by Dellacroce » Thu Jan 07, 2016 4:19 am
January 7, 2015 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Judge Rips FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office; Rewards Wiseguy For Terrorism Tip
An angry federal judge cut 10 years off the 40-year prison term of Colombo mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. this week in a scathing written ruling that ripped the FBI and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office for refusing to reward the gangster for "truthful and forthright" information he gave that led to the 2005 seizure of explosives at the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
In a 20-page opinion, Judge Edward Korman, who was Brooklyn U.S. Attorney from 1978 to 1982, stated that he had found many "demonstrably inaccurate" assertions by the FBI as well as a "series of conflicting reasons for the refusal" by his old office beginning in 2006 that "do not survive careful analysis" regarding the important information that Scarpa provided.
"At a time when we live under the threat of domestic terrorism," wrote Korman," providing information that leads to the discovery of explosives planted by one who had engaged in such terrorism should clearly come within the definition of substantial assistance. I do not understand the U.S. Attorney to argue otherwise."
The judge did not name U.S. attorney Robert Capers who took over the office in October, or the four predecessors who presided over the 64-year-old Scarpa's 10-year-long court battle with the feds. They include a colleague on the federal bench, Judge Roslynn Mauskopf and Loretta Lynch, the current U.S. Attorney General.
Korman also never mentioned Scarpa's father, Greg Scarpa Sr., the late, onetime top echelon FBI informer in his ruling. But during a hearing in 2012, the judge questioned whether the government's non-action for the son was based on a "grudge" the FBI held against him for agreeing to testify against former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio at a 2007 murder trial.
The case against DeVecchio, who was charged with committing four murders with Scarpa Sr., collapsed when the trial testimony of the Brooklyn District Attorney's key witness, Linda Schiro, was contradicted by tape recorded discussions about the murders she had years earlier with reporter Tom Robbins and Gang Land.
"There's good reason why the Bureau would be hostile to Scarpa," Korman stated, according to a transcript of the proceeding. The judge conceded to assistant U.S. attorney Patricia Notopoulos that "the hostility" was not "automatically transferred" to the U.S. Attorney's office. But he added: "This is my view of the reality."
The judge went on to voice some rarely heard confessions of a former federal prosecutor regarding the sway that the FBI often holds in deciding what cases to bring forward and where it chooses to present them.
"A lot of people are surprised when I tell them about the leverage that the Bureau has over United States Attorney's Offices in this city," Korman said. That leverage, he continued, stems "precisely" from the agency's ability to "determine which United States Attorney gets which case. And so it's good for the United States Attorney's Office to oblige the Bureau in the ordinary circumstance."
In his ruling, Korman noted that newly designated Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Capers had declined the judge's offer last month to suggest a reduction in Scarpa's sentence. "I offered him that opportunity, without waiving any objections to a decision to reduce sentence," said Korman. The judge wrote that Scarpa's attorney Georgia Hinde suggested 12 years.
Korman's reduction of Scarpa's sentence was no surprise to the feds, although it may have been greater than they expected. At the 2012 hearing, Korman told prosecutor Notopoulos that he was leaning toward a five year reduction, according to the transcript.
"I am troubled when I think that people are not being treated fairly. I give substantial consideration, maybe more than anybody else here, to cooperation because of my own experience in the United States Attorney's Office," said Korman, who also was Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney the four years before he got the top spot in 1978.
"It's the one area that experience has impacted what I do on the bench," he said. "I realize how critical cooperators are in making cases, and that cases are just not Sherlock Holmes here. They're critical and I think the word ought to get out that you get substantially rewarded, and if it's Judge Korman, maybe you get a little bit more," he said.
The feds had good reason to be skeptical about anything Scarpa said, Notopoulos argued long and passionately during several hearings over the years. At his 1999 trial, he lied from the witness stand about his non-involvement in murders he later admitted committing with his father. And trial Judge Reena Raggi labelled his prior informant work against World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yusef as insignificant, at best, and more likely, "part of a scam."
Scarpa is slated to be released in October of 2035. If Korman's decision is upheld on appeal — federal sources say one is likely — Scarpa still has 11 more years to serve. Under Bureau of Prisons calculations, which reduce the actual time inmates spend behind bars by 15% of the pronounced sentence, Scarpa's revised release date would be in March of 2027. Scarpa would be 75 — if he makes it.
Judge Korman said he doesn't think he will. Scarpa suffers from Stage IV nasopharyngeal squamous cell cancer, and "it is more likely than not" that the cancer and his poor overall health "will take his life within five years," the judge wrote.
"It does not require special expertise to evaluate the defendant's cooperation here, which involved a matter relating to public safety," wrote Korman, noting that the feds now "concede" that on March 3, 2005 Scarpa gave an FBI agent information that led to the FBI's seizure of a "cache of explosives" on March 31 that Nichols had buried at his old home in Herington, Kansas.
The stonewalling and obfuscation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office began two months later, and continued until August of 2014, Korman wrote.
In May, 2005, the U.S. Attorney's office told Scarpa's lawyer it was "not interested in affording Mr. Scarpa any relief" because his "information and sources were suspect" and because he "had provided bad information in the past." Korman disputed those reasons.
In August of 2014, under prodding from the judge, Notopoulos revised what Korman termed a "serious misstatement of fact" in an FBI agent's affidavit that she had submitted two years earlier concerning the Bureau's recovery of blasting caps and other explosive materials in 2005.
In a letter to the Court, Notopoulos stated that the FBI did not obtain a search warrant before seizing the materials, but after getting permission from the owner of the home to search the house, the judge wrote.
Korman dubbed the affidavit "factually inaccurate in material respects," and "so vague as to make it impossible to judge its validity."
Korman also criticized federal prosecutors for shunning Scarpa while seeking leniency for turncoats who have "committed serious crimes, even lied during their cooperation." The evidence, Korman stated, "indicates that the defendant provided information in this matter in a manner that was both truthful and forthright and that he did not engage in exaggeration or deliberate obfuscation."
"A modest sentencing reduction to an incarcerated defendant who has provided evidence that explosives were left by a domestic terrorist in a residential area is necessary to encourage others to come forward," wrote Korman. "This is the principal reason for my decision to reduce Scarpa's sentence by a period of ten years."
The judge also questioned the motives of the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney's office, for opposing a reduction of Scarpa's sentence. He said they were essentially a "series of largely implausible, contradictory, and factually unsupported reasons" that unraveled during the 10 years that Scarpa's motion was pending before him.
"It is difficult to ignore the fact," wrote Korman, "that the information Scarpa provided embarrassed the FBI because the explosives were not found during its initial search in the wake of the bombing and because the FBI agent who interviewed Scarpa did not follow up on the information he received" for several weeks.
The judge noted that in a USA Today account of the seizure, Dan Defenbaugh, the retired FBI agent who had run Oklahoma bombing probe, "was dismayed that his agency may have missed the evidence and stated, 'When you do a search warrant of that importance, you have to make sure it's thorough.'"
Judge John Gleeson Completes The Circle, Going Back To Private Practice
John Gleeson, the soft-spoken, button-downed former federal prosecutor best known for convicting the in-your-face, swashbuckling Mafia boss John Gotti can now throw away those black robes he never wore when he became a federal judge soon after the former Dapper Don was sent to prison for the rest of his life.
Gleeson, who began his tenure on the federal bench in 1994, announced this week that he is returning to private practice, where it all began for the 62-year-old jurist back in 1981, when he joined the white shoe Manhattan law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a young associate.
In a statement, Chief Judge Carol Amon said: "The court is losing a very distinguished judge and a valued colleague."
It's not known whether Gleeson, who is cited on the law firm's website — along with the late Supreme Court icon Justice William O. Douglas — as one of the many former associates who have served as federal judges, will rejoin the prestigious firm when he steps down. Neither Gleeson nor Amon would discuss the matter. Court sources say Gleeson, who has two college-age daughters, cited family reasons for the move, and gave the court two months notice.
But when Gleeson finally chucks those black robes, it's pretty certain that he'll be in the seven figure category, earning more than five times the $201,100 he earned last year. For the record, in 2016, the annual salary for federal judges is up to $203,100.
Gleeson took the bench on October 24, 1994, exactly three years after he first spoke to turncoat Gambino crime family underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, the key witness against Gotti.
Since he was a supervisor of the organized crime unit of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office in the 1990s, Gleeson frequently recused himself as a judge from Mafia cases in which he may have had even the remotest involvement.
On the bench, Gleeson became a staunch advocate against strict mandatory minimum sentences that eliminate a judge's discretion at sentencing, what several judges have stated is the most important aspect of the judicial system, since it can deprive a person of his liberty.
At the sentencing in the one Mafia trial at which he presided, the 2009 racketeering and murder trial of Genovese capo Michael (Mikey Cigars) Coppola, Gleeson disappointed prosecutors, and set himself apart from the sentencing practices of many judges in mob trials. He rejected a motion to hammer Mikey Cigars with 40 years, even though he was acquitted of the centerpiece of the trial, the storied 1977 murder of Johnny Cokes Lardiere, and gave Coppola 16 years for racketeering.
In Brooklyn: A State Of Mind, a 2001 book edited by Michael W. Robbins and Wendy Palitz, Gleeson spoke publicly about his role as prosecutor in the 1992 trial of John Gotti for the only time that Gang Land has found. In the book, which came out a year before Gravano was arrested for drug dealing, Gleeson is quoted as saying: "Gravano was the best witness of all time. There are forty seven guys in jail because of Sammy."
He also told Dorothy Weiss, the author of the article about him and trial judge I. Leo Glasser that while Gotti never tried to intimidate him during the trial, the Dapper Don did engage in some "shenanigans" during the jury selection process. Gleeson discussed one he called "a stunt." "Flyers started appearing on the Long Island Rail Road, and then all around town, with a drawing of a rat and the face of Sammy Gravano," Gleeson recalled. "I had a fit. Of course, I thought the bad guys were behind it all and I was afraid prospective jurors would be tainted. No one would claim responsibility. The defense lawyers said they had nothing to do with it. I brought the flyers to Judge Glasser's attention."
"Judge Glasser took care of the situation on the spot," Gleeson recalled. "Turning to Gotti, who was sitting at the defense table, he said, 'You've been complaining that you're not getting a fair trial. I don't know who posted these flyers all around town. I'm not accusing you, but if you're really interested in getting a fair trial, it might be a good idea to stop those flyers if you can.'"
"It was a great moment: Boss meets Boss," said Gleeson, adding: "The flyers mysteriously disappeared the next day."
Prosecutor Sees The Light; Joins Long Island Power Authority
James Miskiewicz, the prosecutor who blamed a paralegal for three unlawful subpoenas that went out under his name in a mob-connected drug probe, and who drew the ire of a federal judge for his "curious" report about that, has taken a position as an ethics officer for the Long Island Power Authority.
Miskiewicz hasn't begun his new gig yet, so it's not too late to give him Gang Land's Sidestepper Award for 2015 for fingering unnamed "support staffers" as the culprits responsible for grand jury subpoenas which warned recipients not to discuss them with anyone else. The subpoenas — which under the law are fair game for discussion by recipients — went to accountants for members of the Gregorio Gigliotti family who were later charged with coke smuggling with gangsters linked to a Calabrian-based organized crime group, 'Ndrangheta.
Sources say Miskiewicz, who was one of the government prosecutors in court yesterday at a pre-trial hearing for former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke, has told associates that he did not intend to "blame" his staffers in his letter to Judge Raymond Dearie about the matter, and would re-word the letter to shoulder the blame himself, if he could.
According to LIPA spokesman Sid Nathan, Miskiewicz will report to LIPA's Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Falcone, and also work on other important legal issues for the state agency. He is slated to begin working at his $170,000 a year job next week.
Over the years, Miskiewicz has won numerous notable convictions during his 18 years as an assistant U.S. attorney, based mostly on Long Island. He also toiled seven years for the Justice Department in Washington.
In 2000, he prosecuted several mob associates of legendary Colombo mobster John (Sonny) Franzese, and convicted them on racketeering, arson, and other charges.
A year later, he charged and ultimately convicted Joseph (Little Joe) DiBenedetto, the son-in-law of Luchese boss Vittorio Amuso and five others on labor racketeering and embezzlement charges stemming from the family's control over a construction industry union.
It took him two trials, but in 2011 and 2012, he convicted mob associate Christian Tarantino of two 1994 murders and for a plot to murder a third victim who was shot to death in 2003. At the second trial, Miskiewicz used a tape recorded conversation Tarantino had with a former business partner, the 2003 murder victim, to convince the jury of the defendant's guilt.
In other 2015 awards, Gambino wiseguy Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo gets the Comeback Kid Award for making it back to Brooklyn in 2015, after spending nearly seven years away from his old haunts in places like the reconverted Fort Dix U.S. Army Base in Fort Dix, N.J. Corozzo, 74, moved to a halfway house in Brooklyn last fall. He was officially released from custody Tuesday.
Vita Rose Cacace, the ex-wife of imprisoned Colombo consigliere Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace gets the Grandma Dearest Award for the will she filed, ostensibly made by her son, Joel Cacace Jr., three months before he died suddenly of a heart attack at age 44 on New Year's Day of last year. The will, which features several crossed out dates and several misspellings of Cacace's name, is being contested by Cacace's only child, Dina Marie.
Depositions of the two Long Island residents-witnesses who signed the will were slated to take place in December, but were postponed until next month.
January 7, 2015 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Judge Rips FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office; Rewards Wiseguy For Terrorism Tip
An angry federal judge cut 10 years off the 40-year prison term of Colombo mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. this week in a scathing written ruling that ripped the FBI and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office for refusing to reward the gangster for "truthful and forthright" information he gave that led to the 2005 seizure of explosives at the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
In a 20-page opinion, Judge Edward Korman, who was Brooklyn U.S. Attorney from 1978 to 1982, stated that he had found many "demonstrably inaccurate" assertions by the FBI as well as a "series of conflicting reasons for the refusal" by his old office beginning in 2006 that "do not survive careful analysis" regarding the important information that Scarpa provided.
"At a time when we live under the threat of domestic terrorism," wrote Korman," providing information that leads to the discovery of explosives planted by one who had engaged in such terrorism should clearly come within the definition of substantial assistance. I do not understand the U.S. Attorney to argue otherwise."
The judge did not name U.S. attorney Robert Capers who took over the office in October, or the four predecessors who presided over the 64-year-old Scarpa's 10-year-long court battle with the feds. They include a colleague on the federal bench, Judge Roslynn Mauskopf and Loretta Lynch, the current U.S. Attorney General.
Korman also never mentioned Scarpa's father, Greg Scarpa Sr., the late, onetime top echelon FBI informer in his ruling. But during a hearing in 2012, the judge questioned whether the government's non-action for the son was based on a "grudge" the FBI held against him for agreeing to testify against former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio at a 2007 murder trial.
The case against DeVecchio, who was charged with committing four murders with Scarpa Sr., collapsed when the trial testimony of the Brooklyn District Attorney's key witness, Linda Schiro, was contradicted by tape recorded discussions about the murders she had years earlier with reporter Tom Robbins and Gang Land.
"There's good reason why the Bureau would be hostile to Scarpa," Korman stated, according to a transcript of the proceeding. The judge conceded to assistant U.S. attorney Patricia Notopoulos that "the hostility" was not "automatically transferred" to the U.S. Attorney's office. But he added: "This is my view of the reality."
The judge went on to voice some rarely heard confessions of a former federal prosecutor regarding the sway that the FBI often holds in deciding what cases to bring forward and where it chooses to present them.
"A lot of people are surprised when I tell them about the leverage that the Bureau has over United States Attorney's Offices in this city," Korman said. That leverage, he continued, stems "precisely" from the agency's ability to "determine which United States Attorney gets which case. And so it's good for the United States Attorney's Office to oblige the Bureau in the ordinary circumstance."
In his ruling, Korman noted that newly designated Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Capers had declined the judge's offer last month to suggest a reduction in Scarpa's sentence. "I offered him that opportunity, without waiving any objections to a decision to reduce sentence," said Korman. The judge wrote that Scarpa's attorney Georgia Hinde suggested 12 years.
Korman's reduction of Scarpa's sentence was no surprise to the feds, although it may have been greater than they expected. At the 2012 hearing, Korman told prosecutor Notopoulos that he was leaning toward a five year reduction, according to the transcript.
"I am troubled when I think that people are not being treated fairly. I give substantial consideration, maybe more than anybody else here, to cooperation because of my own experience in the United States Attorney's Office," said Korman, who also was Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney the four years before he got the top spot in 1978.
"It's the one area that experience has impacted what I do on the bench," he said. "I realize how critical cooperators are in making cases, and that cases are just not Sherlock Holmes here. They're critical and I think the word ought to get out that you get substantially rewarded, and if it's Judge Korman, maybe you get a little bit more," he said.
The feds had good reason to be skeptical about anything Scarpa said, Notopoulos argued long and passionately during several hearings over the years. At his 1999 trial, he lied from the witness stand about his non-involvement in murders he later admitted committing with his father. And trial Judge Reena Raggi labelled his prior informant work against World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yusef as insignificant, at best, and more likely, "part of a scam."
Scarpa is slated to be released in October of 2035. If Korman's decision is upheld on appeal — federal sources say one is likely — Scarpa still has 11 more years to serve. Under Bureau of Prisons calculations, which reduce the actual time inmates spend behind bars by 15% of the pronounced sentence, Scarpa's revised release date would be in March of 2027. Scarpa would be 75 — if he makes it.
Judge Korman said he doesn't think he will. Scarpa suffers from Stage IV nasopharyngeal squamous cell cancer, and "it is more likely than not" that the cancer and his poor overall health "will take his life within five years," the judge wrote.
"It does not require special expertise to evaluate the defendant's cooperation here, which involved a matter relating to public safety," wrote Korman, noting that the feds now "concede" that on March 3, 2005 Scarpa gave an FBI agent information that led to the FBI's seizure of a "cache of explosives" on March 31 that Nichols had buried at his old home in Herington, Kansas.
The stonewalling and obfuscation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's office began two months later, and continued until August of 2014, Korman wrote.
In May, 2005, the U.S. Attorney's office told Scarpa's lawyer it was "not interested in affording Mr. Scarpa any relief" because his "information and sources were suspect" and because he "had provided bad information in the past." Korman disputed those reasons.
In August of 2014, under prodding from the judge, Notopoulos revised what Korman termed a "serious misstatement of fact" in an FBI agent's affidavit that she had submitted two years earlier concerning the Bureau's recovery of blasting caps and other explosive materials in 2005.
In a letter to the Court, Notopoulos stated that the FBI did not obtain a search warrant before seizing the materials, but after getting permission from the owner of the home to search the house, the judge wrote.
Korman dubbed the affidavit "factually inaccurate in material respects," and "so vague as to make it impossible to judge its validity."
Korman also criticized federal prosecutors for shunning Scarpa while seeking leniency for turncoats who have "committed serious crimes, even lied during their cooperation." The evidence, Korman stated, "indicates that the defendant provided information in this matter in a manner that was both truthful and forthright and that he did not engage in exaggeration or deliberate obfuscation."
"A modest sentencing reduction to an incarcerated defendant who has provided evidence that explosives were left by a domestic terrorist in a residential area is necessary to encourage others to come forward," wrote Korman. "This is the principal reason for my decision to reduce Scarpa's sentence by a period of ten years."
The judge also questioned the motives of the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney's office, for opposing a reduction of Scarpa's sentence. He said they were essentially a "series of largely implausible, contradictory, and factually unsupported reasons" that unraveled during the 10 years that Scarpa's motion was pending before him.
"It is difficult to ignore the fact," wrote Korman, "that the information Scarpa provided embarrassed the FBI because the explosives were not found during its initial search in the wake of the bombing and because the FBI agent who interviewed Scarpa did not follow up on the information he received" for several weeks.
The judge noted that in a USA Today account of the seizure, Dan Defenbaugh, the retired FBI agent who had run Oklahoma bombing probe, "was dismayed that his agency may have missed the evidence and stated, 'When you do a search warrant of that importance, you have to make sure it's thorough.'"
Judge John Gleeson Completes The Circle, Going Back To Private Practice
John Gleeson, the soft-spoken, button-downed former federal prosecutor best known for convicting the in-your-face, swashbuckling Mafia boss John Gotti can now throw away those black robes he never wore when he became a federal judge soon after the former Dapper Don was sent to prison for the rest of his life.
Gleeson, who began his tenure on the federal bench in 1994, announced this week that he is returning to private practice, where it all began for the 62-year-old jurist back in 1981, when he joined the white shoe Manhattan law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a young associate.
In a statement, Chief Judge Carol Amon said: "The court is losing a very distinguished judge and a valued colleague."
It's not known whether Gleeson, who is cited on the law firm's website — along with the late Supreme Court icon Justice William O. Douglas — as one of the many former associates who have served as federal judges, will rejoin the prestigious firm when he steps down. Neither Gleeson nor Amon would discuss the matter. Court sources say Gleeson, who has two college-age daughters, cited family reasons for the move, and gave the court two months notice.
But when Gleeson finally chucks those black robes, it's pretty certain that he'll be in the seven figure category, earning more than five times the $201,100 he earned last year. For the record, in 2016, the annual salary for federal judges is up to $203,100.
Gleeson took the bench on October 24, 1994, exactly three years after he first spoke to turncoat Gambino crime family underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, the key witness against Gotti.
Since he was a supervisor of the organized crime unit of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office in the 1990s, Gleeson frequently recused himself as a judge from Mafia cases in which he may have had even the remotest involvement.
On the bench, Gleeson became a staunch advocate against strict mandatory minimum sentences that eliminate a judge's discretion at sentencing, what several judges have stated is the most important aspect of the judicial system, since it can deprive a person of his liberty.
At the sentencing in the one Mafia trial at which he presided, the 2009 racketeering and murder trial of Genovese capo Michael (Mikey Cigars) Coppola, Gleeson disappointed prosecutors, and set himself apart from the sentencing practices of many judges in mob trials. He rejected a motion to hammer Mikey Cigars with 40 years, even though he was acquitted of the centerpiece of the trial, the storied 1977 murder of Johnny Cokes Lardiere, and gave Coppola 16 years for racketeering.
In Brooklyn: A State Of Mind, a 2001 book edited by Michael W. Robbins and Wendy Palitz, Gleeson spoke publicly about his role as prosecutor in the 1992 trial of John Gotti for the only time that Gang Land has found. In the book, which came out a year before Gravano was arrested for drug dealing, Gleeson is quoted as saying: "Gravano was the best witness of all time. There are forty seven guys in jail because of Sammy."
He also told Dorothy Weiss, the author of the article about him and trial judge I. Leo Glasser that while Gotti never tried to intimidate him during the trial, the Dapper Don did engage in some "shenanigans" during the jury selection process. Gleeson discussed one he called "a stunt." "Flyers started appearing on the Long Island Rail Road, and then all around town, with a drawing of a rat and the face of Sammy Gravano," Gleeson recalled. "I had a fit. Of course, I thought the bad guys were behind it all and I was afraid prospective jurors would be tainted. No one would claim responsibility. The defense lawyers said they had nothing to do with it. I brought the flyers to Judge Glasser's attention."
"Judge Glasser took care of the situation on the spot," Gleeson recalled. "Turning to Gotti, who was sitting at the defense table, he said, 'You've been complaining that you're not getting a fair trial. I don't know who posted these flyers all around town. I'm not accusing you, but if you're really interested in getting a fair trial, it might be a good idea to stop those flyers if you can.'"
"It was a great moment: Boss meets Boss," said Gleeson, adding: "The flyers mysteriously disappeared the next day."
Prosecutor Sees The Light; Joins Long Island Power Authority
James Miskiewicz, the prosecutor who blamed a paralegal for three unlawful subpoenas that went out under his name in a mob-connected drug probe, and who drew the ire of a federal judge for his "curious" report about that, has taken a position as an ethics officer for the Long Island Power Authority.
Miskiewicz hasn't begun his new gig yet, so it's not too late to give him Gang Land's Sidestepper Award for 2015 for fingering unnamed "support staffers" as the culprits responsible for grand jury subpoenas which warned recipients not to discuss them with anyone else. The subpoenas — which under the law are fair game for discussion by recipients — went to accountants for members of the Gregorio Gigliotti family who were later charged with coke smuggling with gangsters linked to a Calabrian-based organized crime group, 'Ndrangheta.
Sources say Miskiewicz, who was one of the government prosecutors in court yesterday at a pre-trial hearing for former Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke, has told associates that he did not intend to "blame" his staffers in his letter to Judge Raymond Dearie about the matter, and would re-word the letter to shoulder the blame himself, if he could.
According to LIPA spokesman Sid Nathan, Miskiewicz will report to LIPA's Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Falcone, and also work on other important legal issues for the state agency. He is slated to begin working at his $170,000 a year job next week.
Over the years, Miskiewicz has won numerous notable convictions during his 18 years as an assistant U.S. attorney, based mostly on Long Island. He also toiled seven years for the Justice Department in Washington.
In 2000, he prosecuted several mob associates of legendary Colombo mobster John (Sonny) Franzese, and convicted them on racketeering, arson, and other charges.
A year later, he charged and ultimately convicted Joseph (Little Joe) DiBenedetto, the son-in-law of Luchese boss Vittorio Amuso and five others on labor racketeering and embezzlement charges stemming from the family's control over a construction industry union.
It took him two trials, but in 2011 and 2012, he convicted mob associate Christian Tarantino of two 1994 murders and for a plot to murder a third victim who was shot to death in 2003. At the second trial, Miskiewicz used a tape recorded conversation Tarantino had with a former business partner, the 2003 murder victim, to convince the jury of the defendant's guilt.
In other 2015 awards, Gambino wiseguy Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo gets the Comeback Kid Award for making it back to Brooklyn in 2015, after spending nearly seven years away from his old haunts in places like the reconverted Fort Dix U.S. Army Base in Fort Dix, N.J. Corozzo, 74, moved to a halfway house in Brooklyn last fall. He was officially released from custody Tuesday.
Vita Rose Cacace, the ex-wife of imprisoned Colombo consigliere Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace gets the Grandma Dearest Award for the will she filed, ostensibly made by her son, Joel Cacace Jr., three months before he died suddenly of a heart attack at age 44 on New Year's Day of last year. The will, which features several crossed out dates and several misspellings of Cacace's name, is being contested by Cacace's only child, Dina Marie.
Depositions of the two Long Island residents-witnesses who signed the will were slated to take place in December, but were postponed until next month.