as “Mac” and Machiavelli” inside the mob and “the Brain”) was promoted to acting underboss under at about the same Squitieri was made acting boss. The promotion meant that Megale would be tasked with settling disputes within the family and generally overseeing the family’s criminal interest. The job paid him a portion of the Gambino’s take and made him wealthier than he had ever dreamed of becoming.
If John Gotti were alive at the time, Megale’s promotion never would have happened, Gotti didn’t like Megale steaming from Megale 1990 conviction for racketing. In the plea deal, Megale was forced to admit that he was a member of the Gambino crime family which aggravated John Gotti to no end. Megale received close to 6 years in prison. After he was released in 1995, he was sent back for 11months to jail for associating with known members of organized crime.
Even while Megale was acting underboss, he continued to grow his operations in Connecticut. The feds estimated that Megale and his top man Nic “The Greaseball” Melia, had at least $2,000,000 in cash dedicated to shylocking, out on the street at any given time. At the same time, Megale personally the big dollar poker games in the rich and clustered Greek communities in Stamford and Norwalk.
When Megale went down, just about all his top earners went down with him. Old age eventually took its toll on what remained of the once mighty and expansive Megale organization in Connecticut.
Nicola "The Old Man" Melia, AKA The Greaseball, a Gambino associate, who, the newspapers wrote “had a knack for making hundreds of dollars off a $1,000 loan” and Victor Riccitelli, a Gambino soldier from Bridgeport, who supervised illegal gambling in Fairfield County for decades.
Melia, who was underboss to Tony Megale was an interesting hood. In the 1990’s, Eugene “The Rooster” O’Nofrio was with the Gambino Family and running a small but wealthy criminal empire that included pieces of Western Connecticut, Western Massachusetts and a few spots in Manhattan’s Little Italy.
O’Nofrio, who dabbled in bookmaking, drugs and loan sharking ran his organization out of The Café Roma in Port Chester New York, just east of Greenwich and minutes from the Connecticut’s western border. He answered to Capo Louis “Louie Bracciole” Ricco who held sway from Brooklyn to the Bronx to New Jersey.
Because he operated inside territory owned by Tony Megale, he paid Megale’s operation, he not only paid up to his Capo but to Megale as well. Whatever he was paying to Megale, Megale’s underboss, Greaseball Melia, felt it wasn’t enough and demanded more money out of O’Nofrio.
At a meeting at O’Nofrio’s Café Roma in early 1997, to discuss the increase, things got so hot between O’Nofrio and Melia that Melia threw a heavy glass ashtray at O’Nofrio and others at the meeting had to separate the pair. Melia was so angry he drove to New York and demanded that the Gambino’s toss O’Nofrio out of the organization. The Gambino’s weren’t about that do, reportedly O’Nofrio had carried out some contract killings for them, so they instead transferred O’Nofrio over to the Genovese Family under Matty “The Horse” Ianniello. When O’Nofrio started to pour big time money into Ianniello pockets, in 2003, Ianniello sponsored O’Nofrio to be made into Mafia.
In 2000, Melia did four months in federal prison for under-reporting $150,000 on his 1994 federal income tax return. In March of 2005, two men broke into Melia's home and bound and robbed him at gunpoint. A month after that, Melia’s 39-year-old son, Philip, was arrested on state charges of first-degree assault and third-degree criminal mischief in connection with the beating of a truck driver.
Later that year, when The Old Man Melia was 78-years-old when he was swept up in a statewide crackdown that rounded up 18 alleged Gambino mobsters accused of racketeering, extortion and illegal gambling. Of the 18 men, Melia was the least important. Still, federal prosecutors told the court that Melia, who owned a Stamford beauty parlor called Continental Coiffeurs III, was a "major-league loan shark." They claimed he was all business and once negotiated a loan in his then-98-year-old mother's room in a Stamford nursing home, at 3% a week and once collected more than $300,000 in interest on a $10,000 loan.
Melia was charged with five counts of making extortionate loans and one count of illegal possession of ammunition by a convicted felon. For the law, it was an open and shut case since most of the evidence, prosecutors were prepared to present against Melia came from a small notebook one of his loan shark customers used to record his payments over a period of about nine years.
Melia, a natty dresser who spoke with an almost undecipherable Italian accent, lived in Stamford, pled guilty to racketeering and admitted in court that he collected debts for Megale. On one $2,500 loan taken out at $100 a week interest, Melia, who emigrated from Italy in 1955. He had virtually no formal schooling, was picked up on FBI microphones telling the debtor “I’m going to do what I gotta do” to make the collection. In December of 2011, the 79 year old Melia was sentenced to five years in prison on extortion and weapons charges, his third prison sentence in a decade. Further, he was ordered Melia to pay a $50,000 fine and forfeit $253,800 and a 2000 Mercedes Benz SL 600 to the government.
Harry A. Riccio of Bridgeport was reported to be a Gambino member was a ranking an in Megale’s operation. The feds said that Riccio supervised illegal gambling in the Bridgeport area. However, and despite his severe arthritis and high blood pressure, Riccio said he earned his living as a well-paid itinerant racquetball coach. Riccio had a long record. His first conviction came in 1958 for receiving stolen goods. He was arrested on gambling charges in 1962 and in 1972 he was arrested for interfering with an officer when he threw a batch of gambling receipts written on dissolvable paper in to a puddle of water when he saw the police approaching to rain his house. He was one of the last people seen with Tommy DeBrizzi before he was murdered in 1982.
In 2005, 71 year old Victor Riccitelli, a Gambino solider in Bridgeport, and another key Megale operative, had just gotten over open heart surgery, still had cancer and suffered from a serious heart problem, was denied bail because the judge considered him too dangerous to walk the street. In fact, the judge ruled it was “extremely likely” Riccitelli would commit more crimes if released. Riccitelli, who claimed to be a retired use car salesman, had been indicted for operating the Gambino’s lucrative numbers operation in Bridgeport. He was arrested late in 2005 Riccitelli gambled and rejected a plea deal that would have given him about five years in prison. Instead, he went to trial, where, after four hours of jury deliberations, he was convicted of cocaine distribution and conspiracy and sent away from 13 years.
“I’m not a drug dealer,” Riccitelli, whose criminal record went back to the 1940s, told the court, but in fact, he was a drug dealer. The FBI captured Riccitelli on video and audiotape selling cocaine to an informant in 2003. When agents arrested him he was flushing drugs down the toilet. The feds also seized more than $28,000 in cash from him, including money marked by the FBI as part of the drug buy.
“I only got a few more years left, your honor, if you could take that into consideration,” Riccitelli, shrugging his shoulders, told the court when he was sentenced. However, the prosecutor in the case played audio tapes they said showed him to be violent, unpredictable and dangerous. In one taped conversation, Riccitelli outlined a plan to kill a local drug dealer and steal his cocaine stash: "That'll be our expletive retirement!" Riccitelli yelled in to the recording.
In another conversation, Riccitelli said he planned to kidnap the son of an unidentified Fairfield County businessman and hold him for ransom. 'Two million to him is like a expletive hamburger," Riccitelli said. "He owns all kind of real estate and shopping centers…..as soon as I get better, I'm going to snatch him."
Gerald Gerardi of Stamford, another Megale operative, ran a gambling operation in Greenwich. His record went back to 1963 when he was convicted of conspiring to transport women across a state line for immoral purposes, (The Mann Act) has been sentenced to five years in prison. He didn’t rehabilitate very much since an investigation provide that Gerardi received very special treatment at the jail. By the late 1980s, Gerardi was collecting millions for the Gambino mob with his numbers and bookmaking rackets. When he wa convicted on gambling charges in 1990 and sentenced to serve eight years in federal prison, the trial judge also tacked on a $100,000 fine as well a fairly steep charge for his room and board while being held in jail. In 2006, after his release, a federal judge had Gerardi yanked into court to explain why he has paid only $225 toward the $100,000 fine imposed (Plus $512,350 in interest) on him 15 before. Gerardi, the owner of a mini-mansion in Greenwich, dragged the case out and died in 2009.
Another Megale regular was Vincent Fiore, he preferred Vinny. Fiore was born and raised in the Bronx. He was college educated, holding a bachelor’s degree in finance from Mercy College in Westchester County, New York. He had one conviction, a weapons charge in New York City in the early 1990s. In 1998, Fiore, his wife, and their three children moved to 78 Maple Avenue in Goshen in 1998, a four-bedroom, three-bathroom, double-lot property valued at $595,000 in 2005.
The additional land was approved for 17 new house lots which worked out well since Fiore was also an aspiring land developer and ran a construction and remodeling company, The Venice Land Development, with his wife, Desiree. His lawyer would later tell a court that Fiore made $25,000 to $35,000 a year in taxable income.
That was one side of Vinny Fiore. The other side, so said the federal government was that Fiore was a Made Man in the Gambino crime family and an enforcer for the Megale crew out of Bridgeport who worked under Gambino hood Victor Riccitelli. In a series of recorded conversations, Riccitelli bragged about how he and Fiore were inducted into the Gambino family in July 2003 and referred to Fiore as a soldier in his crew. In another recorded phone conversations Riccitelli berated another Mafia crew chief for using Fiore to handle a dispute with an unnamed Connecticut contractor over some construction equipment.
On August 5, 2003, a month after he was made into the Gambino’s Fiore and another unnamed man, approached a bar owner and demanded $30,000 in cash and $200 weekly protection payments. Exactly what happened isn’t clear, but a fight broke out because the bar owner wasn’t intimidated so Fiore punched him in the head, touching off a brawl. The bar owners elderly father joined in and was struck in the back with a bar stool and was later sent to a hospital. Fiore was chased out of the bar, had his car window broken and his watch stolen and, to make matters worse, the bar owner reported Fiore to the FBI.
A short time later, Nic “The Old Man” Melia, sent two men to assault a contractor in the parking lot of an Off-Track Betting parlor in Bridgeport. Fiore was thought to be one of the assailants but the contractor, whose jaw was wired shut, refused to identify Fiore or anyone else in the attack.
Then, in September of 2004, everything fell apart. Megale, Riccitelli, Fiore and 15 others were indicted on racketeering charges.
During Fiore’s trial his New York attorney, Thomas Lee, who represented a long line of Mafia hoods, was arrested on murder conspiracy and racketeering charges. Lee shuttled messages between an imprisoned Bonanno family boss Joe Massino and the mob’s street soldiers. Massino, facing life in jail, decided to cooperate with the feds and turned Lee in.
Several requests that Lee delivered included direction on killings that various Bonanno bosses wanted to be carried out. Lee told Massino during a prison visit that the Bonanno acting boss on the streets, Vincent Basciano, (Who was later sentenced to life in prison) wanted to kill a Bronx Capo named Patrick DeFillipo (Who would later die in prison) and wanted Massino’s blessing for the contract to be carried out. Lee also brought a request from Basciano to Massino to murder the adult sons of two cooperating witnesses.
Lee would later say that in January of 2004, he delivered a message from the jailed Massino to Vinny Basciano that it was agreed by the Bonanno elders that Basciano should "take the reins of the Bonanno crime family."
"He was excited.” Lee said, “He asked me to repeat several times the exact words that were used by Mr. Massino…..I don't remember the exact words, but they were "something to the effect, 'I love him. I won't let him down. Things aren't going to skip a beat with me out here.'"
After hearing the tapes made by Massino, Lee agreed to cooperate with the government and turn states evidence. His other choice was to face 60 years in prison. Lee would become the first lawyer in American history to enter the witness protection. His wife and family joined him.
Fiore’s wife, Desiree, also pleaded for leniency for her husband and said that with his arrest and the costs of lawyers to defend him that she was forced to rent out their Maple Avenue home and move into a small apartment in the South Bronx. “I don’t want to sound like a snob,” she said. “But I don’t deserve to be in the South Bronx.” But the judge fined Fiore $6,000, to be paid in $175 monthly installments after his release from prison and sentenced to at least two years behind bars

[Bklyn21]

THE NUTMEG MAFIA.
An Informal History of Organized Crime in Connecticut
A 25 part series.
By
John William Tuohy
Part 24
Dean DePreta, saved by a suicide.

In June of 2013, Dean DePreta, of Stamford pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the RICO act and as part of his plea deal, admitted to his involvement in an illegal gambling and extortion ring in Connecticut. The government said DePreta, representing the Gambino’s in southern Connecticut, controlled an illegal internet sports gambling site along with multiple illegal high stakes poker games. he was sentenced to 71 months in prison
Richard Uva, of Trumbull, and Victor Amereno both alleged members of the Gambino crime family working under DePreta supervised the massive gambling operation in Connecticut. Uva, prosecutors said, was second in command under DePreta. The gambling operation brought in approximately $1.7 million dollars from mid-2010 to June of 2011. In 2013 Uva, who co-owned Westover Pizza in Stamford, with DePreta, admitted to being involved in an extortion scheme where he collected tribute payments on behalf of the Gambino family from local independent bookmakers in Connecticut.
Another person who worked with DePreta in the gambling rackets was Michael Pepe, whose family owns the infamous Pepe’s Pizza. Pepe was indicted for running an illegal card gambling club called “The Spot,” at 2965 State St. in Hamden. He was sentenced to one year in prison. Prosecutors said Pepe was the “master agent” of a sports bookmaking operation in Greater New Haven, answering to DePreta and Uva.
The operation used two websites based in Costa Rica that allowed gamblers to place bets on sports events. Prosecutors said Pepe and other bookies would then use the information on the websites to collect debts and hand out winnings in person.
The DePreta group also ran a high-stakes clubs at 859 East Main Street and 614 Glenbrook Avenue in Stamford as well as at 2965 State Street in Hamden and had many as 30 bookmakers who paid a yearly fee to operate, and at least 200 committed gamblers. In total, the group brought in about $9 million profit in four years for the Gambino family.
In one case, DePreta, a muscular 6-footer, called in a bookmaker to meet him at the Southport diner. DePreta described the bookmaker, who was terrified of DePreta, as "easy pickings" whose family "got money," Chen said. DePreta brought Nicholas "Nicky Skins" Stefanelli with him. But Stefanelli, a Gambino thug was cooperating with the FBI after being caught in a drug deal. Stefanelli wore a wire during the meeting and recorded DePreta telling the bookmaker he was to pay $5,000 in Gambino taxes. After the extortion, federal prosecutors said the victim was "so visibly agitated from this meeting that he nearly walked into oncoming traffic."
Stefanelli's record included convictions for heroin trafficking and cargo theft. He was also involved in a September 1972 beating of a black man in Newark that led to a landmark civil rights case. In that case, Robert L. Chavers, was eating at Ed's Diner in the white North Ward section of Newark, NJ, and Stefanelli and two other Gambino mobsters beat him because he refused to leave and to send out the message that they didn’t want blacks at the eatery.
Stefanelli, Robert Bisaccia and Louis Fulco were charged by the United States Task Force Against Organized Crime with violating the victim's civil rights. The case represented the first time that the Task Force had used the law against reputed mobsters in New Jersey. A hung jury resulted in a mistrial against the trio, and the charge later was dismissed against Stefanelli although his co-defendants Bisaccia and Fulco pled guilty during a second trial against them.
During a Jan. 30, 2010 meeting at Paramus, N.J., diner, Stefanelli told DePreta, he would talk to Gambino captain Jimmy Dellarata, Stefanelli was a member of his crew, and ask him to allow him to work exclusively DePreta as a team and that they would kick up a portion of the tax taken from bookies to both Dellarata and Mario Antonicelli, a ranking Gambino soldier. Dellarata, they decided would get $1,000 a month)
Stefanelli told DePreta "Bridgeport's mine," and DePreta named other New York-based Gambino who might “want a taste” of their operation including Louie Ricco, a soldier, and Louis Fillippelli, a Gambino captain. When Stefanelli complained about low-life's in the Family, DePreta said he was committed to the Gambino family. "I believe in ... the whole thing, the whole thing. I'm looking out for the principles of the family," he said.
It was because of the recordings that FBI agents became aware of a violent struggle between the Gambino organization and the rival Genovese crime family over competing card games each operated in Hamden. The mobs profited from the games by "chopping" a piece from each pot.
Concerned that the Gambino game was cutting into their profits, three Genovese mobsters attacked the building at 2965 State St. in Hamden where the Gambino’s ran poker games that sometimes lasted until 5 a.m.
The Genovese mobsters pitched rocks at the building and barked insults into the intercom system when they failed to breach the security door. Inside, the mostly middle-aged businessmen playing cards became alarmed, mistaking the sound or rocks hitting walls for gunfire. "The dealer had to yell at the guy to tell him to put his (expletive) phone away and don't call the cops, you know?" one of the Gambino mobsters said in a recorded conversation.
The recorded conversations also showed that DePreta and his associates were "whacking up" their gambling revenues, dividing about half among themselves and sending the remainder to mob high-ups in New York.
Although Stefanelli wore a wire for two years, and recorded hoods from Pennsylvania to Providence, something that his position as a Gambino crime family representative, allowed him to do, something that also made him more valuable when the FBI flipped him in 2009
In one case, Stefanelli, he recorded a meeting of what the government called “board of directors” of organized crime, which included representatives from the Gambino crime family and the Philadelphia mob. At that meeting, which was held over lunch, the bosses discussed a consigliere named Antonio 'Tony Bananas' Caponigro who was told by Sinatra to 'stop talking' during a performance. The mobster was so enraged, he was said to have 'hated' the singer and threatened to kill him.
But, Stefanelli never testified. He killed himself with a drug overdose on February 26, 2012, in a Renaissance Meadowlands Hotel in Rutherford, NJ. Before he killed himself, Stefanelli drove to Phoenix Amusement, video poker and game machine distributorship on Floyd Avenue in Bloomfield. He confronted the owner, Joseph Rossi, and fired two bullets into Rossi’s head, killing him. Stefanelli believed that Joseph Rossi had fingered him in the 2009 drug case that led to him becoming an informant. Stefanelli’s son, Nicholas Stefanelli Jr., was also arrested in connection with a drug operation. The elder Stefanelli agreed to wear the wire to keep is son out of jail.
Oddly enough, Rossi was cooperating with the FBI in an ongoing mob investigation centered in part around the mob’s operation of illegal video poker machines. Rossi, who ran his own fleet of illegal video games, was arrested for tax evasion and agreed to flip for the government.
Stefanelli had paid for his own funeral three or four days before he died.

[Bklyn21]

https://mywriterssite.blogspot.com/2019 ... 9.html?m=1....... HISTORY OF ORGANIZED CRIME LCN ETC..IN CONNECTICUT LINK...25 PART SERIES

[Bklyn21]

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[johnny_scootch]

So the FBI has Fiore being made in a July 2003 ceremony.

[Bklyn21]

So the FBI has Fiore being made in a July 2003 ceremony.

I knew I heard the name but couldnt remember where ? He was based with the Conn. Crew and under Megale

[johnny_scootch]

It might mean Campos has absorbed the remaining Connecticut based members into his crew.

[Bklyn21]

It might mean Campos has absorbed the remaining Connecticut based members into his crew.

Thats what I figured, Guess they didn't make anyone in Conn. Who knows? Alot of associates though

[Bklyn21]

It might mean Campos has absorbed the remaining Connecticut based members into his crew.

I was surprised The Melia's weren't made . Supposedly the elder Melia declined and years ago was Robbed in a home Invasion where the guy , Napoleon Andrade was shot to death I think 2 months ago at his halfway house . Supposedly people said Depreta was going to be , Or might have been made but so far that didn't pan out either , So I wonder who's in charge of all these Associates left out in Connecticut/Fairfield County and other areas ? I wonder if Campos absorbed some of the associates also ? It said nothing about Connecticut in the Indictment , I just can't see all those associates being left out there , They had some major juice/Money making rackets on the street out there

[Gabagool718]

Anybody know any of the spots they hang or operate in Stamford/Bridgeport?

[Bklyn21]

https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/loc ... ......LINK TO MOB ROUNDUP 2012 with lots of associates