Federal authorities yesterday executed one of the biggest mob takedowns in history, rounding up more than 60 reputed wiseguys – including the entire Gambino crime-family hierarchy – and charging them with murder, extortion, drug dealing, loan-sharking and corruption of New York’s construction industry.
The sweeping roundup of made men – among them acting Gambino boss John “Jackie Nose” D’Amico – came in conjunction with the simultaneous busts of 25 other mobsters in a $10 million Gambino sports-betting ring in Queens and raids on the family’s members in Sicily.
“Our goal is and always has been simple: to dismantle the Gambino organized-crime family in a coordinated and consistent fashion,” said Brooklyn US Attorney Benton Campbell about the busts of more than 100 mob captains, soldiers and associates in two countries.
Campbell said the main federal indictment – which melded two huge probes of the Mafia family – covers more than three decades of criminal activity and reflects the Gambino family’s corrosive influence on New York’s construction industry.
Crucial evidence came from thousands of hours of damning secret recordings made over three years by a Staten Island trucking-company executive “flipped” by authorities against the family’s powerful Corozzo brothers, with whom he had a close relationship.
Although top-level capo Nicholas “Little Nick” Corozzo remained at large last night, the rest of the Gambino leadership that was not already in prison was in custody, including his brother, consigliere Joseph “Jo Jo” Corozzo, and underboss Domenico Cefalu.
A handcuffed D’Amico acted blasé as he was placed into an unmarked station wagon outside 26 Federal Plaza: “I’m going to dinner,” he glibly told photographers.
Among the lower-level mobsters grabbed were the brother and nephew of late Gambino boss John “Dapper Don” Gotti, Vincent Gotti and Richard Gotti Jr., respectively.
“This was a bad day for organized crime, its killers and its cash producers,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
A law-enforcement source said, “I can’t think of a larger single-day roundup of substantial [Mafia] figures. I just can’t think of a day that had this many arrests” – many of which occurred in the early morning as authorities rousted defendants from their homes.
One of them, Charles Carneglia, was accused of five slayings, including the 1976 murder of Brooklyn court officer Albert Gelb just days before Gelb was to testify about wresting a gun from Carneglia in a Queens diner.
The pint-size, bearded thug also is accused of killing fellow Gambino soldier Louis DiBono in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1990 for failing to come to a meeting called by John Gotti Sr.
“He was one of the guys that made John Gotti so dangerous,” said one source. “He’s a guided missile. You could send him to a target, and he would hit it.”
A significant part of the indictment stems from a probe into Gambino activities after the conviction and imprisonment of official family boss Peter Gotti, the Dapper Don’s brother, and others three years ago.
Then, Joseph Vollaro, CEO of a Staten Island-based Andrew’s Trucking Corp., came under scrutiny, said a law-enforcement source.
Vollaro, described as a close associate of the Corozzo brothers and their Howard Beach, Queens, crew, was a “big earner” and may have been on track for induction into the crime family, the source said.
After being caught with 1 kilo of cocaine, Vollaro agreed to provide evidence against the Corozzos and others by wearing a wire.
“He made devastating recordings against the Corozzo crew . . . discussions about how they conducted their entire business, and how the money came in and how it was kicked up to their bosses,” the source said.
“They captured . . . payoffs from construction people, payoffs from jobs, kickbacks.”
In addition, wiretaps, surveillance video and photos also provided evidence the Gambinos demanded a tribute of $1 per cubic yard of landfill used at the site of the later-aborted NASCAR race track on Staten Island, and were skimming money from pension contributions at a Teamsters local.
Other projects allegedly infiltrated by the Gambinos were a West Side water tunnel, a Bronx water-filtration system, and the Liberty View Harbor site in Jersey City.
Added to the new indictment is evidence of violent crimes – including Carneglia’s purported hits – from turncoats who had been flipped after recent convictions related to a Gambino crew operated by Ronald “Ronnie One Arm” Trucchio, who reports to the Corozzo brothers.
Several members of that crew close to Trucchio and John “Junior” Gotti Jr. provided firsthand knowledge of murders and other violence, a source said.
Additional reporting by Austin Fenner, Ikimulisa Livingston and Kieran Crowley