by Dellacroce » Thu Mar 17, 2016 2:29 am
March 17, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Crooked CPA Who Sunk 'Mafia Cops' Still A Low-Life
Most mob turncoats are not nice people. They start out as criminals, and usually agree to snitch only after they've been caught committing crimes, often reprehensible ones. Then they start spilling the goods. They cause immense grief for their friends and their families. Some go on to lead productive lives. But some never rise above that low-life attitude.
Take former CPA Stephen P. Corso whose noxious post-cooperating witness activities are detailed in recent filings in his Connecticut Federal Court case.
Corso's decision to flip came after he was nailed stealing $6 million from close friends, including TV sports icon Dan Patrick. Previously, Patrick, his wife Susan, and other neighbors had considered Corso a close friend, someone they trusted so much that they used him to prepare their tax returns for 10 years.
After he cooperated, Corso's biggest catch came in 2004 when he taped Mafia Cops Lou Eppolito and Steve Caracappa talking about a drug deal in Las Vegas. The recordings enabled the feds to put the rogue cops away for good for a slew of mob murders in the 1980s and 1990s. For his own sins, Corso spent a mere 10 months in custody, including several in a halfway house.
At sentencing, he said he was truly sorry, and promised he would "never ever" work as a CPA again. He couldn't legally, because his CPA license was suspended as a result of his conviction.
But on August 2, 2010, three days after his sentence ended, Corso simply changed a few letters in his name, and became Steven J. Corso. Presto, he was at it all over again, stating he was CPA, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint that cites numerous frauds by him between then and last April. According to court filings, by 2011 he was earning $6000 a week. Since then, the records show, he has stiffed his ex-wife and a son out of $196,000 in alimony and child support payments.
Amazingly, Corso, 60, has avoided being charged with any crimes since he got out of prison and set up shop in Encinitas California, a suburb of San Diego, as Steven John Corso, CEO of Corso & Company. He also managed to avoid violating post prison supervised release restrictions from 2010 through 2013 that were imposed by Connecticut Federal Judge Janet Hall in 2009.
In a civil complaint filed last year, the SEC described Corso & Company as a "fictitious" business, which provided "accounting and consulting services to public companies."
In addition, the SEC stated that Corso:
Advertised himself on the Internet as a "Security and Exchange Commission Consultant and Attorney,"
Has signed SEC filings stating he was the Chief Financial Officer or Chief Accounting Officer of one shell company, and was the Principal Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer of a second shell company,
Has falsely stated in SEC filings that he was a licensed CPA, a graduate of Washington University with a Law degree, had an accounting degree from NYU, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Cornell, and
Continued his fraudulent practices for two months after the SEC filed its complaint.
There's no question that Corso is a superb con man. His ability to tape record Caracappa and Eppolito agreeing to a drug deal establishes that. The savvy corrupt cops had known for 10 years that they'd been fingered as rogues. And when he was sentenced in 2009, he was already earning more than $420,000 a year, ostensibly legitimately, according to court papers.
He was also careful. For nearly three years, as CPA Steven J. Corso, he religiously made his monthly $4000 restitution payments as Stephen P. Corso, according to court filings. But the bubble began to burst when he stopped paying restitution to the government in September of 2013, a month after his supervised release ended. His criminal and civil attorneys declined to comment, but Corso apparently figured that without the pesky Department of Probation monitoring him, he'd be able to slide. By then he had paid $452,490 of the $5.4 million in restitution that he owed.
But he didn't count on the relentless efforts of hard-driving assistant U.S. attorney Christine Sciarrino, who for 25 years has headed the Connecticut U.S. Attorney's Financial Litigation Unit, which is responsible for collecting debts owed to the U.S. government.
"She's a bulldog," laughed a lawyer who is familiar with her work. "She is particularly aggressive in enforcing restitution orders for the government. She's a lovely woman but she is absolutely ruthless when it comes to collecting money for the government."
After beginning her investigation into Corso's failure to keep up his payments, Sciarrino located "a previously undisclosed financial account," garnished the funds (about $500,000, according to an SEC filing) and "distributed a portion" to some of his victims, the prosecutor wrote in a court filing last month.
She also placed $289,414 in a separate account and asked Judge Hall for permission to distribute it to Corso victims, except for $13,567 that Corso owes in child support payments for one of his three children to his ex-wife Beth Ann Corso.
But last week, Beth Ann Corso informed Judge Hall that Corso owes her $182,482 in back alimony, noting that since their 2011 divorce, he has failed to pay 52 of his 57 alimony payments and has been found in contempt of court nine times in California and Connecticut.
In her letter, she cited a Danbury Superior Court ruling ordering Corso to pay the overdue bill. She also cited federal statutes stating that funds owed "for the support of a person have priority over the Government's garnishment" and asked Judge Hall to award her back alimony to her before distributing her ex-hubby's money as restitution.
The couple's divorce settlement indicates that Corso's alimony payments are a fairly hefty $6000 a month, but Beth Ann stressed that she was not seeking the money Corso owed her to maintain her "pre-divorce marital lifestyle" but because it "is necessary for my basic existence."
"Mr. Corso's willful non-payment of alimony has put me into unnecessary financial ruin necessitating the foreclosure sale of my home as well as the sale of most of my possessions," she wrote.
"I am living in a small rental home on a Church property, driving a 12 year old car with 291,000 miles, am over $200,000 in debt and am actively seeking employment which due to my limited vocational skills, employability and age of 62 is not easy."
"The non-payment of alimony and tuition obligations are more examples in a long string of Mr. Corso's offenses and continued refusal to abide by the law," she concluded, noting that she moved for divorce in 2011 when she "discovered that Mr. Corso had committed bigamy" by marrying another woman in 2006.
In last month's government filing, prosecutor Sciarrino mentioned the same federal statutes regarding support payments that Beth Ann Corso cited. But she stated that they did not apply to the alimony payments that were ordered last year by a Danbury Superior Court Judge.
A spokesman said Sciarrino would file a response to Beth Ann Corso's letter with Judge Hall.
"In short," said spokesman Thomas Carson, "the government's position is that the applicable statute requires that child support payments be made before restitution to victims, but that victims in this case will get preference over an alimony claim."
Corso has not appeared before Judge Hall since prosecutors began investigating him two years ago. He has remained in California, and let lawyers deal with the government's seizures of his cash, and related issues —for good reason.
Last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, the judge in the contentious Corso divorce case told his ex-wife: "He owes you a ton of money. He's jerking you around. If you can get him to Connecticut, we'll be happy to lock him up for you."
Corso, in a filing last week by attorney David Grudberg, was true to form about the $289,414 of his funds that the government seized and has placed in an escrow account. Instead of taking the high road, and backing his ex-wife's claim for her alimony money, he supports the government's position that his seized cash shouldn't go to his victimized ex-wife, but to his other victims.
Judge Hall gave Corso and the government two weeks to respond to Beth Ann Corso's letter, which was filed after the legal papers by Corso and the government.
No Arrests In Brutal Prison Assault, But BOP Singles Out Johnny Joe For Blame
The investigation of the brutal assault of a Gambino associate whose jaw was broken and wired shut last summer after an attack in a recreation yard at a Fairton, New Jersey prison is over. No arrests have been made. But federal prison officials have apparently decided who was behind the vicious beating of Albert (Albee) Crisci.
Following the incident, Bonanno soldier John (Johnny Joe) Spirito was sent to the prison's segregated housing unit (SHU) where he spent the next eight months. Now, the 57-year-old wiseguy has been transferred to an institution in Cumberland, Maryland – about 200 miles further away from his family's home in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx.
Bureau of Prisons officials in Washington, as well as those at the medium security facility in South Jersey, declined to say why Spirito was transferred from his longtime home away from home. But there is little doubt that his uprooting stems from the belief by authorities that he was involved in the attack.
Law enforcement sources say Spirito was quickly pegged as one of the participants. But the investigation went nowhere because Crisci, 41, who underwent emergency surgery in a local hospital following the assault, declined to finger his assailants, and authorities had no choice but to close the case. But they opted to exact some punishment.
"I would not be surprised by another transfer or two," said one official.
According to the prison grape vine, the attack was in retaliation for a decision by Crisci's wife to participate in the upcoming season of Mob Wives — the cable TV reality show that wiseguys love to hate. But that's only one theory that authorities pursued. No clear motive for the brutal assault was ever firmly established.
But whatever the cause, Spirito's attorney, Murray Richman, says his client has gotten a raw deal. It's a "tremendous hardship for Johnny Joe's wife Michelle,†said Richman. "She is a cancer survivor. It was difficult for her to make the trip to Fairton. I don't know whether she's going to be able to visit her husband now," said the lawyer.
Richman, who learned about his client's pending transfer the day before it happened, filed an official complaint about the move in letters to the BOP, and to Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis. At sentencing in 2006, Garaufis asked the BOP to assign Spirito to a facility in the Northeast Region to accommodate visits from his wife, who had attended all her husband's court sessions following his indictment in 2003.
"As I told Judge Garaufis," said Richman, "we recognized that the BOP can pretty much do whatever it wants with a prisoner, so we needed help to keep him in the northeast for the sake of his family and common decency. But we didn't get any."
Richman said he has begun looking for a way to get Spirito closer to home as soon as possible. Johnny Joe, who was sentenced to 20 years for murder and racketeering charges, still has five more years behind bars ahead of him. He is slated for release in January, 2021.
Meanwhile, Crisci, who was transferred to a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts after his surgery, still has two months remaining on his 57 month sentence for drug dealing. He is completing that prison term under home confinement, following a brief stay at a halfway house, according to a BOP spokesperson.
Disgraced Mob Lawyer Back To The Drawing Board As Judge Revokes His Law License Again
A day after Gang Land reported that disbarred mob lawyer Larry Bronson had gotten back his license to practice law in the same federal courthouse where he had been convicted and sentenced to prison eight years ago, Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan reversed himself and re-instated Bronson's suspension.
On Friday, March 4, Cogan stated that because of a "clerical error," he was vacating his order that re-instated Bronson to the roll of lawyers in good standing in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY). Cogan also ordered Bronson to submit the proper paperwork to comply with the appropriate local rules within 14 days.
The judge's order had nothing to do with Gang Land's March 3 report about Bronson, according to an EDNY Grievance Committee clerk. She said Cogan's decision concerned the court's complicated rules involving lawyers — like Bronson — who have never been admitted to the New York State bar but were admitted to practice in Brooklyn due to a prior admission to practice in Manhattan Federal Court.
Bronson, who was admitted to practice law in New Jersey in 1970, told Gang Land that former Manhattan Federal Judge Pierre Leval swore him and "half a dozen other lawyers" involved in the 22-defendant Pizza Connection case in as attorneys in good standing in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) before that trial. That's standard legal practice (called pro hac vice) when attorneys are admitted to appear in the court for a single case. But Bronson insisted that Leval gave him and the other lawyers much broader permission to practice in Manhattan Federal Court.
Unfortunately, said Bronson, the SDNY has told him there are no records of the group swearing in by Judge Leval, who is now a senior judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bronson, whose New Jersey license was reinstated last year, is admitted to practice law in the New Jersey Federal Courts. But that also doesn't suffice, since the Garden State is in a different federal Judicial District (the Third Circuit) than the New York federal courts, which are in the Second Circuit, along with Vermont and Connecticut.
"Whatever it takes, I want to do this right," said Bronson, who added that he was going to ask Cogan for additional time to submit the proper paperwork.
In 2008, Bronson was convicted of illegally structuring cash proceeds from a drug deal in a plea deal that covered racketeering, obstruction of justice and other charges. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison. According to his re-instatement petition that was approved by the New Jersey Supreme Court, Bronson, 70, plans to open up a law office in Hudson County, where he served as a prosecutor in 1970.
March 17, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Crooked CPA Who Sunk 'Mafia Cops' Still A Low-Life
Most mob turncoats are not nice people. They start out as criminals, and usually agree to snitch only after they've been caught committing crimes, often reprehensible ones. Then they start spilling the goods. They cause immense grief for their friends and their families. Some go on to lead productive lives. But some never rise above that low-life attitude.
Take former CPA Stephen P. Corso whose noxious post-cooperating witness activities are detailed in recent filings in his Connecticut Federal Court case.
Corso's decision to flip came after he was nailed stealing $6 million from close friends, including TV sports icon Dan Patrick. Previously, Patrick, his wife Susan, and other neighbors had considered Corso a close friend, someone they trusted so much that they used him to prepare their tax returns for 10 years.
After he cooperated, Corso's biggest catch came in 2004 when he taped Mafia Cops Lou Eppolito and Steve Caracappa talking about a drug deal in Las Vegas. The recordings enabled the feds to put the rogue cops away for good for a slew of mob murders in the 1980s and 1990s. For his own sins, Corso spent a mere 10 months in custody, including several in a halfway house.
At sentencing, he said he was truly sorry, and promised he would "never ever" work as a CPA again. He couldn't legally, because his CPA license was suspended as a result of his conviction.
But on August 2, 2010, three days after his sentence ended, Corso simply changed a few letters in his name, and became Steven J. Corso. Presto, he was at it all over again, stating he was CPA, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint that cites numerous frauds by him between then and last April. According to court filings, by 2011 he was earning $6000 a week. Since then, the records show, he has stiffed his ex-wife and a son out of $196,000 in alimony and child support payments.
Amazingly, Corso, 60, has avoided being charged with any crimes since he got out of prison and set up shop in Encinitas California, a suburb of San Diego, as Steven John Corso, CEO of Corso & Company. He also managed to avoid violating post prison supervised release restrictions from 2010 through 2013 that were imposed by Connecticut Federal Judge Janet Hall in 2009.
In a civil complaint filed last year, the SEC described Corso & Company as a "fictitious" business, which provided "accounting and consulting services to public companies."
In addition, the SEC stated that Corso:
Advertised himself on the Internet as a "Security and Exchange Commission Consultant and Attorney,"
Has signed SEC filings stating he was the Chief Financial Officer or Chief Accounting Officer of one shell company, and was the Principal Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer of a second shell company,
Has falsely stated in SEC filings that he was a licensed CPA, a graduate of Washington University with a Law degree, had an accounting degree from NYU, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Cornell, and
Continued his fraudulent practices for two months after the SEC filed its complaint.
There's no question that Corso is a superb con man. His ability to tape record Caracappa and Eppolito agreeing to a drug deal establishes that. The savvy corrupt cops had known for 10 years that they'd been fingered as rogues. And when he was sentenced in 2009, he was already earning more than $420,000 a year, ostensibly legitimately, according to court papers.
He was also careful. For nearly three years, as CPA Steven J. Corso, he religiously made his monthly $4000 restitution payments as Stephen P. Corso, according to court filings. But the bubble began to burst when he stopped paying restitution to the government in September of 2013, a month after his supervised release ended. His criminal and civil attorneys declined to comment, but Corso apparently figured that without the pesky Department of Probation monitoring him, he'd be able to slide. By then he had paid $452,490 of the $5.4 million in restitution that he owed.
But he didn't count on the relentless efforts of hard-driving assistant U.S. attorney Christine Sciarrino, who for 25 years has headed the Connecticut U.S. Attorney's Financial Litigation Unit, which is responsible for collecting debts owed to the U.S. government.
"She's a bulldog," laughed a lawyer who is familiar with her work. "She is particularly aggressive in enforcing restitution orders for the government. She's a lovely woman but she is absolutely ruthless when it comes to collecting money for the government."
After beginning her investigation into Corso's failure to keep up his payments, Sciarrino located "a previously undisclosed financial account," garnished the funds (about $500,000, according to an SEC filing) and "distributed a portion" to some of his victims, the prosecutor wrote in a court filing last month.
She also placed $289,414 in a separate account and asked Judge Hall for permission to distribute it to Corso victims, except for $13,567 that Corso owes in child support payments for one of his three children to his ex-wife Beth Ann Corso.
But last week, Beth Ann Corso informed Judge Hall that Corso owes her $182,482 in back alimony, noting that since their 2011 divorce, he has failed to pay 52 of his 57 alimony payments and has been found in contempt of court nine times in California and Connecticut.
In her letter, she cited a Danbury Superior Court ruling ordering Corso to pay the overdue bill. She also cited federal statutes stating that funds owed "for the support of a person have priority over the Government's garnishment" and asked Judge Hall to award her back alimony to her before distributing her ex-hubby's money as restitution.
The couple's divorce settlement indicates that Corso's alimony payments are a fairly hefty $6000 a month, but Beth Ann stressed that she was not seeking the money Corso owed her to maintain her "pre-divorce marital lifestyle" but because it "is necessary for my basic existence."
"Mr. Corso's willful non-payment of alimony has put me into unnecessary financial ruin necessitating the foreclosure sale of my home as well as the sale of most of my possessions," she wrote.
"I am living in a small rental home on a Church property, driving a 12 year old car with 291,000 miles, am over $200,000 in debt and am actively seeking employment which due to my limited vocational skills, employability and age of 62 is not easy."
"The non-payment of alimony and tuition obligations are more examples in a long string of Mr. Corso's offenses and continued refusal to abide by the law," she concluded, noting that she moved for divorce in 2011 when she "discovered that Mr. Corso had committed bigamy" by marrying another woman in 2006.
In last month's government filing, prosecutor Sciarrino mentioned the same federal statutes regarding support payments that Beth Ann Corso cited. But she stated that they did not apply to the alimony payments that were ordered last year by a Danbury Superior Court Judge.
A spokesman said Sciarrino would file a response to Beth Ann Corso's letter with Judge Hall.
"In short," said spokesman Thomas Carson, "the government's position is that the applicable statute requires that child support payments be made before restitution to victims, but that victims in this case will get preference over an alimony claim."
Corso has not appeared before Judge Hall since prosecutors began investigating him two years ago. He has remained in California, and let lawyers deal with the government's seizures of his cash, and related issues —for good reason.
Last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, the judge in the contentious Corso divorce case told his ex-wife: "He owes you a ton of money. He's jerking you around. If you can get him to Connecticut, we'll be happy to lock him up for you."
Corso, in a filing last week by attorney David Grudberg, was true to form about the $289,414 of his funds that the government seized and has placed in an escrow account. Instead of taking the high road, and backing his ex-wife's claim for her alimony money, he supports the government's position that his seized cash shouldn't go to his victimized ex-wife, but to his other victims.
Judge Hall gave Corso and the government two weeks to respond to Beth Ann Corso's letter, which was filed after the legal papers by Corso and the government.
No Arrests In Brutal Prison Assault, But BOP Singles Out Johnny Joe For Blame
The investigation of the brutal assault of a Gambino associate whose jaw was broken and wired shut last summer after an attack in a recreation yard at a Fairton, New Jersey prison is over. No arrests have been made. But federal prison officials have apparently decided who was behind the vicious beating of Albert (Albee) Crisci.
Following the incident, Bonanno soldier John (Johnny Joe) Spirito was sent to the prison's segregated housing unit (SHU) where he spent the next eight months. Now, the 57-year-old wiseguy has been transferred to an institution in Cumberland, Maryland – about 200 miles further away from his family's home in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx.
Bureau of Prisons officials in Washington, as well as those at the medium security facility in South Jersey, declined to say why Spirito was transferred from his longtime home away from home. But there is little doubt that his uprooting stems from the belief by authorities that he was involved in the attack.
Law enforcement sources say Spirito was quickly pegged as one of the participants. But the investigation went nowhere because Crisci, 41, who underwent emergency surgery in a local hospital following the assault, declined to finger his assailants, and authorities had no choice but to close the case. But they opted to exact some punishment.
"I would not be surprised by another transfer or two," said one official.
According to the prison grape vine, the attack was in retaliation for a decision by Crisci's wife to participate in the upcoming season of Mob Wives — the cable TV reality show that wiseguys love to hate. But that's only one theory that authorities pursued. No clear motive for the brutal assault was ever firmly established.
But whatever the cause, Spirito's attorney, Murray Richman, says his client has gotten a raw deal. It's a "tremendous hardship for Johnny Joe's wife Michelle,†said Richman. "She is a cancer survivor. It was difficult for her to make the trip to Fairton. I don't know whether she's going to be able to visit her husband now," said the lawyer.
Richman, who learned about his client's pending transfer the day before it happened, filed an official complaint about the move in letters to the BOP, and to Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis. At sentencing in 2006, Garaufis asked the BOP to assign Spirito to a facility in the Northeast Region to accommodate visits from his wife, who had attended all her husband's court sessions following his indictment in 2003.
"As I told Judge Garaufis," said Richman, "we recognized that the BOP can pretty much do whatever it wants with a prisoner, so we needed help to keep him in the northeast for the sake of his family and common decency. But we didn't get any."
Richman said he has begun looking for a way to get Spirito closer to home as soon as possible. Johnny Joe, who was sentenced to 20 years for murder and racketeering charges, still has five more years behind bars ahead of him. He is slated for release in January, 2021.
Meanwhile, Crisci, who was transferred to a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts after his surgery, still has two months remaining on his 57 month sentence for drug dealing. He is completing that prison term under home confinement, following a brief stay at a halfway house, according to a BOP spokesperson.
Disgraced Mob Lawyer Back To The Drawing Board As Judge Revokes His Law License Again
A day after Gang Land reported that disbarred mob lawyer Larry Bronson had gotten back his license to practice law in the same federal courthouse where he had been convicted and sentenced to prison eight years ago, Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan reversed himself and re-instated Bronson's suspension.
On Friday, March 4, Cogan stated that because of a "clerical error," he was vacating his order that re-instated Bronson to the roll of lawyers in good standing in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY). Cogan also ordered Bronson to submit the proper paperwork to comply with the appropriate local rules within 14 days.
The judge's order had nothing to do with Gang Land's March 3 report about Bronson, according to an EDNY Grievance Committee clerk. She said Cogan's decision concerned the court's complicated rules involving lawyers — like Bronson — who have never been admitted to the New York State bar but were admitted to practice in Brooklyn due to a prior admission to practice in Manhattan Federal Court.
Bronson, who was admitted to practice law in New Jersey in 1970, told Gang Land that former Manhattan Federal Judge Pierre Leval swore him and "half a dozen other lawyers" involved in the 22-defendant Pizza Connection case in as attorneys in good standing in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) before that trial. That's standard legal practice (called pro hac vice) when attorneys are admitted to appear in the court for a single case. But Bronson insisted that Leval gave him and the other lawyers much broader permission to practice in Manhattan Federal Court.
Unfortunately, said Bronson, the SDNY has told him there are no records of the group swearing in by Judge Leval, who is now a senior judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bronson, whose New Jersey license was reinstated last year, is admitted to practice law in the New Jersey Federal Courts. But that also doesn't suffice, since the Garden State is in a different federal Judicial District (the Third Circuit) than the New York federal courts, which are in the Second Circuit, along with Vermont and Connecticut.
"Whatever it takes, I want to do this right," said Bronson, who added that he was going to ask Cogan for additional time to submit the proper paperwork.
In 2008, Bronson was convicted of illegally structuring cash proceeds from a drug deal in a plea deal that covered racketeering, obstruction of justice and other charges. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison. According to his re-instatement petition that was approved by the New Jersey Supreme Court, Bronson, 70, plans to open up a law office in Hudson County, where he served as a prosecutor in 1970.