Racketeer Snapshot: Gambino Soldier Anthony “Tony Plate” Plata

One of the lesser known, yet longer-established and active soldiers of the old Carlo Gambino Family was Anthony (Tony Plate) Plata.

With a criminal record dating back to 1931 and several prison terms under his belt, including one he served at Sing Sing for armed-robbery, he was a well-seasoned gangster and a well-respected member of the New York Mafia.

Tony initially operated around Harlem and The Bronx, but later expanded up to Westchester where he became one of the most active and important mobsters in that county.

Westchester County police sources say that Plate controlled a large crew of subordinates who ran much of that county’s bookmaking and numbers gambling, corrupted labor unions, pulled various types of heists and shylocked on a fantastic scale.

During his testimony before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee Hearings in 1963, Genovese Family soldier-turned-informer Joe Valachi told the committee that Plate was earning $5,000 each and every week from a policy-numbers game he operated in Upper Manhattan.

Anthony (Tony Plate) Plata

Tony’s unsavory reputation proceeded him.

With a “yellow sheet” stretching from Manhattan and Mamaroneck in New York to Pittsburgh and Miami, Tony’s police record spoke volumes about him. Through the years, he had been arrested and often convicted on a wide variety of offenses, including vagrancy, felonious assault, attempted robbery, armed robbery of a card game, frequenting a house of ill-repute, disorderly conduct, frequenting a gaming house, extortion, attempted extortion, conspiracy, racketeering, gambling, loansharking, murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

By at least the mid-to-late 1950s, the ever ambitious “Tony Plate” decided to expand his criminal operations even farther when he moved down to South Florida, eventually purchasing a home in the Bay Harbor Island section of North Miami.

Tony’s reputation was such that almost immediately detectives with the Florida Organized Crime Control Council became aware of his presence and his intentions in Dade County and quickly started what became an intense investigation into his criminal activities and associates.

Florida detectives started a daily physical surveillance of Plate, following the Gambino mobster everywhere he went. They took note that he was a trim and muscular man who regularly spent most of his days at the upscale Diplomat Hotel along Route A1A in Hollywood.

Each morning Tony would work out in the hotel gym, then use the steam-room or sauna, before heading off to the locker rooms to shower and dress for the day.

Tony Plate

He then usually enjoyed a late morning breakfast before conducting a steady stream of business meetings in the Diplomat’s restaurant and lounge with his Cosa Nostra associates and others seeking his favors. Florida investigators also noted that Tony’s daily presence and suspicious activities within the hotel was completely ignored by the hotel’s management, allowing the mafioso free rein to come and go and operate as he wished.

In fact, Tony’s influence around the hotel was such that management even gave him unfettered access to a special private-parking area and the use of the Diplomat’s executive offices to conduct more “sensitive” underworld meetings in private with his subordinates.

By this point in time, Plate had already become so notorious a figure that he was also the subject of several other active state and federal investigations up in New York regarding his activity as a vicious loanshark, extortionist and killer.

Underworld legend has it that Tony Plate once jumped over a desk and bit a delinquent borrower in the face after the man dared to miss several weekly shylock payments due the mafioso.

But Tony Plate’s meteoric rise and time in the sun would come to an abrupt and unexpected end one sunny afternoon in 1979 when he suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. The 66-year-old mafioso was never seen or heard from again.

It was later revealed through an FBI informant that Plate had been murdered at the behest of his direct superior, Gambino Family underboss Aniello (O’Neil) Dellacroce . The “work” had allegedly been carried out by John Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero who had been dispatched down to Florida to take care of the matter.

The FBI later claimed that Dellacroce had ordered the hit on his former soldier after he and Plate were indicted in a major federal racketeering case that included several homicides and the wily old underboss figured he’d stand a better chance of beating the case if the volatile Plate wasn’t sitting next to him in the courtroom.

Until next time..."The Other Guy"

Racketeer Snapshot: Gambino Soldier Anthony “Tony Plate” Plata

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Racketeer Snapshot: Gambino Soldier Anthony “Tony Plate” Plata

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