The Utica Mob - Anthony (Tony) Damiano

Here is the seventh and final biography on a hoodlum who was recognized as a ‘key’ soldier in the so-called Joseph Falcone Regime of the Utica faction of the mafia.

Anthony Damiano was, and to this very day somewhat remains, a shadowy mafioso who operated successfully and with near-total impunity from law enforcement over the length of his underworld career.

Here is what we have uncovered about him. I hope you enjoy his story.

There will be one more installment in this series. The grand finale if you will. The culmination of decades of mob rule over the Utica and the ultimate devolution of Cosa Nostra’s hold on that city.

The crumbling of an underworld empire which was started more than seventy years earlier by Salvatore and Joseph Falcone, and the end of the Mafia as we have come to know it.

Antonio Gaetano (Tony) Damiano - aka “Anthony Thomas Domiano” “Anthony Ralph Damiano” “Antonio Raffaele Damiani” (TN) - was born on January 10, 1898, at San Severo, Foggia, Italy (Puglia region).

He was the son of Raffaele and Vittoria (née Mazzone) Damiani.

By the time he was in his mid-teens, Damiano had met a local Italian girl named Maria Consiglia (née D’Arrando) who lived nearby in the town of Torremaggiore. They married in Torremaggiore on October 23, 1916, when he was 18.

Several years later, the young couple sailed with their firstborn infant son for the United States. On April 4, 1920, they arrived at New York’s Ellis Island.

Anthony and Maria first settled within the city of New York. He stated to immigration officers that he was a baker by trade and listed his total assets at approximately $10,000. (Quite a princely sum for 1920.)

Some years later, they’d relocate further upstate to the fast-developing city of Syracuse, New York where he allegedly had relatives and cousins. This is where they would permanently settle down and raise their growing family for the foreseeable future.

He and his family resided at 105 Westside Avenue in Syracuse.

Some years later, they relocated again to 3522 James Street in North Syracuse. And by the mid-late 1950s, Tony and Mary reportedly left New York State altogether for the warmer environs of down south relocating to Miami Beach, Florida.

Now more commonly known by their Americanized names of Tony and Mary, the fledgling Damiano brood boasted a family that would eventually grow to include six children: four boys they named Victor, Alfred, Ralph, and Joseph and two girls named Clara and Yolanda.

Side Note: There is evidence that Maria was naturalized as a U.S. citizen at Patterson, NJ, in 1927. It makes sense that Anthony was most likely naturalized as well. Either on that same date or around that same point in time.

FBI #475059, FBI-Miami File #92-1112

A Very Careful and Measured Mafiosi

Whatever illicit rackets and criminal activities Damiano may or may not have been engaged in over the years, he was obviously a very careful and measured guy, because I was very hard-pressed to uncover even one single arrest or interaction with criminal activity for him.

Yet, Anthony Damiano was a known and respected mafia figure in Central New York for years.

By the early 1960s, his name started turning up on FBI reports to Director J. Edgar Hoover back in Washington, informant reports, and internal #302 field agent memos about the situation in Upstate New York regarding active organized crime figures.

Damiano was listed as an official ‘inducted’ mafia soldier serving in the Joseph Falcone regime based in Utica. In fact, an Albany-based federal FBI informant, who was carried on internal FBI memos as “AL T-7”, had identified Damiano as a mafia member by at least August 23, 1965.

FBI membership list for Utica faction.

Known as CI “AL T-7” for “Confidential Informant Albany-based T-7, he had named three Upstate hoodlums in total as soldiers in the Falcone regime of the larger Buffalo-based Magaddino Family. Besides Damiano, he also named Vincenzo (Jimmy) Femia of Utica and Francesco (Frank) Russo Sr. of nearby Rome as crew members.

Al-T-7 was one of six reliable FBI informants used to paint a picture and a composite sketch of what the Utica-Rome/Syracuse faction of Cosa Nostra looked like at that time.

Collectively, this informant, along with other informants labeled under the codenames, AL-T-1, AL-T-2, AL-T-3, AL-T-5, and AL-T-12, named the following fourteen mafiosi as members of the faction:

• Salvatore Falcone • Joseph Falcone • Serafino Grio • Rosario Mancuso • Vincenzo Femia • Anthony Damiano • James Fiore • John Melito • Frank Pelli • Frank Russo • Sylvester Battaglia • Anthony De Stefano • Joseph Sabella • Antonino Trufio

They additionally named the following eleven men as suspected “associate members,” and possibly “proposed or inducted members” of this faction:

• Angelo Conte • Samuel J. Farrar • Anthony F. Falange • Angelo Thomas • Frank Thomas • Augustus Battaglia • Samuel Zappia • Joseph Leone • Anthony Scro • Charles Scro • Joseph Scro

But by the time of his unveiling in the early 1960s, Tony was already reported by informants to be in poorer health and somewhat inactive and semi-retired from the rackets.

He was said to still keep in touch and be in regular contact with his former caporegime Salvatore Falcone, who had himself moved down to Miami Beach back in 1946. The FBI’s Miami field office decided to slate Damiano as a target for intensified coverage nonetheless.

In fact, one FBI informant, “AL-T-7”, reported to his federal handler that Anthony Damiano had been given $30,000 in racket profits while on a visit upstate in the Utica area for safekeeping. This money had been entrusted to Damiano, a regime soldier, for eventual delivery down to the boss himself, Salvatore Falcone, as a regular “tribute payment” that was expected.

Salvatore Falcone

This same informer reported that although Damiano had since flown back down to Miami three weeks earlier he had yet to contact and deliver the money earmarked for Falcone.

A Miami Connection

The FBI also documented Damiano interacting with Tampa-based family boss Santo Trafficante Jr., and other members of Santo’s Florida crew.

Unbeknownst to Damiano and Trafficante, a fellow named Peter Giampapa, who Tony had befriended and later taken in as a 50% partner in his newly formed but struggling ice cream company, the Valentine Ice Cream Company, was a federal informer.

This second informant provided steady tidbits to his FBI handlers about Damiano, Trafficante, Salvatore Falcone, and their various mob associates.

Valentine Ice Cream Co., located at 1931 N.E. 36th Street in Miami, was soon being kept under periodic, but steady FBI surveillance. Giampapa was installed by Damiano as the manager of the company and was soon working daily and providing regular reports to the FBI.

Side Note: Confidential informant AL-T-7 stated on July 15, 1966, that soldier Rosario (Russ) Mancuso and some other unidentified individual (later named as Sam Farrar,) had beaten up Ralph Damiano, son of Anthony Damiano of Florida, who is a known LCN member.

This beating resulted from Ralph Damiano having failed to pay a debt of $950 that was owed to Sam Farrar and Mancuso for a couple of years. The informant further advised this beating allegedly took place in the Syracuse, NY area.

Another Confidential Informant by the handle of AL-T-11 stated on July 26, 1966, that information had come to his attention that several weeks before Sam Farrar had been heard to say that he had to go with Rosario Mancuso to the Syracuse, NY, area to handle a matter involving another individual.

Coffee, Ice Cream, and Other Business Ventures

Dating back to at least the 1930s, Tony owned and operated the Roma Cafe at 553 North Salina Street in Syracuse. By 1942, he had turned this location from a cafe and eatery into a manufacturing and wholesale distribution plant for an ice cream business he named the Darling Ice Cream Company .

He ran this company successfully for the next decade or so until later selling it to a fellow Syracuse-based mafioso named Salvatore (Sam) Scro. A fellow Magaddino Family soldier himself, Sam Scro had purchased the business for three of his sons: Anthony, Charles, and Joseph.

A fourth son, Vincent (Jimmy) Scro, was already well established as the son-in-law and righthand man to the family boss himself, Stefano Magaddino. Jimmy Scro had married one of Magaddino’s two daughters and relocated years earlier up to the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area where the Magaddino’s resided.

Aside from his cafe, ice cream company, and other business ventures, it seems that Damiano was always heavily invested in the real estate and property development industry. Over the years, as he made money in the rackets, which were suspected to have included alcohol bootlegging and policy-numbers, Tony had wisely invested his money rather than blow it like so many others of his ilk.

He was also documented as being the owner of record for an impressive array of realty such as taxpayer storefronts, private homes, and an apartment house complex that he leased out over the years which brought him steady rental incomes.

Among his holdings were residential properties at 104 Ash Street and 314 Leavenworth Avenue. Several other commercial properties he owned were garages and retail stores located at 838-840 North State Street and the building that had once originally housed his cafe and manufacturing plant at 553 N. Salina Street, all in Syracuse.

After moving down to South Florida, Damiano went about opening up the aforementioned Valentine Ice Cream Company of Miami Beach in the 1960s. This is when he first came under FBI scrutiny.

Anthony (Tony) Damiano died in August 1967. He was 69 years old.

Until next time…”The Other Guy”

The Utica Mob – Anthony (Tony) Damiano

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The Utica Mob – Anthony (Tony) Falange

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