NEW YORK _ Forty-six alleged mob figures with nicknames like "Muscles," "Tony the Cripple," "Big Vinny" and "Mustache Pat" were named in a sprawling new racketeering indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday morning.
The charges identified the men as part of a multistate East Coast La Cosa Nostra Enterprise that engaged in and coordinated crimes ranging from extortion and arson to credit card fraud, untaxed cigarette sales and firearms trafficking.
Official said the case was the largest mob roundup in the last several years, and the 30-page indictment shows the mob may be down, but it's far from out.
"The mob remains a scourge to this city and around the country," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. "Today's mafia is fully diversified in its boundless search for illegal profits."
"The indictment reads like an old school mafia novel, where extortion, illegal gambling, arson and threats to 'whack' someone are carried out along with modern-day crimes of credit-card skimming," said Diego Rodriguez, head of the New York FBI office.
The government said the defendants included bosses, capos, soldiers and associates from several different organized crime families _ Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno and Genovese _ as well as a Philadelphia organized crime family.
From New York and Massachusetts to Pennsylvania and Florida, the indictment said, the men engaged in "ongoing coordination, communication and efforts to work together" and "functioned as a continuing unit."
The government said it had recordings made by an informant who worked under Pasquale Parrello, an alleged Genovese captain whose crew operated out of his Arthur Avenue restaurant in the Bronx, Pasquale's Rigoletto, and later under Philadelphia crime boss Joseph Merlino.
An FBI undercover agent, the government said, made recordings while working under Eugene "Rooster" D'Onofrio, who headed crews on Mulberry Street in New York City, and in Springfield, Mass.
The indictment described racketeering activities ranging from a casino that offered illegal gambling activities in Yonkers to assaults and traditional strong-arm and leg-breaking activities to protect mob enterprises to health care fraud scams.
In one incident cited in the indictment, Parrello allegedly ordered two underlings _ one nicknamed "The Beast" _ to assault a panhandler in his Arthur Avenue neighborhood and "break" his knees.
Afterward, according to the charges, one of the legbreakers said on a wiretap, "Remember the old days in the neighborhood when we used to play baseball? A ballgame like that was done."
Thirty-nine defendants were arrested Thursday in New York, Florida and Massachusetts, and are scheduled to appear in court. Others were already in custody or have agreed to surrender, officials said.
