SIX reputed mobsters from New York’s Gambino crime family have pleaded guilty to using internet porn sites and “free” sex lines to cheat users across the globe out of $650 million (£344 million) in one of the biggest consumer frauds in American history.
One of the charges involved an extortion attempt against the former porn publisher Richard Desmond, the proprietor of the Daily Express. One of his executives was beaten by the gang.
An alleged Gambino captain, a soldier and four associates admitted their involvement on Monday just before the start of their trial in Brooklyn. Prosecutors said that they advertised “free” phone numbers offering adult entertainment, horoscope readings and telephone dating and then billed callers $40 (£22) a month for “voice mail” — a practice known as phone “cramming”.
The mobsters also persuaded web surfers to part with their credit card information so that they could enter “free tours” of porn sites, saying the data was needed for “age verification”, and then charged their credit cards up to $90.
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“The defendants bilked (cheated) thousands of unwitting consumers in the United States, Europe and Asia of more than $200 million through bogus free tours of adult entertainment websites, which resulted in fraudulent charges on the credit cards of more than a million consumers,” Roslynn Mauskopf, the US attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement.
“Today’s guilty pleas not only ensure that the perpetrators of one of the largest consumer frauds in history will serve significant time in prison, but they will also forfeit the spoils of their crimes, including luxury homes and other significant assets, which will be used to compensate the victims of their crimes.”
The mastermind was a Gambino soldier named Richard Martino, 45, a favourite of John Gotti, the late Godfather, and the mobster believed to be the Gambinos’ biggest-ever earner. He faces up to ten years in prison and a restitution bill of as much as $75 million when he is sentenced in May.
Among other charges, Martino pleaded guilty to extortion involving an assault on Philip Bailey, one of Mr Desmond’s executives. Mr Bailey was abducted when he got into a waiting limousine outside his hotel in October 1992 during a visit to New York to seek advertisements for Mr Desmond’s porn publications.
The whole criminal scheme was supervised by the reputed Gambino captain Salvatore “Tore” LoCascio from his home in Naples, Florida.
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LoCascio was allowed to make an extraordinary tele- phone call from prison to seek permission from his father, a former Gambino underboss who is now serving a life sentence. LoCascio, 45, faces 7½ years in jail.