by Dellacroce » Thu Feb 11, 2016 4:25 am
February 11, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Genovese Family's Murder-For-Hire Quintet Discussing Plea Deals
The strange murder-for-hire mob indictment may be resolved by plea deals, but if it does go to trial, prosecutors are lucky they don't have to prove a motive in the failed rubout plot. That's because the official version of why a pair of Genovese gangsters hired a trio of black hoodlums to whack a rival Queens gangster in the aborted hit is likely more than a little wide of the mark.
Prosecutors have declined to publicly state why mob associates Salvatore Delligatti and Robert Sowulski allegedly set the murder plot against rival gangster Joseph Bonelli in motion. But when asked, law enforcement sources said the "official reason" was that Bonelli was believed to be informing the FBI about mob bookmaking ventures in Queens following his release from prison in 2012. And that's why a carload of would-be assassins were on the prowl a few blocks from their intended victim's home when they were pulled over and arrested on June 8, 2014 by some alert Nassau County detectives.
That may be the "official reason" the gangsters used to justify the plot, but sources say it's bogus. It was cooked up as a legitimate Mafia explanation the same way that Luchese family leaders came up with similar phony excuses when they were whacking family wiseguys left and right in the late 1980s. The real motivation, to say the least, is very murky. But it has its roots, we are told with confidence, with a bookmaker who tried to weasel out of paying off a winning gambler.
Here's the tangled tale of the poorly executed murder plot that has the two mob associates and three gangstas associated with the Crips (not the Bloods as Gang Land reported last month) behind bars as dangers to the community as they await trial in Manhattan Federal Court.
The trio of would be assassins — Tyrone (Ty) McCullum, Sharif (QB) Brown and Marcus Grant — were stymied in their first run at Bonelli by too many potential witnesses on a busy Saturday night. They were thwarted the next night, permanently this time, by detectives who arrested the hit team as they drove to the victim's house. In the car, and arrested along with them, according to court papers, was career criminal Kelvin Duke, the go-between who allegedly hired them, and who is now the government's key witness in the case.
Sources say the failed rubout was triggered by a brouhaha that took place on the street (not a bar as also previously reported) when Bonelli dissed a Delligatti buddy named Ryan Ellis, a 300-pound mob enforcer who was nailed with family capo Conrad Ianniello in a 2009 extortion plot against a Long Island union. Ellis, 34, and Delligatti, 37, had become close pals by 2014, and each was under Queens-based mobster Robert DeBello in 2014, according to court records. But Delligatti was not present for the Ellis-Bonelli confrontation.
Ellis, who was awaiting sentencing for the extortion plot when the murder plot unfolded, was behind bars from October of 2014 until last August for that conviction. Sources say he is one of several alleged co-conspirators who are part of a continuing investigation into the murder plot by Manhattan federal prosecutors Samson Enzer and James McMahon. Delligatti, Ellis and DeBello were targets of the Nassau County District Attorney's office investigation into a Genovese gambling operation that led to the federal murder-for-hire case.
"There are several un-apprehended and uncharged co-conspirators that the government believes were involved in the conspiracy to commit murder for hire," Enzer said during a bail hearing for Delligatti.
In addition to Ellis and Bonelli, there were two others present for their street confrontation, which took place in front of a private house at 20-16 149th street in Whitestone Queens, sources say. One was bookie Luigi Caminiti, 35, who lived there. The other was a 52 year old businessman, a steady customer of Caminiti, who pleaded guilty to unrelated gambling charges last month, and is now serving 90 days at Rikers Island.
Sources say the confrontation stemmed from the bookmaker's refusal to pay the businessman, a heavy gambler and friend of Bonelli who had won more than $30,000 in previous weeks and hadn't collected a dime from Caminiti. Worse, from the perspective of the gambler, whose name Gang Land is withholding, he'd been told he was not going to get paid because he was alleged to have thrown eggs at the bookie's house a couple of nights before. That was just another phony story, however, we're told.
On the day in question, sources say, after the gambler complained again about being skunked, Caminiti told him to come to his house. Fearing the worst, sources said, the businessman called his buddy Bonelli, a bodyguard chauffeur for Genovese soldier Michael (Hippy) Zanfardino until he went to prison for racketeering in 2004, and asked him to come along.
When they arrived, sources say, Bonelli, who'd maintained his own prison hardened muscles, set the tone by stating that he had no interest in the dispute between his buddy and the bookie, but was there just to make sure no harm came to his pal. To make the point, said one source, Bonelli took a baseball bat away from Ellis, "got in his face and told him to keep his hands to himself," or he'd have "more trouble than he could handle."
When Ellis backed off, the emboldened gambler, with his gangster guardian angel standing close by, again denied the silly egg throwing allegation and pressed Caminiti for his money.
Sources say that once Caminiti saw how easily Joseph Bonelli, the gambler's gangster buddy had gotten the upper hand over Ryan Ellis, the baseball-bat wielding mob enforcer buddy that he was counting on, the bookie agreed to a weekly payout scheme that is slated to end later this year.
In May of 2014, a month before the hit team was first arrested, Delligatti was spotted talking to Ellis in his car, according to affidavits by the DA's office about the gambling probe. The affidavits describe Ellis as a DeBello underling whose movements were under surveillance by a pole camera stationed outside his home. The Nassau gambling investigation is continuing. Sources say any charges to result from that probe are likely to be prosecuted in Manhattan federal court, perhaps as part of a racketeering case that includes the aborted murder plot.
The government and the defendants are currently involved in plea negotiations, according to a filing last month by the prosecutors. If they are not fruitful, Judge Laura Swain is expected to set a trial date at a status conference that is scheduled for later this month.
Appeals Court: Shamrock Bar Murders A Gambino Family Affair
A federal appeals court last week upheld the racketeering and murder conviction of Gambino wiseguy Bartolomeo (Bobby Glasses) Vernace for the 1981 slayings of the owners of a Queens bar following an angry dispute over a spilled drink.
Vernace had previously beaten state charges for the same murder rap. But his 2013 federal court prosecution hinged on convincing the jury that the killings directly resulted from a deadly allegiance that Bobby Glasses had given his Mafia family — not just because of a dispute over a spilled drink on a raucous night.
Actually, there was plenty in the trial record to bolster the argument made by Vernace's appeals lawyer that the feds had taken a stupid and otherwise senseless crime and turned it into a Cosa Nostra execution in a bid to win the conviction that had eluded state prosecutors.
For instance, the prosecutor said in his opening remarks that the owners of the Shamrock Bar in Ozone Park, Queens "had nothing to do with the mob before the night that they were killed. They were killed over a spilled drink." The same explanation was offered by the bartender, a key witness who fingered Bobby Glasses for the murders of John D'Agnese and Richard Godkin: "Two men were dead over a spilled drink," he said.
But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals insisted nothing in Gang Land is that simple. "Vernace's theory" that the slayings stemmed from a "personal dispute over a spilled drink … carries with it an air of implausibility," the judges stated. The notion of a stupid barroom fight was not supported by "reason or common sense," they wrote. As a result, the anonymous jurors were rightly entitled to decide that the barroom slayings were Gambino family business.
In affirming the 66-year-old mobster's conviction, the court wrote: "Vernace argues that a mere spilled drink somehow cascaded into two brutal, and very public, murders. But the jury, seeking to make sense of the Shamrock Murders, could have reasonably rejected this theory and found instead that the Shamrock Murders were related to the activities of the Gambino crime family."
There was no testimony or other evidence about that. But the judges wrote that the jury could have "reasonably inferred" that Vernace returned to the bar with a fellow mob associate, Frank (The Geech) Riccardi, after a drink had been spilled on Riccardi earlier that night to help him "address the affront" that was "real or perceived to himself and to his authority as an associate of the Gambino crime family."
"That is," the court continued, "a reasonable jury could have concluded Vernace went so far as to commit murder in a crowded bar because such a public display related to preserving (and even enhancing) the reputation of the Gambino crime family and its members."
In its 26-page ruling the court stated that attorney Seth Ginsberg also "made too much of the similarities" between the Shamrock Bar murders and a 1994 shooting in a Brooklyn social club that left one Genovese associate dead and another badly wounded. In that case, the appeals court reversed the convictions, finding that the shootings were "for personal reasons unrelated to the Genovese crime family."
In the Genovese case — the murder of mob associate Tino Lombardi and wounding of associate Michael (Cookie) D'Urso — Judges Roger Miner, Nicholas Tsoucalas and Robert Katzmann, the court's current chief judge, ruled in 2004 that the reason for the shooting was "tens of thousands of dollars in loansharking debts" owed to Lombardi. Ruling that the case had nothing to do with the crime family, that panel threw out the convictions of Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito and Mario (The Baker) Fortunato.
In the Vernace ruling, the appeals court acknowledged quite a few similarities: Like the social club case, "the Shamrock Murders stemmed from a personal dispute." Likewise, "none of the participants was an inducted member (and) the murders were not sanctioned." Also, Riccardi had help from pals who were not in his crew and mob higher-ups plotted to kill Riccardi for his involvement. Finally, just as in the social club case, "the participants laid low after the murders."
But that's as far as the court was willing to go. Looking back at what their appeals court colleagues decided 12 years ago, Judges Robert Sack, Denny Chin and Christopher Droney declared that the "personal angle" of a "spilled drink" on mob associate Riccardi in the Shamrock Bar murders case was "far weaker" than the "personal reasons" in the Genovese case and "not one the (Vernace) jury was obliged to credit."
In addition, the panel wrote, "even if the dispute at the Shamrock Bar was initially personal, it grew to be much more," noting that for Bobby Glasses, who was not involved in the initial dispute, "the spilled drink was not entirely personal."
"The Court's effort to distinguish this case from the Genovese case is far from compelling," said attorney Ginsberg. "Killing someone to avoid the repayment of a debt seems as irrational to me as killing someone over a spilled drink, but both happened. To ascribe some presumably more rational motive — preserving the reputation of the Gambino family — is a fiction.
Noting that his client intends to seek redress with the Supreme Court, the lawyer added: "There is no evidence that the murders emanated from anything other than the spilled drink. Anything else is pure speculation."
Meanwhile, Bobby Glasses Vernace, currently serving a life behind bars, surely wishes he had drawn the trio of judges who decided the appeals for Carmine Pizza Polito and Mario The Baker Fortunato instead of the panel he got. By the same token, federal prosecutors in the Polito-Fortunato case surely would have preferred the judges that affirmed Vernace's conviction.
Joe Boy Sclafani Eyes A Second Reduction Of His Sentence For Drug Dealing
It's no stretch to say that 50-year-old Gambino soldier Joseph (Joe Boy) Sclafani is a career criminal. After all, he followed his dad into the mob and has been committing crimes for more than half his life. He was also present — and packing a gun — when an infamous piece of Mafia history was made back in 1989 when the mob whacked gangster Gus Farace for killing a DEA agent.
But under a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the definition of "career offender" may no longer fit Sclafani. And that's the argument he's making as he seeks a second reduction of the 15-year sentence he's doing for a 2011 drug arrest.
So far, things are looking good for Joe Boy: In a court filing last month, Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson indicated that the law is on the mobster's side, and he asked prosecutors why Sclafani's already reduced prison term, now 14 years, should not be cut by up to four more years.
The judge issued a "show cause order" to the U.S. Attorney's office following a motion for a re-sentencing by attorney Timothy Parlatore. The lawyer wrote that Sclafani's sentencing guidelines for his conviction for distributing cocaine between 2008 and 2011 now fall between 121-to-151 months. That's because his 1990 conviction for possessing the gun he had when Farace was killed in 1989 is no longer recognized as a "crime of violence" under federal guidelines.
In moving for a sentence reduction, Parlatore noted that, in December, a Manhattan Federal Court Judge cited the Supreme Court ruling in overturning a sentence that Gleeson had cited in finding that Sclafani was a "career offender" when the judge originally calculated Joe Boy's sentence in 2013. At the time, the guidelines called for a sentence of between 15 and 17.5 years at his sentencing.
It's a safe bet that prosecutors, who have not yet replied to Parlatore's motion or the judge's "show cause order," will find a legal precedent or two to argue that Sclafani's sentence should not be reduced. There is no love lost between the feds and Joe Boy going back to the 1989 murder of Farace.
Sclafani was not an alleged assassin in the killing, but a bodyguard for Farace, who was then the focus of an all-out federal agency onslaught against the mob for the execution murder of Agent Everett Hatcher during a drug buy in February of 1989.
When attorney Parlatore moved to reduce Sclafani's original 15 year sentence based on lower sentencing guidelines for drug offenses that went into effect in 2014, prosecutors first said he wasn't eligible, a claim that turned out to be inaccurate. Prosecutors then objected because he was a "longtime member of the Gambino crime family" who had in fact "been harboring Farace" back in 1989.
Prosecutors have until March 19 to respond to Judge Gleeson's order. At that point, they'll presumably be dealing with a different judge: Gleeson is slated to step down on March 9.
It will be too late for something else that was once important to the non-career wiseguy: Whatever happens with his sentence, it won't get him out of prison soon enough to win back former Mob Wives star Ramona Rizzo — that ship sailed, she told Gang Land last year.
February 11, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Genovese Family's Murder-For-Hire Quintet Discussing Plea Deals
The strange murder-for-hire mob indictment may be resolved by plea deals, but if it does go to trial, prosecutors are lucky they don't have to prove a motive in the failed rubout plot. That's because the official version of why a pair of Genovese gangsters hired a trio of black hoodlums to whack a rival Queens gangster in the aborted hit is likely more than a little wide of the mark.
Prosecutors have declined to publicly state why mob associates Salvatore Delligatti and Robert Sowulski allegedly set the murder plot against rival gangster Joseph Bonelli in motion. But when asked, law enforcement sources said the "official reason" was that Bonelli was believed to be informing the FBI about mob bookmaking ventures in Queens following his release from prison in 2012. And that's why a carload of would-be assassins were on the prowl a few blocks from their intended victim's home when they were pulled over and arrested on June 8, 2014 by some alert Nassau County detectives.
That may be the "official reason" the gangsters used to justify the plot, but sources say it's bogus. It was cooked up as a legitimate Mafia explanation the same way that Luchese family leaders came up with similar phony excuses when they were whacking family wiseguys left and right in the late 1980s. The real motivation, to say the least, is very murky. But it has its roots, we are told with confidence, with a bookmaker who tried to weasel out of paying off a winning gambler.
Here's the tangled tale of the poorly executed murder plot that has the two mob associates and three gangstas associated with the Crips (not the Bloods as Gang Land reported last month) behind bars as dangers to the community as they await trial in Manhattan Federal Court.
The trio of would be assassins — Tyrone (Ty) McCullum, Sharif (QB) Brown and Marcus Grant — were stymied in their first run at Bonelli by too many potential witnesses on a busy Saturday night. They were thwarted the next night, permanently this time, by detectives who arrested the hit team as they drove to the victim's house. In the car, and arrested along with them, according to court papers, was career criminal Kelvin Duke, the go-between who allegedly hired them, and who is now the government's key witness in the case.
Sources say the failed rubout was triggered by a brouhaha that took place on the street (not a bar as also previously reported) when Bonelli dissed a Delligatti buddy named Ryan Ellis, a 300-pound mob enforcer who was nailed with family capo Conrad Ianniello in a 2009 extortion plot against a Long Island union. Ellis, 34, and Delligatti, 37, had become close pals by 2014, and each was under Queens-based mobster Robert DeBello in 2014, according to court records. But Delligatti was not present for the Ellis-Bonelli confrontation.
Ellis, who was awaiting sentencing for the extortion plot when the murder plot unfolded, was behind bars from October of 2014 until last August for that conviction. Sources say he is one of several alleged co-conspirators who are part of a continuing investigation into the murder plot by Manhattan federal prosecutors Samson Enzer and James McMahon. Delligatti, Ellis and DeBello were targets of the Nassau County District Attorney's office investigation into a Genovese gambling operation that led to the federal murder-for-hire case.
"There are several un-apprehended and uncharged co-conspirators that the government believes were involved in the conspiracy to commit murder for hire," Enzer said during a bail hearing for Delligatti.
In addition to Ellis and Bonelli, there were two others present for their street confrontation, which took place in front of a private house at 20-16 149th street in Whitestone Queens, sources say. One was bookie Luigi Caminiti, 35, who lived there. The other was a 52 year old businessman, a steady customer of Caminiti, who pleaded guilty to unrelated gambling charges last month, and is now serving 90 days at Rikers Island.
Sources say the confrontation stemmed from the bookmaker's refusal to pay the businessman, a heavy gambler and friend of Bonelli who had won more than $30,000 in previous weeks and hadn't collected a dime from Caminiti. Worse, from the perspective of the gambler, whose name Gang Land is withholding, he'd been told he was not going to get paid because he was alleged to have thrown eggs at the bookie's house a couple of nights before. That was just another phony story, however, we're told.
On the day in question, sources say, after the gambler complained again about being skunked, Caminiti told him to come to his house. Fearing the worst, sources said, the businessman called his buddy Bonelli, a bodyguard chauffeur for Genovese soldier Michael (Hippy) Zanfardino until he went to prison for racketeering in 2004, and asked him to come along.
When they arrived, sources say, Bonelli, who'd maintained his own prison hardened muscles, set the tone by stating that he had no interest in the dispute between his buddy and the bookie, but was there just to make sure no harm came to his pal. To make the point, said one source, Bonelli took a baseball bat away from Ellis, "got in his face and told him to keep his hands to himself," or he'd have "more trouble than he could handle."
When Ellis backed off, the emboldened gambler, with his gangster guardian angel standing close by, again denied the silly egg throwing allegation and pressed Caminiti for his money.
Sources say that once Caminiti saw how easily Joseph Bonelli, the gambler's gangster buddy had gotten the upper hand over Ryan Ellis, the baseball-bat wielding mob enforcer buddy that he was counting on, the bookie agreed to a weekly payout scheme that is slated to end later this year.
In May of 2014, a month before the hit team was first arrested, Delligatti was spotted talking to Ellis in his car, according to affidavits by the DA's office about the gambling probe. The affidavits describe Ellis as a DeBello underling whose movements were under surveillance by a pole camera stationed outside his home. The Nassau gambling investigation is continuing. Sources say any charges to result from that probe are likely to be prosecuted in Manhattan federal court, perhaps as part of a racketeering case that includes the aborted murder plot.
The government and the defendants are currently involved in plea negotiations, according to a filing last month by the prosecutors. If they are not fruitful, Judge Laura Swain is expected to set a trial date at a status conference that is scheduled for later this month.
Appeals Court: Shamrock Bar Murders A Gambino Family Affair
A federal appeals court last week upheld the racketeering and murder conviction of Gambino wiseguy Bartolomeo (Bobby Glasses) Vernace for the 1981 slayings of the owners of a Queens bar following an angry dispute over a spilled drink.
Vernace had previously beaten state charges for the same murder rap. But his 2013 federal court prosecution hinged on convincing the jury that the killings directly resulted from a deadly allegiance that Bobby Glasses had given his Mafia family — not just because of a dispute over a spilled drink on a raucous night.
Actually, there was plenty in the trial record to bolster the argument made by Vernace's appeals lawyer that the feds had taken a stupid and otherwise senseless crime and turned it into a Cosa Nostra execution in a bid to win the conviction that had eluded state prosecutors.
For instance, the prosecutor said in his opening remarks that the owners of the Shamrock Bar in Ozone Park, Queens "had nothing to do with the mob before the night that they were killed. They were killed over a spilled drink." The same explanation was offered by the bartender, a key witness who fingered Bobby Glasses for the murders of John D'Agnese and Richard Godkin: "Two men were dead over a spilled drink," he said.
But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals insisted nothing in Gang Land is that simple. "Vernace's theory" that the slayings stemmed from a "personal dispute over a spilled drink … carries with it an air of implausibility," the judges stated. The notion of a stupid barroom fight was not supported by "reason or common sense," they wrote. As a result, the anonymous jurors were rightly entitled to decide that the barroom slayings were Gambino family business.
In affirming the 66-year-old mobster's conviction, the court wrote: "Vernace argues that a mere spilled drink somehow cascaded into two brutal, and very public, murders. But the jury, seeking to make sense of the Shamrock Murders, could have reasonably rejected this theory and found instead that the Shamrock Murders were related to the activities of the Gambino crime family."
There was no testimony or other evidence about that. But the judges wrote that the jury could have "reasonably inferred" that Vernace returned to the bar with a fellow mob associate, Frank (The Geech) Riccardi, after a drink had been spilled on Riccardi earlier that night to help him "address the affront" that was "real or perceived to himself and to his authority as an associate of the Gambino crime family."
"That is," the court continued, "a reasonable jury could have concluded Vernace went so far as to commit murder in a crowded bar because such a public display related to preserving (and even enhancing) the reputation of the Gambino crime family and its members."
In its 26-page ruling the court stated that attorney Seth Ginsberg also "made too much of the similarities" between the Shamrock Bar murders and a 1994 shooting in a Brooklyn social club that left one Genovese associate dead and another badly wounded. In that case, the appeals court reversed the convictions, finding that the shootings were "for personal reasons unrelated to the Genovese crime family."
In the Genovese case — the murder of mob associate Tino Lombardi and wounding of associate Michael (Cookie) D'Urso — Judges Roger Miner, Nicholas Tsoucalas and Robert Katzmann, the court's current chief judge, ruled in 2004 that the reason for the shooting was "tens of thousands of dollars in loansharking debts" owed to Lombardi. Ruling that the case had nothing to do with the crime family, that panel threw out the convictions of Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito and Mario (The Baker) Fortunato.
In the Vernace ruling, the appeals court acknowledged quite a few similarities: Like the social club case, "the Shamrock Murders stemmed from a personal dispute." Likewise, "none of the participants was an inducted member (and) the murders were not sanctioned." Also, Riccardi had help from pals who were not in his crew and mob higher-ups plotted to kill Riccardi for his involvement. Finally, just as in the social club case, "the participants laid low after the murders."
But that's as far as the court was willing to go. Looking back at what their appeals court colleagues decided 12 years ago, Judges Robert Sack, Denny Chin and Christopher Droney declared that the "personal angle" of a "spilled drink" on mob associate Riccardi in the Shamrock Bar murders case was "far weaker" than the "personal reasons" in the Genovese case and "not one the (Vernace) jury was obliged to credit."
In addition, the panel wrote, "even if the dispute at the Shamrock Bar was initially personal, it grew to be much more," noting that for Bobby Glasses, who was not involved in the initial dispute, "the spilled drink was not entirely personal."
"The Court's effort to distinguish this case from the Genovese case is far from compelling," said attorney Ginsberg. "Killing someone to avoid the repayment of a debt seems as irrational to me as killing someone over a spilled drink, but both happened. To ascribe some presumably more rational motive — preserving the reputation of the Gambino family — is a fiction.
Noting that his client intends to seek redress with the Supreme Court, the lawyer added: "There is no evidence that the murders emanated from anything other than the spilled drink. Anything else is pure speculation."
Meanwhile, Bobby Glasses Vernace, currently serving a life behind bars, surely wishes he had drawn the trio of judges who decided the appeals for Carmine Pizza Polito and Mario The Baker Fortunato instead of the panel he got. By the same token, federal prosecutors in the Polito-Fortunato case surely would have preferred the judges that affirmed Vernace's conviction.
Joe Boy Sclafani Eyes A Second Reduction Of His Sentence For Drug Dealing
It's no stretch to say that 50-year-old Gambino soldier Joseph (Joe Boy) Sclafani is a career criminal. After all, he followed his dad into the mob and has been committing crimes for more than half his life. He was also present — and packing a gun — when an infamous piece of Mafia history was made back in 1989 when the mob whacked gangster Gus Farace for killing a DEA agent.
But under a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the definition of "career offender" may no longer fit Sclafani. And that's the argument he's making as he seeks a second reduction of the 15-year sentence he's doing for a 2011 drug arrest.
So far, things are looking good for Joe Boy: In a court filing last month, Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson indicated that the law is on the mobster's side, and he asked prosecutors why Sclafani's already reduced prison term, now 14 years, should not be cut by up to four more years.
The judge issued a "show cause order" to the U.S. Attorney's office following a motion for a re-sentencing by attorney Timothy Parlatore. The lawyer wrote that Sclafani's sentencing guidelines for his conviction for distributing cocaine between 2008 and 2011 now fall between 121-to-151 months. That's because his 1990 conviction for possessing the gun he had when Farace was killed in 1989 is no longer recognized as a "crime of violence" under federal guidelines.
In moving for a sentence reduction, Parlatore noted that, in December, a Manhattan Federal Court Judge cited the Supreme Court ruling in overturning a sentence that Gleeson had cited in finding that Sclafani was a "career offender" when the judge originally calculated Joe Boy's sentence in 2013. At the time, the guidelines called for a sentence of between 15 and 17.5 years at his sentencing.
It's a safe bet that prosecutors, who have not yet replied to Parlatore's motion or the judge's "show cause order," will find a legal precedent or two to argue that Sclafani's sentence should not be reduced. There is no love lost between the feds and Joe Boy going back to the 1989 murder of Farace.
Sclafani was not an alleged assassin in the killing, but a bodyguard for Farace, who was then the focus of an all-out federal agency onslaught against the mob for the execution murder of Agent Everett Hatcher during a drug buy in February of 1989.
When attorney Parlatore moved to reduce Sclafani's original 15 year sentence based on lower sentencing guidelines for drug offenses that went into effect in 2014, prosecutors first said he wasn't eligible, a claim that turned out to be inaccurate. Prosecutors then objected because he was a "longtime member of the Gambino crime family" who had in fact "been harboring Farace" back in 1989.
Prosecutors have until March 19 to respond to Judge Gleeson's order. At that point, they'll presumably be dealing with a different judge: Gleeson is slated to step down on March 9.
It will be too late for something else that was once important to the non-career wiseguy: Whatever happens with his sentence, it won't get him out of prison soon enough to win back former Mob Wives star Ramona Rizzo — that ship sailed, she told Gang Land last year.