In the annals of organized crime and extortion, there is no end to the victims and their suffering, from movie stars and Wall Street brokers to truck drivers and small businessmen.  Carmine Franco, known as Papa Smurf, was identified as an associate of the Genovese crime family in an indictment Wednesday.  But in recent years, the owner of a lucrative carting company operating in the New York City suburbs has apparently achieved something that few can claim: He endured extortion by four different mob figures or crews, the authorities said.  The man’s tribulations were revealed in a federal racketeering indictment unsealed in Federal District Court on Wednesday against 29 defendants connected to the garbage-hauling industry. He remains anonymous because he cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal prosecutors; he is referred to only as C.W., legal parlance for cooperating witness.  The indictment contains no particulars about the company owner or his motivation for cooperating with the authorities, and little is known about the details of his frequent victimization. Indeed, because he was working with the F.B.I. and prosecutors — and he may have been doing so because he himself had been charged with a crime and was seeking more lenient treatment — he may have been motivated to ensnare the men who prosecutors charge made him a victim.  The charges in the case outline how the members and associates of three crime families — Genovese, Luchese and Gambino — controlled waste disposal businesses, dictating which companies could pick up trash where and extorting payments that ostensibly would entitle them to protection from other mob figures, court papers said.  This system eliminated competitors who might provide better service or lower prices, or both, and in effect levied a mob tax on businesses and communities, according to the charges, in much the same way that the organized crime families in New York City did in the five boroughs two decades ago.  The mob’s stranglehold over the carting industry in the city was broken in large measure by a sweeping racketeering case brought in 1995 by Robert M. Morgenthau, then the Manhattan district attorney, and the creation of a robust regulatory framework that would later become the Business Integrity Commission, which played a significant role in the indictment unsealed on Wednesday.  The case seems to highlight the effectiveness of the experienced, well-financed and aggressive regulatory agency in keeping organized crime out of the carting industry. Many of the charges in the federal case are centered in areas with less aggressive or nonexistent industry oversight, and the indictments unsealed on Wednesday include no evidence of organized crime influence on companies licensed in New York City, where the Business Integrity Commission regulates hauling companies.  But the company owned by the cooperating witness was very much the focus of organized crime figures. Competing factions vied for control of his company over the last three years, according to the indictment. And the case seems to suggest that outside New York City, the mob’s hold on the industry remains, in some part.  The indictment also suggests that the accused gangsters — men with nicknames like Papa Smurf, Tony Lodi and Muzzy — were not reluctant to use some creative, if not particularly clandestine, approaches.  Carmine Franco, for example, who is identified in the indictment as a Genovese associate and is one of those accused of extorting the carting company owner, arranged to replace the use of envelopes or paper bags for collecting payments. He instituted a sort of direct mob deposit.  “When Franco controlled the C.W.’s company,” the indictment says, “Franco directed Franco’s bookkeeper to establish automatic monthly payments from the C.W.’s bank account.”
Some of those arrested, on charges including racketeering and extortion, had ties to the Genovese, Gambino and Luchese crime families, an official said.