Word: salerno
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Fire Sale. Small businessmen who need to borrow to keep going at all are increasingly turning to underworld loan sharks for credit, reports Ralph Salerno, chief rackets investigator for the district attorney of Queens County in New York City. The "vigorish," or interest rate, on these loans makes the bank prime look like a fire-sale bargain: $300 on $1,000 borrowed for 13 weeks, or 120% a year; $150 a week on a $5,000 loan, or 156% a year. The loan sharks are sophisticated operators who keep close tab on the legitimate money markets and often cite...
...cruelly bargaining with the life of an innocent young woman were clearly the exception. Yet Cinque and his ilk were establishing themselves in the national consciousness as a new and distinct breed-a potentially dangerous achievement. "Cinque is getting away with his own delusions," says Ralph F. Salerno, top New York City investigator and expert on the Mafia. "If everyone said, 'You're a hood,' then he would appear for what...
Truck Driver Antonio Tedesco was heading toward Salerno on the Italian autostrada shortly before dawn. Suddenly in the driving rain he saw a lone figure wildly waving his arms by the side of the road. Tedesco pulled to a stop, and the young man, weeping and drenched to the skin, told him: "I am a kidnaping captive. I need to get to a telephone to call my mother in Rome...
Since there is virtually no check on speculators, denudations occur that would turn an American slumlord's hair white with envy. An example: one night some trucks drove up to a little 13th century church standing on a valuable plot of land in the middle of Salerno. The drivers attached chains to the frail walls and then pulled away. The building simply collapsed. There was some mild protest from the Bishop of Salerno, but, as Journalist Sorrentino acidly recounted, "the land where now you can see a hideous new building was worth, and fetched...
...Ralph Salerno, a former New York City policeman and an expert on the Mafia, believes that the Mob killings could take a more ominous turn. "The gangsters do have rules about murders," he says. "There are rules against killing law-enforcement officials. Other rules forbid killing reporters. But if society does nothing about gang slayings, the gangsters may decide to change the rules and hit anybody who gets in their way. Remember, the rules are theirs-not ours...