"We were like: 'We want to get the fuck out of here. So we met with a realtor, got high, and Tony got stupid with money. He ogled the women standing on corners in their underwear and high heels. Dancers with names like Baby Doll, Tipsie, Trixie, and Crme offered to have sex with the cops for as little as $150, court records show. That didnt stop Russell from trying to get them on board with doing a film about the submarine deal. When crews were launched to investigate, the suspected smugglers threw several packages into the water. Thousands of teachers walk out demanding pay, funding incr Canadian teacher with size-Z prosthetic breasts placed on paid leave, What's next for Buster Murdaugh after dad's murder conviction, life sentence, US home prices just did something they haven't done since 2012, Rebel Wilson says Meghan Markle isnt as naturally warm as Prince Harry, Kristen Doute supports Ariana Madix amid mutual ex Tom Sandovals scandal, Celeb-loved jewelry brand Dorsey drops dazzling new styles, Undertaker transforms coffin into barbecue grill, Tom Sizemore And The Dangerous Burden of Desperation, Tom Sandoval breaks silence on Ariana Madix split amid cheating claims. This time, I'm innocent.". "It's not an easy choice," she says. The club was very successful. The charismatic teenager sold the stolen suits or electronics at strip clubs or used-car lots. Anywhere other than La Joya, this news would be shocking. "If you like to eat chocolate and you live in a chocolate factory, you're going to eat chocolate," he says. Episode 5: Spain /Sold My Soul Indeed, Havana Club has already reopened. "It is with tremendous heartfelt sadness to announce the passing of Michael James. "I'm used to getting my water from a rain bucket, not hot from the tap." A judge eventually dropped the human trafficking charge, but Galeota still rotted in his sordid cell alongside insects the size of small dogs. "Their connections were bigger than ours," he says. More than anything, Galeota is grateful that his family kept faith in him. He was a big, big fish.". As Shea tried to pull the panties off one of the dancers, he heard police sirens in the distance and bolted. And, above all, selling it. We've received your submission. "A family type thing, like an ale house with wings and beer," he says. "It was home to a lot of shrewd and nefarious characters.". It continued at another local strip club, called Quarterbacks Playmates Lounge. "These guys were into just about everything," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Fernandez said at the time. "My father wasn't in the mob, but his friends were," Tony says. #Torture #PanamGovernment #LaJoyaprisonPanam #PresidentVarela #Panam #Corruption. Its a lot of f- -king paper. People named Tony Galeota Find your friends on Facebook Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. "We treated the women well.". "They shot him in the middle of the night," Galeota continues quietly, "and buried his body behind the pavilion.". Galeota yelled. 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. When Seidle died in 2008, Porky's political protection followed the 82-year-old to the grave. I told Juan, I said, Hey. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our, From Porky's to Panamanian Prison: Web Extra. Galeota saw an opportunity. one of the kids shouted as he pulled a handkerchief over his face and wildly swung a revolver. "I thought I would kick up my heels together like 'Oh my God, I'm finally out,'" he says. And, above all, selling it. Use tab to navigate through the menu items. 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. Almeida was a specialist in obtaining black-market goods for status-crazed drug dealers. Miami's underworld may still be seedy, but it has outsourced much of its shadiness to nearby Third-World countries such as Panama. In the meantime, he's spending time with his wife and kids. Yester told the Colombians that theyd have to pay $35 million for the vessel, even though Tarzan had talked the price down to $5.5 million plus just $600 for a crew to pilot it to Colombia. "I've done a lot of shady things in the States," he admits. I definitely want his number and so I began chasing it from there and actually jumped on a plane, went down and smuggled myself into this Panamanian prison to meet with him.. A year later, it was $115,000 per month.". Galeota already lived according to a gangster's code. (CBS Miami). 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. "I lived it up in Miami," he says. "That's the goal," is all he'll offer. "Like me, he was a black sheep who could do nothing right.". 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. The two ran Porky's for another decade after Fainberg's deportation. 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. The heavy-set Italian even signed a release. Over the course of three months, undercover detectives made dozens of visits, tallying up a vivid snapshot of the club: "15 purchases of cocaine, four purchases of MDMA, one purchase of Xanax, one purchase of marijuana, 18 solicitations for prostitution, [and] 20 lewd acts.". The value then triples to $100,000 per kilo at the street level when it's busted down for individual use. 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. We break down the best movies and series to watch in November in theaters and streaming. ", http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-10-04/news/tony-galeota-from-running-porky-s-miami-s-most-notorious-strip-joint-to-rotting-in-a-panamanian-jail/full/. independent local journalism in Miami. But the deal never happened. 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. 4:00AM. "This case has had a big impact here," says Jos Otero, a reporter for Panamanian newspaper La Prensa. "But I did it for my child.". Operation Odessa - From the Heart Productions Inc "My wife can say she has regrets, but that's bullshit," he says. Toni Galeota Profiles | Facebook But he insists that, for once, he has done nothing wrong. 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. Everybody wanted to make money. "It is with tremendous heartfelt sadness to announce the passing of Michael James Galeota," Jan. 10, reads a statement on a Go Fund Me page, created by Galeota's family to raise money for his burial. This time, I'm innocent.". ", McDonald has succeeded, however, in chipping away at the case, persuading a judge three weeks ago to drop the trafficking charge on a technicality. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. But it was abundantly clear that the key figure in the deal was Yester and his story would be particularly illuminating though the CIA, DEA and FBI had been after him, without success, for more than two decades. Galeota's enemies say that a life of sin has finally caught up with the flesh-peddler. Joseph GALEOTA Obituary (2011) - Willimantic, CT - Hartford Courant Galeota's sheer size and mob connections are the only things keeping him from getting shivved in the dark. But Galeota was convinced the cops were bluffing and refused to cooperate. 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 told them he could get them the submarine for $35million, but said hes need the money in installments; when they gave him the first $10million, he kept the money for himself and disappeared. Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. "Everybody give me your money!" We travelled all the time. Tarzan, got his first job in America as an enforcer for the Gambino crime family. "But I've always paid for everything, either with stitches in my head, concussions, or jail time. Jimmy Galeota has spent the last month-and-a-half grieving his older brother Michael's death - but perhaps the most difficult part of it all to swallow has been the bizarre circumstances that. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our. But Tony had darker secrets. And then Russell got a text message out of the blue. Log In. Panamanian police had been casing the Doll House, Moulin Rouge, and another joint, called Havana Club, for weeks. Filmography (by Job) Trailers and Videos. local news and culture, Michael E. Miller "Keep your fucking hands off the girl!" Controlling it. "We were like: 'We want to get the fuck out of here. Running an underworld operation in Cocaine Cowboys-era Miami wasn't an easy gig. Biography. But when Galeota was arrested June 19, 2011, and charged with trafficking drugs and women, he was just as innocent as Stephen King's saintly inmate. Even then, however, he couldn't sleep. We have a lot of laughs about it now," he says. It is not known when he was born or his current age. But Galeota's plan would soon go catastrophically wrong. "My wife could have left me. 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. 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. 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. "The investigation was so poorly handled and rushed," says Otero, the journalist. But when Galeota was arrested June 19, 2011, and charged with trafficking drugs and women, he was just as innocent as Stephen King's saintly inmate. It was a caper, for sure., He says: Tarzan was the lynchpin to it, because it was his story. Locked Up Abroad 151M subscribers Miami mobster Tony Galeota is a strip-club supremo. Galeota jumped at the deal. During the Doll House raid, they found marked bills in the register and several grams of pot on a promoter. Tony Galeto. Tony Galeota has a wife named Kristy Galeota, with whom he lives. But then the country's corrupt system turned on them. If only there were a place where prostitution was legal, he thought, a city full of beautiful women like Miami, but no rules. When Galeota arrived, his mobster reputation preceded him. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. While Galeota avoided testifying, Fainberg faced 30 counts including racketeering and conspiracy to traffic cocaine and heroin. When he discovered he was about to be subpoenaed, he withdrew $2,500 from the bank and boarded a two-week Caribbean cruise. In January 2017, Almeida got federally charged by the Drug Enforcement Administration with conspiracy to possess narcotics with intent to distribute. As far as he was concerned, he owned the military base. A poster on the wall advertises "Lesby Show: 2 Girls per Person" for $350. Again, the charges were dropped. Anthony Jr. was taken to a juvenile detention center that wasn't much better. In an instant, Galeota's meaty hand was around the customer's neck, shoving him outside. The submarine request, which came from Yester on behalf of the cartel, was not as outrageous as it now sounds. (A New York Police Department spokesman says records from that far back aren't available.) Anthony Galeota was born October 17, 1968, on Long Island. Twice, American authorities had investigated Galeota. Photo Gallery. He didn't stay long. Back in South Florida, Kristy Galeota vacillates between outrage and empathy for her husband. Join the New Times community and help support independent Shea fatally blasted bouncer Richard Jimenez in the face and then opened fire on the dancers, shooting one in the chest and another in the head. Both Juan and Tarzan shared with Russell how they had graduated from buying helicopters, motorcycles and cars for the cartel from Russia to pursuing a submarine for the drugrunners. But instead of classical music, his specialty is sex. Banged Up Abroad - National Geographic for everyone in everywhere People named Tony Goleta. Instead, Galeota admits he's done bad things, such as. ", Tony Galeota and fellow defendant Alon "Tarzan" Bar during better days in their Panama club The Doll House, After bribing half the guards at La Joya, Galeota was taken to an immigration holding center in Panama City where he and four co-defendants were kept for four more days. 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. Eventually, however, he made his way to Tarzan. Juan felt like he had no choice, says Russell. A dozen plainclothes cops poured in with pistols drawn. It was a Foxtrot-class submarine, or Project 641 as the Soviets called it. It was a lot of kind of romancing them and explaining to them, hey, this is your chance to tell your story on kind of a broad canvas. Log In or Sign Up Tonia Galeota See Photos Antonio Galeota See Photos Tony Galeota See Photos Toni Galea See Photos Toni Colletto See Photos Toni Torres Galea He called his cartel contacts and arranged to meet them in the pickup area of the Madrid train station. Miami's independent source of But killings are common in Panama's worst prison, where the smell of raw sewage wafts over the yard, metal shackles hang from moldy staircases, and overcrowded cells house nearly 3,500 of the Western Hemisphere's vilest murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers. The entire situation sounds like something dreamed up for a Miami Vice-inspired action thriller, but it actually happened in the 1990s and the trio came very close to pulling it off before one of them pocketed the cartels millions and went on the run. He turned himself in a few days later, but the lounge's owner decided to close the cursed club. Instead of celebrating, he walked through the scuzzy neighborhood until he found a shabby motel. 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. It's not quite Shawshank Redemption, but when Tony Galeota walked out of a Panama City jail cell May 23, it was still a small serving of justice. And I'm not asking her to.". Police again surrounded Porky's in the early hours of May 9, 2009. Nearly 300 feet long with 10 torpedo tubes (empty in this case), it was diesel but could be converted to electric for silent running. "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. "I lived it up in Miami," he says. He escaped with his life and went on the run, aiming to avoid the cartel, Interpol and US law enforcers. As for his career, his only oath is that he won't let his sons follow his example. 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. It wasn't until he ordered some Italian food and a cold Guinness that he finally felt like he was free. He offered protection and gave Galeota $200. All the services here are free. Galeota examines a bruise from a prison fight in La Joya. 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. They arrested 18 suspects, including Galeota, several strippers, and most employees. On Friday, May 17, Galeota got word that the judge had also dismissed the drug charge because of lack of evidence. But bloodshed would follow them to Miami. 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. But his mind was on another kind of riches. Miami playboy, Russian gangster and Cuban spy tried to buy submarine Apparently knowing all too well how things would shake out, Yester decided to screw his partners and take off for Amsterdam with the first $10 million. Locked up in one of the world's worst prisons, Tony has to prove his innocence and attempt an audacious escape. Nobody was impressed more than Kristy Sharpe, an 18-year-old waitress from Orlando with blond hair, blue eyes, and lightly freckled skin. Join the New Times community and help support So I was literally stepping over dead bodies of the people who had been shanked and stuff over the course of the night.. A tattoo of an Italian Mafioso emerges from an extra-large sleeveless T-shirt. Thanks to a successful appeal, Almeida served only 18 months for his part in the sub caper. ", Instead, he found another, tighter-knit family: the mob. We have a lot of laughs about it now," he says. Research > Galeota > Tony Galeota. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. Days go by without water, and when it does arrive, it's turbid sludge from a nearby river. 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. "We just meshed," she says. Michael Galeota Obituary (1984 - 2016) - Pontotoc, MS - Pontotoc Progress By now, she knows of his many infidelities, including that he lived and slept with some of the girls at the Doll House. They taught him the rules, the most important of which Galeota took to heart: "You can have your girlfriends on the side," he remembers hearing, "but never leave your wife.". I said, Thank you, Cali cartel. I hoped to walk away from the deal with $10 million.. "My father wasn't in the mob, but his friends were," Tony says. He answered only to property owner William Seidle, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee who ran a chain of car dealerships. Like a concert pianist, Tony Galeota has spent his life honing a single skill since he was a teenager. Police repeatedly raided the club, yet Galeota escaped unscathed every time. "That clean, business-friendly, postcard-Panama bullshit is just a faade," Galeota says. "That's obstruction of justice.". The gig introduced him to a lifelong vice. Skip Ancestry main menu Main Menu "She would use shoe polish to change our driver's licenses so we could go to clubs and drink when we were 15. And that's why drug traffickers are in the business - take something that starts off with a value of $5,000 and when you're done selling it at the retail level the value has skyrocketed. October 4, 2012 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 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. independent local journalism in Miami. local news and culture, Michael E. Miller "They shot him in the middle of the night," Galeota continues quietly, "and buried his body behind the pavilion.". Galeota believes that his arrest has little to do with a renewed commitment to the law in Panama. His school friends didn't believe him, so a few days later he sneaked out, stole his mom's minivan, and drove around the neighborhood loading up with other teens. I know its gonna be a strange question. Behind him, 12-foot-high fences topped with spools of barbed wire frame a muddy soccer field.
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