When Caffe Nuovo opens in Boston’s North End in a few weeks, customers likely will recognize the owner’s name - if only for the sins of his father.
Vincent Ferrara Jr. - the 34-year-old son of convicted Mafia capo Vincent “The Animal” Ferrara - is breaking into the restaurant business as a first-time owner.
The space at 76 Salem St. had sat vacant for a time following the closing of Paesan’s Pizza.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have sharply criticized a defense lawyer’s claim that the government engaged in misconduct by allowing a cooperating witness in a Mafia case to run a sex- trafficking ring that involved a 15-year-old girl.
The government said it ended the operation as soon as it discovered that the under-age girl was involved. The witness, who was participating in an investigation of the Gambino crime family, learned of the prostitution ring in June 2009 and reported it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prosecutors said. The witness was then authorized to participate in the trafficking activity for investigative purposes.
Full Story (NY Times)
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Human rights groups say the war on drugs in Mexico has gone badly awry with soldiers covering up atrocities that have included civilian deaths.
The defense ministry says it still looking into the case of the Almanza family, in which eight adults and five children were driving to the beach on April 3, a drive that ended with soldiers opening fire on the vehicle, leaving two small children dead, The Arizona Republic reported Sunday.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have demanded the case be turned over to civilian authorities. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission has already issued a scathing 1,400-page report accusing soldiers of "manipulations to misdirect the investigations," to avoid blame in the affair.
A car explodes outside a police station, another outside a television station.
A drug gang is suspected of massacring 72 migrants and a prosecutor investigating those deaths suddenly disappears. Mexico’s drug cartels seem to be adopting the tactics of war zones half a world away.
The violence has contributed to fewer migrants crossing the border into America, officials say, because they have to traverse some of Mexico’s most dangerous territory to get to Texas. Mexican officials, meanwhile, warn there will likely be more bloodshed in the coming months.
“Violence will persist and even intensify,” said President Felipe Calderon at a forum on security, where he promised he would not back down.
The two car explosions happened early on Friday, less than 45 minutes apart, in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern state of Tamaulipas, near where the slaughtered migrants were found.
The first happened in front of the offices of the Televisa network and the second in front of transit police offices. The network described the explosion as a car bomb, but the state attorney general’s office could not confirm that.
If the explosions were car bombs, it would mean a total of four so far this year in Mexico – a new and frightening tactic that officials say the cartels are using in the escalating drug war.
MONTREAL - Tony Mucci, 55, of Boucherville, reputed to be an influential figure in the Montreal Mafia, appeared before Judge Jean-Paul Braun Friday afternoon. He faces 10 charges in all, including two for allegedly being in possession of a weapon designed to repell bears.
He is also charged with being in possession of a prohibited weapon while he was inside a vehicle on Thursday.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/money/Reputed+Montreal+Mafia+figure+court/3451077/story.html#ixzz0y2mOrsQG
The ’Ndrangheta mafia of Calabria planted a bomb in the doorway of the building where the region’s top prosecutor lives, the second bomb attack aimed at prosecutors there this year.
In January, a woman wearing high heels drove a scooter and helped a man plant an explosive at the courthouse entrance, according to a surveillance video. Salvatore Di Landro, the prosecutor targed by today’s bomb, blamed organized crime for the attack.
“They evidently want to make me pay for the fact that I’ve always, in every circumstance, done my duty as magistrate,” Di Landro said, according to la Repubblica newspaper’s website.
Johannesburg - Fugitive Czech billionaire Radovan Krejcir scoffs at suggestions that he is “some big Mafia boss from the Eastern Bloc” and says he has “absolutely nothing to hide”.
Breaking his silence ahead of a renewed bid by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to have him extradited to the Czech Republic, Krejcir told Rapport he was the victim of “fabricated stories” and a “dirty plan” concocted to “get me deported from this country, either legally or illegally”
MANHATTAN (CN) - Federal prosecutors say two brothers extorted school bus companies for thousands of dollars with the help of the Mafia. The FBI Department of Labor arrested Nick and Paul Maddalone on suspicion of extorting Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Workers Union. According to the indictment, the Genovese family "influenced and asserted control over Local 1181."
Prosecutors say that the Local 1181 represents about 15,000 bus drivers who work for companies that contract with the Department of Education to provide school bus transportation in New York City.
From the 1980s through 2006, the Maddalones worked with Mafia contacts to intimidate bus company owners and operators out of tens of thousands of dollars, prosecutors say.
For example, Salvatore Battaglia aka "Hotdogs," a Mafia soldier who was sentenced 57 years in prison after pleading guilty to racketeering in 2008, served as local chapter president from 2002 to 2006, prosecutors say.
Julius Bernstein aka "Spike," another "made" mafioso who died shortly after pleading guilty to similar charges, once served as the chapter's Secretary Treasurer.
And the local chapter's Director of Pension and Welfare Anne Chiarovano pleaded guilty in January 2007 to obstructing an FBI investigation.
If convicted, the Maddalones face up to 20 years in prison on each of two extortion counts. They face two additional counts under the Taft-Hartley Act - conspiracy to receive labor payments and unlawful labor payments.
Prosecutors seek a forfeiture of money of at least $1 million.
An Italian senator has demanded the government intervene after a convicted Mafia boss was freed from jail because he was suffering from depression.
Anti-Mafia Commission member Carlo Vizzini called the release of Giacomo Ieni into house arrest "scandalous".
Ieni had been sentenced to eight years for racketeering, but broke down in tears in front of his parole board, saying he could not take jail any more.
The board ruled that detaining him in hospital would endanger his health.
Being with his family was "indispensable" to Ieni's well-being, it said, adding that it hoped "the affection of his family will help him recover".
'Insult'
The ruling by the tribunal in Catania, in eastern Sicily, infuriated prosecutors and politicians alike, who said Ieni was a danger to society.
I wonder at this point what therapy is available to the relatives of those murdered by Mafia bosses whose hands are dripping with blood?
Senator Carlo Vizzini
"A Mafia boss in a high-security regime gets depressed and is first moved to an infirmary and then sent home in the belief that his family will help get over it," said Senator Vizzini, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party.
"I wonder at this point what therapy is available to the relatives of those murdered by Mafia bosses whose hands are dripping with blood?" he asked.
Another Senator, Gianpaolo Vallardi, said it was an insult and likely to demoralise those risking their lives to fight the Mafia, known as the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. He called on the justice minister to intervene.
But Ieni's lawyer, Giuseppe Lipera, said it was wrong that his client had been in prison since being arrested three years ago.
Ieni was constantly reduced to tears and had lost (25kg) 55lbs in weight, he said.
The Sicilian Mafia and janitorial services might seem an unusual pairing, but it's at the root of nine years of litigation ruled on Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The case began in 1999 after a U.S. Naval contracting officer awarded a $28 million maintenance case to Joint Venture Conserv. at the Navy's Sigonella Air Base near Catania, Italy. The janitorial services company was owned by Carmelo La Mastra, who had been indicted by Italian prosecutors in 1997 for his alleged role in a mafia scheme to win construction contracts on the base. A losing bidder, Impresa Construzioni, filed a protest over both the price and ethical questions surrounding the winner.
ROME (AP) — Local politicians, bankers and businessmen were among 57 people wanted Wednesday in connection with a mafia sweep across Italy targeting drug trafficking and extortion rackets, police and news reports said.
A local mayor and a tourism official from the southern region of Calabria were among those detained in early morning raids, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported.
The raids were focused on the southern region of Calabria — home of the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate — and Umbria, in central Italy, the carabinieri paramilitary police said.
The investigation, code-named Naos, uncovered an association between the 'ndrangheta and the Naples-based Camorra mob, with members working outside their traditional territories and alongside local criminal groups, a police statement said.
The ring focused on drug trafficking and extortion rackets, with money reinvested in construction projects, particularly hydroelectric utilities and tourism buildings in Calabria, reports said.
A former Mafia godfather, known by the nickname "the Pope", died in prison where he was serving multiple life sentences.
Michele Greco, 83, who had been ill for several weeks, was a contemporary of top gangsters Toto "The Beast" Riina and his successor as 'boss of bosses', Bernardo Provenzano.
Arrested in 1986 after several years on the run, Greco had been a member of the 'cupola', the Mafia's board of directors. He earned his nickname by being a conciliatory voice between rival Mafia factions.
The Italian state claims to have made great steps in recent years in cleaning up the Mafia, the crime organisation based in the island of Sicily.
Italian and US police arrested 77 suspected members last week after a three-year probe into drug trafficking and money laundering. The latest boss of bosses, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, was arrested in November after nearly a quarter century on the run.
On Wednesday Italian police arrested 60 people suspected of involvement with the 'Ndrangheta and Camorra crime gangs - the equivalent of the Mafia based on the southern Italian mainland.
The police said they were breaking up a drugs and money laundering "joint venture" between the two gangs.
MONTERREY, Mexico — Four suspects were arrested Friday in the kidnapping and killing of two federal agents investigating drug trafficking in Northern Mexico, authorities said.
The arrests came just hours after the bodies of Rene Lorenzo Lopez and Roberto Krhisna Raul Martinez, both agents of the Federal Agency of Investigation, Mexico's equivalent of the FBI, were found in a river in the city of Santa Catarina, in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, the federal Public Safety Department said in a news release.
The agents were naked, their limbs and heads bound with what appeared to be duct tape, state and federal police said.
Their names and cause of death weren't immediately released.
If linked to organized crime, the slayings bring to 29 the number of law enforcers believed killed by drug gangs this year in the Monterrey area, according to a media tally.
The killing of six Italians in the German city of Duisburg has thrust into the spotlight the shadowy world of the 'Ndrangheta, whose tentacles have spread far beyond their rural origins in Calabria, in southern Italy.
The six men, one of whom was reported to be only 16 years old, were sprayed with machine gun bullets moments after they left a pizzeria in the western German city.
Based on the strong blood ties between interlinked families, membership of the 'Ndrangheta - which means "Honoured Society" - is believed to number in the tens of thousands.
"It is disturbing - firstly because of the sheer number of dead," the acting director of Italy's National Anti-Mafia bureau, Carmelo Petralia, told the BBC news website.
The Italian 'Ndrangheta crime circle works in cooperation with Bulgarian organized crime groups, a report of the Italian anti-mafia directorate states, as cited by Giornale di Calabria newspaper.
The report warns of the 'Ndrangheta's constantly growing power and its links with Bulgarian crime bosses, who are backed by the even more powerful Russian mafia.
The report comes just two days after six Italians were shot dead near a train station in Duisburg, western Germany. All of them are believed to be members of the 'Ndrangheta crime group based in Calbabria. Police believe the motive for the killings is the result of a feud stemming from the Italian town of San Luca.
Ever more often Italian mafia bosses go to court together with Bulgarians and this is just one of the many examples that prove the links between Bulgaria and the Calabrian mafia, the report says.
DUISBURG, Germany (AFP) - Six Italian men were shot dead here on Wednesday as a powerful mafia clan exported a bloody vendetta to Germany.
Italy's Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said the victims, who ranged from 16 to 38 years old and included two brothers, were caught up in a feud between mafia families in the Calabria region of southern Italy.
A police patrol alerted by a passerby discovered four of the victims in a Volkswagen Golf hire car and two in an Opel delivery van, which were parked near the central rail station of the industrial western city of Duisburg early Wednesday.
Heinz Sprenger, the officer leading the German police investigation, said all six victims had "multiple gunshot wounds".
"These men were shot at indiscriminately," he told a press conference.
Sprenger said some of the victims showed signs of life when they were found by police, but although one survived longer than the others, doctors were unable to resuscitate him.
Police said the men had been celebrating the 18th birthday of one of the victims in a pizza restaurant near the scene of the shooting where some of the men worked.
(07-29) 04:00 PDT Nagasaki , Japan -- For all the trouble he had caused, Nagasaki gangster Tetsuya Shiroo had atoned by cutting off half a little finger and the tips of two others.
And things were not looking up.
The code of the yakuza, or organized crime syndicate, calls for troublesome members to perform the joint-by-joint amputations when they upset the bosses. Shiroo was an old-style gangster, a man who believed in the rituals.
But yakuza life was hard and getting harder for Shiroo. Everyone knew he had money troubles. His bosses expected him to kick about $3,000 a month their way in homage, and it was tough coming up with the cash in a city where business had been so bad for so long. Even worse, the once- lucrative option of skimming money from public-works projects was dying now that the Japanese government had turned off the geyser of public money.
