The Fat Rat is Back

In being so public, is Ron Previte pushing his luck?

by Brendan McGarvey and Gabriele J. Valentine

Guess who loves hanging out in Atlantic City, in broad daylight, introducing himself to TV journalists and their camera crews to yak about the good old days in Hammonton, N.J.? Why, it's none other than Ron Previte, the 6-foot, 300-some-pound gangster-turned-government-witness, who is not laying low these days.

For the last several years, Previte has ignored his old haunts like South Philly coffee shops where a new generation of wiseguys might want to take a shot at him. In fact, he should be in the Witness Protection Program in Nowhereville, Neb., but the man the mob calls "The Fat Rat" has been strutting his stuff all over casino city of late. Previte, a former capo, seemingly doesn't have a care in the world — even after he wore a wire for the FBI and recorded hundreds of conversations with fellow Mafiosi and then testified against them in open court.

Just last week, the Fat Rat was down the shore, chatting up a Philly journalist and her camera crew. Previte introduced himself to a pretty TV reporter who covers South Jersey and happens to live in Hammonton. Eyewitnesses tell City Paper that Previte wasn't at all shy and initiated the conversation with the reporter. He was with his daughter and an attorney when he spied the news crew preparing to cover the Sands implosion.

"He was pretty relaxed," an eyewitness says. "He wasn't hiding from anyone. He didn't seem to have a care in the world. Just standing out on a corner in Atlantic City for all to see. Very bold."

Interesting word choice, because Previte used to say, "Fortune favors the bold," to criminal colleagues; he was paraphrasing Niccolò Machiavelli, a 16th-century philosopher, but Previte seemed to think the same advice would help him survive his stint inside the modern-day Mafia.

Interesting timing, too, because Previte's been out and about at a time that most of the men he betrayed are being released from prison and returned to the streets of South Philly and South Jersey. The Philly cop turned bookie, turned Cosa Nostra capo, served under three Mafia bosses: John Stanfa, Ralph Natale and Joey Merlino. However, by the 1990s, he was spying for the FBI. Previte testified against the Merlino crew during a federal racketeering trial in 2001 and appeared on 60 Minutes in 2004 to talk about his life of crime and a book about his underworld career titled, The Last Gangster.

When he finished working for Uncle Sam, Previte told the feds he wasn't interested in vanishing into the Witness Protection Program to live out the rest of his life with a new identity insome boring one-horse town in Elvis Country. Maybe Previte just realized that witness protection didn't necessarily guarantee a long and safe existence.

In December 1994, Philly mobster-turned-government-witness Michael Palma was hit by a Union Pacific freight train in Dodge County, Neb. Palma, a member of the Stanfa crew and onetime friend of Previte, was on a hunting trip with an Air Force sergeant when their truck was demolished at a railroad crossing.

A retired mob investigator tells City Paper that Previte may be pushing his luck.

"Previte thinks the mob won't come after him because they're too disorganized and not smart enough," the source says. "But he's got to be worried about the wannabes looking to make a name for themselves."

The investigator says that guys who want to be considered mob material would be eager to kill Previte to impress the Cosa Nostra higher-ups. Another law enforcement source says Previte, "hurt a lot of people. The mob has a long memory and will kill former members. Just look what happened to Mario Riccobene."

Mario "Sonny" Riccobene had been on the losing side of a mob civil war in the early 1980s; he turned government witness after his arrest and testified against other members of the breakaway faction. A decade and two mob bosses later, Riccobene returned to South Jersey believing that the new generation wouldn't know or care that he was back.

They did. A few months later, Riccobene was shot to death while sitting in his car in the parking lot of a South Jersey diner.

(editorial@citypaper.net)