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Who are Tampa's new mob leaders?

 
Published May 5, 1991|Updated Oct. 13, 2005

They are among the most powerful men in Tampa, but few people know their names. They own bars, restaurants and other businesses but aren't likely to be found at Chamber of Commerce meetings.

They are the new local leaders of La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia in the United States.

With the death of Santo Trafficante Jr. four years ago, the big question was: Who would take over as the local crime boss?

Nobody emerged with Trafficante's stature and unquestioned authority. Rather, court records and testimony say, three men share control. They are:

Frank Diecidue, a 76-year-old Tampa businessman and longtime underboss to Trafficante. In a cocaine conspiracy case, an FBI agent recently identified Diecidue as the new "boss" of the Trafficante family.

Vincent LoScalzo, 53, operates Brother's Lounge on West Kennedy Boulevard and other Tampa bars. The Broward County Sheriff's Office lists LoScalzo as the head of the Tampa mob.

Frank Albano, 52, who once owned the Claiborne Restaurant in South Tampa and now works in sales for a vending company in Tampa.

In interviews, all three men denied any connection to the mob. Albano laughed, then got serious.

"This is all bulls---," he said. "I guess that we (the Trafficantes) are just like the Kennedys. People are always putting bulls--- about them in the paper, too. They cope with it; I guess we have to."

One investigator said Albano holds great power, but others say that has shifted to LoScalzo.

"It may be that they don't have such a formal structure anymore, you may have LoScalzo running one part of the operation and Frankie Albano running another," said Lt. Dave Green, an organized crime investigator with the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

"But when I was working there undercover even when Santo was alive, if you wanted to talk to the main guy in town, you go to Frankie Albano."

Despite law enforcement's disagreement over the power structure, on one point they are unanimous: The La Cosa Nostra is alive and growing in Tampa since Trafficante's death.

The local mob once was known for its assassinations. Trafficante's leadership was marked by his reported efforts to help the CIA kill Fidel Castro; he was questioned about whether he had a role in the assassination of President John Kennedy.

But an FBI affidavit in a cocaine case provides a peek into a new type of local mob _ one that is more pedestrian and more likely to be involved in local drug dealing than international intrigue.

Michael Napoli pleaded guilty in that case to using four Hillsborough bars as fronts for cocaine distribution. Investigators said he headed the cocaine laundering operation in Tampa for what is known as the Trafficante crime family.

At least 26 people with ties to the Trafficante family and the New York-based Mafia have been convicted in Central and South Florida since Trafficante's death, federal court records show. The crimes range from loansharking and extortion to cocaine distribution and interfering with interstate commerce.

Diecidue, LoScalzo and Albano are not among them.

Gambling and shotguns

Jimmy Lumia was an oil company executive who controlled gambling rackets in Tampa in the 1940s. He was the first identified La Cosa Nostra leader here.

Lumia was engaged in a war for control of the lucrative gambling districts with Jimmy Velasco, a Tampa politician who was murdered in 1948.

With Velasco dispatched, Lumia had the run of the waterfront. But on June 5, 1950, a Ford sedan pulled alongside Lumia's car, parked along Tampa's waterfront. The sedan driver honked the horn; a gunman in the passenger seat fired a shotgun at Lumia, who died on the way to the hospital.

Santo Trafficante Sr. took control of local gambling but died of natural causes in 1954, leaving his second son, Santo Jr., to carry on the family business.

The younger Trafficante already had established connections with New York Mafia members. He opened casinos in Cuba with mob accountant Meyer Lansky and cemented associations with Lucky Luciano and other mob leaders.

In Tampa, Trafficante enlisted Frank Diecidue as his underboss. After spending a brief time in a Cuban jail after Castro's coup, Trafficante returned to Tampa and took part in a CIA plot to poison the Cuban leader.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Trafficante expanded his organization into gambling, bookmaking and labor racketeering. Law enforcement tracked his every move. Once, flying from Miami to Tampa, Trafficante purchased an airline ticket in the name of an agent who was supposed to be trailing him undercover.

Trafficante, though, never spent a night in an American jail.

In 1981, in Miami, he was indicted for skimming money from the health and welfare funds of the Labor International Union. In 1983, in Tampa, he was indicted for racketeering in a scheme to control garbage pickup on the Suncoast.

The Tampa case ended in mistrial. Trafficante died in March 1987, before the Miami case came to trial.

But as he neared death, the FBI had opened a new investigation that eventually would reach into the new structure of the mob.

Bars, cocaine and distrust

Diecidue, Albano and LoScalzo all surfaced in the investigation of Napoli and his bars: Mike's Lounge, the Journey's End, the South End and Levi's Saloon.

An affidavit by FBI Special Agent Richard Holland said that an informant infiltrated Napoli's organization and began making regular purchases of cocaine at the Tampa bars. In May 1987, the informant told agents that Diecidue had asked him to "watch Vincent LoScalzo, Michael Napoli and Frank Albano as he (Diecidue) does not think he is receiving his fair share of the cocaine profits."

The informant, one of three who provided information to the FBI during the investigation, said LoScalzo gave him $24,000 worth of cocaine from a safe in the office at Brother's. He quoted LoScalzo: "Daddy Frank said to give you anything you want."

The FBI identifies "Daddy Frank" as Diecidue.

LoScalzo denies having any connection to drug distribution.

"I have never used drugs, or dealt drugs or had anything to do with drugs," he said in an interview. "There's no truth to it whatsoever. I have never been involved in drugs in my life."

Napoli, who is serving a 6{-year federal prison sentence, declined an earlier request for an interview. He was featured in a recent St. Petersburg Times series on Florida's criminal records sealing statute: He persuaded Hillsborough judges to seal records of three arrests, even though the law allows only one sealing. Tampa police protested, but the judges wouldn't unseal the cases.

Napoli's wife, Florence, denied that her husband was associated with La Cosa Nostra.

"He is not in the Mafia and he never has been," she said recently. "He just knows some people who are."

Filling the vacuum

Joseph Pistone spent six years posing as Mafia member "Donnie Brasco" to gather information for the FBI. He's retired now.

"Since Santo died, they really are not into the whole realm of what they were into when he was alive," Pistone said in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location. "It indicates perhaps that they are not as well-connected as they once were."

Trafficante was a respected member of organized crime's commission of local bosses, an associate of the early leaders of the Bonanno and Gambino families.

Green, of the Broward Sheriff's Office, agreed that no one with Trafficante's respected national status is likely to take over the Tampa operation. But he said that high-level mob officials recently have expanded their influence in the area.

"John Gotti has some influence in Tampa now," Green said. "I recently received some intelligence that Gotti's people had been in that area."

Gotti, the boss of New York's Gambino family, is the most flamboyant of today's mob leaders. Nicknamed "The Dapper Don" by New York media to reflect his fondness for $1,500 suits, Gotti is in prison awaiting trial.

He's charged with arranging the murder of his predecessor as head of the Gambino family and three other people. Last year, Gotti was found innocent of conspiring with other mob leaders to kill the leader of New York's carpenter's union.

It's been 15 years since the most recent arrest of any of the three men investigators say share the power in Tampa now.

In 1976, Diecidue was charged with racketeering in an indictment that charged others with participating in a plot to kill Tampa Police Detective Richard Cloud, who was investigating the mob.

Diecidue was convicted of the charge and was in federal prison from 1976 to 1979 before his conviction was overturned on appeal.

Born in Tampa in 1915, Diecidue was identified by the FBI as early as 1957 as the "underboss" of Trafficante's crime family. He was among a group of mob leaders in attendance when police raided a 1957 summit conference at Apalachin, N.Y.

Diecidue is listed in state records as the owner of Dixie Amusement Co., a now-defunct vending and pinball machine company in Tampa.

He leads a modest lifestyle. Property records list only one home in his name in Hillsborough County, a small, one-story home where he lives valued at $47,000.

"What the hell is the matter with you people?" he said when a reporter asked about the FBI's claim that he heads the local mob. "Tell them (the FBI) they're full of s---."

Albano was charged with violating liquor laws in 1967, when federal agents claimed he and Trafficante's brother were substituting cheap liquor for expensive brands in a Tampa nightclub. The outcome of the case couldn't be determined from court records.

Albano is married to the former Lucille Trafficante, the daughter of Santo Trafficante Jr. Albano, who once owned Majestic Cleaners in Tampa and the Claiborne Restaurant on South Howard Avenue, recently managed the Mercedes Cafe and is now working in sales for a vending company.

LoScalzo was born in Sicily and moved with his family to New Orleans and then Tampa as a young man. He has never been charged with a crime, although state alcohol agents have forced him to give up one liquor license, and Tampa police sought an injunction that led to the closing of Ernesto's Bar and Package in 1985.

In each case, authorities charged that a multitude of crimes occurred in LoScalzo's nightclubs. State officials list him as the owner of Brother's Lounge in Tampa, although law enforcement officials say that he has a hidden interest in several other bars.

Since 1980, LoScalzo has increased his property holdings in West Tampa and Ybor City; at various times he has owned property valued at more than $365,000 in Hillsborough County, according to property appraiser's records.

"I came to this country 40 years ago and I've worked hard to get what I have today. I am a legitimate businessman," LoScalzo said.

"I don't know about Mafia. I grew up with some people who I know did bad things, but I also grew up with people who became judges and doctors and lawyers.

"But because I go into business for myself they put this horrible stigma on me."

The Mafia in Tampa

1930

Gambling becomes big business in Tampa, turning some streets into full-time casinos. Italian and Sicilian immigrants offer bolita games and slot machines throughout the city.

1948

Tampa politician and gambler Jimmy Velosco murdered in a war over control of the city's gambling.

1950

Tampa oil company executive Jimmy Lumia, the first man the FBI identified as leader of Tampa's La Cosa Nostra, is gunned down in his car, the 15th person to die in mob violence in Tampa between 1930 and 1950. Santo Trafficante Sr. succeeds him as boss.

1953

Santo Trafficante Jr. wounded during failed assassination attempt in Tampa.

1954

Santo Trafficante Sr. dies of natural causes and leaves his gambling enterprise to Santo Jr.

1957

Trafficnate and Frank Diediue are seen during a police raid on a Mafia summit in Apalachian, N,Y.

1959

Trafficante is jailed by Fidel Castro after Castro takes control of Cuba and dismatles the island's gambling operations.

1960

Trafficante returns to Tampa and enlists in a CIA plot to poison Castro.

1978

Trafficante refuses to testify to a congressional committee investigating the assassination of Hohn F. Kennedy. A fellow mobster claimed that Trafficante was part of a group of La Cosa Nostra principals who arranged Kennedy's murder.

1981

Trafficante is indicted in Tampa on charges he tried to illegally take control of garbage collection on the Suncoast. The case ends in a mistrial.

1987

Trafficante dies in a Houston hospital following surgery.

1988

Frank Diecidue is identified in U.S. Senate testimony as the new head of the Tampa mob.

1989

Broward County organized crime investigators name restauranteur Vincent LoScalzo as the power behind Tampa's mob. An FBI agent in Tampa names Diecidue as the new "boss".