International Longshoremen's Association (ILA)

On October 3, Frank Rago, former representative of the International Longshoremen's Association and former president of ILA Local 1604 in Stoneham, Mass., was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to a year and a day of incarceration followed by three years of supervised probation for making unlawful payments and falsifying union records after the fact. Rago used his position as an ILA representative to secure a no-show job with a local employer in order to continue making his line handler's salary without performing any work. He directed his union to pay his salary out of member deductions. In addition to receiving a sentence, he also was ordered to pay $216,384 in restitution, $10,000 in asset forfeiture and a $200 assessment. Rago was convicted by a jury in January 2010. The actions follow a joint probe by the Labor Department's Office of Labor Management Standards and Office of Inspector General.

There are few things quite like a mass arrest to serve as a reminder of the Mafia's continuing presence in American life. The mob roundup last Thursday morning, the largest in U.S. history, at once underscores the large dent that the Justice Department has been making in organized crime and how deeply entrenched so many organized crime operations have been. Some 800 FBI agents, U.S. marshals, state police and New York City cops fanned out and arrested nearly 120 wise guys and associates named in an 82-page, 16-count indictment for acts of murder, racketeering, money-laundering, loan-sharking, extortion and other offenses going back three decades. The takedown includes crime soldiers from each of New York's "Five Families," plus the DeCavalcante (Northern New Jersey) and Patriarca (New England) families. A number of the arrestees were heavily involved in labor corruption.

Michael “Mikey Cigars” Coppola spent more than a decade on the lam before being caught this August.  The Genovese mobster and suspected hit man, formerly the scourge of the New Jersey docks, now might be concerned primarily with protecting himself.  In October 2008, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y. indicted Coppola, now serving a 42-month sentence for separate offenses, on racketeering charges related to business deals of International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1235, based in Newark.  The local, which represents dock workers in Newark and Elizabeth, N.J., was seized by the international union in August, just three days before Coppola’s capture, and has been under trusteeship since.

During the reign of former President Jorge Aponte-Figueroa, International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1740 in Puerto Rico was a lucrative racket for the well-connected.  By the time federal prosecutors filed a series of charges in 2005, top union leaders and business associates had illegally diverted an estimated $10 million from its coffers to their own personal use.  Moreover, union officials underreported another $1.5 million in dues collections.  The result was a rash of guilty pleas.  Aponte, now well into his 70s, chose, unwisely, to go to trial.  Having been convicted by federal jury trial in April, he learned on August 31 the price of his ways:  five years in prison, plus another three years of supervised release.