March 31-April 6, 2005

city beat

Nick Out of Time?

Awaiting his release into a cold world, "Little Nicky" Scarfo's son calls Juniata Park home.

by Brendan McGarvey

Guess who's back in town? Not since he left the hospital after getting shot five times at Dante and Luigi's by a hitman dressed as Batman on Halloween 1989 has this unlucky son-of-a-mob-boss spent so much time in Philadelphia.

Yes, Nicky Scarfo Jr. is living in a federal halfway house at Luzerne and D streets, passing his time by supposedly working at a Spanish-speaking Pentecostal storefront church on North Sixth Street. It's part of his "transition" back to society after having spent the last three years in federal prison for running an illegal gambling operation for the Gambino crime family in North Jersey.

His halfway house, Diversified Health Treatment Center, sits next to a PECO substation. The building looks like a brand-new one-story warehouse with cinderblocks covered in tan stucco. Surrounded by a high fence with blue netting to obscure the view into the parking lot, there is an electric gate which has to be buzzed open from inside to admit residents and staff. Passersby have no idea this is a state and federal facility for convicts prepping for parole. This little slice of Juniata Park is Junior's home for another week.

Junior is 40 years old now, and he looks a lot like his infamous mob father, Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, one of the city's most homicidal mob bosses who is incarcerated for the rest of his life on racketeering and murder charges. Junior's brother is married and sells real estate down the shore, having legally changed his name years ago to blend into the South Jersey shore communities and, some say, escape the family name.

Junior is a family man with a wife and kid in a posh North Jersey suburb of New York City. He looks more like a middle-aged white-collar worker than a second-generation mafioso. His hair is thinning and he wears glasses. Inside the center, he walks around in a white undershirt and khakis.

Hanging out in the halfway house or walking the streets of Juniata Park and Kensington is a much lower profile existence than the days of partying in Atlantic City restaurants, Delaware Avenue nightclubs and South Philly bars with crowds of young, tough mob sycophants and pretty women. Back then, he was a high-profile man-about-town running with the sons of other high-ranking mobsters, like young "Skinny Joey" Merlino.

But during Scarfo Sr.'s hyperviolent reign, more than 30 mob members and associates were killed. Several more became federal witnesses, including Senior's own nephew and underboss, "Crazy Phil" Leonetti.

The sons, nephews and brothers of the men convicted with Scarfo Sr. in 1988 and '89 had had enough of his underworld rule, so when he appointed his elderly cousin as the acting boss and tried to run the mob from jail with the help of Nicky Jr., the young wise guys got fired up and fired back.

Junior, toting a laptop computer instead of a gun, was dining at Dante and Luigi's in South Philly the night he was shot. Years later, mobsters-turned-government-witnesses claimed the shooter was Merlino. Never charged with the crime, Merlino has always publicly maintained he had nothing to do with it.

After the shooting, Nicky Jr. was hustled off to North Jersey to live under the protection of the Newark branch of La Cosa Nostra that was still loyal to his dad. But one of Junior's bodyguards, George Fresolone, was already wearing a wire for the New Jersey State Police. Junior was arrested in a massive investigation by state police into organized crime in North Jersey that targeted six crime families. He pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges to manufacture and distribute illegal video poker machines and got seven years. Out in three, he proceeded to get in trouble after an Atlantic City bar fight.

Several years later, Junior was arrested by the FBI for running a multimillion-dollar gambling and loan-sharking operation for the Gambino crime family in North Jersey. (He kept his gambling records on his office computer using an encrypted code that the FBI had to break using top-secret technology. His secret password? Dad's federal prison ID number.) Junior pleaded guilty to the gambling charges, so the feds dropped the loan-sharking charges. Junior was sentenced to 33 months in the slammer and three years supervised probation. The probation begins full time April 6.

"Nicky Junior is not welcome in Philly," one mob associate tells City Paper. "When he gets out on probation next week, he better get out of town. Nobody thinks he'll hang around long. I'm bettin' he'll be on the Turnpike north 10 minutes after he hits the street."

White Fight

White-supremacist prison gangs and violent skinheads are being recruited by both the Hells Angels and the Pagans in the Delaware Valley, City Paper has learned.

Law enforcement sources and gang experts say outlaw bikers are looking for tough new foot soldiers to beef up their forces for a street war that is expected to intensify over the next several months. (Since January, one Hells Angel has been severely beaten and a second, Thomas David Wood, shot and killed. The suspects in the cases are Pagans.)

The Aryan Brotherhood was born in the California prison system during penitentiary race riots in the 1960s. Also known as "The Brand," the group was founded in San Quentin prison for the protection of white inmates. To join, prospects had to kill either a prison guard or a black inmate and subscribe to a white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology. Over the decades, The Brand has morphed into a powerful, nationwide gang dealing in prostitution, gambling and meth.

The Aryan Brotherhood and other white supremacist gangs like the Nazi Low Riders "are criminals masquerading as white supremacists. They pay lip service to white power but are quite willing to deal with other ethnic gangs to sell drugs or contract murders," says one private intelligence expert.

The expert, who specializes in tracking hate groups, asked not to be identified because of his undercover relationships. Law enforcement sources say the Aryan Brotherhood is growing in strength in federal prisons in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and a faction of the Brotherhood known as the East Coast Aryan Brotherhood is strong inside the Jersey prison system.

The other potential pool of recruits for both the Pagans and the Hells Angels are racist skinheads.

"Most skinheads are blue-collar white guys, 18- to 25-years-old," the hate group expert adds. "They're violent, but they are not organized criminals involved in drugs or anything like that. They hold real jobs. They're not motivated by profit but by ideology."

Says one expert, "Skinhead gangs have their share of goons, and bikers will recruit the hardest cases for membership." One skinhead gang that police have their eye on is the Keystone State Skinheads, the fastest growing white supremacist skinhead organization in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. "Whether they find them in prison or out on the streets, the bikers are looking to bring some of them on board."