Connecticut Mobster Accepts Plea Deal In Racketeering Case, Once Ran With Springfield’s Frankie Sky Ball & Big Al

Pioneering rock’-n-roller Chuck Berry got it all wrong, Johnny B Good is for the birds. If you’re in the New England underworld, it’s Johnny B Bad – as in Hartford Goodfella John (Johnny B) Barile. The longtime wiseguy in New York’s Genovese crime family’s Connecticut wing pled guilty in federal court earlier this month to several racketeering counts related to arson, insurance fraud and bookmaking, including admitting to assaulting an indebted gambler with an electric stun gun. The 52-year old Barile is facing up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced in the spring. He’s free on bail until his May 6 sentencing date.

The 2015 indictment charged Barile with overseeing a sports-book from 2010 through 2014, attacking a man who racked up $50,000 in gambling losses with a stun gun in a Hartford, Connecticut Burger King parking lot in November 2011 and burning down his Enzo’s Pizzeria, located directly behind the Hartford Police Station, in December 2010 in order to collect almost $200,000 in insurance money.

The Genovese clan, one of New York’s Five Families, has long operated out-of-state satellite crews in Connecticut, New Jersey and Western Massachusetts. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, Barile was firmly entrenched within the inner circle of the Genovese’s Hartford-based then-captain, Anthony Volpe, a South End restauranteur and genuine tough guy.

In the fall of 1994, Volpe and his crew, made up of a colorful cast of mob characters such as Barile, Pasquale (Pat the Rat) Guglietta, Dominic (Cuckoo Nick) Scacco, John (Johnny Baskets) Della Ferra, Paul (Paulie the Wrestler) La Rosa, Patrick (Big Pat) Poland, and Walter (The Lobsterman) Bassett, were named in a rather large gambling and loan sharking indictment. The federal RICO case also ensnared the Genovese’s Springfield, then-Massachusetts capo Frank (Frankie Sky Ball) Scibelli and its’ then-Worcester, Massachusetts capo Carlo Mastrototaro.

All fourteen co-defendants went on to be convicted in the case. Barile did two and a half years as a guest of the government after pleading guilty, Volpe did three years. While out on bail following the indictment dropping in 1994, Barile had his bond revoked when he was arrested for trying to bribe a witness called before the grand jury.

Brutish and broad-shouldered, Volpe was groomed in the east coast rackets by Scibelli, observed by FBI surveillance units throughout the 1970s and 80s traveling from Springfield to Hartford to check-in on Genovese Family interests in Connecticut. Eventually, Frankie Sky Ball and the Genovese brass trusted Volpe enough to make him official crew boss in the at-that-time booming Hartford region.

Anthony Volpe

Per court documents related to the 1994 indictment, Barile, Cuckoo Nick Scacco and Big Pat Poland, tipping the scales at more than 300 pounds, acted as an enforcement and collection team for Volpe, who died of cancer in 2010 at the age of 78. Sky Ball Scibelli died of natural causes in 2000, passing the reins of the Springfield crew to Adolfo (Big Al) Bruno and Anthony (Skipper) DeLevo.

Bruno was Scibelli’s No. 1 protégé and right-hand man and got busted in the 1994 case alongside Scibelli, Volpe, Barile and the rest. He was slain gangland style in 2003. DeLevo died of cancer in prison two years later. The Bruno hit was arranged by Bruno’s own protégé, Anthony (Bingy) Ariollotta, an ambitious and politically-savvy thirtysomething aspiring mob chieftain, who would succeed him as crew boss, but by the start of the next decade, turned rat.

Per a recent expose series on the current state of the mafia in Springfield written by Masslive.com’s Stephanie Barry, Albert Calvanese, a 53-year old former Bruno lieutenant, enforcer and loan shark, is the Springfield mob’s newest crew leader. Calvanese was released from prison after serving time for extortion in 2011.