Richard Cantarella (born December 19, 1944), also known as Shellackhead, was an American mobster who became a captain for the New York City-based Bonanno crime family and later a government witness.
Cantarella was born to Italian parents on the Lower East Side, Manhattan and raised in Knickerbocker Village, a public housing development that was home to many Bonanno family members.
However, Cantarella and his cousin, Bonanno mobster Joseph D'Amico, actually served as enforcers on the newspaper's loading docks, jobs they would perform for over thirty years.
From 1988 until 1991, Cantarella was a so-called "tail man", a worker who rides on the back of the delivery truck and unloads the newspaper bundles.
On the evening of Nov. 14, 1983, Cantarella, Embarrato, D'Amico, and Patrick Romanello met Mazzeo at a sanitation garage in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
In 1981, the Bonanno family was rocked by the revelation that one of their associates, Donnie Brasco, was actually a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) undercover agent named Joseph Pistone.
In 1994, Cantarella and other mobsters kidnapped a wealthy businessman at his office, drove him home, forced him to deactivate the burglar alarm system, and robbed him of cash, jewelry and other valuables.
[5][6] Cantarella was eventually convicted of grand larceny for his "no show" job at the Post and served seven months in prison.
Jack Stubing, the head of the FBI's Bonanno Squad, had been at a loss to find a way to bring down Massino.
He ultimately persuaded his bosses to let him borrow Jeff Sallet and Kim McCaffrey, a pair of forensic accountants normally used on fraud cases, believing that they could pinpoint participants in the family's money laundering schemes.
While being debriefed, Weinberg revealed that Cantarella had wrung a total of $1.25 million in extortion payoffs from him—much of it laundered through Scozzari's restaurant.
Among the specific acts were the Perrino murder, arson, kidnapping, loansharking, extortion, illegal gambling, and money laundering.
While in prison, Cantarella learned that capo Frank Coppa, also arraigned in the October roundup, had become the first member of the Bonanno family ever to become an informant.
Realizing that Coppa's testimony would all but assure that he would die in prison, in December 2002, Cantarella accepted a plea bargain deal and became a government witness.
Also in 2004, Cantarella testified that he attended the Bonanno family induction ceremony for Perry Criscitelli, who was then the president of the Feast of San Gennaro Association.
[14] In April 2017, Oxygen Channel launched Unprotected, a reality television program starring the Cantarella family, chronicling their attempt to start their lives over again after having opted out of Witness Protection.