Law enforcement sources told CBS News that five alleged members of the Bonanno organized crime family have been arrested Thursday, including one in connection with the 1978 Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The other four are to be charged with a variety of violent crimes, including murder and extortion.
They were arrested by FBI agents this morning in the New York area. They are expected to be arraigned in Federal Court in Brooklyn later today.
CBS Station WCBS reports that a racketeering indictment is set to be unsealed Thursday.
In 1978 thieves took $5 million in cash and nearly a million dollars' worth of jewels from the vaults of Lufthansa at JFK. The cash and jewelry were never recovered.
Only one man was ever prosecuted in connection with the robbery: Louis Werner, an airport employee and inside informant.
One of those involved was Henry Hill, a mob member who entered the witness protection program and became the inspiration of the 1990 Martin Scorsese film, 'GoodFellas.'
James 'Jimmy the Gent' Burke, the suspected mastermind of the airport heist, died of cancer in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital in April 1996.
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