Federal prosecutors rested their case Monday after the last of their 62 witnesses finished testifying in the bribery and corruption retrial of former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joseph Bongiovanni.
“Judge, we’ll rest,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi told U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo early in Monday’s court proceeding.
Testimony from FBI Special Agent Brian Burns completed the prosecution’s case as prosecutors called on him to recap witnesses and connections among those mentioned in the trial.
Former DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni is accused of accepting at least $250,000 in bribes to shield drug traffickers from arrest.
Bongiovanni, 60, faces 11 charges at his retrial. The charges include bribery and conspiracy to defraud the United States for reportedly using his position as a DEA special agent to protect members of the Ronald Serio drug-trafficking organization whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime. Prosecutors charge that Bongiovanni 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.
Complete coverage: The case of ex-DEA agent Joseph Bongiovanni
Testimony in the retrial started Aug. 5.
The 62 witnesses called by prosecutors is fewer than the 70 they called during 21 days of testimony at Bongiovanni’s first trial. But the prosecution case spanned 27 days during the retrial, which was interrupted when Bongiovanni and a couple of the jurors suffered from Covid-19 infections, as well as when U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo fell ill.
Those in Ronald Serio's drug organization thought they were protected. Then came his arrest
The jury in Bongiovanni’s first trial could not reach a verdict on bribery counts against him, but 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 when he retired. They could not reach a verdict on 12 other charges.
The first defense witness to take the stand Monday was John Flickinger, the former group supervisor for Bongiovanni who eventually became resident-agent-in-charge of the DEA’s Buffalo office.
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Flickinger described Bongiovanni as a “solid” DEA agent who typically focused on “buy-and-bust” short-term cases as opposed to lengthier investigations into more sophisticated drug conspiracies.
Bongiovanni brought up Serio as a target of an investigation, Flickinger recalled, someone Flickinger considered worth investigating given Serio’s financial assets and numerous cash transactions.
But the Serio investigation ended without arrests mainly because no confidential informant could infiltrate the Serio organization, Flickinger said.
“We never had a confidential informant who could deal directly with the main target,” Flickinger told defense attorney Parker MacKay during direct questioning.
Prosecutors allege Bongiovanni manipulated informants that local police departments turned over to the DEA who could have reached Serio’s inner circle of personal friends.
Prosecutors say Bongiovanni led a Tonawanda detective to believe he was signing up one such prospective informant. The person was driven to DEA offices, and even he thought he had become a confidential source for the DEA, Tripi said at the first trial.
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.”
MacKay focused many of his questions to Flickinger on Monday about Robert Kaiser, an informant who testified at the first trial that there was no limit to how much cocaine or marijuana he could have bought from Serio. Kaiser died in May of an apparent overdose, so his testimony from the first trial was read to jurors in the second trial. In prosecutors’ eyes, Kaiser’s testimony showed how Bongiovanni had steered Kaiser away from saying or doing anything to develop an investigation into Serio.
MacKay’s questions focused on the crucial role Kaiser played in the conviction of Peter N. Militello, a drug dealer from the Town of Tonawanda, who became the first defendant in Western New York to go to prison for selling fentanyl-laced heroin that killed someone. Bongiovanni handled that case for the DEA.
At the time, Kaiser was a DEA confidential informant. Kaiser was there when the person bought the fentanyl-laced heroin, a violation of Kaiser’s deal with the DEA.
The defense has said that was reason enough for Bongiovanni to deactivate Kaiser as a confidential source and not attempt to use him further on the unrelated Serio investigation.
Kaiser, during his testimony, accused Bongiovanni of revealing his identity to Militello, which meant others in the drug trade knew he was an informant and placed him in danger.
MacKay pressed Flickinger on whether the DEA prioritized heroin and fentanyl cases over marijuana cases. The Serio organization was seen mainly as a marijuana trafficking organization, and the defense team has said it wasn’t a corrupt agent that stalled the Serio investigation but rather in part the DEA directing its resources to other traffickers dealing more dangerous drugs.
Kaiser was used for the more important fentanyl case, the defense attorneys have said.
Flickinger said the DEA did not focus on many marijuana cases, saying the “overwhelming priority of our office” was on the 100 people a year dying of fentanyl overdoses.
During cross-examination, Flickinger told Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Cooper that he was not aware Louis Selva was Bongiovanni’s longtime friend.
Selva, considered a pivotal government witness, said he used cocaine with Bongiovanni, which partly explained why he felt safe to broach with Bongiovanni the alleged bribery scheme in which the Serio drug-trafficking organization would pay the then-DEA agent $2,000 a month, and later $4,000 a month, for sensitive law enforcement information about informants, surveillance, wiretaps and targets of investigations.
Flickinger said the DEA generally would not be allowed to investigate friends.
When Cooper asked if Flickinger was familiar with Selva’s name, the former DEA boss said he was not.
What’s more, Selva’s phone number was coming up in the phone records that Bongiovanni subpoenaed as part of the Serio investigation, prosecutors have shown.
“Did he ever ever come up to you and say, ‘Hey, my best friend’s name is coming up in the investigation?’” Cooper asked Flickinger.
Flickinger said he did not recall Bongiovanni telling him that.
Gerace's ex-wife testifies about envelopes of cash for Bongiovanni, sex acts for others at Pharaoh's
