Spring Break
Once-strong Colombo crime family crumbles
June 10, 2008
Anthony M. DeStefano - NewsdayIssue date: 6/5/08 Section: Real News
After mob boss Joe Colombo was shot in the head at Columbus Circle in Manhattan in 1971 during a rally for his self-styled Italian-American Civil Rights League, he lingered in a coma for six years before dying.
Since then the crime family that bears his name has itself been on life support _ mostly on Long Island _ hemorrhaging members, money and status.
Last week's indictment of the reputed leaders and members of the Long Island-based Colombo mob, including the assumed acting boss, Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli, 55, is seen by law enforcement and mob experts as another blow against a crime family that has had one foot in the grave for years.
Things have become so bad in the Colombo group because of bloody internal struggles and prosecutions that the other New York mob families have at times considered disbanding it and divvying up its members.
"It has been mayhem ever since Colombo got shot in Columbus Circle," said Joseph Coffey, a retired New York police mob investigator.
"The family has had the most unstable leadership of any of the families," agreed former Brooklyn federal prosecutor Edward McDonald, who handled a number of Colombo crime family cases in the 1980s.
Once firmly rooted in Brooklyn, the crime family's leadership and members migrated over the years to Long Island. The shift to the suburbs may have insulated the Colombo hierarchy from many New York City-based investigations, but it created additional problems through lost business opportunities and the inability of the bosses to tightly manage members, said a former federal prosecutor who asked not to be named.
Management problems never allowed the Colombo mob to exploit its rackets effectively, said McDonald.
Mark Feldman, another former Brooklyn federal prosecutor who is now a director at BDO Consulting, a Manhattan-based corporate investigative consulting firm, said the imprisonment of leaders like Carmine Persico likely caused internal power struggles.
Since then the crime family that bears his name has itself been on life support _ mostly on Long Island _ hemorrhaging members, money and status.
Last week's indictment of the reputed leaders and members of the Long Island-based Colombo mob, including the assumed acting boss, Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli, 55, is seen by law enforcement and mob experts as another blow against a crime family that has had one foot in the grave for years.
Things have become so bad in the Colombo group because of bloody internal struggles and prosecutions that the other New York mob families have at times considered disbanding it and divvying up its members.
"It has been mayhem ever since Colombo got shot in Columbus Circle," said Joseph Coffey, a retired New York police mob investigator.
"The family has had the most unstable leadership of any of the families," agreed former Brooklyn federal prosecutor Edward McDonald, who handled a number of Colombo crime family cases in the 1980s.
Once firmly rooted in Brooklyn, the crime family's leadership and members migrated over the years to Long Island. The shift to the suburbs may have insulated the Colombo hierarchy from many New York City-based investigations, but it created additional problems through lost business opportunities and the inability of the bosses to tightly manage members, said a former federal prosecutor who asked not to be named.
Management problems never allowed the Colombo mob to exploit its rackets effectively, said McDonald.
Mark Feldman, another former Brooklyn federal prosecutor who is now a director at BDO Consulting, a Manhattan-based corporate investigative consulting firm, said the imprisonment of leaders like Carmine Persico likely caused internal power struggles.
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