November 23, 2020 – Montreal underworld figure Shane (Wheels) Maloney was granted a full parole this week after serving eight years for drug and firearms offenses. The 43-year old wheelchair-bound Irish wiseguy says he will be moving to British Columbia. Wheels Maloney was a leader of Montreal’s Irish mob, known locally as The West End
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November 21, 2020 – The dominos keep falling. And so do Philly wiseguys. Alleged Philadelphia mob soldier Salvatore (Sonny) Mazzone was indicted along with four others in a federal bookmaking case Thursday morning, capping a frenzied week in Uncle Sam’s battle against the mafia in the City of Brotherly Love. Nine Goodfellas from Philly found
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November 20, 2020 – The nickname really fits, don’t you think? Philadelphia mob associate Anthony (Tony Mortgage) Ambrosino was sentenced to a year and a half in federal prison last week for, yep, you guessed it, a mortgage scam. His mortgage swindle netted him $300,000, all but $10,000 of which he’s being forced to return
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November 19, 2020 – Alleged Philadelphia mafia associates Daniel (Cozy) Castelli, Daniel (Danny Blue Eyes) Malatesta, Sr., Danny Bucceroni and Kenny Arabia were quietly indicted by the feds for cocaine trafficking last week. The case dates back to 2016 and intertwines with a mob sting in New Jersey that nabbed two Philly soldiers for coke
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November 19, 2020 – The FBI’s organized crime unit in Philadelphia is re-examining the 2012 Gino DiPietro murder and issued a wanted poster and a $10,000 reward for information on the partially-unsolved gangland killing Tuesday morning. On the poster was a never-before-seen image of a stocky man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt snapped by a
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November 17, 2020 – The signature and most audacious murder in the ongoing Canadian Mafia War occurred ten years ago this month when Montreal mob royal Nicolo (Uncle Nick) Rizzuto was killed by a single sniper’s bullets inside his palatial estate in Cartierville on November 10, 2010. He was 86 and stuck in the crossfire
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November 14, 2020 – One-time Boston Irish mob boss Howie Winter died of old age this week at 91, in his own bed, a free man. If you know the math for guys who reach the highest levels of the underworld in their careers, you’ll agree, ole’ Howie boy did quite well for himself. In
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November 12, 2020 – Springfield (MA) mobster Ralphie Santaniello was let off house arrest last week, per MassLive resident mobologist Stephanie Barry, who broke the news of Santaniello’s ability to now roam free in a story back on Thursday about the early prison-release of Springfield wiseguy Frank (The Shark) Depergola via a motion for COVID-19-related
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November 13, 2020 — The music world lost two more rappers this week to street violence, as Chicago’s King Von and Texas’ Mo3 were both gunned down in separate incidents five days apart. Sadly, the hip-hop industry in general has been plagued with violent and untimely deaths of rising and established young stars of the
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November 12, 2020 — United States District Court Judge Rya Zobel sentenced the Latin Kings’ east coast “underboss,” Jorge (King G) Rodriguez, to 18 years in prison last week. Rodriguez, 32, was the No. 2 defendant in 2019’s Operation Throne Down, a case filed out of Boston and responsible for the arrests of more than
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November 11, 2020 – Twenty-five years ago this week the Ninety-Nine Restaurant & Pub Massacre in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood marked the end of the bloody Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme regime in the New England mafia. After the “four on the floor” slayings in the bank-heist capital of Beantown in late 1995, long-simmering tensions in the
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November 11, 2020 — You could not have painted a better picture for one of Canada’s most notorious criminals. Montreal gangland leader Greg (Picasso) Woolley was paroled early from his drug case with strict conditions this week, walking out of prison eight months before he was scheduled to be because of the COVID-19 pandemic. On
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November 8, 2020 – Springfield mob figure Frank (The Shark) Depergola walked out of prison four months early on a compassionate release issued by U.S. District Court Timothy Hillman out of Worcester, Massachusetts last week. Hillman believed Depergola had age and health issues that placed him at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. The 64-year
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November 5, 2020 – Smoke’em if you got’em. A victory cigar would be appropriate. Turncoat mobster Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, formerly of the Patriarca crime family in New England, was granted a compassionate release from prison in a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston this week. Bobby the Cigar is
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November 4, 2020 – This month marks the 25th anniversary of the classic Martin Scorsese gangster flick Casino, telling the story of the Chicago mafia’s days ruling over the Las Vegas hotel and gaming industry. Casino was released on November 22, 1995 and although not as well received as Scorsese’s mob movie opus Goodfellas, still
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November 4, 2020 – The most powerful biker boss in Michigan has gotten a reprieve from a life prison sentence. He’s walking free this week. Leonard (Big Daddy) Moore, the 72-year old “Godfather” of The Highwaymen Motorcycle Club, was granted a compassionate release due to preexisting conditions for COVID-19 by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds
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November 3, 2020 — Anthony Gerace, the nephew of reputed Buffalo mob boss, Joseph (Big Joe) Todaro, Jr., copped a plea in his federal drug and gun case from 2019 last week. The 40-year old Gerace pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm in furtherance of narcotics trafficking in front of U.S. District Court Judge
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October 31, 2020 — Back in the summer, I was approached by Google News (in conjunction with The Grosse Pointe News) to write an investigative piece on the JoAnn Matouk Romain case from 2010, a disturbing murder mystery out of my hometown of Detroit that was being featured on Netflix’s reboot of Unsolved Mysteries. I
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October 31, 2020 – One-time New York drug don Guy Fisher got a ticket home from the federal government this week, let out of prison Wednesday on a medical pardon after 36 years behind bars on a drug and racketeering conviction from the early 1980s. The 73-year old Fisher led The Council, a syndicate of
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October 30, 2020 – One Latin Kings boss in Massachusetts went free this week and another pleaded guilty in continuing fallout from last year’s Operation Throne Down. More than 60 members of the mostly Hispanic organized crime group across multiple states were indicted in a RICO case in December 2019 out of Boston. Worcester chapter
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October 30, 2020 – At the same time he was acting boss of the Montreal mafia, Andrew Scoppa was secretly helping two Quebec crime writers work on the a book about the mob war he was immersed in and feeding information to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The 55-year old Scoppa, who was gunned down
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October 29, 2020 – Detroit breakdown. Motor City shakedown. Just like the old J. Geils Band used to rock out to. The feds in Motown took down the It’s Just Us Gang in a drug, racketeering and murder case that dropped last week in U.S. District Court out of Detroit, Michigan. The It’s Just Us
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October 28, 2020 – Avengers Motorcycle Club member Ward (The Anvil) Wright had his bid for compassionate release rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Murphy in Detroit this week, as Wright saw his dream of finagling his way out of a life sentence for murder and drug trafficking shattered with the swift pounding of
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October 24, 2020 – According to FBI records, recently-deceased Buffalo mob capo Frank (Butchie Bifocals) Bifulco once put out open murder contracts on an African-American crime baron and two of his enforcers he held responsible for the drug-related killing of his teenage stepson. Nobody collected, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The government swooped
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October 23, 2020 – The sentence was stiff. It exceeded the recommended guidelines. That’s just the way it goes sometimes in the Philadelphia mafia, where the feds gun for their targets with a full clip no matter what. Philadelphia mob figure Joseph (Joey Electric) Servidio was sentenced to 15 years in federal court in New
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October 22, 2020 – The original “Big Meech,” legendary Detroit drug lord Demetrius Holloway, was slain 30 years ago this month in one of the Motor City’s most sensational homicides ever, a gangland hit most historians point to as the official end to the decadent and destructive crack era in the D. Black Mafia Family
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October 21, 2020 – The sight of the Buffalo underworld is all but a blur without Butchie Bifocals. Buffalo mafia captain Frank (Butchie Bifocals) Bifulco died of natural causes over the weekend at 76 years old. The jack-of-all-trades mobster will be remembered for being intelligent, innovative and uniquely entrepreneurial in his rackets. He allegedly ran
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October 18, 2020 – Slain Boston mobster Jimmy Limoli thought he was stealing from Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. not another higher-ranking mafia figure in the weeks before his murder 35 years ago, according to court records. The 25-year old Limoli was gunned down in Boston’s North End on October 28, 1985. Limoli and mob-prince-in-waiting
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Buffalo mob enforcer Daniel (Danny Boots) Sansanese was famous for his lethality on the streets of Western New York. He was the Magaddino crime family’s No. 1 hit man from the late 1950s until his incarceration in 1971 (he died of cancer four years later). The FBI believes in that capacity Danny Boots either personally
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October 15, 2020 – His second cooperation deal with the feds has treated him well. Former New England mafia captain Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca was let off with no prison time for the 1992 gangland slaying of Providence mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan this week. The Hanrahan hit is an open murder investigation for both
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October 10, 2020 – Deceased Godfather Joseph (Lead Pipe) Joe Todaro got into a brawl at the Buffalo Playboy Club that spilled into the parking lot on the night of March 13, 1982, according to FBI records. The fight erupted after a patron of the club made a lewd remark to a girlfriend of Buffalo
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October 7, 2020 – The Fall River chapter of The Outlaws Motorcycle Club greeted member Joseph (Little Joe Jo) Noe, Jr. at the Bristol County Circuit Court doors in Massachusetts when he was granted bail from a state murder charge last week. Little Jo Jo, who has been locked up for a year, got on
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October 7, 2020 – No luck for the Indian. U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel denied Chicago mobster Paulie (The Indian) Schiro his request for an early release from his federal racketeering sentence under the First Step Act this week. Schiro, 83, has battled lung cancer and only has one lung. According to his motion
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October 6, 2020 – Long linked to The Outfit’s Cicero crew, Chicago mob associate Greg Paloian was busted for bookmaking this week in an operation the feds claim has been up and running for the past half-decade and centers in Elmwood Park and Melrose Park. The 66-year old Paloian is tied to reputed current Outfit
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October 1, 2020 – The relationship between fictional Kanas City gangland figures Loy Cannon and Doctor Senator in the new season of the hit television show Fargo is inspired by the real-life friendship and business relationship shared by former K.C. Black mob bosses James (Doc) Dearborn and Eugene (Seal) Richardson. The FX drama explores a
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September 29, 2020 — With the television show Fargo kicking off it’s fourth season this week diving into the Kansas City mafia and the fictional Fadda crime family, Gangster Report looks back on one of the real-life Civella crime family’s most compelling unsolved mob murders: The 1988 Roger Reid homicide. The 36-year old Reid was
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Kansas City’s Civella crime family wasn’t to be trifled with in its heyday. The boys from the Missouri mafia were unafraid of littering the streets with bodies and did so throughout much of the 1970s and early 1980s. The newly-premiered season of the FX television show Fargo explores a fictional storyline involving the K.C. Italian
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Tremors of a pending mob revolution were felt in the mid-2000s, by the end of the decade, however, the underworld in Canada was in an all-out gangland shooting war that would reach biblical proportions in subsequent years. The conflict started in Montreal, Quebec surrounding unrest in the Rizzuto mob empire and eventually moved to Ontario,
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September 26, 2020 – Justice for C-Boogie may be coming soon. Jermal Williams was indicted this week in state court out of New Orleans for second-degree murder in the New Year’s Day slaying of 3NG Gang lieutenant Chris (C-Boogie) McCann. The homicide occurred during a car chase that ended on South Claiborne with a bullet-ridden
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September 25, 2020 – The 1985 murder of Kansas City’s Black mob boss James (Doc) Dearborn may have been tied to instability in the Italian mafia in the wake of the city’s longtime Godfather’s death, sources say. Comedian Chris Rock plays a character loosely based on Dearborn in the new season of the FX television
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September 24, 2020 –  Attorneys for Chicago street gang boss LaBar (Bro Man) Spann are asking U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Durkin to throw out one of six pending first-degree homicide counts against him in his upcoming federal drug and murder trial because a jury already found him not guilty of the crime. The 42-year
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September 23, 2020 – Chris Rock’s Kansas City Black mafia boss character in the new season of the hit FX television show Fargo is partially based on James (Doc) Dearborn, the leading African-American organized crime figure in K.C. until his gangland slaying in 1985 at age 53. The acclaimed high-energy comedian is hoping this is a career-defining
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September 23, 2020 – The bosses continue to cop pleas in Operation Throne Down, the bust that led to the arrest of 62 Latin Kings members and associates on federal racketeering, drugs and attempted murder charges all up and down the east coast last December. Connecticut Latin Kings boss Hector (King Demon) Vega is the
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September 21, 2020 – Motown’s hotbed of a biker community is bursting at the seams with speculation as two members of The Highwaymen Motorcycle Club in Detroit have died violent deaths in the past three months. Are The Highwaymen at war with each other? Most likely not, but the questions and rumors are buzzing. Highwaymen
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September 20, 2020 – Hamilton mafia hired-gun Michael Cudmore was found slain in Mexico back in the summer, charting another murder in the long-raging Canadian Mob War across the border. The body count is in the hundreds by now. The 39-year old Cudmore was shot behind the wheel of a car left in a ditch
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September 19, 2020 – Revered Pittsburgh bookie Robert (Bobby I) Ianelli, one of the last remaining links to the old Steel Town mafia that ruled the region for decades, pleaded guilty to sports gambling and policy lottery charges in state court this week in exchange for probation. Ianelli and his son, Rusty, ran their sports
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September 19, 2020 — United States District Court Judge Ronald Guzman rejected Chicago mob boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno’s motion for a compassionate release this week. The corpulent 62-year old former don is suffering from a variety of health ailments and is in the midst of serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for extortion. According
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September 16, 2020 – The Operation Throne Down racketeering and narcotics bust out of New England is less than a year old and it has already yielded a dozen guilty pleas, many of them of high-ranking Latin Kings, in federal court in Boston. Dropping in December 2019, Operation Throne Down dismantled the leadership of the
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The film Goodfellas was released 30 years ago this month and went on to become the gold standard for all mob movies of the future. Director Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic told the story of New York mafia associate Henry Hill of the Lucchese crime family and his Robert’s Lounge crew run by James (Jimmy the
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September 13, 2020 – Convicted Philadelphia mafia bookmaker Steve Sharkey is in a beef with reputed Bruno-Scarfo crime family acting boss George (Georgie Boy) Borgesi, according to a new article from local mobologist and award-winning television investigative journalist Dave Schratwieser on his Mob Talk Sitdown website. Schratwieser’s sources claim Sharkey and Borgesi fell out over
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