Feds: Two ex-cops among 100 mob arrests

More than 100 alleged mobsters and their accomplices were arrested Thursday in what was billed as the largest-ever bust of organized crime and included violent gambling-extortion operations on Long Island.

Former police officers from the Suffolk and Nassau counties were caught in the net.

Fanning out across New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island, 930 officers arrested defendants in 16 separate indictments, charging suspected mob leaders and anonymous soldiers, associates and hangers-on alike with murder, narcotics and labor racketeering as well as new scams. Those included ripoffs focused on Money Gram, struggling credit-card debtors and the Figli di Santa Rosalia feast in New York City.

The splashy mega-bust focused attention on the mob in an era when terrorism has taken on a high profile, and federal statistics show the FBI's organized-crime referrals to U.S. attorneys' offices have dropped.

"The mob has been weakened," said Attorney General Eric Holder, whose presence at a Brooklyn news conference underscored the importance placed on the operation. "It is different from what it once was, not nationwide in scope. But the reality is that it is an organization that is still a threat to the economic well-being of our country. . . . It is one of our top priorities."

On Long Island, federal prosecutors in Central Islip charged 16 men - some with ties to the Gambino or Colombo families - with running gambling and poker clubs from Bohemia to Westbury, or using threats of violence to extort protection money from them, or both.

Defendants included former Suffolk Police Officer Robert Dito, 58, of Manorville, accused of tipping off a Ronkonkoma gambling club to a raid while he was a cop in 2009. Also charged: Franklin Camarano, 72, of Franklin Square, identified as a former Nassau cop, who was accused of being part of a extortion ring run by alleged Gambino soldier John Cavallo, 62, of Westbury.

Prosecutors described Camarano as a man who had chased a business partner with a pickax, ordered an employee at a gym he owned to erase a videotape when he learned he was under investigation, and held sit-downs with a Bonanno family captain.

Cavallo was caught on wiretaps issuing epithet-filled threats to victims slow to pay him off. "Did you think I would let them get away with it," he allegedly said to one subordinate. " . . . Go there, tell him I said I'll go there and I'll kill him."

Camarano pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in federal court in Central Islip. Cavallo was to be arraigned Friday.

The day began with predawn raids, and officials set up a special processing center in Brooklyn to handle the arrests. Altogether, 27 "made" members - including the entire Colombo family leadership, and the Gambino family's consigliere - were charged, as well as 56 associates.

The five murders charged included a 1981 double murder in Woodhaven - which Holder said occurred over a spilled drink - and intra-mob hits in 1993 and 2002. In another case with Long Island ties, prosecutors also charged Anthony Colandra, 41, of Pennsylvania, with lying when he denied a role in the 1992 killing of two men in North Massapequa during a Colombo family power struggle.

Mob experts said the array of cases - making extensive use of informants and wiretaps - reflected the decline of the mob from its heyday of power. "The mob is something totally unrecognizable," said Ron Goldstock, head of the Waterfront Commission. "Today there are more informants than agents working with them."