Dominic Truscello
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Dominic "Crazy Dom" Truscello (b. April 29, 1934) is a Lucchese crime family captain. Truscello grew up in Downtown Manhattan and became involved in the labor rackets, something that the Luccheses specialized in. As a soldier, Truscello was indicted in 1993 with family captain/consigliere Steven Crea, who was the top leader of the family's Bronx faction, and Genovese crime family captain Salvatore Lombardi and Gambino crime family soldier John "Johnny G" Gammarano for their involvement in an extortion of a Pennsylvania based builder of modular homes in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Truscello would eventually become a captain in the family, and leader of "the Prince Street Crew" based in Little Italy, Manhattan. Crea, as acting boss and official underboss appointed Truscello and fellow captain Joseph Tangorra to the "Lucchese Construction Group", a group of wiseguys and labor officials active in shaking down New York City contractors.
On September 6, 2000, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced the indictment (the result of a state and federal investigation) of the Lucchese Construction Group, which included Truscello, Crea and Tangorra, as well as 35 other individuals and 11 construction companies in a massive racketeering indictment. The indictment alleged that leaders of the N.Y.C. District Council of Carpenters, including its Secretary-Treasurer Michael Forde, took payoffs from organized crime, fixed "no-show" jobs and committed a host of other extortions and threats of work stoppage even though the entire union was under federal monitoring. The Luccheses and its carpenter associates were accused of muscling in on the construction industry and imposing a "mob tax" that skimmed millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded and private projects. On one job alone (the restoration of the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan), an inflated bid was pushed through which resulted in a $2 million kickback for the Luccheses.
Sean Richard, a DeCavalcante crime family associate and the son-in-law of family boss John Riggi would testify against the defendants. Richard would "flip" after Truscello picked him up in a van outside a New Jersey diner, and asked him "What are your sins?", the statement was interpreted by Richard to mean that he would be killed. Truscello would be sentenced to prison time and was released in January of 2006, after serving several years in a federal prison.
