The Big Heist

by Anthony M. DeStefano

  After leaving the FBI building, Asaro and the other four were taken to Brooklyn federal district court for the first of what would be many court appearances. Vincent was represented by Gerald McMahon, an experienced criminal defense attorney from Manhattan who in recent months had won some impressive victories in mob cases against federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, including one in which Massino himself had been the star witness. A thick-chested Irishman with a pile of white hair, McMahon wasn’t easily intimidated in court and was known to lock horns with judges when he thought he had to for his client’s sake.

  Arrayed against McMahon were assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicole M. Argentieri and Alicyn L. Cooley. Argentieri had been a veteran of a number of mob prosecutions and had risen over the past two years to become head of her office’s organized crime unit. She was familiar with McMahon’s litigation skills, having lost to him with the acquittal in 2012 of reputed Genovese crime captain Anthony Romanello. Cooley was a relatively new prosecutor, having joined the office in 2013. Physically, both women were a contrast: Argentieri was dark haired and dark eyed while Cooley was a blonde.

  During the arraignment before Magistrate Judge Marilyn D. Go, the afternoon of the arrests started out with Vincent Asaro, his son Jerome, and Ragano pleading not guilty, while Bonventre and DiFiore were to appear in court the next day. McMahon told Go that Vincent had received a copy of the indictment and Vincent answered “Yes,” when the magistrate asked him if he understood the charges.

  Not surprisingly, Argentieri and Cooley presented to the court a detention memorandum which spelled out why the Asaros and the other defendants should be held without bail. The fifty-three-page document recounted all of the alleged connections between the defendants and the Bonanno crime family, their criminal histories, and described why each was dangerous and should be kept in jail. In the case of Vincent, the prosecutors said that while he had been demoted as a captain, he had been reinstated to his old rank sometime in late 2012 or early 2013 and in fact was on a committee running the crime family.

  The government had three major cooperating witnesses against Asaro labeled CW-1, CW-2, CW-3. It didn’t take long for Asaro to figure out, based on the descriptions of each witness in footnotes to the memorandum, who the witnesses against him were. CW-1 was his cousin Gaspare Valenti; CW-2 was his former boss Joseph Massino; CW-3 was former Bonanno underboss Salvatore Vitale. Massino had told investigators about Vincent’s erratic career in the crime family, including his loansharking and habitual gambling. Vitale had related how Vincent had been demoted and now reported to his son Jerome, who had risen to the rank of captain as his father’s star lost its luster in the mob.

  But the real damaging information in the indictment, as spelled out in the memorandum, had been provided by Valenti. Over the years of tape recordings, according to the memorandum, Valenti had implicated Vincent in many crimes, including the murder of Katz and old shakedowns in the pornography industry. But the most compelling charges involved Asaro’s involvement in the Lufthansa case, and for that Valenti’s tapes seemed damning.

  As spelled out by Argentieri and Cooley, Gaspare had said that he, his cousin Vincent, James Burke, and others associated with the Lucchese family all had meetings to plan the heist at the Lufthansa secure cargo facility. Burke’s involvement and that of Henry Hill and the rest of the crew had been well known. But the government papers revealed publicly for the first time the alleged involvement of Asaro and Valenti in the notorious crime. This was information that had never appeared in the previous published accounts of Hill and others of the robbery. In addition, Valenti had also claimed that Massino himself was kept apprised of the crime, even though at that point he was only a captain in the crime family—although admittedly a very powerful one who was an emissary for Rastelli.

  The prosecutors also revealed that one of the recordings Valenti had made of his cousin captured him bemoaning the way Burke had kept all of the money from the heist and didn’t spread it around.

  “We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get,” Asaro said on February 11, 2011. “We got fucked all around. Got fucked all around, that fucking Jimmy kept everything.”

  At this stage of the case, any argument by McMahon or the other defense attorneys to try and convince the court to grant bail would have been a waste of time. That would have to be tried later. Magistrate Go ordered Asaro and his son, as well as Thomas DiFiore and the others, to be held without bail. McMahon made a point of saying that Asaro had a triple bypass operation ten months earlier and had to be sure he got his medications while he was being held in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center. All three men were then taken out of court and off to jail.

  Outside the courthouse, McMahon had a field day playing into the GoodFellas hype that had surrounded the case. As he spoke, McMahon referenced the film and indicated he thought the indictment was nothing more than an extended screenplay.

  “Literally and truly this is the sequel to GoodFellas,” McMahon told the gaggle of reporters assembled on Cadman Plaza East. “Marty needs a screenplay; Loretta said she would help him out.”

  Those references were to GoodFellas director Martin Scorsese and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. McMahon said he appreciated the hype created by the indictment but stressed the government sometimes sends up smoke without a lot of fire. Vincent Asaro, he said, wanted to fight.

  “Vincent Asaro said categorically, ‘We’re going to trial,’” said McMahon, promising another big court battle—at least if his client came up with some money.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “SUPER THIEF”

  BEFORE IT BECAME JOHN F. KENNEDY International Airport, gateway to the United States and a favorite target of the Mafia, the area of southeast Queens was a popular and fashionable golf course situated on Jamaica Bay. With large expanses of land surrounding it, Idlewild Golf Course was looked upon as the ideal place to site a large airport befitting the city’s status as a major international city. There were about 200 summer homes spread out amid the creeks and wetlands, and the course was a favorite of popular golf tournaments. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had sparred with the City Council on what to name the new aerodrome that occupied a massive chunk of land on the border between Brooklyn and Queens. LaGuardia favored New York International Airport, while many in the council liked the name Idlewild, which is said to have been of Indian origin.

  With the start of hostilities in World War Two, the airfield when it was first constructed was used by the Army and Navy to defend New York City. There was even a proposal to name the location the Colin Kelly Airport in honor of a pilot who died sinking Japanese ships in the Pacific. The location was unusual at the time for the siting of such an airport because it was much farther distant from the core metropolitan area than normal. The existing airport in the area of Whitestone was about a six-mile cab ride from Manhattan. The new Queens airport, popularly known as Idlewild Airport when it finally opened in July 1948, was a good fifteen miles from Times Square as the crow flies. But proponents of the project, having no clue how much road-traffic congestion would grow over the decades, said it would only be a mere twenty-five-minute drive from the center of Manhattan.

  While the original plan was for the airport to encompass 1,110 acres, its size during construction grew to nearly five times that to nearly 5,000 acres. Idlewild or New York International attracted many of the major air carriers of the day and was the entry to the United States and New York City for hundreds of thousands of passengers each year, a number that swelled to 56.8 million passengers by 2015. By 1963, it was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in honor of the assassinated thirty-fifth president. To locals it became known as JFK. In the 1970s, cargo operations had increased so much that it was said to be the busiest commercial cargo airport in the world.

  More cargo traffic meant more opportunity for the Mafia. As cargo operations increased at JFK, the mob didn’t waste time. There was Mafia control of labor unions for sure. But the big money maker
for the wise guys was in the unbridled theft of cargo of all sorts: everything from stock certificates to jewelry to cash, valuable metals, and more. While under the control of the bi-state Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency’s small police force was taxed to the limit by airport thievery, which is to say that it couldn’t cope.

  Long before Jimmy Burke’s crew made its name in the 1978 Lufthansa robbery, there was Robert Cudak, who earned the moniker “super thief” for a life of crime. Born in Baltimore in 1941, Cudak moved to New York City where his youth was notable for the number of times he was arrested for all kinds of larceny, from car theft to burglary. After spending over seven years in the New York State prison system, Cudak was finally released in early 1966 and shortly thereafter noticed a newspaper ad for Northwest Airlines seeking men to work on its cargo ramp at JFK. He was fingerprinted and then, in a stark case showing how porous and meaningless the system of employee background checks was at the time, bluffed his way around his prison stint during the job interview.

  “On the application and during the questioning, I stated that I had been in the armed services, had recently been discharged, and that my wallet had been stolen and therefore I could not provide driver’s license, discharge papers, or other identification,” Cudak recalled.

  Lack of identification was no problem, and Northwest hired Cudak to work as a ramp man for all flights during the course of a fifteen-hour work day. Poor background checking wasn’t the only problem with security at the airport. About three days after he started working, Cudak noticed that procedures were lax around the high-value boxes used to transport valuable cargo and began stealing again—first taking small items and then working with partners to pulling off bigger and bigger thefts, which eventually totaled $100 million. Stocks, bonds, jewelry, cash, furs. Anything that wasn’t nailed down, Cudak and his fellow thieves took. They ripped open mail sacks to steal from them and eventually began taking entire bags of registered mail, including one certified package that contained radioactive material. They occasionally came across classified Pentagon documents that had been sent through the mails, although the military assured everyone the secrets weren’t that big.

  Cudak found that security at all the airports was poor, with JFK and O’Hare in Chicago among the worst. In Atlanta there didn’t seem to be any security at all. The only exception was Los Angeles, which seemed a hard place to steal from.

  “At most airports, a person who put on a pair of coveralls and wore a plastic helmet or ear mufflers such as airport personnel use was not questioned and could move about the airport without restriction,” remembered Cudak.

  Henry Hill knew what Congress was learning about JFK security—or about the lack of it—because in his own way he had tested JFK security about a year before Cudak had taken his job at the airport. Hill’s first entrée to the airport was through Robert “French” McMahon, so named because he worked for Air France as a cargo foreman. McMahon was a cocky guy who walked with a swagger and told cops he was to the manor born, supposedly a descendant of a wealthy business family from Pennsylvania, something no investigator was ever able to verify.

  Even if he did come from a privileged background, McMahon liked to live close to the edge. Investigators who monitored the airport would see him at local bars known to attract thieves, notably the Owl and the Riviera, both of which were close to JFK. He also started hanging out at Robert’s Lounge, which is where he solidified his relationship with Hill. At the lounge, McMahon would bring Hill and Burke stolen things they could unload for a nice profit.

  “Once he came across a small 24-by-48-inch box of silk dresses which Jimmy unloaded at the garment center for eighteen thousand dollars and which French got a piece,” remembered Hill. “Frenchy always got a piece of everything he brought us or pointed us toward.”

  It was in early 1967 that McMahon tipped off Hill and Burke to the fact that shipments of cash from Europe would be coming into Air France’s new strong room for valuables where the money would be kept before it was to be taken to New York banks. Hill recalled that his group, which included Thomas DeSimone, thought about holding up the facility. But security measures made that risky, so the crew figured out a way of compromising and distracting a cargo supervisor who possessed a key to the safe room with a prostitute at a motel outside the airport. The ruse was a classic variation of the old “panel room” tactic practiced in the nineteenth century by hookers in Manhattan where they distracted a client long enough so that an accomplice would open up a wall panel and steal the man’s wallet. In this case, Hill and McMahon got a prostitute to take the supervisor to a steam room at the motel long enough so that Hill could take the key, get a copy made at a locksmith and then return the original before the prostitute had finished with the clueless man.

  It was over the weekend of April 10-11, 1967, that Hill, DeSimone, and McMahon pulled off the theft. Hill said that with McMahon’s assistance he walked to the secure valuables room, opened its steel door with the duplicate key and put seven white bags loaded with cash into a suitcase he had brought for the job and then walked out the door. DeSimone was waiting outside in a rented car with bogus license plates, and the duo drove away unmolested. It was that easy.

  That Monday, the newspapers reported the theft as $420,000 missing from the Air France cargo building. Investigators were stumped. The theft occurred even with a security guard on duty, up to twenty people working in the area, and no sign of forced entry into the secure room. According to Pileggi’s later account of the theft as told to him by Hill, the actual amount of the loss was $480,000, and the money was spread around a number of Mafia bosses, including Colombo crime captain Sebastian “Buster” Aloi and Paul Vario, Burke’s mentor. Both men got about $50,000 each in tribute while Hill, Burke, and DeSimone took shares as well.

  Investigators also learned that Hill took credit for another airport theft around 1969 involving cash stolen from Alitalia Airlines by two black associates. The problem with that money was that it consisted of consecutively numbered currency, which would be easier to trace, so Hill said he sold it at a discount to Paul Vario. Then a year later Hill and hijacker Joe Allegro robbed a concession store at JFK and netted $60,000. For Hill, the airport seemed like easy pickings and a place where he could get away with any crime he put his mind to without being caught.

  * * *

  Cudak wasn’t as lucky as Hill and DeSimone, and eventually postal investigators arrested him. But even when he was freed on bail, Cudak continued his thievery until he pleaded guilty in November 1970 in Brooklyn federal court and received a seven-year prison sentence. In the hopes of getting leniency and parole, Cudak decided to tell his story to a U.S. Senate investigating committee in 1971, revealing the extent of the crimes just one group of thieves could carry out at the airports. In New York, according to Cudak, a group of Mafia members and associates became the people who could fence the stolen property all over the metropolitan area.

  Cudak wasn’t a member of the mob; not with that surname he wasn’t. But he relied on a number of Mafiosi who either fenced the stolen merchandise themselves or were plugged into a network of associates who were experts in moving the products. When dealing with over $100 million in stolen airport cargo, those involved had to know what they were doing and be well connected in the Mafia. According to what Cudak told the Senate committee in his testimony, the men through whom he fenced included Anthony “Tony” Boiardo, Albert DeAngelis, and Greg Scarpa.

  The three men were not household names, and the senators who questioned Cudak didn’t go into detail about their criminal histories. But to police they each had a certain mob pedigree that was unmistakable. Boiardo was son of the legendary New Jersey gangster Richie “The Boot” Boiardo. Anthony Boiardo, known as “Tony Boy,” became in his own right a member of the Genovese crime family. DeAngelis, who ran a jewelry business on Canal Street in Manhattan, also was tied to the Teamsters. Scarpa was a powerful member of the Colombo crime family who in fits and starts had
been providing information over the years to the FBI. The most notable bit of cooperation by Scarpa involved leads that led to the solving of the disappearance and murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s.

  Cudak identified others fences who either worked under Scarpa or were as one senator said part of “syndicated crime.” Among them was Cosmo “Gus” Cangiano, a Colombo crime family member, who decided to appear before the Senate committee and testify in a half-hearted effort to defend himself. Appearing without a lawyer, Cangiano listened as a committee investigator read excerpts of Cudak’s testimony about airport crime and once answered, “It’s true, and I respectfully stand on the Fifth Amendment.” Cangiano invoked the Fifth Amendment numerous times, even when asked if he knew an associate found murdered in the trunk of a car at JFK in October 1969.

  The cargo rip-offs credited to Cudak and his associates were substantial and in total over the years dwarfed anything the Burke crew would later gain from the Lufthansa heist a decade later. But for the customers who suffered the losses, it appeared that they only reported to the authorities a fraction of the true losses. In other words, airport robberies and theft were likely much greater than anyone imagined. This was illustrated by an analysis done by investigators with the U.S. Post Office who looked at a sample of ten percent of the robberies of registered mail Cudak had identified. The survey found that the amounts of claims filed with postal authorities didn’t represent the true value of the losses since victims had originally undervalued their cargo to reduce the fees they had to pay for registered mail. In some cases, victims didn’t file any claims with postal authorities because they had commercial insurance.

  Cudak’s revelations put into stark relief the size of the mob take of airport cargo, particularly jewels, cash, and securities. The latter were as good as cash because they were often bearer instruments, which could easily be converted to cash. Although the Port Authority police had jurisdiction over the three major airports—JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia—many in law enforcement and government had for years been questioning the agency’s ability, as well as that of private security firms, to handle the problem in the face of an increasingly serious escalation in cargo thefts.