Folytassuk sorozatunkat a Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves (=Cigányok, csavargók, tolvajok) című cikkel. Forrás linkje a végén.

A cikk, amelyet teljes egészében (a kommenttel együtt) idézünk, a következőt mondja el: Rosie Marie és Pete Costello, akik – olaszos nevük*  ellenére – cigányok, 20 éven keresztül élősködtek az adófizetők pénzén, mintegy 200 000 US$-t felmarkolva, úgy, hogy Pete Costello-t teljesen retardált, magatehetetlen embernek állították be, aki nem hogy autót nem tud vezetni, de magát még ellátni sem képes. Amit aztán kegyetlenül megszívtak, mert a rendőrség kezébe került jópár videofelvétel, amelyen az illető vígan autókázott, és megszólalásaiban sem volt éppen beszédképtelen retardált.

* Amerikában nagyon sok cigány vett fel olasz családnevet, ugyanazon okból, amiért szívesen állítják magukról, hogy mexikói bevándorlók, és még véletlenül sem cigányok – a bőr, haj- és szemszín hasonlósága a déli népekkel és a cigányok USA-beli gyűlöltsége miatt. Mellesleg pont ugyanerre utal a cikkre érkezett megjegyzés is (“I was looking at Mrs. Costello and thinking she really didn't look very Italian - more like a gypsy. Then I found out that one of the gypsy kings (circa 1912) was named Costello. Wonder why they chose that name?”) Persze a zömmel jó arcú olaszokkal és mexikóiakkal csak felületes szemlélő téveszti össze a zömmel rosszarcú cigókat.

Ejnye, de ordító a párhuzam a magyarországi viszonyokkal, ugye? A többszázezer cigány rokkantnyugdíjas, akikről mindenki tudja, hogy nem azok? (Lásd pl. EZT és EZT) Az, hogy a cigányok előszeretettel nevezik ki a kölykeiket retardáltnak, hogy aztán még több pénzt zsebeljenek be, miközben azon sipítoznak, hogy felzárkóztatóba küldik őket?

A tanulmányt mindenképp érdemes elolvasni. Az adott, a cigányokra oly jellemző bűnügyek kitárgyalása mellett sok érdekes infót is megtudunk belőle; pl. azt, hogy a cigány tanulók döntő többsége Amerikában sem fejezi be a nyolcadikat, mert a szülei egyszerűen kiveszik a suliból, és emiatt természetesen kisebb-nagyobb mértékben írástudatlanok is. Ez természetesen nem gátolja meg őket abban, hogy a szociális és segélyrendszer egyik legnagyobb kihasználói legyenek. A cikken belüli, ill. a végén felsorolt linkeket szintén érdemes követni, nagyon hasznos infókat találunk bennük. Például, az ITT található tanulmány leszögezi a következőket: “The Roma are ethnocentric, tending to demonstrate a sense of moral superiority and contempt toward the Gadje.”

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

By now you’ve probably heard of Rosie Marie and Pete Costello. The mother and son team who have plead not guilty to charges of Social Security fraud and conspiring to defraud the government. Allegations are that for the last twenty-years the pair had obtained over $200,000 in fraudulent funds from Social Security, after Rosie Marie convinced Social Security officials and psychologists that her son was mentally disabled.

According to Rosie, her twenty-eight year old son, Pete, was unable to care for himself, in any way. He was unable to wash himself, feed himself or take care of his daily needs. He was unable to read, write or communicate, and most certainly was not capable of driving a car. But it was all a lie. And it fell apart when Pete went to court to talk his way out of a traffic ticket.

Pete Costello had been caught on video tape in a courtroom contesting a traffic ticket, and was able to communicate well enough to persuade the court to give him a deferment. Pete was also caught in a separate video tape. One in which Pete and his mother, Rosie, are being interviewed by Social Security personnel, and there’s a much different portrayal of Pete in that one. In the second tape Pete can be seen sitting slouched in the corner, appearing to have problems controlling his motor coordination, and picking his nose. Sitting in the background in the hooded jacket, pulling at her hair is, allegedly, Pete’s girlfriend posing as Rosie’s mentally disabled daughter. It is unknown if Rosie was able to obtain any additional government funds from the female imposter feigning the disability, or through the fraudulent use of identification which enabled the individual to pose as her daughter. Whether or not Rosie actually has a daughter has not been confirmed one way or the other, but if I were to guess, I’d have to say probably not.

Pete, as it turns out, is not mentally disabled at all, or at least not as mentally deficient as he’s been portraying himself to be. And prior to his current home in a Washington jail cell, Pete was employed as an auto body repairman and was living with his girlfriend and her children.

It could be easy to construe that Pete Costello was brainwashed by a controlling mother and that he continued to go along with her scheme out of some sense of misguided loyalty, or perhaps fear. Or perhaps one could assume that Pete felt he couldn’t get out from under this scam because if he did his mother would have no way of supporting herself. At some point Pete became an adult who was capable of telling the difference between right and wrong, that’s obvious. So why did he continue to go along with his mother’s lies and thievery? The answer lies in what has not yet been reported in the mainstream, and that is that the Costello’s are members of a gypsy crime family and fraud IS the family business. Pete and Rosie Marie Costello are part of a family where going to jail is nothing more than the small cost of doing business.

The culture of the gypsy crime family is passed through the generations. There is a belief that all gadje (non Roma) are marimé (impure, unclean, defiled), making them fair game for frauds and cons. The children are not only taught this way of life, but are included in various schemes from a very young age, as in the case of Pete Costello beginning to defraud the Social Security system when he was eight-years old at the behest of his mother. Most gypsy children never finish school, as they are generally removed by the time they reach the 8th grade. These particular organized crime groups are masters at social engineering, but are usually limited in their ability to read and write, even so, many of the generation-X gypsies have become quite Internet and computer savvy, as have their children, and can frequently be found ego surfing.

A folktale that is told that justifies the fraudulent activities of the gypsies is a story which involves the crucifixion of Jesus. There are several versions. In some a Rom child steals, or swallows depending on the version, the nail that was intended to pierce Christ’s heart. In other versions a Rom woman, and sometimes a Rom child, steals a bag of nails that was to be used in the crucifixion, leaving only three nails to be used, summarily leading to less pain and suffering. The final resolution in the folk tale of the nail, regardless of the version, is that God was so grateful to the Rom child/woman that the Sin attached to theft was removed for all of the Roma people, they were then blessed and granted permission to take any and all that they needed, for all time. The gypsy crime groups believe that they are ordained by God to lie, cheat and steal – but only from gadje or, if necessary, from gypsies who are not members of their immediate group. It is this belief that sets them apart from any other organized crime ring. There is no other criminal organization (not including many of those who perpetrate acts of terrorism), that I am aware of, that believes that they are ordained by God to carry out acts of crime (again, not including many who perpetrate acts of terrorism)

Another gypsy legend tells of why they travel from place to place to place. It too surrounds the crucifixion of Christ. This is a tale of a Roma blacksmith who forges the nails that were to be used at the crucifixion, after all the other blacksmiths had refused the task, some paying with their lives. According to the folktale it was that action, on the part of the Roma blacksmith, which condemned the Roma people to forever wander the earth.

Gypsy crime groups are frequently found defrauding the government, whether it be Social Security, as with Rosie Marie and Pete Costello, or through welfare fraud using multiple identities, usually obtained through various forms of identify theft and identity fraud. Both of the Costello’s are alleged to have used more than one identity to obtain the SSI benefits, in more than one state.

Investigators frequently find themselves chasing their tails because many of the individuals in these crime families use the same names. You will find an entire line all named Jimmy, Bobby, Frankie and Lizzie, then have to try and sort out which Jimmy is which. Occasionally a first name is a flag to an investigator that they have a possible gypsy on their hands, for example two of the most popular and unusual gypsy names are Peaches and Madonna. That is not to say that Madonna the entertainer is a member of a gypsy crime family, or that everyone named Peaches is out staging accidents or pulling slip-n-falls at the local grocery.

Gypsy crime rings are active in identity theft, staged accidents, auto salvage frauds, auto repair frauds, auto consignment schemes, auto thefts, fraudulent auto sales, sweetheart scams, distraction thefts, quick-claim scams, slip-and-falls, and paving and roofing schemes - just to name a few. They’ll travel to flood and wind ravaged areas to perpetrate contractor scams on the victims. And, unfortunately it is not just a stereotype, fortune telling and money cleansing schemes as well. After 9/11 fraud perpetrated by gypsy crime groups took a significant nose dive and appeared almost non existent, these crime rings flew very low on the radar for quite some time. Over the last two and a quarter years these criminal groups have become increasingly more active.

Author Jack Olsen wrote about a gypsy crime family in his book ‘Hastened to the Grave’ who after defrauding their victims and stealing their finances and homes, would kill them by putting Foxglove in their food, otherwise known as Digitalis. For the most part, gypsy crime families are not well known for murderous behavior, but may frequently be involved in domestic violence type situations as there can be much in-fighting within the group dynamic itself. They are, however, well known for frauds and cons and for utilizing distraction schemes to perpetrate their crimes.

The state of Washington is home to a several gypsy crime families who participate heavily in confidence schemes. In the western United States, some of the most well known of the gypsy crime families are the Costello’s, the Ristick’s, the Marks’, the Miller’s, the Steve’s and the Ephrem’s. That is not to say that everyone who has one of those surnames is involved in criminal activity, but when the name comes up associated with an investigation, a savvy investigator knows that they better take a closer look to rule out a connection to a gypsy crime ring. In the case of Rosie Marie and Pete Costello, there’s nothing to rule out, it’s a done deal.

I hope that the investigation into the activities of Rosie and Pete continues, beyond the current allegations. Because if the investigators look close enough they just might find other evidence of a variety of frauds perpetrated by not just these two, but other individuals that they can be linked to. Fraud to these types of crime rings is like eating potato chips, you can’t have just one.

The reader may find the following articles regarding the culture of the Roma people, and gypsy crime and criminals of interest:

Gypsies, Cops, and Thieves 
The Double Life of Nick the Cop 

Romani Customs and Traditions: Popular Myths about the Roma 
Gypsy (Roma) culture 

Menjünk tovább, nézzük az ITT található, a bolgár cigányhelyzettel foglalkozó tanulmányt:

Gypsies

Although Gypsies are known to have lived in Bulgaria since the fourteenth century, most of the Gypsy population arrived in the past few centuries. The last known group was forced to settle in 1958, having remained nomadic until that time. The Gypsy population was divided into three groups. According to the 1965 census, the last that enumerated Bulgarians by nationality, 42.5 percent were Orthodox and spoke Bulgarian; 34.2 percent were Orthodox and spoke Romanian or Romany, the Gypsy language; and 22.8 percent were Muslim, spoke Turkish, and considered themselves ethnic Turks. Estimates in 1990 put the Gypsy population at about 450,000, some 10 percent of whom lived in the southeastern city of Sliven.
The Gypsies had a long history as one of Bulgaria's most disadvantaged and maligned nationalities. They were the focus of official name-changing campaigns in every postwar decade between 1950 and 1990. Despite their numbers, Gypsies did not contribute much to Bulgarian society because only about 40 percent of them attained the educational and cultural level of the average Bulgarian. The other 60 percent lived in extremely disadvantaged conditions, isolated from the mainstream of society by the Gypsy tradition of preserving ethnic customs and by Bulgarian government policy. Government programs to improve the lot of the Gypsies usually meant construction of new, separate Gypsy neighborhoods rather than integration into Bulgarian society. Housing in Gypsy neighborhoods was always poor and overcrowded. In 1959 when a new neighborhood was built in Sofia, 800 people moved into 252 apartments. Each apartment had one and one-half rooms and no kitchen or inside plumbing. By 1990 about 3,000 people lived in these same apartments.

The education of Gypsies who spoke Romany was inhibited because the language has no alphabet or written literature. Gypsy children were exposed to Bulgarian only in school, hampering completion of studies for many. The illiteracy rate among Gypsies was believed to be still quite high in 1990, although no statistics were available. According to the only known literacy figures for nationalities, given in the 1926 census, 8.2 percent of Gypsies were literate compared with 54.4 percent of Bulgarians overall. The Gypsy community exerted little pressure on students to finish school; many dropped out before reaching legal working age, increasing the tendency to marry and begin having children early.

In 1990 about 70 percent of Gypsy workers were unskilled and worked as general laborers, custodians, street cleaners, dishwashers, or in other minimum-wage occupations. About 20 percent of Gypsies worked at skilled jobs. The small Gypsy intelligentsia, which included musicians, scholars, professionals in various fields, and political figures, tried to influence their countrymen to gain more education and job skills. Pressure also was exerted for elimination of separate Gypsy neighborhoods and official replacement of the derogatory Bulgarian word tsiganin with rom, the Romany word for Gypsy.
Az általunk félkövérrel kiemeltekhez (azaz annak finom, PC megfogalmazása, hogy a cigányok nem járatják iskolába a kölykeiket, ill. hogy körükben az írástudatlanság hihetetlen nagy mértékű) nem kell sokat hozzátennünk.

Folyt. köv., addig is tanulmányozzák Kedves Olvasóink az első cikkből tovább vezető linkeket – érdemes!