Word: mobsters
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Several times Pistone came within a telephone call of being exposed. In 1977, shortly after he had infiltrated a small gang of crooks attached to the Colombo family, two mobsters became suspicious that Pistone was a stoolie and demanded that he provide a criminal reference. Months before, Pistone had asked another FBI agent to instruct a Mob informant in Florida always to be ready to vouch for Donnie Brasco. But had the agent passed on the message? And if he had, would the informant remember? For several tense hours Pistone played cards with the rest of the gang, while...
...with Sonny and Lefty and we get caught in a battle," he recalls. The situation never arose, but as he came closer to being initiated into the Mob, he was given a contract by Sonny Black to kill a fellow Mafioso. Before Pistone could run the mobster to earth, the FBI ended the operation, and on July 26, 1981, Agent Pistone came in from the heat...
...first time it was the top mobster bosses -- who ran a vast illicit empire financed largely by heroin sales to the U.S. -- who received the longest terms. Among 19 men who received life sentences was Michele Greco, 63, nicknamed "the Pope" for his high position in the Mafia. Greco was found responsible for scores of murders, including the 1982 assassination of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa. Only three months before his death, Italian authorities had sent the crime-busting military man to Palermo to lead the battle against the Mafia...
...prosecution relied heavily on 14 Mafia members who broke the code of silence, known as omerta, to describe the organization's workings. The star witness was Tommaso Buscetta, 59, a mobster who once ran some Mafia operations in the U.S. and South America and who also testified in the "Pizza Connection" trial in New York City, which led to the conviction of 17 drug traffickers. Buscetta described to the jury the Mafia's pyramidal structure, capped by a twelve-member cupola, or commission, that ruled on all major gangland murders. There were plenty of those. The prosecution charged that between...
Last week, however, the department decided that Fratianno had outlived his usefulness. The former mobster lost his government subsidy, and will have to live on book royalties and Social Security. For the Weasel, that is cold comfort. "I put 30 guys away -- six of them bosses," he told a reporter. "I'm a dead...