Surviving the Mob (3 page)

Lenny DiMaria was a year younger than Nicky. The close
friends shared the leadership of a Gambino street crew as unofficial capos. In 1981 Lenny was arrested on federal charges of possession of contraband cigarettes. Convicted at trial, he was sentenced to serve 10 years in a federal prison. However, he remained free pending an appeal.

The case was argued in the Second Circuit on November 23, 1983, and decided on February 6, 1984. The conviction was affirmed and Lenny had to surrender and begin serving his sentence. Thus, for most of Andrew’s time with the crew, he was under the control of Nicky Corozzo.

Andrew believes Lenny’s forced absence from the crew had an adverse affect on his life.

“Lenny was approachable. He was down to earth. You could talk to him about personal things, like if you were having trouble at home. But Nicky wasn’t like that. He was in gangster mode all the time. Everything had to be done according to protocol. You had to be very careful of what you said to him. He sometimes took things you told him as signs of weakness. And Nicky didn’t want any weak members in his crew.

“Lenny was popular with guys from other crews, but a lot of them didn’t like Nicky. Even while he was in prison, guys asked me what we heard from Lenny and how he was doing. They only asked about Nicky as an afterthought. Lenny was much more personable, no doubt about it.”

4

After becoming a member of Nick Corozzo’s crew, Andrew refocused on enhancing his budding criminal career.

He knew that stealing cars to sell whole or as parts could be a lucrative business. He also knew that in order to get started, the thieves needed enough space to operate and the skill to dismantle multiple brands of vehicles. Equally important, they had to know what vehicles and parts were in demand and how much money they would bring. And it was critical to have a client base to assure the rapid turnover of inventory.

Andrew decided to take advantage of his newfound connections to get his education in the car-stealing business from an accomplished professional.

“I figured I might as well learn from the best, so I hooked up with an older guy named Anthony Gerbino. Anthony’s street name was Beansy and he was affiliated with the Gambino’s Roy DeMeo crew. At the time they ran the biggest stolen car ring in the country. Anthony and I quickly developed a teacher-and-student relationship and became fast friends in spite of the age difference.”

It was the right choice for Andrew. He learned quickly and by mid-1983, the 17-year-old had become one of the premier car thieves in New York City.

In the parlance of Andrew DiDonato and Anthony Gerbino, “drop-off” meant the delivery of a vehicle that had been ordered by a customer. Automobile junk yards and body shops were on their list of clients, as well as other thieves and private individuals.

“We stole almost every night, doing drop-offs for neighborhood car shops and junk yards. We filled orders for DeMeo crew members too. One of them was Patty Testa, who was an auto-crime legend.”

Testa ran a used-car dealership, Patty Testa’s Motor Car Service, and several of the vehicles they stole for him ended up on his lot with altered Vehicle Identification Numbers. Testa made a lot of money in the car business, both legal and illegal.

“But when I got involved with Patty, the DeMeo crew was on its way out. Most of them were already under indictment. Patty himself got convicted on a federal racketeering charge in 1985 and went away for two years. When he got out, he switched to the Lucchese family.”

Patty Testa was hit on December 2, 1992, murdered in the garage of his car lot. No one was ever charged for his killing.

Depending on the make and model, Andrew and Anthony made between $300 and $500 per car when they filled orders for their drop-off customers. Their fee was relatively low per unit, but they made up for it in volume.

“The way we worked the deliveries and getting paid was simple. The customers didn’t want the hot cars parked right in front of their businesses. We parked the vehicle a little way down the block and left the sun visor down to help the customer identify it. We made three or four deliveries a week
to most of these places. They paid us weekly, rather than having to make personal contact on each delivery.

“We had higher paying customers too. Two brothers on Staten Island, who lived a few doors away from Gambino boss Paul Castellano, dealt in exotic brands like Porsche and Ferrari. They paid us three grand per unit. It was a good relationship and we delivered a lot of cars to them. And it was an all-cash business, of course.”

In addition to the drop-offs, Andrew and Anthony also stripped or chopped cars.

“Stripping a car meant we took most of the parts, but the car could still be driven. We usually took the wheels and tires and replaced them with what we called baloney [used] tires, so we could move the car around. Chopping a car meant we took everything; there was nothing left. We used to joke that we turned a chopped car into a Pepsi can.”

Like good entrepreneurs, Andrew and Anthony invested some of their earnings to expand their business.

“We rented garages to dismantle cars and store inventory. For the parts business, we bought work trucks to make deliveries. Overall, General Motors makes—Olds, Caddy, Pontiac, and Chevy—were the most popular. And as the business grew, we brought in more people to help dispose of inventory. We had a scrap-metal guy, an engine guy, a glass specialist, and a tire and wheel man. We profited from every part of the car. Nothing went to waste.

“And we had to have more thieves to help keep up with the orders. Mike Yannotti worked with us regularly. Another neighborhood guy named Albert Lattanzi stole with us.”

Although there was good money in stolen cars and parts, another aspect of the business was even more profitable. Andrew refers to it as “the rebuildables.”

“In the rebuildables business, we legally bought wrecked or recovered stolen vehicles dirt cheap. Then we went out the same night, stole the exact same car as we’d bought, and rebuilt
the one we owned legally. Within a few weeks, we sold it at full book value. There was a small fortune to be made and we made it.”

One incident from those days stands out for Andrew.

One of his friends had an old Mercedes he was rebuilding and asked Andrew to steal a duplicate to strip for the parts. Anthony, Albert, and Andrew found the exact car, stole it, and brought it to Sally the Lip’s house on East 86
^th
Street. By the time they were finished with it, all that was left was the frame and engine—no glass, mirrors, hood, trunk lid, or seats, not even the Nardi steering wheel. They put on a set of baloney tires so Andrew could drive the shell a few blocks away and leave it on the street.

That night they crimped all the oil lines so no trail led back to the garage. Sally went to the corner and used a flashlight to signal the coast was clear. Sitting on an overturned milk crate and using Vise-Grip pliers to steer, Andrew drove the shell out of the garage, Albert following behind in the work car.

“A kid with a Lucchese crew that lived in the neighborhood was also in the car business and the Auto Squad knew it. The cops were watching his house that night. When I passed by, they got a look at what I was driving. I saw their lights come on and knew I had to make a run for it.

“That Mercedes could fly with nothing on it and I was doing over a hundred real quick. I had no way to see where the cop car was, but I could hear the siren right behind me. I ran a couple of red lights and was coming up on Ralph Avenue, a major intersection. I decided to take a chance and run that red light too and see if the cops had balls enough to follow me. I said a little prayer and hit the intersection doing over a hundred. I just missed getting T-boned and made it through.
Behind me I heard the screeching of brakes and knew the cop had run out of nerve.

“I kept going a few more blocks and made a left on East Fifty-eighth. By this time the oil lines had exploded and the car was enveloped in a big cloud of smoke. I pulled over and left the car at the intersection of Avenue K and took off running. I saw a cop car coming toward me and ducked behind a telephone pole while they passed. When they got to East Fifty-eighth, they must have seen the cloud of smoke, because they turned and headed in that direction.

“Just then Albert Lattanzi showed up in the work car. I ran across the street and jumped in. I think the cops who had just gone by might have caught sight of me running, but it was too late for them to do anything. We were already gone.

“After we got a few blocks away, Albert reached over and felt my chest to see how fast my heart was beating. He said the whole scene was like something out of a movie. I guess maybe it was.”

In addition to the stolen-car operation, Andrew’s involvement in the drug trade had increased dramatically in scope and profitability. From initially shaking down a handful of young marijuana dealers by himself, Andrew and his gang were now muscling older dealers selling heavier drugs, such as cocaine. These were large-scale operators whose suppliers protected them. This made the situation a lot more dangerous than it was with the pot dealers.

“We went to a known drug-dealer spot. We grabbed the dealer at gunpoint, forced him to a pay phone, and made him call his supplier for a delivery [later on, beepers replaced pay phones]. When the runner showed up, we robbed him of his money and product. After that, we made him tell us everything we needed to know about their operation, like who was
involved, where they operated, and where they kept their inventory.

“And then we went there. We usually put a gun to the guy’s head and said, ‘Listen, either you’re going to pay us a thousand a week or we’re gonna kill you right here, right now.’ A few guys challenged us and had to be forced into line. But most of them agreed to pay without a fight.

“After we got a few guys like that under our belt, we started going to every major drug dealer we could find. In a fairly short time, we had most of the major dealers in the Canarsie, Mill Basin, and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn paying us.

“We didn’t get ’em all, though. Two guys operating out of the housing projects were strong [they had a large organization] and well-insulated. And they were no strangers to violence. If we caught up with them, there was a good chance we’d have had to kill one of them to get the point across.

“They knew we were after them. We were never able to get the information we needed to catch them. Every time we got close, we ran into some kind of obstacle. Eventually, we just walked away and went after other guys.”

For Andrew, 1983 was a big year. He joined Corozzo’s crew and fine-tuned his abilities as a thief and extortionist. He began carrying a gun on a regular basis. But something else happened that year that made him even more valuable to Nicky. He proved he was capable of violence beyond using his fists or a baseball bat.

“My first shooting incident happened early one morning right around dawn. Jo Jo [Nicky’s nephew Joseph Corozzo, Jr.] and I had been out all night. We were on our way home and Jo Jo was driving his father’s Mercedes. I was in the passenger seat and starting to nod off. A friend of ours in another
car and Jo Jo started playing a game of chicken.

“But some other guy was on the road with his girlfriend. This guy got pissed off and him and Jo Jo exchanged words and obscene gestures. When we stopped at a light, this guy pulled up behind us. In the rearview mirror, Jo Jo saw him get out of his car and start running up the passenger side of our car. Jo Jo hollered to me in an excited voice, ‘Wake up, Andrew! Wake up! Shoot him, Andrew! Shoot him!’

“I looked in the side mirror and saw this guy coming up toward my door. He was carrying a big knife, like a Bowie knife. I lowered the window and pulled my gun. When he grabbed my door handle, I swung around and shot him in the groin area. He dropped to the pavement and Jo Jo took off. We ran a red light and I saw some people at a bus stop as we rounded the corner. I fired a few shots in the air to scare them away, so they wouldn’t pay much attention to us or the car. We got away with no problem.

“I reported what happened to Nicky right away and he called me down to the club. He wasn’t happy. He said his brother [Jo Jo, Sr.] was pretty upset. He was hiding out in Florida at the time, ducking a subpoena, and didn’t need his car involved at the scene of a shooting. I explained to Nicky that this guy was coming at me with a knife and I didn’t have many options. He said okay, it would be taken care of. But he added that I might have to make it up to his brother by going to Florida and doing some work for him.

“Jo Jo Senior wanted to get the shooting mess cleaned up. He found out which hospital the guy I shot was in and sent two of his men to see him. They told him they knew his wound wasn’t life threatening. They had ten thousand dollars in cash with them and were prepared to give it to him right then and that would be the end of it. If he didn’t take the money and wanted to cooperate with the police investigation instead, his wound would become fatal and he wouldn’t
leave the hospital alive. He took the money and that’s the last I heard about it.”