FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2005
DA BROWN: KEY PLAYERS IN $360 MILLION
SPORTS BETTING OPERATION
PLEAD GUILTY TO ENTERPRISE CORRUPTION
Face State Prison Sentences
District Attorney Richard A. Brown today announced that four more individuals have pleaded guilty to felony charges stemming from a long-term probe into sports betting. The highly sophisticated gambling ring handled illegal wagers on horse racing, professional baseball and football and other sporting events that totaled a staggering $360 million over a two-year period. Five other defendants – including the ringleader and major bookmaker, the Mets’ former head groundskeeper and a Long Island attorney – pleaded guilty in connection with the case earlier this week.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendants – key players in a successful sports bookmaking operation run by the mob for the benefit of the mob – miscalculated their odds of getting caught and now must pay the price for their costly mistake by serving serious state prison time and forfeiting tens of thousands of dollars in assets as the fruit of their crimes. This case sends a clear signal to all who involve themselves in illegal gambling that law enforcement will keep up the pressure and not allow them to operate. Organized crime reaps huge profits from illegal gambling that evade taxation and underwrite its other more insidious forms of corruption, such as labor racketeering, drug trafficking, auto theft, insurance fraud and loan sharking. Illegal gambling is by no means a victimless crime – it provides the fuel that allows organized crime to operate.”
District Attorney Brown identified today’s defendants as Joseph Amato, 40, of 439 North Queens Avenue in Massapequa; Dana Antal, 35, of 606 Martz Road in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania; Albert Chan, 56, of 621 East 9th Street, Manhattan; and Michael D'Alessandro, 40, of 3671 West Oceanside Road in Oceanside.
The four defendants entered pleas of guilty today to Enterprise Corruption before Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard L. Buchter. The defendants will forfeit a total of more than $88,000 in cash seized at the time of their arrests, and the defendant Antal will make restitution of $100,000 to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for taxes owed on gambling revenue.
Sentencing has been adjourned to October 10, 2005, for Antal and Chan at which time they will each be sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison. Sentencing for Amao and D’Alessandro is set for October 17, 2005, at which time they will be sentenced to 2 to 6 years and 1 to 3 years in prison, respectively.
District Attorney Brown said that the four defendants were among thirty-six individuals charged three months ago with participating in a Bonanno organized crime family controlled gambling operation that ran wire rooms in Kew Garden Hills and Flushing, Queens, and off-shore in Costa Rica. Prosecutors estimated that the ring handled up to 2,000 bets daily – totaling $400,000 – on horse racing, baseball, football and other sporting events and booked over $2.5 million in one day during the 2005 NFL Playoffs. Eleven of the defendants are also being sued civilly and have been named as respondents in a $360 million civil forfeiture action filed in Queens Supreme Court by the District Attorney’s Special Proceedings Bureau. The civil forfeiture action alleges that the eleven defendants engaged in a criminal enterprise that promoted illegal gambling activities and generated illegal bets amounting to about $360 million from April 2003 to April 2005.
The indictment charges that the defendants Amato, who was the ring’s enforcer who ensured that its protocols and procedures were obeyed, and Antal were partners, along with Christopher Bruno, the ringleader and major bookmakers in the enterprise. Together, these three defendants managed the ring's day-to-day operations, settling bettor disputes, authorizing and accounting the debts and payouts and supervising numerous, lower-ranking employees.
District Attorney Brown noted that Bruno, 34, of 4022 Jean Avenue in Bethpage, New York, pleaded guilty earlier this week to Enterprise Corruption and was ordered to immediately forfeit $510,00 in cash, investment accounts and vehicles. Among the forfeited items, said District Attorney Brown, are a 2003 Mercedes Benz valued at $95,000, a 2002 GMC Denali valued at $29,000 and a rare baseball card collection reportedly worth as much as $300,000. Sentencing has been adjourned to November 15, 2005, at which time Bruno will be sentenced to three to nine years in state prison. Bruno’s fiancé, Cheryl O'Connor, 24, of 267 Nassau Street, Brooklyn, pleaded guilty to Conspiracy in the Fifth Degree and was sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge.
According to District Attorney Brown, the ring also used 25 “runners,” included the defendants Chan and D’Allesandro who maintained lists of bettors, paid their winnings and collected their losses and recruited new bettors to the bookmaking enterprise. According to the charges, each of the ring’s “runners” in exchange for a share of the ring’s gambling profits managed his own group of bettors by accepting and relaying bets or by providing bettors with a phone number and runner's code for a particular wire room, then settling up their bettors' win-loss amounts.
Three other runners – attorney Marc Rovner, 42, of 15 Oxford Road in East Rockaway; Eric Bard, 38, of 119 Grohmans Lane in Plainview; and former Mets head groundskeeper Dominic Valila,39, of 383 Plainfield Avenue in Floral Park, Long Island – pleaded guilty earlier this week to Promoting Gambling in the First Degree in connection with their roles in the gambling operation, said District Attorney Brown. Valila and Bard were each sentenced to three-year conditional discharges, and Valila was ordered to forfeit $9,200 in cash that had been seized at the time of his arrest. Sentencing for Rovner was adjourned to September 15, 2005, and, in addition, to forfeiting $31,039 in cash seized at the time of his arrest, Rovner was ordered to surrender his law license prior to sentencing.
District Attorney Brown said that the criminal enterprise reportedly handled about 2,000 bets each day that generated gross revenues of nearly $400,000 daily, $15 million a month and $180 million a year during the 28-month period covered by the indictment. It is alleged to have relied on modern technology to generate its criminal proceeds, including computers, the Internet, e-mail and AOL instant messaging to safedepositsports.com and a toll-free telephone number that ran up a monthly bill of over $50,000.
District Attorney Brown expressed his appreciation to the detectives assigned to the New York City Police Department's Organized Crime Control Bureau, the District Attorney’s New York City Police Department Squad and his New York State Police Unit, and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance’s Revenue Crimes Bureau for their assistance during the lengthy investigation.
Assistant District Attorneys Peri A. Kadanoff, Chief of Auto Crime and Insurance Fraud Unit, and Suzanne H. Sullivan, of the District Attorney's Organized Crime and Rackets Bureau prosecuted today’s cases under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Gerard A. Brave, Bureau Chief, and Marc P. Resnick, Deputy Bureau Chief, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Peter A. Crusco and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Linda M. Cantoni.