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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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2-20-01 How mobster shed the Outfit.
Detroiter Nove Tocco now a U.S. witness.
February 20, 2001 With golden oldies cranking on the radio, Nove Tocco cruised Detroit, shaking down bookies, shooting windows and hatching schemes -- just living the gangster good life.Tocco had enough devotion to honor, family and loyalty to bring a wolfish grin to television mafioso Tony Soprano. But even with his third-generation tradition, Tocco could feel the chill of coming change to the Detroit mob. At 1:06 p.m., March 3, 1992, Tocco peeked into the future and saw a fossil."Yeah, the Outfit's all done," Tocco told his partner Paul Corrado. "There's gonna be no more. I think we're dinosaurs. "Eight years later, renouncing a life of strong-arm schemes, Tocco became the only member of the Detroit Mafia to turn federal witness.Locked away in special federal custody, Tocco is still working for the government, giving details of the operations, helping obtain guilty pleas in recent months against four associates. He also is standing ready to testify against alleged mob capo, or captain, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone if Giacalone's health permits him to go to trial. When the government is done with him, Tocco is to finish his 50-month racketeering sentence and join his wife and children with a new identity and new legitimate job under the federal witness-protection program. While officials are proud of their prize, others -- including defense attorneys at the 1998 Mafia conspiracy trial -- said Tocco is a braggart bloated by too many cheesy gangster movies. He was a hoodlum wanna-be, they contend, whose conversations picked up by hidden FBI microphones sound like a cut-rate Godfather. Defense lawyer Frank Eaman summed up his opinion in an appeal on behalf of convicted Detroit mob boss Jack Tocco: "When is Nove Tocco lying? Whenever he opens his mouth, whenever it suits his purpose."Nove Tocco, through his lawyer, declined to talk to the Free Press. But a review of court records, investigative reports, transcripts of secret FBI recordings and numerous interviews with law enforcement officials, attorneys and people who knew Nove Tocco as he grew up provide insight into the man and his motives for turning on the Outfit.Family tiesThe Detroit mob is special, said Joe Finnigan, head of the Detroit FBI's organized crime squad. When authorities talk about Mafia families in New York or Chicago, they are speaking of criminal confederations. But in Detroit, they're talking blood. Nove Tocco, 53, is the grandson of Joe Zerilli, who established the Detroit Mafia out of the bloody Prohibition gang wars of the 1920s. He is also the nephew of reputed Underboss Anthony Zerilli, currently under federal indictment on conspiracy, racketeering and extortion charges; and a cousin on his mother's side of Jack Tocco, the convicted boss.Nove Tocco's transformation from hulking menace to valued prosecution witness was a renunciation of a code woven through three generations. "He was proud of being a gangster," said a former friend, who, like several people who knew him, asked not to be identified because of Tocco's associations.Tocco learned to use his fists early, but not on the mean streets.He duked it out in oversized mitts against other kids in weekend peewee prizefights at a suburban Italian cultural club. A member of the Grosse Pointe High School Class of 1965, Tocco stands out in yearbook photos as a thick-set kid with a slick pompadour in a sea of tidy, button-down preppies. By the 1980s, Tocco was into gambling, the lifeblood of the Detroit mob, along with shaking down bookies. But in 1986, he got caught in a cocaine conspiracy. After about five years in federal prison, Tocco returned to Detroit and joined Paul Corrado -- the nephew of convicted capo Anthony Corrado -- collecting street taxes, the protection money paid by bookies. Tapes reveal businessIn a January 1992 conversation picked up on an FBI bug, Tocco told Paul Corrado how he explained the business to a reluctant bookie."The reason you pay is because this is an Italian town and you're in a controlled business," Tocco said. "If you don't pay, close the (expletive) down. "Corrado agreed: "The No. 1 rule, he's got to pay to book."The conversation was a snippet of hundreds of hours of scheming and yammering the FBI snared by bugging Tocco's car beginning in 1991.The tapes, allowing jurors to hear the defendants speaking freely, were crucial to the 1998 federal conspiracy trial that netted four convictions and two guilty pleas, taking down the top layers of the Detroit mafia. Tocco knew the power of a reputation, as revealed in a taped January 1992 conversation with Paul Corrado, who was worried that an associate would learn about one of their shakedowns. "I'd hate for Jimmy or somebody to know that it was us who put the guy in the hospital for six months," Corrado said. "I'd like everybody to know it was us," Nove Tocco said, "as long as nobody can prove it."On tape, Tocco told Paul Corrado how he'd squeeze a bookie:"I'll say, 'Where's the money?' He'll say, 'No money,' and I'll just go budda-bing, budda-bing and now, tomorrow I'll be back for the money. "Tocco had a strong work ethic, Finnigan said."He was getting up in the morning and going from one crime to the next," Finnigan said.Oakland County bookmaker George Sophiea told grand jurors in 1995 why he paid Tocco $500 a month: "It's the right thing to do, I mean, as far as I was concerned. "But, as time passed, Paul Corrado told a friend of his concerns that Tocco was too old-school and becoming a liability. "I'm trying to get the (expletive) away from him. I'm gonna go to jail with him, and I don't want to," Paul Corrado told a friend on one tape in June 1992. "He wants to be a (expletive) gangster. "Tocco believed -- until he started doing the time himself -- that taking a 20-year jolt was just part of the job, even if others turned prosecution witnesses: "Who's gonna stand up, Paul, besides you and me? "The tapes also revealed the bitter hatred Tocco and his partner Paul Corrado held for Jack Tocco and the Giacalone brothers, Vito (Billy Jack) and Anthony (Tony Jack). Nove Tocco and other younger men chafed under these bosses, who feared attracting attention.In 1996, the U.S. Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force unsealed a massive indictment against the Detroit Mafia and their tapes of Nove Tocco's conversations were vital. At trial, Tocco's lawyer, William Bufalino II, argued to jurors that his client wasn't part of "a Sicilian crime family" despite the tapes. Paul Corrado's lawyer Robert Morgan went further, even ridiculing the idea. Nove and Paul in the Mafia?Those guys, Morgan told jurors, were "Nitwits Inc." who had trouble planning a broken window.But Keith Corbett, who heads the federal Strike Force, told the Free Press that Nove Tocco and Paul Corrado were each pulling down $100,000 a year, impressive money for a couple of alleged nitwits. The tapes, Corbett said, snared the bosses, putting them in the middle of numerous meetings and sit-downs: "All their problems arose because of Nove and Paul. They wanted themselves to be seen as avuncular guys trying to control these two wild men. "Perhaps worse, the tapes showed that the street soldiers mocked their elders as needing diapers and how some of them might be rubbed out.In one tape, Nove Tocco exploded: "(Expletive) them Toccos. They want you to do something for nothin.' "The prosecution team watched as Jack Tocco and Nove Tocco went eyeball-to-eyeball in the hallway and then at the defense table after the tapes were played for jurors in the 1998 trial. Bitterness peaksThe bitterness reached critical mass for Nove Tocco after both he and Jack Tocco were convicted. Street soldier Nove Tocco drew 19 years in prison for racketeering conspiracy, weapons and extortion charges while Boss Jack Tocco got just a year and a day for racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit extortion charges. After stewing for months, Nove Tocco wrote the FBI, asking whether there was a place at their table. He made his government debut a year ago, testifying against Jack Tocco in a resentencing hearing. On that March morning, as relatives and associates hissed prayers for his ill health, Nove Tocco strode into court and pointed to his cousin as the man who ran the Detroit mob. Richard Convertino, a Strike Force prosecutor, said Nove Tocco's value is clear: "He provided the institutional and historical knowledge of the Detroit Sicilian Mafia. "At his own resentencing three months ago, Tocco admitted he'd lived his life "contrary to normal rules of society.... and I justified it by saying that I was taking care of my family in a manner in which men like me have done so for generations. "That life, he said, brought anguish and threats, not comfort.Corbett cautioned that Tocco's cooperation isn't the Detroit mob's obituary, but added that "we're in the best position we've ever been" in the fight against the Outfit. Nevertheless, authorities said, orders can pass through prison bars, bookmakers are open, high-stakes card and craps games are still running and somebody's convincing them that paying protection is the smart thing to do. You can bet on it.
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