George Anastasia

Although this is the story of the downfall of the Philadelphia mob in the 1990s, The Goodfella Tapes documents the larger unraveling of traditional organized crime through “its own indiscriminate use of violence and lack of self-discipline,” assisted by government investigations. George Anastasia, using mobster’s own words in hours of conversations surreptitiously recorded by the FBI, details how greed and the clashing values of the new and old tore apart the Philadelphia mob under the show more leadership of Joseph Stanfa.

The recordings did damage, informants finished the job. Omerta, “the Mafia’s time-honored code of silence and the concepts of honor and loyalty that supposedly went with it” was shattered. “Now the only people making offers that can’t be refused are the authorities who run the Witness Protection Program and the producers who run Hollywood.” show less

Not much to review on this one. Typical mafioso tell all from one man's perspective. What does come out is the mafia has become more cartoonish in this media, reality show driven world. But I suspect you would end up just as dead crossing them. Alite's story is his side of course and one has to ask why he would be any more credible than the others. Both he and Junior got off lightly in the legal process, and of course got to keep the money.

I lived in Philadelphia at the time Previte was a corrupt cop there. I was 5'3", 99lb, blue-eyed dishwater blonde. One night my door was burst open and two huge Philadelpha cops hurtled into my apartment, "All right, Sonya, we got you now!" they announced. I nearly wet myself in terror and rushed to the bathroom. One of the enormous cops rushed in and watched as I sat on the toilet petrified and embarrassed. I was on my period and the soiled sanitary napkin dangled between my knees as the show more cop glowered over me. They ransacked my small apartment, then forced me into their car and took me to the police station. On the way I asked who they thought I was and they handed me a wanted poster for Sonya Perez, 5'9", 155lb, brown-eyes, and black hair wanted for writing bad checks. I asked the cops if they had noticed the discrepancy in the description. The fat pig in the passenger seat said, "Oh we know you got your ways, Sonya," and sneered over the seat at me. I spent several hours in a Philadelphia police station while they "checked my fingerprints" amid a roomful of desks where pigs sat and occassionally hollered, "Hey, Sonya!" to make me jump and then the whole room laughed--except me. Eventually, one of the pigs who'd broken into my apartment came out and said, "Well, the fingerprints didn't match," and I was free to go, in the middle of the night in a strange neighborhood.

I don't have much empathy for Ron Previte the corrupt Philadelphia cop.

This is supposed to be the story of the death of the American Mafia as told through the experiences of corrupt cop, made wiseguy and FBI informant, Ron Previte.

Anastasia presents his characters, especially Previte, as just regular working folk doing their job. Only in this case it's murder, drug dealing, stealing, gambling (legal and illegal), threatening violence and actual violence. And in Previte's previous work life, police corruption.

It follows the eight year investigation that leads to the trial of the then head of the Philadelphia mob, Skinny Joey Merlino and several of his associates.

It is somewhat difficult to keep all the names and players clear. The author often has to reference murders and crimes or gangsters who are dead or in jail before the events chronicled in this narrative. It includes a section of FBI surveillance photos which helps somewhat.

The author interviewed Previte during these years. Throughout the book, Anastasia belittles members of the Philadelphia mob and insists that their downfall meant the death of the entire mob.

In a passing reference to activities of the New York families in 1997, I think he elicited, rather than the death, the actual new direction of gangsterism in the new millenium, "In New York, wiseguys about the same age as Merlino were worming their way onto Wall Street, setting up 'pump-and-dump' stock schemes that generated tens of thousands of dollars per score."

The author subscribes to the myth of the Mafia "code of honor" and believes that if the Philadelphia mob had been run with the "old values", Previte would never have turned on them. "His mentality, his demeanor, and his attitude were more suited to the mob of the 1950s and 1960s, the glory days of the organization, when, he says, 'real gangsters' ran the families."

Meh...just another mafiosa glorification. Interesting for some of the gossip, but it seemed like an attempt to put the Philadelphia family on the map. Other books about major crime families in other cities suggest that they have always considered the Philadelphia mob more of a joke than actual mafia. I think Anastasia was trying to remedy that by giving the impression that Philadelphia had at one time been an organization with some clout, and their demise would have even a speck of effect on any of the other families. I think he's wrong, but it was a nice try. show less

Doctor Dealer by George Anastasia and Ralph Cipriano is about a doctor, James Kauffman, who started a partnership with a biker group called the Pagans. He started a pill mill ring and insurance scams with opioids, a blood lab, and a topical by writing BS prescriptions and in return the biker’s would sell it for huge profits. His wife April Kauffman figured out his dark side and wanted to divorce him, in return James figured it would be cheaper to kill her rather than paying her out in a show more divorce. He hires one of the biker’s to kill her and eventually gets arrested. He commits suicide in jail before he is sentenced.
The true crime story has all the interesting parts of love, murder, and drugs. But you can watch the 20/20 episode and be more entertained and get the same story across versus this book. This book was drawn out and poorly outlined. Each chapter didn’t serve a purpose and it was a lot of back and forth that didn’t need to be done. The book also goes way more in depth over the whole Pagan biker gang than really needed to be. There were a lot of extra people brought in to the book that had nothing really to do with the crime. It was like the writers wanted you to think it was a mystery but in the beginning they tell you that it was the doctor who did it so the rest of the suspense falls flat.
The statistics on the opioid sales and the other doctors that were convicted, as well as mentioning the switch in prosecution and political aspect was an interesting bonus in the storyline but overall the book wasn’t worth the read.
★★ Boring. Just watch the 20/20 episode. show less