Author: William

FBI returns to NY horse farms connected to Gambino crime family investigations

FBI agents were back at two upstate New York horse farms after searching the same properties for bodies last year in connection to federal investigations into the Gambino crime family.

The feds, along with members of the New York State Police and NYPD, descended on the two farms on Hampton Road in Goshen and on Hamptonburgh Road in Campbell Hall on Tuesday morning, witnesses told The Times Union.

Excavators, a police K9 unit and a New York City medical examiner were also on site, video from the scene shows. It’s not clear if anything was found.

The two farms, located about five miles apart, were raided by the FBI last November after a tipster said bodies were buried on the grounds, sources told The Post at the time.

An FBI spokesperson confirmed to The Post that agents from its New York office were at the two addresses on Tuesday, but could not provide additional information about the investigation.

FBI, state police and NYPD returned to the Orange County horse farms on Tuesday. Mark Lieb / Rockland Video Productions
The two horse farms were searched as part of a federal probe into the infamous crime syndicate. Mark Lieb / Rockland Video Productions

Both farms were formerly owned by Giovanni DiLorenzo — who has the same surname as one of the 10 alleged mafiosi from the Gambino crime family indicted in November over accusations they used violent tactics to take over the Big Apple’s garbage hauling and demolition industry.

The Campbell Hall farm is currently owned by Viviane DiLorenzo, according to property records. The Goshen farm is currently owned by GDLI LLC.

Salvatore DiLorenzo was one of 10 alleged Gambino associates indicted on racketeering charges in November in federal court in Brooklyn. Much of the indictment centers on the group’s alleged attempts to extort money from an unidentified garbage company and an unidentified demolition company, starting in late 2017.

The farms are about five miles apart from each other in Goshen and Campbell Hall. Mark Lieb / Rockland Video Productions
Members of the Gambino crime syndicate were indicted in federal court in November. Dennis A. Clark

The defendants include Joseph Lanni, also known as “Joe Brooklyn” and “Mommino,” an alleged captain in the Gambino family; and three alleged Gambino soldiers: Diego “Danny” Tantillo; Angelo Gradilone, also known as “Fifi;” and James LaForte.

They allegedly hospitalized a man in a vicious hammer attack, threatened to saw a business owner in half and tried to burn down a restaurant that had thrown them out, among other crimes, according to the 16-count indictment.

The men were hit with charges including racketeering conspiracy, extortion, witness retaliation, fraud and embezzlement. They each face between 20 and 180 years in prison for the laundry list of alleged crimes.

This article was originally posted here

Italy expands bizarre anti-Mafia program where mob bosses’ kids are forced into foster care

Forget the godfather, meet the foster father.

A bizarre plan hatched 12 years ago by a fed-up Italian judge to force the kids of jailed mafiosi into foster care has worked out so well at keeping them on the straight and narrow that it’s expanding into the birthplace of La Cosa Nostra, the Times of London reported.

“It has been an extraordinary success,” Judge Roberto Di Bella told the outlet in a report Wednesday. “In Catania, kids as young as seven are sent out to be pushers, while parents take out younger children in prams as cover when they are transporting kilos of drugs.

“Now with the new protocol we can expect an important increase in the number of children involved — we can change the destiny of thousands of minors,” he said.


Italian Judge Roberto Di Bella.
Italian Judge Roberto Di Bella launched “Free to Choose” in 2012, which places the children of jailed mobsters with foster families to keep them from inhereting a life of crime. AFP via Getty Images

The controversial plan that was launched in Southern Italy to place kids of Italian mafia bosses with foster families to cut their inherited underworld ties are being tested out in Sicily after about 150 mob-tied children were relocated in Calabria over the years, the Times said.

Called “Free to Choose,” Di Bella hatched the program after growing tired of seeing generation after generation of organized crime figures following in their father’s footsteps.

“There’s a religious baptism and a mafioso baptism which is confirmed when you reach a certain age,” mob writer Antonio Nicaso told the BBC in 2013, shortly after the program launched.

Raised to be hoodlums, the kids included a mafia youngster charged with six murders and others who were ordered to kill their own mothers after they were unfaithful to their jailed mob husbands.

“So this means that often the children of bosses — particularly the firstborn — are predestined to follow in their father’s footsteps,” Nicaso said.

Once pulled free of their criminal birthright, many youngsters flourished, Di Bella found.

“I could see a light in the eyes of some of them,” he said, “and knew they could choose another path.”


Mafia foster care plan moves to Siciliy.
The “Free to Choose” program has placed about 150 children of Italian mobsters into foster care, and is now in Sicily. AFP via Getty Images

First deployed against the Ndrangheta family, the plan had early critics — but eventually even won over some mobsters and saw about 30 mob wives opting to join their kids in state-funded new homes, the report said.

One jailed mob boss went so far as to thank Di Bella for sparing his four grandchildren from ‘The Life.’

“Free to Choose” is now being tried out in Catania, Sicily, once a mafia hotbed.

“This is a historic moment in the fight against the mafia,” said Carlo Nordio, Italy’s justice minister.

This article was originally posted here