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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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2-1-00 State police smash sports gambling net based in North End. February 1, 2000 by Tom Farmer, Boston Herald Tuesday, February 1, 2000 A massive illegal sports gambling network that generated up to $26 million a year was smashed yesterday with the 82-count indictment of 27 ``organized crime'' figures who ran the operation from a tiny North End apartment, authorities said. ``They were moving a lot of money through this operation. They had a lot of people going to them placing bets,'' said James Borghesani, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Ralph C. Martin II. Coming the morning after the biggest gambling day of the year - Super Bowl Sunday - the indictment alleges the defendants moved $300,000 to $500,000 in sports bets every weekend starting Oct. 19, 1998. For more than a year, court-authorized wiretaps were used to record incoming and outgoing telephone calls from an apartment at 28 Hull St. in the North End, Borghesani said. The operation was also kept under surveillance by investigators from Martin's office and troopers from the state police Special Service Unit, Borghesani said. The majority of the bets were placed on football, hockey and basketball games, according to the indictment. Anthony J. ``Spitzy'' Gambale, 55, who has addresses in Boston and Saugus, and Robert A. Beshere, 32, of Winthrop, were named as the leaders of the ``multi-level'' ring of ``27 reputed members of organized crime.'' According to court records, Gambale was given a one-year suspended sentence and placed on probation for a year in April 1997 after appearing in Norfolk Superior Court on gaming charges. Gambale was fined in Essex Superior Court for a gambling charge in 1980, according to court records. Also charged yesterday was Philip L. ``Sonny'' Baiona, 76, of Walpole, who Boston officials said ran an illegal rooming house at 40 Dwight St. in which a 62-year-old tenant died in a July 1998 fire. At the time of the fire, Baiona, who owned other property in the city, had some 20 Boston Housing Court default warrants dating back to 1991. When he was indicted in 1992 in an alleged $20 million mortgage scam, federal authorities identified Baiona as a ``reputed soldier in the New England Mob.'' Another of the defendants, Gerald Esposito, 28, of Boston, is an associate probation officer at West Roxbury District Court, according to Coria Holland, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Probation Service. He has been suspended without pay pending the outcome of his case. Borghesani said the 27 defendants will be summonsed to appear for arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court Feb. 24 on charges of keeping a place for registering bets and using the telephone for gaming purposes. Some of the defendants will also be charged with conspiracy to violate gaming laws. ``With continued cooperation between police and prosecutors, we will make sure that organized crime does not regain a foothold in Suffolk County,'' Martin said. ``Because of these efforts, we saw the rapid disruption of organized crime in the last decade. And we intend to diminish their activity even further in the decade to come.''
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