Joint raids in Italy and USA bust 19 mobsters

Joint raids in Italy and USA bust 19 mobsters

  July 17, 2019    Dapper_Don

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New York’s Gambino crime family and its cronies in the Italian Mafia got slammed during a series of coordinated, international police raids that were triggered by a trans-Atlantic WhatsApp message.
Italian authorities on Wednesday announced the arrests of 18 reputed mobsters, some of whom were paraded in handcuffs through the streets of Palermo, Sicily, by state police and FBI agents.
A 19th suspect was also being sought in the US, and law-enforcement officials searched the homes of reputed gangsters on Staten Island and in Philadelphia, an FBI spokeswoman said.
The crackdown capped a joint investigation — dubbed “New Connection” — that the feds and Italian state police conducted into ties between the Gambinos and Sicily’s Inzerillo crime family.
The probe uncovered a “strong bond established between Cosa Nostra Palermo and US organized crime,” according to Italian police.
Law-enforcement officials made their moves simultaneously at 3 a.m. in Italy and 9 p.m. Tuesday in the New York region, based on a message sent via the WhatsApp messaging service, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper said.
The app is not only free to use, but also allows communications between American and European cellphones that employ different wireless technologies.
The mob roundup “will definitely have effects in New York City and 18th Avenue in Brooklyn,” where the Gambinos maintain their base of operations, a law-enforcement source told The Post.
“The Sicilians have become the power in the Gambino crime family since John Gotti went away,” the source said, referring to the “Dapper Don” who died in prison in 2002.
“They are the money earners and the enforcers in the family.”
Among those busted was Thomas Gambino, 47, who’s suspected of holding a key position in the Gambino family, CBS News reported.
Italian police said Gambino was caught on video while meeting with ranking members of the Inzerillo clan on a speedboat off the coast of Palermo last summer.
The group was allegedly discussing the sale of property formerly owned by then-Gambino boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, according to the BBC.
The Sicilian-born Cali married into the Inzerillo family, which fled Italy following a bloody, early 1980s war with the rival Corleonesi faction, but has been making a comeback since the 2017 death of Sicilian mob boss Salvatore “Toto” Riina, also known as “The Beast.”
Cali, 53, was gunned down outside his Staten Island home in March in a killing allegedly committed by construction worker Anthony Comello, 24.
Cali’s killing hasn’t been tied to his role in the mob, with law-enforcement sources instead saying that Comello — whose lawyer plans to mount an insanity defense — may have been seeking revenge against Cali for ordering his niece not to date Comello.
Others arrested include Salvatore Gambino, the mayor of Toretta, a small town outside Palermo, and Rosario “Sal” Gambino, a former New Jersey resident who was deported to his native Italy following his conviction for heroin trafficking.

https://nypost.com/2019/07/17/italian-cops-and-fbi-agents-bust-19-mafia-suspects-in-joint-raids/