Where's Jimmy Hoffa Buried? Boca Raton company sued a late mobster’s son to find out
- Jul 27
- 16 min read
STARMEDIA PRODUCTIONS of Boca Raton had been in business just two years when the son of a late Mafia soldier made company officials an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Give me $250,000 and I’ll tell you where my father said Jimmy Hoffa is buried, Phillip Moscato Jr. of Palm City told them in early 2019.
StarMedia officials, eager to raise the profile of their fledgling television production house, were intrigued.
They were familiar with Moscato’s late father, Phillip “Brother” Moscato, described by feds as a Genovese crime family associate. They knew he once owned a New Jersey landfill that attracted the FBI’s attention not long after Hoffa, the former Teamsters president, vanished from the parking lot of a suburban Detroit restaurant on July 30, 1975.
And they found Phil Jr. persuasive as he explained how his father, dying of liver cancer in 2014, summoned his son to his hospital bed and told him Hoffa’s burial spot.
They envisioned a book deal, TV appearances and a documentary with cameras rolling as Phil Jr. directed heavy equipment to the purported grave, solving a mystery that has gripped the American imagination for nearly half a century.
“We were like, ‘Man, we could make a show out of this,’’’ recalled Steve Williams, the now-defunct company’s former chief operating officer.
But time was of the essence.
Phil Jr. and StarMedia wanted their project to tell the definitive Hoffa story, countering what they considered an inaccurate version portrayed in “The Irishman,” the Martin Scorsese movie scheduled for release later that year on Netflix and in theaters.
After courting Phil Jr. with a boat ride, restaurant meals and a roughly $25,000 advance, they thought they’d reached a deal, Williams said.
But things soon went sideways.
In September 2019, StarMedia sued the late mobster’s son in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, demanding an answer to the same sensational question that’s been burned into the American psyche for 50 years:
Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried?
Hoffa, the ruthless Teamsters president with a seventh-grade education, transformed a small struggling union local into a powerful force starting in the late 1950s. Along the way he made powerful enemies, including business partners in the Mafia and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Convicted in 1964 of jury tampering, attempted bribery and other charges, he was sentenced in 1967 to 13 years in federal prison. After President Richard Nixon commuted the sentence, Hoffa was released from prison in 1971. He embarked on a quest to regain control of the union.
On July 30, 1975, he vanished without a trace.
The previously unreported StarMedia lawsuit opens a window into South Florida’s dubious connection to the mystery. It spotlights Phil Jr.'s efforts to cash in on his story about his father sharing the precise location of Hoffa’s body, which may or may not be true. And it shows how badly StarMedia officials wanted to believe Phil Jr.
“I am the only person alive who knows the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body,’’ Phil Jr. has said.
But he’s not the only person to make that claim.
And 50 years after Hoffa disappeared, his body still hasn’t been found.
‘Brother Moscato’s dump’
PHILLIP ‘BROTHER’ MOSCATO died at home in New Jersey on Feb. 16, 2014, 10 days after his son said he shared his Hoffa secret. He was 79.
A family-written obituary paid homage to a beloved patriarch and successful businessman who grew up in an Italian neighborhood on the west side of Jersey City.
After serving in the Korean War, he worked as a demolitions expert and helped build the World Trade Center, Atlantic City casinos and the old New York Giants football stadium. He owned more than 40 restaurants along the East Coast.
“He was an avid golfer who enjoyed his motorcycles, cigars, traveling abroad, and cherished spending time with his grandchildren,’’ read the obit with a smiling later-in-life photo.
Newspaper stories from the ‘70s and ‘80s offer another portrait.
A 1972 FBI report called Brother Moscato “one of the top loan sharks in Hudson and Bergen County New Jersey," according to The Bergen (N.J.) Record. Some articles cited U.S. Department of Justice reports linking him to the Genovese crime family.
He was convicted of income tax evasion in 1977, given a three-year suspended sentence and fined $5,000.
A few years later, he was embroiled in a fraud investigation that implicated Raymond Donovan, the labor secretary under President Ronald Reagan. (Donovan was acquitted in 1987.)
Moscato’s name popped up in the corruption investigation of the U.S. District Judge Alcee Hastings, who was indicted in 1981 charges of soliciting a $150,000 bribe in return for reducing the sentences of two mob-connected felons convicted in his court. (Hastings was impeached and removed from the bench in 1989.)
By many accounts, Brother Moscato was a wealthy entrepreneur, feared and respected by his colleagues. Many of the Garden State goodfellas he grew up with felt a kinship to him, embodied in an affectionate nickname he reportedly wore on a gold bracelet: “Brother.’’
“A 6-foot, 210-pound former paratrooper, Moscato has a flashy openness unusual among crime figures,’’ investigative reporter Bruce Locklin wrote in The Bergen Record in 1981. “Another mobster once said that ‘Brother’ has too big a mouth to ever make the big time.’’
In 1975, Moscato followed some of his friends to the Sunshine State in what news reports called an exodus of suspected racketeers trying to avoid New Jersey State Commission of Investigation subpoenas.
He moved to Broward County, at first living in a Lauderhill townhouse next to Jackie Gleason. He later moved to Hallandale, home to 45 organized crime figures in 1977, Locklin wrote that year, citing “law enforcement sources.”
“A muscular, kinky-haired, flashy-dressed six-footer, Moscato looks more like a bouncer than a nightclub manager, which was his latest job,’’ read a 1977 Miami Herald story under the headline “Mafia Associates Join Friends in Florida Haven.’’
While they tried to live normal lives, golfing and playing tennis and taking their kids to school, they sometimes attracted attention from law enforcement.
On Aug. 9, 1975, Moscato was arrested outside the Hallandale Athletic Club during a Broward County Sheriff’s raid. Gambling charges were later dropped and the case dismissed.
But his lawyer told reporters the negative publicity “destroyed” business at Charlie Brown’s Steak Joint, a Hallandale restaurant owned by Moscato’s sister and managed by Moscato. He successfully sued Broward County Sheriff Ed Stack for false arrest and won a $5,000 jury award in 1977.
In 1976, the Miami Dolphins delivered a stiff block after Brother invited linebacker Bob Matheson and running back Norm Bulaich to dinner at Charlie Brown’s. Photos of the players with Moscato and his family decorated the lobby wall. When the Dolphins security staff found out, players were instructed to steer clear of the restaurant and Moscato, whose indictment on income tax evasion charges raised alarms.
Even the Hallandale Building Department went after him — for a code violation when he built an addition to his home without a permit.
The fashionable home, in the posh Golden Isles neighborhood between the ocean and the Gulfstream Park racetrack that Moscato frequented, had a gold-and-marble bathroom, according to news reports.
Not far from where Moscato lived was the Teamsters office of Chuckie O’Brien, Hoffa’s foster son. O’Brien, an early suspect in Hoffa's disappearance, lived in a house owned by Moscato's sister in Lauderhill.
Another Hallandale neighbor was Moscato’s childhood friend, Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamsters boss and reputed Genovese family capo suspected of orchestrating Hoffa’s murder.
In early December 1975, the search for Hoffa led investigators to a Jersey City landfill nicknamed after its co-owner: “Brother Moscato’s Dump.” Nothing was found, but the headlines led to some unpleasantness at school for 11-year-old Phil Jr.
“Kids can be cruel,’’ Brother Moscato told a reporter in 1977. “My son happens to like me. He comes home crying from school many days.’’
‘Hollywood puts a hit on Phil Jr.’
PHIL MOSCATO JR., who declined multiple interview requests for this story, has shared with others his recollections about growing up around organized crime members and associates.
“There was always the thing of who my dad was. I learned that very early. It felt like anyone told me, ‘You kind of see how people respect your dad and how they respect you because of your dad,’’’ he told Fox News reporter Eric Shawn on the podcast “The Riddle” in 2019.
When the family moved to a South Florida townhouse next door to Jackie Gleason, he said, “That's when you start realizing you are different. Your family is different and your way of life is different than anybody else that you know.’’
Phil Jr., who was living in Boca Raton in 2024 and has lived in Boynton Beach, has said he worshiped his father, even though his father’s past reportedly led some to question Phil Jr.’s “moral character” more than 30 years ago.
“My dad was definitely a class act,’’ he told Shawn. In another Fox interview, he described his father as a “straight up old-school mobster” and “one of the toughest guys to come out of Jersey City.’’
Ten days before Brother Moscato died, he summoned his son to his bedside at a New Jersey hospital, according to a story Phil Jr. has shared with others, including StarMedia. He told his son that Hoffa was fatally shot by Provenzano’s right-hand man, Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio, and the body was trucked from Detroit to New Jersey.
He also purportedly told his son the exact location of the burial site — a virtual needle in a toxic haystack: the shuttered 87-acre PJP Landfill, the formal name of "Brother Moscato's Dump’’ in Jersey City, declared an EPA Superfund site in 1983.
The secret Brother Moscato supposedly shared turned into something of an obsession for his son, who in 2019 told Shawn he was methodically taking his time before going public with what his father told him.
“It hasn’t left my head since that day, not for a minute,’’ he told the Fox News reporter.
But was it true?
After all, others have come forward over the years with claims that they know where Hoffa is buried. Among the purported gravesites: the end zone of old Giants Stadium, a Michigan farm, a drum in the Florida Everglades, under the pilings of a Detroit high rise.
Phil Jr., though, as Brother Moscato’s son, thinks he’s in a unique position to know the truth. That’s assuming his father gave him the truth.
“It’s my job to kind of get it to the public,’’ he told Shawn on the podcast. “People say, ‘Why don’t you just tell everybody?’ You need to be patient. This isn't something you go and blurt out. There's not a lot of people on the planet that know this, only one. … It has taken this long to prepare myself for that.’’
He also had visions of monetizing this unusual family heirloom.
Not long after his father died, Phil Jr. learned that Martin Scorsese was directing a movie portraying a Hoffa demise different from what his father told him.
“The Irishman,” a project pushed by actor Robert DeNiro, who stars in the film, is based on a book about Frank Sheeran, a Mafia hitman and Hoffa associate who claimed he shot Hoffa in the back of the head and that the body was taken to a crematorium. The movie received critical acclaim and 10 Academy Award nominations.
Phil Jr. is convinced the Sheeran story isn't accurate, a concern he might have tried to convey to Scorsese and DeNiro, according to a strange press release posted on the internet in 2017.
“Hollywood puts a Hit on Phillip Moscato Jr.,’’ was the headline of the ePRNews.com release from the Berman Law Group of Boca Raton.
Questioning the accuracy of “The Irishman,” the release said “the allegedly true story of what happened and even where Jimmy Hoffa is actually buried is not what is portrayed in the Scorsese Movie.
“After years of silence, Phillip Moscato Jr. is prepared to set the record straight and do what is right. However, he reached out to Scorsese and DeNiro to make sure a false project didn’t proceed and Hollywood quickly put a Hit on him,’’ the release said.
“He has allegedly been threatened and attempts have been made to silence him with so much money at stake for Netflix and others.’’
The press release offers no details on the alleged “hit.’’ It does not mention Moscato’s background or explain why he is in a position to supposedly set the record straight. But it said he “will be giving an exclusive in the near future and may have cameras follow him to the resting place of Jimmy Hoffa.’’
The press release referred questions to Courtney Clyne of the Berman Law Group. Clyne did not respond to phone calls and emails. Russell and Theodore Berman, the law firm’s founding partners, did not respond to messages.
Was the press release and its reference to “a hit” just a play on words to drum up publicity for Phil Jr.?
“With regard to the Scorsese and DeNiro project, I know that Phillip and his representatives at the time were interested in making a deal with them,’’ investigative journalist Dan Moldea, considered the leading Hoffa scholar, said in an email in 2020.
“I don’t know all the details, but I’m fairly certain that no deal was made. In fact, I have no idea whether any direct or indirect contact was made,’’ he said.
Moldea interviewed Brother Moscato several times about the Hoffa case from 2007 to 2014. In 2015, on the 40th anniversary of Hoffa’s disappearance, he wrote a story for ganglandnews.com about what Brother shared with him. Although the elder Moscato did not disclose Hoffa’s final resting place, Moldea's story was picked up by the New York Daily News.
Moldea also interviewed Phil Jr. several times from 2014, a few months after his father died, until late 2019.
“I believe that Phillip Moscato Jr. has a story to tell,” Moldea, author of “The Hoffa Wars,” said in 2020. “I know most of it, but he has kept one key piece of the puzzle close to his chest: What his father told him in his hospital room 10 days before he died.”
But Phil Jr.’s claim of knowing Hoffa’s final resting place became a source of friction with Moldea. In an essay for mobmuseum.org, he described on Phil Jr.’s “relentless attempts to profit before Hoffa’s body was found and identified.’’
“From the outset,’’ he wrote, “Moscato Jr. made it clear to me that he was looking for a deal with a production company or a media organization before disclosing the actual location — despite my constant admonition that he should not ask for a financial reward before ‘The Trophy,’ my code name for Hoffa’s body, was found.’’
StarMedia Productions vs Phillip Moscato Jr.
STARMEDIA WAS LAUNCHED in 2016 by Orlando Espinosa, a one-time Boca Raton resident who once described himself on a since-shuttered website as having “over 30 years of experience in the television, theatre, production and New York City advertising industries.’’
The company was known for “Earth with John Holden,” a weekly infomercial on Fox Business Network, but looking to expand its programming.
Not long after Williams joined StarMedia in 2018, Espinosa pitched an idea for a potential can’t-miss hit: A mobster’s son divulging his dying father’s secret about the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body.
Phil Jr., at the time working in construction, had been introduced to Espinosa through a mutual acquaintance in 2018, Williams recalled. (Espinosa, who left StarMedia in late 2019, declined to comment for this story.)
In early January 2019, Phil Jr. was sitting in StarMedia’s Federal Highway offices overlooking a canal on the Delray Beach/Boca Raton border, retelling the story of his dying father’s purported revelation.
“We’re sitting here with this guy who says he knows where Hoffa’s body is. He is very convincing and he’s got a really good memory,’’ Williams recalled.
“It’s a terrific story. He only knows what somebody told him. I don’t think he made up the story.’’
On rides around Lake Boca aboard Williams’ boat, over meals at Italian restaurants and in phone calls, they discussed big plans. Phil Jr. asked for a $250,000 advance, which StarMedia balked at, Williams said.
“The information I have is going to shock everybody. It’s 100 percent provable,’’ Phil Jr. told StarMedia officers, according to Williams’ recollection of one conversation.
Negotiations continued and, according to StarMedia’s lawsuit, the company reached a “Life Story Rights Agreement” with Phil Jr. on Feb. 26, 2019.
A copy of the contract in court records outlines a deal that called for StarMedia to pay Phil Jr. “at least $150,000 in royalties by Nov. 30, 2019,’’ a deadline that could be mutually extended.
The contract also called for Phil Jr. getting 40 percent of the profits from the documentary and $3,000 in upfront payments.
Williams said StarMedia gave Phil Jr. about $25,000 as incentive to focus on the project.
The timing was critical: They wanted to release the documentary before “The Irishman” dropped on Netflix, Williams said.
To drum up public interest, StarMedia introduced Phil Jr. to Eric Shawn, host of “The Riddle: The Search For James R. Hoffa” on Fox Nation, Fox News Channel’s on-demand subscription streaming service.
And according to a StarMedia letter in court records, the company enlisted Moldea to write an outline of Phil Jr.s life story and was working with Harper Collins Publishing on a book deal.
By August, though, StarMedia officials were getting antsy. Despite their repeated requests, Phil Jr. wouldn’t disclose the purported location of Hoffa’s remains.
StarMedia wasn’t about to give him more money until he shared the final, crucial piece of the deal — Hoffa’s final resting place. The last thing the company wanted was a repeat of Geraldo Rivera’s infamous 1986 live television airing of Al Capone’s empty vault.
“We are now at the point in the process where you need to divulge the location so that it can be investigated to determine if what your father told you regarding the location of the Jimmy Hoffa remains is correct,’’ Williams wrote Aug. 22, 2019, in a letter to Phil Jr.
“Without this essential information from you, the success of this project will be adversely affected.’’
StarMedia’s Sept. 5 deadline for Phil Jr. to reveal the location came and went. The company sued on Sept. 20.
“StarMedia has been damaged as it cannot proceed with the production, marketing and distribution without the most important information i.e. the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s remains,’’ the lawsuit said.
The day before the lawsuit was filed, Phil Jr. was interviewed by Shawn at Fox studios in New York for an episode of “The Riddle” — something Williams learned two months later after the episode started streaming.
The show made no mention of a collaboration with StarMedia, whose officers weren’t the only ones feeling slighted by Phil Jr.
As Moldea wrote in his memoir, Phil Jr. told him in July 2019 that a “Florida production company” — StarMedia, although it’s not named — wanted the author to write his life story. But Moldea said he told the younger Moscato there was no book unless he got confirmation of Hoffa’s final resting place.
Moldea said he agreed for no charge to write a book proposal, based on nine hours of recorded interviews with Phil Jr., “about his life as the son of a Mafia soldier.’’
“I gave it to Moscato for any purpose he chose — even if I was not the author — as long as he kept me ‘in the loop,’’’ Moldea wrote.
That summer, Shawn told Moldea he’d been introduced to Phil Jr. through StarMedia and that he had interviewed Phil Jr. during the past few weeks.
“That news really shocked me,’’ Moldea wrote, adding that “I did feel somewhat betrayed by Moscato, with whom I had invested five years of my time.’’
By the end of the year, Moldea had lost confidence in Phil Jr.'s story.
“Moscato refused to pledge his full cooperation with the law enforcement community,’’ Moldea wrote. “He balked at executing a sworn statement about what he knew. And he refused to take a polygraph test.’’
‘Tell the world where his body is’
IN NOVEMBER 2019, Phil Jr.’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss StarMedia’s lawsuit.
“The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa’s final resting place is to this day still a mystery among the public and (Phil Jr.) has yet to see the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, therefore not able to corroborate his father’s statement,’’ attorney Andrew Boloy wrote in a court filing.
In the motion, Phil Jr. noted that StarMedia’s complaint didn’t include a copy of the alleged contract. StarMedia claimed it withheld the contract from the lawsuit for confidentiality reasons. But after Circuit Judge Howard Coates ruled the contract was not confidential, the company filed a copy with the court in January 2020 — a move that only raised more questions.
For one, the contract filed with the court had no date on it. And although it had Phil Jr.’s signature, he claimed he never signed it.
In court documents filed Feb. 23, 2020, Phil Jr. claimed “a base contract with multiple handwritten notations was the only signed contract executed by the parties some time in May 2019.’’
The contract filed in court records by StarMedia “does not at all reflect the hand marked up contract signed in May,’’ Boloy wrote.
StarMedia “has taken the signature page from the executed May 2019 contract and placed it at the end of the contract” that was filed in court in January 2020, he wrote.
Phil Jr. also said StarMedia officials induced him to sign the May contract by making “false claims of guaranteed monetary gain and misrepresentations of stature in the entertainment community.’’
And he said the company breached the May 2019 contract by failing to pay him $150,000 before he divulged Hoffa’s location.
A day after he filed the motion to dismiss, Boloy filed another motion — to withdraw as Phil Jr.’s attorney. Boloy, who wouldn’t comment for this story, in the motion cited “irreconcilable differences’’ with his client.
The case dragged on, and the coronavirus pandemic put a temporary halt to all court proceedings. Although courts went back to business later in 2020, StarMedia, wary about mounting legal costs, dropped the complaint on Feb. 19, 2021.
Meanwhile, Moldea kept digging on his lifelong quest to solve the Hoffa mystery. (“After all of these years,’’ he has written, “I am still Ahab and the Hoffa murder case is still my white whale.’’)
In late 2019, he wrote an article based on an interview with Frank Cappola, the oldest son of the late Paul Cappola, Brother Moscato's partner at the landfill. That information led the FBI to search the old landfill site in late 2021, but in July 2022 the feds announced the search came up empty.
Earlier in 2022, Phil Jr. appeared on an episode of History's Greatest Mysteries about the Hoffa disappearance. Moldea wrote a blog discrediting Phil Jr.’s appearance, saying he “shamelessly hijacked Frank’s version of events.’’
As for StarMedia, Williams said he disbanded the company in 2024 to focus on other projects.
The $25,000 that StarMedia lost in the Hoffa dispute is “spilled milk,” he said. He hasn’t spoken to Phil Jr. in more than five years but said he holds no ill will toward him.
“It’s up to Phillip to tell the world where his body is and they'll dig it up. Or he can say, ‘Well, my dad said it was right here and it’s not, so someone must have dug it up and moved it,’’’ Williams said.
“If the story comes out and they find his bones and the Hoffa family can have some closure, then that's the end of it.’’
(On July 10, Dan Moldea discussed the Hoffa case, including his interviews with "Brother" Moscato,'' in a lecture with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Labor History Research Center. Click here to watch a video of his talk.)
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.