Reputed mob figure faces arson charge
• An 82-year-old reputed mob figure who was acquitted in connection with the storied 1978 Lufthansa heist in 2015 was indicted again this week, this time along with John Gotti’s grandson, accused of conduct as petulant and petty as the US$6 million robbery of the terminal at Kennedy Airport was grand: setting fire to the car of a motorist who had cut him off on the streets of Queens in New York.
And if the indignity of being charged i n such a scheme was not bad enough, court papers describe its execution as so clumsy that had the elder John Gotti, a crime figure once known as the Teflon Don, not died in prison after a 1992 conviction he might well die now of shame.
To make matters worse, one of two federal indictments unsealed in the case on Wednesday also charged the young mob scion, John J. Gotti, 23, and two other men with a bank robbery that appears on its face to be less than well- thought through: The younger Gotti’s girlfriend, according to the court papers, worked as a teller at the bank branch.
The three men, along with the aging, irascible Vincent Asaro, were all charged Wednesday in U. S. District Court in Brooklyn with arson and arson conspiracy for setting fire to the car after the road rage episode in April 2012. Prosecutors from the U. S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York identified Asaro as a powerful member of the Bonanno crime family for more than 30 years who they said has served in various leadership positions.
Asaro, who has a lengthy criminal histor y dating to 1957, won a stunning courtroom victory in the Lufthansa case in November 2015, when a jury acquitted him of racketeering and other charges. The case figured prominently in the plot of the 1990 Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas.”
Elizabeth E. Macedonio, an Asaro lawyer, said, “He’s faced a series of unfounded charges before and was vindicated, and he will do the same this time.”
A detention memo filed in the case against Asaro, Gotti and the two other men said that the older man “became enraged at another motorist who switched lanes in front of Asaro at a traffic light.”
“Asaro chased the other vehicle for a period of time at a high rate of speed,” the memo said. Later, Asaro sought the help of a mob associate in order to get the driver’s address, then directed another to set fire to the motorist’s car.