The Black Mafia Family, a nationwide ring of high-volume cocaine distributors

The Black Mafia Family, a nationwide ring of high-volume cocaine distributors, better known as BMF, has been sold to DuBose Entertainment.Announced today, the terms of the sale were not made public. However, a statement from the company declared that a TV series, similar to The Wire, was being scripted. The statement also alluded to a film script in development as well.Per DuBose' report, "Brothers Demetrious 'Big Meech' Flenory and Terry Flenory were sentenced to 30 years in prison for operating a multi-state criminal enterprise involving cocaine distribution. 'Big Meech,' the leader of the notorious BMF, lived a lavish lifestyle that he generously shared with his members garnering him a level of notoriety and celebrity status usually reserved for hip hop royalty. Authorities estimate the operation began in Detroit during the 1990s and eventually expanded to Missouri, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, California and Texas
"This is a complex crime story that weaves elements of humanity, a strong family bond, street-level survival and opulence with real consequences," says James DuBose. "The acquisition of the Black Mafia Family story reflects my mission to pursue contemporary and authentic stories."DuBose also recently announced a partnership with Disturbing Tha Peace's Chaka Zulu and Jeff Dixon on their own venture Ebony Son Entertainment.

Gaetano Milano who killed underboss William "The Wild Guy" Grasso had seven years shaved off his sentence

mob soldier who killed underboss William "The Wild Guy" Grasso in a failed attempt to hijack the Patriarca crime family two decades ago had seven years shaved off his sentence Wednesday.U.S. District Judge Alan H. Nevas reduced Gaetano Milano's sentence from 33 to 26 years, approving a deal negotiated by defense attorney Craig Raabe and Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Jongbloed. The deal bases the sentence reduction on the assertion that Milano was not provided effective assistance by his trial lawyer F. Mac Buckley — an assertion Buckley denies.The reduction in his sentence means that Milano could be released within eight years.
Milano had been fighting since the middle 1990s to have the sentence reduced on a variety of grounds. The claim resulting in the most prolonged litigation was Milano's argument that FBI agents in Boston wrongly withheld informant reports from Buckley in 1990 and '91 that could have permitted him to mount a more effective trial defense.Milano's informant claim has grown increasingly persuasive over the past decade with disclosures in federal court in Boston that FBI agents engaged in criminal behavior with what the bureau classifies as its "top echelon" informants.
The informant who Milano said could have helped his defense was Angelo "Sonny" Mercurio, a sworn member of the Patriarca crime family who died two years ago in the federal witness protection program. Former FBI agent John Connolly recruited Mercurio as an informant. Connolly is now on trial for murder in Florida, accused of leaking information that led two of his other "top echelon" informants to kill potential witnesses against them.Milano said — and some federal law enforcement officials in Boston agree — that Mercurio was involved in a conspiracy that incited a factional war within the Patriarca crime family and resulted in Grasso's murder. Milano said — after his conviction — that he was forced by his position in the factional dispute to kill Grasso. Had he not, Milano says, Grasso or some other gangster would have killed him.Milano's lawyers and federal prosecutors battled over the Mercurio claim for years. With no resolution in sight, the parties entered a settlement conference in September.The settlement says that Buckley should have asked the judge to instruct trial jurors that Milano could have been convicted of manslaughter rather than murder — even without the Mercurio information. Jurors presumably could have reached that conclusion if they had believed Milano was suffering from extreme emotional duress due to a belief that he had to kill Grasso in order to save himself. At his sentencing in November 1991, Milano broke down in tears. He renounced the Mafia and, reversing his claim of innocence during the trial, tearfully confessed that he had to kill Grasso to avoid being killed himself. The settlement agreement asserts that Buckley again was ineffective by failing to postpone the sentencing and win time to prepare an argument that reflected Milano's "extraordinary change of position."Buckley said this week that he supports the reduction in Milano's sentence, but disagrees that his trial defense was ineffective. He said a jury instruction on an emotional duress defense would have contradicted Milano's categorical claim of innocence at trial. And he said Milano's post-conviction "change of position" was known to the FBI and federal prosecutors weeks before he was sentenced.In return for the reduced sentence, Milano agreed to drop further legal claims concerning Mercurio.Raabe suggested in court that the sentence reduction may have been based on ineffective assistance of counsel for expediency."There were a wide range of issues that were in play. Ineffective assistance was a negotiated settlement," Raabe said. "It would be a shame if the upshot of today was that Mac Buckley performed ineffectively."He called Buckley "a great trial lawyer" who "performed well."Buckley, a former federal prosecutor, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2000 for stealing from clients and was placed on probation in 2002 for failing to file income tax returns. At the time of his convictions, he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. He agreed to give up his law practice and now operates a boxing program for Hartford youths.
Milano was one of seven Patriarca crime family members and associates convicted in 1991 of racketeering, murder and other offenses following the longest and most sensational Mafia trial ever in Connecticut. Among other things, prosecutors introduced as evidence the first ever recording of a Mafia initiation ceremony.After the seven convictions in Hartford and another dozen or so in Boston, federal officials said that they had decimated the Patriarca family, which since World War II had been the dominant criminal organization in New England.

The Black Mafia Family,WANTED Paul Buford suave charmer with plenty of charisma

members of the Detroit-based gang "The Black Mafia Family" have found themselves under the suspicion of law enforcement for dozens of crimes committed throughout the nation. The leaders of the gang, brothers Terry and Demetrius Flenory, have been arrested, pled guilty, and sentenced to decades in prison for the felonies they've masterminded.According to Marshals, the Flenory brothers operated the Black Mafia Family under the guise of the rap label "BMF Entertainment."BMF Entertainment acted as a legitimate facade for their operation, in an attempt to keep cops from noticing the large amounts of money flowing in and out of their organization. But nothing could hide the flash of their bling or the gold on their grills: federal agents aren't stupid, and they knew that, sooner or later, the BMF would come undone.
Since the Flenorys will be imprisoned for years to come, the baton has been passed, and the leadership of the criminal organization has changed hands.
As of April 2008, an investigation spearheaded by the Detroit office of the DEA has resulted in the indictments of 64 BMF members, as well as the seizure of approximately $20 million in assets. It all stems from charges alleging their cooperation and participation in a large-scale conspiracy to distribute thousands of kilograms of cocaine, among other improprieties.While 64 'Family' members have been taken down in the first wave of arrests, one man has managed to evade the wide net cast by DEA officials. His name is Paul Buford, and Marshals need your help to take him off the streets once and for all.
They describe Buford as a suave charmer with plenty of charisma.
Dangerous Felon Known To Live Life Of Luxury
While Buford isn't the high-profile BMF ringleader like Terry and Demetrius Flenory were, police say he's still a big player in the crime syndicate and needs to be put behind bars, according to U.S. Marshals in Detroit.

Buford is currently wanted on a federal warrant for conspiracy to sell large quantities of cocaine, and another for conspiracy to launder money.

But not surprisingly, these aren't the first crimes he's ever been wanted for. In his past, Buford's been charged with assault & battery, assault with a firearm, domestic violence, and multiple counts of larceny, to name just a few of his prior alleged indiscretions.

Now, he's wanted for more of the same, only this time, the charges would land him in prison for a substantially longer time than he's ever faced before: up to 20 years.

Deputy U.S. Marshals on the Detroit Fugitive Apprehension Team tell us that Buford's eluded them for nearly two years, and they hope this latest push for publicity will help them nail him down for good.

They describe Buford as a suave charmer with plenty of charisma who's known to drive expensive cars and wear top-of-the-line threads. He has expensive taste, and cops say he's one of the top members of the BMF's west coast bureau.

If you've seen this dangerous felon, you've got to call our hotline right away at 1-800-CRIME-TV.

Funeral wreath bearing a threatening note with the names of two of the dead and other officers was left outside the Chihuahua state police headquarter

commander and two other members of a state auto-theft investigations unit were killed in two attacks by hit squads this week in Juárez, said Chihuahua state officials.After the gangland-style killings, a funeral wreath bearing a threatening note with the names of two of the dead and other officers was left outside the Chihuahua state police headquarters in Juárez.Tuesday evening, Cmdr. Rodolfo Barragan Marrufo was in a Dodge Ram 2500 when he was fatally shot by masked gunmen in the parking lot of Los Cedros Hotel, officials said.An unknown number of shooters opened fire after getting out of a white Dodge Durango or Cadillac Escalade.Thirty bullet casings were found at the scene.Officials said Barragan had training from U.S. authorities, including having taken a course to identify stolen vehicles by the National Insurance Crime Bureau and a crime scene investigation workshop in Albuquerque.Wednesday evening, two auto-theft agents in their official Dodge Ram 2500 were at a stop light when they were fired at from a van, officials said.The agents drove into an incoming traffic lane to try to escape but crashed into a car.
Agents Luis Carlos Rodri guez Saldaña, 33, and Mario Saldaña Ramirez, 39, died at the scene, where investigators found 41 bullet casings.Seven other homicides also occurred Wednesday in Juárez.More than 1,060 slayings have been reported in the border city so far this year.

Bernardino Terracciano, who played local mob boss Uncle Bernardino in the movie "Gomorra," arrested.

Police in the Naples area arrested seven alleged mobsters on Saturday, including an actor who played a boss in an award-winning movie denouncing the mafia.The pre-dawn raids targeting the Camorra crime syndicate netted alleged members of a clan responsible for the gangland-style killing of six African immigrants last month, said police in the town of Caserta, near Naples.Those arrested were not directly linked to the deadly shooting, but were suspects in other attacks and crimes. The clan's alleged boss, Giuseppe Setola, escaped arrest and was being sought along with three others, police said in a statement.The Sept. 18 shooting of the Africans sparked rioting in an area already rife with lawlessness and violence, prompting the government to deploy 500 soldiers to set up checkpoints and help police.Investigators believe the Camorra orchestrated the slayings to punish the Africans for getting involved in drug trafficking, one of the syndicate's lucrative activities. At least four men accused in the killings have been arrested in sweeping anti-mafia raids over the last weeks.Among those netted in Saturday's sweeps around Caserta was Bernardino Terracciano, who played local mob boss Uncle Bernardino in the movie "Gomorra," said police official Rodolfo Ruperti.Terracciano, 53, is accused of extortion and associating with the mafia, Ruperti said.Director Matteo Garrone's study of the Naples-based Camorra won second place at the Cannes Film Festival this spring and is Italy's hopeful for a best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in the United States.The movie is based on a book by Roberto Saviano, whose expose on the Camorra's hold on everything from fashion to waste disposal forced him to go under police protection.

Oceanside street gang six people arrested

Six people were arrested and six others already in custody were named yesterday in federal complaints resulting from a three-year investigation targeting an Oceanside street gang, authorities said. During the investigation, authorities seized 26 firearms and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in the Oceanside area, U.S. Attorney Karen Hewitt said in a statement.
Many of the defendants are members or associates of the Varrio Posole Locos gang, Hewitt said. She said the crimes alleged in the complaint include purchase, theft and possession of multiple firearms by convicted felons; robbery of a heroin dealer who was forced from a moving vehicle; conspiracies to distribute heroin at the Vista jail and at Ironwood State Prison in Blythe; and street sales of methamphetamine and heroin.

Gangsters are flocking to the millionaires' playground of Dubai

Gangsters are flocking to the millionaires' playground of Dubai. "Enforcer" Graeme Pearson - former head Scottish Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency - says the Middle East desert kingdom attracts global organised crime bosses. He said: "Dubai is a place of great interest to criminals internationally. It's a bit like an owners' club where they talk about the new places in the world. "Once it was Amsterdam then places such as Portugal and the Costa del Sol but now it's Dubai."
One Dubai exile from Scotland is playboy Imran Hussain, of Glasgow, who is being probed over a billion-pound carousel fraud perpetrated against UK taxpayers.
Others include security firm couple Paul and Marie Johnston who brag about rubbing shoulders with Prince Andrew. European organised crime gangs and the Russian Mafia flock to the United Arab Emirates state. They're attracted by its opulent hotels, lack of scrutiny from Western authorities and tax-free status. But Pearson believes other countries will eventually force the Dubai authorities to get tough.
He said: "It will come because there will be global pressure as there has been in other places such as Switzerland."

Lee Dotson, a member of an O'Donnell Heights gang engaged in a vicious, weeks-long turf war.

Lee Dotson, a member of an O'Donnell Heights gang engaged in a vicious, weeks-long turf war.But the bullet hit his 16-year-old girlfriend, Estefany Gonzalez. Dotson, the only eyewitness to the crime, refused to name her killer.Yesterday Juan Hernandez, the man prosecutors believe killed the former Patterson High School student, entered an Alford plea - an acknowledgment that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict but not an admission of guilt - to second-degree murder and handgun charges. He made the plea as part of a deal with prosecutors for a five-year prison sentence.Hernandez's defense attorney, William Purpura, told Circuit Judge John Addison Howard that a five-year sentence normally would not be "anywhere close to appropriate" for murder. But in this case, because of the lack of witnesses, it was, he said.Estefany Gonzalez Dotson "refused to cooperate in any way with the Baltimore City Police Department," prosecutor Lisa Phelps said. Phelps said the state's second witness did not see the crime but overheard Dotson say that "Juan" had "shot at" him.The second witness was subsequently shot with the same gun used to kill Gonzalez. He is paralyzed from the waist down."The state had difficult evidentiary issues, but if they overcame those, my client faced life in prison," Purpura said.Phelps said that in March 2007 a violent turf war broke out after members of a gang called the Untamed Gorillas beat up a member of the Toone Street Bangers.Prosecutors say the Toone Street gang retaliated, with Hernandez attempting to kill Dotson, a member of the Untamed Gorillas, as he walked through a nearly empty public housing project on the far eastern edge of the city.The bullet struck Gonzalez in the shoulder and then went into her chest. Dotson left her there. A passer-by discovered her in a parking lot in the 6200 block of Toone Street.
Yesterday, Gonzalez's guardian, Gennette Washington, wept as she told Howard that she forgave Hernandez but couldn't forgive herself for allowing Gonzalez to move to Baltimore to live with her father a few months before her death.
"I'm so lost without her," Washington said. "She wasn't my child, but it felt as though she was my baby."Washington's mother, Elba Ortega, took Gonzalez in when she was an infant. When Ortega died in 2001, Washington took guardianship of the 10-year-old. But she wanted to leave her school in Newark, Del., so Washington allowed her to move in with her father on Eastern Avenue, where he had moved after Ortega's death.By the time of the shooting, Gonzalez had been expelled from Patterson High School and was staying with a girlfriend in O'Donnell Heights."She's not my biological sister," Washington said. "My mother raised her, but I wanted to give her the life my mother couldn't give us. A family. A home. I wanted her to be able to grow up ... to graduate from high school, to go to prom, to do things I never got to do. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time.""Maybe he'll change his life," Washington added. "Everyone should get a second chance."Hernandez declined to say anything to the judge, but he was escorted out of the courtroom in tears.Hernandez's five-year sentence will be served without parole, followed by five years of probation. If he violates probation, he could face up to 25 years in prison.

John Gizzi is serving five-and-a-half-years for violent offences must repay over £2m

£875,000 offer was being considered by an enforcement receiver handling John Gizzi's affairs magistrates in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, were told. Gizzi is serving five-and-a-half-years for violent offences. The criminal builder must repay over £2m of his criminal gains by December, or face an extra seven years in prison.
Gizzi was said by police to have "ruled" Rhyl through threats and intimidations, and he was jailed in 2006 for causing grievous bodily harm and other offences.
His former home, Bronwylfa Hall in St Asaph, was valued at £1.8m in March 2007, when a crown court ordered that he repay £2.6m. It has been reduced twice already. On Wednesday, the court heard he had repaid £318,000 and still owed £2.3m. His solicitor said Gizzi's Rolex watch was to be sold at a specialist auction and his parents had put in an offer for four personalised number plates, originally valued at £45,000. A decision on giving the receiver more time to sell some of the assets was adjourned until December by District Judge Andrew Shaw.

Andrew Pritchard the ‘fixer’ behind Britain’s largest ever drugs smuggling operation

Customs and Excise in London had labelled Andrew Pritchard the ‘fixer’ behind Britain’s largest ever drugs smuggling operation - half a ton of cocaine, “enough to keep London’s clubland snorting for months”.Held behind bars for 18 months, doing time for a crime he insisted he did not commit, Pritchard was subsequently exonerated. He was allowed to walk away from Her Majesty’s prison with all charges formally dropped against him. And that, he says, was the start of his transformation.

Andrew Pritchard signing a copy of his book. (Photos: Joseph Wellington)
Pritchard chronicles his experience in the no-holds-barred novel, Urban Smuggler, a book which will be made into a film, with some of the scenes shot on location here in Jamaica.“Oh yes, I was a smuggler,” Pritchard admits without reservation, in an interview the day after the local launch held recently in the gardens of the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.His smuggling escapades, however, were limited to Cuban cigars and those of the counterfeit variety - never cocaine or any such drug, he emphasises, his British accent sounding thick.Born in Britain to a Jamaican mother who migrated to that country in the 50s, in the book, Pritchard says that his introduction to smuggling came as a child on his return trip from Jamaica to England. He recalls wondering why the suitcases he and his sister were taking home were so heavy.
“When our suitcases were opened, they revealed dozens of bottles of white rum. I remember being amused, if not shocked. This, then was to be my first experience in smuggling.”And, if smuggling is to be defined as taking steps to import a legal substance without paying the customs and excise duties, then Pritchard here has quite casually opened a can of worms. Which traveller can honestly say they have never tried to ‘hide’ an item from the prying eyes of Customs officials in order to avoid paying duties? So, does that make us all smugglers? (Those of you without sin cast the first stone.)The author guilelessly recounts his chequered past - starting out in 1988 as a promoter for ‘warehouse parties’ - illegal, all-night events - through to 2004 when he became intimately involved with the Cuban cigar smuggling ring. The Foreword says it all. “Andrew was known to the police and the underworld from early 1980s when he was at the centre of the rave scene which transformed youth culture and drug use in the UK.”So, making strides in his career, Pritchard finds more lucrative ways to earn a living. “We brought top-end Cuban cigars and found a way to circumvent the excise and duties, which were ridiculously high at the time,” he told the Observer. “We later started smuggling counterfeit cigars through Cayman into England as well,” he added
And, crucial to the success of this smuggling enterprise was the Fast Team of Customs officials on Pritchard’s payroll, whose job it was to send through his containers of cigars without them being searched.It was while on his way to pick up one such sealed container that Pritchard’s neatly stacked deck of smuggling cards came tumbling down. He was arrested and charged with smuggling half a ton of premium grade cocaine with a street value of $100m, as that was what was allegedly found in the container, not cigars.The nightmare which followed saw a court case which cost nine million pounds, two hung juries and a final acquittal.
Surely the stuff of which books and films are made. And also the stuff from which the smuggler-turned-author made tons of cash. (”Oh, yes, smuggling was quite a lucrative enterprise,” he told us.)Casting is now being done for the international feature film

Tuan Ky Quach, 38, was allegedly bound with duct tape in a Windsor motel room in February by three armed men who stole about $200,000 in marijuana.

Tuan Ky Quach, 38, was allegedly bound with duct tape in a Windsor motel room in February by three armed men who stole about $200,000 in marijuana. Another man was pistol-whipped with a 357 Magnum in a case that resulted in seven arrests after police were alerted to people in ski masks lurking outside.Quach was charged with possession of 24 kilograms of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking.
Details of that incident came out yesterday when Quach — a small, clean-cut man with glasses — was denied bail on charges related to a Kitchener home-grow operation.
Quach was among five suspects arrested at gunpoint Sept. 11 during an alleged drug deal in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant in suburban Toronto. Police fired five shots in the afternoon takedown when the driver of a car allegedly tried to speed away and hit one of the officers in the knee.
Waterloo Regional Police doing surveillance based on a public tip had followed a blue van from a home in the Doon South area of Kitchener. The blue van allegedly met up in the restaurant parking lot with a car and a white van.According to allegations outlined in court, $24,000 was transferred from the car to the white van, and 11 kilograms of marijuana worth $100,000 were moved from the blue van to the car.
Quach, the alleged car driver, is charged with possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, assault with a weapon and dangerous driving.The day after the arrests, police searched 366 Pine Valley Dr. and found more than 1,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated $1 million.It was one of four major marijuana seizures in the same suburban neighbourhood in a month.Court heard Quach was released on $30,000 bail in the Windsor case and went to live with his parents in Markham. Two months later, he was charged in Toronto with possession of marijuana and breaching the terms of his bail. He was then freed again.Defence lawyer Nana Kato applied to have him released for the third time yesterday, proposing his father and his sister as sureties. They said they were willing to put up $150,000 each and would watch Quach around-the-clock."We admit he was deceiving us," his sister, Ngoc Quach, said of his two prior releases. "We did not supervise him close enough."Trung Quach said through a Cantonese interpreter that his son likes gambling and began getting in trouble after he lost his girlfriend and his job in a machine shop a few years ago.
Kato suggested Quach might have thought it was another drug rip-off and panicked when confronted by armed undercover officers in the parking lot.Federal prosecutor Kathleen Nolan opposed his release, stressing Quach's track record of alleged breaches since his first arrest."Why should we have any confidence he is going to follow the terms if he is released?" she asked.Justice of the peace Andrew Marquette agreed, denying bail on even strict terms of house arrest.Two of five suspects in the Pine Valley Drive case were granted bail of $140,000 and $100,000. Two other suspects have not had bail hearings yet.

Bosses of the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate formally acknowledged their "employers' liability" for the death of one of three bystanders killed

Bosses of the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate formally acknowledged their "employers' liability" for the death of one of three bystanders killed when members of an affiliate gang shot up a bar in Maebashi in 2003. The admission was part of a settlement reached Friday in a lawsuit filed by the family of one of the victims.
According to an attorney for the plaintiffs, Shigeo Nishiguchi and Hareaki Fukuda--Sumiyoshi-kai's top two leaders--agreed to pay 97.5 million yen in compensation to the plaintiffs, promised to prevent similar incidents and expressed regret to the victims' relatives. It is believed to be the first time that gang bosses have formally acknowledged their liability as employers for a crime committed by subordinates. On Jan. 25, 2003, two members of a gang affiliated with Sumiyoshi-kai fired a number of shots inside and outside a bar in Maebashi, killing four people and severely wounding two. A man formerly linked to a gang affiliated with the rival Inagawa-kai crime syndicate was killed along with three customers of the bar. One of the two people wounded was a former leader of the gang affiliated with Inagawa-kai.
The two attackers and their boss, who ordered the shooting, were arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. They have lodged an appeal with higher courts. In November 2006, three family members of one of the murdered bystanders filed a 197.6 million yen lawsuit against the two attackers, the senior member of the affiliate gang who ordered the attack, Nishiguchi and Fukuda. One of the two attackers agreed to pay his portion. The other attacker and the senior gang member were ordered by the high court to pay 88 million yen. The decision was finalized. The suit against Nishiguchi and Fukuda was separated as it involved employer liability. Earlier in the trial, Nishiguchi and Fukuda denied their employers' liability and sought to have the case dismissed. The court proposed a settlement in respect of the case in April.
The plaintiffs said they would accept the court-mediated settlement if the defendants would acknowledge their liability as employers. The defendants presented a settlement proposal earlier this month. Speaking at a press conference after the settlement was finalized, the eldest daughter of the victim said: "Since we sued gangsters, we've been fearful that we may lose more family members. We'll continue to be terrified, but now I'll tell my [late] father at the home altar that the Sumiyoshi-kai bosses acknowledged their responsibility." She was accompanied by her husband, who held a portrait of the victim. The plaintiffs' lawyers said in a statement, "The ruling will bring significant results in terms of relief from gang crimes and prevention of such crimes."

INSIDE LATIN KINGS

INSIDE LATIN KINGS
• Scope: National
• Criminal Activity: Narcotics, weapons, extortion, assaults, intimidation, beatings, stabbing, shootings, murder and graffiti.
• Propensity for Violence: The Latin Kings’ reputation continues today as evidenced by the violence in correctional facilities in various communities.
The Latin Kings are known to beat, stab or shoot members who have not conformed to the gang’s rules of obedience, resulting in serious physical injury up to and including death.
Individuals and rival gangs who possess a threat to the Latin Kings have also been targeted for violence.
• Finances: The main source of income for the Latin Kings is funds derived from drug trade. Though members are not to use drugs, they may sell and distribute drugs to make money for themselves and the organization.
Recently, this group has been seen developing legitimate business enterprises as fronts to their criminal activities; this will include medical offices, law offices and more.

Stephen Flemmi was a feared gangster and former paratrooper they called ''The Rifleman''

Stephen Flemmi was a feared gangster and former paratrooper they called ''The Rifleman'' around South Boston. The same Stevie who murdered Hussey's daughter.
Hussey once knew him well he spit in Flemmi's face when he found out the gangster was sleeping with his wife.
Flemmi cold-cocked him but let him live. Decades later, Thomas Hussey's daughter, Deborah Hussey, met a different -- and final -- fate.On Monday, Flemmi was not on trial. His 2004 conviction for strangling Deborah is just one of 10 murder charges that put him in prison for life.Instead, Flemmi was there to testify against former Boston FBI agent John Connolly, 68, who stands accused of being corrupted by Flemmi's gang and leaking vital information that led to the 1982 murder of a gambling executive in South Florida.''He's really aged,'' Hussey, 74, whispered as the diminutive Flemmi, also 74, walked in, sporting glasses, thinning gray hair parted to the side and an olive prison suit.And with that, Flemmi began his day recounting his decades-long criminal career in Boston. Hussey watched calmly, nodding at points, remembering names and places as though he were watching a familiar movie.Hussey has been a court regular since the Connolly trial began last week. A plumber, he moved to South Florida in 1973 to escape the danger around South Boston.His then-wife, Marion Hussey, had taken up with Flemmi, who along with Winter Hill gang leader James ''Whitey'' Bulger ran an unchecked criminal enterprise in Boston.The last time Hussey saw Flemmi was during a party for Deborah's high school graduation in 1976. Deborah's life spiraled into drugs and booze. Eight years later, Deborah accused Flemmi of sexual molestation. She went missing soon after.Flemmi took Deborah shopping for clothes, then strangled her and yanked out her teeth to make identifying her body difficult. Her corpse was not unearthed from a Boston marsh until January 2000.''I'm glad he didn't get the death penalty,'' Hussey said of Flemmi. ``I want him to suffer. Death penalty is too quick.''Minutes before Flemmi arrived Monday and outside the jury's presence, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake expressed his condolences to Hussey. Then he politely asked Hussey to step outside if emotions took over. ''I can handle it,'' Hussey assured the judge. Flemmi never looked his way.He did face the jury, however, telling them how he and Bulger gave Connolly more than $200,000 in gifts over the years.''Hey, I'm one of the gang,'' Flemmi recalled Connolly saying after receiving $25,000 in drug money.
He recalled Connolly telling them of a bookmaker named Richard Castucci, who had informed the feds about the hiding place of a fugitive pal. The gang murdered him.
They also killed fellow gangster Brian Halloran, who ratted to the FBI that Bulger's gang killed Oklahoma millionaire Roger Wheeler in 1981 over a business dispute involving Miami's World Jai-Alai.Hussey watched, getting up only to get a closer look at blow-up photos of South Boston and its players. ''Most of those guys are from South Boston, where I lived. Tough neighborhood,'' he whispered.In the years since his daughter disappeared, Hussey has battled alcohol addiction but little anger. He hopes Connolly gets convicted but wants to see him receive a light sentence.Flemmi is scheduled to testify about the disgraced FBI agent on Tuesday.
As for Flemmi, Hussey watched with the detached eye of a Red Sox analyst.
''I hope they put him in the jail's general population,'' Hussey said, affably. ``He'll have a heinous death. He's a pedophile and a snitch -- they'll kill him, very brutally.''

Gangster Killer Bloods leader Victor "Little Vic" Lopez, 26, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in the shooting death of Edwin "Dino"Andino

Gangster Killer Bloods leader Victor "Little Vic" Lopez, 26, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in the March 25, 2005, shooting death of Edwin "Dino" Andino. Andino, 19, was gunned down at Walnut and Houghton avenues in Trenton. Lopez, a captain in the Gangster Killer Bloods, said he told two co-defendants who were soldiers in the gang to open fire on the corner while he waited in a van. But Lopez, answering questions posed by his lawyer, Bruce Throckmorton, the judge and assistant prosecutor, said he had a personal dispute with people hanging around on that corner, rather than a gang-related vendetta. Asked by Assistant Prosecutor Skylar Weissman what his rank was in the gang, Lopez said that he was a "five star."
Lopez will be sentenced in February to 15 years in prison and must serve at least 12 3/4 years before he can be released, Superior Court Judge Thomas Kelly said. The sentence will run concurrently with a 71-month federal sentence Lopez incurred in 2005 for carrying an Uzi semi-automatic weapon and wearing a bulletproof vest.
"He could have gotten 30 to life (in prison) or he could have been found guilty of aggravated manslaughter as well," said Weissman. "In a situation like this there are no winning sides. A 19-year-old young man was killed. You see the fact all the young players who played a part in this have their lives ruined and there's no winners on either side. And he'll be spending 15 long, hard years in jail. Hopefully, he'll think every day of the pain and suffering he brought to the victim's family."
After a hearing Friday, Kelly had ruled that damaging audiotapes of phone calls made by another inmate on Lopez' behest to tamper with witnesses could be played to the jury at the trial. Weissman argued the tapes showed evidence Lopez realized his guilt. Meanwhile, murder charges remain pending against alleged shooters Bruce "Black Magic" Duette, 27, and Anthony "Ace" Coleman, 21, both of Trenton. Their trial date is set for Dec. 1. While Lopez will not be required to testify against Duette or Coleman, he told Kelly he ordered them to open fire on the street corner knowing that someone might be killed. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he will also not testify for the defense.

Rayful Edmond III is now part of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program and his place of incarceration is confidential.

Rayful Edmond III is largely credited with introducing crack cocaine into the Washington, D.C. area. Columbians was alleged to have moved In an indictment involving two of Edmond's associates, it said that they bought between 1000 and 2,000 kilos over a 1 week period at a time. In 1992 from the Trujillo-Blanco brothers, who were associated with the Medellin cartel, and sold the drugs to Washington area wholesalers. He was known to have spent some $457,619 in an exclusive Georgetown store (Linea Pitti, specializing in Italian men's clothing) owned by Charles Wynn who was later convicted on 34 counts of money laundering.Edmond was arrested in 1989 at the age of 24. His arrest and subsequent trial were widely covered by local and national media. Judicial officials, fearful of reprisals from members of Edmond's gang, imposed unprecedented security during the trial. Jurors' identities were kept secret before, during, and after trial, and their seating area was enclosed in bulletproof glass. Edmond was jailed at the maximum security facility at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia and flown to the Federal Court House in Washington, D.C. by helicopter each day for his trial. Authorities took this unusual step due to heightened fears of an armed escape attempt. This gang was believed to have committed over 40 murders including the attempted murder of a local pastor, the Reverend Mr. Bynum, who was shot 12 times during an anti-drug march in his Orleans Place neighborhood.[citation needed]Rayful continued to deal after being incarcerated in Lewisburg, PA federal prison. In 1996, Edmond and another drug dealer from Atlanta, named Lowe, were convicted after conducting drug business from a federal prison phone. Edmond received an additional 30-year sentence. Edmond's case is one of the most notorious abuses of such phone privileges and an embarrassment for the Bureau of Prisons. In an interview with the Bureau of Prisons, Edmond said he had spent several hours every day on the telephone, occasionally using two lines simultaneously to conduct his drug business.Following this conviction, Edmond became a government informant in order to secure his mother's release from prison and a reduced sentence. Edmond is still incarcerated but is now part of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program and his place of incarceration is confidential.

Gaetano J. Milano was sentenced in 1991 for executing William "Wild Guy" Grasso

Gaetano J. Milano was sentenced in 1991 for executing William "Wild Guy" Grasso as they sped down Interstate 91 in a van two years earlier. A volatile mobster even by mob standards, Grasso was a fellow soldier in the Providence-based Patriarca crime family and Milano told the judge he believed it was Grasso or him.
"It was kill or be killed," Milano said at his sentencing before U.S. District Judge Alan H. Nevas, the same jurist who will reconsider Milano's sentence next month.
Fueling that argument, defense lawyers have argued, was the late Boston mobster Angelo "Sonny" Mercurio, revealed in the 1990s to be a "top echelon" FBI informant who the agency shielded from prosecution in the murders of Grasso and others. The FBI's mishandling of mob moles like Mercurio, James "Whitey" Bulger and others has prompted widespread litigation of old sentences and early release of several gangsters who have successfully argued they were framed by or took the fall for informants. Mercurio died in 2006 in the federal Witness Protection Program, 17 years after recording a prized Mafia induction ceremony in Medford for the FBI. A former federal prosecutor with a Boston organized crime strike force, Diane Kottmyer, now a Superior Court judge, ultimately testified in a separate trial that Mercurio had been complicit in the Grasso murder and others, but was never charged.
Defense lawyers believe Mercurio also pitted Boston and Connecticut mob factions against each other with bogus reports that members on each side were plotting to "clip" or "take out" the other, according to court filings.
In a surprise move in 2006, Nevas released Milano's codefendant, 82-year-old Louis Pugliano, of West Springfield, after Pugliano served just 15 years of a life sentence. Lawyers for Pugliano ultimately won his early release through an agreement with prosecutors who agreed to a resentencing based on flawed jury selection and ineffective counsel arguments.

Christopher Hudson was proud to be a Hells Angel."Don't you know who I am? I'm a Hells Angel."

Christopher Hudson was proud to be a Hells Angel. When he left for Melbourne, he made his bikie connection known at the King Street strip club Spearmint Rhino he used to frequent.They knew him as "Huddo" at the club at which he was a VIP member where a minimum spend of $250 was the deal.The night before the CBD shooting, Hudson had been drinking there before moving on to nearby club Barcode.
It was there Hudson took objection to stripper Autumn-Daly Holt giving a man a lap dance.He saw it his duty to intervene, lifting Holt from her chair by her hair and assaulting her.When a bystander objected, Hudson lifted his shirt to reveal his Hells Angels tattoo, saying: "Don't you know who I am? I'm a Hells Angel."Hudson battered Holt and she was left unconscious on the steps of the club.
His history of aggression toward women was no different with his on-again off-again lover, model Kaera Douglas.In their two-and-a-half-month relationship, he managed to beat her around the head, give her black eyes and twice break her nose.
On the morning of the CBD shootings, a petrified Douglas had been trying to break free from Hudson by getting into a taxi.Two onlookers, lawyer Brendan Keilar and Dutch backpacker Paul de Waard, saw Hudson assaulting her and went to her aid.
Fuelled by a toxic blend of grog, ice and steroids, Hudson fired his gun at all three at point blank range, killing Keilar.The three slumped to the ground but that didn't stop him continuing to fire as onlookers on their way to work watched horrified.Witnesses reported Hudson was calm as he executed the shots - "cool as a cucumber", said one.Another described him fleeing the scene like he was late for an appointment.As Hudson fled, tram commuters saw what they believed was his attempt to take his own life.The witnesses told police he had held a gun to his head then said, "no".Even if Hudson had tried, his bullets had been spent on his victims.
In the end he chose life and made a run for it.Although proud of his Angels membership, Hudson had done his bikie mates no favours by thrusting them into the public spotlight. The talk was that the Angels would disown him.Wracked by either remorse, fear of his Angels mates or the inevitability the law would catch up with him, Hudson handed himself in to police after a two-day nationwide manhunt.He gave a "no comment" interview, except to say he was sorry for what happened.
During his pre-sentence hearing this month, the crown spoke of how the shooting rocked Melbourne.This was a crime which deserved no parole, they argued.
His defence said while there was little to explain the motive behind the shooting, his behaviour was linked to the drug ice, the nightclub scene and the associates he kept.Hudson showed little emotion today, except that his eyes continually darted around the court room, perhaps a sign of anxiety over his fate.Hudson was sentenced to life behind bars, with a non-parole period of 35 years.

Vito Rizzuto arrest warrant

The Rizzuto organization has formed a "Sixth Family," a Mafia clan based in Montreal that has overshadowed the Mafia's notorious Five Families of New York. Recent allegations of their presence abroad place them as one of the world's most robust criminal cartels. controlling mind behind it all was Vito Rizzuto of Mont-real, Italian authorities allege.Police in Italy issued an arrest warrant for Rizzuto, who is currently in prison in the United States for three gangland slayings. Also wanted are four men in Canada -- including Rizzuto's father, Nicolo, who is similarly in jail in Montreal awaiting trial."We believe that even from jail they are able to control the organization," said Silvia Franze, an investigator with the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia in Rome."We blocked a lot of bank accounts and money," Ms. Franze told the National Post. "We have seized many companies and hundreds of millions of Euros all around the world because we believe that behind these companies is Vito Rizzuto."
Also arrested was Mariano Turrisi, 53, the president and founder of Made in Italy Inc., an export marketing group. He is heard on wiretaps speaking with Rizzuto, police allege.Mr. Turrisi's arrest and connection to Rizzuto is particularly noteworthy --he was the senior deputy of a political movement founded by Prince Emanuele Filiberto, a last heir to the Italian throne when the monarchy ended in 1946, according to Claudio Gatti, an investigative journalist with Il Sole 24 Ore, a leading Italian business newspaper."This becomes a political story. The prince was planning to make it into a political party and he picked as his only vice-chairman Mr. Turrisi," said Mr. Gatti, who has been investigating the links.The political movement, called "Values and Future" in English, was started after Mr. Filiberto returned from exile in 2002 after the royal family, commonly called the Royal House of Savoy, was allowed to re-enter Italy.
Links to such people show the level of influence and power the Rizzuto name carries around the world, police said.Italian legal documents in the case dramatically portray Vito Rizzuto as being a global superboss.From their origins in Italy, the Rizzutos moved to Canada, where they "gave birth to a transnational society" that worked to unite the Italian mafias and create "overseas cells," a document from the Rome anti-Mafia prosecutor's office alleges.The organization sought to "manage and control the economic activities connected to the acquisition of contracts in public works" and to "commit a series of crimes -- killings, internatonal drug trafficking, extortion, frauds, smuggling, stock-market manipulation, insider trading and criminal transfer of securities," it alleges.The group used several companies listed on European and North American stock markets, including one registered in Vancouver, to develop business projects linked to gold mines in Canada and Chile, authorities allege.The Italian investigation was aided by Swiss police, who probed bank accounts and other investments. Two of those arrested were bank employees.The masses of money come from rampant international drug trafficking, authorities say, including a company that used leather clothing to mask the smell of narcotics from drug-sniffing dogs.Among those charged yesterday in Italy were Roberto Papalia, 62, a controversial Vancouver businessman who has run afoul of security regulators in Canada and the United States, who was arrested in Milan; and Felice Italiano, 61, a LaSalle, Que., businessman who had charges dropped against him more than a decade ago after one of Canada's largest drug seizures.Mr. Italiano was arrested in his Rome hotel room two hours before his return flight to Canada was scheduled to leave."I think he will remember this holiday in Italy," Ms. Franze said. His wife continued on to Canada.All are charged in Italy for Mafia association.Also facing charges are Paolo Renda, 68, Francesco Arcadi, 54, and Rocco Sollecito, 59. All three Montral men are awaiting trial, along with Nicolo Rizzuto, on charges in Canada. Other arrest warrants are pending against Canadians, the National Post has learned.Despite the allegations of high-finance and political connections, the charges stem from a small-time mob-linked swindle north of Toronto in 2001. That allowed police in Ontario to install wiretaps in Montreal.While no charges in Quebec came from that probe, evidence from it was used by the RCMP in Montreal to install more wiretaps in 2002, in what became known as Project Colisee.It was shortly after those wiretaps were turned on that police tracked regular contact between gangsters in Montreal and men in Italy. That information was forwarded to Italian authorities, who, in turn, placed several suspects under surveillance.The Italian probe brought two startling sets of allegations.The first were announced in 2005 and accused Rizzuto and former Montreal construction engineer Giuseppe Zappia (known for building the Olympic Village for the 1976 games) of conspiring to use illicit money to build a bridge connecting the island of Sicily to mainland Italy.The bridge was one of the largest public works projects in Italy and the consortium was allegedly prepared to invest $6-billion to complete it.
The second series of charges are those announced yesterday in Rome."We found there were cells here in Italy controlled by Vito Rizzuto. We found out the links between the chiefs of those cells and the companies allegedly involved in financial crimes and in acquiring land for development," Ms. Franze said.

Max Mermelstein took orders directly from cartel bosses Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.

Mermelstein did more than any other American citizen to help bring the Colombian cocaine trade into this country. Then he turned into a federal witness and did more than any other American to try to bring it down.1978 to 1985, Max Mermelstein helped move 56 tons of cocaine into Florida and sent $300 million in cash back to Medellin, Colombia. He was instrumental in creating the "Cocaine Cowboy" era of South Florida depicted in the Al Pacino film Scarface and in innumerable episodes of Miami Vice.
Mermelstein died Friday at age 65 in Lexington, Ky., felled by cancer of the bone, liver and lung. The Post's Jeff Leen, who crossed paths with Mermelstein when he was investigating the cocaine cartel for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, reports on the startling life and death of this drug-importer-turned-informant:
Mermelstein had been living under an assumed name after years spent in the Federal Witness Protection Program, known to all its denizens as "WITSEC." Max hated WITSEC and complained about it constantly, eventually leaving the program. He hated the rules, the government bureaucracy, the slow response to his needs and concerns.
That was not a bit surprising considering that he had lived a good portion of his life beyond society's rules as one of the most brazen and effective outlaws of his time. Mermelstein was the only gringo allowed into the inner circle of the Medellin Cartel, the Colombian criminal organization that spawned America's cocaine epidemic in the 1970s and 1980s. He sat in on the cartel's high councils, taking orders directly from cartel bosses Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa.
The man who sat at the right hand of Pablo Escobar in the most murderous criminal enterprise of the 20th Century started out as a mechanical engineer in Brooklyn. He was born Nov. 1, 1942. At 13, he began working in his father's small business, saving money to pay his way through community college and then to study engineering at the New York Institute of Technology.He married a Puerto Rican woman, learned 'barrio Spanish," moved to San Juan, separated from his wife and met a gorgeous Colombian woman who introduced him to the cocaine trade. He started by helping to smuggle his wife's Colombian relatives and friends into the United States through the Bahamas, where he had worked as chief engineer at the Princess Hotel in Freeport. One of his wife's friends was a slick, 20-something Colombian man named Rafael "Rafa" Cardona Salazar. Rafa was a cocaine dealer who wore ostrich-skin shoes on his tiny feet and paid Max $1,500 for each $45,000 kilogram (2.2. pounds) of cocaine Mermelstein delivered to his clients. By now Max was working as the chief engineer at the Aventura Country Club in Miami. He delivered a few kilos, rationalizing what he was doing. "I didn't really consider this an excursion into the murky realm of the drug dealers," Max later wrote in a book about his life. "I hadn't personally touched a single gram of coke."Things changed for Max on Christmas Day, 1978, when he witnessed Rafa kill another drug dealer the three men were driving around the suburbs of Miami at 2 a.m. The dead man worked for Rafa and made the mistake of criticizing his boss for shooting at a party. Rafa was coked up and offended; he emptied his .38-caliber revolver into the man's face and they dumped the body on a side street. Rafa told Max he suspected the man was stealing from him.
The killing bound Max's fate to Rafa's."He owned me, if you want to put it that way," Max told me nine years later in the first interview he gave to a journalist. "I saw him commit murder and he let me live. I think it was a well thought-out plan."Max went to work for Rafa full time in 1981, overseeing 38 smuggling flights by small aircraft that each brought in 1,000 pounds of cocaine directly into Florida. As Rafa's employee, Max earned $500,000 a year, living in a $350,000 house in Miami Lakes with a yacht, $30,000 in jewelry and $275,000 in cash stashed under his bed.In 1985, Mermelstein was arrested in California on federal cocaine charges. He became a government witness against the Medellin Cartel, filling in the blanks and gaps and finally allowing the feds to see the monster whole. "Max Mermelstein's position with the Medellin cartel was akin to Joe Valachi's with the Maifa," Guy Gugliotta and I wrote in our book on the cartel, Kings of Cocaine. "Like Valachi, whose dramatic testimony before the United States Senate in 1963 served as the first public unveiling of the Cosa Nostra, Mermelstein took the feds deeper than ever before into an uncharted areas of organized crime."
Max later told the feds about one trip he made to the Ochoas' 350,000-acre ranch in Colombia, which featured a landing strip long enough to accommodate commercial jets, a full-sized bull ring and a thirty-acre lake with a five-acre island for "lions and tigers." His importance to the war on drugs was still largely secret, and the government was slowly and carefully unveiling him as the chief witness against the cartel. He was still in the witness protection program when I interviewed him, so we never met face to face. He requested two things for the interview: a speaker phone, so he wouldn't have to hold a telephone to his ear for hours, and a Mont Blanc pen, a luxury item favored by drug kingpins. We got him the phone but not the pen.On the back of The Man Who Made It Snow, the book Max eventually wrote with help from Robin Moore and Richard Smitten, are the usual blurbs extolling the book's virtues. Most authors get blurbs from other authors. Max got blurbs from five prosecutors."In the United States, there is not a brighter or a better witness against the major drug traffickers than Max Mermelstein" wrote Richard Gregorie, the federal prosecutor in South Florida who indicted both Gen. Manuel Noriega and the Medellin Cartel. "There is also no witness so intricately and overwhelmingly involved in their story."