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News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
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12-16-99 'Soprano' Tapes Sing. Mob snitch cripples Jersey crime family. Thursday, December 16, 1999
By GREG SMITH They are the "Soprano" tapes — hours of video and audio tapes revealing the inner workings of a New Jersey-based crime family that sees
The recordings were key in bagging 41 reputed mobsters in a massive organized crime bust earlier this month, but they also give a rare glimpse into what the alleged criminal class likes to watch on television. In this case, fact seems to follow fiction. "Hey, what's this f---ing thing, 'Sopranos'?" asks Joseph (Tin Ear) Sclafani, a reputed mob soldier with a hearing aid as he waits in a car March 3 for a sitdown with another mob family. "Is that supposed to be us?" "You're in there," responds reputed capo Anthony Rotondo, as both men erupt in laughter before going on to point out several characters on the show they believe were taken whole-cloth from their real-life crime family. "Every show you watch, more and more you pick up somebody," Rotondo says. "One week it was Corky. One week it was, well, from the beginning it was ... Albert G," he says, comparing fictional mobsters to apparent real ones. Sclafani and Rotondo might not have laughed so loud had they known another companion, identified only as Ralphie, was wearing an FBI recording device. Because of Ralphie's work as an informant, Rotondo, Sclafani and 39 other members and associates of the DeCavalcante crime family were charged Dec. 2 in four real-life racketeering indictments. On the HBO show "The Sopranos," Anthony Soprano, an aging Jersey mob capo with a paunch, suffers panic attacks because of the pressures of his work. He sees a shrink, confronts the price of betrayal, considers whether it's all worthwhile. He hangs out in a topless bar called Ba Da Bing! with his cronies, who are all in construction or carting businesses. On the "Soprano" tapes, the alleged capos are all middle-aged guys with paunches who spend hours betraying one another and discussing the intricacies of how to bury a body. They hang out in a restaurant called Sacco's, and all claim legitimate jobs in construction — except at least one, who runs a casino boat. They love the HBO show — "great acting," Rotondo comments — and point out one similarity to their lives after another, such as a TV mobster who dies of cancer just as one did in real life. But the feds are quick to say that these tapes are not fiction, and they allege that people actually ended up dead. The most jarring recordings concern the life and death of Joseph (Joey O) Masella, a 49-year-old bookie who owed everybody — the DeCavalcantes, the Colombos, the Gambinos. Masella borrowed hundreds of thousands from the three mob families, hoping to hit it big as a bookie, according to the tapes. He failed. "This guy is breaking my b---s," Masella told Ralphie in the summer of 1998, referring to one of his any mob pursuers. "All I need is just three thousand. He's calling me, and calling me and calling." That June, Masella approached acting DeCavalcante boss Vincent Palermo, claiming he simply could not pay his debts. "By all rights, by all the rules, I have to kill you," Palermo replied, according to court testimony. One afternoon, Masella got a call from Steve, an alleged debtor. Steve was going to hand Masella $10,000 in cash, which Masella would immediately turn over to his creditors. But Steve was really Westley Paloscio, Masella's bookmaking partner, who masked his voice, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Barton alleged in court last week. Paloscio told Masella to meet Steve at the Marine Park Golf Course parking lot in Brooklyn, prosecutors alleged. Masella pulled into the dark lot around 9:30 p.m. When a red two-door sedan pulled up, Masella bounded forth to meet Steve.. He saw a man with a mustache and dark hair at the wheel, and then several flashes from a gun. Motorists rushed to the scene as the red car sped away. Masella was alive, his body riddled with bullets. He described Steve and his car and gave up Paloscio's beeper number. He died four hours later. Paloscio learned Masella survived for a while, and he worried that the botched hit could result in his death. "Somebody's going to get shot," Paloscio told Ralphie.
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