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Their names may simply have been taken from the type of Hollywood mafia script that once ruled American cinema.
But when the indictment was filed Wednesday, Joseph “Joe Brooklyn” Lanni, Angelo “Fifi” Gradilone and Francesco “Uncle Ciccio” Vicar were instead the faces of the Justice Department’s new attack on Gambino’s infamous circle of criminal relatives in New York City.
Prosecutors’ indictments used wiretapping, secret recordings and surveillance to gather evidence against the men, accusing them of conspiracy to use violence and extortion to commit fraud and retaliate against witnesses.
However, while the initial enthusiasm has faded, experts have noted that the most recent raid, which caught 16 alleged mafia members, would likely have a primary effect on criminal operations.
Instead, the genuine twist revealed through the documents the close and ongoing relationship between the New York-based mafia and its ancestor in Sicily, where six of the suspects were arrested.
Italian said the arrests demonstrated “the strength of the existing relationships” between American and Sicilian gangsters.
Among those arrested were a father from Palermo and his son founded in New Jersey.
Two of those arrested in the U. S. were described as members of the U. S. -based Sicilian mafia, while at least one of the men arrested in Italy is believed to spend time in the U. S.
Similar raids in 2019 and 2020 also targeted others leading a “double life” between the U. S. and Italy, said criminology professor Anna Sergi, who has written several books on trendy organized crime.
He told the BBC that Italian gangsters see New York as a “gymnasium” where their members go to boost their ascent.
However, the usefulness of the recruits varies.
In an intercepted chat, Francesco “Tío Ciccio” Vicari, a Sicilian living in the United States, shared his frustrations with fellow Americans with Francesco Rappa, who returned to Sicily.
“I’m 60 years old. I said, ‘And now you need me to make deliveries?'” she says, complaining that she isn’t assigned more tasks.
Rappa then contacted his son, Vito, and suggested he intervene, Professor Sergi said, adding that Rappa’s father is well known to the U. S. and Italian governments and in the past was arrested in the 1970s for heroin trafficking. and “charisma” — he’s strong enough in the U. S. and Italy to make it easier to collect debts through extortion and make sure his friends are treated well, he told BBC News.
Despite the varying quality of their Italian recruits, American crime families have continued to rely on a flood of such soldiers, and prosecutors have convinced many of their own members to “snitch” or denounce their families in exchange for reduced or more lenient sentences. decades.
The trend has made crime bosses appreciate the contribution of Italians, who are perceived as more unbreakable in the face of a code of silence known as Omerta, experts told the BBC.
Of the five families that have run New York’s Italian-American mafia since 1931, the Gambino and Genovese teams have been the most successful in Italy over the past 15 years, Sergi said.
The Gambinos – who have been the main target of this week’s arrests – are close to the tough Calabrian group, the ‘Ndrangheta.
“The link is due to the fact that neither of the two aspects are joint,” says Professor Sergi.
“The Sicilian part has been under siege since the 1990s and uses New York as a gym to train new players,” he said. For New York families, plagued by “recruitment” disorders, men are welcome.
In such a climate, some observers wonder whether the latest arrests would be perceived as a first blow to the mafia.
But Murray Richman, a longtime lawyer for the New York mob, told the BBC that the US indictment does not seem particularly serious – or “heavy” – compared to other notable prosecutions.
Previous indictments against the Gambino family included charges of murder, drug distribution and loan theft, particularly more serious charges than those facing Wednesday’s arrests.
“How is this any different than any other mob accusation I’ve ever seen?All you have to do is replace the names,” Richman said.
The accusations point to an obsession with respect among some members of the mafia.
In a particularly violent episode in September, the alleged captain of the Staten Island Gambino, Joseph “Joe Brooklyn” Lanni and Vincent “Vinny Slick” Minsquero, took revenge on a restaurant owner who asked them to leave after a heated argument with the customer.
Lanni allegedly threatened to set fire to Roxy’s Bar and Grille, with the owner inside, after bragging about his ties to the Gambino family.
He saw him on security camera footage 18 minutes later, at a nearby gas station, filling a can with red fuel before Mr Minsquero failed to take it from him.
That night, Mr. Lanni called the restaurant 39 times, once he reached the owner while he was with a police officer whose body camera recorded the encounter. The owner and his wife were violently attacked at knifepoint later that night.
Most of the alleged crimes are demolition companies and the trucking industry, also known as waste control or garbage collection.
Some plots aimed to embezzle the budget and defraud unions and worker benefit plans, officials said.
The Italian documents come with transcripts of phone calls and text messages between the defendants in which they discuss advances in the United States.
In one exchange, the men discussed the murder of Gambino family boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, who was shot from his New York home in 2019.
It is the most high-profile murder of the New York mob in decades and has fueled false speculation that he was killed through a rival family.
Giovan Battista Badalamenti called Cali’s death a blow to all members of his network, as “his death cut off all of our legs,” according to the Italian indictment.
Where does Cali murder the New York mafia?
A lawyer for the Cali killer later argued that his client was inspired by QAnon conspiracy beliefs. The gunman, a young man who lived with his parents on Staten Island, was declared unworthy of trial due to intellectual fitness issues.
When Mr. Badalamenti observed that a madman had killed Cali, because of his position as patron of the Gambino, Mr. Francesco replied, “And thank God. “
Italian prosecutors said the reaction was “a clear reference to the fact that a bloody mafia war would have broken out if the killer had been from some other mafia clan. “
While the arrests may not represent serious disruptions to the mob, the indictments mean the FBI’s attention is returning to organized crime, said former U. S. Justice Department prosecutor Joseph Moreno.
After the 9/11 attacks, FBI resources were directed toward counterterrorism. In 2016, Selwyn Raab of the e-book Five Families told Rolling Stone that some FBI organized crime task forces had gone from about 400 agents to 20 or 30. .
But under the Obama administration, the FBI began combining national security and organizing criminal operations in an attempt to combat what it calls “transnational organized crime. “
“The concept is that when organized crime teams achieve a certain degree of sophistication, they can pose not only a street crime risk but also a danger at the national level,” Moreno said.
Italy’s organized crime families may not be as tough as they once were, he added, but other organized crime groups, from Russia and East Asia, have stepped in to fill the void.
“No single arrest or prosecution is most likely to topple an entire mafia family, but there is no doubt that decades of investigations have eroded its strength and influence in major cities such as New York and Chicago,” he told the BBC.
All ten U. S. defendants have pleaded guilty, indicating they will fight the charges, but some could backfire on their allies.
“In my experience, one in three people is an informant,” said Richman, who represented several Genoese and Luquoise family gangsters in New York City.
Professor Sergi said the allegations are unlikely to have an immediate immediate effect.
“The short term is not so important, what is important is the return,” he said, predicting an accumulation of illicit activities in either direction in the near future.
Overall, “the connections that are emerging on both sides of the Atlantic show a well-oiled network of men that comes out of the old movies. “
Additional information via Laura Gozzi