Mar 31, 2006 7:49 pm US/Eastern
Eight Gambino Crime Family Members Plead Guilty
NEW YORK (AP) ―
Eight members and associates of the Gambino organized crime family, including the family's acting underboss, have pled guilty to charges stemming from a probe in which an FBI agent infiltrated the mob, authorities said Friday.
The eight were among 11 people charged last year with racketeering in a prosecution aimed at taking down current and future leaders of a crime family more than a century old. In all, more than 30 people were arrested on various charges.
The eight racketeering defendants, including acting underboss Anthony Megale of Stamford, Conn., were scheduled to go to trial on May 8. Instead, they entered their pleas in recent days in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Three others still face trial.
During his plea before U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Thursday, Megale admitted extorting money from a Greenwich, Conn., restaurant between 1998 and March 2005.
He also said he extorted money from a New Jersey trucking company and from the owners of a Westchester County construction company.
Stephen Seeger, a lawyer for Megale, said no violence actually resulted.
Megale told the judge: "I have never threatened anybody for anything. But, it could be by me talking to them, I could be implying a threat to them without them realizing it."
The judge asked him if he was taking money from them that they did not want to give.
"Yes," Megale answered.
"Was it your understanding they were doing so because they were afraid?" the judge asked.
"Yes," Megale replied.
They agreed to forfeit a total of approximately $550,000 for their roles in a decade-long racketeering scheme including violent assault, extortion, loansharking, union embezzlement, illegal gambling, trafficking in stolen property and mail fraud.
Mark Mershon, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office, called the pleas "significant additional steps in the steady march toward reducing the influence of organized crime, if not eradicating it."
The pleas came several weeks after a jury deadlocked at the racketeering retrial of John A. "Junior" Gotti. Prosecutors say Gotti became the family's street boss after his father, John Gotti Sr., was sentenced to life in prison in 1992. The elder Gotti, who was convicted of racketeering, died in prison in 2002.
The younger Gotti's lawyers argued that he quit the mob when he pleaded guilty in a separate racketeering case in 1999.
The new pleas came in a case in which an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the mob during a three-year period. Authorities say he was so well respected that he was considered for formal induction into the family.
The undercover work helped to produce more than 5,000 hours of recordings resulting from wiretaps and other surveillance.
Sentencing was set for various days between May and July. The defendants face prison terms ranging from five years to more than 20 years. They also could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Megale was Connecticut's highest-ranking gangster, federal prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty in October to racketeering conspiracy in a related case in Connecticut and faces up to 61/2 years in prison. He has denied being the Gambino underboss.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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