“The Westies” are back — with a twist. Manhattan’s former “Irish Mafia’’ gang. Long infamous for running loan-sharking and extortion rackets out of the tenements of Hell’s Kitchen through the early 1990s. Suddenly resurfaced with a highly sophisticated scheme using a fleet of superfast private jets to smuggle high-grade marijuana from California to cities across the country. Click below to see the video.
“It’s rare to run into an organization that’s wealthy enough and sophisticated enough to pull it off†— but they’re doing it, one law-enforcement source said. At the helm of the gang’s Manhattan operation is John Bokun, whose uncles, Billy and namesake John, were Westies before the neighborhood became gentrified by pricey co-ops and wine bars, authorities said. The younger Bokun lives in what is now known as the West Side’s Clinton neighborhood and is accused of teaming up with a California drug organization to use his Dassault Falcon executive jet to distribute top-grade hydroponic marijuana across the country, records show. ICE agents were waiting for him as he stepped off his private jet after it landed in Farmingdale, LI, and they watched as the plane was unloaded, Assistant US Attorney Christopher Ott recently told a federal judge. Authorities seized $500,000 worth of marijuana.
