Gillian Flaccus, AP, December 5, 2007
A dispute between two Gypsy clans over control of the fortunetelling trade in this Southern California city has spilled into court, offering a rare glimpse of an insular culture that has long settled scores according to its own Old World rules of honor.
The turf war in well-to-do Orange County has unfolded like a gangster movie, with allegations of death threats, a graveside scuffle, and nicknames like “White Bob” and “Black Bob”—details revealed in a police report and requests for restraining orders.
“The older Gypsies are pulling out their hair, not wanting the courts in our business because they’ll find out too much about us,” said Tom Merino, who is distantly related to one of the clans but has spurned his heritage. “Ignorance is the Gypsies’ weapon against the outside world.”
{snip}
The trouble started two years ago when Edward Merino and his wife, Sonia, opened fortunetelling parlors in two trendy resort sections of Newport Beach, not far from where the Stevenses did business.
Members of the Stevens clan promptly broke in, stole a credit card machine and threatened to kill the Merinos if they didn’t shut the places down, the Merinos claim in court papers. Since then, the bad blood has only gotten worse.
{snip}
At the root of the conflict lies a delicate system of intermarriage and social customs that has defused tensions among Gypsy clans for generations, said Anne Sutherland, a University of California, Riverside anthropologist who has studied Gypsies.
{snip}
The Stevens and Merino clans adopted an Old World custom of uniting families through marriage to cope with intense competition, much as European nobility once did to avert war. A Merino married the Stevens patriarch, George Stevens.
But the family bond did not prevent tensions from flaring when, the Merinos say, the Stevenses demanded they pay $500,000 up front and $5,000 a week to open their fortunetelling businesses in the Stevenses’ back yard. The Merinos refused to pay, and went ahead and opened their parlors. The alleged break-in soon followed.
Gypsies have traditionally resolved disputes in front of a secret council of elders that can impose fines, make territorial decisions or order someone shunned. They don’t like to involve non-Gypsies, who are considered impure.
{snip}
That the dispute wound up in court reflects an erosion of tradition among the Gypsies, said Ian Hancock, an expert on Gypsy language and culture at the University of Texas.
“It used to be that the Romany world was absolutely insulated from the outside world,” said Hancock, a Gypsy himself. “But it’s very hard to resist the pressures of MTV, and people are beginning to see alternatives.”
He cited cases in which Gypsy women in Houston hired lawyers to get their ex-husbands to pay child support—something previously unheard of.
Things were calm for months until the Stevens patriarch died of a heart attack at age 53 last May. Edward “Davie” Merino showed up at the funeral, pulling up at the cemetery in a limo with what was described as a menacingly burly chauffeur.
Merino says members of the Stevens clan attacked him and screamed, “We will make your life a living hell!” But the Stevenses claim that Merino flashed a gun and threatened to “come back and kill all of you.” Both sides agree that before speeding off, Merino shouted that he wanted to make sure “the mother-(expletive) was dead.”
{snip}
Edward Merino filed for restraining orders against four Stevens men and two Stevens women. Over the summer, a judge granted such an order against just one person, the new Stevens patriarch, Ted Stevens.
Stevens’ nephew, the only Gypsy directly involved in the feud who spoke to The Associated Press, said the Merinos concocted the allegations and are using the courts to try to drive their rivals out of Newport Beach.
“They beat themselves up and then they testify that we hired people to come to their house and beat them up,” said Steve Stevens, who goes by the nickname “White Bob” to distinguish him from his swarthier cousin, “Black Bob.”
{snip}
Original article
(Posted on December 6, 2007)
Comments
My only advice on this is to never pay a strolling street musician a tip in a foreign country. He is merely the advance man for revealing where your wallet is. And you can bet his buddy is standing next to you and will have his hands in your pocket as quick as you can say, “What happened to my wallet?!?”
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 6:38 PM on December 6
How gullible are people that they have the profit to pay 500,00 dollars and 5’000 a week to operate a fortune telling business?
Posted by pat at 1:45 AM on December 7
I suppose that when the census bureau tells us that America is 67% White, or whatever number they use, that they are including Gypsies? We are fewer than they would have us believe.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 7:41 PM on December 7
Schoolteacher, thank God there are very few of these people in our country. I understand that our government has a policy to more or less automatically deny them entry. How they get here I have no idea, but a lot lie about their origins and say they are “Romanians”, etc. I wonder just how many Gypsies are NOT criminals. I have heard of one who is a professor at some US university, so I guess he’s not a crook, but how many others are there. Seems like 95% of them are criminals of one type or another, or else support it in the other ones.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 3:57 AM on December 8
I can only suggest that AMRENS enter Google Search ‘gypsy scams’ daily to be aware of all this stuff, then to aware of their entire community of all these evil schemes, and to challenge the local police force of the need to be aware. We in UK are saturated with these clans, who hide behind ‘racist’ laws to protect them from due process of law if anyone complains about their activities, small ‘g’ always by the way.
Posted by yorkshireman at 1:15 PM on December 8
“We in UK are saturated with these clans, who hide behind ‘racist’ laws to protect them from due process of law if anyone complains about their activities, small ‘g’ always by the way.”
Posted by yorkshireman
Contrary to all the orchestrated moaning about their persecution and suffering thru history, the fact is that WW Two was the most wonderful benefit they could have asked for. It put them on a pedestal and made them sacred minorities, immune from all criticism. Since then, anyone who complains about them is a “racist”. And now there are laws to silence such complainers.
If they have really suffered so badly at the hands bigoted Europeans, and for so many centuries, then why have they remained here all this time? Surely, they would have fled long ago. In fact, why did they even come here in the first place?
Posted by at 4:38 PM on December 8
Robert,
Many Gypsies are here because their families imigrated here long ago, in the earlier part of the 20th century. They stayed together as clans, and they look down upon non-Gypsies,even those with some Gypsy blood in them. They were also classified as being from the country they had left-for example, Italian Gypsies would be taken in as Italians, etc. Fortunately, not all Gypsies are of a criminal element, although it may not seem like that some time. Just like other ethnicities can’t always be stereotyped. I should know, as I am partly of that extraction, and come from a very staight-laced, law abiding family of third generation Americans.
Posted by at 7:19 PM on December 8
Ok, but I would like to see a sociologist look into this. I have seen a study in Czechoslovakia where they live in segregated hoods and are basically the Underclass of the country. The overwhelming majority of them are criminals of some type or another, and those that are not support those that are.
I’d like to see some good sociological studies of US Gypsies to show us just how many are the usual crooks and how many are like you guys.
I know zero about Gypsies in the US except that I just met a pack of them outside Walmart and they swindled $2 out of me for a fake funeral for the fake death of a fake girl. They got mad when they could not get more. They told me they were “Romanian” and denied being Gypsies. Their behavior in every way mirrored Black gangbanger speech, down the woman in her 40’s. I’m still mad about this.
What is a “Black Swede”? I dated a girl named Tegerstrand who was one. Are they Gypsies?
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 1:31 AM on December 9
And I forgot to add,Yes, keep the Gypsies out of the USA.While our immediate family is good people, believe me, many of our relatives are NOT. It is a wise policy not to let Gypsies emigrate here. Just look at the news reports out of Europe concerning Gypsies. That speaks volumes for itself.
Posted by at 12:30 PM on December 9
Robert Lindsay:
TRUE Gypsies are a brown-skinned people from northern India. They entered into south-eastern Europe in the late medieval period. The Europeans assumed they were from Egypt, hence their name. They are ethnically Roma (A.K.A. Romani, Romany). TRUE Romanians are a White European people in Eastern Europe. They are of Latin background like the French and Italians. Many Gypsies try to pass themselves off as “Romanians”. THEY ARE NOT! My advice to you is to have nothing to do with Gypsies.
Posted by at 1:56 PM on December 9
“I just met a pack of them outside Walmart and they swindled $2 out of me”
I would definately complain to the store manager AND to the regional manager. Let them know you will not patronize the store-ANY Walmart- until such people are not allowed to scam folks for money outside the store. No one should have to put up with that type of nonsense. And I wouldn’t give them a cent. Usually people asking for money like that arent allowed on retail property.
Posted by at 10:23 PM on December 9
