Associates of four of New York’s infamous “five families” crime syndicates allegedly backed a multimillion-dollar poker con that used elaborate technology to cheat unsuspecting players — and brought rare, unappreciated light to the mob’s shadowy operations, officials said.
Associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families were named in a sweeping indictment that also ensnared Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, and one-time NBA journeyman Damon Jones, according to prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York.
Federal authorities didn’t hesitate Thursday to pin the poker scam on La Cosa Nostra, showing that organized crime is still a modern law enforcement concern even after FBI operations in the 1980s and 1990s seemed to decimate the five families.
“The mafia … it’s still a thing,” said Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
The mob works best when the public knows less about the people involved, according to Schumacher, who called famed bosses like the late Dapper Don, John Gotti, an “aberration.”
“They didn’t want the general public to be well-versed in their business. The one guy who kind of defied that whole thing was John Gotti because he just believed that he was untouchable,” Schumacher said.
A dozen mafia associates played a role in the poker scam, prosecutors said.
- Ernest Aiello and Julius “Jay” Ziliani were linked to the Bonanno crime family.
- Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella, Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh, John Gallo, Joseph Lanni, Nicholas Minucci, Angelo Ruggiero Jr. were associates of the Gambino crime family
- Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino and Lee Fama were identified as associates of the Genovese crime family.
- Seth Trustman was linked to the Lucchese crime family.
- And Thomas “Juice” Gelardo was called an associate of the Bonanno crime family and later an associate of the Genovese crime family, according to the indictment.
Gambling “is an easy pinch” and bread-and-butter income source for the mob, the author and former Gambino mobster Louis Ferrante told NBC News.
“I wasn’t at all surprised,” Ferrante said. “Gambling has been a mafia mainstay for the last 100 years. With all the RICO indictments that put so many people away for the rest of their lives (in the 1980s and 90s), the mob has sort of scaled back and they stuck with loan sharking and gambling because if you get busted, as long as there’s no violence involved, nobody’s beat up or threatened, it’s a slap on the wrist.”
He added: “These guys could do a nickel maybe in the can, as opposed to doing 30, 40 years or life sentences.”
Organized crime soldiers and associates are busted all the time but rarely make news, said Seth Zuckerman, New York criminal defense lawyer and former Brooklyn prosecutor.
“It’s not what it used to be, but it definitely still exists,” Zuckerman said. “In underground poker games and things like that, where you need protection, you need a source of cash, the mob still has its involvement.”
With legal online gambling, users are required to put up all of the money before they place a bet but the crime families operate outside of the rules by acting as an intermediary, offering people the ability to place bets on credit.
“There’s still a need for that,” Zuckerman said. “There are people who want to bet on credit, which as you know with legalized operations, you really can’t do. So that’s part of the mob’s territory.”
Federal action against Billups and Jones spill into two separate indictments covering poker and insider sports betting information.
The alleged mafia members are only tied to the alleged poker scheme. But the mob does have a long history of involvement in sports betting and poker.
- The most famous sports betting scandal in American history, when the 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series, was allegedly engineered by gambler Arnold Rothstein, a mentor to early Genovese boss Charlie “Lucky” Luciano.
- The Colombo crime family had alleged connections to NBA officials in the 1990s and early 2000s.
- Even though sports betting is largely legal in most states, that still didn’t stop several Gambino soldiers from taking illegal bets in New York, state prosecutors said last year in a 17-person indictment.
- The Lucchese crime family had alleged ties to a racketeering, gambling and money laundering operation out of New Jersey poker rooms that was taken down early this year, officials said.
The New York City area’s “five families” include the four mentioned in the indictment plus the Colombo crime family.
FBI Director Kash Patel said federal law enforcement had “entered and executed a system of justice against La Cosa Nostra to include the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families.”
Old-fashioned mob muscle ensured victims paid up from their losses in rigged games, officials said.
“With respect to poker games held in the New York City area, members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Crime Families, used threats and intimidation to assure payments of debts” in games organized by defendants Awawdeh, Trustman, Zhen Hu and Robert Stroud, the indictment said.
All crime families involved “received proceeds” from the crooked games, the indictment said.
The mafia’s alleged use of cutting-edge technology that included hidden cameras and X-rays shouldn’t surprise anyone, Ferrante said, because a mob boss can reach out to experts as easily as anyone else.
“The mob moves with the technology,” Ferrante said. “Don’t think that some capo, ‘Frankie nine fingers,’ or ‘Joe the butcher’ is making these moves. They’re getting some geek who knows technology and he’s doing it for them.”
And poker is no different from fuel, concrete and construction when it comes to wise guy involvement, according to Ferrante, the author of “Borgata: Clash of Titans: a History of the American Mafia.”
“The mob only has multiple families involved when it becomes something like gasoline, when they’re doing multimillions of dollars,” Ferrante said. “Concrete, when they were pouring all the concrete in New York; the windows, when they were putting in all the new energy efficient windows in the 90s; that’s (when) all the families get involved because it’s so big and there’s so much money involved that you can’t, one family can’t keep it to themselves. “
He added: “So when you see four (of the five crime) families involved, you know that this is a huge racket.”