Word: bonannos
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...book neither as trashy nor as clever as it sounds. Hype is Korda's natural gift ("My argument is with people who do not view the world cynically," he once said). He published an "as told to" book by an aging mobster, Joseph Bonanno. Critics complained that it romanticized the Mafia and objected to its title, A Man of Honor. The title was Korda's, who later explained, "It does not affirm that Simon & Schuster thinks he is a man of honor, but that that is what he claims...
...alleged masterminds of the drug ring lived in different countries. Gaetano Badalamenti, arrested in Madrid last week, was the Sicilian connection. Badalamenti was described as one of the heads of the worldwide Mafia. His "big cheese" in the U.S. was Salvatore Catalano, purportedly a leader of the Bonanno crime family...
According to the FBI's 341 -page affidavit, Badalamenti and his deputies in Sicily purchased opium from Pakistan and Afghanistan, oversaw its production into heroin, then exported it to the U.S. There Bonanno-family members, including Alfano and his fellow restaurateurs in the Midwest, acted as middlemen. Finally, the money was collected by the Catalano Mob faction and laundered through prestigious New York City brokerage houses...
Federal authorities gathered evidence by wiretapping some 300 telephone conversations. According to court documents, important calls were exchanged from phones in or near Al Dente pizzeria in Queens, New York, owned by Catalano and a frequent meeting place for lieutenants in his faction of the Bonanno family. The smugglers spoke in obscure Sicilian dialects and in code. Shipments of heroin were called "cheese" or "tomatoes." U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani says the bust was part of a larger assault on the Mafia. "We can substantially crush organized crime," he said. "And we are doing just that...
Even by Mob standards, that is not petty cash. When the Bonanno family protested within Mafia circles that Masselli had violated a territorial agreement, the Genovese and Bonanno factions held a council "sitdown" to hear the dispute. Masselli argued that he had simply foreclosed on bad loans. The council absolved him of infringing on a Bonanno jurisdiction. Salvatore (Sally Blind) Frascone, a Bonanno soldier specializing in vending machines, made the fatal mistake of continuing to protest the pro-Masselli decision. Frascone was openly executed in October...