Tag Archives: organized crime legal news

Suspended Milwaukee lawyer faces FBI investigation into alleged international fraud scheme

, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The FBI is investigating a suspected international fraud scheme said to involve a suspended Milwaukee lawyer, $16.2 million from China, an English bank, a man who claims to be an English solicitor and … John Hancock’s signature.

At the center of the probe is veteran Milwaukee lawyer Michael Krill, whose law license was suspended by the state Supreme Court on Wednesday. The court employed a rarely used rule that allows emergency temporary suspensions before the Office of Lawyer Regulation files a formal complaint.

“Krill’s repeated acts of dishonesty, delay and contempt for the judicial process” makes his “continued practice of law … a threat to the public and the administration of justice,” Karl Wyler, an OLR investigator, wrote in a June affidavit urging the immediate suspension.

The FBI and the Racine County Sheriff’s Office are also investigating the 59-year-old attorney. The Racine investigation centers around $300,000 belonging to ex-clients that Krill received but has not turned over despite a court order that he do so.  Since May, Krill has been fined $500 a day for contempt for failing to turn the money over to the clients’ new lawyers, court records show.

Krill was ordered Monday to come up with about $350,000 — the $300,000 in client funds plus the accrued daily contempt fine — in two weeks or spend 30 days in jail.  Krill has repeatedly promised in court to produce the money in 14 days — and he repeated that pledge Monday during a brief hearing before Racine County Circuit Judge David Paulson.

Full Read – http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2017/08/28/suspended-milwaukee-lawyer-faces-fbi-investigation-into-alleged-international-fraud-scheme/595890001/

No Italy ‘baby bonus’ for Mafia boss’s daughter Lucia Riina

Sicilian authorities have refused to pay Italy’s “baby bonus” to the youngest daughter of jailed Mafia boss Toto Riina, 36-year-old Lucia.

A painter, Lucia lives in Corleone and gave birth earlier this month.

Salvatore “Toto” Riina, former boss of the notorious Cosa Nostra, was jailed in 1993 and now has terminal cancer.

Italy’s top court ruled this month that he had a right to “die with dignity” under house arrest but there were protests and he may not be let out.

A parole board will have to decide in the northern city of Bologna, where 86-year-old Riina is in jail for his role in dozens of Cosa Nostra murders.

Two anti-Mafia judges – Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – were killed in 1992, in Riina’s “war against the state”.

Read Full – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40326094

Mafia enforcer back behind bars after road rage attack

A gangster for the New Jersey crime family that inspired The Sopranos has pleaded guilty to violating his parole after he was filmed engaging in a road rage attack.

Ex-con Jerry Balzano, a reputed enforcer for the DeCavalcante crime family, was on supervised release after pleading guilty to a racketeering conspiracy in 2011 when he lost his cool at another driver.

Vision from the victim’s dashboard camera shows Balzano brake-check him before he gets out of his car and hurls abuse.

“You want to play f—ing games, you little c—?” Balzano can be heard yelling at the driver.

“You want to cut me off like a tough guy?”

The victim’s wife can be heard phoning police as the 54-year-old alleged gangster pummels her husband.

“Someone is hitting my husband,” she screams. “Oh my gosh.”

Balzano continues to beat the man until another motorist pulls over, manages to calm him down and leads him back to his car.

He then speeds away, despite not having a driver’s licence.

The alleged Mafioso is due to front court again on May 16 and faces up to two years in jail for the road rage attack, according to the New York Post.
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/world/2017/04/11/14/39/mafia-enforcer-back-behind-bars-after-road-rage-attack#1FAHlspQLiv4Te2h.99

New York mafia family hit by wave of arrests

Ten members of a New York mafia family were arrested Tuesday on charges including attempted murder and extortion, prosecutors said, the latest blow against the area’s organized crime syndicates.

All of the suspects are believed to belong to the Bonanno family, one of five major Italian-American mob organizations in the northeastern United States – along with the Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families.

The charges stem from alleged crimes committed over a nearly 20-year span, beginning in 1998. They centered in New York’s bayside Howard Beach neighborhood, close to the John F. Kennedy International Airport, and were the result of a long-term investigation that included wiretaps, cooperating witnesses and surveillance.

Ronald “Ronnie G.” Giallanzo, an acting captain in the Bonanno family, was the ringleader of a loansharking operation that, at one point, reached $3 million in “extortionate loans,” according to Bridget Rohde, acting federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York.

“Even while incarcerated, Giallanzo kept watch over his illicit loansharking book, directing his associates to commit acts of violence to ensure that the customers paid the exorbitant weekly interest rate,” a statement read.

Prosecutors gave an example of one customer who owed Giallanzo $250,000 and had been missing the required weekly interest payments. Giallanzo and an unnamed associated allegedly beat the man until he soiled himself, while screaming and demanding the money.

Another defendant, Evan “The Jew” Greenberg, had boasted about grabbing a delinquent customer by the ankles, and knocking the victim to the ground with his head hitting the concrete, prosecutors said.

The indictment unsealed Tuesday also accused Giallanzo of a plot to murder a person who had robbed his associates.

The dispute lasted months, and saw Giallanzo’s crew and their target trading gunfire on several occasions in the streets of Howard Beach.

The defendants were estimated to have earned more than $26 million from crimes including illegal gambling, robbery and extortion, prosecutors said.

Howard Beach is home to a large Italian-American community and is sometimes considered a stronghold of the New York mafia.

Last week, the 23-year-old namesake grandson of New York mobster John Gotti was arrested and charged with violent crimes, including a bank holdup. Six others were also indicted and arrested in the mafia crackdown.

And in August, authorities arrested 46 alleged mobsters up and down the US East Coast, accusing them of orchestrating a vast criminal enterprise that stretched from Massachusetts to Florida.

Russian mafia boss still at large after FBI wiretap at Trump Tower

There, indeed, was an FBI wiretap involving Russians at Trump Tower.

But it was not placed at the behest of Barack Obama and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016. For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.

The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” Tokhtakhounov was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.

Five months after the April 2013 indictment and after Interpol issued a “red notice” for Tokhtakhounov, the fugitive appeared near Donald Trump in the VIP section of the Moscow Miss Universe pageant. Trump had sold the Russian rights for Miss Universe to a billionaire Russian shopping mall developer.

“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the FBI agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News. “He is prominent, he has extremely good connections in the business world as well as the criminal world, overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, other countries.”

Gaeta, who ran the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit of the FBI’s New York office told ABC News at the time that federal agents were closely tracking Tokhtakhounov, whose Russian ring was suspected of moving more than $50 million in illegal money into the United States.

“Because of his status, we have kept tabs on is activities, and particularly as his activities truly enter New York city,” Gaeta said. “Their money was ultimately laundered from Russia, Ukraine and other locations through Cyprus banks and shell companies based in Cyprus, and then ultimately here to the United States.”

The FBI investigation did not implicate Trump. But Trump Tower was under close watch. Some of the Russian mafia figures worked out of the 63rd floor unit in the iconic skyscraper –- just three floors below Trump’s penthouse residence — running what prosecutors called an “international money laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring.”

The Trump building was home to one of the top men in the alleged ring, Vadim Trincher who pleaded guilty to racketeering and received a five-year prison term. He is due to be released in July.

“Everything was moving in and out of there,” said former FBI official Rich Frankel, now an ABC News consultant.

Read Full – http://abcnews.go.com/US/story-fbi-wiretap-russians-trump-tower/story?id=46266198