A series of blunders by a newly inducted Genovese crime family soldier six years ago have come back to haunt him and several fellow wiseguys in the so-called Ivy League of Organized Crime, as the Genovese family is often described. Among the screw-up’s victims are a Bronx-based capo who is a very close pal of family boss Liborio (Barney) Bellomo, Mob Insider has learned.
The blunders began when mobster Michael Messina couldn’t keep his mouth shut about his own status as a member of the Genovese family. They reached a fever pitch when he later coldcocked a loanshark victim. Messina’s gaffes sparked a joint probe by federal and state agencies resulting in the indictment of Messina in April on racketeering, gambling and loansharking charges. Charged alongside him are Ralph (The Undertaker) Balsamo, a powerful capo who attended Bellomo’s 65th birthday party in January, two other family wiseguys, and a father-and-son team of mob associates.
From 2011 up until April of 2022, the indictment alleges, the six Genovese gangsters were part of a racketeering conspiracy operating out of a four-bedroom home owned by Messina that sits on a secluded 3.5 acre plot in New Fairfield, Connecticut, and a tanning salon in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx that is owned by one of the mob associates, Michael (Mike Polio) Poli.
The investigation began as a joint effort by the state Organized Crime Task Force and Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office in 2019. It was joined by the FBI a year later and survived the wounding of a federal prosecutor who was hit by a stray bullet as she dined in a Brooklyn eatery, and several other missteps before it ended with the arrests of the gangster sextet on April 26.
State authorities got wind of the 11-year-long racket, according to sealed court filings obtained by Mob Insider, when a stressed out cabby who had borrowed $150,000 from Messina reached out to the cops in January of 2019. The loanshark victim said that on the prior New Year’s eve he was seeking a way to pay off his debt, when Messina suddenly punched him in the mouth. The one-punch threat, the filings state, came three months after Messina had also held a knife to the cabby’s belly and “threatened to kill him.”
By then, according to affidavits by state investigator John Mullen and FBI agent Sarah Lingsch, the loanshark victim, a car service driver, was paying Messina $3070 a week vig on his interest only $150,000 loan.
Messina’s first gaffe, according to affidavits, came in the Spring of 2016, on the day he met the car service driver who needed cash. After giving the cabby the first of many loans that grew to $150,000, Messina allegedly told him: “You’re with a wiseguy now.”
His next screw-up came in the spring of 2018 when Messina bragged to his loanshark customer that he was celebrating his anniversary as a made man: “It’s my two-year anniversary,” Messina said, and made sure the cabby knew what anniversary he was talking about, by pointing to his chest and stating: “It’s two years I got my thing, my stripe.”
The final straw for the stressed out cab driver was Messina’s wordless punch in the mouth response when he was asked on December 31, 2018 to turn his $150,000 loan, for which he was paying a weekly “vig” of $3070, into a “knockdown loan,” one that would turn his interest only payments into reductions of the principal.
During the next 20 months, as the car service driver dutifully made his weekly interest payment of $3070, he tape-recorded Messina as the buttonman implicated himself in threats to other loanshark customers. State probers also tapped Messina’s phone and linked Balsamo, capo Nicholas (Nicky Slash) Calisi, soldier John Campanella, Michael Poli and his father Thomas to the alleged racketeering scheme.
Sources say that Messina dropped the names of the ultimate targets of any probe of the Genovese crime family “Barney and Ernie,” the nicknames of Bellomo and his reputed “street boss,” Ernest Muscarella, to the wired-up snitch but did not implicate the crime family leaders in the long-running gambling and loansharking scheme.
Messina became so enamored of the loanshark customer who was dutifully paying his weekly vig of $3070 that he often discussed his gangster business with him during breakfast and lunch meetings in the Bronx and Westchester. Messina also used him to “pick up and drop off other loansharking monies” at his New Fairfield home, according to the affidavits.
Meanwhile, the court authorized wiretaps snared Messina arranging to meet with other loanshark customers and discussing the gambling business with Michael Poli, who allegedly ran it out of the Electric Paradise Tanning Salon, a thriving business Poli opened on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx in 2006 and later expanded to include a second location in Carmel, NY.
The wiretaps also overheard Messina talking with capos Nicky Slash and Ralph The Undertaker, according to an affidavit by Agent Lingsch.
In a coded talk on June 9, 2020, Lingsch wrote, Messina and Calisi discussed “an outstanding loan, and the length of time that the ‘vig’ has been owed on this loan.” In the talk, she wrote, after Calisi asked about the amount that was owed (“the date of the party,”) Messina responded that it was $1600 based on “four months” of payments.
MM: What’s up buddy?
NC: What’s the date of the party?
MM: Ahh
NC: The date
MM: I think it was, I don’t have the date, it’s 16
NC: 16
MM: Yeah its ahh . . . Four months yeah
A few weeks later, on June 30, the feds generated a taped talk between Messina and Balsamo after they stopping Messina while he was driving alone and asked him about a loanshark victim he had met on Mulberry street.
Before the day was over, Lingsch wrote, “Messina promptly reported this contact” to Balsamo and stated he was going to “ke(e)p a distance” from other wiseguys and loanshark victims.
During their talk, after Messina told Balsamo that he had been pulled over and questioned about “that guy in Brooklyn,” the burning question on Ralph the Undertaker’s mind was whether his name had come up during the stop.
MM: No, no they got me, they got me with this kid.
RB: They didn’t mention, they didn’t mention anybody else or anything. . .
MM: No. They said okay here here’s our number if you think of anything call us. If we have any questions, give me your number so I gave them my number.
RB: Not this number right?
MM: No are you out of your fucking mind.
Eleven months later, in May of last year, as the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office was fine-tuning its evidence and preparing to obtain a racketeering indictment, an assistant U.S. attorney involved in the case, Mollie Bracewell, was struck in the face by a ricocheting bullet fragment as she dined al fresco at a Thai restaurant.
Bracewell was not seriously injured. The feds quickly determined that the shooting had nothing to do with the loanshark investigation but Bracewell was still taken off the case. The shooting incident delayed the planned indictment until this year.
The government’s best-laid plans to quietly arrest Messina and turn him into a cooperating witness against his Genovese cohorts fell apart when FBI agents, armed with an indictment only naming him, went to his home to arrest him on April 12. They were surprised to learn he was rehabilitating from a bout with Covid and other ailments at a nearby nursing facility, according to court filings in the case.
Once that happened, sources say, the feds realized that the cat was out of the bag and quickly dashed those plans. Two weeks later, they filed an indictment against all six gangsters. Three weeks ago, Poli’s dad, Thomas, 62, copped a plea deal calling for a recommended prison term of 33 to 41 months behind bars .
The remaining defendants, Messina, Calisi, Poli, Campanella, and Balsamo, all face up to 20 years if convicted at trial. Sources say that several of them, who have a status conference before Judge John Koeltl next week, are seeking to dispose of the case with a plea deal.
That’s not the case with Balsamo, whose sentencing guidelines call for up to eight years behind bars, according to a court filing by prosecutor Celia Cohen.
“There are no plea discussions involving Ralph Balsamo,” his attorney told Mob Insider. “Ralph’s going to trial,” said lawyer Gerald McMahon. “He’s a totally innocent man who’s been unjustly accused and we’re going to punish the government by demanding attorney’s fees after Ralph is acquitted at trial.”
Upstate New York Mob Insider 