Mafia death threat to UK newspaper boss

By Nigel Rosser, Evening Standard
17 February 2005

The Mafia issued death threats against Richard Desmond, the owner of Express Newspapers, in a dispute over pornographic phone lines, according to court documents.

A member of the Gambino crime family travelled to London to issue a warning to Mr Desmond, who had struck a deal to carry adverts for adult chat lines in his pornographic magazines.

The Brooklyn court heard that one of Desmond's employees was told: "We want our money back. If your boss sets foot here, he's a dead man."

Richard Martino, 45, has admitted personally extorting money from Mr Desmond by threatening force in a London hotel in

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/16675084?source=Evening%20Standard

SAME headline could have applied to Ken Livingstone's recent rant against the Evening Standard....

David Teather in New York and Dan Milmo
Thursday February 17, 2005
The Guardian

The documents allege that soon after the meeting, according to the FBI's sources, a senior executive at Mr Desmond's publishing group, Northern and Shell, was pistol-whipped and had a Taser-style gun applied to his testicles while on trip to New York.

...

The documents form part of an investigation into a wide-ranging telephone and internet sex scam allegedly perpetrated by Martino and a string of associates. Martino is alleged to have been inducted into the Gambino family in 1990 and served in the "crew" of Salvatore LoCascio, whose father was convicted of racketeering with Gotti in 1992.

Martino and others are alleged to have placed unauthorised charges on users' phone bills and credit cards in one of the biggest consumer frauds in American history. They allegedly cheated consumers out of up to $600,000 a day.

According to the charges read out in a Brooklyn court on Monday, the extortion count stemmed from a threat "to damage Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell business if Desmond or any Northern and Shell employees ever attempted again to do business in the United States".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1416268,00.html

DESMOND is a major donor to Poodle's Labor Party...