Galeota examines a bruise from a prison fight in La Joya. Facilitating it. That didnt stop Russell from trying to get them on board with doing a film about the submarine deal. "We treated the women well.". But then the country's corrupt system turned on them. Tony went on the run with the money the drug cartel provided up front, however, as authorities closed in - meaning the deal never happened, Tarzan got deported, Juan was (temporarily) convicted on drug charges and Tony became a fugitive not just from justice but from the hit that was put out on his head. She is cute and curvy with dark hair and a button nose. 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. Almeida, back in Moscow, trying to work out yet another deal and not realizing that this one had already soured, managed to temporarily elude arrest. "It was home to a lot of shrewd and nefarious characters.". Two agents told him that they'd been tapping his phone for months. When Seidle died in 2008, Porky's political protection followed the 82-year-old to the grave. Michael Galeota Obituary (1984 - 2016) Chicago Sun-Times Tony Goleta. The most audacious plot allegedly hatched in the back of Porky's was to purchase a former Soviet submarine for $5.5 million for a Colombian drug cartel so it could ship cocaine up the coast to California. S10 E10 - Miami Mobster Take Down Tony Galeota is framed for drug trafficking in Panama City. "I brought in music and women," Galeota says. "I've done a lot of shady things in the States," he admits. I told Juan, I said, Hey. New laws effectively outlaw brothels such as the Doll House, permit or not but if Galeota walks with no convictions, it will surely embarrass officials trying to make it look like they're cleaning up the industry. MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) The Coast Guard offloaded about $93 million of cocaine Thursday afternoon on Miami Beach. It was 1990, and Galeota transformed the place by wiring in subwoofers and bringing in New York dancers. Join the New Times community and help support Reborn behind bars. But Tony had darker secrets. Let me check.. All the main players involved appear on camera and share their stories, including law enforcement, from which the documentary takes its name; Operation Odessa was formed as a joint task force in the 1990s as American authorities worried that Colombian cartels would join together with Russian organized crime to pair drug money with Soviet military hardware. Were out there to cause an effect in the drug industry and I believe we made a little dent on it.. Banged Up Abroad - National Geographic for everyone in everywhere By the time they returned to Long Island later that night, a pimp was born. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. Galeota may not be a good man, but he is brutally honest. And she launched drunken tirades at Tony after baseball games, no matter how well the all-star shortstop performed. He was a character.. Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes. But he insists that, for once, he has done nothing wrong. "It's not an easy choice," she says. 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. "I'm used to getting my water from a rain bucket, not hot from the tap." "It was puppy love," he says. Rats, roaches, and beetles the size of Chihuahuas crawl over inmates at night. And multiple sources close to Fainberg say he was pressured to rat out Seidle but refused. It was a Foxtrot-class submarine, or Project 641 as the Soviets called it. He soon finds himself wanting to be a mobster, and starts running errands for them. Luckier still, a powerful Colombian inmate named Mauricio Ramrez recognized Galeota from his restaurant. "Last week we were supposed to have a hearing, but there was no running water in Panama City. For the most part, Doll House dancers agree. Russian mobsters learned about their comrade's successful venture, and adopted the club as a virtual office. (CBS Miami). So I was literally stepping over dead bodies of the people who had been shanked and stuff over the course of the night.. If any official asks you to pay for anything, please report them.". Update information for Tony Galeota . "The investigation was so poorly handled and rushed," says Otero, the journalist. 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. Although he knows he could receive the death penalty, the money is too tempting to resist. Tony Galeota: From Running Porky's, Miami's Most Notorious Strip Joint A tattoo of an Italian Mafioso emerges from an extra-large sleeveless T-shirt. Tony Galeota Wikipedia: Everything To Know About The Film Actor 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. Im gonna see them in f***ing hell when I arrive there., Russell says the fugitive is probably one of the most fascinating human beings Ive ever been in a room with., He adds: Theres five other films you couldve made about his life and life experiences, and yet he was charming and cultured and funny and also, then, on a dime deadly serious, not somebody that you trifle with. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. "There were beautiful girls, just walking the streets, giving blowjobs for $10 or $15.". Panama became Galeota's personal paradise. We didn't even have to have sex unless we wanted to," says a Colombian stripper named Catherine. Then once he sent me this crazy email like, Holy s***! McDonald expects those will be dismissed as well, but not for months. A judge eventually dropped the human trafficking charge, but Galeota still rotted in his sordid cell alongside insects the size of small dogs. Photo courtesy of Josh Weiss Surrounded by Colombian strippers, Galeota gives a toast during a party at the Doll House. "I lived it up in Miami," he says. His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a criminal," Tony remembers. Unfortunately, Galeota's defense isn't as simple as quoting strippers, says his lawyer, Guillermina McDonald. He sold the shop and in 2010 opened Bongos, a restaurant serving wings and beer. But the men kept in touch as Russell pursued other projects, with Tarzan sending random messages such as Christmas greetings until he finally sent the email the filmmaker had been awaiting (although he couldnt have guessed the other crazy details in the communication. Tony Galeto. They had girls in every city. He didn't stay long. Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. A year later, it was $115,000 per month.". "They shot him in the middle of the night," Galeota continues quietly, "and buried his body behind the pavilion.". Create a free family tree for yourself or for Tony Galeota and we'll search for valuable new information for you. It was like this super weird, incredibly sketchy circumstance that we came together in, Russell tells DailyMail.com of his visit to the Mad Max-like prison where at night they lock the gates. Now the stranger-than-fiction story is brought to life in new documentary Operation Odessa, a film thats closer to a roller-coaster ride than anything else and premieres on Showtime March 31. Now the locals want to get rid of guys like Galeota too, as his case has drawn national attention to corruption and human rights abuses. The Coast Guard said each one of the kilos is worth $33,000. "He was a smooth-talker. Galeota's sheer size and mob connections are the only things keeping him from getting shivved in the dark. 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I have to tell you, all my enemies are dead, and Im happy, he says in the documentary. Also read: Tony Galeota: From Running. And like the Italian-American crooner, he loved women a little too much. "We were like: 'We want to get the fuck out of here. Kristy caught Tony cheating several times, she says. "But I've always paid for everything, either with stitches in my head, concussions, or jail time. Then they pushed play on a cassette deck. Porky's: Notes from inside South Florida's sleaziest strip club His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a criminal," Tony remembers. "My wife is never going to completely trust me. Three weeks after the Doll House raid, Kristy was working the bar at Bongos when three teenagers walked into the restaurant. "My father wasn't in the mob, but his friends were," Tony says. While he, Tarzan and Juan were dealing with the Colombians and while Tony and Tarzan even got onto a Russian military naval base to tour a possible submarine for the deal the entire time the Cuban was planning to rip off the Colombians. As for his career, his only oath is that he won't let his sons follow his example. Kristy and his sons hid in a shabby, poorly protected office. This time, I'm innocent.". Panama's judicial system is outdated and overburdened, she says. But killings are common in Panama's worst prison, where the smell of raw sewage wafts over the yard, metal shackles hang from mouldy staircases, and overcrowded cells house nearly 3,500 of the Western Hemisphere's vilest murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers. He was 31. 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. TV-14 | 06.05.2013. 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. This is a guy that the FBI went after for years but could never get him. Between the restaurant and the Doll House, he was making enough to retire in five years. It is not known when he was born or his current age. Thats why you have to do this kind of story as non-fiction., The initial meeting with Tarzan, however, was hampered by the fact that the Russian mob got wind of Russells visit, he says, and they threatened Tarzans life inside the jail if he shared his full story. And I'm not asking her to.". 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. Tony and Kristy were shocked and out of a job. Now the locals want to get rid of guys like Galeota too, as his case has drawn national attention to corruption and human rights abuses. When he was 16, he knocked up his 15-year-old girlfriend at Hauppauge High School. Prosecutors say police never filed the necessary paperwork. Rising swiftly through the ranks, John buries his conscience to become a notorious Mafia hitman. Even though Yester may have suspected that the cartel was after him, he couldnt help but try to get his hands on the remaining $25 million. But the deal never happened. Tony Galeota - Historical records and family trees - MyHeritage We did outsmart the FBI, we did outsmart the DEA, we even did outsmart the court, Tarzan says in the film. The last one locked the door. Galeota tried going straight, opening a coffee shop in downtown Panama City. Michael Galeota's Obituary (1984 - 2016) Estes Park Trail-Gazette Instead, he's trapped in a labyrinthine legal system, alone and unable to speak Spanish. Once they spotted the plane, they changed course which is suspicious for us, said Boatswains Mate 1st Class, Joshua McElhaney with the Coast Guard. Instead of celebrating, he walked through the scuzzy neighbourhood until he found a shabby motel. 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. As far as he was concerned, he owned the military base. It continued at another local strip club, called Quarterbacks Playmates Lounge. Research > Galeota > Tony Galeota. SO I started with the cops and I had been kind of circling the others without knowing if it was really possible or not. Then my friend got back to me a couple days later and said there was just one question: Do you want a sub with missiles or without? , For all their camaraderie, though, the criminals opinions of one another were mixed. It was this sort of legendary underworld myth, almost, that people had been talking about for, you know, 20 years., He tells DailyMail.com: In Moscow, I got a text from Tony that said, Youve talked to the waiters; you should come meet the chef. I gave each of my kids a Rolex when they were 5 years old. ", "You hear that?" See Photos. A bartender characterized Porkys as the kind of place where you could get killed. Babushka was so notorious that FBI agents who described Tarzan as a matre d for criminals bugged the booths there. ", Instead, he found another, tighter-knit family: the mob. "We were doing fantastic, but Tarzan got bored and started living the life," Galeota explains. Marshals deported Ludwig Fainberg from Miami.
As he sweated in jail, Galeota's Panamanian empire crumbled. A 28-year-old English teacher named Tim Schrader agrees to smuggle eight kilos of heroin into the U.S. to solve his financial problems. But in South Florida, he was once a strip club king. Thats how they eventually uncovered the plot to sell a submarine to the Cali cartel, orchestrated by Tarzan, exotic car importer Juan Almeida and Nelson Tony Yester, a Cuban immigrant believed to be a trained intelligence operative who remains an international fugitive to this day. "Anthony has been in jail for more than 15 months, and a judge hasn't even heard his case yet!" In this real life Goodfellas tale, New York teen John Alite gets a job at his local Deli, a hangout for 'wise guys'. "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. He paid for her to secretly get an abortion. Filthy and crowded cell block of La Joya Prison, Panama. (Panama passed harsher penalties for human trafficking during Galeota's incarceration, but Galeota can't be prosecuted under laws that weren't in place when he was arrested. ", McDonald has succeeded, however, in chipping away at the case, persuading a judge three weeks ago to drop the trafficking charge on a technicality. Facebook Email or phone Password Forgot account? "I was 16 years old and amazed," he says. We asked them some questions and some of their information didnt quite add up, so we conducted a boarding.. Galeota also found himself in the back of an unmarked FBI car. Behind him, 12-foot-high fences topped with spools of barbed wire frame a muddy soccer field. The FBI swooped in January 21, surrounding the club and arresting Fainberg. "A family type thing, like an ale house with wings and beer," he says. Advertisement. He faced nine years in prison, but because he provided evidence against Almeida, he served just three years before being deported to his adopted homeland of Israel. Skip Ancestry main menu Main Menu and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our, running Miami's most infamous strip club, Porky's, Tony Galeota: From Running Porky's, Miami's Most Notorious Strip Joint, to Rotting in a Panamanian Jail, Sex and Drugs in the Champagne Room: The Truth About Porky's and Other Miami Strip Clubs. Guards with machine guns man rusty metal towers. "Everybody give me your money!" S10 E10 Miami Mobster Take Down. Instead, Galeota admits he's done bad things, such as. Tony Galeto. This looks great. . And when his mother was distraught over a broken washing machine, he filled the house with new appliances. Explore More. Galeota is no angelic Andy Dufresne, the main character in Shawshank who serves two decades behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. And, above all, selling it. And she launched drunken tirades at Tony after baseball games, no matter how well the all-star shortstop performed. Now the locals want to get rid of guys like Galeota too, as his case has drawn national attention to corruption and human rights abuses. Again, the charges were dropped. If Galeota is freed, it will be a major blow for Panama's prostitution crackdown. June 4, 2013 "Running a club in that neighborhood, win or lose, you've got to fight.". Watch Locked Up Abroad TV Show - Streaming Online | Nat Geo TV 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. Inside, the bar is still littered with half-empty bottles of Chivas Regal. As Shea tried to pull the panties off one of the dancers, he heard police sirens in the distance and bolted. He was a loan shark: generously offering money but punishing those who didn't pay back. Half an hour later, Galeota was guarding the door when a car rolled up with the window down. A large Russian man called Tarzan sits in an armchair against the backdrop of a cracked and stained wall, a pack of cigarettes, lighter and an ash tray on a table to his left, and he shrugs as he talks about a deal he tried to broker more than 20 years ago. Even then, however, he couldn't sleep. 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. We were approximately 24-hours on board before we got to a hidden compartment, said Castro.There was a hidden compartment and once we opened it we found all the contraband.. Bonnie also shoplifted booze to sustain her hard drinking habit. "My wife could have left me. Sheila Flynn For Dailymail.com
Two days later, he was transferred to La Joya a hellish cinder-block complex an hour outside of Panama City. We have a lot of laughs about it now," he says. Get started U.S. Yearbooks Name Index, 1890-1979. If he didnt give them the information, he was afraid that he would have gotten killed, and he was probably right., In the meantime, Yester may have been too in love with his eight-figure haul to really care and there was ultimately no retribution against his family. Galeota says the police had already gotten what they wanted: Porky's demise. This story has been shared 173,716 times. But Galeota's problems aren't completely behind him. A narc I know called me with a tip and he said, This is the craziest true-crime caper Ive ever come across in my life. Over the years, Galeota saw nearly a dozen shootings at Porky's, some of them fatal. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. "Keep your fucking hands off the girl!" source of local news and culture, Michael E. Miller But in South Florida, he was once a strip club king. Sixteen months later, the two men have yet to appear in court. When traffickers balked at the price, Yester reminded them that it could hold 40 tons of cocaine and would pay for itself quickly. But bloodshed would follow them to Miami. Everything here has a cost.". Director Robin Dashwood Stars Alex Andreas Ricardo Burgos Tony Galeota He offered protection and gave Galeota $200. Log In or Sign Up Tony Galeota See Photos Anthony Galeota See Photos Tony Kalata See Photos Tony Galeote See Photos Tony Galea See Photos Tony Galeto See Photos Tony Gullette See Photos Tony Gulotta See Photos CAKEGATE 2023: Bad Bunny's Restaurant Accused of Gobbling Birthday Girl's Cake, Neighborhood Nazi Jon Minadeo Peddles Hate by the Minute, Sen. Rubio's Permanent Daylight Savings Bill Sees Light of Day Once More, NFL Legend Ray Lewis Joins World Jai-Alai League Board of Directors, Affordable New "Micro-Units" Slated for Little River, Edgewater. You could not mislead him in any way or you could tell that the consequences could be serious, but I loved him. None of them ever appeared in the newspapers, but Hialeah police records confirm there were at least ten shootings at Porky's during Galeota's tenure. "I was always looking for their approval," he says, "but I never got that. His nightmare began in June of 2011, when police raided his Panama City strip club and arrested him and his Ukrainian partner for trafficking women and selling drugs. Juan, Tarzan and law enforcement insisted there was no way hed agree to participate in the documentary. Galeota was crammed into a sweltering holding cell with 150 others. But he insists that, for once, he has done nothing wrong. 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. Business was better, but it still wouldn't make him rich. But Tarzan a seasoned wheeler-dealer, strip club owner and former mob enforcer took it in his stride and went back to his partners with the response. "When you go to prison, it's like dying, but you get to see your own funeral," Galeota says. It was coke or pimping or messing with the wrong people.. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida 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. "Thank God I'm out," he tells New Times in his first interview since his release. "She would use shoe polish to change our driver's licenses so we could go to clubs and drink when we were 15. Galeota and his "girls" in the Doll House, before the bust. "I've done a lot of shady things in the States," he admits. He knew that the owners of a local strip club called Moulin Rouge David Fridman and Jake Lita (an Israeli wanted by German police on human-trafficking charges) had a business offer for the duo. See Photos. While another new prisoner was beaten and robbed, Galeota was untouched. 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. And so from there, Juan showed up in Moscow with a vague, half-assed agreement with Tarzan he still had gotten me to come there without agreeing to be in the film, and he put me through the paces of taking me to the sauna and sort of took me on this insane kind of underworld tour of Moscow. 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. His mother, Bonnie Gellilti, was "a bit of a criminal," Tony remembers. Docs need stars just like features need stars. In January 2017, Almeida got federally charged by the Drug Enforcement Administration with conspiracy to possess narcotics with intent to distribute. Tarzans on board and essentially youre in the movie, one way or another. Then I ended up spending a great deal of what I like to call social engineering, which is kind of like the hanging out with all these guys theyre all very secretive cats with these very sketchy kind of criminal pasts. They arrested 18 suspects, including Galeota, several strippers, and most employees. "This country is corrupt. Michael Galeota, who starred on the Disney Channel's "The Jersey" died Sunday, according to Variety. The year before, his father helped him land a job as a wedding DJ. He was recently sentenced to serve around six years in federal prison. The heavy-set Italian even signed a release. 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
I had a friend of mine living in St. Petersburg, and I said, Misha, tell me something, Tarzan real name Ludwig Fainberg says in a heavy Russian accent. He raises his eyebrows and looks upwards to the left to emphasize just how flabbergasted he was with Mishas counter question. But in South Florida, he was once a strip club king. Cops had made several controlled buys of drugs. The two were married in 1994 at a wedding full of mobsters. In the distance, La Cordillera de San Blas cuts through the Panamanian jungle like a serrated knife. As Yester laid low with the cash, cartel liaisons in the United States, aware that they had been burned, pressured Almeida to show them where Yesters relatives lived in and around Miami. The offload is a result of two successful drug interdictions in the Caribbean since August 23. "If you like to eat chocolate and you live in a chocolate factory, you're going to eat chocolate," he says. ), The narcotics charge, however, still stands despite little evidence linking Galeota to the drugs. Join Facebook to connect with Anthony Galeota and others you may know. He bought seven properties pretty much sight unseen.". "But I've always paid for everything, either with stitches in my head, concussions, or jail time. When crews were launched to investigate, the suspected smugglers threw several packages into the water. In the meantime, he's spending time with his wife and kids. According to the Coast Guard: It first took place north of the Gulf of Uraba. Facebook gives people the power. Indeed, court records show that Seidle was a target of the federal wiretapping investigation. Family members can also bring them food and clean water, however, and inmates bribe guards to smuggle in additional items. Anywhere other than La Joya, this news would be shocking. The message was that the cocaine traffickers would kill Yesters family members. Anywhere other than La Joya, this news would be shocking. 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. It had been ten years since U.S. And theyre like, F*** yeah, lets do it. Somewhere between his native Ukraine, Israel, and Russia, he'd shed his trademark long hair and changed his name to Alon Bar.