Category: News

Gov. Hochul’s waterfront commission is a win for New Yorkers

We should note one real win for Gov. Hochul in the budget: She got the soft-on-crime Legislature to OK to a New York-only mob-busting waterfront commission after Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy killed the old bistate panel.

For much of a century, the Waterfront Commission was central to successful prosecutions against organized crime in and around local ports, as well as to ensuring fair employment.

But Murphy killed it in 2023, selling out to International Longshoremen’s Association and inviting the mob back into Jersey’s ports.


Gov. Kathy Hochul was able to get the state Legislature to approve a new unit to replace the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.
Gov. Kathy Hochul was able to get the state Legislature to approve a new unit to replace the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

Getting a commission to keep organized crime out of the Port of New York is an important victory for dockworkers, shippers and, ultimately, consumers.

The new commission will do background checks and license companies and individuals working in the shipping industry at the New York port.

Sadly, the ILA got New York lawmakers to limit the commission somewhat: It must consult with employers and unions in a review of its regulations, and can’t suspend port workers who “without unlawful purpose” consort with known criminals.

Phil Murphy has guaranteed that the mob will again rule Jersey’s ports; cross your fingers that the Legislature’s mindless pandering to unions doesn’t let it take over New York’s waterfront.

This article was originally posted here

El Chapo’s desperate pleas for more supermax prison visits, calls with wife, daughters rejected

A Brooklyn federal judge has rejected pleas by notorious Mexican cartel drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán for more contact with his wife and kids — telling the kingpin to take it up with the Bureau of Prisons.

Guzmán, 67, serving a life term and currently housed in the Florence, Colo., supermax federal lockup, wrote a letter to Judge Brian Cogan begging him to increase the calls and visits with his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, and their twin daughters.

“Since May of 2023, the facility stopped giving me calls with my daughters. And I haven’t had calls with them for seven months,” the Sinaloa cartel drug lord told the judge.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman unsuccessfully begged a judge to intervene and increase his contact with his wife and kids while he’s held in a supermax prison. AFP/Getty Images

“I ask that you please authorize [my wife] to visit me and to bring my daughters to visit me,” Guzmán wrote in the letter dated March 20 and made public last week.

“I ask for your intervention, since it is unprecedented discrimination against me.”

Cogan responded in an order from last Wednesday saying there was nothing he could do, since the BOP is in charge of Guzmán’s fate, and told him to take it up with the agency.

“After his conviction, the Bureau of Prisons became solely responsible for his conditions of his confinement, and this Court has no power to alter the conditions that the Bureau of Prisons has imposed,” Cogan wrote, in a letter first reported by Law & Crime Tuesday.

Guzmán claimed he used to get two 15-minute calls a month but said that “staff here told me that the FBI agent who monitors the calls does not answer.”

The judge responded by clarifying that the call schedule was put in place for Guzmán’s trial, but once the kingpin was convicted, the BOP took over his conditions.

Guzmán’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman told The Post by email that his client is subject to “the most onerous conditions” he’s ever seen for an inmate “in any American prison.”

Judge Brian Cogan rejected the bid by the drug kingpin, telling him to take his request up with the Bureau of Prisons. AP

The lawyer said Guzmán is kept in solitary confinement and he has not contact with his wife and “rarely gets to see his children or speak to them.”

Lichtman said Cogan was correct in noting that it’s an issue for the BOP, not for the judge.

“Mr. Guzman will address this issue with the BOP which will undoubtedly refuse to ease any of the severe and unnecessary conditions imposed on him, now years after he was first placed in solitary confinement,” the lawyer said.

Guzmán made a similar request of Cogan in August when Aispuro, 34, was slated to get released from prison after serving three years for drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracy.

El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison for drug-trafficking and related charges for running a multibillion-dollar narcotics operation. AP

At the time, he asked that the former beauty queen be allowed to visit with their pre-teen twin daughters, Emali Guadalupe and Maria Joaquina.

The narco king was convicted in February 2019 on a slew of drug-trafficking charges for running a multibillion-dollar operation.

In January 2023, El Chapo sought help from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to have him returned home, claiming he was being subjected to “cruel and unfair” conditions in the American prisons.

The BOP didn’t return a request for comment Wednesday.

This article was originally posted here

‘Sal the Shoemaker’ pleads guilty to operating Mafia gambling ring out of Long Island shop

A Long Island cobbler has admitted running an illegal gambling ring raising money for the Mafia out of his now-shuttered store.

Salvatore Rubino, better known as “Sal the Shoemaker,” pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to a slew of charges related to the illegal gambling business and using the proceeds to bolster the coffers of the notorious Genovese crime family, federal prosecutors have announced.

He told a judge in Brooklyn federal court that there were gambling machines installed in the back of Sal’s Shoe Repair in Merrick, where he also operated poker games three nights each week, Newsday reports.

Salvatore Rubino, 60, told a judge in Brooklyn federal court that there were gambling machines installed in the back of Sal’s Shoe Repair in Merrick, where he also operated poker games three nights each week. Google St View

Rubino, 60, and Joseph Rutigliano, 65 — known as “Joe Box” — would collect the profits for the Genoveses and distribute the funds to high-ranking members.

Their operation was active from May 2012 through 2021, when Sal’s Shoe Repair had to shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, other mobsters operated out of seemingly innocuous business fronts across Long Island, including a gelato shop in Lynbrook called the Gran Caffe Gelateria and Centro Calcio Italiano Club in West Babylon, prosecutors said.

Other mobsters operated out of seemingly innocuous business fronts across Long Island, including a gelato shop in Lynbrook called the Gran Caffe Gelateria and Centro Calcio Italiano Club in West Babylon. Gran Caffe Gelateria / Facebook

The businesses secretly operated poker-type gambling machines and poker games, and would bring in more than $2,000 in a single day, the feds said.

Four others involved in the massive operation pleaded guilty earlier this month, including Rutigliano and Carmelo “Carmine” Polito, 64, the alleged acting captain of the Genovese crime family, who also faced charges for running an illegal online sports betting operation through a website called PGW Lines.

Carmelo “Carmine” Polito, 64, pleaded guilty earlier this month. Brooklyn U.S Attorney’s Office

He once threatened to “break” a debtor’s “face” before instructing an underling in 2019 to relay the message, “Tell him I’m going to put him under the f–king bridge,” according to prosecutors.

Joseph Macario, 69 — aka “Joe Fish” — also pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, and Mark Feuer, 61, pleaded guilty to felony charges relating to the operation of other illegal gambling businesses.

Mark Feuer, 61, pleaded guilty to felony charges relating to the operation of other illegal gambling businesses. Alec Tabak

“With their guilty pleas, these five members and associates of the Genovese crime family have admitted they committed crimes to benefit a criminal enterprise notorious for inflicting harm on our communities for generations,” US Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.

“As long as the Mafia doesn’t get it that illegal gambling is a losing proposition, they can bet on this office and our partners vigorously enforcing the law and flushing them out of the shadows,” she added.

Rubino is now expected to be sentenced to just between four to 10 months in prison as part of a plea deal — though he could face up to five years behind bars and have to pay $250,000 in fines, Newsday reports.

With Post wires.

This article was originally posted here