June 14, 2018
This Week in Gang Land
A Bookie's Sentencing – And The House That Ronnie G Built
Robert
(Rob) Pisani, a Howard Beach bookmaker and a buddy of acting Bonanno
capo Ronald (Ronnie G) Giallanzo for more than 10 years, is up for
sentencing next week. Originally facing 20 years, the feds gave him a
plea agreement calling for 15-to-21 months for collecting an illegal
debt from a deadbeat gambler – one of the best deals among the dozen
defendants in the 55-count racketeering indictment.
Prosecutors seem to regret making it, though. In their sentencing memo, they have dug pretty deep to find bad things – even an alleged Giallanzo threat to a victim that Pisani had nothing to do with – in an effort to make sure he gets not a day less than 21 months. They surely wouldn't mind if the judge gave him more, but the plea agreement prevents them from asking.
Nothing's changed since November when the agreement was signed and Pisani pleaded guilty before Chief Judge Dora Irizarry. And there may be a few reasons for the government's full court press. But the one that jumps off the pages of the sentencing memo is that Pisani sold Ronnie G the home that "Giallanzo turned into a mansion constructed with illicit proceeds" – loanshark earnings that he made over the years with Pisani's help.
Governor
Cuomo Hits ILA When It's Down
There's more bad news for the International Longshoremen's Association, which lost its latest effort in a decade-long plan to kick the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor off the New Jersey docks on June 1 when a judge ruled that mob taint was still evident on the piers. Now, Gang Land has learned, Governor Cuomo has selected an old ILA nemesis to serve as New York's representative on the 65-year-old waterfront watchdog.
Ask
Andy: Mafia Transfers
Over the years, many wiseguys and mob associates, unlike the actors and actresses who sported black eyes in clever TV cigarettes ads in the 1970s and said they'd rather fight than switch, have not only wanted to move from one family to another, quite a few did more than once.
Unless you get really lucky, and find a copy squirreled away in the
wrong section of your local bookstore, you won't be able to get a
first printing of Mob Boss: The Life Of Little Al
D'Arco, The Man Who Brought Down The Mafia. But there
are still some second print versions of the hardcover available
as gifts or for your own reading pleasure.
Because of the heavy demand, Thomas Dunne Books went to the well again for a second printing of Mob Boss, the book that The New York Times called a "gripping, novelistic biography – a bulls-eye."
The mass market, paperback version was published in 2015. It is available online and at your favorite bookstores for about eight bucks. You still should be able to pick up a copy of the hard cover at your favorite bookstore, or, as Claude Raines might say to Humphrey Bogart, from any number of the usual online suspects: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and BooksAMillion, as well as an independent book seller near you.
See why Mob Boss has been praised by Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, Nicholas Pileggi, Mister District Attorney Robert Morgenthau – as well as readers everywhere.
Mob Boss is also available in a special BIG PRINT edition. And for those who would rather hear every word of the 406 page book read to them, Mob Boss is also available on an MP3 CD from Tantor Audio.
