A Rookie Cop vs. The West Coast Mafia. Tanya Chalupa
dollars. This enabled Fratianno to collect tax-free money out of the Teamsters insurance fund from Allen Dorfman, an attorney and leading official of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). Dorfman oversaw the pension fund at the time. He was a close associate of IBT President Jimmy Hoffa, who was convicted in 1964 of jury tampering, bribery and fraud and was sent to prison in 1967 for thirteen years.1
Allen Dorfman was indicted for embezzlement of the Teamsters Union pension fund in 1970, then convicted and sentenced to one year in federal prison. Unpublished Jack Anderson papers alleged that while Dorfman was serving time in Marion, Illinois, he was bragging that he was only going to serve sixty days because of an agreement he had with then United States Attorney General John Mitchell, appointed by President Richard M. Nixon. Richard Kleindienst, the Deputy Attorney General who took over as Attorney General when Mitchell resigned to work on President Nixon’s re-election campaign, allegedly stated to Anderson that he did not have to honor Mitchell’s promise, “so Dorfman can serve his full time.”2
Dorfman was investigated again in 1973 and was subsequently convicted in December 1982, along with Teamsters president Roy Lee Williams and a Chicago mob enforcer for conspiring to bribe Senator Howard Cannon of Nevada. One month later, just before his scheduled sentencing, Dorfman was murdered in a hotel parking lot. The killing was believed to have been orchestrated to keep him from talking and making a plea deal to reduce his fifty-five year prison sentence.
As for Fratianno and his problems in the Central Valley case, the money he was getting from the Teamsters insurance fund was helpful but it was still just pocket change. He needed to get his hands on more cash to plug the deepening hole he had created. He needed more trucks. To get them, Fratianno used Bompensiero to ingratiate himself with wealthy Chicago boss Frank La Porte. La Porte took the bait and purchased additional trucks valued at $304,000.3
La Porte was soon phoning Fratianno and Bompensiero regularly to check on his investment. FBI reports indicate that Ettleman was also holding meetings with Bompensiero during his involvement in Fratianno’s Central Valley plot. FBI reports covering this period obtained through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) show that Ettleman held a series of meetings with Bompensiero, Fratianno and La Porte. Ettleman, however, was never linked to Fratianno’s plans in the Central Valley and therefore one has no choice but to surmise that he was working with them on another scheme which also, of course, included Scotty Spinuzzi.4 Based on miscellaneous information, a guess is that it involved either a gold mine in Mexico or, more likely, drugs.
Around this time, Fratianno devised a new scheme, which eventually had dire consequences for both him and his company, Fratianno Trucking Lines, Inc. One might even posit that it had devastating effects on the entire West Coast mob, including unforeseen consequences that would trickle down and impact Ettleman and his safecrackers.
Fratianno offered to sell his trucks to the drivers with no money down and they would receive 30 percent of gross proceeds. Their payments would come from the balance. A few of the drivers quit but a majority of the truckers signed the contract, which listed them as conditional lessees. The rules stipulated that they could only work for Fratianno Trucking Lines, Inc. and must do so when called upon, otherwise they forfeited the truck and any payments applied to it. The arrangement allowed Fratianno to pay his truckers less each week and, by listing them as owner-operators, he no longer was required to pay any benefits to them.
FBI surveillance overheard Fratianno telling Bompensiero how he had the drivers trapped: “They are never going to buy the trucks, Frank, can’t be. I charge them for tires. I charge them eight dollars an hour [for welding]…You understand, Frank? I murder them…When I get through with that truck, he’s got about one hundred dollars equity in the truck. I charge him for tires, grease and everything. They are not going to buy the trucks…”5
There was soon grumbling among the truckers. And when Fratianno ordered the hot-headed Nick Diacogianis to lean on one of the drivers for always coming in late, an argument ensued and Diacogianis hit the driver. The trucker immediately went to the El Centro police and that afternoon a warrant was out charging Diacogianis with assault and battery.
As a result of Diacogianis’s arrest and subsequent trial, the Imperial Valley Press in El Centro ran a front-page article that carried the headline, “Mafia Present in Valley.” It was a bold piece of journalism by reporter Mike James which began:
The Mafia is reaching its tentacles into the Imperial Valley. The Bump, the Weasel, and Nick the Greek have taken up residence in El Centro. They are operating Fratianno Trucking Lines, Inc., which is engaged in hauling dirt for the new freeway being constructed across the Southern edge of the county. They are up to other things as well. Things which are commanding the very close attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the El Centro police, the Los Angeles police, the Sacramento police, the United States Customs Service and no doubt other official bodies. To say nothing of the redoubtable Mexican Policia Judicial Federal. 6
The reference to the Mexican police was probably due to the trips Fratianno took to Mexico with Bompensiero and Leo “The Lip” Moceri, a former member of the Detroit Purple Gang, a brutal bootlegging mob consisting mostly of Jewish members. Moceri was also an ex-convict and an Ohio representative to the infamous Appalachian Mafia Summit. The trio were supposedly looking to invest in a gold mine in Mexico.
Mike James’s account in the Imperial Valley Press exposed Fratianno’s and Bompensiero’s criminal backgrounds to the public and revealed the contract the drivers were pressured to sign just so they were able to work to feed their families.
Fratianno and Bompensiero were furious at the article and threatened to sue the paper. Fratianno’s trucking business was disintegrating and La Porta’s $304,000 investment was in jeopardy.
A little over a month later, in August 1967, the San Diego Union carried a front page story with a photo of Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno’s arrest. El Centro sheriff’s deputies arrested him, with his attorney at his side, at Los Angeles International Airport. They drove him back to their jurisdiction to be booked on charges of criminal conspiracies. Fratianno claimed he was on his way to El Centro to give himself up when he was stopped by the deputies. Bompensiero, the kingpin of San Diego, was relegated to the San Diego Union’s second page. The caption beneath his photo read, “Frank Bompensiero is booked in El Centro on charges he and four others conspired to defraud truck drivers.”
The present El Centro jail was built in the 1960s, with two sixty-two-man dormitories and a multi-purpose room added in 1989. But the jail Fratianno and Bompensiero were locked down in was an early 1900s model with four large iron-barred open cells, each of which held eight to ten people. It was bad enough that the bathroom facilities were primitive but, worse than that, the jail had no air conditioning and the temperature rose from one hundred and four one day to one hundred and twelve the following day. Bompensiero’s daughter visited her father in El Centro when he was locked down and later described the jail as “a real hellhole.”7
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