‘True partners in crime’ behind infamous $6m heist, court told

An ageing gangster went on trial on charges he was in on the $6m Lufthansa holdup in 1978, a legendary theft dramatised in the hit film Goodfellas.

The brazen armed robbery of cash and jewellery in the dead of night at a cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport was “the score of all scores” for Vincent Asaro and other mobsters of his generation, Assistant US Attorney Lindsay Gerdes said in opening statements in federal court in Brooklyn.

Asaro, 80, teamed with heist mastermind, the late James ‘Jimmy the Gent’ Burke, played by Robert De Niro in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film, “because he knew Burke was someone he could make money with”, Gerdes said.