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Cocaine worth £50m washes up on Norfolk beaches

Loss of the drugs would be ‘major blow’ to criminals, says crime agency

Cocaine with a street value of £50m has washed up on two Norfolk beaches.

Around 360kg of the drug was found on Hopton beach, near Great Yarmoth, and across another section of the coast near Caister, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.

A member of the public contacted Norfolk Police after finding several different coloured holdalls containing packages of cocaine.

The crime agency said the loss of the drugs would be a “major blow” to the criminals involved.

Matthew Rivers, from the NCA’s border investigation team, said: “We are now working with Border Force, the Coastguard Agency and Norfolk Police to try and establish how the bags ended up where they did, however it is extremely unlikely that this was their intended destination.

“This is obviously a substantial seizure of class A drugs, and its loss will represent a major blow to the organised criminals involved.”

Superintendent Dave Buckley, from Norfolk Constabulary, said: “We are assisting the National Crime Agency with their searches and whilst we believe we have recovered all the packages, should any member of the public find one they are urged to contact Norfolk Constabulary immediately on 101.

“We will have extra officers in the area to monitor the situation.”

Sourced From – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cocaine-drugs-50-million-washed-up-beach-norfolk-great-yarmouth-hopton-a7574486.html

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Mafia queen pleads guilty to smuggling cocaine through Queens restaurant

The wife of a mob-connected Queens restaurant owner who trafficked drugs admitted on Monday to pushing the narcotics through the eatery’s basement.

Eleonora Gigliotti pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court to the top charge of conspiracy to import cocaine.

She faces a minimum mandatory sentence of five years in prison and also agreed to pay a $1.625 million forfeiture judgement.

Judge Raymond Dearie could sentence Gigliotti to the maximum of 171/2 years behind bars.

Gigliotti, 56, was slated to go to trial at the end of March for smuggling more than 110 pounds of cocaine from Costa Rica in shipments of cassava to her family’s restaurant, Cucino a Modo Mio, in Corona.

If Gigliotti had been convicted at trial, she could have faced life in prison, authorities said.

The Gigliotti family allegedly has ties to the Genovese mob family and served as a connection to the ’Ndrangheta crime group in Italy.

Prosecutors said in 2014 that Gigliotti had traveled to Costa Rica with more than $360,000 in cash that she delivered to cocaine dealers.

Gigliotti also agreed to forfeit the property seized, including $124,874 in cash, seven handguns recovered from the business, ammunition, an automated money counter and brass knuckles, according to a law enforcement source.

Her husband, Gregorio, 60, and 36-year-old son, Angelo, were convicted on drug and guns charges after a jury trial last July.

They face mandatory minimums of 15 and 20 years behind bars, respectively.

At the trial, Dearie concluded that lawyers for Gregorio Gigliotti and his son had tried to stack the jury with women by using all their preemptory challenges to exclude men.

After a panel of 10 women and two men was selected, federal prosecutors Margaret Gandy and Keith Edelman complained that the defense had discriminated against men.

Dearie later ruled that after reviewing the transcript of jury selection, he found “a pattern of attempting to exclude men” and was going to restore two men back on the jury.

At the time, defense lawyers Elizabeth Macedonio and Alan Futerfas had insisted that there was no bias against men — explaining that some of the challenges were based on “gut” feelings.

It didn’t work — and jurors found both men guilty on July 22 after deliberating for just three hours.

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US to turn drug cartel founder over to Mexico

MEXICO CITY –  The U.S. Embassy in Mexico says Sinaloa cartel co-founder Hector “El Guero” Palma will be turned over to Mexican authorities after his release from a U.S. prison.

The U.S. bureau of prisons says Palma will be released Saturday. Palma served five years in a Mexican prison before being extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to 16 years for transporting 50 kilograms of cocaine.

It is unclear whether Palma still faces any charges in Mexico.

Attorney General Arely Gomez says prosecutors are looking through files for any remaining criminal cases. She said that in some cases the statute of limitations has expired.

Palma was arrested June 23, 1995 in western Mexico.

The embassy said Thursday that “the United States and Mexico enjoy strong cooperation in security.”

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Brother of Montreal Mafia leader arrested with large quantity of cocaine in Arizona

PAUL CHERRY, MONTREAL GAZETTE

A specially trained German shepherd in Arizona might be named Amigo but he is no friend to a Montrealer recently arrested with a large quantity of cocaine.

The brother of an influential leader in the Mafia in Montreal was recently arrested in Arizona after the specially trained police dog sniffed out 62 kilograms of cocaine in the vehicle he was riding in.

Girolamo Del Balso is the younger brother of Francesco, 45, a Mafia leader who was one of six men who took control of the Mafia in Montreal — roughly between 2003 and 2006 — after Vito Rizzuto was arrested and later jailed in the U.S. for having taking part in the U.S. for being part of a conspiracy to murder three mobsters in Brooklyn in 1981.

Francesco (Chit) Del Balso was the more aggressive of the six men on the committee and his penchant for talking on a cell phone provided police with tons of evidence in Project Colisée, a major investigation into the Mafia in Montreal that produced dozens of arrests in 2006. One man involved with the Rizzuto organization later sarcastically referred to Francesco Del Balso, in court, as “the CEO of Bell” for how chatty he was found to be on police wiretaps. For example, a chilling recording of him warning an off-island contractor that he shouldn’t work in Montreal raised eyebrows when it was played during the Charbonneau Commission. His actual nickname, “Chit,” is an apparent reference to Del Balso’s fondness for gambling. While he was investigated in Colisée he was frequently seen at the Montreal Casino and police believed he was laundering his drug trafficking profits there.

According to a statement issued by the Arizona Police Department on Facebook, Girolamo Del Balso, 41, was arrested on Feb. 17 after a state trooper pulled over his vehicle for a moving violation.

“Due to suspicious circumstances, the trooper requested the assistance of” a specially trained police dog named Amigo, the police noted in the statement. “A resulting search of the vehicle yielded approximately 62 kilograms of cocaine destined for Canada. The cocaine has a street value of $3.7 million Canadian dollars and $1.5 million United States dollars.”

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Girolamo Del Balso remains detained in the case in Arizona.

He also was arrested in Project Colisée, in 2008, in a second part of the investigation. He later admitted to being part of an illegal gaming house the Mafia had set up in an office building in St-Léonard and was sentenced to pay a $10,000 in 2012. In December, he pleaded guilty at the Montreal courthouse to threatening someone and was sentenced to pay a $750 fine.

News of the arrest in Arizona comes just a few weeks after Francesco Del Balso had conditions imposed, by the Parole Board of Canada, on his statutory release after having reached the two-thirds mark of the 11-year sentence he was left with in Project Colisée when he pleaded guilty to several charges in 2008. In a written summary of a decision made on Feb. 2, the parole board describes him as a “high-ranking member of (the Mafia in Montreal).”

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While Del Balso obviously took orders from older members of the six member committee, in particular Vito Rizzuto’s father, Nicolo, he had considerable decision-making abilities on his own and controlled a satellite organization based out of a café in Laval.