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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
When people enter the federal government’s Witness Protection Program, they’re supposed to hide, right?
1. WISEGUY: Henry Hill, a member of New York’s Lucchese crime family and participant in the $5.8 million Lufthansa heist from New York’s Kennedy Airport in 1978, the largest cash theft in U.S. history.
IN THE PROGRAM: The Witness Protection program relocated him to Redmond, Washington, in 1980, and Hill, who’s changed his name to Martin Lewis, was supposed to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. He wasn’t very good at either -in 1985 he and writer Nicholas Pileggi turned his mob exploits into the bestselling book Wiseguy, which became the hit move Goodfellas.
WHAT HAPPENED: When the book became a bestseller, “Martin Lewis” couldn’t resist telling friends and neighbors who he really was. Even worse, he reverted to his life of crime. Since 1980 Hill has racked up a string of arrests for crimes ranging from drunk driving to burglary and assault. In 1987 he tried to sell a pound of cocaine to two undercover Drug Enforcement officers, which got him thrown out of the Witness Protection Program for good.
“Henry couldn’t go straight,” says Deputy Marshal Bud McPherson. “He loved being a wiseguy. He didn’t want to be anything else.”
2. WISEGUY: Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, mafia hit man and acting head of the Los Angeles mob. When he entered the Witness Protection program in 1977, Fratianno was the highest-ranking mobster ever to turn informer.
IN THE PROGRAM: Fratianno had another claim to fame: he is also the highest-paid witness in the history of the program. Between 1977 and 1987, he managed to get the feds to pay for his auto insurance, gas, telephone bills, real-estate taxes, monthly check to his mother-in-law, and his wife’s facelift and breast implants.
WHAT HAPPENED: The Justice Department feared the payments made the program look “like a pension fund for aging mobsters,” so he was thrown out of the program in 1987. But by that time, Fratianno had already soaked U.S. taxpayers for an estimated $951,326. “He was an expert at manipulating the system,” McPherson said. Fratianno died in 1993.
3. WISEGUY: James Cardinali, a five-time murderer who testified against Gambino crime boss John Gotti at his 1987 murder trial. Gotti, nicknamed the “Teflon Don,” beat the rap, but Cardinali still got to enter the Witness Protection Program after serving a reduced sentence for his own crimes. After his release, federal marshals gave him a new identity and relocated him to Oklahoma.
IN THE PROGRAM: Witnesses who get new identities aren’t supposed to tell anyone who they really are, and when Cardinali slipped up and told his girlfriend in 1989, the program put him on a bus to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told him to get lost.
more …
It was the biggest mob bust in New York history, but reporters covering the incident seemed to be more interested in the colorful wacky nicknames on the rap sheets. Many believed that these old-school Mafia empires were obsolete in the Facebook era, but clearly the criminal underworld has found away to co-exist with Silicon Alley. They’ve just had to learn to do better at keeping their presence a secret, although there’s still the occasional slip-up such as the ridiculously obvious nicknames of the sort you’d expect to hear on a Fat Tony-centric episode of The Simpsons.
Here’s a tip: if you don’t want to attract attention to yourself, maybe don’t have all your friends refer to you as “Vinnie Bag-of-Corpses.”
As with all momentous events – and quite a few non-momentous ones – there’s an infographic, breaking down the arrests, the charges, the crime family hierarchies, and of course those awesome nicknames!
Photo: Mucha Man @ Forumosa forum
What did the Corleone family do after they got tired from all that mafia stuff? Well, they moved to Taiwan and opened a credit service!
