Copyright 1990 The New York Times Company  
The New York Times
October 22, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 4; National Desk

LENGTH: 3369 words

HEADLINE: The Mob in Decline - A Special Report
A Battered and Ailing Mafia Is Losing Its Grip on America

BYLINE: By SELWYN RAAB, Special to The New York Times

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

BODY:
Battered by aggressive investigators and weakened by incompetent leadership, most of America's traditional Mafia families appear to be fading out of existence, law-enforcement officials and independent experts say.

The Mafia remains potent in the New York City area, where officials say the mob is hard to uproot because it has five separate and large crime families, and in the suburbs of Chicago. But in most other areas, where prosecutors have to contend with only a single family, the legendary mob that once controlled entire labor unions, city governments and criminal enterprises has clearly lost its grip.

Officials say the convictions of top Mafia leaders and their hierarchies have dismantled thriving underworld organizations in Philadelphia, New Jersey, New England, New Orleans, Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis.
 
'The Geritol Gang'

Here in Los Angeles, investigators speak of the "Mickey Mouse Mafia" and say the mob is so enfeebled that illegal bookmakers refuse to pay it for the right to operate. In Cleveland and Denver, where Mafia gangs once flourished, officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation say each city is left with a lone mobster who was "made," or formally inducted in a secret ritual. And in New Jersey, Col. Justin Dintino, the State Police Superintendent, calls the Bruno-Scarfo group the "Geritol gang," so aged and ineffective does he find its leaders.

Many experts and officials say it is premature to write the Mafia's obituary, and they emphasize that its decline does not mean that organized crime has been banished: other groups are moving in to take the Mafia's place. In particular, Chinese international gangs called the Triads are making a strong bid to succeed the Mafia in the sophisticated crimes of large-scale gambling, loan sharking and labor racketeering.

But experts say the recent defeats of the Mafia will nevertheless mean real gains for the public, reducing the financial and social costs of rigged public contracts, of domination of labor unions like the teamsters and longshoremen, and of influence in the construction, trucking, trash-collection and garment-manufacturing industries.
 
Causes of Decline

While there is wide agreement that the Mafia is declining, there is much disagreement on the causes. Law-enforcement officials generally credit a long-term strategy adopted by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early 1980's: developing cases against the top leaders of organized-crime families and relying largely on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, as a courtroom tool.

By concentrating on enterprises rather than individuals, Federal prosecutors in the last five years have removed the high commands of families through the convictions and long prison sentences of almost 100 top Cosa Nostra leaders.

The chief architect of the RICO act, G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, admits he was surprised by its impact. "It was sort of like George Kennan's containment policy of the Soviet Union," he said. "We tried it and by God it worked."
 
Impact of Changed Society

But two other experts, Peter A. Lupsha and Howard Abadinsky, say demographic changes, too, have helped undermine the Mafia. Mr. Lupsha, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico and who is a consultant on organized crime for Federal and state agencies, and Mr. Abadinsky, founder of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime, a research organization, cite these factors:

*The dispersal of white populations away from urban neighborhoods. This diminished both the Mafia's political influence, which was strongest in Italian-American sections of big cities, and the surreptitious protection that organized-crime bosses often got from the local police and political machines.

*A new generation of Mafia leaders who took control after the convictions or deaths of previous bosses and capos, or captains, but who were less competent than their predecessors.

*The disintegration of traditional Mafia loyalties, with members breaking the code of silence to become informers against leaders.

*The emergence of rival crime groups controlled by Asians, Colombians, black Americans and the Sicilian Mafia, a powerful unit that operates independently of America's Mafia or Cosa Nostra. These new groups dominate drug trafficking and illegal gambling, especially in the inner cities.
 
A Multinational Trend

"The real trend in organized crime today is transnational with the ability to move drugs and money across borders," Mr. Lupsha said. "The old Italian-American organized crime groups were too content with what they had and too slow to think globally."

Outside of New York and Chicago, the Mafia is an anachronism, Mr. Abadinsky said, adding: "They changed like the rest of society. The younger ones are better educated than their elders, they have more opportunities in life and they know the mob is being pounded by the Feds."

Many experts say the American Mafia lacks the nerve and ability to compete with the new underworld rivals. Ronald Goldstock, the director of New York's Organized Crime Task Force, said a high-ranking Mafia defector had bitterly told him that his crew could no longer find reliable assassins in its own ranks and had to take outside contracts.

"The new drug gangs are wild groups, and the old-timers don't want any confrontations with them," said Ralph F. Salerno, a former New York detective who is a consultant to Congressional committees on organized crime. "Moreover, west of the Mississippi, there is nothing left of the Cosa Nostra to fight anybody."
 
The East
Power Dwindling, But Still Strong




The largest Mafia concentration, 1,200 of about 2,000 "made" members nationwide, is in New York, Long Island, the suburbs north of the city and in Northern New Jersey. With five families, New York is the only area where so many factions have co-existed for half a century. Law-enforcement officials maintain that their campaign to eradicate the Cosa Nostra in New York is hampered by the mob's large numbers, its wide-flung illicit networks and an ample supply of recruits to fill the ranks of convicted capos and soldiers.

But since 1985, the bosses and underbosses of the five families -- Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno and Colombo -- have been slain or sentenced to long prison terms. The changing of the guards within such a short period has led to feuds, sapping the strength of every family.

The reputed bosses of the Genovese family, Vincent Gigante, and of the Lucchese family, Vittorio Amuso, along with their top lieutenants, were indicted in May on charges that they had taken part in rigging bids for $142 million in window contracts at New York's Housing Authority.

Mr. Amuso, 56, and the man the F.B.I. lists as his underboss, Anthony Casso, 50, are fugitives in another sign of the disorder in the Lucchese organization, agents said. Relatives of the 62-year-old Mr. Gigante maintain that he is mentally unfit to stand trial, but prosecutors contend that is a ruse.

In 1986, the F.B.I. identified John Gotti as the new boss of the Gambino family, the largest and most powerful Mafia family in the country, with 400 to 500 members. Since then, Mr. Gotti, 50, has twice been acquitted on separate Federal and state criminal charges.

The F.B.I., which was not involved in Mr. Gotti's earlier trials, and Justice Department officials said Mr. Gotti was the subject of new RICO investigations. The latest ones focus on his purported role as the head of a criminal enterprise, the Gambino family, and the 1985 murder of Paul Castellano, the family's previous boss, whose death cleared the way for a takeover by Mr. Gotti.

On Oct. 18, Thomas Gambino, a prominent captain in the family, was indicted on charges of masterminding a conspiracy that imposed "a mob tax" on every item manufactured in Manhattan's garment industry.

"The Gambino and Genovese families are still functioning, but their power is dwindling," said Jules J. Bonavolonta, the head of the F.B.I.'s organized-crime branch in New York. "The other three families in New York are shattered and pretty well beaten."

Based in Philadelphia, the Bruno-Scarfo family in the early 1980's was rated by law-enforcement experts as Pennsylvania's premier underworld group. The gang's gambling, loan sharking and labor rackets extended into Atlantic City, other parts of New Jersey and Delaware.

"Today they are a limping relic," said Frederick T. Martens, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission, a state agency.

When Nicodemo Scarfo took over as boss of the family in the early 1980's, he inherited 75 "made" members and more than 500 associates. Law-enforcement officials said Mr. Scarfo's mismanagement and ruthlessness damaged the family's operations and encouraged defections. Five of Mr. Scarfo's cronies, including his nephew and his underboss, Philip Leonetti, became turncoats and are cooperating with investigators.

Mr. Scarfo, 60, along with 15 gang members, were convicted in 1988 of Federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. He was sentenced to 69 years in prison.

Officials said that Anthony Piccolo, 67, was the acting boss of the family when he and Mr. Scarfo's son were indicted on state racketeering charges in New Jersey in August. "The latest indictments have left them with about 10 active members, and the number keeps declining," Mr. Martens added.

In New Jersey, the authorities combat seven organized Cosa Nostra families; this is the most operating in any state. Besides the five New York families and the Bruno-Scarfo faction from Pennsylvania, New Jersey has an indigenous group, the DeCavalcante family.

Until this year, the suspected DeCavalcante leaders were legally unscathed. But in June, John Riggi, described by prosecutors as the boss of the DeCavalcantes, was convicted of RICO violations, including extortion and labor racketeering. He faces as many as 70 years in prison on those charges.

As part of the Bruno-Scarfo case, New Jersey prosecutors in August filed new racketeering counts against Mr. Riggi and most of the remaining reputed higher-ups in the DeCavalcante family.

For 35 years in New England, law-enforcement officials acknowledge, the Patriarca family conducted an extensive web of rackets in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Raymond L. S. Patriarca, the founder and boss of the family, died in 1984, and prosecutors say he was succeeded by his son, Raymond J. Patriarca, of Providence, R.I.

Last March, after a five-year investigation by the F.B.I., grand juries in Boston and Hartford indicted the 45-year-old Mr. Patriarca and 20 other men on RICO charges involving murder, extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and gambling. Prosecutors said the 21 were the active leadership of the family in New England.

The F.B.I. asserted that it had penetrated the inner sanctum of the Patriarca family with an informer, who taped a secret induction ceremony in 1989. According to an affidavit, four new members burned a holy card with the image of the Patriarca family saint, pledged to uphold the code of silence and then intoned in Italian: "As burns this saint, so will burn my soul, my soul. I want to enter alive into this organization and leave it dead."

Stanley A. Twardy Jr., the United States Attorney in Connecticut, said "the backbone of organized-crime control and influence throughout New England" would be broken if the men were convicted.
 
 
 
The Central States
An 'Outfit' In Disarray




Chicago's traditional organized-crime family is called "The Outfit." Unlike other Cosa Nostra groups, it shuns secret rites. "They're different here," said Robert E. Walsh, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Chicago bureau. "Instead of a swearing-in ceremony for new members, they have a banquet in a good restaurant."

Mr. Walsh says intelligence reports place the Outfit's strength at from 100 to 150 members, compared with more than 200 five years ago. Law-enforcement officials and independent researchers say the Outfit has little influence in Chicago and now runs and manages its operations in an arc from the northern and western suburbs to southern Wisconsin.

In 1986, the Outfit's boss, 78-year-old Joseph J. Aiuppa, and most of his top lieutenants were convicted of skimming $2 million from gambling casinos in Las Vegas. The convictions and deaths of other veteran leaders, said Mr. Walsh, "left them in disarray."

The Outfit's main activities are sports bookmaking and loan sharking, conducted through suburban wireroom or gambling dens.

Sgt. Robert M. Lombardo of the Chicago police says the Outfit is divided into five gangs, with the largest one known as the Taylor Street crew.

Jerry Gladden, the chief investigator for the Chicago Crime Commission, an independent research group, said the commission had identified Sam Carlissi, 68, as the Outfit's "street boss." But police officials said the new leader is a Taylor Street veteran, John DiFronzo, 61.

Investigators said Anthony Accardo, an 84-year-old former mob leader who is considered an elder statesman, frequently visits the Chicago area from his retirement home in Palm Springs, Calif., to advise the less-experienced group.

Since the mid-1940's, Las Vegas has been an open city, a place where any Mafia family could operate and where there were no territorial rights.

But the Chicago Outfit's influence was paramount until the mid-1980's when the F.B.I. found records pinpointing how $2 million in casino winnings had been skimmed and split by Mafia leaders. The records helped convict a dozen mob chiefs and their top lieutenants in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

In 1986, Anthony Spilotoro, the Outfit's main emissary in Las Vegas, was found beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. Law-enforcement officials believe the killing resulted from mob feuds in Chicago and that the Outfit's power in Las Vegas ebbed further after Mr. Spilotoro's slaying.

Preston E. Hubbs, the Las Vegas Police Commander, said no member of the mob had succeeded Mr. Spilotoro, who oversaw Chicago interests in bookmaking, loan sharking and casino skimming. "We think we have pretty well knocked them out of the casinos," said Edward J. Jenkins, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Las Vegas bureau.

Organized crime's roots in Las Vegas go back to the 1940's, when Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, a New York-based gangster, operated from a casino wing with secret doors and escape tunnels. That vestige of Mafia history will soon vanish. The wing, now part of the Flamingo Hilton Hotel, is to be demolished and replaced with a swimming pool.

At the age of 80, Carlos Marcello is free on parole. But the crime group that he headed in New Orleans for 35 years is in tatters.

"The all-powerful Godfather is gone, and so is his organization," said Rafael C. Goyenche, the managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans, a civic crime-monitoring agency.

New Orleans, with a 100-year history of organized crime gangs, had the oldest Mafia tradition in the country. Mr. Marcello, experts said, controlled the city's Mafia for 30 years until his conviction in 1983 for trying to bribe a Federal judge. After six and a half years in prison, and in poor health, he was paroled last year.

With about 12 members, Mr. Marcello headed the smallest Cosa Nostra family in the country and the organization disintegrated after his conviction. "He didn't make any new members; he didn't train anyone" Mr. Salerno explained. "He wanted to run everything himself."

Peter Marcello, a 28-year-old nephew of Mr. Marcello, had visions of resuscitating the family's underworld fortunes, investigators say. But in July Peter Marcello was arrested and indicted on Federal drug-trafficking charges.

For almost three decades in Kansas City, Mo., the River Quay, the fruit and vegetable market area near the Missouri River, was headquarters for one of the Midwest's oldest Mafia groups, the Civella family. Nicholas Civella presided over the family's gambling and loan-sharking activities until he died of natural causes in 1983.

Later, Roy H. Williams, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, testified that he was controlled for two decades by Mr. Civella, who forced him to arrange union pension-fund loans to members of the mob and their allies.

Mr. Civella's brother Carl, now 80, took over briefly as the head of the family before he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for participating in the Las Vegas skimming.

The F.B.I. says Carl Civella's son, Anthony, is the boss of a reorganized underworld family. "We have the remnants of the Civella organization still in business," said Frank J. Storey, special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Kansas City. "They are nowhere near as powerful as they were in Carl's time. We don't believe they have any influence or control over labor unions."

Anthony Civella operates out of restaurants and clubs in the North End. As another sign of changing times for the Mafia, the old Civella headquarters near the riverfront will be razed to make way for a shopping mall.
 
 
 
The West
In Splinters, With No 'Brain'




"All the muscle is out of them," Bob Morehouse, supervisor of California's Organized Crime Bureau, said of the Cosa Nostra here in Los Angeles and in Southern California.

Thomas R. Parker, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s office here, added: "They've been stripped of what they had for years. All that is left is a couple of splinter groups without a real brain or an organization."

Federal and state officials say the last known boss of the Southern California Mafia was Peter J. Milano, 64. Mr. Milano, according to investigators, took control of a small group in 1983 or 1984 and tried to revive the mob's fortunes in Southern California through narcotics and exacting street taxes, or tribute, from bookmakers and loan sharks. But two members recruited by Mr. Milano became Government informers, and in 1988 their undercover work led to the convictions of Mr. Milano, a brother, and six other men identified as the last functioning Mafia gang in Southern California.

"No one has replaced Milano," said Capt. Stuart J. Finck, the commander of the organized-crime intelligence division in the Los Angeles Police Department.

With the local Mafia apparently knocked out, Federal and state investigators said an increasing number of Cosa Nostra members from the East had been seen recently.
 
Open City of Las Vegas Is Closing




Since the mid-40's, Las Vegas has been an open city, a place where any Mafia family could operate and where there were no territorial rights.

But the Chicago Outfit's influence was paramount until the mid-1980's when the F.B.I. found records pinpointing how $2 million in casino winnings had been skimmed and split by Mafia leaders. The records helped convict a dozen mob chiefs and their top lieutenants in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

In 1986. Anthony Splotoro, the Outfit's main emissary in Las Vegas, was found beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. Law enforcement officials believe the killing resulted from mob feuds in Chicago and that the Outfit's power in Las Vegas ebbed further after Mr. Spilotoro's slaying.

Preston E. Hubbs, the Las Vegas Police Commander, said no member of the mob had succeeded Mr. Spilotoro, who oversaw Chicago interests in bookmaking, loan sharking and casino skimming. "We think we have pretty well knocked them out of the casinos," said Edward J. Jenkins, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Las Vegas bureau.

Organized crime's roots in Las Vegas go back to the 1940's, when Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, a New York-based gangster, operated from a casino wing with secret doors and escape tunnels. That vestige of Mafia history will soon vanish. The wing, now part of the Flamingo Hilton Hotel, is to be demolished and replaced with a swimming pool.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Raymond J. Patriarca Jr., New England - New indictment asserts that he became boss after his father died in 1984. He is to be tried on racketeering indictments. Prosecutors say they obtained evidence by taping family meetings.; Anthony Accardo, Chicago - The authorities say the former boss frequently leaves his retirement home in California to offer advice to inexperienced Chicago-area Mafia leaders, whose predecessors are serving prison sentences.; Nicholas Civella, Kansas City - The longtime boss died of natural causes in 1983. In 1986, his brother and successor, Carl, was convicted of racketeering. Prosecutors presented evidence of skimming from Las Vegas casinos and of illegal loans obtained from the teamsters union.; Peter J. Milano, Southern California - He tried to stregthen his organization by recruiting young members, two of whom became government informers. Information they provided helped convict him, eliminating a Los Angeles Mafia group.; John M. Riggi, New Jersey - The last known boss of the DeCalvacante crime family in New Jersey, he was convicted of racketeering in June and faces a maximum of 70 years in prison. Officials say his weakened family is probably ripe for a takeover by a stronger New York family. (Associated Press); Nicodemo Scarfo,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey - The authorities attribute the decline of the Bruno-Scarfo gang largely to his ruthlessness and mismanagement. He and most of his top confederates were convicted of racketeering in 1988. He is serving a 69-year prison term. (From "The Plumber") (pg. B7)