CRIME HISTORY - Mobsters Convicted of Extorting Action Movie Star
By: Scott McCabe, Examiner Staff Writer
March 18, 2010
On this day, March 18, in 2003, seven mobsters were convicted of trying to muscle $3 million from action film star Steven Seagal.
Seagal, a seventh-degree black belt, decided to stop making violent films on the advice of his spiritual guru. But the Gambino crime family wanted Seagal to keep making the ticket-selling movies and to pay the family $150,000 for each project.
Mafia members kept showing up uninvited at Seagal's home or his film set. To help get their point across, they brought along 300-plus-pound enforcer Richard "the Lump" Bondi.
On FBI tapes, the mobsters laughed over how Seagal seemed "petrified." Said one goon, "It was like right out of the movies."
The convicted men included the brother and nephew of the Dapper Don, John Gotti.
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