TRENTON – George “Georgie Neck” Zappola has stood before a judge and said he was guilty once before. That was 1996, in federal court, when he pleaded guilty to several murders, including the 1990 killing of James Bishop, a New Jersey labor official, and accepted a 22-year prison sentence. On Wednesday, he was back in a New Jersey courtroom, a different judge and a different crime, and pleaded guilty to second-degree racketeering for his role in an illegal gambling enterprise that ran from suburban poker clubs to offshore sportsbook websites registered in foreign countries. He is 65. He faces a recommended seven years in state prison.
Zappola was among eight people who entered guilty pleas in New Jersey Superior Court on June 24, the most significant single-day resolution in a prosecution that Attorney General Jennifer Davenport has described as a comprehensive dismantling of the Lucchese crime family’s gambling infrastructure in the state. With Wednesday’s pleas, 35 of the 42 people indicted since April 2025 have admitted their roles in what prosecutors describe as a coordinated operation with managers, agents, corporate laundering shells, and oversight from the family’s leadership. The AG’s office detailed the pleas in a statement issued Wednesday.
What prosecutors uncovered, across the two-year investigation, was a functioning industry operating inside legitimate New Jersey businesses. Social clubs hosted live poker games and banks of gambling machines for patrons. A parallel online sportsbook ran through websites based in foreign countries, with agents and sub-agents managing groups of bettors through offshore platforms. The proceeds filtered through three New Jersey companies: Frasso Trucking Inc., Café Gio Inc., and CJW Development & Consulting LLC, which collectively processed approximately $4.79 million in suspected criminal revenue before investigators connected the transactions to the gambling operation.
Three of Wednesday’s eight defendants carried the heaviest recommended terms. Alongside Zappola stood Joseph “Big Joe” Perna, described by prosecutors as an alleged Lucchese capo, and his cousin John Perna, identified as a reputed soldier in the family. All three were described as senior managers of the New Jersey faction, with the broader Lucchese organization receiving a share of proceeds through what prosecutors characterized as a franchise arrangement. All three pleaded to second-degree racketeering, with a recommended seven-year state prison term under their plea agreements. The five remaining defendants in Wednesday’s group admitted lesser roles and face lighter recommended sentences.
Zappola’s reappearance in a New Jersey courtroom more than a decade after his release from federal prison is the clearest expression of prosecutors’ broader argument: that the expansion of legal sports betting across the United States did not reduce organized crime’s appetite for gambling revenue; it changed how the market worked. He was a close associate of Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, the Lucchese underboss whose federal cooperation in the 1990s produced some of the most detailed organized crime disclosures of that era. After his 1996 plea, Zappola served his full sentence and was released in 2014. By prosecutors’ account, he was embedded within a few years in an operation running on digital infrastructure and offshore technology that did not exist when he was sentenced.
The indictment also reached into local government in ways prosecutors took care to detail. Anand Shah, 42, of Prospect Park, a municipal councilman, was among the defendants charged in the initial April 2025 indictment. He was accused of managing poker games and sportsbook operations as part of the enterprise. His case was not among Wednesday’s resolutions, and his disposition remains pending. Prosecutors cited his presence in the prosecution to illustrate that the operation’s reach extended beyond organized crime networks and into the civic structures of the communities it served.
The mechanics of the enterprise track how illegal gambling networks adapted to the legal betting expansion rather than retreating from it. As analysis published by the Eastern Herald has examined, the premise that licensed gambling displaces underground markets has never fully held: underground operators compete on terms licensed platforms cannot legally offer, including anonymous credit accounts, no identity verification, and flexible collection arrangements. The Lucchese enterprise ran its offshore sportsbook alongside New Jersey’s regulated betting market and appears to have drawn customers seeking precisely those unlicensed features. As World Cup betting volumes this month drove record activity on licensed platforms, investigators in New Jersey were simultaneously piecing together evidence of an unlicensed parallel market operating in the same state.
Seven defendants from the original 42 indicted have not yet resolved their cases. Whether the offshore technology providers that hosted the sportsbook platforms have been identified, or whether they remain beyond the reach of New Jersey enforcement on foreign servers, is a question the AG’s announcement did not address. Nor did the announcement address whether the three laundering companies had other clients whose transactions may require scrutiny. Zappola himself said nothing publicly at sentencing that the AG’s office has disclosed. He said he was guilty. He has said that before.
