Bongiovanni trials give glimpse into federal case against strip club owner Gerace

At last, Peter Gerace Jr. will face accusations against him at his own trial.

Jury selection begins Monday in the bribery, sex- and drug-trafficking trial of the Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club owner – and a good amount of trial testimony expected over the next two months should not surprise him.

That’s because his trial comes after the two trials for his co-defendant, retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Joseph Bongiovanni. Eight charges in Bongiovanni’s case involved Gerace in some way. And three of the nine counts against the 57-year-old Gerace include allegations of a conspiracy with Bongiovanni.

So many of the prosecution witnesses at Bongiovanni’s trials talked a lot about Gerace: former exotic dancers testifying about his drug use at his Cheektowaga strip club; ex-girlfriends recounting who he socialized with; an ex-wife describing his alleged bribes to the former DEA agent.

The former dancers described pervasive cocaine use at the strip club, with several giving personal accounts on how Gerace introduced them to drug use. They’re expected to offer similar testimony at Gerace’s trial as prosecutors seek to convict him of paying a bribe to a public official, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises, among the other charges.

But there’s a charge in Gerace’s upcoming trial not previewed in the Bongiovanni trials: sex trafficking. Prosecutors allege Gerace exploited vulnerable women through their drug addictions – particularly their fear of withdrawal symptoms – and coerced them into engaging in commercial sex acts. Katrina Nigro, his ex-wife, testified at Bongiovanni’s retrial about prostitution at the strip club and how Gerace would send dancers to the club’s upstairs private quarters to use drugs with high-end clientele and his friends and engage in sex acts with them.

In a recent letter to The Buffalo News, Gerace said Pharaoh’s had previously fired four of the dancers who testified against him for theft or for selling or possessing drugs. Nigro has told outrageous lies about him to the grand jury, he said.

“She claims I’m in the Mafia and a member of the Outlaws (Motorcycle Club),” Gerace told The News. “That would make me the only person on the face of the Earth that was a member of both.”

‘No one chained them up’

Bongiovanni did not face a sex-trafficking charge, so U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo kept out of the former DEA agent’s trials any testimony from ex-addicts saying they were compelled to engage in sex acts in order to get cocaine to feed their addictions.

Vilardo is expected to issue rulings throughout Gerace’s trial about how much of that kind of testimony to let in.

Also among the judge’s decisions will be whether to allow testimony from Rebecca Bender, who says she has interviewed more than 1,600 victims and is herself a trafficking survivor. Prosecutors want Bender to testify in Gerace’s trial to explain to jurors the dynamics of sex trafficking, including the psychological control and manipulation of traffickers, the drug use, and threat of financial and reputational harm.

“Almost everything in this area is outside the (knowledge) of average jurors,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi told Vilardo during a recent court proceeding.

Bender has said she was forced into the sex trade by a boyfriend after he moved her and her daughter to Las Vegas, and for nearly six years she was sold between three different traffickers. Bender can explain why women continue to return to strip clubs to be victimized, Tripi said.

“I think this is a big one – why victims continue,” said Tripi.

Tripi anticipates Gerace’s defense team will contend Gerace’s alleged victims were not coerced into sex acts, “because they’re going to say they walked in the door every day of their own volition, no one chained them up and dragged them into Pharaoh’s.”

Indeed, during a recent court proceeding, Gerace’s lawyers said at least two of the alleged victims engaged in prostitution separately from their actions at Pharaoh’s, “entirely independent from Mr. Gerace.”

“We think it’s fair, only fair, that the jury should know that,” defense lawyer Eric Soehnlein told the judge. “Because it would tend to prove that they were not being forced, coerced or otherwise. It shows their motive for engaging in that type of behavior, which is monetary.”

Vilardo said he will not allow testimony about the alleged victims’ employment at other strip clubs.

But it looks as though the defense will be allowed some leeway in questioning their other sexual behavior during the period of Gerace’s alleged conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, from 2009 to 2018.

Without being allowed to ask the alleged victims about their other activities, Soehnlein said Gerace would be “left without the strongest source of cross-examination to prove these women weren’t coerced or tricked or duped into doing this.”

“It’s not relevant if another person trafficked one of our victims,” countered Assistant U.S. Attorney Casey Chalbeck in court. “It’s what this defendant does to his victims – not what other people do to the same victims. That’s what’s relevant here.”

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Bongiovanni ‘practice rounds’

At Bongiovanni’s retrial, jurors convicted him of four counts related to a marijuana trafficking organization run by Ronald Serio and Michael Masecchia, and which included Lou Selva, his friend since childhood. Prosecutors alleged Bongiovanni thought members of the organization were associated with Italian organized crime. Those guilty verdicts were for conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and two counts of obstruction of justice.

Three additional Bongiovanni convictions related to Gerace – two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of false statement to a U.S. agency – were for internal DEA memos Bongiovanni wrote and for what he told investigators about his past contact with Gerace.

Former DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni guilty on 7 counts: 'This was corruption, through and through'

Jurors in Bongiovanni’s retrial acquitted him of two corruption charges and a drug count related to allegations he protected Gerace from narcotics investigations. And before the start of Bongiovanni’s retrial, Vilardo acquitted Bongiovanni, 60, on the charge he was paid an undetermined amount by Gerace to help him and his Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club avoid federal narcotics investigations.

Although encouraged by what those acquittals might portend for Gerace in his upcoming trial, his lawyers worry about the publicity surrounding Bongiovanni’s trials.

“I think there’s good reason to believe that if somebody saw there was a conviction, they’re going to conclude that it related to allegations against Mr. Gerace specifically,” Gerace’s other defense lawyer, Mark Foti, told the judge at a recent hearing. “That would be really, unfairly prejudicial to him because it’s not accurate to the extent that they might believe it is.”

Two weeks ago, Foti and Soehnlein asked Vilardo to dismiss the counts against Gerace that are connected to the counts that Bongiovanni was acquitted of. Given that Bongiovanni was acquitted of accepting an alleged bribe from Gerace, how can Gerace be convicted of paying that alleged bribe to Bongiovanni?

The facts decided in Bongiovanni trials are the same facts prosecutors seek to prove in Gerace’s trial, Soehnlein said.

“The allegations and the proof are the same,” he said in a court filing. “The witnesses are the same. The court should not permit the government to use the Bongiovanni trials as practice rounds to improve its trial presentation as to Gerace in the hopes of obtaining a different, contrary result.”

In a court filing, Chalbeck called it “Gerace-fueled fiction” that the prosecution against him will be identical to Bongiovanni’s, given the numerous evidentiary and exclusionary rulings potentially decided differently in the co-defendants’ cases.

Under Gerace’s thinking, the government would never be permitted to try a second co-defendant in a separate trial after the first co-defendant stands trial because it would somehow give an impermissible advantage to prosecutors, Chalbeck said in a court filing.

“Mr. Gerace’s sense of unfairness – which appears not to have accounted for the strategic benefits he could derive from reviewing the transcripts of the two prior trials – is not grounds to reinvent the criminal justice system,” she said.

Bongiovanni was acquitted of accepting a bribe from the Serio and Masecchia drug-trafficking organization.

“We’re not retrying Masecchia, Serio and Lou Selva. That’s not happening at this trial,” Vilardo told Gerace’s prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Gerace’s lawyers, however, expressed concern about testimony regarding Italian organized crime.

Vilardo has previously ruled the term “Italian organized crime” – because it’s used in the indictment – can be used at trial.

Gerace has 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, in an interview in 2021 with The Buffalo News, called the accusation “nonsense.”

Prosecutors said the aura of Mafia connections could be seen as stronger in Gerace’s case than Bongiovanni’s.

“Because here we also have a sex-trafficking conspiracy charged that alleges force, fraud and coercion,” Tripi said. “And Gerace’s family reputation, true or not, is highly relevant to his ability to exert control and influence over the employees and dancers at Pharaoh’s who engage in commercial sex acts. There’s going to be testimony that he’s made reference and alluded to his being in the Mafia.”

Even if untrue, “if that’s what he’s putting out there, fear sounds a lot like coercion,” Tripi said.

Foti, the defense lawyer, countered that “the jury’s going to be looking at the person at the defense counsel table saying we’re hearing from multiple sources that he’s apparently a member of the Mafia, and there is no way that doesn’t have an impact on him.”

Vilardo said he will not allow testimony alleging Gerace is involved in Italian organized crime, but will allow testimony about what Gerace has said himself about any connections and Bongiovanni’s understanding of it.