Trouble for Mr. Dee

"Johnny Dio operates like an iceberg," says one rackets expert. "You never know how much is going on below the surface, but you know it spells trouble."

A precocious teen-age pupil of Murder Inc.'s Louis ("Lepke") Buchalter, urbane, well-tailored Iceberg Johnny Dio, 43 (real name: Dioguardi), was belatedly packed off for a three-year stretch at Sing Sing by Racket Buster Tom Dewey in 1937. The charge: extorting protection money from garment district truckers and cloak-and-suiters. Long out of stir and prospering by 1950, Dio became a smoother thug, refined his old muscle technique to set up "paper locals" (no rights, few members), shook down businessmen with threats of "labor violence" and picketing. So powerful grew "Mr. Dee" that two months ago, when U.S. attorneys attempted to hale him before a trial jury as the mastermind behind the acid-blinding (TIME, April 16, 1956 et ante) of Labor Columnist Victor Riesel, two key underworld Government witnesses took added five-year sentences for contempt rather than sing against Dio on the witness stand, and Johnny Dio's trial had to be postponed.

But Dio's triumph was short-lived. Last week a jury found Tough Boy Dio guilty on state charges of bribery and conspiracy in soliciting $30,000 from two complaisant Brooklyn electroplating firms in return for "labor peace." After one all-night session, the jurors sent word they could not reach an agreement, but General Sessions Judge John A. Mullen sent them to a hotel for rest and sober second thoughts. The guilty verdict opens Dio to a maximum sentence of two years in prison and a fine of $1,000.

Dio's troubles are not over: this week in Washington, members of the Senate committee investigating labor racketeering, already proved specialists in underwater demolition, will call on Iceberg Johnny Dio to explain just exactly how he used his paper locals to help Midwest Teamster Jimmy Hoffa win control of New York City's 125,000 drivers.

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