Feb. 3, 1997

BROTHERLY BETRAYAL

 By Jerry Capeci

IN 1994, word began spreading among knowledgeable Brooklyn wiseguys and truck hijackers all along the East coast that this anonymous storefront on Flatlands Avenue in Brooklyn was really a social club named the Portofino Soccer Club, and the guys who ran it, Sonny and Steve, were the ultimate bigtime fences.

At least Steve was - sort of. Sonny was a longtime truck hijacker who had somehow managed to hook up with Steve. No matter, they paid top dollar and could handle any load from abdominal exercisers to 27-inch Zenith remote control televisions - no questions asked.

Sonny and Steve had opened the club after getting permission from Louie, a Gambino crime family associate who agreed to accept $250-a-week - protection money - to allow them to operate the social club on his turf.

On occasion, Louie, who liked to play the role of a "made guy" even though he wasn't, would join Sonny and Steve inside the club (left) to play cards, watch TV or just lounge around in the white club chairs and shoot the breeze about the latest load of hot goods that had just come down the pike.

Sonny Visconti, 59, and Louie Facciola, 56, went back a long way together, decades in fact. For most of that time, they and their brothers, Alfred Visconti and Bruno Facciola, had been associated with the Luchese crime family. But in the early 1990's, the leaders of the family - Vittorio (Vic) Amuso and Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso - went on a paranoid killing rampage which included Alfred and Bruno.

Bruno was shot to death in August, 1990, and left in the trunk of his car with a canary stuffed in his mouth because Casso suspected him of being a government informer. Alfred was gunned down in his Brooklyn apartment building in March, 1991.

At the time, Sonny was down on his luck. So Louie shelled out more than $10,000 for Alfred's funeral and his wake at Guarino's Funeral Home.

This bond that developed because of the violent deaths of their brothers enabled Sonny to drag Louie and 46 other alleged thieves and gangsters into an FBI sting operation in which $6 million in stolen goods from lipstick to designer dresses was recovered.

In 1993, Sonny, who had been an informer for some time, agreed to become a cooperating witness and set up an FBI agent who would play a big time fence to the Gambino family's Canarsie Crew. He approached Louie, and said he was now flush and wanted to pay him back for Alfred's funeral.

"It's been on my mind all these years. I never thanked you. Now that I'm getting off, I want to pay you back for what you paid for the funeral," said Visconti, giving him seven VCRs and $500 as a down payment.

"You don't have to do this," said Facciola.

"I want to do this," said Visconti. "I want to pay you back."

Shortly after the initial pay-off, sources said, he introduced Louie to "Steve," the big time fence who had been responsible for his sudden change of fortune.

Louie soon brought Gambino capo Leonard DiMaria into the sting. DiMaria, no stranger to hijackings, even visited the FBI's warehouse, which was a little more than a mile from the social club, to inspect the place.

It wasn't long before Steve and DiMaria "became best buddies," said one law enforcement source. "They did everything together. They went out together, hung out together."

Steve was so convincing in his role, that DiMaria, a gangster from the old school, was worried about bringing the law down on his friend following his arrest on racketeering charges in Florida a few days before Christmas.

So, when DiMaria got a hold of a load of counterfeit Super Bowl sweatshirts they had spoken about before his arrest, he called and offered them to Steve at $7 each, but sent an associate to iron out the final details.

DiMaria made himself scarce because he "was concerned about bringing unnecessary heat on the warehouse," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Ward in court papers in which she moved to revoke DiMaria's bail.

In Gang Land, you never really know who your friends are.