To Michael O’Rourke, seizing 200 pounds of marijuana during a state police raid in November 2012 looked like a big case.
He estimated the marijuana had a street value of some $250,000.
“It’s the highest possession charge you could get at that time,” recalled O’Rourke, a retired state police senior investigator who testified at Joseph Bongiovanni’s bribery and corruption retrial this week.
Former DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni tested positive for Covid on Saturday, as have two jurors, forcing another delay in his retrial on bribery and drug-trafficking charges.
Within days, the case looked to get even bigger after O’Rourke heard from Bongiovanni, then a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The DEA had nothing to do with a search at Wayne Anderson’s residence in a neighborhood near McKinley High School. But within days of the arrests of Anderson and Damien Abbate, Bongiovanni called O’Rourke to set up a meeting at the State Police’s downtown office, O’Rourke testified Thursday.
Bongiovanni wanted to discuss Anderson’s arrest and his cooperation with police.
At their meeting, Bongiovanni asked if the DEA could take over the case and use the threat of federal charges to leverage Anderson’s cooperation as a confidential informant to pursue organized-crime targets.
O’Rourke replied he was happy to let the DEA take over the case.
Here’s what O’Rourke did not know at the time: Anderson and Bongiovanni have known one another since they were teenagers.
“I met Joe with friends over the years,” Anderson testified at Bongionvanni's first trial earlier this year, saying he met Bongiovanni through “all my friends in North Buffalo, guys I went through high school (with).”
“Joe was always a great guy,” Anderson testified. “He was very good, polite person, good person.”
Anderson attended Bongiovanni’s stag party at Iron Works before the federal agent’s second marriage.
What else didn’t O’Rourke know?
Anderson was also a friend of Michael Masecchia, another childhood friend of Bongiovanni’s who prosecutors say was the “the muscle and the money man” for the Ron Serio drug-trafficking organization and responsible for allegedly making face-to-face cash payments to Bongiovanni as part of a bribery scheme to shield the drug organization from investigation. Serio was supposed to be the recipient of the 200 pounds of marijuana, prosecutors say. Both Serio and Masecchia eventually pleaded guilty to drug charges. Masecchia, now serving a seven-year prison sentence, told law enforcement officials that he and others in the drug trade had help from Bongiovanni, according to his plea agreement. But Masecchia did not testify at the retired agent’s first trial.
After their meeting, O’Rourke never heard again from Bongiovanni about Anderson, he said Thursday.
The case: Bongiovanni, 60, faces 11 charges, including a bribery count alleging that he accepted at least $250,000 from a drug-trafficking organization that 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 Cheektowaga strip club owner Peter Gerace Jr.; and making false statements to a U.S. agency for denying that he initiated contact with Gerace or witnessed Gerace use narcotics.
Key witness: Michael O’Rourke, retired New York State Police senior investigator who spent 16 years on narcotics enforcement team.
Quote: “He said that this case may be tied to organized crime and they’d like to take it to a new level and possibly adopt it federally,” O’Rourke said of Bongiovanni’s pitch to take over a case after a state police narcotics bust netted 200 pounds of marijuana.
Ronald Serio, a marijuana and cocaine trafficker who said he paid bribes to onetime DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni, leaves federal court on March 12, 2024, after testifying.
Context: In 2012, Serio had a supplier in California who would ship hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the country, prosecutors say. Illinois state police intercepted a shipment for Serio that was intended to be delivered to Anderson’s residence. The courier carrying the marijuana agreed to cooperate with the Illinois police. The Illinois police alerted New York State police, and the police arranged a controlled delivery of the hundreds of pounds of marijuana at Anderson’s residence. Police were watching as the marijuana was delivered, and shortly afterward, the State Police’s tactical team burst into the house. Police searched the house and made two arrests.
Anderson has said he did not cooperate with state police when he was arrested or afterward with the DEA.
Anderson said he was not asked by Bongiovanni to cooperate and become a DEA informant after his arrest.
Anderson’s defense lawyer handled conversations about his case with prosecutors, and eventually his case was dismissed.
Key testimony: O’Rourke testified Thursday that Anderson had refused O’Rourke’s request to cooperate after his arrest. So when Bongiovanni brought up the prospect of federal charges, either to lodge against Anderson or as a way to leverage his cooperation, O’Rourke agreed to let the DEA take over the case.
O’Rourke said he believed the DEA would try to sign up Anderson as a confidential source, with the prospect of federal charges being used as leverage for his cooperation.
O’Rourke said State Police had a good relationship with the DEA.
“Whatever I had at that time I would have given it to him,” O’Rourke said of his support for Bongiovanni and the case.
Complete coverage: The case of ex-DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni
Why it matters: Federal prosecutors point to this case as an example of Bongiovanni misdirecting another law enforcement agency by taking over a narcotics investigation he had no intention of successfully completing. Bongiovanni’s taking over the Anderson case from state police is listed as an overt act in the indictment for one of his 11 charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States. Opening an Anderson file – DEA Case Number C2-13-0026 – had wider significance beyond a feigned investigation, prosecutors say. Bongiovanni added target names to the file, including drug traffickers and associates who were allegedly paying him bribes, prosecutors said. Adding their names to the file, prosecutors say, enabled him to keep track if other agents were accessing their names, which would allow him to warn the drug traffickers. It also gave the appearance that Bongiovanni was investigating those whose names were in the file, so fellow DEA agents and other law enforcement agencies would defer to him if they got wind of the trafficker’s activities.
Prosecution angle: Bongiovanni “swoops in” to gain control of the Wayne Anderson investigation but doesn’t do anything with the case, allowing “it to die on the vine,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said at Bongiovanni’s first trial. “The Wayne Anderson case gets dismissed. Disaster averted. No federal case. No further State Police investigation. Dies on the vine. But it didn’t just die on the vine like sometimes other cases might. It died on the vine because he intentionally killed it.”
Defense response: Don’t blame Bongiovanni because the other suspect, Abbate, took a plea accepting responsibility for the drugs the state police seized. It is undisputed Anderson was arrested, but his charge was dismissed in state court. Prosecutors took a plea from Abbate. “Abbate got probation because he was the one who ate the drugs, ate the charge,” defense attorney Robert Singer said at Bongiovanni’s first trial. “The case against Anderson was dismissed and that was it. Where are you going to go after that? You have somebody who pled out to possession of the drugs other than Wayne Anderson.”
