All right, welcome into the OG podcast. I'm Scott Bernstein, your host. This is another quick hitter episode, some more breaking news coming out of New York. It looks like Vinnie Gorgias, Vinnie Bassiano, the very notorious and infamous, flashy new millennium John Gotti in the early 2000s, the boss of the acting boss of the banana crime family, who's been serving a life sentence for multiple gangland murders tied to his reign, first as a capo out of the Bronx, and then as acting boss of the bananas. It looks like he might have some possibility to find some daylight out of this sentence that maybe the life sentence could be in jeopardy right now because of a pretty interesting argument that Vinnie Bassiano's attorneys are making in his appeal effort. It's an argument he's been trying to make for the last five or six years that the U.S. District Court just last week decided that they will hear and the crux of the argument is that the murder conviction that Bassiano was caught admitting to on tape in a 2005 prison conversation that he was having with at that point the boss or what people didn't know that he had become an informant. The boss at that time was the most powerful boss in the whole country Joe Massino. Joe Massino was asking Vinnie Bassiano to give him the details of what happened in the 2004 gangland homicide of Randy Pizzolo who was a banana associate and a guy that at first was an ally, a close friend of Vinnie Gorgias, a guy that he was trying to mentor and eventually a guy that he proposed to be made into the bananas but then had a falling out with, some of that falling out with had to do with a botched construction job on his house on Vinnie Gorgias's house but it was actually much deeper than that. That was kind of a final straw but Randy Pizzolo was the quintessential mob cowboy, a loose cannon, a guy that was really acting a fool for a couple years before his demise, a guy who it appears just his proximity to Vinnie Bassiano who was ascending from the early 2000s to eventually he declared himself acting boss which was another issue we'll talk about in a second. It looks like that proximity to Bassiano went to Randy Pizzolo's head and he was allegedly or not allegedly he was convicted, Bassiano was convicted of ordering Pizzolo's murder from behind bars. Pizzolo is killed in November of 2004. The contract went through Mikey Mancuso and then from Mancuso got passed on to Dom Sicali who then passed it on to Ace Aiello and Aiello was a guy that was referred to by both Bassiano and Sicali who was Bassiano's right-hand man and succeeded him as the skipper of the Bronx crew and when Bassiano upped himself to acting boss they called Aiello who was a relatively young guy at that point their lucobrotzi you know guy that was their enforcer their their go-to muscle he came up in the old Giannini crew with Baldo Amato from the you know that zip faction of the bananas that go back to Galante and so Bassiano gets locked up the hit happens like less than two weeks after Bassiano's locked up and Massino gets him in a I believe it was a something where their their case the they got to meet to discuss their case and when they were meeting Bassiano didn't realize that Massino had already cut a deal after his conviction and in 2004 and was wired up and Bassiano spilled you know spilled the beans on himself and admitted to Joe Massino that he had ordered Randy Pazzuolo's murder and that Pazzuolo had really gone off the reservation in terms of his behavior and that it was a message that he wanted to send to the street now that he had been declared boss by himself he declared himself boss that he wanted to send a message to the street for everybody to get in line now the the very intriguing argument that I think could possibly have some legal merit to it is that Bassiano's attorneys right now are saying that he was entrapped that he was set up by by Massino via the or the FBI vis-a-vis Massino who was wired for sound and was asked about a murder where he would have to implicate himself and had no choice but to implicate himself because he was being asked by his boss who was again the most powerful mafia don in America at that point and had ordered friend and foe alike murdered over the past 30 years before that 30 40 years before that for infractions way less severe than refusing to answer when when your boss well you know he was the acting boss at that point Bassiano Massino even though he was working for the government was the official boss of the bananas at that point according to the attorneys Bassiano had to answer and by answering incriminated himself and if you go to the to the conviction and Vinny Bassiano's trial to the meat and potatoes of that conviction can be traced back to that confession and those tape recordings and and Joe Massino's testimony so the Bassiano appeal team is arguing that a there was a negligence of counsel back then not to challenge it the way they're challenging it now and that anything that he said to Massino incriminating himself should be tossed and he should get a new trial so you know Bassiano is 63 it's amazing these pictures filter out a prison and he looks like he still looks like a million bucks always the hair is always perfectly cropped always smiling always you know showing that he's connected with a multitude of different criminal ethnic factions and then there's one photo circulating with him with all the some of the Mexican mafia and even if this gets tossed and he gets a new trial there are some other factors that play with him you know he he was also convicted of the Frank Santoro murder which was another murder that he did unsanctioned and had to kind of retroactively get approved with Massino Santoro was threatening to kidnap and kill Vinny's son so he acted quickly they murdered him he was convicted of that and then he was also convicted of attempting to plan the murders of prosecutors and judges so it's pretty extreme in terms of what he was convicted of if he can get the Pizzolo murder conviction tossed and somehow earn a acquittal at a retrial without that damning tape coming back to haunt him or Massino jumping back on the stand in theory uh you know you could have a situation where just like Mancuso pled out to to this Pizzolo murder for being a middleman and he only did 12 years so if he gets the one murder case tossed I mean I guess there's a possibility that within a resentencing after 25 years or so 20 25 years that he could be sprung in theory if he beats this case if he gets a new trial and before I close just give a couple more details on on Randy Pizzolo and you can go to gangsta report right now and read a deep dive of the circumstances that surround his murder Pizzolo met Bassiano in the construction industry out of the Bronx he was managing a Bonanno controlled contracting company Bassiano was a supplier started hanging out together like I said before Bassiano really took a liking to Pizzolo thought he could kind of train him the way that maybe that uh you know Dom C Callie went from a guy that uh you know wasn't made to you know a copo status uh over a pretty short period of time under Vinny's guidance and uh Cicali also liked Pizzolo but Pizzolo started acting uh very erratically around 2002 things started to kind of domino altercations with other crime families altercations with guys within the Bonanno family and you know in 2002 in the spring of 2002 he shot a Gambino associate outside a uh a swanky queen's restaurant and in Bayside there were dust ups that he had with the Genovese there was an allegation that consulieri or a guy that became consulieri and at that time was a copo tough Tony Federichi Federichi had put out a contract with him through a Genovese button hippies afrodino and then there were complaints that were coming from the Bonanos the Brooklyn crew was complaining Josie Jo Camarano who eventually became an acting boss now he's on the shelf but back then was copo uh acting copo for his dad and uh he came to to uh Vinny Bassiano and said that his boy Pizzolo was acting wild and out of control and that he had brought a pistol to a sit down which is a a major breach of mob etiquette and then things started to really spiral uh in in in the spring of 04 there was an altercation physical altercation between Vinny Bassiano's son Vinny Jr and the son of the Genovese consulieri quiet Dom Serillo a quiet Dom son Nicky and Vinny Jr were in business together they had some type of falling out I hear allegedly over a drug deal gone bad and Nicky Serillo slapped Vinny Jr um within two or three weeks Vinny or within two or three weeks Nicky Serillo disappears he's never been seen again Bassiano is caught on tape talking to Massino denying that him and his guys had any role in the Nicky Serillo hit and that it actually had been ordered by his dad um it's never been confirmed but it's a hot rumor that circulated for for a good 20 years now um but Pizzolo over the last couple months of his life bragged openly about being a trigger man on the uh the Nicky Serillo kidnapping and murder and one of the some of the bragging happened in front of uh Bonanno guys like powerful Bonanno guys at some wedding receptions uh where he had to be taken aside and told to zip it uh he was known as a big drinker um and had a real big mouth of a lot of bravado at the end of his life he kind of knew that that things were coming to an end uh took out try to take out a million dollar life insurance policy on himself and uh was supposed to sign the paperwork the day he died and uh told his daughter that that he thought he was you know was going to be killed eventually was um but I I'm guessing that if Bassiano can somehow succeed on this appeal and gets another time in front of a jury that they'll make the argument and it would be an argument to make I mean there's backing of that argument that there were a lot of different people that wanted Randy Pizzolo dead the only problem with that is that Mikey Mancuso and Dom Tricali have both copped to their roles in the Pizzolo murder uh Tricali did like eight nine years and became a witness Mancuso did 12 years in his back out now and has led to be the boss of the Bonanos um him and Bassiano at one point were close uh had a falling out but uh it'd be difficult I think because even if you can get the the massino stuff and the the tape of admitting uh his role in it thrown out you're still gonna probably have Tricali on the witness stand saying that he received the order um and that it came from from Bassiano and that he had firsthand knowledge that Bassiano was was openly trying to murder Pizzolo before Bassiano got locked up and then when he gets locked up he sends a word through Mikey Mancuso to tell Dom that that thing with Nikki make sure it still gets done uh I apologize the that thing with Randy make sure it still gets done so only time will tell uh but nothing seems to really make Vinnie Gorge a sweat uh he is uh always fresh to death man uh this guy looks like uh he's spending his his days on the beach not uh in Supermax or you know in the the when he's in the when he's in prison he's being watched just as much uh as he was being watched on the street so we'll keep you updated with what's going on with that but an interesting development um for Jimmy who will be back on the uh full length episode and for Ben behind the glass I'm Scott Bernstein og pod out