Mortgage firm is Mafia Inc: feds

By CHUCK BENNETT and JOSH MARGOLIN
Last Updated: 3:20 AM, November 2, 2011

It was a hostile corporate takeover -- Mafia-style.

The son of jailed former Lucchese boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky’’ Scarfo used the trusted mob technique of extortion to gain control of a cash-rich mortgage company -- and then loot it for millions, according to federal prosecutors in New Jersey.

“The [mob’s] criminal activities have evolved from the back alleys to the boardrooms,” said Michael Ward, FBI agent-in-charge in Newark, said of the stunning scheme.

Nicodemo “Junior’’ Scarfo, 46, and 12 others, including an accountant and five lawyers -- one, David Adler, from tony Chappaqua, NY -- were nailed in the scheme involving Irving, Texas-based FirstPlus Financial Group, authorities said.

Instead of targeting a more typical Mafia staple such as a restaurant or illegal-gambling racket, the mobster offspring and his cronies zeroed in on FPFG, which had been raking in millions from its subprime-mortgage business at the height of the real-estate boom, the feds said.

Scarfo’s longtime pal, Sal Pelullo, 44, a mobster wannabe with bank-fraud convictions, and Harold Garber, an ex-mob lawyer, had ID’d the company as ripe for the taking, officials said.

“They saw the potential, they saw this small company that was cash-rich, looking to do a restructuring,” one law-enforcement source told The Post. “They saw an opportunity to exploit. It was wrong place, wrong time” for the firm.

The group began threatening the board of directors -- and their families -- to get them to vote their way, or else.

Pelullo was allegedly caught on wiretap at one point warning a board member: “If you ever rat, your wives will be f--ked . . . and your kids will be sold off as prostitutes.’’

In another instance, when Pelullo was trying to get enough directors to vote his way, he allegedly screamed at an associate: “I don’t care if [any voting members] are in a funeral parlor, I don’t care if they’re in a f--kin’ hospital respirator, we’ll send somebody there.

“I want their vote, I want their signature, and I want it done by the close of the day today.”

The scheme netted $ 12 million by bleeding FPFG dry. The money was laundered by manipulating mergers of sham shell companies they owned and engaging in phony consulting contracts, prosecutors alleged.

Scarfo and Pelullo bought an $850,000, 83-foot yacht -- named “Priceless” -- together with some of their cut, the feds said.

Six guns, 2,500 rounds of ammo and 17 more boxes of bullets were discovered aboard.

The reputed Mafiosos were ruthless, with Pelullo joking that he was “crushed’’ that a former FPFG exec had suddenly died, the feds said.

“The “rat is dead!” Pelullo crowed to Scarfo, according to a wiretap transcript in the complaint.

Scarfo replied: “Oh, boy. Yeah, Sal, you wanna know something, though? That’s one that I know you can’t take credit for ... [laughter] and that’s the natural best thing.

“You know what I mean? That is so, like, Enron-ish. You know what I mean? Kenneth Lay, he bailed out and took a heart attack.”