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March 17, 1996
But they say the current investigation gives the Justice Department a better chance to wipe out organized crime in the Motor City because the organization isn't armed with the weapon that has kept it alive for so long: loyalty.
"The old values of the old-time mobsters just haven't been too binding to hold onto this new generation," said James B. Jacobs, a New York University law professor and author of Busting the Mob: U.S. vs. La Cosa Nostra. "The new guys don't have those old-world values of silence and loyalty."
Federal prosecutors in Detroit have refused to reveal what witnesses and evidence they plan to use in the case against reputed crime boss Jack Tocco and 16 of his alleged lieutenants, but law professors and former U.S. prosecutors speculate government attorneys will rely on one-time Mafia members to testify against their former cronies and secretly tape-recorded conversations.
"You've seen so much success prosecuting organized crime because they're starting to testify against one another," said Richard A. Rossman, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 1980 to 1981, who is now in private practice. "That's why there's been so much activity. They're difficult cases without direct witnesses."
The crime family
In recent years, top-ranking organized crime figures in New York and Philadelphia -- who had previously eluded conviction -- were convicted after mob informants testified.
The 57-page grand-jury indictment unsealed Thursday in Detroit described a 30-year legacy of sometimes-violent shakedowns of bookies, infiltration of Nevada casinos, murder plots, numbers rackets and loan sharking.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Eastern Michigan called it the largest case federal agents had worked since the 1993 murder conviction of John Gotti, former head of the New York City's Gambino crime family.
In addition to Tocco, of Grosse Pointe Park, others indicted included: Anthony Joseph Zerilli, Anthony Joseph Corrado, Anthony Joseph Tocco, Vito William Giacalone, Anthony Giacalone, Paul Corrado (son of Anthony Corrado), Nove Tocco, Paul Corrado (son of Dominic Corrado), Peter Jack Corrado, Peter Anthony Corrado, John Batista Sciarrotta, John Michael Jarjosa, Norman Nerses Bagdasarian, Paul Joseph Tocco, Thomas Kenneth Lehnard and Frank Bert Whitcher.
They are all free on bail.
Mounting evidence
Defense attorneys have spent the past several days decrying the investigation and proclaiming their clients' innocence, but they won't get a peek of the government's evidence for another 10 days.
"We haven't seen a stitch of evidence yet," said attorney William Bufalino II, who represented several of the defendants in hearings last week.
In pre-trial conferences scheduled for March 26, prosecutors must reveal much of the evidence they plan to use, including search warrants and what they turned up, listings of the locations and targets of wiretaps that resulted in evidence, and explanations of other physical evidence, such as DNA tests, bank statements or other records.
Trials may not begin for more than a year as defense attorneys comb through wiretap transcripts and other government evidence.
As an example of the breadth of the federal investigation, agents have compiled some 700 hours of wiretapped conversations from a bug in the car of one defendant, Nove Tocco, Bufalino said after meeting informally with federal officials last week.
Nove Tocco, called a mafioso "soldier" by agents working the case, is mentioned throughout the indictment as one of the Detroit area mob's principal street enforcers. Working with others, Nove Tocco allegedly shot out the windows of a Detroit numbers runner's business in 1992, built bombs and otherwise intimidated bookmakers into paying protection money, according to the indictment.
But Bufalino claims Nove Tocco's only business is fast food -- he owns two restaurants in Mt. Clemens.
Building a case
Successful cases against organized crime in the past have been built around the federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, enacted in 1970 specifically to target the mob.
The Detroit case is no exception, with nine of the people indicted facing RICO charges, which helps explain why some of the allegations in the indictment go back to 1966.
To convict a person under RICO, federal prosecutors must show that defendants engaged in a wide-spread conspiracy of organized criminal activity.
The result is prosecutors don't need to focus on individual homicides or acts of extortion, said G. Robert Blakely, the University of Notre Dame law school professor who wrote the RICO act.
"The jury gets to see an organization the way as it really is -- not just one illegal act. They get the whole picture," said Blakely, who was a Justice Department attorney under then-Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and a member of the 1967 Presidential Crime Commission. "(RICO) takes more work to prove, but if done right, it's impossible to defend."
Mob informants and electronic surveillance are important parts of a RICO prosecution, Blakely said.
"You get a turncoat and some collaborating wiretaps -- you get some very compelling testimony," Blakely said. "That's how you can bring down the mob."
U.S. attorneys in New York used that combination to convict Gotti in 1993, using the testimony of Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano, Gotti's closest aide.
Last year in Philadelphia, federal prosecutors used the testimony of a hit man turned informant to bring down the crime family headed by John Stanfa.
Evidence obtained from wiretaps and electronic bugs alone or relying only on testimony of a former mob member is not enough to get a conviction, lawyers say. It is the combination of the two that ensures victory.
"A wiretap only gets what's between A and B, and a bug only gets what's in the room. And the recordings can be garbled," Blakely said. "You really need someone who was on the inside to put it all together."
But mob informants are usually not the most credible witnesses. "They're not lawyers or priests; they're criminals, too," Blakely said. "Juries won't believe them unless there is some other evidence to back up what they say."
Jacobs, the NYU professor, said mob members know that by testifying against their former partners, they not only escape jail time, but also avoid retribution from those they've turned against. "They know it's possible to survive betrayal," he said. "The government will give them a new identity, and they'll be fine in witness protection."
Convincing the jury
If prosecutors want to make the charges against the local men stick this time, they'll have to do better than the Wolverine Golf Club gambling case, a six-year investigation in which the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and federal prosecutors went after what they alleged was a multi-million-dollar gambling ring operated from a Mt. Clemens golf club.
Only two of the 14 men and women charged with gambling offenses in the case were convicted; two others pleaded guilty before the trials began.
Defense attorneys familiar with 1993 Wolverine case said jurors were confused by complex charges and garbled tapes of wire taps that included cryptic names and undecipherable lists of numbers.
Detroit attorney Richard Zuckerman, a former U.S. prosecutor in Detroit who successfully prosecuted Anthony Giacalone for tax evasion in 1976, said prosecutors this time have a more compelling case than in the Wolverine prosecution.
"Wolverine was based on gambling offenses," Zuckerman said. "I don't think juries see the significance of gambling offenses anymore.
"The nature of the charges in this case are far more significant than simple gambling. It will be easier to get the jury's attention."
Tracking mobsters
If the prosecution does not prevail against Tocco and his alleged lieutenants, it won't be for lack of law enforcement resources.
State, local and federal law enforcement agencies spent millions of dollars and countless surveillance hours tracking alleged Detroit-area mobsters' every move over the past two decades.
"The federal government in the last 20 years has spent tens of millions trying to prosecute these people," Zuckerman said.
Both the Michigan State Police and Detroit Police had special units during the 1960s and 1970s devoted solely to tracking organized crime members.
"We took pictures at every wedding and every funeral," said Hal Berriman, Bellville chief of police and former organized crime investigator for Detroit Police and a combined group that included city and state police. "You could tell who was where in the organization by how much respect they were accorded at events like that."
Increasing numbers of drug crimes and violent offenses forced law enforcement officials to shift their attention away from the La Costra Nostra.
"We could no longer afford to have teams working exclusively on organized crime," said Michigan State Police Capt. Chris Hogan, who heads Southeastern Michigan's Criminal Investigation Division. "Drugs became more of a problem."
Still, Hogan said it would be short-sighted to dismiss the current indictments as insignificant or to think that those charged committed victimless crimes, even though some of those named as witnesses themselves ran smalltime gambling operations.
"The people named in this indictment were involved in a large criminal enterprise, and violence has been a part of their past," he said. "They're involved in multi-million gambling schemes. A few have been associated with drug trafficking on a very large scale.
"In illegal gambling, normal people can lose, can rack up debts of tens and thousands of dollars."