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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. |
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5-4-01 Mafia Takes a Big Hit. From First-Rate Snitch.
By MIKE CLAFFEY and GREG B. SMITH In the Italian enclave of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mike Durso was known as an engaging con man who took a mobster's bullet behind the ear and lived to tell about it. That same gift of gab has now earned Durso a place among the most successful Mafia informants of all time, the Daily News has learned. Last week, when the FBI took down 45 reputed goodfellas in a sweeping attack on the Genovese crime family, the FBI's New York director, Barry Mawn, never once mentioned Durso's name. Durso survived being shot in the head during a mob hit at San Guiseppe (no photo above.) He did praise an unnamed "cooperating witness" who had infiltrated the city's most powerful crime family, living among its members for three remarkable years. Sources familiar with the investigation identify Durso as the informant extraordinaire, a man who recorded 500 tapes of mob talk without catching another bullet. In thousands of hours of conversation, Durso captured numerous wiseguys in remarkably candid moments, such as reputed Genovese soldier Paul (Slick) Geraci confiding, "If you're not the kind of guy who is capable of hurting people ... you might as well stay home." Durso, 31, could ingratiate himself with the mob because he'd been around for so long, hanging out at the social clubs in East Williamsburg near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Friends and associates describe him as a likable, knock-around guy with "an engaging smile." In 1988, when he was charged with conning dozens of bank tellers into approving $500,000 worth of bad checks, they called him "well-dressed and charming." But Durso's life changed forever in the early hours of Nov. 30, 1994, when an unidentified gunman opened fire inside the San Giuseppe Social Club on Graham Ave. A Genovese associate named Tino Lombardi was killed, shot four times in the face. Durso was hit once in the back of the head and wound up critically injured. He survived. But a friend, who spoke to The News on condition of anonymity, said Durso soured on the mob because the Genovese family refused to help him take revenge. "He gave everything to this life and got nothing in return," said the pal. "He was a standup guy, and he was never looking to hurt nobody." So when Durso was implicated in a murder case brought by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and faced serious jail time, he agreed to cooperate. In 1998, he began wearing a wire. His Mafia mentor was Salvatore (Sammy Meatballs) Aparo, a 72-year-old capo who took him in and vouched for him to several other gangsters, sources said. He spoke with top members of the Genovese family as they allegedly discussed extortion, gambling and stock pump-and-dump schemes, according to an indictment filed by Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. About two weeks ago, Durso's parents abruptly disappeared from the home on Metropolitan Ave. in East Williamburg, where they'd lived for more 20 years. It's an old-fashioned Italian-American neighborhood, with pork stores stocked with plump salamis and fresh smoked mozzarella and cafes that serve espresso. Yesterday, Durso's aunt stood on the stoop of her two-family house, where the Christmas lights remain tacked up year-round. "I'm mad at my sister not telling me anything," said the aunt, who did not want to give her name. "She just said she's on vacation, that's all she tells me. I'm really upset."
********************************** The Durso Tapes: Reputed Genovese soldier Paul (Slick) Geraci sounds off on federal undercover tapes: On stool pigeons: "How ... can they make her talk to a stool pigeon? We don't talk to stool pigeons. We hate stool pigeons. You want to bend the rules? You don't twist the rules." On modern mobsters: "You know they wouldn't go out there and shoot nobody. They don't even have the imagination for murder. In other words, you have to have an imagination to go lay on somebody. They don't have nothing." On a mob wanna-bes: "If you're not the kind of guy who is capable of hurting people, that's what this is about. If you're not capable of doing that, you might as well stay home." Original Publication Date: 5/4/01
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