What to Know
- Nine members and associates of organized crime families — including a Nassau County detective — were charged Tuesday on racketeering, illegal gambling and other charges, federal prosecutors said.
- According to court filings, members of the Genovese and Bonanno organized crime families operated a number of illegal gambling operations in New York City and Long Island.
- “The defendants tried to hide their criminal activity by operating from behind the cover of a coffee bar, a soccer club, and a shoe repair shop, but our Office and our law enforcement partners exposed their illegal operations,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a Tuesday statement.
Nine members and associates of organized crime families — including a Nassau County detective — were charged Tuesday on racketeering, illegal gambling and other charges, federal prosecutors announced, in an organized crime racket reminiscent of the Mafia’s heyday.
According to court filings, members of the Genovese and Bonanno organized crime families operated a number of illegal gambling operations in New York City and Long Island. Beginning in at least May 2012, the Genovese and Bonanno families jointly operated a lucrative illegal gambling operation in a café located in the Nassau County town of Lynbrook, prosecutors alleged.
The Genovese crime family also operated illegal gambling locations at a shoe repair site, an Italian social club and a soccer club. The profits from these locations were allegedly laundered through cash transfers to the accused and to the crime families’ leaders.
Additionally, the alleged acting captain in the Genovese crime family was also charged with operating an illegal online gambling scheme in which sports bets were placed on “PGWLines” — a website he used to allegedly extort an individual who lost several thousand dollars in bets. Prosecutors alleged that in an October 2019, he instructed another individual to relay a new message to a delinquent debtor: “Tell him I’m going to put him under the f——g bridge.”
Nicknames of the defendants included “Joe Fish,” “Sal the Shoemaker” and “Joe Box.”
While the heyday of organized crime is long past in New York — and many types of gambling that were once the exclusive domain of the Mafia are now legal in the state — Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said the indictments were proof that “organized crime is alive and well in our communities.”
She said the Genovese and Bonanno organized crime families were alleged to have operated secret underground gambling parlors for a decade in local businesses, “generating substantial amounts of money in back rooms while families unknowingly shopped and ate mere feet away.”
Court filings in the case also allege that a detective with the Nassau County Police Department accepted money from the Bonanno crime family in exchange for arranging police raids of competing gambling locations. The detective, Hector Rosario, was charged with obstructing a grand jury investigation by federal prosecutors and lying to the FBI.
A lawyer for Rosario did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
“Today’s arrests of members from two La Cosa Nostra crime families demonstrate that the Mafia continues to pollute our communities with illegal gambling, extortion, and violence while using our financial system in service to their criminal schemes,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a Tuesday statement.
“The defendants tried to hide their criminal activity by operating from behind the cover of a coffee bar, a soccer club, and a shoe repair shop, but our Office and our law enforcement partners exposed their illegal operations. Even more disturbing is the shameful conduct of a detective who betrayed his oath of office and the honest men and women of the Nassau County Police Department when he allegedly aligned himself with criminals,” Peace went on to say, calling the detective’s alleged conduct “shameful.”
Michael Driscoll, head of New York’s FBI office, said members of the five organized crime families “demonstrate every day they are not averse to working together to further their illicit schemes, using the same tired methods to squeeze money from their victims.”
“Our active investigations show the Mafia refuses to learn from history,” Driscoll added, “and accept that at some point they will face justice for their crimes.”
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