What I find interesting is this case is being prosecuted in New York, although the racketeering was in New Jersey.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The mob, the feds and the ILA
Joseph Bonney | 1:46PM GMT
Federal prosecutors are ready to have another go at proving links between organized crime and the International Longshoremen's Association.
The venue will be federal court in Brooklyn, where reputed Genovese mobster Michael Coppola goes on trial next week for racketeering and conspiracy. Coppola’s alleged offenses include a 1977 mob murder, conspiracy to possess false identification during 11 years as a fugitive from that crime, and the use of extortion to control ILA Local 1235 in Newark from 1974 to 2007.
Most of the indictment against Coppola is devoted to the ILA racketeering charges. Prosecutors allege Coppola and his mob cohorts controlled three past presidents of Local 1235 and extorted money and favors, including jobs and contracts with mobbed-up firms.
This is like something from the Soprano's, or perhaps today "The Housewives of New Jersey".
Cernadas’s co-defendants in the 2005 case -- ILA officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey and Genovese mobster Larry Ricci – were acquitted. Ricci, however, wasn’t around to celebrate the verdict. He vanished in mid-trial and his body was found weeks later in the trunk of a car parked outside a New Jersey diner. In court documents, prosecutors state that their informants say Ricci was murdered on mob orders to ensure his silence and that Coppola was involved.
.... prosecutors have said one likely witness is octogenarian labor racketeer George Barone, who testified for the government in the 2005 case. Barone, a onetime ILA vice president, was convicted in 1979 for shaking down Miami port businesses and testified that he committed several mob murders during his younger days but couldn’t recall how many.
click here for complete article from the Journal of Commerce
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