The offload is a result of two successful drug interdictions in the Caribbean since August 23. Photo courtesy of Josh Weiss A prisoner poses with a gun smuggled into La Joya with help from guards. ), Right about the time my last film was coming out, he emailed me and said, I did a jailbreak from Panama, traveled to Costa Rica, on to Cuba and then got repatriated to Moscow Im ready to do the movie, Russell says. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. He paid for her to secretly get an abortion. Episode 5: Spain /Sold My Soul Tarzan eventually testified against Juan and was deported to Israel, where he recanted his testimony meaning Juans conviction for conspiracy to traffic cocaine was overturned and he went free. Join the New Times community and help support "Anthony has been in jail for more than 15 months, and a judge hasn't even heard his case yet!" Galeota is one of several Americans locked up here. "They murdered a guy in here a couple of days ago," Tony Galeota says. When his dad lost his job, Tony paid the bills. Behind him, 12-foot-high fences topped with spools of barbed wire frame a muddy soccer field. People named Tony Galeta. Has a stint in Panamanian prison reformed Miami's most notorious strip club manager? Wrongly imprisoned. "She would use shoe polish to change our driver's licenses so we could go to clubs and drink when we were 15. "There was probably a lot more fun going on at Porky's than we even knew of," says one Hialeah police officer who asked not to be identified. As for Yester taking a flier with the cartel money, Tarzan says he would have done the same himself if he could have and expresses no hard feelings. The gig introduced him to a lifelong vice. Tarzan managed to get light punishment for his 1997 conviction; he rolled over on Almeida and spent 30 months behind bars before being deported to Israel, where his family had immigrated, in 1999. I said, Thank you, Cali cartel. Galeota says the police had already gotten what they wanted: Porky's demise. "We were like: 'We want to get the fuck out of here. Kristy caught Tony cheating several times, she says. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida Even then, however, he couldn't sleep. In hand-painted white lettering, it reads, "Dear visitors. . But Porky's was just a Hialeah dive bar on the corner of SE 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, surrounded by cheap motels and buzzed by flights taking off from Miami International Airport. When Kristy and their three sons finally arrived in June, the business became a family affair: His wife took over at Bongos, while Galeota concentrated on turning the club into a cash machine. And she launched drunken tirades at Tony after baseball games, no matter how well the all-star shortstop performed. "I want to go legit when I get out, but if the economy is bad, I might go back to the industry," he says. Awards. Russian mobsters learned about their comrade's successful venture, and adopted the club as a virtual office. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. Galeota is one of several Americans locked up here. ", Instead, he found another, tighter-knit family: the mob. But in South Florida, he was once a strip club king. "She would use shoe polish to change our driver's licenses so we could go to clubs and drink when we were 15. "My wife can say she has regrets, but that's bullshit," he says. Like a concert pianist, Tony Galeota has spent his life honing a single skill since he was a teenager. And when his mother was distraught over a broken washing machine, he filled the house with new appliances. "When you're in La Joya for two years, you get used to that environment," Galeota says. By then, the club's criminal clientele and Fainberg's increasingly lavish lifestyle had raised eyebrows. He escaped with his life and went on the run, aiming to avoid the cartel, Interpol and US law enforcers. When he heard that his old partner in crime from Porky's had moved to Panama, he flew in to meet with Galeota. But Tony had darker secrets. Instead, he's trapped in a labyrinthine legal system, alone and unable to speak Spanish. If I were to make this story up and pitch it as a writer, producers would be like, Thats the worst pitch Ive ever heard. "I'm not a religious person, but I believe I went to jail because I was living like a rock star -- running around with all these women, drinking a bottle of vodka every day for two years," he says. Prostitution was so common at Porky's that the club had fixed places and prices, Galeota says. So I was literally stepping over dead bodies of the people who had been shanked and stuff over the course of the night.. Skip Ancestry main menu Main Menu It was 1990, and Galeota transformed the place by wiring in subwoofers and bringing in New York dancers. Its about 2,800 kilos, about a ton and a half of contraband. On a Sunday night in July of 1991, a 29-year-old electrician named Phillip John Shea came into Quarterbacks shortly after Tony and Kristy left. "My wife could have left me. Police repeatedly raided the club, yet Galeota escaped unscathed every time. Facilitating it. His government protection would evaporate, the Doll House would be raided, his investments would be stolen, and he would be arrested. Like a real-life godfather, Galeota weathered it all. It wasn't until he ordered some Italian food and a cold Guinness that he finally felt like he was free. And, above all, selling it. S10 E10 - Miami Mobster Take Down Tony Galeota is framed for drug trafficking in Panama City. The Doll House couldn't expand fast enough to meet the influx of sex tourists. Running an underworld operation in Cocaine Cowboys-era Miami wasn't an easy gig. Is this possible, to buy a military submarine - used one? And he said, What a question! While Kristy was still in the States, he lived with five of his Colombian prostitutes. View Tony Galeota's 1940 US census record to find family members, occupation details & more. "They knew some Russian guy named Tarzan who had just opened up a club in Miami called Porky's. But Galeota's problems aren't completely behind him. 17:57 GMT 13 Mar 2018. "Luis pulled out a .38 and shot the guy in the chest. The Coast Guard said the eight-member crew cooperated and was taken into custody. For a while, Panama's pay-to-play culture suited Galeota just fine. "It was puppy love," he says. local news and culture, Michael E. Miller Tony Galeto. Of the $10 million, he said, I cannot f- -king believe it how fast I spend it.. Ten million dollars really feels like 10 million dollars, he gushes in the movie. 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So looking back on it and all the hijinks, from being smuggled in to a Panamanian prison to crossing paths with the FSB in Moscow to being met in a Porsche Cayenne by Tony Yester and driving away thinking: Okay, the CIA, DEA, FBI and US Marshals have been looking for this guy for 25 years, and Im in his car by myself with no notion of where were going or when were coming back. In retrospect, its like, Im a moron, but at the time I was full-throttle chase the story., Of the finished product Operation Odessa, he says: Hopefully, its a rocknroll thrill ride into the underworld, where you get a passport to a life and lifestyle and characters that you didnt even imagine existed much less having a ringside seat with them., The comments below have not been moderated, By "Whenever there is an American businessman involved in crime here in Panama, it becomes an important case. "My father wasn't in the mob, but his friends were," Tony says. Panama became Galeota's personal paradise. But then the country's corrupt system turned on them. New Times wrote about Galeota's plight last year ("From Porky's to Hell," October 4, 2012), even visiting him in La Joya prison, a crumbling concrete complex in the jungle where inmates kill each other with impunity. "This case has had a big impact here," says Jos Otero, a reporter for Panamanian newspaper La Prensa. MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) The Coast Guard offloaded about $93 million of cocaine Thursday afternoon on Miami Beach. This business has been very good to me.". Miami's independent source of "But I did it for my child.". Locked up in one of the world's worst prisons, Tony has to prove his innocence and attempt an audacious escape. "Now I'm living in hell.". The value then triples to $100,000 per kilo at the street level when it's busted down for individual use. Bonnie also shoplifted booze to sustain her hard drinking habit. "I couldn't take all the people who wanted to come.". The Coast Guard said four suspected smugglers were taken into custody and 32 bales of cocaine were found in the water. "I lived it up in Miami," he says. The $33,000 number is actually the wholesale price in the US for smugglers - or how much a kilo is worth delivered to US soil, for traffickers. Tony Galeota lived in 1954, at address, Massachusetts. Its a great success overall. Let me check.. The gig introduced him to a lifelong vice. For two decades, Galeota managed Porky's, a Hialeah dive notorious for drugs, prostitution, and violence, where he was part pimp, part bouncer, and completely untouchable. He offered protection and gave Galeota $200. Inside La Joya, he had paid a guard to smuggle in a BlackBerry to talk to his wife, but strangers kept calling with threats to kill his kids unless he paid them. Director Tiller Russell tells DailyMail.com that hed heard rumblings and rumors about the insane deal, but it was about seven years ago when he first got a concrete lead about Tarzan and his cronies. They were concerned that Tarzan and his arriviste colleagues in crime would merge with Cuban mobsters who already used brutal, bloody force to rule Miamis underworld and create a sort of supergroup of criminality. Tony Galeta. See Photos. But in South Florida, he was once a strip club king. "When you go to prison, it's like dying, but you get to see your own funeral," Galeota says. Tony Galeota. The guards leave at 5pm, and they just lock the gates, and its inmate rule at night, he says, explaining that he bribed a guard to get him in and out of the jail. And, above all, selling it. And he hopes to open a place in Fort Lauderdale when he's back, Just not a strip club. (CBS Miami). Upon seeing 10 thugs rush the vehicle and hijack it with the unsuspecting passenger in back, Yester realized that the remaining cash would not be forthcoming. Sixteen months later, the two men have yet to appear in court. And theyre like, F*** yeah, lets do it. Garrulous and bearish, the dentist-turned-hood (practicing the former in the Soviet Union and training for the latter in Brighton Beach) routinely carried two pistols and operated out of his Hialeah, Fla., strip club, Porkys: famous for a small motorized car that pulled up between the spread legs of dancers as they performed. Galeota examines a bruise from a prison fight in La Joya. Galeota has seen several murders. Miami's independent source of He was talking to Fainberg about a murder he'd witnessed in Porky's parking lot. "It's not an easy choice," she says. And multiple sources close to Fainberg say he was pressured to rat out Seidle but refused. The heavy-set Italian even signed a release. The FBI swooped in January 21, surrounding the club and arresting Fainberg. Although he admits that "running around whoring and casinoing wasn't worth it," he can't promise to be faithful to the woman who has stood beside him. "Thank God I'm out," he tells New Times in his first interview since his release. While out of sight, he phoned his guy and lied about being in a particular taxi cab. "Like me, he was a black sheep who could do nothing right.". "I've been in this business my whole life. Instead, he says competitors pulled government strings to screw him. If any official asks you to pay for anything, please report them.". Fainberg allegedly told undercover cops he had sent coke to Russia in a shipment of frozen shrimp and had bought six $1 million Russian military helicopters for the South Americans. He was the one whod been speaking directly to the cartel; he was the only one who knew the real amount of money Cali were willing to pay; and he was the one who took the risk and disappeared with millions of the cartels drug money. As for his career, his only oath is that he won't let his sons follow his example. Coast Guard members who seized the cocaine said this is what their jobs are all about. His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a criminal," Tony remembers. Miami's underworld may still be seedy, but it has outsourced much of its shadiness to nearby Third-World countries such as Panama. Find your friends on Facebook. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. Kristy and his sons hid in a shabby, poorly protected office. There is no rehabilitation here," he says. Indeed, court records show that Seidle was a target of the federal wiretapping investigation. Guards with machine guns man rusty metal towers. Guards with machine guns man rusty metal towers. "Last week we were supposed to have a hearing, but there was no running water in Panama City. When crews were launched to investigate, the suspected smugglers threw several packages into the water. I had kind of, little by little, put the word out to everybody among the cops, all the law enforcement side as well as among the crooks and said, Gotta meet Tony, gotta meet Tony, gotta meet Tony knowing that he was the only guy who really knew what happened. Galeota jumped at the deal. But instead of classical music, his specialty is sex. Johns paid $100 to rent a VIP room downstairs. Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. Most of them were robberies gone wrong or simple revenge. "Everybody give me your money!" And they were doing it on behalf of the notorious Cali drug cartel in Colombia, who planned to use the underwater vessel to smuggle cocaine undetected. More than anything, Galeota is grateful that his family kept faith in him. Its our mission down there besides search and rescue. They put a hit out on him when he disappeared with the money, while Juan and Tarzan took the legal fall in Miami. They are willing to assume the massive risk of getting caught and going to prison for decades, because if they make just one big score they're millionaires. One can imagine they did plenty of drugs.. Galeota's imprisonment abroad marks the end of one of Miami's most outrageous eras, when Russian and Colombian cartels stocked strip clubs with cheap prostitutes and cheaper cocaine. Ludwig Fainberg a Russian-speaking Ukrainian nicknamed "Tarzan" for his flowing locks had opened it a few months earlier but ran it like a private club for Eastern Europeans. Photo Gallery. "They shot him in the middle of the night," Galeota continues quietly, "and buried his body behind the pavilion.". He needed some help," he recalls. Its a lot of f- -king paper. "The worst part of being in here is being in here for nothing. Reborn behind bars. Instead of celebrating, he walked through the scuzzy neighborhood until he found a shabby motel. Prostitution is legal in Panama," he complains. He paid for her to secretly get an abortion. By now, she knows of his many infidelities, including that he lived and slept with some of the girls at the Doll House. He met with mobsters in Cali mansions full of women, and he knocked on random doors in search of dancers. His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a. But Monday morning, when it came time to walk out of La Joya, there was no vehicle waiting. Meet me in Africa for a cup of coffee tomorrow.. Instead, Galeota admits he's done bad things, such as running Miami's most infamous strip club, Porky's, for years before moving to Panama and opening a brothel. I was literally on a press tour for the last film, and I was in New York doing interviews and stuff I called the producers and said, Do you think we can get a million dollars in the next five days?. "They murdered a guy in here a couple of days ago," Tony Galeota says. Behind him, 12-foot-high fences topped with spools of barbed wire frame a muddy soccer field. He hired 'Fat Tony' Galeota as Porky's manager. "I brought in music and women," Galeota says. Tony Galeota's age is expected to be 52. Instead, they eat rice for lunch and dinner, drink dirty river water, and use a hole in the ground for a toilet. The Porky's party nearly came to a sudden end in early 1997. In the early 1990s, three friends set out to hustle the Russian mob, the Cali cartel and the DEA for the score of a lifetime. Get started U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890-1979. Prostitutes were everywhere at the weddings, and when Tony asked another employee where they came from, the older kid took him to Manhattan's infamous West End. He was, after all, working with an American playboy in Miami and a fugitive Cuban spy to procure this submarine. the agent said. This is a guy that the FBI went after for years but could never get him. He raises his eyebrows and looks upwards to the left to emphasize just how flabbergasted he was with Mishas counter question. "We were doing fantastic, but Tarzan got bored and started living the life," Galeota explains. I know its gonna be a strange question. independent local journalism in Miami. A tattoo of an Italian Mafioso emerges from an extra-large sleeveless T-shirt. A judge eventually dropped the human trafficking charge, but Galeota still rotted in his sordid cell alongside insects the size of small dogs. He ogled the women standing on corners in their underwear and high heels. Galeota was hit with felony drug and prostitution charges. Theyre nice guys [the cartel members], and I didnt ask what they needed the submarine for, Tarzan tells The Post, speaking on a crackling phone connection from Russia. When Galeota arrived, his mobster reputation preceded him. "But she's never going to forget. Guards with machine guns man rusty metal towers. Once they spotted the plane, they changed course which is suspicious for us, said Boatswains Mate 1st Class, Joshua McElhaney with the Coast Guard. "My father wasn't in the mob, but his friends were," Tony says. But he was too shell-shocked to take up his attorney's offer for a ride to a nice hotel. His name was Tony Galeota, he said, and he had run Porky's for 18 years before being locked up in Panama's worst prison for a crime he didn't commit. Kenyan court is shown vital evidence ignored by police two years after his arrest over 4.5m cocaine haul, Body armor-clad Cancun cops are 'suspended' after posing for pictures with topless tourists on the beach, Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Ken Bruce: 'I always wanted to be a radio presenter from about 15', Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' "I thought I would kick up my heels together like 'Oh my God, I'm finally out,'" he says. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our, From Porky's to Panamanian Prison: Web Extra. And then Russell got a text message out of the blue. On a crowded balcony overlooking La Joya, Galeota describes the past 16 months as a nightmare. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. In describing Tarzan, Almeida says in the film, He struck me as an oddball. Tarzan classifies Almeida as a guy who had two drinks and thought he was Tony Montana. As for movie-star handsome, hooker-loving Yesters first impression of Tarzan: I said, This f- -king guy is trouble. Thirty minutes later, I loved the trouble., Abetted by the tumultuous state of the former Soviet Union the ruble was completely devalued and state-owned resources went to whomever had the most firepower gaining access to the submarine was surprisingly easy. "A family type thing, like an ale house with wings and beer," he says. The eight crew members aboard the Hope II and the vessel were taken into custody and will be turned over to U.S. officials for further investigation. Instead, they eat rice for lunch and dinner, drink dirty river water, and use a hole in the ground for a toilet. "When you're in La Joya for two years, you get used to that environment," Galeota says. Prosecutors accused him of providing prostitutes for his Russian friends, trafficking drugs, selling stolen cigarettes and liquor, and setting up arms deals for Russian and Colombian cocaine smugglers. Explore More. Then an old friend showed up. He was 31. The person they were going to pay for the submarine was the officer who let them [into the naval base], says Russell. View the profiles of people named Anthony Galeota. ", McDonald has succeeded, however, in chipping away at the case, persuading a judge three weeks ago to drop the trafficking charge on a technicality. With dark hair and pale, wide-set eyes, teenage Tony resembled a stocky Frank Sinatra. "I thought I would kick up my heels together like 'Oh my God, I'm finally out,'" he says. Filmography (by Job) Trailers and Videos. They tried to squeeze Fainberg to get Seidle. Born on June 3, 1924 at Hartford. "I was 16 years old and amazed," he says. "These guys were into just about everything," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Fernandez said at the time. Miami mobster Tony Galeota is locked up in Panama after being framed for drug dealing and human trafficking. Because of his age, he escaped with six months' probation. Galeota yelled. State and local police launched an investigation in February 2009. Sixteen months later, the two men have yet to appear in court. She is a high-powered attorney who has defended two former presidents in corruption cases, but even she hasn't been able to get Galeota out of jail yet. But instead of classical music, his specialty is sex. It continued at another local strip club, called Quarterbacks Playmates Lounge. "It was so slow I couldn't take it," he says. The year before, his father helped him land a job as a wedding DJ. A tattoo of an Italian Mafioso emerges from an extra-large sleeveless T-shirt. There was nothing unusual about it. His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a criminal," Tony remembers. Galeota's wife Kristy comments "Porky's was definitely a place you could get killed." Miami's underworld may still be seedy, but it has outsourced much of its shadiness to nearby Third-World countries such as Panama. That didnt stop Russell from trying to get them on board with doing a film about the submarine deal. "Running a club in that neighborhood, win or lose, you've got to fight.". On June 19, 2011, Tony and his oldest son, 15-year-old Anthony Jr., had just sat down to eat wings in the Doll House office around 11 p.m. when the gold-painted doors burst open. Michael Galeota, who starred on the Disney Channel's "The Jersey" died Sunday, according to Variety. When Bill Seidle died, Galeota knew the club's days were numbered. source of local news and culture, Michael E. Miller The young mobster needed to lay low, so the Pacciones sent him south to a strip club called the Porthole Pub in Pompano Beach.
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