Nicodemo Scarfo

Police were investigating the death of a 26-year-old woman found Saturday in the bathroom of a Center City condo owned by high-profile criminal defense lawyer A. Charles Peruto Jr. A maintenance worker found the woman unresponsive just after 10 a.m. in the building at South 20th Street and Delancey Place, said Officer Tanya Little, a Philadelphia police spokeswoman. The woman, whose identity police did not immediately release, was pronounced dead shortly before 10:30. A police source identified the woman as Julia Law. Law described herself as working for the Peruto firm as a paralegal, according to her profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. and 28 other reputed mob figures, including the acting boss of the Scarfo crime family, were arrested yesterday after a yearlong undercover investigation propelled by a mob informant who secretly recorded dozens of meetings - including his own Mafia initiation ceremony. The informant, who wore a body wire, recorded more than 380 hours of conversations between the suspects about extortions, loan-sharking, gambling, drug deals and racketeering, authorities said.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., 23, with two men, arrives for hearing on charges that he beat and kicked a woman in Hahnemann Hospital Friday.

SURE, BULLETS were flying in the barroom at Dante & Luigi's on Halloween night in 1989, when a masked man pulled a gun out of his trick-or-treat bag and starting pumping round after round into Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., son of the former Philadelphia mob boss. Before that, the Italian restaurant at 10th and Catharine streets was a hangout for Angelo Bruno, the mob boss who was killed outside his Snyder Avenue home in 1980 by a hitman with a shotgun. You'll still see a wiseguy having dinner there from time to time.

These photographs, collected by the FBI, were presented as evidence by federal prosecutors during the racketeering trial of Nicodemo Scarfo and his associates. They were taken throughout the 1980s by law enforcement agents or by Scarfo associates.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. (center), accompanied by two unidentified men, enters City Hall this morning for a hearing on charges that he beat a woman in a Hahnemann Hospital elevator on Nov. 4. The hearing was postponed until Jan. 24 because Scarfo's attorney is in federal court defending Scarfo's father, who is on trial on racketeering charges. Young Scarfo remains free on $100,000 bail.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. (right), accompanied by an unidentified companion, in City Hall this morning for his often-postponed preliminary hearing on assault charges he faces in the beating of a woman in a Hahnemann University Hospital last November. He didn't stay long. The hearing, originally scheduled for last January and delayed several times since then, was put off until Feb. 8 because Scarfo's attorney is busy elsewhere.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., seriously wounded in a Halloween assassination attempt, is jokingly telling hospital visitors that he is "holier than thou," sources said yesterday. Scarfo's condition was upgraded from fair to stable yesterday, according to a spokesman for Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Scarfo, son of the imprisoned Philadelphia mob boss, is recovering from nine bullet wounds to his neck, chest and left arm. Meanwhile, Charles Iannece Jr. - identified as the man who kissed Scarfo's cheek in greeting just minutes before he was shot by a masked gunman - took a polygraph test Tuesday night to back up his contention that he had nothing to do with the shooting.

Despite what authorities said was an open-ended contract on his life, mob informant Mario "Sonny" Riccobene couldn't stay away from the Philadelphia area. Thursday night, in the parking lot behind a diner in the tiny South Jersey borough of Brooklawn, that contract was fulfilled. Riccobene, 60, the silver-haired half-brother of longtime Philadelphia mobster Harry "The Hunchback" Riccobene, was found shot to death at the wheel of his Ford Taurus station wagon at 7:11 p.m. when patrons of the Brooklawn Diner heard the engine racing and went to investigate.

Reputed mobster Albert "Reds" Pontani, believed by some law enforcement officials to be the caretaker boss of the Nicodemo Scarfo organized-crime family, was ordered held without bail yesterday on federal drug, conspiracy, loan-sharking and extortion charges. U.S. Magistrate John Devine denied a request for bail after a federal prosecutor argued that Pontani, 60, was a "danger to the community" and posed a potential risk of flight if set free. In asking for "reasonable bail," Pontani's court-appointed attorney, Philip J. Moran, argued that the government had failed to substantiate either allegation and had offered little evidence to support the charges contained in the indictment.

SURE, BULLETS were flying in the barroom at Dante & Luigi's on Halloween night in 1989, when a masked man pulled a gun out of his trick-or-treat bag and starting pumping round after round into Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., son of the former Philadelphia mob boss. Before that, the Italian restaurant at 10th and Catharine streets was a hangout for Angelo Bruno, the mob boss who was killed outside his Snyder Avenue home in 1980 by a hitman with a shotgun. You'll still see a wiseguy having dinner there from time to time.

Nicodemo S. Scarfo was denied bail Monday in a multimillion-dollar fraud case, but he may be released soon from solitary confinement while awaiting trial. Following a brief hearing in Camden, U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler accepted prosecution arguments that Scarfo, a made member of the Lucchese crime family, was a danger to the community and should remain behind bars while awaiting trial on racketeering, conspiracy, fraud, and money-laundering charges. But Kugler urged the U.S. Attorney's Office to lift a request that Scarfo remain in a Special Housing Unit at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia after Scarfo said he wanted to be in general prison population.

The grandson of notorious Philadelphia mobster Harry "The Hunchback" Riccobene was gunned down outside his South Philadelphia home early Thursday. Rocco Maniscalco, 38, had just watched Wednesday night's Flyers game at the Wolf Street Cafe when he walked the short block home to his rowhouse on Wolf near Colorado. Outside his home, an armed man leaped from the shadows and fired at least 10 times, hitting Maniscalco repeatedly, police said. He died on the scene about 1:20 a.m. The gunman, a thin white man in a white shirt, fled in a dark-colored SUV, police said.

Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. was targeted, but never charged, in a federal racketeering case that resulted in the conviction last week of North Jersey mobster Andrew Merola, one of his best friends and closest underworld allies. Scarfo, son of jailed Philadelphia-South Jersey mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, was under surveillance and his phones were wiretapped during the investigation, which began about five years ago. "He was someone we were interested in," said Robert Buccino, chief of detectives for the Union County Prosecutor's Office, which initiated the probe.

A federal bankruptcy trustee in Dallas has put a dollar figure on a multistate financial-fraud investigation linked to mobster Nicodemo S. Scarfo and Elkins Park business consultant Salvatore Pelullo. The trustee has alleged the two men, through companies they controlled, took at least $4.86 million out of FirstPlus Financial Group, a company based in Irving, Texas. Those business deals are the focus of the ongoing fraud investigation by the FBI, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.

Wiretapped conversations from an organized-crime investigation in North Jersey could help federal authorities build their case against mobster Nicodemo S. Scarfo and Elkins Park businessman Salvatore Pelullo in an unrelated financial-fraud probe that stretches from Philadelphia to Texas. While not charged in the North Jersey case, Scarfo and Pelullo were picked up on several recorded conversations last year as authorities gathered evidence of gambling, extortion and racketeering by members of the Gambino and Lucchese crime families.

FBI agents fanned out across New Jersey yesterday in two high-profile organized crime cases, one linked to a sweeping racketeering indictment and the other to a financial investigation in which the son of jailed mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo appears to be a prime target. FBI agents seized records and documents from the Atlantic County home of Nicodemo S. Scarfo, 42, son of the notorious former Philadelphia/South Jersey mob kingpin. After serving search warrants, agents also took records from several other locations, including the home of Scarfo's ex-wife and from his lawyer's office in Cherry Hill.