CrimProf Blog

Police Arrest top Mafia Dons in Sicily Raid

From latimes.com: Police raided a summit of Mafia dons in Sicily on Monday, arresting a longtime fugitive authorities say was revitalizing Cosa Nostra's ties with U.S. mobsters and vying to become the crime syndicate's next "boss of bosses."

The capture of Salvatore Lo Piccolo after more than a decade on the run dealt another blow to the Sicilian Mafia, already weakened by several recent arrests, outmuscled by other underworld groups and facing an unprecedented challenge to the extortion racket that has been one of its main sources of income.

"It's a tough blow ... because they (the Lo Piccolo family) were in charge of restructuring the Mafia," said Francesco Forgione, head of Italy's anti-Mafia parliamentary commission.

Lo Piccolo, sentenced to life in prison for murder and on the run since 1993, was captured in a morning raid on a house in the countryside outside Sicily's capital, Palermo, police said.

Also arrested were Lo Piccolo's 32-year-old son Sandro -- another top Mafia figure sentenced to life in prison and wanted since 1998 -- as well as two men accused of being local bosses, both on Italy's list of 30 most-wanted fugitives, officials in Palermo said.

Investigators believe Lo Piccolo, 65, could have eventually emerged from a power struggle to be the Mafia's new "capo di tutti i capi" following the capture of top boss Bernardo Provenzano, the reputed No. 1 of the Cosa Nostra crime syndicate. Provenzano, who was on the run for more than 40 years, was arrested on a farm near Corleone, Sicily, in April 2006.  Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Chicago Jury Finds All 5 Mobsters Guilty of Murder

From NPR.com:  Jurors cap the 10-week trial of five reputed Chicago mobsters with five guilty verdicts. The numerous charges in the case were related to nearly 20 murders that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.  Listen. . . [Mark Godsey]

LA Creates Gang List

From NPR.com: In Los Angeles, a new strategy of listing the city's worst gangs has created a stir among some of the gang-bangers who've been identified. But it remains to be seen whether the list will make a difference as Los Angeles authorities launch a major crackdown on gang violence.

Listen. . . [Mark Godsey]

FBI and Local Police Work Together to Stop Jewel Thieves

From USATODAY.com: FBI and local police are teaming up to combat a little noted but highly lucrative crime: robberies by gangs that target traveling jewelry and precious gem sales representatives.

Jewelry and gem salespersons reported 117 such robberies nationwide in the first nine months of this year, putting the industry on track for its lowest number of annual attacks since about 1990, according to a report by the industry group Jewelers' Security Alliance (JSA).

However, ripping off sales reps, who typically travel by car and carry hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods in small pieces of rolling luggage, remains a highly lucrative crime. The average theft this year has netted about $224,000. By contrast, the average bank robbery netted about $4,220 in 2004, the FBI estimated.

"It's a crime that's below the radar, and doesn't get nearly the attention of say, bank robbery," says John Kennedy, president of the JSA. "But in the past 10 years or so, it's become a fact of life for an industry where it had pretty much been unknown."

After 1999, when sales reps endured a record 323 robberies and more than $76 million in losses, the FBI began to partner with local police task forces in New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami and other jewel theft hot spots. Using stakeouts, stings and other methods, they've helped boost arrests and lower dollar losses each year since 2000. Figures kept by the Jewelers' Security Alliance show local, state and federal arrests increased 25%, from 456 in 2003 to 570 in 2004. Those included crimes against retailers as well as sales reps. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

The "Crossed Legs" Strike: No Love for the Guns in Colombia

Guns or lovin'?  That's the choice Colombian gang members are having thrust upon them in a united effort by their signficant others. It's the 'crossed legs' strike: drop all the guns or forget all the sex. From MSNBC.com:  "After meeting with the mayor’s office in the Colombian city of Pereira to discuss a disarmament program, a group of women decided to deny their partners their conjugal rights and recorded a song for local radio to urge others to follow their example." More on the sex strike. . . [Michele Berry]

FBI to Crack 'Da Bernardo Code'

FBI code-breaking experts are helping Italian investigators to determine whether a Bible found on the Mafia’s "boss of bosses" Bernardo Provenzano, hides a secret code.  Bernardo, who spent 43 years on the run, had underlined passages in his personal copy of the Bible that he was found with during his April arrest. Investigators believe that deciphering any encoded messages in these passages could hold the key to other encoded messages found at his rural hideout in Corleone, the Italian city made famous by the Godfather movies. Full story... [Michele Berry]

Organized Crime Via the Internet

Now OC gangs are targeting people in the comfort of their own homes--via the internet.  [Mark Godsey]

Will Alleged Israeli Drug Kingpin Make $10 Million Bail?

U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, set a $10 million bail Tuesday for an alleged Israeli organized crime figure, Zeev Rosenstein, thought to be one of the world's biggest distributors of Ecstasy.  Judge Torres set the bail amount over the objections of federal prosecutors, who said they were concerned that Rosenstein could easily make bail and flee the U.S. But Torres was concerned about allowing Rosenstein to be held without bail or even a detention hearing for such a lengthy time since his extradition from Israel in early March. More. . . [Mark Godsey]

Italy's Mafia "Boss of Bosses" Caught after 40 Years on the Lam

Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano, the undisputed chief of the Sicilian Mafia who had been on the run for more than four decades, was arrested on Tuesday while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily, (the city that inspired the family name in "The Godfather.") In the end, Provenzano was done in not by an informer or a rival gangster, but by a delivery of clean laundry. Police tracked the package to his hideout and closed in when they saw his hand peek out of the door to take it. Provenzano had escaped capture so often since going into hiding in 1963 that he earned a place in the Italian imagination as ''The Phantom of Corleone.'' Story here and here from NYTimes. [Mark Godsey]

Online Sale of Financial Information About Others

This post from BoingBoing is pretty scary: bulletin boards and other websites abound where private financial data, such as account numbers, is for sale.

Dan Ackman: Dispatches from a Mob Trial

Reporter Dan Ackman has a very interesting feature on Slate regarding the trial of two cops for acting as mob enforcers. [Jack Chin]

Genovese Indictments in New York

Story here. [Jack Chin]

Ch*ld P*rn Big Business

International organized crime is interested.  Wall Street Journal story here.  There are also international efforts to stamp it out.  Meanwhile, a scandal is brewing in the UK about whether sex offenders should be allowed to teach school; it centers on a teacher who accepted a "police caution" for viewing child porn.

No Relation

RIP, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante.  Fake mental illness never goes out of style, as the (overall, terribly unfortunate) Lionel Tate story shows.

Mob Boss Acquitted in Racketeering Trial Found in Car Trunk

Story here. [Jack Chin]

Mafia Constitutes 3.4% of Italy's GDP

From People'sDailyOnline.com:  "The Calabria-based mafia organisation made 36 billion euros (43.6 US dollars) last year, Italian media reported on Sunday.  The report by Italian social research institute Eurispes said the criminal revenue in 2004 equalled 3.4 percent of Italian GDP.  Drug trafficking was the organisation's most profitable business, generating 22.3 billion euros (26.7 billion dollars), Eurispes said.

Skimming off money from public works contracts and general business corruption were the next most lucrative activities, netting the group more than 4.7 billion euros (5.7 billion dollars).  Prostitution and arms trafficking made the 'Ndrangheta an estimated 4.6 billion (5.6 billion dollars) while extortion and loan-sharking brought in 4.1 billion (4.9 billion dollars), the report said.

It stressed that the 'Ndrangheta's grip on the southern region was having a devastating social impact.  The 'Ndrangheta is believed to have been responsible for the murder of an important local politician earlier this month.  Franco Fortugno, deputy chairman of the regional "parliament", was gunned down on October 16 as he voted in centre-left primary elections in the town of Locri.  The slaying shocked the country and fuelled fears that the ' Ndrangheta had become even more powerful and dangerous than the Sicilian Mafia, Italian media said. "  [Mark Godsey]

Mob News: Gotti, Tocco

RIP Albert "Caesar" Tocco, a mob boss who died in prison, convicted after his own wife testified against him.  He committed some of the murders featured in "Casino," and, according to thestory, cheated his own daughter at tic-tac-toe.  John Gotti Jr., who had an acquittal and a mistrial at his latest trial, was granted bail, but some doubt that he has gone legit.  [Jack Chin]

Organized Crime May Be Behind Massive Credit Card Breach

From scmagazine.com:  "The huge security breach that exposed more than 40 million credit cards to potential fraud appears to be the work of organized criminals, experts said Monday.  System vulnerabilities at CardSystems Solutions, a payment card processor, allowed an intruder to break into the network and access cardholder data, MasterCard International said Friday. The incident exposed more than 40 million cards of all brands to fraud, including 13.9 million MasterCard branded cards.  The breach represents a high-tech version of "skimming," in which criminals used a small device to snatch information from the magnetic strips on the back of credit cards, said Tom Kelly, a senior investigator at the private investigations division of Stroz Friedberg, a computer forensics and technical services firm.  Next-generation skimming involves attacking servers that process credit-card transactions, collecting account data and then selling that information to people who use it to create counterfeit cards or to make purchases, he said.  "This is very unique to crime groups in Eastern Europe," said Kelly, who has more than 25 years of investigating credit-card and fraud. "It has been going on for years. They're very well organized."  Taking advantage of the vast size of the credit-card breach would require the resources of organized crime, said Chris Noell, vice president of business development at managed security firm Solutionary."  [Mark Godsey]