John Baudanza

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John Baudanza (b. 1969) is a New York mobster and a powerful soldier in the Lucchese crime family. Baudanza's father Carmine is a longtime Colombo crime family associate, and his uncle Joseph is a powerful Colombo captain, who once headed the family's ruling panel.

In 1990, Baudanza and Craig Marino got into a dispute with a man in a local diner. Baudanza and Marino gave the man a beating and then Baudanza shot him in the back. According to former Bonanno crime family captain and current turncoat Frank Lino, Baudanza once stabbed a man during a barroom brawl.

During the Colombo family war from 1991-1993, Baudanza often served as a bodyguard and chauffeur to members of the Colombos, and even was enlisted as a member of a hit team. Shortly after the war, Baudanza married Danielle Cutaia, the daughter of Lucchese crime family captain Domenico Cutaia.

In 1995, Baudanza was inducted into the Lucchese crime family and placed in his father-in-law's crew.

On March 23, 2006, Baudanza, and his father Carmine and uncle Joseph, as well as other associates of the Colombo crime family, were indicted for operating a pump and dump stock scam, in which licensed and unlicensed brokers misrepresented the prospects of certain stocks to potential investors, in ex change for large commissions. The men then sold their holdings in those stocks at inflated values, costing investors more than $20 million. The stock firms were located in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island. In order to hide the proceeds, the profits were laundered by wiring funds and making cash transfers through domestic and foreign banks, while utilizing nominee accounts and corporations to hide the true ownership of the illegal proceeds. Prosecutors alleged that as part of the indictment, that an enforcers beat a broker with a bat and then stabbed him in the head while a cold caller was pummeled with a golf club. In one attack in 2000, Colombo associate Robert Podlog kidnapped a stock promoter and chained him to a pit bull until he paid money that his abductor claimed he was owed.