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Stevedoring Company Files Racketeering Suit Against Dockworkers Union Alleging Mob Corruption

A former shipping terminal operator has sued the International Longshoremen's Association on claims that President Harold Daggett and some other union officials and members are organized crime associates who forced the company off the Newark and Brooklyn docks after it refused to play their waterfront games as reported by Steve Strunsky for The Star-Ledger:  "one of the allegations in the suit by American Stevedoring is that ILA leaders told the company's chairman, Sabato Catucci, in August 2011 that if he refused to pull up stakes and leave the port he would be carried out 'in a box.'"

The Mafia allegedly "has infested the waterfronts since the 1930s," and it "continues to threaten commerce at U.S. ports" as reported by Alan Rappeport for the Financial Times:  "New York waterfront officials contend that 'kickback' schemes and 'no show' jobs are prevalent in almost every terminal.  According to some estimates, 40 per cent of the 5,000 people getting paid at the ports are not working."

George Barone, a decades-long waterfront enforcer for the Genovese family, testified in the 2003 racketeering trial against reputed Gambino boss Peter Gotti that "in the late 1960s, the Genovese and Gambino crime families carved up the waterfront -- the Gambinos controlled Staten Island and Brooklyn while the Genovese crew owned Manhattan and New Jersey" as then reported by John Marzulli for the Daily News.

Ex-Longshoreman Gets 30 Months

Former longshoreman Edward Aulisi was sentenced to thirty months in prison for extorting Christmas tribute payments from New Jersey dockworkers on behalf of the Genovese crime family as reported by Warren Cooper for NJN Publishing:

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Edward Aulisi conspired with his father, Vincent Aulisi -- a former president of International Longshoremen Association Local 1235 who succeeded another co-defendant, Albert Cernadas -- and Michael Coppola, a Genovese organized crime family captain, in the scheme.

Coppola was convicted in July 2009 for decades-long extortion against Local 1235, and is serving a 16-year term.

Ex-Longshoreman Admits To Waterfront Extortion

Former longshoreman Edward Aulisi has pleaded guilty to extorting Christmas tribute payments from New Jersey dockworkers on behalf of the Genovese crime family according to a DOJ press release.   

The feds secretly recorded a telephone conversation between Edward Aulisi and reputed Genovese capo Michael "Mikey Cigars" Coppola as reported by Richard Perez-Pena for The New York Times:  "on the recording, the man said to be Mr. Aulisi updated the other man on news -- a subpoena served to a Genovese associate, a loan shark customer falling short on a payment -- and mentioned that the 'Christmases' had doubled in a few years."

Coppola was convicted in July 2009 for decades-long extortion against Local 1235.

Federal Jury Convicts Three Fazios

It was a family affair.

Three relatives with former leadership positions in Brooklyn's Local 348-s of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union -- Anthony Fazio Sr., Anthony Fazio Jr. and John Fazio Jr. -- were convicted by a Manhattan federal jury after a three week trial for using the union over two decades as a platform for their criminal schemes according to a press release by Department of Justice prosecutors.  The Fazios, among other things, regularly extorted cash payments from unionized businesses in exchange for labor peace and looted the union's benefit funds by submitting fraudulent invoices for non-existent goods and services.

According to court papers the FBI uncovered suspected ties between the union and the mob including alleged meetings between John Fazio Jr. and reputed Genovese capo John Barbato as previously reported by Bruce Golding for the New York Post.

A number of recent indictments involving labor racketeering suggests that the Genovese family apparently continues to have pervasive influence throughout assorted unions in New York City.  Just last month the feds brought a case charging several suspected Genovese mobsters and union officials for their alleged roles with extortion on construction sites, and last year the feds busted a suspected Genovese crew and  a number of ex-International Longshoremen's Association officials for their alleged roles in extorting NY and NJ dockworkers for annual Christmas-time tribute payments known in mob lingo as "Christmases."

In October 2010 a federal jury convicted reputed Genovese associate Joseph Olivieri, the former head of the Wall-Ceiling Association which is NYC's largest trade group for carpentry contractors, on a perjury charge "in a case that showed the mob's grip on construction" as then reported by Brian Kates for the Daily News:  "testimony painted Olivieri as the mob's go-to guy in city construction unions." The feds variously indicted Olivieri -- who also was a trustee of the carpenters union benefit funds -- with ex-carpenters union boss Michael Forde and others in August 2009 for their alleged roles in a scheme involving bribes by dirty contractors to union officials in order to avoid obligations under labor agreements. 

In announcing last April's labor racketeering bust allegedly involving the Genovese family Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Panella from the U.S. Department of Labor stated that the "arrests reflect our strong commitment to combat the infiltration of unions by organized crime members and associates for their personal enrichment."

FBI Was MIA On Albert Anastasia

J. Edgar Hoover may have had a knack for routing out commies but he was pretty useless in taking on Albert Anastasia as reflected in the FBI's sparse files on the notorious mobster who infamously was whacked in a barber's chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan on October 25, 1957.

Anastasia orchestrated dozens of hits as the chief executioner for  Murder, Inc., later ran the crime family which gave rise to Carlo Gambino, made a fortune from loansharking, gambling and other enterprises which he laundered through the garment industry, and controlled the Brooklyn waterfront through the International Longshoremen's Association, and yet in nearly forty decades of racketeering the only criminal case ever brought against the mob boss by the feds -- no thanks to the FBI -- was in 1954 for evading a few thousand dollars in taxes on his 1947 and 1948 returns.

Indeed, when the Department of Justice during its tax investigation into Anastasia asked the FBI to provide assistance the supposed law enforcement agency in a gross dereliction of duty had nothing to offer.

On January 30, 1953 the Tax Division within the DOJ advised the FBI that it was building a case against Anastasia , and requested "any information which might be developed as a result of the Bureau's water-front investigations which might be of assistance in the income tax case against the subject."  Incredibly, according to an internal agency memo dated Feb. 10, 1953, the FBI admitted it had nothing to share because it did not have Anastasia under investigation:

[Name redacted] of the Investigative Division advised that no investigation concerning Albert Anastasia was being conducted by his Division.  No Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 case involving the subject has developed up to the present time.  [Name redacted] was called by Special Agent [name redacted] Domestic Intelligence Division, at 4:00 P.M. , January 30, 1953, and was informed that the Bureau did not have Albert Anastasia under investigation but in the event that any information was developed through the New York water-front investigations concerning Anastasia it would be directed to the attention of [name redacted].

Anastasia ultimately pled guilty in the tax case -- after first killing a few witnesses including a husband and wife -- and spent less than a year in prison. 

The deep level of distrust between the lawyers at the DOJ and the agents at the FBI was reflected in a Dec.  16, 1954 memo from Assistant Director L.V. Boardman to Hoover in which Boardman recounts a conversation he had that morning with Warren Olney, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the DOJ's Criminal Division, during which Olney told Boardman that "there were many members in the Department who did not like the FBI" and specifically referenced an apparent misunderstanding in connection with the Anastasia tax case.

Of course, to take down Albert Anastasia required someone more powerful than a cross-dressing FBI Director absorbed in paranoid delusions of a communist takeover, and even once the mob boss was taken out it's clear from his FBI files -- or more accurately the lack thereof -- that even nervous nellie Hoover and his merry band of G-men didn't have a clue as to what was happening on the mean streets of New York.  Indeed, much of the thin file was composed after Anastasia's death and relies as much on open source material (i.e., newspaper clippings) as original investigative work.  It's as if the FBI really didn't want to know.

It's a wonder this country survived at all during the mob's reign of terror throughout most of the 20th century with Hoover's laughable tenure at the FBI helm.

Unfortunately, history has a bad habit of repeating itself.  Just as the FBI once was absorbed with chasing down purported communists while the mob took over America, it now is preoccupied with supposed terrorists as the Mafia retools.  No doubt the war on terror will be judged by history as just as much an overblown folly as the cold war, and the real threat to the country from organized crime once again was ignored.  Of course, it's always easier to fight a phony bogeyman than actual monsters.

Download Albert Anastasia FBI Documents Part 1

Download Albert Anastasia FBI Documents Part 2

Download Albert Anastasia FBI Documents Part 3

Download Albert Anastasia FBI Documents Part 4

Further reading that may be of interest:

J. Edgar Hoover Biopic Punts On Gay Question

Feds:  The Mafia Is No Longer A Top Target