NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) \u2014 For decades, New York\u2019s Mafia acted like rival hedge funds, each guarding its own market share. Now, they\u2019re more like a network of family offices pooling capital, technology, and muscle for shared gain.<\/p>\n
That cooperation was on full display in last week\u2019s\u00a0sweeping indictment<\/a>\u00a0by Brooklyn prosecutors outlining a vast sports-gambling ring. Officials described what they called an unprecedented alliance among four of the city\u2019s five Mafia families \u2014 the Genovese, Gambino, Bonanno, and Lucchese \u2014 working together to rig high-stakes poker games and cheat high-rollers out of millions.<\/p>\n \u201cBringing four of the five families together in a single indictment is extraordinarily rare,\u201d Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a press conference. \u201cIt tells you how much money was on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n The case details how the Mafia that once divided the city by neighborhood now runs on shared profit and shared technology. Modified card shufflers and X-ray tables supplement the knives and pistols of the past, even as the enforcement methods remain familiar.<\/p>\n \u201cThey used threats, intimidation, and violence,\u201d Tisch said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same pattern we\u2019ve seen for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n According to prosecutors, gamblers lost more than $7 million in the rigged games, including one who dropped nearly $1.9 million.<\/p>\n Each family took a cut. The Bonannos ran a game on Lexington Avenue, the Gambinos another on Washington Place, and the Genovese and Lucchese crews handled collections, prosecutors say. Hidden sensors inside $10,000 DeckMate shuffling machines read every card, transmitting the order to an off-site \u201cdriver,\u201d who texted the winning hand to a \u201cquarterback\u201d seated at the table. A touch on the wrist or a brush across a stack of chips signaled who would win.<\/p>\n The scheme was a modern reflection of an old institution. La Cosa Nostra \u2014 \u201cour thing\u201d \u2014 took root in New York during Prohibition, when Sicilian and southern Italian gangs carved out empires in bootlegging and gambling. From those origins emerged figures who became part of city lore: Charles \u201cLucky\u201d Luciano, who helped create the modern Mafia; Carlo Gambino, who built his family into the city\u2019s most powerful; and John Gotti, the swaggering boss convicted of murder in 1992.<\/p>\n While cooperation is rare, the gambling case wasn\u2019t the first time the organizations worked together. Beginning in 2012, the Bonanno and Genovese families quietly joined forces in a gambling ring that stretched into Wall Street suburbs across Queens and Long Island. They ran bets through a coffee bar, a shoe-repair shop, and a soccer club \u2014 fronts for an operation later detailed in a 2022 indictment that also accused a Nassau County detective of taking cash to warn them before raids.<\/p>\n Other prosecutions have shown the same instinct for adaptation. In 2021, reputed Colombo family leaders were charged with\u00a0trying to seize control<\/a>\u00a0of a labor union and its health fund, threatening to put a union officer \u201cin the ground\u201d if he resisted. Wiretaps captured bosses in their seventies and eighties directing extortion schemes from diners and garages.<\/p>\n \u201cThe illegal businesses, in place for many years, require constant attention and protection,\u201d prosecutors wrote in one filing.<\/p>\n The violence didn\u2019t always come from rivals. In 2018, Sylvester \u201cSally Daz\u201d Zottola, a Bronx landlord and reputed Bonanno associate, was shot dead in his SUV at a McDonald\u2019s drive-through after months of ambushes. Prosecutors said his son orchestrated the killing, enlisting members of an alleged Bloods street gang member to murder his father and brother to seize control of the family\u2019s real estate holdings.<\/p>\n That killing came less than a year after prosecutors charged the Lucchese family\u2019s top hierarchy \u2014 including its reputed acting boss, underboss, consigliere, and four captains \u2014 with murder, racketeering, and drug trafficking across New York and New Jersey.<\/p>\n Other cases have shown how the Mafia never really disappears, it mutates. In 2016, prosecutors charged Vincent Esposito, son of a reputed Gambino underboss, with running an extortion racket targeting labor unions. That same year, reputed Genovese associate Pasquale \u201cPatsy\u201d Parrello was\u00a0indicted<\/a>\u00a0for illegal gambling and loansharking in the Bronx. Both cases, prosecutors said, underscored \u201can enterprise that continues to function as a cohesive criminal organization.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, a union leader was accused of diverting pension and medical funds into sham investments for kickbacks. Prosecutors said that crime relied on the same \u201cstructure of loyalty and concealment\u201d that defined La Cosa Nostra for generations.<\/p>\n \u201cOrganized crime is still active and remains a threat both nationally and internationally,\u201d said Robert Boyce, former chief of detectives for the NYPD and a 35-year veteran of the force. The gambling case \u201cis evidence that law enforcement is vigilant and well coordinated, both federally and locally, in combating these criminal enterprises.\u201d<\/p>\n More stories on bloomberg.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) \u2014 For decades, New York\u2019s Mafia acted like rival hedge funds, each guarding its own…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-20188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}