March 21, 2019

At 76 years old, most people Andy Russo’s age would be thinking about retiring. Maybe settling down, moving to Florida. Andy could definitely had done so if he wanted. The money was there; Andy had been a wildly successful entrepreneur during his lifetime, and continued to hold silent partnerships in area bars and restaurants. If he wanted, Andy could sell his plush, five-acre Old Brookville mansion, and live out the rest of his years in the Sunshine State.

But retirement was the last thing on his mind. In fact, in 2010, at 76, Andy had just accepted a promotion as the "street boss" of the Colombo crime family, one of New York’s most violent and turbulent Mafia organizations. He had been waiting fifteen long years for a chance to take the helm once again. Back in the 1990s, he helped bring the family back together after a devastating civil war, but the FBI put the kibosh on that when they arrested him in 1996, claiming that he muscled and strong-armed his way into illegally controlling Long Island’s garbage hauling industry.

After he went away, things started to fall apart once more. The FBI ensured that Andy never got to finish unifying the fractured Colombo family, and the distrust and dissent from the internecine civil war lingered. Fearing their own executions, mobsters agreed to cooperate with the FBI in exchange for a new life in the Witness Protection Program. The feds used their information to arrest more and more gangsters, many of whom also agreed to cooperate to spare themselves a lengthy jail sentence. The Colombo family’s stranglehold on New York’s labor unions started to diminish, as did their gambling, loansharking, and stock fraud operations.

So when Andy’s parole restrictions finally expired in March of 2010, he jumped at the chance to take over once again. Using his son, Billy, as his right-hand-man, Andy traveled far and wide across New York to rebuild the weakened organization. For him, the Mafia - "Cosa Nostra" - was sacred. He had more than enough money, but that wasn’t the point. In one conversation picked up by an FBI microphone, Andy voiced his diehard mindset to a peer, a 72-year-old lieutenant known as "Paulie Guns" Bevacqua. Andy told him; "I can’t walk away… I can’t rest," referring to his lifelong pledge of loyalty to the Colombo crime family.

Andy Mush - The Silent Fixer Behind Carmine "Junior" Persico.

Andrew 'Andy Mush' Russo, born in 1934/5 can thank his fast ascension in the Colombo family's ranks due to his first cousin, Carmine 'Junior' Persico, born in 1933. Persico shot up the mob chain-of-command after "making his bones" in the storied hit of Gambino boss Albert Anastasia, who was gunned down by a five-man hit team in a barbershop in 1957. When his capo and mentor Frank 'Frankie Shots' Abbatemarco was murdered in 1959, Persico and the equally-young Gallo brothers revolted against their family leadership. But Persico double-crossed his peers and was rewarded handsomely for it. By 1963, 30-year-old Carmine was a powerful capo, but he couldn't promote his cousin Andy Russo for induction into the family. This was because the head of the Mafia's ruling body, the Commission, had put an extended hold on new making ceremonies. Carlo Gambino felt that law enforcement pressure was getting out of hand, and a temporary halt on inducting new members until the heat died down. So, through the 1960s and 1970s, Andy Mush would establish valuable rackets in both Brooklyn and Long Island, including a "wide-ranging" loansharking ring that began in 1968, and under-the-table control over both Brooklyn and Long Island garbage-carting companies. Russo was a bonafide earner, owning a plush five-acre, $250,000 estate in the Long Island township of Old Brookville, not far from where the town's mayor resided. On paper, Russo's income came as the owner of the Valley Stream-based A&S Trucking Company. On September 12, 1973, ex-con Dominic Cavalieri, another figure in the trucking industry, was found dead at 8:40AM, his corpse riddled with point-blank bullets in his left abdomen, left shoulder, neck, and head. Cavalieri's body was found in farmland just across from Russo's estate, and he was a lead suspect in his disappearance, although the case is still cold.

After twenty years, the books were finally reopened, and the first induction ceremonies began taking place in the early months of 1976. Andrew Russo was one of the first in line and was most likely inducted during these early months. Since Carmine Persico was five years into a fourteen-year stretch for hijacking, the imprisoned boss quickly put his cousin in charge of some of his rackets. Russo began brushing shoulders with influential mob bosses from around the country as a representative of Persico's. One meeting was described by James 'Jimmy the Weasel' Frattiano, the former boss of the Los Angeles Mafia, at Russo's 1985 trial. According to Frattiano, a dinner gathering of gangsters from around the country took place at the Rainbow Room in the RCA Building after a Frank Sinatra concert. Russo, a "made guy" according to Frattiano, was introduced to him by Colombo acting boss Tommy DiBella and captain Gennaro 'Gerry Lang' Langella. Legendary Pennsylvania Mafia boss Russell 'Russ' Bufalino, whose impressive career feats include allegedly running New York's Genovese crime family as well as his own for a brief time, apparently discussed who Carmine Persico, Tommy DiBella, Langella, and Russo were in the crime family. Bufalino had good reason to consider who Andy Mush was. In 1992, The Morning Call reported that former capo Michael Franzese, who left "the life" in the late 1980s without having to testify against any of his mob cohorts, accompanied Andrew Russo to Allentown, Pennsylvania in "around 1975" to meet with Russell Bufalino and a handful of his Borgata's soldiers. "Russo was seeking approval to do business in Bufalino's Poconos territory, Franzese said," according to the article.

The year after his induction, Russo was a family captain and was in direct contact with his imprisoned cousin. This was a comfortable position for Russo to hold since Persico was being viewed on the streets as the family's next boss, who would assume the mantle from interim regent Tommy DiBella upon his scheduled release in 1979. Wanting to speed up the process, Russo began making moves to see Persico released from prison earlier than that and he got into contact with a Long Island restaurateur who promised he could help. Victor Puglisi knew a corrupt IRS agent named Richard Annicharico and served as a middleman between the mobster and the tax agent. Starting in the summer of 1977, Puglisi began paying bribes to Annicharico to have Carmine Persico brought up from the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta back to the Brooklyn Correctional Center. Puglisi never mentioned Russo by name, referring to him by the mysterious moniker "fat man" or, on occasion, "Mr. X." Unfortunately, Annicharico was a double agent conducting a sting operation to snare the mobsters on bribery charges. FBI agents watched as Puglisi would meet with Andy Mush in restaurants and bars across Brooklyn, then use a pay-phone to tell the double agent that he'd just arranged bribes with "the fat man." On November 29, 1979, Puglisi announced to Annicharico that "the fat man" was comping a trip to Las Vegas, and IRS & FBI agents later observed the two Long Island mobsters partying up at the Dunes Hotel and Caesar's Palace.

Puglisi, Russo, and a slew of other wiseguys were traveling down to Vegas to watch the middleweight championship bout between Vito Antuofermo and 'Marvelous' Marvin Hagler. As it so happens, Antuofermo was allegedly "owned" by Andrew Russo, who made a fortune by betting on fixed matches. This exciting foray into the boxing world was revealed through the testimony of Michael Franzese in August 1992, although Russo was never charged with any crimes. "Myself and other family members were often told in advance what the outcome would be of many of Antuofermo's fights," Franzese, the son of infamous family underboss John 'Sonny' Franzese, said. "This enabled us to bet successfully on those bouts. On occasion, I was present at Monte's Restaurant in Brooklyn when Russo would meet with other managers and fight promoters regarding Antuofermo's opponents. The bouts would be arranged, and certain family members would be assured of their outcomes." But not every match was fixed, he said. "When it came time for Vito to fight Marvelous Marvin Hagler for their first title bout in Las Vegas (in November 1979), we were told that the outcome was not predetermined and that we were on our own with regard to any bets we might place."Soon enough, the IRS agent became useful in other Colombo family business. As part of the undercover investigation, Annicharico killed the income tax prosecutions of Russo and fellow mobsters Dominic Cataldo and Charles Panarella. Annicharico blocked the probe of the return of longshoremen's union boss, Anthony Scotto, as enlisted by Russo. When Andy Mush's attorney, Marc Rosenberg, got in trouble for lying in court about the ownership of Russo's, Annicharico lent his services once more. Russo even gave the undercover agents a glimpse into his illicit garbage hauling empire when he enlisted Annicharico to eliminate any back income liability for Stephen LoMangino, 70, and his company Adak Carting Inc. Russo even tried to solicit the agent's services to get his nephew Joseph Giordano out of trouble in a drug-dealing case, according to Annicharico's testimony in 1985.

In February 1980, the investigation basically died off. Carmine Persico had been paroled the month earlier, but he soon realized he would be going back to prison. Somehow, the mobsters found out that Annicharico was an undercover agent. Puglisi was deemed responsible for the enormous foul-up, and sometime in mid-1980, he went missing. His body would never be found again. On November 7, the indictment was finally unsealed, but the probation-bound Carmine Persico was the only person arrested. Andy Russo and Hugh 'Apples' McIntosh were on the run, and Puglisi - who had also been indicted - was sleeping with the fishes. The taped conversations that Annicharico had recorded revealed that the Long Island restaurateur had also been over-billing Russo & Carmine; "Three for you, two for me," Puglisi said after giving Annicharico the $3000 bribe, of which he had charged Russo $5000. On July 14, 1981, Greg Scarpa Sr., a high-ranking Colombo soldier and secret informer for the FBI, told his handler that whilst on the lam, Andy Russo had appointed Anthony 'Chucky' Russo to "(maintain) his illegal activities and interests in the New York area... noting that Chuckie Russo has frequent contact with Andrew Russo." Chucky was the nephew of Andrew. On November 18, 1981, Andy finally strode into court just as federal authorities began to speculate he had been whacked, according to an article from the Ithaca Journal. Facing 26 counts of bribery, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, he was released on a $200,000 bond as the government continued to search for McIntosh, who himself surrendered on July 8, 1982. By this point, Russo and Persico had both arranged plea deals, and the pair received five years in prison. Plea deals weren't standard for mobsters in these days, but the sweet deals ensured Persico and Russo were both out within two or three years, whereas they had previously faced 15. What the cousins had not anticipated what the government's next move. Even before their exits from prison, the FBI and federal prosecutors were closing in on two racketeering conspiracies: the Colombo crime family, and the ruling Commission of the mob. As was mentioned before, Puglisi was probably murdered for accidentally bringing in an undercover IRS agent into the mob. However, on March 9, 1982, Greg Scarpa Sr. reported that Andrew Russo "was recently broken of his rank because of taking money in a bribery matter. He noted that James Angelina is the acting capo of that crew and probably will become the permanent captain." On May 4, Scarpa went back on his previous statement and "advised that Andrew Russo has retained his position as capo in the Colombo family, although not on firm ground as a result of the pending IRS case against him and the fact that he took money away from other members of the Colombo family in an unauthorized way."