Salvatore Ruggiero - Ending His Obsession With Speed

Ending His Obsession With Speed

By 1975, resulting from several serious injuries that led to hospitalization in the intensive care unit, Salvatore was cured of his impulse control disorder that was the root cause of his addiction to high speed. Then, too, he had very little time for such pursuits, for Salvatore was a very busy millionaire "businessman" (as he preferred to call himself). He was dealing in heroin that made him one of the largest and wealthiest dealers in New York that included Gerlando Sciascia, Alphonse Indelicato, Cesare Bonventre and others who would later be indicted in the Pizza Connection Trial.

Salvatore was not close to his uncle and remained distant to his younger brother, and strived to be more than a street-level hood which Angelo would later become. Despite his long friendship with John Gotti, Salvatore did not seem consumed with the ambition to become a major Mafia powerhouse as did his brother, Angelo, and their mutual friend. He built criminal business relationships with Gene Gotti, John Carneglia, mob criminal attorney Michael Coiro, Joseph Guagliano, Anthony Moscatiello, Oscar Ansourian, Edward Lino, Mark Reiter, William Robert Cestaro, Salvatore Greco, Joseph Lo Presti, Vincent Lore, Anthony Gurino and Caesar Gurino, Instead, he appeared content to stay on the fringes of the Gambino crime family organization and the Bergin crew as some sort of vague associate, although no one seemed quite certain what he did. He had graduated from street thuggery and became a multimillionaire, selling a range of drugs, from major shipments of marijuana, to heroin and cocaine.

Wanted on several charges, he had become a fugitive, hiding out with his wife, Stephanie under various aliases in New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Salvatore could afford life on the run. He secretly owned hideouts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and the Poconos and traded heavily in stocks and bonds under other names. He also owned a diner, a greeting card store, and other investment property purchased through a company called Ozone Holding, named after Ozone Park, Queens. He owned four cars including a Mercedes Benz and ten watches worth $12,000 each. He was living in a leased home in New Jersey while another mansion on Tortoise Lane in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey was being built for him through a company run by Anthony and Caesar Gurino, owners of Arc Plumbing Corporation, the mobsters who gave John Gotti and Angelo Ruggiero no-show jobs. His prime heroin supplier was Gerlando Sciascia. He secretly controlled a Liberia based corporation, Vimi Steamship Limited in 1981. The vagueness was deliberate, for Salvatore by 1970 was deeply involved in heroin trafficking, and by La Cosa Nostra regulations, that was strictly forbidden. So the fiction had to be maintained: Ruggiero moved heroin while officially neither his capo Carmine Fatico, nor John Gotti, nor Carlo Gambino knew anything about it. All the while, Fatico accepted a share of the heroin sales' proceeds from Sal, with the facade further maintained by both men's bland insistence that the money was the result of some successful transport truck hijackings from John F. Kennedy International Airport.