The disclosure of State Department cables by WikiLeaks over the week reveals the U.S. understanding that organized crime is running amok in Montreal, QC Canada as reported by Andrew McIntosh for QMI Agency: "Written after interviews with RCMP officers and Montreal police detectives, the U.S. diplomats described a major Canadian city grappling with extensive underworld criminality." Among the rackets "is the extensive use of - and trafficking in - underage girls in Montreal strip clubs and prostitution operations" which led the diplomats to characterize the city as "Bangkok of the West." Other pervasive rackets include telemarketing fraud and movie piracy. The Hells Angels motorcycle club allegedly has a hand in many of these illicit operations.
Last Thursday the Pennsylvania State Attorney General's office executed several search warrants in South Philadelphia at the homes of a former Pagans motorcycle club member and several reputed mob associates as reported by WTXF: "Law enforcement sources say it's part of a long term investigation into prescription drugs, purchased legally from legitimate doctors and then re-sold illegally out of bars and taverns in South Philly."
*** The feds have brought a racketeering indictment against five suspected Hells Angels in Rochester, NY involving their alleged roles in a 2006 baseball bat attack against an individual who dissed them: "the indictment identifies the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in Rochester as a criminal organization whose members functioned for the common purpose of facilitating criminal activity, including acts involving drug trafficking and murder."
Benjamin Arellano Felix, the former alleged head of the Tijuana cartel which is based out of Mexico's northern state of Baja California, has been extradited to San Diego, CA to face U.S. justice as reported by the Los Angeles Times: "Authorities allege the cartel generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, using the money to bribe Mexican military and law enforcement officials and to purchase weapons that enforcers would use to torture and kill enemies in Mexico and the San Diego area."
In extraditing Arellano Felix federal prosecutors aren't swallowing the White House party line that there is no drug cartel spillover violence from Mexico into the United States. Indeed, Assistant Atty. Gen. Lanny A. Breuer expressly stated that "the Arellano Felix organization has spread fear and violence on both sides of the border, and today's extradition is an important step forward in our effort to hold the alleged leaders of this criminal enterprise to account."
In Washington, D.C. teenage shoplifters are employing the flash mob technique in their capers which effectively stuns security from acting in the chaos as reported by Fox 5. It's ironic that these incidents are occurring in the capital of our entitlement nation, and the casualness by which the young thieves take what is not theirs must make the politicians proud.
The racketeering trial against reputed Bonanno mob boss Vincent Basciano continues, and yesterday gangster-turned-informant Giuseppe "Joey" Gambina testified that Vinny Gorgeous put the kibosh on public displays of affections among his boys out of concern that "the government's taking pictures" as reported by Josh Margolin and Tim Perone for the New York Post.
An NYPD corruption scandal in the Bronx, NY which touches as many as 400 cops including many union delegates may taint other law enforcement agencies and possibly involve conduct more egregious than fixing parking tickets and moving violations.
Bronx cops have been "caught on wiretaps calling in ticket-fix favors to the State Police, Yonkers PD, Port Authority PD and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority" as reported by the New York Post. Moreover, it's apparently not just tickets which some cops were fixing as a favor or in exchange for cash or other bribes. In one incident they allegedly "spared a prosecutor from a potential DWI arrest" as reported by the New York Post, and in at least two other cases "wiretaps have captured cops talking about . . . helping cops suspected of drunken driving and domestic violence" as reported by the Daily News.
As many as 40 cops are expected to be indicted on criminal counts and another 100 to be slapped with disciplinary charges.
Italian authorities have seized assets worth 4.5 million euros or $6.69 million from the Pesce clan of the 'Nrangheta or Calabrian Mafia as reported by AGI News.
The FBI believes that violent drug cartel Los Zetas has kidnapped a Texas man who recently moved to border town Ciudad Mier in northern Mexico to live with his father, and Don Clark, a former special agent in charge of the FBI's Houston office, is advising U.S. citizens "just stop going across the border" as reported by Fox 26.
Many residents along the border have dual U.S.-Mexico citizenship. Some of the murdered Americans may have spent most of their lives in Mexico. Other American border residents frequently cross south of the line to visit friends and family in troubled Mexican towns and cities.
Of course, as the drug cartels increasingly take control over cities on the north side of the border, U.S. residents may be no safer by staying at home. For example, the "notoriously brutal group known as the Zetas has used family and personal connections to make the Dallas area into a sophisticated distribution point" as reported by The Dallas Morning News:
"Dallas is no longer a world away from the border," said Jeffrey Stamm, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Dallas office, describing the Dallas area as a key base for the Zetas and other cartels. "We are close enough to be the command-and-control center."
It's called border creep, and the White House is just fine with that.
The Guatemalan National Police have arrested Waldemar Lorenzana Lima who allegedly served as a key transit point in the movement of cocaine from the Colombian drug cartels to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel as reported by BBC News: "The suspected trafficker, nicknamed the Patriarch, had been sought by the US since 2009, which had offered a reward of $500,000 for information leading to his arrest."
Howie Carr, the unofficial biographer of Winter Hill gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, has just released Hitman about former Bulger enforcer Johnny Martorano, and this week he is running excerpts from the book in the Boston Herald. In today's excerpt Carr details how in 1982 Martorano and his partner Joe McDonald murdered World Jai Alai president John Callahan in a parking garage at Miami International Airport: "I opened the back door to put his suitcase in, and that was when I picked up the .22 from under the blanket, reached around and shot him once, twice at the most, in the head."
In 1999 Martorano reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors pursuant to which he confessed to twenty murders in exchange for a 14-year prison sentence, and he now is retired and living in Boston, MA.
The Martorano story is not for the gentle reader, and Howie Carr recounts a tragic blood bath involving mistaken identity and innocent victims:
Enrico Ponzo, the reputed Patriarca associate discovered last April living as a rancher in Marsing, ID after nearly twenty years on the lam, had a safe containing more than $100,000 cash, gold and jewelry which was buried under his home's cement foundation, and this week local police arrested Kelly Verceles, a friend who promised to look after the place, for allegedly taking the booty as reported by William Yardley for The New York Times: "Many people have asked how Mr. Verceles, a mechanic, might have known to look beneath the foundation."
The racketeering trial against reputed Bonanno mob boss Vincent Basciano continues, and yesterday FBI agent Michael Breslin testified that the former beauty salon owner was grateful the G-men busted him at 9 am rather than the crack of dawn because it gave him time to get "all dolled up" as reported by Josh Margolin for the New York Post. Meanwhile, the prima donna is not happy with the baloney sandwich he is served at lunch during trial, and is requesting a food upgrade as reported by John Marzulli for the Daily News: "'He wants a sandwich from the Carnegie Deli?' the judge asked."
UPDATE: Fabulous news for Vinny Gorgeous. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis is ordering the U.S. Marshal to provide the gangster with a hearty sandwich from the courthouse cafeteria rather than the standard issue one-sliced bologna sandwich as reported by Josh Margolin for the New York Post.
The NYPD is looking for four teen boys who allegedly pummelled and robbed a Chinese food delivery man after luring him to a Morningside Heights apartment building with a phony order as reported by Joe Kemp for the Daily News.
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