NYC mobster known as ‘Tony Cakes’ identified as pedestrian decapitated by truck: report
A New York City man who died last week after he was decapitated when a truck plowed into him while he was crossing a New York City street was identified as a former captain for the Genovese crime family.
The New York Police Department told Fox News Digital the victim was identified as Antonio Conigliaro. Conigliaro, 86, who went by "Tony Cakes," and "Tony the Dessert Man," was a former acting capo for the mafia family, the New York Post reported.
He died June 12 when he was struck by a city Department of Transportation truck in Brooklyn.
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"He spent his life looking over his shoulder, but he forgot to look both ways before crossing the street," one police source said.
Authorities said Conigliaro was crossing Dahlgren Place against a "don’t walk" sign in a marked crosswalk when the 31-year-old driver of a Ford F550 truck was turning on a green light and struck him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The driver remained at the scene and no arrests have been made, police said.
Conigliaro, who for years worked in the wholesale cake business, sold sweets across the New York City area and ran an Italian ice and gelato stand in Little Italy, was accused by federal prosecutors in 2005 of being a soldier in the Genovese crime family.
Conigliaro worked as a loan shark for the family, prosecutors said. He eventually copped a guilty plea to a racketeering conspiracy charge, for which he received a 13-month sentence, court records state, the Post reported.
The former foot soldier also was arrested in 1999 for criminal usury and in 2006 in a grand larceny case, law enforcement sources told the newspaper.
Mathew Mari, a mob lawyer who counted Conigliaro as a friend and client, told the paper Conigliaro became successful in the dessert business after serving his prison time.
"Later on in life he became known as Tony the Dessert Man," Mari said. "He was a kind, gentle, soft-spoken, very quiet guy. Always trying to help people."
The Genovese family stands among the Five Families, an Italian American syndicate that has long dominated organized crime in New York City. The other members are the Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno and Colombo families.