Reputed Philly mob underboss pleads guilty to racketeering and extortion and will do time in federal prison

The reputed underboss of Philadelphia’s mob family faces up to five years in federal prison after federal prosecutors and the FBI notched another conviction Thursday in their latest — and perhaps last — major salvo against the remnants of the once-fearsome criminal enterprise.

Steven Mazzone, 58, pleaded guilty to racketeering, illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and conspiracy to commit extortion. He was the most recent senior mob figure to fall after the convictions over the decades of Nicky Scarfo, John Stanfa, Ralph Natale, and Joseph Merlino.

Mazzone was among 15 defendants in a sweeping case made public in 2020 that targeted numerous members and associates of the Philadelphia mob, including his younger brother, Salvatore. Of the 15 defendants, 11 men, including the Mazzone brothers, have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so. Three others are awaiting trial. One has died.

“These are guys who have been major players for decades. This is a major accomplishment.”

Prosecutors Jonathan Ortiz, Justin Ashenfelter, and Alexander Gottfried reached an agreement with Mazzone under which the judge in the case will be asked to consider a prison term of at least 45 months or as many as 60 months. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick is free to abide by the deal or not at sentencing Oct. 26.

After the brief hearing, Mazzone’s lawyer, Louis Busico, said: “Steven Mazzone always lived his life as a man’s man and today he made a decision that’s in the best interests of his family and loved ones.”

Busico unsuccessfully asked the judge to lift an 11 p.m. curfew imposed on Mazzone as he awaits sentencing. The lawyer said this would make it easier for Mazzone to see and console his two grown daughters, who are coping with the death of their mother last December. Busico provided few details.

In an interview Thursday, retired federal prosecutor David Fritchey, a former chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, said Mazzone and his codefendants included veteran mobsters, not just “low-level strong-arm guys or bookies.”

“These are guys who have been major players for decades,” he said in an interview. “This is a major accomplishment.”

Federal prosecutors said they built their case on evidence obtained by informants who wore wires, along with electronic bugs, undercover drug buys, camera surveillance, and law enforcement and civilian witnesses.

In the most unusual part of the indictment, prosecutors say Mazzone was caught on tape participating in a 2015 mob initiation ceremony in South Philadelphia in which his brother and four others became made members of the crime family. In the secret session, the initiates were captured pledging to “burn in hell forever if I betray my friends.”

Mazzone explained during the ceremony how the members had to “kick up” money from their criminal activity.

“None of youse are owed anything,” prosecutors quoted him as saying. “It’s what you’re going to bring here. ... This is the family, this is where you bring it to. It’s not for you.”

At a celebratory dinner afterward, Mazzone said the mob had to make sure it got its share of the action in Atlantic City.

“We’re gangsters,” he was recorded saying. “I mean, you know, I’m not gonna let no sucker take that.”

Prosecutors said the “acting boss” of the family also took part in the ceremony, identifying him in court papers only as “M.L.” That man would be the seventh or so leader of the Philadelphia mob since Angelo Bruno was shot to death in 1980, according to court documents and news accounts. A year after Bruno’s murder, his successor, Philip Testa, was killed by a bomb on his South Philly doorstep and, in the decades that followed, four other bosses were sidelined by long prison terms in a string of cases brought by federal prosecutors.

In the so-called mob wars that flared for years after Bruno’s death, prosecutors said informants variously named Mazzone as both the pursued and the pursuer in a series of violent encounters. Among other allegations, authorities said, Mazzone shot to death a rival mob member and played a role in two other gun assaults that left targets wounded, all in 1993. That same year, authorities have said, Mazzone’s enemies plotted to kill him, but the planned hit failed after he failed to show up at a South Philadelphia bar as expected.

In 2001, a jury acquitted Mazzone of allegations related to this violence but convicted him on racketeering, extortion, and gambling charges. At sentencing, a prosecutor called him “vicious, lazy, shameless, selfish, and devoid of any sense of conventional morality.” His defense lawyer called him “quiet, kind, and gentle.”

He then served his first stint in federal prison, until his release in 2009. When Mazzone was arrested again in 2020, his defense lawyers said he was working at a South Philadelphia gym and a Bucks County store that sells lawn furniture.

In an interview Thursday, Stephen LaPenta, a retired Philadelphia police lieutenant and onetime organized crime investigator for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, called the convictions of Mazzone and his codefendants “a marvelous achievement.”

Attorney Joel M. Friedman, who was a leader of the Organized Crime Strike Force in the years before Fritchey, said the mob in the city was far weaker now compared with “how strong they were in the earlier years.” He added: “The strike force and the federal investigative agencies made a major impact upon organized crime.”