PA: Organized Crime? Say it isn't so!

Bill Kearney

Massachusetts ‘GAMING’ Future

Casino gambling has always been a magnet for attracting unsavory characters from all walks of life.

Philadelphia Inquirer - March 19, 2014 - Pa. gaming board keeps restriction on DeNaples

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The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said no dice Wednesday to lifting restrictions on Scranton businessman Louis A. DeNaples' dealings with Mount Airy Casino in Mount Pocono, Pa.

DeNaples, whose businesses include banking, auto-parts, and landfill interests, developed Mount Airy but was forced to turn it over to his daughter after being charged in 2008 with lying to the board about ties to reputed mobsters.

Read more http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20140320_Pa__gambling_board_keeps_restriction_on_DeNaples.html#06Fz1DKXPOwb6CMH.99

Daily American - January 02, 2008 - Priest, a friend of casino owner, accused of lying about mob ties

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A Roman Catholic priest was arrested on perjury charges Wednesday, accused of lying about his relationship with a mobster in testimony to a grand jury investigating a casino owner’s possible ties to organized crime.

Read more - http://articles.dailyamerican.com/2008-01-02/news/26323372_1_sica-russell-bufalino-kevin-feeley

Daily American - February 02, 2008 - DeNaples case exposes patchwork Pa. casino investigation

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — An FBI wiretap and a reputed mob leader’s testimony provided key evidence against a northeastern Pennsylvania businessman accused of lying to state officials to win a casino license.

Read more - http://articles.dailyamerican.com/2008-02-02/news/26315199_1_denaples-gaming-board-tad-decker

For more on this story open the link below.

http://articles.dailyamerican.com/keyword/mount-airy-casino-resortSee More

Massachusetts, Here we come!

Don't think you're different because this is a pattern repeated across the nation....and if you watch, you'll see Massachusetts genuflect as we repeat the same.....

Brazen!!!! DeNaples wants restrictions lifted!! Where there's smoke ... | PoconoRecord.com Tablet Edition

Where there's smoke ...

January 13, 2014 - 12:00 AM

 

The Denaples family that owns Mount Airy Casino Resort wants gambling regulators to lift restrictions that limit patriarch Louis DeNaples' involvement in the casino. But the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board should think long and hard before granting the request. Louis DeNaples' history is checkered, and even today, after more than one investigation and a grand jury report, disagreements persist over whether he ever was fit to operate the multimillion-dollar gambling enterprise he himself built.

DeNaples, of Scranton, made his fortune in the auto parts and landfill businesses, became a successful banker, and by 2004 — the year the Pennsylvania General Assembly legalized slot machine gambling — he bought the erstwhile Mount Airy Lodge property near Mount Pocono with an eye toward building a casino. This was two years before the PGCB awarded the coveted licenses.

Somehow DeNaples got one of the five available licenses despite having a felony record. (In 1978, DeNaples pleaded no contest to a felony conspiracy charge in a scheme to defraud the federal government of more than half a million dollars in reimbursements for a Hurricane Agnes cleanup.)

By 2007, a grand jury was investigating DeNaples' earlier statement to the Gaming Control Board denying ties to organized crime.

DeNaples' gaming license was suspended in February 2008 after Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico charged him and an associate, the Rev. Joseph DeSica, with perjury for testifying during the licensing hearings that they had no associations with the Bufalino crime family. In 2009, the DA agreed to drop the charges against DeNaples after DeNaples consented to transfer ownership of the $400 million casino resort to his daughter Lisa. DeNaples' gaming license was restored, but he could not run the casino, which continues to operate under the so-called "Lisa Trust." By 2012, he successfully petitioned the board to cut all ties, including financial ties, to the resort and divide its ownership among his children and grandchildren.

Now the casino has asked the board to lift restrictions that prevent DeNaples' auto-parts and landfill enterprises from doing business with Mount Airy. That would reverse the current agreement that bars DeNaples from receiving, either directly or indirectly, any remuneration, cash or property distributions from the Lisa Trust. Lifting the ban would enable the resort to use DeNaples-owned trash hauling or vehicle repair businesses.

The board's enforcement arm does not oppose the move as long as DeNaples undergoes another background check, as a casino service provider, and passes it. DeNaples' lawyer wants the board to lift the ban first, and vet DeNaples later only if they determine proposed contracts would hit the $100,000 mark that calls for a background check.

Followers of the Mount Airy saga could reasonably conclude that Louis DeNaples was following the strategy of letting things blow over before working his way back into the lucrative gambling enterprise. DeNaples' history suggests gambling officials should remain vigilant.


http://t.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20140113%2FNEWS04%2F401130319&template=tabletart

New mob bio traces secret state police probe of corruption in Pa. gaming industry

New mob bio traces secret state police probe of corruption in Pa. gaming industry

• Article by: MICHAEL RUBINKAM , Associated Press
• Updated: September 3, 2013

EASTON, Pa. — Pennsylvania state police ran a top-secret investigation into whether then-Gov. Ed Rendell and his administration rigged the outcome of the casino licensing process to benefit favored applicants, including a wealthy and politically connected businessman suspected of having mob ties, a new book asserts.





But the probe failed to lead to criminal charges against anyone in the administration or on the state gambling board, and prosecutors blamed the state Supreme Court for thwarting the investigation, according to "The Quiet Don," a forthcoming book by Matt Birkbeck that also serves as the first full-length biography of reclusive northeastern Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino.

Birkbeck covered the troubled beginnings of Pennsylvania's casino industry as a newspaper reporter, and here he pieces together the yearslong effort by state police and local prosecutors to probe whether corruption was involved in the awarding of the lucrative casino licenses.

The narrative emerges from interviews with dozens of participants, including now-retired Lt. Col. Ralph Periandi, the No. 2 official in the Pennsylvania State Police.

Periandi initiated the probe in 2005 because he suspected that "Rendell, members of his administration and others in state government might be trying to control the new gaming industry in Pennsylvania," Birkbeck writes.

Rendell did not return a call for comment. He has long denied any impropriety.

The book follows Periandi and his small, secret "Black Ops" team of covert investigators as they dig into the gambling board, the Rendell administration and Louis DeNaples, a powerful northeastern Pennsylvania businessman who'd been awarded a casino license despite questions about his suitability.

DeNaples was eventually charged with perjury in January 2008 for allegedly lying to state gambling regulators about whether he had connections to Bufalino — the titular "quiet don" — and other mob figures. Prosecutors later dropped the charges in an agreement that required DeNaples to turn over Mount Airy Casino Resort to his daughter. DeNaples has long denied any ties to the mob.

Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico agreed to the DeNaples deal because "the Supreme Court had interfered in his case twice already, and he feared that no matter what he did, the court would see to it that the DeNaples prosecution would never move forward," Birkbeck writes.

The author said investigators "basically stepped on a bee's nest" when they went after DeNaples.

Chief Justice Ronald Castille did not return a call placed to his office. He has rejected similar allegations about Supreme Court interference in the gambling industry as ludicrous, slanderous and irresponsible.

"The Quiet Don" traces Bufalino's ascent to mob boss, including his role in organizing the infamous 1957 meeting of Mafia leaders in Apalachin, N.Y., his control of the garment industry in New York and Philadelphia, and his control of the Teamsters union and its leader, Jimmy Hoffa.

The book asserts that it was Bufalino who ordered a hit on Hoffa, a claim also made in the 2004 Mafia memoir "I Heard You Paint Houses," in which confessed mob hitman Frank Sheeran said he killed Hoffa on Bufalino's say-so. Hoffa disappeared in 1975; his body has never been found.

What's new here is the reason: Birkbeck writes Bufalino was upset by a 1975 Time magazine article that linked him, for the first time, to the CIA's attempts to enlist the Mafia to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and he feared Hoffa would tell Senate investigators what he knew about the failed plot.

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/222193791.html