2 gambling is like drinking, it always persists except when the otb gangs and associated politicians steal it into bankruptcy, like ny otb , suffolk otb and perhaps nassau otb. the distinctions include credit. when there is credit you run the ridk of ... if it is not paid
nassau otb needs statutory refirm and a bit of the a team competence and mentality
a social experiment might include opening a drag strip in suffolk county enhanced by a machine shop and other manufacturing facilities for cars and motorcyles. bets may be placed for drugs, guns of sny type, cash.
Forty-six members of an organized crime network that included four of New York’s five Mafia families were charged in a large-scale racketeering conspiracy, according to an indictment unsealed on Thursday.
The group, which included members of the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese and Bonanno crime families, worked together in a conspiracy that spanned from Springfield, Mass., to South Florida, and involved extortion, arson, health care and credit card fraud, illegal gambling and the sale of illegal firearms and cigarettes, according to the indictment. A majority of those charged were from New York.
Federal authorities said the arrests, the product of a multiyear investigation conducted by federal and local authorities with an undercover special agent as well as a cooperating witness, showed that the Mafia was still a force in the city.
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that “threatening to assault, maim and kill people who get in the way of their criminal schemes remains the go-to play in the mob’s playbook.”
Prosecutors identified three men who they said “supervised and controlled” the network: Joseph Merlino, whom they believe to be the boss of the so-called Philadelphia crime family; Eugene O’Nofrio, a Genovese capo known as Rooster, who they said was in charge of crews on Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood; and Pasquale Parrello, who is believed to be a capo in the Genovese organization.
Some of the trouble revolved around a gambling club in Yonkers that prosecutors said was operated by another defendant, Anthony Zinzi, nicknamed Anthony Boy, and other associates, who used profits to pay tribute to Mr. Parrello. When a rival’s nearby club grew to be more successful, another defendant, Mark Maiuzzo, nicknamed Stymie, found the rival’s car and lit it on fire in March 2011, according to the indictment.
A few months later, Mr. Parrello ordered Mr. Zinzi and another man to attack a panhandler who had bothered a woman in a parking lot near the restaurant Pasquale’s Rigoletto, which Mr. Parrello operated on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, prosecutors said.
The group worked hard to evade detection, meeting at restaurants and highway rest stops and using coded language when they spoke, according to prosecutors, who released snippets of conversations recorded on wiretaps in a news release.
In a statement, Diego Rodriguez, the assistant director in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office, described the case’s details as reminiscent of an “old-school Mafia novel.”
When Mr. Parrello sent Mr. Zinzi; Israel Torres, known as Buddy; and Vincent Terracciano to threaten someone who owed a debt to an associate, he instructed Mr. Torres to choke the victim and tell him that “next time I’m not gonna stop choking,” according to the indictment.
Later, Mr. Parrello instructed members of his crew to intimidate another man who owed a debt to members of the Lucchese and Bonanno families by slashing his tires and surrounding him. “Give him a flat,” Mr. Parrello said on a recording, the indictment charged. “Then you catch up with him because then he’s there, ya know, he’s got to get it fixed, he can’t go nowhere.”
The assault of the panhandler was referred to as a “ballgame,” prosecutors said. “Remember the old days in the neighborhood when we used to play baseball?” one of the two men who took part in the beating told Mr. Zinzi, according to a conversation cited in the indictment. “A ballgame like that was done.”
The indictment also notes the nicknames of many defendants, including Tony the Wig, Tony the Cripple and Tugboat.
Members of the syndicate also trafficked guns illegally, used a skimmer to steal credit card numbers and profited from the sales of $3 million worth of illegal cigarettes, prosecutors said. About 40 of them were arrested on Thursday; two were already being held on other charges.
Edward A. McDonald, a former federal prosecutor in charge of organized crime prosecutions in Brooklyn in the 1980s, said that cooperation between Mafia families was not uncommon. He said that the charges, while serious, underscored how much has changed from that period, when the Mafia’s reach had affected the price of certain goods and services, like concrete and commercial garbage removal, across the entire city.
“The Mafia is just not engaging in the significant criminal activities they were involved in the past,” he said. “I’m not saying the war has been won, but it’s pretty close.”
Also on Thursday, John J. Gotti, the grandson of the deceased Mafia bosswith the same name, was arrested and charged with selling Oxycodone and other controlled pharmaceutical substances in Queens, according to the district attorney. After monitoring Mr. Gotti’s phone calls and implanting a listening device in the car they believed he used, investigators said they recorded Mr. Gotti stating that, in an average month, he sold more than 4,200 pills and made about $100,000.
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