NEW YORK, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A jailed New York mobster has tried to use pornography to get help from another inmate with smuggling messages, officials say.
Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, former acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, is serving a life sentence and waiting for trial on federal charges that could carry the death penalty, the New York Daily News reported Thursday. Prosecutors say officials at the federal detention center in Manhattan got a tip that Basciano had offered another inmate pornography and then found what was described as an "X-rated" DVD in a law library room and a copy of Esquire in Basciano's cell.
Basciano was moved to the wing normally used to house terrorists and received a 30-day revocation of commissary privileges.
Federal prosecutors say Basciano seems to be using code in talks with his son.
In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, Basciano said his violations of the rules were "innocuous."
