As mentioned in Part 1 of this story, Johnny Dioguardi was a very different kind of mafioso in that he didn’t dabble in the typical gangland pursuits his underworld brethren did, such as gambling, loansharking, truck hijacking, narcotics, and the more traditional types of organized crime activities.
Instead, his criminal forte always lay in more unique and complex forms of thievery, such as infiltrating and controlling labor unions, pension-fund embezzlement, bribery, extortion, sweetheart contracts, garment industry racketeering, fraudulent stock manipulations, and business infiltration and bankruptcy fraud scams.
A review of his long underworld career clearly shows that Dioguardi was one of the more intelligent, sharp, and admittedly diabolical mobsters ever to grace the American landscape.
Never Earned an Honest Dollar
In 1953, while standing before the court after being convicted of selling “labor peace” to a victim company, before pronouncing sentence, Judge John A. Mullen flatly stated to John Dioguardi, “Judging from your background and record, it’s clear you’ve never earned an honest dollar from the time you left school.”
Judge Mullen then sentenced the dapper hoodlum to a term of two years in prison.
However, the judge did allow Dioguardi to remain free on bail while his lawyers quickly appealed the conviction. As it turned out, Johnny got lucky. The case was eventually reversed and completely thrown out.
Although he dodged that bullet, before the year was up, Dioguardi did end up serving a bit of jail time. Johnny cooled his heels for 60 days at New York’s Rikers Island Penitentiary after being convicted of evading New York State income taxes relating to some illegal labor kickback payments he had received.
A Shockingly Vicious Assault
In August 1956, the FBI arrested Dioguardi and several of his henchmen on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice in connection with the highly publicized attack on nationally known labor columnist Victor Riesel, which was committed in the early morning hours along busy Broadway in midtown Manhattan, right off the corner of West 51st Street.
Because of the nature of the crime, as well as who had been targeted, the FBI immediately stepped into the picture to assist the New York Police Department and Federal Labor Department Investigators in their search to uncover the perpetrators of the assault and the reason behind it. Riesel was left nearly totally blind after an unknown assailant accosted him on the street and threw a bottle of sulfuric acid directly into his face.
An intensive police investigation and manhunt soon ensued. Using informants, law enforcement authorities were led to Manhattan’s Lower East Side after they were given several names as to who might have been involved in the attack.
