Queens Tenants at Condo Had to Pay Fees and Fines to Mafia Thugs, Feds Say by John Marzulli - NY Daily News

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Greentree Condominiums in Ozone Park. Below, evidence photo of alleged mobsters Joseph Panzarella Jr. and Charles Carneglia. DelMundo for News

Gambino gangsters controlled a condo board in Queens and extorted tens of thousands of dollars in bogus and inflated fees from owners when they tried to move, the feds say.

Testifying at the trial of reputed hit man Charles Carneglia, former residents of the Greentree Condominiums in Ozone Park said they were slammed with steep last-minute charges for "failure to comply with condo bylaws."

Federal prosecutors allege Carneglia conspired with several mob associates on the board - including local Realtor Joseph Panzarella Sr. and former president Robert Porto - to gouge the residents.

The Greentree development features attached and unattached townhouses which range in price from about $250,000 to more than $400,000.

Alleged mobsters Joseph Panzarella Jr. and Charles Carneglia.

Right before he was due to close on the sale of his two-bedroom duplex in 2001, UPS driver Joseph Mauro said he was blind-sided with a $47,517.47 bill from the board for fees and fines he supposedly owed.

The fines included $6,000 for "animal excrement thrown from the balcony daily" from 1996 to 2001, nearly $9,000 in water and sewer assessment fees and $1,792 for "collection of" water and sewer assessment fees.

"Were you ever told that your tenants were throwing animal excrement off the balcony?" asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Evan Morris.

Mauro said there were never any prior complaints about his tenants' dog. He said the "violations" began in 1996, the year he was voted off the board after having replaced a maintenance company the government contends was operated by a reputed Gambino associate.

Brian Crowley, a carpenter foreman married to an NYPD officer, testified that not long after he bought Mauro's condo for $240,000, he ran into problems with Porto.

"I went to ask him questions about elections and tax-revenue papers that are supposed to be given to us as owners... He had mentioned that I should stop asking so many questions because I was involving more people in my questions," Crowley explained.

Even Gambino associate Kevin McMahon - a member of Carneglia's crew and once considered boss John Gotti's good luck charm - claims he, too, was scammed by Greentree officials.

The feds on Thursday played a taped 2000 conversation intercepted from McMahon's cell phone in which he bitterly complained about Panzarella hitting him with a $2,000 water bill when he was selling his apartment.

"He's gonna die, that pr--," McMahon said. "He's dying and I can't wait. I'm gonna go to the funeral and laugh. Go stick the water bill under his f-- neck."

McMahon, a turncoat witness, testified that he bought his Greentree condo from Gotti's son, John A. (Junior) Gotti.

Only Carneglia has been charged in the shakedown scheme, which the feds say operated from at least 1999 to 2004.

Panzarella Sr. is deceased; his son Joseph Panzarella Jr., also described as a Gambino associate, declined to comment, said his lawyer, Jessie James Burke.

jmarzulli@nydailynews.com

Longtime Gotti Loyalist Kasman Cooperates with FBI by Anthony DeStephano -- Newsday.com

The lawyer in question is Joseph Corozzo, who is representing his father, Joseph, 66, a reputed crime family consiglieri, in a case involving last month's 62-defendant Gambino crime family indictment. Brooklyn federal prosecutors have charged that attorney Corozzo was essentially acting as "house counsel" for the Gambino family and took part in some criminal activities.

Corozzo, 41, has denied wrongdoing and is expected to put up a vigorous defense. The stakes are huge for Corozzo, who has been the target of potential prosecution for obstruction of justice in the past but has never been charged. The Manhattan defense attorney couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.

Kasman's decision to help the FBI came as a shock to Gotti's wife and children, who viewed him as a member of the family. But it was unclear Wednesday to many defense attorneys if Kasman's information had any great importance to anyone other than Corozzo and a few Gambino family members he taped.

The still-unanswered question is why Kasman, 50, decided to help the government after being such an avowed loyalist to Gotti for so many years. Lawyers' theories range from Kasman's anger at the Gotti family to feeling slighted by some Gambino crime family members.

Suspicion about Kasman being a cooperator existed well before this week's disclosure. In one case, Kasman showed up in 2006 at a wake in Howard Beach and was heard asking pointed questions about whether Gotti had any hidden wealth left behind, said sources who didn't want to be identified.

Now it appears those hunches about Kasman were correct.

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Years ago, when he was a favorite of the late mob boss John Gotti, Garment District businessman Lewis Kasman had a friendship with the Gambino crime boss that few people experienced.

"Kasman would carry on like it was some Broadway play with Harvey Fierstein, speaking to Gotti in a way , for anyone else, would incur Gotti's wrath," remembered defense attorney Gerald Shargel, who once met with Gotti at Kasman's zipper company.

Though Kasman, 50 -- Gotti's self-proclaimed "adopted son" -- drifted from the front pages when the mobster died of cancer in 2002, he is now back with a vengeance.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn revealed earlier this week that since 2005, Kasman has been a cooperating witness for the FBI, taping a number of reputed mobsters and associates. Prosecutors intend to use Kasman and some of his evidence in a special hearing Thursday in federal court in Brooklyn aimed at getting a controversial lawyer disqualified from a major mob case.

The lawyer in question is Joseph Corozzo, who is representing his father, Joseph, 66, a reputed crime family consiglieri, in a case involving last month's 62-defendant Gambino crime family indictment. Brooklyn federal prosecutors have charged that attorney Corozzo was essentially acting as "house counsel" for the Gambino family and took part in some criminal activities.

Corozzo, 41, has denied wrongdoing and is expected to put up a vigorous defense. The stakes are huge for Corozzo, who has been the target of potential prosecution for obstruction of justice in the past but has never been charged. The Manhattan defense attorney couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday.

Kasman's decision to help the FBI came as a shock to Gotti's wife and children, who viewed him as a member of the family. But it was unclear Wednesday to many defense attorneys if Kasman's information had any great importance to anyone other than Corozzo and a few Gambino family members he taped.

The still-unanswered question is why Kasman, 50, decided to help the government after being such an avowed loyalist to Gotti for so many years. Lawyers' theories range from Kasman's anger at the Gotti family to feeling slighted by some Gambino crime family members.

Suspicion about Kasman being a cooperator existed well before this week's disclosure. In one case, Kasman showed up in 2006 at a wake in Howard Beach and was heard asking pointed questions about whether Gotti had any hidden wealth left behind, said sources who didn't want to be identified.

Now it appears those hunches about Kasman were correct.

In Ozone Park, the Mob Ties That Bind - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

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Standing in front of the old site of the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens, you can see a few immediate differences between its appearance now and its appearance when it was home base for the John J. Gotti and his associates in the Gambino crime family.

First, the space, at 98-04 101st Avenue, has been divided into two businesses, a medical supply store and a pet groomer, and it looks a lot more welcoming now than it used to. Second, there was some faded graffiti on the front of the building. That is the kind of thing, people in the neighborhood said this week, that would not have flown when Mr. Gotti, who died in prison in 2002, was still around.

I was in Ozone Park to visit a couple of Mafia landmarks for the Dispatches feature in this week’s City section, and to see what people thought about the arrests last week of dozens of people accused of involvement with organized crime. One thing that’s clear is that Mr. Gotti and his compatriots really did, and do, have a following in the neighborhood. They put on fireworks shows and held barbecues at the club, and anyone was welcome. And, people said, they kept the streets clean and safe, and scared away street criminals.

That last point is one you hear a lot regarding the civic benefits of organized crime, but I couldn’t find any substantiation for it in the city’s crime statistics. There are two police precincts covering Ozone Park, the 102nd and the 106th, and in both, every category of crime that the police track is down substantially since 1990, which was two years before Mr. Gotti went to prison.

The numbers can’t tell the whole story, of course — the city in general was a more dangerous place all those years ago, and maybe things would have been even worse in the neighborhood if Mr. Gotti hadn’t been around keeping an eye on things. But empirically, it seems the most you can say is that some people in the area felt safer. Albert Gelb, the court security officer killed near his home in the neighborhood in 1976, certainly wasn’t safer, and neither was John Favara, Mr. Gotti’s neighbor in nearby Howard Beach, who accidentally ran over Mr. Gotti’s son and disappeared in 1980, maybe to wind up dead and buried in an Ozone Park lot.

Things are not what they used to be, anyway. The neighborhood is less Italian than it was, and its newer residents lack a connection to the Gambinos’ prime years and may not have even heard of Mr. Gotti. And a quick search for addresses of the people named in the 170-page indictment reveals locations all over the tristate region, often in tonier areas than Ozone Park, a modest neighborhood of small, shingled houses.

Some people in the neighborhood who remember organized crime figures are not interested in discussing them. One business owner, who had stopped by the pet grooming store in the former Bergin social club storefront while I was there, maintained a stony silence on the topic of Mr. Gotti. But then, he had arrived while I was standing in Mr. Gotti’s old bathroom with a notepad, trying to find the words to describe his odd-looking toilet, so the man’s discretion did make some sense.

Others were almost as circumspect, but revealed a bit more. A waitress at the Esquire Diner, where Albert Gelb once clashed with Charles Carneglia, the man charged in his killing, said she was sad to see the era of Mr. Gotti and his former associates come to an end. The way they socialized, she said, was a lot like the mobsters’ nights out depicted in Martin Scorcese’s “Goodfellas” — being ushered to special tables in expensive nightclubs and spending large sums of money on food and drinks.

It’s tempting sometimes to conflate movie mobsters with their real-life counterparts, and generally that is a temptation worth avoiding. I couldn’t resist, though, taking a peek at the table-side jukebox mounted in my booth at the Esquire. Yes, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” is in there — No. 2602.