Activities in The 1970s
In 1970 Joey McGreal and three others were indicted for labor racketeering and extortion. They later received eight years in prison. DelGiorno had lost a significant financial backer. So he and John Bastione began holding all night card games at his home. The house took $1,000 from each game and DelGiorno easily took several thousand more during each game.
In the early 1970s "Broadway Eddie" Colcher and "Frankie Flowers" D'Alfonso began backing DelGiorno's gambling operations including a sports betting operation he had set up to take advantage of the customers available during American football seasons.
Frankie Flowers was one of the biggest bookmakers in the City and he was a close friend of Philadelphia Mob Boss Angelo Bruno, not to mention an associate to his crime family.
By 1972 DelGiorno had established links to the Philadelphia Mob through D'Alfonso and Colcher. That same year he and his first wife Maryann divorced.
That same year the FBI raided Broadway Eddie's Restaurant and arrested DelGiorno, Colcher and D'Alfonso for running a gambling operation. The raid led to probation and suspended sentences for the three men. By then the bookmaking operation was making $20,000 a day if not double that during football season.
Whilst Joey McGreal was in prison Ralph Natale took his place in Local 107 with the help of Angelo Bruno. McGreal was later released from prison early in 1973.
In December 1973 DelGiorno was called to a meeting with Joey McGreal. That night Joey McGreal was found dead, shot three times in the head with a 38 caliber pistol. McGreal had been killed on orders from Angelo Bruno because he was attempting to force his way into the unions again.
In 1976 Atlantic City gambling was legalized and 47 year-old Nicky Scarfo took advantage on the behalf of the Philadelphia Mob. Though the government looked to keep the Mafia out of the casino counting rooms which had been so easily infiltrated by the mobs in Las Vegas. Scarfo used his ties to Local 54 to squeeze money out of the casinos by threataning strikes and withholding materials necessary during construction.
As the shores of Atlantic City were soon flourishing once more, DelGiorno was one of the few mobsters in Philadelphia content with his gambling operations and not desperate to run to Atlantic City.
Around this time Bruno's consigliere Tony Caponigro and underboss Phil Testa began to suspect that Angelo was allowing members of the Gambino crime family to traffic heroin through a string of restaurants in New Jersey for a cut of the profits; whilst upholding a contradictory "no go" policy towards drug trafficking in his own crime family. Though this was never confirmed it became a widespread theory among the ranks of the Philadelphia Mob.
The recent death of Bruno's ally Carlo Gambino and emergence of Giuseppe and Rosario Gambino in New Jersey undermined Bruno's leadership even more.
DelGiorno and Frankie Flowers bought a restaurant called Piccolo's 500, the name was later changed to Cous' Little Italy after they hired Vincent "Cous" Pilla as head chef. Officially Frankie's wife Michelne and DelGiorno's second wife Roseanne were the owners of the restaurants. DelGiorno's sons Tommy Jr. and Bobby worked at the restaurant in the late 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Thomas Del Giorno
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