Episode 6 - Housewife or Mob Wife?

This week we're asking: Housewife or Mob Wife? We kick things off with TV recaps, Summer House news, and the latest ADHD invention before diving into the surprisingly deep connections between the Real Housewives and organized crime. From the Manzo family's alleged mafia ties to the legal drama surrounding RHORI's Liz McGraw, plus Alexia Nepola's infamous Cocaine Cowboy. We're breaking down the wildest mob-adjacent Housewives scandals. Allegedly, of course.

Transcript

Julia 0:00

Hey guys. This is the Petty Agenda with your co-host, Julia and Sarah.

Sarah 0:07

Welcome everyone. Hope you had a great week. Julia, what have you been up to?

Julia 0:12

You know, stuff. Um, I I applied to jobs and I AI'd my cover letter and then copy and pasted the AI prompt accidentally. Oh no. And like sent it in. I don't think I'm ever gonna hear from that job again. It's fine.

Sarah 0:32

Everyone does that for cover letters at this point. It's so annoying that they even ask for them. Like they they don't read them.

Julia 0:39

Yeah, I know. No one, no one reads the cover letter. How's your weekend?

Sarah 0:43

Pretty good. I didn't do anything too crazy. Um, I watched this show Five Star Weekend on Peacock. Have you watched that yet? I just finished watching it this morning before you called me.

Julia 0:54

I was like, I have to watch the show because I watched it last night and then I was like fully vested in watching it.

Sarah 0:59

Okay, so you liked it? I liked parts of it. Okay, because I thought it was really bad. I like couldn't get through it. I thought it was horrible. Okay, spoiler alerts for anyone who's gonna watch. Okay, so this scenario is if you find out that your friend was sleeping with this woman's husband who has now died. Would you what would you do in that situation? I would tell my friend. I feel like I my immediate thought was I would just tell that girl, you better leave right now. Block her, delete your number, never talk to her again. And then I don't think I would say anything because it's like he's dead.

Julia 1:38

Does she really need to know? But I think it also depends on the friend. Like, how bad are they doing, you know? And like, do I tell them a year from now? The storyline itself was just weird. And I just don't like uh Jennifer Gardner was fine, but there were some other people that I was like, I don't like your acting that much. Like it just wasn't that good.

Sarah 2:01

I don't know.

Julia 2:02

Yeah, it wasn't.

Sarah 2:03

Like this girl sucks. Like, why did she literally sleep with her husband and then expect to like become her friend? Like, that's so creepy.

Julia 2:09

Yeah, that's creepy.

Sarah 2:11

I just think like there was no point to it. Like at the end, the plot was that, oh, but he chose you. Like, who the fuck cares at that point? I don't know, it's just so stupid to me.

Julia 2:20

I did forget that that was the end. Like, oh, he chose you. That was dumb.

Sarah 2:25

I thought it was pretty dumb. There's been some summer house announcements over the past weekend. Um, they've announced the full cast, including Sierra, so she's coming back for the season. I know I said I didn't want her to come back, but I guess it will be fun to kind of see her story play out. And then it's gonna be Kyle, Lindsay, Carl, Sierra, Jesse, KJ. I'm happy KJ's coming back because I thought he wasn't. And then Bailey and Mia. So pretty much the same cast. I don't know if there'll be new people and they just haven't announced them yet, but pretty solid cast. Amanda and Wes have been seen going to weddings together, they're still dating and they're like posting stuff on social media. Very cringe. What did you think about that?

Julia 3:10

No, I was gonna say, like, people were talking about uh how they were having a baby or like she was pregnant. Oh, yeah. And I was like, I don't think so.

Sarah 3:20

I don't think so. I think that's too far, guys. That's when we gotta like take the tinfoil hat off and uh calm down a little bit.

Julia 3:28

It's like I don't think she's pregnant. I think that would be wild if she was pregnant.

Sarah 3:32

I definitely think she's jealous though that everyone started filming again because like she hasn't really been posting. Yeah, and then she posted at this wedding the same weekend that they started filming. So I'm like, she definitely has FOMO.

Julia 3:43

Yeah, for sure.

Sarah 3:44

Um, but yeah, this week's in the city episode, there was nothing I really wanted to talk about. It was kind of boring, but I don't know, I don't know if you watched it, but Kyle was talking about how he started taking all these fiber pills, and then he took so much that he like literally ripped his asshole from like Pupik so much.

Julia 4:04

He's fiber maxing, he's also 40. So like he's he's at the age where he needs to fiber max.

Sarah 4:10

Some more TV news. Real House was Orange County just started up. It's not my favorite franchise, it's kind of boring. Um, but Vicki's back, so that's kind of fun. I think she's crazy and I think she's very entertaining. So I'm excited to watch like just clips of her online and not the actual show. Also, you know what I was thinking? I keep seeing this motherfucker, Jake Shane, everywhere. And I wanted to know what you thought about him because I feel like I can't escape him. I don't understand what the hype is. I don't know why he's so successful and so like connected to every popular celebrity. And I'm seeing him on all these like nationwide campaigns, like for Panera, Duncan, and I don't get it.

Julia 4:51

Yeah, I don't understand either. I he is funny though. I guess I just don't get why he's so successful. I think he's like a theater kid that was probably well connected. That's that that is like my only uh thought process, is that he's a theater kid, well connected, knows people through childhood.

Sarah 5:13

I just feel like the average person, like the average person doesn't know him, right? Like if you asked, if you asked Josh, would he know who he was? No. No. Yeah, so why is he like on a Duncan commercial? How did he get famous? I don't know.

Julia 5:26

I think he's an industry plant. That's my theory. The rise of a clueless influencer. That's what the the article says about Jake Shane.

Sarah 5:37

The rise of a clueless influencer. Yeah, he's very clueless. And like when he's clueless, it's funny.

Julia 5:43

I just don't think he's anything special. Yeah, I don't, I don't really care for him.

Sarah 5:48

The ADHD news, this kid in New Jersey, as part of like some invention contest, has created this AI tool that basically reviews the imagery of scans of your eyeball. Oh, and it can determine if you have ADHD or autism or if you're neurotypical with 89% accuracy. That's so cool. Imagine you walk in and they just scan your eye and you're like, Yup, ADHD. Wow. That seems too good to be true. I know, but I mean it makes sense. The differences are so subtle, but they are documented and well researched that these differences do exist in the eye.

Julia 6:24

This kind of is giving me thernos, thernos, you know, like that thing that Elizabeth whatever Holmes created. Now she's in federal prison with Jen Shaw and they're hanging out. Yeah. But like, do you remember? She was like, I just need one drop of blood and I can find everything to 99% nine accuracy.

Sarah 6:44

Think about all my ADHD issues. I almost burnt my house down like multiple times this week because I constantly cook things on the stove and then walk away and like fucking water boils over everywhere.

Julia 6:57

I know this happened to me before I left the stove on and left um this like the microwave cover on top of the stove and it burned in flames. And I was like, oh shit, that's bad.

Sarah 7:08

They need to like create a some type of fail-safe on these like stoves.

Julia 7:13

Yeah. Well, isn't there like an app where like if you accidentally turn on your stove, you can turn it off on your app or something like that? Well, really?

Sarah 7:21

You probably have to have like a smart stove. Yeah, I don't know. But I definitely think it should just turn off after like a couple hours at least. Yeah, it should. What else happened? This week with me? Yes, yes. What else is going on? Well, I feel like I haven't done anything interesting lately. Sometimes I go in my tiny inflatable pool in my backyard and just float my redneck, redneck pool. But yeah, not much going on with me. Pretty boring week for me. Um looking forward to the World Cup finals this weekend. Oh, it's this weekend. Mm-hmm. Are you gonna go watch them?

Julia 7:55

I just no. I I feel like I don't have that many days off. Yeah, I'm I have a lot going on. I'm only off for like one day, and then I'm working Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and I'm leaving for Ireland. It's because you have all these fun trips planned. Do I excited? Well, I'm gonna see my grandma. I'm very excited to see my grandma because and my grandpa. Shit, I forgot. How are you gonna see them? I'm going to fly and we're going to Michigan, and then we have a wedding in Toronto. There's a lot of events, and I'm like, I cannot pack for this many events. Like it's just too much. I was like, we can't pack for this and Detroit and then also pack for Ireland. Like we have to just skip some events just because Indian outfits are so heavy, and I don't have room in my suitcase. So we're gonna go to two events and then we're going to Ireland, which I'm very excited for because I just love walking in the hills and the land of my people. The land of your people. I honestly will go, we'll have to go again because it's only three days, and there's so much of Ireland that we're that we're missing. I feel like people normally go for like two a week, a solid week, but I'm only going for like three days, and it's not enough time to see everything. There's so many things to see. Yeah, but that sounds really fun. I'm jealous. It is. I'm I'm very excited. I'm I'm excited to be Irish, you know, for the three days. Yes. I'll have to drink some beer. Yeah, I'm I'm very excited. I'm not so excited for Detroit. Toronto. I don't really care for Canada. Yeah. But anyways, we are here to talk about something so scandalous and so salacious. It's the mob. It's the mob. Don't dun dun.

Sarah 9:39

Our topic this week is called housewife or mob wife. And we're gonna talk about a couple of different housewives that have had connections to the mob or just, you know, organized crime. Um, but Julia, why don't you start us off by talking about what the mob actually is? Okay.

Julia 9:59

So the mob, the mafia, la costa. Oh, wait, I can't pronounce this, so I'm not gonna pronounce it.

Sarah 10:06

Nostra? Yeah, I've never heard that.

Julia 10:09

La Cosa Nostra. These are all basically, they mean the same thing. Um, the Italian American Organized Crime Network that took root in the US, especially New York, early to mid-1900s. We have the five families in the New York mob scene. It's five separate organizations carved up into the city. One is Gambino, the other one is Genovese Bomba. Okay, these are really hard Italian words to pronounce.

Sarah 10:39

Pronouncing. Sarah, we want to take a look at it. I think it's Genovese, I don't know. Banano, Lucisi, and Colombo. I've definitely heard Gambino, Colombo before. Those are like the well-known mob family last names that you've heard of in the past that have like the most violent crimes. And a lot of times they'll be connected to like real estate or construction or insanitation type, you know, employment.

Julia 11:10

Yeah, they're like five extremely violent sororities that never graduate and like everyone's in real estate.

Sarah 11:19

Basically, yeah, basically just industries that are easy to launder money through, I think. That right, like that's the or be a cover-up for what they're really doing.

Julia 11:28

You know what though? What is the definition of laundering money?

Sarah 11:31

Like, how would you describe that? So, like they're making money from drugs, but they have no way to show like if you're gonna have a million dollars in your bank account, the government's gonna be like, where the hell did this million dollars come from? So they're trying to show, oh, I made this through my business, and they create like fake papers to make it look like that. So it's just a way to like have money in a legal way through a business, but it's fake. It's fake paperwork, fake accounting, you know.

Julia 11:59

So then there always has to be a really good accountant or someone that's like fudging the numbers really, really well. You have the boss who's the top of the family, the CEO, underboss who's second in command, cat capo, basically a captain who runs his crew underneath the boss, a soldier who is a sworn-in member that has to pass a background check, but you have to be like committed to the serious crimes, an associate who works with the family, does jobs for them, but isn't formally made. Then there's like ratting, flipping, turning an informant is when someone's facing serious prison time and cooperates with the government and testifies against their own family in exchange for a lighter sentence or witness protection. This comes up a lot in stories today. It's considered the ultimate betrayal.

Sarah 12:48

The maidman, the soldier of maidman, that came up in some of my research. Um, if you're considered maid, that means that you've been inducted and accepted. It's a life position. But yeah, associa is probably a lot of the people we'll talk about in Housewives. They're the ones who are just associated with these crime families. Um, they're not necessarily inducted into the mob themselves, but um, they're involved in some of the cover-up sometimes. Or yeah, sometimes they'll be the ones who are informants.

Julia 13:16

Yeah. And then how the mob actually makes this money, I know we discussed one portion of it, but it's loan sharking, lending cash at an insane interest rate to people who can't get a bank loan, and then collecting it through threats instead of a credit score ding. Illegal gambling, unlicensed casinos, sports betting, underground lottery games, extortion, which is charging a business money to be protected from the same people charging them. It's a subscription service where the product is we don't hurt you, labor racketeering, infiltrating unions, especially construction and trucking, to control hiring and scheme the pension funds, hijacking and theft, stealing a whole stuff and reselling it. And then drug trafficking, which became a massive earner over time. And by the 70s and 80s, I think almost everyone was in it. Money laundering, running cash heavy, legit looking businesses, restaurants, bars, construction, laundromats to make dirt money look clean. Do you remember there was a business in the city that was like rice pudding and it was only rice pudding? And people were like, they're laundering money. There's no way. Like, how are they Oh yeah?

Sarah 14:24

I remember that.

Julia 14:25

Like it was such a random store in the middle of the city, or I think in Flatiron. Rice to riches. It just looked so random. It was it was out of place.

Sarah 14:34

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of like money laundering businesses out there. I see the craziest businesses, dude. The other day I saw this van and it was like the company was called this, has nothing to do with money laundering, but I just thought it was funny. The company was called Rim Guys. Rim Guys, and it was like bicycle repair. Like, why did you call it Rim Guys? That actually sounds very sexual.

Julia 14:57

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I feel like they did that on purpose. Yeah, that's that's really funny, though. I would hire them if I had a bike.

Sarah 15:05

Honestly, when you were reading through a lot of those ways that the mob made its money, I feel like all of those are have just become in capitalism, like legalized in a way. Like gambling, we know gambling apps. It's just taking these money-making schemes and making them legal. Loan sharking.

Julia 15:23

Dude, my student loans. Every day I'm getting a call from Sally May. Shut that fucking bitch up.

Sarah 15:30

Yeah, like the government has just taken these and made it profitable for themselves, or companies have taken it, made it profitable for themselves. Let's talk about our contestants. The first one and the main one that we'll probably focus on is the Manzo family, who was on Real Housewives of New Jersey. Yeah, Real Housewives of New Jersey probably has the most mob wives lore, and it makes sense. It's New Jersey, you know, full of Italian Americans. Um, so Dina and Caroline Manzo were two of the original stars of the Real Housewives of New Jersey when the show first premiered in 2009. And their co-stars for the first season were Teresa, Jacqueline, and Danielle Staub. Danielle Staub also has mobwives ties, but I'm just not gonna touch on that today. So Caroline was the loud and proud, short red hair, family first Jersey mom. And then her sister, Dina, was the quieter, blonde, glam interior designer who just wanted peace. So that was kind of their personas. Um and Dina wasn't on Real House uh Real Housewives of New Jersey for very long. She left after season two, but Caroline did stay through season five, and they had kind of a severed relationship over time, which I'm gonna talk about later. But basically, both Caroline and Dina married into the Manzo family. I didn't realize this. They married brothers, so that's so isn't that kind of weird? That's so weird to me. Yeah, I feel like that's like ancestral, but I guess it isn't. But they both married brothers, so they both have the last name Manzo. So they're sisters and sister-in-laws. So if the cousins are like cousin brothers, like I don't know.

Julia 17:12

Like I'm a double cousin. Uh like that's my cousin on this side and on that side. Their cousin is like a half sibling, honestly.

Sarah 17:21

Because, well, more than just your cousin.

Julia 17:23

They share the same DNA. Yeah. Yeah. It's something closer than a cousin, but I'm gonna call it cousin, I'm gonna call it cousin brother. Cousin brother. And for this, for the sake of this podcast, I think you should talk into uh like in a jersey Italian-American accent. Okay, I'll try. I'll try.

Sarah 17:40

I can't do it the whole time. Uh I'll do it in in snippets. Um, so they both married brothers, Albert and Tommy Manzo. And their dad, the patriarch, was Albert, also known as Tiny Manzo, even though he was 350 pounds. Um, and he was a maid man, which we just re referenced earlier, which means he was formerly initiated and a lifelong member of the Lucchisi crime family. So basically, these two stars of season one of Real Houses of New Jersey, their father-in-law is a known member of a crime family. Wow. So he's this large New Jersey mob enforcer, and he bought the Brownstone. It's this upscale event hall in Patterson, New Jersey, and it was featured a lot on Real Houseways of New Jersey. And to give some background into the father-in-law, in 1983, his body was discovered locked inside the trunk of his Lincoln Continental. He had been executed and shot four times in the chest. And in the investigation, law enforcement determined he was murdered by the mob, allegedly for skimming money from a Staten Island casino run by the Gambino crime family. The murder remains officially unsolved, but yeah, both of his sons, Albert and Tommy, who Caroline and Dina are married into, have been described as mob adjacent. So to get into Caroline and her husband Albert, he inherited the Brownstone and took it over, took over running it. And Caroline famously built her Real Houses of New Jersey persona around fierce family loyalty. And her legendary threat was let me tell you something about my family. We're thickest thieves and we protect our own. Deliberately playing into, you know, these organized crime tropes. So also I thought something that was funny was that she talked about how Albert, her husband, had like a private apartment in the Brownstone that he like often slept at and uh basically conducted a lot of his business through. And that just was parallel to um Tony Soprano's like backroom offices where you have an apartment inside your cash-generating business that is perfect for having private meetings, you know. And then Dina, this is when we get into some more recent crime. So Dina married Tommy Manzo, Albert's brother, and the son of the original Albert Manzo. She had a very turbulent marriage to him that ultimately led to their separation in 2012 and eventual divorce. He was federally convicted and sentenced to prison for hiring a soldier in the Lucisi crime family to assault her new husband in a home invasion in 2015. Isn't that crazy? He her ex-husband, Tommy, hired John, which is a soldier in the mob family, to invade their home with her new husband and assault him. Was that on the Real Housewives? No, because she was off, she was off of the Real Housewives by then. This is 2015. But some of the current members play into it. So basically, he hired this guy, John Perna, who is a heavily documented soldier in the Lucisi crime family. And like we said before, their father also had connections to the Lucisi Crime family. Yeah. So Perna and another mob associate tracked her new husband, Canteen, to a New Jersey strip mall and beat him with a slapjack. I don't know what that is. What's a slapjack?

Julia 21:13

I don't know what a slapjack is. Let me look it up. Slapjack. It's a card game. No, that can't be what it is. A weapon. No, slapjack is a card game. But slapjack in itself is a leather pouch filled with dense material.

Sarah 21:28

Interesting. Okay, but this is the part where it gets crazy to me. So instead of paying this guy for the mob hit for what he did, he traded his business assets. So he gave him a free lavish wedding at the Brownstone. Jesus. So basically, that's how he paid him was to say, Oh, you can have a wedding of over 330 mafia associates just one month later. And he falsified and threw away the restaurant's billing records. So that's kind of how like it gets tricky because now you're seeing Seeing the sisters' husbands get involved with each other. Okay, so another thing that happened was in 2017, they were in their home, Dina and her new husband, David, and they were violently burglarized. The attackers bound them with zip ties, beat them with a baseball bat. Yeah, it's really bad. And then as a result, you know, of this robbery, Tommy was connected to it as well. So in June of 2024, a federal jury found Tommy Manzo guilty of committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering, conspiracy, and falsifying documents. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison. The mob soldier John Perna also pled guilty. And then he also got some more uh time for stalking them, basically. But this is some serious crimes to commit and definitely very mob-esque. Here's where it gets tricky with the sister. So when she when Tommy went to court, so now if you think about it, this is her brother-in-law, but it's her sister's ex-husband. Oh. Okay. She wrote a formal letter of support to the judge, praising Tommy as kind-hearted. And this obviously created a huge rift. It severed their relationship between Dina and Caroline because she's taking her the ex-husband's side. The ex-husband who hired a hitman to assault her new husband and invaded their home and assaulted them. That's wild behavior.

Julia 23:23

That's wild. But I also think she probably was like, I gotta, like, I'm already in too deep. And if I divorce this man that I'm with, I'm gonna also be another victim of that crime.

Sarah 23:34

She probably did what she had to do. Yeah, she had to like speak on behalf of the mom. She's in deep.

Julia 23:40

Like, eat shit just because that's how their family rolls. And she already saw how her sister is suffering, so she probably is like has to stay face, right?

Sarah 23:49

Yeah, she can't leave her husband or she's gonna be whacked. So Teresa, uh how Teresa Judice plays into this, because we know Teresa is like the current star, and I think they're actually filming again for New Jersey. It's been on a long hiatus. But um, Teresa and Dina were always close. So Dina really took Teresa's side during Teresa's like criminal investigation into her financial issues, which weren't mob related, they were mostly just tax evasion related. Um, and then on Watch What Happens Live, when Teresa was asked if she would ever reconcile with Caroline, she said, not after what she did to Dina. So that's where Teresa stands. I agree with her. The other crazy thing is Dolores, which you also might know from Traders, or she most recently was brought on to Real Housewives of Rhode Island as a friend of. She also wrote a letter of support for Tommy Manzo for this court. Yeah, isn't that crazy? So she wrote a character reference letter supporting Tommy Manzo.

Julia 24:48

So Dolores is someone who when Dolores was on Rhode Island and Liz, they look, and I know we're gonna talk about Liz later, but they look so eerily familiar. Like they're like two peas in a pod, and their plastic surgeon, whoever is doing the work, it's a huge injustice to the system, okay? Because you just did copy paste. That's true, that's true.

Sarah 25:11

They're both naturally really beautiful women.

Julia 25:14

Like if you look at old photos of them. But I feel like whatever the surgeon did, or how what whoever's doing their work is like copy-paste, copy paste. And it's it's not how they truly look like if you go back and they're older pictures. Yeah.

Sarah 25:27

But yeah, Dolores, her entire personality on Real Houses of New Jersey is she's like a tough girl. Um, I was looking into her past. Her dad, she grew up in Patterson, which we all know Patterson is rough area. Um, her dad was actually the Patterson chief of police. So and she actually was a corrections officer too. That's shocking. She's a tough bitch, especially on traitors. She was good on traitors, but yeah, she has this background of like, I feel like she's the in on the other side, you know? Like she's got the she's got the in of understanding the criminal law, the prison life, and the street politics. And she's definitely got some connection to the these, you know, affiliations with the mob too. Because she clearly speaks out to protect them.

Julia 26:16

I wouldn't be surprised if she was like running her little old and like mob. Just because she seems like that type of a woman, like her and Liz.

Sarah 26:25

She's very like fiercely loyal throughout her experience on New Jersey. You'll see. She's very like old school mentality. But so to connect to Real Houses of Rhode Island, a more recent show, as we said, Dolores is very close with Liz. And Liz McGraw was on season one of Real Houses of Rhode Island. She is 55 years old and she's calls herself the cannabis queen of Rhode Island. So her and her husband, Jerry, own the Slater Compassion Center, which is one of the state's biggest cannabis dispensaries. And they live on a very nice waterfront Cranston home. I looked up, it's worth 1.3 million. It looks like it should be worth more than that. I don't know if the real estate there is not great.

Julia 27:05

I don't know where Cranston, Rhode Island is, but it's a lot. So that's another thing with like the real houseways of Rhode Island. A lot of them don't live in like Newport. Like, you know, the predominantly really rich areas in Rhode Island where I think is very expensive for to buy real estate, or like where Taylor Swift lives. Like they don't they don't live in those areas. They let they have big houses in other different areas. They're like more old school. Like they're not like they have family business.

Sarah 27:33

I guess it's like old money versus new money. Yeah, and I think they're just not like the elites, you know. But she's got a nice house and she's got, yeah, the waterfront house, and she's got a boat, and she's pretty badass too. Like she's driving that boat around. And a lot of the other cast members, you know, said they're scared of her. She's very successful in her business, and she actually talked about how she's technically related to her husband, which she found out after she married him. It's like some distant, weird, familial by-marriage connection. So Liz's main connection to the mob is through her longtime close friend Dino, who she mentions many times on the show. It's not just like an acquaintance. She says that he's her close friend of 20 years, that he's always been there for her, especially when her husband, Jerry, was away on these fishing trips, which I'm going to mention later. Her husband, Jerry, is into sport fishing. And so he has this fancy boat and he goes out for like weeks and months at a time to do these expeditions. And so Dino was there for her during those times. And so a big storyline is that her and Dino might be having an affair. Um, and she was very defensive about that, and she told Jerry about it and basically just denied it. Um, but it was staunchly defending their friendship. What what else was crazy is that Kelsey, Kelsey is the one who's the beauty queen. She was living in the house of that really rich guy who had another girlfriend. Yes. In Miami or something like that, yeah. So she actually said that 10 years ago she hooked up with Dino and that she didn't like him. He was really weird, he acted possessive, and it was a really negative experience. But I'm like, wow, this is a small state. The fact that Kelsey hooked up with this creepy ass guy, and then that's also like Liz's best friend. Like, this is the kind of shit that makes the show good because everyone has dirt on each other. Okay, so to get into Dino's crimes, so in court and search warrants, Rhode Island State Police allege that Dino, I don't know how to say his last name, Jill Mette, ran a cocaine operation. So they explicitly allege that his illicit operations were run in allegiance with the Patriarch crime family, which is apparently a historic New England mafia syndicate. So this is wasn't one of the New York five families. This is a New England mafia family. He currently faces charges of drug trafficking, conspiracy, and financial fraud. His lawyer denies the mafia ties. However, these allegations, you know, were a big talk of this season, considering her close ties to him. And the state police actually wiretapped and got warrants for, you know, all of his phone calls and stuff. And they went through over a thousand phone calls and text messages between Liz and her husband Jerry and Dino. And while the McGraws, meaning Liz and Jerry, were never indicted or legally charged with wrongdoing, you know, this exposure and association with him, the mob adjacent figure, very much, you know, shades her reputation. So what fans are now alleging, because it's been announced that Liz is not coming back, she's decided to not come back for season two. And I think there's a lot of reasons for this. I think she faced some criticism she maybe wasn't ready for. But I think I was hoping she would come back. I liked her character. But now people are alleging that it's because of her ties to Dino. So, you know, he's heavily embedded in their personal lives. They allege that these long trips, this is all alleged. There's no facts to this, but basically, um, Jerry's long multi-week fishing trips could also be connected to drug runs for cocaine because um they sold the boat during this season. And so I don't know, people think they're trying to cover up evidence. And I Google, I was like, is that how cocaine is actually smuggled? And I was just curious why people thought this. And apparently it's very it is a very common way. About like three-quarters of all major cocaine bus track shipments out of primary transit hubs on these small, unassuming vessels like fishing boats. A lot of these stories are like kind of lining up. Like, I'm not saying any of it's true, but it aligns with each other. Yeah. Yeah. And so when people were alleging this on the internet after she just announced that she's leaving for season two, she made a post and she said, It's fascinating to me how everyone assumes my reason for leaving involves being afraid of skeletons, jail, etc. This is not new gossip. It has been the local slander for years. If there was even an ounce of validity to it, I'd never gone on a show. I realized that for some reason it feels good to speculate, hate, and defame my character, but I have never been investigated. First of all, that's already not true. She was part of the investigation, um, nor involved in any criminal case. It's preposterous, and people should know how utterly ridiculous it sounds. Sorry to disappoint. It's wild to me how people feel at liberty to openly state such absurd claims as facts. And then this is the funny part. Now that I have time on my hands, I will start the process of holding those originating and spreading such fiction accountable. So she might be coming for Australia. We have to be careful. We have to watch our backs, sending out a threat to anyone who talks badly about her. Whatever, we don't care. She's never gonna see this. I recently saw an interview on page six's virtual reality tea podcast by a former Mob Wives star. And I just thought it was funny. Um, I took a quote of what she said about about Liz leaving. And this was Renee Graziano, she's from Mob Wives. So she said, I think it's a very good decision, personally. I think with everything going on around her and being friends with certain people, I think it's the best bet. Listen, we've seen, and I'll speak on it. Hopefully they don't come from me. But the feds have really cracked down on the housewives. So if you have an attachment to an uncomfortable situation, you don't need to be in the limelight. You'll be in the limelight in another way, you know? God, I hope not. I mean, she's not wrong. She's not wrong. She's a mob life star. She knows what's what, and she also is leaning into the theory that maybe Liz was getting too close.

Julia 33:44

I feel like if I too was involved in crime, not saying I I would, but I wouldn't want to be in the limelight of and have people look into me. Yeah, on a TV show, have people look into me and then question where I'm getting my money. Because at the end of the day, people always question housewives and like how they have money. I know they're under a microscope. Yeah, they are.

Sarah 34:05

And you sign up for it. This is so funny to me that the feds are specifically after housewives. I'm like, damn, you really be sitting there watching these housewives, or they're just like really going after them more than other crime happening in the country.

Julia 34:19

It's easier that way for the feds, probably, versus someone who is very like low-key and you would never expect them to be a part of uh in the mob. But I also feel like you can you can guess because there's families and you can be like, oh well.

Sarah 34:32

Yeah. I would love to talk about in the future, like Jen Shaw's whole crime thing. Because yeah, a lot of these people go on shows and they think they're not gonna get caught, and then they're very obvious about stuff, and it's used against them, like the episodes and what they say. If they contradict themselves, it's used as evidence. Jen Shaw. She was kind of iconic though. That was the best episode, I think, in reality TV history was when she got taken away on the bus.

Julia 34:58

They had the most watched views when that happened. But now we're going to talk about someone in the Real Housewives of Miami, Alexia. I can't pronounce her last name. Napoleon. I don't do you know, I think it's just Napola. She calls herself the Cuban Barbie. Do you remember her?

Sarah 35:17

Yeah, I actually like why I know she's very toxic. She never apologizes for anything, but she's really like she's funny, she's entertaining. I like how she's fierce and defends herself and her friends. I like her. Yeah, I think she's on husband three now.

Julia 35:33

So I don't know. I feel like the housewives of Miami is very different than the housewives of like New Jersey and and Rhode Island. Like, I think when they're committed, they're committed for life, or they divorce, but they don't have like three husbands.

Sarah 35:46

That's true. They stick by their husbands more. But it's the husbands in Miami's faulty. Like, think about Lisa's Hoxtein's husband. He's a little hoe.

Julia 35:55

He's a hoe. He's also oh the the worst plastic surgeon I've ever met, like with his work. But we're here talking about Alexia's first husband because she didn't inherit bob blood, she just had like a really bad first husband, which I feel like is the uh trend for these housewives.

Sarah 36:16

Yeah, for sure.

Julia 36:18

She meets this guy in 1987. His name is Pedro Peggy at a club in Miami. He's cute, they meet at a VIP section, and I guess in the club that he tells her he works for his parents, but he's actually trafficking 75 tons of cocaine for a two billion col $2 billion Colombian drug empire.

Sarah 36:41

Oh my god.

Julia 36:42

He's not a part of the Italian mafia, he's part of the Colombian cocaine trafficking operation. So it's it's it's almost the same, you know? Yeah, it's the same shit, different thought. I know. And then 1992 he was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for cocaine trafficking.

Sarah 37:02

So she uh her her son Peter is with him. Yes, Peter Jr. Her first son. So he's on the he's on the show a lot, but I didn't realize that that was her son with this guy. Yes.

Julia 37:14

So by 96, he flips. He's also like cheating with her. I mean, like not with her, but like with other people when he's with her, which is also fucked up. But by 96, he flips and he testifies against his own partners. He gets out early, they divorce, she goes off, and she's like an executive editor of a magazine and becomes a certified socialite of Miami, which is why she gets cast in the house ice of 2011. But like no one knows and no one really talks about it that much that she's like a like a her ex-husband was a drug lord until a Netflix documentary came out about it 10 years later. How Pedro got in, he grew up in a working class family in Little Havana, and his older sister started dating Gustavo Tabby Falcon, an older brother of a king of a kingpin, Willie Fli uh Falcon. And that marriage locked him into the family circle. So he started really young at 15, just doing bookkeeping, and then he got to the top by the time the operation peaked, and then he was like third in command and moved over 75 tons of cocaine, and they flipped him, like I said before, and then he's sentenced, but only he was trying they tried to sentence him for 24 years, but he only served about four to five. And then after prison, the crimes didn't stop there. In 2007, he was arrested for having sex with a minor he met at a nightclub and he was sentenced to 12 years in probation, which makes him a convicted sex offender. What a fucking dumbass. I know, what a dumbass. And then in 2012, they arrested him again for violating that probation. And in 2017, just weeks after sitting for his cocaine boys interview, the DEA caught him trying to sell five kilos of cocaine to an informant. Oh my god. And he was expected to be released around February 2022 from a low security federal facility in Miami. So yeah, Alexia was it just an innocent bystander who had a type, and the type happened to be a cocaine king pen.

Sarah 39:24

Cocaine cowboy. Yeah, she had no involvement, but you know, she probably liked that money in the beginning. Yeah, she she did like what it could buy. Yeah. 100%. But yeah, now she's with Todd, but they're divorced, but they're together. We don't know what's going on with that. She definitely has some toxic issues with relationships. She's I thought she got divorced with Todd. He filed for divorce, basically, but then she's been trying to get back together with him. That's what happened on the more recent season. And everyone was like, Don't get back with him. Like he left you. I think he'd left her like in the middle of the night, like packed up, divorced her. And they were like, You can't go back to him, but she's like very stigmatized by him. Like, that's what she said. That's insane. Yeah, there's definitely crime throughout all of these Real Housewives franchises. Some are, you know, just by association, but some are more directly involved. The house I was in New Jersey is definitely the most closely linked to mafia ties. Yeah. Doing this research made me want to watch the Mob Wives show. Did you ever watch that back in the day? I did. I loved Big Ange. She was amazing. Okay, so maybe I'll watch that. But yeah, I really like learning about all this organized crime.

Julia 40:34

It's really interesting to me. I know. Organized crime is the best. I honestly like that's why I asked you about money laundering because I want to commit that crime eventually.

Sarah 40:45

I mean, all these rich people are doing this shit. They're just doing it in a way that it's very strategic. They're doing it strategically. But yeah, don't come for us. Don't set out a hit on us.

Julia 40:56

This is all alleged. We're just two girly pops. We have no real stake in the game. Yeah. That's all we have for this week. We'll try to plan something for next week. We don't know what we're gonna talk about yet, but we will figure it out.

Sarah 41:11

Hope you guys have a great weekend. Hopefully, it's full of relaxing and not stressed. And yeah, Julia, enjoy all of your exciting vacations and traveling coming up.

Julia 41:22

Yes, I will. It's gonna be so much fun. I can't wait to document my travels. All right. Well, love you guys. Bye. Bye.