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Operation Old Bridge is the code name for the February 7, 2008 arrests in Italy and the United States that targeted the Gambino crime family; among the indicted were the reputed acting bosses Jackie D'Amico, Nicholas Corozzo and Joseph Corozzo. The indictments included murder, drug trafficking, robbery, and extortion. [1]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was able to collect the needed information through informant Joseph Vollaro, (owner of a truck company on Staten Island) who secretly recorded several conversations with members of the Gambino family. [1] More than 80 people were indicted in the Eastern District of New York. The case is now referred to as United States of America v. Agate et al. It was initially assigned to Judge Nicholas Garaufis, but later reassigned to Judge Jack B. Weinstein.
Gambino crime family boss Nicholas Corozzo turned fugitive after he was tipped off by his daughter who witnessed her husband and fellow mobster being led away by the US authorities. On May 29, 2008, Corozzo finally couldn't take life on the run anymore and so he turned himself in to authorities with his lawyer by his side. Of the 62 American defendants, 60 pleaded guilty with at least 52 of them facing no more than three years in prison. [2] [3] [4]
The operation broke up a growing alliance between the Gambinos and the Sicilian Mafia, who wanted to get further into the drug trade. One of those arrested in the raids in the US was Frank Cali, a captain in the Gambino family. He was allegedly the "ambassador" in the US for the Inzerillo crime family. [5]
The name of the police operation, "Old Bridge", refers to the historical ties of an exile group of Sicilian Mafiosi across the Atlantic Ocean. After the Second Mafia War in the beginning of the 1980s the surviving members of the Inzerillo mafia family had been "allowed" to migrate to New York to avoid extermination by the Corleonesi faction and then victorious Sicilian boss of bosses Salvatore Riina. The Inzerillo's American relatives and associates of New York's Gambino family intervened on their behalf. They were allowed to settle in the States in exchange for a pledge: neither they nor their offspring would ever again set foot on Sicilian soil. They became known as gli Scappati, the Runaways. Two decades later, the Runaways were returning to Palermo. The exiles had good reasons: Riina and his successor Bernardo Provenzano were both arrested and are serving life terms in Italy. The runaway Inzerillo clan was allegedly rebuilding the "Old Bridge" between America and Sicily, reestablishing the business and drug trafficking ties between the Sicilian and American mobs. [6]
The following list contains some of the most notable charged and does not include most of those convicted.
| Name | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charge | Verdict | Sentence | Release date [7] | |
| Thomas Cacciopoli | Extortion | April 4, 2011 | ||
| Frank Cali | Racketeering, extortion, and conspiracy | Pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges | 16 months | June 4, 2009 |
| Charles Carneglia | Murder | Guilty by jury of four murders [8] | Life imprisonment [8] | N/A |
| Domenico Cefalu | Racketeering | Pleaded guilty to extortion [2] | Two years [9] | November 3, 2009 |
| Joseph Corozzo | Racketeering, drug trafficking [2] | Pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge | 46 months | June 10, 2011 |
| Nicholas Corozzo | Enterprise corruption and murder | Pleaded guilty to enterprise corruption charge and was found guilty by jury of murder | 13½ years | March 2, 2020 |
| Jackie D'Amico | Racketeering [2] | Pleaded guilty to extortion [2] | Two years [10] | November 3, 2009 |
| Leonard DiMaria | Pleaded guilty to racketeering, extortion, and conspiracy | August 31, 2012 | ||
| Richard G. Gotti | Attempted murder [11] | Pleaded guilty | Eight years [12] | February 22, 2015 |
| Vincent Gotti [11] | Attempted murder | Pleaded guilty [11] | Eight years [12] | February 22, 2015 |
| Richard Ranieri | Extortion [13] | March 1, 2010 | ||
| Vincent Dragonetti | Extortion [14] | 37 months [14] | May 28, 2011 [14] | |
Those without a release date listed either weren't sentenced to jail time or weren't imprisoned in a Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Joseph Charles Bonanno, sometimes referred to as Joe Bananas, was an Italian-American crime boss of the Bonanno crime family, which he ran from 1931 to 1968.
The Gambino crime family is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the American Mafia. The group, which went through five bosses between 1910 and 1957, is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the family at the time of the McClellan hearings in 1963, when the structure of organized crime first gained public attention. The group's operations extend from New York and the eastern seaboard to California. Its illicit activities include labor and construction racketeering, gambling, loansharking, extortion, money laundering, prostitution, fraud, hijacking, and fencing.
John "Jackie" D'Amico is a New York City mobster and caporegime who served as street boss of the Gambino crime family from 2005 to 2011. "Street boss" had been the family's number one position ever since official Boss Peter Gotti started serving a life sentence in prison.
Capo dei capi or capo di tutti i capi or Godfather are terms used mainly by the media, public, fiction writers and law enforcement community to indicate a supremely powerful crime boss in the Sicilian or American Mafia who holds great influence over the whole organization. The term was introduced to the U.S. public by the Kefauver Commission in 1950.
Salvatore Lo Piccolo, also known as "the Baron", is a Sicilian mafioso and one of the most powerful bosses of Palermo, Sicily. Lo Piccolo rose through the ranks of the Palermo mafia throughout the 1980s and he became the capomandamento of the San Lorenzo district in 1993, replacing Salvatore Biondino, who was sent to prison. Lo Piccolo was a fugitive since 1983 and had been running his Mafia affairs in hiding. With the capture of Bernardo Provenzano on 11 April 2006, Lo Piccolo had been cementing his power and rise to the top of the Palermo Mafia until his own arrest on 5 November 2007. It is believed that his family spread across Europe due to rising tensions, settling in England, Portugal, and southern Spain.
Antonino "Nino" Rotolo is a Sicilian Mafia boss from the Pagliarelli area in Palermo that traditionally was under the control of the Motisi Mafia family. Rotolo was the underboss of Matteo Motisi, but according to some pentiti he was the de facto leader representing the mandamento on the Sicilian Mafia Commission. In 2006, the police deduced that Rotolo — Number 25 in the numbered code of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano — had become a key figure in Cosa Nostra's hierarchy.
Giovanni "Gianni" Nicchi is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. Despite his young age – he is nicknamed 'u picciutteddu – he is considered to be one of the leading mafiosi of Cosa Nostra in Palermo. He was on the "most wanted list" of the Italian ministry of the Interior since 2006, until his arrest on 5 December 2009.
Francesco Paolo Augusto "Frank" Cali, also known as "Franky Boy", was an American mobster and the eventual acting boss of the Gambino crime family. Law enforcement considered Cali to have been the Gambinos' "ambassador to Sicilian mobsters" and had linked him to the Inzerillo Mafia family from Palermo. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Lipton, he was "seen as a man of influence and power by organized crime members in Italy". Cali was shot and killed outside his home in Staten Island on March 13, 2019. At the time of his death, a number of media organizations described him as the "reputed" acting boss of the Gambino crime family.
Giovanni Inzerillo, is a construction entrepreneur and son of Salvatore Inzerillo, a notorious Sicilian Mafia boss who was killed in May 1981 on the orders of Mafia boss Salvatore "Totò" Riina during the Second Mafia War.
Giovanni "John" Gambino was an Italian-born American mobster. Born in Palermo, Sicily, he became a made member of the Gambino crime family in 1975 and a capodecina or captain, and head of the crime family's Sicilian faction, appointed by family boss John Gotti in 1986, according to Mafia turncoat Sammy Gravano.
Rosario "Sal" Gambino is an Italian mobster in the Gambino crime family. He became nationally known when he and his brothers set up a multimillion dollar heroin cartel during the 1970s and 1980s. At the turn of the century he made headline news again when members of his family were suspected of trying to get him a presidential pardon through bribery.
The Bonanno crime family is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, and in the United States, as part of the criminal phenomenon known as the American Mafia.
The Inzerillo Mafia clan is a Sicilian Mafia clan, formerly among the most powerful in Sicily, for at least half a century they were considered the "aristocracy of Palermo's mafia".
Settimo Mineo is an Italian member of the Sicilian Mafia Pagliarelli mandamento from Palermo.
