Photograph of arrested mobsters being led by the FBI on Thursday by ~Raymond on Flickr It turns out that Thursday's take down of 62 mob figures, many of them high-ranking members of the Gambino crime family and called the biggest mob bust in decades, was spurred by a Staten Island trucking company owner. Joseph Vollaro, who made a lot of money for the Gambinos, ended up becoming a government informant after being caught in......

John D'Amato, a prominent Staten Island attorney, died of a heart attack yesterday; the 52-year-old had been jogging near his Dongan Hills home. D'Amato, a lawyer and lobbyist, had been appointed as the NYC campaign manager for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. (He had hosted a fund-raiser for Governor Spitzer's campaign last year, though.) The Staten Island Advance writes:John D'Amato was a titan on Staten Island -- one of the most ambitious, aggressive and influential of......

The Staten Island Advance reports that work has begun to stabilize the retaining wall that collapsed late Monday in the Dongan Hills neighborhood. Five homes were evacuated after a 50'-by-50' chunk of wall - including boulders - fell downwards from a wall built to support John D'Amato's home, hitting other homes; luckily no one was hurt. D'Amato is notable for two reasons: 1) One neighbor complained that the wall was built illegally back in 2002......

Five families are homeless after a 50 foot by 50 foot part of a retaining wall collapsed late Monday in the Dongan Hills section of Staten Island It turns out that the wall, which is 200 feet long, was built without a permit and that the owner of the wall happens to be John D'Amato, lobbying partner of Guy Molinari and the head of Rudy Giuliani's NYC campaign. Nice one, D'Amato! It's believed that the......

A woman who had recently left her husband and moved in with her daughter was shot by the estranged husband in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. The husband then killed himself. Karen Skellas had been accepting a housewarming gift from coworker John D'Atri when Ioannis Skellas appeared. D'Atri told reporters, "From out of nowhere this person appears with a hood over his head. In the blink of an eye, he came towards her and fired."......

Forbes has a fun nauseating feature on the homes of billionaires, and three of them are in New York (okay, one is in the Hamptons, but to a Billionaire With a Helicopter, that's practically one of the five-boroughs):When billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg was elected, he declined to live in Gracie Mansion, preferring his own luxury digs nearby. Built in 1889, Bloomberg's townhouse has five floors and totals 7,500 square feet--including the chunk of the building......

In a boon for history buffs and duel enthusiasts, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the most famous fight in American history (with pistols - not chads), the Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel was reenacted in Weehawken, NJ. You remember it from your history/social studies books in grade school - Thomas Jefferson's Vice-President Aaron Burr and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton hated each other (even though Burr and Hamilton shared a law practice early on, Burr......