Surviving the Mob

by Dennis Griffin

  “Lenny said he wasn’t talking about Wild Bill. He wouldn’t elaborate, but he gave me a warning. ‘I don’t want ya’ to get caught with your dick in your hand. Don’t trust nobody. Not even in your own backyard, kid.’

  “Was Lenny telling me that Nicky was getting ready to give the order to have me whacked? Would Mike Yannotti be the assassin? I didn’t know and he didn’t say. But that statement put me on a serious red alert. When I dropped Lenny off, he gave me one more piece of advice. ‘If they start calling you in [for meetings] too many times, do yourself a favor and don’t go after a while.’

  “By the end of that day, I felt I had no choice but to continue to keep an eye on Wild Bill, who was still upset with me over the money deal. I knew how Danny Cutaia felt about me. And from what Lenny had told me, I wasn’t in very good shape with Nicky either. I was already being very careful. How much more cautious could I be?

  “Nicky wanted to meet with me again about a week later. But before that took place, he was arrested on federal racketeering charges in Key Biscayne, Florida.”

  On December 18, 1996, Nicky Corozzo was arrested on charges of attempted murder, loansharking, and racketeering. A newspaper report of the arrest said Corozzo was nabbed by federal agents as he emerged from a swim in the Atlantic Ocean at the Sonesta Beach Hotel in Key Biscayne, shortly before he was to depart for New York City. Officials said the arrest was certain to create even more disarray in the Gambino crime family.

  The arrest coincided with the unsealing of a 20-count indictment that accused Corozzo of an array of charges, including running the Gambino gang’s crime activities in South Florida for at least four years, operating a vast loansharking ring that charged extortionate interest rates up to 260% a year, and arson.

  Investigators said that Corozzo was believed to have succeeded John Gotti as the godfather of the Gambino family after leaders in the city’s four other Mafia factions—the Genovese, Lucchese, Colombo, and Bonanno families—demanded that Gotti step down. They’d complained that Gotti, serving a life sentence for murder and racketeering, could no longer effectively run the Gambino group from a cell in the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

  Also indicted on racketeering charges with Corozzo was Leonard DiMaria, who officials said was Corozzo’s right-hand man and had recently taken command of Corozzo’s old Brooklyn crew. DiMaria was arrested by the FBI at his home in Flatlands, Brooklyn.

  The indictment by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale asserted that Corozzo had ordered the abduction and murder of an associate in the family, Louis Maione, suspected of stealing $20,000 from the loansharking operation. Investigators said the FBI had been investigating the Florida crew for two years and that its loansharking activities were conducted through a front, the E-Z Check Cashing Company in Deerfield Beach, a town near Fort Lauderdale.

  From wiretaps, the FBI learned about the alleged conspiracy to murder Maione, who cooperated with the inquiry after agents warned him that his life was in danger.

  Although Nicky had predicted his arrest days earlier, it still sent shockwaves through the crew.

  “We couldn’t believe it happened so quick,” Andrew recalls. “I started to wonder that if they were that close to Nicky, were there agents in the diner when we had our meeting? Did they know about me? How safe was my safe house? I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to give up my apartment and go back to living like a gypsy.

  “A few days later, I got a call from Lenny. He’d been pinched with Nicky, but had been able to arrange bail. Nicky hadn’t. Lenny wanted to know how long before I was going to get Wild Bill his seven thousand. I had the money, but I asked him to give me a few days. Then he told me that Nicky expected me to help him with his lawyer fees. I told him I’d help him if he needed it. But Nicky had millions. Why in the fuck should I help him?

  “Lenny said that with all the law-enforcement pressure, nobody could earn like before. Everybody had to tighten their belt. He even told me I had the green light to bring my associates in the drug business forward and put them on record [introduce them to the crew boss].

  “Selling drugs was supposedly taboo in organized crime. All the families made money from drugs, but they claimed they earned from shaking down the dealers, not from dealing themselves. I’d been around the Gambino family all my adult life and I’d never been given a green light to bring drug dealers forward. Something wasn’t right. If they wanted to know who my dealers were, it was because they were going to pass them on to somebody else. Which meant I probably wasn’t going to be around.

  “Nicky wanted me to set up a hit on Junior Gotti, bring my drug connections forward, and pay his legal fees. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out they were measuring me up for a casket myself. All the signs were there. The dry run at Mike Yannotti’s house. Lenny’s warning about being careful in my backyard. The notice that a lot of work would be done after Nicky went to jail.

  “I’d also found out from my Genovese bank-robbery crew that after my last meeting with Nicky, he’d sent Vinny Dragonetti around to find out how much we’d made on the New Jersey score. They stonewalled him and said they didn’t know what he was talkin’ about. I could only imagine how much that must have pissed him off.

  “And in the Junior Gotti thing, it wasn’t uncommon in a high-profile hit to get rid of the shooter afterward. Lenny got arrested on additional charges right after that and his bail was revoked. I wasn’t able to see or talk with him again.

  “About a week later, I ran into a guy with a street name of Black Dom from Wild Bill’s crew. I knew him and liked him. He said he had a message for me from Wild Bill: Nobody had come forward with the seven thousand yet. I told him to tell his boss that gettin’ him or anybody else killed trying to collect seven grand wasn’t very smart. Dom knew that even though I liked him, I’d shoot him right there if he tried anything. He said, ‘Andrew, I’ve got no problem with you. I’m not even gonna tell Wild Bill I saw you.’

  “I felt like I was on life support—in a kill-or-be-killed situation. I wore a bulletproof vest whenever I was out on the street and was armed to the teeth. My friends thought I had dementia, because I was no longer on time for appointments. If a meeting was scheduled for six, I showed up at seven. If I was supposed to call somebody on Monday, they heard from me on Wednesday. I did everything with the intent of not letting anybody pin down my movements. If I established any patterns, it would probably cost me my life. Each and every day I waited for the shoe to drop.”

  As 1997 began, the pressure on Andrew increased regarding his personal safety. But his financial situation improved as he finalized the marijuana operation with his San Diego connection. He and his partner put in $100,000 to cover setup expenses. His partner and their new associate, the guy who had prepared his fake identification, traveled to Las Vegas to get things moving. Andrew stayed in New York to receive the shipments.

  Marijuana came in from Mexico to San Diego. It went from there to Las Vegas on the friend’s tractor-trailer. In Vegas the load was broken down and shipped to Brooklyn by UPS and a private trucking company. On the first run, they got about five hundred pounds. The second time yielded about three hundred. But on the third or fourth trip, the fake-document guy got pinched in Vegas with about 150 pounds of marijuana and around $65,000 in cash. And that was the end of the marijuana business.

  “My partner told me that we needed to bail the guy out right away; otherwise he might start cooperating with the law. We got him out a few days later. A short time afterward, my partner was implicated in that same drug deal and was arrested in Vegas as well. When he got out on bail, they both returned to New York. I met them at my partner’s house to discuss the case against them and what we could do to help with their legal fees.

  “I had suspicions from the start about the way this thing had come down. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but alarm bells were going off in my head big time about these two guys. When I went to the meeting, I even considered killing them both
right there. But that was a spur-of-the-moment thought. I had no plan in place. My car was parked on the street and I didn’t know if they’d told anybody else about the meeting.

  “The decision not to kill them turned out to be a wise one, as I found out later on. And that was the last meeting I had with them.”

  As winter turned to spring, Andrew was living in a shell and maintained regular contact only with Charlotte and the members of the bank-robbery crew, as they were planning another score. He lived a day at a time and made no long-range plans. As each day dawned, he didn’t know if he’d have to take someone’s life or if someone would try to take his. And, of course, the law was still anxious to catch up with him.

  “They were stressful, stressful times,” Andrew recalls. “Around April Mike Yannotti reached out to me and wanted to meet. We talked about Junior Gotti. We’d never received the order from Nicky to carry out the hit. Junior had been arrested in February and was still behind bars. It didn’t look like he stood much chance of getting bail, so there didn’t seem to be a great deal we could do about him for the moment. Mike tried to get me to another meeting later on, but I didn’t show.

  “On the morning of May seventh, me and the Genovese guys had plans to rob the same bank in New Jersey. They hadn’t changed their procedures after the first robbery and we figured they’d never expect us to come back. But we had to postpone the job until I came up with the stolen license plates we needed to put on our cars. I planned to do a dry run that morning, though, just to make sure there hadn’t been any last-minute changes at the bank or on the escape route, like road construction.

  “Charlotte picked me up at my apartment at ten o’clock, driving my Mercedes. She came into the basement apartment and I remember asking her about the weather. She said it was nice, so I put on a light jacket. I locked my door and we took two steps up to the street level. And then all I could hear was racing car engines and squealing tires. I looked to my left and saw a minivan approaching with the side door already sliding open. I shoved Charlotte into the bushes next to us and started to run down the driveway. I saw two men running toward me from my back yard. I ran up on the stoop, thinking I could jump over the fence. Then one of the men coming at me from the back yard pulled a chain up from around his neck with a badge on it. When I saw the badge, I stopped dead in my tracks. I thought, it’s the law; I can handle this. I breathed a little sigh of relief and surrendered.

  “The arresting officers were part of a joint task force made up of FBI agents, New York State Police, NYPD, and state parole. They took me back in my apartment, put me up against the wall, and searched me and my apartment. They found all kinds of guns. There was a Mossberg pump riot shotgun, a Baretta nine millimeter, a thirty-eight-caliber revolver, a machine gun, and three hundred rounds of ammunition.

  “During the search I overheard two of the parole guys talking. One of them told the other that when I surrendered on the stoop, I pulled my jacket back. He thought I was going for a gun and came very close to shooting me. I had pulled my jacket back, but only to show I wasn’t armed. He was pretty nerved up over what had almost happened. I remember his hand was still shaking when they transported me to the precinct.

  “An investigator named Tom Scanlon searched my wallet and pulled my Joseph Conti driver’s license out of it. There was no doubt he already knew it was going to be there. He said to one of the other cops, ‘Hey, I’ve got it.’ Then he said to me, ‘Andrew, you got so many problems that this one’s on us.’ He put the license in his pocket and that was the last I ever heard about my fake identification.

  “And then he asked me if I knew what this was all about. I told him I had no idea. He said, ‘You’re the last one we got. Your whole crew is in jail. This has something to do with your uncle down in Florida.’ I knew he was talking about Nicky. And my marijuana partner thought that Nicky was my blood uncle. And who better to tell them about Joseph Conti than the guy who made up the documents for me? What Scanlon had said answered some of my questions.

  “They had placed Charlotte in handcuffs too. Scanlon told me I had two options. I could keep my mouth shut and they’d arrest her along with me until they could find out if she had anything to do with the guns. Or I could be a man and take responsibility for what they’d found. If I did that, they’d just run a warrant check on her and turn her loose. I told them it was my place and anything they found was mine. I said let’s leave civilians out of this. They ran their check, then released her.

  “After they finished the search I was taken to a precinct on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. That’s where I first met a detective named Michael Callahan. He was working with the Joint Organized-Crime Task Force and was assigned to the Lucchese squad. Then they took me to another facility, where they said some people wanted to question me.

  “While this was going on, Charlotte had called my mother, who in turn had contacted Mike Yannotti. He had her go to the office of his lawyer, a guy named Joe Muri. He told her that he’d see what he could do about getting me bailed out.

  “I knew I was in a bad spot, but I wasn’t sure exactly how bad. I was no doubt facing a lot of years behind bars from the legal system. And if I was willing to take it on the chin and do the time, I’d be protecting the very same guys who wanted me dead. I needed more time to think and try to figure out where things really stood for me. So when I talked with Callahan and an FBI agent named Vince Girard, I hinted that I might consider talking with them again. I didn’t give them anything or promise them anything. I just kind of opened the door a crack for future reference.

  “They explained to me that I’d be going through central booking and then to the Brooklyn House of Detention on the parole-violation charge. They’d arrest me again in a few days on federal charges. I told them I thought they were full of shit, that they didn’t have anything on me. They kinda laughed at me. Like they were going to open my eyes real soon.

  “The law had gotten a fugitive and a bunch of weapons off the streets. It was a good day for them. But in the long run, it was a pretty good day for me too.”

  18

  Decision Time

  Andrew had been in the Brooklyn House of Detention for a couple of days when he had visitors. Michael Callahan and another lawman wanted to see him. He turned down the visit. It wasn’t that he’d changed his mind about possible cooperation. Rather, he thought the contact was too out in the open. Andrew didn’t trust the guards at the facility and he knew how it would sound if the word got out that he was meeting with lawmen without an attorney present. And he’d already rejected the services of Joe Muri.

  “I was initially held for only the parole violation,” Andrew explains. “When Muri showed up at my arraignment, I told him there was nothing he could do for me. I wasn’t going to get bail and had no need for a lawyer at that time. And when I did need one, I’d use Joseph Corozzo. That decision caused a lot of talk in organized-crime circles, because they couldn’t figure out just what I was up to.

  “A couple of mornings later, a correction officer woke me up around four-thirty and said I had to get ready for court. I told him I didn’t have any court scheduled, that I was being held on a parole violation. He insisted. So I got dressed and they moved me to the holding pens where inmates waited for transportation to court or other appearances. Names were called out and guys left. It was now past court hours and I was the only one left in the cell. I complained to a correction officer that they’d just rousted me to bust my balls. There was no court for me.

  “The officer said, ‘Oh no. You’re somethin’ special. The marshals are comin’ for you.’ That’s when I knew additional charges were about to be filed against me. They took me to Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn. I was met there by Michael Callahan, Vince Girard, and a couple of other guys. I was arrested, but only on a federal weapons charge at that time. That was because the serial number on the machine gun they found in my apartment had been filed off, making it a federal charge. After processing me, they wanted to talk.


  “My choices were to tell them I didn’t want to talk, would only speak with them if I had my lawyer with me, or talk with them right then. My mother had found a non-Mob lawyer for me and I already indicated to him that I was thinking about becoming a government witness. So I let it be known to them that I was open to a cooperation deal. I told them, though, that I was concerned about several things. I said that I wanted to get my lawyer involved and maybe something could be worked out. I said that any agreement we reached would have to include me doing any time as a federal prisoner.

  “Because I was now in the federal system, I figured I’d be going to MDC [Metropolitan Detention Center] in Brooklyn where Nicky and Lenny were being held. But they had issued a separation order that we couldn’t be housed in the same facility. In addition, I learned later that another guy housed at MDC, Timothy Lynskey, had been a friend of Robert Arena’s and thought I was responsible for Robert’s murder. For those reasons, I was sent to MCC [Metropolitan Correction Center] in Manhattan instead.

  “When I arrived at MCC, I was assigned to the eleventh floor. Almost immediately, I was approached by Danny Marino, a capo in the Gambino family. A lot of other organized-crime guys were there from the various families. They treated me well, but I was in a very uncomfortable position. Although I was still on the fence, if they knew what I was thinking about doing, my treatment would have changed real quick.

  “Meanwhile, the federal prosecutor’s office was in contact with my lawyer. They told him they understood my situation and that I’d definitely been marked for death. That became crystal clear when I was arraigned before a female federal magistrate. When the subject came up, she said she’d consider setting bail. The prosecutor told the judge there was credible information that not only was the Gambino family plotting my murder, but other organized-crime families as well. If I went back onto the streets, it was unlikely I’d live to return to court.