Mob-busting ex-FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio rips Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes' office in new book

Mob-busting former FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio beat a murder rap in 2007 – and now he’s settling a few scores in a new book.

DeVecchio, who was accused of advising Colombo crime family mob informer Greg Scarpa to whack four turncoats, says the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was bamboozled by convicts who hoped DeVecchio’s downfall would help their appeals.

BY John Marzulli,daily news

Colombo crime-family POW scam

mobster pleaded guilty yesterday to a bizarre scheme to defraud a former Long Island congressman out of $18,500 in exchange for bogus information about Vietnam POWs.

Charles Guiga, 38, admitted that within the last year he’d sent letters supposedly written by a Russian mobster and giving the locations of 75 prisoners of war supposedly being held in the former Soviet republic of Belarus.

But the letters to one-term GOP Rep. John LeBoutillier were in actuality the scribblings of imprisoned Colombo crime-family captain Frank “Frankie Blue Eyes” Sparaco.

Sparaco, 54, who is serving a 24-year federal sentence, once did time with Russian mobster Vyacheslav Ivankov and claimed to have a line into Eastern European gangs. “Frank Sparaco sent me handwritten letters from prison and asked me to correct his spelling, type the letters and send them . . . to ‘John the Congressman,’ ” Guiga told Brooklyn federal Judge Carol Amon in pleading guilty to mail fraud.

LeBoutillier, 56, who held office from 1980 to 1982, served on a special congressional committee on Vietnam War MIA/POWs. He believes that some are still being held, and he remains committed to freeing them.

And he says he still feels that Sparaco’s letters could lead somewhere.

“I’ve gotten some good information from these guys,” he said

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Colombo Family: Frank "Frankie Shots" Abbatemarco

Organized Crime Figure. Known as "Frankie Shots", he was a Captain in the Profaci Crime Family (today the Family is called the Colombo Family). He had one of the largest bookmaking and loan sharking operations in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. He was shot and killed in a bar in Brooklyn, New York City, New York at age 59.

From Godfather to Godfellas, mob rats william Cutalo jr and Joe Campanella

Meet the Godfellas. In previous incarnations, mob rats Joe Campanella and William Cutolo Jr. were entrenched in the Colombo crime family. The son of Murdered Former Colombo Underboss William ' Wild Bill' Cutolo. Now they want deliverance from evil - as "ministers" in a flock of mob misfits known as Goodfellas4God. "There are people who want to get out of that life and they talk to me," said ministry founder Glenn Hovater, a former pest control inspector who runs the operation from donated offices in Painesville, Ohio

. Hovater started the group two years ago; most members are ex-wiseguys from Cleveland and Pennsylvania. A retired NYPD detective introduced him to Campanella; he and Cutolo Jr. are the only New Yorkers. Hovater will send Campanella, a former made man, and Cutolo Jr., son of underboss Wild Bill Cutolo, on speaking tours to rail against "the life."
Neither Mafia rat is in the witness protection program, so special security arrangements will be made to ensure their safety.
Campanella helped convict Colombo boss Alphonse Persico and underboss John DeRoss of ordering Wild Bill's murder in 2001.
Cutolo Jr., 37, is a marked man for wearing a wire to gather damning evidence against DeRoss after his father vanished. The senior Cutolo, whose remains were found last year in an industrial park on Long Island, came home from prison in 1995 a devout Catholic, his son said.

"It took 10 years to find him and I must say I lost my faith at times," Cutolo Jr. wrote on the Goodfellas4God Web site. "When they confirmed indeed it was my dad, I found my faith again. Still asking why, but I now realize it is not our job to ask WHY. It's the Lord's work. He brought my father home to me

. "When my friend Joe (Campy) Campanella told me about this ministry and minister Glenn, right away I thought of my dad. How proud he would be of me for joining this ministry. I would rather preach goodness than to teach someone how to do something bad."
Campanella, 50, seems to be having some misgivings about the God thing. In a message to the Daily News, he said: "As far as the Goodfellas4God and being part of the ministry and all that other B.S., right now, there's nothing written in stone."
Still, Campanella is listed as head of the "Out of the Life Ministries" on Hovater's Web site. The site asks visitors: "Have you committed adultery, fornicated, lied, stole, lusted etc.? Click here to 'Get Connected' and wash away all the sins you have ever committed." The New Yorkers easily qualify.
Campanella did a three-year prison stint for racketeering. As a Colombo soldier, he took part in shootings, beatdowns, extortion and an affair with a woman whose father-in-law was a made man in the Gambino family.
Cutolo Jr. was sentenced in 2006 to four years' probation for extortion, which got him kicked out of witness protection.
DeRoss' lawyer claimed Cutolo's newfound faith is a scam. "Cutolo's son has chosen the ministry for one reason only, to scam unsuspecting members of his new flock as he victimized innocent people when he was a member of organized crime," lawyer Robert LaRusso said.
Hovater - who grew up around wiseguys in Cleveland - is convinced his newest evangelists aren't acting. "I believe in my heart they're really sincere," he said. "Maybe other people don't, but I do."

"Joey has no money and Cutolo ain't got no money either," he said. "I told them there's no money in this."

Joseph "Joe" Colombo SR. Mafia Boss

Joseph "Joe" Colombo Sr. (December 14, 1914 - October 1, 1978) was leader of the Colombo crime family, one of the "Five Families" in the American Mafia.


Colombo was originally part of what was called the Profaci family in New York. In 1961, a gang war broke out in the family between the family leadership and the renegade Gallo brothers. During this conflict, boss Joe Profaci died and his supporter, Joseph Magliocco, succeeded him. Later in the conflict, Magliocco decided to murder Tommy Lucchese from the Lucchese crime family and Carlo Gambino of the Gambino crime family for their support of the Gallos. Magliocco gave obthe job to Colombo, who promptly notified the intended With their support, Colombo became family boss after Magliocco died of a heart attack

On June 28, 1971, the morning of the second Italian Unity Day rally, Joe Colombo was approaching the podium to address the crowd. An African American street hustler had somehow managed to obtain press credentials from the league. Disguised as a photojournalist, the gunman approached Colombo and fired three shots from an automatic pistol into his head.

Colombo's son and several others wrestled the gunman to the ground. At that point, a second man stepped out of the crowd and shot the gunman dead. The second assailant managed to escape and was never identified. The dead gunman was positively identified as Jerome Johnson.

The crowd in attendance quickly dispersed, although some made a feeble attempt to continue the festival. Colombo was seriously wounded, but survived the shooting. He lingered in a coma without regaining consciousness for nearly seven years (he was "vegetabled", in the words of Joe Gallo). On May 22, 1978, Joe Colombo died at his New York estate.

Greg Scarpa sr.Witness: FBI used mob muscle to crack ’64 case

The FBI used mob muscle to solve the 1964 disappearance of three civil rights volunteers in Mississippi, a gangster’s ex-girlfriend testified Monday, becoming the first witness to repeat in open court a story that has been underworld lore for years.
Linda Schiro said that her ex-boyfriend, Mafia tough guy Gregory Scarpa Sr., was recruited by the FBI to help find the volunteers’ bodies. She said Scarpa later told her he put a gun in a Ku Klux Klansman’s mouth and forced him to reveal the whereabouts of the victims.
The FBI has never acknowledged that Scarpa, nicknamed “The Grim Reaper,” was involved in the case. The bureau did not immediately return a call for comment Monday.

Schiro took the stand as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of former FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, who is charged in state court with four counts of murder in what authorities have called one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history.
Prosecutors say Scarpa plied DeVecchio with cash, jewelry, liquor and prostitutes in exchange for confidential information on suspected "rats" and rivals in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Scarpa died behind bars in 1994.
Mob loreThe notion that Scarpa strong-armed a Klan member into giving up information about one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era has been talked about in mob circles for years.
It supposedly happened during the search for civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, who were beaten and shot by a gang of Klansmen and buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss. The case was famously dramatized in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”
Investigators struggled for answers in the early days of the case, stymied by stonewalling Klan members.
In 1994, the New York Daily News, citing unidentified federal law enforcement officials, reported that a frustrated J. Edgar Hoover turned to Scarpa to extract information. The Daily News said the New York mobster terrorized an appliance salesman and Klansman already under suspicion in the case and got him to reveal the location of the bodies.
Schiro testified Monday that she and Scarpa traveled to Mississippi in 1964 after he was recruited by the FBI. She said they walked into the hotel where the FBI had gathered during the investigation, and the gangster winked at a group of agents. She said an agent later showed up in their room and handed Scarpa a gun.
She said Scarpa helped find the volunteers’ bodies by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.” She said an unidentified agent later returned to the room, gave Scarpa a wad of cash, and took back the weapon.
Civil rights turning pointThe killings galvanized the struggle for equality in the South and helped bring about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Seven people were convicted at the time, but none served more than six years.
Mississippi later reopened the case, winning a manslaughter conviction against former Klansman and part-time preacher Edgar Ray Killen two years ago. He is serving a 60-year prison sentence.
Schiro’s remarks about the Mississippi episode were only a brief part of her full day of testimony.
Schiro, 62, started dating Scarpa at age 17 after meeting him in a bar. She said she had been around mobsters most of her life, so his boasts that he had been involved in 20 gangland murders didn’t frighten her.
“I was impressed,” she said.
She said she was more surprised when the Colombo crime family captain told her about his ties to the FBI. “I said, ‘What do you mean, you’re a rat?”’ she recalled. “And he said, ‘No, I just work for them.”’
DeVecchio became the informant’s “handler” in 1978, and Schiro said she was allowed to sit in on weekly meetings at the couple’s apartment. She said that when Scarpa offered stolen jewelry to the agent, he took it and put it in his pocket.
'I'll take care of it'

The girlfriend was gunned down at a mob social club a few days later.
Defense attorneys have sought to portray Schiro — who testified that prosecutors were paying her $2,200 a month for living expenses — as an opportunist who framed DeVecchio at the behest of overzealous prosecutors.
They have also accused her trying to improve her chances for a tell-all book deal about Scarpa.