Genovese mobster ‘Tony Cakes’ ID’d as NYC pedestrian, 86, decapitated by DOT truck

It was La Crossing Nostra.

The 86-year-old man who was decapitated by a truck that plowed into him at a Brooklyn crosswalk is a former acting captain for the Genovese crime family, The Post can exclusively reveal.

Anthony Conigliaro — a one-time mafioso known as “Tony Cakes,” “Tony the Dessert Man,” among other dessert-themed sobriquets — died June 12 in an accidental hit by a city Department of Transportation truck, his lawyers and law-enforcement sources said.“He spent his life looking over his shoulder but he forgot to look both ways before crossing the street,” one police source said.

Before Conigliaro’s gruesome death, he apparently lived a quiet life by himself in a small Bay Ridge apartment building on Dahlgren Place. A neighbor told The Post that Conigliaro, a dad of two, always looked out for others. “We miss him. Everybody misses him,” he said.

But the neighbor didn’t know about Conigliaro’s past — which not only included a connection to the mafia, but also a nearly two-decade-old racketeering case.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors in 2005 accused Conigliaro — who toiled for years in the wholesale cake business, selling sweets across the New York City area and running an Italian ice and gelato stand in Little Italy, according to court documents — of being a soldier in the Genovese crime family.

Conigliaro worked as a loan shark for the Genovese, the feds said in a four-count indictment. He eventually copped a guilty plea to a racketeering conspiracy charge, for which he received a 13-month sentence, court records state. Conigliaro also was arrested in 1999 for criminal usury and in 2006 in a grand larceny case, which has since been sealed, sources said.

The Post’s attempts to contact Conigliaro’s family were unsuccessful.

Mathew Mari, a longtime mob lawyer who counted Conigliaro as a friend and client, said the man he knew as “Tony Cheesecake” successfully delved into the dessert business after his time behind bars.

“Later on in life he became known as Tony the Dessert Man,” Mari said.

Grisly footage from the crash showed Conigliaro’s head severed several yards from his crumbled body — and a DOT driver, who was behind the wheel of a city truck when the elderly man walked against a traffic light to cross the street, looking teary-eyed and devastated.

“Now we know why that DOT guy was crying… he’s probably asking for witness protection,” one source said.

> (pic) The DOT driver appeared devastated after the crash that left Conigliaro dead.

https://nypost.com/2024/06/21/us-news/genovese-mobster-tony-cakes-idd-as-elderly-nyc-pedestrian-decapitated-by-dot-truck/

Britain's richest family ripped apart as four members handed jail sentences

-The family members were found guilty of exploiting their vulnerable domestic workers and providing unauthorised employment.

Members of Britain's richest family have been handed jail sentences after being found guilty of exploiting their vulnerable domestic workers and providing unauthorised employment. The four family members are Indian-born tycoon Prakash Hinduja and his wife Kamal, along with their son Ajay and his wife Namrata.

However a Swiss court cleared the foursome of more serious charges of human trafficking linked to their servants. The court ruled that the servants, who worked at their lakeside villa in Geneva, had known what it was they were getting into. Last week, the court heard the family had reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs.

Jail terms spanning four to four-and-a-half years was handed down to the family members, whose lawyers said they would appeal the conviction. They were accused of alleged illegal activity, including exploitation, human trafficking and violation of Swiss labour laws.

The family controls the multinational conglomerate the Hinduja group, whose businesses range from trucks and lubricants to banking and cable television.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1913996/Hindujas-UK-richest-family-jailed

Louisiana becomes first state to allow surgical castration as punishment for child molesters

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana has become the first state where judges can order offenders guilty of certain sex crimes against children to undergo surgical castration under a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry on Tuesday.

While the punishment of surgical castration is used in other countries that are known for harsher criminal sanctions — including the Czech Republic and Nigeria — it will be new in the U.S. The governor’s office confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that Landry had signed the bill earlier in the week.

Proponents of the Louisiana law, which takes effect Aug. 1, hope the new possible punishment will deter people from committing sex crimes against children. Opponents argue that it is “cruel and unusual” punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution. They say it is sure to face legal challenges. The legislation gives Louisiana judges the option to sentence someone to surgical castration after the person has been convicted of certain aggravated sex crimes — including rape, incest and molestation — against a child under 13. The punishment is not automatic and would be by individual cases and at the discretion of the judge.

Louisiana has 2,224 people in prison for such crimes. The law can be applied only to those who have convicted a crime on or after Aug. 1 of this year.

A handful of states, including Louisiana, California, Florida and Texas, have laws allowing for chemical castration for those guilty of certain sex crimes. In some of those states, offenders can opt for the surgical procedure if they prefer. But no other state allows judges to impose surgical castration outright, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In Louisiana, which for 16 years has allowed judges to order chemical castration of people convicted of certain sex crimes against children, that punishment is rarely issued. Chemical castration uses medications that block testosterone production to decrease sex drive. Surgical castration is a much more invasive procedure that involves the removal of both testicles or ovaries. An offender who “fails to appear or refuses to undergo” surgical castration after a judge orders the procedure could be hit with a “failure to comply” charge and face an additional three to five years in prison, based on the bill’s language.

>The bill received overwhelming approval in both of the GOP-dominated chambers. State Sen. Regina Barrow, a Democrat, authored the legislation, but votes against it mainly came from Democrats. “We are talking about babies who are being violated by somebody,” Barrow said during an April committee meeting. “That is inexcusable.”

Proponents of the measure argue that the punishment is just for horrific crimes against children. Critics argue that the state should focus on the rehabilitation of those guilty of such crimes in an effort to lower recidivism rates. Others wonder if more states may look at adopting a similar law to Louisiana’s and question the constitutionality of such measures. The U.S. has decided that retributive punishment — “an eye for an eye” — is cruel and unusual, said Katrina Sifferd, a philosophy professor at Elmhurst University.

https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-castration-sex-crimes-dc6763a2b6a144cf05d92174df032a63

Bannon pushes back on Trump’s green cards for graduates idea

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4734394-bannon-pushes-back-trumps-green-cards-graduates-idea/

Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is pushing back on former President Trump’s idea to give green cards to international students who graduate from U.S. colleges.

Bannon, an ally of Trump’s and a podcaster, argued strongly against the immigration idea on Friday, saying the student’s exit visa should be clipped to their diploma.

“People by and large want to live back where they come from or where their folks are and what their culture and society is,” Bannon said in comments highlighted by Mediaite. “Yes, let’s take them in on a selective basis, train them up, let the root for college football and get all that. You know, you look in the college football stands, the diversity, it’s fabulous, but then it’s time to go back home.”

Bannon argued that international students should go and make their home country “great again” upon graduating from higher learning institutions in the U.S.

“Work for your country and make [it] great again. That is the way we go as nations of the earth,” he said.

In a Thursday appearance on the “All-In” podcast, Trump said he thinks college graduates should automatically get a green card to the United States as part of their diploma “to be able to say in this country.”

The idea was a change of tone for the former president, who rode to office during his first campaign on promises to build a wall at the country’s southern border.

His words seem to mirror language from former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign, during which she said certain STEM and PhD graduates should receive green cards.

Bannon tied the green card issue to ongoing foreign affairs, saying “we can’t keep the world on our shoulders and keep spending money on all these forever wars in this international apparatus […] we want the nations of the earth to also make themselves great again.”