Loan Sharks’ Victim Tells Court of Fear

Convicted swindler Harry Hall, who once sent investigators on a fruitless search for missing labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, explained Friday how he became the government’s star witness in the loan-sharking trial of Joseph E. Matranga.

Hall, 66, testified that he decided to cooperate with the FBI in 1982 after falling far behind in payments on a $300,000 loan he obtained from Matranga and co-defendant Michael Polizzi in 1979.

Federal authorities have admitted that Hall, a former public relations man for the Teamsters Union, may have been paid as much as $125,000 in 1975 after convincing law enforcement officials that he knew where the body of former Teamsters Union leader Hoffa was buried.

On Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles Gorder played recordings of calls taped by FBI agents after Hall again agreed to turn informant, this time while serving a prison term for a 1982 conviction for fraud. In several of the calls, Polizzi told Hall that he owed $670,000 on part of a $300,000 loan Hall had received.

Hall testified earlier in the trial that Polizzi’s mother-in-law in Detroit loaned him $100,000 and that Matranga and Guiseppe DiCarlo-Stassi, a Tijuana restaurateur, loaned him the other $200,000.

Polizzi is a Detroit produce grocer who was identified by Hall as “the No. 4 man” in the Detroit Mafia. Polizzi has denied any Mafia affiliations.

Polizzi on tape came across as a desperate man in fear of losing his house.