Jul 31 2007
ROME — The hit was classic mob. There were shots to the face and to the abdomen. The killers used a Lupara, a sawn-off shotgun that is the traditional weapon of choice for Mafia executions. The target was Giuseppe Lo Baido, 36. He was gunned down on July 13, near his house outside Palermo, Sicily. Continue Reading »
Jul 30 2007
JERSEY CITY, N.J. - They call him “Petey Cap.” But now some are calling Peter Caporino “Greedy Petey” for keeping up his numbers racket, even after he informed on more than a dozen Genovese crime family members.
The 70-year-old Hasbrouck Heights man’s skill in keeping out of prison ended in a Jersey City court last week, when he pleaded guilty to running an illegal gambling ring as part of a plea deal that includes a seven-year prison term, much of which will likely be spent in isolation. Continue Reading »
Jul 28 2007
MONTREAL — After the RCMP raided the Montreal mafia eight months ago - and with alleged mafia boss Vito Rizzuto serving time in a U.S. prison — the city’s criminal organization is now in limbo, says an expert on organized crime. Continue Reading »
Jul 27 2007
CHICAGO: As both a gun dealer and an undertaker, Ernie Severino was positioned to serve the Chicago mob in various ways.
The soft-spoken 60-year-old testified Thursday in the trial of five reputed mobsters that he supplied his friend, William “Butchie” Petrocelli, the leader of a gang called “The Wild Bunch,” with up to 100 guns for free. He was hazier about what happened when Petrocelli asked about using his funeral parlor’s crematorium. Continue Reading »
Jul 26 2007
In a stinging rebuke of the FBI, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the government to pay a record $101.75 million in the case of four men who spent decades in prison for a 1965 murder after agents withheld evidence of their innocence to protect informants. Continue Reading »
Jul 25 2007
CHICAGO: After years of hiding in the witness protection program, mobster Robert G. Siegel emerged Wednesday at the trial of five alleged Chicago mafia figures and told how organized crime used to buy off the police. Continue Reading »
Jul 23 2007
A former gangster has recounted the gruesome details of more than a dozen murders in the trial of five Mafia leaders in Chicago, including a killing that helped to inspire the Hollywood film Casino.
Nicholas Calabrese, the star prosecution witness and self-confessed killer in two of the murders, has been giving evidence against his alleged former cronies, including his brother Frank, in a Mob trial hailed as the biggest in the city since Al Capone’s. Continue Reading »
Jul 19 2007
WASHINGTON — It could have been just idle chitchat among bored inmates. The problem was, they weren’t your average inmates, and the subject of their threatening chatter was the chief justice of the United States. Continue Reading »
Jul 19 2007
An Albanian gangster has been gunned down amid a bloody turf war over the right to rob the parking metres in Tony Blair’s street.
Even as police protections team were assessing security at the former Prime Minister’s new London home in Connaught Square, criminals were clashing over who ‘owned’ metres in the exclusive neighbourhood. Continue Reading »
Jul 19 2007
Sofia - The head of the Bulgarian police authority responsible for the combatting of organized crime, Vanyo Tanov, on Thursday resigned in protest at a “political smokescreen” that had been erected to hide the country’s shadow economy. The authority had reached its limits in its fight against corruption in the “higher echelons of power,” Tanov was quoted as saying by Bulgarian media. Continue Reading »
