 Welcome to the original gangsters podcast. I'm Scott Bernstein. We're going to go out to New York City for some, you know, breaking news, a little bit of breaking news related to the Gambino's related to the overall New York underworld and really the transnational underworld. So Mike the Serb, the Gambino affiliate, Mileta Milancic has been released to a halfway house after three years in prison. Maybe the most powerful mob associate in New York City right now. A guy whose reach goes well beyond the Big Apple. It's around the globe and it's interesting to see where this guy kind of came from and we'll get to that in a second, but got into a halfway house recently, and went away in 2021 for fraud, tax evasion, and you know, just some kind of basic minor racketeering stuff. And he, there was a gun possession charge, I believe, related to the raid that they came and arrested him with. And he has a group called Group America and it's a Eastern European crime network mixed with a political influence, outfit, power, brokerage, drug logistics, gambling, loan sharking, muscle for hire. It's very diversified and it has outposts around the world, mainly kind of ran between New York City, the former Yugoslavia and parts of Italy. So this guy is a major, major player and I was told that within Group America, which is the name of the organization that he leads, there were some internal squabbles in the business relationship between a group America and the Gambino's. And Mike the Serb is tied to the highest levels of the Gambino crime family, Lorenzo Monino, Frankie Camusso, and Beau Filippelli, but Lorenzo is the day-to-day shot caller of the Gambino's from the Sicilian faction of that crew, and he actually takes his paycheck from Mike the Serb's one of his construction companies and the FBI believes that Mike the Serb and Frankie Camusso kind of run point for Monino and the Gambino's and other groups within the five families for their construction rackets in Manhattan. But just to give a little bit of backstory before we check out and let's also just say that even though I've heard there are some issues that were behind the scenes that were going on when Mike the Serb was locked up, I heard there was a construction contract that got kind of messed up. Some joint gambling ventures where some money ended up missing and that when Mike the Serb hit the halfway house, he was kind of like met with these troubleshooting agenda. My sources say there's no problems, there aren't going to be any issues between the Gambino's and group of America. I'm just saying group of America, group America. And that they expect Mike the Serb is going to get everything tightened up in short order. But I think there might be some misconceptions here. And I don't want to demean anybody's power level, but it looks like that the media, some people that write about this stuff, including me in the past, have been kind of really undervaluing where Mike the Serb stands in the global crime food chain or the packing order. And looking at group America as a subunit of the Gambino's, when it might be the Gambino's as a subunit of group America. It didn't start like that. I'm not being literal when I say that. But so just to give a quick backstory, this all ties back to the Westies, John Gotti, stuff that was going on in the 80s. Mike the Serb was a protege and bodyguard for the final leader of the Westies, the Irish mob in Hell's Kitchen, a group that was very close to the Gambino, specifically Gotti, Jimmy Coon in the boss, of the Westies had a top enforcer, a driver, bodyguard by the name of Bosco Radonovic, they call him the Hugo. He eventually succeeded Jimmy Coonan. You had a Eastern European that was ahead of the Irish mob as assigned by John Gotti and those guys. And Mike the Serb was by Bosco's side that entire time throughout the 80s. So if Bosco was Jimmy Coonan's right hand man, Mike the Serb was Bosco's right hand man. So very close to Gotti, made a lot of connections in the five families. Then the fall of the Soviet Union, USSR, Iron Curtain, all falls apart late December 1991, just a year before that Gotti had gotten locked up and the Westies are kind of dissolved or what the original Westies were were dissolved and you had Bosco and Mike the Serb go back to their homeland in the Balkans and set up shot there. That's where group of America is born. I keep on saying group of America. I'm sorry, group America is born and first there's a leader that wasn't Mike the Serb. That leader ends up getting killed 1997, 1998, Mike the Serb takes over and the entire operation just scales up metamorphosis evolves and this is a group that controls almost 100% of the logistics in the global cocaine market. Connecting North America, South America and Europe and then they hold a lot of sway in government circles, political circles, intelligence circles. So very shadowy, very powerful and it all kind of started in Hell's Kitchen with the Westies. It's just it's crazy to think that. But Mike the Serb, 64 years old is a free man now. He'll be out of the halfway house in September and it will be interesting to see how this all plays. Lorenzo Monino is, we all know, is the target of a big federal labor corruption case. Frankie Camusso, another buddy of Mike the Serbs is under indictment right now, but only time will tell, but Mike the Serb back in the mix fixing problems within group America and some issues that had popped up when he was away with the Gambino's. Now he's back. Everything's copacetic. Welcome back, Mike the Serb. Scott Bernstein, OGPod.