Speaker 1: You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
Speaker 1: production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: In the criminal justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
Speaker 2: to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
Speaker 2: and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
Speaker 2: that is defined American history. These are their stories. August seventeenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one, Eltingville, Staten Island.
Speaker 1: The pickup was scheduled for just past nine sunny. Black
Speaker 1: Nepolitano placed his keys on the bar, along with his
Speaker 1: prize diamond pinky ring and.
Speaker 3: A wat of cash.
Speaker 1: He told the bartender he had a sinking feeling that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be needing them anymore. Sonny got into a
Speaker 1: Lincoln town car which took him over with the Verizano
Speaker 1: Bridge to a small house on Staten Island. For years,
Speaker 1: he had been a good earner for the Banano family,
Speaker 1: but he made one unforgivable mistake. He vouched for someone
Speaker 1: who turned out to be the enemy.
Speaker 3: One of the closer Austra rules is if you vouch
Speaker 3: for a guy and he turns bad, it's on you
Speaker 3: and the penalty could be death.
Speaker 1: Sonny knew the score. As he descended the stairs to
Speaker 1: the basement, the door slam shut behind him and he
Speaker 1: was shoved to the floor.
Speaker 4: There was a setup crew, there was a murder crew,
Speaker 4: and there was a cleanup crew, so multiple people involved.
Speaker 1: The first shot grazed his ear, then he heard the
Speaker 1: gun jam. Sprawled on his knees, Sonny looked up at
Speaker 1: the gunman and said, hit me one more time and
Speaker 1: make it good. The second gunman fired.
Speaker 3: You're not with the mob because you want to be.
Speaker 3: It's the gangster that decides whether you're his associated on
Speaker 3: If you like.
Speaker 5: Your life, you will vote to acquit.
Speaker 1: I'm aniseg and NICOLASI.
Speaker 3: My father should have been a dead man.
Speaker 1: From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts. This is law and
Speaker 1: order criminal justice system.
Speaker 3: I didn't get hired as an FBI agent. What I
Speaker 3: got hired as was a grade to file coler, which
Speaker 3: was a position that doesn't even exist anymore. And my
Speaker 3: very first job in the FBI was filing fingerprint cards
Speaker 3: in alphabetical order.
Speaker 1: Extremely exciting work, but I.
Speaker 3: Managed to work my way up through the ranks.
Speaker 1: You can blame it on the hardy boys or shirlofe homes,
Speaker 1: but Jack Stubing, like many of us, developed a passion
Speaker 1: for crime solving at a young age. He just happened
Speaker 1: to make a career of it, first as a file
Speaker 1: clerk and then eventually as a supervisory special agent at
Speaker 1: the FBI.
Speaker 3: The first actual organized crime book I ever read was
Speaker 3: about the Banano family. When I became a supervisor, I
Speaker 3: tried to instill in young agents that you should know
Speaker 3: the history of these things because it's all about human
Speaker 3: relationships and how we got to where we are. And
Speaker 3: it's one of the reasons that at West Point they
Speaker 3: study battles that happened a thousand years ago, because the
Speaker 3: technology may change, but human beings remain human beings. And
Speaker 3: part of success in organized crime investigations is the ability
Speaker 3: to predict the future, basically, and you want to predict
Speaker 3: what's going to happen before it happens.
Speaker 1: Know your history. Predict all easier said than done, especially
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with an adversary as unpredictable as the
Speaker 1: American mafia with the mobs elaborate org chart of bosses, underbosses, capos,
Speaker 1: and soldiers. Keeping track of the nicknames alone would test
Speaker 1: even the most dedicated of crime solvers. Thankfully, Special Agent
Speaker 1: Jack Steubing loved a good mystery, and he had his
Speaker 1: sight set on a big one. Throughout the second half
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. The rise and fall of the
Speaker 1: Banano crime family had more twists and turns than an
Speaker 1: act at the Christie novel, and in the years after
Speaker 1: the Commission trial, Jack was tasked with taking them down
Speaker 1: once and for all.
Speaker 3: The Bananas were an absolute mess. To put it bluntly,
Speaker 3: they had had problems going back to the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: Joe Banano was the founding member of the Banano family,
Speaker 3: but he was also the youngest member of the Commission
Speaker 3: at the time because he was a young, wise guy
Speaker 3: from the Old Country. And even though that he was
Speaker 3: on the Commission, he was trying to gather support from
Speaker 3: some of the other families to institute himself as the
Speaker 3: Boss of bosses. Despite the Commission. Commission got wished to
Speaker 3: this thing before he was able to make his move,
Speaker 3: and they chased them out of New York. The titular
Speaker 3: Boss was now living in Arizona having been chased out
Speaker 3: of New York, and they were rutorless. There were these
Speaker 3: constant factions within the family that led to the assassination
Speaker 3: actually of Carline Gallante and the rise of Joe Messino.
Speaker 1: The rise and reign of Joe Messino, perhaps the most
Speaker 1: ruthless and resilient of the New York bosses, a man
Speaker 1: who would become known as the Last Don.
Speaker 3: He was a hijacker. He was not an educated man,
Speaker 3: but he was a smart man. He was very clever,
Speaker 3: very street wise. Obviously, he was brutal, reputed to do
Speaker 3: his own work. In other words, he wasn't afraid to
Speaker 3: use violence as a tool against somebody personally, wouldn't just
Speaker 3: order somebody else. He would participate in acts himself if necessary.
Speaker 1: By the time he was in his thirties, Messino had
Speaker 1: earned a coveted role as protege to Rusty Rostelli, who
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three had taken over the top spot
Speaker 1: in the Banano family. Messino's appetite also earned him the
Speaker 1: nickname Big Joey.
Speaker 3: He was a good earner and he was very interested
Speaker 3: in food. He ran a catering business back in the
Speaker 3: day before there were the kind of sophisticated food trucks
Speaker 3: and stuff that they have now that go to fairs
Speaker 3: and that kind of thing. There were essentially pickup trucks
Speaker 3: with stainless steel bodies on the back of them, and
Speaker 3: they sold sandwiches to construction sites and places where people
Speaker 3: were working out in the field. And in Joe's case,
Speaker 3: these trucks were also used there's good mechanisms for taking
Speaker 3: bets and making loan shark loans, and conducting other business
Speaker 3: that generated more income for him than selling sandwiches.
Speaker 1: After the Bananas got burned by undercover FBI agent Joe
Speaker 1: Pistone aka Donnie Brasco and were banished from the Commission,
Speaker 1: the family was forced to pivot into new illsicit markets,
Speaker 1: and during that time Joe Messino crew in status.
Speaker 3: As the years went by, he grew in power within
Speaker 3: the family and became a captain and had his own crew.
Speaker 3: He rose through the ranks through guile violence, basically to
Speaker 3: head the family after the death of Rusty Rostelli.
Speaker 1: A position he secured in large part thanks to the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine assassination of rival Carma Galante and the
Speaker 1: triple murder of the three Capos in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 1: And remember, the Bananos had been left largely unscathed by
Speaker 1: the Commission trial, so by the end of the eighties,
Speaker 1: as the other families were weakened by prosecutions and a
Speaker 1: revolving door of turncoats, they were poised to fill that
Speaker 1: power vacuum. As the new head of the family. Messino
Speaker 1: was becoming arguably the most powerful mafia leader in the country,
Speaker 1: not to mention the only full fledged New York boss
Speaker 1: who was not in prison or dead.
Speaker 3: Messino, you know, I mean, he's been referred to as
Speaker 3: the last Godfather. He was the force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 3: He really was de facto the boss and bosses by
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 1: And he aimed to keep it that way, determined not
Speaker 1: to make the same mistakes other bosses had made that
Speaker 1: exposed them to federal prosecution.
Speaker 3: Messino was pretty sophisticated in a street wise way, but
Speaker 3: also he sort of had a fondness for technology. He
Speaker 3: sometimes used the walkie talkies on his operations. He would
Speaker 3: have electronic sweeps of his social club to detect bugs.
Speaker 3: There's a famous story that they had installed a bug
Speaker 3: in one of his clubs and he managed to find
Speaker 3: it within two days. So he was somebody who was
Speaker 3: constantly on guard against infiltration.
Speaker 1: Just as Vincent Gigante was called the Chin earned a
Speaker 1: similarly descriptive nickname, he was known as the.
Speaker 3: Ear It's like Valdemort, he who must not be named.
Speaker 3: The ear Thing was partially this myth that Messino created
Speaker 3: for himself, where he was everywhere and all seeing and
Speaker 3: would hear you know if anything was amiss within his empire.
Speaker 1: But Messino's greatest advantage over his predecessors. After watching the
Speaker 1: government round up his rivals, he had gotten wise to
Speaker 1: their playbook.
Speaker 3: We had a case where we had infiltrated one of
Speaker 3: their clubs. We were able to install bugs and CCTV
Speaker 3: inside the club, and we could see on the CCTV
Speaker 3: that when they were talking to each other they would
Speaker 3: be whispering in each other's ears. They just assumed that
Speaker 3: the place was bugged, and a acted accordingly.
Speaker 1: These bugs had been the hallmark of the Commission case,
Speaker 1: but in many ways, federal law enforcement had been a
Speaker 1: victim of their own success. Decades of black bag ops
Speaker 1: and surveillance had served to strengthen those mobsters that had
Speaker 1: managed to survive.
Speaker 3: This combination of factors that no one within the family
Speaker 3: had turned. Our informant coverage was spotty at best. They
Speaker 3: were very cautious about electronic surveillance. We just weren't making
Speaker 3: any headway.
Speaker 1: So for this next chapter in their spy versus spy
Speaker 1: battle with the mob, the FBI needed a new game plan,
Speaker 1: a whole new type of agent. They would have to
Speaker 1: be sophisticated, fearless, and most of all, relentless. Enter the accountants.
Speaker 3: In the mid nineties, I went to my ASAC, the
Speaker 3: Assistant Special Agent in charge of the Organized crime branch
Speaker 3: in New York, and I said, you know, everything we
Speaker 3: have tried has not worked. Now, I've been toying with
Speaker 3: this idea that maybe if we could get some forensic
Speaker 3: accountantcy in here, maybe they could make some headway where
Speaker 3: we can. My ASAC said, all right, well, let's see
Speaker 3: what I can do. He obtained for me two forensic
Speaker 3: accountants by the name of Jeff Selette and Kim McCaffrey,
Speaker 3: and they were both brand new agents. They were eager, enthusiastic, smart.
Speaker 1: And their real superpower each was a whiz with numbers.
Speaker 4: So my name is Kimberly McCaffrey, and I started in
Speaker 4: New York. I spent nine years there working organized crime.
Speaker 1: Like many agents, Kim McCaffrey had grown up familiar with
Speaker 1: some of the faces and names of organized crime.
Speaker 4: I grew up in southern New Jersey. Obviously it was
Speaker 4: on the local news all the time. I would always
Speaker 4: see John Gottie. I would always see how he walked
Speaker 4: with a swagger. Even as a kid, I never quite understood.
Speaker 4: I'm like, guys, if we know he's the head of
Speaker 4: a mob family, why can't we arrest him. I didn't
Speaker 4: understand how he could just walk around when we all
Speaker 4: knew he was such a bad guy.
Speaker 1: But Kim's path to crime fighting was not a direct one.
Speaker 4: I started as a phyzed major and changed my major
Speaker 4: three times till I finally graduated with an accounting major.
Speaker 4: I majored in accounting not because I thought I would
Speaker 4: have a great fulfilling career as a CPA. I majored
Speaker 4: in accounting because it actually came naturally to me. It
Speaker 4: was fun going through all the numbers every day. But
Speaker 4: I really did want to use my accounting skills. It
Speaker 4: sounds so cliche, but to change the world to make
Speaker 4: things better.
Speaker 1: So after getting her degree, Kim stopped buy an FBI
Speaker 1: field office and filled out an application.
Speaker 4: On my first day, one of my supervisors when I
Speaker 4: first got to the New York office, said Hey, if
Speaker 4: you had your dream career here, what would it be?
Speaker 4: And I was like, you know, I would love to
Speaker 4: use my accounting skills to combat organized crime. He said, Oh,
Speaker 4: do I have the perfect person for you to meet.
Speaker 1: That person was Jack Steubing, who had the novel idea
Speaker 1: of recruiting CPAs to combat the mob.
Speaker 4: At that point, I was slated to go to Squad
Speaker 4: C ten in New York to work the Banana organized
Speaker 4: crime family. Jeff and I became partners, and the rest
Speaker 4: is history. I guess.
Speaker 1: So, how would this work? How would a few accountants
Speaker 1: accomplish what it had taken hundreds of FBI personnel to
Speaker 1: do before them.
Speaker 3: The idea of forensic accounting isn't just crunching numbers. That's
Speaker 3: what regular accountants do. What the forensic accountants do is
Speaker 3: put those numbers into the organized crime context. What here
Speaker 3: is legitimate money, what is bad money?
Speaker 1: And if the numbers added up, the results would prove
Speaker 1: to be even more reliable than human witnesses.
Speaker 3: Bank records don't change. You can kill an informant, you
Speaker 3: can bribe people, you can do all manner of things,
Speaker 3: But you can't change the records that are in the
Speaker 3: banking system. They're always lurking there, and many of them
Speaker 3: you don't even know exist, And it's great evidence.
Speaker 1: The fact is that at its heart, the mob is
Speaker 1: all about money, and who better to trace a money
Speaker 1: trail than an accountant.
Speaker 4: One thing Jeff always said was what do financial records
Speaker 4: tell you? Well, they give you leads like cut off
Speaker 4: the numbers, and it gives you a pattern of life,
Speaker 4: Like if we look at any one of our statements,
Speaker 4: it's a financial surveillance, like, oh, you like to go
Speaker 4: to Chipotle, you shop at Target, this is where you vacation.
Speaker 4: Who are you getting money from and who are you
Speaker 4: sending money to? And why look at someone's tax returns,
Speaker 4: especially a mob boss. Why are they getting W two's
Speaker 4: from particular corporations they're clearly not working there. Look at
Speaker 4: the in and outflows of money, and then understand the
Speaker 4: people behind them, and then you look into those people
Speaker 4: and figure out who will actually talk to you, look
Speaker 4: for the weak link.
Speaker 1: And the plan was to deploy these methods against the
Speaker 1: boss of bosses, Joe Messino. But even Jack had to
Speaker 1: admit this was a bit out of his wheelhouse.
Speaker 3: I mean, I had taken some accounting classes in community college,
Speaker 3: but I was no forensic account and I didn't know
Speaker 3: what I was looking for when I subpoenaed bank records.
Speaker 3: Unless it said in the memo loan shark payment, I
Speaker 3: would have had no idea what it was I was
Speaker 3: looking at.
Speaker 1: Luckily, his agents were experts in decoding the secrets in
Speaker 1: the stacks of checks, bank statements, and shady receipts that
Speaker 1: had accumulated from years of property seizures.
Speaker 3: As I recall, Jeff was the first to arrive, and
Speaker 3: I had a box of these checks that from when
Speaker 3: I was a case agent. Well, he opens his box
Speaker 3: up and starts going through the box, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 3: this is evidence of structuring. Oh, this is evidence of
Speaker 3: money learning. Oh this is evidence of tax of asion.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 3: I don't, Frank, I'm looking at the same stuff he said.
Speaker 3: He is, Hakim, I don't see what he sees. I said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take whatever's in my head about the
Speaker 3: Banano family and put it in your head, and you
Speaker 3: mix it up with your accounting skills and see what
Speaker 3: you can do.
Speaker 1: Armed with pencils, paper and their trusty Excel spreadsheets, Kim
Speaker 1: and Jeff got to work sorting through thousands of documents
Speaker 1: in putting the pieces together. The endgame, follow the money
Speaker 1: and hit them where it hurts.
Speaker 4: Traditionally, an organized crime, you sort of expect to go
Speaker 4: to jail at some point in your career, but what
Speaker 4: you don't expect is when the government takes your money
Speaker 4: away while you're in jail. So that was what we
Speaker 4: had planned. Not only do we want to put them
Speaker 4: in jail, but we want to take all their money,
Speaker 4: or we want to have that hanging over their head
Speaker 4: that maybe they will talk to us for the first time.
Speaker 1: They decided to start right at the top with Joe
Speaker 1: Messino and his underboss, sal Vitali, who was also his
Speaker 1: brother in law.
Speaker 4: They had the same CPA. So the first thing we did,
Speaker 4: as our nerdy accountant selves, was we subpoenaed their accounting records.
Speaker 1: Not wiretaps, not stakeouts of smoke filled social clubs, receipts,
Speaker 1: stacks and stacks of receipts. Safe to say, this was
Speaker 1: a whole new side of the FBI.
Speaker 4: I always kind of laugh because you had some old
Speaker 4: school agents on the squad who were going out on
Speaker 4: surveillance every day or doing old school type of things.
Speaker 4: And how excited were Jeff and I when we brought
Speaker 4: back nine boxes of financial records and were filling in
Speaker 4: Excel spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: I'm shaking my head because I would have walked by
Speaker 1: your office so fast.
Speaker 4: I was like, and that's exactly what most people did,
Speaker 4: but to us, like, we're so excited, So I don't
Speaker 4: think anyone wanted to be on our team at that point.
Speaker 1: And the gangsters themselves weren't their only targets. It was
Speaker 1: also their facilitators, the network of people who were helping
Speaker 1: them move their money and attempt to disguise it as legitimate,
Speaker 1: which led to the uncovering of one of the more
Speaker 1: novel laundering schemes in criminal history. If you actually believe
Speaker 1: their tax returns, Messino, Vitally and their respective wives were
Speaker 1: among the luckiest people in New York. Why they were
Speaker 1: reporting thousands and thousands of dollars of lottery winnings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we see that on their tax returns. Joe, sal Josie, Diana,
Speaker 4: They're all winning the lottery at various points. Anyone around
Speaker 4: Joe Messino is winning the lottery all the time. We
Speaker 4: knew that really wasn't real. That was a way for
Speaker 4: him to launder his money. It would have been clever
Speaker 4: if maybe they just won it once, but with the
Speaker 4: volume of times that they and their friends or family
Speaker 4: members won it, it just obviously became a red flag
Speaker 4: for us.
Speaker 1: Here's the scheme, as Messino and Vitally imagined it. You
Speaker 1: have a lot of cash from a legal activity, and
Speaker 1: you need to clean it to make it look like
Speaker 1: it was earned legitimately.
Speaker 4: And in New York there's a lot of bodegas. The
Speaker 4: owners of the bodegas, these are the people selling the
Speaker 4: lottery tickets. So I have a lot of cash and
Speaker 4: I tell the owner, Hey, if someone wins the lottery,
Speaker 4: I'd like to buy their ticket. Because that legitimate person
Speaker 4: who wins the lottery, they have to claim it, they
Speaker 4: have to pay taxes on it, and that's less money
Speaker 4: for them. But if Joe Mosino buys your lottery ticket
Speaker 4: from you, you get more money. You don't have to
Speaker 4: claim it on your taxes. He doesn't care about paying
Speaker 4: the taxes on it because he has so much cash
Speaker 4: that he needs to legitimize. And that's sort of the
Speaker 4: way the scheme worked.
Speaker 1: But their lucky streak would eventually run out, partly due
Speaker 1: to the FBI's work with an unlikely partner, Barry Weinberg.
Speaker 1: He was our first big break. Barry Weinberg was the
Speaker 1: owner of several parking lots in Lower Manhattan. His name
Speaker 1: was nowhere on the Banana Org chart, but it kept
Speaker 1: popping up on checks to and from Messino and wives.
Speaker 4: We're just wondering why the boss and the underboss' wives
Speaker 4: are receiving income from parking lots in Lower Manhattan. In particular,
Speaker 4: we're wondering why a man by the name of Barry
Speaker 4: Weinberg is receiving checks from Messino and Vitally. Let's figure
Speaker 4: out who he is and what he's all about.
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out that Barry was a character almost
Speaker 1: as colorful as the gangsters he was in bed with.
Speaker 4: Barry Weinberg was a very successful businessman who was infatuated
Speaker 4: with the mob. He was an associate of Richie Cantarella.
Speaker 1: Richie Cantrella was a Banano captain and confidant of sal Vitally.
Speaker 4: Barry Weinberg owned parking lot leases all over Manhattan, super wealthy,
Speaker 4: and he was pretty much extored out of a portion
Speaker 4: of those leases and forced to sell to the wives
Speaker 4: of Joe Messino and Salvatally so that they could legitimize
Speaker 4: their income.
Speaker 1: So Weinberg was a victim of the bananas, but also
Speaker 1: an accomplice who walked the fine line between the legitimate
Speaker 1: and criminal worlds of New York City.
Speaker 4: In vision like an older, wheeling, dealing guy in Lower Manhattan,
Speaker 4: chain smoking, super nervous, always had a cigarette in his hand.
Speaker 4: He once described W two wage earners as schmucks, and
Speaker 4: then Jeff and I just looked at him, like, you
Speaker 4: do realize that we are W two wage earners And
Speaker 4: he's like, oh, sorry, sorry, you know, very fast talking.
Speaker 1: He was just a character. And in addition, Barry had
Speaker 1: an achilles heel that Kim and Jeff were happy to exploit.
Speaker 4: Barry's downfall was that he liked really young women, and
Speaker 4: he had a lot of ex wives, and he had
Speaker 4: a lot of children, and he didn't like to pay
Speaker 4: his taxes. I think he had evaded close to fourteen
Speaker 4: million dollars in income taxes with his various businesses.
Speaker 1: Money that largely went right back out the door in
Speaker 1: the form of alimony and child support.
Speaker 4: We sort of assessed that Barry Weinberg was not the
Speaker 4: type of guy who was willing to go to prison.
Speaker 4: So our plan and our hope was to arrest Barry
Speaker 4: in a covert way without anyone in the family knowing
Speaker 4: about it, and to have Barry make a decision whether
Speaker 4: he wanted to go in front of the magistrate judge
Speaker 4: that day for his tax evasion crimes, or he wanted
Speaker 4: to go along his normal daily activities but wearing a
Speaker 4: wire for the FBI.
Speaker 1: And so Kim and Jeff partnered with the n MIPD
Speaker 1: to affect a car stop of Weinberg's Mercedes, careful to
Speaker 1: do it far from the prying eyes of Banano spies.
Speaker 4: We were close behind in a van and then they
Speaker 4: asked him to get out of the car and they
Speaker 4: put him in the van and he met Jeff and
Speaker 4: I for the first time. He was pretty surprised to
Speaker 4: meet us that day. We just introduced ourselves and we
Speaker 4: basically gave him his options and it took him about
Speaker 4: ten seconds to decide. He said, where were you six
Speaker 4: months ago? Give me the wire for Barry Weinberg. Loyalty
Speaker 4: took a back seat to self preservation. It was the
Speaker 4: first piece in a case against the Last Dawn, one
Speaker 4: that wouldn't just lead to charges of tax evasion and
Speaker 4: money laundering, but the murder of one of his oldest friends,
Speaker 4: Sonny Black. Nepolitano. Special agent Jack Stubink's team of forensic
Speaker 4: accountants had tracked payments to and from Banano boss Joe
Speaker 4: Messino to a New York businessman named Barry Weinberg. Not
Speaker 4: one to entertain a lengthy prison term, Weinberg quickly agreed
Speaker 4: to cooperate, and he would do it the old fashioned
Speaker 4: way by.
Speaker 1: Wearing a wire.
Speaker 4: Part of his decision was one he was not willing
Speaker 4: to go to jail, but two because a few months prior,
Speaker 4: he was actually assaulted by Richie Kintarella. Although Barry had
Speaker 4: made the Banano family a ton of money, they felt
Speaker 4: that it wasn't enough, and he got beat.
Speaker 1: Up because he wasn't earning enough or producing enough.
Speaker 4: I mean that's what they thought. But he literally had
Speaker 4: made them millions of dollars. They basically said, I hate
Speaker 4: these guys, and give me the wire and I'll do
Speaker 4: whatever you need me to do. We wired him up
Speaker 4: right then and there. We didn't want to change his pattern.
Speaker 4: We didn't want anything to change, so he literally went
Speaker 4: right back out wearing.
Speaker 1: A recording device, and just like that, the forensic accountants
Speaker 1: were back to using human intel and assuming all the
Speaker 1: risk that goes with it. After all, this was not
Speaker 1: a low stakes game. If Weinberg was suspected of working
Speaker 1: with the Feds, there was a good chance he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be left to run parking lots. He'd be buried under one.
Speaker 4: Barry hung out with Richie Cantarella and his crew pretty
Speaker 4: much every Monday through Thursday at Deniko's. It was a
Speaker 4: restaurant in Little Italy. Our goal with Barry was to
Speaker 4: have him just wear that wire every day and just
Speaker 4: see what they talked about.
Speaker 1: The slick haired Richie Cantarella, also known as s Lackhead,
Speaker 1: was Banano captain who had once murdered his own cousin
Speaker 1: at the behest of Joe Messino, and thanks to his
Speaker 1: extortion of Barry Weinberg, he, along with Messino and Vitali,
Speaker 1: was also the proud co owner of several parking lots
Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 4: And what Barry did explain was when the wives of
Speaker 4: Joe and Sal purchased interests in the parking lots. They
Speaker 4: were not for what they were worth. He was told
Speaker 4: to do that and he really had no choice. So
Speaker 4: that's what those checks were for, was for their interests
Speaker 4: in the parking lots, which now they earned income from
Speaker 4: working there. And that's how Richie earned all of his
Speaker 4: money too.
Speaker 1: It's extortion.
Speaker 4: It's no show jobs because they're definitely not working there.
Speaker 4: They couldn't even tell you where those parking lots were.
Speaker 4: Everything that Barry made, he was supposed to give a
Speaker 4: portion to Richie, who then gave it to Joe and Salar.
Speaker 1: Lots like windows in concrete were not sexy, but they
Speaker 1: were profitable, and they turned out to be a lynchpin
Speaker 1: in dismantling a much larger criminal enterprise. I can't stress
Speaker 1: how integral Barry was. I don't know that anyone would have.
Speaker 4: Cared or noticed who he was if we didn't find
Speaker 4: those three checks that were written to him. Through the
Speaker 4: work that he did, we got a lot on.
Speaker 1: Richie thanks to Weinberg's wire, the FBI collected over one
Speaker 1: hundred tapes of incriminating statements from Cantarella and his crew,
Speaker 1: and in October of two thousand and two, Richie Cantrella
Speaker 1: was arrested and charged in a twenty four count Rico indictment.
Speaker 1: Also arrested another Banano captain named Frank Copa. It became
Speaker 1: a race to see which made man would be the
Speaker 1: first to flip to Cantrella's dismay. Copa beat him to
Speaker 1: the punch.
Speaker 4: Although Barry broke it open and Frank Copa crushed it.
Speaker 4: We thought we were arresting him on an extortion charge
Speaker 4: against Barry Weinberg that he was going to face eighteen
Speaker 4: months until Frank told us about the murder of Sunny
Speaker 4: Black Napolitano, and I will tell you the truth. We
Speaker 4: had no idea he was involved in that murder, or
Speaker 4: that fifteen other people were involved in that murder. Joe
Speaker 4: Messino was involved in that homicide. There was a setup crew,
Speaker 4: there was a murder crew, and there was a cleanup crew,
Speaker 4: so multiple people involved, and we were like, wow, okay.
Speaker 1: The murder of Dominic Sonny Black Neapolitano was the violent
Speaker 1: finale of the most infamous chapter of Mafia. Lore Neapolitano
Speaker 1: was the Banano captain that would forever be known as
Speaker 1: the man who allowed an undercover FBI agent named Jopstone
Speaker 1: to work undetected for nearly sake years within the Banano organization.
Speaker 1: FBI agent Joseph B.
Speaker 5: Stone was known to the underworld as Donnie Bresco, a
Speaker 5: trusted Jules thief who leaders of the Banano family promised
Speaker 5: eventual membership in the Cosa Nostra.
Speaker 1: Unsurprisingly, the price for Napolitano's mistake was his life. It
Speaker 1: would be Sunny Black's murder that would ultimately bring the
Speaker 1: entire Banano family to its knees because, according to Frank Copa,
Speaker 1: Joe Messino, the last on himself, was directly involved in
Speaker 1: the hit, and when it came to bringing indictments against
Speaker 1: the mob, a murder charge just hits harder.
Speaker 4: Frank Copa when he starts talking about the murders. Now
Speaker 4: people are facing life in prison, that's a different story
Speaker 4: than facing eighteen months.
Speaker 1: But still they were a long way from the finish line.
Speaker 1: To make those charges stick, they would need the help
Speaker 1: of another unassuming star of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 5: Mitra Hermosi. And I was an Assistant United States Attorney
Speaker 5: in the Eastern District of New York, working in the
Speaker 5: Organized Crime and Racketeering section of the Criminal Division.
Speaker 1: Much like Jack Steubing's accounting acolytes, Mitra did not take
Speaker 1: a typical path to her career as a federal prosecutor.
Speaker 5: Born in Brooklyn, I am the child of immigrants. But
Speaker 5: my parents were like, Okay, you have three options in life, doctor, lawyer,
Speaker 5: or professor. And I'm like, I don't love science that much,
Speaker 5: and professor who wants to get a PhD. So I
Speaker 5: ended up as a lawyer.
Speaker 1: But what she never expected was that just a few
Speaker 1: years into her career she would be taking on the mob.
Speaker 5: Did I think I would be in the organized crime section.
Speaker 3: No? Never.
Speaker 5: It seemed so in tense and stressful, and it was
Speaker 5: a lot of trial work, and you have to think
Speaker 5: on your feet, and there's these defendants from very violent
Speaker 5: people to very sophisticated business people.
Speaker 1: And talk about baptism by fire. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: after the indictments of Frank Coopa and Richie Cantrella, Mietro
Speaker 1: was tasked with prosecuting a case against the most powerful
Speaker 1: mob boss in New York, Joe Messino.
Speaker 5: So I'd been in the OC unit for just under
Speaker 5: a year. I'd been working on Columbo matter cases and
Speaker 5: the Messino case had been the brainchild like the blood,
Speaker 5: sweat and tears of a prosecutor who was a couple
Speaker 5: of years senior Greg Andres, and he really needed help.
Speaker 5: It had gotten so big, a really large racketeering case,
Speaker 5: and so I said, all right, let's bring Mitre to
Speaker 5: help you. Then the next couple of years we're just
Speaker 5: all Banano all the time.
Speaker 1: And at the center of that case was unraveling the who,
Speaker 1: what and why of Sonny Black's murder.
Speaker 3: One of the Coosinoustra rules is if you vouch for
Speaker 3: a guy and he turns bed, it's on you and
Speaker 3: the penalty could be death.
Speaker 1: And as Jack Stubing explains, according to Frank Copa, it
Speaker 1: was Joe Messino himself who demanded that his close friend
Speaker 1: Sonny Black pay the ultimate price.
Speaker 3: He was going to kill Lefty guns Gerio, the soldier
Speaker 3: in Sonny Black's crew who formed the closest friendship with
Speaker 3: Donnie Brasco. And the reason that Lefty was not killed
Speaker 3: was because the FBI came and scooped him up off
Speaker 3: the street and arrested him and pla him in prison.
Speaker 1: Sonny Black would not be so lucky. In Messino's own words,
Speaker 1: he had to end I quote, give him a receipt
Speaker 1: for the Donny Brasco situation.
Speaker 5: Sonny Black's death was the first murder charge we had
Speaker 5: for Messino. Sonny had brought Donnie Brasco in didn't realize
Speaker 5: he was an FBI agent. They never forgave him for
Speaker 5: doing that. So Sonny Black had to be murdered.
Speaker 1: And so while the nineteen eighty one hit may have
Speaker 1: served mob justice, it might also prove to be Messino's downfall.
Speaker 5: The beautiful part about a racketeering case is you could
Speaker 5: go back thirty forty years. There can only be a
Speaker 5: ten year gap between crimes. But as long as you
Speaker 5: have a criminal activity every ten years and the last
Speaker 5: one being within two three years of indictment, then you
Speaker 5: can go back to their teenage years for the criminal
Speaker 5: conduct you charge.
Speaker 1: So, despite Sonny Black's murder happening over thirty years prior,
Speaker 1: Messino could still go down. Here's Cam again on the
Speaker 1: team tasked with making those charges stick.
Speaker 4: We had three prosecutors, Greg andres Mita, Hermosi and Robert Hennock.
Speaker 4: Greg was the lead, and then they broke it up
Speaker 4: by cooperators. Each prosecutor handled certain cooperators and witnesses.
Speaker 1: The three pronged attack was critical in managing the cooperating witnesses,
Speaker 1: which now included Frank Coopa, Richie Cantarella, Barry Weinberg, and
Speaker 1: another Banano associate named Augustinos Gazzari. All of the men
Speaker 1: were being offered a chance to testify against their boss.
Speaker 5: Not one is allowed to talk to, or see or
Speaker 5: hear from anyone else because you don't want them trying
Speaker 5: to coordinate stories. So they cooperate, they're plucked out, they're
Speaker 5: put somewhere, depending on who they are, a safe house,
Speaker 5: a prison, or the like, and it's a lonely life
Speaker 5: for them for a while then, because they're by themselves
Speaker 5: for the most part, and they're not allowed to talk
Speaker 5: to friends or family.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little about the cooperation process. If
Speaker 1: you believe what you see on TV, flipping a witness
Speaker 1: can seem to be only about using threats of jail
Speaker 1: time to coerce damning testimony from a suspect who would
Speaker 1: otherwise be prosecuted for another crime. But in reality, securing
Speaker 1: cooperation and testimony you can use in court is not
Speaker 1: so baldly transactional or so easy it can be a
Speaker 1: long process. You have to build trust and most importantly,
Speaker 1: ensure that the information you are getting is completely true.
Speaker 4: When they decide to cooperate, we sort of go through
Speaker 4: their whole history, so they pretty much have to tell
Speaker 4: us about every crime they've committed, whether they've been indicted
Speaker 4: for it or not. We have to make sure they're
Speaker 4: truthful because you know, as a prosecutor, if they then
Speaker 4: get on the stand and they didn't tell us something,
Speaker 4: or they didn't plead guilty to something that they did,
Speaker 4: that is going to basically taint their entire testimony. And
Speaker 4: that is the job of a defense attorney to ruin
Speaker 4: their credibility.
Speaker 1: Even when you're dealing with career criminals, their testimony can
Speaker 1: be as good as anyone's as long as the witness
Speaker 1: is believable.
Speaker 5: What people I think don't appreciate is how much time
Speaker 5: you end up spending with a witness one to see
Speaker 5: are they being truthful? Can we give them a cooperation agreement?
Speaker 5: Because most witnesses think, oh, eighty percent of the truth
Speaker 5: is fine, right, Like maybe I can just delete myself
Speaker 5: from that murder, right, like who cares there?
Speaker 3: Or other people?
Speaker 5: And so there's a little bit of back and forth
Speaker 5: with them to make them realize, like, no, if you
Speaker 5: want to cooperate, you have to tell us everything right,
Speaker 5: every criminal activity that you have committed, and then we
Speaker 5: have to corroborate it, because otherwise there's no point. So
Speaker 5: it's a ton of work leading up to granting someone
Speaker 5: a cooperation agreement saying I trust them they're being truthful
Speaker 5: about every act of violence or criminal activity or everything
Speaker 5: they've said.
Speaker 1: The most important witness so far in the government's case
Speaker 1: against Messino was Richie Cantrella. He was the one whose
Speaker 1: voice was most often captured on Weinberg's hidden wire.
Speaker 5: Richie Canerella ended up being my cooperator, and he was
Speaker 5: very high up in the organization, acting underboss at some point.
Speaker 5: And so I go to this big meeting with Richie.
Speaker 5: There's all the agents, Kim and Jeff and Greg's there,
Speaker 5: and he's talking about a murder. He's like, oh, yep, yep.
Speaker 5: So we were in the house, we were going down
Speaker 5: the stairs and then he was dead. We all were like,
Speaker 5: he was dead, Huh, how did that happen? Did he
Speaker 5: have a heart attack, struck by lightning?
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 5: Well, no, he was shot, and so you're just like, Okay, Ritchie,
Speaker 5: who shot him? Finally, you know, after like forty five minutes,
Speaker 5: he's like, I shot him. It was a learning experience
Speaker 5: for Richie as well, to be like, Okay, I have
Speaker 5: to be fully honest about how the murders occurred, who
Speaker 5: was there, and who did.
Speaker 1: What, Considering how much Cantrella knew it would not be
Speaker 1: a short process, and that can lead to an unlikely
Speaker 1: familiarity between prosecutors and witnesses, which is actually a critical
Speaker 1: element of establishing trust.
Speaker 5: For that year or two where he's now in a
Speaker 5: safe house and we're visiting him at least once or
Speaker 5: twice a week. You walk in and mitrad, did you
Speaker 5: see the view?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: And he would talk to me about his favorite TV show,
Speaker 5: with the kind of clothes he bought his wife and
Speaker 5: what did I think, do you think she'll like something?
Speaker 5: So it becomes a funny rapport you have with them.
Speaker 1: There was one story in particular that put Richie's gallows
Speaker 1: humor on full display.
Speaker 5: I had gotten engaged before joining this case with the
Speaker 5: thought of, Okay, you'll be married within a year, let's say,
Speaker 5: But this case took so much time and it was
Speaker 5: supposed to go to trial, but then the trials kept
Speaker 5: getting delayed and my wedding kept getting delayed, which I
Speaker 5: didn't mind. But at some point I'm with Richie and
Speaker 5: he sits and goes to Meumitra, what's going on with
Speaker 5: your fiance. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like,
Speaker 5: you need me to send someone to talk to him. No, Richie,
Speaker 5: He's like, all right, you just let me know. Like, Richie,
Speaker 5: you're not supposed to be saying stuff like that anymore.
Speaker 5: You're a changed man, right, He's like, no, No, I'm
Speaker 5: just saying, you know, sometimes men need a little talking to.
Speaker 1: Cantrella's cooperation proved to be the tipping point. Slowly, prosecutors
Speaker 1: gathered more names, which led to more arrests, which led
Speaker 1: to more cooperating witnesses.
Speaker 5: You start out with one individual, he then has so
Speaker 5: much information. Once he cooperates, you're able to go after two, three, four,
Speaker 5: and then it was like a domino.
Speaker 1: Effect among mobsters. The writing was on the wall, flip
Speaker 1: now or face the music.
Speaker 4: At this point, we have multiple people talking to us,
Speaker 4: we have multiple murders. There's just so many different parts.
Speaker 1: And Jack's plan is starting to work.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, yeah, it was working from like day two,
Speaker 4: but it's just exploded at this point.
Speaker 1: For Mitrin her fellow prosecutors, it was an embarrassment of riches,
Speaker 1: but not always so glamorous.
Speaker 3: All of them.
Speaker 5: I had to travel. They're in prison at the time,
Speaker 5: right Like, we're not treating them to a fancy hotel.
Speaker 5: A couple were in safe houses. We would be staying
Speaker 5: at like little divy hotels. Visiting these people all throughout
Speaker 5: the country and prisons, spending hours upon hours prepping these
Speaker 5: witnesses in these locations. I'll choke. I've spent more time
Speaker 5: in prisons than people who have actually committed some crimes.
Speaker 1: For many of these career criminals, they were not just
Speaker 1: giving up their bosses and in some cases their families.
Speaker 1: They were betraying their identity, their entire way of life.
Speaker 1: One cooperating witness was Richie Cantarella's cousin, Joey Demico.
Speaker 5: When he first came in to cooperate, he was really
Speaker 5: struggling with cooperating and at one point he had cut
Speaker 5: his wrists. He walks in to meet us and his
Speaker 5: lawyer is like, oh, Joey, not his head's not in
Speaker 5: a good place. But he was also a very good
Speaker 5: witness for us.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the burden of cooperating was easier for some
Speaker 1: than others, like in the case of James Tartaglioni, also
Speaker 1: known as Big Louie.
Speaker 5: Big Louie, he ends up wearing a wire and gets
Speaker 5: really great evidence. As I'm preparing him, we're just talking
Speaker 5: about his testimony, and he says, you know, the good
Speaker 5: thing is Mitro. Whatever happens, I know I'm going to heaven.
Speaker 5: And I just looked at him and thought, Okay, murders
Speaker 5: be damned right, because he was involved in several murders.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, what about the murders. He's like, but
Speaker 5: that's work, Metro, it's work that doesn't count. I go
Speaker 5: to church, I'm really good to the grandkids.
Speaker 3: Work is work, like okay.
Speaker 1: But of all all the mobsters that became cooperators, none
Speaker 1: was a bigger get than Messino's second in command, sal Vitali.
Speaker 4: Salvitally was Joe Messino's underboss, and he was also his
Speaker 4: brother in law. Josie Messino and Salvatally were brother and sister.
Speaker 4: When Joe and Josie got together. Sal was young, like
Speaker 4: seven years old. Joe was like a brother to Sal.
Speaker 5: Messino taught him how to swim. They'd known each other
Speaker 5: since they were kids, and they were partners right they
Speaker 5: were involved in the Three Captain's murders together. As Messino
Speaker 5: rose in the organization, he took Vitally with him. Sal
Speaker 5: just was Messino's right hand all throughout Messino's career.
Speaker 1: But in the epic saga that is the American Mafia,
Speaker 1: a proximity to power just feeds the desire for more,
Speaker 1: and Sal and Joe's relationship was destined to say, especially
Speaker 1: when Messino had to do a short stint in prison
Speaker 1: for a hijacking conviction and left Vitally in charge of
Speaker 1: the family. Here again is Jack stubing.
Speaker 3: With the rise of Vitally as the underboss. It's my
Speaker 3: personal opinion that he probably got a little too big
Speaker 3: for his breeches. I mean it's not he won't be
Speaker 3: the first guy who was a number two guy who
Speaker 3: temporarily became the number one guy and said, Jesus pretty good,
Speaker 3: I like it. He started pressing the capos for more tribute.
Speaker 3: I have heard that he was disrespectful to some of
Speaker 3: his underlings. He started to lose support within the family
Speaker 3: and he got a little too comfortable in his acting
Speaker 3: boss slot, and Messino began to distrust him as a result.
Speaker 1: When Messino was back on the street, tensions came to
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 5: And then once Messino's out of prison, I think he
Speaker 5: just got so many other people saying bad things about Vitalian,
Speaker 5: claiming that Vitali isn't as loyal to Messino as he thinks.
Speaker 5: There's no honor among thieves. Then Messino's like, fine, let's
Speaker 5: kill Vitally.
Speaker 1: Knowing his life was in danger. Made Vitali the perfect
Speaker 1: candidate to turn against Messino. It would be an act
Speaker 1: of self preservation with perhaps a side of revenge.
Speaker 2: Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 4: Joe Messino practically raised Salvitally, and here he was betraying
Speaker 4: a family oath.
Speaker 5: The tension, it was palpable, the glares, the death stairs
Speaker 5: that are coming.
Speaker 3: When you really know what this life is. The movies
Speaker 3: portrayed of this otherhood of honorable men, hello of crap.
Speaker 5: I couldn't tell you who the boss of the Genoese
Speaker 5: crime family was today if you asked me to bat order,
Speaker 5: because I don't even know that the.
Speaker 3: Government knows.
Speaker 2: Law and order criminal Justice System is a production of
Speaker 2: Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 2: This episode was written by Walker Lamond and Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliott Wolf, and Stephen Michael
Speaker 2: at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeartRadio. Executive produced by
Speaker 2: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick, with supervising producers Trevor Young
Speaker 2: and Chandler Mays and producers Jesse Funk, Noams Griffin and
Speaker 2: Riema Elkali. This season is executive produced by Anna Seagan Nicolazzi,
Speaker 2: story producer Walker Lamond, Our research are Carolyn Talmage and
Speaker 2: Luke's dance editing in sound design by Rima Alkali, original
Speaker 2: music by John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post, additional
Speaker 2: music by Steve Moore, and additional voice over by me
Speaker 2: Steve Zernkelton. Special thanks to Fox five in New York,
Speaker 2: ABC and CBS for providing archival material for the show.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Wolf Entertainment, visit the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to your
Speaker 2: favorite shows. Thanks for listening.