 Welcome to the Original Gangster's podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein. We're going to do another quick hitter edition today and we're going to go back into the Skinny Joey, Genovese Crime Family podcasting controversy. This stalemate that seems to, that we seem to be at between the bosses in New York and the Bruno Scarfield Crime Family in Philadelphia, the boss, the alleged boss Skinny Joey Merlino has been building a social media brand for the last six months has been podcasting with a platform called the Skinny. And as we've been reporting here, there was a bit of a slow reaction to this, but as of the last month or two, it seems to have really gotten the New York bosses up in arms. And I'm going to report right now on this that now handsome Stevie Mazzone, Joey's longtime, you know, close friend, underboss, he was concealeria at one point is, or I shouldn't say he's always, I'm confusing him in bourgeoisie, has always been Joey's underboss, that he's being contacted right now in prison has been reached out to by both guys in Philly as well as guys in the Genovese. They want to get him to put in his two cents here. And frankly, they want him to try to fix the problem. I know that him and Joe Legambi, Uncle Joe, a longtime acting boss, conciliary, he has also been tasked to kind of come out of semi retirement and deal with the fallout from this. There's been a lot of meetings going back and forth the last couple weeks. And I'm being told that Philadelphia was made aware of this issue when Sonny Mazzone came home from his one year in lock up. Stevie's got five more years to do. They're both having to do time based on a racketeering conviction. And I'm told Sonny came home with a message that then set into motion these series of sit downs and negotiations. And that the Genovese are looking to Stevie. Now, Stevie's always been, you know, the straw that serves the drink here has always been a guy that it has been a kind of a good cop to Joey's bad cop has been somebody that everybody likes. And I've I'm told that in in one of these very important meeting of high ranking members of the Genovese, the prevailing thought was that if Stevie was free, Stevie's been locked up about a little over a year now that he wouldn't have allowed this to happen. I know I'm told one guy said Stevie would have got on a plane and gone down to Florida and stopped this from happening. Everybody knows Joey's relocated to South Florida. Now he's no longer in Philly, but the FBI insists that he's still running that Bruno Scarfield family in Pennsylvania through a series of buffers and proxies. Joey says he's retired. We also know that Joey doesn't care that there's blowback coming from New York City. He's saying that mind your own business. This is me trying to go legit or has having gone legit and I'm going to do what I want to do. But that from what I'm hearing that ain't playing. And guys like Stevie and Joe Legambi are having to almost on a daily basis deal with us right now. And we don't know how it's going to resolve. I've heard a lot of different scenarios. I heard there are people within the five families that want Stevie to take the family, the Philly mob. They want Stevie to take over from prison, rearrange it, restructure it. And then when he comes home in four years, he'll be the boss. I've heard other people that just want to anoint the acting boss right now, George Boyd Borgesi, that he becomes the official boss. I know that there's been some shifting in and out for guys that were liaisoning for Philadelphia to the New York group. I know there's a new guy right now. I'm told I'm not going to name and name, but I'm going to say it's somebody that's very close to Stevie, was brought up there at some point in the last month and introduced to the guys in New York as being kind of the new go-between that speaks to the high esteem they put Stevie Mazzone in. And again, only time we'll tell here, but there's a lot of people that are looking to the prison walls, Loretto, Pennsylvania, FCI, Loretto and Stevie Mazzone to get this situation under control. But right now, I think again, it's still a lot of stuff's up in the air. Meetings are still taking place almost on a weekly basis. I think there is a belief that they want to see what happens after Joey's next big media appearance. It came out this past week that he's in negotiations with DJ Vlad to do a big interview on Vlad. I know that did not sit well with the New York guys that were already sending word for him to cease and desist, get off the internet as quickly as possible, and then these problems would go away. And Joey's response is to leak out through Jeff Nadeau in the sit-down news that he's negotiating to go on Vlad. So that just really put fuel on the fire. And again, I'm reporting that Stevie is being asked to chime in here. I've also heard from people that have visited Stevie since the holidays that this entire situation with Joey has got him quite upset and knowing that all these ripple effects go well beyond Joey down in South Florida and that whole crew that's putting together the skinny Kevin Conley action, action park media, little snuff and those guys who do a great job. And there's no doubt. Very entertaining. They've developed a rabid niche following. Guys swear by it. They love seeing Joey on this platform being able to be freewheeling and shoot from the hip, but not going over a well in New York. And people are going inside prison walls with Stevie to try to get him to exert some authority. I know that one of Barney Balomo's, the Genovese, the boss of bosses, the most powerful boss in the American Mafia. I know that his protege, Ralphie Balsamo, the undertaker is one of the people that's in prison right now kind of running point for the any prison meetings that are taking place regarding this. And I know that at one point in time, I believe Sonny and Ralphie were walked up together in some point this last year. So that's my report. I'll have more coming out about what's going on with this skinny Joey, Barney Balomo controversy and how it all shakes out. It's ever evolving, new stuff popping up every day. But as of right now, it looks like Stevie Mazzone might be getting a promotion from prison, possibly. Or at the very least, he is reaching out to people outside prison walls to try to fix the problem that's happening with his podcast. So for Benny behind the glass, I'm Scott Bernstein, OGPod out.