New York feds and Italian authorities are continuing a crackdown against the Gambino mafia family and have charged 16 members with racketeering conspiracy, extortion, witness retaliation, and union-related crimes.
The latest development involves ten individuals arrested by American officials and six taken into custody by Italian authorities. The situation results from a coordinated international operation to bring the mafia to justice.
Gambino Crime Family Crackdown
American and Italian officials conducted a joint operation to crack down on the Gambino crime family and arrested a total of 16 individuals. (not actual photo)
The ten defendants in the United States were named in a 16-count indictment and were scheduled to be arraigned before a US magistrate in Brooklyn Federal Court later on Wednesday. US Attorney Breon Peace said that for years, the defendants are believed to have committed violent extortions, assaults, arson, witness retaliation, and other crimes.
He noted that such actions were done to dominate the New York carting and demolition industries. The indictment against the suspects alleged that the individuals, who go by aliases such as "Vinny Slick," "Joe Brooklyn," "Fifi," and "Uncle Ciccio," among others, knowingly and intentionally violated racketeering laws, as per CNN.
The indictment added that the members and associates of the Gambino crime family allegedly engaged in conduct designed to prevent government detection of their identities, their illegal activities, and the location of the proceeds of said activities.
There were some defendants in the case who allegedly put into motion a plan to set fire to the home of a man "while his wife and children were inside." This was believed to be part of an effort to receive extortion payments. One defendant who wrought extortion payments allegedly displayed a metal baseball bat as a threat of harm.
Furthermore, some arrested individuals are alleged to have "knowingly and willfully embezzled, stolen, and unlawfully abstracted" money from one or more employee pension and welfare benefit plans in 2020.
The Gambino crime family is one of New York's five Cosa Nostra organized crime cliques and was previously headed by the late notorious John Gotti. In 2002, he died while in federal prison in Missouri, according to CNBC.
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Alleged Racketeering
The individuals who were arrested in New York on Wednesday also included the alleged Gambino captain, Joseph Lanni, who goes by Joe Brooklyn. Each suspect arrested faces between 20 and 180 years of imprisonment for the laundry list of crimes they are accused of.
Officials noted that several defendants allegedly kicked up hundreds of thousands of dollars to Lanni through an intricate web of payments made by companies they owned.
The US Attorney's Office said that the investigation into the Gambino crime family revealed that the defendants have profited since 2017 from extorting individuals in the state's carting and demolition industries.
Much of the indictment against the individuals focused on the group's supposed attempts to extort money from an unidentified garbage hauling company and an unidentified demolition company.
One example of the threats that the group's members conducted was sending their victim a picture of his business late at night just to let him know that they had been there. The feds noted that it got worse after the victim stopped making payments, said the New York Post.
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