When Albert ”Chinky” Facchiano was born in 1910, Al Capone was just another young thug in short trousers, stealing lunch money from children in a school playground in Brooklyn. Almost a century later, Scarface and the other legendary gangsters of his ilk are long gone — dead of old age, whacked in mob hits or simply vanished into witness protection programmes.
But Facchiano, also nicknamed ”The Old Man” for his decades as a henchman for New York’s ruthless Genovese crime family, is very much alive. He is days from his 97th birthday and destined to spend his final years in a luxury waterfront apartment in Miami, despite pleading guilty in a Florida courtroom last week to racketeering, conspiracy and witness tampering.
”According to the rules of the mafia, he’s still a made guy,” said Jerry Capeci, a mob expert and editor of a website, ganglandnews.com, that follows the movements of the key players in organised crime. ”The rules are that you go in alive and you go out dead — you’re not allowed to quit. He still has to take orders and do what his superiors tell him, even though at 96 there’s no way a guy can do the normal routine that guys 50 or 60 years younger can do.”
According to prosecutors, who agreed to a plea deal that would allow Facchiano to serve a sentence of house arrest, the nonagenarian was willing to kill for the mob as recently as two years ago. One charge from a New York indictment now wrapped into the Florida case relates to intimidation and a murder plot against a Genovese family ”squealer” when Facchiano was 95. Other documents show that he attended a 2001 meeting of ageing mafia captains and associates. ”Chinky offered to do ‘work’ if they needed someone killed,” FBI investigator Michael Campi said in a statement presented in court. It is not thought they took him up on his offer.
According to Capeci, Facchiano is a ”quintessential old-school gangster”, always smartly dressed and politely spoken — until you cross him. Then he exudes a ”fierce and treacherous nature”. That was reflected in a confrontation with a wheelchair-bound punter who bumped into him at a south Florida racecourse a few years ago. ”He gave the guy a ‘watch where the fuck you’re going’ look,” said a policeman who witnessed the episode. ”I could see Chinky’s face. It was scary. I knew that this little old guy was a genuine wise-guy.”
First arrested in 1930 for a rape he was later cleared of, Facchiano dedicated his life to the Cosa Nostra. He learned mafia scams and rackets during the 1930s, experience that later helped his crime family prosper during America’s post-war revival. He spent two years in prison for a robbery conviction in Pittsburgh in 1932 and was arrested in 1936 and 1944 for grand larceny and illegal bookmaking, though records do not show if he was jailed.
On the orders of family boss Vito Genovese and his successor Philip ”Benny Squint” Lombardo, Facchiano was sent to Florida in the 1950s to join a fast-growing operation of loan-sharking, robbery and bank fraud, the FBI says. Profits helped the family’s expansion into a large and powerful ”business” empire in New York that flourished into the 1980s under new leaders Anthony ”Fat Tony” Salerno and Vincent ”The Chin” Gigante.
”The Genovese were the biggest and most powerful of the big five families,” said James Jacobs, professor of criminology at New York University. ”There was very little opposition to organised crime until the late 1970s, when the FBI made it their top priority. Once that happened, the defections started and if you agreed to cooperate there was at least a possibility you would survive.”
Authorities turned the tide with the help of gangsters-turned-informants such as Salvatore ”Sammy the Bull” Gravano, whose evidence helped convict John Gotti, the so-called Teflon Don and head of the Gambino family, in 1992.
But Facchiano held true to the mafia code of silence and kept his mouth shut, though it always rankled that he never rose above the rank of foot soldier. An FBI wire recorded Thomas Cafaro, a long-time family associate, describing Facchiano as a ”an abusive old codger who thinks he should have been boss of the family”. The truth, Cafaro said, was that ”Chinky couldn’t shine Fat Tony or Benny Squint’s shoes”.
Facchiano cut a frail figure as he shuffled into court last week, supported by a walking stick and straining to hear US District judge James Cohn adjourn the case for sentencing on May 25.
His lawyer, Brian McComb, insists he was not mimicking Uncle Junior, the ageing mob boss in the TV series The Sopranos who feigned senility to try to evade charges.
”He’s got a very sharp mind and he’s absolutely aware of what’s going on,” McComb said. ”But his health is failing, he has a bad back and has to see a doctor four times a week. The guilty plea was for convenience. A trial would kill him.” – Guardian Unlimited Â