“And when he asked that question I said, ‘Yes. I lied, cheated, scammed, and plotted every day of my adult life, because that’s what organized crime is. It’s a never-ending lie that exploits every citizen with whom it comes in contact. So yes, I am guilty of it all. But I’m no longer that person.’
“And then I said something to the effect that if I was in court to lie, I’d be sitting at the defense table with him or one of his colleagues representing me. I told him that my record was an open book. I wasn’t proud of it. But at least all my cards were on the table. I wasn’t hiding behind a lawyer trying to profess my innocence.
“I don’t think this attorney realized that the worse he made me look, the worse he was making his client look as well. Like the old saying says, birds of a feather flock together. If I was that bad, what did it make Mike?
“But I think the defense team was desperate and felt their only chance was to make me the villain. So the lawyer kept up his verbal assault, trying to trip me up at every turn. I’d implicated Mike in four Mob-related shootings, three of which ended in homicide. And as questions came my way about each act, I truly believe Mike’s lawyer was hurting him, not helping him. He seemed to constantly get the names of the victims wrong. And I think to confuse me, he sometimes put a name to a different crime. But in my opinion, that only made him seem unprepared. I think the deeper he got into those subjects, the more credibility he gave me.
“And then the defense turned their attention to Junior Gotti. What if any business dealings had I had with him? I made it clear to the court and jury that I’d met him at Gambino social events on several occasions over the years, but I’d never had any personal dealings with him. When asked what status Gotti held in the family, I explained that after his father went to prison, he sat on the panel of family leaders with Nicky Corozzo and Jackie D’Amico.
“When they challenged my statement, I explained that I knew about the leadership panel from conversations with Nicky Corozzo and from being part of Nicky’s crew. Crew members have to know who their leaders are; it’s a part of their survival. It’s like working for a major corporation. The average employees may not speak with board members directly, but they know who they are.
“Junior’s story was that he’d walked away from the Mob years earlier. I disputed that. So they came at me hard, wanting me to explain how I could say that it’s impossible for a made member, boss or soldier, to walk away from the life. I answered that for many years, I was schooled in the rules of the life by Nicky Corozzo. I also told about the time I tried to get released from the Gambino family to join the Colombos. Nicky read me the riot act by saying in no uncertain terms that I was born under the Gambino flag and that’s where I would die.
“When asked what knowledge I had of any business dealings between Junior and Nicky, I stated they were involved in a long-distance phone-card business. Of course, the lawyer asked if it was an illegal business and that I had to answer yes or no. Because of that I answered no, it wasn’t illegal. What I wasn’t allowed to say was that while the business itself was legal, their business practices weren’t. Not when guys like me went to the merchants and told them they could only sell that particular card or else. So the defense got away with one.
“But I was able to get in Nicky’s plot to kill Junior because he felt he was being cheated on his end of the phone-card business. Because me and Mike were supposed to do the work, I can imagine the co-defendant meetings between Junior and Mike got a little tense after that came out.
“Moments like that reveal the level of treachery behind the scenes. On the surface, it looked like those two guys were allies against the justice system. But in reality, either one of them would have killed the other if ordered.
“For the two days I was under cross-examination, I was called a murderer, a liar, and a cheat. But they really showed how much they felt they needed to neutralize me when they accused me of beating Dina when she was nine months pregnant. How was that for a desperate effort to get jurors to look at me with disgust? But they failed to do their homework, because during Dina’s ninth month of pregnancy, I was on the run and had no contact with her.
“It’s things like that guys like me who turn government witness can expect from defense lawyers. If the government takes you on as a witness, it’s because they believe you can help drive a nail into somebody’s coffin. One way to overcome damaging testimony is to make the witness seem even more despicable to the jury than the defendant. Lies and slanderous accusations are the Mob’s only defense against the truth.
“Mike’s lawyers went as far as trying to blame me and two other Gambino soldiers for the murders of Robert Arena and Thomas Maranga. I wonder if those guys were happy with Mike’s decision to implicate them in a double homicide just to save his own ass. Was that an example of the idealistic Mob rules we hear about? No, it was not. But it does illustrate the big lie that the Mob of today is built on.
“For the record, it should be known that testifying brought me no pleasure, only sadness. I thought Mike was throwing his life away to appease and protect those in power who didn’t give a rat’s ass about guys like him or me. But it was his decision and he’d have to live with it.
“When my testimony was over, I left the stand knowing I’d done what I had to do. But I was glad it was over.”
The jury got the case on September 8. On September 20, the judge declared a mistrial in the case against Junior Gotti. Michael Yannotti was convicted on only one count: racketeering conspiracy based on the extortion and loansharking aspects of the racketeering charges. And these were the allegations that Andrew addressed in great detail during his testimony, over the strenuous objections of Yannotti’s lawyer.
YANNOTTI TAKES IN SOME MONEY ...
On January 26, 2006, an article appeared in the Gang Land News relating to a rather odd fundraiser that had been held a couple of weeks earlier. The event was a well-attended $1,000-a-plate dinner to help pay the legal fees the incarcerated Mike Yannotti accumulated during his 2005 racketeering trial. Sources told Gang Land that between $250,000 and $400,000 was raised.
It was reported that more than 300 of Yannotti’s friends and associates showed up to demonstrate their support for the alleged gangster. For their donations, the attendees were treated to a buffet, beer, and wine, but no hard liquor. Nicky Corozzo was listed as a no-show.
Although Nicky wasn’t at the event, Andrew believes he was the catalyst behind it.
“I think the fundraiser was orchestrated by Nicky and was more or less a shakedown. He probably put the word out that everyone was expected to attend the event and nobody dared to not show up. Don’t forget that Mike no doubt had enough on Nicky to bury him if he ever flipped. Raising money for Mike’s legal fees would have been a good move on Nicky’s part.”
... BUT LOSES BIG
In November 2006, Yannotti appeared before Judge Shira Scheindlin for sentencing. Probation officials anticipated he’d get four years of prison time. However, to the surprise of many, Scheindlin slapped Mikey Y with the maximum allowable sentence of 20 years.
Prosecutors had argued that she should consider the attempted murder of Curtis Sliwa when deciding on Yannotti’s punishment. Even though he was acquitted of the charge, the government contended that ample proof of his guilt had been presented. A number of observers concluded that the judge agreed with the prosecution’s argument. But that wasn’t the only hit the convict suffered at the hands of the legal system.
Following his conviction, Yannotti filed an appeal. One of his complaints was that Andrew’s testimony at trial was inappropriately allowed into evidence. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard the case in August 2007. The decision was rendered in September 2008.
Per Federal Rules of Evidence 701, three conditions must be met in order to allow lay testimony into evidence: It must be rationally based on the perception of the witness, helpful to a clear understanding of the witness’ testimony or the determination of a fact i
n issue, and not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge.
The Court ruled that Andrew’s testimony met all three of those conditions and the decision by the trial court to allow his testimony was affirmed.
25
Closing in on Nicky
February 2008 was not a good month for Nicky Corozzo. He was one of 26 people indicted in Queens County, resulting from a multi-year investigation called Operation Touch-back. The 29 counts in the indictment focused primarily on illegal gambling. At the same time, the feds announced that Nicky was also named in the indictment arising from their Operation Old Bridge investigation. Old Bridge was massive in scope, involving the FBI and police in Italy. The federal allegations included myriad racketeering charges, the murders of Robert Arena and Thomas Maranga among them.
The February 7th Queens County indictment was particularly interesting, because it detailed the Gambino gambling setup, much of which involved online betting. It appeared Nicky and his boys had gone high-tech.
The indictment was on charges of operating highly sophisticated illegal-gambling enterprises in Queens County and elsewhere that booked nearly $10 million in wagers over a two-year period on professional and college basketball and football, professional baseball and hockey, and other sporting events. Twenty of the defendants were in custody and six were being sought. Nicky Corozzo was one of the latter six.
The defendants were alleged to have gone online, supplementing traditional wire-room and street-corner bookie operations with offshore-based Internet websites designed for sports betting and casino-style gambling. Toll-free telephone numbers were established, through which numerous gambling accounts were managed and out of which criminal proceeds were collected and distributed throughout the New York City metropolitan area. The computerized wire rooms operated around the clock and handled a large volume of bettors at any one time, allowing the defendants to increase their illicit profits without having to bother with the time-consuming record-keeping aspects of a more traditional paper-based bookmaking operation. The Gambino crime family allegedly took in millions of dollars each year through the illegal gambling scheme.
The defendants were charged with enterprise corruption—a violation of New York State’s Organized Crime Control Act—as well as promoting gambling, criminal usury, grand larceny, and conspiracy. They faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
The specifics of the indictment filed in Queens County Supreme Court alleged that the gambling ring promoted illegal sports betting in Queens County and elsewhere and that the defendants were involved in traditional gambling wire rooms located at 85-50 Forest Parkway in Woodhaven, as well as nontraditional computerized wire rooms in Costa Rica.
Six of the defendants were also being sued civilly and named as respondents in a $9.8 million civil-forfeiture action filed in Queens Supreme Court by the District Attorney’s Special Proceedings Bureau, which alleged that they engaged in a criminal enterprise that promoted illegal-gambling activities and generated illegal wages.
The criminal enterprise was generally known as the “Nicky Corozzo Crew of the Gambino Crime Family” and allegedly handled thousands of wagers each month that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly gross revenue, or approximately $9.8 million between November 6, 2005, and January 8, 2008.
Authorities believed the operation relied on modern technology, including toll-free telephone numbers and four known gambling websites, BETMSG.com; BETALLSPORTS.com; BETWSI.com; and BETOFFSHORE.net, which served as computerized wire rooms through which the enterprise conducted much of its illegal gambling activity. Account information was typically stored on computer servers outside the United States—often in such Central American countries as Costa Rica—which “bounced” their data through a series of server nodes in efforts to evade law-enforcement detection through traditional methods.
According to the indictment, Nicholas Corozzo was the boss of the enterprise. He controlled and oversaw the entire operation and profited from each criminal pursuit by the other members. Corozzo was also alleged to have benefited from a prostitution ring to the tune of $500 per week.
Nick was in big trouble. When his daughter tipped him off that the law was scooping up his co-defendants, he did what Andrew had done 12 years earlier. He went on the lam.
AMW JOINS THE MANHUNT
On May 17, just over three months after Nicky went on the run, “America’s Most Wanted” profiled him on its TV show. Its report recapped his criminal history and the pending charges. The heat was on Nick big time.
And “AMW” cameras were on hand 12 days later when, with his lawyer by his side, an exhausted-looking Nicky Corozzo surrendered to authorities on a street corner outside the FBI’s office in lower Manhattan. At his arraignment, Nicky pled guilty to all charges and was ordered held without bail.
VINDICATION
On August 14, 2008, Nick Corozzo avoided a jury trial by pleading guilty to ordering the January 26, 1996, murder of Robert Arena, which also resulted in the death of Thomas Maranga. Andrew was on an airplane on the way to testify against Nick when the deal was made.
“It happened while I was in flight,” Andrew remembers. “When I landed, I was told that Nicky’s defense team had worked out a deal with the U.S. Attorney. Nicky pled guilty to being part of the conspiracy to murder Robert and Thomas. Hearing that was music to my ears. After so many years of being called a liar and all the denials by Nicky and his attorneys, I was finally vindicated. And he had been exposed for the liar he is.”
THE ACCOUNTING
On April 17, 2009, Nicky Corozzo was sentenced to 13½ years in federal prison for his role in the Arena and Maranga murders.
In July 2008, he had pled guilty to the state enterprise corruption charges. On April 28, 2009, he was sentenced to a prison term of 4½ to 13½ years on those charges.
Corozzo is serving the sentences concurrently at a federal correctional facility. His projected release date is March 2, 2020, two weeks before his 80th birthday.
26
Lessons
When Andrew and I began writing this book, he was emphatic about one of the things he wanted to accomplish. His primary goal was to get the word out to young men, who might be considering a life of crime, that they’d be making a very bad mistake. He hoped that learning what he’d gone through would cause them to think twice before going down that road.
In closing, he wants to reiterate in his own words the lessons he learned while living the life. And he hopes those lessons will discourage others from following in his footsteps.
“Being an organized-crime guy is for losers. I say that based on my own experience. When I got into the life, I was excited. I thought I was part of something—a family that took care of its own. Everybody looked out for each other and nobody would dare fuck with us. That’s what I thought. I was wrong.
“For fifteen years, I was a predator. Everybody was a potential victim to me. From the time I got up in the morning until I went to sleep at night, I planned, plotted, and schemed how I could take advantage of people. If I could get their money through fraud, I would. If I could get it through robbery or burglary, I would. And if I could get it through violence or the threat of violence, I would.
“I made a lot of money during those years. I also made a lot of money for my boss, Nicky Corozzo, and the Gambino crime family. To make that money, I hurt an awful lot of people. They weren’t all victims of my crimes either. Some of them were the people who cared about me the most, who loved me. But I didn’t think about that then. I hurt virtually everyone I came in contact with physically, financially, or emotionally.
“Do you know what I ended up with when it all came crashing down? Nothing. I didn’t have a goddamn dime. Nicky and some lawyers did okay on me. But it turned out that I hurt all those people for nothing. When the end came I was broke, facing decades in prison and under a death sentence from a couple of organized-crime families. A real success story, huh?
“If that
isn’t a turn-off, try this. When I was still in the life, but having second thoughts, my father wanted to make a point. He asked me to write down my ten closest friends in the life. After I did that, he told me to write what each one was doing then. Out of the ten, six were in prison and four were dead. I guess you could call that a one hundred percent failure rate.
“With all those bad things I did, there was one decision I made that I know was right. When I got the green light to kill my brother-in-law, when I held the power of life and death over him, I let him live. My niece has a father and that’s the way it should be. So that was one choice that I’ll never regret making.
“That aside, I’m alive and free. So what am I complaining about, you ask? First, I’m not complaining. I’m stating facts. And having my life and freedom carries costs that can’t be ignored. I was born Andrew DiDonato and he no longer exists. I haven’t seen my son or family in years and don’t know if or when I’ll see them again. Yes, I’m alive. But there’s a big hole inside of me.
“I’m alive because I was lucky—very lucky. I was shot at a few times by guys with bad aims. And I got into Witness Protection before my former colleagues could get me. If not for that good fortune—or divine intervention—we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“And I owe my freedom to luck or fate too. I shot several people, but none of them died. I shot Ralph Burzo in the head and the bullet struck a bone and splintered. When I was going to finish him off, Sandra Raiola was there staring at me, so I couldn’t. Somebody was watching over Burzo or me. Either way, it turned out to be a blessing.
Surviving the Mob Page 23