Mafia Leader Indicted Over Presser Link

One of the nation’s top Mafia leaders and three underlings personally engineered the selection of Jackie Presser as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the nation’s largest labor union, a federal grand jury has charged.

A federal grand jury in New York indicted Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, and three other mob figures for “exerting influence and control” over Presser’s selection as general president of the scandal-plagued 1.7 million-member union in 1983 and then influencing his “decisions and acts” to benefit the mob.

The 39-count indictment, which supersedes a 29-count indictment returned last March 21, also accuses the Mafia leaders of engineering the selection of the previous Teamster president, Roy L. Williams, in 1981, and then seeking to control him in office.

The racketeering indictment does not name Presser as a defendant. He was indicted on May 16 on separate federal charges of siphoning $700,000 in a payroll padding scheme involving his Cleveland local. He was reelected to a five-year term as Teamster president later that month.

The indictment was returned on Sept. 19 but was sealed until Monday pending completion of the Mafia “commission” trial here. In that case, Salerno and seven other mob figures were convicted last week of racketeering for running a governing “commission” that has ruled the Mafia since the 1930s.

“This indictment charges that, from 1981 through 1985, the presidents of the Teamsters have been selected in large part by Salerno,” said Alan Cohen, an assistant U.S. attorney who helped prepare the case.

Extensive Scheme Alleged

The indictment specifically charges Salerno, 75, Vincent (Fish) Cafaro, John (Peanuts) Tronolone, 76, and Milton (Maishe) Rockman, 75, with wire fraud as part of an extensive racketeering scheme with 12 other mob figures that included extortion, loan-sharking, bid-rigging and other charges.

The U.S. attorney’s office identified Cafaro as a capo in the Genovese family in New York; Tronolone, a Miami travel agent who was a reputed counselor for Cleveland’s Mafia family; and Rockman as a close associate of the Cleveland and Genovese crime groups.

According to the indictment, the four “selected” Presser, then a union vice president living in Cleveland, as their candidate to fill the unexpired term of Williams, who resigned as union president after being convicted of conspiring to bribe former Sen. Howard W. Cannon (D-Nev.) in 1983. Cannon was not accused of accepting a bribe.

The four then “influenced” other union officers to support Presser’s selection by the Teamsters’ General Executive Board, the indictment charges. The Justice Department said Rockman met with organized crime leaders in Chicago and Cleveland to seek their approval and then traveled to New York City with Tronolone to meet with Salerno to gain his support. The 17-member board unanimously elected Presser in April, 1983.

The indictment charges the four with wire fraud for using the telephone to place calls from Chicago to Cleveland, from Cleveland to Miami and from Miami to New York.

“We allege the phone calls were made in furtherance of the scheme,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Heller.

Once Presser was in office, the indictment charged, the mob leaders sought “to influence decisions and acts of Jackie Presser with respect to the Teamsters International and its various pension and welfare funds to favor the defendants’ interests.”

Rockman was also charged with three counts of making false statements to the federal court’s Pretrial Services Agency in Kansas City in connection with his trips to meet Salerno in 1984.

Lonardo Testifies

Much of the information about the Mafia’s attempts to control the Teamsters has come from Angelo A. Lonardo, a former Cleveland underboss who has testified for the government since being sentenced to more than 100 years in prison on drug and conspiracy charges in 1983.

Lonardo, the highest-ranking Mafia figure to turn informant, testified at the “commission” trial in September that he and Rockman met with Mafia leaders in Chicago to gain their support for making Presser the Teamster president. He said he and Rockman then met with Salerno in a private club in East Harlem that the Genovese leader used as his headquarters, to get his approval.

Teamster officers could not be reached for comment late Monday.

In all, the indictment names 16 mob figures on a variety of charges, including bid-rigging at a concrete construction project in Manhattan, extortion of a restaurant in Hackensack, N.J., bribery of a union officer, murder of a rival mob figure and bid-rigging in the supply of hot dogs, hamburgers and other foods sold at the Bronx Zoo.