The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino by Matt Birkbeck Page B

salvage.
    Designated a “flood vehicle,” the truck was, by law, a salvage vehicle since it was submerged to the extent that vital parts such as the engine and transmission were exposed to water and damaged. Because a flood vehicle is not deemed operable, the insurance company settles the claim, and the trucks are sold at a discount.
    Across the United States, flooded trucks and autos are part of a regular trade where, following natural disasters, they are brought to different states, cleaned up and sold to unsuspecting buyers. Because the engines and transmissions were under water, the vehicles often develop electrical problems and, as Rothstein’s truck did, catch fire. The trick for a seller is getting a clear title from the state Department of Transportation. By not disclosing the damage, the sellers are committing a crime called “title washing,” which is a felony. Somehow, DeNaples was able to register his trucks with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation with clean titles, as if they were never destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. In Pennsylvania, a damaged or salvaged vehicle requires a
W
on its state title. But that wasn’t the case with the Rothstein truck. Instead, the truck was put on the lot with a $75,000 price tag and advertised with a full warranty, which for the unsuspecting buyer had already been voided by Freightliner.
    By the summer of 2006, Rothstein was still coughing and suffering from lung problems. Convinced he was sickened by the mold in the truck, he decided to share his story with investigators with the gaming board’s Bureau of Investigations and Enforcement (BIE).
    The FBI was also interested. Rothstein had originally contacted the Scranton office, but for some reason, the case was referred to the U.S. attorney in Binghamton, New York, about ninety miles north. After making several inquiries, prosecutors in Binghamton decided that titling was a state issue and referred the case back to Pennsylvania and to the state police.
    When Ralph Periandi first heard the news about the Katrina flood trucks, he was floored. It had been eighteen months since his visit with the FBI in Philadelphia, and his “Black Ops” team had come up with information on DeNaples that was long on history but short on substance. The Katrina trucks solved that issue. Around the same time the Katrina truck incident fell into his lap, the police were pointed to two other DeNaples-related cases.
    Agents from the gaming board’s own BIE learned that DeNaples had been caught on an FBI wiretap talking to Shamsud-din Ali, a Philadelphia Imam who was under investigation for racketeering and defrauding the city of Philadelphia (he was later convicted and sent to prison).
    Tensions between the state police and BIE continued to fester while Rendell sought to legitimize the gaming board’s investigators within law enforcement circles. The legislature approved several laws that allowed BIE to share criminal background information, but none were recognized by either the police, attorney general, FBI or any other law enforcement agency. Periandi explained the police position in nearly a dozen letters to Tad Decker and to other gaming board members, but to no avail, as they demanded that the police cooperate. So the BIE referral was a sort of peace offering.
    DeNaples was not the target of the Ali investigation, but he was notified by the FBI that he was inadvertently captured on the phone in a conversation recorded in July 2002. Others heard during the conversation were Jamie Brazil, a local Scranton political operative with deep ties that had stretched to the Clinton White House—he was a cousin of Hillary Clinton. The conversation with Ali centered on several matters, from DeNaples getting a plum parking spot for one of his daughters, who was about to attend college in Philadelphia, to transporting hazardous waste to his landfill.
    Despite their cold relationship, BIE nevertheless alerted the state police to the wiretap, and