NEW YORK -- Reputed Colombo crime family boss Carmine 'Junior' Persico and eight other alleged members of the mob were found guilty Friday of running extortion, narcotics and loansharking operations.
The verdict in the eight-month trial was reached after 12 days of deliberation and was the first major victory for the federal government in its two-year drive against organized crime in the New York City area.
Sentencing is set for Aug. 12.
The nine defendants were charged with being part of a racketeering enterprise -- the Colombo family, traditionally the weakest of New York's five organized crime families.
They were charged with hijacking interstate shipments, loansharking, policy operations, selling narcotics and extorting payoffs in the concrete, restaurant industries and from shippers.
In addition to Persico, the defendants were his son, Alphonse 'Little Allie Boy,' Persico, Gennaro 'Gerry Lang' Langello, John DeRoss, Anthony 'Scappy' Scarpati, Andrew Russo, Dominic Cataldo, Frank 'The Beast' Falanga and Hugh 'Apples' McIntosh.
Frank 'Beansie' Melli and Ralph Scoppo, former head of the concrete workers union, were dropped from the trial because of illness.
During the trial, in which some 200 tapes, 100 witnesses and 800 documents were introduced, jurors were not sequestered until they began deliberations, following Keenan's five-hour charge.
The trial's record ran more than 15,000 pages.
Unlike other Mafia trials in Manhattan, the jury was told of the enterprises connection to the four other Cosa Nostra familes and a history of the Colombo family in New York going back to 1931. One witness to help the prosecution in that regard was James 'The Weasel' Fratianno, 72, an admitted hitman turned informant.
Another informant to testify was Fred DeChristopher, Persico's cousin by marriage. He said he hid Persico in his Long Island home while Persico was on the lam.
After the case went to the jury, the New York Daily News carried a story citing sources quoting from FBI reports of interviews with him in which he claimed Persico bragged he killed Albert Anastasia, the reputed Murder Inc. executioner, in the old Park Sheraton Hotel barber shop in 1957.
Persico's attorney, Frank Lopez, denied it saying that because of DeChristopher's doubtable credibility, 'He could have said Junior killed Abraham Lincoln.'
Actors James Caan and Burt Young and singer-dancer Joey Heatherton visited the trial.
Caan played Sonny Corleone in 'The Godfather,' a movie about the Mafia. He said he was a boyhood friend of defendant Russo.
