Cavallo Leaning on Dems to Support Tony Castro for DA at Dem Convention on Wednesday

 

The upcoming Westchester Democratic convention tomorrow has one race that everyone is talking about. Who gets the nomination for district attorney?

Incumbent DA and former Republican Janet DiFiore, as well as Tony Castro, are the two vying for the party nod. DiFiore has received the endorsement of the County Democrat Executive Committee and many of the local party endorsements throughout the county.

But there are pockets of Castro support that we have heard about. This support comes from Dems who worked on Castro’s two prior races for DA in 2001 and 2005.  Other Castro support comes from diehard Democrats who believe that Castro is the real Democrat in the race, and DiFiore a Republican in disguise.

It gets interesting here — we have heard from several Democrats in different Westchester locales that Westchester Independence Party Chairman Dr. Giulio Cavallo has been “lobbying” Democratic district leaders to support Castro.

How can Cavallo, chair of the Independence party, attempt to intervene in the Democratic Convention, to be held on Wednesday at the county center? By using his party’s line to Dems running for office this fall.

We know who these few Dems are but don’t want to name them because they have not accpeted Cavallo scurrilous invitations.

Dr. Cavallo is pushing hard for Castro, which is an indication of his ever-closer political friendship with Sam Zherka, Westchester Guardian publisher, and admitted target of the Manhattan DA.

We have it once again folks, and we should be ashamed. Cavallo is working his black magic on another important county election.

When will it end and when are the Feds coming?

A Ghost from the Past Returns — Zehy Jereis Back in Business in Yonkers

We have received several contacts from our friends in Yonkers who report that Zehy Jereis has returned from an 18-month exile in Brooklyn, where he allegedly owned and operated a couple of car washes. Jereis, the former Yonkers GOP chairman, has a shady and tarnished political career, which eventually resulted in his stepping down as chairman in 2006.

Shortly after his resignation, Jereis disappeared from Yonkers. Months later, the car wash explanation surfaced. Jereis’ departure from Yonkers coincides with U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia’s investigation into political corruption, in Westchester and in Yonkers, began picking up steam. Garcia subpoenaed ethics disclosure records on Jereis.

A law enforcement source explained that Jereis’ departure is exactly the way that the Feds handle a cooperating confidential informant, or RAT. There is no real proof yet that Jereis sang —  just connected the dots here.

What really threw me for a loop was when I heard that Jereis was back in the business of politics in Yonkers, to the point in which he held a fundraising event for a prominent Democrat, yes a Dem, and reached out to a Yonkers Republican interested in running for a council seat in the fall. We are trying to get confirmation before we list the names of the Dem and Rep.

Clearly, Yonkers politics neither needs nor wants a return of Zehy Jereis. The best way to see this is to see how smoothly the Yonkers GOP is running, with John Jacono as chairman, and Steve Levy and Justin Tubilulo underneath. While there have been no election wins for the new Yonkers GOP lately, at least we aren’t hearing on a daily basis calls for the chairman to resign.

That’s why Zehy needs to go back to buffing cars.

The Tangled Web of Corruption, Part 2

from Yonkers Confidential:

The first wiretap requests from federal investigators for the various targets in the current “Ridge Hill” investigation came as far back as 2002, after federal court testimony opened the door for a federal investigation into allegations of corrupt politicians, judges, and other public and political figures.

Again, we remind the readers that Ridge Hill is only a small part of the much larger investigation, and remember that there are over 5,000 hours of wiretapped conversations in these cases, about which the public has only heard one minute of to date.

Allow me to digress. Albanian mobster Mo Sanginiti, in the extortion trial of Angelo DiPietro and several others in 2002, testified that he paid Zehy Jereis (former Yonkers Republican chairman and a close political operative to former state Sen. Nick Spano) $10,000 in 2001 because Jereis told him the he had someone in the Westchester District Attorney’s Office who could make criminal cases “go away.” Of course, the best scenario in order to make a criminal case go away is to have a cooperating assistant district attorney, a cooperating judge and a “plugged in” defense attorney.

The feds believe they know where the defense attorney in the “fixed” cases came from. An important part of their investigation is allegedly identifying the ‘cooperating’ ADA’s and Judges.

Sanginiti also testified that he had previously paid Jereis $5,000 to check and find out if he, DiPietro, and other individual were being investigated by then-Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro. Sanginiti did not name Jereis’ alleged source, but an FBI document did: Al Pirro, Jr.

These “information” payments are reportedly one of the main focuses of the current investigation. It turns out that Sanginiti and his friends were under investigaiton, and Sanginiti and DiPietro were subsequently convicted of extortion, along with several others.

DiPietro was again indicted in 2004, and later convicted for being a member of the “Rudaj Organization,” an Albanian organized crime gang. He is currently serving 40 years in federal prison. Because of this, he might also be talking to federal investigators. 

Why? Zehy Jereis was allegedly good friends with DiPietro, who was an owner of the Mt. Vernon strip club Sue’s Rendezvous, which Jereis frequented along with another TARGETED election official and a TARGETED political party operative. These three loved to talk, according to reliable sources, and DiPietro might have some interesting tidbits to trade with the Feds in exchange for a sentence reduction.

Albanian gangster Din Celaj was part of DiPietro’s extortion group in the 2001 case, and cooperated with the feds against the others, earning him an early release. Celaj, however, was arrested again in 2007 in a RICO case along with Moheed Oasman, Xhavit Celaj, Besmir Boshnjaku, Ali Zherka and Arber Selimi. Rumor has it that Celaj is once again cooperating in another ongoing organized-crime-related investigation, and prosecutors are very interested in his testimony.

It is the understanding of Yonkers Confidential that the feds are also investigating information they have received from wiretapped conversations in the Greg DiPalma case concerning a former YPD police officer and stolen narcotics, with a fed target in the case being used as a middleman between the officer and the relatives of a TARGETED elected official. The fed target allegedly used the proceeds to buy Yonkers properties. Incredibly, this individual not only had a mortgage on their primary residence in Yonkers, but also on a number of two-family homes in Yonkers, and a condo in South Florida — all on a modest salary from politically connected jobs. This target is now reportedly cooperating with federal prosecutors.

It is also alleged that the targeted elected official involved in the above drug sales laundered money for the drug dealers by purchasing luxury cars, as well as properties which were bought and sold in the same time period, raising a red flag for federal investigators. The feds reportedly are still pursuing this target’s testimony. 

However, recent e-mails received by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in White Plains between this individual and another target in the investigation, thanks to a federal subpoena, might have convinced this individual to “loosen up” and begin cooperating. 

And from what Yonkers Confidential understands to be contained on these sometimes “amorous” e-mails, they should be cooperating. Stay tuned …