Vincent Teresa
Vincent "Fat Vinnie" Charles Teresa (* 1930 , † 1990 ) was an American mobster of La Cosa Nostra , and was in the 1960s, a senior member of the Patriarca family in Boston. He became known for his willingness to testify to the police after his arrest and his book My Life In The Mafia .
Life
Early years
Already Vincenti Teresa , the grandfather of Vincent Teresa to a member of the original Mafia have been in Sicily. In 1895 he emigrated to the United States to avoid a murder charge. In the western suburb of Revere (Massachusetts) of Boston he was responsible for the local “streetcrew” of La Cosa Nostra . With his thugs he collected " protection money ".
Cosmo Teresa, Vincent's father, did not become a mobster , but worked as a truck driver and construction worker or later in the poultry trade.
He made his first break-in at the age of twelve in order to be able to settle gambling debts. He was caught doing this but was only slightly punished. Despite numerous successful further break-ins in the following period, Teresa fell into the hands of loan sharks ("loansharks"). By the age of 16, he had stolen around US $ 5,000 from 12 burglaries, but this was not enough to pay off his debts. He was expelled from school and was hired as a cook on a US destroyer in November 1945 .
Gang crime
In February 1948 he was dismissed for poor conduct. He returned to Boston and married his childhood sweetheart Blanche. His main job was to work as a driver for a haulage company, but took advantage of this activity to explore break-in opportunities.
An old school friend persuaded him to help him with the check fraud . Through contact with a printer, false checks could be produced, which were used as a means of payment in supermarkets, etc. with the help of false driving licenses as identification documents . In this way, the gang stole a sum of US $ 500,000 until an unsatisfied gang member testified in front of the police. Teresa was sentenced to 18 months in prison, with suspended suspension.
Vincent Teresa then joined a gang of armed vault crackers that successfully cleared four banks in Massachusetts . However, Teresa left the gang and raided illegal casinos with some old schoolmates. After three months, however, they caught their attack on a casino that was controlled by "Mike the Wiseguy". This belonged to the leadership of the La Cosa Nostra in Boston. Teresa and his friends escaped punishment because an uncle Teresas, who was himself a mafia member, was able to obtain a pardon.
Patriarca family
Vincent Teresa now preferred to work like his uncle for the Boston mob that was classified as the Patriarca family under their boss Raymond Patriarca . Patriarca was one of 12 bosses who had a seat and vote on the "Commission" of the National Crime Syndicate . In the sense of protection downwards through the Omertà , Teresa never received his orders directly from his top boss, but from Capo Enrico "Henry" Tameleo .
“Each one is a wall that protects the guy above. Say you want to do business with Tamelo. You can't do business (directly) with Tamelo. You have to do business with someone below. We now imagine a wall. When you come to me, I am the wall. You won't get any further. If I did business with you, and then Tamelo, you would never know about it. You can hand me over to the police, but never Tamelo, because I wouldn't talk ... "
By chance Teresa knew Tameleo from his youth, which is why he was soon considered a protégé of Tameleo. In particular, Teresa was involved in fraudulent bankruptcies, previously fraudulent loans , and receiving stolen goods . So were z. B. ordered goods from a new company at toy companies and initially paid for them, and commercial buildings and goods were highly insured.
“We sold as much as we could before the Christmas season and then hired a good arson specialist. Then when the house burned down, we took the insurance and declared ourselves bankrupt. "
The “Office” also manipulated sports betting . Teresa and other bullies bribed football players and brought dog and horse races under control. Teresa's job was to bribe the trainers and stable boys to get them out of the stables. Then horses could be manipulated with drugs or jockeys bribed. This did not end the task, since urine samples from the racehorses had to be exchanged for harmless ones before the doping control .
Thereafter, Teresa was mainly used in securities fraud and in the casinos. In particular, he organized trips of players to remote casinos ( "junkets") where this alone, usually by foul play could be excluded. Made compliant by gambling debts, they could often be induced to acquire counterfeit securities and put them into circulation.
Enrico “Henry” Tameleo's “office” robbed an estimated 700 million US dollars through these illegal activities. The "Mob of New England" were protected by bribed police officers who picked up their bags of money at Christmas. However, the activity in the "Office" has been bugged since 1962 by the Federal Police FBI . On October 6, 1966, the killer Joseph "The Beast" Barboza , a colleague of Teresa's, was arrested. This arrest led to a chain reaction in which Barboza confessed (in Mafia jargon: became the " pentito ") and ultimately Tameleo and Patriarca were also arrested. Patriarca was sentenced to five years in prison in 1968 for incitement to murder, and Tameleo was sentenced to death.
"When Tameleo and Patriarca were no longer there, I was outlawed."
Key witness against the mafia
Vincent Teresa was arrested soon after and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1969. He followed the example of Barboza, whom he was originally supposed to assassinate on behalf of Patriarca, also became a " Pentito " and one of the most sought-after key witnesses in US judicial history.
He admitted, among other things, to have used the Key Biscayne Bank of the Cuban exile Charles Rebozo , a confidante of the US President Richard Nixon , who had received a highly paid position in the Ministry of Health for money laundering .
In 1973 the US judiciary tried for the last time to prosecute Meyer Lansky and charged him with tax evasion .
"It was a known fact among the criminal underworld that dealing with Al Malnik was the same as dealing with Meyer Lansky ..."
"It was a well-known fact in the criminal underworld that business with Al Malnik was business with Meyer Lansky ..."
Lansky, who had heart problems during the trial, was acquitted because the jury disagreed over Vincent Teresa's incriminating testimony, as his credibility and reputation were considered questionable through his membership in the Boston Patriarca family.
Vincent Teresa, who was very overweight at 135 kilograms, died in 1990 of kidney failure .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Vincent Teressa: My Life In The Mafia . Buccaneer Books. December 1994. ISBN 978-1-56849-377-0
- ↑ Dagobert Lindlau : The Mob . dtv, Munich 1989, p. 74, ISBN 3-455-08659-4
- ↑ You will live like a king . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1973 ( online ).
- ↑ a b mob at the end . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1973 ( online ).
literature
- Clarke, Thurston and Tigue, John J. Jr .: Dirty Money: Swiss Banks, the Mafia, Money Laundering, and White Collar Crime . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. ISBN 0-671-21965-0
- Davis, John H .: Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy . New York: Signet, 1989. ISBN 0-451-16418-0
- Hinckle, Warren and Turner, William W .: The Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro . New York: Harper & Row, 1981. ISBN 0-06-038003-9
- Kwitny, Jonathan: Vicious Circles: The Mafia in the Marketplace . New York: WW Norton, 1979. ISBN 0-393-01188-7
- Lacey, Robert: Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life . London: Century, 1991. ISBN 0-7126-2426-0 .
- Scheim, David E .: Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy . New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988. ISBN 0-933503-30-X
- Summers, Anthony: The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon . New York: Viking, 2000. ISBN 0-670-87151-6
- Teresa, Vincent: My Life In The Mafia . Buccaneer Books. December 1994. ISBN 978-1-56849-377-0 . German translation by Helmut Degner : "My life in the mafia". Hoffmann and Campe Verlag. Hamburg 1973. ISBN 978-3-455-07675-2
- Teresa, Vincent: Wise Guys . ´Panther. June 7, 1979. ISBN 978-0-586-04867-2
- Mob in the end . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1973 ( online ).
- You will live like a king . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1973 ( online ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Teresa, Vincent |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Teresa, Vincent Charles; Fat Vinnie |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mobster and pentito |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1930 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1990 |