Free Republic

<p>September 5, 2003 -- Will the real boss of the Gambino family please stand up?</p> <p>Lawyers working to undercut convictions in the Peter Gotti racketeering case want the feds to investigate a mob snitch who claims the Gottis no longer hold the reins of the Gambino family, The Post has learned.</p>

The brother of the late mob boss John Gotti was charged Monday with plotting to kill Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, the Mafia turncoat who once dared the Gambino crime family to hunt him down. Peter Gotti was named in an indictment that included five other Gambino family members already charged in a wide racketeering conspiracy that included the plot to kill Gravano. Gravano was arrested in a drug case before the hit could be carried out. The new indictment in U.S. District Court in Manhattan told little about the scheme, saying only that Peter Gotti and others conspired from...

Sidewinder: Chinese Subversion Tracked in CanadaSecret RCMP - Canadian Security Intelligence Service Draft Report <-- Snip --> ForwardIn May 1996 a joint project was initiated by the RCMP Criminal Analysis Branch and the CSIS Analysis and Production Branch to assess the extent of the threat posed by the acquisition and control of Canadian companies by members or associates of triads and with affiliations to the Chinese Intelligence Services. The research team quickly realized that the initial premise was the tip of the iceberg with only a minute portion of a much more complex situation showing. It should be stressed that...

Posted on Sun, Aug. 03, 2003 Nation's biggest ATM fraud exposes system's vulnerability By WALT BOGDANICH The New York Times NEW YORK - He fenced stolen jewels, committed bank and credit-card fraud, and had been accused of having links to an Albanian-Yugoslavian criminal gang. Cloaking himself in nine aliases and Armani jackets, he was a smooth, multilingual master of the con, say investigators and persons who knew him. By all accounts, Iljmija Frljuckic had no business being around anybody else's money. Nevertheless, after being deported in the late 1990s, he slipped back into the United States and set up shop...

<p>The president of the labor union that is paying for Gov. James E. McGreevey's trip to Puerto Rico this week said yesterday he expects his organization may soon be named in a federal racketeering suit.</p> <p>John Bowers, president of the International Longshoremen's Association, made the surprising comment in his opening remarks to union delegates at the convention in San Juan. McGreevey will address the convention today.</p>

N.J. mob probe brings arrests of reputed capo, 19 associates Wednesday, June 11, 2003 By RANDY DIAMOND TRENTON BUREAU The Genovese crime family's reputed capo in New Jersey and 19 alleged other associates were charged Tuesday with operating a criminal enterprise that engaged in loan-sharking, illegal gambling, theft, and drug distribution. Acting Attorney General Peter Harvey Jr. described the early morning arrests of reputed capo Ludwig "Ninny" Bruschi and the others as the most significant dent in organized crime operations in northern and central New Jersey in a decade. "It's not by accident that 'The Sopranos' television show on HBO...

MONTEVIDEO, May 13 (IPS) - The two consecutive terms of former Argentine president Carlos Menem, who goes to the polls in next Sunday's presidential runoff election, were marked by a trail of mysterious deaths. Among those who were murdered in unclarified circumstances, died in what were reported as accidents and suicides, or died of supposed heart attacks or strokes were investigative journalists, witnesses, or people who knew too much, whose downfall could drag along with them other people implicated in the most serious scandals of corruption, arms and drug smuggling, and money laundering in the history of Argentina. The spate...

<p>TRENTON -- Employees at the state Parole Board and the Attorney General's Office are talking about how state investigators, who are looking into whether the governor's office was involved in the parole of reputed mobster Angelo Prisco, damaged a computer believed to contain evidence in the case, sources have told the Gannett State Bureau.</p>

Northfield Center - The "boss" of the Nordonia Middle School "mafia" was an elaborate dreamer. He researched the mob on the Internet and in the library, attracted about a dozen followers and extracted $100 in entry fees to his group. His plans were even bigger than his actions. He envisioned getting rich quickly off prostitution, computer hacking, robbery, theft or candy sales. Summit County authorities say Monday's arrest of the "boss" and a fellow eighth-grader, both 14, put a stop to the mixture of plans and fantasy. School officials had found a note outlining some of the scheme. Police said...

Scandal-hit US firm wins key contracts Antony Barnett Sunday April 13, 2003 The Observer A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal. DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department. The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN...

BRUSSELS -- Afghanistan called on international donors on Monday to maintain their commitment to rebuilding the war-shattered country or risk seeing it turn into a mafia drug state. Afghan officials fear that a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq could make donors shift their focus from Afghanistan, with future aid for the country going instead toward helping rebuild Iraq. "We will focus on reforms but we need your assistance in providing predictable finance," Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai told a meeting in Brussels of donors from 40 countries. "The narco-mafia state will have the lowest indirect price tag ... but...

PARIS, March 12 (Reuters) - A commando-style gang used a bazooka to blow its way into a prison near Paris and free one of the inmates in a pre-dawn raid on Wednesday, officials said. The gang of four or five men machine-gunned watchtowers at the prison, in Fresnes to the east of the French capital and near Disneyland Paris, before rushing inside to the cell of Antonio Ferrara, who was serving time for organised crime. "The commando gang entered the high-security section of the prison and gave Antonio Ferrara explosives which allowed him to blow open the bars on the...

<p>TRENTON -- An angry Gov. McGreevey yesterday welcomed a federal probe into whether someone in his office had secretly helped a reputed mob boss get paroled from state prison.</p> <p>McGreevey said allegations that a top aide helped alleged mobster Angelo Prisco regain his freedom are the result of disgruntled former state Parole Board executives trying to retaliate against him for letting them go.</p>

<p>As many as 40 mobsters and members of a union being probed for taking no-show jobs in the Ground Zero cleanup will be busted today for similar schemes at other city construction sites, sources told The Post yesterday.</p> <p>After a long-running organized-crime probe, FBI agents are planning to arrest members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Locals 14 and 15 in a series of early-morning raids.</p>

Last October, several dozen American troops assembled outside an anonymous new low-rise factory building in a half-empty industrial park on the outskirts of Bijeljina, a small town in northeastern Bosnia. The owner of the factory, a firm called Orao, was well known among arms dealers and weapons manufacturers. During the 1980s, when a still-intact Yugoslavia maintained the fourth largest military in Europe, Orao was the Yugoslav Air Force's contractor of choice for jet engine maintenance. After the partition of Bosnia in 1995 and in defiance of U.N. sanctions, they went into business with a new client: Saddam Hussein. Orao became...

More and more real life mafia godfathers are seeking help on the psychiatrist's couch, according to new research. Medical experts at the University of Palermo in Sicily say they are following the lead of James Gandolfini in the Sopranos and Robert de Niro in Analyse This. Psychiatrist Girolamo Lo Verso says the mafioso are grappling with mental problems caused by the stress of organised crime. ''They come to discuss food disorders, anxiety, depression and sexual problems they are having," he said. "We know of one case where a Godfather from Trapani in Sicily visited a psychiatrist because he could not...

HE WAS only married to Marilyn Monroe for nine turbulent months, but Joe DiMaggio, the reclusive US baseball legend, vowed he would never forgive the Kennedys for her death. Now, four years after his own demise, the man immortalised by Simon and Garfunkel in the song Mrs Robinson appears to have his revenge. A new book, written by his long-time lawyer and close companion Morris Engelberg, reveals he really did believe the Kennedy clan killed Monroe. "They murdered the one person I loved," DiMaggio confided to Mr Engelberg. Officially, Monroe, who allegedly enjoyed affairs with both John Kennedy, the US...

UN team 'acted like Mafia', says Iraqi scientist By Hamza Hendawi in Baghdad 19 January 2003 An angry Iraqi scientist accused UN weapons inspectors yesterday of using his wife's illness in a "Mafia-like" attempt to lure him abroad for interrogation about Baghdad's nuclear programmes. "Never, never will I leave my country," he said. Faleh Hassan, a physicist who received his doctorate at Edinburgh University, was one of two scientists whose homes were visited on Thursday by inspectors. It was the first unannounced visit to private residences as the US increased pressure on the UN teams to try to take scientists...

<p>Prosecutors dropped a bombshell yesterday at a cop's trial on charges of concealing mob-hit evidence, suggesting he tampered with evidence in another Mafia murder and tipped off a mobster about a drug case.</p> <p>The stunning new allegations came on the last day of evidence against Detective Michael Silvestri, who is accused of covering up his cousin's role in a 1998 mob hit by taking the spent bullet shell casings from the victim's car before cops checked it.</p>

German police have launched a special task force to smash a Christmas tree 'mafia' who are destroying the country's woodland. It follows the revelation that one in ten trees in German homes this Christmas will be stolen. The German Environment Ministry says the country's economic problems mean more people than ever are stealing trees for their own homes. Others are buying trees off the street after they have been stolen from forests. A spokesman said: "These people are taking the young trees that are the future of the forests or destroying older trees by hacking off the tops without any...