April 13, 2022 — Longtime Cleveland mafia figure William (Billy D) DiLeno died of natural causes last week. C-Town’s own “Billy D” was 84 and beloved for his humor and compassion.

According to FBI documents and federal informant-intelligence memos, Billy D was officially inducted into Cleveland’s Scalish crime family in the early 1990s. DiLeno came up in the Cleveland mob’s Eastside faction and was known to maintain ties to influential C-Town Mafiosi like Joseph (Joe Loose) Iacobacci, Tommy (The Chinaman) Sinito and Angelo (Big Ange) Lonardo.

Iacobacci became boss of the mob in Cleveland in the 1990s, but retired to rural Pennsylvania in the 2000s after allegedly relinquishing too much territory to the Chicago Outfit. He died two years ago.

Sinito, a fast-rising soldier in the Scalish crime family of the late 1970s and early 1980s, succumbed to cancer in prison. Lonardo became the first acting boss of an American mob family to flip, jumping from the head of the spear in the Cleveland underworld to the frontlines for Team USA in 1985.

Today, the Cleveland mafia is a small, almost-benign group of old-school gamblers, bookies and loan sharks with a limited formal structure. Once a star athlete in his youth, DiLeno was known for his love of horses and cigars later in life.

This article was originally posted here