This gangster’s fat in the fire

This gangster’s fat in the fire

For the FBI, bringing down the Cheeseman was like shooting fish in a barrel.

A very, very fat fish, that is. He weighs 400 pounds, this don of doughnuts, this king of the mozzarella mob. And Carmen DiNunzio can’t keep his bleepin’ mouth shut, any more than he can keep his pants from falling down around his 66-inch waist.

Yesterday, the feds released more information about the arrest of the 50-year-old moron formerly known as the Big Cheese, now the Cheeseman. And you can stick a fork in the Boston Mafia, because it’s all done.

As we pick up the story, Mr. Cheese is trying to muscle in on the very lucrative dirt racket in the city of Boston. The capo of capicola was scheming to sell dirt to the Big Dig. Go figure.

Of all the mistakes the Cheeseman made in this sad caper, the one I can’t get over occurred last Friday morning. He’d just been lugged, and as he sat around FBI headquarters, he began yapping about the family business.



I called up a retired wiseguy I know and read to him the 302 report on the Cheeseman’s revelations. The guy listened in silence until after I came to the final sentence.

“DINUNZIO advised that he believes that narcotics are ruining society.”

“What is he, a bleepin’ philosopher now?” my source said. “Doesn’t he understand everything he says will be used against him?”

But the G-men released even better material yesterday. They bugged conversations of his attempt to bribe a state hack. That’s right, you heard me - the Big Cheese wasn’t shaking someone down, he was delivering money to a guy he thought was a Mass. Highway Department inspector, for the privilege of dealing, not drugs, but dirt.

Only problem was, this corrupt hack was actually an undercover FBI agent. The third guy, the go-between, has been flipped.

You know how you learn in Mafia 101, never give your real name. The conversation begins with the rat introducing DiNunzio: “This is my friend, Carmen.”

The Cheeseman starts talking to the wired rat and the fed about what he was going to do to this trucker, Andrew Marino.

“I was gonna throw this bleeping kid off a roof,” he says.

First, Cheeseman, you’d have to run him down and catch him. And even if he were in a wheelchair, or even an iron lung, in a race against you, my money’d be on Marino.

The FBI hack then tells DiNunzio that “what I need is a guarantee that somebody’s got their foot on Marino’s neck.”

“Listen to me,” growls the gross gangster, “right here you got the guarantee from here.”

The fed is warming to his role. He is staring at 400 pounds of you-know-what stuffed in the sweatsuit of a 200-pound man.

“I don’t know you,” says the fed.

“I’m the Cheeseman.”

“You’re . . . the Cheeseman?” The fed deserves an Oscar for keeping a straight face as he says that. Back to you, Fromage-man.

“We straighten out a lot of beefs.”

And they eat even more of them. But by God.

“If they had 100 million dollars - and I’m talking out of school here. They better leave town. Cause it ain’t gonna be safe nowhere for them.”

Yeah, they cross the Cheeseman, he’ll sit on them.

“If the check ain’t there then I’m going to the bleeping can - ”

Yes, you are, Mr. Cheese. For a good long time, too.

Next, he starts stealing lines from “The Godfather.”

“If I can help you down the line. I’m not saying I can, but sometimes I could help you probably more than I could help myself or somebody in my own family because I’m, ah ...”

Because you’re the Cheeseman!

Mr. Cheese. For a good long time, too.

Next, he starts stealing lines from “The Godfather.”

“If I can help you down the line. I’m not saying I can, but sometimes I could help you probably more than I could help myself or somebody in my own family because I’m, ah ...”

Because you’re the Cheeseman!

Somewhere in Nahant, Gennaro Angiulo is weeping. Somewhere in Europe, Whitey Bulger is laughiing

The mobster who died in pink pajamas

By Paul Lieberman
The Gangster Squad got to Jack Dragna by bugging his mistress' bed.Dealing with him was the flip side of dealing with Mickey Cohen. Sure, Mickey ranted about the Los Angeles Police Department in public, but if squad members drew stakeout duty outside his Brentwood home on a hot day, his wife, Lavonne, would send out beers or invite them in for slices of chocolate cake.
With Dragna, icy distance was the rule when the squad members camped outside his banana warehouse or the Victory Market, where he held meetings in a concrete-walled back room. The squad's bugging expert, Con Keeler, did once get in between the rounds of a night watchman, but he didn't have time to fully conceal his bug. Dragna's men found it, carried it outside and smashed it on a curb.Dragna was cautious to a fault -- that's how he'd remained unscathed for decades, despite being branded the "Capone of Los Angeles"by Gov. Earl Warren's crime commission. A native of Palermo, Italy, he had arrived in California in 1914 and generally lay so low that one bookie was said to have asked, even in the 1940s, "Who the hell is Jack Dragna?"He was imprisoned once for extortion but won his freedom on appeal. By mid-century, his record was eight arrests, no convictions.
He knew how to go on the offensive, too, like after the 1950 dynamiting of Cohen's house, when the Gangster Squad hauled in Dragna's entire inner circle, and well as his son Frank, who had gone to USC and lost an eye in the war. The son then filed suit against the head of the squad and the "John Doe" officers who rousted him, seeking $350,000 for false arrest and humiliation, the latter for inviting photographers into the lockup.The younger Dragna's suit was pending in 1951 when the squad bugged the bed of his father's mistress. She was a secretary for the dry cleaners union, in which the mob had its hooks. If a dry cleaning shop didn't sign up, Dragna's men would send over suits with dye sewn inside so all the clothes in its vats turned purple or red.The secretary had a wooden headboard with a sunburst pattern. While she was out, Keeler picked the lock to her apartment and hid a mike in the center of the sun. Amid the pillow talk, the bug picked up occasional mentions of mob business, including plans for a new casino in Las Vegas. But that wasn't what the police used against the 60-year-old Dragna. Their ammunition came from other bedroom goings-on. If they couldn't get him for ordering hits on Cohen and his men, why not for "lewd/vag," lewd conduct and vagrancy?Dragna's lawyers could argue that the police didn't have a warrant to eavesdrop, but to no avail -- back then authorities could use illegally obtained evidence. The misdemeanor case earned Dragna a mere 30-day sentence, but how and where he was bugged stood to cost him respect in the mob. More significantly, the morals conviction could get him sent back to Italy.Indeed, Dragna was still fighting a deportation order when he died in 1956. They found his body in a Sunset Boulevard motel, in pink pajamas, with $986 in cash and two sets of false teeth nearby, his Cadillac parked outside. In his luggage was a small statue of Jesus and a newspaper clipping about his son's lawsuit, which had been dismissed.Paul Lieberman is a Times staff writer

Gay Night With Mobster Whitey Bulger

Infamous Mobster, James "Whitey" Bulger of the Winter Hill Mob had a gay one night stand with handsome actor Sal Mineo..Mineo was known for his Academy Award nominated performace opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause... Bulger killed plenty of people with tommy guns and pistols, but he slew Sal with cupids arrow right in the ass

Mobster meets his maker

Angelo "The Gentle Don" Bruno May 21 1910- March 21 1980 ran the Philadelphia crime family for two decades. Bruno gained his nickname and reputation because of his preference for only using violence as a last resort when settling disputes... .Unfortunately for Bruno his enemies didn't share the same philosophy.. Bruno wound up getting blasted to bits from a shotgun

OLD MOB PIMP GOT THE CLAP

Vincent "Jimmy" Caci. Caci didn't become a "Made Guy" untill he was over 60 years old. He had been passed over for years because mob bosses knew he had the heart of a mustard seed. When Cacis' pal, Pete Milano, became boss, Caci finally got his stripes. Caci once ran a whore house in Las Vegas . He caught the clap from one of his Ho's and he nearly beat her to death.

HOLLYWOOD HOODS GET HAMMERED.

Frank "Puggy" Sica was the hoodlum brother of big time Los Angeles racketeer, Joe "JS" Sica . Frank was a pint sized punk,with a big chip on his shoulder... He was nothing like his older brother, JS, who was well connected and respected by Mafia figures all over the country. Puggy Sica and Sal Di Giovanni were burgelers in the Sica gang.. They both got their clock cleaned by a bartender who first shot at them, and then beat the fuck out them both for punching and kicking a woman to the floor in a Hollywood gin mill.. The woman was Sal the Creep's girlfriend... Sal got beat so bad he looked like a racoon because he got two black eyes.. .Frank Sica had been arrested plenty of times, but my old lawyer Eddie "the Fixer" Gritz kept him out of the pokey. When I was an enforcer for JS, I hated seeing this little drunken fuck.... Anthony "The Animal" Fiato .

..Another true Hollywood story

Roy DeMeo Mobster

Roy Albert DeMeo (September 7 1940 – January 10 1983 was a ranking member of the Gambino crime family formerly one of the largest and most feared crime families in New York
He is most infamous for heading a crew of car thieves, drug dealers and murderers suspected by the FBI of somewhere between 75-200 murders from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The crew also gained notoriety due to their use of dismemberment as a method of disposing of their victims. For a time, Roy Demeo lived on a Waterfront Estate on Whitewood Drive in the Bar Harbour section of Massapequa Park,NY