Gangland 12/15/2022

[Dr031718]

Brooklyn Jurist Ray Dearie Decides It's Time For Him To Go

Federal Judge Raymond Dearie is stepping aside on a high note — while still at the top of his game — but not for any of the memorable organized crime cases he's handled during more than three decades on the federal bench in Brooklyn, including five years as its Chief Judge.

Dearie, 79, forecasted his decision to step down in August when he turned over the Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola murder case to Judge Hector Gonzalez two weeks before the trial of his son Anthony Zottola and two members of the Bloods was set to begin. He told Gang Land this week that his last day as an active member of the Court will be January 20.

Dearie was the judge in the fabled Windows case, which was transferred from Brooklyn to White Plains so a 450 pound witness could be airlifted there from a nearby hospital where he was recovering from a 12-shot rubout attempt, a case that ended with controversial 15 and 16 year sentences for top echelon wiseguys convicted of crimes calling for three years in prison.

But Dearie, who also brought down corrupt politicians and mobsters as the U.S. Attorney before he was appointed to the bench in 1986, got more ink in the past year than over his entire career after lawyers for ex-president Donald Trump chose him to serve as a special master to examine the classified records that FBI agents discovered in Trump's Mar a Lago home.

Trump may have figured that any judge selected by former U.S. Senator Alphonse D'Amato and appointed by President Reagan would be in his corner. It didn't work out that way. Dearie, judiciously but definitively, assured Trump, his lawyers – and readers and pundits across the country – that in his courtroom the evidence, not words, was what counted.

"What's the expression, 'Where's the beef?'" Dearie asked Trump attorney Jim Trusty, noting that the lawyer had not given him a good legal reason why the attorney-client privilege applied to documents that prosecutors had seized.

aAt another point, Dearie interrupted Trusty, and asked: "When you say 'the President', do you mean President Biden?"
When Trusty replied, "No, President Trump," the Judge stated: "Let the record show Mr. Trusty was referring to former President Trump, now a private citizen. Please continue."

Last week, Dearie sentenced the first two underlings of Bloods leader Bushawn (Shelz) Shelton for their roles in the murder-for-hire plot against Sally Daz and his son Salvatore. He had planned to sentence two others early next month, but their sentencings have been pushed back to Dearie's last day, and they will be sentenced by Gonzalez.

Gonzalez was a spectator in the court room last week when Brandon Peterson, 37, who took part in a failed hit of Sally Daz with Shelton, received 16 years, and Herman (Taliban) Blanco, 38, a planner with Shelton in several rubout attempts, was sentenced to 22 years behind bars.

"I'm sure I will miss it, but the time has come, I feel it in my bones," said Dearie, who began his government career in 1971 as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, and who oversaw the re-design and planned renovation of the Courthouse in the late 1990s and for whom the atrium of the building was named in 2018.

"In fairness to my wife, and to shut up my doctor, it's time for me to go," he said, noting that his wife, former prosecutor Susan E. Shepard is retired, and that "it might be fun to go on vacation for two weeks, something we have never done. And I don't want to go out as some crotchety old screwball, so I decided to pack it in."

Dearie said he wasn't resigning, and will remain a member of the Court, albeit an inactive one.

He plans to spend more time with his family — he has five children and six grandkids — but the judge didn't preclude the possibility of a return to the court at some time. "There's always the possibility," he said, "that if the necessity arises, I might return to lend a hand. That's all speculative, but I'll have that option."

Dearie seemed reluctant to recall any of the major cases he oversaw during his time as U.S. Attorney, joking, "I'm an old man, thinking back so long ago is hard work."

But pressed to name at least one case, the judge said: "Judge Brennan, the Queens Judge who was fixing mob cases. That was an important case," he said, referring to the 1985 conviction of former Queens Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who was found guilty and sentenced by the late Jack Weinstein to five years for taking $47,000 in bribes to fix four criminal cases for mob figures and drug dealers.

Dearie noted that years later, Weinstein referred him the wrongful death civil case by the families of seven persons murdered by the notorious NYPD rogue detectives Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa who were convicted of selling their shield to the Luchese crime family and killing the seven victims between 1986 and 1991.

In 2015, Dearie penned a scathing opinion that ripped former police commissioner Ben Ward and every police official who had a hand in not firing Eppolito for corrupt activities back in 1985, despite "overwhelming evidence" of his guilt to "avoid bad press," adding that those officials were potentially liable for their deaths. The city settled the cases for $18.4 million.

A "jury could reasonably conclude that Ward and other high-police officials were deliberately indifferent to (a) widespread and persistent practice of tolerating police corruption" so the NYPD could "avoid bad press," wrote Dearie.

Weeks after turncoat Luchese capo Peter (Fat Pete) Chiodo, the 450-pound witness who testified at the Windows trial in September of 1991, completed his testimony, Genovese family underboss Venero (Benny Eggs) Mangano and Colombo consigliere Benedetto (Benny) Aloi were found guilty in a controversial split verdict by the jury, which acquitted five other defendants.

Even more controversial, were the heavy sentences that Dearie imposed on Mangano and Aloi when he ruled that the government had presented "compelling" evidence that the duo, as high-ranked members of their crime families, had to have known about and approved the murder of a potential witness in the case that was detailed by three cooperating witnesses.

The sentences were affirmed twice by the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1994 and 1996, and both men, as Gang Land has reported, survived the draconian prison terms.

Dearie, who has called for sentencing reform, and has often stated that he is not a fan of long prison terms, decided in the case of mobster Michael (Baldy mike) Spinelli two years ago that sometimes they are needed. After granting him bail while he still had eight years to serve on his sentence for the attempted murder of Chiodo's sister while he was awaiting resentencing, the judge surprised Spinelli, and his lawyers, by sending him back to prison.

Dearie cut his sentence by only two years, from 19.5 years to 17.5. After acknowledging that he is "not a big fan in many cases of lengthy prison sentences," the judge declared: "This case is certainly one of them that calls for significant punishment."

Early this year, Dearie went the other way, in the case of Colombo mobster Vincent (Chickie) DeMartino, who was serving 25 years for the attempted rubout of a rival wiseguy. Over the objections of the government, Dearie granted him a compassionate release and slammed the federal Bureau of Prisons for having what he called a "cavalier attitude" about the gangster's "medical conditions" and ignoring them for years.

In the coming weeks, as lawyers have been doing for months now, they will wish Dearie well and say they are sorry to see him leave, as all the attorneys did when he recused himself from the Sally Daz murder case. And virtually all of them will mean it.

"Judge Dearie has faithfully served the Eastern District of New York with integrity and courage for decades," said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. "From my appearances before him as a young AUSA to present, he has always been incredibly thoughtful and fair. He cares about getting it right and doing what is just. Judge Dearie will be sorely missed."

Ousted NY State Union Honcho Guilty In Construction Industry Bribery Scheme

James Cahill, the ex-president of the powerful NY State Building & Construction Trades Council, pleaded guilty last week to accepting more than $140,000 in bribes from a major New York contractor. Cahill's plea comes after he was caught on tape laughingly admitting that the Gambino family and the leader of a Serbian organized crime gang were partners in a construction industry racketeering scheme.

Cahill, 73, and 10 other former union members pleaded guilty to accepting thousands of dollars in bribes "stuffed in envelopes" – often in the "restrooms of restaurants" – to sell out their "hard-working union members to feed their own greed" and "corruptly favor" the non-union contractor from 2018 to 2020, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

As president of the Building & Construction Trades Council, which represents 200,000 construction workers, the disgraced Cahill had helped negotiate labor deals for major public projects like the building of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

Cahill, a former steamfitters union official, "was the leader of the conspiracy and introduced (the contractor) to many of the other defendants, while advising (him) that (he) could reap the benefits of being associated with the unions without actually signing union agreements or employing union workers," according to a news release distributed by Williams's office.

Prosecutors Laura de Oliveria, Marguerite Colson, Frank Balsamello and Jun Xiang informed the nearly 9000 members of Local 638 of the United Association of Journeymen & Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry (UA) last week that they were crime victims of Cahill. In a letter posted on the union's website, the prosecutors told its members they had a right to submit a letter to his sentencing judge or make an "oral statement" at his March 7 sentencing.

The members of a sister UA local that represents about 1000 plumbers, Local 200, were also victims of the Long Island-based contractor "who had projects and potential projects within the jurisdiction of Local 638 and/or Local 200," according to the government's news release. Cahill, according to the statement, "was bribing the defendants" to look the other way while he was paying non-union workers to do the work of union members.

Sources say the contractor, who wore a wire and tape recorded bribes he gave all 11 former union officials who copped guilty pleas, agreed to cooperate in a joint state and federal agency investigation about five years ago after he was snared in illegal activity by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.

Cahill faces up to 20 years as the leader of a bribery and kickback scheme that ran from October of 2018 to October of 2020. Under a plea agreement reached between prosecutors and Cahill's lawyer, Sanford Talkin, the ex-labor big would receive a recommended prison term between 33 and 41 months.

In March of 2020, Cahill implicated Gambino capo Louis (Bo) Filippelli and Mileta (Michael Michael) Miljanic, the reputed leader of a violent Serbian-American organized crime gang known as Grupo Amerika, in a separate construction industry racketeering scheme, according to a December 2020 court filing with Manhattan Federal Judge Colleen McMahon.

Prosecutors told the judge that Cahill had detailed his ties to Filippelli and Miljanic in a taped talk with the contractor. They successfully opposed a defense motion to lessen Cahill's strict house arrest conditions as he awaited trial. In the conversation with the contractor, the government wrote that Cahill was heard stating that after he contacted Filippelli and got the mobster "to intervene" with Miljanic on his behalf to block "a death threat" against a Cahill nephew by Grupo Amerika, Filippelli and Miljanic became fast friends.

"So what does Louis do?" Cahill is quoted as telling the contractor on March 13, 2020, "He goes partners with Michael Michael in the construction business, and they're happy as pigs in shit."

Miljanic, who is detained without bail as he awaits trial for pulling off a $154,000 SBA fraud from March to May of 2020, is identified in an arrest complaint as the owner of a "shell company," MDP Rebar Solutions, that Michael Michael has used for years to funnel millions of dollars to himself and several Gambino family mobsters and their associates.

NYPD detective William Dionne wrote that MDP paid out some $1.5 million " to the bank accounts for two construction management companies" controlled by Filippelli from December 2018 to May 2021. Another $10,000 "was disbursed to a company" owned by Filippelli's girlfriend, Dionne wrote. In a court filing in Miljanic's case, prosecutor Jason Swergold wrote that Michael Michael is a major target of an ongoing "larger investigation" by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office that sources say includes Filippelli and other Gambino crime family members and associates.

Discredited Mob Turncoat Got 'Time Served' Two Years Ago; Last Week He Got 67 Months.

Frank Pasqua III was back in the same courtroom, with the same judge on the bench. But things have changed dramatically for the would-be mob turncoat since he appeared there two years ago. Back then, despite having flubbed his role as a cooperator, prosecutors spoke highly of him and he was rewarded with a sentence of "time served" for past crimes. But last week was different: He was in the dock charged with assaulting his wife, and son.

This time, the prosecutors heaped no praise on Pasqua for helping them solve a mob rubout, even though he had wrongly fingered his father as the killer of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish. Even worse for the hot-headed gangster, Pasqua's wife appeared as a witness against him, recounting how he had choked and punched her. His son made similar charges, stating that his dad had assaulted him too.

The only win for Pasqua, 43, was being able to convince White Plains Federal Judge Nelson Roman to allow him to represent himself — after determining, as the judge put it, that Pasqua understood "his right to an attorney and ma(de) this decision knowingly, intentionally and unequivocally." Just in case, though, the judge appointed the lawyer who had defended Pasqua during his cooperation, Avraham Moskowitz, as his "standby counsel."

The hearing began on Wednesday, December 7, after Pasqua waived a public reading of the eight violations of supervised release (VOSR) specifications that were lodged against him on November 29, and he denied them all. Over the following two days in the courtroom, a disturbing spectacle took place as Pasqua cross-examined both his wife and his son, who were called by assistant U.S. attorneys Benjamin Klein and Margery Feinzig.

He also questioned FBI agent Michael Cali who also took the stand. After the government rested, Pasqua called one witness, and rested, according to the docket sheet, which noted that the "pro se Defendant rested."

After hearing the closing arguments by the government and the defendant, Judge Roman found Pasqua guilty of seven VOSRs against his wife and son. These included– three assaults and four threats of violence if they didn't do what he said, including refusing to testify against him. There was another count for attempted assault of an inmate.

"It is the Court's determination," Roman stated in a one sentence docket sheet entry, "that the Government sustained its burden of proof on all eight Violation Specifications."

tPrison terms are rarely imposed on the same day as a VOSR hearing, but Roman accommodated the "pro se defendant request to be sentenced" after the judge announced his decision, and sentenced him to 67 months behind bars, and five years of supervised release.

In a decision issued Tuesday, Judge Roman ordered Pasqua to steer clear of his wife and son throughout the five years that he is on supervised release. Drumming his message home, Roman ordered Pasqua to stay away from "their homes, businesses, places of employment and schools." The judge also told him to refrain from contacting his family through "third parties" or by telephone, text messages, email, and letters. Should he violate that order, he risks another VOSR and another session with the judge.

Gang Land was unable to obtain a transcript of the hearing, but according to docket sheet entries and court records, Roman found that Pasqua "repeatedly struck" his wife "with a closed fist, causing her to be injured" on one occasion; that he stalked her and "sent a series of threatening text messages to (her) from in or about March 2022 up to and including April 2022."

The Judge also found that on April 12, Pasqua choked his wife at 3AM near the Richmond University Medical Center by squeezing her "neck while pushing her body into a motor vehicle causing her physical injuries." Later that same day, Pasqua "threatened to cause physical harm to his son" in a series of text messages.

Four days later, Judge Roman found, Pasqua carried out that threat and assaulted his son in Brooklyn, as he was charged.

Pasqua, who attended a few classes at the University of Buffalo, fervently believes he is a lot smarter than the average wiseguy. He made that clear when he boasted to co-hosts John Alite and Gene Borrello on the now defunct Johnny And Gene Show podcast that there was a "big difference between myself and a lot" of mobsters he met over the years, including Luchese capo Steven (Stevie Junior) Crea.

"The difference," said the college dropout, is that "a lot of them are just ignorant. I'm not saying they're stupid, they're ignorant. They have no educations, they have no way to support themselves in the world. I always made more money," he continued, in a shot at Stevie Junior. "My captain pushed a broom for a living. I made more money than all of them," he said.

If so, none of those smarts were on display when Pasqua decided to represent himself at the hearing. Even less so when he insisted on being sentenced immediately.

On deadline yesterday, Gang Land received a call from Pasqua. He said that if there is a story about him appearing in today's column he wanted to add one line: "I love my wife and son," he said

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

[AntComello]

Thanks for posting…this Pasqua guy, what a fuckin bum.

[newera_212]

I wonder what Pasqua and his family were doing coming out of a hospital at 3 AM. I have a few guesses as to why him or his wife were there that late and none of them are good.

One of Pasqua's funnier stories was when he claimed the Lucchese admin asked him to drive by the MCC on a motorcycle and assassinate Michael Mancuso while he was outside on garbage duty lol

[AntComello]

I wonder what Pasqua and his family were doing coming out of a hospital at 3 AM. I have a few guesses as to why him or his wife were there that late and none of them are good.

One of Pasqua's funnier stories was when he claimed the Lucchese admin asked him to drive by the MCC on a motorcycle and assassinate Michael Mancuso while he was outside on garbage duty lol

Lmaooo that’s a good one

[Tonyd621]

To have your own wife testify against you...that really says something. To drive a woman to that point...

[DonPeppino386]

Thanks for posting. Was a pretty good column this week.

[Ivan]

Thanks for posting. Was a pretty good column this week.

the latest judge retirement bulletin was way too fuckin long

[Hired_Goonz]

Thanks for posting. What does it say about the government that they use scum like Pasqua to build their cases? And at one point they were even making excuses for his blatant lies. Complete POS.

[SonnyBlackstein]

How do you 'help solve a mob rubout' by identifying the wrong guy?

[DonPeppino386]

Thanks for posting. Was a pretty good column this week.

the latest judge retirement bulletin was way too fuckin long

Heh not gonna argue there.

[newera_212]

How do you 'help solve a mob rubout' by identifying the wrong guy?

Always wondered this, and while he's told a lot of what seems like egregious bullshit on his podcast appearances, I still wonder if Pasqua and his Dad were actually on the scene like he described. IIRC he said he stayed in the car but heard the gunshot and his Dad came back in and said it was done. Surely if he wasn't on the scene at all and just made that up, the government couldn't have used him? Don't want to open up a can of worms with that either.

He did say randomly, kind of peppering it in over another comment/topic on one of his appearances, that before his cooperation - Thomas Ficarotta is/was the Genovese Underboss. Took it with a big grain of salt but thought that was interesting at least.

[Ivan]

Thanks for posting. Was a pretty good column this week.

the latest judge retirement bulletin was way too fuckin long

Heh not gonna argue there.

Those are gay as hell.

"one time, a mobster thought he could lecture the judge about how the law worked... and then judge said something SASSY, really PUT HIM IN HIS PLACE"

[CornerBoy]

Always wondered this, and while he's told a lot of what seems like egregious bullshit on his podcast appearances, I still wonder if Pasqua and his Dad were actually on the scene like he described. IIRC he said he stayed in the car but heard the gunshot and his Dad came back in and said it was done. Surely if he wasn't on the scene at all and just made that up, the government couldn't have used him? Don't want to open up a can of worms with that eith er.

What is pasqua's version of events vis a vis the meldish hit? any links? Thanks so much

[newera_212]

Always wondered this, and while he's told a lot of what seems like egregious bullshit on his podcast appearances, I still wonder if Pasqua and his Dad were actually on the scene like he described. IIRC he said he stayed in the car but heard the gunshot and his Dad came back in and said it was done. Surely if he wasn't on the scene at all and just made that up, the government couldn't have used him? Don't want to open up a can of worms with that eith er.

What is pasqua's version of events vis a vis the meldish hit? any links? Thanks so much

I feel like there was a thread on here about it, or it was definitely touched on in another topic - there was also a GL about it too, a long time ago.

But, paraphrasing what he said on a podcast (the Johnny and Gene show podcast, I believe the episode still may be up) - he said that him and his Dad were brought into the Meldish hit by their Captain - supposedly Crea Junior - and they were crucial to the hit because they were friends with Meldish and would be able to set him up . The setup was that they were going to sell Meldish some heroin - they were coming up from the city to the Bronx to drop it off. When they got to Country Club or Throggs Neck or where ever it went down, both Pasquas were out of the car talking to Meldish, and the elder Pasqua told the younger one to go back to the car to get an ipad or a phone or some sort of device. The younger one says he knew what was going down and knew he wasn't going to fetch an ipad... when he got back to the car he heard a gunshot. The elder one hopped back in the car and told the younger "if anyone asks, you should take credit for it" -

That's how it went down according to Pasqua. I don't recall him mentioning where the other people who were actually convicted of the hit were at when this happened, or how they came into play at all. IIRC , Pasqua walked back his comment to the feds about hearing a gunshot and said it might have been a car door slamming (I think).