The Return of Black Dom

Black Dom: from stocks to pizzas

(Updated)

One of the characters in Born to Steal is a fellow named "Black Dom" Dionisio, a Colombo crime family associate who was one of the hoods behind Hanover Sterling and other shady brokerages in the early 1990s. Now word that Dom has come down in the world, big time.

Mob Watch reports that Dom, who served time for securities fraud a while back (this court ruling describes his pedigree), is now on trial for shooting somebody during the Colombo family's civil strife in 1991. It seems that he made a bid for release before trial, saying that he works for a prominent Brooklyn pizza restaurant called Lucali's.

But....

The feds, however, think Black Dom's full of shit, because he hadn't been providing any pay stubs since he supposedly started working almost a year ago. They say he's simply using Lucali's as a front, perhaps for sinister purposes. So Dionisio countered by producing said stubs -- 10 in all. Problem is, they came from the personal account of Lucali's owner Mark Iacono, not the restaurant. And they were written on sequentially numbered checks, implying that Dom was hastily paid for an entire year all at once.

The Daily News originally reported on Dom's connection with the restaurant, but not on the pay stubs.

One thing that makes this interesting is that Lucali's is not some greasy joint in Hicksville, but is in upscale Carroll Gardens, and is getting quite a reputation for outstanding pizza. It has received publicity in restaurant websites and even the New Yorker, describing Iacono as a former "marble fabricator." The New Yorker reported:

These days, it’s not unusual to encounter a wait of well over an hour for one of the ten tables; late-arriving takeout patrons are sometimes turned away all together. So it was hardly surprising, last week, when a Presidential-calibre motorcade pulled up out front. Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z emerged, and were quickly ushered to a table near the chef.

When I read the Mob Watch item I was intrigued, because someone by the name of Mark Iacono used to be a trader at a "chop house" called A.T. Brod, and was named in an NASD complaint concerning the short-selling of shares in the aforementioned Hanover Sterling. More on the entities and other nastiness described in the complaint can be found in this BusinessWeek article.

Well, rest easy, folks. You'll be happy to know that the pizza restaurateur Mark Iacono is a different guy. The one who used to work at Brod would now be nearing 50, which is much older than the fellow pictured in the articles on the pizza place, unless he's exceptionally well preserved. Still, you have to admit that this is one hell of a coincidence.

The Daily News article says

"Dionisio, 39, is now permitted to leave his home six days a week for his $300-a-week job at Lucali's, where the owner praised him. "Regardless of his past, he's like my family," Mark Iacono said.

Hey, I'm all for giving ex-cons a second chance, if they've reformed. One of my favorite financial bloggers is ex-con Sam Antar, scourge of the Overstock.com fraud. But I have my doubts about Dom, however.

© 2010 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Junior Gotti Busted -- Again

Junior Gotti in happier days

Junior Gotti, the now-middle-aged child star of the Gambino family, has been arrested yet again, this time in Tampa, on murder-conspiracy charges. Junior has been arrested and tried several other times, as noted in the New York Times article linked, but nothing has really stuck so far.

Here's the indictment. What's interesting to me is how the list of charges against Junior are scummy, low-level, violent and crude -- a far cry from the sophisticated scams, and the high-level union and Las Vegas skimming, that used to dominate Mafia law enforcement until a few years ago. What we have here are street-level offenses like shaking down drug dealers, home-invasion robberies and the usual murders.

Not a whiff of securities fraud either. Junior was charged with that only once, and he beat the rap. The Gambino family was very heavily into pump-and-dump schemes back in the 1990s, and were behind several of the small "chop houses" in lower Manhattan. No more. Now they're back to stickups and you don't even see the kind of sophisticated tax scams the Russian mob is noted for. (Speaking of which, it's been quite a while since we've heard of any prosecutions in t hat area, and they're certainly not going anywhere.)

The mob is certainly not gone and will be around forever, but they sure are getting grungy, almost pathetic.

© 2008 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Wall Street Angle in Gambino Bust

Newsday today has an interesting wrapup on the recent Gambino family megabust. Here's a Los Angeles Times pickup of the article.

Newsday says that securities fraud charges, mentioned peripherally in the indictment, "stem from a giant Wall Street boiler-room operation prosecuted in 2001."

The latest Gambino indictment accuses reputed Gambino captain Charles Carneglia and reputed captain Leonard DiMaria with securities fraud conspiracy stemming from the 2001 stock fraud prosecution, according to court records.

DiMaria and Carneglia are accused of plotting to commit securities fraud in the sale of three stocks from November 1995 to March 1996, according to the indictment.

Interesting. I wonder if that aspect of the case dates back to an informant who was the buyer in an unrelated art forgery case some years ago.

Note this New York Times story from back in 2000. Seems that there was an "unnamed man who had pleaded guilty to securities fraud and was already cooperating with federal agents." [emphasis added] The two people involved were "associates" of Carneglia, and quite obviously they were cooperating against him.

Could just be a coincidence. Or it could be that the unnamed man who had pleaded guilty -- probably under seal -- was instrumental in the 2001 prosecution and the ongoing investigation of Carneglia. There were quite a few mob stock prosecutions in 2000 and 2001, so it's hard to say offhand which one is involved.

That's how mob prosecutions are made. One case leads to another which leads to another, with defendants flipping like waffles. Took a while to get this one going, that I will say. Eight years?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.