MANHATTAN (CN) — A reputed Genovese boss who owns a popular Bronx restaurant and an accused arsonist will remain in jail, awaiting charges from a giant bust on 46 alleged La Cosa Nosta members across the East Coast.
More than a dozen of the men pleaded not guilty Thursday afternoon in Manhattan Federal Court, as new details emerged about their rude awakening at 6 a.m., when they were arrested in connection with a sprawling racketeering indictment.
Targeting alleged crime families scattered across New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Florida, the indictment paints a picture of a mafia busily juggling loan-sharking, firearms-trafficking, illegal gambling, health care fraud, arson and extortion conspiracies.
Its victims included insurance companies, debtors, taxpayers, gambling addicts, credit card owners and, in one instance, someone mistaken for a panhandler, prosecutors say.
For Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the indictment shows how "today's mafia is fully diversified in its boundless search for illegal profits."
"Today's charges against 46 men, including powerful leaders, members and associates of five different La Cosa Nostra families, demonstrate that the mob remains a scourge on this city and around the country," he said in a statement.
Lead defendant Pasquale "Patsy" Parrello, a 72-year-old from Tuckahoe, N.Y., is the owner and namesake of the Zagat-rated restaurant Pasquale's Rigoletto on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, and a reputed Genovese family member.
Grizzled, stocky, balding and comfortably dressed in a white T-shirt and black athletic pants, the reputed mobster waved to his family seated in the arraignment room before pleading not guilty before Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses.
Parrello, who will remain in jail until a future bail application, recently finished a long spell of incarceration, having faced a seven-year sentence for union embezzlement in 2001.
A decade later, Parrello still owned his Bronx restaurant when he ordered Israel "Buddy" Torres to "break [a panhandler's] knees" after seeing someone bothering customers in 2011, according to the indictment.
Nabbing the wrong person, Torres and several unknown goons assaulted a bystander with "glass jars, sharp objects, and steel-tipped boots," prosecutors say.
Two years later, Parrello and Torres allegedly stabbed another man charged Thursday, Anthony Vazzano aka "Tony the Wig" and "Muscles", in the neck in an act of retaliation, which the indictment does not specify.
Prosecutors say that another site of violence was a gambling club in Yonkers, where Parrello and five others allegedly profited from poker tournaments, dice tournaments and horse-race betting.
"The owners of the Yonkers Club (the 'House') took a percentage of the gambling proceeds," the 32-page indictment states. "Additionally, the Yonkers Club generated additional money through the installation of illegal poker machines."
To intimidate a rival bookmaker, reputed wiseguy Mark "Stymie" Maiuzzo "set fire to a motor vehicle parked outside of the gambling club," acting upon the instructions of Anthony "Anthony Boy" Zinzi, prosecutors claim.
Maiuzzo, a 37-year-old from Scarsdale, N.Y., also wore a white T-shirt and a sour expression as he sat cross-armed in the courtroom of Magistrate Judge Frank Maas, where roughly a dozen other alleged mobsters faced arraignment.
Of that group, only Maiuzzo will stay behind bars pending a future bail application, as the other defendants seated with him in the jury box were allowed to leave on bonds ranging from $150,000 to $400,000.
