Just say Cheese Man, please, not The Big Cheese

DiNunzio sets the record straight

Carmen "Cheese Man" DiNunzio listened yesterday as his lawyer argued a motion to dismiss charges against him, in Essex Superior Court in Salem. (Robert Spencer For The Boston Globe)

The alleged head of the Boston mob set the record straight yesterday on an important matter. He is not, he said, "The Big Cheese."

"Nobody calls me that," Carmen DiNunzio said while leaving a Salem courthouse. "People call me Cheese Man. They call me the Cheese Man because I sell all kinds of cheese."

In a hearing yesterday in Essex Superior Court, DiNunzio, the rotund, low-key 50-year-old reputed underboss for the New England Mafia, asked a judge to toss out gambling and extortion charges that could send him to prison for 15 years.

DiNunzio's lawyer, Anthony Cardinale, said a five-year investigation by state troopers yielded not a single word on tape from DiNunzio or any other proof he extorted $500 a month from North End bookie Anthony Pino, who testified before a grand jury last year. No one called him The Big Cheese, on the tapes, a nickname widely used by police and the media.

Cardinale accused District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett's office of "poisoning" the grand jury against DiNunzio, who owns Fresh Cheese in the North End, with tales of his alleged friendships with mobsters.

A state trooper has testified that police saw DiNunzio meet in Sharon with reputed New England godfather Luigi "Baby Shanks" Manocchio, 81, of Providence, around Easter 2006, but that the meeting was not bugged.

"He could have been buying cheese," Cardinale told reporters. "They could have been eating spaghetti. Who knows?"

Assistant District Attorney Catherine Semel told the court yesterday that evidence of DiNunzio's mob connections were properly admitted. "These were all introduced to help explain the context of the extortionate threat that was made," she said.

Cardinale argued that Pino was not afraid of DiNunzio but was concerned about a rival mob capo named Bobby Luisi in 2001.

"He didn't have any problem with my client. He wasn't worried about him. It was about this other guy," Cardinale said, calling Pino's payment similar to "someone hiring a bodyguard."

Pino, who pleaded guilty to gaming charges in 2003, testified before the grand jury that he paid his gaming associate Joseph Settipane $500 per month for protection after he was "bothered" by Luisi, then a top capo in a faction based in Philadelphia.

Pino at first testified he did not know what Settipane did with "the nickel" but later testified that the money went to DiNunzio.

Settipane, a former West Ender who was in his 70s, died in 2002.

The prosecutor said Pino wasn't just a businessman but a victim.

"Mr. Pino testified it was his understanding if he did not pay $500 per month, his business would be harmed, he would be harmed," Semel told the court.

State Police intercepted at least 28 phone calls between bookmakers and associates and seized more than $800,000 in the probe. DiNunzio is accused of conspiring with underlings to shake down Medford drug dealers and rival bookies for tribute.

Prosecutors say three of DiNunzio's men made an intimidating visit to a North Shore restaurant owner and gambler named John Forziati in October 2001.

Testifying before the grand jury, Forziati said the men came to his restaurant and told him to stop betting with Settipane's nephew Richard Settipane and to bet with them.

Forziati said he quit gambling that day. "I just didn't want to deal with it, you know . . . didn't want my wife to kill me. Just totally stopped and that was it," he testified, according to a transcript.

Judge David Lowy did not immediately rule in the case.

DiNunzio, who remains free on bail, spent four years in federal prison on a 1993 conviction for extorting a Las Vegas gambler out of $27,000.