Last week, GR inaccurately reported that Girolamo (Mimmo) D’Anna had pled out in his RICO case and was on his way to prison. Instead, because of his brother’s plea, the charges against him were dismissed.
The charges were tied to their near-death beating of a rival restaurant owner and attempted shakedown victim. Joe D’Anna, a reputed capo stationed on the suburban eastside of the Motor City, will do three years behind bars. Gangster Report apologizes to Mimmo D’Anna for the misinformation provided.
Less than five years ago, the D’Annas were convicted of assault via a controversial plea in a state case related to the same incident which occurred in 2011 in Shelby Township, Michigan and both did less than four months in Macomb County Jail, while serving the rest of their time on home confinement. Dissatisfied with the punishment doled out in state court, the Feds came in and dropped a RICO on the Sicilian-born and raised D’Anna brothers in the winter of 2013.
In April 2011, the 63-year old Joe D’Anna lived up to his nickname by attacking fellow-Sicilian Pietro Ventimiglia (owner of Nona’s Kitchen Italian eatery next across the street from D’Anna’s-then headquarters Tirami Su Ristorante) with a baseball bat, cracking Ventimiglia 12 times in the face, head, neck and torso, threatening to kill him and harm his family back in the homeland if he didn’t start paying a street tax to operate as he screamed “Don’t you know who I am?.”
Mimmo D’Anna, 52, stood watch at the door as the attack took place. The pair of wiseguy siblings had been trying to extort Ventimiglia for over two years.
Ventimiglia was hospitalized for two weeks following the assault and suffered broken bones cracked ribs and a cracked skull. His Nona’s Kitchen remains open and thriving. D’Anna’s restaurant has since shuttered after a rebranding effort to distance itself from the bad publicity.
Previously, Joe D’Anna had been pinched for loan fraud in New York and paid a $5,000 fine. He was represented in court by prominent Michigan criminal defense attorney James Thomas, famous for repping imprisoned former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (serving 28 years on his own RICO).