Career
He earned the nickname "Tony Roach" or simply "Roach" because of his vague physical resemblance to the insect, the cockroach, the name assumed a double meaning not to long afterward, when Rampino started smoking copious amounts of marijuana. He was involved in drug trafficking. Anthony"s passion was stickball and being a successful thief.
He was a cadaverous looking man with huge hands and long arms that seemed to reach down past his knees, and an odd rubbery-looking face.
He liked to contort his face into all kinds of horrible grimaces in front of a mirror, years of practice allowed him, at a second"s notice, to shape his face into something like The Phantom of the Opera. He firmly believed that such faces would frighten any enemy.
He had been troubled with a severe heroin addiction in the 1960s which was well known among his criminal associates but had successfully kicked the drug habit by 1979. But he had to know what was going on.
On June 28, 1987 he was arrested for selling $30,000 worth of heroin to an undercover police officer in Ozone Park, Queens.
He was sentenced to fifteen years in a federal prison for criminal sale of a controlled substance in the first degree, which carries a sentence of fifteen years to life in prison. His bail was set at $150,000. Rampino was admitted to Saint Luke"s Hospital in New Hartford on December
4., 2010.
The colorful mob character had been suffering from heart and respiratory ailments, according to court filings. He died on 12/20/2010 in the same hospital.
