By the mid-’60s, Carmine Fatico was under intense surveillance by law enforcement and was indicted for the attempted murder of an East Rockaway business owner for complaining about Fatico’s theft of over $185,000 in air conditioning equipment from his firm’s warehouse.
Carmine (Charlie Wagon Wheels) Fatico was born in 1921.
He was a longtime Gambino member who became a top “Capo di decina,” running one of the more gritty crews of the Family from a headquarters in the East New York section of Brooklyn.
Fatico operated from a social club named the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club of John Gotti fame. The only thing was that the original “Bergin” was Fatico’s club before Gotti.
In fact, Gotti was originally brought around and became a protege of Carmine Fatico.
This was a large crew of real street guys including burglars, truck hijackers, armed robbers, as well as the more mundane white-collar bookmakers, numbers guys, and varied gamblers and hangers-on.
Carmine and his brother and partner Donato (Danny Wagons) Fatico, a soldier in Carmine’s regime and his “acting captain”, operated a large and very active truck hijacking ring responsible for many of the trucks snatched from JFK and its outer environs, and the related fencing of these loads.
Fatico had moved from Brooklyn to 810 Higbie Lane in West Islip and started to conduct activities on Long Island by the early 1960s.
His primary action was gambling and a large shylock operation.
He also pushed into businesses and attempted the “strong-arm” takeover of a Long Island painter’s union having a union official beaten in an effort to coerce him into submission (Colombo associate Louis “Louie the Mole” Morra was a suspect in this assault).
By the mid-’60s, he was under intense surveillance by law enforcement and was indicted for the attempted murder of an East Rockaway business owner for complaining about Fatico’a theft of over $185,000 in air conditioning equipment from his firm’s warehouse.
By the early 1970s, he had another indictment related to his loansharking ring and several extortion counts.
A Colombo/Gambino associate named Salvatore (Sonny Black) Montella, a hijacker turned informer, named Fatico as an accomplice.
With the extensive “heat” that accompanied these indictments, Fatico tried backing up a bit, utilizing his brother Danny as a proxy, but Danny, before long, had his own legal headaches.
He was indicted in relation to several “deviant” sex bars/clubs he was backing in Island Park and a gambling “pinch” he took.
Side Note: The legal precedent, the so-called “Fatico Hearing” which alleges to prove a person’s Mafia affiliations and criminal record, a common statue used by prosecutors. was created from a criminal case of Carmine Fatico. He went down in legal history for this.
Fatico had a long criminal arrest record including assault (5 times), grand larceny, burglary, possession of burglar’s tools, making a false statement, dice games, robbery (twice), policy, bookmaking (twice), disorderly conduct (twice), conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy, usury, and extortion, but had only served one jail term (3 to 5 years) on a grand larceny conviction.
By the late 1970s, Fatico semi-retired.
He still hung around the Bergin on occasion but allowed an up-and-comer, John Gotti, to assume more and more responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the Fatico crew.
