He . . . targeted organized crime after a slew of gang-related murders in Fairfield County, including the assassination of Frank Piccolo, a Gambino crime family captain on Bridgeport's busy Main Street on a Saturday afternoon. FBI plants, court-authorized wiretaps and cooperating witnesses led to indictments of Francis and Gus Curcio, Salvador Basso and Vincent Pollina, all affiliated with the Genovese crime family; Thomas DeBrizzi, who succeeded Piccolo as the Gambino head, and others.
The adjustments resulted from additional income for consulting services and the use of a car service, and reductions in charitable contribution deductions. Senator Daschle filed the amended returns voluntarily after Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate the senator to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Presidential Transition Team identified the charitable contribution issue and Senator Daschle self-identified the income adjustments.
So much for restoring trust and confidence in government. Rep. Eric Cantor said: "A pattern is developing. The pattern is solidified. It's easy for the other side to sit here and advocate higher taxes because -- you know what? -- they don't pay them."
Commissioner Douglas Shulman and other officials yesterday urged New Yorkers to get the most out of their tax returns. Asked about appearing with a pol who's being probed for failing to pay taxes, Shulman said, "He's one of the leaders in this country on tax policy issues. I work closely with him every day, and I'm honored to be on this stage with him." Rangel had no comment.
Nobody's home at the House ethics committee that's supposed to be investigating Rep. Charles Rangel. The panel created on Sept. 24 to probe the Harlem Democrat's alleged ethical lapses has been virtually disbanded, after meeting only twice in four months on the matter, The Post has learned.
The five alleged ethical breaches by Rangel which the House committee purportedly is investigating are his failure "to declare rental income on a beachfront villa he owns in the Dominican Republic"; his "use of four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem; his use of congressional stationery to solicit donations for an academic center named in his honor at City College; his storage of a vintage Mercedes at a House parking garage; and a $1 million pledge to the Rangel Center from an oil-drilling company that benefited from Rangel-sponsored tax legislation."
Apparently Rangel is getting a complete pass on other alleged ethical breaches raised in the press:
Critics also wonder why the panel has not officially taken up alleged ethical issues recently uncovered by The Post, including the 78-year-old congressman's use of a tax credit on his DC home while he was living in New York, and his attendance at Caribbean junkets sponsored by lobbyists. Also missing are allegations that Rangel solicited donations from insurance giant AIG for his City College center.
Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano has "directed the Customs and Border Protection service 'to find guns going south and interdict them'" in a move to disarm the Mexican drug cartels:
The country's new homeland security chief said Friday that the Obama administration is mapping out a crackdown on the flow of firearms smuggled to Mexico's murderous drug gangs operating along the Texas border. Janet Napolitano said she had directed the Customs and Border Protection service "to find guns going south and interdict them." Additionally, the homeland security secretary said she will give Mexican authorities access to a government database to trace the U.S. origin of seized weapons. U.S. and Mexican officials have been investigating organizations in Houston and elsewhere believed to have smuggled large numbers of weapons into Mexico.
Napolitano said: "A growing wave of criminal violence in Mexico's border communities and in the interior of the country, fueled by the availability of guns and currency smuggled south from the U.S., poses a serious threat to Mexico's security, and portends deepening problems for our nation's border regions."
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Juan Pablo Gutierrez was a "prolific" purchaser among a group of 23 arms traffickers who bought at least 339 firearms for Mexican organized crime syndicates in 2006 and 2007. At least 40 of the guns were later recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and Guatemala as gangsters wage a protracted war against one another and the Mexican government, the bureau said. * * * The ATF contends Houston is the No. 1 origin for weapons later recovered in Mexico. * * * The [drug cartels] are known to get their weapons by employing U.S. citizens with no felony convictions so they can pass federal background checks. The weapons are illegal in Mexico.
Twelve capos have been arrested in the past three months, forcing police to admit that the Camorra and N’drangheta from Calabria and the Sicilian Mafia are now a very real presence on the Iberian peninsula. Many come to Spain attracted by the opportunity to deal cocaine or to launder millions of euros through property. Others hope to escape the unwelcome attention of Italian investigators and Carabinieri by blending into the established Italian communities in Spain.
Roberto Saviano, author of the international bestseller Gomorrah exposing the Neapolitan-based Camorra "said that Spain has long been regarded by the Camorra as a crucial part of its criminal empire" and "that Camorra bosses refer to the Iberian peninsula as la costa nostra – our coast."
Dennis Krousos, a Woodbridge-based accountant and mortgage banker, who is also a part-owner of The Pines Manor banquet hall and the Skylark restaurant in Edison . . . was indicted on charges of racketeering, money laundering and several other offenses. Krousos is accused of orchestrating financial schemes to hide the proceeds of the drug network[.] * * * Vicente Esteves . . . is charged with being the leader of the racketeering enterprise[.] * * * [T]he organization . . . used two legitimate companies owned by Esteves and "other financial schemes" to launder the earnings from drug sales.
Last summer authorities seized 150 pounds of cocaine and $2 million in cash allegedly tied to the ring.
Where the money is coming from to pay Carnesi's fees and expenses — estimated by some court observers to be potentially in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — is not known. Motta said he was indigent when he was first charged in the case and the fees of his court-appointed lawyer, Hawai'i defense counsel Todd Eddins, were paid by the government. But in sealed court records filed late last year, Eddins was dismissed and Carnesi was hired privately, along with Hawai'i attorney Walter Rodby. * * * Motta . . . [is] charged with participation in the midday murders of Romilius Corpuz, 40, and Lepo Utu Taliese, 44, on Jan. 7, 2004, in the parking lot of the city's Pali Golf Course. A third victim, Tinoimalu Sao, 42, was shot in the head but recovered. According to prosecutors and police, the violence was rooted in a dispute between rival factions of security personnel who provided protection services to illegal gaming venues bankrolled by [Kai Ming] Wang, a mainland Chinese immigrant who came to Hawai'i in 1994.
"People need to be aware that they are funding criminal activity if they purchase illicit tobacco products and those tobacco products are not sold legitimately," Insp. Brian Brennan said Thursday. "And really, illicit tobacco shouldn’t be looked upon by the general public in any different way than, say, drug trafficking." * * * "Illegal tobacco trends seem to originate in Central Canada and are part of organized crime groups and individual entrepreneurs bringing in large loads of tobacco to the Atlantic provinces." * * * In 2008, the RCMP nabbed 48,396 cartons of contraband tobacco in 81 separate seizures. If that product had been bought on the retail market, the value would have been more than $3.8 million, Insp. Brennan said.
Organized crime has taken root in Costa Rica: "In the past 10 years . . . organizations from countries such as Colombia and Mexico have put Costa Rica on the map for drug- and weapons-trafficking, outpacing the country's 'inadequate' crime laws."
Sales increased to 130 billion euros ($167 billion), up from 90 billion euros in 2007, according to figures supplied by Eurispes and SOS Impresa, an association of businessmen to protest against extortion. Drug trafficking remains the primary source of revenue, bringing in about 59 billion euros, and they earned 5.8 billion euros from selling arms, the Rome-based research group said today.
The schemes — often involving online promotions touting fake computer virus protection, get-rich scams and funny or lurid videos — already were rising last fall when financial markets took a dive. With consumers around the world panicking, the number of scams on the Web soared. The number of malicious programs circulating on the Internet tripled to more than 31,000 a day in mid-September, coinciding with the sudden collapse of the U.S. financial sector, according to Panda Security, an Internet security firm. It wasn't a coincidence, says Ryan Sherstobitoff, chief corporate evangelist at Panda. "The criminal economy is closely interrelated with our own economy," he says. "Criminal organizations closely watch market performance and adapt as needed to ensure maximum profit."
Crime groups were using the financial crisis "as a golden opportunity" to launder funds through bank deposits and the buying of shares. He declined to single out any institutions but said it was "certainly happening across the board." "The money is available and the need for that money is there," he said. "I think the whole system is infected." Costa said he was basing his claims on contacts with prosecutors in various countries, as well as consultations with banking representatives and years of experience tracking organized crime.
Costa further suggested the complicity of financial institutions: "I'm pretty sure that when someone knocks at the door of a banker with a few million, or tens of millions of dollars in a briefcase, the bank has plenty of reasons to doubt the origin."
Jailed Mafia supremo Toto Riina taught his daughter "good manners, morals and respect," she said in an interview published Wednesday. "My father has been presented as cruel and bloodthirsty, almost like an animal, as someone who was even capable of having children killed," Maria Concetta Riina told the left-of-centre Italian daily La Repubblica. "But to me, his daughter, he passed on good manners, morals and respect," Riina said of her father, who was nicknamed The Beast for his legendary brutality.
The former Cosa Nostra crime boss has been in jail since 1993 where he presumably will remain until he dies:
Toto Riina, now 78, was arrested in 1993 when he began serving more than 10 life sentences for dozens of murders including those of anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
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