Old Florida Mafia Looses Veteran Shot Caller To Father Time, Alleged Tampa Mobster Jimmy Valenti Dies At 91

May 28, 2022 — Reputed Florida mob figure Jimmy Valenti died earlier this spring of natural causes. The 91-year old Valenti was alleged to be a member of Tampa’s Trafficante crime family, but had no criminal record. He passed in March surrounded by his loved ones.

Today, the Trafficante organization is considered, for all intents and purposes, shuttered by the FBI, despite Valenti’s friend and reputed Tampa mafia don Vince LoScalzo still being alive. Mafia crime families from New York, Eastern-European crime syndicates and Mexican-cartel backed drug gangs have increasingly filled the void in the area over the past 20 years. LoScalzo, 85, served as Santo Trafficante, Jr.’s driver and bodyguard and then reportedly took the reins from him when he died of a heart ailment in March 1987.

According to Florida State Police, LoScalzo inducted Valenti into the Trafficante crime family in the late 1980s. Before he retired, Valenti was vice president of Southern Wine & Spirits. a liquor distributorship company he was employed by for four decades.

FBI surveillance logs from the 1990s show Valenti meeting with LoScalzo on a regular basis at LoScalzo’s Mahalo Auto Sales on Nebraska Avenue in Tampa. Intelligence reports from the era describe him as a protege of distinguished Tampa mob capo Francis (Dandy Frank) Diecidui and an associate of Trafficante gambling lieutenant Lou Caggiano. Dandy Frank Diecidui died in October 1994.

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Alleged cancer charity scammer could face seven years in prison


A former Wall Street crook with ties to the Mafia allegedly set up two dozen fake cancer charities across the country and scammed donors out of more than $150,000, prosecutors charge.

Starting in 2014, Ian Hosang, 63, of Staten Island, began establishing fake non-profits with legitimate-sounding names, including “American Cancer Society for Children” and “United Way of New York Inc.,” but donations never went to medical research or community outreach, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

Instead, he “lined his own pockets,” DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.

Hosang was arrested May 9 and arraigned in Brooklyn Supreme Court on 12 counts of grand larceny, three counts of identity theft and one count of scheme to defraud. He was released without bail.

He received slaps on the wrist in previous run-ins with the law over charity schemes — In 2018, North Dakota and Washington dissolved Hosang’s phony charities, and barred him from establishing any more, SILive reported. Three years later, the Michigan Attorney General Office dissolved 10 of his entities, the Mining Journal reported. 

He now faces seven years in prison if convicted.

DA Eric Gonzalez, above, alleged that Hosang used the charities to line his own pockets.
DA Eric Gonzalez, above, alleged that Hosang used the charities to line his own pockets.
REUTERS

Prior to his charity scams, Hosang was a wannabe Jordan Belfort.

In a 1997 complaint federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Hosang of being the ringleader of a pump-and-dump stock scheme, and claimed one of his partners, Frank Mancini, was connected to the Gambino crime family, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Hosang’s “stockbrokers” were just potheads he found on the subway, and he and Mancini once beat a rival broker and hung him upside down out of a ninth floor window, The Journal reported.

Hosang pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and money laundering charges in 1999. He served 12 years in federal prison, SILive reported.

Hosang’s lawyer, Paul Martin, refused to comment.

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The Jimmy Hoffa Murder Fallout Hit List: Aftermath Of Teamsters Boss’ Assassination Saw Five Bodies Drop In Detroit & NYC

Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa was kidnapped and murdered on July 30, 1975 on his way to a mob-style sit down with Detroit mafia street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey mafia capo Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano to talk about Hoffa’s desire to return to the union presidency which was being opposed by his one-time benefactors in the underworld. The sit down was supposed to take place in Bloomfield Township, Michigan at the Red Fox restaurant, less than 10 miles outside Detroit’s city limits.

Hoffa was witnessed getting into a car in the parking lot of the Red Fox and never seen again. His body has never been unearthed and nobody has ever been charged in the now-iconic case. However, in the years following Hoffa’s disappearance, people connected to him and the murder conspiracy that brought an end to his historic reign in organized labor began being murdered themselves.

The Hoffa Hit Aftermath Murders (1977-1984):

November 3, 1977 — New York attorney Gino Gallina is shot to death as he exits his vehicle in front of his mother’s home in the West Village. He was a bagman and fixer for several of the Five Families and a number of Harlem heroin bosses. Gallina was cooperating with the FBI and DEA in mob and narcotics investigations and claimed he had knowledge of the shooters in the Jimmy Hoffa hit and taped confessions locked away in a safety deposit box.

December 12, 1977 — Teamsters union figure Otto Wendell is found shot twice in the abdomen in his car on a rural slice of road three miles from his home in Livingston County. He died at the hospital two weeks later. His .38 caliber revolver was found next to him in the vehicle. Wendell was a staunch Hoffa loyalist and held the position of Treasurer for Hoffa’s old Teamsters Local 299. Just like Hoffa, Wendell ran afoul with the mob and was scheduled to testify at the upcoming federal extortion trial of Detroit mafia captain, Vincent (Little Vince) Meli.

March 21, 1978 — New Jersey mob soldier Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio is gunned down leaving the Andrea Doria Social Club in Manhattan’s Little Italy section. A soldier in the Genovese crime family’s Jersey wing, Briguglio was Tony Provenzano’s right-hand man and alleged representative on the Hoffa hit team, according to FBI informants. At the time of his murder, Briguglio was considered a top suspect in Hoffa’s kidnapping and killing and was under indictment and awaiting trial with Tony Pro for the gangland slaying of Anthony (Three Finger Tony) Castellito in another union power struggle that occurred more than a decade before.

July 30, 1981 — Detroit mafia soldier Carlo Licata is found shot to death inside his residence in Bloomfield Township, Michigan on the six-year anniversary of Hoffa going missing. Many investigators theorize Hoffa was killed at Licata’s house at 630 West Long Lake Road, two and a half miles north of the Red Fox restaurant where Hoffa was last seen alive. Licata was the son of L.A. mafia don Nick Licata and the brother-in-law of then Detroit mob boss Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco. Licata’s death was officially ruled a suicide, despite the gun being 15 feet away from him and absent of finger prints.

August 10, 1984 — Former Teamsters union figure Ralph Proctor is slain in the parking lot of a bank in Livonia, Michigan (shot twice from two separate guns inside an idling car) while in the middle of a feud with Local 299 over a $100,000 loan he gave and wasn’t being repaid on. Proctor was a close friend and union ally of Hoffa’s and had been threatened in the days leading up to his murder by Hoffa homicide suspect and notorious Teamsters goon Rolland (Big Mac) McMaster. During the acrimony surrounding Hoffa in the mid-1970s, Proctor took a beating administered by McMaster’s personal enforcement unit in its intimidation campaign against Hoffa and his loyalists. Two current mob shot callers in Detroit are considered prime suspects in Proctor’s murder.

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