This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

The Cosa Nostra Redemption: Wiseguys Top Albanians in Danbury Dustup

Gang Land Exclusive! More than a decade after the so-called Albanian Mafia brazenly beat up and terrorized New York mobsters, seizing some of their rackets, a large group of imprisoned wiseguys recently engaged in a bloody jailhouse brawl with a bunch of Albanian gangsters in a federal lockup about an hour's drive from their old stomping grounds, Gang Land has learned.

Sources say a long-simmering feud between the two groups erupted into violence at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut on a normally quiet Saturday afternoon, March 14. It took place during a regularly scheduled leisure time in a rec room in the refurbished low security facility that houses about 750 sentenced inmates.

"It was a real donnybrook, but no one died," said one source.

Sources say about 25 inmates — including five mobsters and two Albanian hoods whose names Gang Land has obtained — were in the recreation area and an adjoining room during the fracas. All were thrown into "the hole" after receiving stitches or treated for cuts, bloody noses and other non-life-threatening injuries.

Prison officials and the New Haven FBI, which are both investigating the dustup, declined to confirm or deny the incident. But several sources, including one law enforcement official, confirmed the unusual prison violence involving mobsters, and provided Gang Land some details.

Sources say the suspected mob pugilists included Colombo soldier Vito Guzzo, 50, Gambino mobsters Michael (Mikey Y) Yannotti, 51, Michael Roccaforte, 38, and Neil Lombardo, 59, and Bonanno wiseguy Robert Lino, 48.

Their primary victims, sources say, were Albanian gangsters Prenka (Big Frankie) Ivezaj, 49, and Nardino (Lenny) Colotti, an Italian-American hood who once ran with the Gambinos but defected and co-founded the violent gang of mostly Albanian heritage gangsters with Alex Rudaj in the 1990s. Colotti, 53, was with about six crew members during the riot.

Sources say the fighting, which took place in an area that is constantly videotaped, stemmed from a beating early that morning that several Albanian gangsters gave to an older non-Italian inmate who is friendly with the wiseguys while he was asleep in his cell. Cells are not monitored so the beating was not videotaped, but one source said the victim was about 70, and required medical treatment, including stitches.

"That was the straw that broke the camel's back," said a second source, one of several persons with friends, relatives or clients at the facility who spoke to Gang Land only after being promised anonymity.

"They saw that as a senseless beating, a low blow that could not go unpunished, and they went after the Albanians the first chance they had," said this source. "The guy had nothing to do with nothing, except that he was friendly with some of the Italians," the source added.

The sources say that before the older inmate was attacked, the rival gangsters had been feuding about the allegiances of another inmate, who had ties to both groups, but whom the mobsters felt very strongly was "with them" and not the Albanians. The gangster, whom Gang Land was unable to identify, was "on the fence," but the wiseguys were adamant that he "belonged with them, not the other guys," said one source.

Life behind bars is much different than the real world, explained a former inmate.

"In prison little things mean a lot," he said. "It is very territorial in there. If you belong in a certain place, with certain people, you have to be there, not someplace else," he said. "When you're doing a bid, it's very important to know where you belong, and to stay there, if you want to get along."

All the sources, including the law enforcement official who was also promised anonymity, told Gang Land that the Albanians got the worst of the fisticuffs.

"On the streets, the wiseguys were pansies, afraid they'd be caught and sent to prison if they reacted, but now that they're behind bars they figured they had nothing to lose, so they manned up and fought back," said another source, who has a relative behind bars.

This source's assessment about the motives and attitudes of the imprisoned mobsters may not be a hundred percent accurate — as John Gotti might put it. But in 2000 and 2001, the Albanians beat up and abused wiseguys from at least three crime families, according to court records in their 2005 trial.

Lenny Colotti and Big Frank Ivezaj "smacked around" Bonanno soldier Johnny Joe Spirito in Pelham Bay, and along with Rudaj, Colotti beat up his former mob superior, an "old soldier in the Gambino family who was based on Arthur Avenue," stripped him and "threw him into the street as a sign of disrespect and kept his wallet as a trophy," according to their sentencing memo.

Although outnumbered three-to-one at a confrontation with the Gambinos at a New Jersey gas station in the summer of 2001, the Albanians got the wiseguys to back down when they threatened to fire their guns at the pumps and blow them all up.

A few days later, on August 3, 2001, Colotti and Ivezaj were among six Albanian gang members who stormed a barbut game run by the Luchese family in Long Island City, pistol whipping one of the workers and taking over the lucrative gambling racket that brought in $8000 a week.

Colotti, sentenced to 27 years, is slated to be released in 2028. Ivezaj, who got 22 years, gets out in 2024. Along with as many as eight associates, they will most likely remain in a Segregated Housing Unit (SHU) until prison officials decide what penalties, if any, will be meted out.

The known five wiseguy participants are also serving substantial prison terms. Roccaforte, the youngest, is due out first, in 2019. Yannotti is slated for release in 2022; Lombardo in 2023, Lino in 2028, and Guzzo in 2030. They are also in the SHU, with as many as 10 other associates, sources say.



The Feds Are Obsessed With Tough Tony Federici

Anthony Federici"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you." Joseph Heller, 1961, Catch-22.

Gang Land doesn't know whether Anthony (Tough Tony) Federici — he prefers "Tony," or even "Tony Park Side" to what the feds and most mobsters call him — is paranoid. But there's no doubt that the FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are after him. In fact, they seem obsessed with the 75-year-old wiseguy.

If there had been any doubt about that, it was erased two weeks ago. That's when they threw Tough Tony's name into a major drug arrest, even though a coke-dealing informer who worked at Federici's Park Side Restaurant in Corona gave his former boss a clean bill of health, as far as crimes were concerned.

Prosecutors acknowledged they had no information of wrongdoing by Federici when they successfully detained Gregorio Gigliotti, 58, his wife Eleonora, 54, and their son Angelo, 34, without bail. The arrests came after the feds seized 55 kilos of cocaine that was shipped from Costa Rica to the Gigliottis, who own an Italian restaurant, Cucino Amodo Mio, a block away from the Park Side.

Jerry Capeci At Park SideIn a court memo, prosecutors stated that when the informer first began selling coke to Gigliotti in 2008, he "advised that he was employed in a lawful capacity at a business owned by Federici … and observed that Gigliotti and Federici were associated with each other in some undisclosed business activity," wrote prosecutors Nicole Argentieri and James Miskiewicz.

The informer was described as a "foreign national" seeking asylum in the U.S. and a halt of removal efforts begun by ICE, which is involved in the joint probe.

Citing "source information," Argentieri and Miskiewicz wrote that Gigliotti and his son are "associated with … Tough Tony, a senior caporegime in the Genovese crime family whose base of operations is also located in Corona, Queens." But they asserted no allegations of wrongdoing by Federici, except that his restaurant "is a short distance from Cucino Amodo Mio."

"It's all gratuitous nonsense," said Federici's longtime attorney, Mathew Mari. "The reason they can't catch him committing crimes is because he doesn't commit any. What he does all day long, from 11 am to 11 pm, seven days a week, is make meatballs," cracked Mari. "Maybe if they follow him they'll see him throw out the garbage before he goes home."

In the interest of full disclosure, Gang Land knows first hand that Chef Tony cooks up plenty of other great dishes at his always crowded eatery that New York Magazine called "a destination Italian landmark in the heart of Corona." With family and friends — and once with a New York Times columnist — Gang Land has dined at the Park Side maybe a half dozen times.

The prosecutors wrote that the Gigliottis, who allegedly paid $570,000 for two loads of coke and lost 55 kilos worth $2 million along with $150,000 in cash that was seized by the feds, "also received funding for their narcotics-trafficking scheme" from Anthony (Rom) Romanello.

Mari, who has represented Romanello three times, laughed out loud at that. "That is utterly ridiculous," the lawyer said.

Romanello, 77, is a longtime Federici underling who was hit with racketeering charges twice in 15 months from 2010 and 2012 in what an FBI supervisor stated was an effort to flip him against Tough Tony. According to court papers in those cases, Tough Tony sponsored Rom as a "made man" in the 1990s and then turned over all his rackets to him so Federici could devote his time to running the Park Side. Once, Rom was acquitted at trial. He received six months of home detention for running a gambling house across the street from the Park Side in the second case.

Prosecutors Argentieri and Miskiewicz did not respond to calls for comment about the case.



Gambinos Promote Former Garbage Man To Capo

The Gambino family has replaced a brash and relatively young capo once viewed as a rising family star with a grizzled former sanitation worker who once toiled in the streets with fellow former San Man and ex-Gambino boss, Peter Gotti.

Sources say Thomas (Monk) Sassano, who professed his mob allegiance to the Gambinos in the late 1980s after John Gotti shot his way to the top, has taken over the Queens-based crew once headed by Alphonse Trucchio, one of 21 other Gambinos hit with racketeering charges on Mafia Takedown Day in 2011.

Trucchio, 38, was allegedly knocked down for several reasons, including "disrespect" he showed former consigliere Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo when they were codefendants awaiting trial, sources say. The disrespect stemmed from a disagreement over defense strategy in the case, which had been divided into three separate trials at the time.

Not surprisingly, none of the defendants were eager to have their group go to trial first, since much of the prosecution evidence and witness testimony would be fresh and more difficult to rebut. The dispute came to a head during a pre-trial session and exploded into angry words between Trucchio and Corozzo's lawyer son Joseph as they moved out of the courtroom and into a hall way in Manhattan Federal Court.

"Hey Al, so it's every man for himself, now," said Corozzo.
"Why don't you come here and say that to my face," replied Trucchio, as he kept moving toward the elevator.
"So, I'm not a man now," snapped the lawyer, with a look of disgust on his face.

Trucchio eventually copped a plea deal and is serving a 10-year sentence in an upstate federal prison near Buffalo. But numerous accounts of the Gambino family's anger with him have surfaced over the last two years: Among the unconfirmed reports that reached Gang Land's desk are that Trucchio was beaten up in prison; that he was knocked down to soldier, and that he saw all of his Mafia rights and privileges revoked as he was "put on the shelf."

But until recently, according to knowledgeable sources on both sides of the law, Trucchio has remained the crew's official capo.

The timing is unclear, but the sources say Gambino boss Domenico (Italian Dom) Cefalu has finally replaced Trucchio with the 68-year-old Sassano as skipper of the Howard Beach crew that Alphonse took over when his father, Ronald, a contemporary of Jo Jo Corozzo, was imprisoned for life a decade ago.

The sources say Sassano has been a loyal family soldier since the Bonannos, as a favor to Peter Gotti, agreed to release his former Sanitation Department buddy to the Gambinos in 1989.

In 2007, in an attempt to win a sentence for his extortion conviction of a Manhattan strip club that was more lenient than that of the main defendant in the case, Sassano's lawyer described him as an "errand boy" who was more like the "back side of mule" in a drug case "since he received no financial benefits from his conduct."

The attorney's efforts were mildly successful. As the main man in the shakedown, capo Salvatore Scala got six years in prison, while Sassano got five years behind bars for his role in extorting payoffs from the club in the early 2000s. Released from prison in 2011, Monk completed his post-prison supervised release period last October, but not without some difficulty from the feds.

After his release, Sassano had another run-in with authorities, one that cost him 100 hours of community service, but one in which his actions were truly selfless and easy to understand.

On December 2, 2012, shortly after his son was involved in a "hit and run" accident, Sassano drove back to the scene and tried to take the blame by telling "police he was the driver of the vehicle that left the scene," according to court papers. Monk's gambit failed, however, and both he and his son were arrested.

But since Sassano 'fessed up the next day, and had no other violations during his supervised release period, Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed with federal monitors that community service and a "verbal reprimand" would suffice.

People on here where saying months ago Sassano was capo of the trucchio crew

Try a year mate! One of the best Gangland articles in a while tbf.

agreed pal

Demoting Trucchio is one thing, but to put him on the shelf seems really harsh considering all the money he was bringing in. You'd think they'd want to keep a money maker like that in the fold.

And where'd you hear it first?


I completely agree. But he made a formidable enemy in JoJo Junior. The kid's supposed to be a lawyer, but he's a wiseguy at heart, and he has a memory longer than a Sicilian from the other side. Hell, as an attorney he's technically not even an associate. But he has the ear of the administration, and he carries a lot of weight. Believe it.

I heard it first from PB and hairy , like tommy says about a year ago . That's why I love this forum , people who really r in the know

Hairy Knuckles is, bar none, the finest researcher I've ever encountered on any of these sites. So for all of the "neighborhood guys" who can't handle a European who has more knowledge than they do, try reading his stuff with an open mind. I promise you that you'll learn something, especially where the older stuff is concerned (the formation of The Commission, etc.).

your on point with your info aswel PB , even though u have been grumpy lately

Whats the world coming to when ed scarpo and a couple of british guys on the gbb have more sources on the street then capeci

ha ha cheers dellacroce

You´re making me blush PB.

And just for the record, there are very few neighborhood guys on these forums who actually delivers the goods. Pizza is one of them. I'm very happy to have had the opportunity to get to know him and just like most of you, I´ve learned a lot just by reading his posts.

Imagine a made guy that was also a practicing criminal attorney WOW deadly combo.. sounds like a good tv show

Didn't Andrew Didonato's write in his book how Jo Jo Jr. told him to shoot some guy out of road rage. DiDonato then says the papa jo Jo had them pay off the guy he shot at the hospital?

That's what I was driving at. If he ever gets himself disbarred, he'll have his button a day later, and probably be an acting captain the day after that.

Not that he's looking for it to happen. He relishes the "house counsel" thing too much, which in a strange way makes him privy to more family matters than if he was actually running a crew.

Bottom line: He's every bit as lethal as the elder members of his family (and I don't mean the Gambinos ).

Not particularly surprising JoJo's kid is involved in some way, look who his father and uncles are.

PB, how old is he?

Mid 40's. He's still a young guy. But being that he was born into the life, it's like a normal street guy who's 60. He's well-schooled, put it that way.

probably making more money being a lawyer anyways

a lawyer with a briefcase makes more money than 100 armed men, or something from the Godfather, maybe I was wrong to translate it.




However Trucchio will stay in prison till 2020 and I know that any capo that is serving a sentence of more than 5 years is demoted to soldier.
Also was a rising star, and when will be the same in 2020 will have a little over 40 years, but the fact that he was beaten in prison and degraded has to do something ? the fact that the new capo Sassano has 67 years doesnt mean that have chosen an experienced soldier waiting taht trucchio go out of jail?

Who knows what will happen, Trucchio has 5 years left and probably 3 years supervised release. So in 8 years time, who knows. But if the Corrozzo's and Dom are still in power then he's fucked.

But my money's on that crew going to Michael Roccaforte when he gets out, he was Trucchio's #2 and is thought of quite highly.

Furio the article says,"All the sources, including the law enforcement official who was also promised anonymity, told Gang Land that the Albanians got the worst of the fisticuffs"

Someone on here told me about a year ago that Vernace slapped Trucchio in prison, first I've heard about him getting beat up though.

tommy maybe I was wrong with the syntax of the phrase, but I wanted to say that if the fact that Trucchio had been beaten in prison had nothing to do with the fact that it now was no longer the official capo of the crew (and was in prison from 2010) only because he had disrespected with corozzo.

So this guy takes a 12 sentence, keeps his mouth shut, and they shelve him. I hope he flips and takes down all of them. A bunch of scumbags.

It's not the first incident with Trucchio, he's a bit of a hot head and not that well liked apparently. If Ronnie was still on the street maybe he'd have kept him in line.

It is quite harsh to shelve him though, he's one of the biggest earners in the family, stand up and not even out of his 30's.

No way he'll flip.

You gotta be a real believer to have them take away everything from you and then still keep quiet...

.

Most of them are true believers , in reality almost all of them , even today . My guess is maybe 1% or so of members actually flip .

For all the rat labels out there , the gambino family really hasn't had that many rats given their size . Outside of Scars and Bull , no one that high either . They seem to have good leadership today , very well diversified IMO .

That pizza guy is full of it, I gave him that info!

He lives off my glory!