The owner of Fortunato Bros is a mobster? No, really?!
November 14, 2007 — A Queens pizza man and a Brooklyn baker didn’t want to pay the piper – so they arranged to have him whacked instead, prosecutors charged yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Carmine Polito, 49, a compulsive gambler and the owner of an Astoria pizzeria, and Mario Fortunato, 60, the owner of Greenpoint’s Fortunato Bros. bakery, allegedly plotted the murder of a Genovese loan shark and his cousin during a friendly card game, so that Polito wouldn’t have to cough up $60,000 he’d borrowed.
Early on Nov. 30, 1994, as the game inside a social club was winding down, two armed men burst in and opened fire, killing the loan shark, Sabotini Lombardi, and wounding his cousin Michael D’Urso.
It’s the second go-round for the defendants, who were convicted in Brooklyn federal court in 2003.
An appeals court scrapped the conviction, ruling that the feds could not prosecute because the hit was personal business, not an organized-crime conspiracy. A Brooklyn grand jury re-indicted the pair in 2005.
Fortunato’s is still a slammin’ bakery.
That reminds me, I’ve gotta pick up some pignoli cookies for Thanksgiving.
No matter what, their stuff is the best, you should see the cakes they sell, one of a kind. Bachelor party, christening, weedings, all shapes, 3ds cakes, it is amazing and is all done by a talented guy from the same family, Biagio Fortunato or as they all know him, big Biagio. Get a pick at his page:
http://hi5.com/friend/photos/displayUserAlbum.do?albumId=173799446&ownerId=129012957