Reputed Gambino associate gets 5 years in prison
At 79, Nicola Melia has yet to learn his lesson.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton gave the Stamford resident another five years in federal prison to think over his future in the mob and loansharking. She also added a $50,000 fine.
Melia, a reputed Gambino crime family associate, received his latest federal prison sentence for loansharking and being a felon in possession of 40 hollow-point bullets. Federal law makes it illegal for anyone convicted of a crime carrying more than a year in prison of ever legally possessing a firearm or ammunition.
Melia, who operates Continental Coiffeurs III, a hair-styling salon in Stamford, allegedly rivals some small banks, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Chen by making "hundreds of thousands in loans" and using his home "as a bank for his loansharking activities.
Melia has been in federal custody since his March 24 arrest.
The latest case involves a $375,000 loan to a person with a substance abuse problem.
In a tape recorded conversation, Melia allegedly warned the borrower that the people above him have "a big crew. They go in the house and kill people."
But, he added, "as long as I am alive no one is going to hurt you."
The borrower allegedly set up a burglary of Melia's Bushwood Road home in Stamford during the fall of 2010 in which the reputed organized crime figure and his wife were bound and gagged before the assailants fled with money and jewelry.
Melia's son, Philip, of Stony Brook Drive, Stamford, later was charged with assaulting the borrower.
At the time of his March arrest, Melia was still on federal supervision as a result of a 2005 racketeering conviction that also netted Anthony Megale, a Stamford resident who had risen to underboss in the Gambino crime family operation.
That case stemmed from a shakedown of a Stamford strip club owner.
Melia pleaded guilty to a loansharking charge and received a 33-month federal prison term from which he was released in 2008.
In 2000, Melia spent four months in federal prison for under-reporting $150,000 on his 1994 federal income tax return.
But it was the attention he paid to a girlfriend in 1981 and the resulting inattention to his duties in the mob that nearly got her killed.
The FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police staged a fake killing, turned the hitman into an informant and exposed the role of Sicilian mobsters moving into Connecticut.
The incident was the focus of "Mafia Enforcer," a book on the life of Cecil Kirby, the hitman-turned-informant.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Reputed-mob-figure-gets-5-years-in-prison-2398241.php#ixzz1gMswAcY2
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