Cheat Sheet 60, FBI Files: Is Coia Son Like Father?

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Monday, October 03, 2016

GoLocalProv News Team

Each week accompanying the segments of the FBI files on Raymond Patriarca and expert analysis on the documents released, GoLocal provides a “cheat sheet” of some of the key elements from the documents.

Make no mistake about it, the files are layered with information about a time where the scope and reach of the Patriarca crime family permeated nearly every aspect of life in New England.

This week is focused on the case of the FBI against Arthur E. Coia.

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In 1999, Michael Powell of the Washington Post wrote about the Coia’s (both father Arthur E. and his son Arthur) and their role as leaders of the Laborers’ International, “The senior Coia also was identified in federal racketeering reports as a business associate of Raymond L.S. Patriarca Sr., who, as it happens, was CEO of the New England chapter of La Cosa Nostra. Patriarca had a face of pure and cool menace. In the early 1960s, the FBI eavesdropped as Patriarca Sr. talked about his business strategy. Faced with competition, he explained, he found it helpful to "hit them, break legs to get your way."

"If Arthur Coia Sr. told Raymond Patriarca Sr. that there was a little problem, a guy wasn't hiring union guys, he was hiring scab help, we would . . . visit the guy. Me, and Fall River Dan and the Snake, and Blackjack and Bobo . . ." wrote Powell.

PAGE 29 Cookout at the Laborer’s Training Academy at Pomfret CT, celebrating Arthur E. Coia’s Birthday — strictly a social event.

PAGE 50 Business from “Fat Tony” Salerno.

PAGE 86 Arthur E. Coia liked to go to Giro’s in the North End in Boston..

"By contrast, the Teamsters waged a bitter court fight against the 1988 federal racketeering lawsuit in which the Justice Department accused them of being dominated by the Mafia. But the union, the nation's largest, ultimately gave in, agreeing to a court-approved consent decree that called for appointing a panel of outside overseers to launch a three-year effort to rid the Teamsters of what a federal judge termed 'the curse of organized crime,'" wrote the Los Angeles Times in September of 1995.