Those in Ronald Serio's drug organization thought they were protected. Then came his arrest

John Robinson panicked after learning police searched the Town of Tonawanda home of a low-level drug dealer whom Robinson was supplying 2 to 4 pounds of marijuana every week in 2015.

“I was extremely stressed out,” Robinson testified in federal court, recounting how he threw into a Dumpster his scales, packaging materials and anything else that could link him to selling drugs for the Ronald Serio drug-trafficking organization.

But others in the organization didn’t seem nervous. He remembers his girlfriend – who at the time was Serio’s sister-in-law and had also sold marijuana – telling him not to expect police to investigate further up the organization’s hierarchy.

“She basically says, ‘I don’t think you need to stress. Ron has Joe Bong,’ “ Robinson testified.

She was referring to Joseph Bongiovanni, a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent at the time. Serio testified he agreed to pay $2,000 and then $4,000 a month to Bongiovanni from 2010 to 2017 to be alerted about any investigations and informants that could jeopardize his drug organization. Serio said he had never met Bongiovanni in person, but agreed to the scheme he said was put together by Michael Masecchia with help from Louis Selva – two longtime friends of Bongiovanni who were key members of the drug organization.

Serio said he initially bought marijuana from Masecchia’s Southern Tier outdoor grows, but he eventually went from being a customer of Masecchia’s to his partner.

“He just said Joe is willing to give information for money,” Serio said of Masecchia’s pitch to him to pay the alleged bribes.

Serio said Masecchia told him Bongiovanni could access information about wiretaps, informants and investigations by checking the DEA’s computer system and keeping up with what his fellow agents were working on.

A few days after the police raid, Robinson and the busted low-level drug dealer met with Serio’s then-wife. The dealer described to her what happened during the search and that police indicated to him they were aware of Serio’s drug organization. “She seemed pretty uninterested” in what the two told her, Robinson said, recalling her as appearing unconcerned. That was “100%” different than how he felt, Robinson said in his testimony last Monday. Robinson left Buffalo to move back home to Corning within a year.

The case: Bongiovanni, 60, faces 11 charges at his retrial. The charges include bribery and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. for reportedly using his position as a DEA special agent to protect members of the Serio drug-trafficking organization whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime. Prosecutors allege he received $2,000 and then $4,000 a month – totaling at least $250,000 – to provide the organization information about investigations and cooperating sources and to shield its members from arrest by feigning investigations and manipulating informants.

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 Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club; and making false statements to a U.S. agency for denying that he initiated contact with Gerace or witnessed Gerace use narcotics.

Through Friday, 52 witnesses have testified for the prosecution over 21 days of testimony.

The jury in his eight-week trial earlier this year found him guilty on one count of obstruction of justice and one count of lying to federal agents over a case file kept in his home after his retirement. Jurors acquitted him of deleting data on his DEA-issued cellphone but could not reach a verdict on 12 other charges.

In July, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo on his own acquitted Bongiovanni of one of the bribery counts related to the allegation he was paid an undetermined amount by Gerace to help him and his strip club avoid federal narcotics investigations and induce the FBI to abandon an investigation.

Prosecutors expect to finish calling witnesses by the middle of this week, and the defense expects to rest its case by Oct. 4.

Complete coverage: The case of ex-DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni

Context: Prosecutors assert Serio felt protected by Bongiovanni, even after the May 2015 raid at the home of one of his low-level distributors. The amount of money generated by just that one low-level dealer, one of many selling Serio’s marijuana, shows how Serio could afford to buy in 2012 a 9,000-square-foot French Provincial mansion at 697 Lebrun Road in Amherst, prosecutors say. Serio has said he bought the home for $715,000 and added $700,000 in improvements. The 2.4-acre parcel included a pool and tennis court.

The low-level dealer would get about 4 pounds of marijuana a week from distributors under Serio for about $2,800 a pound over a five-year period. “This low-level distributor represents about a quarter of a million dollars in profit to Ron Serio,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said at Bongiovanni’s first trial.

A person who knew someone in Serio’s organization helped Town of Tonawanda police get a search warrant for the low-level dealer’s home, Tripi said.

That person had been with a friend of Serio’s and used cocaine, so he touched Serio’s inner circle of personal friends.

Prosecutors say Bongiovanni led a Tonawanda detective to believe he was signing up the person as an informant. The person was driven to DEA offices, and even he thought he had become a confidential source for the DEA, Tripi said.

But Bongiovanni feigned an investigation and never used the person to investigate the Serio organization, Tripi said.

“There’s no record of it in the DEA system whatsoever,” Tripi said, alleging Bongiovanni pretended to sign him up but acted to put him “in bubble wrap, keep him on the shelf.”

Key witness: Ron Serio

Quote: “He said for $2,000 a month, Joe would make sure we’re not under investigation, check phones and make sure there are no informants,” Serio said of the alleged bribery scheme presented by Michael Masecchia.

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Ron Serio testimony: In 2012, Serio had a supplier in California who would ship hundreds of pounds of marijuana, prosecutors say. Illinois state police intercepted a shipment intended for the Serio organization and alerted New York State Police, which arranged a controlled delivery of 200 pounds of marijuana to a residence near McKinley High School. 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.

Serio said he met with Masecchia after the arrests because he wanted to know if everything would be OK. Masecchia told him he would talk to Bongiovanni, Serio testified.

The next day Masecchia called Serio and said “that everything was OK,” Serio testified Friday. “He said he talked to Joe.”

A retired state police investigator previously testified that Bongiovanni asked if the DEA could take over the case, and state police complied. 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.

Serio said he used Bongiovanni’s supposed protection to strike deals with marijuana wholesalers to keep the marijuana coming to Western New York rather to Boston or elsewhere.

“I told them it’d be safer if you stuck with me because I had an agent on the payroll,” Serio testified.

Serio said 300-pound shipments of marijuana would be delivered by large trucks from Vancouver to New Jersey or Toronto, hidden in bales of mulch. Other times the marijuana would be hidden under the floorboards of trucks that would escape detection at the border, he said.

Serio said he drove to New York City himself at least 20 times to pick up marijuana, and he would pay someone to follow him in a car. If police began following Serio, the driver of the other car was supposed to drive recklessly to distract the police attention away from Serio’s car.

Other times, couriers would drive U-Haul trucks to Amherst carrying marijuana. Serio would meet the courier at a restaurant, give the courier the keys to his Range Rover and then drive the U-Haul truck himself to his Lebrun Road home, because he did not want the courier to know where he lived. After he unloaded the shipment, Serio would return the empty truck to the courier, he said.

Serio testified he distributed about 10,000 pounds of marijuana and 5 kilos of cocaine until his arrest by Erie County Sheriff’s Office investigators and FBI agents in 2017.

Serio, who was abusing opioids before the arrest, said most of the 16,000 fentanyl pills he bought were for himself and his friends.

The Sheriff’s Office did not tell the DEA its investigators were looking into Serio, so it wasn’t on Bongiovanni’s radar, prosecutors said.

When caught with 19 pounds of marijuana during a delivery he was making in Buffalo, Serio was upset.

“I asked for Joe Bongiovanni,” he testified, wanting to talk to the DEA agent Serio never met but whose protection he was counting on.

“Do you work for him?” he was asked.

“I believe I said ‘I want my lawyer,’ “ Serio testified about his reply to the question.

Why it matters: Masecchia and Serio are the two key figures in the drug organization that prosecutors have alleged paid Bongiovanni bribes. Masecchia was “the muscle and the money man” whom prosecutors said made face-to-face cash payments to Bongiovanni. Serio, whom prosecutors say was responsible for finding narcotics suppliers locally and in New York City as well as California and Canada, provided the money to Masecchia. Selva has testified he touched base with Bongiovanni about once a month to get information, if there was any that could affect the organization, and would pass it along to Masecchia. Masecchia said he would pass along information to Serio. Masecchia is now serving seven years in federal prison. He did not testify at Bongiovanni’s first trial. So Selva and Serio are the only witnesses jurors heard from about the alleged Serio bribery scheme.

Prosecution angle: “What was in Ron Serio’s houses? Large amounts of drugs, cocaine and marijuana, and currency,” Tripi said at the first trial.

But Bongiovanni never investigated him, despite informants who indicated they could penetrate Serio’s organization, Tripi said.

“He wasn’t interested,” Tripi said. “He was protecting him – for bribes.”

Defense response: Bongiovanni’s defense attorneys have asserted Selva and Masecchia concocted Bongiovanni’s involvement. Serio wasn’t paying bribes to Bongiovanni, but was tricked into giving money to Masecchia, who did not give it to Bongiovanni. So no matter what crimes Serio admitted to during his testimony, that doesn’t reflect on Bongiovanni.

As for Serio talking about bribes that he said he paid to Masecchia, “you heard a little bit from Lou Selva about that, you didn’t hear from Masecchia,” defense attorney Robert Singer said at the first trial.

The evidence in this case shows Selva and Masecchia “duped Ron Serio,” Singer said.

Serio said he gave names of drug dealers he supplied to Masecchia, who he thought would give them to Selva, who would then go to Bongiovanni with the names for him to check out to make sure they were not being investigated.

On Friday, during defense attorney Parker MacKay’s cross-examination, Serio acknowledged some in his organization had been investigated and even arrested but that he had not learned that from Bongiovanni. That bolsters the defense contention that Bongiovanni, in fact, had not been approached by Masecchia to keep an eye out for the Serio organization.

“It doesn’t appear like the names that Ron Serio was interested in were being looked into that much,” Singer said at the first trial.

When federal agents searched Bongiovanni’s home, “did they find a safe full of cash?” Singer asked. “They found that in Michael Masecchia’s residence. They found that at Ron Serio’s residence. Didn’t find it in Joseph Bongiovanni’s residence.”