February 17, 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 Three)

The stand-over of Ricigliano was only another example of the increasing strength of Joey Amato's crew. On Staten Island, they were raking in cash, and their membership was swelling further and further. Within the Colombo administration, however, Joey Amato was on shaky ground. It had only been in the last decade or so that the family had finally resolved longstanding grievances with remaining holdouts of the Orena faction, and the wounds from the 1991-93 conflict were still sore. Carmine "Junior" Persico, the embattled defendant in the struggle, remained the boss of the crime family until his death in 2019, and his imprisoned-for-life son Allie is his slated heir.

When Carmine Persico passed away in 2019, it gave Amato a chance to redeem himself, in a sense, and prove his renewed loyalty to the ruling regime. In one phone call, Amato advised two of his crew members, Thomas Scorcia and Danny Capaldo, to drive the longtime boss' body back to New York from the federal medical prison in Springfield, Massachusetts.
"Do I move up in the ranks?" quipped Scorcia.

When it came to the funeral, Amato didn't attend himself. It was a small ceremony filled mostly with close family and friends, according to Gang Land News, but his right-hand-man Scorcia was sent as an emissary. On March 18, 2019, the feds listened as the Plumber briefed Amato about the upcoming event.
"I ordered a charcoal grey suit, something new. I don't want to be a stumblebum like everybody else. I represent you. This way, we'll be nice and sharp."

The late Persico is probably spinning in his grave at the FBI's recent case against Amato and Scorcia, primarily because of how easy the two mobsters made it for the feds by chatting away over the phone. Prosecutors began to finalize their case a couple of months after the Persico funeral, and they obtained a search warrant for Thomas the Plumber's house on June 5, 2019. There, they found two loaded, unregistered firearms, which were misdemeanors in Staten Island. Then, the feds searched his car, stumbling on a covered compartment in the trunk containing wht prosecutors called "tools of Scorcia's trade," such as an adjustable steel baton, a ski mask, binoculars, gloves, and "Cosa Nostra," a nonfiction history of the Mafia by author John Dickie.

As usual, Scorcia panicked and made a few frantic phone calls as the FBI rummaged through his stuff. In a call to Joey, Scorcia pondered why he was being targeted, and Amato noted;
"They definitely know that you, you know, your situation changed, you know what I mean?" In court papers, prosecutors explained the vague comment;
"In so saying, Amato was making clear to Scorcia his belief that law enforcement tends to focus its scrutiny on inducted members of the crime family and assuring Scorcia that law enforcement knew about his change in status, i.e., Scorcia's induction."

Scorcia stopped talking on the phones after that, but the damage had already been done. Prosecutors were in the process of compiling hundreds of hours of incriminating discussions about delinquent loansharking customers and debtors from the past six months of wiretaps. Some of those conversations weren't damning enough to be included as formal charges but made for interesting quips in the Plumber’s detention memo. One of those was on April 30, 2019, when Scorcia told Bugz Silvestro about a recent incident where he and Albert Masterjoseph (the hulking, middle-aged bruiser from earlier), got a message through to one customer who had been missing weekly payments. Thomas noted that the customer had once been "on track with me like fucking clockwork, twice a week," but was one of the various customers that had been poached from him by Dominick the Lion Ricigliano. To win the customer back, Scorcia brought "Al," a reference to Masterjoseph, and "another guy, bigger than him." Scorcia said that "when he (the loansharking customer) seen him pop out of the car and the other guy was opening up the door, I told the guy 'Sit in the car,' and the kid had the tears, like between you and me, like… 'No, please, T. No.' Boom! But we'll talk about that in person. I got this kid good right now."

But even those conversations didn't get as bad as some of the things Joseph Amato Jr. and his cohorts said about debtors of their own. In one chat from February 22, 2019, a heated Joseph Jr. and Bugz Silvestro got dark when talking about "two or more customers who owed money to a third individual, and another individual who was trying to collect the money for himself," according to court papers.
"Something's wrong with them, right?" Silvestro said.
"Bro, what do you think at this point, no?" Amato Jr. replied.
"Uh yeah, I mean, they gotta die," Silvestro bluntly remarked.
Amato Jr.: We gotta get to 'em before the actual kid gets to 'em 'cause the actual kid is like, 'I'm gonna try today and Tuesday I'm supposed to meet 'em and if that doesn't work out, I will see if you can help and you know how you are going to do it.' I want the whole thing.
Silvestro: Tell the kid to fucking stay back stay back. We'll (unintelligible) take care of it. You know?
Amato Jr.: If we can get on this thing ASAP, it could be a good thing.
Silvestro: Bro I'm getting on it tomorrow, I'm meeting up with the plumber (Thomas Scorcia) tomorrow, and I'm gonna tell him listen, if fuckin' you don't go and get these kids today, then I'm gonna go and beat their ass, and I'm gonna beat their Dad's ass too. So it's up to you. I was supposed to see the plumber tomorrow anyway.
Amato Jr.: Yeah, that fucking plumber.
Silvestro: That fucking plumber.

Piecing together the mass of wiretapped conversations to come up with a complete indictment took a few months, but prosecutors finally put together their 31-count indictment before a grand jury in October of 2019. The grand jury returned it on October 2, 2019, and the following morning, 16 Colombo family members and associates were arrested. At 6:00AM that Wednesday morning, the FBI knocked on the doors of those defendants' houses, which were almost entirely in Brooklyn and Staten Island, apart from Amato Sr.'s out-of-state palace in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Using little other than wiretaps on the father-and-son Amatos and Thomas Scorcia, prosecutors were also able to separate indictments against the Bosco family bookmaking operation, and an additional indictment charging one charge of attempted sports bribery, against disgraced political aide Benjamin Bifalco.

The center of the Amato case was, naturally, the Colombo captain Joseph Amato Sr., but his son and Scorcia were hit harder in terms of violent charges. They filed immediate detention motions against those three, as well as Anthony "Bugz" Silvestro and Danny Capaldo. The charges also feature a lot of minor, street-level players in Amato's organization, most of whom were immediately granted bail and some of whom will receive no jail sentences. But even their penny-ante crimes cast light on the peripherals of Joey Amato's enterprise, like the Cranford-based loanshark Vinny Scura and the Bosco bookmaking enterprise. Another section of the indictment regards a regular poker-and-blackjack game that the father-and-son Amatos ran alongside at least two crew members, John Cahill, 27, and John Tucciarone, 39.

Prosecutors also unraveled a scheme between Joseph Amato Jr. and an enterprising Staten Island hustler named Christopher Coffaro, 21, to "obtain and receive black market marijuana vaping cartridges."
"As part of the scheme," prosecutors wrote, "Coffaro received several shipments from fictitious addresses in California for more than a year. In March 2019, law enforcement intercepted one of these packages and seized more than 600 marijuana vaping cartridges."
At one point, FBI agents overheard Amato Jr. and Coffaro on the phone contemplating the best means to collect a debt. On February 15, at 10:26 AM, Coffaro called Amato Jr. with an eager, yet thoughtless, plan:
"Yo, I was thinking of just going there and taking a picture of the car and sending it to him and be like, 'Yo, this shit's mine until I get paid.'" Amato Jr. nixed that plan pretty early and suggested the Mafia-style way of doing things. He would lure the debtor to a location and corner him.
"No, no, no," Amato Jr. said to Coffaro. "We're gonna call, I'm gonna call him or someone's gonna call him that I'm interested in the car… Instead of spook him immediately, I'd rather fucking make him think that I'm coming to get the car. He'll come meet up and then once he meets up then he's fucked, and then, fucking, he's gonna have to fucking pay something out."

Prosecutors also charged Amato Sr. with helping a 61-year-old loanshark named Philip Lombardo to collect a debt. Two other associates with Gambino family connections - Primo Cassarino, 30, and John Dunn, 31 - were charged in loansharking counts with the father-and-son Amatos. The indictment alone doesn't venture into the nature of these counts, but the names of Cassarino and Dunn should ring a bell for mob-watchers. I'm not exactly sure of the connection, but the 30-year-old Cassarino shares the name of a former Gambino family soldier who was famously charged with shaking down $700,000 from Hollywood star Steven Seagal. Cassarino, however, became more infamous in mob circles for turning government's witness, and testifying against his captain, Sonny Ciccone.

Dunn, on the other hand, shares the same name of a 47-year-old associate of the Colombo & Gambino families nicknamed "Johnny Five." We aren't sure of a direct relation, but Johnny Five Dunn came up in the Amato crew during the early 1990s when Joey ran a social club in Fort Hamilton Parkway. Johnny Five grew up tinkering with machines, according to a 2011 sentencing memorandum, which parlayed into a career operating and servicing illegal video-gambling machines for the mob. One source told us that Johnny Five is related to a late Colombo soldier named Rocco Miraglia Sr., which is how he got connected to Joey Amato. Unfortunately, this connection almost cost Johnny Five his life on March 4, 1992, when Persico faction loyalists ambushed him during the Third Colombo War. The shooting occurred at approximately 8:50 PM on Cropsey Ave., in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn. Dunn, who was only 19, was wounded by bullets & shotgun slugs in the back and arm, while his friend, 25-year-old Gambino associate Michael Giangregorio, was hit in the back and chest. At the time, police directed the spotlight on Giangregorio, who had been shot twice in Bath Beach over recent years.
"He should stop whatever he has been doing," a detective told the Daily News, regarding Giangregorio. Later, however, police classified the shooting at a Colombo family affair, due to Dunn's membership in Joey Amato's rebel crew.

 Johnny Five might have learned his lesson after that shooting, because he subsequently moved under the Gambino family's umbrella, reporting to soldier Joseph "Joe the Blonde" Giordano. We don't know if he's back with the Colombos since Joey Amato's return to power, but he's kept the ties alive. By 2010, he was servicing gambling machines for Colombo clubs all over South Brooklyn, working alongside associates like Angelo Spata, Roger Califano, and FBI informer Tommy McLaughlin. In last year's indictment, prosecutors charged the 31-year-old John Dunn with four counts of loansharking alongside Joey Amato, Joey Amato Jr., and Primo Cassarino. As of February 2020, prosecutors haven't released any further information about the shylocking gig, or whether it ties into the video-gambling operations of Johnny Five Dunn, 47, who served no time behind bars for his 2012 illegal gambling conviction and recently finished his federal probation.

Joey Amato, on the other hand, has a long way to go before he can start thinking about probation. He's currently stewing behind bars in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, along with two co-defendants who were also denied bail; right-hand-man, Thomas "the Plumber" Scorcia, 53, and Daniel "the Wig" Capaldo, 55. We can only guess, but tensions must be running high between the three. It's hard not to point fingers when you're facing upwards of a decade behind bars. Amato might blame the lion's share of the government's evidence on Scorcia since it the FBI's wiretap of the Plumber's phone that proved the most useful in the investigation. Scorcia could turn that around on Amato, however, and note that Amato caused the entire investigation by creepily harassing and stalking his girlfriend with a GPS tracker. You could defend Scorcia's ignorance by noting that, at 53, he had never served a day behind bars in his life, and was unknown to the feds until the past few years. Throughout his loansharking career, he never needed to watch what he said on the phone, or watch out for cooperating witnesses. Joseph Amato, on the other hand, knows all too well how powerful the FBI can be since he was under intense police scrutiny following the 1991 killing of an innocent teen. If anybody should have known not to talk on the phone, it should've been Amato. Meanwhile, Danny Capaldo must be fed up with both of his prison pals by now. From the moment he was released from prison in 2015, he was accidentally caught up in the ongoing FBI investigation into Amato, which was made all too easy by the crew's loose lips. Capaldo tried everything he could to stay out of the next federal dragnet, knowing that arrests were - at some point - inevitable. He had a carefully-crafted set of codewords that tied back to his on-paper interests in the plumbing world, but his peers failed to stick to it when they weren't speaking to Danny. 

Joseph Amato Jr. was granted an immediate $1 million bail by the legendary New York Judge I. Leo Glasser, who sentenced Mikey Red Nobile back in 2001 and presided over Joseph Amato Sr.'s case back in 1993. But Glasser was as stern with Amato Jr. as he was with his father, and remanded the mob scion's bail after prosecutors argued that he had the capacity for committing violent acts if Glasser released him. Amato Jr.'s attorney, James Froccaro Jr., had a different take. In his eyes, the bust was a classic illustration of overzealous prosecutors making mountains out of molehills by slapping on the term "Mafia" onto the small-potatoes indictment. Despite being "Colombo" mobsters, Froccaro Jr. said the allegations of violence were all talk.
"It's talk," he said. "We're not going to start remanding people because of talk alone?"

In way roundabout way, he's right. The only allegation of violence against Amato Jr. came from a former associate of the Lucchese family. Neil Devito was a low-level guy on the fringes of the mob - his only arrest was for stealing wholesale quantities of cardboard. But Devito, who had a seen-but-not-heard role on a short-lived reality TV show called Made in Staten Island, had a lot to tell the FBI about some high-level figures he knew in the Bonanno, Colombo and Lucchese organizations. Devito said that in June of 2014, he got into a curt but tense showdown with Joseph Amato Jr. at a local Staten Island "hotspot," according to the indictment. Court papers only refer to Devito as I-1, or "Individual-1", ostensibly to protect his identity as a government witness, despite Gang Land News outing Devito months earlier. The Lucchese hoodlum was minding his own business at the bar, he said, when he spotted Amato Jr. "disrespecting a young woman." As any good Staten Islander would do, he interceded for the damsel in distress, and Amato Jr. got confrontational.
"In response," court papers read, "Amato Jr. told I-1 that he should mind his own business." To the mob prince's surprise, Devito held his own and refused to back down.
"Do you know who my father is?" Amato challenged. Unfortunately, Devito hadn't, which wasn't the answer the younger Amato was looking for. He left the bar vowing to teach him a lesson, Devito recalled. The following day, Devito got a visit from Amato Jr. and his father. Just to make sure they delivered the message, the father-and-son Amatos also brought along "carloads" of crew members give a one-sided beating to the Lucchese associate.
"Amato and his crew lured I-1 to an isolated area and then assaulted him, leaving him with significant head lacerations that required staples."

Amato’s detention memorandum doesn't go further than that in terms of details, but according to Jerry Capeci, the saga doesn't end there. In fact, it ended on a lot better terms than prosecutors would have you think.
"Eventually, Devito told the feds, Amato brought him a drink and 'apologized' for the beating. Devito declined to tell police about it, and the duo let bygones be bygones." But before they were getting friendly and having drinks together, Amato caused Devito more agita in Staten Island's Mafia by telling his buddy in the Bonanno family about it. That buddy was Peter "Petey B.S." Lovaglio, an influential Bonanno captain who had a startling propensity for violence. Lovaglio would eventually be sentenced to eight years in prison for a senseless sushi lounge assault that had nothing to do with the mob at all, and it was during that case that his longtime cooperation with the NYPD came to light.

Lovaglio contested his eight-year sentence, citing his extensive work with police and verbal promises made to him by law enforcement higher-ups, who guaranteed that the judge would go easy on him. To this day, Petey BS's eight-year sentence still stands, since he ended up doing more harm than good on the witness stand. In the two trials he testified, the defendants were acquitted on most charges, and defense lawyers ripped into Petey BS on crimes that he had failed to tell his police handlers. One of those crimes was apparently an assault that Lovaglio committed against Neil Devito, shortly after the attack by Amato. Gang Land News was able to get the full scoop from Devito's interviews with investigators as he prepared for the witness stand in the 2019 trial of Bonanno acting boss Joseph "Joe C" Cammarano Jr.
Gang Land News, Sep. 12, 2019:
"Devito told federal investigators that the encounter with Lovaglio began as soon as he walked into Cabo, a Mexican restaurant at a Tottenville strip mall. In the restaurant he spotted Petey B.S., who was there with (Lovaglio's right-hand-man Albert' Al Muscles' Armetta) and several other cohorts. He soon heard Lovaglio angrily call him "a rat." Devito moved quickly for the door, but was "knocked to the ground" at the entranceway of the club by the Lovaglio group, that included Armetta, the sources say."
"'I would have been beaten to death' sources say Devito told the feds, if patrons from a cigar bar next door that's controlled by Luchese capo John (Big John) Castellucci hadn't 'jumped in and stopped the beating.'"
"'It was quick, last about 30 seconds,' said Devito, adding that he wasn't sure why Lovaglio called him 'a rat' or why 'his goons jumped me.' But the sources say Devito speculated that Joe Amato, a longtime pal of Lovaglio, might have been the root cause of the attack."

As attorney James Froccaro Jr. is quick to point out, this allegation from 2014 is the only violent crime alleged in the indictment, and it relies solely on the testimony of Neil Devito, a convicted felon. Even worse, law enforcement had a paid informant in their ranks, Petey Lovaglio, that never told them about the altercation whatsoever and allegedly attacked Devito himself. That's a pretty good case for bail, says Froccaro Jr., and Judge I. Leo Glasser got around to his way of thinking. After Amato Jr. spent the weekend behind bars, Glasser released him back on bail since the young Colombo associate had no criminal record, even if he "comes off as a very tough guy."
"To my knowledge, 25 years ago, when I dealt in a case with his father has no use here," Glasser said. "This man has no prior arrests. I'm not suggesting a threat isn't as serious, but that's what we have." Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Geddes disagreed: "Home detention isn't viable for pretrial for the safety of the community," she said. "The defendant has a history of using electronic devices to carry out his threats of violence and it's hard to supervise."
"It's clear the defendant not only turns to his father, he debriefs him and seeks his approval on acts," she added, according to the New York Post.

Geddes might not have won Judge Glasser over, but she was on the same page as Magistrate Judge Peggy Kuo, who presided over the bail hearing for Danny Capaldo. While she granted Anthony "Bugz" Silvestro $500,000 bail, she refused to do the same for the chrome-domed Danny the Wig, citing his long and colorful criminal record.
"It seems to me that Mr. Capaldo can't help but get in trouble, even if he's being watched by the government," Kuo said, a remark which must have had Danny fuming at his senseless co-defendants for bringing the FBI to his doorstep in the first place. Vincent Romano, Capaldo's attorney, told the New York Post that he was going to appeal the decision immediately.
"Mr. Capaldo is optimistic, and we'll deal with the charges." But if Capaldo's got any optimism left in him, he should probably have another look at the grim charges against him, including racketeering, extortion, and wire fraud conspiracy. They're all crimes that his co-defendants discussed on tape, and crimes certainly befitting of Capaldo's extensive criminal history.

Thomas Scorcia has also embarked on a long-shot quest for bail, based on the fact that he has no prior skirmishes with the criminal justice system. Scorcia's attorney, who also happens to be Capaldo's attorney Vincent Romano, wrote a glowing description of Scorcia as a model citizen who has been gainfully employed in the plumbing industry for 23 years. Indeed, Scorcia is a 24% owner of ABR Plumbing, a Brooklyn-based company that he started in 1996 with his two boyhood pals, Luke Marcato and Robert Brofsky. The company now employs 40-45 people, including Scorcia's eldest son Anthony, 28. (We should note that there are no criminal allegations against Scorcia's handling of ABR Plumbing, and it appears he ran the company by the books. Neither Marcato or Brofsky have been accused of any wrongdoing). Romano also noted his client's "good relationship with his ex-wife," and that his other children - Thomas Jr., 21, Falyn, 19, and Michael, 18 - were growing up to become model citizens as well. But one of the more pressing reasons Scorcia wanted bail was to care for his 85-year-old mother, Catherine, who lived with Thomas in Staten Island and was suffering from life-threatening health problems. It was Scorcia's job to drive her to-and-from her doctors' appointments in Brooklyn and Manhattan, he said.
"(Scorcia) works five days a week," continued Romano. "They're not disputing that. He works - he's out of the house by 6 a.m. He works from 7 or 6 to 7 o'clock at night. He's back in Staten Island. I'd like to point out, Judge, there's nothing in his background here that demonstrates he is a risk of flight." Romano also disputed the allegations of violence in the indictment, noting that the FBI had not been able to come up with one charge of physical violence after six months of listening to Scorcia on his phone.
"(I) t's not here, Judge," said Romano, referring to any allegations of direct, physical violence in the stacks and stacks of discovery material. "It's all very bland. And there's no actual violence." The presiding judge was quick to counter that argument by noting that their lack of violence was because they were successful in their threats and extortions. But Romano also pointed out that the main talking points on the wiretaps were the ones regarding his co-defendant, Dominick Ricigliano. Romano noted that the case should be viewed from a slightly different perspective, as Scorcia was only seeking revenge against an assault he had endured from Dominick Ricigliano and his thugs.
"Nothing happened in retaliation," said Romano, noting that Scorcia's proposed revenge plot at Woodrow Diner or outside his house never transpired.

Romano also pressed the government on why they could not name an exact figure for Scorcia's loansharking operation. In her summation to Judge I. Leo Glasser, Geddes announced that Scorcia's illicit business had "hundreds of thousands of dollars based on all of the different customers he had."
"Listening to his phone calls, he would literally spend large portions of his day making arrangements to make all of these collections.
"Other portions of his day were spent consulting with his fellow crime family members and the individual to whom he reported in the crime family, Joseph Amato. He regularly consulted with Amato from advice. In one conversation he went to him specifically for permission in order to carry out one of the charged crimes." But Romano wasn't convinced that the agents, of which he counted ten in the courtroom, couldn't find more than ten loansharking customers to include in their indictment, despite valuing Scorcia's empire to be in the hundreds of thousands.
"You can't just stand up in court and say hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's an exact science here." Ultimately, the judge didn't care whether it was tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands. The threat of violence was too high for Scorcia's pretrial release, despite the proposed $1 million bond.
"There's certainly significant threats of violence and actions taken towards executing the acts of violence. The loaded weapon - the weapons, the guns loaded or unloaded certainly suggest a willingness to be prepared and possibly willing to engage in the use of violence or at least threatening violence." 

Since then, the case has been moving slowly, but one defendant seems to be making the most of his limited time on the streets. Joseph Amato Jr., setting an example for his co-defendants, was recently accepted to a local college to pursue a degree, according to a motion filed by his attorney James Froccaro Jr. His motion to remove cyber-monitoring for his new, college-issued Apple Macbook was recently accepted by Judge Glasser, and he expects to join in the Spring semester.