Riots Reveal Organized Crime Power in Brazil

Last weekend, Brazilians living in the greater Sao Paulo metropolitan area witnessed one of the country's largest prison riots in the past five years, organized and orchestrated by Sao Paulo's largest criminal faction, the First Capital Command (PCC in Portuguese).

When Sao Paulo state authorities transferred some 756 PCC leaders, the PCC criminal enterprise, led by Willians Herbas Camacho (a.k.a. Marcola), implemented its plan to start riots in dozens of prisons in Sao Paulo and around the country. They took advantage of the unusually lax security environment over the weekend when some 10,000 prisoners were given a day pass to visit families on the outside for Mother's Day, and thousands more civilians entered prisons to visit inmates on the inside.

As one prison after another fell under the control of rioting inmates, the hostage count rocketed into the hundreds. Meanwhile, organized attacks on police stations around Sao Paulo kept security forces busy defending themselves. At the same time, masked gunmen commandeered city buses, ordering them evacuated before burning them to the ground.

The weekend's total included over 250 separate attacks on police stations, stores, and other establishments. There were 115 people killed, including 32 policemen and prison guards and 71 gang members. Another 49 people were injured. Some 215 hostages were taken in 73 prison riots that occurred in prisons across Sao Paulo, Parana, Matto Grosso do Sul, Brasilia, and Bahia, according to Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Over 80 public transport buses were burned and one metro station was attacked, leaving over five million people without public transport. On 15 May, as millions of people fled home in the early afternoon, Sao Paulo became a city of gridlock spanning 203 kilometers of roadways.

Over the weekend, as the violence raged on, Brazilian Justice Minister Marcio Thomas Bastos offered the service of 4,000 soldiers, part of a National Force trained to help contain the security problems in Brazilian states. But Sao Paulo Governor Claudio Lembo, filling in for presidential candidate Geraldo Alckmin, refused to accept federal help. Bastos made the trip from Brasilia to Sao Paulo to again offer federal assistance during a close-door meeting on Monday, 15 May. But again it was refused.

By 16 May, as quickly as the violence had started, it ended, and most prisons were back in the control of state authorities, and policemen were no longer the target of random attacks. The Sao Paulo daily newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, reported on 16 May that the state government had reached an agreement with the PCC. Government officials continue to deny that claim, but it is possible such negotiations were a last-resort option for state officials clearly caught off guard by a highly organized criminal network, one many believed had been dismantled years ago.
Brazilian organized crime The PCC began to take shape in 1993, when prisoners incarcerated in Taubate state prison in Sao Paulo organized themselves to fight against deplorable living conditions and more rights within the prison system. Over the past 13 years, this organization has grown into one of the country's most powerful prison criminal networks, controlling activity within dozens of prisons in Sao Paulo and around the country, as well as important sales points and transport routes for drugs and guns flowing into Brazil from source countries such as Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, and Suriname.

The PCC became more active outside prisons in 1999, when Rio's top criminal organization - the Red Command (CV in Portuguese) - formed an alliance with PCC members who lived in Heliopolis, a shantytown located in the southeastern zone of Sao Paulo, according to a Rio de Janeiro Federal Police officer who asked to remain anonymous. Through this alliance, the CV sought to shift some of its drug trafficking activities from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. In Rio, CV leaders had been constantly harassed by police who exacted an extortion tax for allowing favelas (shantytowns) to be used as drug sales centers and contraband transshipment points. Additionally, the PCC in 1999 was a large criminal organization with more manpower than economic activity. Its alliance with the CV increased earnings for the PCC in Sao Paulo, while opening a new pool of man power for the CV to defend its turf from rival gangs in Rio de Janeiro.

Together, the two gangs control the drug trade in Brazil's two largest cities. They operate gun smuggling routes out of Paraguay and purchase weapons from corrupt policemen and military soldiers in Sao Paulo and Rio. High-level members of these gangs, especially the CV, continue to conduct a weapons-for-cocaine barter with members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) based in the Colombian Amazon.

As recently as 30 April, three Colombians opened fire on a Brazilian patrol on the Rio Negro, a branch of the Amazon river that begins in an area of the Colombian Amazon reportedly controlled by the FARC. Brazilian authorities claim that the rifles were stamped with the Brazilian military coat of arms. The men were followed to the Colombian city of San Felipe, where their arms were confiscated. Brazilian Federal Police investigators told ISN Security Watch that they believe the arms were part of a cache of weapons to be traded for cocaine that traffickers would transport to Sao Paulo and Rio.

Red Command leader Fernandinho Beira-Mar is considered to have been one of the first Brazilian criminals to trade weapons for cocaine with the FARC. He was arrested by Colombian authorities in April 2001 and immediately extradited to Brazil. Yet the recent incident on the Brazilian-Colombian border in the Amazon indicates that five years later, this criminal exchange program still continues to supply the CV and the PCC with pure, Colombian cocaine.

Brazilian organized crime is just as powerful within the prison system as it is on the outside. And as the battle continues to dismantle these criminal networks, the occasional mega-rebellion reminds Brazilian authorities and civilians that the security sector here has a long way to go before it has any significant control over organized crime. These rebellions also highlight the superior communication networks operated by Brazilian organized crime.
Communication is fundamental When Fernandinho Beira-Mar was transferred from his prison cell in Rio de Janeiro after he orchestrated a prison riot there in September 2002 to mask the assassination of rival gang leaders, authorities found a number of luxury items including silk pajamas. But what surprised them more was the number of abandoned cell phones. Reports from Rio de Janeiro daily, O Globo, claim that Beira-Mar used up to a dozen cell phones to communicate with lieutenants and other subordinates in his black market network of guns and drugs shipments and sales.

In a similar fashion, leaders of the PCC use cell phones to communicate with one another between prisons and between prisoners and gang members on the outside. Both the Civil Police and the Federal Police operate listening posts, which enable security officials to piece together actionable intelligence on plans for rebellions and other gang operations. However, the use of two-way radios has made that task much more difficult.

In both Rio and Sao Paulo, two-way radios are used by criminals to relay messages to other incarcerated gang members and members on the outside. In some cases, one prisoner calls via cell a subordinate on the outside who uses a two-way radio to transmit the message to a third individual who then uses another cell phone to pass along the message to its recipient in another prison, reports O Globo. Each node on the communications chain may use any number of cell phones or two-way radios, making tracking the signals very difficult.

Attempts to block cell phone signals in Rio and Sao Paulo have been ineffective.

In the middle of the Mother's Day weekend riots, requests to shut down cell phone towers used by criminals to relay signals were presented to Brazil's telecommunications regulatory body when Marco Antonio Desgualdo, the head of the Sao Paulo state Civil Police, met with this body, called Anatel, on 15 May. The Folha de Sao Paulo reported that after the meeting Desgualdo announced that authorities would not be able to shut down cell towers without the acquiescence of telecommunications companies.

These same companies - Vivo, Tim, Telefonica, Embratel, and Nextel - complain that shutting down the towers would mean an unacceptable disruption of service for their law-abiding clients. Nothing short of a court order would shut down the towers, a legal instrument that takes too long to obtain.

In some prison systems, cell phone signal blockers are used, but they are quickly rendered obsolete by the rapid pace of technological advancement in cell phone systems.

The battle between Sao Paulo authorities and the cell phone companies to shut down towers in the event of security needs began in February 2001, when PCC members used cell phones to orchestrate simultaneous riots in 29 prisons across Sao Paulo. Security officials failed to win the battle then, too, but no one knew that such decisions five years ago would eventually facilitate the most violent uprising of Brazilian organized crime in years.
Corruption and politics Even as blocking cell signals and other methods to impede communication between criminals evolves into what may become a viable solution, many believe that such time is wasted on treating a problem that is not central to the real reason why the PCC was able to orchestrate such a widespread reign of disorder and rebellion. Corruption and politics, two of the usual suspects behind systemic dysfunction in democracies, are at the center of Brazil's security problems.

Bribes paid to security officials at all levels keep leaders of the PCC and the CV well informed of official planning. When authorities planned to move over 700 of the PCC leaders to a more secure prison environment to avoid what they learned was a planned Mother's Day rebellion, the PCC reacted by launching its rebellion two days early, disrupting the prisoner transport and a host of other activities planned to prevent the rebellion.

Low salaries exacerbate corruption because policemen and some lower-ranking members of the military are more likely to sell weapons from poorly organized stock piles to make ends meet. Over 70 per cent of the weapons used by Brazilian organized crime were made in Brazil. Many of them are sold to Paraguay where they enter the black market before returning to Brazil. Yet a significant amount are sold to criminals directly from stockpiles of seized weapons.

When budgets must be prepared, politics dictate who gets what slice of the pie. From 2004 to 2005, the Brazilian federal government reduced resources for the country's Penitentiary Fund by 37 per cent. This fund oversees the overall improvement and maintenance of Brazil's prison system. Meanwhile, the government of Sao Paulo state diverted from public security spending some US$81.3 million in the last five years. It was a decision in the reduction of security spending at the Sao Paulo state level that was likely made after the 2001 prison riots in that state.

Commenting on the event, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva said it was a demonstration of the power of organized crime in Brazil. His comments underline the fact that Brazilian organized crime is a force that has grown to threaten Brazilian cities as well as the nation. With links to organized crime in Paraguay and Suriname, and a thriving barter system with Colombia's FARC soldiers, the PCC and CV may soon become internationally known as a criminal network that has grown too big for Brazil's security system to handle.

Sam Logan (http://www.samuellogan.com) is an investigative journalist who has reported on security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism, and black markets in Latin America since 1999. He is currently completing his work on Nice Guys Die First, a forthcoming non-fiction narrative about organized crime in Brazil.

Protests underscore Bulgarians' fear of Roma, organized crime

Houses set ablaze; far right activists and football hooligans chanting racist slogans; vigilantes arming themselves with swords, knives, and clubs; riot police charging through normally peaceful streets.

Last week’s ethnically-charged protests and riots in Bulgaria presented a series of grim images to the world. The country, which rarely makes waves internationally these days, even on the sports pages, is suddenly in the headlines, and it is not a pretty sight.

The events, which started with the killing of a teenager on Sept. 23, are widely seen as the worst outbreak of ethnic tension in Bulgaria since the end of Communism in 1990. The death of Angel Petrov, run down by a van in what many claim was a killing ordered by a Roma underworld boss, sparked protests and riots that have led to several hundred arrests. As gangs of youths clad in Bulgarian flags took to the streets shouting anti-Rom and anti-Turk slogans, police have protected mosques and Roma neighborhoods. Gendarmes in riot gear have been gathering at major intersections in Sofia every evening.

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Mr. Petrov’s death has been widely blamed on associates of Kiril Rashkov, a Roma clan leader from the same village, Katunitsa, near the central Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. Mr. Rashkov, the self-styled “Tsar [King] Kiro” has been linked to a range of underworld activities. He was convicted of illegal transactions during the communist period and is under investigation for tax evasion and bootlegging. Locals also accuse him of extortion and illegal appropriation of land. Several of Rashkov’s properties in Katunitsa were torched on Saturday night as villagers vented long-held grudges against the alleged kingpin.

The subsequent incidents have caught the attention of Bulgarians, who have been spared the ethnic conflict that tore apart other parts of the Balkans in the 1990s. Though, a particularly unpleasant government campaign against the country’s Turks took place in the 1980s, leading to (as was intended) many fleeing to Turkey.

Last week’s events should be put into perspective. The demonstrations gathered only a few thousand – a paltry 2,200 nationwide on Tuesday, according to local press reports, following a relatively small gathering of around 1,500 in Sofia the day before. The protestors are predominantly young, and the fringes of Sofia rally outside parliament on Monday evening had something of a party atmosphere, with people drinking and chatting, breaking off to chant “resign!” and jeer at police.

Since the Katunitsa blazes, there have been no major clashes, and the Roma vigilantes showing off blades on television have not been called into action to protect their homes.

More important are the issues in Bulgarian society that underlie the outpouring of anger: the exclusion and perceived impunity of both the Roma community and the power of criminal classes who have profited in the post-Communist era. In the popular imagination, Tsar Kiro is an avatar for what is wrong with Bulgaria, and Petrov a martyr for the ordinary Bulgarian, even though allegations are as yet unproven.

'Bulgarians are discriminated against'

Bulgarian Roma make up between 5 and 10 percent of the country’s population and are among Europe’s poorest and most marginalized people. Those who live in cities often inhabit gruesome ghettos, some of which are even walled off from roads and surrounding communities. Access to jobs tends to be very limited and attendance at school lower than the national average. On the other hand, relations in mixed-ethnicity villages and small towns are often very good, and differentiation between ethnic groups blurred.

But many – most – Bulgarians feel that the Roma have an easy ride. The latter are accused of not paying taxes or utility bills and of involvement in crime. Regular complaints are that the police will not press charges against Roma, and even that ticket collectors on public transport will give them a wide berth.

“If a Bulgarian kills a Gypsy, he’ll go to prison, but if a Gypsy kills a Bulgarian, he goes free,” Aleksandar Damov, a marketing manager leaning on his bicycle at Monday’s rally in Sofia told Christian Science Monitor. “Bulgarians are discriminated against. The police don’t do anything.”

Another demonstrator related that his grandmother had been attacked and left in the snowy street by Gypsies who stole her purse. “I’m not racist,” he said, “but I pay 120 leva a month for water and electricity bills, and pay taxes, while people who haven’t done a single day’s work get government money.”

These views are not the preserve of the far right and associated football hooligans, but are widely shared among the Bulgarian middle classes.

Wealth and crime

Bulgarians are also increasingly frustrated with successive governments’ inability to deal with organized crime and corruption. The European Union has suspended tranches of funding to Bulgaria over graft on several occasions. Stories about the wealthy’s ability to bribe their way out of trouble and buy political favors abound. It is alleged that local tax inspectors turned a blind eye to Rashkov’s expensive properties. Over recent years, a number of senior politicians have been accused of involvement in organized crime, from contract fixing to drug trafficking, forcing several out of office.

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who styles himself as a no-nonsense man of action in jeans, was elected on the strength of his promise to break the old, corrupt elites, but has himself been accused of being too close to business interests. Even the muscular “Big Brother Boyko” has proved unable to cut out the corruption, and protestors now see him as part of the problem.

“Enforcing the law against the rich and powerful has always been a problem in Bulgaria,” Daniel Smilov, of the Sofia-based think tank Centre for Liberal Strategies, told The Christian Science Monitor. “What is distinctive is probably the arrogance of the rich in living above the law, which in the case of Tsar Kiro and his associates became particularly visible. So, the unrest was in its core started as anti-oligarchic, but soon turned racist.”

Mr. Smilov is pessimistic for the future. As even many demonstrators agree, when the protests die down, Bulgaria will still be left with the challenges of race, corruption, and crime, with the background of a worsening European economy.

“Roma exclusion is grounded in the poverty of the minority and its poor education,” Smilov says. “The only conceivable solution to this problem is a massive, inevitably paternalistic, publicly funded effort to educate Roma children, and to increase employment in the Roma community. This effort must be sustained over a generation at least. No one is prepared to embark on such a policy. Moreover, the predominant economic fashion for fiscal discipline and rolling back the state excludes the possibility of such large scale public investment. So, the Roma problem will not be solved, and exclusion will most probably accelerate.”

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Organized Crime - The Mafia in America

Many people see two main divisions when they think of crime: ordinary criminals, such as burglars and thieves, and organized crime. Although organized crime may not impact your day-to-day life, it is still important to be aware of its existence and its impact on the world.

The Mafia is perhaps the most well-known organized crime group in the world today. The American Mafia, which is also known as Cosa Nostra, is an offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia, an Italian criminal society. The origins of the Mafia in Italy are believed to date back as far as the Middle Ages, when groups of wealthy families controlled Sicily through their social standing. The organized crime group known as the American Mafia first emerged at the end of the 1800s on the East Coast following a wave of immigration from Southern Italy.

The first Mafia groups in America started in New York City, where gangsters would threaten immigrants with extortion. By 1890, organized crime had spread to New Orleans, where the Police Superintendent was murdered, execution-style, allegedly by Mafia members. As organized crime grew on this side of the ocean, the criminal activities expanded from extortion to drugs and alcohol, robbery, kidnapping, murder, loan-sharking, and dozens of other nefarious crimes. In 1920, prohibition resulted in a significant increase in alcohol sales and related activities by the Mafia.

By the end of the 1920s, there were two main factions of the Mafia in the United States. This caused a major mafia war for the control of organized crime in New York City which lasted throughout the 1930s. It is during this time that Al Capone (or Scarface) led the Chicago Outfit, one of the main Mafia crime families, and amassed a fortune reportedly over a hundred million dollars. Like many Mafia kingpins, he was chased by the law for years, before he was finally caught for tax evasion.

By this time, the Mafia is believed to have infiltrated most of the major labor unions throughout the country, particularly the Teamsters Union. Little of the inner workings of the Mafia were known by outsiders, even law enforcement agencies, until 1963, when Joseph Valachi became the first Mafia member to provide a detailed look of the organization to the FBI. He exposed much of the secret structure of the mafia, including its ranking system and how Mafia members did business.

According to the FBI and other agencies, the American Mafia still has a significant level of control in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, among other major cities. Today, although the word 'Mafia' is used to refer to almost any forms of organized crime, it is believed that there are about 26 major American Mafia families throughout the United States, as well as offshoot groups and associates in many smaller cities. The Mafia and its reputation have been portrayed in movies, TV shows, books, and video games. It is believed that Cosa Nostra has is hand in many major areas of crime, including labor racketeering, gambling, corruption, drug trafficking, pornography, tax fraud, and even stock manipulation.

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New Forms of Organized Crime

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) to indicate that nearly $ 1 trillion, from criminal activities, circulating daily in the financial markets.

The UN, moreover, suggests a world market for illicit drugs more than the entire oil industry, moving a year more than $ 400 billion dollars.

This high volume of financial resources generated by organized crime to be hidden, disguised and integrated into economic activity permitted.

It is possible to state that the mafias no longer a matter of police to become a financial and geopolitical issue of first magnitude A clandestine world buzzing, not subjected to any kind of law or democratic rules, employs hundreds of thousands of people.

The 'business' includes trade in drugs, weapons (possibly even nuclear), sophisticated technologies obtained through industrial espionage or secret purchase of slaves and white children, human organs used in transplants, transport, passports and visas for falsified entries for illegal immigrants, in addition to practice 'traditional' authorities and of bribery of politicians, extortion, exploitation of prostitution and child and adult control of cities or entire regions based on force and terror imposed by well-armed gangs and organized according to a paramilitary structure.

Another important factor to be considered is the transnational criminal organizations tripled the area of cultivation of coca in Colombia, due to new agricultural techniques despite fumigation under sponsorship of the America.

Organized crime looked further, to try coca plantations in Georgia, on the island of Samoa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire). But, still, washing the dirty money in big on shore, as Miami and New York.

The model is increasingly sprayed, characterized by the limited knowledge among its members, the time when the operators of the crime held off business. Ability to articulate world, which drew of new world order of organized crime after the fall of "empire" Soviet in the early 1990: The international organized crime, an imaginary threat to many in 1990, was already a global emergency in 1993.

The major unions of the East and the West gather services and personnel as soon colonizing Western Europe and the United States, increasing drug trafficking in half trillion dollars per year by washing and reinvested in legal ventures an amount estimated at a quarter of a trillion of dollars annually.

Much of the phenomenal growth originated from the fact that they had free access to a territory that covers half the continent of Europe and much of Asia - one sixth of the land mass- Afloat and essentially defenseless.

According to the Italian police released in Sicily in 2001, a survey done by the Russian general Vitor Cheborachev confirms: "eighty percent of the banking system of Moscow is in the hands of the Mafia Russian.

It happened that dismantle the structures the state has disappeared completely and entered a different structure (the Russian mafia) to replace it. The movement of cartels and mafias in the world, however, does not yet constitute a sort of world federation of organized crime.

Since 1980, the Cosa Nostra became a wide structure.

A direct way of achieving the mafia globalization has been the practice to introduce, clandestine, illegal immigrants in the core countries of Europe and the USA. This was the procedure, for example the Chinese Triads and the Yakuza.

The Triads smuggled eight thousand illegal immigrants in Italy in just two years, almost half of all the Chinese community in the country. (...) The tens of thousands of Chinese illegally entering the "head-of-serpent" of the triad were not only more profitable that the heroin, but also a practical necessity. Hong Kong, a showcase of Triads in the world for over a century, revert to communist China in 1997.

The Triads could return to land from where it had fled after the communist - in fact many were returned - but she would never be their homeland. More discreet, and operating in the economic level, the Japanese Yakuza "was investing heavily in all states of the European Union. Authorities of the Japanese police confirmed that she washed money everywhere, in every kind of institution financial and industry, legal or illegal - just as the Sicilian Mafia, they combined a visit to Italy.

Mafia groups that had a tradition of activities limited to their own regions began to join, probably in the late 80s, to extend its influence to the most remote regions of the planet. Included in that table the old Italian and American mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, the Triads based in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, as well as the new Mafia groups in rapid expansion in West Africa and the newest Russian mafias (arising from the dismantling of the Soviet state).

These episodic business between mafias are indicating with certainty that these criminal organizations will be adjusting to the process of economic globalization, which main feature is the relatively free flow of capital with the support systems highly computerized.

In other words, the dimensions and forms of organization of crime in the contemporary world have nothing to do with what existed two or three decades. Compared with the current heads of the crime, Al Capone, for example, is a robber of backyard. It is estimated that Capone fortune of not more than $ 40 million, which is a lot of money, but nothing that is comparable to the billions currently moved by mafias.

While national states seek a solution through international strategic cooperation, which is more effective for the prevention, combating and prosecuting organized crime, through multilateral organizations like the UN, the criminal organizations by passing tax havens and new routes, leaving behind -- finally - the metaphor of the times of Al Capone: laundry, bakery corner of houses of gambling ... are things of the past.

Today, the narco-capital terms "fat" with the greatest naturalness in sessions, live and electronic, financial markets daily. After almost two decades of hegemony of the thesis of the minimum, the economic science is immersed in the search for new paths. The so-called "market fundamentalism" - that suggested the end of the story - already suggest "greater invention of the state in the lives of citizens, now emphasizing the need to combat the recession Keynesian-style, now to invest in national security.

The impasse that wins new contours in the 21st century is placed in the following way by where to draw the line between pure private sector activities and those that require public involvement through ownership or regulation is a question.

How to manage services of those holding public or private regulatory involving social externalities is another. There is little doubt that we cannot answer them. The lesson may well have been that some externalities are too big to be faced by the private sector and always require government funding through collection of taxes to provide services and infrastructure required.

The attempts to blockade the capital attributed to Al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, were empty. Indeed, the determination of the United States and Britain of blocking accounts of 27 entities suspected not reached the targets concerned. In Britain, where the freeze hit $ 88 million - with $ 6 million in the U.S. and another $ 6 million in other countries - this figure is a trace compared to U.S. $ 5.9 billion that moved through the bureau de change, since the time of Thatcher freely operating funds of criminal origin.

Following the logic of time zones, there are dozens of so-called "tax havens" that make up the main area of organized crime. A huge - and intense - laundry global, operating in real time and mounted on a technological device that works on the logic of masking and clear, digitally, all tracks - just a simple click and the money "dirty" becomes the "productive capital."

Clearly, tax havens connect and artificial satellites, around the three major financial centers worldwide: United States, European Union and Japan that is, the link with the Cosa Nostra mafia-type American, Italian, Russian, Chinese Triads and Yakuza is direct and immediate. The figures on the amount of resources from organized crime are disagreements, but "the Newsweek magazine estimates that the capital accumulated for each year by all the mafias of the world, is $ 3 trillion. Also in the field of the estimates, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the world business of money laundering movement NTA between $ 500 billion and $ 1.5 trillion dollars per year - an amount equal to 5% of production world, more than one quarter of international trade to GDP or the UK.

Of course, this figure includes drug trafficking, other forms of organized crime, political corruption and tax evasion. There are the kinds of nonsense: "Alone, the Jersey Island focused applications with a total value of $ 600 billion.

The World Wide Web (Internet), so-called internal networks of organizations (Intranets) and others like the world is also composed to support the transactions of organized crime. the world's largest network is the washing SWIFT: In 1973, the 250 largest financial institutions in Europe and the United States created a cooperative with the name of Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. Or just Swift.

The network covers the whole territory of the United States, Japan and Western Europe, and Latin America, including Brazil. Just order a Swift and a password to leave the money in an area offshore (Bahamas, for example) and between banks in Vienna, Frankfurt and Miami.

The SWIFT network has two features that much like criminal organizations: a) the possibility of multiple operations and in short space of time - facilitating the life of a current interest in clean money, b) the fact that the network is not monitored.

In other words, no and no monitoring system, intelligent, is able to detect suspicious transactions.

The technology worked out nicely for the interests of international organized crime. The Swift does not obey borders. It is the network that traffickers and terrorists move much of his fortune today. It is there that sell the product of political corruption.

In the late 1990s, during the meetings of the UN summit on organized crime, held in Naples (1994), Cairo (1995) and Vienna (March 2003), reports on the laundering of money exchanged by the representatives police from dozens of countries represented point to new strategies for the "purification of dirty money" adopted by the mafias and cartels, worldwide. In the new geopolitics of organized crime, the markets are on shore in new webs of washing international scheme.

The criminal organizations are adjusted to the process of economic globalization, which implies a relatively free flow of capital through systems. In other words, the dimensions and forms of organization of crime in the contemporary world have nothing to do with what existed two or three decades.

In the Middle East, terrorists and criminals still use the system known as Hawala, primitive, which is possible to transfer resources without the need to identify the owner and the destination. The confirmations of transfer are made by fax (the page is destroyed after this OK. Schemes would be well used by bin Laden and the followers of Alspalan Tuerkes, one of the leaders of the Turkish mafia, which controls the trafficking of heroin and weapons in Eastern Europe.

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Security and Organized Crime

The historical process of combating violence, is crime prevention and control and minimization of risk.

Within this context, studies originated and developed by the military and civilians tried to achieve the state of the art necessary for combating violence can be efficient and thus achieve tolerable levels for the welfare of the community.

In the international arena from the 1960s, there was the emergence of various initiatives to combat the increasing violence and the consequences resulting from this situation. Among several attempts, it was observed that the solution was increasing police-community interaction, specially focusing on respect with society.

The new idea of a police connected directly to the needs of stakeholders, seeking further integration and recognizing that the citizen who lives in an area of social risk, should be seen so respectful. Community policing was born then.

Technological innovations, operational base of economic globalization, were quickly adopted by criminal organizations.The mafias have held its own "globalization", in which the labor force comes from the preferential migration, sometimes clandestine, possibly in working conditions similar to slavery. Two factors contributed decisively to the new world order of organized crime.

The unification of the European Community (EC), which is materialized in the 1990s (now called the European Union - EU), and the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ).

The end of borders, in countries that joined the EU and the absolute lack of political and military control over the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, opened a corridor from the Baltic to the Pacific, for the disposal of the products of organizations as the Sicilian Mafia (Cosa Nostra), the Russian Mafia, the Chinese Triads, the Yakuza (Japanese) and the Colombian Cartel.

This movement, the world, involved agreements and understandings, taking into account a "support bank" already prepared by the 'tax havens', and prospered in the financial markets under the brand of three circumstances:

a) The fall in business profitability of traditional products;

b) the excess of dollars from the existence of payments deficit and domestic debt increased in the U.S. for at least 50 years, the same extent as the dollar took over the condition of world currency.

c) The process of privatization of the economy of the former USSR in the 1990s under the government of Boris Yeltsin, through which the Russian mafias began to dominate 70% of the financial system of the Russian Federation.

Holders of equity, available, opened the Russian mafia a 'gateway' extremely relevant in the global financial system. The crossing with the global activity of organized crime in its version less shocking occurred in successive operations, balance sheets and accounts of fraud. Other two also note the phenomenon: the deployment of a system of e-commerce, based on operations of the Internet and the privatization of postal services international - in which the largest is FedEx, based in the U.S..

In this context there are other macro-elements to be considered: the issue of patents and control of biodiversity - from the battle scenes of international diplomacy to the ends of the Amazon.

The shadow of the state, officials criminals operate a policy of biopiracy strongly linked to organized crime circles. From a geopolitical view, Miami and Los Angeles (USA) appear as' capital 'of organized crime strategy for Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, especially in the two most relevant aspects: - the trafficking of drugs and weapons.

Among the countries that are more wash money the U.S., where they give 50% of all financial transactions that have as source drug trafficking, terrorism, kidnapping, smuggling, corruption and other illegal activities. The different global networks and connections, which operate with the support of ultrasound technology flee, even for now, the scope of calls of Financial Intelligence Units (FIU - Financial Intelligence Unit), which act globally articulated in the so-called Egmont Group.

In its last report, the group notes: the delay in investigations of money laundering means that were presented few settings involving new technologies or techniques - such as washing Internet, smart cards (smart cards) or banking transactions online. We anticipate that, over the years, more and more cases involving these technologies come to the knowledge of the forces of repression against crime.

The available literature on organized crime are only now beginning to meet the cases of laundering of capital 'dirty' schemes based on high tech. As the money grows in volume transactions in the real economy, more organized crime networks and we passed by the vast network of virtual money. Precisely at that size there are difficulties in identifying the "dirty capital", obtained through the sale of drugs and weapons, for example, that is" washed "daily and receive the blessings of the market, breaking the economies of countries of central capitalism, and so-called emerging countries, without being bothered by anyone.

The money laundering activity is presented as either mean performance of acts concatenated in time and space, perspective is reached determined purpose. These actions are linked to concealment and integration. From a strategic action of organized crime, conceal and disguise are movements background the action of integration, when the 'dirty money' return in the economy as a legitimate investment market. In this stage, is rarely possible to recover the assets generated by illegal activities.

In a worsening of the socio-economic conditions of countries classified as " emerging" on all continents, there are three elements that can be highlighted:

a) The fall in profitability of traditional businesses, a world in which products are produced and services are provided, so-called real economy;

b) The increase in poverty in world, with the deconstruction of the growing world of work;

c) Lack of control of financial markets and the flow of capital, by states and multilateral bodies such as the World Bank (IBRD), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and of multilateral organizations tied to the United Nations (UN).

Drug Trafficking comes in first rank hierarchy in markets controlled by organized crime the first is that drugs, mainly cocaine, heroin and synthetic, such as ecstasy and amphetamines. It is estimated that the business moves from $ 300 to 500 billion.

The second is the trafficking of weapons. Further, trafficking in human beings for prostitution, organ trade, slave labor. Then there are other sectors such as corruption and money laundering that permeate all the work of organized crime. A very acceptable number, calculated by the United Nations, is 400 billion dollars (more than the global oil industry), employing nearly 20 million people and serving 70 to 100 million consumers.

Perhaps half of these consumers are in the United States, the largest market for drugs in the world - and the largest market for everything else. Authorities and experts that deal with different ways of combating organized crime, from multilateral bodies such as the United Nations (UN) bodies, intelligence and repression of democratic, non-governmental organizations see the "lords of crime 'with a kind of 'holding'. The concept is taken from the modern theory of government and was appropriated by mafias and cartels to manage and maintain the mega-business in high.

And all this, regardless of the war and repression still concentrated in the hands of the state, today extremely weakened by the reduction and dismantling of the state machinery, the world, a result of the policies led to the end of the 1980s by the U.S. and Great Britain.

It operates as a holding company. The group that comes to drugs is often linked to arms trafficking, mainly because it is a business that involves no money, only goods: I give you 20 kg of cocaine in exchange for a gun. This happens on the border between Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, especially with the proceeds of the theft of cargo, cars and trucks. Often there is no money in the middle. Therefore, organized crime operates as holding more than as a business sector.

The Trafficking of Weapons The smuggling of weapons, the operation part of a perfectly legal transaction (the purchase of weapons in trade for export), is a hidden level, but still 'legal' and returns to the country illegally, smuggled by criminal organizations engaged in the resale slums and outskirts of large Brazilian cities. There is also an aggravating factor in the world of trafficking in weapons, the arsenal of Russia, whose economy is totally dominated by the mafia: 'According to the Minister of Interior of the Russian Federation, approximately 5,700 mafia groups control 70% of the banking sector of the country and most of its exports of oil, natural gas, of strategic minerals and raw materials.

We must distinguish, preliminarily, the trafficking of weapons of illicit arms trade.

The first, practiced by drug traffickers linked to criminal organizations, and has assumed the sale in bulk, or in quantity and type (quality) that involves big money. But the illegal trade, typically retail, thrives in the shadow of their own unconventional bodies and authorities responsible for public safety, more than the arms trafficking, illegal arms trading business is nonsense. The police seized a 38 to someone, a small gun, near the heavy weaponry that exists today. This gun remains lodged in the judiciary, the police for years, and the state often loses control over it.

The scheme of trafficking in weapons operates in reverse of the drugs, in general: first a purchase is made, legally, then the product is exported to finally return smuggled in the country, going directly up in the hands of criminal organizations. In early 1991, a fact revealed to the international community the size of the problem, especially the control exercised by the Russian mafia in such sensitive sectors of the economy of that country, such as the financial system.

The nuclear issue - never be emphasized enough - is one of the most serious problems. In 1991. For $ 250 thousand he could buy a nuclear warhead for medium size (approximately 700 pounds). " What probably prevents the use of nuclear weapons by organized crime is on the one hand, the volume of destruction caused and possible violent retaliation, and, secondly, the lack of a strategic reason.

The main risk, therefore, involves groups and religious fanatics. The numbers of world production of weapons, despite the secrecy surrounding the trade war industry, for alleged reasons of state, indicate that the five permanent members of UN Security Council United - United States, China, Russia, France and the UK - totaling nearly 85% of the world stock of weapons. The United States exports nearly 15% of its production, the United Kingdom and France, 25% and 20% respectively.

Nearly 80% of sales go to smaller and poorer countries, especially for problem areas in the developing world.

What feeds the traffic on a global scale, many times is the production of small arms, whose manufacturing technology is simple and relatively affordable cost. Unlike the complex weapons systems such as missiles: "To give an idea of numbers, the development of a new air-to-air missile leaves around $ 1.5 billion to $ 2 billion dollars.

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An Orthodox Report On Organized Cyber Crime

Nowadays, organized cyber crime has been emerging as a great threat to the computer and business world. There are lots of organized cyber organizations operating around the world. The goal of this report is to bring awareness among the people about the cyber crime and its operational procedure as well.

Cyber crime, Cyber terrorism and Cyber attack

Classifying a cyber attack as cyber terrorism or cyber crime is a bit difficult due to the complexity in the determination of the identity, intension, or the motivation of a cyber criminal. It can be very large in extent and could involve many other factors than a simple computer hacking.

Definition of Cyber crime

It is a kind of crime that targets computers and can involve a violation of patent, robbery of scholar property, copyright laws or trade secrets as well. However, it also includes espionage to produce unlawful copies of classified records. The commencement of cyber attacks by any terrorist group is also considered as cyber crime. Generally, the basic difference between a cyber crime and a cyber attack is found in the intention of an attacker.

Definition of Cyber terrorism

There is a lot definition exist for cyber terrorism like as the various definitions of terrorism. A security expert named as Dorothy Denning describes cyber terrorism as politically induced hacking operations projected to cause massive loss like as the severe economic breakdown or loss of life. Others denote cyber terrorism a massive substantial attack that tears down computerized infrastructures like as the telecommunications, electric power grid or the Internet without even touching a keyboard.

Usage of Botnets in Cyber crime

Nowadays, "Botnets" or "Bot Networks" are becoming a key tool for cyber crimes. It can easily be designed in a way that can effectively disrupt any targeted computer systems in many ways without possessing any especial technical expertise and can be immediately initiated in cyberspace by renting botnet services from any cyber criminal. Generally, a good number of compromised computers infected with malicious code are used to build up the botnets and these computers can be remotely monitored by the commands that are sent through the Internet. Moreover, hundreds or thousands of compromised computers can be used to block or disrupt the Internet traffic for the targeted systems or to distribute malware, viruses or spam as well. Because of the versatility of botnets it's often delineated as "the knives of Swiss Army of underground economy". However, the designer of botnets is generally called as the botmaster. A botmaster can easily make a handsome amount of money within a short time by rendering their exclusive technical expertise. Botnets are now the prime weapon to the fraud and extortionist for executing all sorts of cyber crimes. At present, the authors of various botnets software are trying to develop their software modules through the collaboration among them so that they can reuse their malicious code. This collaboration will make the future botnet more reliable and robust as well.

Cyber crime Organizations

We are often stunned about the strategy, operational vision, deployment and logistics of the highly organized online mafias. They not only act like the real companies, but they are also transnational organizations who are fervently operating throughout the world. Recently, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has classified different professional positions that they have encountered in their cyber crime business. According to the report of FBI, every organization is well equipped with a good number of experts who are specialized in their own area. Here is an overview of the common positions within cyber crime organizations.

Coder-who develops the malware and exploit

Distributor-who trades with the stolen data

Tech expert- who safeguard the IT infrastructure of criminal organizations

Hacker-who seek and exploit the vulnerabilities of the targeted computer networks and systems

Fraudster- who encourage the potential victims through social business schemes like spam and phishing

Hosted system provider-who provide illegal content servers to the criminals

Money mule-who conduct wire transfer between the bank accounts

Teller-who transfer and legalize illegitimate incomes through the digital currency services

Organization leader- who organize the entire team and launch the attacks to the targeted victims

Now, it is high time to stand against all kinds of cyber crime and to protect our valuable documents, earnings and treasures as well. We must have to find an effective way to fortify the security of our computer networks and systems. Otherwise, the day will be not so far when our entire computer systems will be turned into the play ground of these ruinous cyber criminals!

Hi! I'm an undergraduate of Electronics & Communication Engineering. Besides this, I'm a freelance writer. Writing is my passion. I would like to write on various niches and an expert in technical writings. I'm looking for some one whom I can work with. If you like my work, then I will be pleased.

Organized Crime In Detroit: Forgotten But Not Gone

By James Buccellato and Scott M. Burnstein

DETROIT (WWJ) – The Detroit mafia lives in the shadows. It always has, now, more than ever.

“They don’t chase the news cameras like in other cities and a lot of them have been very adept of veiling themselves in legitimacy,” said former federal prosecutor and organized crime task force member Keith Corbett, of the area’s ruling mob powers. “In relative terms, it’s been a recipe for success, in that most of them have avoided long, if any, prison sentences and, for the most part, very few people have any idea who they are.”

That hasn’t exactly been the case for other organized crime families around the country.

Notorious Boston Irish mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was apprehended earlier this week in California, arrested for 19 gangland-related homicides after 16 years on the run from the law. Bulger, the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in the Oscar-winning film “The Departed,” ran the Boston underworld for over two decades and had for years been No. 2 on the FBI’s famed Most Wanted List, behind only Osama Bin Laden.

The Philadelphia mob made headlines last month when federal investigators arrested reputed godfather Joseph “Uncle Joe” Ligambi. Philly’s alleged No. 1 gangster and a dozen of his suspected underlings were all charged in a 50-count racketeering indictment involving gambling and loan-sharking.

Interestingly, the Ligambi arrest comes on the heels of one of the largest mob busts in American history when in January the U.S. Justice Department rounded up over 100 suspected East Coast organized crime members, many of them alleged to be high-ranking mafia leaders, on charges including murder, gambling, loan-sharking, extortion and narcotics trafficking.

Top Chicago Mafioso Michael “Fat Mike” Sarno and a number of his associates were convicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from a mob-ran video poker operation late last December.

Four major busts in six months and all of the investigations involve customary mafia locales: New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence and Newark.

One of the traditional mob hotbeds absent from the recent slew of arrests and convictions was Detroit, a longstanding picture of stability and efficiency in an underworld landscape littered with defectors, dissidents and dim-bulb thugs.

Those who remember stories about the infamous Purple Gang from the city’s bloody Prohibition era or the everlasting hubbub regarding the mysterious disappearance of labor boss Jimmy Hoffa may wonder if organized crime still exists in the Motor City.

Indeed, many would probably be surprised to find out that Detroit’s mafia is still alive, well and racketeering in 2011.

Few would suggest that the local crime family has the manpower or criminal reach it once had, but it nevertheless continues to function – and when compared to other mob syndicates across the country, at a fairly high level.

As recently as 2006, FBI agents in Detroit arrested more than a dozen individuals under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) charging them with bookmaking, money laundering and extortion. Though federal authorities did not officially link the case to the mob, sources in local law enforcement confirm that the indictment’s alleged ringleaders, Peter Tocco of Troy and Jack V. Giacalone of West Bloomfield, as well as several of their co-defendants are affiliated with the area’s mafia family.

Tocco, 62 and referred to on federal surveillance tapes by such monikers as “Blackie” and “Specs,” pled guilty to the charges and served a two-year prison sentence before being released last year. Giacalone, 60, went to trial and was acquitted. Sources peg Giacalone, known by nicknames like, “Jackie the Kid” and “Jackie the Bathrobe,” as someone being groomed to be a future don.

People around Detroit with even a vague familiarity of local mob affairs are most likely aware of the names Tocco and Giacalone, longstanding staples in newspaper headlines from the area’s underworld dating back nearly a century.

Peter Tocco’s grandfather was William “Black Bill” Tocco, the Detroit mafia’s founding father, establishing the crime syndicate in 1931 after winning a violent street war for gangland supremacy in the city in the aftermath of Prohibition. His uncle is Giacomo “Black Jack” Tocco, Black Bill’s eldest son and the city’s current mob boss, in power since the 1970s.

Jackie Giacalone is the son of retired mob underboss Vito “Billy Jack” Giacalone, 87 and the nephew of former Detroit mafia street boss, Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, who died of cancer in 2001.

During the 1950s and 60s, Congressional committees named Black Bill Tocco and both Giacalone brothers as being top echelon mob leaders in the Motor City.

The following decade the Giacalone brothers gained national infamy, having their names echoed on television newscasts from coast to coast after they became central figures in the Hoffa case.

All three mobsters were linked closely to legendary godfather Joe Zerilli, Detroit’s undisputed “boss of bosses” for over four decades and a highly-respected mob dignitary that was one of the few non-New York bosses granted a seat on the notorious “Commission,” a nationwide mafia board of directors. He was brother-in-laws with Black Bill Tocco, having come over together from Sicily in 1910.

The Detroit don’s only son, Anthony “Tony Z” Zerilli, was initially tagged as his father’s replacement, however following Tony Z’s imprisonment in 1973 on charges of skimming millions of dollars from a Las Vegas hotel and casino, the aging mob chieftain demoted his offspring in favor of his nephew Jack Tocco. Both the younger Tocco and Zerilli received college business degrees from the University of Detroit-Mercy in 1949, around the same time, according to Congressional testimony, they “made their bones” and were inducted into the mafia.

When Joe Zerilli passed away from natural causes in 1977, Tocco took control of the crime family, naming his first-cousin Tony Z his second-in-charge as a measure of good faith. The pair of mob princes ran the local mafia in tandem uninterrupted until 1996 when they were arrested in a widespread RICO indictment, titled, Operation Gametax, charging virtually the entire syndicate administration with bookmaking, loansharking and extortion.

Tocco was convicted in 1998, Zerilli in 2002 and after each conviction, federal law enforcement described the situation in hyperbolic terms, claiming to have “driven a stake through the heart” of the Detroit mafia.

This proved hardly true. Although a majority of the mobsters arrested in the bust were convicted, most of them received relatively light sentences. Curiously, Tocco, who was found to be the kingpin of the continuing criminal enterprise in the case, served barely two years behind bars.

With so many sons, nephews and cousins employed in the “family business,” the mob’s rackets more or less continued with little to no interruption. In a measure to ensure loyalty, Joe Zerilli had planned it that way, making it a requirement as early as the 1930s that his soldiers married other soldiers’ daughters, sisters, nieces and cousins.

The strategy has paid dividends since unlike most of the country’s mob families in the past three decades that have been torn apart at the seams from within, overwhelmed by informers or “rats,” as they’re called in underworld circles, the Detroit mob has been virtually free of turncoats.

“Almost everyone important in the crime family is related by blood or marriage in some way to almost everyone else of any significance and this makes the organization extremely difficult to penetrate,” retired Detroit FBI agent Mike Carone notes. “For an outsider, whether in law enforcement or not, to get real close to these guys is practically impossible.”

Nove Tocco, Joe Zerilli’s grandson, became the only member of the crime family to ever testify against the syndicate in open court when he began working for the feds in 2000, two years after he was convicted in the Gametax case. He debriefed for the federal authorities and testified at his cousin Jack Tocco’s sentencing hearing in exchange for a sentence reduction.

The FBI in Detroit asserts that upon Tocco’s release from federal prison in 2002, he re-assumed his position as boss and continues to head the crime family to this day at the ripe old age of 84.

Detroit’s mafia faction has also avoided the internecine warfare that has plagued other national mafia groups, as a general rule, being free of renegades, a phenomenon most experts credit to the syndicate’s intermarriage edict and its longstanding policy of only utilizing violence as a method of last resort.

“It’s a lot harder to get the motivation to start a war if the guys you’re going to be shooting at and trying to kill are your own family,” Carone said. “That’s not to say the mafia around her doesn’t murder people, but that it’s probably a little less frequent when compared to other big city mobs.”

The last round of known or possible-related mob murders took place between 1998 and 2002, a timeline some sources in law enforcement tie to the fallout from the convictions and subsequent prison sentences of city mafia royalty, like Jack Tocco and Tony Zerilli.

The mini hit parade started in 1998 in the months after a slew of convictions in the Gametax case when a former mob associate under the direction of the Giacalone brothers wound up dead in Great Britain after he had turned informant for the government.

Three years later in 2001, there was the murder of strip club operator, John “John John” Jarjosa, Jr.,34, whose father was convicted mob associate John “J.J.” Jarjosa, Sr., away serving a prison sentence related to the Gametax bust at the time of his son’s death. Jarjosa, Jr, was gunned down at the corner of 8 Mile and Evergreen in broad daylight, his black Corvette boxed in as he took fire from two gun-wielding assailants in a turn-around lane.

In 2002, a young reputed mob enforcer, Gerard “Gerry the Blade” Bianchette, 31, was shotgunned to death at a Macomb County construction site in the months surrounding the conviction of Tony Zerilli.

Though all three murders remains unsolved, law enforcement describe each as a professional hit, most likely rooted in gangland conflict.
Just last month, a pair of reputed mobbed-up brothers, the Sicilian-born, Giuseppe and Girolamo D’anna, owners of the Tiramisu Italian restaurant in Shelby Township, were indicted on assault to commit murder, extortion and witness intimidation charges. Authorities allege the brothers stormed into a competing Italian restaurant across the street for Tiramisu, severely beat its owner with an aluminum baseball bat and threatened to kill him and his entire family if he went to the police. According to confidential sources, the D’anna brothers are connected to the local mafia family and have alleged ties to mob activity back in their native Sicily.

A federal point shaving bust alleged to be headed by Gary Manzi and Mitchell “Steady Eddie” Karam, two reputed Detroit mob associates of Chaldean descent, made headlines in 2009. Karam, long linked to the crime family and a one-time close friend of deceased reputed mob power, Jack “Fat Jackie” Lucido, and Mazi, a local convenient store owner, are accused of paying players on both the University of Toledo football and basketball teams to alter outcomes of games so they could win close to a half a million dollars in wagers.

At its peak in the 1960s, the mafia in the Motor City was estimated to have roughly 100 fully-inducted members. Currently, it’s probably closer to between 40 and 50. The number had dropped to around 30-35 at the time of the Gametax trial, but reports indicate the family has since increased its ranks with at least two initiation ceremonies being held in the last eight years.

Most people might not know the mob still exists in Detroit, yet the organization doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of their demise have been much overstated,” Corbett said. “The current leaders, guys like Jack Tocco, may be on the way out due to age, but there is a younger generation coming up behind them ready, willing and able to take the reins. From its inception, this organization was built for the long haul and it will continue to sustain. I don’t think we’ll be talking about the eradication of the mafia in Detroit for quite a while.”

——

James Buccellato, PhD. James is a political scientist. Currently he is researching the history of social banditry in America.

Scott M. Burnstein is a local author and crime expert, who has been featured on the History Channel’s hit show, “Gangland” and whose first book, “Motor City Mafia – A Century of Organized Crime in the City of Detroit,” was a regional best-seller. His writing has appeared in both the Detroit Free Press and the Oakland Press

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Organized Crime In Detroit: Forgotten But Not Gone

By James Buccellato and Scott M. Burnstein

DETROIT (WWJ) – The Detroit mafia lives in the shadows. It always has, now, more than ever.

“They don’t chase the news cameras like in other cities and a lot of them have been very adept of veiling themselves in legitimacy,” said former federal prosecutor and organized crime task force member Keith Corbett, of the area’s ruling mob powers. “In relative terms, it’s been a recipe for success, in that most of them have avoided long, if any, prison sentences and, for the most part, very few people have any idea who they are.”

That hasn’t exactly been the case for other organized crime families around the country.

Notorious Boston Irish mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was apprehended earlier this week in California, arrested for 19 gangland-related homicides after 16 years on the run from the law. Bulger, the inspiration for Jack Nicholson’s character in the Oscar-winning film “The Departed,” ran the Boston underworld for over two decades and had for years been No. 2 on the FBI’s famed Most Wanted List, behind only Osama Bin Laden.

The Philadelphia mob made headlines last month when federal investigators arrested reputed godfather Joseph “Uncle Joe” Ligambi. Philly’s alleged No. 1 gangster and a dozen of his suspected underlings were all charged in a 50-count racketeering indictment involving gambling and loan-sharking.

Interestingly, the Ligambi arrest comes on the heels of one of the largest mob busts in American history when in January the U.S. Justice Department rounded up over 100 suspected East Coast organized crime members, many of them alleged to be high-ranking mafia leaders, on charges including murder, gambling, loan-sharking, extortion and narcotics trafficking.

Top Chicago Mafioso Michael “Fat Mike” Sarno and a number of his associates were convicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from a mob-ran video poker operation late last December.

Four major busts in six months and all of the investigations involve customary mafia locales: New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence and Newark.

One of the traditional mob hotbeds absent from the recent slew of arrests and convictions was Detroit, a longstanding picture of stability and efficiency in an underworld landscape littered with defectors, dissidents and dim-bulb thugs.

Those who remember stories about the infamous Purple Gang from the city’s bloody Prohibition era or the everlasting hubbub regarding the mysterious disappearance of labor boss Jimmy Hoffa may wonder if organized crime still exists in the Motor City.

Indeed, many would probably be surprised to find out that Detroit’s mafia is still alive, well and racketeering in 2011.

Few would suggest that the local crime family has the manpower or criminal reach it once had, but it nevertheless continues to function – and when compared to other mob syndicates across the country, at a fairly high level.

As recently as 2006, FBI agents in Detroit arrested more than a dozen individuals under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) charging them with bookmaking, money laundering and extortion. Though federal authorities did not officially link the case to the mob, sources in local law enforcement confirm that the indictment’s alleged ringleaders, Peter Tocco of Troy and Jack V. Giacalone of West Bloomfield, as well as several of their co-defendants are affiliated with the area’s mafia family.

Tocco, 62 and referred to on federal surveillance tapes by such monikers as “Blackie” and “Specs,” pled guilty to the charges and served a two-year prison sentence before being released last year. Giacalone, 60, went to trial and was acquitted. Sources peg Giacalone, known by nicknames like, “Jackie the Kid” and “Jackie the Bathrobe,” as someone being groomed to be a future don.

People around Detroit with even a vague familiarity of local mob affairs are most likely aware of the names Tocco and Giacalone, longstanding staples in newspaper headlines from the area’s underworld dating back nearly a century.

Peter Tocco’s grandfather was William “Black Bill” Tocco, the Detroit mafia’s founding father, establishing the crime syndicate in 1931 after winning a violent street war for gangland supremacy in the city in the aftermath of Prohibition. His uncle is Giacomo “Black Jack” Tocco, Black Bill’s eldest son and the city’s current mob boss, in power since the 1970s.

Jackie Giacalone is the son of retired mob underboss Vito “Billy Jack” Giacalone, 87 and the nephew of former Detroit mafia street boss, Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, who died of cancer in 2001.

During the 1950s and 60s, Congressional committees named Black Bill Tocco and both Giacalone brothers as being top echelon mob leaders in the Motor City.

The following decade the Giacalone brothers gained national infamy, having their names echoed on television newscasts from coast to coast after they became central figures in the Hoffa case.

All three mobsters were linked closely to legendary godfather Joe Zerilli, Detroit’s undisputed “boss of bosses” for over four decades and a highly-respected mob dignitary that was one of the few non-New York bosses granted a seat on the notorious “Commission,” a nationwide mafia board of directors. He was brother-in-laws with Black Bill Tocco, having come over together from Sicily in 1910.

The Detroit don’s only son, Anthony “Tony Z” Zerilli, was initially tagged as his father’s replacement, however following Tony Z’s imprisonment in 1973 on charges of skimming millions of dollars from a Las Vegas hotel and casino, the aging mob chieftain demoted his offspring in favor of his nephew Jack Tocco. Both the younger Tocco and Zerilli received college business degrees from the University of Detroit-Mercy in 1949, around the same time, according to Congressional testimony, they “made their bones” and were inducted into the mafia.

When Joe Zerilli passed away from natural causes in 1977, Tocco took control of the crime family, naming his first-cousin Tony Z his second-in-charge as a measure of good faith. The pair of mob princes ran the local mafia in tandem uninterrupted until 1996 when they were arrested in a widespread RICO indictment, titled, Operation Gametax, charging virtually the entire syndicate administration with bookmaking, loansharking and extortion.

Tocco was convicted in 1998, Zerilli in 2002 and after each conviction, federal law enforcement described the situation in hyperbolic terms, claiming to have “driven a stake through the heart” of the Detroit mafia.

This proved hardly true. Although a majority of the mobsters arrested in the bust were convicted, most of them received relatively light sentences. Curiously, Tocco, who was found to be the kingpin of the continuing criminal enterprise in the case, served barely two years behind bars.

With so many sons, nephews and cousins employed in the “family business,” the mob’s rackets more or less continued with little to no interruption. In a measure to ensure loyalty, Joe Zerilli had planned it that way, making it a requirement as early as the 1930s that his soldiers married other soldiers’ daughters, sisters, nieces and cousins.

The strategy has paid dividends since unlike most of the country’s mob families in the past three decades that have been torn apart at the seams from within, overwhelmed by informers or “rats,” as they’re called in underworld circles, the Detroit mob has been virtually free of turncoats.

“Almost everyone important in the crime family is related by blood or marriage in some way to almost everyone else of any significance and this makes the organization extremely difficult to penetrate,” retired Detroit FBI agent Mike Carone notes. “For an outsider, whether in law enforcement or not, to get real close to these guys is practically impossible.”

Nove Tocco, Joe Zerilli’s grandson, became the only member of the crime family to ever testify against the syndicate in open court when he began working for the feds in 2000, two years after he was convicted in the Gametax case. He debriefed for the federal authorities and testified at his cousin Jack Tocco’s sentencing hearing in exchange for a sentence reduction.

The FBI in Detroit asserts that upon Tocco’s release from federal prison in 2002, he re-assumed his position as boss and continues to head the crime family to this day at the ripe old age of 84.

Detroit’s mafia faction has also avoided the internecine warfare that has plagued other national mafia groups, as a general rule, being free of renegades, a phenomenon most experts credit to the syndicate’s intermarriage edict and its longstanding policy of only utilizing violence as a method of last resort.

“It’s a lot harder to get the motivation to start a war if the guys you’re going to be shooting at and trying to kill are your own family,” Carone said. “That’s not to say the mafia around her doesn’t murder people, but that it’s probably a little less frequent when compared to other big city mobs.”

The last round of known or possible-related mob murders took place between 1998 and 2002, a timeline some sources in law enforcement tie to the fallout from the convictions and subsequent prison sentences of city mafia royalty, like Jack Tocco and Tony Zerilli.

The mini hit parade started in 1998 in the months after a slew of convictions in the Gametax case when a former mob associate under the direction of the Giacalone brothers wound up dead in Great Britain after he had turned informant for the government.

Three years later in 2001, there was the murder of strip club operator, John “John John” Jarjosa, Jr.,34, whose father was convicted mob associate John “J.J.” Jarjosa, Sr., away serving a prison sentence related to the Gametax bust at the time of his son’s death. Jarjosa, Jr, was gunned down at the corner of 8 Mile and Evergreen in broad daylight, his black Corvette boxed in as he took fire from two gun-wielding assailants in a turn-around lane.

In 2002, a young reputed mob enforcer, Gerard “Gerry the Blade” Bianchette, 31, was shotgunned to death at a Macomb County construction site in the months surrounding the conviction of Tony Zerilli.

Though all three murders remains unsolved, law enforcement describe each as a professional hit, most likely rooted in gangland conflict.
Just last month, a pair of reputed mobbed-up brothers, the Sicilian-born, Giuseppe and Girolamo D’anna, owners of the Tiramisu Italian restaurant in Shelby Township, were indicted on assault to commit murder, extortion and witness intimidation charges. Authorities allege the brothers stormed into a competing Italian restaurant across the street for Tiramisu, severely beat its owner with an aluminum baseball bat and threatened to kill him and his entire family if he went to the police. According to confidential sources, the D’anna brothers are connected to the local mafia family and have alleged ties to mob activity back in their native Sicily.

A federal point shaving bust alleged to be headed by Gary Manzi and Mitchell “Steady Eddie” Karam, two reputed Detroit mob associates of Chaldean descent, made headlines in 2009. Karam, long linked to the crime family and a one-time close friend of deceased reputed mob power, Jack “Fat Jackie” Lucido, and Mazi, a local convenient store owner, are accused of paying players on both the University of Toledo football and basketball teams to alter outcomes of games so they could win close to a half a million dollars in wagers.

At its peak in the 1960s, the mafia in the Motor City was estimated to have roughly 100 fully-inducted members. Currently, it’s probably closer to between 40 and 50. The number had dropped to around 30-35 at the time of the Gametax trial, but reports indicate the family has since increased its ranks with at least two initiation ceremonies being held in the last eight years.

Most people might not know the mob still exists in Detroit, yet the organization doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of their demise have been much overstated,” Corbett said. “The current leaders, guys like Jack Tocco, may be on the way out due to age, but there is a younger generation coming up behind them ready, willing and able to take the reins. From its inception, this organization was built for the long haul and it will continue to sustain. I don’t think we’ll be talking about the eradication of the mafia in Detroit for quite a while.”

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James Buccellato, PhD. James is a political scientist. Currently he is researching the history of social banditry in America.

Scott M. Burnstein is a local author and crime expert, who has been featured on the History Channel’s hit show, “Gangland” and whose first book, “Motor City Mafia – A Century of Organized Crime in the City of Detroit,” was a regional best-seller. His writing has appeared in both the Detroit Free Press and the Oakland Press

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