February 6, 2020

This article is based on various court documents and federal indictments relating to the October 2019 indictment of Joseph Amato and nineteen others, and was the result of a nine-month FBI investigation involving wiretaps and physical surveillance. Please note that as of this article’s publication, the defendants have not yet been found guilty of any crimes in the indictment.

The Godfather of Staten Island (Part Two)

Judging from court documents, Joseph Amato Jr. considered himself a pretty successful hustler in his own right. Whereas his dad lived comfortably off bread-and-butter loansharking and bookmaking, Amato Jr. was branching out into all sorts of avenues from his Staten Island gangland connections when he wasn't settling scores for his father. The FBI discovered the first of these side businesses when they knuckled down with their investigation in late 2018. On federal wiretaps, they overheard Amato Jr. discussing the planned fix of an NCAA college basketball game with an unlikely partner-in-crime, 24-year-old Benjamin Bifalco. The pair knew each other from back in high school, sources said, and they kept in touch despite taking drastically different routes in their life.

Amato Jr., as we know, followed in his father's footsteps as an arrogant Staten Island Mafia prince. Bifalco, on the other hand, graduated from Wagner College and became an aide to state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis. It seems his college connections put him in contact with an NCAA Division 1 basketball team, whose exact name has been withheld in court papers but can probably be deduced using the dates in the indictment, and public information about Bifalco. In their first chat over the phone, Benjamin laid out to Amato Jr. his plan to "pay thousands of dollars" to players of this mysterious college basketball team to intentionally lose an upcoming game by the desired point spread.

But for all of Bifalco's political and educational achievements, he was no mobster. It was his cluelessness and Amato Jr.'s carelessness that allowed FBI investigators to receive the full decoded details about the upcoming game. First, Bifalco asked Junior if he could "talk about this over the phone." That should've reminded Amato Jr. of his responsibility to avoid such a discussion. But instead, he sarcastically replied;
"I mean, why not? You talk about everything else on the fucking phone, and you're an idiot!"

In a chat between two more intelligent mobsters, that comment would have led to the two organizing an in-person meeting. But instead, the pair continued to chat away about the match, even after Amato Jr. had chided Bifalco for doing exactly that! Amato Jr. must have gone pretty red in the face reading back his own words in court papers the next year.

The talks about the basketball game went on for a few days, and Amato Jr. started spreading the word that an upcoming college match was in his pocket. If his pal Ben was correct, Junior could be in for a lot of money. But the fix never transpired. Perhaps the FBI contacted the crooked team members whom Bifalco had bragged were in his pocket, and the bribe was shut down there. Whatever the case, Amato Jr. only found out that the scheme had fallen apart mere hours before the game commenced.

"Ok I wouldn't trust the game I was telling u about(.)" That was the first text that Amato Jr. sent to his father’s right-hand-man, Thomas "the Plumber" Scorcia.
"I'm not touching it personally(.)" Junior followed up. It's unknown whether or not Scorcia got the memo in time.

Bifalco's team was supposed to lose the match by a specific point spread. Instead, according to court papers, they actually beat their opponents and won the game outright. It turns out that Junior and Scorcia’s love of gambling was shared by the entire crew, and some of them weren’t so lucky. One of these associates was referred to in court papers as "John Doe" or Amato Jr.'s "Friend." He was not accused of any wrongdoing by Brooklyn prosecutors, but it was allegedly John Doe’s gambling problem that led the FBI to another crime group - a small, family-run outfit of bookmakers, referred to in court papers as the "Bosco organization."

By "family-run," I don't mean in a crime family sense. According to a separate indictment, the Bosco organization was actually run by a father and his son; Joseph "Rocky" Bosco, 55, and Nicholas "Nicky" Bosco, 30. For muscle, they employed Rocky's nephew (and Nicky's first cousin) Anthony Bosco, 26, who was described as a "wannabe mobster" tasked with collecting outstanding debts.

The only problem for the Boscos is that they had no real organized crime backing. On the one hand, that meant they weren't beholden to anybody, and they didn't have to kick up a tribute or pay Mafia taxes. On the other, it also gave them no protection against people like John Doe, who had no intention of paying the unspecified debt (FBI agents never learned the exact figure, or they at least decided not to include it in court papers). Naturally, the Boscos dealt with delinquent customers the same way most bookmakers do: threats, beatings, and harassment. But John Doe had a connection that the Boscos didn't, as Doe was best pals with Joey Amato Jr., the son of the leading Colombo family figure on Staten Island.

Initially, Nicky Bosco sent his cousin Anthony to collect the debt. That was a futile endeavor. As much as Anthony liked to play tough, he wasn't all that efficient at carrying it out. Between November 2018 and January 2019, his pathetic means of coercion were only to send "numerous text messages" to John Doe, according to court papers.

Anthony was no help, so Nicky had to take things into his own hands. The pair grew up in the same neighborhood, according to sources close to the case, and Nicky knew that John Doe was still living with his mom in Staten Island. He went to Doe's childhood home on November 29, with no backup or weapons, to talk some sense into his boyhood acquaintance.

But as Nicky started scoping out the house, he confronted somebody who might have been even scarier than John Doe's Colombo connections. It was Doe's ornery old mother that shooed the bookmaker off her property, according to a retelling of events caught over the phone by Amato Jr. to his father. FBI agents caught this conversation at 4:18 PM, on November 30, 2018:

JUNIOR: I forgot to tell you, um, remember that situation with Nick Bosco?
SENIOR: Yeah.
JUNIOR: I went to my friend (John Doe)'s house yesterday, his mother is very nervous and concerned about her son. And uh, she's a good woman, she's like, you know, she's cool like us, whatever.
SENIOR: Yeah.
JUNIOR: And she just wants to make sure, like, you know, her son's gonna be okay and stuff, you know, I promised her he's gonna be alright, whatever, you know, don't worry about it, this and that.
SENIOR: Yeah.
JUNIOR: And then, you know, they're talking to him today, the kid Nick's talking all crazy, reckless, this that and then he went to his house last night, knocked on the door, and, uh, his mother opened the window, said "What do you want," he's like, "Oh," he's like, "Where's your son? I need to speak to your son." She's like, "Oh, you're not speaking to my son," this that, "You were told what it is," and then, the kid's like "Nah nah, sorry about that," and she's like, "I know exactly what it's about, get out of here." She's like, he's like, "That's fine, 'cause your son's gonna get hurt."
SENIOR: Oh yeah?
JUNIOR: And then, and then, today, they're going back and forth with it, and now today he's like, "Yeah," he's like, "The way I was taught is, you know, things like this happen, people get hurt."
SENIOR: "Let me call you back, please, because I just might as well just go turn myself in, alright?"

When all else failed, Nicky went to his father. At 55, Joseph "Rocky" Bosco was unequivocally old-school and had navigated Staten Island's sports betting field for years. He wanted to get to the bottom of whether John Doe had any organized crime protection and, if so, reach out and conduct an old-fashioned sit-down to discuss payment plans. Rocky asked him flat-out if he wanted to "sit down" with somebody on December 7, 2018, and Doe relayed this information to Joey Amato Jr. later that day, in a call recorded by the FBI.
JUNIOR: What's going on?
DOE: Nothing. Yo, I just got a phone call from that guy Rocky.
JUNIOR: Yeah, what happened?
DOE: He's like, freaking out on the phone saying like if a you better pay this kid. I'll come to your house ba ba ba he's like, he's like 'If you want to sit down with somebody get them today,' I didn't know what to say on the phone, I was like 'I got to call somebody. I'll call you back.'

Rocky was putting John Doe to the test, to see if his professed ties to organized crime held any water. Sit-downs are a formal Mafia meeting where grievances are aired before made guys, who then issue a courthouse-style judgment. The challenge was also a bit of a bluff from Rocky, as well, since he had no Mafia reinforcement of his own. Rocky would be lucky to even sit down with Joey Amato, let alone negotiate a fair deal for himself.

Amato Jr. was equally well-versed on mob-speak, and gave Doe instructions on what to say;
JUNIOR: No, just tell him, 'My friend is Joe A,' tell him to reach out to Joey A, tell him that. Call him back right now, call him back.
DOE: Tell him to get in touch with Joey A?
JUNIOR: My friend is Joey A, get in touch with him. Just have him get in touch with him.
DOE: Alright, just say that?
JUNIOR: Keep it nice and short and call me right back, because I'm going to meet him right now anyway.
DOE: You are going to meet your dad?
JUNIOR: Yeah, so go do this now.
DOE: Alright, so I'll call him and say 'Get in touch with my friend Joey A? Big Joey A?
JUNIOR: Yeah, Joey A Sr.
DOE: Alright, alright.
JUNIOR: Alright, bye.

John Doe did as Amato Jr. instructed, and immediately called him back when he was done.
JUNIOR: Yeah, the guy's gonna get in touch with him. Bosco has been calling me like crazy, he wants to see me when I get home. He's like, panicking.
DOE: Who, Anthony?
JUNIOR: Yeah.
DOE: No way.
JUNIOR: Yeah.
DOE: Wait, so did the guy get in touch with your dad?
JUNIOR: He will eventually. He's gonna-
DOE: Okay, when I said to him that he’s like, “Yeah, no problem, I know him no problem.”
JUNIOR: As far as anything goes, you personally went to go speak to him. Not me doing it for you. You know what I mean?
DOE: Yeah, they will understand that 'cause they know you and me are close. He knows that obviously-
JUNIOR: If anyone asks you, yesterday you called him to speak to him.
DOE: Alright. Anthony's been calling you to meet up with you?
JUNIOR: Just remember what's happening to you, bro.
DOE: I know, buddy.
JUNIOR: I'm looking out with this shit.
DOE: Yea, I know how much you love me.
JUNIOR: I wouldn't be doing this if you were some fucking stranger, bro.

By that point, it looked like Junior was getting impatient with Doe, and was quick to remind him how much he was putting himself on the line. But Junior didn't end up calling Bosco that day; exactly "why" he didn't was explained to Doe over the phone, but wasn't intelligible to the FBI investigators listening in on the call.
DOE: You speak to fucking Anthony?
JUNIOR: Nah, I didn't call him.
DOE: What?
JUNIOR: I didn't call him 'cause (unintelligible).
DOE: Okay, yeah, I don't even know why he's trying to get involved.
JUNIOR: (Unintelligible)
DOE: What's up?
JUNIOR: (Unintelligible) 'cause he's a fucking fag. I don't give a fuck less.
DOE: Yeah, I don't know. He tries to be a wanna-be mobster. I don't know what the fuck's wrong with that kid.
JUNIOR: (Unintelligible) fucking fag.

A few weeks of quiet went by, as Rocky tried to speed up the slow bureaucracy of the mob and eventually hold a meeting the Colombo captain. It took almost a fortnight for that to happen but, when it did, he was pleasantly surprised with the result. Joey had apparently forgotten about his son's request to stand up for his friend, and the elder Amato gave Rocky the green light to do whatever he needed to collect the money. When word of that got back to Doe, he immediately called Junior with the bad news. Doe stated that he had "just got a call from Nicky's dad," who said that "he sat down with Joe Senior and he said he doesn't want anything to do with it, and he's gotta meet me direct for the full payment." According to Doe, Rocky’s exact words were;
"If I don't get it Sunday, you're really going to disrespect me, and I'll do what I have to do."

Amato Jr. didn't discuss the matter further with his father over the phone, so the FBI isn't sure what transpired over the next few weeks. Whatever the case, Rocky felt he had been given a pass to collect his money from Doe, by any means necessary. The harassment and threats continued, but the debtor didn’t budge, and Junior went back to his father to remind him of his obligation to protect Doe. Perhaps out of embarrassment, Amato Sr. took the matter into his own hands. He could've simply called Rocky to backtrack on his earlier green light, but Senior wanted to send them a message. John Doe was ordered by Amato to arrange a sit-down with the Boscos under the auspices that he was going to repay the debt in full. That meeting occurred on January 5 and was the subject of a lot of wiretapped chatter between the participants.

When the Boscos - Rocky, Nicky and Anthony - arrived, they had dollar signs in their eyes. Those dollar signs disappeared as soon as a pack of Colombo members and associates encircled them. Danny Capaldo and Tommy Scorcia, both violent Colombo soldiers, explained that the money owed to them was gone, and they were never getting it back. John Doe was off-limits, and unless Rocky Bosco knew a wiseguy on Staten Island as important as Joey Amato, there was nothing he could do.

The FBI wasn't there to watch it unfold, but that didn't matter. They had an eye-witness account that filled them in on the details - Joseph Amato Jr. himself. Hours after the meeting, Junior gave a call to his father. The ensuing conversation is how the FBI learned that the months-long dispute with the Boscos had been swiftly put to bed.
"They got here they thought they were cowboys and the second (unintelligible) got there they were like church mice. … The second when they got here, you know they thought they were nuts, and then we popped out they were like church mice tails between their legs, ‘Okay no problem, no problem.’"
Like clockwork, Junior then made a few follow-up phone calls to his pals to shamelessly brag about what just went down. In one text to Tommy Scorcia, Amato Jr. wrote;
How embarrassing to get abused like that infront of infront of your son that was great.
Scorcia replied; His son would have got knocked the f*** out
Amato Jr.: Forget it! They knew it would be bad if they got stupid I wish he would have said something.
Scorcia: Trust me me too but he was not a butt sorry and apologetic but I just couldn't slap them but I almost seen black and I was just for the fun of It
Amato Jr.: Extremely apologetic and polite as can be lol

Tommy Scorcia was 27 years older than Amato Jr., but he shared the same naivety. At 53 years old, he hadn't had any run-ins with the law, and he was slowly able to carve out a chunk of loansharking territory in Brooklyn, using his successful plumbing business as a cover. That probably made him equally as ignorant as Junior when it came to law enforcement. Not only did Scorcia talk openly on the phone, but he blatantly discussed his crimes in text messages too. From his cell in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, I'd figure he's probably getting a bit of grief by his co-defendants for the damage caused by his loose lips.

Scorcia was a crude-talking bruiser at heart, but he had a knack for business too. His loansharking empire made him comfortably rich and provided plenty of work for the ambitious young associates around Joseph Amato Jr., like Bugz Silvestro and John Cahill. When the elder Amato's right-hand-man, John Cerbone, was sent to prison for drug-dealing in 2015, Scorcia soon became the captain's new number two, and his biggest earner. After a few years, Amato promoted him for induction into the crime family, despite the associate having yet to serve a day behind bars.

It might sound contradictory, but mobsters in the Colombo family view prison as a badge of honor. For most Americans, criminal or otherwise, prison is a sign of a failure in the long-running cat-and-mouse game with the cops. But the Colombos have a different experience with penitentiaries. For starters, their boss, Junior Persico, was behind bars from 1986 until his death in 2019. His son and heir, Allie, has been running the family's day-to-day since 2001, all from the comfort of a cell in McKean, Pennsylvania. Even at a street level, a prison stretch is a bragging right. A mobster getting arrested and convicted is almost a guaranteed green light that he's not a rat or an undercover cop. In 2010, two Colombo wiseguys were discussing the controversial topic of whether or not a prison sentence should be mandatory for new members.
"Well, they… you know, everybody should go for at least three years… Go sit, go learn your manners. Go learn your manners. Teach you a lot," said Reynold Maragni, a captain from Florida who, ironically, ended up becoming a government witness after he was indicted in 2011.

For one reason or another, Joey Amato, who knew prison all too well, decided to skip that unspoken prerequisite when he proposed Tommy Scorcia for induction. According to the FBI, Amato was planning the ceremony as early as October of 2018, three months before. The feds might not have known what he was talking about at the time, but they logged down an exchange between Amato and Michael "Mikey Red" Nobile that month. According to court papers, Amato "called CC1 and told him that he could not say no to Amato's invitation to meet him because 'you never know what I mean(,)' a reference to the fact that their next meeting could be his induction in the crime family."

Mikey Red finally "received that call on or about December 10, 2018," according to court papers.
"You still (unintelligible) about that job interview tomorrow, right?" asked Joseph Amato on the other line. Nobile agreed, and Amato continued, "… Yeah, okay, so meet me by (unintelligible) about nine… Alright, he told you what tools to bring and everything, right?... Alright, very good, we will look at it, and if it's good then, you know, we will go sign a contract, alright?"

It's unknown whether Amato's lawyers will take the stance that he was really putting Nobile up for a potential job offer, and it's unknown exactly how the FBI was able to crack the code. Perhaps it was the follow-up conversation later that night, in which Amato referred to the Mafia's Holy Grail film, The Godfather.
"You should go to bed early. Did you press your clothes?" asked Amato, sounding like a concerned mother.
"Yep," Mikey Red replied.
"You're gonna look like Barzini or what?" Amato asked, referring to the dapper-looking antagonist in The Godfather.
"Barzini…" Nobile chuckled.
"Barzini," Amato interrupted, "I'll see you by my mother's around 9."
"You got it."

It might have been at that stage that the FBI realized they weren't dealing with an innocuous job interview. The following day, they tailed Amato from his Colts Neck, New Jersey home to Brooklyn, where he met up with Mikey Red Nobile and Thomas the Plumber Scorcia. They converged at an old-world Italian café nestled in Gravesend, the Café di Giorno Espresso Bar. In court papers, prosecutors noted that "all of (them) were dressed nicely." After they enjoyed a quick espresso at the café, they headed over to an adjacent Italian bakery, Panini Perfetto, on 66 Avenue U. It was there, police say, where Scorcia and Nobile became the two newest additions to the Colombo crime family's ranks.

Nobile and Scorcia had just received the most coveted promotion most aspiring Italian gangsters in New York sought. That sort-of clout meant that Nobile could take on more lucrative assignments from the crime family, instead of his day-to-day debt collecting jobs. The upcoming ceremony meant a lot more for the other proposed member, however. By the time Thomas "The Plumber" Scorcia was inducted on December 11, 2018, he was in the middle of a months-long dispute with another area loanshark, and his elevation gave him the official power and status to stand up for himself.

Scorcia, for all his tough-talking, wasn't very intimidating when he stood next to the local neighborhood rival, a heavyset 29-year-old named Dominick "the Lion" Ricigliano. Scorcia had some muscle behind him, but at 52, he was in no shape to go head-on with Ricigliano, who didn't need any organized crime ties to assert his neighborhood authority. Scorcia based his operations from his waterfront South Slope offices in Brooklyn, but the Lion was coming into his own as a shylock and viewed that turf as his own. Court papers said that in 2017 he "assaulted Scorcia and vandalized his property." Back then, the Plumber was helpless to retaliate. He lacked the real organized crime pedigree to declare war, especially when nobody knew how much power Ricigliano had behind him. Maybe things would have been different if the Lion jumped Scorcia in Staten Island, Amato's turf, but in Brooklyn, it meant nothing. The Plumber didn't dish out any immediate revenge, giving Ricigliano the go-ahead to encroach onto his territory further.

The Lion subsequently contacted some of Scorcia's loansharking customers who he viewed as being in his "turf." He directed them to give their weekly vig to him, instead of Scorcia. If he wasn't feeling the sting from Ricigliano's beating, Thomas the Plumber must have felt the sting when his customers, who had been giving weekly cash payments "like clockwork," according to wiretaps, switched over to Ricigliano. Still, Scorcia wasn't in a position to retaliate - yet.

Ever since he filled the shoes as Joey Amato's right-hand man in 2015, Scorcia had been pushing to become an official member of the crime family. He was a great earner for Amato, and always on-call to do his dirty work, but Scorcia's status as a mere "associate" wasn't doing him any favors with Ricigliano. If the crime family admitted him into their ranks, he would have a legitimate claim to his small patch of loansharking domain, and the Joey Amato would be obliged to protect his financial stake. It’s why induction was at the forefront of Scorcia’s mind, and it's why that December 2018 day was so important.

Scorcia's excitement with his induction was evidenced in calls that he made with wiseguys and associates across the Island. A January 12 call he made to his captain Joey was one of those occasions where Amato, who tried to be as tight-lipped over the phone as he could, let his guard down as the inexperienced Scorcia started chatting about his crime family status. He was addressing an upcoming meeting he was having with a wiseguy from an unnamed borgata, referred to only by his surname.
"Yeah, I'm curious tonight with Fanucci," Scorcia commented. Amato didn't reply, and Scorcia sheepishly tried to probe into whether or not the other wiseguy would recognize his recent change in status.
"Yeah, well, you know, like I says, uh, he knows that you. You don't think he don't know? Of course, he knows."
"A hundred percent," Amato confidently replied. "I don't think he'll go there. He may give you a wink or something. You know what I mean?"

Those sorts of interactions were customary for new members, always eager to flaunt their status to their peers. After he had gotten used to his new position on the streets, Scorcia went to get even with his old nemesis 'The Lion.' The FBI promptly bugged his phone to get a front-row seat of the impending face-off. Tensions first started rising on January 30, after the Plumber directed some of his old loansharking customers - the ones who had been poached by Ricigliano - to resume making payments back to him. It's unknown if any of the customers knew about the dangerous struggle for control that was going on between the two loansharks, but it must have been pretty frightening. Gamblers and struggling debtors received threats of violence from either side, leaving them stuck in the middle. Luckily, Scorcia had a plan to fully snap up control of his customers and re-assert his dominance over South Slope.

After triumphantly telling his loansharking customers that he was back in charge, Scorcia convened a meeting with a fearsome Albanian gangster named Krenar Suka, 26, who was a friend of Amato Jr. Together, Scorcia and Suka made a plan to confront Dominick Ricigliano that night at the Woodrow Diner, where he was supposed to be collecting loansharking payments from his customers. Now, you'd think that most loansharks would opt to meet their customers in dimly-lit offices, social clubs, or seedy bars. But Ricigliano picked a different approach. The Woodrow Diner was in the heart of the Woodrow Shopping Plaza in Rossville, Staten Island, and was always busy. That made it hard for him to abuse his customers right there in the diner, but also made it equally hard for rivals like Scorcia to confront him in front of everyone.

Ricigliano was a lot more intelligent than Scorcia credited. At such a young age, he had conquered a prominent patch of loansharking territory from a well-established, Mafia-backed shylock, using nothing but raw intimidation. At the same time, Dominick the Lion was surprisingly low-key for such an ambitious neighborhood gangster, his unorthodox meetings with customers being just one example of that. He lived with his grandmother in a quiet Staten Island home, which was closer to his work than his mother’s house in Wantagh, Long Island. Ricigliano seldom left his comfortable stomping grounds, where he knew the terrain and could stay alert for industry foes. He knew the mob wouldn't risk such a public and brazen assault in a shopping plaza, especially not Thomas Scorcia, who had no prior criminal convictions. Ricigliano knew that Scorcia and the rest of the Colombos like to strike from behind, in the shadows. That's why he insulated himself in places like the Woodrow Diner.

When Scorcia and Suka arrived at the diner that night, they were appalled at how many people were around. It wasn't something they were anticipating, and it ruined their confrontation plan. Scorcia didn't want to bother his captain with such trivial information, but he had no idea what to do. Instead, he deferred to a kid 24 years his junior - Anthony "Bugz" Silvestro. As Scorcia panicked in the Woodrow Diner's parking lot, Silvestro calmed him down by offering some solutions.
"I would just wait for the kid to come out the place and grab him before he gets to the car," Bugz advised.
Krenar Suka, the Albanian, took the phone to stress the liveliness of the restaurant; "It's packed bro, there's so many cars there, there's so many people there. … Bro, I'm telling you, Tommy, tell him it's fucking slammed in there right now." Scorcia echoed, "Fucking packed, people walking out with fucking kids, and like (unintelligible) fucking (unintelligible)." Scorcia then lamented, "I'm fucking, I'm sick to my fucking stomach, I was just gonna walk right in there, but there's fucking people coming out with fucking families."

The conversation was among the many that crime family members like Thomas Scorcia had with Silvestro over the phone, where they turned to the young enforcer for advice. At only 28, Bugz was a rising star in the Colombo family, on-record directly with Joseph Amato Sr., and best friends with the captain’s son. When compared to guys like Amato Jr., Bugz was relatively low-key, and he commanded a lot more respect than the other mob associates in his age bracket. He was a good "fixer" in organized crime terms, which helps explain why a 52-year-old Colombo inductee like Thomas Scorcia was phoning him for guidance.

Bugz was well on his way to being inducted himself, and he knew it. He leaped at every chance he got to help out Joey Amato Sr., and ingratiate himself with high-profile bigwigs in the family. In court papers, prosecutors described one weeknight where Amato Jr. asked Bugz to accompany him and his father to Manhattan. The elder Amato was having a sit-down with other made guys, and he wanted his son to drive him and wait around for the meeting to finish.
"Tomorrow night, I gotta fucking drive to the city," Amato Jr. declared, "And, fuckin'… and I don't know how long I'll be waiting around for in the city, and I wanted to see if you wanted to come with me while I wait."
"What do you have to do out there?" Silvestro replied.
"I don't got to do shit. I just gotta drop someone somewhere and wait."
"What part?"
"I don't know."
Silvestro didn't hesitate before accepting the job: "Yeah, I'll be in the city 100%. What time you gonna come there, though?"
"I don't know. I find it all out last-minute type of shit."
"Yeah 'cause you could get a parking spot out there too," Silvestro noted.
"He (referring to his father, Amato) asked if I wanted to bring someone, and I wanted to bring you. Bring someone to keep me company."
Court papers concluded that the elder Amato found another driver, and Junior and Bugz weren't needed. But prosecutors noted what the phone call represented; "Amato Jr. and Silvestro's willingness to drive Amato and then wait for several hours speaks to their association with the crime family and willingness to further its goals," they wrote.

Anyways, back to the Woodrow Diner parking lot on the evening of January 30, Scorcia and Suka were still freaking out about their long-awaited showdown with the Lion. Scorcia, appalled at the number of potential witnesses around the plaza, started offering alternative plans to get to Ricigliano.
"Horrible, he's gonna have to fucking text him, because he text him and say 'Hey, I want to meet you we're gonna do something here and there or whatever' and bingo (unintelligible) fucking pop up like that maybe tomorrow afternoon or Saturday morning," Scorcia told Bugz over the phone. He was likely referring to the loansharking customer who first tipped off Scorcia to Ricigliano's presence at the diner.

A few minutes later, the two would-be extortionists left the scene, and the Plumber called Silvestro once again to brood over the events of that night. He stressed how Ricigliano had insulated himself from his underworld foes, and Silvestro warned him not to do anything that could get him on the police's radar. What neither of them knew was that the feds were already ten steps ahead of them.
"It's a breakfast place," Scorcia says, retelling his version of the evening's events. "I get in; I'm about to get in the car I said 'Fuck it, I'm gonna go in there right now.'"
"And this rat really parked under the fucking cameras?" Silvestro asked.
"Yeah, 150%, I said, 'I'm gonna go in there right now, and walk in, I'm gonna blast (PH) the kid in the face.' I says, 'motherfucker.'" Scorcia continues.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"The mother fucker, the place is packed."
Silvestro cut Scorcia's increasingly-boring story off:
"Listen, at the end of the day, you can't fucking cannot jeopardize the freedom for fucking some little jerkoff like that - You know what I mean?"
Then, the pair started to make plans for their next move. Silvestro started feeling his oats;
"On Saturday, we shouldn't even, we shouldn't even make it a fucking song and a dance, we jump out. … Give him (unintelligible) you send him a smack if he raises his hand back to you we beat the bricks off him, that's it. … That's the bottom line, we're taking his shit, you're giving him your fucking, breaking his shit, punching him, and we're out of there."
Scorcia answered, "Exactly. That's what we're gonna do." They agreed to execute the plan on Saturday, and Scorcia made a follow-up call to another trusted Colombo soldier from the crew, Daniel "the Wig" Capaldo, who asked him what happened with Ricigliano.
"Nothing," Scorcia answered. "I just pulled into Woodrow or whatever, I'm gonna head home, I'm gonna head home, and uh, it just didn't work, wasn't good to fucking do the work, you know what I'm saying? Not enough time, whatever, the valves wouldn't hold, lot of fucking people, too many people complaining they would have had no water, so it would have been really, uh, fucked up. You know, one of the big plumbers that I had with me, not the one you know, the other one, he didn't like it. You know, so, what the fuck was I gonna do? You know? Abort the job? What would we do? We'd have to do OT on the whatever. Alright, I'll talk to you tomorrow then. No worries, all good."

You might have noticed that Scorcia's conversation with Capaldo was a lot different than his discussions with the rest of the Colombos. Thomas was talking in a crude plumbing code to hide his brazen extortion attempt from earlier that night. He hadn't bothered to commit to the plumber's jargon with anybody else; he didn't care when he was on the scene, phoning Bugz Silvestro, complaining that Ricigliano had parked right under the cameras. But with Capaldo, he couldn't tread the same ground. That's because Capaldo was somebody who never underestimated FBI scrutiny. Unlike Scorcia, Capaldo had served a hell of a lot of time behind bars and was a familiar name in the feds’ mob-busting squads.

Capaldo's early history in the Colombo family started in the late 1980s, when he was an up-and-coming associate in one of Brooklyn's scariest crews, led by the infamous Colombo soldier Gregory "the Grim Reaper" Scarpa. Back then, Capaldo was a bit more heavyset than he is now and was known as Fat Danny. He grew up in the same era as Joey Amato's crew, except Capaldo was down in Dyker Heights with Scarpa. But despite being mere boroughs away, Capaldo and Amato would never cross paths early in their careers due to the divisive Colombo war. Chances are, however, the pair both knew of each other by reputation. Joey Amato was an acting captain at one point, so he would have been a high-priority target for Fat Danny and the rest of the Persico side during the war. Capaldo, on the other hand, was pretty infamous to the Orenas too. They eyed him in one particularly egregious shooting outside of an Orena social club, in which a hit team including Capaldo allegedly murdered an elderly Genovese family soldier on accident who happened to be playing cards with his Orena pals. The gunfire was frowned upon by the rest of the mob, and guys like Joey Amato knew they could win favor across the board by bumping off Fat Danny and others in Greg Scarpa's regime.

But neither of the two came to blows, and both would be behind bars by 1995. Prosecutors could never convict Fat Danny of any wartime murder, but he was found guilty of racketeering and drug-dealing in three separate trials. On January 7, 1993, he pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Supreme Court to cocaine possession and was given 66-months-to-life. The following month, on February 3, he pleaded guilty in Richmond County Supreme Court to cocaine possession and was given 8-to-life. Two years later, he was charged in a federal racketeering case and pleaded guilty to narcotics conspiracy and tax fraud. He was given 168 months' in federal prison and eventually wrapped up his various state and national sentences on September 5, 2008, when he got out of his halfway house and moved back to Brooklyn.

Capaldo learned his lesson about FBI surveillance in the 1990s, just like Joey Amato did, but he was continually reminded about that lesson after his release. Capaldo hooked up with his old Scarpa-era buddies, who were all getting out from their various sentences. Guys like Fat Larry Sessa, Jerry Ciauri, and Joey Savarese were all back out loansharking again like the good old days. Unfortunately, things were a little different this time around. As all the ex-Scarpa crew members were getting out of prison, the FBI was able to convince one of them to flip. His name was Tommy McLaughlin, an Irishman who the Mafia had accepted as one of their own. He was half-Italian himself and was the cousin of the Colombo family's acting boss. When he went to prison in '95, however, he was dismayed to learn that all of his blood ties meant nothing.

According to Gang Land News, McLaughlin wasn't sent so much as a Christmas card by his "Uncle Tommy" Gioeli, the longtime acting Colombo boss. McLaughlin was bitter and, when the FBI informed him that he was a suspect in a 1991 murder, he confessed. He agreed to wear a wire in exchange for a reduced sentence, and he started working on getting his old Scarpa pals behind bars.

When the Bureau of Prisons re-released Capaldo on November 3, 2015, he followed the demographic trends of many Italian-Americans by moving to Staten Island, just like Joey Amato and his crew. The Mafia presence in Brooklyn was a shell of what it was, a remnant of a bygone era. One turncoat wiseguy from the Lucchese family - thought to be the third-or-fourth largest borgata in New York - even testified that his family's sole so-called "Brooklyn" crew now operated out of Tottenville, over the Verranzano Bridge.

Back in Dyker Heights, Capaldo's old buddies had continuous run-ins with the law over low-level, petty crimes. Jerry Ciauri, a friend of Capaldo's from the late 1980s, was arrested in 2018 for running a loansharking operation that netted him a measly $243 a week, according to Gang Land News. Fat Larry Sessa, another Capaldo pal from the '80s, was also arrested in 2018 for trying to secure burner phones while on probation. The bad luck over in Dyker Heights probably spurred Capaldo's sensible relocation out to greener pastures on Staten Island.

In fact, Capaldo was always in a league of his own against his former Scarpa pals, even when he was behind bars. When the feds hit the crew with damning indictments in '95, most of them simply served their time and tried to start up shop again when they got out. But Fat Danny had a game plan; he turned his drug money into a successful loansharking business that he ran behind bars. That earned him a little nest egg for his release date, which was decades away, and gave him a lot more opportunities when he left prison compared to his pals.

Another Dyker Heights crew member who did the same thing was Joseph "Joe Fish" Marra, who fancied himself as Greg Scarpa's right-hand-man in the early 1990s. Marra, even though he was an associate, was the man to whom Capaldo served under in the '90s, and he held a lot of sway among Scarpa's ranks. According to former Scarpa crew member Larry Mazza, it was Joe Fish that inherited a lot of Scarpa's empire when the latter was indicted on murder charges in '93.
"Joe has Greg's business, or some of it," Mazza said. Then, he hesitated; "A small part. Greg never kept all his eggs in one basket."

But even though Marra was an influential, young leader in Dyker Heights, he eventually fell out of favor during the Colombo war.
"Joe Fish?" Mazza began. "He left me and Jimmy (Demastro) in a dire spot with Billy Cutolo's guys. Jimmy and I were this close to taking him out, he didn't come home that night… Greg put him on the shelf during the war, did not trust him, thought he was playing both sides - Not that Greg should talk!"

When the indictments came down in 1995, Joe Fish was convicted of racketeering, murder conspiracy, loansharking and drug dealing charges. He served eighteen years and was finally paroled in 2013. But as we mentioned earlier, Marra didn't spend his time behind bars idly. Like Capaldo, he also ran a lucrative, hands-off loansharking operation using a ragtag group of friends and former crew members he had assembled on the street. Marra even turned up in court papers from other Colombo cases, even in an investigation from 2010, fifteen years into his sentence. Investigators discovered that a few Colombo soldiers on the street were working on assignments from Joe Fish Marra in prison, helping to collect on loansharking debts. They watched as one mobster went to Marra's daughter with an envelope stuffed with $3000 as a graduation gift, said prosecutors - a gift that Marra had carefully planned from his prison cell across the country.

Like Capaldo, Marra also migrated over the Verrazano Bridge after his release from prison in 2013. He also shared the same counter-surveillance ethos as Danny, who had shed most of his weight and now went by the equally unflattering nicknames; "The Wig" and "Shrek." In one phone call, Scorcia discussed his induction into the Colombo family over the phone with Marra but spoke in the same, hard-to-decipher code that he used with Capaldo. Scorcia made that call on April 1, 2019, and commented on an individual who had "got signed up" and "got his union card." It sounded innocuous enough, but investigators believed it referred to something different. Prosecutors wrote in court papers;
"Based on the investigating agents' training, experience, and knowledge of the investigation, there is probable cause to believe that this comment refers to the individual's induction as a member of an organized crime family."
Marra replied with a cryptic comment;
"Yeah, they were telling me, uh, sometimes, ya know, once you get that union card, everything behind ya gotta go." Scorcia replied, "Yeah, I know. I heard that too, but I pursued it, and it worked out fine."

Without context, it's impossible to know what they were talking about, and as the FBI was investigating the Amato crew they were only able to discover evidence against Marra for one crime, a conspiracy to commit wire fraud with Danny the Wig. According to the indictment, Marra and Capaldo allegedly conspired to rob Mountain Valley Indemnity Company through wire fraud. Due to the relatively mild nature of the one crime alleged against him in the indictment, Marra's back on the streets today on bail and will likely settle for a plea bargain with next to no jail time.

That makes Marra one of the lucky ones. Another comparatively lucky name in the 20-defendant federal case is Vincent "Vinny Linen" Scura, a Colombo family soldier who was charged with one count of loansharking. Scura, who prosecutors say collected his week out of a pizzeria in Cranford, New Jersey, was a longtime Colombo associate who was inducted while he was late in his 50s. But despite their allegations, Scura was charged with only the sole count of loansharking, as the Brooklyn-based prosecutors focused primarily on Thomas the Plumber, who had "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on the street, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes. They never scrutinized Vinny Scura's business or tapped into his calls, and the sole count of loansharking didn't contain any allegations of violence. In his neat little bail package, Scura ended up being the only defendant to be granted travel permission to both New York and New Jersey - an issue brought up in his Brooklyn Federal Court bail hearing.
"Mr. Scura's business, which is listed on his Pretrial form, is in Cranford, New Jersey," said Scura's attorney, Vincent Martinelli, "and a second business, a credit card processing company, runs out of that business. It's a pizzeria that he owns. It's his sole source of income. As you can imagine a pizzeria, he needs to be there daily, so-"
Elizabeth Geddes quickly cut off the smooth-talking attorney; "The defendant also operates in part a loansharking business out of that pizzeria, so there are some - we don't object to his going there but he should not be able to have any contact with any individuals who are lending money at exorbitant rates and we can go over that with defense counsel who those individuals are." That still works out pretty well for Vinny Linen, who probably doesn’t need to see his customers directly to get his money. One source told us that Scura’s connections go beyond the Colombo family; he apparently has familial ties to the Gambino crime family’s Inzerillo clan, and Scura once shared an address with influential Sicilian mobster Pietro "Tall Pete" Inzerillo. Family ties aside, Joey Amato was not hugely impressed with Vinny Linen, whom he remembered from 1991-93 Third Colombo War. On Scura, Amato allegedly told Pennisi; “That faccia brutta (Ugly face) punk hid in his house when we had the war years ago,” while Amato and his fearsome crew were prowling the streets of Brooklyn. Pennisi’s Lucchese family captain, John “Johnny Sideburns” Cerrella, also wasn’t a fan of Scura; “I ran into him (Scura) and that disgrace of a girlfriend at Il Sogno the other night. He made believe he didn’t see me, this guy has been an associate since the Pilgrims discovered America. Now he gets straightened out and thinks he don’t have to say hello? Nice looking guy haha!” Pennisi discusses his life in the Lucchese family, and his cooperation with the federal government, in his blog, sitdownnews.com.

Scorcia probably wishes he got a similar bail package that allows him to continue his day-to-day routine like Vinny Linen. Before the indictment, Scorcia was usually out of his South Shore, Staten Island house by six in the morning on the commute to ABR Plumbing and Heating Contractors in the South Slope section of Brooklyn. FBI agents almost missed him when they turned up at his house at 6:00AM to arrest him, only to find that their target had already left. But since the feds caught up with him on his drive to work, Scorcia has been confined to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, mainly due to the violent threats he made regarding Ricigliano.

After the failed attempt to enact retribution at the Woodrow Diner, the Plumber went back to the drawing board and decided to ambush the Lion that upcoming Saturday, on February 2, 2019. This time, Scorcia brought Bugz Silvestro along with him for guidance, alongside another Colombo associate named Albert Masterjoseph, 57, an enormous leg-breaker from Brooklyn. They went to Ricigliano's house for a more private chat with the rival loanshark, but they quickly discovered that Ricigliano was, again, one step ahead of them. His entire property was covered in surveillance cameras and alarm systems, another smart move to protect against the threat of Scorcia and his bruisers. None of the crew knew what to do, and Scorcia made a frantic call to Danny Capaldo, trying desperately to make the situation fit with his "plumber" code. When he figured he couldn't get anywhere talking to the security-conscious Danny, he asked him to give the phone to Joey Amato.
"Oh, alright," Scorcia began, trying to think of an appropriate plumber-related analogy. "So hear, hear me out. The whatchamacallit, the guy that we have to do the job, off the job for, run all the lines and everything, doesn't uh, was avoiding the kid, doesn't want to meet, doesn't want to start the work. The only way he would meet the kid, to do what they have to do would be in front of his house."
"They would only meet in front of the house?" Amato clarified.
"Yeah, where he's got, uh, cameras all over it." Scorcia sheepishly said, quickly breaking the plumber facade.
"Yeah, alright, stupid," Amato said, frustrated at Scorcia's ineptitude. "Don't worry, don't go over his house, that's for sure, cuz."
"Don't, right?" Scorcia reaffirmed.
"No, no, you control the situation," Amato advised. "Don't let him control it."
"Yeah," Scorcia agreed.
"Alright, just leave it alone, leave it until tomorrow, we'll talk, alright?"

Scorcia had to call his gang to let them know about the plan. The Plumber had undoubtedly been bragging to his friends about his planned showdown with Ricigliano, and now he had to return with bad news. He first called Krenar Suka, the young Albanian hoodlum from earlier.
"I just, uh, tried to get permission over here," Scorcia said, explaining that Amato had told him to abort the plan. "That's ridiculous over there by the house," Scorcia lamented. "I don't know, but he's (referring to Ricigliano) fucking, (unintelligible) chicken shit, he's got no balls, he's a telephone tough guy, you know that, you know."

Calling Ricigliano a telephone tough guy might have been a little bit ironic since Scorcia's biggest weakness was that he couldn't help himself when talking tough over the phone. Scorcia was getting frustrated with the delays; he couldn't believe that, as a made member of the Colombo family, he was being pushed around by an independent, 30-year-old shylock. On February 5, he made another plan regarding Ricigliano, which would end up being the last straw for the FBI. At 12:44 PM that Tuesday, Scorcia called Bugz Silvestro and advised him;
"Just give me a heads up what time ya know, this way I can get the other gorilla to come and meet us, from the other day. … Five, 6:00 (unintelligible) later, you tell m-, ya know, what do you think? Wanna get a little darker? Right? … We could do it right in New Dorp too 'cause that's where that kid lives."

After that, the telephone lines went dark, and it looked like Thomas the Plumber had finally come up with a viable plan of attack. Law enforcement went to Ricigliano's residence and warned him of the assault, potentially jeopardizing their long-running investigation into the Amato crew. That night, Scorcia and his goons caught wind of the heavy police presence around Ricigliano's New Dorp residence, and they abandoned their mission for the night. The next few days, we can only guess, were pretty frantic for Thomas Scorcia and his crew, who should have realized from that they were under a microscope by the feds. Investigators couldn't hear anything about Ricigliano over the phones in those next few days, and they might have been worried that their investigation had completely fizzled out.

But somehow, against all the odds, Bugz Silvestro was able to covertly shake down Dominick the Lion on his own, without the FBI catching wind of it at all. As investigators relied so heavily on the loose lips from Scorcia and Co., they somehow let Bugz slip through their dragnet to get to Ricigliano and, through whatever means, convince him to hand over the books for Scorcia's old customers. It's hard to imagine Bugz Silvestro didn't crack a few bones to get the message across, but sources say the Lion was subject to round-the-clock surveillance in the days surrounding the assault plot.

The FBI learned what had transpired after Bugz let his guard down shortly after the confrontation. On February 8, 2019, at 1:33 PM, Bugz called Scorcia in a state of glee.
"I've got the funniest fucking video to show you when I see you," Bugz giggled. "You're gonna pee your pants."
"Fuck!" Scorcia replied, frustrated that he wasn't there himself to see Ricigliano humiliated - a scene that was apparently caught-on-camera by Bugz. "I spoke to my buddy," Scorcia continued, "he says he'll let me know, so hopefully it won't be fucking dead. He's fucking scared this fucking kid. You don't think so?"
"Bro, you have no idea what I did to him," Bugz replied, making sure to keep the events vague over the phone.
"Motherfucker!" Scorcia laughed. "Why can't I be there!?! Motherfucker!... Motherfucker."