New England mob soldier Darin (Nino) Bufalino recently walked free from a state prison sentence in Massachusetts for armed robbery and extortion. The 57-year old wiseguy was groomed in the mafia by former Patriarca crime family don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, the New England region’s Godfather in the early 1990s who was convicted in a cold-case murder back in the summer. Bufalino was Salemme’s driver and bodyguard. In 2009, Bufalino was indicted for robbing a landscaper of $1,000 at gun point. The following year he was busted in a racketeering and extortion case alongside East Boston crew capo and FBI informant Mark Rosetti. He pleaded guilty to both cases in 2012 and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Bufalino spent the first half of the 2000s behind bars on a bank-robbing conviction. Back in the 1980s, Bufalino beat a murder case. He was found not guilty in the first-degree homicide of mob associate and drug dealer Vince DeNino in 1984. DeNino allegedly owed Bufalino a $15,000 drug debt and was gunned down in a Massachusetts grocery store parking lot. A recorded conversation behind prison walls between Bufalino and Boston mob associate Charles (Good Time Charlie) Lightbody caught Lightbody bragging of his silent ownership in a 75-million dollar deal to build a Steve Wynn-backed casino and resort in Everett, Massachusetts. Lightbody, 59, was indicted by the feds for fraud and trying to hide his interest in the lucrative land contract, but acquitted at a spring 2016 trial. Wynn, the premier casino tycoon in Las Vegas, grew up on the east coast and got his start in the hotel and gaming industry from mobsters in Detroit at The Frontier in the 1960s.
