From: News and Views | Crime
File |
Thursday, December 16, 1999
'Soprano' Tapes Sing
Mob snitch
cripples Jersey crime family
By GREG SMITH
Daily
News Staff Writer
 hey are the "Soprano" tapes — hours of video and audio
tapes revealing the inner workings of a New Jersey-based crime
family that sees itself as the inspiration for one of TV's hottest
shows.
The recordings were key in bagging 41 reputed mobsters in a
massive organized crime bust earlier this month, but they also give
a rare glimpse into what the alleged criminal class likes to watch
on television.
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| Members
of the reputed DeCavalcante crime family believe they have a
lot in common with the characters in 'The Sopranos, above.
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In this case, fact seems to follow fiction.
"Hey, what's this f---ing thing, 'Sopranos'?" asks Joseph (Tin
Ear) Sclafani, a reputed mob soldier with a hearing aid as he waits
in a car March 3 for a sitdown with another mob family.
"Is that supposed to be us?"
"You're in there," responds reputed capo Anthony Rotondo, as both
men erupt in laughter before going on to point out several
characters on the show they believe were taken whole-cloth from
their real-life crime family.
"Every show you watch, more and more you pick up somebody,"
Rotondo says.
"One week it was Corky. One week it was, well, from the beginning
it was ... Albert G," he says, comparing fictional mobsters to
apparent real ones.
Sclafani and Rotondo might not have laughed so loud had they
known another companion, identified only as Ralphie, was wearing an
FBI recording device.
Because of Ralphie's work as an informant, Rotondo, Sclafani and
39 other members and associates of the DeCavalcante crime family
were charged Dec. 2 in four real-life racketeering indictments.
On the HBO show "The Sopranos," Anthony Soprano, an aging Jersey
mob capo with a paunch, suffers panic attacks because of the
pressures of his work.
He sees a shrink, confronts the price of betrayal, considers
whether it's all worthwhile. He hangs out in a topless bar called Ba
Da Bing! with his cronies, who are all in construction or carting
businesses. On the "Soprano" tapes, the alleged capos are all
middle-aged guys with paunches who spend hours betraying one another
and discussing the intricacies of how to bury a body.
They hang out in a restaurant called Sacco's, and all claim
legitimate jobs in construction — except at least one, who runs a
casino boat.
They love the HBO show — "great acting," Rotondo comments — and
point out one similarity to their lives after another, such as a TV
mobster who dies of cancer just as one did in real life.
But the feds are quick to say that these tapes are not fiction,
and they allege that people actually ended up dead.
The most jarring recordings concern the life and death of Joseph
(Joey O) Masella, a 49-year-old bookie who owed everybody — the
DeCavalcantes, the Colombos, the Gambinos.
Masella borrowed hundreds of thousands from the three mob
families, hoping to hit it big as a bookie, according to the tapes.
He failed.
"This guy is breaking my b---s," Masella told Ralphie in the
summer of 1998, referring to one of his any mob pursuers. "All I
need is just three thousand. He's calling me, and calling me and
calling."
That June, Masella approached acting DeCavalcante boss Vincent
Palermo, claiming he simply could not pay his debts. "By all rights,
by all the rules, I have to kill you," Palermo replied, according to
court testimony.
One afternoon, Masella got a call from Steve, an alleged debtor.
Steve was going to hand Masella $10,000 in cash, which Masella would
immediately turn over to his creditors.
But Steve was really Westley Paloscio, Masella's bookmaking
partner, who masked his voice, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Barton
alleged in court last week.
Paloscio told Masella to meet Steve at the Marine Park Golf
Course parking lot in Brooklyn, prosecutors alleged.
Masella pulled into the dark lot around 9:30 p.m.
When a red two-door sedan pulled up, Masella bounded forth to
meet Steve.. He saw a man with a mustache and dark hair at the
wheel, and then several flashes from a gun.
Motorists rushed to the scene as the red car sped away. Masella
was alive, his body riddled with bullets. He described Steve and his
car and gave up Paloscio's beeper number. He died four hours later.
Paloscio learned Masella survived for a while, and he worried that
the botched hit could result in his death.
"Somebody's going to get shot," Paloscio told Ralphie.
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