Turncoat Will Testify Against Longshoremen’s Union Officials
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.

A burly defector from the Gambino family with a smorgasbord of crimes on his mob resume will soon make his debut as a prosecution witness at the labor racketeering trial of a rival mobster and two allegedly corrupt union officials, Gang Land has learned.
Primo Cassarino, a one-time bagman and enforcer for his family’s waterfront rackets, is poised to take the stand against Genovese capo Lawrence Ricci and two high-level International Longshoremen’s Association officials, Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey.
Along with Ricci, the high-powered and highly paid ILA officials – Mr. Daggett raked in $480,000 in 2003, and Mr. Coffey earned $378,000 – are charged with diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars in workers’ benefit funds to the Genovese crime family between 1996 and last year.
Messrs. Daggett, 58, and Coffey, 63, also are charged with extorting millions of dollars from waterfront businesses that operate on the New York, New Jersey, and Miami docks, and from ILA workers between 1997 and the end of last year.
Cassarino will testify that the Gambino and Genovese families shared a $400,000 payoff in a medical fund fraud scheme in which Ricci, a self-described dairy supply salesman, received a $70,000 kickback, sources said.
As Gang Land disclosed in May, Cassarino, a feared strong arm for longtime docks boss Anthony “Sonny” Ciccone, began cooperating in the hope of slashing an 11-year sentence for waterfront racketeering. Also sentenced were Ciccone and Gambino boss Peter Gotti.
Cassarino, who was also convicted of shaking down action-movie star Steven Seagal, has owned up to a wide range of violent criminal activity, including extortion, assault, and arson, before and after his induction into the Gambino crime family, according to court papers filed by assistant U.S. attorneys Paul Weinstein, Taryn Merkl, and Jeffrey Goldberg.
The beefy gangster also copped to a slew of nonviolent crimes, including drug use, Social Security fraud, gambling, loan-sharking, wire fraud, and – one that could really get him in trouble – “stealing cable television service,” the prosecutors wrote.
Whether the crimes entailed the use of his brawn or his brains, Cassarino – like Gotti, a former garbage man – often came up short, according to sources and court papers.
A few years ago, when Ciccone sent Cassarino and a cohort on a mission to beat up an uncooperative union official, they pounced on him in his driveway early one morning, a source said. Unfortunately, the victim was the official’s next-door neighbor.
On another occasion, the prosecutors wrote, Cassarino “attempted to purchase stock on what he believed was insider information” but ultimately “lost money on the transaction.”
Because Cassarino is still in prison, housed in a special secure unit for turncoats, his cooperation has come pretty cheaply for the feds, according to the prosecutors.
All told, the prosecutors wrote, the government has “spent $502 on a pair of eyeglasses,” paid for his meals during debriefing sessions, and once, on an apparently special occasion, he “was allowed to smoke and provided with a cigar.”
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For years, the feds have been calling mob lawyer Joseph Corozzo a “house counsel” to the Gambino family, but FBI agents were taken aback last year when, according to federal prosecutors, they heard that acting boss Arnold “Bozey” Squitieri wanted to induct him into the family.
So was longtime capo Gregory De-Palma, who last November 10 heard the news about the namesake son of family consigliere Joseph “JoJo” Corozzo at the same time as the agents assigned to monitor a wiretap of the aging gangster.
“I can’t get over it. I really can’t. How … do you do that?” bellowed DePalma, noting that this was different than his decision to induct his son Craig into the crime family.
“The guy’s a legitimate … lawyer. He’s doing great. Now you want to make him a friend? … You understand
what I’m saying? If your son is a professional guy, a lawyer, you want to make him?”
Yes, say federal prosecutors Mitra Hormozi and Winston Chan, who stated in court papers that the elder Corozzo five years ago told turncoat Bonanno boss Joseph Massino of his intentions to induct his son into the Gambino family. The papers, which state that the lawyer is the subject of two criminal investigations, seek to disqualify him from representing a capo, Dominick “Skinny Dom” Pizzonia, who is charged with the 1992 murders of a husband and wife suspected of robbing mob social clubs.
Mr. Corozzo, a 39-year-old graduate of Brooklyn Law School, has been successful in winning a number of acquittals in wiseguy cases, a fact the lawyer believes is at the heart of the motion to disqualify him from the Pizzonia case, as well as many others in recent years.
Two years ago, for example, he won an acquittal for Genovese associate Andrew “Angelo Bella” Albin, the only defendant of 45 to beat racketeering charges based on the undercover work of turncoat associate Michael “Cookie” D’Urso.
“Unfortunately,” Mr. Corozzo told Gang Land, “only the government can control what their paid informants say. It’s all untrue and I will defend myself of these baseless charges in court.”
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Mob lawyer Larry Bronson, who often boasted that he had a close personal relationship with former a FBI director, Louis Freeh, that would aid defendants who retained him, must have misplaced his old friend’s telephone number.
The attorney, who was tape-recorded two years ago hosting a long get-together in his law office between two Bonanno mobsters forbidden by court order from seeing each other, was indicted on racketeering and criminal contempt charges last week and held on $2 million bail.
According to the indictment, Mr. Bronson, 60, and a former client, Steven Kaplan, 46, intimidated strippers and patrons of an Atlanta strip club in 1999 during a probe that led to a sensational racketeering trial in 2001. The trial featured testimony by former Knicks center Patrick Ewing and other sports stars that they received sexual favors from dancers at a nightspot owned by Kaplan, a Gambino associate.
The lawyer is no stranger to sexploitation allegations. Last year he was charged with coercion for telling a client he would sabotage her federal extortion case and cause her to “spend the rest of her life in jail” if she stopped sleeping with him. Months later, he was hit with additional aggravated harassment charges for repeatedly calling and cursing at the woman. All charges were ultimately dropped when he promised to behave himself.
In Brooklyn Federal Court on Friday, prosecutor Caren Myers said Mr. Bronson “basically behaved like a criminal” in the Atlanta case, noting that he once asked a witness whether “his wife knew that he had been having sex with dancers at the Gold Club.”
While things look bleak for Mr. Bronson, the future appears much brighter for his former client, Kaplan, who pleaded guilty to similar charges in Atlanta and served 16 months in prison while forfeiting $5 million and paying $300,000 in restitution.
Atlanta lawyer Steve Sadow told Gang Land that the Gold Club case plea deal “prohibits these charges from being prosecuted against him by the federal government.”
Mr. Sadow’s assertion is backed up by the plea agreement, which was obtained by Gang Land. Unlike virtually every plea deal reached by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and Manhattan, Kaplan’s agreement was approved by the Justice Department and binds the U.S. government, not just an individual U. S. attorney’s office.
This spells even more trouble for Mr. Bronson, who is scheduled for a bail hearing today.
Since the agreement grants Kaplan immunity from prosecution for any crimes related to the Gold Club case, the feds are sure to force him to testify as a prosecution witness against Mr. Bronson.
This column and other news of organized crime will appear later today at www.ganglandnews.com.