Gangster Sonny

Born in 1936

A New York mobster and caporegime in the Lucchese crime family. He was involved in labor racketering in the garbage and waste management industry in Long Island, New York, and served as right-hand man and chauffer to boss Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo.

For nearly 15 years, Avellino used aggressive strongarm tactics to keep Long Island’s garbage hauling industry under Lucchese family control. In 1983, Avellino ordered his son Michael Avellino and son-in-law Michael Malena to set fire to competitors’ garbage trucks.

Avellino was a frequent subject of undercover federal surveillance. During one bugged phone call, Avellino explained Lucchese plans to an associate “We’re gonna knock everybody out, absorb everybody, eat them up, or whoever we, whoever stays in there is only who we allowing to to stay in there.” From his recorded conversations with Corallo and other senior Luccheese members, federal agents learned the organization’s internal structure, history, and relations with other crime families.

Federal agents also used undercover informant Robert Kubecka, the owner of a Suffolk County, New York, garbage hauling business, to gather evidence on Avellino. In 1982, Kubecka, who had been harassed and intimidated by Lucchese associates, agreed to wear a wire. Although Kubecka was unable to get close to Avellino himself, the information gathered eventually persuaded a judge to allow a wire tap on Avellino’s home phone in Nissequogue, New York. Later on, federal agents bugged Avellino’s Jaguar,in which he held regular conversations with Corallo.

In 1993, Avellino was convicted on racketeering charges and sent to prison. He was originally scheduled for release in 2006. However, in March 2001, Avellino pleaded guilty to using threats of violence to run his Long Island garbage business from federal prison. As part of a plea deal, Avellino was to serve five more years in prison after the end of his racketeering sentence. On October 13, 2006, Avellino was released from prison.

Frank Lucas (born 1930 in Washington, North Carolina) was a heroin dealer and organized crime boss in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in Southeast Asia. He organized the smuggling of heroin from Vietnam to the U.S. by using the coffins of dead American servicemen (”cadaver connection”)^.He claims to have grossed US$1 million a day selling drugs on 116th Street. Federal judge Sterling Johnson, who was special narcotics prosecutor in New York at the time of Lucas’ crimes, called Lucas’ operation “one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator who got his own connections outside the U.S. and then sold the narcotics himself in the street.”

Frank Lucas was arrested in 1975 in New Jersey and was convicted of both federal and New Jersey state drug violations. In 1976, he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Once convicted, Lucas provided evidence that led to the convictions of more than 100 drug-related criminals. His sentence was reduced and changed to parole, so that he was released from prison in 1981. In 1984 he was arrested again and convicted for new drug violations and a parole violation. He received a sentence of 7 years and was released from prison in 1991.

Frank Lucas is now wheelchair bound, as seen in the HBO documentary, The Making of American Gangster. Actor Denzel Washington portrays Frank Lucas in the film American Gangster directed by Ridley Scott, due for release on November 2, 2007. Lucas and his former competitor, Nicky Barnes, sat down with New York magazine’s Mark Jacobson recently for a historic conversation between men who have not spoken to each other in 30 years.