'Wahlbergers' Cast Member Mines Rich Material for 'Boston Mob Wives' Show
Henry "Nacho" Laun of "Wahlbergers" hosts casting call for characters.
— -- Boston’s mob might be decimated, but the underworld is not dead, especially when infamous gangsters' long-suffering wives and girlfriends still have stories to tell.
At least that's what actor and first-time producer Henry “Nacho” Laun, a cast member of the hit A&E reality TV show “Wahlbergers.” Laun is famous for being an original member of Mark Wahlberg’s entourage. This Saturday, he is holding a casting call for mob wives that could rival the brazen casts of the hit reality series of the same name currently set in New York and Chicago.
“Some of these New York and Chicago mob wives are so fake they would melt in the heat. Our women are real and have raw personality," he told ABC News in an exclusive interview today. “Behind every powerful man is a strong woman. Behind every Boston mobster is a strong, and probably long-suffering woman. Whether it’s a wife or a goumadah [girlfriend on the side], they have a story to tell.”
The casting call will be held this Saturday at the Four Points Sheraton in Revere -- a city just north of Boston that is known throughout New England for having cans of Aqua Net hairspray to shellac high-hairdos into place, a place where parachute pants never went out of style and leopard print pumps are a necessity on every woman’s fashion list.
Revere also happens to be home to the man that federal prosecutors call the acting boss of the New England crime family, 72-year-old Antonio L. “Crazy Eyes” Spagnolo, a reputed old-time mafioso who was allegedly among the attendees of a mob initiation ceremony secretly bugged by the FBI in 1989.
Spagnolo and his codefendant Pryce “Stretch” Quintina, also of Revere, are slated to go on trial in the coming weeks on federal charges that they extorted the Revere Moose Lodge for monies earned by illegal “joker poker” machines Spagnolo’s company put in the social club, according to a federal indictment. Both pleaded not guilty.
Spagnolo, photographed by the Boston Globe leaving federal court in blue jeans and a sweatshirt after his arraignment last year, is hardly representative of the yesteryear of Boston organized crime. His outfit alone suggested the Boston mob is a fragmented, frumpier version of its glory days.
Former New England crime boss Raymond Patriarca, a dapper don who counted Frank Sinatra among his friends, allegedly inducted Spagnolo and Quintini into the mob at a Mafia initiation ceremony secretly bugged by the FBI in 1989.
Patriarca was among the mob bosses who ran the nation’s underworld activities and was among the Mafia leaders who attended the 1957 historic underworld summit in Apalachin, N.Y., alongside Carlo Gambino, Joe Bonanno and Vito Genovese to divvy up the proceeds from bootlegging and gaming scams run by Albert Anastasia. The sharply-dressed Patriarca died two decades ago, and the New England mob began gasping its last breaths.
In recent years the FBI has indicted every one of Patriarca’s alleged successors.
In 2012, former boss Anthony L. DiNunzio was sentenced to 78 months in prison for racketeering. He had replaced his brother, federal prosecutors said, Carmen “The Big Cheese” DiNunzio, who is serving a sentence on federal bribery charges connected to Boston’s Big Dig tunnel project.
The New England boss before the Big Cheese, according to the federal prosecutors, Luigi “Baby Shanks” Manocchio, is serving five years for extorting strip clubs.
Even East Boston’s Mark Rossetti, once one of the most feared captains in the New England mob, is in prison in Massachusetts for extortion and bookmaking and has since been identified as a longtime FBI cooperator, just like infamous Irish mobster James "Whitey" Bulger.
Henry “Nacho” Laun said that the Boston mob’s geriatric ranks are not a concern. “Being a made guy makes you a target. It might seem like the mob is done, everyone’s ratted. But there are plenty of wives out there, there are guys getting out of jail and running businesses."
"Believe me, Boston Mob Wives will give a lot of women a chance to speak out." he added.
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