Posted on 10/19/2015 1:50:58 PM PDT by ETL
Vincent Asaro, accused of receiving a cut of one of US history’s biggest cash thefts, was arrested last year after allegedly keeping his role secret for decades.
For decades, prosecutors say, Vincent Asaro managed to keep hidden his role in an infamous mob heist that was immortalized in the hit movie Goodfellas. As he did so, others of his generation were locked up or died gangland deaths.
A frail-looking Asaro finally emerged from the shadows after his arrest last year. He will go on trial on Monday on charges that he pocketed a cut of the $6m Lufthansa robbery at Kennedy Airport in 1978 – one of the largest cash thefts in American history.
If convicted, he will become the latest casualty of an erosion of the Mafia’s code of silence that has decimated the aging upper echelon of New York City’s underworld, sometimes called the “Oldfellas”.
Prosecutors at the trial in federal court in Brooklyn will give jurors a lesson in a bygone era when the five Italian Mafia families had a greater appetite for brazen crimes and deadly payback for betrayals. The defense will counter by accusing the government of using shady turncoat gangsters with faded memories or incentives to lie.
Asaro, 80, who has a history of convictions for lesser mob-related crimes, was arrested after his cousin, Gaspare Valenti, came forward with new information about the Lufthansa heist and agreed to wear a wire to try to coax admissions out of the reputed longtime member of the Bonanno crime family.
Prosecutors have not revealed why the key witness turned on Asaro, though it is believed he may have held a grudge after being cheated out of a cut of Asaro’s $750,000 take from the heist, said Jerry Capeci, a Mafia expert who writes the ganglandnews.com web column.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Reputed mobster pleads not guilty in 1978 Lufthansa heist that netted $5.8M
NEW YORK - More than 30 years after hooded gunmen pulled a $6 million airport heist dramatized in the hit Martin Scorsese movie “Goodfellas,” an elderly reputed mobster was arrested at his New York City home on Thursday and charged in the robbery and a 1969 murder.
Vincent Asaro, 78, was named along with his son, Jerome, and three other defendants in wide-ranging indictment alleging murder, robbery, extortion, arson and other crimes from the late 1960s through last year. The Asaros, both identified as captains in the Bonanno organized crime family, pleaded not guilty through their attorneys and were ordered held without bail at a brief appearance in federal court in Brooklyn.
The elder Asaro’s attorney, Gerald McMahon, told reporters outside court that his client was framed by shady turncoat gangsters, including former Bonanno boss Joseph Massino - the highest-ranking member of the city’s five organized crime families to break the mob’s vow of silence.
Massino “is one of the worst witnesses I’ve ever seen,” McMahon said. He added that Asaro had given him “marching orders” that “there will be no plea and he will walk out the door a free man.”
A lawyer for Jerome Asaro declined comment. ...”
Defendants in ‘Goodfellas’ Lufthansa heist make shackled court appearance
Four reputed mobsters, with an average age of 65, came to the routine court appearance in shackles and chains. ...”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/19/goodfellas-lufthansa-heist-court-appearance-new-york
“Jimmy I want my money!”.
"I've been tellin' ya for forty years now. Don't buy anything. Don't get anything. Especially nothing flashy or big. Haven't you been hearing what I've been saying all these years? Why not? You're going to get us all pinched, that's why. What are you, stupid?
That isn't even small change compared to what politicians and UN officials steal.
That was $6 million in 1972; adjust for inflation...
“What did I tell you.....Don’t buy anything!”
“I thought he’d never shut the .... up.”
Poor Morrie never got paid.
Poor Stacks.
I could never listen to “Layla” quite the same way ever again.
Salerno’s was also within 3 blocks of where I lived at the time. I think it’s a Mexican restaurant now. Most Italians have deserted NYC.
I don’t think inflation would quite catch it up to $6 billion missing from the State Dept. or the hundreds of millions skimmed off of the Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq. A program coincidentally initiated by Slick Willie Clinton.
Danny DeVito wears wire in SNL skit.
https://screen.yahoo.com/jon-lovitz-snl-skits/wired-danny-000000907.html
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