Joe Bruno on the Mob – Italian Mobsters Girlfriend Turns Rat

This may be one reason that women are never inducted into the Mafia. They can’t take the heat.

In a devastating display of betrayal, Monica Vitale, the “goumada” of Sicilian mob boss Gaspare Parisi, turned cheese-eater and spilled the beans on all of Parisi’s illegal activities. The only reason given for her betrayal was that “she could no longer stand his life of crime.”

After Vitale ran to the law, the Sicilian police went on a 15-month surveillance caper on the gangsters, – where they used listening devices and hidden cameras. As a result, 28 Italian mobsters were arrested, including Parisi, who now must have more than a little bit of Sicilian omelette splashed across his face.

Sicilian authorities released the statement, “’This was a very successful operation against Mafia activity in the city and led to 28 people being arrested. It came at the end of 15 months of surveillance and much of the information came from Monica Vitale. She (Vitale) has told everything she knows to a team of detectives and prosecutors and now as a result she is under police protection, as she is a key witness.”

Some of the other little tidbits that Vitale told the police included:

1. She was used to collect extortion payments from designer boutiques in Palermo.
2. She overheard a murder being discussed by mobsters during her time with Parisi……. And
3. Former MP Enzo Fragala was beaten to death in Palermo in February 2010 on the orders of boss Tommasso Di Giovanni after he failed to show respect to the wife of another mobster who had been arrested.

The Sicilian Mafia was always supposed to be more astute and more careful than the American Mafia. But I can’t imagine an American Mafioso who would get his girlfriend so intimately involved in his activities that she would have enough information to put him away for a very long time.

Hell, Tony Soprano never even told his wife Carmela he had a ton of cash hidden in their backyard.

Carmela found that stash all on her own.

You can view the article below at:

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2074036/Hell-hath-fury-28-mobsters-arrested-Mafia-bosss-girlfriend-turns-police-informer.html

Hell hath no fury: 28 Italian mobsters arrested after Mafia boss’s girlfriend turns police informer

By Nick Pisa

Italian police today arrested 28 Mafia mobsters after the girlfriend of a Godfather turned informer.

Monica Vitale, the partner of boss Gaspare Parisi, spilt the beans on the activities of her lover and his associates because she could no longer stand his life of crime and is now in hiding with round-the-clock protection.

With Monica’s priceless information officers carried out a 15-month surveillance operation on the gangsters – using listening devices and hidden cameras – finally moving in to make the arrests early this morning in a massive dawn swoop codenamed Pedro.

The men were held in a series of raids in Palermo, Sicily, the Mafia’s island stronghold – and during the operation it also emerged that one arrested mobster, Calogero Lo Presti, had been extorting money from a TV crew who were making a crime series on the Mafia.

Lo Presti and his associates had managed to infiltrate the set of popular TV show Squadra Antimafia (Anti-Mafia Squad), which revolves around a group of brave police officers fighting corruption and organised crime in Palermo.

‘She has told everything she knows to a team of detectives and prosecutors and now as a result she is under police protection, as she is a key witness’

He had managed to secure lucrative contracts with the show for catering and transport and he was recorded boasting to one friend: ‘If they carry on paying and using the services we provide they will have no problems on the set.’

Video footage released by police in Palermo showed armed officers climbing over fences to launch raids on the villas and houses of those arrested, and in other footage those held were seen having a series of meetings to discuss criminal activity.

Miss Vitale, who told police she was used to collect extortion payments from designer boutiques in Palermo, also revealed that she had overheard a murder being discussed by mobsters during her time with Parisi.

She told police how lawyer and former MP Enzo Fragala was beaten to death in Palermo in February 2010 on the orders of boss Tommasso Di Giovanni after he ‘failed to show respect to the wife of another mobster who had been arrested’.

Di Giovanni was among the 28 people held in the police operation. One mobster suffered a fractured leg as he tried to escape police capture by jumping from a staircase. He was under armed guard in hospital.

A police spokesman in Palermo said: ‘This was a very successful operation against Mafia activity in the city and led to 28 people being arrested. It came at the end of 15 months of surveillance and much of the information came from Monica Vitale.

‘She has told everything she knows to a team of detectives and prosecutors and now as a result she is under police protection, as she is a key witness.’

He added that those arrested had been held on charges of Mafia association, extortion, drug trafficking and robbery.

Police named the staircase-jumping Mafia boss as Nicola Milano.

Father-and-son mobsters Giovanni and Fabrizio Toscano tried to escape in their pyjamas from a police night raid but were caught.

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Sicilian Mafia Control Italian Television Drama

In an incredible turn of events which evoke memories of the production of the movie “The Godfather,” Monica Vitale, a Sicilian Mafia boss’ former girlfriend, has told police that members of the Sicilian Mafia received protection money from the producers of Squadra Antimafia (The Antimafia Team), in order to film in and around Palermo without any disturbances. Ms. Vitale also said that Mafia members “controlled the supply of goods and services for the drama.”

Ms. Vitale told the police, “The Mafia controlled all transport services for the production as well as catering for the cast and crew.”

When “The Godfather” was filmed in New York’s Little Italy in the early 1970’s, there were also rumors that the American Mafia demanded protection money in order for the streets of Manhattan’s Little Italy to be safely used for the filming of the movie. When “Godfather 2” was made two years later, the producers used the streets of New York City’s Alphabet City to avoid paying protection money to the Mafia. The surrounding tenements in Alphabet City closely resemble the streets of Little Italy less than as mile away.

Paolo Piccinelli, a police colonel in Palmermo told the press, “We’ve verified that an employee of the production company was in league with a person close to the Mafia.”

The TV show which stars the actress Simona Cavallari is broadcast on Channel Five, which is owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the disgraced former prime minister, who was recently forced to resign for various sexual and monetary improprieties.

No wonder the economy of Italy is going down the tubes.

You can see the article below at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8955746/Italian-mobsters-demand-protection-money-from-mafia-TV-drama.html

Italian mobsters ‘demand protection money’ from mafia TV drama

A mafia informer has alleged that the series Squadra Antimafia (The Antimafia Team), a popular Italian TV show, has come rather too close to its subject matter.

By Nick Squires, Rome

5:30PM GMT 14 Dec 2011

Monica Vitale, a mafia chieftain’s former girlfriend, has told detectives that mobsters from Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, demanded protection money and controlled the supply of goods and services for the drama.

Ms Vitale, 28, who is now a pentita, or informer, is said to have claimed that the mob demanded payment — known in Italian slang as pizzo — from the production company Taodue in return for allowing the show to be filmed in and around Palermo. She is also said to have claimed that it controlled all transport services for the production as well as catering for the cast and crew.

The mob also had a man employed on the set of the show, which has been filmed in Sicily’s largest city since 2009, according to Ms Vitale.

Paolo Piccinelli, a police colonel, said: “We’ve verified that an employee of the production company was in league with a person close to the mafia.

The series, which stars the actress Simona Cavallari as a detective leading a team of officers, is broadcast on Canale 5, a channel owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister. One episode was based on the disappearance of a boy whose father was involved in the Basta Pizzo, which encourages businesses and shop owners to stand up to extortion.

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Dominick Cefalu is One Stand-Up Guy.

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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Joe Bruno on the Mob – Italy Arrests Top Mafia (?) Fugitive

 

Antonio Iovine had a great (not) so glorious life on the run.

Iovine, the supposed head of the Camorra in Naples, has been on the lam for 14 years: two years less than Whitey Bulger, the Boston mob boss, who was an informant for 30 something years. But at least Bugler lived a life of luxury all over the world, before he was caught in Santa Monica, California, with his girlfriend, all nice and cozy: $800,000 in cash hidden in the wall, and guns and ammunition stashed throughout his condo.

What a guy.

Iovine, on the other hand, was caught hiding in a filthy wall cavity (I cringe to think what that means), and when Iovine was discovered, he tried to jump off a balcony; like he was one of the Three Musketeers.

Not very good, in term of style points (Couldn’t Iovine have least swallowed the poison pill, not to be so humiliated?).

Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the arrest of Iovine was, “a great day in the fight against the Mafia.”

Uh, Senior Marconi, the Camorra and the Mafia are two different organizations. The Mafia is based in Sicily, and the Camorra is based in Naples. That’s like saying the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are on the same team, just because they both play baseball.

Oh, I remember. The word “Mafia” makes headlines.

The Camorra? Who knows what the Camorra is anyway, aside from the people who live in Naples?

Italians prosecutors are smart headline grabbers, but not the smartest law enforcement officials in existence.

Stupido!

http://www.euronews.net/2010/11/18/italy-arrests-top-mafia-fugitive/

One of Italy’s most wanted men has finally been captured after 14 years on the run. Antonio Iovine, a boss of the Camorra, the Naples version of the Sicilian mafia, was convicted in absentia in January and sentenced to life for directing the clan’s criminal operations.

He was reportedly discovered hiding in a wall cavity and is said to have tried to jump off a balcony to escape arrest.

Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni described it as a “great day in the fight against the mafia,” but denied the operation was mounted to detract from problems facing the prime minister.

Iovine’s capture is the latest in a string of high-profile mafia arrests by Italian authorities in recent months. His arrest was also welcomed by Roberto Saviano, author of the best selling book, Gomorrah, a study about the gangster underworld.

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Mafia Informants in Sicily Rare

 

Isn’t it amazing, you hardly ever hear of Mafia informants in Sicily? (The person in the article below is an exception.)

In America, it seems every time you buy a newspaper, or if you read Jerry Capeci’s internet website “Gangland,” there’s another made guy going over to “Team America,” to save his own hide and minimize his prison sentence. And “mob associates” are even worse. Ten minutes in jail and they’re ready to give up their mothers.

Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and Joe “Big Joey” Massino are the two most glaring examples. Joey was a boss who gave up his underboss (Vinny ‘Gorgeous’ Basciano), and Sammy was an underboss who gave up his boss (John Gotti).

Why doesn’t this happen as often in Sicily??

I’m open to all explanations.

This article appeared on Mafia Today, July 20, 2011.

http://mafiatoday.com/sicilian-mafia-ndrangheta/omerta-the-glue-that-binds-gang-members/

originally posted on : standardmedia.co.ke

Omerta: The glue that binds gang members
by Capo

One thing common across all underworld groupings is the use of oath to ensure members remain loyal to a group and does not reveal secrets.

The Sicilian Mafia is no different. Having existed for centuries, the group has one of the most powerful oaths, that perhaps has contributed to its survival despite attempts by several governments to eradicate it.

The oath is known as Omerta. It is a code of silence and secrecy that forbids members from betraying their ‘brothers’ to authorities or rival gangs.

The penalty for disobeying the oath is death. That, however, does not end there, family members of the traitor are also punished by death. And if the crime is grave, his entire kinsmen may be wiped out.

In a memoir, Bernardino Verro, a one-time mayor of a city in Italy and a member of the Mafia, who defected and paid the ultimate price, describes the oath.

“I was invited to take part in a secret meeting of the Mafia. I entered a mysterious room where there were many men armed with guns sitting around a table. In the center of the table there was a skull drawn on a piece of paper and a knife.

“To be admitted to the Mafia, I had to undergo an initiation consisting of some trials of loyalty and the pricking of the lower lip with the tip of the knife: the blood from the wound soaked the skull,” he writes.

The oath is also used to guard mafia members against cooperating with the police in any way, although bribing individual officers to get information or a favour is allowed.

“Omertà is an extreme form of loyalty and solidarity in the face of authority. One of its absolute tenets is that it is deeply demeaning and shameful to betray even one’s deadliest enemy to the authorities,” writes an Italian author.

A mafia member will therefore not call the police when he is a victim of a crime. A wronged person is expected to solve the problem conclusively on his own.

Involving the police undermines one’s reputation as a capable protector of others and they view him as weak and vulnerable. Inconspicuousness from members while in the society is among what the oath also guarantees. To ensure this, it discourages members from consuming alcohol or drugs. This is because when drunk, a member is more likely to let out sensitive information.

The oath further forbids members from writing down anything about the mafia’s activities. Such may become evidence used against the gang.

In their strongholds, the group imposes the oath on the population. Residents, though they do not swear, are expected to remain silent of the gang’s ills, lest they are punished by death. A Sicilian proverb goes, “He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace.”

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html