A Primer In the Art Of Crime

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

School was in session yesterday in Courtroom 14C at the new federal courthouse on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan.


The subject was Crime 101 and the professor was one Salvatore “Fat Sal” Mangiavillano, an eighth-grade dropout from the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn who learned his trade at the feet of men who would rise to stardom in the mob.


The occasion was the trial of a garbageman turned accidental mob boss, Peter Gotti, and his sidekick, Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro, who are charged with murder conspiracy.


The news part of this is that Professor Fat Sal, who is testifying so he can trade in his prison uniform for street clothes, linked Gotti and Huck to an aborted plot to kill mob rat Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano.


The most interesting part was the professor’s how-to primer for stealing cars, ripping off credit cards, burglarizing banks, running insurance scams, and strong-arming drug dealers – a tour de force that mesmerized the jurors and amused Gotti and Carbonaro.


Here then, for your reading pleasure, are bits of Professor Fat Sal’s lesson plan – with key details omitted so as not to encourage anyone with a screwdriver, criminal aspirations, and too much idle time.


How to steal cars and car radios: Mangiavillano, a husky 40-year-old father of three with close-cropped black hair, olive skin, and a tendency to talk too fast, began boosting car radios – and then entire cars – when he was 16.


His favorite method to get into a car was punching a squared-off screwdriver in the lock of the car door and using a vise grip to twist the lock until it popped out. Then, he says, you pry off the ignition cover, slam in the screwdriver, and attach the vise grip and rotate until the car starts. “Works every time,” the professor said proudly.


How to extort drug dealers: By the time he was 17, the professor was augmenting his car-stealing income by selling cocaine on the streets of Bensonhurst with a sidekick named Teddy Persico Jr., the nephew of jailed-for-life Colombo mob boss Carmine “Snake” Perisco. Even though the cash was rolling in, they decided to make more by extorting rival dealers. “It was simple,” Professor Fat Sal said. “We used the Colombo family name to get what we wanted. They paid so we would leave them alone.”


How to rip off credit card companies: The drug selling lasted about seven years, until Teddy Persico got busted and drew 25-to-life. Then the professor had to diversify.


He bought duplicates of legitimate credit cards from two mobsters, “and then we would go shopping … . The cards were legit, so they didn’t show up as stolen.” The spree ended before the real credit card holder got the bill.


How to run a car insurance scam: An offshoot of Professor Fat Sal’s stolen car business: The easy way was to bribe insurance adjusters to inflate damage claims by several thousand dollars, with the adjuster getting 10% and Fat Sal the rest.


The more complicated scheme was to steal two cars, change the vehicle identification numbers on both, get phony titles, crash the cars into each other, and pocket all the insurance money.


How to burglarize banks: In a series of capers that became known in mob circles as “Fat Sally Productions,” the professor would target out-of-the-way banks along the East Coast and steal money from the night-deposit boxes on the outside walls.


He accomplished about 30 of these heists with a special drill and handmade fishing spears to snare the moneybags. He also did an occasional armed bank robbery, once grossing $920,000.


The professor may have reeled in lots of cash, but he had his share of bloopers, blunders, and bad luck.


One bank burglary went awry when an accomplice fell through a drop ceiling, setting off alarms. Another was aborted on a windy night when Huck – not one of the professor’s favorite pupils – panicked and used a walkie-talkie to tell the others they were making too much noise. The noise turned out to be a street light banging into a pole.


He also provided a short list of what not to do.


Do not try to cheat mob bosses of their cut: The professor said Huck once told him to keep quiet about the expected proceeds for a job because he didn’t want to have to cut in the Gottis. “We’d get murdered if we did that and someone found out,” he said.


Do not use Huck as a crime partner: “I never made any money on a job with Huck,” the professor said. “I felt he had a black cloud; that he was a jinx.” Asked if Huck brought any “special skills” to burglary, the prof was incredulous: “Huck? Not at all.”


The New York Sun

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