Union Removes Manager because of Mob Ties
Ralph Scopo (seen here in a 2005 file photo) was removed from his position as business manager of concrete workers Local 6A because of suspected Colombo family mob ties.
Ratted out by mob informants, the boss of a major city concrete workers union was booted Friday in an effort to break decades of Colombo crime family control.
Concrete workers Local 6A was quietly placed in trusteeship after Laborers Union International of North America (LUINA) determined that "the Colombo family placed Ralph Scopo, the current business manager, in office to assure that the [crime] family had direct control."
The international removed Scopo and the local's entire executive board and will appoint a trustee to run the union, as early as Monday.
Six mobsters, including imprisoned Colombo captain Dino Calabro, cooperated in the investigation. The probe uncovered a 25-year pattern of contractor shakedowns, meetings between mob bosses and union leaders, and no-show jobs for crooks and their cronies.
The mob even managed to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of coffee at city construction sites, according to testimony at LUINA hearings this week.
Calabro, who pleaded guilty to seven murders and eight murder conspiracies in June, took control of Local 6A for the mob in 2002. He named Scopo Jr. to handle day-to-day operations, according to evidence at the hearing.
Six years later, with Calabro's approval, Scopo engineered his son's elevation from secretary-treasurer to business manager, according to informant David Gordon, a member of Calabro's crew who pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges.
Calabro did not have complete confidence in Ralph Scopo, but he "believed his loyalties would always be with the Colombo family because his father, Scopo Jr., was a Colombo soldier," LIUNA said in its decision.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/the_mob/2011/03/12/2011-03-12_concrete_workers_union_removes_manager_ralph_scopo_because_of_colombo_crime_fami.html
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