tony galeota family
Seidle was never charged with a crime. Behind him, 12-foot-high fences topped with spools of barbed wire frame a muddy soccer field. Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes. If any official asks you to pay for anything, please report them.". They are willing to assume the massive risk of getting caught and going to prison for decades, because if they make just one big score they're millionaires. Miami's independent source of 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. Two days later, he was transferred to La Joya a hellish cinder-block complex an hour outside of Panama City. The lessons in crime didn't come fast enough for Galeota to stay out of trouble. According to Yester, the cartel provided an initial payment of $10 million. 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. Prostitutes were everywhere at the weddings, and when Tony asked another employee where they came from, the older kid took him to Manhattan's infamous West End. 4:00AM. Kristy caught Tony cheating several times, she says. "It is with tremendous heartfelt sadness to announce the passing of Michael James Gal When Kristy and their three sons finally arrived in June, the business became a family affair: His wife took over at Bongos, while Galeota concentrated on turning the club into a cash machine. The nightmare deepened for Galeota. But killings are common in Panama's worst prison, where the smell of raw sewage wafts over the yard, metal shackles hang from mouldy staircases, and overcrowded cells house nearly 3,500 of the Western Hemisphere's vilest murderers, rapists, and drug traffickers. 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. When traffickers balked at the price, Yester reminded them that it could hold 40 tons of cocaine and would pay for itself quickly. The American says he's giving up the strip club and brothel businesses. Research > Galeota > Tony Galeota. Its our mission down there besides search and rescue. So if you wanna do it, the time is now, and essentially, its happening one way or another, so you might be the person to author your story. "Anthony has been in jail for more than 15 months, and a judge hasn't even heard his case yet!" Police repeatedly raided the club, yet Galeota escaped unscathed every time. Galeota saw an opportunity. But bloodshed would follow them to Miami. I flew to a little island near St. Petersburg, met with a retired Russian admiral, and he took me to the navy base, says Tarzan. Sheila Flynn For Dailymail.com, Smashing the Sinaloa cartel: Major coup for DEA as agents seize $6MILLION cash, hundreds of pounds of narcotics and indict 75 across America for 'laundering drug money for El Chapo's gang', Is this proof that British aristocrat did NOT smuggle drugs into Africa? As Yester laid low with the cash, cartel liaisons in the United States, aware that they had been burned, pressured Almeida to show them where Yesters relatives lived in and around Miami. ", After bribing half the guards at La Joya, Galeota was taken to an immigration holding center in Panama City where he and four codefendants were kept for four more days. Thanks to a successful appeal, Almeida served only 18 months for his part in the sub caper. And there was absolutely no bullshit. Eventually, however, he made his way to Tarzan. If he didnt give them the information, he was afraid that he would have gotten killed, and he was probably right., In the meantime, Yester may have been too in love with his eight-figure haul to really care and there was ultimately no retribution against his family. Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. Miami mobster Tony Galeota is locked up in Panama after being framed for drug dealing and human trafficking. S10 E10 Miami Mobster Take Down. A large Russian man called Tarzan sits in an armchair against the backdrop of a cracked and stained wall, a pack of cigarettes, lighter and an ash tray on a table to his left, and he shrugs as he talks about a deal he tried to broker more than 20 years ago. Finally, on May 23, the gate on Galeota's cramped cell swung open, and he was free to go. But the deal never happened. Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1. They were concerned that Tarzan and his arriviste colleagues in crime would merge with Cuban mobsters who already used brutal, bloody force to rule Miamis underworld and create a sort of supergroup of criminality. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. And last year, Yester was finally arrested in Rome on charges unrelated to the submarine while en route to a wedding. Photo courtesy of Josh Weiss A prisoner poses with a gun smuggled into La Joya with help from guards. At the entrance to La Joya, ant hills and wasp nests surround a wooden sign. He might have sold them the submarine, taken the money and walked away with the money.. Anthony Galeota was born October 17, 1968, on Long Island. View Tony Galeota's 1940 US census record to find family members, occupation details & more. The year before, his father helped him land a job as a wedding DJ. 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. CAKEGATE 2023: Bad Bunny's Restaurant Accused of Gobbling Birthday Girl's Cake, Neighborhood Nazi Jon Minadeo Peddles Hate by the Minute, Gator Gets in on the Action at Tampa Bay Horse Race, Sen. Rubio's Permanent Daylight Savings Bill Sees Light of Day Once More, NFL Legend Ray Lewis Joins World Jai-Alai League Board of Directors, Affordable New "Micro-Units" Slated for Little River, Edgewater. And like the Italian-American crooner, he loved women a little too much. Russell did as he was told and flew to the appointed city in Africa; as soon as he walked into his hotel room, the phone rang and he was instructed to be downstairs in five minutes, where Tony whisked him off in a Porsche Cayenne and they spent several surreal days together; Tony showed the director his Russian fighter jet, which had $5million in the cockpit as the fugitives getaway plan, and told his part of the story. The submarine request, which came from Yester on behalf of the cartel, was not as outrageous as it now sounds. and help keep the future of New Times, Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our, From Porky's to Panamanian Prison: Web Extra. "Like me, he was a black sheep who could do nothing right.". A poster on the wall advertises "Lesby Show: 2 Girls per Person" for $350. 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. Gunshots flashed like fireworks in the darkness. When the bartender told Shea it was last call, he became enraged. Tony Galeota lived in 1954, at address, Massachusetts. With dark hair and pale, wide-set eyes, teenage Tony resembled a stocky Frank Sinatra. "We were like: 'We want to get the fuck out of here. Tarzan managed to get light punishment for his 1997 conviction; he rolled over on Almeida and spent 30 months behind bars before being deported to Israel, where his family had immigrated, in 1999. Nearly 300 feet long with 10 torpedo tubes (empty in this case), it was diesel but could be converted to electric for silent running. 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Galeota believes that his arrest has little to do with a renewed commitment to the law in Panama. The two were married in 1994 at a wedding full of mobsters. Days go by without water, and when it does arrive, it's turbid sludge from a nearby river. His father, Arnold, was a strait-laced sales manager but a distant and disapproving dad. 4:00AM. We've received your submission. It was 1990, and Galeota transformed the place by wiring in subwoofers and bringing in New York dancers. Then they pushed play on a cassette deck. But when he opens a new club in Panama City, the competition isn't happy and frames him for drug dealing. The drugs will be turned over to the DEA. Guards with machine guns man rusty metal towers. "A family type thing, like an ale house with wings and beer," he says. "This case has had a big impact here," says Jos Otero, a reporter for Panamanian newspaper La Prensa. We have a lot of laughs about it now," he says. Galeota is no angelic Andy Dufresne, the main character in Shawshank who serves two decades behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. "I lived it up in Miami," he says. ", - Tony Galeota: From Running Porky's, Miami's Most Notorious Strip Joint, to Rotting in a Panamanian Jail, - Sex and Drugs in the Champagne Room: The Truth About Porky's and Other Miami Strip Clubs. Again, the charges were dropped. "Whenever there is an American businessman involved in crime here in Panama, it becomes an important case. While Galeota avoided testifying, Fainberg faced 30 counts including racketeering and conspiracy to traffic cocaine and heroin. October 4, 2012 It wasn't until he ordered some Italian food and a cold Guinness that he finally felt like he was free. On Friday, May 17, Galeota got word that the judge had also dismissed the drug charge because of lack of evidence. Panama became Galeota's personal paradise. And I'm not asking her to. As chronicled in the new Showtime documentary Operation Odessa, the trio of cutthroat outlaws collaborated in 1996 to procure the ultimate weapon for Colombias money-minting Cali cocaine cartel: a military submarine. They put a hit out on him when he disappeared with the money, while Juan and Tarzan took the legal fall in Miami. The gig introduced him to a lifelong vice. But then the country's corrupt system turned on them. His name was Tony Galeota, he said, and he had run Porky's for 18 years before being locked up in Panama's worst prison for a crime he didn't commit. . Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. Inside, the bar is still littered with half-empty bottles of Chivas Regal. "No one can tell us how long he will be in there," she says. 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. Within weeks of its April 2011 opening, the club was raking in $6,000 on good nights. The value then triples to $100,000 per kilo at the street level when it's busted down for individual use. 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. According to the Coast Guard: It first took place north of the Gulf of Uraba. Galeota's enemies say that a life of sin has finally caught up with the flesh-peddler. But instead of classical music, his specialty is sex. Then she'd charge my friends $50 each," he says. He called his cartel contacts and arranged to meet them in the pickup area of the Madrid train station. "I was just numb.". These interdiction's were part of Operation Martillo, an international operation to fight illegal trafficking. 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. See Photos. "Many times, I worried about him getting killed. His attorney has warned him that prosecutors will likely appeal, so he plans to stay in Panama until his case is resolved. And she launched drunken tirades at Tony after baseball games, no matter how well the all-star shortstop performed. "She would use shoe polish to change our driver's licenses so we could go to clubs and drink when we were 15. Instead, he's trapped in a labyrinthine legal system, alone and unable to speak Spanish. And then Russell got a text message out of the blue. 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. He was hilarious and charming and garrulous, and it was as if hed stepped right out of a Scorsese movie, Russell says, adding: You know whats the funny thing people dont know about docs? ", Instead, he found another, tighter-knit family: the mob. Even then, however, he couldn't sleep. "It was a real moneymaker. And like the Italian-American crooner, he loved women a little too much. At night, the guards lock the gate and leave, turning over control of each cell block to prisoners. Explore More. 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. Rats, roaches, and beetles the size of Chihuahuas crawl over inmates at night. They were all together when Tony worked for the Russin mobsters in Porky's club as its manager. It was February 2011, and he was preparing to open the Doll House, his own strip club in Panama. He bought seven properties pretty much sight unseen.". The trio convened in Russia, and snapshots of them aboard the football-field-size sub, posing with the captain, hamming it up with one another, were shown to cartel members to make clear that the submarine sale closed with all parties naked in a bathhouse was for real. The offload is a result of two successful drug interdictions in the Caribbean since August 23. 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 Galeota arrived in Miami in the summer of 1991, the city was awash in coke, crack, and drug cash. Its Colombian dancers were in Panama on six-month tourist visas, weren't licensed as prostitutes, and weren't getting required weekly health checkups. Has a stint in Panamanian prison reformed Miami's most notorious strip club manager? A tattoo of an Italian Mafioso emerges from an extra-large sleeveless T-shirt. He ogled the women standing on corners in their underwear and high heels. Join Facebook to connect with Anthony Galeota and others you may know. Theyre nice guys [the cartel members], and I didnt ask what they needed the submarine for, Tarzan tells The Post, speaking on a crackling phone connection from Russia. Eventually, he moved two dozen ladies to Panama City. "My wife could have left me. It was this sort of legendary underworld myth, almost, that people had been talking about for, you know, 20 years., He tells DailyMail.com: In Moscow, I got a text from Tony that said, Youve talked to the waiters; you should come meet the chef. And twice they had given up. His nightmare began in June , when police raided his Panama City strip club and arrested him and his Ukrainian partner for trafficking women and selling drugs. Behind him, 12-foot-high fences topped with spools of barbed wire frame a muddy soccer field. #Torture #PanamGovernment #LaJoyaprisonPanam #PresidentVarela #Panam #Corruption. For a while, Panama's pay-to-play culture suited Galeota just fine. or. Even then, however, he couldn't sleep. And he hopes to open a place in Fort Lauderdale when he's back, Just not a strip club. Tony Galeota has a wife named Kristy Galeota, with whom he lives. Facilitating it. When Galeota stood up, he checked his T-shirt for bullet holes, but found none. MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) The Coast Guard offloaded about $93 million of cocaine Thursday afternoon on Miami Beach. Find your friends on Facebook. Instead of celebrating, he walked through the scuzzy neighborhood until he found a shabby motel. She's forgiven me, for the most part. If only there were a place where prostitution was legal, he thought, a city full of beautiful women like Miami, but no rules. I have to tell you, all my enemies are dead, and Im happy, he says in the documentary. 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. 16:56 GMT 13 Mar 2018 local news and culture, Michael E. Miller Bonnie also shoplifted booze to sustain her hard drinking habit. Here, Galeota is just one of 500 prisoners crammed into a filthy cell block designed to hold 200 people. And multiple sources close to Fainberg say he was pressured to rat out Seidle but refused. "There was no transportation, no cops, no nothing," he says. In describing Tarzan, Almeida says in the film, He struck me as an oddball. Tarzan classifies Almeida as a guy who had two drinks and thought he was Tony Montana. As for movie-star handsome, hooker-loving Yesters first impression of Tarzan: I said, This f- -king guy is trouble. Thirty minutes later, I loved the trouble., Abetted by the tumultuous state of the former Soviet Union the ruble was completely devalued and state-owned resources went to whomever had the most firepower gaining access to the submarine was surprisingly easy. Born on June 3, 1924 at Hartford. 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. He paid for her to secretly get an abortion. Somewhere between his native Ukraine, Israel, and Russia, he'd shed his trademark long hair and changed his name to Alon Bar. They arrested 18 suspects, including Galeota, several strippers, and most employees. He was 31. The smugglers boat was destroyed because it was a hazard to navigation. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Thanks for contacting us. Galeota is one of several Americans locked up here. "These guys were into just about everything," Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Fernandez said at the time. We break down the best movies and series to watch in November in theaters and streaming. "She would use shoe polish to change our driver's licenses so we could go to clubs and drink when we were 15. Log In. 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. "She hasn't worked for 15 years. Luckier still, a powerful Colombian inmate named Mauricio Ramrez recognized Galeota from his restaurant. "Whenever there is an American businessman involved in crime here in Panama, it becomes an important case. La Joya is flush with contraband, from cell phones and cigarettes to marijuana and handguns all of it brought in with the complicity of corrupt guards. But he insists that, for once, he has done nothing wrong. Bonnie also shoplifted booze to sustain her hard drinking habit. Advertisement. Nobody was impressed more than Kristy Sharpe, an 18-year-old waitress from Orlando with blond hair, blue eyes, and lightly freckled skin. I just called a friend who had a friend and asked if he could get us a sub. Instead, he's trapped in a labyrinthine legal system, alone and unable to speak Spanish. Guards with machine guns man rusty metal towers. Inside the prison, the sign is a running joke. "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. Running an underworld operation in Cocaine Cowboys-era Miami wasn't an easy gig. "They would describe what they looked like," Galeota says. Anthony Galeota was born October 17, 1968, on Long Island. Like a concert pianist, Tony Galeota has spent his life honing a single skill since he was a teenager. "I don't care how strong you are; that's going to affect your marriage," she says. Wrongly imprisoned. Although he knows he could receive the death penalty, the money is too tempting to resist. Inmates are fed bread and cheese for breakfast and rice (sometimes beans) for lunch and dinner. Cops had made several controlled buys of drugs. And she launched drunken tirades at Tony after baseball games, no matter how well the all-star shortstop performed. By the mid-'90s, Galeota had turned Porky's into a one-stop shop for strippers, sex, and serious drugs. The eight crew members aboard the Hope II and the vessel were taken into custody and will be turned over to U.S. officials for further investigation. He and Kristy struck up an unlikely romance. Controlling it. Biography. "I just watched Luis blow a guy away," Galeota heard himself say on tape. ", "You hear that?" Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1. He'd already invested in seven apartments in Panama City and rented a storefront on the capital's seediest street, where prostitution was legal. Greed got the better of him. Galeota's imprisonment abroad marks the end of one of Miami's most outrageous eras, when Russian and Colombian cartels stocked strip clubs with cheap prostitutes and cheaper cocaine. But Tony had darker secrets. We were approximately 24-hours on board before we got to a hidden compartment, said Castro.There was a hidden compartment and once we opened it we found all the contraband.. But in South Florida, he was once a strip club king. Anthony Galeota was born October 17, 1968, on Long Island. But the story of how the documentary got made is nearly as crazy as the caper plot itself. "There was probably a lot more fun going on at Porky's than we even knew of," says one Hialeah police officer who asked not to be identified. And so from there, Juan showed up in Moscow with a vague, half-assed agreement with Tarzan he still had gotten me to come there without agreeing to be in the film, and he put me through the paces of taking me to the sauna and sort of took me on this insane kind of underworld tour of Moscow. 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 not until she discovered he'd been dating a former Porky's stripper for more than two years did she threaten to divorce him in 2009. Galeota also found himself in the back of an unmarked FBI car. ), Right about the time my last film was coming out, he emailed me and said, I did a jailbreak from Panama, traveled to Costa Rica, on to Cuba and then got repatriated to Moscow Im ready to do the movie, Russell says. Is this possible, to buy a military submarine - used one? And he said, What a question! Galeota is one of several Americans locked up here. Facebook gives people the power. "Maybe we didn't have the permits we were supposed to have, but we're foreigners who didn't understand the rules.". The charismatic teenager sold the stolen suits or electronics at strip clubs or used-car lots. Galeota has seen several murders. Russian immigrant Ludwig Fainberg, a.k.a. Galeota's wife Kristy comments "Porky's was definitely a place you could get killed." I gave each of my kids a Rolex when they were 5 years old. One scammer stole from another scammer; of course I accept it, he says. "I've been in this business my whole life. And so it was extraordinary, where sort of person after person was this larger-than-life character, from Fat Tony the bartender to Tony Yester the spy-turned-dope-dealer-turned-fugitive. More at IMDbPro Contact Info: View agent, publicist, legal on IMDbPro. Anthony Galeota was born October 17, 1968, on Long Island. "Everybody give me your money!" ", 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. See also: "From Porky's to Panamanian Prison: Web Extra.". 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. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. "I was always looking for their approval," he says, "but I never got that. Galeota examines a bruise from a prison fight in La Joya. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. In an instant, Galeota's meaty hand was around the customer's neck, shoving him outside. CAKEGATE 2023: Bad Bunny's Restaurant Accused of Gobbling Birthday Girl's Cake, Neighborhood Nazi Jon Minadeo Peddles Hate by the Minute, Sen. Rubio's Permanent Daylight Savings Bill Sees Light of Day Once More, NFL Legend Ray Lewis Joins World Jai-Alai League Board of Directors, Affordable New "Micro-Units" Slated for Little River, Edgewater. Tony Galeto. He raises his eyebrows and looks upwards to the left to emphasize just how flabbergasted he was with Mishas counter question. When he left to open a bona fide brothel in Panama, Galeota thought the country's lax prostitution laws would make him rich. Miami's underworld may still be seedy, but it has outsourced much of its shadiness to nearby Third-World countries such as Panama. The two ran Porky's for another decade after Fainberg's deportation.