by Dellacroce » Thu Jul 14, 2016 3:25 am
July 14, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Mob Turncoat Shot While Fishing For Cash On The Treasure Coast
It was like old times last week for Gerard (Skeevy) Bellafiore, the controversial mob turncoat who robbed millions from banks both before and after he became a federal cooperating witness.
Over the July Fourth weekend, Skeevy got back into action using his signature burglary tool — a fishing gaffe — at a sidewalk bank vault in Florida. This is the same maneuver he described to a rapt Brooklyn jury a decade ago when he detailed how he used the gaffe to hook cash out of night-deposit boxes. A new feature of his inventive approach was wearing a Freddy Krueger mask, the better to confuse and intimidate would-be witnesses. He may have picked up that idea during the 50 hours of Film Appreciation classes he took in a special federal Bureau of Prisons unit for FBI snitches.
His latest act didn't work out too well, however. Bellafiore, who promised to foreswear his criminal ways when he signed on as a cooperating witness 15 years ago, was shot and seriously wounded when he was spotted conducting the July Fourth burglary of a bank in a posh resort area near Port Saint Lucie known as Jensen Beach. It's not known why Skeevy picked the place, but perhaps he was drawn to the area's reputation which has been known as the Treasure Coast since Spanish explorers arrived there in the 1600s.
Martin County Sheriff William Snyder told the story this way: "Our deputy confronted a Freddy Krueger type suspect coming at him and the deputy clearly thought that his life was in jeopardy. And he did what he was trained to do, and that was to use deadly force to protect himself."
Bellafiore, 47, was shot several times. He was hit at least once in the face, according to the Sheriff's office, after he allegedly attacked a deputy sheriff with his fishing gaffe when he was confronted during the bank burglary, and again when he tried to run the deputy over before crashing his car into a tree in a futile escape attempt at about 6:20 AM.
It was clearly bad timing for Bellafiore. But the prolific bank heist artist — he was involved in the thefts of more than $5 million in scores of bank heists across the country between the mid-1990s and 2009, according to court papers — was in the right place, said Snyder.
"It's the Fourth of July weekend," said the sheriff. "This would be the ideal time to do it because the banks would've been closed and this is where the businesses would be dropping off their money," said Snyder, noting that bank security footage showed Bellafiore using a metal cutting device to cut into the night-deposit box.
But Skeevy was apprehended before he could fish out any cash, said the sheriff's spokeswoman, Christine Weiss.
Bellafiore, whose cooperation led to convictions in New York of scores of mob associates of all five families, is currently under 24-hour guard at a local hospital, said Weiss. He will be charged with bank burglary, possession of burglary tools, aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, "and multiple other charges, if and when he recovers," Weiss added.
The exact date of Bellafiore's release from prison is unclear since his sentence was served in a Witness Security Unit. But it didn't take him long to get back to his chosen line of work. Court records indicate he was released early this year, before March 8. All told, he spent about 10 years behind bars — based on prison terms totaling 139 months that he received for two separate federal court convictions, one in Brooklyn, the other in Fort Lauderdale.
In the Sunshine State, justice was meted out much more quickly — and more severely in 2009 for a handful of Florida bank jobs — than it was in Brooklyn, where he was indicted in 2000 for dozens of bank robberies and burglaries from New York to California in the 1990s.
He was indicted in Fort Lauderdale in June of 2009 for three bank jobs that netted Bellafiore and his cohorts $467,000. In August, he copped a plea deal calling for 57-to-71 months. In October, at his sentencing, his attorney and the prosecutor each recommended a prison term of 57 months.
But Fort Lauderdale Judge William Zloch was having none of that. He knew that Bellafiore had committed crimes while cooperating with the government in New York, and learned that even though his prosecutors had breached his agreement, they were going to tell the sentencing judge there about the work he had done for the feds following his 2000 indictment.
Citing "Bellafiore's egregious and continuous criminal conduct" in Florida and "his general disregard for the law, particularly since he was awaiting sentencing for the same type" of crimes in New York, Zloch said he was going to mete out a prison term "above the advisory guideline range," and gave him 78 months.
Bellafiore whined to Zloch, who responded that 120 months, and even 180 months would have been "reasonable in light of your prior criminal record," which included 10 prior adult arrests.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Bellafiore claim that the sentence was excessive. It was reasonable, the court wrote, based on the "nature and circumstances of the offense, the history and characteristics of the defendant, and the need for the sentence imposed to promote respect for the law."
In 2011, when Bellafiore was finally sentenced for his guilty plea in his 2000 case, he again whined to Brooklyn Federal Judge Edward Korman about the sentence he received in Florida. "I went before another judge and this guy looked at me like I was Al Capone," he said.
Bellafiore fared much better in Brooklyn. Prosecutor Jacquelyn Kasulis said that Bellafiore's guidelines were 15 and a half years, but stated that the government took "no position" about his sentence. It didn't hurt Skeevy that the veteran FBI agents who flipped him, Theodore Otto and Cindy Peil were seated in court, and that Bellafiore's lawyer pointed out their presence — and support — to the judge. Korman gave him five years and one month.
While doing his time, Bellafiore stated he was "a very good inmate" who "received good job evaluations in my assigned prison jobs" and that he "received no serious misconduct or disciplinary citations" in a letter he wrote Korman last year protesting the BOP's refusal to place him in a halfway house six months before his release date.
"I have taken and passed my GED requirements, and I have taken many other educational courses that have been offered in the prison," he wrote, noting that he obtained his equivalent high school diploma in 2011 and that in addition to the usual subjects he had also attended Film Appreciation classes in 2012 and 2013.
Korman refused to upset the BOP's decision, saying that it was beyond his jurisdiction, a ruling that at least delayed Bellafiore's return to his chosen profession for six months.
The BOP sought to reassure Bellafiore. The denial was not a "reflection on your positive progress reports or your behavior while in custody," the agency wrote, but a reflection of the position of the Probation Department, which believed his "safety" would be threatened if he were "released to a community treatment center," according to court documents that were unsealed by Korman following a request by Gang Land.
Little did the Probation Department or BOP know that by keeping Bellafiore behind bars they were protecting him not from reprisals from any of his former gangster buddies he had testified against, but from the temptation to loot the Treasure Coast of Florida — and from the bullets of a sheriff's deputy who would be called to the scene of a burglary in process on the Fourth of July.
In addition to his pending charges in Martin County, Bellafiore also faces likely federal charges for violating his supervised release (VOSR) in Brooklyn or Fort Lauderdale, since judges in both federal courts gave him strict post-prison restrictions for his convictions.
Spokeswomen for the U.S. Attorneys in Brooklyn and Fort Lauderdale declined to comment about their intentions regarding Bellafiore. So did U.S. Probation Department officials in Brooklyn and Fort Lauderdale.
Manhattan DA's Office Gives John Gotti Pal A Very Sweet Deal
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has settled a criminal case against an old John Gotti pal who headed a lucrative Gambino family bookmaking operation for less than the Dapper Don used to leave behind in tips when he was out for a night on the town.
Gambino soldier Joseph Isgro pleaded guilty to misdemeanor gambling charges, was sentenced to pay a $1,000 fine, and received a conditional discharge of money laundering charges. The charges stemmed from Isgro's use of computer software created by an online sports betting guru who allegedly took the Gambino clan into the cyber-space era and laundered $5 million he obtained from the Gambinos and other mob-connected bookmakers from 2005 until 2013.
The plea deal was approved by Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner after defense attorney Aaron Rubin and assistant district attorney Carey Ng had worked out an agreement, according to court records.
In an unusually swift turn of justice, Isgro was sentenced on the same day he pled guilty on May 17. This saved the 68-year-old Isgro a lot more than the $1000 fine that he paid, since it spared him the cost of hotel accommodations in New York and a flight back and forth to his Los Angeles digs, where sources say he heads the crime family's west coast rackets.
By comparison, Leonard Rapisardi, the crime family's lowly un-made bookmaker in the case, pleaded guilty to felony gambling charges, paid a $30,000 fine, and was sentenced to three years probation, in what Rapisardi's attorney termed a "fair outcome" and "a favorable disposition" at the time.
But that was back when hard-nosed, mob-busting prosecutor Eric Seidel was calling the shots in the landmark case against Robert Stuart, the creator of the online betting software, and the two top officials of his company, his wife Suzanne, and her brother, Patrick Read. Seidel supervised the case from its inception in 2011, and had gotten an expanded indictment to include money laundering charges after the first case ended in a mistrial. The next court date is in September.
Isgro's sweet plea deal came three months after Seidel moved on — after 16 years with the DA's office, where he was a Rackets Bureau Chief for Robert Morgenthau and an organized crime supervisor for current DA Cyrus Vance. The plea also came a few days after the DA's office failed to convict four Bonannos in a three-month-long racketeering trial when the jury hung 6-6 after nine days of deliberations.
Gang Land wondered if Seidel's departure or the hung jury in the Bonanno case had anything to do with the decision to give Isgro his plea deal, and whether the office intends to do anything regarding the charges against the Stuarts and Read, and forwarded those questions to the DA's office.
We're still wondering. The DA's office declined to comment.
It's Good That Jurors Don't Have To Decide How To Pronounce The Name Gigliotti
They nearly came to blows when they were held in the same federal lockup last year. The long running animosity between Gregorio and Angelo Gigliotti, the accused father and son drug dealers charged with using their family-run Italian eatery in Corona to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. from Costa Rica, has escalated to the point where their attorneys can't even agree on the pronunciation of their clients' names.
That became evident yesterday when defense lawyers gave their opening statement to the jurors who will decide whether the accused associates of 'Ndrangheta — the Calabrian-based organized crime clan — shipped boatloads of coke disguised as yucca, or cassata, an oblong root vegetable that resembles a sweet potato.
Elizabeth Macedonio referred to her client as Gregorio Gig-lee-OH-tee as she told the eight-woman, four-man jury to keep an open mind as they listened to the numerous tape recordings and testimony during the trial, which is expected to last about three weeks.
In his opening, when Alan Futerfas implored the jurors to weigh the evidence carefully and separately against each defendant, the attorney identified his client as Angelo Jig-lee-AH-tee, and stressed that any incriminating evidence introduced by the government against the father should not be held against the son.
It's unclear how the Gigliottis pronounce their name, but neither pronunciation used by the attorneys is the correct textbook one, since the second "G" in Gigliotti should be silent, according to Gang Land's limited knowledge of Italian and a quick call to a linguist we know.
As it turns out, Futerfas was closer than Macedonio to the correct pronunciation, which would be Jill-AH-tee.
Not that either defendant cares just now how their names are pronounced.
Gregroio, 60, his wife Eleonora, 55, and their son Angelo, 36, were arrested last year after U.S. authorities, who have been investigating the Gigliottis for years, seized a 40-kilogram load of coke hidden in a shipment of yucca from Costa Rica in October of 2014 and a 15-kilo load two months later. Both shipments were ostensibly for use at the family's now-defunct restaurant, Cucino Amodo Mio.
The charges against Mrs. Gigliotti were put on hold two months ago when Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie ruled that she was mentally unfit to proceed to trial.
The defense lawyers disagree on the pronunciation of their clients' surname, but Judge Dearie ruled yesterday that they were in lockstep in seeking an all-woman jury, which ended up with only two men on it when it was selected Tuesday. After prosecutors complained that the defense had discriminated by using their peremptory challenges to bounce only men from the jury, Dearie reviewed the transcript, agreed with the government, and restored two men to the panel yesterday.
A law enforcement source told Daily News reporter John Marzulli that the defense team most likely believed that "female jurors would be more sympathetic to acquitting Angelo by perceiving that he was pushed into the family's illicit business by his bullying father."
July 14, 2016 This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci
Mob Turncoat Shot While Fishing For Cash On The Treasure Coast
It was like old times last week for Gerard (Skeevy) Bellafiore, the controversial mob turncoat who robbed millions from banks both before and after he became a federal cooperating witness.
Over the July Fourth weekend, Skeevy got back into action using his signature burglary tool — a fishing gaffe — at a sidewalk bank vault in Florida. This is the same maneuver he described to a rapt Brooklyn jury a decade ago when he detailed how he used the gaffe to hook cash out of night-deposit boxes. A new feature of his inventive approach was wearing a Freddy Krueger mask, the better to confuse and intimidate would-be witnesses. He may have picked up that idea during the 50 hours of Film Appreciation classes he took in a special federal Bureau of Prisons unit for FBI snitches.
His latest act didn't work out too well, however. Bellafiore, who promised to foreswear his criminal ways when he signed on as a cooperating witness 15 years ago, was shot and seriously wounded when he was spotted conducting the July Fourth burglary of a bank in a posh resort area near Port Saint Lucie known as Jensen Beach. It's not known why Skeevy picked the place, but perhaps he was drawn to the area's reputation which has been known as the Treasure Coast since Spanish explorers arrived there in the 1600s.
Martin County Sheriff William Snyder told the story this way: "Our deputy confronted a Freddy Krueger type suspect coming at him and the deputy clearly thought that his life was in jeopardy. And he did what he was trained to do, and that was to use deadly force to protect himself."
Bellafiore, 47, was shot several times. He was hit at least once in the face, according to the Sheriff's office, after he allegedly attacked a deputy sheriff with his fishing gaffe when he was confronted during the bank burglary, and again when he tried to run the deputy over before crashing his car into a tree in a futile escape attempt at about 6:20 AM.
It was clearly bad timing for Bellafiore. But the prolific bank heist artist — he was involved in the thefts of more than $5 million in scores of bank heists across the country between the mid-1990s and 2009, according to court papers — was in the right place, said Snyder.
"It's the Fourth of July weekend," said the sheriff. "This would be the ideal time to do it because the banks would've been closed and this is where the businesses would be dropping off their money," said Snyder, noting that bank security footage showed Bellafiore using a metal cutting device to cut into the night-deposit box.
But Skeevy was apprehended before he could fish out any cash, said the sheriff's spokeswoman, Christine Weiss.
Bellafiore, whose cooperation led to convictions in New York of scores of mob associates of all five families, is currently under 24-hour guard at a local hospital, said Weiss. He will be charged with bank burglary, possession of burglary tools, aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, "and multiple other charges, if and when he recovers," Weiss added.
The exact date of Bellafiore's release from prison is unclear since his sentence was served in a Witness Security Unit. But it didn't take him long to get back to his chosen line of work. Court records indicate he was released early this year, before March 8. All told, he spent about 10 years behind bars — based on prison terms totaling 139 months that he received for two separate federal court convictions, one in Brooklyn, the other in Fort Lauderdale.
In the Sunshine State, justice was meted out much more quickly — and more severely in 2009 for a handful of Florida bank jobs — than it was in Brooklyn, where he was indicted in 2000 for dozens of bank robberies and burglaries from New York to California in the 1990s.
He was indicted in Fort Lauderdale in June of 2009 for three bank jobs that netted Bellafiore and his cohorts $467,000. In August, he copped a plea deal calling for 57-to-71 months. In October, at his sentencing, his attorney and the prosecutor each recommended a prison term of 57 months.
But Fort Lauderdale Judge William Zloch was having none of that. He knew that Bellafiore had committed crimes while cooperating with the government in New York, and learned that even though his prosecutors had breached his agreement, they were going to tell the sentencing judge there about the work he had done for the feds following his 2000 indictment.
Citing "Bellafiore's egregious and continuous criminal conduct" in Florida and "his general disregard for the law, particularly since he was awaiting sentencing for the same type" of crimes in New York, Zloch said he was going to mete out a prison term "above the advisory guideline range," and gave him 78 months.
Bellafiore whined to Zloch, who responded that 120 months, and even 180 months would have been "reasonable in light of your prior criminal record," which included 10 prior adult arrests.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Bellafiore claim that the sentence was excessive. It was reasonable, the court wrote, based on the "nature and circumstances of the offense, the history and characteristics of the defendant, and the need for the sentence imposed to promote respect for the law."
In 2011, when Bellafiore was finally sentenced for his guilty plea in his 2000 case, he again whined to Brooklyn Federal Judge Edward Korman about the sentence he received in Florida. "I went before another judge and this guy looked at me like I was Al Capone," he said.
Bellafiore fared much better in Brooklyn. Prosecutor Jacquelyn Kasulis said that Bellafiore's guidelines were 15 and a half years, but stated that the government took "no position" about his sentence. It didn't hurt Skeevy that the veteran FBI agents who flipped him, Theodore Otto and Cindy Peil were seated in court, and that Bellafiore's lawyer pointed out their presence — and support — to the judge. Korman gave him five years and one month.
While doing his time, Bellafiore stated he was "a very good inmate" who "received good job evaluations in my assigned prison jobs" and that he "received no serious misconduct or disciplinary citations" in a letter he wrote Korman last year protesting the BOP's refusal to place him in a halfway house six months before his release date.
"I have taken and passed my GED requirements, and I have taken many other educational courses that have been offered in the prison," he wrote, noting that he obtained his equivalent high school diploma in 2011 and that in addition to the usual subjects he had also attended Film Appreciation classes in 2012 and 2013.
Korman refused to upset the BOP's decision, saying that it was beyond his jurisdiction, a ruling that at least delayed Bellafiore's return to his chosen profession for six months.
The BOP sought to reassure Bellafiore. The denial was not a "reflection on your positive progress reports or your behavior while in custody," the agency wrote, but a reflection of the position of the Probation Department, which believed his "safety" would be threatened if he were "released to a community treatment center," according to court documents that were unsealed by Korman following a request by Gang Land.
Little did the Probation Department or BOP know that by keeping Bellafiore behind bars they were protecting him not from reprisals from any of his former gangster buddies he had testified against, but from the temptation to loot the Treasure Coast of Florida — and from the bullets of a sheriff's deputy who would be called to the scene of a burglary in process on the Fourth of July.
In addition to his pending charges in Martin County, Bellafiore also faces likely federal charges for violating his supervised release (VOSR) in Brooklyn or Fort Lauderdale, since judges in both federal courts gave him strict post-prison restrictions for his convictions.
Spokeswomen for the U.S. Attorneys in Brooklyn and Fort Lauderdale declined to comment about their intentions regarding Bellafiore. So did U.S. Probation Department officials in Brooklyn and Fort Lauderdale.
Manhattan DA's Office Gives John Gotti Pal A Very Sweet Deal
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has settled a criminal case against an old John Gotti pal who headed a lucrative Gambino family bookmaking operation for less than the Dapper Don used to leave behind in tips when he was out for a night on the town.
Gambino soldier Joseph Isgro pleaded guilty to misdemeanor gambling charges, was sentenced to pay a $1,000 fine, and received a conditional discharge of money laundering charges. The charges stemmed from Isgro's use of computer software created by an online sports betting guru who allegedly took the Gambino clan into the cyber-space era and laundered $5 million he obtained from the Gambinos and other mob-connected bookmakers from 2005 until 2013.
The plea deal was approved by Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner after defense attorney Aaron Rubin and assistant district attorney Carey Ng had worked out an agreement, according to court records.
In an unusually swift turn of justice, Isgro was sentenced on the same day he pled guilty on May 17. This saved the 68-year-old Isgro a lot more than the $1000 fine that he paid, since it spared him the cost of hotel accommodations in New York and a flight back and forth to his Los Angeles digs, where sources say he heads the crime family's west coast rackets.
By comparison, Leonard Rapisardi, the crime family's lowly un-made bookmaker in the case, pleaded guilty to felony gambling charges, paid a $30,000 fine, and was sentenced to three years probation, in what Rapisardi's attorney termed a "fair outcome" and "a favorable disposition" at the time.
But that was back when hard-nosed, mob-busting prosecutor Eric Seidel was calling the shots in the landmark case against Robert Stuart, the creator of the online betting software, and the two top officials of his company, his wife Suzanne, and her brother, Patrick Read. Seidel supervised the case from its inception in 2011, and had gotten an expanded indictment to include money laundering charges after the first case ended in a mistrial. The next court date is in September.
Isgro's sweet plea deal came three months after Seidel moved on — after 16 years with the DA's office, where he was a Rackets Bureau Chief for Robert Morgenthau and an organized crime supervisor for current DA Cyrus Vance. The plea also came a few days after the DA's office failed to convict four Bonannos in a three-month-long racketeering trial when the jury hung 6-6 after nine days of deliberations.
Gang Land wondered if Seidel's departure or the hung jury in the Bonanno case had anything to do with the decision to give Isgro his plea deal, and whether the office intends to do anything regarding the charges against the Stuarts and Read, and forwarded those questions to the DA's office.
We're still wondering. The DA's office declined to comment.
It's Good That Jurors Don't Have To Decide How To Pronounce The Name Gigliotti
They nearly came to blows when they were held in the same federal lockup last year. The long running animosity between Gregorio and Angelo Gigliotti, the accused father and son drug dealers charged with using their family-run Italian eatery in Corona to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. from Costa Rica, has escalated to the point where their attorneys can't even agree on the pronunciation of their clients' names.
That became evident yesterday when defense lawyers gave their opening statement to the jurors who will decide whether the accused associates of 'Ndrangheta — the Calabrian-based organized crime clan — shipped boatloads of coke disguised as yucca, or cassata, an oblong root vegetable that resembles a sweet potato.
Elizabeth Macedonio referred to her client as Gregorio Gig-lee-OH-tee as she told the eight-woman, four-man jury to keep an open mind as they listened to the numerous tape recordings and testimony during the trial, which is expected to last about three weeks.
In his opening, when Alan Futerfas implored the jurors to weigh the evidence carefully and separately against each defendant, the attorney identified his client as Angelo Jig-lee-AH-tee, and stressed that any incriminating evidence introduced by the government against the father should not be held against the son.
It's unclear how the Gigliottis pronounce their name, but neither pronunciation used by the attorneys is the correct textbook one, since the second "G" in Gigliotti should be silent, according to Gang Land's limited knowledge of Italian and a quick call to a linguist we know.
As it turns out, Futerfas was closer than Macedonio to the correct pronunciation, which would be Jill-AH-tee.
Not that either defendant cares just now how their names are pronounced.
Gregroio, 60, his wife Eleonora, 55, and their son Angelo, 36, were arrested last year after U.S. authorities, who have been investigating the Gigliottis for years, seized a 40-kilogram load of coke hidden in a shipment of yucca from Costa Rica in October of 2014 and a 15-kilo load two months later. Both shipments were ostensibly for use at the family's now-defunct restaurant, Cucino Amodo Mio.
The charges against Mrs. Gigliotti were put on hold two months ago when Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie ruled that she was mentally unfit to proceed to trial.
The defense lawyers disagree on the pronunciation of their clients' surname, but Judge Dearie ruled yesterday that they were in lockstep in seeking an all-woman jury, which ended up with only two men on it when it was selected Tuesday. After prosecutors complained that the defense had discriminated by using their peremptory challenges to bounce only men from the jury, Dearie reviewed the transcript, agreed with the government, and restored two men to the panel yesterday.
A law enforcement source told Daily News reporter John Marzulli that the defense team most likely believed that "female jurors would be more sympathetic to acquitting Angelo by perceiving that he was pushed into the family's illicit business by his bullying father."