by Dr031718 » Thu May 15, 2025 8:58 am
Feds & Drug Dealer Freed By Trump Go At Each Other In Filings, And In Court Today
The feds say they already proved that a convicted drug-dealing Gambino associate whose prison term was commuted by President Trump should return to prison for sexually abusing his live-in nanny. And they still intend to prove that he assaulted a three-year old boy whose father has refused to testify at the hearing that resumes today.
The prosectors are planning to have a Nassau County police officer testify the boy's father stated that Jonathan Braun punched him and assaulted his young son on March 29 at a Sabbath service at his home — and introduce pictures of the boy provided by the father, as well as photos of the father that a cop took when interviewing him for an arrest complaint against Braun.
Braun's attorney objected strongly to the government's claim that he sexually abused the nanny and asked the judge to both dismiss that charge and block prosecutors from letting a police officer testify about the assault on the three year-old boy. The lawyer also ripped the government for reaching back to charge Braun with wrongdoing back in 2021 for something that he had received permission to do from the Probation Department.
In a court filing Tuesday, prosecutors disclosed they have subpoenaed the father, identified in sessions last month as Shammai, and a second neighbor who told police that Braun threatened him for praying too loud at a Sabbath service on March 22 — but now refuses to testify. He told police that Braun grabbed his arm "tightly" and stated, "I'm going to fuck you up."
Prosecutors informed Brooklyn Federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto that since serving subpoenas on both victims, "the government has repeatedly endeavored to confirm that (they) will appear at the hearing as required." But so far, they acknowledged, "the government has not received assurances that these witnesses will in fact appear."
The alleged victims "live near the defendant and have expressed significant concerns and reluctance to testify," wrote prosecutors Tanya Hajjar and Rachel Bennek, noting that "at times" both men have "indicated their outright refusal to testify."
Braun, 41, was charged in April with seven VOSRs, violations of the five years of post-prison supervised release that he began serving in January of 2021 when President Trump commuted the 10-year prison term he was serving for drug trafficking and money laundering on the last day of his first term as POTUS.
Prosecutors detailed three new VOSRs this week, including sexual abuse: that Braun "forced (his nanny) Danielle to touch his genitals," a charge that his attorney asked Matsumoto to summarily dismiss as a "clear violation of constitutional and statutory law" because the government filed the charge on May 1, based on testimony that took place more than two weeks earlier.
Braun had the right to a "full and fair notice of the charges being brought against him" before the witness took the stand against him, attorney Kathryn Wozencroft wrote, arguing it was unfair and illegal for prosecutors to "rely on evidence previously taken to bring new, heightened charges in an effort to enhance Mr. Braun's sentencing exposure."
Braun was clearly prejudiced by the government's actions, Wozencroft wrote, since she "would have cross examined the complainant in a vastly different manner” if he had been charged with placing "the complainant's hand on his genitals."
She made a "strategic decision" to "not engage the complainant" about the fact that she had not told police or state prosecutors about that allegation and had raised it for the first time with the federal prosecutors because Braun was not charged with sexual abuse and the lawyer "had no notice at the time that this allegation would be the subject of elevated charges."
Wozencroft also asked Matsumoto to dismiss a second new charge: that Braun was traveling out of state to Puerto Rico without permission from November 24, 2021 through November 27, 2021 . . . "without prior authorization from the Probation Department or the Court" because his probation officer had approved his trip in emails to his mother, whom he was meeting there.
"It is concerning that these exculpatory emails were not provided in discovery to Mr. Braun, despite the fact that they are in the possession of Probation," the lawyer wrote.
Wozencroft stated that the allegations involving the three-year-old boy were too serious to allow "hearsay testimony" from a police officer who spoke briefly to the boy's father, who "has not been re-interviewed" by any other law enforcement officials who might have challenged his account.
"What he says on the bodycam provided" to the defense "is called into question," the lawyer wrote, "both by the objective evidence and other witness testimony."
Wozencroft argued that while Shammai's complaint "alleges that he was punched in the face and his son was shoved, resulting in a bruise on his child’s body," the "picture that the complainant provided to the police as 'evidence' of the injury shows no mark or bruise" on the child's back, as it states in the complaint.
In addition, Braun's butler, government witness Justin Dizon, testified that while the defendant "tussled with the complainant," he didn't see Braun throw a punch and "he testified that Mr. Braun never touched the complainant's child," the lawyer wrote.
"Braun has a particularly great interest in confrontation here," Wozencroft wrote.
He wants to know why Shammai “stopped cooperating with law enforcement, how his actions may have precipitated the events in question, his possession of illegal drugs in Mr. Braun's home, his requests to be paid by Mr. Braun's family, and other factors bearing on his credibility."
With his freedom at stake, Braun "has a compelling interest in confronting" this important witness about his "bias and other factors which bear on credibility" since they "have a prior relationship," the lawyer wrote.
Skinny Teddy & Big Ralph Almost Home; Extorted Union Prez To Start Getting More Money
Two powerful Colombo family wiseguys involved in the 20-year extortion of a union official were released from prison recently. And in a few months, that will be a good thing for Andrew Talamo, the construction workers union president who fingered the gangsters for shaking him down for $624,000, Gang Land has learned.
Exactly how good and when it'll happen remains up in the air. But before too long, Talamo will begin receiving 10% of the gross income that convicted consigliere Ralph (Big Ralph) DeMatteo, 69, and capo Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico, 61, earn each month after their release from the Brooklyn halfway house where both currently reside.
When that happens — on August 1 for Persico and September 24 for DeMatteo — the duo will join three other defendants in the case who also pleaded guilty to extorting Talamo and already completed their prison terms. The trio are paying him 10% of their post-prison earnings toward the $280,890 he's slated to receive in restitution from five surviving Colombo gangsters involved in the shakedown.
Their lawyers, Talamo, and the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office are all mum on how much restitution the union official has received.
The architect of the scheme, capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo, began extorting $2600 a month from Talamo back in 2001. He managed to dodge his restitution requirement. The Colombo veteran instead paid with his life, dying behind bars.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez found all six gangsters who pleaded guilty to shaking down Talamo, the president of Local 621 of the United Construction Trades & Industrial Employees Union, jointly liable for less than half of the amount the feds said the union official gave Vinny Unions over the years.
Gonzalez limited it to $280,890, the amount prosecutors were able to establish from bank records provided by Talamo.
Skinny Teddy, whom the feds say will succeed his late uncle, Carmine (Junior) Persico, as family boss, will be hard pressed to handle that role for the next three years while on supervised release and barred from meeting with wiseguys and ex-cons. He arrived at the halfway house last week from a West Virginia prison, following 43 plus months behind bars of a five-year sentence he received.
Big Ralph made a big splash when the feds filed the blockbuster case that took down the crime family's administration, three captains and a family soldier. A photo posted online showed DeMatteo lounging in a pool in Florida while his wiseguy cohorts were detained. But he was a minor player in the extortion scheme. He got to the halfway house in March, after serving about 15 months of a three-year sentence he received.
Like Vinny Unions, his cousin Domenick Ricciardo, who often collected the monthly payoffs from Talamo, and mobsters Richard Ferrara and Michael Uvino, Persico and DeMatteo were required to pay $25 a quarter toward the $280,890 in restitution that they were jointly held liable for while they were serving the prison terms they received.
And like the three cohorts who completed their prison terms before them, Skinny Teddy and Big Ralph will be required to pay 10% of their gross monthly earnings toward the restitution they owe Talamo once out of the Bureau of Prisons' custody and serving their supervised release terms.
DeMatteo, a retired Daily News truck driver, is a pensioner. Persico should have no trouble getting a job at Vintage Collision, the Staten Island auto-body shop where he was working in September of 2021 before his arrest — if he hasn’t started there already.
The company is owned by his fiancé Nicole Russo, who stated in a letter to Judge Gonzalez that she has been with Theodore more than 15 years and knows him to be a "remarkable" man who "works incredibly hard and would give anyone, even a stranger, a helping hand."
Editor's Note: Gang Land is taking a slide next week. We'll be back with more real stuff about organized crime in two weeks, on May 29.
Feds Defend 'Common Sense' Conviction Of Crooked Ex-detective
A Brooklyn Federal Court jury was "entitled to use its common sense" in convicting former detective Hector Rosario of lying to the FBI after two agents testified that his tall tales could have influenced an FBI probe into crimes committed by three Mafia families, federal prosecutors stated this week.
The prosecutors argued in a court filing with Judge Eric Vitaliano that the testimony from the G-men offered "strong evidence" indicating the former Nassau County detective made "false statements" about "material facts" five years ago — and that the panel's guilty verdict at his trial in March should be upheld.
If Vitaliano upholds the jury verdict, Rosario, 51, faces up to five years in prison for lying to the FBI in January of 2020. The former gumshoe, fired after his 2022 indictment, was acquitted of obstructing a grand jury investigation of racketeering activity by members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese families.
In their filing, prosecutors Anna Karamigios and Sean Sherman wrote that the jury, which had been instructed on the law involving "material facts" by Vitaliano, rejected the same arguments that Rosario's lawyers had raised with the judge. They argued there was no legal basis for him to usurp that decision.
Agent Orlando Tactuk testified that if Rosario had acknowledged that Sal's Shoe Repair was a Genovese gambling parlor, his admission "would have been used to bolster existing investigations" or open new ones, they wrote. Tactuk also said if Rosario had admitted knowing that Damiano (Danny) Zummo was a Bonanno crime family mobster, that information "would have been shared to either bolster existing investigations or open new investigations."
Agent Jarryd Butler told the jury, they wrote, that Rosario's answers about his criminal activity were important. He testified that the FBI seeks to "gather as much evidence as possible," and uses "multiple investigative techniques" in its efforts to "corroborate" all the evidence agents gather when investigating racketeering activity by organized crime members and associates.
The prosecutors cited several Second Circuit Court of Appeals rulings that "the government was not obligated to show that the defendant's false statements actually influenced or hindered the FBI’s investigation" but "only required to show that the defendant's false statements were capable of influencing investigators" in order to convict defendants of lying to federal agents.
In one decision, the appeals court wrote that a trial judge could set aside a verdict "only when there is no evidence upon which a reasonable mind might fairly conclude guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." In another, the court declared the evidence had to be "nonexistent or so meager that no reasonable jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
Sean ShermanProsecutors backed up their argument by citing a case in which the Second Circuit refused to set aside a guilty verdict even though "the agent testified that the defendant's responses 'would not have changed his investigation.'" The court ruled that a jury "could reasonably conclude" that the defendant's answers were "capable of influencing" the investigation, "which is all that was required."
"Because the trial record includes testimony by multiple law enforcement witnesses" that Rosario's "false statements could have influenced the FBI's investigation," the prosecutors wrote, Vitaliano should "deny the defendant's motion for a judgment of acquittal."
And since Rosario did not know that the FBI had info from Zummo and a second cooperating witness that he had met the Bonanno mobster five times and had raided a Genovese gambling parlor for the Bonannos, the prosecutors wrote that "when the defendant lied to the FBI about Zummo and Sal's Shoe Repair he certainly was trying to influence their investigation. He just did not succeed."
"The defendant's sole post-trial claim," they wrote, "that this was in effect an FBI setup to catch the defendant in a lie, is simply an argument, or competing inference, about the evidence that the jury was free to consider and reject."
[size=150]Feds & Drug Dealer Freed By Trump Go At Each Other In Filings, And In Court Today[/size]
The feds say they already proved that a convicted drug-dealing Gambino associate whose prison term was commuted by President Trump should return to prison for sexually abusing his live-in nanny. And they still intend to prove that he assaulted a three-year old boy whose father has refused to testify at the hearing that resumes today.
The prosectors are planning to have a Nassau County police officer testify the boy's father stated that Jonathan Braun punched him and assaulted his young son on March 29 at a Sabbath service at his home — and introduce pictures of the boy provided by the father, as well as photos of the father that a cop took when interviewing him for an arrest complaint against Braun.
Braun's attorney objected strongly to the government's claim that he sexually abused the nanny and asked the judge to both dismiss that charge and block prosecutors from letting a police officer testify about the assault on the three year-old boy. The lawyer also ripped the government for reaching back to charge Braun with wrongdoing back in 2021 for something that he had received permission to do from the Probation Department.
In a court filing Tuesday, prosecutors disclosed they have subpoenaed the father, identified in sessions last month as Shammai, and a second neighbor who told police that Braun threatened him for praying too loud at a Sabbath service on March 22 — but now refuses to testify. He told police that Braun grabbed his arm "tightly" and stated, "I'm going to fuck you up."
Prosecutors informed Brooklyn Federal Judge Kiyo Matsumoto that since serving subpoenas on both victims, "the government has repeatedly endeavored to confirm that (they) will appear at the hearing as required." But so far, they acknowledged, "the government has not received assurances that these witnesses will in fact appear."
The alleged victims "live near the defendant and have expressed significant concerns and reluctance to testify," wrote prosecutors Tanya Hajjar and Rachel Bennek, noting that "at times" both men have "indicated their outright refusal to testify."
Braun, 41, was charged in April with seven VOSRs, violations of the five years of post-prison supervised release that he began serving in January of 2021 when President Trump commuted the 10-year prison term he was serving for drug trafficking and money laundering on the last day of his first term as POTUS.
Prosecutors detailed three new VOSRs this week, including sexual abuse: that Braun "forced (his nanny) Danielle to touch his genitals," a charge that his attorney asked Matsumoto to summarily dismiss as a "clear violation of constitutional and statutory law" because the government filed the charge on May 1, based on testimony that took place more than two weeks earlier.
Braun had the right to a "full and fair notice of the charges being brought against him" before the witness took the stand against him, attorney Kathryn Wozencroft wrote, arguing it was unfair and illegal for prosecutors to "rely on evidence previously taken to bring new, heightened charges in an effort to enhance Mr. Braun's sentencing exposure."
Braun was clearly prejudiced by the government's actions, Wozencroft wrote, since she "would have cross examined the complainant in a vastly different manner” if he had been charged with placing "the complainant's hand on his genitals."
She made a "strategic decision" to "not engage the complainant" about the fact that she had not told police or state prosecutors about that allegation and had raised it for the first time with the federal prosecutors because Braun was not charged with sexual abuse and the lawyer "had no notice at the time that this allegation would be the subject of elevated charges."
Wozencroft also asked Matsumoto to dismiss a second new charge: that Braun was traveling out of state to Puerto Rico without permission from November 24, 2021 through November 27, 2021 . . . "without prior authorization from the Probation Department or the Court" because his probation officer had approved his trip in emails to his mother, whom he was meeting there.
"It is concerning that these exculpatory emails were not provided in discovery to Mr. Braun, despite the fact that they are in the possession of Probation," the lawyer wrote.
Wozencroft stated that the allegations involving the three-year-old boy were too serious to allow "hearsay testimony" from a police officer who spoke briefly to the boy's father, who "has not been re-interviewed" by any other law enforcement officials who might have challenged his account.
"What he says on the bodycam provided" to the defense "is called into question," the lawyer wrote, "both by the objective evidence and other witness testimony."
Wozencroft argued that while Shammai's complaint "alleges that he was punched in the face and his son was shoved, resulting in a bruise on his child’s body," the "picture that the complainant provided to the police as 'evidence' of the injury shows no mark or bruise" on the child's back, as it states in the complaint.
In addition, Braun's butler, government witness Justin Dizon, testified that while the defendant "tussled with the complainant," he didn't see Braun throw a punch and "he testified that Mr. Braun never touched the complainant's child," the lawyer wrote.
"Braun has a particularly great interest in confrontation here," Wozencroft wrote.
He wants to know why Shammai “stopped cooperating with law enforcement, how his actions may have precipitated the events in question, his possession of illegal drugs in Mr. Braun's home, his requests to be paid by Mr. Braun's family, and other factors bearing on his credibility."
With his freedom at stake, Braun "has a compelling interest in confronting" this important witness about his "bias and other factors which bear on credibility" since they "have a prior relationship," the lawyer wrote.
[size=150]Skinny Teddy & Big Ralph Almost Home; Extorted Union Prez To Start Getting More Money [/size]
Two powerful Colombo family wiseguys involved in the 20-year extortion of a union official were released from prison recently. And in a few months, that will be a good thing for Andrew Talamo, the construction workers union president who fingered the gangsters for shaking him down for $624,000, Gang Land has learned.
Exactly how good and when it'll happen remains up in the air. But before too long, Talamo will begin receiving 10% of the gross income that convicted consigliere Ralph (Big Ralph) DeMatteo, 69, and capo Theodore (Skinny Teddy) Persico, 61, earn each month after their release from the Brooklyn halfway house where both currently reside.
When that happens — on August 1 for Persico and September 24 for DeMatteo — the duo will join three other defendants in the case who also pleaded guilty to extorting Talamo and already completed their prison terms. The trio are paying him 10% of their post-prison earnings toward the $280,890 he's slated to receive in restitution from five surviving Colombo gangsters involved in the shakedown.
Their lawyers, Talamo, and the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's office are all mum on how much restitution the union official has received.
The architect of the scheme, capo Vincent (Vinny Unions) Ricciardo, began extorting $2600 a month from Talamo back in 2001. He managed to dodge his restitution requirement. The Colombo veteran instead paid with his life, dying behind bars.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Hector Gonzalez found all six gangsters who pleaded guilty to shaking down Talamo, the president of Local 621 of the United Construction Trades & Industrial Employees Union, jointly liable for less than half of the amount the feds said the union official gave Vinny Unions over the years.
Gonzalez limited it to $280,890, the amount prosecutors were able to establish from bank records provided by Talamo.
Skinny Teddy, whom the feds say will succeed his late uncle, Carmine (Junior) Persico, as family boss, will be hard pressed to handle that role for the next three years while on supervised release and barred from meeting with wiseguys and ex-cons. He arrived at the halfway house last week from a West Virginia prison, following 43 plus months behind bars of a five-year sentence he received.
Big Ralph made a big splash when the feds filed the blockbuster case that took down the crime family's administration, three captains and a family soldier. A photo posted online showed DeMatteo lounging in a pool in Florida while his wiseguy cohorts were detained. But he was a minor player in the extortion scheme. He got to the halfway house in March, after serving about 15 months of a three-year sentence he received.
Like Vinny Unions, his cousin Domenick Ricciardo, who often collected the monthly payoffs from Talamo, and mobsters Richard Ferrara and Michael Uvino, Persico and DeMatteo were required to pay $25 a quarter toward the $280,890 in restitution that they were jointly held liable for while they were serving the prison terms they received.
And like the three cohorts who completed their prison terms before them, Skinny Teddy and Big Ralph will be required to pay 10% of their gross monthly earnings toward the restitution they owe Talamo once out of the Bureau of Prisons' custody and serving their supervised release terms.
DeMatteo, a retired Daily News truck driver, is a pensioner. Persico should have no trouble getting a job at Vintage Collision, the Staten Island auto-body shop where he was working in September of 2021 before his arrest — if he hasn’t started there already.
The company is owned by his fiancé Nicole Russo, who stated in a letter to Judge Gonzalez that she has been with Theodore more than 15 years and knows him to be a "remarkable" man who "works incredibly hard and would give anyone, even a stranger, a helping hand."
Editor's Note: Gang Land is taking a slide next week. We'll be back with more real stuff about organized crime in two weeks, on May 29.
[size=150]Feds Defend 'Common Sense' Conviction Of Crooked Ex-detective [/size]
A Brooklyn Federal Court jury was "entitled to use its common sense" in convicting former detective Hector Rosario of lying to the FBI after two agents testified that his tall tales could have influenced an FBI probe into crimes committed by three Mafia families, federal prosecutors stated this week.
The prosecutors argued in a court filing with Judge Eric Vitaliano that the testimony from the G-men offered "strong evidence" indicating the former Nassau County detective made "false statements" about "material facts" five years ago — and that the panel's guilty verdict at his trial in March should be upheld.
If Vitaliano upholds the jury verdict, Rosario, 51, faces up to five years in prison for lying to the FBI in January of 2020. The former gumshoe, fired after his 2022 indictment, was acquitted of obstructing a grand jury investigation of racketeering activity by members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese families.
In their filing, prosecutors Anna Karamigios and Sean Sherman wrote that the jury, which had been instructed on the law involving "material facts" by Vitaliano, rejected the same arguments that Rosario's lawyers had raised with the judge. They argued there was no legal basis for him to usurp that decision.
Agent Orlando Tactuk testified that if Rosario had acknowledged that Sal's Shoe Repair was a Genovese gambling parlor, his admission "would have been used to bolster existing investigations" or open new ones, they wrote. Tactuk also said if Rosario had admitted knowing that Damiano (Danny) Zummo was a Bonanno crime family mobster, that information "would have been shared to either bolster existing investigations or open new investigations."
Agent Jarryd Butler told the jury, they wrote, that Rosario's answers about his criminal activity were important. He testified that the FBI seeks to "gather as much evidence as possible," and uses "multiple investigative techniques" in its efforts to "corroborate" all the evidence agents gather when investigating racketeering activity by organized crime members and associates.
The prosecutors cited several Second Circuit Court of Appeals rulings that "the government was not obligated to show that the defendant's false statements actually influenced or hindered the FBI’s investigation" but "only required to show that the defendant's false statements were capable of influencing investigators" in order to convict defendants of lying to federal agents.
In one decision, the appeals court wrote that a trial judge could set aside a verdict "only when there is no evidence upon which a reasonable mind might fairly conclude guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." In another, the court declared the evidence had to be "nonexistent or so meager that no reasonable jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
Sean ShermanProsecutors backed up their argument by citing a case in which the Second Circuit refused to set aside a guilty verdict even though "the agent testified that the defendant's responses 'would not have changed his investigation.'" The court ruled that a jury "could reasonably conclude" that the defendant's answers were "capable of influencing" the investigation, "which is all that was required."
"Because the trial record includes testimony by multiple law enforcement witnesses" that Rosario's "false statements could have influenced the FBI's investigation," the prosecutors wrote, Vitaliano should "deny the defendant's motion for a judgment of acquittal."
And since Rosario did not know that the FBI had info from Zummo and a second cooperating witness that he had met the Bonanno mobster five times and had raided a Genovese gambling parlor for the Bonannos, the prosecutors wrote that "when the defendant lied to the FBI about Zummo and Sal's Shoe Repair he certainly was trying to influence their investigation. He just did not succeed."
"The defendant's sole post-trial claim," they wrote, "that this was in effect an FBI setup to catch the defendant in a lie, is simply an argument, or competing inference, about the evidence that the jury was free to consider and reject."