Pubdate: Fri, 15 Dec 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
Contact:  229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036
Fax: (212) 556-3622
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: Alan Feuer

NEW CHARGES IN ECSTASY CASE ARE FILED AGAINST GRAVANO

Already behind bars in Phoenix on narcotics charges, Salvatore Gravano, the 
Mafia hit man better known as Sammy the Bull, was named yesterday in a new 
complaint that accused him of buying thousands of tablets of the drug 
Ecstasy from associates of an Israeli organized crime gang.

Mr. Gravano has been an underworld legend ever since he served as the 
second-in-command of the Gambino crime family under John J. Gotti, the 
family's former boss. After Mr. Gravano's defection in 1991, his turncoat 
testimony helped convict nearly 40 mob figures, including Mr. Gotti, who 
was found guilty of racketeering and murder in 1992 and was sentenced to 
life in prison.

In February, Mr. Gravano was arrested in Arizona — along with his wife, his 
24-year-old son, his 27-year-old daughter and 32 others — and accused of 
being involved in overseeing and financing an operation that the 
authorities said sold 20,000 to 25,000 tablets of Ecstasy each week in the 
Phoenix area.

At the time, the authorities said the ring's chief distributor was a 24- 
year-old man named Michael Papa, who was described as a founder of a white 
supremacist youth gang known as the Devil Dogs.

The new complaint, which was handed down in Federal District Court in 
Brooklyn yesterday, retraces much of the same ground that was covered in 
the Feburary charges. It took those charges one step further, however, by 
accusing Mr. Gravano, his son, Gerard, and Mr. Papa of buying some 40,000 
Ecstasy pills from a New York drug gang that the government says was run by 
Ilan Zarger, an Israeli national with ties to the Israeli mob. In an 
intelligence report written by federal drug agents last year, Israeli 
organized-crime syndicates were named as the primary sources of Ecstasy in 
the United States.

"We caught an old dog trying to learn new tricks," said Raymond W. Kelly, 
the commissioner of the United States Customs Service, which took part in 
the case.

The complaint also provided additional details about Mr. Gravano's attempts 
to wrest control of the Ecstasy market in the Southwest. It mentioned, in 
particular, an incident at an Arizona nightclub called Pompei in which 
Gerard Gravano and Mr. Papa were said to have beaten up one of Mr. Zarger's 
dealers because they believed he was selling drugs on their turf.

After the assault, the complaint goes on, Mr. Zarger sent a bodyguard, 
known in the underworld as Macho, to Arizona to protect his dealer, who was 
described in court papers only as a man given to driving expensive cars and 
dressing in long, black leather coats. The complaint adds that Mr. Zarger 
was captured on videotape about the same time saying that his organization 
had "someone standing by to whack" Mr. Gravano, if it came to that.

Before such severe steps were taken, however, the dealer was summoned to 
Uncle Sal's, a restaurant run by the Gravano family in Arizona, federal 
prosecutors said. At the restaurant, they added, Mr. Gravano is said to 
have told the dealer: "I own Arizona. It's locked down. You can't sell 
pills here without going through me."

Next, the government said, Mr. Gravano demanded a fee for every pill the 
dealer sold in Arizona. It was an arrangement, prosecutors said, that the 
dealer eventually accepted in a slightly different form, agreeing to sell 
Ecstasy to Mr. Gravano at a discount of 25 cents per pill.

According to federal prosecutors, the drug ring the dealer worked for was 
the largest ever to have been based in New York City and was responsible 
for distributing nearly four million Ecstasy pills across the country 
between 1997 and this June. The prosecutors said that its leader, Mr. 
Zarger, was in turn supplied by a man named Jacob Orgad, who is believed to 
be a high-ranking member of the Israeli mob.

Mr. Zarger was arrested in July and charged with drug violations along with 
15 others, several of whom the government said were members of yet another 
crime group known as the Brooklyn Terror Squad. This group, both 
prosecutors and their victims say, was made up of young men and women from 
Brooklyn who wreaked havoc in the city's nightclub scene by robbing and 
assaulting young people as they danced at raves or at local night spots.

Mr. Gravano, his son and Mr. Papa are expected to be returned to Brooklyn 
for an arraignment as early as next week, prosecutors said.
- ---
MAP posted-by: GD