The "Lufthansa Heist": Five Mobsters Indicted in the 30 Year Old Crime

"Vincent Asaro" Originally the first person to be arrested in the Heist

Vincent Asaro, a high-ranking capo in the Bonnano Crime Family, his son Jerome Asaro, Jack Bonventre, Thomas "Tommy D" Fiore and John "Bazoo" Ragano were all indicted on Thursday in a Federal New York Court.

Charges that make the big news is the link to the 1978 "Lufthansa Hiest".

Famed in the movie "The Goodfellas", the heist was the biggest heist in US history, said to bring in around 6 million dollars or 20 million in todays money.

Jimmy Burke, (played by Robert DeNiro in the Goodfellas) the mastermind behind the heist, was convicted on a parole violation in 1982 and while in prison he was convicted on a murder charge of a drug dealer and sentenced to a much longer term that keep him in prison till 1996 when he died of lung cancer.

FBI descended on Burke's properties in June in New York, including his home where the expected planning of the heist took place and the "Robert's Lounge" that he owned and operated and was said to use it as his own personal cemetery.

The excavating of his Lounge brought up remains of human bones identified as Paul Katz (Burke's associate) and other evidence that gave FBI enough for arrests and indictments of the above mentioned five mobsters. Charges included: racketeering linked to the heist, extortion, consparicy, and murder for the high-ranking Vincent Asaro in connection to Katz's murder.

It will be interesting to see how these charges stick, stature of limitation should already long be over with, outside of the murder charge.

In any event, the crime was more then 30 years ago, the money is gone, the mastermind is dead and the mastermind pretty much murdered all other people involved. Should the FBI really be wasting time on criminal charges linked to this heist?

Murder charges I can see, but giving these old geezers a tax paying free retirement home may not be good money spent by the FBI and the judicial system.