"What makes these guys become mobsters?" Part II

by Dennis Griffin

I write books about organized crime. Invariably, when I give a talk one of the questions from the audience is, "What makes these guys become mobsters?" I don't have a "one size fits all" answer. But there is a rather common scenario I've come across over the years that may explain why at least some young men turn to a life of crime. And I think the case of Andrew DiDonato is a good example.

Andrew was influenced by his environment and neighborhood wiseguys as a young boy, and took to thievery before reaching his teens. In 1980 the teenager became an associate of the Gambino crime family and lived "the life" until he flipped and became a government witness in 1997.

In 2010, I agreed to write Andrew's biography titled Surviving The Mob. I believe by sharing some of Andrew's story here, readers may come away with a better understanding of the circumstances that contribute to the making of a criminal. To read Part I click here

Making Connections 

Andrew was an ambitious young man and had made a commitment to advance his criminal career. He even dropped out of school to allow himself more time on the streets. However, before he was able to fully implement his bold plans, an event took place that had unintended consequences. Although it resulted in his first arrest, it also brought him to the attention of Gambino family crew boss Nicky Corozzo, and catapulted him from an unaffiliated street tough into the world of organized crime.

It started in November 1982 when Andrew and a friend learned that a couple of neighborhood boys working in a bagel shop at East 81st Street and Flatlands Avenue were stealing money from the place on a regular basis. They saw this as an opportunity to make some easy cash.

“My buddy Tommy and I hung out in a park across the street from the bagel shop. Tommy found out these two guys that usually worked the night shift there were taking between a thousand and fifteen hundred a week out of the joint. A couple of brothers in their late twenties owned the place. They had very poor habits when it came to supervising their employees. They weren’t around that much, especially at night. These guys they had working the night shift made the bagels, served customers and ran the place pretty much on their own. That included handling the cash register. They took advantage of the situation by pocketing a lot of the money for themselves. Both of these guys were in their late teens. And the word was that they had serious gambling problems and needed the money to pay off their gambling debts.

“Tommy and I figured we might as well cut ourselves in on the action. We told them we wanted four or five hundred a week or else. They said okay and didn’t resist at all. They started making their payments right away with no problem.

“But the first sign of trouble came quick. This neighborhood guy named Mike Yannotti had a talk with Tommy and me. Mike…who was known on the streets as Mikey Y … was a couple years older than us and was already connected with Nicky Corozzo’s crew. He had a reputation as a tough guy and he was. In fact, I met a lot of dangerous guys over the years, and in my opinion Mikey Y was the most dangerous of them all.

“Anyway, Mikey said that the bagel shop guys we were shaking down owed Nicky Corozzo a lot of money from gambling. If we continued making them pay us they couldn’t pay him too. We had to back off.

“After that conversation Tommy and I had to make a decision. We were a little pissed off that we were being told to stop the shakedown without being offered some other way to replace that income. We said to hell with Nicky Corozzo, we weren’t going to back down. That decision would probably have led to another less friendly visit from Mikey. But something else happened first.

“A couple of weeks later one of our victims got caught by the owners of the bagel shop with his hand in the register. He told his boss that Tommy and I had forced him into stealing the money and giving it to us. The owners called the cops and then headed across the street to the park to confront Tommy and me.

“At that time we carried brass knuckles. When the brothers grabbed us the knuckles came out and the fight was on. We beat one of them up pretty good. I think he ended up needing about a hundred stitches in his head. During the heat of things somebody grabbed me from behind and spun me around. It was a cop. Tommy and I threw the brass knuckles, but the cops found one set of them. We were arrested, taken to the station and charged with assault. We were never charged or even questioned about the extortion scheme.

“I hired a lawyer. He told me that still being a minor would work in my favor. And he could argue that the owners initiated the fight by coming to the park looking for Tommy and me to give us a beating. We could press assault charges against them and probably end up getting a draw, with all charges being dropped. And that’s exactly what happened. Everybody walked away clean.

“After that I started spending more time with Mikey Y and some other guys in Corozzo’s crew. Even though I wasn’t really part of them yet, we did a lot of stealing and some other things. Everything we did made money and some of it went to Nicky.

“A couple of months later…in early 1983…I got to meet Nicky in person. Back then Nicky hadn’t been made an official capo yet. He was an acting capo. Nicky and his friend Leonard DiMaria ran the crew together, kind of like co-captains. I already knew Lenny quite well. I had taken his daughter to the high school prom and I hung around with his nephew. But I’d never met Nicky before.

“They used to hold meetings at a private social club every Tuesday and Saturday. The meetings started around eleven in the morning and went until four or five in the afternoon. The crew members and others they did business with would be there. Food and drinks were available.

“On this one Saturday morning I was riding in a car with some of the crew. I knew they had to go to the meeting so I told them to drop me off and I’d see 'em later. One of the guys said he wanted me to go with them. Another said that Nicky had mentioned just the previous night that they should bring me along. So I went.

“When we got to the club I was introduced around. Everybody socialized while Nicky conducted business in another room. He did that by calling in the people he needed to talk with one at a time. In private he’d tell them what he wanted done and they’d have a chance to let him know if they needed something from him. If he had a job that involved more than one guy or the entire crew, he’d call them all in at once.

“On this particular day Nicky approached me around mid-afternoon and took me into the other room. He said he’d heard a lot about me and knew I was acquainted with his nephews. I was doing some good things. ‘You’ve got a friend here,’ he said.

“And then he told me that if I ever needed anything to come to him. If I needed stolen merchandise disposed of, come to him. If somebody was giving me trouble, come to him. Whatever I needed, come to him.

“After that he told me about the Tuesday and Saturday meetings. I’ll never forget what he said. ‘These meetings are important. You’ll meet a lot of people and make a lot of friends. Some of them may need your help sometime. Think of it as going to school. You’ll learn valuable lessons here so don’t miss. If you miss you’re not being a good friend.’

“When I left the social club that day I was officially part of Nicky’s crew. I was an associate of the Gambino organized crime family.”

Dennis Griffin is a True Crime Author, Co-Host of Crime Wire and We Know a Guy on the Inside Lenz Network.  He has written several books concentrating on the history of the mob presence in Las Vegas. www.dennisngriffin.com

"What makes these guys become mobsters?" Part I

by Dennis Griffin

I write books about organized crime. Invariably, when I give a talk one of the questions from the audience is, "What makes these guys become mobsters?" I don't have a "one size fits all" answer. But there is a rather common scenario I've come across over the years that may explain why at least some young men turn to a life of crime. And I think the case of Andrew DiDonato is a good example.

Andrew was influenced by his environment and neighborhood wiseguys as a young boy, and took to thievery before reaching his teens. In 1980 the teenager became an associate of the Gambino crime family and lived "the life" until he flipped and became a government witness in 1997.

In 2010, I agreed to write Andrew's biography titled Surviving The Mob. I believe by sharing some of Andrew's story here, readers may come away with a better understanding of the circumstances that contribute to the making of a criminal.

Learning the Trade

In 1980, Andrew DiDonato was living with his mother and step-father on East 55th Street in Brooklyn. At that time the minimum wage in the United States was $3.10 per hour. Assuming a 14 or 15-year-old boy like Andrew could get a job flipping burgers 20 hours a week after school, he’d gross $62 for his labor. Although Andrew worked when he wasn’t in school, he didn’t toil in a hamburger stand or anything similar. He did his work on the streets; and made substantially more than a minimum wage worker. In fact, his weekly income was sometimes in the neighborhood of $1,400 cash. How did a kid his age generate that kind of money? As Andrew explains, it took hard work and nerve.
“I had two main sources of making money in those days. I stole and sold parts like wheels, tires and radios, from expensive cars. And I shook down the kids selling marijuana in the neighborhood. I told them they’d either pay me a couple hundred bucks a week or I’d break their head.”

But Andrew knew that if you wanted to be respected on the sidewalks of Brooklyn you couldn’t just talk the talk. Out there actions truly spoke louder than words; and verbal threats alone weren’t enough to prove you were a person to be reckoned with. That was a lesson of the streets Andrew learned early. And he learned it well.

“My family was Mob-connected. My uncle Paddy Macchiarole was a capo in the Genovese family. I was twelve when he was murdered in a Mob hit. A few months later his son Johnny Boy was also murdered. The killings of my uncle and cousin devastated my family. It was the first taste of the reality of how brutal that life can be. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was a lesson that ultimately saved my life many years later.”

Andrew’s own capacity for violence became obvious as he advanced his extortion plans.

“When I started shaking down the drug dealers I began with an act of violence, like a severe beating or a few shots with a baseball bat. I let them know there was worse to come if my demands weren’t met.”

Andrew wasn’t a physically imposing figure. He stood three inches or so under six feet and weighed around 160 pounds. He was thin and athletic. Some of the dealers he wanted to move in on were bigger than he was. And some were as tough, or maybe even tougher. But that didn’t deter him. To overcome deficiencies in size or strength he used the element of surprise to get the upper hand on his victim.

“I’d sneak up behind the guy and whack him with a ball bat. When he went down I’d hit him again to make my point. They knew then I had something most of them didn’t. I had the balls to do whatever it took to impose my will. So it really didn’t matter if they were bigger than me. They knew if they fucked around with me I’d get 'em with my fists, or a bat, or a tire iron. And they’d never even know it was coming. They were afraid of me, and that’s the way I wanted it.”

Did Andrew ever feel guilty about the beatings he administered?

“You gotta remember I knew most of these dealers from school or the neighborhood. Some of them I didn’t like and enjoyed beating them up. But I wasn’t just a bully. I was liked in the neighborhood and gave respect to those who deserved it. This was business though, and I had to rough up the ones I liked too. I was making a statement that if you were in the drug game I wasn’t playing favorites.”

Andrew’s tactics worked. In addition to the dealers falling into line, word circulated that there was a new kid out there who needed to be taken seriously. In fairly short order he had most of the young drug dealers in Bergen Beach paying him a street tax.

Extorting drug dealers was primarily a one-man operation for Andrew. But when stealing car parts he often worked with other neighborhood youths.

“Some of the kids I stole with were already associated with organized crime crews. And several more of us got involved later. I made many good friends back then and I thought we’d be friends for life. But shit happens, and in some cases it didn’t work out that way. And some of those I was closest with died before their time.”

In those early days Andrew and his buddies weren’t proficient at stealing whole cars. Instead they robbed parts such as radios, tires and wheels from expensive vehicles that could be sold for good money.

“Mercedes Benz used Becker digital radios. They were a hot item. We’d smash in a window, rip out the radio and run. My next door neighbor Rocco Corozzo [nephew of Gambino capo and Andrew’s future boss Nicholas Corozzo] had a buyer for the radios. The guy would take all we could get him and pay us between a hundred fifty and two hundred a set. We didn’t have a steady buyer for the tires and wheels, so it took a little more time to move the stuff.

“We were having fun and the guys in the street crews left us alone. We were just kids and they didn’t make us kick anything in to them. Whatever we made was ours. It was all coming in and nothing had to be paid out.”

But even criminals like Andrew can experience economic tough times. In the case of him and his friends, youth, inexperience and greed were contributing factors, as well as unanticipated business interruptions.

“Sometimes when we had a lot of money in our pockets we’d get a little lazy. We’d stop stealing for a while and blow what we had buying stuff and partying. We were young and weren’t thinking about saving or retirement. When we realized we were almost out of cash we’d get off our asses and go back to work.

“I even screwed myself by taking so much from the dealers I was shaking down that I put some of them out of business. By the time they made their payment to me and bought product they weren’t making enough profit to stay in business. When one of 'em went away it might be a few weeks before someone stepped in to take his place and I could get to the new guy to explain the cost of doing business.

“And then there were supply interruptions sometimes. When the dealers didn’t have anything to sell they weren’t making any money and they weren’t paying me. Depending on the reason for the interruption it could last days or weeks. That meant I had to steal more to get through the dry times.

“But I learned a lot and knew I needed to make some changes. I had to work smarter and expand my criminal activities to make more money. Instead of shaking down the dealers for money I’d start shaking them down for product and set up my own network of dealers. And instead of just stealing parts off a car I’d take the whole thing. I wanted to get into the chop shop business and start making some real money.”

Dennis Griffin is a True Crime Author, Co-Host of Crime Wire and We Know a Guy on the Inside Lenz Network.  He has written several books concentrating on the history of the mob presence in Las Vegas. www.dennisngriffin.com