Word: maspeth
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...food isn't the main attraction at the CasaBlanca Italian restaurant in Maspeth, Queens, N.Y. You go for the Sicilian kitsch--the plastic flowers, the bronze-tinted mirrors, the piped-in Godfather theme. The walls bear snapshots of movie stars visiting the place, among them Johnny Depp (Donnie Brasco), Hugh Grant (Mickey Blue Eyes) and James Caan (The Godfather). At a round table sit five men--sturdy, with slick hair and crumpled suits--having a good rude time as two other men in velour sweatsuits, drivers or bodyguards probably, sit at a subsidiary table. They turn quiet and suspicious when...
Massino, 61, has other legitimate businesses (Cafe Via Vento, in Maspeth) and properties (in Queens and Palm Coast, Fla.), but his favorite is the CasaBlanca. From that neighborhood ristorante, he has allegedly run an operation that, the feds assert, includes extortion, loan sharking, illegal gambling, narcotics and murder in a vast criminal empire whose tentacles stretch up into Canada and back to the Sicilian motherland. Investigators say he certified his power in 2000, when he convened a meeting of four of the Five Families, at--where else?--the CasaBlanca...
...Massino's uncle owned a shop in Maspeth, where the young man made sandwiches for catering trucks, frequently driving one himself and selling coffee and cakes to workers in a Long Island City truck yard. The wiseguy soon became a wide guy. "He'd eat half the sweets on his truck," says ex-FBI agent Colgan. Government witnesses at his '87 trial said Massino fenced merchandise, from Kodak cameras to electric appliances, that workers stole from the platforms and loaded onto his truck. By the '70s, he had allegedly expanded his operation into a truck-hijacking racket. With connections...
...indictment charges that from 1972 through last April, the company falsified records and knowingly shipped out of a plant in Maspeth, Queens, "an adulterated food product." According to Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold, that means Good Humor sold millions of Wildberry Whammy, X-5 Jetstar Grape, Orange Push-Up and Chocolate Fudge Cake cones, bars and other ice cream confections containing far more than the legally allowable quantity of coliform bacteria. The bacteria are commonly found in drinking water and dairy products; in small amounts they are nontoxic, but large quantities of them can cause illness. Gold says that bacteria...
...Cadillac. In 1922, General Electric elected Owen D. Young as board chairman and Gerard Swope as president. The first time young Charlie Wilson saw Gerard Swope was at G.E.'s plant at Maspeth, L.I., where Charlie was assistant superintendent. He led the inquisitive Mr. Swope through the entire plant, showed him the panelboards, the switches and the armored cables in the making. The next thing Charlie Wilson heard from Mr. Swope was that the Maspeth plant was being scrapped...