The Nation - News from March 31, 1987

Twenty-one men who “breathed a life of crime together” ran a criminal operation that distributed up to 65 pounds of cocaine per week and enforced loan sharking through vicious beatings, a prosecutor charged in opening arguments in the racketeering trial of alleged members or associates of the Lucchese crime family in Newark, N.J. The Justice Department said it will present informants as witnesses, and will corroborate their testimony with tape-recorded conversations and testimony from a mob infiltrator.