mike lee

On July 12 the New York Times News Service released a story about Steven Seagal quaking in the face of a pair of unarmed gangsters. Read all about it. Excerpts:

Steven Seagal, the action film star cited as a Mafia extortion target, has told investigators that after he stopped working with his longtime producer he was ordered into a car in Brooklyn last year and shuttled to a landmark restaurant where he was threatened by mobsters, officials and lawyers involved in the case say.

He was so intimidated, he recounted, that he agreed to turn over $700,000, although investigators are still trying to trace the money....

In one of the more cinematic moments, people familiar with the case said, Seagal told investigators that in February 2001 he was visiting Nasso and Nasso's brother Vincent, also a reputed Gambino associate, in Brooklyn when he was ordered into a car to accompany both brothers and another reputed Gambino associate later charged in the case, Richard Bondi. After a switching of cars to throw off any pursuers, the journey ended at the Gage & Tollner restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn where Anthony Ciccone, a reputed Gambino captain known as "Sonny," and Primo Cassarino, a reputed family soldier, were waiting in a back room. It was here, people familiar with the case say, that the threat was made.

Not long afterward, people close to the investigation said, a tape recorder in one of the prime bugged locations, Brioso's restaurant in Staten Island picked up Ciccone and Cassarino chortling over scaring Seagal. "They were laughing about it, saying it was right out of the movies and `if we only had guns in our belts, it would be really good,"' said a lawyer who heard the tape.

A month later, Seagal told investigators, he was visited unexpectedly at his home in Los Angeles by Julius Nasso, Ciccone and Cassarino, and that he subsequently paid Ciccone $700,000 through Nasso.