February 20, 2020
This Week in Gang Land
Wiseguy Attorney: Judge Wears Robes But She's An Evil Villain Like Goldfinger
Federal
judges are not usually compared to the notorious villains of James
Bond movies. But an appeals lawyer for an ailing 84-year-old
Luchese wiseguy says Judge Cathy Seibel echoed the murderous character
known as Goldfinger when she hit his client with a 52-month
sentence for his conviction on gambling and loansharking charges.
Lawyer Roger Adler, a former president of the Brooklyn Bar Association, states that the prison term Siebel gave Joseph (Big Joe) DiNapoli was the "legal system equivalent of the memorable scene" when Goldfinger tells Bond, who is strapped to a gurney and about to be cut in half by a gold laser beam, "Mr. Bond, I want you to die."
The prison term, which is six months longer than the recommended maximum in his plea deal, Adler wrote in an impassioned legal memo, was the "functional equivalent of a death sentence" for his client, who has had "six separate surgeries," including "open heart surgery, a heart valve replacement, the implant of three stents, a pacemaker, and a catheter" in the last two years. DiNapoli also "suffers from Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and glaucoma, and is equipped with two hearing aids."
Sammy
Bull Set To Skewer The Dapper Don Again
Like the Broadway revival of a hit show, Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano may soon retake the stage back in Brooklyn.
FBI
Agents Play Keystone Kops Trying To Jail Wiseguy For Using A
Cell Phone
There's no silent video of the hours-long caper, but a large team of FBI agents resembled the stumbling, bumbling Keystone Kops in a 1912 Mack Sennett film as they tried but failed miserably to send Gambino capo Andrew Campos back to jail for violating the conditions of his bail 10 days ago.
Read this week's column
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.
