Friends of Ours

The Junior Gotti Racketeering Trial

Junior Gotti's former pal John Alite testified for a second day, and he "told jurors that Gotti admitted that a man was hanged to cover up Gotti's role in a fatal stabbing at an Ozone Park bar" as reported by John Riley for Newsday:

Prosecutors contend that John Cennamo, whose 1984 hanging from a low tree limb behind a self-service laundry in St. Albans was officially classified a suicide, was killed by the Gambino family because he had fingered Gotti as a killer of Danny Silva. Silva was knifed to death during a 1983 fight at the Silver Fox Bar. Alite, a top aide to Gotti during the 1980s, said the subject of Cennamo's death came up in the summer of 1984, when Alite was hospitalized at Jamacia Hospital with injuries from a brawl and Gotti came to visit. * * * "He said John Carneglia was sent to take care of it on his father's orders." Alite said that Gambino mobsters Angelo Ruggiero and "Willie Boy" Johnson also were on the team of killers.

Alite also testified that after murdering coke dealer George Grosso in 1988, Junior made him "drive back to a crime scene swarming with cops so the mob scion could verify that the hit man had properly done his job" as reported by Kati Cornell and Andy Geller for the New York Post:

"He told me to get in the car and take a ride. He wanted to go back to the scene and make sure this guy was really dead," mob turncoat John Alite testified at Gotti's racketeering trial. "I watch a lot of movies. They say the killer always goes back to the scene. I didn't want to go back to the scene," Alite said. But nevertheless, he and Junior got into Alite's Corvette and they drove past the spot off the Grand Central Parkway. It was where Alite had dumped coke dealer George Grosso after shooting him in the head three times on Dec. 20, 1988. It was all roped off -- cops all over, coroners, trucks," Alite testified. Junior, he said, "was joking around. He said, 'He doesn't look too good.'" Gotti then reported back to his uncle Gene Gotti, a Gambino family capo, that Grosso was dead. * * * Alite said Grosso was killed for telling people he was dealing drugs for Junior and his father. He was warned to stop using their names. Junior, he said, "told me if he does it again and he finds out, he wasn't going to warn him again. He was going to kill him. He already told him once." Subsequently, Alite said, Junior told him "to go kill him. Get a bunch of guys together." * * * Alite had Grosso come to the White Horse Tavern in Queens, then persuaded him to go to another bar. At the White Horse, Alite was ordering shots for everybody, but was secretly drinking water. After they got into the car to go to the second bar, Alite said, he shot Grosso in the head three times on the Grand Central Parkway, then spit on him. Sitting next to him, he said, was a corrupt former detective, Phil Baroni. A car behind them was carrying Nicholas Tobia, who would go on to join the Suffolk County Police Department. He has been suspended.

Further reporting:

Kati Cornell and Andy Geller for the New York Post:  Junior gleeful when describing murder: witness

John Riley for Newsday:  Junior Gotti ordered hit on dealer, says mobster

Alison Gendar and Corky Siemaszko for the Daily News: Mob turncoat John Alite testifies he got nails done with John Gotti Jr. after drug dealer's murder

Victim's Sis Calls Junior "Scum Of The Earth"

Ivyann Gotterup-Stratton, the sister of drug dealer Bruce Gotterup who allegedly was murdered in 1991 on the orders of Junior Gotti, has penned a five-page letter entitled "My Brother of Mine" in which she calls the mob scion the "scum of the earth" as reported by Alison Gendar and Corky Siemaszko for the Daily News:

Ivyann Gotterup-Stratton said Gotti sent "his dog" John Burke to kill her brother, Bruce Gotterup, in 1991. "I guess killing my brother seemed like a way to move up the food chain to Burke," she wrote. "A lot of good people were killed just so some gangsters could keep their reputations." Gotti, the former head of the Gambino crime family, belongs in jail "with his so called 'family,'" she wrote. * * * Prosecutors said Gotterup, 36, was gunned down Nov. 20, 1991, in Rockaway Beach after he fell behind on making payments to the mob to sell cocaine and marijuana in Queens. * * * Gotterup-Stratton also took aim at a claim Victoria Gotti makes in her new book that the Gottis were more like Robin Hood than hoodlums.

 The Daily News has reprinted the five-page letter in its entirety.

Customs Officer From Montreal Airport Convicted

Nancy Cedeno, a former customs officer at the Montreal Trudeau International Airport, "has been found guilty of taking bribes from a drug smuggling ring with ties to the city's Mafia . . . in exchange for providing . . . confidential information on bag searching procedures" as reported by CBC News:

Cedeno was one of 70 people arrested in "Opération Colisée," a 2006 police sweep that cracked down on major drug smuggling operation based at the airport and allegedly connected to reputed mob figure Nicolo Rizzuto. Cedeno handed dealers daily security codes used by customs officials to decide which bags would be searched at the security gates. By buying the codes from Cedeno, dealers were able to smuggle narcotics, mostly cocaine, into Canada. * * * Cedeno was hired at the airport in 2003. Police say members of the organized crime ring running the drug smuggling operation recruited her in 2005.

However, Judge Claude Millette "acquitted Cedeno of seven other charges, including conspiracy to import drugs, racketeering and gangsterism" because "the Crown did not prove Cedeno knew she was working for the Mob" as reported by the Canadian Press.  And who else could she conceivably have believed wanted the information she was selling?

Lucchese Bust May Happen Today

The NYDA is ready to bust the Lucchese crime family for its alleged public corruption scheme involving some on-the-take and drug-dealing NYC building inspectors as reported by Barbara Ross and Greg B. Smith for the Daily News:

Those expected to be arrested as early as today include Matthew Madonna and Joseph DiNapoli, the reputed acting boss and underboss of the Lucchese crime family, the sources say. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is expected to charge about a half-dozen Department of Buildings employees with taking bribes from contractors, some of which were controlled by the mob, the sources say. * * * Prosecutors said they'd have an announcement today dealing with their rackets unit. As the Daily News reported in April, the probe arose during a gambling and loansharking investigation involving organized crime figures operating at a housing development called Boricua Village in the Bronx. Allegations surfaced that contractors on that job had paid bribes to city Buildings Department employees to expedite permits.

Cleaning House

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Arizona: Ground Zero In Drug War

A joint task force among federal, state and local law enforcement authorities has been formed which is "aimed at drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime rings in Arizona" as reported by Mike Sunnucks for the Phoenix Business Journal:

The targets Mexican drug cartels and smugglers who use Arizona as an entry point into the U.S. for gun purchases and money laundering via fraudulent businesses. There is a concerted effort among prosecutors to go after such straw businesses.

Cleaning House

Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu gets 24 years for fund raising schemes

Federal employees spend their days surfing the internet for porn

Former Okaloosa County, FL Sheriff Charlie Morris reports to prison

Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Teitelman gets two years for City Council corruption plot

Four charged in Louisiana highway bribery scheme

The Junior Gotti Racketeering Trial

Junior Gotti's former pal John Alite testified that the mob scion was "tied . . . to seven murders and estimated that the two split more than $50 million in profits from a decade of often violent lawbreaking" as reported by John Riley for Newsday:

John Alite, appearing in Manhattan federal court, testified that he had firsthand knowledge of Gotti's role in the drug-related murders of George Grosso and Bruce Gotterup, which are charged as separate counts, and the killing of Louis DiBono, who was killed for defying orders from his father. But Alite said Gotti also bragged about a role in four other killings. Gotti, he said, took credit for the stabbing of Danny Silva in a Queens bar fight in 1983 and said he had a role in the 1984 hanging of a witness to that stabbing who fingered Gotti. Gotti also said he drove a getaway car in a hit on mobster "Willie Boy" Johnson, who was believed to be an informant, and discussed the killing of an unnamed victim at brother-in-law Carmine Agnello's junkyard. "He told me they crushed him in the car chopper," testified Alite, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and sporting a cross-like tattoo on his thick neck.

Reporting on John Alite's testimony for the New York Post, Kati Cornell and Andy Geller write:

He recalled once being in a mob apartment at East 58th Street and Second Avenue when John Gotti Sr. entered. Another wiseguy ordered him to count out $100,000 and give it to the Dapper Don. He did so. Alite said $600,000 in drug proceeds was kept in the apartment. He also implicated Junior in numerous crimes, including the murders of Louis DiBono -- who failed to show up for a meeting with Gotti Sr. -- and drug dealers George Grosso and Bruce John Gotterup. He said his relationship with Junior soured in 1994, but he couldn't leave the crew. "It's not the Boy Scouts. We can't say we don't like it no more and call your mother. There's no quitting," said Alite.

Retired NYPD detective Phil Baroni testified that "he committed robberies and burglaries for the Gambinos," and he witnessed Junior Gotti's alleged partner-in-crime John Alite murder drug dealer George Grosso in 1988 as reported by Kati Cornell for the New York Post:

Baroni said Alite worked for Gotti, who the feds say headed the Gambinos, and that he was there when the former mob brute pulled the trigger, then spat on the man's dead body. He said the hit was ordered by Gotti.

Further reporting:

Alison Gendar and Larry Mcshane for the Daily News

The Cult Of Obama

British Royal Navy Seizes 5 1/2 Tons Of Cocaine

Mexican Drug Cartels Tread On Texas

The Mexican drug cartels not only have taken over national forests from the West to East coasts to use for their marijuana plantations which often are toiled by illegal aliens under gunpoint, but they also now are claiming Texas ranch land as reported by Steve Campbell for McClatchy Newspapers:

Mexico's nimble drug cartels are leapfrogging tightened border security and establishing sophisticated marijuana-growing operations in North Texas and Oklahoma, law enforcement officials say. "There is no doubt" that three big marijuana fields uncovered this month in Ellis and Navarro counties "have a tie to the border and a Mexican drug cartel," said a drug investigator for the Department of Public Safety. "They brought the tenders up here from Mexico to do the work.

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Suspected Russian Mob Hit In Southern Ohio

In southern Warren County, OH police have identified the body of a murdered man discovered two years ago as Aleksander Alferov, and believe that his killer may be "someone connected to organized crime" as reported by Denise G. Callahan for the Dayton Daily News:

"We don't feel our victim was a member of the mob, but we feel the person that did this was on the fringes of organized crime," [Lt. Jeff] Braley [of the Hamilton Twp. Police Department] said. Alferov was beaten severely on the head Braley said, and now one of their most valuable witnesses has fled back to Russia.

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$41 Million In Suspected Drug Money Seized

Hitting the drug cartels where it hurts the most, Mexican and Colombian authorities working with U.S. ICE agents have "seized $41 million in suspected drug money over the past two weeks" as reported by Eileen Sullivan for the Associated Press:

The first seizure came Sept. 9 at a Colombian port where inspectors found $11.2 million in two containers. The bundles of $20 bills were tightly bound in plastic wrapping and hidden in shipments of ammonium sulfate — material commonly used for fertilizer. Using that seizure as a lead, officials went on to find nearly $30 million more at Colombian and Mexican ports over a nine-day period. * * * The ports in Buenaventura, Colombia and Manzanillo, Mexico — where inspectors found the cash — are considered key points on a smuggling route for sending cocaine from Colombia to Mexico and from sending cash back to Colombia, officials said. 

Two Canadians Murdered In Mexico

Two Canadians were found shot to death at a condominium complex in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on Sunday, and the RCMP says that the murdered men -- Gordon Douglas Kendall and Jeffrey Ronald Ivans, both of Kamloops, B.C. -- have been involved with the drug trade as reported by Jennifer Yang for The Toronto Star:

"Both the organized crime team and the gang task force have been aware of these two males for a while," said Sgt. Bill Whalen with the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. "We've been aware that these two males have been involved with the drug trade for a while. We've been aware of ... some of their activities recently in Mexico." * * * Whalen said he doesn't know what the two men were doing in Mexico but he suspects their trip was drug-related. "It's a suspicion, I don't know," he said. "But cocaine comes from Mexico to Canada, and if you're involved in drug activity, that would make sense."

The Mexican news website Noticias Puerto Vallarta has graphic photos of the murder scene.