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FOR SALE AGE 3 By Graham Johnson With her big blue eyes and cute smile, four-year-old Angela would tug at the heartstrings of any parent. But like her five-year-old brother Aco and their friend Jovanna, blonde Angela is up for SALE to anyone with enough cash to buy her. Incredibly, the head of a British-funded charity is at the centre of this despicable trade. The children, some as young as three, are snatched from their parents and sold for as little as £300. Some are feared to have been taken as child sex slaves. Others are put up for illegal...

Federal investigators continued their search-and-destroy mission through the ranks of the decimated Bonanno crime family, announcing yesterday the indictment of 28 reputed members and associates, including the acting bosses and a key mob leader in Canada. The 20-count racketeering indictment charged many of the defendants with complicity in 15 murders or murder conspiracies from 1978 to 1992. Gambling, loan-sharking and drug charges also were included.

B.C. JUDGE DELAYS MEDIA BID TO UNSEAL SEARCH WARRANTS VANCOUVER -- The mystery surrounding a massive drug and organized-crime probe in British Columbia has deepened after a judge delayed a bid to unseal the search warrants used in a series of unprecedented raids on the B.C. Legislature last weekend. Lawyers for several media outlets, including The Globe and Mail, asked for access to the warrants the RCMP used to get permission to raid the offices of two top B.C. cabinet ministers' aides and five other businesses and homes in Victoria and Vancouver. Police said the raids were part of an...

t can be hard for certain New York City neighborhoods to lose their reputations. To some people, the South Bronx is still burning and Hell's Kitchen is still a place filled with gangsters with Irish names and a taste for sadistic violence. And while gentrification can tame parts of Brooklyn, it cannot rewrite their rap sheets. Such is the plight of Pleasant Avenue — a six-block stretch in East Harlem that is one of the most famous gangland stretches in mob history. The avenue, which runs from 114th Street to 120th Street, just east of First Avenue, is an Italian...

Four years after it was "liberated" by a NATO bombing campaign, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts. Though nominally still under UN control, the southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafiosi and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, such as Serbs, Roma and Jews. In recent weeks, UN officials ordered the construction of a fortified concrete barrier around the UN compound on...

Decades After Brando, Waterfront Still Mobbed Up   BAYONNE, N.J.  — At the headquarters of New Jersey's most notorious union, the ornate front windows are etched with an anchor-and-rope motif. They're opaque, making it impossible to peer inside International Longshoremen's Association (search) Local 1588.That hasn't stopped law enforcement. Local 1588 was historically so corrupt that mob enforcers were unnecessary, according to one veteran investigator. Kickbacks, extortion and fraud became as routine as a Labor Day picnic at the local, long a lucrative outpost for the Genovese (search) crime family. In 1954, when Marlon Brando (search) starred in the Oscar-winning "On The Waterfront," one of 1588's delegates was...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. beverage giant Coca-Cola says it will stop showing a short film showing mafia toughs intimidating movie viewers after a barrage of complaints from Italian-American groups. The film, "Mafia Movie Madness," by graduate student Jordan Ross, won the 2003 Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award and was released as a pre-movie reel in early November to chains that included Loews Cineplex and Regal Entertainment Group."We regret that anyone was offended and we are removing it from theatres by tomorrow," a Coca-Cola spokeswoman said on Thursday.The film shows one movie patron getting jumped after ignoring a gray-suited usher's order...

<p>For more than 10 years, one of California's most brutal criminal organizations has been operating from behind the walls of the state's highest- security prison. From cells in Pelican Bay State Prison, Nuestra Familia's leaders have ordered murders and assaults and controlled much of the drug trade in Northern California cities, according to court and law enforcement records.</p>

ROME (Reuters) - Quick. What comes to mind when you hear the word Corleone? If you said Mafia, some people in the Sicilian town think that may be part of the problem and not the solution. Local lawyer Antonio Di Lorenzo began a signature drive on Tuesday to change the name of the hill town south of Palermo made famous by "The Godfather" books and films of the 1970s. He thinks enough is enough and wants the city's name changed to protect the innocent, so to speak. But not everyone agrees. "Some people come all the way from countries such...

FBI let innocents get death sentences: report By Fox Butterfield November 22, 2003 The FBI used murderers as informants in Boston for three decades, even allowing innocent men to be sentenced to death to protect the secret operation, a government report has found. The FBI's policy "must be considered one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement" and had "disastrous consequences", the report by the House Committee on Government Reform said. More than 20 people were murdered by FBI informants in Boston from 1965, often with the help of FBI agents, it said. But no FBI...

<p>Published in the Asbury Park Press 11/17/03 By ERIK SCHWARTZ GANNETT NEW JERSEY The Camden County Democratic Committee relied on more than $1.1 million worth of loans from 33 party supporters to help fund the final campaign push in the 4th Legislative District, with a large share coming from people with connections to Commerce Bank.</p>

Receive FREE updates by email: New Developments In The Salvati Case By Notra Trulock November 12, 2003 Earlier this year, Accuracy in Media reported on the case of Joseph Salvati, who spent nearly thirty years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. False, uncorroborated testimony by an FBI informant convicted Salvati in 1968 of murder. Salvati was finally freed in 1997 after Boston WBZ-TV reporter Dan Rea uncovered old police records that exonerated him. Salvati was framed by an informant recruited by two FBI agents working out of the Boston office, Paul Rico and Dennis Condon....

The RCMP is working with the FBI in targeting Russian and European organized-crime rings that are trying to flex their muscles by expanding into Canada and the U.S. They have created a task force to curb Eurasian organized crime, which includes members of Russian, Italian and Balkan rings, from gaining a foothold here. The Mounties said the violent Balkan crime rings are the fastest growing in the world. "They are getting worse," said RCMP Chief Supt. Ben Soave, of a Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit. "It is just a matter of time before they expand here." Soave said the Balkan...

Although they swear that Robert G. Torricelli never really had an inside track, several top officials in the McGreevey administration said last week that the former U.S. senator has been declared radioactive and his clients are to get nothing from the state. "The word from the front office is he's cut off," said one Cabinet officer, using the Trenton insider term for the governor's office. "They said, 'Cut him off and the people he brings around.' I sent the word to my people not to send anything he's connected with to my desk." Another Cabinet member said there had initially...

Celebrity Private Eye Pleads Guilty To Weapons Charges Anthony Pellicano Faces 33 Months In Prison LOS ANGELES -- Celebrity private eye Anthony Pellicano pleaded guilty Thursday to two felony counts of possessing hand grenades and C-4 explosives, authorities said. Pellicano, 59, also faced one misdemeanor count of unlawfully storing a plastic explosive, but the count was dropped under a plea agreement, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. Pellicano faces up to 33 months in prison and was scheduled to return to court Jan. 20 for sentencing. He previously could have received 21 years in prison if...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.NEW YORK (AFP) - A New York gangster family said to be the inspiration for the hit TV mob drama "The Sopranos" used "double-decker" coffins to dispose of their murder victims, a Manhattan court has heard. According to the New York Post on Tuesday, mafia turncoat Anthony Rotondo told jurors that the DeCavalcante crime family had used the coffins to secretly bury the victims of mob "hits" along with the bodies of those who died more natural deaths. Rotondo said the double-decker coffins were being used as early as the 1920s and...

Former Catholic Church watchdog says clergyman used smear tactics October 1, 2003 BY RACHEL ZOLL Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who resigned this year as head of a watchdog panel on clergy abuse, has told a conservative Roman Catholic magazine that a clergyman tried to undermine him by circulating a letter that accused him of keeping a mistress. Keating said the letter -- which eventually made its way to top American church leaders -- also claimed he never attended mass. ''I was stunned and outraged,'' Keating said in an article he wrote for the October issue of the magazine Crisis....

<p>WASHINGTON -- New Jersey's U.S. attorney told Congress yesterday that violent street gangs represent a growing public threat and must be attacked with the same force and methods used against traditional organized crime families.</p> <p>Christopher Christie's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee came as his office in Newark announced charges against an East Orange man they said helped provide firearms to gang members in Newark and other parts of Essex County.</p>

Feds: Janitorial contractors cleaned up in city set-aside scam September 25, 2003 BY FRAN SPIELMAN, CITY HALL REPORTER The owners of a controversial maintenance company with political ties to Mayor Daley and reputed ties to organized crime were accused of racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering today for their alleged participation in a $100 million scheme to fraudulently obtain government contracts earmarked for minorities and women. The federal indictment accuses James Duff, his mother, Patricia Green, their business associate William Stratton and four other people of using “fraud, deceit and deception” to obtain certification as minority- and women-owned businesses,...

KFI reporter Eric Leonard just broke the following exclusive story. A man was arrested today after he approached Kobe Bryant's defense team with an offer to murder the female accuser in his sexual assault case. Patrick Grobber of El Segundo, 31, asked for $3 million to either murder the woman or "talk her out of testifying." He is being charged with one count of solicitation to commit murder and is being held on $1 million bail. Grobber, a German national, had given the name "Uri Andropov" to the defense team and identified himself as a Russian mobster. "Uri Andropov" was...