The
Huck Finn on Morris Avenue in Union is an unremarkable, typical Jersey
diner, where the usual three-egg omelets and burgers share the menu with
Greek salads, tuna sandwiches and, of course, meatloaf.
But it has a more notorious claim to fame. In November 2005,
authorities made a gruesome discovery in the trunk of a silver Acura
that had sat undisturbed for weeks in the back of the diner’s big
parking lot.
Alerted by a foul odor and the swarming of flies around the car,
police found the decomposing body of Lawrence Ricci—an alleged Genovese
crime family capo with hooks into the waterfront, who had disappeared
weeks earlier in the midst of his own racketeering trial.
Face down with a grey sweatshirt over his head, somebody had put a bullet in his brain.
Lawrence Ricci
Connections with organized crime
The
death of Ricci marked the last known mob hit tied to the waterfront, say
investigators, and the murder has never been solved.
But more than a decade later, law enforcement officials say organized crime still stalks the docks.
Since January 2017, records show at least 10 dockworkers have had
their registrations revoked, or had their applications denied by the
Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor because of friendships or
associations with those deemed to have organized crime connections.
Another four applications for registration were withdrawn or
surrendered without an administrative hearing, and one individual
seeking a restoration of his registration was denied.
Among those cases included a $350,000-a-year longshoreman barred over
his alleged friendship with an admitted loan shark who authorities say
was connected to a Colombo crime family bribery scheme involving debris
removal from the World Trade Center site.
Just last month, another longshoreman who supervised the delivery and
maintenance of refrigerated containers was banned from the port by the
Waterfront Commission, citing his alleged ties to Pasquale “Patty”
Falcetti, Sr., a reputed member of the Genovese crime family.
Falcetti was convicted of defrauding the employee pension and welfare
fund for longshoremen, noted the commission, which also concluded that
the banned supervisor had a friendship with Andrew Gigante, the son of
the late crime boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante.
Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's 1954 film
On the Waterfront.
The influence remains
The movie classic On the Waterfront
told a story of crime and corruption on the docks of New York and New
Jersey. It followed a series of Pulitzer Prize winning stories by
reporter Malcolm Johnson in The New York Sun that exposed the
racketeering and violence endemic on the piers, and led to major reforms
aimed at ridding the port of mob influence.
More than 60 years later, Jan Gilhooly, a former special agent in
charge of the Secret Service in New Jersey who served on the Waterfront
Commission of New York Harbor, said the mob’s influence remains, despite
a litany of criminal cases in recent years.
“The port is a perfect setting for organized crime and it always has been,” said Gilhooly. “There’s so much money involved.”
He added the influence remains even after prosecutors make arrests.
“That’s the way organized crime works. One part goes away, and another tentacle takes its place,” he said.
A man identified by law enforcement officials
as Stephen Depiro leaves the federal courthouse in Newark in 2011,
after at least 15 people were arrested in New Jersey in connection with a
waterfront corruption scheme involving the collection of "Christmas
tribute" money exacted from dockworkers.
Kickbacks and racketeering
According
to court filings, Ricci had reported to the late New Jersey mobster
Tino Fiumara, a feared Genovese member with a ruthless reputation, who
had long controlled the rackets on the waterfront. After Ricci turned up
dead, he was replaced by Stephen Depiro, said the FBI in a 2010
affidavit.
The affidavit said Depiro “took over handling for Fiumara and the Genovese crime family extortion payments at Christmas from port union members,
loansharking at the ports, illegal gambling at the ports, kickbacks for
giving union-related jobs to individuals, and kickbacks from vendors
for favorable treatment by port unions.”
Depiro ultimately pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges for
his role in a decades-long scheme to extort Christmastime tribute
payments from ILA members. He was charged with taking a cut out of the
annual year-end bonuses longshoremen receive based on the number of
containers moved through the Port of New York and New Jersey, and
sentenced in 2015 to three years in prison.
But his arrest and conviction did not represent a knockout blow to
the mob on the waterfront, said former U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, whose
office prosecuted Depiro and two others tied to the shakedown scheme.
“You always hope that every case makes an incremental improvement,
but guys like that don’t get wiped out in a day,” said Fishman, who said
he believes organized crime still wields “considerable influence” at
the port.
Nighttime on the waterfront.
Whack-a-Mole...
A
similar assessment came from Robert Stewart, former head of the federal
Organized Crime Strike Force in New Jersey, who traces the entrenchment
of organized crime at the port to the 1940s, first with the Irish gangs
and then with the Mafia.
The operations at the port are less violent, and far more lucrative, and it has only gotten more sophisticated, he said.
“You’re not seeing anything. There’s no bodies. But that suggests a higher level of ability to work,” observed Stewart.
Tossing down a series of dossiers one-by-one onto a table as he read
the names of close relatives of known organized crime figures with
high-paying port jobs, Walter Arsenault, the executive director of the
Waterfront Commission, asserted that “the mob is very much a presence at
the port.”
At a hearing before a New York legislative committee in June,
Arsenault volunteered a 15-page list of ‘made’ men from the seven Mafia
families in New York and New Jersey, who he said all had relatives at
the port. “You can't throw a stone at the port without hitting the son,
the daughter, the son-in-law, the nephew, the cousin, the godson of a
‘made’ guy,” he told the committee.
Whenever someone is removed for having mob ties, he complained the
spot is immediately filled by another family member. “It’s like
Whack-a-Mole,” he said, the arcade game that players seldom beat.
https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/at_jerseys_ports_the_shadow_of_the_mob_never_goes.html#incart_2box_nj-homepage-featured
0 comments:
Post a Comment