Friday, January 19, 2007

Colombo admits gambling, denies intimidation

Chris Colombo
Defense attorney Jeremy Schneider acknowledges that his client, Chris Colombo, is guilty of gambling, but the attorney insists Colombo did not run an underworld organization that extorted money from its victims, according to a story by Kati Cornell of the New York Post.

Brother Chris and Anthony Colombo, sons of slain crime boss Joseph Colombo, face racketeering charges in federal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say they used their family name to terrorize victims and generate income through gambling, loan-sharking, extortion and fraud.

The brothers found themselves on the losing end of a civil war within the Colombo Crime Family, prosecutors say, and struck out on their own.

In pretrial hearings, defense attorneys asked that prosecutors be prevented from making reference to the Mafia organization once run by Joseph Colombo. Prosecutors responded by charging that the brothers used the family connection to their advantage in underworld business dealings.

Joseph Colombo was mortally wounded by an assassin in 1971. He died in 1978.

Chris Colombo was featured in a short-lived 2005 HBO reality show entitled "House Arrest."

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Writer, editor, researcher, web publisher, specializing in organized crime history. (Available to assist with historical/genealogical research, writing, editing. Email at tphunt@gmail.com.)
Editor/publisher of crime history journal, Informer; publisher of American Mafia history website Mafiahistory.us; moderator of online forums; author of Wrongly Executed?; coauthor of Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia and DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime; contributor of U.S. Mafia history to Australian-published Mafia: The Necessary Reference to Organized Crime; writer/co-writer of crime history articles for several publications.
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