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Former mob rat Michael ‘Cookie’ D’Urso writes open letter to the Mafia

Wanna whack me? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Genovese turncoat Michael “Cookie” D’Urso, who is now using a different identity after testifying against the mob, wrote an open letter to his former colleagues, warning them against trying to take revenge.

D’Urso, 49, apparently heard that members of the Genovese family were discussing his new name and whereabouts at an Upper East Side steakhouse.

“I am ready, able and willing to defend my family and myself,” D’Urso threatens in the letter, first obtained by Gang Land News. “A bat and a knife won’t help you so you will have to use a gun.”

D’Urso was an up-and-coming gangster when, in 1994, he survived a bullet to the head over a gambling debt during a predawn card game in a Williamsburg social club. The hit also killed a beloved cousin, but the mob family wouldn’t allow D’Urso to seek retribution, an episode he alludes to in the letter.

He says the acting boss of the Genoveses, Frank “Farby” Serpico, threatened to assassinate him, which drove D’Urso to begin wearing a wire in 1998.

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From the big house to the ‘burbs: Scottsdale ‘Mafia’ family stars in reality show

Check out Monique Griego’s full story on the Cantarella family’s transition from a life of crime to life in the Sonoran Desert TONIGHT on 12 News at 10.

It’s a lifestyle most of us only know about from the movies: The Mafia life.

“It was a great life — there wasn’t anything we couldn’t have,” said Richard Cantarella.

As a former mobster with the Bonanno crime family, Cantarella and his son Paul grew up in the Mafia. But in 2002, their world came crashing down when the FBI came knocking.

“I got arrested in 2002 and I wound up cooperating with the government,” Cantarella told 12 News.

Cantarella faced life in prison for his alleged ties to a string of Mafia hits and Paul was looking at 20 years for racketeering.

Both decided to cooperate with Paul heading into witness protection as his father waited in prison.

“I chose to be loyal to my family rather than my boss,”

Back then, he never imagined he and his wife Lauretta would end up out west, far away from New York.

“My son picked the state. He flew here, found a home and loved it,” Cantarella said.

In 2004, Paul left witness protection for sunny Scottsdale.

“It was like paradise to me,” said Paul, “The palm trees and your pool was open all year.”

Cantarella later followed, leaving the big house for the Phoenix suburbs.

“You know what I notice out here? There’s a lot of money out here,” Cantarella said. “I’ve never seen so many Bentleys, Maseratis … This would actually be a haven for the Mafia.”

Once in Arizona, the Cantarellas traded a life of crime for a legit family business.

Their Valley car washes are also now serving as the backdrop for the family’s latest endeavor: Unprotected, a reality show on the Oxygen network.

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.