Mar 04 2007
Former mobster writes tell-all about the Israeli mafia in NY
Meeting up with an old friend from Israel - Ran Efraim - Gonen began to buy coke from Efraim in LA and sell it in New York City, grossing about $50,000 a month. His business continued to grow, he found additional suppliers, and also met the woman who would become his third wife - Honey.
The two were married in 1984, by which time, Gonen said, he was following her into a recurrent pattern of drug use. Gonen and Honey returned to Israel, but Honey was caught at the airport with almost 50g. of cocaine, and police used the arrest to try to convince Gonen to testify against his cronies in the Israeli underworld.
Returning to New York, Gonen tried to set up a fake company and run a pyramid scheme. But his briefcase containing all of his papers was stolen, he says, and he returned to drugs.
This time, his plans were altered by the unexpected arrival of old acquaintances from Israel - among them Eitan Hiya, Jonny Atias and Yisrael “Alice” Mizrahi. As then-District Attorney Rudy Giuliani had taken on the Italian mob, and the Soviet Union had not yet fallen, the New York drug industry was wide open. Apparently, even the criminal underworld abhors a vacuum.
The Israeli newcomers wanted help and turned to Gonen. He began to hold weekly meetings with Attias, but soon realized that they had a different business outlook. “Jonny said to me, ‘Don’t worry, if anybody sees us, we take down the witnesses,’” Gonen - who says he never killed anyone - recalled.
“Attias built his name on blood, on brutality, and on fear,” Gonen said, adding that the violence was attracting too much attention and threatening his lifestyle. The situation became even worse after internecine war broke out between Mizrahi and Attias.
Then, the second shoe dropped. Gonen was caught by an anti-drug task force set up under new laws pushed through by the administration of then-president George H.W. Bush. After evading police for three days, Gonen was arrested on September 27, 1989.
When he saw police coming for him, he stopped at a corner store and bought four grapefruit juices and two coffees. If the police were trigger happy, he said, they would see that a man with his hands full of beverages couldn’t reach for a gun.
