Anonymous ID: d6ec20 July 18, 2020, 5:38 p.m. No.10004373   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4375 >>4456 >>4485 >>4574

It's the Jewish Mob.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/03/nyregion/17-found-guilty-in-pizza-trial-of-a-drug-ring.html

 

17 FOUND GUILTY IN 'PIZZA' TRIAL OF A DRUG RING

By Arnold H. Lubasch

March 3, 1987

 

A former chief of the Sicilian Mafia and 16 other defendants in the pizza connection trial were convicted yesterday of running an international ring that distributed tons of drugs.

 

The jury announced its verdict near the end of its sixth day of deliberations in the 17-month trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan. It acquitted two men of the main drug conspiracy charge, but convicted one of them of lesser currency violations.

 

All 19 defendants were charged with participation in a Mafia ring stretching from Sicily and Brazil to New York and the Middle West. It was a ring dealing in large amounts of heroin and cocaine, illegally transferring tens of millions of dollars in profits and using a network of pizza restaurants as fronts.

 

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the chief Federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said vigorous prosecution of Mafia members under strengthened racketeering laws was leading to the group's death. [ Page B3. ] Violence Overshadowed Trial Making its mark as one of the longest criminal cases in court history, the trial continued month after month. Twice, violence overshadowed the courtroom drama, as one defendant was slain and another was shot and seriously wounded.

 

The verdict came from an 11-member jury; one juror had been excused after her family received an apparently threatening telephone call during the deliberations. Defense lawyers said they would appeal the convictions.

 

Among those convicted were two men portrayed as the top leaders of the ring's two main factions - Gaetano Badalamenti, the 63-year-old former chief of the Mafia in Sicily, and Salvatore Catalano, 46, a Queens bakery owner described as a powerful captain in the Bonanno crime family in New York City.

 

One defendant, Mr. Badalamenti's son, Vito, was acquitted of the only charge against him, drug conspiracy. Convicted Relatives

 

Mr. Badalamenti's convicted relatives included Emmanuele Palazzolo of Milton, Wis., Salvatore Evola of Temperance, Mich., Giuseppe Trupiano of Olney, Ill., and Giuseppe Vitale of Paris, Ill. Mr. Alfano is also a Badalamenti relative.

 

The other convicted men included three from New Jersey: Francesco Polizzi of Belleville, Giovanni Ligammari of Saddle River and Salvatore Greco of Oakhurst. The others were Baldasssare Amato of Brooklyn, Filippo Casamento of Brooklyn and Giovanni Cangialosi of Baldwin.

 

Most of those convicted of the drug conspiracy were also convicted of a racketeering charge, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

 

Judge Pierre N. Leval, who conducted the trial, remanded the convicted men to jail. He said he would sentence them on May 5.

 

For almost a year, the prosecution had presented hundreds of witnesses and wiretapped conversations, thousands of documents, several pounds of heroin and an array of guns that Federal agents seized when they arrested the defendants.

 

Evidence from overseas as well as the United States was presented by the prosecution team of Richard A. Martin, Louis J. Freeh, Robert Stewart, Robert B. Bucknam and Andrew C. McCarthy. The complex case, which cost several million dollars to complete, included actors who read the transcripts of wiretapped conversations to the jury and interpreters who translated the proceedings into Italian for defendants.

 

Defense lawyers presented evidence for more than three months to attack the prosecution's case. The only defendants to testify were Mr. Badalamenti and Mr. Mazzurco, who were questioned about their telephone conversations, which the prosecution portrayed as drug discussions.

 

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Anonymous ID: d6ec20 July 18, 2020, 5:38 p.m. No.10004375   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4456 >>4485 >>4574

>>10004373

 

Conceding that he talked in code on the telephone, Mr. Badalamenti denied talking about drugs, but he refused to explain what was being discussed. Mr. Mazzurco testified later that they had talked about importing precious stones. The wiretapped conversations showed the defendants were talking about shipping shirts, 22 parcels and products that were pure cotton and 10 percent acrylic. Division Intensified

 

During summations, a division between two groups of defendants intensified when lawyers for the Badalamenti faction suggested that a New York faction had tried to lure Mr. Badalamenti out of hiding so that he could be murdered in a Mafia war that originated in Sicily.

 

A defense lawyer, Michael Kennedy, argued in his summation that Mr. Badalamenti had been expelled from the Mafia and forced to flee for his life because he had opposed drug dealing. He said Mafia drug bosses were still trying to kill Gaetano Badalamenti.

 

Another lawyer, Ivan S. Fisher, argued that the jury should not believe the Mafia informers who testified against Mr. Catalano. Other defense lawyers challenged the prosecution's view of the wiretapped conversations and the credibility of the informers.

 

Two prosecutors, Mr. Freeh and Mr. Martin, argued that all the defendants took part in a conspiracy dealing in dollars and drugs. The ring obtained tons of morphine base in Turkey, processed it into heroin in Sicily and shipped it to New York and other cities, they said. It also sent cocaine from South America, they said, and secretly transferred suitcases full of cash. An Elaborate Scheme

 

The prosecutors traced an elaborate money-laundering scheme using banks and brokers to transfer more than $50 million to secret accounts overseas.

 

In announcing the indictment in 1984, Federal authorities said the ring had smuggled 1,650 pounds of heroin, with a $1.6 billion street value, into the United States since 1979. William French Smith, then the Attorney General, called it the most significant case involving heroin trafficking by traditional organized crime that has ever been developed by the Government.

 

When the trial began, there were 22 defendants. Two of them, Lorenzo Devardo of Queens and Vincenzo Randazzo of Italy, pleaded guilty to lesser charges during the trial. Another one, Gaetano Mazzara of Sayreville, N.J., was found murdered last Dec. 1.

 

Many others were named as participants in the ring but were not defendants in the trial, either because they were being held in other countries, they were fugitives or they were dead.

 

The trial began on Sept. 30, 1985, when the judge started selecting jurors anonymously, keeping their names secret to protect them from any interference. He sequestered the jury after the Alfano shooting drew intense publicity.

 

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