Posted on: December 18, 2022, 04:03h.
Final up to date on: December 18, 2022, 04:03h.
Steven “Good-looking Stevie” Mazzone, the underboss of the Philadelphia Mob, has been sentenced to 5 years in jail on prices of racketeering conspiracy, extortion, and unlawful playing.
“Good-looking Stevie” Mazzone, left, leaves a Philadelphia courtroom along with his lawyer in June 2020. He was taped collaborating in a Mafia induction ceremony in 2015. (Picture: Philadelphia Inquirer)
Mazzone was indicted in November 2020, together with 15 different alleged members of the infamous crime household with names like “Tony Meatballs,” “Joey Electrical,” and “Louie the Sheep.” Additionally indicted was Domenic “Child Dom” Grande, allegedly Mazzone’s capo.
Mazzone directed an unlimited community of felony exercise that spanned Philadelphia and components of New Jersey, prosecutors stated.
He pleaded responsible in June 2022 to conduct that concerned financing high-interest loans to sportsbook clients who had been unable to pay their money owed. This is able to outcome within the assortment of rates of interest on loans of as a lot as 264%, in line with courtroom paperwork.
His henchmen made a number of threats of violence to debtors who didn’t pay, together with one menace to make a sufferer “disappear” for nonpayment.
Look Out, Atlantic Metropolis
Prosecutors constructed the case in opposition to Mazzone with proof gathered by means of wiretaps, surveillance footage, and witness testimonies.
One such wiretap information Mazzone’s participation in a Mob initiation ceremony wherein the underboss’ brother and others are became made males. They’re made to swear they’ll “burn in hell without end if I betray my associates.”
We received to get a maintain again on Atlantic Metropolis, buddy! That’s what I would like. That’s what I would like. We’ve to get that again. I imply now we have a couple of guys on the market, you already know, proper now. You’re going to have a pair extra guys on the market with you … I would like you, I would like you to do one thing.”
The Philly Mob was a dominant drive within the on line casino resort city within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties below former bosses Angelo Bruno and Nicky Scarfo.
Amongst different rackets, Scarfo intimidated lots of the metropolis’s on line casino builders, together with Donald Trump, into utilizing his cement contracting firm, and made a fortune from its new gaming trade.
Skinny Joey
However the household’s affect has waned normally within the ensuing years due to infighting and the profitable prosecution of leaders like Scarfo, John Stanfa, Ralph Natale, and Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, The Philadelphia Inquirer stories.
Merlino is apparently nonetheless the boss of the household. He was launched from jail in October 2019, having served a sentence of two years in jail for unlawful playing. That was after a jury didn’t discover a verdict on racketeering prices.
Mazzone was incarcerated for 9 years in 2001, together with Merlino, for racketeering and unlawful sports activities bookmaking.
“When he received out, he went proper again to the identical streets and usual rackets — overseeing loansharking, unlawful playing, and extortion,” Jacqueline Maguire, Particular Agent in Cost of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division, stated in a information launch.
“Mazzone and co. want to just accept that the FBI is simply as dedicated to shutting down organized crime right here as ‘the household’ has been to sustaining it,” she added.
