New York Paralegal Blog

A Staten Island man was arrested earlier this morning on charges arising out of his alleged operation of a $12 million Ponzi scheme from 2007 to 2010. Joseph Mazella, the founder and president of the Great Atlantic Group, Inc., a Staten Island-based real estate and financial consulting company, was charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in a federal indictment that was unsealed earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn. The case has been assigned to Chief United States District Court Judge Carol B. Amon. The defendant is scheduled to be arraigned later today before United States Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom at the United States Courthouse, 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn, New York. The charges were announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office. As alleged in the indictment, Mazella solicited investmen...

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that JOSEPH WATTS, a longtime associate of the Gambino Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra (the "Gambino Family"), pled guilty this morning before U.S. District Judge COLLEEN MCMAHON to a two-count Superseding Information that charges WATTS with participating in murder and assault conspiracies in order to maintain and increase his influence in the Gambino Family. According to the Information, the plea proceeding, and the record of the case: WATTS was a close associate of one-time Gambino Family Boss JOHN A. GOTTI and others. Although WATTS was never formally inducted into the Gambino Family as a "made" member because of his non-Italian lineage, he was afforded the status of a Gambino Family capo.