This simple action spawned the historic Mafia Commission case in which Corallo and six other top gangsters were put away for 100 years on racketeering charges. Tony Ducks and three others died in prison, but the tiny bug's legacy lives on.

Last week, it cost longtime Long Island Luchese associate Emedio (Mimi) Fazzini two lucrative garbage-hauling contracts worth millions of dollars a year.

Fazzini's companies, Jamaica Ash & Rubbish Removal Co and Jet Sanitation Service Corp., earn an estimated $1 million a year picking up trash at the Walt Whitman, Roosevelt Field, Smith Haven and The Source malls in Long Island. But the contracts are worth many millions more because Fazzini sells much of the waste -- recyclable glass, cardboard, paper and aluminum -- and his presence and his visibility at the malls gives him a huge competitive edge over other private carting companies.

After listening to tape-recorded conversations of Fazzini, now 68, discussing various labor scams with Avellino in 1983, a federal civil jury determined that Fazzini's garbage businesses were mob connected and their contracts to haul refuse from the malls should be trashed.

On the tape, Fazzini and Avellino were heard discussing setting up a mob-controlled union to work hand in hand with the mob-controlled Long

Island Private Carters Management Association. The prototype for the plan was the Gambino crime family's New York City operation under capo James (Jimmy Brown) Failla (left) at the time.

"You gotta control the workers," said Fazzini. "Right now you control the employers. You got to control the men. That's the power."

"Right," said Avellino. "Right now, we as the association, we control the bosses. Now when we control the men, we control the bosses even better, now because they're even more fuckin' afraid. . . .Now when you got a guy that steps out of line and this and that you got the whip. You got the fuckin' whip. This is what (Corallo) tells me all the time: 'A strong union makes money for everybody, including the wiseguys.' The wiseguys make even more money with a strong union."

"True," agreed Fazzini.

"Because the envelopes (kickbacks to the mob) could be bigger and better," said Avellino.

The jury decided against Fazzini's companies, which had sued New York City and Allied Waste Industries in an effort to force Allied and its

The next day, the jury decided Allied was blameless in breaching its contracts with Fazzini after the city ordered the conglomerate to cancel them or lose the right to pick up garbage in the Big Apple.

The three week trial featured many old colleagues and adversaries from the Jaguar bug days, including:

• Former federal Organized Crime Strike Force Chief Edward McDonald (right) who represented Allied.
• Former civil racketeering expert Edward Ferguson who was sued as the Executive Director of the city's Trade Waste Commission.
• Former state Organized Crime Task Force Chief Ronald Goldstock, whose office had bugged the Jaguar, and who was ready to testify as an expert but wasn't needed.
• Former John Gotti prosecutor Michael Cherkasky, now a court-appointed monitor of Long Island's private carting industry, said he found no mob-connections at Fazzini's companies in recent years. He conceded on cross examination, however, that anything was possible.

Stephen Scaring, who has done pretty well keeping Fazzini out of jail for two decades, said he was confident he would win on appeal. "The only evidence against my client was the 1983 Jaguar bug," Scaring said. "Since then there has not been one surveillance report or tape that links him to the Luchese crime family." 

The only major actor in the Jaguar bug case still living wasn't there. That's Avellino, who's due out of federal prison in late 2006. He claims he quit the mob and hopes to retire to sunny Florida and catch up on his golf game.

A Bureau of Prisons National Appeals Board ruled again last month that Furnari was a multiple murderer unworthy of parole, even though the main mob turncoat who made the claim has been certified as a liar by federal prosecutors.

Furnari, 77, received a new hearing after a federal appeals court ruled that an earlier denial by the U.S. Parole Commission was based on tainted assertions by discredited mob turncoat Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso.

In its latest decision, prison officials state that federal prosecutors who said Casso lied in more recent accounts of mob doings believe that Casso's "historical information" about Furnari's murderous activity was "credible."

"You, at the very least, knew about, and more likely directed, the murderous activities of your crew," the panel wrote, citing three hits and a failed murder plot that Casso and the feds attribute to Furnari.

"It is irrational to base a decision on Casso," said Furnari's lawyer David Brietbart. "It is strange that the only thing the government is willing to credit to this totally discredited witness is what he says about Christy Tick Furnari. The decision flies in the face of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, but really is no surprise. We expect to get the appropriate relief from the Federal Courts."

Joseph (Little Joe) DiBenedetto (left) used mob muscle and a post as a union official to gain payoffs and steal pension and welfare funds from a host of construction workers' unions from July, 1995 until May 17 of last year, the indictment said.

Using various mail fraud, wire fraud and extortion schemes, DiBenedetto and five associates ripped off pension and welfare funds of union carpenters, ironworkers, bricklayers and cement workers, the indictment charged.

At their arraignment, assistant U.S. attorney James Miskiewicz notified the defendants that during a lengthy FBI investigation, many were overheard on tape recorded conversations that would be used at trial.

DiBenedetto, 32, used his position as a shop steward in Local 20 of the Cement and Concrete Workers Union and the mob clout of Luchese capo Joseph (Joey Flowers) Tangorra,  51, to pull off his scams, the indictment said.

Tangorra (right) is charged only with loansharking in the case. As Gang Land reported two months ago, however, he also faces trials for labor racketeering, murder and racketeering and has been so depressed over his plight that he has been seeing prison psychiatrists for several months.

"He is still undergoing evaluation and we're awaiting the results," said Tangorra's attorney Vincent Romano.

Sources said Gioia, 34, who has testified only twice since he turned on the mob in 1995, recently spent several hours lecturing rookie FBI agents about the mob, using his years as a wiseguy and a wannabe as a backdrop.

Gioia, who was only a soldier when he flipped, has taken over tasks that used to be performed by superstar turncoats like Luchese acting boss Alfonse (Little Al) D'Arco (left) and underbosses Philip Leonetti of Philadelphia and Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano. (right)

Sources said Gioia told of hanging out at his grandfather's social club at age 12, being "made" at age 23, and cooperating four years later when a cousin, Vincent Salanardi, visited him in jail and told him that the family was plotting to kill his father, also a Luchese mobster.

Salanardi, 39, was subsequently inducted by the Lucheses and assigned to a crew headed by Joey Flowers. Ironically, sources said, Gioia is slated to testify against Tangorra.

Meanwhile, sources said, Gioia and his main FBI handlers, Kevin Hallinan and Stephen Byrne -- they showed slides and surveillance photos at Gioia's first seminar -- are preparing for a return to the lecture circuit later this year. This time, the class will consist of veteran organized crime agents from around the country.