It seems more information has been coming out abut the new Gambino Crime Family Boss Dominick Cefalu, and was provided by Mob Scribe Jerry Capeci is his wonderful website gangland.
(Pay the $45 bucks a years for the subscription to this site. You’ll get your money’s worth.)
The new Gambino Crime boss Cefalu, who was born in Sicily, made his bones in 1982, when he served six years in the slammer for a heroin smuggling conviction, which was the precursor to the Pizza Connection trial later that decade. After the got out of jail, Cefalu was inducted into the Cosa Nosta by John Gotti himself in November of 1990. The mob boss who proposed Cefalu for induction was Sicilian Pasquale (Patsy) Conte, who made tons of money in the New York Key Food Supermarket chain.
The strange thing was that, according to law enforcement sources, Gotti had no use for the Sicilian faction of the Mafia, which is ironic since the Mafia started in Sicily, and Gotti’s family originated in Naples. Gotti used to refer to the Sicilians as “Zips,” a slur which made fun of the way the Sicilians spoke in rapid-fire, “zipping” sentences.
Cefalu’s served 20 months behind bars for a 2008 extortion rap, and is now out on parole and gainfully employed as a salesman for a local bakery. It seems one of the reason’s Cefalu now heads the Gambino family is that all the other Gambino big shots, like Peter Gotti and Bartolomeo (Bobby Glasses) Vernace, and John (Jackie Nose) D’Amico, are all in prison, and won be released any time soon.
That left the door wide open for Cefalu to take the rains of the struggling family. Apparently, according to Capeci, Cefalu has a three-headed capo, with Venace, old timer Daniel Marino, and 71-year old John Gambino sharing the capo duties.
Even though he inducted Cefalu, it was reported that John Gotti never was crazy about Cefalu, or John Gambino. And now they basically run Gotti’s former family.
Things don’t always work out how people plan them.
The links for the article below is:
http://www.ganglandnews.com/members/column750.htm
This Week In Gang Land July 28, 2011
By Jerry Capeci
Gambinos Pick A New Boss
In a surprise move, the Gambinos have gone back to the old-fashioned way of running a crime family. They have selected a boss who is not in prison. He is a convicted drug trafficker with a well-earned reputation as a stand-up wiseguy who would never flip, Gang Land has learned.
The new Gambino godfather is Domenico (Italian Dom) Cefalu, a 64-year-old Bensonhurst, Brooklyn resident who was inducted into the crime family during John Gotti’s reign. Cefalu’s served 61 months of a six-years prison term for a 1982 heroin smuggling conviction, and served 20 months behind bars for a 2008 extortion rap. Cefalu is now gainfully employed as a salesman for a local bakery.
Sources tell Gang Land that the battered crime family – three brothers of the late Dapper Don, including deposed boss Peter Gotti, and dozens of other wiseguys and associates are behind bars – chose Cefalu, a powerful leader of the family’s Sicilian faction, as its official boss earlier this year.
Despite having close ties to imprisoned capo John (Jackie Nose) D’Amico, the swashbuckling Gotti’s longtime aide de camp, Cefalu’s selection as family boss clearly marks the end of the crime family’s Gotti era.
“There are still a lot of his players on the team but it’s a whole new ballgame now,” said one law enforcement source.
During Gotti’s short but volatile reign, he was not shy about taking cash “tributes” from drug-dealing members of the Sicilian faction. But sources say he often badmouthed them as “sneaky” and “untrustworthy” to his Administration members – underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano and consigliere Frank (Frankie Loc) Locascio.
“Gotti had no use for Sicilians,” said one law enforcement source, adding that Gotti often used a demeaning tone and the derogatory term “Zips” when discussing Sicilian-born gangsters.
Ironically, Cefalu became a “made man” in the last induction ceremony that Gotti himself conducted, sources said. It took place in November, 1990, at a safe-house in Queens. Cefalu was sponsored by capo Pasquale (Patsy) Conte, a rich and powerful member of the family’s Sicilian faction.
A month later, Gotti, Gravano and Locascio were hit with racketeering and murder charges and detained without bail to await trial – one that featured Sammy Bull on the witness stand, and Gotti and Frankie Loc convicted and sentenced to die in prison. This month, the Daily Beast said it was the “biggest” mob trial of the last 20 years. Overall, it ranked #11“of the most-watched, most covered cases” since 1991.
The initiation rite – the logistics were arranged by Junior Gotti, who had been promoted to capo that summer – had been scheduled for October. It was abruptly canceled when Gambino mobster Edward Lino was shot to death on his way to the event, a killing that was later proven to be carried out by corrupt NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa on orders from Luchese family underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso.
Cefalu earned his stripes as an old-school wiseguy in the mid-1990s. That’s when he spent 51 months behind bars for civil and criminal contempt rather than testify before a grand jury or at the trial of Patsy Conte for the 1990 murder of Gambino soldier Louis DiBono.
Not only did he refuse to testify at either proceeding. When he was prosecuted for criminal contempt, he waived a jury trial, and refused to present a defense. It was a similar tactic that he, his cousin Dominick Cefalu, 54, who sources say is now a Gambino capo, and an uncle used at their 1982 drug trial.
In that case, the Cefalus were found guilty by Brooklyn Federal Judge Eugene Nickerson on a “stipulated record” that was agreed to by defense lawyers and prosecutors. The ring used Belgian “mules” to import $90 million of heroin from Sicily to the U.S. in 1979-80 in a pre-cursor to the historic Pizza Connection case. That evidence was introduced at an earlier trial that ended in a mistrial after jurors saw a 60 Minutes segment about the case.
“You can’t call it a plea bargaining arrangement because there was no plea,” prosecutor Victor Rocco told New York Times reporter Joe Fried back then. “In effect, we agreed to sentences, and they agreed to waive a jury trial.”
In recent years, through underlings and a trucking company he controlled, Cefalu allegedly was involved in several extortion schemes involving a Staten Island cement company and the planned construction of a NASCAR racetrack. He ultimately pleaded guilty to a single extortion count and was sentenced to two years. He did not admit any connection with the Gambino family.
During the height of those schemes, a state Organized Crime Task Force bug in his 1999 Lexus captured a June, 2006, conversation in which Cefalu was overheard telling his wiseguy cousin Dominick that, because of his rank in the crime family, he knew the details of a recent mob shooting, according to assistant U.S. attorney Daniel Brownell.
During the conversation, Cefalu is heard stating, “I’m the underboss of the family,” Brownell stated at the gangster’s sentencing. Cefalu’s words, said Brownell, were “as clear as a bell.”
Cefalu’s attorney, Joseph Ryan, (right) who disputed Brownell’s sentencing remarks, would only issue a brief statement when Gang Land asked about his client’s current status: “Mr. Cefalu has resumed his employment in the bakery supply business, lives with his mother and is under the close supervision of the U.S. Probation Department.”
Italian Dom’s elevation to boss has been “in the works for a while,” said one source, but its timing has some mob watchers a bit surprised since Cefalu, who was released from prison in November 2009, will be under strict supervised release for 16 more months.
Sources say the move was triggered by the arrest in January of Bartolomeo (Bobby Glasses) Vernace, a Queens-based capo who was indicted on racketeering charges by federal grand juries in Brooklyn and Manhattan and jailed without bail on Mafia Takedown Day. Vernace, 62, is the second member of a three-capo panel that was put in place to run the family after its entire administration was indicted and jailed in 2008 to be hit with racketeering charges.
Cefalu is the only 2008 Administration member no longer behind bars. D’Amico, the acting boss at the time of the massive 62-defendant Gambino family indictment, and then-consigliere Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo are still incarcerated.
Sources say Vernace currently serves as the family’s consigliere, even though Corozzo is listed as the consigliere in the Manhattan racketeering indictment in which they are both defendants.
Sources say that a longtime thorn in the side of the late Dapper Don, the Brooklyn-based capo John Gambino, 71, who was previously on a three-capo ruling panel with Vernace and longtime capo Daniel Marino, is another powerful, well-respected member of the family’s Sicilian faction these days.
“Gotti would be horrified to learn about the prominence that Cefalu and John Gambino have today in his crime family,” said one law enforcement source.
http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html
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