30 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
30 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Organized Crime"
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tags:
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- Person
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- OrganizedCrime
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summary: "Individual under FBI investigation for extortion, insider trading at MCA/Universal, narcotics trafficking, and ties to organized crime."
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updated: 2026-10-15
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relations:
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- type: partner_of
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with: "[[Martin Bacow]]"
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start: 1987-03
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role: "named co-subject of the same wiretap applications; calls recorded March and August 1987; the affidavit alleges a kickback on labor benefit plans"
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fn: 2
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---
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[[Angelo Commito]] was an individual who was under investigation in 1987 for various suspected offenses, including extortion, insider trading (MCA/Universal), the purchase and sale of narcotics/controlled substances, and the allocation and use of the proceeds of its trafficking. His name appeared in [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] wiretap affidavits related to the investigation of [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]] and its alleged ties to organized crime.[^1]
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### Wiretaps and the benefit-plan allegation
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Commito was then the president of Labor Health and Benefit Plans, Inc., a company that administers employee benefit plans for unions and private companies.[^2] On March 12, 1987, Commito told a Chicago-area contact that he had spoken with [[Martin Bacow]], who was making a movie that [[Eugene Giaquinto]] was going to distribute.[^2] The affidavit alleges that agents were investigating whether Commito offered Bacow a kickback to guarantee the selection of benefit plans that Commito represented.[^2]
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The Ninth Circuit's opinion in the Tham appeal recounts that Chief Judge Peckham, sitting as a magistrate, initially authorized the April 22, 1987 wiretap application against Commito, and that the April affidavits named Commito, Bacow, real estate developer William Richard Baldwin and others.[^3] In the appeal of [[Michael Rudy Tham]], a Teamsters official in San Francisco, Tham argued that the affidavit omitted a March 12, 1987 call in which Commito told Bacow that he did not want to talk to Tham or involve him in further discussions about an eye-care insurance kickback scheme. The court held that the omission was at worst negligent and that Tham had offered no proof it was intentional or reckless.[^3] The Ninth Circuit later reversed Judge Patel's suppression of the April wiretap, which Judge Patel had ordered in Commito's trial.[^4] On December 15, 1987 the Los Angeles Times reported Commito's indictment on labor racketeering charges, described as another organized crime figure and Bacow associate.[^5]
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---
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
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[^2]: Gates affidavit, paragraphs 5(c), 58 and 59 (continuation affidavit, Judge J. Spencer Letts, C.D. Cal., intercepts through September 1, 1987). https://archive.org/details/casolaro-notebooks (file Gates.pdf).
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[^3]: United States v. Tham, 948 F.2d 1107 (9th Cir. Nov. 5, 1991). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/571500/united-states-v-michael-rudy-tham/
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[^4]: United States v. Commito, 918 F.2d 95 (9th Cir. 1990), as stated in the note to United States v. Tham, 948 F.2d 1107. https://static.case.law/f2d/918/cases/0095-01.json
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[^5]: William Knoedelseder, Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia (HarperCollins, 1993), p. 436.
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