This Week In Gang Land
Payback: Union Prez Getting Back Some Cash He Gave The Mob During 20-Year-Long Shakedown
Brooklyn
Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez has reinstated his order that Colombo mobster
Michael Uvino should begin making restitution payments to Andrew Talamo, the
courageous union president who fingered the gangsters who shook him down for
$624,000 during a 20-year-long extortion scheme, Gang Land has learned.
Gonzalez’s decision followed a directive from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to review his ruling about Uvino's liability following the mobster's claim that he was liable for only $22,000 of Talamo's losses. In his ruling, Gonzalez repeated his initial finding that Uvino had the same liability as five other guilty gangsters. Exactly what financial impact the judge's decision will have on Talamo is muddled because details about the restitution payments are not public, and Talamo and the feds have declined to discuss them.
Here's what we do know about the intriguing back story of the centerpiece of the blockbuster racketeering case that took down the leadership of the Colombo family and ended with six gangsters admitting they were part of the long-running shakedown and all 14 members and associates of the crime family being convicted on a variety of charges.
Gangster Still 'Hates Rats;' But Changes His Tune About Challenging His Arrest By The FBI
Cooler
heads prevailed last week among the defense team for Anthony Costa, the
Genovese gangster who "hates rats" and was hit with a seemingly
open-and-shut illegal possession of weapons charge after FBI agents found a
loaded handgun in his car a Staten Island parking lot and accused him of
several other crimes in a detention memo that prosecutors lodged against him
Bazoo Gets Three More Years For His Naked City Loansharking Conviction
John
(Bazoo) Ragano, the Bonanno soldier who threatened a loanshark customer and
ordered him to strip naked during an angry confrontation about the $150,000
loan that he hadn't paid back, was sentenced yesterday to three years in
prison on top of the 57 months he's been serving for a three-year-old
conviction for the same loan.
