OLEAN -- Is it an aging dinosaur already teetering on the fringes of the criminal boneyard? Or is it a sleeping tiger, still healthy, stealthy and newly subtle in its pursuit of prey?
Two nationally recognized experts on organized crime disagreed here last week about the Mafia's present state of prosperity in a presentation to community members and students at St. Bonaventure University.
Dan Moldea -- the well-sourced veteran author of more than a dozen non-fiction tomes on organized crime, gambling and murder -- believes the traditional Italian-American dominance of this segment of the crime culture is still existent in certain locations in the United States.
He thinks it's just not as noticeable to police and public because there's more finesse in sophisticated, computerized criminal operations -- and "because I think the Mafia has been able to maintain a decades-long peace" between once-competing families.
An "enormous amount" of Mafia income "comes from offshore" through computer-assisted gambling and Internet usage, said Moldea. "Now you can call a number and make a bet -- and when police trace that number and raid a location, they find an empty room because that traced call has simply been forwarded through modern technology. These guys are not wearing spats and fedoras anymore. They're MBAs and CPAs (masters of business administration and certified public accountants)."
Lee Coppola, dean of the school of journalism at St. Bonaventure, is a former federal prosecutor in Buffalo, and before that was an investigative reporter with the Buffalo News and Channels 4 and 7. Organized crime was his beat.
He believes the rigid dominance of organized crime by Italian-Americans, perceived by most Americans through Hollywood's stock portrayal during the last three decades, has evaporated under the pressure and growth of several new ethnic groups.
The Mafia's strict chain-of-command, the almost-fanatic reliance on family loyalty, the formal division of power and crime markets, the code of honor in approving who died and who didn't -- all that has been replaced, Coppola held, by astonishingly violent immigrant gangs from Russia, China, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
"The criminal enterprise from these gangs often features betrayal of their own organizations and families, and is much more violent than the Mafia ever thought of being," he said. "These gangs are out of control and there's no way the leaders can contain their violence."
Another factor eroding the once-powerful Mafia is the state of the American economy, said Coppola.
"In places like Buffalo in the 1950s, you once had more than 20,000 men working at Bethlehem Steel," he noted. "Who passed out the football betting cards before the weekends? The Mob. Those jobs are no longer there. The profit motive has been removed."
When blue-collar jobs disappeared, the Mafia got the blues.
"Here in New York, the (Mafia) families are basically falling apart," said Coppola of their storied influence on society. "I really believe it's minimal."
Coppola also commented on changes in the tone of portrayal of Mafia members in the movies. He showed film clips from the "Godfather" series in which actor Marlon Brando, playing Vito Corleone, runs a "commission" meeting of crime bosses in much the same respectful, effective, low-keyed manner that a corporate executive might employ today. Then, in contrast, he clicked up a clip of comedian Billy Crystal in "Analyze This," a 1998 movie with Robert De Niro as the crime boss.
Crystal, playing a Jewish psychiatrist caught sitting in clandestinely on a similar "commission" meeting, is asked to identify himself and hilariously starts babbling names like "Elmer the Fudd" and "Louie the Schnozz" that he makes up on the spot. He is not harmed.
"Thirty years ago," Coppola told the audience, "somebody would have died for this."
Both speakers detailed previous relationships with mob informants.
"I always objected to them being called stool pigeons, and rats, and names like that," said Moldea. "To me, they're actually heroes."
Coppola recalled his time as an investigative reporter covering Ron Fino, who from 1973 to 1988 was the business agent of Local 210 of the Laborers' International Union in Buffalo. Fino fled Buffalo in 1989 and his whereabouts today are unknown to the general public.
But in 1996, he testified to the House Subcommittee on Crime that "for over 16 years, I communicated on a regular basis with FBI agents and much of that information pointed toward the Laborers' International Union and its total domination by the Cosa Nostra (Our Thing, an internal nickname for the Mafia)."
Fino identified himself in the congressional hearing as a federally paid informant for the FBI. He is not formally a participant in the government's Witness Protection Program, but was assisted by the feds in assuming a new identity: "The bureau treated me as one of their own."
Coppola characterized Fino as "the reluctant son of a reluctant godfather. When he was running the local, he was a very secret informant to the FBI."
Coppola, as a reporter, was investigating a fake company the mob had set up to receive government funds for diversity hiring and promotion: "The president of the company was a janitor who had no idea where the company headquarters was, and the vice president didn't even know he was vice president."
The stories drew some attention from people Coppola thought were in the mob.
"Ron Fino called me and said, 'I think it's time you and I had a sit-down. Now, I knew what a sit-down was. I sealed his name in an envelope and told a clerk if anything happened to me, get the envelope out of my desk and open it. We arranged to meet in a bar about 15 miles outside of town (Buffalo)."
Coppola was surprised once he sat down with Fino: "He told me he was a government informant -- and for the next 15 years he was my informant, too. The government was always befuddled where I was getting story material because their source was my source."
Coppola and Moldea believe most government witnesses still seek approval for their information roles, even after uprooting their lives and moving to far off places under new identities. They sometimes are called by Fino and other government witnesses.
"They want someone outside that spectrum to say: You did the right thing," said Coppola.
The speakers said they don't know where Fino is today.
"He went into hiding," said Coppola, "and took a new identity, which I don't care to know about."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 29 2002 |