Newly-Freed Colombo Soldier Vito Guzzo, Jr. Being Recruited Hard By Mancuso’s Bonanno Mob


The Bonanno crime family is the leader in the clubhouse to acquire the mob rights to Vito Guzzo, Jr. as the recently-sprung-from-prison Colombo mobster has become the object of a bidding war for a requested transfer, per sources. Last week, news broke of multiple NYC crime families negotiating with the Colombo mob to take possession of Guzzo, Jr. in a de-facto free-agency recruiting blitz. The validity of Guzzo, Jr.’s button-status has resulted in debate in the days following him coming home from the feds on the heels of finishing a 28-year stint for racketeering and murder, but Guzzo, Jr. himself is viewed as an elite commodity in the modern-day LCN landscape.

Over the past month, Bonanno mob boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso and his underboss John (Johnny Joe) Spirito allegedly approached the Colombo crime family’s administration regarding transferring Guzzo, Jr. into their organization and the Colombos were receptive to the possibility, sources claim. Mancuso and Spirito are said to have grown close to Guzzo, Jr. during their respective bids in the feds for their own murder convictions. Back in the 1990s, the 60-year old Guzzo, Jr., 60, headed the Caffe Giannini Crew, a mafia farm team out of Ridgewood, Queens named after a restaurant once owned the Bonannos. Some sources speculate Guzzo, Jr. could immediately enter the fray as a capo, no matter what borgata he ends up with.

The Caffe Giannini Crew is alleged to be responsible for more than two dozen killings and acted as a breeding ground for future inductees to all of the NYC Five Families. Guzzo, Jr., personally admitted his part in the 1992 slayings of local dope boys John (Johnny Danger) Ruisi, Steve (Stevie Love) Pagnozzi and Ralph Sciulla and Colombo mob bodyguard Anthony Mesi in October of that year in an attempted revenge-murder targeting the man he considered responsible for clipping his dad five years prior. As part of his September ’98 plea deal, he also admitted to being a triggerman in the fall 1996 Maspeth, Queens murder of a Gambino mob affiliate and bitter street rival named John (Johnny Boy) Borelli, reportedly put into motion because Borelli was dating Guzzo, Jr.’s ex-girlfriend.

Ruisi and Pagnozzi were the victims of a drug and cash rip-off and a subsequent coldblooded execution. Sciulla was lured to a mutual friend’s basement and killed because he refused to pay the Caffe Giannini Crew tribute from his narcotics trafficking. Besides romancing Guzzo, Jr.’s girl, Borelli had allegedly fallen out of favor with his bosses in the Gambinos related to insubordinate behavior. Adding to his mob lore and reputation for fearlessness, Guzzo, Jr. has himself survived being shot 11 times.

Members of the Colombo and Genovese mob hierarchies allegedly contributed money to Guzzo, Jr.’s legal defense fund back in the day, per FBI intelligence memos. Colombo mob underboss “Wild Bill” Cutolo donated a cool 20k in cash to the cause and Genovese leaders chipped in a combined $50,000 to aid his and his big bro Anthony’s separate defense funds, according to confidential informants. Genovese mob brass in the Bronx are alleged to have once hired Guzzo, Jr. to do hits and even helped pay attorney expenses for his appeal effort more recently, sources claim. Cutolo would be slain gangland style in May 1999 in fallout from the Colombo Mob War.

Vito Guzzo’s Jr.’s older brother, Anthony, received a button from the Lucchese mob following serving state prison time for a 1989 machine-gun slaying carried out in a Queens parking lot and then another stint in the can for stabbing someone in the throat in a 2002 bar fight. The Guzzo brothers’ dad, Vito Guzzo, Sr., was a made guy in the Colombos before disappearing on a 1987 hunting trip amid a feud with Vincent (Vinnie Unions) Ricciardo, never to be seen nor heard from again. Anthony Mesi was shot to death driving “Vinnie Unions” to a funeral in a bullet intended for Ricciardo that went astray. Ricciardo died of cancer last August doing a prison bid for labor racketeering and extortion.

Guzzo, Jr. maintains ties to a number of high-ranking Genovese, Bonannos and Gambinos from his time on the street and behind bars, sources say, including current bosses in those borgatas, such as “Mikey Nose” and “Johnny Joe.” GR sources allege. While doing of his time on the inside, he grew to be one of the most powerful Italian inmates in the federal prison system. Locked up in the spring of 1997 before he could get made the traditional way, Guzzo, Jr. was allegedly inducted into the Colombo mob in an unconventional making ceremony held in a rec room at the Danbury Federal Correctional Institute in Connecticut at some point in the past dozen years or so, at least according to the BOP, federal prosecutors and the FBI. Guzzo, Jr.’s attorneys deny he took an oath behind bars and Guzzo, Jr. offered to undergo a polygraph exam for his judge to defend himself against the accusation. FBI surveillance units intercepted chatter within the top levels of the Colombos where Guzzo, Jr. was discussed and how other mob organizations needed to know Guzzo, Jr. held the weight of a full-fledged made man and spoke for them on the inside.

In addition to their father, Vito, Jr. and Anthony were mentored in the mafia by a collection of heavyweights in the Colombo and Bonanno crime families, including the Colombos’ Benny Aloi, William (Wild Bill) Cutolo, Dennis (Little Denny) Guzzardo and Pasquale (Fat Patty) Catalano and the Bonannos’ famous zip, Baldo Amato of his syndicate’s Brooklyn crew. Amato was the silent owner of the Caffe Giannini before his incarceration for killing his front man in the restaurant, mob associate Sammy DiFalco, for stealing from the establishment. The Guzzos launched their hit on Vinnie Unions in November ’92 as he traveled to pay his final respects to Little Denny Guzzardo at a Queens funeral home.

A wiseguy so feared and that made 28 years in the prison without flip is very rare today. Guzzo deserve to be made in a better family then the Colombos.

supposedly the Colombo's are trading Guzzo for 3 Bonanno soldiers and 1 associate. This is similar to baseball trades and seems to be common in LCN. I heard Guzzo actually has an agent.

agreed, 100%

This entire story line is based on a false narrative and is pure fantasy.

99.9999% of the time "transfers" from one crew to another never happen. Never!

There's got to be a damn good reason -- an extraordinary, compelling reason -- why a man gets "released" from one crew and is "accepted" into another. And no such situation exists here, in any way, shape or form.

As I mentioned, this is all BS.

The mob doesn't operate like MLB teams.

May 11, 2025 — Sending word from his new homebase in Queens to the boss in the Bronx, Bonanno crime family consigliere Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato is advising a more deliberate, less impulsive strategy in the alleged recruitment of recently-freed Colombo mob soldier Vito Guzzo, Jr., whose made status in LCN appears to be up in the air and Bonanno mob don Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso is reportedly making a fast play for his street rights, per GR sources. The shoot-from-the-hip 69-year old Mancuso and the former Queens JV mafia bad boy, Guzzo, Jr. 60, are said to have become close friends in prison and “Mikey Nose” has allegedly reached out to leaders in the Colombo crime family to discuss a transfer to bring Guzzo, Jr. into the Bonannos, these sources claim. Mancuso’s stronghold is in the Bronx.

Guzzo, Jr, just got out of the feds late last month after doing a near 30-year bid for racketeering and six first degree homicides carried out in the 1990s as boss of the Caffe Giannini Crew, the infamous, now-defunct NYC mob farm team that fed into all Five Families and according to authorities was responsible for dozens of contract, rip-off and revenge murders during its bloody run based out of the Ridgewood neighborhood in Queens. Back in April, GR broke the news of a number of different mob families talking with Colombo bosses about the possibility of taking the suddenly in-demand Guzzo, Jr. off their hands in a frenzied recruiting blitz following Guzzo, Jr. walking free early from his bid because of First Step Act sentence-reduction legislation.

The validity of Guzzo, Jr.’s button, — it’s believed Guzzo, Jr. was made in federal prison on orders of Colombo bosses on the outside in a makeshift induction ceremony to provide him needed standing in BOP power circles —, has resulted in great debate amongst shot callers on the NYC mafia scene, according to sources. Due to this uncertainty, Guzzo, Jr. is being viewed as a de-facto free agent by at least some of the bosses of non-Colombo families in NYC, like Mancuso in the Bonannos. Caffe Giannini itself was a Bonanno mob-run spot in the 90s and the headquarters of notorious Bonanno zip-faction figure Baldo Amato, even though Guzzo Jr.’s LCN roots lay in the Colombo mob. His dad, Vito Guzzo, Sr., was a Colombo crime family soldier and most of his gangland mentors, besides Amato, come from the Colombo borgata. Guzzo, Sr. disappeared on a hunting trip in October 1987 in the midst of an internal Colombo mob feud related to the carpenters union.

“Bruno” Indelicato, 78, received a bump-up to consigliere by Mancuso in 2024 as part of an organizational revamp in the Bonannos engineered to stabilize a shaky ship stemming from remaining fallout from a failed Brooklyn-faction insurgence in the late 2010s that shook the family to the core, sources allege. The move to reshuffle the deck by Mancuso and let bygones be bygones has paid quick dividends, solidifying the Bonannos’ rank-and-file and earning Mancuso kudos from fellow NYC dons, per multiple sources on both sides of the law. Three of these sources report that in recent weeks, Indelicato has relayed message to Mancuso to “pump the breaks” in his rush to bring Guzzo, Jr. into an already fragile mix in the Bonannos and take some added time to “let the situation breathe.”

It’s unclear how Mikey Nose responded to the advice, but Indelicato was sure to promise to respect any decision Mancuso makes in relation to Guzzo, Jr. and added that he wouldn’t try to block Guzzo Jr.’s potential transfer into the Mancuso regime if that’s what Mancuso deemed best for the Bonanno family as a whole. Originally from Little Italy, the incredibly-connected, now more-level headed Indelicato reportedly holds territory in all the boroughs of NYC these days and is residing in a number of different properties split between Queens, Manhattan, Westchester County and Long Island. He’s spending an increasingly amount of time in Guzzo, Jr.’s old Middle Village stomping grounds, according to sources. Mancuso and Indelicato each held reputations as cowboys in their respective mob youths, both boasting two murder convictions apiece and legacy-caliber street lore surrounding their names dating back to the 1970s.

Guzzo’s Jr.’s older brother, Anthony, also a convicted murderer with heavy prison time under his belt, has a button from the Lucchese mob. The Luccheses and the Gambinos have expressed interest in securing Guzzo, Jr.’s services, too, if his made status is back on the table and the Colombos are willing to part ways with him, according to sources. Wherever he lands, even if its back with the Colombos, the consensus among NYC mob shot callers seems to be that Guzzo, Jr. will have to go through another making ceremony on the outside. Talk in the Bonannos and Luccheses right now is that Guzzo, Jr. would be remade and then immediately promoted to a capo position.