|
|
|
|
News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
|
3-29-01 $3.4M Federal Scam Rap. Reputed mobster & 10 charged with mortgage fraud. Thursday, March 29, 2001
By ROBERT GEARTY A reputed member of organized crime and 10 other people engineered a mortgage scam that defrauded the federal government out of $3.4 million, Manhattan prosecutors charged yesterday. Reputed Luchese crime family capo Ray Argentina and the others were charged with racketeering, mail fraud, wire fraud and bank fraud in a 61-page indictment unsealed in Manhattan Federal Court. Argentina, 45, of Islip Terrace, L.I., was ordered held without bail after a prosecutor told U.S. District Court Judge John Martin that Argentina "scares the daylights out of everyone." The prosecutor, Jonathan Etra, also said of Argentina: "He doesn't have a job; he's a full-time mobster." Martin also held without bail Argentina's longtime friend and alleged accomplice, Louis (Louie Jet) Gampero, a 42-year-old Massapequa, L.I., man with a tow-truck business in Brooklyn. In urging that no bail be set for Gampero, Etra played excerpts of conversations the government had recorded between Gampero and a mortgage broker and the mortgage broker's wife. The conversations were recorded after Gampero had allegedly beaten up the broker, fracturing his ribs. In the conversations, an enraged Gampero is heard wildly cursing and threatening violence. "Tell him to get in touch with me or move out of the country," Gampero tells the wife. Both men pleaded not guilty through their attorney, David Breitbart of Manhattan. "I always get suspicious when an indictment weighs more than a pound and a half," he said. Etra said in court that the mortgage scam was done through a transaction known as "flip financing," in which a home is sold and then quickly resold for an exorbitant profit. The prosecutor said the scheme involved pumping up the appraised value of a home to obtain mortgages backed by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. He said six properties were involved in the scam, three in Brooklyn and three on Long Island. Participants in the fraud included a HUD-approved real estate appraiser, the owner of a title search company and a real estate broker, each of whom were named in the indictment. The indictment alleges that one of the homes in Central Islip, L.I., also was used as a cocaine stash house.
|
|
AmericanMafia.com
Copyright © 1998 - 2001 PLR International
|