Free Republic

Mafia godfathers in Sicily have been caught on wiretaps lamenting the “miserable” calibre of new recruits as nearly 150 alleged criminals were arrested in dawn raids involving 1,200 police officers. Crime bosses from Cosa Nostra, the Italian island’s notorious mafia, unfavourably compared the new generation of mafiosi to those of the past, invoking the example of The Godfather, the classic 1972 film starring Marlon Brando as the Sicilian-American patriarch Don Corleone. They said that, unlike their predecessors, new recruits were too quick to turn “pentito” – or state witness – as soon as they were arrested. “The calibre these days...

Federal authorities indicted 15 alleged members and associates of the Philadelphia mafia Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced. The men charged are alleged members or associates of the South Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey-based criminal organization La Cosa Nostra (LCN), according to a press release from the Department of Justice. They are charged with several crimes, including racketeering conspiracy, illegal gambling, loansharking, extortion and drug trafficking...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://boston.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/murder020909.htm Anthony St. Laurent, Sr. is charged with soliciting murder A federal complaint filed in Providence charges Anthony St. Laurent, Sr. with solicitation to commit murder-for-hire. According to an FBI affidavit supporting the complaint, St. Laurent tried to enlist others to kill Robert DeLuca, who, according to the affidavit, is a “capo,” or captain, in the New England La Cosa Nostra (LCN) criminal organization. United States Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Department of Justice Criminal Division, and Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of...

Former FBI Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio fed a mobster-turned-informant confidential information that was used "to devastating effect,'' a prosecutor said Monday at his murder trial.Former Colombo crime family capo Gregory Scarpa brutally killed four people, prosecutor Joseph Alexis said, "and the defendant helped him do it.''But defense attorney Douglas Grover said prosecutors "are quick to provide broad strokes -- broad strokes that provide cover for witnesses who are telling lies.''DeVecchio went on trial Monday in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn in what prosecutors have billed as "one of the worst cases of law enforcement corruption in the history of this...