Spanish wine thieves corked for 54 months

Included in the haul was a 217-year-old bottle of Château d’Yquem worth €350k.

A court in Spain has sentenced two people to 54 months in prison after the theft of €1.6m worth of wine from a high-end restaurant in a heist that made headlines around the world. Owners of Atrio hotel and restaurant in the city of Cáceres sounded the alarm after discovering 45 bottles of wine missing.

Nine months later, a former Mexican beauty pageant contestant and a Romanian-Dutch man were arrested in Croatia. The wines are gone. Priscila Lara Guevara and Constantín Dumitru were sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

“I’ve murdered. I’ve beaten. I’ve robbed." - Anthony Arillotta

Twenty years ago, Anthony J. Arillotta stood at the bottom of a makeshift grave he and two other gangsters had spent hours digging. They labored in a wooded lot at the behest of mob boss Adolfo 'Big Al' Bruno in the fall of 2003. Arillotta was on the edges of a mob coup. The grave could have become the resting place for any number of thugs. Arillotta betrayed his oath to the mob, testifying in two murder trials in 2011 and 2012. He spent eight years in witness protection while in prison, then cut ties with the program and returned to his hometown in 2017. Arillotta has joined other former mobsters trying to parlay their celebrity. Arillota explains his 'squeal point' and why he turned rat. “That was my squeal point. My squeal point was life,” Arillotta said of his move. “I got caught cheating (on his ex-wife). I was facing the death penalty, and I had to make a decision.”

“I’ve murdered. I’ve beaten. I’ve robbed. What else is there realistically for me to do, professionally, in this area?” he asks. Fotios 'Freddy' Geas and Emilio Fusco were part of a power play Arillotta was involved in. The pair later became his codefendants in the murder and racketeering prosecution that eviscerated the mob in Springfield. They were convicted of murdering both Bruno and Arillotta’s brother-in-law, Gary D. Westerman, the man who ended up in the grave they dug.

Mongrel Mob boss caged

Gangsters shouted and gestured in the streets outside a courthouse as Mongrel Mob boss Turanganui John Ormsby-Turner was driven away to begin a jail sentence of at least 126 months for the murder of a rival gang prospect. Head of the West Coast chapter, Turanganui John Ormsby-Turner, killed Rei Joseph Tumatauinga Maihi Marshall, a prospect for the Uru Taha gang, in a brutal slaying last August. Marshall, a 23-year-old Taranaki father-of-two, died after he was attacked with a claw hammer and stabbed with a large hunting knife. Ormsby-Turner, 26, admitted the murder and was sentenced in the High Court at New Plymouth.

Following the hearing, the gangsters shouted Sieg Heil as Ormsby-Turner was driven away to serve his life sentence. Tensions boiled over between the gang and supporters of the victim before police moved in to keep order.

The heightened security followed previous hearings for the case where the public gallery exploded into emotional scenes of chaos and shouting between angry gangsters.

B.C. co wants to avoid cutting old growth - Province says you pay

A B.C. company that wants to avoid logging sections of at-risk old growth was told by the Crown that it must pay to leave them standing. Logging began in two cut blocks north of Revelstoke in spring 2021, but Downie Timber halted operations when protesters blocked access to the sites. The company values its relationship with local First Nations and the public, and didn't want to jeopardize that by logging old growth areas that are sensitive to them.

Forests.BCTimberSalesHQOffice@gov.bc.ca

BC Timber Sales, the provincial entity responsible for auctioning harvesting rights for 20% of B.C.'s annual cut, said Downie Timber must fulfil its logging contract — or pay full stumpage fees for any trees left standing. That could be a significant amount. The company has spent $200k putting roads into the area. The company, trying to achieve a balanced conservation result that serves Canadians, stands to be penalized for it by bureacrats.

Mapping shows 50% of one of Downie's cut blocks north of Revelstoke overlaps with an old-growth deferral area. The second block also overlaps, to a lesser amount. There can't be much hope for what remains of old growth in British Columbia when it's guardian demands that it all be chopped down.

Late mob boss Vincent 'The Chin' Gigante's family feuding

Father Louis Gigante in 2003.

The grandnephew of 'The Chin' pilfered more than $500k from Building Management Associates in the Bronx, a company established in 1980 by the crime lord’s brother Father Louis Gigante according to a lawsuit. The priest hired Salvatore Gigante 18 years ago “out of the goodness of his heart,” lawyers said. “Sal had no real estate knowledge at the time. His college career focused on hammer throwing.” Louis Gigante died in October at age 89, leaving his $7m estate to son Gino — a 32-year-old whose lineage to the not-so-celibate priest emerged after his death.

Salvatore Gigante

“Father G was not even cold in his grave when Sal started plotting and scheming,” court papers charged.

Joseph 'Yellow Kid' Weil

Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil (July 1, 1875 – February 26, 1976) was one of the best known American con men of his era. During the course of his career, Weil is reputed to have stolen more than $8 million. "Each of my victims had larceny in his heart" Weil said. Some of Weil's successful cons include swindling the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini out of two million dollars, staging fake prize fights, selling "talking" dogs, and selling oil-rich land that he did not own. Weil spent a total of just six years in jail, most of it at Leavenworth Prison.

He passed himself off as a stockbroker, banker, physician, mining engineer, chemist, geologist, and land developer and originated or perfected numerous cons, including a phony bookie operation. Weil had many aliases and wore various disguises. A popular rumor claims that in 1889 Weil managed to sell a chicken to a wealthy prospector passing through Illinois for the price of a golden nugget. It is from this that the term 'Chicken Nugget' stems.

He claimed that he only cheated the dishonest rich. "Sure, I'm a con man, the best," he said. "But I've always taken from those who can afford the education." Weil lived in a Chicago nursing home his last years. A reporter attended his 99th birthday party. When the party was over, and he thought no one was watching, Weil swiped the extra candles. He died in 1976 at the age of 100.

William Rainville - 249 Glock frames, parts = full parole after a year

Smuggling 249 handguns into Canada cost William Rainville a year in jail. Despite a five-year sentence, he’s in a halfway house and allowed day parole. The street value of his weapons was estimated at $1.6m.

William Rainville pleaded guilty to six counts of possession of weapons for the purpose of trafficking and possession of weapons without permits. He pulled a five-year prison term. The minimum sentence which Rainville pleaded guilty to is three years and the maximum sentence is ten years. On social media, William Rainville wrote that his goal in life was to achieve financial freedom at age 40. He owned half a dozen rental properties, including a dilapitated home steps from the US border. The old house has a crooked roof, faded paint, and grounds littered with rusty farm tools. The creaky home was the 6th purchased by Rainville, a year before his bust.

Camping gear was inside. The house comes with something else. A white concrete stele is yards away. The inscription "Canada" appears on the north side, and "United States" on the south side.

Rainville was nailed during a border surveillance operation by RCMP. They found five hockey bags filled with frames and parts for restricted firearms. Contraband was 249 illegal unassembled weapons, namely Polymer 80 Glock frames. All the parts needed to make the weapons operational were present. The firearms, when assembled, go for $2,500 each on the street.

Rainville was busted with large capacity magazines, bolt assemblies with barrels that were less than 105 mm in length, the jigs and all the parts necessary for assembly. Rainville faced multiple charges including importing restricted firearms and possession of prohibited firearms.

Mafia orders hit on Pocho the dog - flashback

Pocho the nine-year-old Jack Russell terrier was a key target of the Neapolitan Camorra in 2018, one of the largest, oldest, and most powerful Mafia families in the world. Pocho sniffed out more than two tonnes of drugs during his career with the Naples police. The K9 rose to the top and was one of the greatest threats to the mobsters’ drug trafficking operations.

Pocho deprived them of uncountable millions.

The Camorra left poisoned bait for him and attempted to protect its stashes by placing female dogs in heat nearby. Following the failure of those ploys, the gangsters then offered a €5,000 bounty. There is no indication of Pocho's fate, suggesting he was not whacked. He would be an advanced senior if still alive today.

Triple Moncton RCMP killer Justin Bourque might get out of jail

New Brunswick's highest court says it had no choice but to reduce the sentence of Justin Bourque, a man who used a semi-automatic rifle to murder three Mounties in cold blood in Moncton in 2014. Bourque's parole ineligibility period is now 25 years, down from the 75 years imposed by a lower court judge. The ruling was based on a Supreme Court of Canada decision involving Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette. It struck down a 2011 federal law that allowed judges to extend parole ineligibility.

The killer, 24 at the time of the murders, might be able to apply for parole when he is 49.

The Supreme Court decided that consecutive sentences violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because they amounted to cruel and unusual punishment for offenders who faced no realistic possibility of being granted parole before they died.

Tramadol on the rise

Nigerian cops seized intercepted 2,684,900 pills of tramadol and exol-5 as well as 1800ml of codeine concealed in the reserve fuel tank of a trailer. Drug kingpin Hussaini Ibrahim 'Bafu', was arrested. The UN says the trade and growing abuse of tramadol, a synthetic opioid, are destabilizing parts of Africa. The nonmedical use of tramadol has become a major health crisis in some areas. Tramadol produces effects similar to morphine and oxycodone. It gives users a sense of detachment from reality and makes them delusional. Less stigmatized than other opioids, tramadol as a prescription medication can be accessed and transported easily. The drug is finding its way into Europe. “This is serious,” a Danish addiction treatment specialist at a youth addiction centre in the town of Greve, southwest of Copenhagen. Six of the 20 teens enrolled in the facility were there because of their addiction to tramadol.

In October 2022 drug baron and Chairman of Automation Motors Ugochukwu Chukwukadibia was busted. One of his six mansions was raided, leading to 443 cartons of Tramadol Hydrochloride 225mg, which contained 13,451,466 pills.

Street prices are low, but still 5 times higher than cost, making Tramadol extremely profitable. It is favoured as a lower cost alternative to Percocet, Suboxone, and Oxycodone. Tramadol is a money generator for terror groups and is used regularly. The dosage used is often four or five times higher than recommended.