Mafia Takes Over Publicly Traded Company

As Occupy Wall Street protestors chant about the criminals in the boardroom, actual thieves -- including men associated with the mafia -- have spent years quietly runningFirstPlus Financial Group(FPFX), a Texas-based company and a one-time subprime lender that boasted former Vice President Dan Quayle as a board member, and used NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino in its ads.

On Tuesday, Nicodermo S. Scarfo, a made man within the Lucchese organized crime family, was arrested at his home. He's one of13 men chargedwith the illegal takeover of the publicly traded company, among other racketeering charges. "The defendants gave new meaning to 'corporate takeover,' " said U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.

"Criminal activities have evolved from the back alleys to the board rooms," said Michael B. Ward, special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark Field Office. Still, the tactics remain the same, he says: "physical threats and intimidation to gain leverage and loot lucrative businesses."

Scarfo is not the only one of the 13 with ties to organized crime. Salvatore Pelullo, an associate of the Lucchese and Philadephia La Cosa Nostra families is also charged, as are Nicodermo D. Scarfo (Scarfo Sr.), the imprisoned former boss of the Philadelphia family of La Cosa Nostra, and Vittorio Amuso, the imprisoned boss of the Lucchese family. Others charged include an accountant and five lawyers.

According to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, the men used both physical and finance threats to take control of FirstPlus in order to plunder the company for their own financial gain. Scarfo, Pelullo and their partners replaced the company's board of directors with their own cronies, and then named their accomplice, lawyer William Maxwell, as special counsel to FirstPlus so that Maxwell could use that position's authority to funnel millions back to the mobsters.

See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/taiDdD

Murder-for-hire plot nets Steele 50-year term

Professing his innocence and blaming a vast government conspiracy, self-described “attorney for the damned” Edgar Steele was sentenced Wednesday to 50 years in federal prison for a foiled murder-for-hire plot that targeted his wife and mother-in-law with a car bomb.

In an hour-and-a-half rant before U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Coeur d’Alene, Steele called the case a conspiracy by the federal government, anti-hate groups and the Russian mafia to silence him for his political views and legal work.

“I, too, am a victim. My entire family is a victim. In fact, all of American society is a victim in this case,” said Steele, 66, who defended Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler in the 2000 landmark civil case that bankrupted the racist group. He also authored a book, “Defensive Racism,” and wrote essays on a website, ConspiracyPenPal.com, from his home near Shepherd Lake, southeast of Sandpoint.

“I am not delusional. I am a well-educated professional with a long track record of honesty,” Steele said, wearing a gray sweatshirt and orange jail pants. He vowed to continue fighting to prove his innocence.

Italy entrepreneur defies mafia with tuna and ice cream

(Reuters) - Sometimes Filippo Callipo, one of southern Italy's most successful businessmen, wonders why he is still alive.

Callipo's refusal to play ball with the mob in an area where organised crime forces many businesses to pay extortion money and even dictates which suppliers companies must use has made him somewhat of a local legend.

But it also means he makes the sign of the cross when he leaves home. It is a silent prayer that he will return each day from overseeing four businesses that provide 350 jobs in a region that has one of Italy's highest unemployment rates.

"Sure I'm afraid. Only an imbecile wouldn't be," said Callipo, who drives his own car and has no bodyguards. "But I am a fatalist. If they want to get you they will. It would be so easy in my case," he said in the offices of Callipo Tuna.

The company, which had revenues of about 40 million euros in 2010, sells high-quality tuna to supermarkets and up-market, gourmet specialty shops the world over.

Criminal gang leaders executed in central China

Xinhua

CHANGSHA, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- A court in central China's Hunan Province sentenced two leaders of a local organized crime group to death with two year reprieve on Tuesday, according to local authorities.

The Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture Intermediate People's Court handed down the sentences to Liu Wanliang and Yang Zhengliang for their crimes, which included commandeering a private owned manganese mine, organizing and leading a criminal gang, murder, racketeering, sheltering criminals and pandering.

The court also sentenced four of the gang's members to life imprisonment and 23 other gang members to jail terms from two to 20 years.

According to the court, Liu and his gang reaped significant profits from a privately-owned mine that they seized in 2006. Over the following year, Liu illegally purchased two firearms, bringing his personal collection to eight weapons, the court said. Liu used his firearms to kill one person and injure five others, according to the court.

Spanish police arrest suspected Chinese mafia members

CNN

Madrid (CNN) -- Police in Barcelona have arrested 39 members of a suspected Chinese mafia and freed 30 young Chinese women whom they allegedly forced into prostitution, a senior officer of the Catalan regional police told CNN Wednesday. 

The arrests occurred earlier this week after a long investigation. It was the biggest strike to date against Chinese-run mafias involved in forced prostitution in the northeast region of Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona, said the senior officer, Xavier Cortes, head of the Catalan police unit that fights human trafficking. 

In recent years, the Chinese crime syndicate had crowded out others from the prostitution market in the fashionable Eixample district of Barcelona by using forced prostitution and charging below-market rates, Cortes said. 

The women were forced to work in unsanitary conditions and in marathon sessions, seeing eight clients in a row for an hour each, he said. 

After initial arraignments, a judge ordered 33 of the suspects to remain in prison. Six others were released but remain under investigation, and must check in regularly with authorities, Cortes said.

24 face charges after investigation into organized crime ring

WKYT News

  A Franklin County grand jury has handed down indictments against 24 people following an investigation into organized crime.

  The Franklin County Sheriff's Office says "Operation Maverick," which was launched in March, targeted the importation and trafficking of prescription medication in the county.

The sheriff's office says the investigation revealed many people traveled to Florida to obtain Percocet and other controlled drugs.

Investigators say those suspects were financed by others, and large amounts of drugs were transported from Florida to Franklin County, where the drugs were then sold illegally.

"If you're going to deal drugs here, we are going to arrest you," Franklin County Sheriff Pat Melton said. "That is the bottom line of this operation, and that's the story here. We have tens of thousands of pills coming into our community from Florida by people going down there to the doctor and paying cash."

Did Federal Judge in Immigration Case Benefit from Organized Crime?

Opednews

  A federal judge who last week upheld most of Alabama's immigration law benefited from organized crime in the state's domestic-relations courts, according to a lawsuit filed four years ago.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn held that key provisions in the Alabama immigration law are constitutional, making it the strictest such measure in the nation. But a 2007 federal lawsuit alleges that Blackburn was the beneficiary of unconstitutional actions by certain judges and lawyers in an Alabama divorce court. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that a hunting club in central Alabama was the focal point of an organized crime ring that fixed divorce cases in order to benefit Blackburn and other favored parties--and their lawyers.

A specially appointed federal judge from Georgia dismissed the lawsuit on technical grounds in March 2008. But U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield found that a key argument in the lawsuit "obviously was not frivolous." And for the purposes of his ruling, Edenfield states, the court was required to find many of the alleged facts as true.

Mexican Mafia racketeers sentenced

From the Houston Chronicle

Five members of the Texas Mexican Mafia gang were sentenced this week in Del Rio to prison terms for racketeering-related crimes, U.S. Attorney Robert Pitmanannounced Friday.

They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate theRacketeering Influenced Corruption Organization Act. Investigators blamed the gang for two killings.

The Texas Mexican Mafia was formed in the early 1980s by inmates in the state's prison system, and has branched into criminal activity outside prison, including extortion, narcotics trafficking and violent crime to enforce a 10 percent drug street tax.

The case is the first investigation to target the gang's operations along the Texas–Mexico border area, in Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Crystal City, Carrizo Springs, Uvalde, Sabinal and Hondo.

Pope condemns 'Ndrangheta mafia in their Calabrian lair

From the Guardian

Pope Benedict XVI has condemned Italy's "ferocious" 'Ndrangheta mafiaduring a visit to the group's heartland in Calabria, days after police seized a suspected mob shipment of more than half a tonne of cocaine at a local port.

Addressing 40,000 people at a disused industrial site in Lamezia Terme, the pope said the crime families in Calabria, in the toe of Italy, were "tearing at the social fabric" in a region "which seems to be in a constant state of emergency".

In a region noted for chronic unemployment, poor healthcare and corruption, the 'Ndrangheta has used its drug connections with Colombia and its quiet stranglehold on many businesses in northern Italy to overtake Sicily's Cosa Nostra and rack up revenue of €44bn (£37bn) a year, according to a 2008 study.

The pope's denouncement was welcomed by Father Giacomo Panizza, a Roman Catholic priest who works with the disabled in Calabria and has been forced to travel with a police escort after he clashed with local crime bosses.

Mafia boss' mansion fails to sell

MONTREAL - Jailed mafia kingpin Vito Rizzuto's $1.9 million luxury home has "spacious living areas and an elegant garden and patio," but no buyers after three months on the market.

Sotheby's International Realty is overseeing the sale of the 29-year-old stone-faced mansion, which is steps away from the home where family patriarch Nick Rizzuto, Vito's father, was shot and killed as he cooked dinner last November.

A sniper fired the fatal shots from the same adjacent "immense wooded area" mentioned in the listing for Vito's home, which is touted as being "perfect for both raising a family and entertaining."

The mansion is registered in the name of Giovanna Cammalleri, Vito's wife. The pair are to be reunited next year when the 65-year-old mob boss wraps up a prison term for a 1981 mob hit in Brooklyn.

Realtor Liza Kaufman refused to discuss her client's reputed crime connections in an interview with QMI Agency. She said her client recommended a list price that's twice the municipal valuation of $1,000,100.

Reputed leader of Mafia sought FBI protection

Mark Rossetti, a reputed leader in the New England Mafia and an FBI informant, thought he would be protected by the bureau after his alleged crime ring was targeted by State Police investigators, according to documents filed in Suffolk Superior Court.

And, according to taped conversations contained in the court documents, Rossetti’s FBI handler told him not to worry, that “my job is to keep you anonymous and keep you safe.’’

“You don’t have anything to worry about if things down the road happen, but if that happens, we’ll have to deal with it as it comes,’’ the handler told Rossetti. “I will have to start working it out.’’

Rossetti’s relationship with the FBI has come under scrutiny since court documents were filed indicating he had been working as an FBI informant while allegedly running a crime ring that engaged in violence, extortion, debt collection, and drug dealing. He is also suspected in at least six homicides, law enforcement officials told the Globe.