Vic Amuso steps down and Lucchese family names Steven Crea the new boss
Underworld sources are abuzz with news that the Lucchese crime family has named Steven "Stevie Wonder" Crea the new official boss. Crea, who had been serving as the family's underboss since 1993 was officially given the spot after jailed for life boss Vittorio "Vic" Amuso was prodded to step down by the family. The Bronx based boss is heavily involved in labor racketeering and construction.
Crea was inducted into the Lucchese family sometime in the 1980s, probably under the reign of boss Anthony Corallo. By 1990, family boss Vic Amuso appointed Crea capo, taking over "Sammy Bones" Castaldi crew in the Bronx.Crea specialized in labor rackets, such as gaining power over Carpenter's Local 608 and using it to extort New York City contractors. Crea held a no-show job at Inner City Drywall, one of the city's largest drywall contractors and was on the Cement and Concrete Workers Union involved with Local 282.
In 1993, with Amuso and Anthony Casso's support, Crea became underboss of the Lucchese Family. Using his new clout, Crea shifted the family's power center away from the Brooklyn crews and back to the Manhattan and Bronx crews who had historically controlled the family for decades. In the early 1990s, several Amuso/Casso loyalists, including George Zappola and Frank "Spaghetti Man" Gioia, Jr. hatched a plot to kill Crea, and take over the family.They planned to lure Crea to a sitdown and then murder him. However, the plot fell through after Zapolla, Gioia, and the rest of Amuso/Casso regime were indicted and imprisoned.
From 1997 through 1999, Crea served as the head of the "Lucchese Construction Group", which also included Lucchese capos Dominic Truscello, head of the Prince Street Crew, and Joseph Tangorra, head of a Brooklyn crew. The Construction Group brokered the bribe payments and the "mob tax" payments to be received from contractors, and settled disputes over who would dominate a particular construction site. Also, the mobsters were placed on the company payroll so they could report legitimate taxable income to the IRS. During its existence, the Construction Group controlled over $40 million dollars in construction contracts, increasing overall construction costs by 5%.
In 1998, after acting Lucchese boss Joseph DeFede was indicted on labor racketeering and extortion charges, Crea became the family's new acting boss.On September 6, 2000, Crea and other members of the Lucchese Construction Group were indicted in New York on state enterprise corruption, labor racketeering, extortion, and bid-rigging charges.The District Attorney charged that these schemes had systematically siphoned off millions of dollars from both public and private construction projects. Specifically, Crea used mob associates to extort building contractors who wished to receive rights to no-bid jobs or who wanted to reduce the number of union members on their payrolls.Truscello, Tangorra, and other family members went to prison. Tangorra suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually took a 16-year prison sentence deal. In 2006, Crea pleaded guilty to lesser state charges and was sentenced to prison for two to six years.
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