Reputed Bonannos allegedly ran online gambling, sold Viagra

Nine people were busted Tuesday as part of a major organized crime ring that allegedly tried to take the mafia into the 21st century.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Tuesday the takedown of nine reputed Bonanno crime family members who allegedly ran the gamut of illegal activities, including the illegal operation of an online gambling service and illegal sale of sex enhancement pills.

“The organized crime activity described in the indictment is as old as the Bonanno crime family, and as relatively new as online betting and trafficking in highly addictive oxycodone,” said Kelly, whose investigators were involved in the probe.

The nine people charged included Nicholas Santora, 71, of Long Island, a Bonanno family captain.

Serving a 20-month sentence at a Pennsylvania federal prison for a 2012 extortion conspiracy conviction, Santora faces charges of enterprise corruption, grand larceny and usury in the latest case.

Among those charged were reputed Bonanno acting captains Ernest Aiello, 34, of the Bronx, and Vito Badamo, 50, of Brooklyn.

According to Vance, the Santora crew was involved in the sale of oxycodone and marijuana and a loan-sharking operation that charged interest of 200% a year.
The indictment also charged that the crew used a gambling operation in Costa Rica where bettors wagered online on professional sporting events. Proceeds from the illegal gambling operation amounted to almost $7 million in less than 230 days of activity, the indictment charged.

The group sold more than 300,000 Viagra and Cialis pills for as much as $20 a pill, the criminal complaint said.

In another aspect of the case, Badamo and another defendant, Anthony Santoro, 49, of Staten Island, where charged with actively promoting the election of Nicholas Bernhard in November 2010 as president of Local 917 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Bernhard, 51, of upstate Congers, no longer holds the post, prosecutors said. He is charged in the case with having a union assistant shop steward help in the crew’s illegal activities. Officials at the union, located in Floral Park, could not be reached for comment.

Arraignment information wasn’t complete late Tuesday, Aiello, Badamo and Santoro were ordered held without bail. Bernhard’s bail was set at $500,000, said a spokeswoman for Vance.

Santora is expected to be arraigned at a later date.

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Here’s a rundown of how the alleged mobsters operated, according to the indictment: