The term “Italian organized crime” is in, with no limits to how often and when prosecutors can say it in front of jurors in the upcoming Pharaoh’s strip club trial, a federal judge has ruled.
But prosecutors will not be free to say Mafia or La Cosa Nostra – or even soldier and connected – whenever they please, although U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo did not impose a complete ban on those words.
“The term Italian organized crime, because it’s used in the indictment, can be used at trial without limitation,” Vilardo said. “The terms Mafia and La Cosa Nostra should be used only when they are needed to explain something that someone said, or that is in an email, or something along those lines.”
Defense lawyers for Peter Gerace Jr. and Joseph Bongiovanni argued against allowing any of the expressions in front of jurors, saying neither defendant stands accused of being members of the Mafia.
“The allegation that a defendant has ties to Italian organized crime is one of the most prejudicial allegations that can be made in the federal courthouse,” said Eric Soehnlein, one of Gerace’s lawyers, during a recent hearing held on a defense motion to squelch use of the terms during the trial. “The mere mention of the term elicits the worse types of criminality – organized, violent, ruthless and, in many respects, irredeemable human conduct.”
Federal authorities have accused Gerace, owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club, of bribing Bongiovanni, at the time a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, and conspiring to engage in drug- and sex-trafficking at the Cheektowaga strip club. Gerace’s charges include maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises where vulnerable young women were exploited through their drug addictions and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts.
Prosecutors have charged the now-retired Bongiovanni with accepting $250,000 in bribes from drug dealers whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime and shielding them from arrest, as well as providing them with information about investigations and cooperating sources.
Both have pleaded not guilty. Their trial is scheduled to begin in January.
The crux of the charges in the indictment against Bongiovanni involves the allegation that Bongiovanni protected individuals he believed were members and associates of Italian organized crime.
Prosecutors argued it is important for jurors to understand how they say Bongiovanni decided to provide his protection.
Bongiovanni did not just protect any Italian drug trafficker, but rather the ones he believed were members of, or connected to, Italian organized crime in Western New York, prosecutors say.
Parker R. MacKay, one of Bongiovanni’s lawyers, told Vilardo the government should not be allowed to use any of the terms.
The government’s case is “about Mr. Bongiovanni allegedly taking bribes and taking certain actions,” MacKay said, adding that prosecutors can present their case against him “pretty well completely” without any references to organized crime.
The defense lawyers are saying “essentially we shouldn’t be able to prove a whole portion of the manner and means of a conspiracy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said during the court proceeding. “Yes, part of the conspiracy ... was bribe giving. Yes, it was bribe receiving. Yes, it related to friends. But another key part of it related to who he believed were members and associates of Italian organized crime.”
Fundamentally, this case is about who Bongiovanni protected and why he protected them in violation of his sworn duties, prosecutors say, and the organized crime proof is critical to proving the charged conspiracies and for the jury to understand Bongiovanni’s motives.
Vilardo generally sided with the prosecution after hearing last week’s oral arguments.
“One of the government’s theories is that Bongiovanni treated people differently depending on whether they were involved in an Italian American organization,” Vilardo told the defense lawyers. “It’s one of the ways that they say this conspiracy worked. How can you possibly keep out that evidence and allow the government to prove its case? I mean, I don’t get it.
“What I see as being relevant here is not whether Mr. Gerace was involved in organized crime, or anyone who Mr. Bongiovanni believed was involved in organized crime,” the judge said. “What’s relevant is what Mr. Bongiovanni thought, and therefore, whether the government can prove its case that he was treating people differently because he thought they were involved in organized crime. And I think the government gets to prove that.”
Bongiovanni and Gerace have denied having Mafia connections. Gerace’s uncle, Joseph A. Todaro, has been accused by federal agents of being the leader of Buffalo’s Mafia family, but that has never been proven in court.
Todaro “is the current boss of the Buffalo LCN family,” a Homeland Security Investigations agent, using the abbreviation for La Cosa Nostra, wrote in a 2019 report.
Todaro, in an interview in 2021 with The Buffalo News, called the accusation “nonsense.”
Last week, Vilardo also denied a Gerace defense motion to dismiss the indictment against him. His lawyers said the grand jury testimony was tainted because nearly a dozen witnesses – mostly current or former law enforcement agents – linked Gerace to Italian organized crime.
“Look it, I’m as sensitive as anybody about ethnic prejudice and ethnic problems, especially when it involves Italian Americans,” Vilardo said. “I’ve been the brunt of it from time to time. I understand it as well as the next guy. But tell me what is so god-awful here that the indictment is tainted by virtue of the evidence that was presented to the grand jury?”
“The testimony was about historic investigations of Italian organized crime, historic investigations of Mr. Gerace’s family, and investigations that did not result in charges related to organized crime,” Soehnlein said. “Even in this case, these are not (allegations) of organized crime.”
Bongiovanni and Gerace were childhood friends who maintained “some sort of friendship” up through the time Gerace was previously incarcerated, Soehnlein said. Gerace pleaded guilty in 2005 to telemarketing fraud and was sentenced to five months in federal custody and three years of supervised release.
“The idea that Mr. Bongiovanni’s belief about who Mr. Gerace was, or who his family was, that’s not actually in the record as far as we can tell,” Soehnlein said. “We believe Mr. Gerace’s charged because of the family that he came from – not because of who he is independent of that fact, and not because of the conduct that he’s engaged in independent of that fact.”
“Then you’ve got a good argument to the jury that that part of the government’s case ought to result in acquittal,” Vilardo said.
