Sarecho Sammy the Arab Nalo was a 57-year-old Detroit-born man of Iraqi descent linked in reporting and court accounts to gambling and racketeering disputes in New York City. On October 25, 1988, he was shot and killed inside a Manhattan travel agency while on the telephone; the caller reportedly heard the sudden eruption of shots. The killing is presented in those accounts as an execution tied to a dispute over gambling territory involving Queens-based boss Spyredon Spiro the Greek Velentzas.

Later federal prosecutions connected the murder to organized-crime channels. Testimony by a government informant attributed a role to Lucchese figures and identified Michael Baldy Mike Spinelli as the shooter; prosecutions ultimately produced a conviction of Velentzas for conspiring to murder and murdering Nalo in aid of racketeering, with a life sentence reported. Lucchese boss Vittorio Amuso was separately found guilty in litigation that included ordering Nalo’s killing.