Son of NYC mobster ‘Sally Daz’ and hitman guilty in murder-for-hire plot

A Brooklyn federal jury agrees — he went against the family.

Anthony Zottola was found guilty Wednesday of orchestrating the killing of his Bronx mobster dad Sylvester “Sally Daz” Zottola, and the near-murder of his older brother.

The panel needed three days to come to its decision, finding Zottola and shooter Himen Ross guilty of murder-for-hire, conspiracy and gun possession. Accused getaway driver Alfred Lopez was acquitted of the same charges.

Sally Daz was stalked and killed by a Bloods gang that couldn’t shoot straight for a year — until it finally did, sealing the 71-year-old mafioso’s fate in a bloody, dramatic shooting as he waited for coffee in a Bronx McDonald’s drive-through on Oct. 4, 2018.

It turned out, the murder plot, which started with a man punching Sally Daz in the neck in his Bronx driveway more than a year earlier, was paid for by his son, Anthony, and planned out by text message with the Bloods gang’s leader.

When authorities arrested that Bloods honcho, Bushawn Shelton, a few days later, they seized his phone and found evidence of Zottola’s year-long correspondence, written in a code which described the murder as a movie scene, or a hockey team, or a coffee order at a restaurant.

Shelton, who pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire in exchange for 35 to 40 years behind bars, didn’t testify at the trial.

Zottola wanted control of his father’s multi-million-dollar real estate empire in the Bronx, which was built off the proceeds of his nearly 40 years running illegal gambling machines for the mob, prosecutors said.

“Anthony Zottola wanted control over the finances. He wanted to be able to make decisions about selling the properties if he wanted to sell them,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Dean said in her closing argument last week, laying out the text messages and cell site data at the heart of the prosecution’s case.

“He wanted to write his own paychecks instead of putting his hand out at the end of the month of hard work to his dad, and he didn’t want to deal with his dad and his brother, because you saw those text messages and it’s very clear that he couldn’t stand them.”

Anthony Zottola’s lawyer, Henry Mazurek, floated a different theory of the crime, that Sally Daz’s long organized crime past finally caught up with him, and his son had nothing to do with his murder.

During his closing argument, Mazurek put the blame on Shelton and his crew, and pointed out that the victim had clashed with Albanian gangsters over where they put his gambling machines.

“There was conflict in his illegal gambling business, the street business,” Mazurek said. “Whether it’s Italians, whether it’s Albanians or whether it’s African-Americans, it doesn’t matter. If gangsters smell cash, they go after it.”

Mazurek also tried to convince the jury that texts alone aren’t enough to find Anthony Zottola guilty. “A text is not something that happens in real life. It’s the virtual world,” he said. “This is not the metaverse, the virtual reality, it is real life.”

The jury heard from Salvatore Zottola, 45, who talked about the year of attacks on his dad, his attempts at “being a detective” to figure out who was behind it, and, in one case, his brother’s lack of urgency in chasing down one of the attackers after one of the botched hits.

He also talked about surviving the July 11 attempt on his life outside his Bronx home, how he rolled on the ground trying to dodge bullets before he was shot twice in the head.

Prosecutors also put two members of the conspiracy who couldn’t get the hit done on the stand — including Ron Cabey, a bumbling would-be killer who botched three attempts at killing Salvatore Zottola, then three more at Sally Daz.

The defense team tried to portray both men as liars and career criminals who’d say anything to secure a “cooperation letter” from prosecutors that could mean less or no time behind bars.

The murder charges carry a mandatory life sentence. Zottola and Ross will be back in court to learn their fate in February.