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When The Chicago Outfit Hired The Cocaine Cowboys: Lefty Rosenthal Tried Having Tony The Ant Blown Up In Miami

Scott Burnstein
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When The Chicago Outfit Hired The Cocaine Cowboys: Lefty Rosenthal Tried Having Tony The Ant Blown Up In Miami

November 25, 2021 — Famous Chicago mob associate Frank (Lefty) Rosenthal tried to take a murder contract out on his childhood friend, feared Las Vegas mafia chieftain Tony (The Ant) Spilotro, before their bosses in the Outfit beat him to it and the hit man he tried to hire was killed himself. According to FBI records, in the early 1980s, Rosenthal, who was feuding with Spilotro over Outfit business affairs in Vegas and the fact that Spilotro was having a romantic affair with Rosenthal’s wife, Geri, sought out Cocaine Cowboy and CIA asset, Richard (Monkey) Morales, to have Tony the Ant blown up in a fire-bomb explosion on a visit to Miami.

Spilotro was known to spend time on one particular boat when he visited the area in the winter. Rosenthal had previously lived in Florida and maintained ties in the area’s underworld.

Monkey Morales was an explosives expert trained in Cuba. He and Rosenthal met each other in Miami in the 1960s when Rosenthal and his benefactors back in the Windy City hired Morales to car bomb rival bookmakers, per federal documents. Rosenthal fled South Florida for the glitzy Vegas Strip in the wake of a federal investigation into the string of bombings focusing on Rosenthal and other Outfit affiliates living in Dade County.

Rosenthal and Spilotro were put in charge of the Chicago mob’s interests in the Las Vegas gaming industry. Outfit bosses tapped Rosenthal, one of the most legendary handicappers in the American gambling world of the mid to late 20th Century, as their “inside man” and Tony the Ant, pint-sized, but formidable mafia assassin, as the strongman to oversee the whole operation from the streets outside the four casinos controlled on the Strip.

The entire ordeal came to a crashing halt in the final months of 1982.

On October 4, Rosenthal survived a car bombing in the parking lot of a Las Vegas restaurant. The following month, on November 9, Geri Rosenthal was found dead of a drug overdose in a Los Angeles motel room.

In the days before Christmas, Monkey Morales, 44, met his fate and died in a bar fight in Miami on December 21, shot to death outside Rogers On The Green. Morales’ family believes the seemingly random altercation was in actuality a hit and Morales’ brother admitted on his deathbed to executing the owner of Rogers On The Green two years later in an act of vengeance.

Spilotro lasted another four years until he was heinously slain in the basement of a private residence in Chicago, beaten, stomped and strangled to death along with his little brother, Mickey, for his insubordinate behavior. Oscar-winning actors Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro, played Spilotro and Rosenthal, respectively, in the 1995 film Casino. Sharon Stone was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Rosenthal’s wife.

After Rosenthal died of natural causes in 2008 at age 79, it was revealed that he was a longtime confidential informant for the FBI. The character based on him in Casino was renamed Sam (Ace) Rothstein.

Morales cut ties with the CIA and became a wholesale cocaine trafficker in the final years of his life. Richard Morales, Jr. recently told reporters his father admitted to him that he was sent to Dallas by the CIA in the days before U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on the afternoon of November 22, 1963 as part of a “clean up crew.” Morales informed his son that he knew Lee Harvey Oswald from his days training Oswald at a CIA sniper school.

Operation Tiny Tunes Toppled Gangster Disciples In N.C., Wide-Netting Drug Case Finally Put To Bed With Last Defendant Sentenced

Scott Burnstein
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Operation Tiny Tunes Toppled Gangster Disciples In N.C., Wide-Netting Drug Case Finally Put To Bed With Last Defendant Sentenced

November 24, 2021 — The North Carolina Gangsters Disciples were dismantled by Operation Tiny Toons, which wrapped up with the final co-defendant in the case pleading guilty and being sentenced in federal court last week. Operation Tiny Toons, a joint effort by local authorities in North Carolina in tandem with the FBI, ATF and DEA, landed in 2017. All 18 defendants in the case were ultimately convicted of heroin trafficking.

GD Wilmington boss Darion (Pluck) Graham was sentenced to 30 years in prison back in the winter for being the leader of the conspiracy. The 31-year old Graham was being supplied drugs by GD affiliates in New York.

Kayla (Lady K) Jackson was the last of the co-defendants to be sentenced, receiving a 7-year term. Jackson would often drive Graham to and from drug purchases and sales.

Based and founded in Chicago, the Gangster Disciples is the biggest American street gang out of the Midwest, however in the past three decades has expanded its ranks greatly, fanning out to locations in the south, southeast and east coast. Founder Larry (The Chief) Hoover, 70, resides in the federal prison system’s Supermax facility in Colorado. Hoover has been incarcerated since the early 1970s and according to the FBI and DEA, remains the final say in all GD policy matters, calling shots from his prison cell.

The No. 2 Man In Buffalo’s Magaddino Crime Family Given Parole In Canada Drug Case

Scott Burnstein
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The No. 2 Man In Buffalo’s Magaddino Crime Family Given Parole In Canada Drug Case

November 20, 2021 — Self-proclaimed Buffalo mafia underboss Domenico (Canadian Dom) Violi was granted day parole by a parole board in Ontario, Canada last week. In 2018, Violi pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges and was sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Under Canada law, “day parole” is equal to being placed in a halfway house within the American justice system.

The 55-year old Violi is mob royalty in Canada. He was caught bragging on an FBI wire that he was promoted to the underboss spot in Buffalo’s Magaddino crime family by reputed boss Joseph (Big Joe) Todaro, Jr. in a ceremony down in Florida in the mid-2010s. His father, Paolo Violi was the street boss of the Montreal mafia in the 1970s until he was assassinated in his social club in 1978.

Following his dad’s murder, Violi was sent to Hamilton, Ontario to be under the protection of his grandfather, Giacomo Luppino’s crime family. Luppino died of natural causes in 1987 at the age of 88.

Dom Violi is the first Canadian to hold an administration post in an American mafia family. His brother, Joe, 51, is also alleged to be a soldier in the Buffalo mob.

Big Joe Todaro, who is 74, has no significant criminal record of note and owns the “La Nova” pizza and wing empire, has long denied any affiliation with or membership in the mafia. The FBI believes the Todaro family has run the mob in Western New York since the 1980s.

Dig For Hoffa Imminent, FBI Secures Search Warrant For One-Time Jersey Landfill Owned By Genovese’s “Tony Pro” Crew

Scott Burnstein
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Dig For Hoffa Imminent, FBI Secures Search Warrant For One-Time Jersey Landfill Owned By Genovese’s “Tony Pro” Crew

November 19, 2021 – The FBI has a search warrant to go dig up a piece of former mob-owned property in New Jersey to look for slain Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Ground penetrating radar paid for by the Fox News Channel detected a series of steel drums on the former site of the PJP Landfill underneath the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City, New Jersey at a 12-by-15 foot patch of land earlier this year. FBI equipment came to the site to confirm the finding last month — results are pending. Award-winning investigative journalist Dan Moldea (the “Godfather”of Hoffa research) and Fox News Channel’s Eric Shawn believe Hoffa’s remains reside at “Brother Moscato’s dump.”

A tipster tied to the one-time owners of the property pointed Moldea to the piece of land, telling him Hoffa was buried at that specific spot under a layer of steel-drum markers. The FBI has spent hundreds of millions of dollars hunting for Hoffa’s body over the past four and a half decades.

Hoffa, 62, famously disappeared on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan on his way to meet Detroit mob street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey mob capo Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano. Hoffa’s body has never been found and nobody has ever been arrested for causing his death.

The case of the missing labor union titan has since been steeped in pop-culture mythology and is still considered an open investigation by the FBI. Hoffa and his former benefactors in the mafia were at odds over the firebrand labor boss’ desire to reclaim the Teamster presidency following a prison sentence for bribery.

FNC’s Fox Nation streaming service is releasing Part 3 of its ongoing investigative series, Riddle: The Search For James R. Hoffa this week. Shawn is the show’s host. Moldea’s crack reporting brought Shawn and the GPR imaging equipment to the potential dig site based on tips provided by Tony Pro’s former partner in the trash business Paul Cappola’s son, Frank.

When Hoffa vanished in the summer of 1975, Paul Cappola and a Tony Pro lieutenant named Philip (Brother) Moscato co-owned PJP Landfill. Moscato was one of the biggest loan sharks on the east coast and along with Tony Pro was a member of New York’s Genovese crime family. Moldea is the world’s foremost expert on the iconic Hoffa disappearance and murder, having written the seminal book on the subject, The Hoffa Wars.

Paul Cappola was not a “made man” in the Genovese crime family. His son, Frank Cappola, also never reached “made” status in the mob, but was a one-time right hand man to another Provenzano lieutenant named, Vinnie Ravo. Frank Cappola claims he was present at the PJP Landfill as a teenager when Hoffa’s body arrived for disposal at Tony Pro and “Brother” Moscato’s behest.

Moldea developed “Brother Moscato” as a source in the final years of Moscato’s life. Moscato admitted to having Hoffa buried on the property, but wouldn’t divulge the exact location. The FBI searched the dump shortly after Hoffa went missing and didn’t find anything.

Moscato, who died of cancer in 2014, told Moldea that Hoffa was kidnapped in a Bloomfield Twp., Michigan restaurant parking lot by Detroit and New Jersey mob hitmen, killed at a nearby residence and then his body driven to the Moscato landfill in Jersey City in a Gateway Transportation truck. Gateway Transportation was owned by notorious Teamster goon Rolland (Big Mac) McMaster, a Hoffa confidant-turned-rival from Detroit.

The feds searched McMaster’s Hidden Dreams Ranch in Commerce Township, Michigan looking for Hoffa’s remains back in the summer of 2006, but came up empty. McMaster died of natural causes less than a year later.

The men Hoffa was going to meet the afternoon he disappeared, Tony Pro and Tony Jack, were related via marriage and both died of natural causes in 1988 and 2001, respectively. Tony Pro was in prison for an unrelated gangland murder and had been in a bitter personal feud prior to Hoffa going missing. Tony Jack died awaiting trial on federal racketeering charges.

Paul Cappola died of cancer in 2008.Right before he died, Cappola gave his son, Frank, the particulars on Hoffa’s burial.

In October 2019, Frank Cappola took Moldea on a tour of what used to be the PJP Landfill. The land is now a state park and wildlife preserve. While they were there, Cappola pointed out to Moldea where his father told him Hoffa was laid to rest.

Cappola, who died of a lung ailment two years ago, executed an affidavit on October 7, 2019 and stated the following:

A Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows showed up the day after Hoffa went missing at the PJP Landfill carrying an unidentified number of men and was met by Moscato and Paul Cappola. Frank Cappola was working a summer job at PJP at the time and saw limo pull in and witnessed the ensuing interaction.

Moscato approached the vehicle and had a conversation with the men inside.

During the conversation, Moscato pointed to a part of the property he wanted Hoffa buried at, resulting in Cappola becoming worried due to the constant FBI surveillance of the landfill and exclaiming, “Great, now the whole fucking world is going to know.”

Brother Moscato had business to attend to off the property and assigned Paul Cappola to take care of the burial at a pre-excavated spot in the northeast part of the landfill.

Later that night, Paul Cappola dug a second hole without telling Moscato in an effort to disguise the burial in case anyone was watching the previous conversation where Moscato pointed to a pre-dug hole in the ground.

Hoffa’s body was placed head first into a 55-gallon industrial steel drum and dropped into the second hole by Paul Cappola using a front-loader machine.

Before filling in the hole, Cappola used the front loader to place 15 to 20 chemical drums on top of the steel drum containing Hoffa and left a marker on surface of grave site.

Early on in the investigation into Hoffa’s disappearance, the FBI searched the PJP Landfill based on a fall 1975 tip from Tony Pro’s driver, Ralph (Little Ralphie) Picardo. The first search of the property came up empty. Picardo claimed members of the Hoffa hit team visited him in prison in the days that followed and confessed to their involvement in the crime and where Hoffa was laid to rest.

The BMF Murder Timeline: While Legendary Drug Syndicate Was Mostly Non-Violent, Big Meech & Crew Had Bodies

Scott Burnstein
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The BMF Murder Timeline: While Legendary Drug Syndicate Was Mostly Non-Violent, Big Meech & Crew Had Bodies

The Black Mafia Family television show is one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood right now. BMF ruled the nation’s wholesale drug trade for much of the 1990s and first half of the 2000s. Detroit-bred brothers, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory defined what it meant to be New Millennium organized crime titans; think big, go global, not local. The fact that the Flenorys accomplished their takeover of the North American cocaine industry with minimal, if hardly any, bloodshed at all is a tribute to their monster legacy and masterful diplomacy skills. That being said, BMF was not to be trifled with. Violence was a measure of last resort, but still employed if necessary.

THE BMF MURDER TIMELINE (1987-2020)

May 3, 1987 – Elvis Simon, the little brother of Southwest Detroit drug lord Layton (The Beast) Simon, who was at war with the Flenorys and their “50 Boys,” is killed in a shooting in the parking lot of the Detroit Coney Island restaurant

October 31, 1997 – Drug boss-turned-informant Dennis (The Duke) Kingsley-Walker is gunned down behind the wheel of his Nissan Maxima as he drove onto the exit ramp of a downtown Atlanta expressway near trendy Buckhead. The hit went down just hours after Kingsley-Walker was released from a three-year prison term and he had stopped for drinks at Atlanta’s Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel to celebrate his homecoming.

*Kingsley-Walker was the first Detroiter to plant a flag in the “Hotlanta” dope game in the early 1980s. To a reduce a prison sentence from a 1994 federal drug case, he testified against his partner Tony Valentine, who was a close friend of Big Meech’s. Per an unsubstantiated claim by a federal informant, Big Meech was the shooter in the Kingsley-Walker hit. Nobody has ever been arrested for the Kingsley-Walker homicide.

September 7, 2003 – BMF “CFO” lieutenant, William (Doc) Marshall kills an assailant in a home invasion of his pricey townhouse located in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood. Marshall kept the books for BMF and owned a luxury car dealership. He was the only member of BMF that spoke and did business on behalf of both Big Meech and Southwest T.

November 11, 2003 – After an altercation with the BMF entourage inside the Atlanta club Chaos, Anthony (Wolf) Jones and Lamont (Riz) Girdy are killed in a shootout with Big Meech and his bodyguard Ameen (Bull) Hight. in the parking lot. Wolf Jones was Puffy Combs’ personal bodyguard. Big Meech is wounded in the exchange of gunfire and avoids getting brought to trial on Jones and Girdy’s murders on the grounds of self-defense.

July 25, 2004 – Atlanta resident Rashannibal (Prince) Drummond is killed by BMF’s pint-sized and trigger-happy third-in-command, Fleming (ILL) Daniels, in the parking lot of The Velvet Room club in Atlanta when the two got into an argument over Daniels nearly hitting Drummond backing out of a parking spot in his Porsche SUV. Drummond was beaten down by several BMF members for slapping his palms on Daniel’s vehicle in anger and then Daniels exited the car and shot a slumped and helpless Drummond at point-blank range.

September 5, 2004 – BMF member Ulysses (Hatchet Man) Hackett and his girlfriend Misty Carter are executed as they slept in Carter’s high-rise Atlanta apartment.

*Hackett and Carter are killed over the belief that Hackett was about to flip and give up Big Meech-affiliate Tremayne (Kiki) Graham and his BMF satellite outpost in Greenville, South Carolina. Graham is married to the Mayor of Atlanta’s daughter.

May 10, 2005 – Rapper Henry (Pookie Loc) Clark is killed when he tries robbing rival rap star Gucci Mane inside a house in Decatur, Georgia, just outside Atlanta.

*Clark was best friends with “trap rap” maven and BMF affiliate Young Jeezy, who was feuding with Gucci Mane at the time of the robbery-gone-wrong ending in Gucci Mane shooting Pookie Loc to death in self-defense. Prosecutors stated in future court briefs the attack on Gucci Mane had been ordered by BMF.

June 11, 2007 — BMF soldier Marques (Baby Bleu) Dixson is shot to death by his girlfriend after an altercation at the Living Room Lounge.

August 9, 2009 – Detroit resident Robert Alexander is killed in a fight with a BMF entourage led by reputed “Junior” BMF’ers, Darnell (C-Bird) Cooley, Eiland (Golden Child) Johnson & Deandre (Boo Dollar) Woolfolk at a suburban nightclub called Arturo’s in Southfield, Michigan.

August 24, 2009 — Detroit resident Anthony Alls, Alexander’s best friend who was present on the night he was murdered, is shot gunned to death outside the barber shop he worked at in the hours before he was scheduled to take the stand in a grand jury proceeding investigating Alexander’s murder.

*Cooley, Johnson and Woolfolk all pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges and did five years of prison time.

April 5, 2010 — Turncoat BMF St. Louis crew soldier Theodis (Theo Down) Howard is slain in the North City section walking to a doctor’s appointment in a local health center. Howard gave information on deceased St. Louis BMF skipper Deron (Wonnie) Gatling, who died of an asthma attack in prison.

May 2, 2013 — St. Louis BMF soldier Terrance (T-Pain) Morgan is murdered over the fear that he may be tempted to cooperate. Wonnie Gatling’s younger brother and crew chief successor, Dionne (Cuffy) Gatling, is convicted of ordering the Morgan and Howard homicides.

December 20, 2016 – Detroit BMF soldier Ricky (Slick Rick) McFarlin, who was convicted in the Motor City Mafia case, is killed along with ex-NFL defensive end Robert Eddins in a drug deal gone wrong on Detroit’s westside.

July 12, 2020 — In a barrage of automatic weapon fire, “OG” BMF soldier Chris (Pig) Triplett is shot to death behind the wheel of his Chevy Malibu in River Rouge.

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