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Mafia's green scams
ROME -
Mafia activity in the environmental sector generated a turnover of 20.5B
euros ($34.9B) in 2009, according to a report published by the Italian
environmental organisation Legambiente. (AFP) MORE:
Ecomafia 2009
Gambino mob bust
STATEN ISLAND - Authorities have charged 14 reputed members and
associates of the Gambino crime family - including nine Staten Islanders
- on counts ranging from sex trafficking to murder and racketeering.
(Staten Island Advance) MORE:
US Attorney charges .pdf
Inadmissible to Canada
TORONTO - Adding meaning to the popular notation of a "Mafia
family," Antonio Coluccio, 40, was ruled ineligible for permanent
residency after authorities said he joined family members in the
powerful 'Ndrangheta, the proper name of the Mafia that formed in the
Italian region of Calabria. (National Post)
Hitman art
When
"I lived
the life," said
Dominick Montiglio, now a 62-year-old struggling artist, who
admits he was involved in scores of those killings, then testified
against the family before entering the federal
witness protection program
in 1983. (ABC)
Gang 'ran betting operation from London'
LONDON - A
multi-million pound mafia network used a British betting firm as a front
to launder money according to Italian police who have rounded up dozens
of members of the group and seized the company. (Telegraph UK)
Department of buildings mobbed up
NEW YORK - After a two
year investigation, the
Manhattan DA has indicted 29 people
accused of connections with the
Lucchese crime family, and six of them
worked as inspectors for the city Department of Buildings. (Gothamist)
MORE:
Mob sweep nets city inspectors
49 indicted
Trial for accused Mafia hit man
NEW YORK -
Michael Coppola, who goes on trial in a
racketeering-murder case, was part of a Mafia assassination squad that
"performed murders ordered by the Genovese family administration" in the
late 1970s and 1980s, prosecutors said in a motion filed last month.
(Philadelphia Inquirer)
$134B 'bond' find
What do you get
when you mix two Japanese nationals with some fake US government bonds,
a slow train to Switzerland and members of the Italian financial guard?
The answer is a $134B conspiracy theory which has fired up a whole realm
of financial bloggers on the internet. (BBC) MORE:
That old $134B in a suitcase trick
Bond smuggling mystery thickens
Mafia take down
CARACAS -
Salvatore Miceli, on the run since
2001, had been under surveillance for three days before he was seized by
officers in the capital, Caracas. He is suspected of being a link
between Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the 'Ndrangheta network and Colombian drug
cartels. (BBC)
Too dangerous to release
MONTREAL - A feared
gangster who was the "pointy stick" for the Montreal Mafia's expansion
into Ontario has been deemed too dangerous to release from prison.
(National Post)
Return of the Godfathers
NEW
YORK - The FBI is on
alert for the biggest Mob reunion of all time with six of the world’s
most powerful Mafia bosses due to be paroled within months of each
other. The big six are
Domenico 'Italian Dom' Cefalu,
George 'Big Georgie' DeCicco,
Joseph 'Joe C' Caridi,
Benedetto Aloi,
Matthew 'Matty the Horse' Ianniello,
and
Anthony 'Fat Anthony' Rabito.
(Sunday Express)
Mafia cash for visa scandal
The Australian Federal
Police has investigated claims that mafia-linked businessmen donated
about $100,000 to the Liberal Party in return for helping to keep an
alleged Mafia figure in Australia. (Age) MORE:
Police reopen visa probe
Striking back
NAPLES - I saw
my first murder victim when I was 13, on my way to school. My family
lived in Casal di Principe, a town of about 20,000 not far from Naples -
an area ruled by the Camorra, one of the most powerful criminal
organizations in Italy. (Washington Post) PREVIOUS: Roberto Saviano
FBI raids company
IRVING - FBI agents have searched an Irving business with alleged ties
to east coast Mafia families. On its website,
First Plus Financial Group describes itself as
a company that provides financial and management services to both
consumer and commercial businesses. (CBC 11)
'Big Gus' gunned down
BRAMPTON - Constantin
“Big Gus” Alevizos was gunned down outside St. Leonard’s Place,
just days after he was granted parole on drug-trafficking convictions.
(Toronto Star)
MORE:
Man linked to mob shot dead
Slain mobster lived in fear
Saved, then sentenced
Apalachin raid 50 years later
APALACHIN, NY
- Five decades ago this week, a police raid sent Mafia bosses, their
underbosses and capos running through the woods of Apalachin - and into
American history and popular culture. Some of the most famous names in
the Mafia -
Carlo Gambino,
Michael Genovese,
Russell Bufalino,
Joe Profaci - were in town Nov. 14, 1957,
ostensibly for a steak roast at the Tioga County estate of ailing local
mobster and Endicott soda distributor
Joseph Barbara. (
Apalachin
Meeting Nov. 14, 1957 |
Deportation appeal
MONTREAL
- A Laval man with alleged mafia ties finds himself running out of
options as an immigration tribunal has declared he can be deported to
his native Italy despite having lived in Canada for more than five
decades. Moreno Gallo, 64, who is out on day parole, showed up for a
hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) at Complexe Guy
Favreau for what essentially turned out to be a formality. (Montreal
Gazette)
Mafia maestro
NEW YORK
- Vincenzo Roccisano, 54, had little trouble travelling around the world
in recent months - throughout Europe, South America and Canada - despite
his notoriety and serious criminal convictions for drug trafficking.
(National Post)
Media use the M-word too much
The use of the word
"mafia" to connote organized crime and illicit, informal networks of
power and influence has become so common that the police and journalists
can hardly be faulted for perpetuating it. But they can be faulted for
paying little or no attention to the rich mix of fact and fiction about
the mafia in Sicily and to the obstacles in understanding that this rich
mix has created in Canada. (Montreal Gazette)
Legal costs
TORONTO - For Vincenzo "Jimmy" DeMaria, a successful
businessman, convicted killer and accused leader within the city's
Mafia, the fact he was released from prison despite the damning
allegations means it was money well spent. (National Post)
PREVIOUS:
Parole board frees reputed mobster
Killer battling parole process
Parole breach
Alleged mobster ordered deported
TORONTO - It's the
second time that Riccardo Gattuso, 39, a regular at a social club in
Woodbridge in the Highway 7 and Martingrove area, has been kicked out of
Canada in the past four years. (Toronto Star) PREVIOUS:
Blood feud
My life of crime is over
Why the mob loves Canada
Backyard 'hit' still unsolved
MONTREAL - Hasan
Eroglu's life ended in gunfire in the leafy suburban neighbourhood of
Valois Bay. Investigators think he was dealing heroin and ran afoul of
the Montreal Mafia - but he had some other intriguing underworld links.
(Montreal Gazette) PREVIOUS:
Man shot to
death in Pointe Claire
'My job was to kill Trudeau'
AMSTERDAM, NY - Mike
Craft is a self-confessed former "degenerate gambler" and heavy drinker,
who ran bars frequented by members of the upper New York State mob. He
also came within a few weeks in the summer of 1974 of becoming something
far worse, he says – the assassin of former Canadian prime minister
Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
(Toronto Star)
Former Judge Gets 3 Years
NEW YORK - A
former Nassau County judge was sentenced to nearly 3 years in prison
for conspiring to launder more than $400,000 for members of the
Genovese crime family. David Gross, 45, pleaded guilty in July and
admitted he agreed to try to secretly move cash he believed was the
result of a jewelry heist. (WNBC)
Mob bust nets arrests
NEW YORK - Several
of those charged are criminal associates of Genovese crime family
captain Angelo Prisco, while others were of Albanian background --
demonstrating an increasing reliance by traditional organized crime
groups on Eastern European gangs "for muscle.” (North Jersey
Media) MORE:
7 charged with extortion, break-ins
after mob probe
Prisco pals roundup
Main man is a lion
NEW YORK - The man
the feds say is the new acting boss of the
Genovese crime family
made his first public
appearance yesterday - but left his bathrobe home. Daniel ‘Danny
the Lion’ Leo appeared in a Manhattan federal courtroom to face
charges that he threatened to harm a livery driver if he didn't pay
back $150,000 in loans and shook down the owners of an illegal
gambling operation. (NY Daily News)
PREVIOUS:
New York Mafia boss arrested
Meet the Genovese Crime Family's new boss
Low key wiseguy rises
to the top
Mole unmasked in
the RCMP
MONTREAL - Angelo Cecere, a 50-year-old visually impaired civilian employee, has
worked for decades for the RCMP, listening to sensitive police
wiretaps of criminals under investigation, translating them from
Italian and interpreting their meaning.
(Topix)
Bosses voted on whacking Giuliani
NEW YORK -
The heads of New York's five Mafia families debated
whacking
Rudy Giuliani
at a 1986
sitdown, according to bombshell testimony Wednesday at the trial of
a disgraced FBI agent. (NY Daily News)
MORE:
Mafia plot to kill
Giuliani
Old tricks spell problems for mob rat
HOBOKEN, NJ - There's is an old
Aesop's fable about a scorpion and a frog meeting on the bank of a
stream. (Hudson Reporter)
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