By Jim Schoettler Florida Times-Union JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — On his first day at work, Mike Steinbach sat at a Chicago Denny’s drinking coffee, reading a newspaper and covertly protecting a nearby federal witness from a possible hit attempt by the mob. “I thought, ‘Holy moly.’ This is a pretty good deal,” Steinbach said. “I knew…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Keeping a record in court is a good idea. But mob expert Jerry Capeci of Gang Land News reports that some how that idea got the short shrift back on December 15, 2008, and no court transcript was ever produced when Colombo soldier Joseph (Joe Caves) Competiello admitted in a sealed…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com On the big screen and on TV, sometimes we forget the twisted plots aren’t simply made up, but actually come from real situations in the wiseguy world. Here’s a real story worthy of the big screen involving a mob hit and a secret recording in which an FBI audio expert accidentally…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The nicknames have become legendary: The Chin, The Dapper Don, Bugsy. Now, there’s a place for them, all under one roof. The New York Times reported on Monday of a $42 million museum in Las Vegas dedicated to the Mob, three stories of a 41,000-square-foot landmark building with 17,000 square feet of…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com As New York mobster stories go, there seemed to be no shortage in 2011. Mob expert Jerry Capeci should know. Capeci, a former New York Daily News reporter, runs the website Gang Land News. On Thursday, he picked the top mob stories of 2011. Hands down, he writes, the top story…
http://youtu.be/NcnVqm0afjc http://youtu.be/_qbRliFj3W8 http://youtu.be/A0EuXB-0sNo
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Shades of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger? A letter from Sen. Charles Grassley to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III seems to suggest so. If you recall, the Boston FBI caught hell for letting Bulger run wild and commit crimes while he acted as informant and snitched on his rivals back in…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com FBI agents found more than a good cut of veal and pork chops at the Graham Ave. Meats and Deli in Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhood of Williamsburg this summer. In their arrest of Michael “Mike The Butcher” Virtuoso on extortion charges this past July, agents found a rolodex of Virtuoso’s with the contact…
