|
||||||||
  |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
20 arrested in organized crime bust
NEW YORK (CNN) -- An alleged captain in the Bonanno organized crime families and 19 others have been arrested in connection with a multimillion-dollar loan-sharking and gambling operation, the Manhattan district attorney announced Tuesday.
Patrick DeFilippo, the reputed "capo" of the DeFilippo crew, was charged with enterprise corruption -- a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Alleged Bonanno soldiers Emmanuel Guarana, Anthony Frascone and John Spirito face the same charges, along with Anthony Siano and Russell Trucco. Fourteen others, including Guarana's son and Frascone's mother, were indicted on lesser charges, including assisting the criminal enterprise, perjury and contempt, said Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau. Prosecutors allege that the DeFilippo crew ran three separate gambling rings that brought in about $100,000 each month. The associated loan-sharking operation had "hundreds of thousands of dollars on the street," said Morgenthau, "and took more than $1 million in interest per year." Morgenthau claimed "the defendants netted more than $2.5 million a year from their criminal activities" and said arrests represented a "significant breakthrough in the fight against organized crime." The investigation began in January 2000, when two undercover detectives from the Organized Crime Investigation Division, posing as hijackers, met with Bonanno associate Fred Kuletsky, Morgenthau said. The detectives purchased firearms and cocaine from Kuletsky and others, and developed evidence leading to electronic surveillance of Kuletsky's cellular telephone. This in turn produced further evidence of narcotics and weapons-trafficking activities, Morgenthau said. In March 2000, Kuletsky invited one of the undercover agents to a social club in the Bronx, said to be a popular meeting place for the DeFilippo crew. The agent met a defendant and the club's caretaker, Alfio Indiviglia, and after earning his trust became a partner in Indiviglia's alleged illegal sports-betting operation, Morgenthau said. This enabled the agents to put together a more substantial body of evidence from the defendants' telephones, electronic pagers and surveillance equipment used in their meeting places and cars, he said. Kuletsky and several others were indicted in March, prosecutors said.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
