William D'Elia

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Billy D'Elia

Born	June 24, 1946 Trenton, New Jersey, USA

William "Big Billy" D'Elia (b. June 24, 1946) is an American mafioso and current leader of the Bufalino Crime Family.

D'Elia began working with the Bufalino crime family in the late 1960s as Russell Bufalino's driver. D'Elia's business background in solid waste brokering and other areas would later be useful in making contacts in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Rising through the ranks, D'Elia represented the family resolving various disputes with rival organizations. Upon succeeding Edward Sciandra in 1994, D'Elia expanded the organization into more legitimate operations such as waste management and controlling shares of Spanel Transportation and the Newcastle Group, the latter of which is a suspected money laundering operation.

In 1990 Bufalino was involved in a money laundering operation involving the Exeter, Pennsylvania based newspaper The Metro, in which the IRS claimed over $3.0 million was laundered from drug and prostitution rings from which non existent advertisements and subscribers were purchased until its eventual closing in 1998.

On May 31, 2001, agents of the IRS's Criminal Investigative Division, US Postal Service Inspectors, and Pennsylvania State Police obtained search warrants for the homes of several Bufalino crime family members, including D'Elia and his mistress, seizing various records regarding a tax evasion investigation from which D'Elia claimed a loss of $6 million while reporting $8,000 in gambling operations in Atlantic City, New Jersey. D'Elia was later banned from entering Atlantic City casinos on February 26, 2003, by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcment as a result from information from the FBI and Pennsylvania Crime Commission.

On May 31, 2006 D'Elia was indicted on federal charges of laundering $600,000 in illegal drugs proceeds.

[edit] Further reading

Capeci, Jerry. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002. ISBN 0-02-864225-2
Pennsylvania Crime Commission. St. Davids, Pennsylvania: DIANE Publishing, 1984. ISBN 0-8182-0000-6 [1]

[edit] References

Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0