Louis “Streaky” Gatto: New Jersey and the Genovese Mob

Retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins examines the rise and influence of Louis “Streaky” Gatto and the Genovese crime family’s powerful New Jersey faction. Drawing from a 2004 New Jersey Crime Commission report, this episode explores how Genovese crews operated across multiple counties while controlling illegal gambling, loan sharking, and waterfront rackets through intimidation and organized violence.

Gary breaks down the structure of Gatto’s Bergen County crew, including the involvement of his son Joseph Gatto and son-in-law Alan “Little Al” Greco. The discussion details how the crew maintained control over bookmaking and gambling operations and how prosecutors later tied key members to murders connected to their criminal enterprises.

The episode also dives into the federal RICO prosecution and the dramatic courtroom testimony of witness Robert Belli. Gary explains allegations that associates of the Gatto crew attempted to pressure and intimidate witnesses before testimony, including claims involving the infamous “evil eye” or malocchio. Prosecutors argued that subtle intimidation tactics, courtroom stares, and indirect threats were all part of an effort to influence testimony.

Another major focus is Moe Brown, a reputed associate connected to the Gatto organization. The episode explores how prosecutors used recordings and testimony to connect Brown to the defendants and how his conduct in court became part of the government’s intimidation narrative.

Finally, Gary examines the later criminal cases involving Joseph Gatto, including offshore sports betting operations, convictions, prison sentences, and the eventual decline of the family’s gambling empire. The episode concludes with the deaths of both Joseph Gatto and Louis “Streaky” Gatto, marking the end of an era for one of New Jersey’s most feared Genovese crews.
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Transcript

[0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland Wires. A little extra I’m going to throw in here. I did this interview with Scott Deitch about Jerry Katina, and I got a lot of.

[0:12] Comments, a lot of reactions to that show, a lot of New Jersey mob fans, Genovese mob fans out there. A guy named Carmine, Carmine something, he had some other numbers after his name. Carmine commented that I should do a show on Louis Streaky Gatto. That was a New Jersey capo who was one of the Chin’s best earners in the Genovese family. He had a crew down in New Jersey. And if you notice, one more thing, I was going to mention this before. I got a new hat. Now, check this out.

[0:46] Hope you can see that. Got the gangland wire insignia on it. Now, this is my official gangland wire hat.

[0:56] Louis Streaky Gatto, the New Jersey Crime Commission report in May 2004, reported that the Genovese family maintained five crews headquartered in New Jersey. Each was overseen by a capo, of course, and each of the four New York-based crews, this is right out of The Sopranos, about 40 soldiers and more than 400 criminal associates who were active in New Jersey.

[1:21] They reported that the family operated in the northern New Jersey counties of Hudson, Essex, Union, Bergen, and Passaic County. They also had gained strength in Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean counties. Ocean, is that down in Atlantic City? I don’t have a map in front of me, so I’m not sure. The crime report stated that the Genovese family controlled the largest bookmaking and loan sharking rings in the New York, New Jersey metropolitan area. And the family maintained a strong influence on the Port Newark, Elizabeth, and Hudson County waterfronts. This report also identified the family consigliere Lawrence Little Larry Dentico as a person with the most extensive familiarity of the family’s New Jersey operations because he had been the top aide to the former consigliere and New York, New Jersey operations chief, Louis A. Bobby Mann. I did a show on Bobby Mann and Irwin Schiff and some of those plots, I don’t know, sometime in the last year, I believe. This 2004 report identified the five capos at that time in New Jersey, and they were Tino Fouimara, who died in 2010, Angelo Prisco, who died in 2017, Joseph Gatto died in 2010, Silvio DeVita, and Ludwig Bruchy, who died in 2020.

[2:44] Now, Streaky Gatto, Louis Streaky Gatto, he was always the favorite money earner of Vincent de Chin Gigante. Before he was promoted to captain, his New Jersey crew was led by a capo named Peter LaPlaca until the mid-1970s, and that’s when Streaky Gatto took over the crew. Gatto was the boss of Bergen County with the help of his son, Joseph the Eagle Gatto. And his son-in-law, and a guy who keeps coming back in this thing, and who was his top enforcer, Alan Little Al Greco. I noticed a comment. Somebody said that he was really half Polish. I think his mother was Polish and his father was Italian. Somebody correct me on that in the comments, if you will. Controlled large illegal gambling, loan sharking, bookmaking operations in Bergen and Passaic counties.

[3:33] These three guys used murder, violence, and fear to click on these rackets and control everybody who was a bookmaker. You couldn’t be, like Chicago, you couldn’t be a lone wolf bookmaker making money without these guys getting a piece of your action and working with you on it. They made sure that other rivals didn’t take advantage of somebody that was

[3:55] under their protection. Gatto and Alan Greco, Little Al, were indicted on two counts of murder for the murders of Arthur Belli and Vincent Mastretti. They also were alleged to be behind the murders of a guy named Jack Handsome Jack, Ciaranella, Johnny Lombardi, and Peter Adamo. 1991-1990.

[4:20] Streaky Gatto and Alan Greco were sentenced to 65 years. Streaky Gatto’s son, Joseph Gatto, was indicted on racketeering charges in the same RICO prosecution, but he only received 30 months. There was an appeal to that trial, and we learned a little bit about their brazen intimidation tactics, how it works. There’s a guy named Robert Belli, whose brother had had a gambling operation. His brother, Arthur Belli, was one of the persons in that RICO case that was murdered by Streaky Gatto. They called on Robert Belli to testify about the extortionate takeover of their gambling business. And he said that little Al Greco once told him, he said, things are going to be different now. And then shortly after that, Robert Belli’s hot dog truck was blown up and he was beaten by two men with baseball bats, typical mob extortionist takeovers of a small-time gambler, a bookie, a guy that had his own book of business, his own customers. As a result, he just gave it up. But he also testified that Belli disappeared and now we’re in trial for Belli being murdered by Streaky Gatto and planned on returning to the business just before he disappeared.

[5:37] Now, in cross-examination, it turns out that he had been spoken to by somebody in the Gatto families because he all of a sudden starts agreeing with all the defense counsel’s suggestions, first of all, that the prosecutor paid him and pressured him, and all the local police and prosecutors involved in the case were corrupt. I’ll redirect. The prosecutor tries to show that Belli had become hostile to government and accommodating to the defense because he’d been intimidated. They asked Belli about a guy named Frank Sesta, who was known as Mo Brown. We’ll refer to him as Mo Brown. He was always known as Mo Brown. Belli stated that after defense investigators, Gatto’s lawyers and their investigators handed him into a meeting with the defense counsel, Mo Brown showed up and wanted to take him to the meeting. And then when he wouldn’t go with Mo Brown, Brown tried to pressure him into letting one of his associates drive him to this meeting and again to a pretrial hearing. He wouldn’t do it. He knew better than that. He took a ride with a government investigator. He did have to go meet with the defense counsel, of course. Anybody that’s going to be a witness against you, they have to make them available to the defense investigators and counsels, defense counsel, in order to do a deposition or just listen to what, see what they got to say.

[6:59] He said Brown approached him and told him about a job interview. He said he’d take him to his job interview just before he testified at trial. He said Brown had discussed the case with him more than once and once said, isn’t it a shame that Little Al got 60 years in this case and he did get 65 years? And this all was coming out after they got their 65-year sentences, Little Al and Streaky Gatto. They just kept coming back. And then during the trial, the prosecutors got testimony from Belli that Moe Brown had been in the courtroom and standing directly in front of him several times and that he looked at him with an unhappy look.

[7:36] Of course, they objected, the defense counsel objected to all that. They also introduced evidence that this Moe Brown was really closely connected to Streaky Gatto and Little Al Greco. They’d sent him into surveillance during the social club, the Lodi Social Club, and sent him with other people in the defendant’s gambling business. They also had a tape of a conversation between Louis Gatto Jr., Stryker Gatto’s son, and little Al Greco, talking about Mo Brown, that they were real familiar with him. So they connected Mo Brown to the Gattos and to Little Al Greco and then showed how he was then in court and was given the witness, the evil eye, the malokia, I think they call it, something like that was in The Godfather. And that he had tried to befriend the guy before he testified and told him about a job and tried to give him rides different places. They even mentioned that how…

[8:39] They asked the witness Belli about three occasions during the trial when Al Greco had given him a look. One was before he testified, and Greco passed by him in the hallway, and he gave him a look. Defense has strenuously objected to this. It’s irrelevant, and you can’t really say that look was a bad look. The defense counsel strenuously objected to these points, but it was overruled. The second look came when Belli was in the back of the courtroom him waiting to testify, and Greco, Little Al Greco, just turned his chair around just to give him a look, and the third time was when Greco stood up and then turned over around and looked at Belli during the sidebar while Belli was on the stand. Prosecutor then asked Belli if Greco had ever looked at him that way before, and Belli said, well, he had. He said when he told him, Little Al Greco told him things are going to be different just before he beat him up, or had he beaten, And, of course, they strenuously object to all this. In the end, it did not do any good. In the end, little Al Greco still got his 65 years, and he didn’t get a new trial or anything.

[9:45] A little story in regards to little Al Greco, the guy that was son-in-law to Strique Gatto and was right under him. It seemed like he was his main kind of enforcement guy, guy out dealing, maybe underboss, under people trying to, guy that deals with people on the street. He made a connection with a notorious New Jersey con artist and mob associates, Tom Giacomaro. They wanted him to come in and be a made man, supposedly, in the 80s. And, you know, he didn’t want it. He was independent. He knew better because once you come in, you know, they’re going to take everything from you. And he was quoted as saying, you know, I don’t want to kiss the ring. Everybody’s kissing Streaky Gatto’s ring, he said, except me. Jack Amaro was in the trucking business with two of Streaky’s crew, and they were making a lot of money. Streaky wanted to sit down. He wanted to bring this guy in because he was earning a lot of money. Giacomaro remembers that they met at Vesuvius in Newark. I mean, it sounds just like the Sopranos, doesn’t it? He described the table and how it went down. He said, Streaky sat at the head of the table with his sons right next to him, Joseph and Louis Jr. And his son-in-law, little Al Greco.

[11:02] And Giacomaro remembered that Streaky was a skinny little guy who hardly said anything, but he said he had an ego big enough to suffocate the entire restaurant. Over again, little Al took care of the business during this lunch. He pitched Giacomaro on Friday. Him joining the family plan. And Streaky, during this time, he made a big production of putting some $100 bills between his knuckles. He held up his fist when the waiters came and they kissed his ring and took the bill and said, oh, thank you, Don Luigi. Thank you. During this lunch, he remembered that little Al once said, you know, we want to open the books for use. We got big plans for use. He knew what that meant. He knew he was then going to have to give him a percentage of his earnings and let them use his businesses to launder their money. Finally, he says, you know, Giacomaro says, I told Streaky and I told Lil Al, I said, you know, what can you really offer me with that? I don’t already have. He said, it was like everybody just quit breathing.

[12:02] Just a dead silence fell over the table. He said he thought Streaky Yaddo was going to leap across his pastas and stab him in the eye with a fork. He didn’t, you know, he’s in a public place. And, you know, he would later say, you know, I was going to use them for everything they had, but never be one of them. You know, I’ll infiltrate their world all the way at the top if I can,

[12:22] but I ain’t never being made because the only crime boss I want to answer to is myself. Joseph Gatto, Stricky Gatto’s son, was released in 1993, and he took over control of his father’s crew. He expanded the crew’s gambling operations and introduced, you know, brings it in the 21st century, so to speak, of the use of pagers and cell phones. And by 1999, he gets convicted again on some illegal gambling charges and took a plea deal. And at that time, he did admit that he was a capo of the Genovese family. You know, gambling is getting lesser, lighter sentences by then. He had a pretty light sentence. He gets released again in 2003. But a year later, he’s indicted in 2004 for running something called Catalina Sports, which is an offshore wire room in Costa rica bosley this thing was taking in 300 to 500 hundred thousand dollars profit per week and these gatos they were they were money earners that’s for sure that conviction gets overturned and you know by now 2005.

[13:22] They did try him again in 2008. I don’t even know what happened. He’ll die in 2010. He’ll never go back to jail again. And nobody cares about gambling by then because it’s getting opened up all over the place. Streaky Gatto, who originally started talking about his father, died in prison in 2002. He never got out after he got that 65-year sentence from his RICO and murder convictions. So that’s a little bit about Louis Streaky Gatto.

[13:48] And Carmine, thanks for suggesting that. So I hope y’all like this story. I hope y’all like my hat with my Gangland Wire logo on it. Talk to you later. Thanks, guys.