On the third day of testimony at Joseph Bongiovanni’s corruption retrial, a former dancer at Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club recalled meeting the then-Drug Enforcement Administration agent at the Cheektowaga strip club and saw him there a couple of times with club owner Peter Gerace Jr.
The 38-year-old ex-dancer said she saw dancers and customers – but not Bongiovanni – using cocaine and marijuana.
She started using drugs her first day working at Pharaoh’s in 2007, she said, and before long she was using a gram of cocaine a day and smoking marijuana.
“Every shift I worked, I would be using it,” she said Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
Former dancers at Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club in Cheektowaga, seen in 2019 during a police raid, have testified in federal court in the retrial of former DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni.
The Buffalo News is not identifying witnesses whom prosecutors say were exploited through their drug addictions and ended up committing crimes to help pay for their drug habits.
The testimony from Pharaoh’s dancers is expected to be a key part of the government’s case against Gerace, whose trial on bribery, sex- and drug trafficking charges will begin in October. Federal prosecutors also found the account of the ex-dancer who testified Wednesday useful in their case against Bongiovanni, as she linked the former federal agent to Gerace at the Cheektowaga strip club.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi has referred to Pharaoh’s as a rampantly drug-involved premises “with drugs flowing through there.”
'Duped' DEA boss says he wasn't told about Bongiovanni's relationship with Gerace
Of the 11 charges Bongiovanni faces, several relate to Pharaoh’s and Gerace, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. for allegedly protecting Gerace from arrest and prosecution as well as conspiring with Gerace to distribute controlled substances at Pharaoh’s.
The ex-dancer knew Bongiovanni worked as a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration because Gerace gave her Bongiovanni’s DEA business card to keep.
Prosecutors have viewed that as “a get out of jail free card.” The dancer said she never called Bongiovanni.
The dancer testified she met Gerace a few months after she started working at Pharaoh’s. She was 22 years old at the time, and she recalled Wednesday what he asked her to do the first time they met: leave the club and go to a drug dealer with between $200 and $300 to pick up about three grams of cocaine. When she returned, the two of them used the cocaine.
The two dated exclusively for four or five months and then on and off for six years.
Eventually she became addicted and resorted to selling it to support the cost of her habit.
At Bongiovanni’s first trial, she said her Pharaoh’s days of drug abuse ended over 12 years ago.
The case: Bongiovanni, 60, faces 11 charges, including a bribery count alleging that he accepted at least $250,000 from a drug-trafficking organization whom he thought was associated with Italian organized crime and shielded its members from arrest and provided them with information about investigations and cooperating sources. Other charges in the grand jury indictment include conspiracy to distribute controlled substances; obstruction of justice, related to reportedly false entries in DEA reports and memos about his dealings with Gerace; and making false statements to a U.S. agency for denying that he initiated contact with Gerace or witnessed Gerace use narcotics.
Lawyer opens defense of accused ex-DEA agent: 'He didn't do the things the government says he did'
Key witness: Former Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club dancer, referred to as Government Witness 4 in court records
Quote: “He said if I ever got in trouble, I could use it to get out of trouble,” she recalled Gerace saying as he gave her Bongiovanni’s DEA business card to keep.
Key testimony: The ex-dancer testified Wednesday that Gerace knew drugs were being sold and used inside the strip club, and she even used drugs with the strip club owner. She was among the dancers who used cocaine in their dressing room or the club’s bathrooms. Needle tracks on the arms of other dancers indicated to her that heroin was the drug of choice for other dancers, although she did not see anyone take heroin. Gerace introduced Bongiovanni to the ex-dancer at the club, and she occasionally saw the former federal agent socialize with Gerace at the club.
Why it matters: Her testimony puts Bongiovanni inside what prosecutors allege is a drug-involved premises. Prosecutors count on her testimony about the business card to show jurors a link between Gerace and Bongiovanni and their conspiracy.
Prosecution angle: Gerace wanted Bongiovanni’s protection to allow and facilitate drug use in “the party environment” at Pharaoh’s, Tripi has said. That led to increased profits for the strip club owner. By shielding Gerace, he became part of the drug conspiracy at Pharaoh’s, prosecutors say. That’s how Bongiovanni agreed with Gerace to distribute drugs, even though prosecutors acknowledge there is no single instance of Bongiovanni delivering a single drug to someone. He didn’t need to, Tripi said, “because his role was even more important: looking out from the top, down.”
Tripi has referred to drug use at the club as a “criminal endeavor, worth the money to protect, and the defendant was just the person for the job.”
As for the business card, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Cooper said at Bongiovanni’s first trial that “it’s super relevant” to the notion that it’s a link between Bongiovanni and Gerace and their conspiracy.
Defense response: The ex-dancer did not see Bongiovanni ever use drugs at Pharaoh’s. Bongiovanni did not see her or Gerace use drugs, she said. During defense attorney Robert Singer’s cross-examination, the ex-dancer said dancers and customers used drugs in the dressing room or club’s bathrooms – not out in the open on the dance floor. Nobody was lining up cocaine along the bar to snort in front of others. So the drug use was not that evident for those who were not taking drugs inside the club. In fact, a club manager fired her when he found her cocaine in the dressing room. Singer previously called her business card testimony “misleading” to jurors. “It’s misleading in the respect that simply saying, ‘Here’s a card, and you know, like, call somebody if you need help,’ that doesn’t imply anything about whether there’s a conspiracy or not.”
Besides, it wasn’t Bongiovanni who gave the business card to her. Gerace did. Singer questioned the ex-dancer about whether she viewed Gerace as a “blowhard” or “braggart,” suggesting Gerace gave her Bongiovanni’s business card to show off his relationship with a federal agent. There is no proof Bongiovanni wanted her to have the card to call him if she got into police trouble, and no evidence that he even knew she received the card.
