Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [7]
“We stole almost every night, doing drop-offs for neighborhood car shops and junk yards. We filled orders for DeMeo crew members too. One of them was Patty Testa, who was an auto-crime legend.”
Testa ran a used-car dealership, Patty Testa’s Motor Car Service, and several of the vehicles they stole for him ended up on his lot with altered Vehicle Identification Numbers. Testa made a lot of money in the car business, both legal and illegal.
“But when I got involved with Patty, the DeMeo crew was on its way out. Most of them were already under indictment. Patty himself got convicted on a federal racketeering charge in 1985 and went away for two years. When he got out, he switched to the Lucchese family.”
Patty Testa was hit on December 2, 1992, murdered in the garage of his car lot. No one was ever charged for his killing.
Depending on the make and model, Andrew and Anthony made between $300 and $500 per car when they filled orders for their drop-off customers. Their fee was relatively low per unit, but they made up for it in volume.
“The way we worked the deliveries and getting paid was simple. The customers didn’t want the hot cars parked right in front of their businesses. We parked the vehicle a little way down the block and left the sun visor down to help the customer identify it. We made three or four deliveries a week to most of these places. They paid us weekly, rather than having to make personal contact on each delivery.
“We had higher paying customers too. Two brothers on Staten Island, who lived a few doors away from Gambino boss Paul Castellano, dealt in exotic brands like Porsche and Ferrari. They paid us three grand per unit. It was a good relationship and we delivered a lot of cars to them. And it was an all-cash business, of course.”
In addition to the drop-offs, Andrew and Anthony also stripped or chopped cars.
“Stripping a car meant we took most of the parts, but the car could still be driven. We usually took the wheels and tires and replaced them with what we called baloney [used] tires, so we could move the car around. Chopping a car meant we took everything; there was nothing left. We used to joke that we turned a chopped car into a Pepsi can.”
Like good entrepreneurs, Andrew and Anthony invested some of their earnings to expand their business.
“We rented garages to dismantle cars and store inventory. For the parts business, we bought work trucks to make deliveries. Overall, General Motors makes—Olds, Caddy, Pontiac, and Chevy—were the most popular. And as the business grew, we brought in more people to help dispose of inventory. We had a scrap-metal guy, an engine guy, a glass specialist, and a tire and wheel man. We profited from every part of the car. Nothing went to waste.
“And we had to have more thieves to help keep up with the orders. Mike Yannotti worked with us regularly. Another neighborhood guy named Albert Lattanzi stole with us.”
Although there was good money in stolen cars and parts, another aspect of the business was even more profitable. Andrew refers to it as “the rebuildables.”
“In the rebuildables business, we legally bought wrecked or recovered stolen vehicles dirt cheap. Then we went out the same night, stole the exact same car as we’d bought, and rebuilt the one we owned legally. Within a few weeks, we sold it at full book value. There was a small fortune to be made and we made it.”
THE SHELL CHASE
One incident from those days stands out for Andrew.
One of his friends had an old Mercedes he was rebuilding and asked Andrew to steal a duplicate to strip for the parts. Anthony, Albert, and Andrew found the exact car, stole it, and brought it to Sally the Lip’s house on East 86th Street. By the time they were finished with it, all that was left was the frame and engine—no glass, mirrors, hood, trunk lid, or seats, not even the Nardi steering wheel. They put on a set of baloney tires so Andrew could drive the shell a few blocks away and leave it on the street.
That night they crimped all the oil lines so no trail led back to