Word: maffia
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...problems with the original case was the confusing nature of the alleged insurance fraud, which centered on a fight that had to be canceled when Chavez cut his nose in training. The government's star witness, former Don King Productions accountant Joseph Maffia, testified that King told him to alter a contract to show that Chavez had received $350,000 in training fees, and Chavez testified through an interpreter that he had never been given that money. Maffia's careful, measured testimony was somewhat compromised when the defense played a tape of an angry Maffia telling King over the phone...
...mistrial was declared, one of the alternate jurors in the case told Alex Michelini of the Daily News that she didn't know whom to believe--King, who "couldn't have been telling the whole truth," or Maffia, who "had it in for Don." The alternate also revealed that she had discussed the case with two of the regular jurors, one of whom is an attorney, on a subway ride home earlier in the week--an apparent violation of court instructions not to discuss deliberations. That alone would have been grounds for a mistrial, according to lead prosecutor Paul Gardephe...
...falsified a contract to collect $350,000 from Lloyd's of London if a 1991 fight was canceled. The defense maintains that King, who has survived three grand jury probes and was aquitted of tax evasion in 1985, was the innocent victim of his accountant, the implausibly named Joseph Maffia. King's defense contends that Maffia, the star witness for the prosecution, falsified the documents and then accused King of complicity to save himself. Despite one juror who called King a "bold-faced liar" and said his testimony was "well rehearsed," other jury members said the government had not provided...
...Soviet diplomatic defector, TIME's art department faced an urgent problem: it needed shots of Soviet leaders of the 1950s and '60s, plus key events in U.S.-Soviet relations of that period. Within a few hours, almost 200 color and black-and-white photographs arrived. Artist Daniel Maffia used many of these as reference material to guide him in creating the illustrations that accompany the story...
...origins of the Mafia are lost in the mists of Sicily's tortured history. Scholars disagree on whether the term came from maehfil, meaning union in the language of the 9th century Arab conquerors of Sicily, or from the Tuscan word maffia, signifying poverty or misery. But there is little doubt that centuries of foreign occupation and feudal oppression turned Sicily into a unique breeding ground for organized crime...